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Congress Pressures DoJ With PIRATE Part II
Anonymous Pirate writes "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have re-introduced the 'PIRATE Act' (pdf) to Congress. According to Ars Technica, the purpose of this act is to get the DoJ to go after individual copyright infringers. It would allow the Department of Justice to bring civil lawsuits instead of criminal ones so that they would be able to prosecute copyright infringers with only a minimal burden of proof, rather than the heavier burden required for criminal prosecution." Took a long time to do a sequel; we first talked about this proposal quite some time ago.
Oh, it looks like someone is tired of losing court cases due to the fact that they don't have ANY proof. It's a good thing they can afford their own senators.
There's a reason civil lawsuits are separate from criminal trials.
Besides, why the hell should the DoJ, a government institution, police what happens between other people, shouldn't only the "victim" be allowed to file a lawsuit over this? Hell, how does the govt even knopw when the copyright hlder actually wants a lawsuit? Most holders like keeping fan projects in a legal grey zone of implicit permission which lets them C&D the project at will but doesn't require them to shut it down before they really want to.
Well, as long as the DoJ would pursue infringements of ANY copyrights, not just those held by a select group of large corporations... Yeah, like that'll happen.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sounds like a good time to make sure you've donated what you can to the EFF. The big fear, obviously, is that the RIAA will get to define what constitutes infringement, and suddenly you can't rip CD's to your MP3 player anymore.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
You can only claim that if the people in this case were going to buy the game/movie/music but decided not to because they recieved a copy through other means. To make that claim is a stretch by any measure.
CD sales are down because what is released on CD is crap. What record companies do not like about file sharing is not piracy at all, it's that they do not control what you can listen to. Like an independent band (I happen to have an Amy Martin CD right here, for instance) you can purchase it without the labels prohibiting it through their channel-lockups.
This measure has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with outdated business models being destroyed by new technologies, and companies unwilling to adapt. They loved the monopoly.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Well, this is a bad idea....
Mostly because, well, then we have the government pursuing civil litigation on behalf of corporations. Are we then going to have the copyright holders pay for the cost, or will this be another free federal benefit on behalf of lobbyists?
Moreover, is the DoJ going to do this fairly? Will they contact the copyright holder to make sure that there isn't a license and that there is a desire to go after the person? Moreover, if someone steals my work as an individual, will the DoJ treat it equal with Microsoft, the RIAA, or the MPAA?
If not, then, well, please vote Leahy, etc. out of office.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Senator Leahy, I used to respect you as a person and as a Senator, and value your dedicated service to the State of Vermont. Today, it is clear to me that you need to be put out to pasture.
Well, at least we know what employer Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cornyn really work for.
I hope that these two are pulled out of office, there's better things for the DOJ to be doing.
Oddly, Leahy usually counts as one of the best pro-privacy, pro-bill-o'-rights, anti-big-brother senators. It really surprises me to see his name attached to this atrocity.
Enough so, that it makes me wonder if we've missed something about this bill that makes it not quite as bad as it sounds - Like capping liability at some absurdly low level ("Yup, ya got me, will you take a check or should I just pay the $20 fine in cash?") or similar.
What you say is somewhat true but let's step back and look at the other side of this for a minute. You seem to be saying that the creators are losing billions in dosh every year because of the mass amount of people who download their creations. I honestly don't know many folks who would pay $600+ for Photoshop yet Adobe continues to charge that amount. I know a hell of a lot of folks who have downloaded and use Photoshop but only 1 or 2 that are willing to pay for it and those people are artists and make money professionally from the product. My point is that you can't call the money a loss when it wasn't there to begin with.
We can also talk about music. The big record labels are losing money by the truckload to piracy are they? I don't think so. The 21st Century came and brought with it the digital age. The record industry has made money from a distribution model based on physical media sales for a long time now but that just isn't cutting it anymore. Apple came along with the fashionable media player that everyone loves and it understands the language of MP3 yet the labels had to have their DRM so they chose to buy into Apple's DRM encumbered format. Then they complain about how they lose tons of dosh to Apple when in fact they could easily sell the MP3s themselves without the DRM.
