Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Controls 421
The copyright battles going on right now are not all about SOPA, PIPA, or even the wider-reaching ACTA: suraj.sun snips thus from TorrentFreak: "At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to authorized sites. ... If the copyright industry had their way, Google and other search engines would no longer link to sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. In a detailed proposal handed out during a meeting with Google, Yahoo and Bing, various copyright holders made their demands clear. The document, which describes a government-overlooked 'Voluntary Code of Practice' for search engines, was not intended for public consumption but the Open Rights Group obtained it through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request."
2084 (Score:5, Insightful)
We should also all install mandatory software that makes sure we don't infringe copyrights.
For the children, of course.
Re:2084 (Score:5, Interesting)
They already tried that in Germany.
The publishers of school books wanted to lobby/buy themselves an agreement which requires a percentage of schools and teachers to install a software on their machines to ensure they don't have any unlicensed material on them.
Kinda like Origin, but enforced by the government.
This is why I no longer buy music (Score:5, Insightful)
Stories like this are why I will never spend another $.01 on music from the major labels. I support musicians I like by going to their concerts and buying their T-shirts but never again by paying for the privilege to listen to a recording of their music. My piracy of music is civil disobedience against the RIAA and MPAA for the copyright terrorism they continue to perpetuate. First it was the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act which ignored the interests of all mankind and extended copyright protection of 75 year old movies for another 20 years specifically to enrich USA media companies. The USA Congress specifically disregarded the rights and interests of the people who elected them into office in order to line the pockets of major corporations. Then it was Metallica suing Napster destroying something which they actually could have leveraged to control online MP3 distribution.
It is my hope that some countries will finally pass rational copyright legislation which sets copyright terms back to the Copyright Law of 1790 which set a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive. To this original law I would require that the work remain in print and for sale to the public. eBooks makes it easy to keep books in print so this should not be a huge burden to copyright holders. The moment something goes out of print (or a site ceases to exist on the Internet) the material should enter into the public domain. For example, the day Microsoft stops selling / supporting Windows XP the operating system should enter into the public domain for free use by all.
Re:This is why I no longer buy music (Score:5, Interesting)
Just putting it out there...if you're going to call it civil disobedience, then make sure that you're down with the road you're choosing to travel. Civil disobedience means that if they decide to sue you that you plead guilty to the crime, take the sentence they give you, and forego appeals. Civil disobedience means that you believe in your cause enough to take the punishment they dish out in order to make an example as to how harmful the rules are with the hope that your sacrifice will influence positive change.
Using the principle famously exemplified by Gandhi and Rosa Parks is admirable, as long as you're willing to go to the lengths that they're willing to go in order to do it. If that's genuinely your goal, and you're okay with it, then I applaud you and support you. However, if you're going at this with even the slightest intent to settle out of court, plead 'not guilty', or appeal a verdict, then you're not following a cause, you're justifying copyright infringement.
Personally, I'll settle for using Spotify.
Re:This is why I no longer buy music (Score:5, Insightful)
Pleading not guilty or appealing could also be civil disobedience, as long as you're not denying what you did, just claiming that it wasn't or shouldn't be illegal.
Re:This is why I no longer buy music (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just putting it out there...if you're going to call it civil disobedience, then make sure that you're down with the road you're choosing to travel. Civil disobedience means that if they decide to sue you that you plead guilty to the crime, take the sentence they give you, and forego appeals. Civil disobedience means that you believe in your cause enough to take the punishment they dish out in order to make an example as to how harmful the rules are with the hope that your sacrifice will influence positive change."
"Civil disobedience" is just a nice term for ignoring the law in order to challenge it. Bad laws are meant to be broken.
"Using the principle famously exemplified by Gandhi and Rosa Parks is admirable, as long as you're willing to go to the lengths that they're willing to go in order to do it. If that's genuinely your goal, and you're okay with it, then I applaud you and support you. However, if you're going at this with even the slightest intent to settle out of court, plead 'not guilty', or appeal a verdict, then you're not following a cause, you're justifying copyright infringement."
Responsibility of challenging a law you deem bad doesn't mean just lying down and getting stomped on as a means to fight it. It also means fighting to win otherwise you're at the mercy of everyone else to do something instead of doing it yourself. We use the tools and methods at hand that work. If it means blowing off the feet of those trying to stomp you so be it.
"Personally, I'll settle for using Spotify."
Another one who hasn't learned from history or Ben Franklin about liberty and security.
Re: (Score:3)
Responsibility of challenging a law you deem bad doesn't mean just lying down and getting stomped on as a means to fight it. It also means fighting to win otherwise you're at the mercy of everyone else to do something instead of doing it yourself. We use the tools and methods at hand that work. If it means blowing off the feet of those trying to stomp you so be it.
The goal is to make of yourself a public example to show just how bad the law is. That means making sure that your violation of the law is as visible as possible, to ensure that you get caught, and admitting publicly and in court that you did it because you believe it's not wrong. Then, to make it really effective, you also need to get saddled with an egregiously unfair punishment to rouse public ire. You don't do that by fighting it.
Otherwise, it's not civil disobedience, it's just being a scofflaw.
Re:This is why I no longer buy music (Score:4, Interesting)
Gandhi-style civil disobedience is for suckers. Governments have adapted and it is no longer an effective tactic.
Re:This is why I no longer buy music (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to define civil disobedience that way, fine. We need another term then. How about if we call it 'principled disobedience'. The idea is that millions of people decide to break a particular law as much as possible, but if they are caught and prosecuted they don't have to necessarily sacrifice themselves to the unjust law. They can do whatever they want and say whatever they want that is consistent with their own self-interest.
