Commerce Department Pushing For New "Copyright Czar"

TechDirt is reporting that those all-too-familiar "stats" surrounding the cost of piracy are being trotted out in an attempt to push through a new "Copyright Czar" position. "In urging President Bush to sign into law the ProIP bill, which would give him a copyright czar (something the Justice Department had said it doesn't want), the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy. Yet, it doesn't cite where that number comes from."

Comments

750,000??

[jgtg32a]

Are there even that many people working in the music and movies/tv industry in this country?

Uh huh

[Xeth]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 383,000 people employed in the Motion picture and sound recording industries in September 2008.

My money is on the idea that they took the amount the industries estimate they lose from piracy and then divided that by some moderate wage.

Re:Uh huh

[halcyon1234]

Heck, think about it this way:

There are about 300 million (thousand thousand) people in the States

According to All Knowledge Ever, 24.6% are minors, and 12.7% are of retired age. That means there are only 188 million "employable" citizens.

The same BLS says the unemployment rate is 6%. That means there are 11.3 million unemployed citizens

If every single one of those lost jobs resulted in a currently unemployed person, then 6.65% of all unemployed persons were from the entertainment industry.

Now, assuming that their number isn't complete and utter bullshatistics-- nah, I think I'll just call BS and be done with this one.

Inefficency

[Wildclaw]

claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy

Overexaggerated number for sure, but jobs may very well have been lost because of piracy. But, so what? Let me formulate the matters in another light.

750,000 American jobs would have been wasted if piracy hadn't existed to combat the inherent inefficencies in the copyright and IP systems.

Jobs are good if they actually produce something useful to society. Otherwise they are just a big waste, and do little more than shuffle resources around because the current system don't have a better way to allocate it.

Even if more actual intellectual property were produced with stronger IP laws, it still isn't sure that it would be a better idea. The real value of IP isn't how much is produced, but how much is produced times how well spread it is among the population. Also, that total value has to be balanced against the cost of producing it.

Say that 700,000 more jobs would be created. That is a multi billion cost. And what would be the gain. More tv? More music? More movies? It isn't like there is a lack of choice right now.

Re:Inefficency

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not the same old complaint. He is just making a case that piracy may be good for the economy, by allowing consumers to spend their money on more beneficial markets.

It makes perfect sense, and the only argument against it is the sense of entitlement for your own creative works. Make no mistake, that sense of entitlement is unnatural, and is only tenuously supported by copyright as granted by the constitution.

It certainly isn't outlined as an unalienable right. And more to the point, the right for profit isn't either.

Japanese Anime Translation

[Khisanth Magus]

Although it is more in the thousands, possibly as high as ten thousand, it is true that there has been a significant amount of job loss due to piracy in the companies that bring japanese anime over to the US. I've talked with voice actors as well as people who run those companies, and piracy really has hurt them. Some companies are closing up shop, others are just having to severely cut back to make ends meet. This was never a large profit business in the first place, and with people downloading it so much as opposed to buying the DVDs they can't manage to squeak by.

The irony of this is that the "copyright czar" would probably just ignore this as the MPAA and RIAA aren't involved. Not that I'm advocating law suits against people who do pirate it, as I think that is way over the top, just pointing out that people HAVE lost their jobs due to piracy.

Re:Henry Paulson

[mcgrew]

Thanks for not linking his wikipedia entry. Unfortunately for me, I looked him up. Do not click that link! Jesus Christ but that's one freaky looking fuckweed! In order to save you the horror of seeing that man's face (makes goatse look like it came from a children's book) I'll quote wikipedia's entry on who he is:

Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is the United States Treasury Secretary and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

Born in Palm Beach, Florida, to Marianna Gallaeur and Henry Merritt Paulson, a wholesale jeweler,[1] he was raised in Barrington Hills, Illinois. He was raised as a Christian Scientist.[2] Paulson attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.[3][4]

A star athlete at Barrington High School, Paulson was a champion wrestler and stand out football player, graduating in 1964. Paulson received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Dartmouth College in 1968;[5] at Dartmouth he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was an All Ivy, All East, and honorable mention All American as an offensive lineman.