Radiohead isn't the only artist that is profiting from this either. Jonathan Coulton, who has been featured on slashdot a few times, has made enough money to support himself. The Grateful Dead allowed fans to record their shows and distribute bootlegs and those guys all made a lot of money. Rage Against The Machine has sold out almost every show since their reunion and have said they don't give a bloody rip about the fans swapping their music files.
The world economy might be affected by sharing digital works but at the same time we can't turn the entire population into criminals and prosecute everyone. At some point the industry has to wake up and realize that the times have changed and they need to catch up with them.
The issue is simply not as black and white as a lot of politicians want it to be. Under the current copyright laws you can be held for infringement simply for singing the happy birthday song with a group of strangers. I don't think you can honestly tell me that the current system needs more laws to fix it. If anything it needs less and it needs to be more open to the ideas of fair use which the industry doesn't want to acknowledge.
What, we don't have enough crime for the feds to track and work on? Now we gotta make busy work up by letting them do "civil" suits for RIAA? How much to buy a seat in washington today? How about we work on our F#CKIN6 Boards and Drugs and REAL criminal cases, and THEN if we have time at the end of the year worry about "he said/she said" civil cases. This is SAD that our government is so blatently BOUGHT by the corporations today.
I used to consider myself a republican until I realized that BOTH sides are essentually the same and will abuse their power in an instant to take what is not theirs and line their own pockets to keep power. This is getting REAL OLD... I now consider myself a libritarian, but if it keeps going the way it is, I may have to consider myself a revolutionist and start dumping tea. I already gave up Music and movies because of the RIAA and the such... (Along with the fact that their hasn't been anything good to hear/see in a number of years.) I hoped they would get the message but they don't. They just keep shoveling more sh*t into our graves... Anyone for a CD Tea Party? Real Pirates can steal boxes of CD's and we pick a good harbor to dump them into.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
This sort of dishonest rhetoric is hurting our cause. Ask people in file-sharing communities, and many of them will openly tell you that they stopped buying CDs not because CD releases are crap, but because you can get all that goodness for free online instead of paying money. I regularly frequent two chat rooms on one network for contemporary classical music and this often comes up. Let's start being honest here: we download music because culture should be free in all senses of the word.
I think that this will essentially fall upon deaf ears. It'll go on the books, and be used a couple times -- maybe.
The problem with distributed infringement is that it takes such a large amount of resources to prosecute a single person, with the prospect of retribution (after investigation, court, and accounting costs) of far less than a monetarily positive result. They might be gung-ho at first to set examples, but once they realize that they've already sucked every last dollar out of 95% of all citizens by way of taxes, they will quickly learn that there's no more money at the bottom of the money well (prosecute counterfeit distributors, not their consumers!). Seriously, does congress or the DoJ believe that we have bundles of cash ready to hand over like they do? (Forgive this digression, but that's actually one of the biggest problems in our society. The people with oodles of money make social policy, and they think that everyone else lives like them -- a suburban household income of $200,000 a year or more...but only in a situation like this would this legislation be tabled in the first place)
The end result isn't going to be deterrence. Everyone in the electronic community will do the equivalent of standing around the train wreck staring and gasping "Oh my god, is there no humanity", for five minutes and carry on as normal (downloading and buying $5 DVDs). The counterfeit vendors will continue to pander their crap, and people will continue to buy it. The government will (in the publics eye) be scrambling and grasping for every last possible stranglehold on its citizens they've be aiming for, for the last 7 years.
How can they believe that persecuting their citizens is a good idea?
If we go a little deeper into the problem, you might agree with me that it's sociological in nature and fairly inevitable and inexorable. Can I get a comment from any sociologists?
You can only claim that if the people in this case were going to buy the game/movie/music but decided not to because they recieved a copy through other means. To make that claim is a stretch by any measure.
You are correct. There's no way to know. Still, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to believe that many people aren't going to bother to buy something when they can get it for free. (Numerous studies have been done to see what the effects are filesharing are, but all the results seem to tell you is who funded the study, and what their agenda is).