Outcompeted by Amateurs (Score:4, Interesting)
Do the big search engines really want to take advice from an industry that is out-competed in distribution by *amateurs*? Most people sharing files don't make money off it.
To those who ask "how will creators get paid?", there are plenty of people who will willingly pay for things at a reasonable price, as demonstrated by iTunes, NetFlix, Steam, and even for books, where Baen free library *increased* sales by exposing readers to new authors. I have 100+ DVDs that I got for about $6 each on average over the last decade. I got them used from the video store, and to me that was a reasonable price. $20 new is just too much for me, so I have nearly never bought new ones.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
And What's really cool is .. (Score:2, Interesting)
That next year computer using windows 7-8, and intel's E?{Remember: Intel bought McAfee} something processor will allow BIG BROTHER to be able to brick your computer if it contains software deem inappropriate. Cool Yes! Its a win win senario for the NeoCons, more felony charges to the people, more computers being replaced, more people fearfull of sharing software. Great huh? Now who says the NeoCons dont know about I.T.?
Re:And What's really cool is .. (Score:4, Interesting)
And more people wanting to install truly free software on their computers, making them aware of the problem.
That's a good point. Free software, at least at the essential tools level, are already as good or better than their proprietary counterparts. Free movies are getting better as well. Depends on taste, but I don't see any downsides to free music too. Literature is a bit different, maybe in the future a donation based economy might work but it doesn't look doable right now at least. On the other hand, most of the things I read now are free (blogs, wikis, etc.) so I guess we're getting there. I guess in the end we can totally make do with content created by voluntary payments (support if you like it, pay if you have money). Micropayment systems will enable more in the near future too (not sure how good flattr performs at this), and Bitcoin donations help preserve the privacy of content creators (which is pretty much essential if we are to guarantee the safety of dissidents we support, even in art form).
I don't think copyrights themselves are helpful to the humanity as a whole, however I'm not so much against giving content creators the right to define the extent of usage either. The content wouldn't exist if they didn't create them (yeah, it's not as simple as that really, but let's assume that). If it could really work without copyrights, let's give the content creators the choice. (Though, in my opinion, these new regulations are not about giving the content creators the choice, but giving the State more means to intervene with our business; the ultimate use case will not even be about copyrights. I don't see much consequential difference between regulations against content piracy and regulations against illegal content (e.g. CP).)
I admit to downloading and watching copyrighted content, but as a consumer I always donate if there is a channel to do so. I don't own a TV, I don't care to going to a DVD store (it's like buying cigarettes, I need to smoke now, who knows what I would want when I go all the way to the corner store; and besides they close at 7), and I don't know any "legal" streaming providers that serve content to my region. Even if they did, I'm not sure I would want to pay what they ask in advance (not sure though, depends on the amount and what I know about the content). Best option for me is paying if I like it to support the endeavor, or if a prior capital is necessary, become a micro-producer and contribute beforehand to support developing a project that I approve. There are a myriad of problems with this model, from trust issues (in the case of donations in advance) to the decreased incentive to pay, but it's already taking off. If it ever becomes a tradition, which by itself solves a lot of these problems, it might one day become a norm too.
Re:And What's really cool is .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kewl how ? (Score:4, Insightful)
To me it is ridiculous to pay an actor and author millions of dollars for a couple of weeks of work. While plumbers, electricians work harder yet get paid less.
Huh? What planet do you live on where that happens? Here on Earth, most of the actors, authors, and other artistic types get paid less than a living wage, because those millions go to the big corporations that control the distribution channels. This has been written about here and in other forums a zillion times, but apparently it hasn't gotten through to whatever planet you're living on.
We do have a new, much cheaper distribution channel that they don't control, called the Internet, and Earth's artists are starting to abandon the older corporate-controlled channels for this new one. The fuss you're reading about here is the corporate controllers' attempts to take control of the Internet, so they can shut down the new, independent distributors and continue to claim the artists' income as their own. If the people on your planet have learned how to block such a takeover, please let us know, so we can try it here.
It's true that we on Earth do have a very few commercial artist that are paid well by the old distribution corporations. This is basically a PR trick, to make the customers think that all artists get that sort of money. But the other 99.9% get close to nothing, unless they've switched over to Internet distribution. Many of us are hoping we can hold off the corporations until they've gone bankrupt, and we've established a permanent system that actually pays the artists. But, as explained in the news stories we're discussing, our governments are trying to pass laws that shut down the new startups and hand the Internet over to the big corporations. Stay tuned, and you might hear how it turns out.
But if you're an alien artist, I'd advise staying home, and not trying to sell your art here on Earth until we manage to establish a system that will actually pay you. Of course, there are a lot of Earthlings who would probably love to see/hear/taste/smell your creations; maybe you could try making them available on our Internet and see how it goes. (Actually, the Internet doesn't do taste or smell very well, so you should just stick to visual, audio, and written works of art.) But our big corporations will probably go after you if they discover you, and claim that they own the Earth rights to your work.
Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals without talking to someone who knows ANYTHING about IT and technology FIRST?
The last thing the world needs is ignorant luddites making the technology decisions for the global internet infrastructure.
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they new anything about the internet they would be making money from piracy instead of making stupid demands.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh fuck, the grammar Nazi's are closing in.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, well if the worst they could pick apart was a typo, they must be in general agreement. Good enough! :D
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not at all. I "pirate" media to preview/prelisten before making a purchase decision. Were I not able to preview/prelisten, I'd buy NOTHING.
So "piracy" INCREASES their market share and sales in my case.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't give a fuck what anyone else does. I'm LEGALLY ENTITLED to preview media in Canada and to format-shift content I already own. The US is it's own nightmare, and as long as they never succeed in shoving their fucked-up system down Canada's throat, I could give a tinker's damn about what the US does to itself.
