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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."
If someone download a movie, game or song doesn't mean they would have paid for it if they couldn't. So those loss calculations are wrong
I can't believe he admitted it. "After all, US copyright-based industries continue to be one of America's largest and fastest-growing economic sectors."
Next thing you know he'll say, "And if they won't buy our opium, we will sail our ironclads right into their harbours and open up their markets, whether they like it or not."
How dare you give your citizens freedom.
"Orrin Hatch (R-UT) once again was charming,
informed, thoughtful and inspiring in his speech."
Who's a good doggy? Who's a good doggy?
You are aren't you! Have some kibble.
Yeah, i love how in business can you count "money we never got or even came close to seeing" as a "loss."
This one time, i was in a convenience store, and i saw someone else had won a million dollars in a lottery. I didn't have an extra dollar on me for a lottery ticket at the time, since the public transit token machine ate one of my dollars. Ergo, PUBLIC TRANSIT COST ME A MILLION DOLLARS!!11!1
oh wait, that 'extra' dollar would have gone to something useful with value to me... not a lottery ticket.
/facepalm
That which does not kill us makes us... st
I'm sure glad that he is a senator then. I would love to see how he would feel if he was convicted in a trial and it turned out that the Judge was a high ranking member of the puppeteers of the prosecutor. Talk about trying to stack the deck. I know lets make sure the Judge is on our side and already believes us, that will make it much easier to make sure the outcome is the one we want.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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?
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.
'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.
I wonder if this number includes the economic benefits gained from people buying extra hard drives, spindles of DVD-Rs, and upgrading their broadband connections to the fastest unlimited connections they can get? Simply looking at it as an economist, neither condemning nor condoning the action of pirating...
America IS the world. Duh.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
Some things the Senator needs to understand:
1/ Other countries are INDEPENDENT and the United States has no authority to dictate to them.
2/ Industry funded studies designed to "prove" their viewpoint cannot be trusted.
3/ Copyright under the U.S. Constitution was not intended to be eternal. It was supposed to be for a limited time and I suspect that "limited" was meant in compared to the human life span not compared to eternity.
3/ The DMCA is bad law and should be repealed rather than encouraging others to implement the same
It is estimated that the US printing industry lost Eleventy Billion Dollars in book sales last year from all those freeloading bastards reading at their local public library, which also contributed to heavy losses in the paper manufacturing industry....
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Okay, maybe I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, but if Americans aren't spending money on mp3s and downloaded movies, aren't they instead spending that money elsewhere? We have one of the lowest savings rates in the world, so it's not like the money is disappearing into our savings accounts. Therefore, downloading content on the internet should theoretically cost the economy $0 and $0 jobs, or at least considerably less than the figures quoted in the article, and instead create new jobs in other sectors rather than lining the pockets of movie execs. Then again, this whole philosophy is moot if nobodyâ(TM)s following the Pirates Code of Honor and buying content that is actually good.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Orrin Hatch has taken over $96,000 From the TV/Movies/Music lobby already.
Sonny Bono, Hatch, both parties? There is only one party.
They are Legion, they are many.
I see little difference between Clinton, Bush, Obama, Carter, etc.
I see 1 party. The "Goverment as a Business" party whom we shall now refer to as the GAAB party comprising two idealogies:
Left: The Goverment Controls Business
Right: Business Control the Goverment
but either way THEY CONTROL YOU.
Seriously this partisan nonsense has to end, neither party has shown any credibitity in over 80 years and have done nothing for the nation as a whole, rather they have done plenty for themselves.
When the USA stopped making real things and moved to a service economy the only thing we have left is our imaginary property that was long ago only supposed to be protected for 7 years has turned into a generation spanning con game with society at large losing in the end.
Now as that society rebels watch carefully as the GAABs show their true colors.
It is modern Feudalism with Goverment as the King and the large corporations as the fiefs. It's employees are the pesants\cattle and we can see the bloodlines clear as day now in both the Corporate spheres as well as in the media.
I will coin a term if it hasn't already:
The United States form of goverment is "Corporate Feudalism"
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Well said. Kinda hard to feel bad for Media conglomerates when most of them own ISPs who are quite happy to advertise their wares in terms of "fast access to media".
Somebody's making money, and it's not the pirates.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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...
Sadly, they are leaderless, clueless, and helpless.
That's what people said about the Democrats before they were able to adopt "Hey, at least we're not Bush!" as their slogan.
I always thought those studies put piracy on the wrong side of the balance sheet: that's 56 billions dollars saved; not a 56 billion dollar cost. 373,000 jobs lost? That's over 15 millions hours each week of free time to spend with children
Ah, yes, the old "no true scotsman" argument. Standby of the man who's lost every rationale he ever had to defend what means the most to him.
Republicans spent many years villifying anyone who dared to disagree with them on any issue while elevating filth such as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck to spokespersons and role models for their movement.
Republicans opened religious and geopolitical extremists with open arms which relegated all the moderates to Independence or pushed them into the democratic party. They elected a stuttering buffoon who drove the country deep into debt with nothing to show for it, destroyed our standing with the rest of the world as a beacon of hope and leadership, and forced a division of loyalties not seen in this country for nearly 50 years.
For their troubles they've been pushed to the fringe by a reliably moderate majority of Americans who have had enough with their extremist views and tactics. Now the republicans are finding that fearmongering and hate only go so far before people get wise to those antics and reject them for more intelligent and useful ideas.
The republicans made this bed. Now they can lie in it until they decide to clean up their act and start acting in a responsible and adult manner again. Or, they can die and let a more thoughtful and reasonable opposition to the democrats replace them. Either way, the republicans are what they are, and it's rapidly sending them to the abyss of irrelevance.
All that said, democrats in this thread bashing Hatch because of the R next to his name would do well to remember that our democratic vice president is pretty friendly to the same people Hatch is, and our president is staffing key legal positions with ex-lawyers from the types of firms that would be more than happy to prosecute torrent users and hosters on American soil the way the Pirate Bay was tried.
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.