Posted on 11/05/2009 11:31:58 AM PST by ShadowAce
Never let it be said that the folks in Hollywood aren't good at coming up with a totally fictional horror story. I just have a problem when they use it not to entertain, but to create a moral panic to push the government to pass laws in their favor. In discussing the recent 60 Minutes piece that was really nothing more than an MPAA scare tactic, some suggested that it was really just a first step in the process of getting the government to make sure net neutrality rules had a special Hollywood exception. So, it's interesting to note that just before that 60 Minutes episode aired (and just before Halloween), the MPAA sent a "scary" filing to the FCC warning it how the US would always be a broadband laggard if it didn't stomp out piracy. The full filing (warning:pdf) claims, repeatedly, that piracy is sucking up all our bandwidth and getting rid of that would somehow make it cheaper to install faster internet connections.
The Commission has projected that it could cost $350 billion to ubiquitously deploy broadband networks capable of delivering 100 Mbps, which is rapidly becoming the international standard. The Commission, however, should not ignore that illegal content accounts for a vast amount of online traffic. Thus, it could generate substantial savings in this tremendous build-out cost -- to be borne by both government and private sector investment -- by encouraging construction of networks that are designed not on the basis of accommodating capacity-hogging transmissions of unlawful content but rather with the goal of providing consumers a rich broadband experience.And, of course, it pushes for kicking file sharers off the internet (it hides this by calling it "graduated response," of course, rather than the more common term "three strikes"). The filing also goes on about how the MPAA is just so sure that ISPs can stamp out piracy, and because of that, it thinks the government should force them to get on it.
[The] Commission should pay no heed to assertions by some members of the advocacy community that the problem of content theft can be ignored because some amount of legitimate e-commerce already occurs through vendors such as iTunes.... The same holds true for the preposterous notion that the law should be ignored unless a property owner can demonstrate that a thief, in the absence of stealing, otherwise would have legitimately purchased a stolen product. A shoplifter who steals a DVD from a store in a mall is not immune from security intervention, let alone prosecution, simply because he might not have planned to buy the product that he attempted to steal.Except, of course, there's a huge difference there. If someone steals a DVD it's no longer there for someone else to buy. If someone who never would have purchased the movie views it online there's no loss. it's difficult to see how the MPAA can simply ignore this while assuming that FCC commissioners are too stupid to grasp this rather simple economic concept.
Quite clearly, it is the promise of access to the content flowing over the Internet's network architecture that motivates Americans to adopt broadband. The Internet without content would be nothing more than a collection of hardware; a series of computer links and protocols with great capacity to communicate but nothing to say. Television once was unfairly derided as little more than a toaster with pictures. In the absence of compelling content, the Internet would offer consumers even less value than that proverbial toaster. It is the content that flows over and through the Internet that makes the breakthrough technology so potentially powerful.Yes, because even though the internet existed for decades before the folks at the movie studios had even heard of it, they had nothing to say, at all, until people could start sharing the latest camcorded blockbuster. Do they really think people are this stupid? Sorry, Hollywood, but it's not "the content" that you're thinking about that makes the internet so powerful. It's the ability to communicate. Sure, the content is a nice-to-have, but the internet grew and grew because it let people talk to each other, not because it was another broadcast medium. This fantasy story by the MPAA also leaves out the fact that more content than ever before is being produced today, even as "piracy" numbers have gone up. And, oh yes, once again, the movie business is hitting record highs at the box office. Funny that the MPAA seems to spend so much time insisting that its industry is dying, while leaving out the record revenue bit. Instead, it just keeps jumping out and yelling that piracy will kill the movie business...
Throughout history, whenever transformative communications technologies have captured the imagination of consumers, compelling content has been the vehicle for forward progress.Apparently, the MPAA is unfamiliar with the telephone. Hopefully, the FCC is a bit more familiar with that particular technology.
MPAA does not want the Commission's consideration of the important overarching issue of unlawful online conduct to be derailed by backward-looking debates about the pros and cons of any given technology, particularly those that already have been surpassed by new innovations. MPAA firmly believes that future developments will yield an entirely new generation of ever-more-sophisticated online protection technologies.In other words, please ignore how badly we've screwed up in the past. Don't worry about things like rootkits and security vulnerabilities we've created. Also, ignore the fact that DRM doesn't work and only punishes our legitimate customers while driving more people to piracy. That would be a waste of time. Really.