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US system of "copyright" is NOT global, no matter what the US lobbyists would like to believe.
Keep your fucked up laws to yourself.
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:4, Informative)
You're right, it's only nearly global [wikipedia.org].
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not a "myopic" opinion -- it is a recognition of the FACT that different nations have different copyright legislation. US law != Global Law, no matter WHAT the American people think about their role in the world.
It is AMERICA that is "myopic" in their presumption that they get to shove their dictatorship and police state down the throats of the international community.
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US and Canadian media lobby groups are doing their DAMNDEST to force Canada to take on legislation "imposed" by the US system, in direct violation of nearly a half century of precedent cases in Canada.
I, for one, will NOT stand by quietly and allow that to go unchallenged. I LIKE my copyright priveleges as a Canadian, and our media companies are NOT running in the red, so it seems to work for EVERYONE, no matter how much the luddites and dogs-in-a-manger bitch about how the "current system is broken."
The chicken little media companies have been claiming piracy was going to kill the music and movie industries since the 1970s with cassettes made of LPs. They have ZERO credibility in Canada left to their name.
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our media companies aren't running in the red, either. In fact, they are making record profits. And I think that is part of the problem. It gives them far too much money to spend on lobbyists like this. They need a fall guy when they finally stop having record profits to point to why, and to be able to say it isn't their fault. In short, they need a scapegoat. Piracy is a good one since it is impossible to reliably prove any effect from it at all.
Re: (Score:3)
On that point, we're in 100% agreement! :D They have WAY too much money to "invest" in lobbyists over the will of the people, never mind foreign governments and their citizens.
Re:Lobbyists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Milking excuses? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is AMERICA that is "myopic" in their presumption that they get to shove their dictatorship and police state down the throats of the international community.
Don't lump me in with those shitheads!
"AMERICA" is not who you think it is. The average American does not want to have anything to do with the dictatorship attitudes of the 1% and those in power, and we are pretty much split down the line on the wars. Americans who were for the wars, were only supportive because they honestly felt threatened and were manipulated by those in power to believe it had to be true. As for the police state laws being exported, that has nothing to do with Americans .
Those in power in this country had to use "National Security" to hide ACTA from us for so long. In less than 48 hours over 30,000 Americans told the Whitehouse to investigate Chris Dodd for bribery when he said some pretty stupid things on television because he was butthurt for his Big Content masters.
What about opposing SOPA? Some tech giants got together and a huge amount of Americans got up and screamed against it!
The American People are not who you need to place your anger with. We are powerless victims here either through apathy or the naivete that we can actually be involved in the political process. In other words, we are being played from multiple angles and we are having a very hard time fighting back.
As much as you don't want "our" copyright laws shoved down your throat, we don't want them to apply to us either.
Your anger needs to be placed very specifically on those running America into the shitter. Please don't sully the name America by including them in it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In short, the illegal activities of the few or the many does NOT mean I'm willing to budge an INCH on defending my established legal rights as a Canadian citizen to kiss American ass, or the asses of even Canadian media lobbyists.
Re: (Score:2)
*LOL* ".. my established legal rights as a Candian citizen to kiss American ass..."
Woot! That's a hilariously bad phrasing, but you know what I MEAN!
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:4, Interesting)
MegaUpload seemed to do quite well and they paid for the content to be uploaded.
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all pirates pirate simply because its free.
Plenty of pirates only pirate because they have no legal option to acquire the content. Sometimes its not available on DVD/Blu-Ray (or digital stream/download) in their country. Sometimes its a TV show that has yet to be picked up by any local TV network (or where the local network is 3 seasons
behind or something).
Sometimes its available on a streaming service but the streaming service has DRM (or restrictions) that means they cant watch it on a mobile device or on a TV. Or maybe its a sporting event they want to watch but cant because its blacked out on their local station.
Sometimes the only way to get the content is to spend huge sums of money on other content they dont want and have no interest in (this is common with various cable providers and premium channel packages)
I for one have been watching some History Channel documentaries on YouTube. Why? Because these documentaries are unavailable on DVD in any store in Australia and the only way to get the content legally is to pay over $60 per month to get Foxtel and the History Channel. And there is no gaurantee that any of the shows you want will be aired (and even if they are, you have to pay extra for a PVR or watch then when Foxtel decides to show them, not when you want)
If I could buy some of these documentaries on DVD at a reasonable price (or better yet, pay something even less to rent the DVD or streaming copy) I would do so. But the option is unavailable to me.
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the fact, that in some countries 500 euros is a good monthly pay, while in others 2000 euros per months means one step above poor. Yet all the goods are priced the same. No, there is more, you see in a country like UK, if you don't like something you have the option of returning it, if it's scratched or damaged, you can get your money back or a replacement. You also have all those neat promotions. You might find it fantastic, but a lot of firms do bussiness that way, they don't bother buying in bulk from the producer, but buy a small quantity from the distributor, simply put because they can't afford to keep that much stock without selling it.
There are a lot of little things that prevent all goods from reaching all markets.
Take manga and anime for instance, until a few years ago, it was impossible to get them in the western countries, let alone translated. So, the option was piracy. Then there was the price, in Japan, Korea, they're dirt cheap, in the rest of the world they're bloody expensive, even with the translation and reprinting the cost isn't justified.
In the end, they're going to lose. You know why? Because anyone and everyone can hold in the palm of their hand, every book ever written in the world.
Re: (Score:3)
Local distributors (or lack thereof) should not matter...
Similarly, lack of translation doesn't matter to everyone...
"translation" is often cited as a reason why american movies take so long to be shown in europe, and yet the UK requires no translation whatsoever and many people in the rest of europe are perfectly capable of understanding english, and when given the choice between "watch it now in english, watch it in 6 months time in your local language" will choose the english version.
Local distributors s
Re:Balassa-Samuelson (Score:5, Interesting)
There's not a whole lot an individual can do about that. Too bad the GP is an AC, because that was an insightful comment that unfortunately will be little seen.
When I was in Thailand in 1974 it cost a nickle to ride a bus anywhere in the country. Dinner for four at a decent restaurant cost a dollar. I bought a tailored shirt for five bucks, my bungalow was $30 a month. The median wage was about $1000 per year, yet they weren't really poor.
It took two decades for them to industrialize, and the average Thai is no better off now than they were then.
Re: (Score:3)
They always have the option to move to a country where the works are published lawfully.
Just like people in the USSR always had the option to move to the west?
Re:They always have the option (devil's advocacy) (Score:5, Insightful)
They always have the option to move to a country where the works are published lawfully.
Migration is actually very difficult, it can be extremely difficult to acquire the necessary permits to live in another country. That's why there are so many illegal immigrants, would you advocate illegally entering another country so you can purchase movies instead of pirating them in your own country?
They always have the option to buy the appropriate brand of computer or game console and watch it on that. And since when has a PC been able to tell whether its VGA, DVI, or HDMI output is headed to a "TV" as opposed to a "computer monitor"?
And why should they? I'm not forced to buy a particular brand of TV to watch broadcast shows, i'm not forced to buy a particular brand of car to drive on public roads.
They always have the option to buy tickets to watch the game in person.
Not at all, it is often extremely difficult to get tickets for major sporting events... A large number of the tickets are reserved for corporate sponsors etc... You have to buy tickets well in advance to get a good seat or to even get a seat at all, and its often exceptionally expensive. Also the event may not be held locally to you, if its held in another country you have to content with flights, hotels, immigration papers etc.. The cost and inconvenience becomes astronomical enough to put a lot of people off.
Also consider events like the olympics, ordering tickets is being done on a lottery system so even people who want to see a specific event and are willing/able to pay for it may not be able to get tickets.
When tickets for major events initially go on sale its often impossible to access their website or phone lines due to heavy demand too.
The option to see the game in person is only ever available to a limited number, equal to the capacity of the stadium... If more than that many people want to see the event live then some of them simply don't have that option at all.
What is reasonable to you is not always reasonable to the work's author.
Prices are usually set by publishers rather than the actual author, who will see a tiny pittance of the price...
This industry is corrupted by extreme greed and arrogance... Why should someone who spends 6 months being filmed in a movie receive millions on an ongoing basis, while other people (including people like camera operators who were there during the same filming) only receive an average hourly wage for the time they actually spent working?
What ever happened to an honest day's work for an honest day's pay?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because their presence, and the star power they bring is worth that much. If you give Brad Pitt ten million, there's a good chance your film will more than make up that c
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should a content publisher have the right to make content available in one country, but then take steps to block third parties from exporting that content to another country (eg region restrictions etc)?
You don't see that happen with physical goods, there's nothing to stop me purchasing a laptop in china and either bringing it with me or having it shipped, and for digital data that can and should be even easier.
I can fully understand a manufacturer who feels that there is insufficient demand for their product in another country that its not worth expending the time and effort to export and market the product there for a tiny number of extra sales. They are saving themselves wasted effort, and it is still possible for anyone who is still interested to import the goods themselves on a small scale.
On the other hand, when a manufacturer actually goes out of they way to prevent third party export of their product to another country that is just ridiculous and highly insulting. They are actually expending significant resources to DECREASE SALES and to SCREW THOSE IN COUNTRIES THEY DONT LIKE... This all strikes me as extremely discriminatory.
It's one thing to not bother, it's quite another to go out of your way to inconvenience someone else.
Re:Milking stones.? (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. Give people what they want and they will buy.
I cite my favorite example for this: Movie DVDs. There are a few shows, very select few, that I follow and like. Sadly, I cannot buy them. They are even commercially available, but I cannot get them. Why? Because they don't want to sell them to me because I happen to live in the wrong corner of the planet.
I have to wait until they are done with their atrocious dubbing and then I am probably, maybe, finally allowed to buy. The dubbed version, not the original one. Sure, in Spanish, German, French, Italian and a few other languages nobody knew or heard of, but rest assured the original English track will not be part of the fold. And even if I accepted a dubbing that butchers the jokes and twists the meaning around, I'd still have to accept being at the very least one season behind. Why? Why can't I simply buy the same DVDs that are sold to the US customers.
And if you're in the US and pretend this doesn't apply to you, you're obviously not into Anime.
Next, I prefer my movies on my movie server hard drive. Why? Because I want to access it with the flick of my remote instead of having to search the correct DVD and because I do not want to watch it on my tiny computer screen but instead on the big TV. Plus, I do not own a standalone DVD-player and I somehow fail to see the reason to get one when I have enough hardware able to read DVDs. This, though, is not acceptable it seems in the eyes of the content makers. I accept their concern with piracy and hence I ... well, it seems I have the choice of abstaining or copying. Draw your conclusions.
The point is, it ain't the price tag that keeps me from buying. 20 bucks for a movie I actually want to see isn't breaking my back. But I don't accept the inconvenience tied to it. I'd rather do without.
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
1970's: We're going to collapse because of piracy by people making cassettes of their LP's!
1980's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of portable music players and people making cassettes of their CD's and LP's!
1990's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people ripping CDs to MP3 players and computers!
2000's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people sharing media online!
Fuck off, chicken little!
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals without talking to someone who knows ANYTHING about IT and technology FIRST?
2000's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people sharing media online!
Fuck off, chicken little!
Chicken Little has learned that if it shouts, throws a tantrum and pays enough money to the lobbyists, then it gets what it wants. You get to sleep in the bed you make, and the bed that the US has made with Big Media has left it a very comfortable bed for Big Media. Big Media doesn't want to consult with IT people who will tell them that what they want can't be done realistically. They don't even care how it will affect anything else - they only look at what it will let them do. Why let someone who knows what they are talking about get in the way of that - lets face it, politicians have no clue technically - but they are willing to pass asinine laws and then see them fail, after all, they did what they promised to do.
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Yeah, they've been promising the end of the world for a while now. I mean, nobody takes the Jehova's witnesses serious anymore, why the content industry?
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Informative)
MP3s were primarily a concern of the 2000s. While it's true that the parent MPEG-1 format was around in the early 90s, and a few geeks were sharing MP3 files from the mid-90s onwards, it wasn't until the end of the decade (circa 1998) with those uselessly low-capacity early MP3 players that they were on the industry's radar. And they didn't really hit the public consciousness until Napster launched in mid-1999, i.e. when the 90s were almost over.
And the problem with MP3s AFAIK was *always* sharing and piracy. No-one cared about people ripping them to their computers in the 90s, because for most of the decade hard drives were barely big enough to hold a significant number of MP3s, and (e.g.) mid-90s PCs used most of their processing capacity just to play them back. As I said, nerd curiosity at that point.
You could probably combine the 70s and 80s; people were taping in the 70s, and the industry woke up to the threat [wikipedia.org] in the early 80s- I don't think the Walkman was itself a threat, beyond the fact that it made the cassette an even more popular format. (Remember that most Walkmans and the like couldn't even record themselves).
But you're right- the industry has made a fuss about this sort of thing before. They also did it with video recorders in the US in the early 80s, then realised that they could make lots of money selling prerecorded VHS tapes.
Ironically, I don't entirely disagree that piracy may be an issue, and possibly moreso than it was back then. I'm happy for people to make money and profit from their efforts in the creative industries (that is, if people want the results of such efforts).
This doesn't change the fact that the industry is- and always has been- a bunch of greedy bastards willing to screw over the working people they'd like to tell us are being hurt by piracy, and to use piracy as a useful indefinable excuse to cover up their own shortcomings (e.g. maybe people aren't paying money to watch their films because they're shallow, adolescent-oriented, unoriginal toss?) And while I might be in favour of reasonable copyright laws, that's certainly *not* not to the extent that those old, entrenched interests are pushing for draconian laws, not giving a toss about fairness or our civil liberties, just to preserve their own meal ticket.
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but if I cited the actual cases, they wouldn't have that nice "once a decade" rhythm going.
You also note I didn't mention the music industry's bad decision to accept a levy on blank CDs when they were losing their battle to take away our format shifting and backup-your-OWN-media rights. The movie industry has therefore NOT done the same with blank DVDs or BluRay discs.
Unfortunately for the media companies, when the music industry accepted the levy, they enshrined our right to make backups INTO EXPLICIT LAW. The DMCA-like provisions of the latest round of lobbyist inspired bullshit in Canada is in direct contravention of the precedents set over the year and in violation of that explicit agreement regarding levies.
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty sure there's a VCR in there somewhere.
The copyright industry continues to disappoint me. Where's this collapse I was promised?
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty sure there's a VCR in there somewhere.
"The VCR is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women." --Jack Valenti, then head of the MPAA. The industry is incredibly short sighted.
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals
Because when they withdraw them and make slightly less impossible and expensive proposals they seem reasonable to the politicians?
Re: (Score:3)
exactly.
http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Door-in-the-Face%20Technique [alleydog.com]
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals without talking to someone who knows ANYTHING about IT and technology FIRST?
They probably did, they just didn't like the answers they got.
That and they don't see figuring out how to do it or paying for it as their problem -- it's for the search engines to deal with.
Re: (Score:2)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals without talking to someone who knows ANYTHING about IT and technology FIRST?
They probably did, they just didn't like the answers they got.
Probably not. They look for consultants who tell them what they want to hear. (I have some exposure in that industry, and it is very tough to get consultant jobs if you don't toe the party line.)
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Informative)
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals
It's a strategy. These guys have been playing politics far longer than any of us. Starting with something far beyond even your own maximum target is a good way to get almost everything you were really aiming for out of someone who is naive and aims for a compromise solution.
It even has a name, it's called the "door in the face" technique [alleydog.com].
If you know it, you see it at works in politics pretty much all the time. In fact, I see it over here (Germany) so often that I'm beginning to wonder if they teach anything else in whatever newly elected representatives are getting in training.
Yes they do - and it sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes, they know but they want to sell us space in a walled garden instead of letting us do things on the commons.
Re:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:4, Interesting)
they are the consumers that use the internet and we are the technicians that make the internet work. In essence these people are our food, we are the top of the food chain
You can't be further from the mark there mate. Big Media isn't a consumer of the internet. Big Media's customers are consumers of the internet. Big media makes a movie and wants to sell it at the cinema, or on a Blu-Ray or DVD. They couldn't be happier if the entire internet vanished. Then they could go back to charging thirty bucks for a CD and fifteen bucks for a CD single. DVDs would be back up to full price and a Blu-Ray would probably be sixty or seventy dollars.
They won't move aside in favour of you. While I applaud your verve, you mistake your place on the chessboard. Until the chessboard changes, and politicians start working for their constituents, constituents start to look forward further then the next one or two pay cycles - "us" in your words will remain in the middle paying jobs, taking orders from bosses who you think you are smarter than, and not seeing the utopian freedom that you want.
