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Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA
boarder8925 writes "In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA: 'We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,' Obama said in his speech, 'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'"
... our jobs!
I fail to see how Democrats and Republicans differ on the matter. Both support large government at the expense of your rights.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Next up: The Texas schoolboard mandates that textbooks 'de-emphasise' the RECORDED HISTORICAL FACT that Hollywood was founded on industrialised copyright infringement.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy, but those of us who are knowledgeable and have a strong opinion on this should contact the White House as well as your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know why we should not be supporting ACTA.
White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Congresspeople: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
The fact that this got rated "Insightful" is a woeful commentary on the state of rational debate and analysis in the geek world. I thought we were supposed, as a group, to be smart. Apparently not.
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed. Of course production is down right now because we're in a recession, but as a percentage of our economy, manufacturing production is pretty stable. What's down is manufacturing jobs, and that's because productivity is up. The better you are at doing something, the less work you have to do to do it.
In a perfect world, more production per unit of labor would mean that we would all have to work less to achieve the same level of prosperity. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current intellectual property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done. Rather than this new-found prosperity being spread across the whole population, it reaches only a relatively few peoples' pockets, and of course those people get quite rich.
So in fact draconian intellectual property laws are antithetical to prosperity. Obama's thesis here isn't just irrelevant to the average worker's prosperity. It's antithetical to the average worker's prosperity.
"But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."
Wait, MPAA/RIAA? Since when do they deal with fake iPods? I hate them as much as the next guy, but I can't find a word in the article relating to copyrights that wasn't inserted by the author.
Obama's speech (as quoted by TFA) seems to relate only to patents and perhaps branded goods, even if ACTA extends to both. It would be interesting to know if this is indicative of an official focus with regard to ACTA.
despite i have been a staunch supporter of him and quarreled with my conservative american friends for close to a year since his candidacy to his election and even beyond.
really, from this point on, i dont think i will be hypocritical to defend him in any regard. there are things that can be overlooked and forgiven, noone is perfect. but ransoming rights and liberties of the thought process to private individuals is nothing less than feudalism at its best. and someone who can justify this to himself cannot be defended in anything else.
Read radical news here
You mean, we should start to stock ARM netbooks?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Step away from the song lyrics. Or there will be... trouble.
While I'm no particular fan of the MPAA, the RIAA or the ACTA, it deserves to be pointed out that the article is substantially misleading and inaccurate. Firstly, the speech to which they refer, in the section about IP protection, talks exclusively about protecting the licensing of technology and make no mention what so ever of the MPAA, the RIAA or music of video piracy. While these organisations happen to also support the ACTA, it is grossly misleading to say that the speech comes out in support of either of them. Secondly, the article says that "the European Parliament has already shot the ACTA agreement down". This is completely incorrect. The European Parliament have demanded that the European Commission make public the nature of its discussions in the ACTA negotiations, and the EU Privacy Commissioner has expressed concern that the treaty might be incompatible with existing EU law, but the parliament have not passed any resolutions regarding the content of the treaty itself (not least because it's secret, so they don't know what it says).
The process through which the ACTA has be created is highly suspect but it does its opponents no service if those who campaign against it can't present an accurate case.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
An IP Based Society is great for every other nation on earth, for in 20 to 30 years all the world has to do to destroy America is simply start ignoring her laws.
Do we then start sending troops into nation X for downloading Disney movies? How about when they all decide to stop paying royalties?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Ummm.... I see you ignore the fact that major portions of our manufacturing capability have been moved offshore. When was the last time you bought a TV made in the US? When was the last time you bought a major household appliance that was manufactured entirely in the US? How about a car? How long has it been since the majority of steel used in the US was made here?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
It is really not a defense of these policies to note that we are moving to an economy where copyrights and patents are our chief export; it is just a description of the broader problem that nobody wants to manufacture their goods in America anymore. The solution is not to try to push other countries to accept our versions of copyright and patent law, it is to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Sadly, the major parties seem to have no interest in the seemingly obvious solution...
Palm trees and 8
In theory, yes.
But the cost of fighting any of these mega-corps is so immense that, in effect, unless you're fighting somebody near your own weight class (in terms of available resources) you will lose, and likely never even get to see the verdict. Look at what Monsanto's done to agriculture in the last decade. If you don't pay to plant Monsanto's seed, they sue you into bankruptcy where you have to sell the farm to a Monsanto friend. It is defacto illegal to harvest seed from crops now, because though there is no law against it the people who used to make a living running the seed-collecting machines were sued for contributory infringement against Monsanto's genetic patents. It just costs too much for a person to defend against that. Especially since most corperations structure themselves in such a way that they don't own anything and use cashflow for everything, and the laws are written to that effect. Farmers have little cashflow and millions of dollars in assets (land, property) and therefore repeatedly get destroyed if they don't lay down and give a large cut of profits to Monsanto.
Your argument about the RIAA stealing an indie band's music and selling it on their own is crap. The laws that protect the RIAA don't cover that, and the indie bands can't afford the cost to use a DMCA-approved content protection system to trigger DMCA violations. Having music IP laws that allow for statuatory payments per performance and such is fine, but the erosion of fair use (though, historically, fair use as a legal concept has re-emerged more recently than not, and is being beat back down) is soley the RIAA powed by friends in Washington DC.
Other IPs vary, but more often than not it's the Monsantos that the laws are written for to protect, not the individual inventor.
I am become
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made by a US company. The "interesting" software in new Internet-connected TVs (Netflix, VUDU, Cinemanow, Pandora, Youtube) is all made by US companies. And not coincidentally, all of those companies focus on distribution of the higher-margin content that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to protect.
The economic (and military) successes of the United States have almost always been based on technological innovation and entrepreneurship - and those innovations DO need to be protected.
The MPAA/RIAA's methods of "enforcing" their IP are despicable. But without any protection, one of the current major assets of the US - media and entertainment - will be in serious jeopardy. Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different. That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online. Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
For every Vespasian, there's a Nero AND a Caligula.
an ex-ussr european here. do the two parties in usa _actually_ differ ?
one seems to be a communist part no. 1, and it is pushing for more milk to workers in dangerous conditions.
second one is a communist party no. 2 and advocates increasing the wine dosage for those who donate blood.
and they are identical in every other way.
Rich
They have different mascots and each has their own set of fans whose primary distinguishing characteristic is hating the other side's fans.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea
that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the
public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged
with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing
circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is
supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or
individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock
of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
No sig today...