That a tool intended to stop unlawful conduct could be put to ill use, however, is not an argument for prohibiting the use of the tool....Wait... isn't that exactly the argument that the MPAA has used for years against every new file sharing technology out there? Wasn't it the crux of the Grokster lawsuits? That because the tool could be put to ill use, it needed to be prohibited? Yet, now, suddenly it doesn't want its own technologies prohibited just because they can be put to "ill use." Double standard, much?
This is nothing but a typical moral panic from Hollywood. They are storytellers out there, and they know how to craft a horror story. Hopefully, though, the FCC reviewers of this particular fantasy will give it the thumbs down for simply being totally unbelievable.
The Hollywood Reds dictate that our our internets belong to them.
Remind me to download more movies. I have nineteen and I’m going to download more. Let them chew on that.
Download Pride!
People are making their OWN content now. They don't need public access channels to get their own shot productions on a "tube" now.
Hollywood's days are numbered. They want to snuff out the competition.
Hollywood hates public domain content. Be sure to download (or stream) a lot of it:
archive.org
Consumers can also stream movies via monthly services like netflix.
Not all such content is “stolen”. Don’t give them “security clearance”. They are worse than “Big Brother”.
As Krusty the Klown said in the Simpsons Movie: “DRAMA QUEEN!”
Another example of how predators, both in and out of government, capitalize on the general public's woeful ignorance of things scientific and technical.
To jog our memories, during the tech frenzy of 10-20 years ago, fiberoptic was installed worldwide in a whilwind of activity that defied logic, since each fiber was capable of transmitting thousands of times the capacity of normal wire. Multiple cables were installed all over the place. I doubt seriously that capacity is a problem.
Having said that, there are other more serious problems that the dying MPAA and the RIIA(?) have caused that are almost invisible.
Perhaps the ultimate demise of Microsoft, should they persist in including destructive DRM in their operating systems. Windows 7 is as doomed, for the same reason, as VISTA was.
The internet industry does not suffer fools. Individual providers are in a better position to police abuse than the FCC (everything the centralized mafia touches turns to crap).
The individual providers are in a better position to also police other abusers, such as spammers and Phisers and purveyors of viruses and trojan horses. These can be identified by their country of origin. It would be possible to lock out ISPs in foreign countries which allow the criminals constant access. The money must be good for them.
In summary, FCC keep off our internet!
I have NEVER downloaded a song off limewire that I would have purchased. Frankly, with youtube and Pandora I can “listen” even easier than by using limewire.
‘Course, my main reason for using limewire is to download songs to learn them for my bands. And usually I have a CD or vinyl copy of my own. It’s just more convenient.
I just finished reading a book called Hotel California. I highly recommend it. One of the things I gleaned from the book is that even with the advent of rock in the 60’s, it took a while for record companies to really cash in, and the cash cow is long gone. People have moved on.
The biggest problem with “illegal” downloading is that it reinforces, in people’s subconscious, that recorded music is not something you pay money for.
To put it in perspective, I bought the first Star Trek movie on beta for $105 and thought I was getting a great deal. My perception has changed.
Screw the MPAA. And the RIAA, while we’re at it.
LOL. Are they really that stupid??
When a store employs security/store detectives, the store pays for them (and gets the benefit).
The MPAA is offering to pay for the development and deployment of the tools to stop this illegal practice, right?
Yes, "absence of [our leftist, perverted, unoriginal] content" is exactly the same as "absence of content". The vast majority of stuff I look at online is actual INFORMATION, not soul crushing Marxist propaganda from Hollywood. Arrogant pricks.
I thought that was the definition of their entire life. Boy, is "tool" appropriate or what?
That graphic includes pirated images. And they are MOVING!!!
ONOZ!!!!!
Hollywood owns book publishers, news agencies, movie and tv studios, and licensing to syndicated reruns and 80 years of movies.
Their attitude is that YOU need to be coughing up some money, because somewhere sometime you MAY see something and they may not collect some money on it.
Works for ASCAP and BMI to get businesses to pay quarterly licensing fees to have a tv or radio on in a bidness. The artists never see a dime of that money but the goon squad is satisfied to collect their cut.
Do you WANT stuff designed by the MPAA keeping an eye on you?
Talk about arrogance, coupled with terminal narcissism!
I have never accessed movies on line, a certain, documented means of getting your computer trashed. Even if I were so inclined, the one movie out of 50 that I would want to own (and presently buy) hardly supports this asinine view of the internet as "a device with great capacity, but nothing to say."
Say what?
I can't possible list all the things that I have downloaded in the last two months that have nothing whatsoever to do with music or movies! And they all benefit enormously from broadband speeds.
I can name a few:
Books free on line, classics.
Research on plate techtonics and earthquakes.
Recent developments and new books on the Great Missoula Floods.
Seismic details of the Great New Madrid Earthquake.
Travel and geographic information of all kinds.
These Hollywood doofuses are judging the internet users by their own focused tiny minds and interests.
Fortunately, that PDF copy of the "complaint" includes the address of the FCC, for the benefit of those of us inclined to add our two cents to the discussion.
Hadn’t looked at the site in awhile (it’s blocked at work).
I know that old radio shows (and speeches) and educational films and public domain features and unaired tv pilots and a lot of other content is on that site.
Also there could be a concerted effort to stack the deck of “top download”. Tell the loyal followers to download 1-10 every day. There have been exposured of attempts to ISLAM online polls in the past (just as people FReep).
My attitude is that they need to go fsck themselves.
I read this earlier today, from Roger Ebert's site where they were talking about all of the "rotten" things that happened in George Bush's America in the name of security...
TIFF: Who shot Bush? (by Jim Emerson Editor, RogerEbert.com / September 12, 2006 )
"Death of a President" has been in the Toronto festival guides as "D.O.A.P." (or "dope"), as if the actual title of the film was too inflammatory for publication (perhaps in the way the comedy "The Pope Must Die" was retitled in America as "The Pope Must Diet"). The "D.O.A.P." designation does not appear on the movie itself. At the press/industry screening Tuesday morning, however, the acronym was conjured by an anti-Bush protest sign in the film that got a good laugh from the international audience: "Solid as a Rock. Only Dumber."P.S. Throughout the festival, men in short-sleeved white shirts have stood in the aisles during press screenings shooting infrared video of the crowd. During the movie, mind you. Ostensibly, this is just a distracting and intrusive anti-piracy measure -- the price you pay for, well, watching a movie. I guess the idea is that if the tapes show any members of the audience photographing what's on the screen, they can be tracked down and prosecuted. No word about those who just pick their noses or itch their butts, but I'm sure a compilation of that footage will eventually appear somewhere -- perhaps on the Internet. I can't tell you, though, how disconcerting it was to see these guys filming us as we watched "Death of a President" and the film talked about the new surveillance procedures allowed under "Patriot Act III." If I disappear trying to legally cross back into the U.S. (I'm a citizen), please look for me.
Excellent rebuttal to the truly delusional hollywood types, filtered through the prostitute legal system. I need to take a shower after reading their stuff.
Hollywood isn't even happy with used media sales. It cuts into the prices realized for new copies and doesn't add to total tracked album sales (for gold album awards etc).
They don't care about your convenience. Ultimately they want to sell you Sgt. Pepper and Born In The USA every 5 years in some new format and convince you to toss out your "old media" version of Dark Side of the Moon, etc.
Is this in the same category as:
If we don’t pass Obammy Deathcare this week, we’ll all die from the pig flu
If we don’t get this Stimulus Package passed in the next two days, the economy will immediately collapse
If we don’t pass Cap and Tax this session, we will all be fried by glowbull warmring
How do you get a Hollywood whore dirtier?
Rub a lawyer on him.
I’m just pointing out that they are perfectly willing to enforce this crap - as long as it’s not done with THEIR money.
I think the MPAA should use existing laws to enforce their copyrights, but not invent a bunch of crap like they’ve been wont to do.
Because of the aggression Hollywood shows when it does stuff like this I have avowed not to put a single dollar in their pockets ever again.
Oh, I understand. They're wrong if they want to do enforcement efforts and have someone else pay. My point is that their position is so bad, that it's wrong if the DO pay as well as if they don't pay. Pretty sucky position to be in, but an honest person would never have ended up there.
Struck you the same way, did it?
I can't believe that the criminal element, that tiny group of copiers, is driving the form and lack of ease of use of the internet for the rest of us.
And yes, I am convinced that 100% of the illegal copiers would not have purchased the information, and further, they are packrats, collectors who couldn't possible watch or listen to everything they steal in their normal lifetimes.
A horrible solution in search of a problem.