Don't hate the player. Hate the game. Or better yet, learn to play the game better than those who keep beating you at it.
Re:The one thing they do understand very, very wel (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Google's anti-SOPA stance may be the beginning of a shift in that "soft" stance of the IT industry. It's becoming quite clear that without spending money on lobbyists to tell the IT side of the story, government will CONTINUE to be ruled by ignorant luddites.
Re: (Score:3)
It's the same problem as SOPA -- using the laws of ONE nation to ENFORCE those laws over the objections and rights of the GLOBAL community.
The only way to avoid that would be to create a "google.us", similar to the way some companies have set up special divisions to cater to the unique needs of serving China's market. So google.us could implement such filtering, but you can NOT mandate that google.com filter the data for THE W
Re: (Score:3)
Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the other search providers are part of the modern internet INFRASTRUCTURE, like it or not. That means they have to be managed as GLOBAL resources, not US-centric companies.
An alternative proposal (Score:5, Interesting)
The movie and music industry make material available globally and easily themselves or the governments of the world regulate their distribution chain.
Also the governments audit and oversee all their artist contracts and revenue streams.
See how much they like government regulation and scream about the idea.
Re:An alternative proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is a simpler proposal that would strike fear and loathing in their hearts, and requires no government oversight :
That content creators have a "moral right" to audit the books of those controlling their revenues. (Such rights are generally lacking, especially in the music business, where it is excluded by contract.) I have yet to meet a professional musician who wasn't convinced that their record label was stealing them blind, which, of course, they are, given that no musician can audit their books.
Wow. have a look at these whores. (Score:5, Interesting)
These whores are basically wanting to censor for their own interest. No shame. No worries. No hesitation.
Modern carriage industry refusing to die and taking everyone hostage.
These need to be killed. Asap. first should be hollywood. else, we are never going to get 'cars' at this rate.
And, NO - as you can see, this has gotten out of hand - there is no way to make it work. Now, its either us - the cyber age, internet, 'the people', or them.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but it's worse. Unlike the buggy-whip makers and carriage builders, they've demonstrated since the 1970's that they're not going ANYWHERE, no matter how much they cry and scream about the money they're "losing", their revenues have and seem to still be going UP, not down.
Alternatives? (Score:2)
What alternatives are there?
ITunes? Apple's been whining for a while about how low their cut per track is. Is it still DRM'd? Or did grow a pair and now serve up MP3s?
Netflix (and similar companies)? Nice model, shame they screwed a lot of their customers recently with their pricing. They also don't have every show/movie ever produced. Nor does P2P I'm sure, but it's closer than Netflix. Nor do they have the most recent shows/movies.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Against Google's Philosophy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.
6. You can make money without doing evil
Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link," so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
Doesn't this proposal breach both these policies of Google?
http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html
Soooo... they're trying to ban linking? (Score:2)
Let's say that Google de-lists a bunch of sites that the *AA's don't like. At some point a non-zero number of Internet users will not longer rely upon Google as their search engine (at least not for these materials), and will look to other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo!, or if they want to kick it old-school, HotBot, Askjeeves, or Altavista.
But the the *AA's go after search engines s_0 ... s_i (sorry, no better subscript), then these disaffected users will now go even further afield, to find sites from
Re: (Score:3)
Remember when the compny behind the unholy Real Player went after a guy who linked to Real Alternative, claiming that he made that software? That's from a tech company. Do you expect that the tech-illiterates over at MafiAA would know any better?
And I thought MAFIAA was a joke... (Score:2)
Now, I'm saying that you should really go and buy some insurance for your business from the insurer we're referring you to. Now, the decision is of course entirely up to you, and I'm not saying anything bad would necessarily happen if you were to
Past peak copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
We are past peak copyright, and they know it, and are desperate.
Rights? where are their responsibilities? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
The original point of copyright is to keep a steady stream of inventiveness going for the public at large—with the idea that the works involved will eventually fall into the public domain and become part of our culture. The importance of copyright is illustrated by the time period immediately following the French Revolution, in which copyright was abolished... and the stream of new works dried up.
The other side of this is that copyrighted works are supposed to fall into the public domain, not be in co
Leveling down (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not going to be abolished. The American business sector sees its future not in production, but in intellectual property. Manufacturing, for example, costs for the raw materials, the labour to produce said item, transportation costs, insurance, all that sort of thing.
Know what's cheaper? Having a lawyer write a letter claiming "You infringed on something that we might own. Give us money, now."
This is the way of the future.
Reply I excepted from Google,Bing and Yahoo (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is our policy , not to negotiate with terrorists".
It's not about copyright violation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about gaining absolute control over the distribution channel. Copyright violation is just the pretext. They want to be able to control all content distributon via the internet, the same way as they control other distribution channels.
Without the channel control, their position as indispensible middlemen is under threat. The destruction of the internet as a communications medium, and the resulting destruction of any other venture that uses the internet in any way is merely collateral damage, not even particularly "regrettable".
Even the most corrupt politicians can't come right out and say "We've been paid to hand total censorship control over the internet to the media companies". They need a plausible reason to make those laws, and the "fact" that the media companies are being robbed a large proportion if GDP is the reason they've chosen. It doesn't have to be a financially viable reason, just one that sounds better than "Because we're being paid to" when they are asked why they are passing such laws.