He met his wife Wendy during his senior year. The couple have two adult children, Henry Merritt III and Amanda Clark, and became grandparents in June 2007. They maintain homes in Washington, DC and Barrington Hills, Illinois.

In 1970 Paulson received a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.[6]

He is, in short, an anti-nerd. He is the complete and polar opposite of you and me.

I think it's obvious now why the banking industry crashed and the stock market is crashing. It's because of people like Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr. who will not lose their jobs and homes and who will NOT go hungry as a direct result of their actions, as you and I may. Not as a result of our actions, but as a result of HIS and the actions of people (and I use that term loosely) just like him.

If you fear people like Osama Bin Laden more than you fear people like Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr., IMO you're brain dead stupid.

Re:The real costs

[mcgrew]

YOU could turn on a radio

And sample it. Three or four hours of top-40 radio will have all the hits on your hard drive. Piracy? It's label-sanctioned piracy!

Steal it if you want to, don't steal it if you don't want to

Stealing: You walk into Best Buy or Walmart, stick a CD under your coat, and walk out.

Copyright infringement: Uploading your CD collection as MP3s on Kazaa. Or downloading with Morpheus and letting the downloads go into your "share" folder.

Stealing: misdemeanor retail theift, small fine.

Copyright infringement: Civil suit with a huge payment.

Downloading without sharing; sampling the radio, downloading or buying indie music: PRICELESS as it helps drive the copyright cartel out of business. I, for one, wish to see Sony and the other three evil mainstream labels GO UNDER. They are hindering the creation of art, hampering the independant artists who aren't in it for the dough.

They are, in my opinion, EVIL and should die horribly.

YMMV. HAND.

Re:Easy

[plague3106]

Who am I to tell someone they can't destroy their own body? Seriously though, if you look at this history of drug laws, they are based in racism. You know.. blacks had a hard enough time not raping poor defenseless white women, and when they were on cocain, well watch out!

Re:Easy

[ShieldW0lf]

Clearly, the business model is flawed and needs to be replaced with one that meets the social goal of providing for those who are valued creators without requiring artificial scarcity to implement it.

History is full of such models. The BBC and the CBC are both good examples. And if you compare the quality of such with Fox News and CNN, you find that they also produce superior programming.

Re:Easy

[Reziac]

Exactly the same war is being waged against dog breeders and livestock producers by various "animal rights" interests (CA Prop 2 is one such example).

Extending civil asset forfeiture to extremes like taking the cars from people who merely WATCH a street race is another example.

We seem to be returning to a Puritan culture, where "anything *I* don't like, YOU can't do either!" whether there's a logical reason for that or not. And if you can't jail someone for some such offense, taking his property for that offense is ... well, not the next-best thing; it's probably "even better" because it's profitable!

We've also entered an era of finding ways to ALWAYS ensure that any person of interest can be convicted of a felony. CA Prop 6 does this by requiring gang members to register with the police (in blatant disregard of our Constitutional Right of Assembly). Arrest some kid without enough evidence of a crime? no problem... chances are he never registered as a gang member; GOT HIM!

The RIAA's desired incarnation of copyright is similiar: Did you even THINK of perusing that material? then PAY UP! and if you don't, we'll send Vinny and Guido to confiscate your computer (that way we can be sure what IP address to tie your "crime" to). The moment we have a "Copyright Czar" you can expect the "war on piracy" to escalate to levels very similar to the "war on drugs" -- with equally negative effects. Imagine raids on average citizens for the crime of copying a disk they got from the library...

Personally, I believe the "war on drugs" is encouraged and even partly funded by the drug lords, to keep prices artificially high. One could draw similar parallels to the RIAA cartel.... as to drugs, I'm all for legalize/regulate/tax. It's relatively easy with hard goods like drugs. How could we do that with content -- to legalize, regulate, and tax, so everyone gets their cut yet no one (short of "smugglers") can be hauled in for a "crime"??