CD sales are down because what is released on CD is crap.
Perhaps true, but I think CD sales are down for a number of reasons...
1 - filesharing
We can debate this one, but I do think it has an effect.
2 - sale of singles
For those who don't wish to fileshare, you can now buy singles on-line. The record company has long had a disconnect between what they market (singles on the radio) and what they sell (CD albums). They got away with this because you couldn't buy singles. Now you can, so many people are going to save their money and only buy the one or two songs they really want.
3 - crappy music
I think music has been crappy in the past more than people realize, and people still bought music. Still, it does seem to be at a pretty low point now.
4- people are done replacing their vinyl/tapes
I suspect that most people have been done for a while now, but as time goes on fewer and fewer are still doing this.
(Also, I really wish the moderators wouldn't list anything as troll just because it goes against conventional Slashdot wisdom. Whether you agree or not, the GP has a point).
This is because companies don't want to foot the bill for lawsuits, they'd rather have it funded by taxpayers. Of course, the DOJ eats this up, because then they get to demand more money to hire more people for all the investigations and prosecutions they'd be doing, and claim to be "tough on crime". People wouldn't be able to point out the RIAA's actions, because it would be the government going after them.
I don't like the idea of the government getting involved in civil suits on behalf of a third party. What's next, investigating people for adulterous behavior, and then filing divorce proceedings on the spouse's behalf?
Because I've said it before and I'll say it again: we have the best governmnet money can buy.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If I have $20 to spend.
And I spend all of it.
Then what is the impact on the world economy for any additional copies of goods I receive?
The fact is that entertainment is overpriced. In reality, entertainment is at the highest supply level it has ever been. It is now impossible to ever catch up with all the entertainment that exists. Why are prices going up then?
Normally when something is in oversupply, the prices go down.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I disagree there. I think people are ready to move on to other media. Try as I might, my CD's won't slide comfortably into my iPod but mp3's fit nicely. As for culture being free what exactly are you saying? Performers should perform for the benefit of mankind? They shouldn't be paid? Or should they be paid by the collective? Hate to break it to you but socialist ideals like this fly in the face of human tendencies. We want to compete and excel based on our performance.
That said, there is an argument for free distribution and pay per performance. This is essentially what The Dead opted into. They didn't care about bootlegs because ultimately it fueled concert revenue which they kept the lion's share of.
If I was an artist of some kind today I'd be really worried about all the people making copies of my work and "sharing" them with their friends over the net.
I'm not going to buy your stupid CD if I've never heard any of the songs. Someone once said (I wish I could find the exact quote) that far more authors have starved from obscurity than from copyright infringement. Actually the number that have starved from copyright infringement may in fact be zero, can you name one?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
So it is up to citizens to stop the corporations before they undermine society. Every useless pice of shit you buy from Wallmart, Disney and Sony is just feeding the beast, stop doing it NOW, you are part of the problem.
Amen to that, bro.
And quit feeding China too. Buy products made in your own country or if you really don't absolutely need that item, use the money to pay some extra against your debts or put it into savings.
Funny thing... the captcha I have to enter to post this as AC is "anarchy". How long will it be until the evil corporations try to get laws passed that basically say if the consumers (not citizens anymore), don't buy enough useless crap to satisfy their corporate profit margins enough then the consumers are guilty of criminal anarchy charges.
It's a statute. If it says the DoJ has standing, then it has standing. Unfortunately, it doesn't have to make sense.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
You know, another thing that I thought about after I posted this was that the RIAA, MPAA, or whoever is suing to protect their copyrighted works could use gov't investigation from this bill as the basis for their own civil suit. Not only do you get stung with whatever civil suit the gov't hits you with, but the RIAA can try and get their standard $250k/infringement once the gov't has won their case (Although the bill says that damages from a second suit would be reduced by the amount awarded by the first suit). This bill is quite a beast, ain't it?
Not only do they have outrageous penalties written into civil law, but now they want to get the taxpayer to pay for their larcenous lawsuits? I think we need to recognise that the closest thing to real piracy in this situation is what the RIAA is doing. Not only have they been granted letters of marque by the US government to exact punishment in civil suits, but now they're getting the government to pay for it. All that remains would be for George II to start handing out knighthoods (after all, it worked for Francis Drake).
I just wrote both of my Senators urging them to vote against this if and when it comes time for a senate vote. I urge everyone else to do the same.
The system can't work without feedback from citizens.
Looks like a double jeopardy run-around, but IANAL and IANYL.
Thing is, we've got a helluva backlog in the Federal courts, and this will just add more logjams to the load. How much more can we pile on til the whole system collapses?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Like many laws it's unconstitutional, but who knows what's going to happen in the court system.
Don't you love America, you socialist, treasonous liberal? We need torture to conduct our missions abroad! Why do you hate the soldiers so much--they're sacrificing so you can have your freedom of speech to complain about them! If people like you ran the country, we'd be Muslims by now!!! Why do you hate God so much?
Well, that's the BS I've been hearing from the war-mongers.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
It's no wonder that law enforcement agencies are all jumping at the chance to investigate myspace and facebook "criminal activity". It's a lot easier to sit at your desk and surf the web all day instead of being out on the street and arresting people who are actually harming others (violent acts, robbery, rape, etc.).
"CD sales are down because what is released on CD is crap."
Most music released has always been crap. 90% of what's released today is crap, but most of the stuff released in the 90's was crap, too. As was the stuff in the 80's, and the 70's, and so on.
It's easy to remember decades past as having better music than what's being released today; this is due to our propensity to remember the good and discard the bad. There's even a common word for this phenomenon: "nostalgia."
Ask many people and they'll swear up and down that there was a magical time in history when the crap level dropped below 90%. For instance, a 50-year-old living in 1926 might have told you that the era of good music ended in the 1890s. Everybody's right, but everybody's also wrong.
At any rate, while I agree with you that most music is crap, pirates love it just the same. The top music traded this week has remarkable parity with the top-selling music. This is why "music is crap" is a great rationalization for piracy, but not the cause of piracy. Piracy is caused by people's natural desire for music, and the natural desire to save money.
"This measure has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with outdated business models being destroyed by new technologies, and companies unwilling to adapt. They loved the monopoly."
There's widespread confusion over what the word "monopoly" means. There are literally thousands of indie music labels whose products are readily available at plenty of retailers, both online and off, and there's absolutely nothing preventing anybody from starting their own label, or even selling their music without working with a label. Sure, going the indie route is hard. So's starting your own independent ice cream shop in this market dominated by the Ben and Jerry's and Baskin-Robbins of the world. You won't have their brand recognition or their marketing budget. But no Slashdotter in their right mind would call the ice cream business a monopoly. So why the disconnect when it comes to the music biz? I suspect that many Slashdotters incorrectly throw around the term "monopoly" not because of a genuine misunderstanding, but because, like the "we pirate music because it's crappy" argument, because it shifts the moral burden off of us, and onto somebody else.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
If half the people on your block got their homes for free, how could you convince somebody to pay you $250k for YOURS?
No, no, NO! Stop taking a plastic knife to a gunfight. Your example does not make any sense with copyright.
To fix yours: It is like everyone on your block is making copies of their houses and land at an extremely low cost (or none) and then giving them out to anyone for free.
YOU are arguing that your house *design* and lot *design* is now being devalued because those with similar (or maybe exact, depending on how cookie-cutter your subdivision is) houses and lots are available elsewhere for free. And when you go to sell your house copies, people will either just make an exact copy of your house or lot and not pay you at all, or just pay you a lot less than what you wished for.
It isn't a perfect example, but, if you don't understand the distinction, I suggest you read up on the topic of copyright some more before you get laughed out of the room.
I've said it before an I'll say it again. The Grateful Dead never needed promotions or labels to push their music. They had the largest show recording/trading fan base ever, long before the internet came to be. I have a show where Jerry gives a person recording them tips in the audience to step back about 20 feet for the best possible sound. They toured for 30 years. All the trading/recording that way done allows the music to continue to be shared, long after the band stopped playing.