Actually, I think we’re in violent agreement. If they can show that a person has violated existing laws (without extra-legal broad measures to fish for possible violations), they have the right to enforce their copyrights.
If they have to invent new laws or use other peoples’ time or money to enforce their copyrights, they are wrong.
The MPAA is a bunch of jerks led by idiots. They have an absolutely tin ear. But that doesn’t mean they have no rights under existing copyright laws.
An honest person may not have ended up here, but even a dishonest person does not lose all of their rights under the law.
I'm doing a terrible job explaining myself. What I was trying to say was that the MPAA has a problem. Their position is so draconian that they're in the wrong when they pay for implementation (Sony rootkits, etc) as well as when they try to implement with others' money (for the reasons you state). It's a crappy position to be in, but the MPAA wouldn't have found themselves in it if the MPAA were honest people in the first place.
The same holds true for the preposterous notion that the law should be ignored unless a property owner can demonstrate that a thief, in the absence of stealing, otherwise would have legitimately purchased a stolen productYet they base their claims of money lost by the industry on the assumption that every person who got a copy of a movie via P2P would have otherwise purchased a copy of that movie.
In essence, they called their own argument preposterous. They finally got something right.
We’re still in violent agreement! ;-P
What is preposterous, as pointed out in the original article, is trying to use the theft of physical goods, which can no longer be sold to a paying customer once they're gone, as an analogy for unauthorized taking digital content which CAN be reproduced infinitely. It wouldn't be unreasonable to observe certain similarities, but they're acting as if it's the same thing, which it manifestly is not. There is where the issue of whether the pirates would have bought a copy or not becomes relevant, because unlike with a physical item, in order to claim that they've been harmed they have to claim the pirate would have bought it had he not been able to take it. Or that's when it SHOULD become relevant, but they're claiming it's not.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
Links: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4511/125/ scroll down
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/mpaa-urges-fcc-protect-creative-content-online-in-national-broadband-plan/
http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2009/june/ambassador-ron-kirk-announces-plan-move-forward-negot
http://keionline.org/node/660
Sorry, I don't know how to make links hot. :(
LOL
This goes back to the fact that copyright infringement was originally a civil matter. Somebody infringes on your work, you sue, you recoup damages. At some point the copyright cartel decided this was too much work, and it was costing them too much time and money to enforce their rights. So they paid Congress to get the government to do much of the enforcement for them at taxpayer expense.
Their “Downloading is stealing” campaign is working. They even have many FReepers following the mantra.
The correct phrase would be “Downloading may be copyright infringement.” Unfortunately most people, including studio execs, don’t understand copyright well enough to know what that means.
The only way for the average person to “steal” a movie is to shoplift a DVD.
I'd be just fine with that if they also dropped copyright back to it's original 14-year term renewable (at holder's expense) once.
There is no legitimate reason the entire Beatles catalog should not be in the public domain.
I agree. They abuse the intent of copyright, corrupt OUR supposed servants, then stick their toe in the ground and expect everyone else to act like Pollyanna. If they acted in good faith, I’m sure there’d be a good chance most of the public would as well. Unless THEIR crooked antics have forever altered the public’s mind on the morality of paying for content.
Jefferson and Madison had a discussion over copyright before the Constitution. Jefferson was against granting any monopoly for fear of abuse. Madison thought some monopoly would be a good thing, and the will of the people through their representatives would be enough to prevent any abuse.
Jefferson was right about the abuse.
He was right about many things....
If the MPAA and the RIAA understood the Internet they’d be making boatloads of money.
I get all the DVD’s I want for FREE at the library !
Ease of use? How about privacy? They're essentially saying they want a search warrant pre-filled out for each one of us, without any case-by-case showing of probable cause, if we have the audacity to want to be online.
Why should I have to surrender my privacy, ease of use, money, or anything else to assist one party in a dispute that I'm not even involved in. They don't own the internets. They have no business trying to establish ground rules I must meet before I "get" to use it.
Long live the Internet.
However, a dishonest person does lose some standing under the law -- in many cases, lack of "clean hands" tips the balance away from the dirty-handed party.
Also, abuse of the system can be punished by removing the abuser's access to the system: for example, judges will sometimes get sick and tired of some clown's harassing (or just plain nuts) lawsuits and enjoin the perpetrator from filing any more cases. If we really treated corporations like legal persons, some of the **AA members would be perilously close to that....
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