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The MPAA's Lobbying-Fu is Stronger Than Yours
georgelazenby writes "The Frisco Chronicle reports: While the music industry has been clumsily bullying its way through the federal government, the movie industry has taken a more subtle -- and more effective -- approach. The MPAA has been lobbying individual state legislatures to pass laws reaching far beyond the original DMCA. The proposed laws would permit cable TV companies to 'limit subscribers to using only certain brands of VCRs and could ban TiVo in favor of their own proprietary PVR technologies.' According to one expert, the bills are 'tremendously open-ended and create theoretical and potential criminal liabilities for just about anybody on the planet.'"
>According to one expert, the bills
>are 'tremendously open-ended and create
>theoretical and potential criminal liabilities
>for just about anybody on the planet.'"
What planet? Planet America? US laws sure don't reach us in Europe.
Having a system where everybody is a criminal and anybody can be arrested whenever the government want to is scary beyond imagination.
As unfortunate as it is, many laws that stem from the United States DO carry over to other countries. That's just how things work with the US being such a great superpower in the world. One can only hope that other countries will have more sense than Bush and his cronies.
[insert witty comment here]
>or the culture is going to shift and people are going to start paying for things again instead of stealing them (net result: good for everybody).
The culture isn't going to shift until people such as yourself stop referring to simple copyright violation as such a heinous crime as theft.
In society, when a law is ignored en masse, it shows a flaw in the system. For exmaple, take speed limits. They never prevented a fast driver from causing an accident (don't believe me? Check your newspaper for the next high-speed deadly street racing collision -- only a driver's judgement prevents accidents), and it would take draconian measures to the point of absurdity for the law to be successful.
Or, for example, take the fact that time shifting was illegal in the US prior to the BetaMax ruling. The fact it was illegal made no difference to anyone commiting the crime.
Some would suggest increasing punishments will stop people from commiting the crimes. Current drug laws prove this is a fallacy. The fact that downloading an MP3 makes you vulnerable to 5 years of pound-me-in-the-ass penetentiary rather than the few days it really should be (if jail is needed) hasn't made any difference. Does a night in the slammer stop a drunk from drinking? Does losing a job stop a barfight? Do satellite raids and cease and desist letters keep pirated TV off the streets? Does risking your marriage keep people from visiting whores?
No.
Most of the time people follow their own rules in a free society, despite whatever the laws state, unless they feel sure to be caught (draconian society, usually) or that the consequences are so extreme the risk isn't worth it (I suppose a minimum death penalty for certain crimes without any option for parole fits in here, because most lifers never thought they'd be there for life). Fortunately, the vast majority of people are adverse to physical harming each other, and wouldn't dare steal anything much more than some pens from work (and does the possibility of losing your job and spending the night in jail make you want to stop?)
Patch the flaw and regrow the economy. It's about time. Artists deserve so much more for their hard work than what today's failed laws give them.
And, part of the patch is to note that people are much more likely to treat others nicely if they're treated well. It's a two way street, and laws like these proposals put 10 ft. sinkholes in that street.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
--an even further analysis shows that at some point "IP" as property is going to be fairly silly. What would a geek really want in his kitchen? A star trek replicator? How would the farmers pay their bills then, once their job and work is outdistanced by available technology?
What this is is an example of the age old rift between protectionism and advances in technology and more open markets. The paradigm of the IP creator being a full time "worker" who garners all his wage with producing those works has always changed over time. At one point only the royals were rich enough to "own" a painting, or to keep a court musician on the payroll, or to have "theater on demand". Only a few owned books, because of the monopoly of the royal religious scribes, who hand copied bibles etc.
Right now we are at a major crossroads again, as the technology already exists to make a large part of "IP" business obsolete. That's why they are pulling out all the stops, they right now can be replaced. So you then have to ask, which parts still require "protectionism".
I find this sort of amusing, moving in political circles where up into about two years ago, white collar workers were sneering at blue collar workers as their jobs got "outsourced" and "made redundant" by advances in technology and the markets. Myself being a blue collar worker noted that is was few and far between that I could see much support (on the web in forums) from much higher paid people than I, working in "still vibrant" economies such as IT/IP. I got laughed at, put down, told to STFU, that my "work" was buggy whip work that modernization and automation and the "free market" made obsolete, so tough luck. Now that THEIR paycheck is threatened, by outsourcing and automation,by improvements in technology, by the skills required to produce this sort of "product" becoming lower and easier, etc, they are crying foul, FOUL they say,they are "wondering how they will feed their families and pay their mortgage".
Well, same thing I kept getting told and keep getting told, at a retirement (or close enough) age, "learn a new skill, perhaps the old one isn't as relevant any more, keep up with the times, pull yourself up with your boot straps" and etc.
SUCKS to get told that doesn't it? Pretty easy to slam it out when it's someone else, isn't it, real easy? But it SUCKS to take it, doesn't it,. sucks to be honest, to actually SEE reality.
"IP" busy-ness and it's related side "jobs" as a full time "job" is rapidly being replaced with automation and ease-of-accomplisment.
GASP, OH NO!!! Geeks who type arcane symbols fall out of chairs all over, "artistes" swoon and get the economic vapors, middle man skimmers get red in the face, demand "laws, we say MORE,MORE, AND MORE LAWS!!! TO PROTECT....." Whatever. Whoops, you are demanding "protectioinism". wow.
It is no different from ANY other industry, nothing special or magical about anyone's "job" there. You never got handed a lifelong job/profit guarantee. Joe Bubba in the factiory doesn't have it, and is losing bigtime, told to "get with the program". Joe Farmer at the family farm is going through it. Where is it carved in stone that programmers and entertainment "artistes" and middle man "trader-skimmers" are guaranteed a full time job that "pays all the bills"?
Soon-perhaps- it will be possible for the end user-the consumer-to "program on demand" applications exactly like they want them. What then? Soon it will be possible to have huge amounts of "entertainments" created-not even copied but CREATED "on demand", cheaply and at the single consumer level. If anyone forgot, it was blacksmiths that "put themselves out of business". The metal workers did it to themselves. today, engineers are putting themselves out of business, as they concentrate on automation-even with their own jobs! When I was a kid, AUTOCAD did NOT exist.
Where do you draw the line on advances in technology? Should we still be paying scribes to hand copy books? At one time it was