Nobody will be listenting to 95% of the crap being put out 10 years from now. If you don't suck, then you don't need a label. If you do suck, then find something you are actually good at and stop waiting for a label to "correct" your sound.
That is making a rather ridiculous assumption that you have a fundamental *right* to get paid for your house. In fact, what you describe is exactly how the housing market works. If some developer moves into your neighborhood and builds a large number of cheap replicas of your house, your house will get devalued. Legally. You will lose money and be pissed, but then oh well, you gambled assuming that your house would be of value in the future and lost. This is precisely what is happening to the music industry (i'll later make the distinction between the industry as a whole and individual musicians). The industry gambled that their cd's would be of value in the future. However, other industries came along and suddenly undercut the over priced pieces of plastic that large record companies gambled on to retain value. I am a musician and absolutely believe in musicians getting paid. However, most musicians do not make the majority of their money in cd sales (note I said most musicians, not most top 40's musicians). In fact, many musicians see cd sales as primarily a good advertising method, and the records sales usually barely pay for themselves. So, if I can put my music out into the ether, and get the same advertising without having to deal with record execs, why shouldn't I. I don't believe musicians will be hurt by this changing business model, but recording labels that fail to adapt to new business models in the face of technology will.
It was very clear in my example (record resale, houses on your block) that was talking micro, not macro.
I'm not sure I follow this. What's the difference? How can something that works "macro" not work "micro"? How does this apply to Radiohead's experiment? Privately-funded websites that get by with the help of donations?
It's considered the trick of a slimy salesman if he prices the product, be it a car or whatever, to what he thinks you can pay.
My examples were all about voluntary payment, where the buyer decides what price they think is appropriate. It's completely different!
Why do I not deserve exclusive rights to my work?
You should be allowed to do whatever you want. That's fine. This is what I have a problem with (from your original post, which gets us back on to the thread's topic):
I would really LIKE and even EXPECT the government to do their job and enforce the laws and stop people from stealing from me.
Why should my tax money, and the tax money of millions of other people who have absolutely zero interest in your niche product, have to pay to help ensure nobody uses it without your permission? What's in it for the rest of society?
Moreover, the only way it's even remotely feasible for the government to perform this function is with invasive monitoring of every single thing we do. Is your program that only 1,000 people in the entire country (or entire world?) thought was worth paying your asking price for really so valuable that we should spend millions or billions of dollars monitoring everyone just so you can make $100,000 instead of $50,000? What makes you so sure those pirates will actually pay you the $50 you think your software is worth if you're enforcing payments, rather than just skip it entirely? If they do that, then our government's crackdown on piracy doesn't make you any more, but costs us all a lot.
Let's assume that it is economically feasible to monitor all digital content using taxpayer money. A society where everyone feels entitled to receive whatever payment they think is appropriate any time they fart out an idea would surely encourage the big corps to game the system (we already know certain record label execs truly believe they deserve to be paid every time anybody hears a song they've published).
But that's a slippery slope argument, so forget all that. I still have issues reconciling such monitoring with the notion of a "free society". I enjoy and value my privacy - real or imagined - and don't think the government has any right to invade it in such a manner. Free will only has value if we're able to use it.
Why should honest people pay -- in terms of taxes and freedom -- to help enforce copyright of things they have paid for the right to use? How does removing free will encourage honesty and ethics and such desirable traits in the members of our society?
And if I want somebody to have to pay $x to use it, I should have that exclusive right.
Sure, you absolutely have that right. But I think you'd be doing yourself and the rest of us a disservice to invoke it, and therefore why should the rest of society help you do it? Why do I think it'd be doing a disservice to the rest of society? You kind of said it yourself:
You have no standing to tell me how much profit is "enough" for a product. How could you EVER make the mistake in thinking that you do?
Let me reflect that: You have no standing to tell me how much your program is worth to me. How could you EVER make the mistake in thinking that you do?
How do you decide what value of x is appropriate for people to pay? Should someone who's going to use it for 6 hours to help them with a task but never need it again have to pay $50 as well? Are people who simply can't afford $50 somehow not good enough to benefit from your time, skill and creativity?
How does your discriminati