It's all about gaining absolute control over the channel, at any cost. Remember, you aren't allowed to sing to yourself in a public place without paying a license fee - people have actually been threatened with lawsuits for doing so. They want control of the internet the same way, so fo instance, you can't make your own music or videos and post them for people to see unless you pay the media companies a license fee for doing that. Control over commercials so companies have to pay for the right to show commercials (like they do in magazines and cinemas now) would be nice too. Maybe that's the real reason they want to attack Google so much.
Government! Enforce our business models! (Score:3)
I make widgets. They are very special widgets. Firstly, I don't want anyone else making widgets. And it doesn't matter if people wants them or not or if they are over-priced or if the people are simply curious about my widgets -- they ALL MUST PAY. No refunds, no warranties, no guarantees.
I'm already making loads of money from my widgets as evidenced, oh law makers, by the excessive money I pay you. But I need more. I need you to make laws and then to enforce them. Call out the military if you must, but my business must grow.
Pirating the Public Domain (Score:5, Interesting)
For most of my life, I've been getting increasingly resentful of these corporate pirates for stealing, hoarding, and even sometimes destroying human culture. They have no interest whatsoever in the "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," nor will they ever be satisfied with any "limited Time" regulating their monopolistic control over thoughts.
Now, these assholes have already shown... [wikimedia.org] They cannot be trusted. [wikimedia.org]
With the exception of some governments, NGOs, and a minority of intelligent artists, the public domain, as defined by law, is a thing of the past. My response to this government and corporations mutual disregard for the founders' more than generous monopoly terms, is to disregard those terms myself, with the maximum effect I can bring to bear. No useless letters to government prostitutes involved.
My uTorrent stats show 964GB transferred in the past ten days, and a 1:12.8 dl:ul ratio since install. I put as much as I can on properly stored archival DVDs, but I'm one person with limited resources. One advantage that we "little people" have over libraries and funded preservation/conservation efforts is not having to wait past death to make a copy; I have a copy a minute after an RSS feed update, and at least ten more public copies before I'm done with it. Hopefully some of my peers are doing the same. You know, I find it tragicomical how these industrial copy-Nazis and their apologists get so confused about who's greedy, freeloading, cheap, thieving, and who's really "entitled."
That all said, I'm not certain what I'm actually achieving in the end, but I do know that I'm motivated to try to improve things for maximum people, and the MAFIAA pirates' motive is amassing more corporate welfare; i.e., "transfer of wealth" at everyone else expense.
If Intellectual property really is property... (Score:3, Interesting)
....then they can pay property taxes on it.
That way the govt is reimbursed for all the services it provides in protecting this "property".
And Sony/BMG will have motivation to let some older works slide into the public domain.
When are we going to stop pandering to nobodys? (Score:3)
I don't know the exact figures, and I'm sure that it could be spun as lies, damned lies and statistics, but the entire movie industry takes in something like $60 billion a year. That's about one year at Intel alone. Maybe combine another half a company somewhere to get some more digits added up right. The music and video game industry...oh wait, we can not mention the video game industry because they figured out the piracy issue and aren't hammering laws down our legislators throats.
Lets be generous then...lets say annual revenue of RIAA/MPAA members is $100 billion...hell, lets say it's $200 billion (it's nowhere close to 200bil, but lets just say).
$200 BILLION IS NOTHING. Why the hell are we letting these asshats try to control the internet? General motors has $135 billion annual revenue (wikipedia). Shall we let them just waltz into googles offices and start making demands about how they run their company? They're also just middlemen(mpaa/riaa)...they produce NOTHING. They add NO VALUE. They're a bunch of thieves trying to hold onto a failing business model.
I say make them compete in the real world or get out.
There's no such thing as a "Copyright Industry" (Score:3)
The organizations pushing for these changes are not "Copyright holders" and there is no "Copyright industry."
These are clearly trade organizations attempting to censor the Internet to effect a better bottom line. They are not the holder of any rights, other than being the US Hollywood movie studio and music lobbying arms, and they bring nothing to the table.
Death to the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA. Long live freedom of speech, expression, and no more stupid nonsense words like "Copyright Industry."
Seriously.
E
Dinosaurs. (Score:4)
Stuff it where the sun don't shine (Score:3)
My latest piracy - entirely legal here in Switzerland, by the way - was to download a very nicely formatted complete set of the Harry Potter ebooks. Our family owns the entire set of books as dead-tree editions, but we wanted the option to re-read them as ebooks.
Why piracy? I would have happily paid for ebooks (assuming a reasonable price), and I was looking forward to the promised release date of last fall (even though this was ten years after publication of the first book). However, the official ebooks are still not available, and the release date has been pushed a year into the future. So I gave up, and downloaded them from a link on TPB.
If publishers (and authors, and musicians, and labels) want to end piracy, it's really simple!. Clue bat: (a) make your material available, (b) DRM-free, (c) at reasonable prices. Start with step (a). The stuff I have pirated is all material that I cannot otherwise get. As long as these idiots continue to shoot themselves in their collective foot, piracy will thrive.
Re:Stuff it where the sun don't shine (Score:4, Informative)
If publishers (and authors, and musicians, and labels) want to end piracy, it's really simple!. Clue bat: (a) make your material available, (b) DRM-free, (c) at reasonable prices. Start with step (a). The stuff I have pirated is all material that I cannot otherwise get. As long as these idiots continue to shoot themselves in their collective foot, piracy will thrive.
Exactly! - Well said.
I'm sure they know this... and chose to ignore it. Perhaps they're really, really, really stupid... but I think it's all about admitting the huge hole in their now seriously obsolete business model. They know they could make a lot more money and reduce the piracy to the freeloaders who's always been around with cassette tapes, VCR tapes and whatever it took to make a copy of someone elses stuff for free. It didn't hurt anything in the past decades and it still won't. Besides, back then they were already circumventing the geo-discrimination already rampant back then so it could have been even less.
