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Senator Applauds Pirate Bay Trial, Chides Canada
eldavojohn writes "Republican Senator Orrin Hatch spoke Tuesday at the World Copyright Summit in Washington DC and hailed the Pirate Bay guilty verdict as an important victory. He expressed severe disappointment in Canada for showing up on our watch list for piracy next to China and Russia. Senator Hatch also said, 'In fact, one study reports that each year, copyright piracy from motion pictures, sound recordings, business and entertainment software, and video games costs the US economy $58 billion in total output, costs American workers 373,375 jobs and $16.3 billion in earnings, and costs federal, state, and local governments $2.6 billion in tax revenue. During this time of economic turmoil, we must ensure that all copyrighted works, both here and abroad, are protected from online theft and traditional physical piracy. After all, US copyright-based industries continue to be one of America's largest and fastest-growing economic sectors.' GamePolitics notes that for his 2006 campaign, Hatch was rented for $7,000 by the RIAA and also got on his knees for $12,640 from the MPAA."
Either from the RIAA/MPAA, or from Verizon.
In both cases the numbers are meaningless.
I suppose it would be a waste of time to explain to this genius that the "problem" of file sharing in Canada is largely a myth and has been discredited.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Hey, Orrin. Just an FYI - those numbers have been proven wrong, on numerous occasions by numerous sources. And not wrong in the "close but not quite accurate" sense - wrong as in "so far off from any vague hint of accuracy as to be laughable." You keep quoting numbers that are being fed to you by the MPAA and RIAA and they're making you look stupid. You might want to have one of your staff members do a smidge of research so you don't look quite so idiotic. Oh, and when you spout off these incorrect numbers, it weakens any other point you may have by association. But, hey, you enjoy that new deck that the RIAA/MPAA donation allowed you to add to your country home.
Where exactly did he get his numbers? I wonder?
I believe he was citing the Business Software Alliance's annual report on piracy. Although that value I believe is for world-wide losses, not American.
My work here is dung.
Oh, that's nothing. Think how much money this "Fair Use" nonsense has cost the industry.
Most of the stuff on
Orrin Hatch has taken over $96,000 From the TV/Movies/Music lobby already.
Just a snippet from the blog cited above...
From Prof. Michael Geist's blog BSA Admits Canadian Software Piracy Rates Estimated; Canada Viewed as Low Piracy Country, the following shows that these statistics are just made up...
In other news, unchecked air-breathing by the earth's entire population costs governments trillions of dollars of lost revenue, billions of air-accounting jobs and millions of death by old age.
The free availability of air to anyone with the simple capability to just *SUCK IT IN* willy-nilly skews the whole thing wildly. We don't know what people would do if wanton free-for-all air-breathing weren't an option. It very well might be possible that the accounting and sale of air (by the gallons) would create huge revenues for government and private businesses. Again, we don't know because people can just... you know... inhale and exhale at will.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/930731/posts
Some things the Senator needs to understand ...
Might I remind you that this is the same Senator Orrin Hatch who
Combine those first two points and I wager that your comment not only falls upon deaf ears but might instead cause him to laugh. This guy's got a long history and he's been very successful doing it.
My work here is dung.
So if Terminator 4 was downloaded 1million times in the US, one could say that it cost the $18million ($18 for the DVD) plus the government $1,260,000 in taxes (assuming 7% taxes).
Okay, I *saw* terminator 4 in theatres, and lemme tell you, it was NOT worth the price. If a friend hadn't bought my ticket, I wouldn't have watched it. But to my friend, it was worth the price because we were seeing it together. That's the difference. He was getting a value out of it separate to the value of the movie.
To me, the best pro-piracy argument is it allows people to not reward people for making shit products. If piracy wasn't available, I'd have to pay $60 to find out that new game is absolute ass-nuggets, I'd have to pay at least $10 to see a movie in the theatres to know it was crap, not including travel time, waiting time, concessions, etc. Why should someone benefit from my enforced inability to check the quality of their product before I shell out full price? You can't tell me you've never watched a movie, or played a game, or bought a book, or *something* that made you go, afterwards, "fuck, that was a waste of $X. I wish I had that back."
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Orrin Hatch is the same dumbass that 4 years ago proposed developing a way to destroy computers that illegally download music. Hatch has family connections to the RIAA, his kid did some legal work for them a while back. But perhaps his real reason for supporting stupid copyright laws is that he wants to make money as a singer-songwriter of Christian music.
Orrin Hatch is routinely among the most annoying men in Washington, and that is saying something.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
these socialist ideals
Where the heck did you get the idea that the ideas Sen Hatch was espousing were socialist? They aren't: Socialism advocates the collective ownership of property, which in the world of so-called intellectual property would be something along the lines of Creative Commons.
No, the word you might have been looking for was "fascist", "corporatist", or "plutocratic".
I am officially gone from
HOLD IT.
President Bush signed TARP, the largest of the bailouts into law, long before the election.
How is that Obama's fault?
It's been a long time.
In Canada they did that.
Which is why this is having such a hard time making file sharing illegal.
And as for the politicians....Do you want to be the guy to say "Good news everyone, we're making it so the music industry can sue you for millions!"
It's been a long time.
You don't even need to think about bribes. He's recorded an album, and fancies himself as an artist.
Don't forget that this is the man who advocating being able to remotely *destroy* computers of *suspected* "pirates".
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Well we express severe disappointment in the U.S. for showing up on our watch list for nations that are known to use torture along with Israel, China, Iran and Afghanistan.
Apologies accepted but in the future, please restrain this retard.
HOLD IT.
Unless my memory is faulty our CURRENT PRESIDENT voted for it himself...in his capacity as a United States Senator.
Right there is how it's Obama's fault. He didn't try and stop it and actually voted FOR it.
Also, please read the first paragraph of this link: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Economy/story?id=6654133&page=1
Obama himself WANTED TARP and access to TARP money.
All Bush did was sign it into law, it's the CONGRESS that made the program. In everyone's rush to BushBash they seem to forget how the U.S. Government actually works.
Oh, and that same Congress that passed T.A.R.P. was majority DEMOCRAT!
Isn't political bashing fun? It can go on all day...and not solve one god damned thing.
No, the Pirate Party gained a seat in the EU parliament in Brussels, not in the Swedish parliament.
Overall, the approval ratings of individual Democratic Congress members are much higher than Bush's ratings. It's the Republican Congress members' ratings that are dragging the Congress as a whole down.
Mark Twain considered himself to be a storyteller. And his works are all public domain now. Guy's been dead a hundred years, quit including him in with the scum sucking leeches^F^F^Fcorporados^Fmedia companies...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
And Canada doesn't even have "Fair Use". So obviously the States is even worse then Canada about Copyright, letting people infringe copyright for satire, parody etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#Fair_dealing_in_Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism