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E.U. Commission Suggests Permissive Copyright Rule
An anonymous reader submits "ITworld.com is reporting: 'The European Commission on Thursday presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry.'"
This sounds fair but I hope the Europeans aren't harbouring any weapons, because if they are, it's only a matter of time before big business whispers in the ear of the military. Next thing you know we've got UN weapons inspectors who can't find anything but have the harshest of 'suspicions' about what the Europenans are planning to do the the God-fearing, fun-loving, democratic nation of the USA.
Seriously, this will not sit well with American companies. It will not be allowed.
We will stop exporting Britney Spears CDs as of now. See how ya like that!
Oh wait...
It's had the microsoft "embrace and extend" applied to it.
It's flooding across the world, the idea that copyright was once a workable solution but now is gradually being more and more perverse
Thanks to many commercial interests, companies are applying pressure to have copyright strengthened in a radical sense
More and more they want not only full control over who makes copies (the original idea) but how you use the copies you get. how you watch them, who you watch them with, what you do with the information on those copies
A home user making a copy of a DVD to have it on their upstares computer as well as their DVD player in the living room is one thing, and is meaninglless in the scheme of things
"they" however want to control you and sya you can't do 'x' or 'y'. when you want to do 'z'
something to think about
Great! The Europeans are sensible about all of this. Downloading music off of the internet is no different than recording music off of the radio and digitizing it. All music is just sound waves anyway.
I think that anyone that resells copyrighted material deserves whatever the content mafia deems possible.
If the content cartel would just ease up about suing all of their potential customers, they wouldnt have a problem with piracy. Each industry has its own issues to deal with.
Software. Makes $80 billion dollars, loses $12 billion on piracy.
Software activation and antipiracy stuff (MICROSOFT AND QUICKEN) are a hassle to customers. They have to justify their existence in the face of open sourced competition.
Movies. Makes a couple of billion dollars (I'm guessing maybe more), loses millions to crappy divx screeners and stuff. People are buying $20 DVDs buy the handful, renting DVD's for $4, and going to movies for $7 a whole hell of a lot! I find it hard to belive their claims about piracy when they are making money hand over fist. Given to head in the sand syndrome when they didnt allow Linux Users to have a version of DVD viewing software. If a bunch of programmers can make their own OS, then decoding DVDs must be trivially easy (Especially when Xing leaves a key around in plain sight--- geniuses). Region Coding is just a sham. Stop now and youll sell more movies. Go digital in projection screens and stop whining about costs to get movies out to justify delayed releases. Global simultaneous releases will do a lot to squashing piracy. Keep those DVD prices at $20 or less.
Music Industry. Must move away from selling CD's a lot. Must sell DRM-less digital download in the MP3, Mp4, or SHN format. Must convince stores like best buy to install kiosks that allow users to hook up iPods or Nomads to swipe credit cards and get albums for $2 (this reduces payoffs to teamsters and costs to get cds pressed and stuff), and singles for $0.10. It;d be a gold mine and I'd buy like crazy. In the meantime, stop suing your customers, stop peddling locked cds WITHOUT LABELING THEM, YOU DECEITFUL BASTARDS, and ease up on piracy. Lastly, dont pay broadcasters to play songs. Thats got you in a bigger bind than this. Oh, and get much more responsive to consumer tastes and demands. And never again sell a Britney Spears to the american public. Spears will be a porn star within 5 years, as if Christina Aguilera isnt one.
If the music industry doesnt serve its customers, it will become irrelevant. Why do you think that your devoted mouthpiece and IT whipping bitch Hilary Rosen left your sorry excuse for an industry? You guys suck, and we are taking our money elsewhere.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It seems it's almost obligatory that any crime gets linked to terrorism now days
In the US, the entire political system is based on money from corporations. As far as I understand, the EU isn't quite the same. Who are the companies bribing? Without money, there really is no way to 'put pressure' on anyone, so what's the tactic?
I'm sure most of the 'pressure' is coming from US companies, which begs the question, why does the EU care at all? Profits are only then to be made on selling the CDs and hosting concerts; Is there really all that much money coming through Europe to make it a big deal? In the US, every penny an artist or company makes is eventually going back into the economy, whether through buying a mansion in the Hills, or buying off a Senator. It's not like US artists are investing millions in real estate in England, and I don't think the politicians are quite so owned.
GL
This law sounds like it's consumer-friendly, perhaps creating some much-needed balance, but it really isn't. In fact, it's a broad expansion of current law that's bad for everyone that uses any kind of p2p, for legitimate reasons or otherwise.
Copyright infringement would still be a civil crime so the content industries could still go after consumers on their own, just like they can now -- the proposed legislation would change criminal law. Also (obviously) the existing law covers copyright infringement for profit as copyright infringement for profit is still copyright infringement.
So what's the point of the new law? Read closely:
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services that encourage copyright infringement and make money from advertising are commercial, according to the Commission. "That is illegal and should be stopped," the Commission said. Examples of file sharing services are Kazaa and Morpheus.
Got it yet?
What they're saying: "Criminal sanctions only apply when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes."
What they want to dupe the public into hearing: "You can download all you want as long as no money is involved."
What they mean: "Copyright infringement through p2p services hurts the profits of companies that make large campaign contributions. P2P companies produce highly functional p2p software which has a primary function of facilitating copyright infringement because there is a financial incentive to do so (adware/spyware). This aspect of the p2p business can be used to legitimate government attacks in order to shut down those businesses."
What this means for you: Say goodbye to KaZaA and other useful (meaning large, meaning commercially-supported) networks.
From another board
"I wish I could record a day's work and then sell that recording over and over and over to anyone who needed that day's work done for them.
Before geeks invented sound recording, musicians sang for their supper.
Now technology has come full circle, and it's back to singing for their supper--and those pampered, bloated, overpaid Holyweird types are scared stiff they might have to work for a living!
And why not?
Technology has ruined the careers of other blue collar workers--now it's the turn of entertainers, who after all are nothing but another kind of blue collar worker."
Didn't we have a war to get away from Europe?
No. Many of you were kicked out, forcibly deported or fled persecution of one kind or another. The others for the most part didn't have to fight to go.
The "war" (rebellion would be more accurate) was to free yourselves from lawful authority and to avoid paying taxes, not to get away from Europe where (mostly) you weren't wanted anyway.
I have actually (Oh horror!) read the directive.
The directive does not legalise filesharing, or any other activity illegal under present copyright law. It deals solely with the enforcement of copyright law. A few highlights (or should i say lowlights?):
EU states must give anti-piracy alliances the right to apply for raids where they can seize infringing copies and related evidence. These raids can be granted without the presence or knowledge of the defendant, "in the event of an actually committed or imminent infringement"
It also demands that you must divulge information on the recievers and suppliers of "infringing goods" if you have yourself been pointed out as "a link in the network" of infringers.
Furthermore EU members must allow injunctions against "intermediar[ies] whose services are being used by a third party to infringe a right" (I wonder what exactly you'll have to do to prove that the resources you put the disposal of others will not be used for piracy...)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I sat browsing the Prelinger archive last night, and download three or four movies.
From "The Terrible Truth" (1951): "Some say the reds are promoting dope traffic in the United States to undermine national moral. They did it in China a few years back. It's certainly true that the increased use of narcotics plays right into their hands."
Oookay... Sounded a little paranoid, but I didn't think much more about it. After all, I've heard of McCartyism, and know it was blown out of proportions. The next movie was about pornographic litterature (Yeah, yeah, I know I downloaded some of the more sensational ones, but I wanted entertainment) :
"Perversion for Profit" (ca. 1964-1965): "This moral decay weakens our resistance to the onslaught of the Communist masters of deceit."
Uh. Two movies in a row, selected at (pretty much) random, made over 10 years apart. Both blaming communism for plotting to destroy the nation. If I've downloaded more movies from the archive, I'm sure I would have found more of the same.
Anyway... This made me think of Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", and what the movie says about fear being used to make the public act in certain ways or accept whatever are presented to them. Sample quote: "The media, the corporations, the politicans, have all done such a good job of scaring the American public, it has come to the point that they don't have to give any reason at all."
If this is how it works, can single words have the power to trigger these effects? Don't forget how hard it is to say no to a law that has "patriotic" as part of it's name (Because saying "no" would mean UNpatriotic, and you KNOW you either are with us or against us).
If shouting "communist" at things and people you wanted to get rid of worked in the 50's and 60's, certainly linking the word "terrorist" to illegal copying should have some effect on public opinion and lawmakers.
Seems to me like "terrorist" is the fnord of our time.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Wow, they have a commission on everything.