Here's an example from real life that shows how stupid release rules kills the business. A few years back I wanted a certain title by a certain french artist. I'm in Denmark so it has to be imported, but both Denmark and France is in the EU with the internal market and everything so that should be a piece of cake... Nope. Turns out the artist is distributed by a label here that owns the rights to all the titles by this artist but chooses to release only two (there's like 25-30) here. So, my local shop (who I'm eager to support) can just import it themselves, right? Nope. The label ACTIVELY blocks 'parallel import' so the shop cannot import it. I can import it myself quite easily by doing it online, but that would mean cutting my local shop out of the loop, thus costing it a sale. I don't want that. I can also give up having already waited and returned several times etc. Both options hurts my local shop who already invested time in researching this. There's no way they can turn this into a sale.
I did get the title online (and my local shop died) but the stupid policy of not releasing all the titles and blocking attempts at importing them moved the sale from Denmark to France (a loss to the danish distributor) but could easily have lost the sale altogether because of the hassle. Some countries actually also block private import (Denmark didn't ratify that part of the Info-Soc directive which controls all this) which means I'd have been shit out of luck and had to go to the pirate market to get it. That would mean that nobody got paid at all (except perhaps a pirate) and that hurts both the label and the artist. Just how stupid is that policy?!?!
Re:Governments and copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're proposing tossing out the GPL and every software license in the world because some media lobbyists are assholes? THINK, man, THINK!
Re: (Score:2)
GPL depends on copyright, yes, I am proposing to throw away all of the copyrights, patents and government power over people. I think it's a very good deal to get freedoms back.
As to software licenses - there are such things as contracts.
Re:Governments and copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
So you propose signing individual contracts to everyone who wants to use OSS software?
Keep thinking. You'll get there.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't have to sign a thing to run my OpenBSD firewall.
Keep asking, you'll get there.
Re:Governments and copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with individual contracts, aside from the enforcement hassle and the sheer VOLUME of contracts any serious OSS project would have to sign is that you're throwing out a system that has good INTENTIONS because it's being abused by special interest lobbyists.
The solution is not anarchy; the solution is to FIX THE SYSTEM. And the best way to do that is to keep highlighting the damage the abusers are doing and to hound government to patch the holes in the legislation.
There's nothing wrong with the INTENT of the patent system, for example. The problem is that it's too expensive for individuals to file for patents, and companies are abusing the concept by patenting CONCEPTS and IDEAS like user interface gestures and the fact that a device is rectangular. There is nothing wrong with protecting actual INVENTIONS and PRODUCTS from theft, but the SCOPE of patents has become too broad and needs to be pulled back.
My pet peeve with patents right now is not software patents, but the idea that you can patent a genetic DISCOVERY of something that exists in nature just because you MIGHT have figured out how that fragment of the genome works. IT'S NOT AN INVENTION AND SHOULD NOT BE PATENTABLE!
Re: (Score:2)
I don't propose that contracts should be signed for OSS software at all.
I am proposing that GPL model is irrelevant once all copyrights are abolished, which is the correct thing to do to regain freedom from government intervention in the system.
Copyright and copyleft are two sides of the same coin and both are wrong. OpenBSD is the model for Free software, AFAIC there would be more free software if there were no copyrights in the first place, never mind GPL, it wouldn't matter.
Re: (Score:3)
I am not saying that I am in favor of this, but in software a world without copyright would in many ways be similar to a world where everything had a BSD license.
And, I would argue that the BSD license has been more important to the actual growth of open standards computing and the Internet than GPL, especially GPL v3.
Re: (Score:3)
The whole point of GPL is emulating what the world would be without copyrights -- as opposed to BSD which is basically "I'm a charity, take it and use or abuse, even against me". The only thing GPL gives you that you wouldn't get outright by abolishing copyright are comments in the source code. You can bet decompilers would sprout up overnight the moment you are actually allowed to use their output -- and then, it's a matter of tidying up what is essentially obfuscated code. And deobfuscation can be to s
Re: (Score:2)
The GPL is a lovely example of what I call "Systems Anarchy" -- using the rules of the system itself to force it to do something it's creators and managers did not intend and even OPPOSE. It's a tough game to play -- the systems of government and law are very complex and tangled, but it CAN be done.
Re: (Score:3)
And if you think the GPL is "anti copyright", you need to read what Rick actually says about the INTENTIONS of the GPL. It's subversive, not revolutionary.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
to prevent piracy Google & bing should drop all references to any all MPAA & RIAA "properties". No Elvis Presley, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Justin Beiber or OneDirection. For a week. Then watch the xxAA's whine and complain - probably try and get an anti-trust action about it.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
No quite as silly a proposal as you think. Torrents tend to be in 2 kinds - the crappy low quality, shot on a handheld camera, and the perfect, pristine, studio-released screener copy.
So, to prevent piracy, all studios that provide screener copies must be de-listed, as they clearly are actively promoting piracy.
And, by extension, any film ever made by Hollywood is based on a copyright work (even if it's only the screenplay), so they not only promote piracy, they actively produce copyright infringing works. Since Google, Bing et al are bigger than Hollywood, I'll side with the tech guys on this one.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you really think Microsoft will produce movies you want to watch?
Do you think Hollywood does that now? Fuck them. I don't care if their little circle gets broken up. There are plenty of creative people to take their place with more ethical and sustainable business models, and we don't need their supply chain anymore. Google or Microsoft or Apple could easily handle distributing any media immediately, globally, from any source, and the real artists still left in the industry would be falling over themselves to get a fair slice and to stay relevant in the new world.