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.
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: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: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:Do these people understand ANYTHING about IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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: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: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:Governments and copyright (Score:1, Insightful)
GPL is a tool to circumvent copyright. It's designed specifically to simulate the terms of a copyright free world.
Re:Milking excuses? (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: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: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: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.
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: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: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: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.
Reply I excepted from Google,Bing and Yahoo (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is our policy , not to negotiate with terrorists".
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:Leveling down (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.
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.
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.
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: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: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:They always have the option (devil's advocacy) (Score:2, Insightful)
Migration is actually very difficult, it can be extremely difficult to acquire the necessary permits to live in another country.
Then the cost of viewing a work includes the cost of doing something that is "extremely difficult". It doesn't change the fact that major label music, major studio movies, and sporting events on the professional or international level are luxuries, not necessities.
I'm not forced to buy a particular brand of TV to watch broadcast shows
There used to be RCA color vs. CBS color until the allegedly "eee-vul gummint" set standards for television signals. The home video and video game markets are far newer than television, and it has taken longer for government to assume a regulatory role to promote interoperability.
i'm not forced to buy a particular brand of car to drive on public roads.
But you do have to buy a car certified to meet a specific country's safety, efficiency, and emissions standards. Let me give a car analogy for DVD or BD region coding: Cars for some countries need a steering wheel on the left side, for others on the right.
You have to buy tickets well in advance to get a good seat or to even get a seat at all
The NFL understands this, and that's why it cancels a TV blackout if the game sells out two days in advance.
Prices are usually set by publishers rather than the actual author, who will see a tiny pittance of the price
The author knew or reasonably should have known this when signing the contract with the publisher.
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?
Replaceability. The actors are more valuable to the producer than the camera crew because the actors have far fewer "close substitutes", as economists call them.
What ever happened to an honest day's work for an honest day's pay?
What happened were the Balassa-Samuelson effect [wikipedia.org] and the Internet. If a country doesn't export much but instead concentrates on local services such as haircuts, its currency will be undervalued on the forex market relative to local purchasing power parity. But starting especially in the 2000s, the Internet made it practical to do an honest day's information work as a contractor in another country. Then countries that had not been exporting much became able to get the low bid on contracts to develop software, contracts to provide technical support, etc. Such "outsourcing" (export of services) enlarges the country's export market, and it raises the overall level of wages in any exporting country over time as employers in local service industries raise their wages to attract employees away from export industries. But until then, this outsourcing drives down short-term "jobs" (demand for labor) in more developed countries.
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:Lobbyists (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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: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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.