Slashdot Mirror
White House Cracks Down On Piracy & Counterfeiting
GovTechGuy writes "On Tuesday the White House made a show of rolling out an expansive new strategy to combat online piracy and counterfeit goods, to the delight of industry groups. The plan emphasizes targeting foreign websites that host pirated software and movies and increasing the number of investigations and prosecutions by the FBI, FTC, and Justice Department. Here is the complete plan, introduced by the new 'copyright czar,' Victoria Espinel."
Well, once again, the major parties fail to work for the benefit of the people, and focus instead on the interests of large corporations. No surprises there I guess.
Palm trees and 8
The biggest counterfeiter of them all is the Federal Reserve. This is why you don't have frauds enforce fraud laws.
I agree with General McChrystal on this one.
Well, what did we really expect when the Copyright Czar position was created?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
in a handbasket.
expandfairuse.org
And this is what happens when the US no longer has any manufacturing and produces very little real, tangible, goods or services. Between executives and shareholders wringing every last penny of quarterly profit at the expense of long-term goals, regulations and unions forcing unsustainable operating expenses, and skyrocketing education costs paired with plummeting education quality, long-term viability of the US business sector is caving.
The only thing the US has left that is of value on the global market is "intellectual property". This means regardless of whether you vote Republican or Democrat, you will get politicians that support crackdowns on piracy and extension of copyright protections.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Let's keep on expanding the "ease of use" for anonymous p2p networks.
p2p is the ENTIRE future of our progress as humanity.
Governments/Corporations (and Government, Inc.orporations) have no idea what will happen when nanoscale-printers arrive, USB Plug&Play Ready.
Think about pirating processors... monitors... wireless antenna designs... turbochargers... medicines... perfumes... textiles... Rolex watches... solar panels... more nano-printers.
The future belongs to us.
Let's work on the p2p networks.
=)
People rather pirate your products because the new mediums changed the value of your product and no one wants to pay $20 for a file when it costs $20 for hard good version of your product. Price it accordingly and people will come back.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...considering who we have as a Vice President and who his friends are:
Biden to MPAA: you'll like Obama's pick for copyright czar
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/biden-to-mpaa-youll-like-obamas-copyright-pick.ars
but I did read the analysis of the plan on Ars (link) and their conclusions are far more favorable to consumers and less favorable to industry groups than the Slashdot summary suggests.
I think it's more likely that the US will try to use US laws on US ISPs to BLOCK foreign/non-US websites -- until those websites conform to US laws.
I don't think it's going to be much fun.
So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
While I think it is unfortunate that they have legitimized the phrase "intellectual property", it's actually a bit of a relief to see them focusing on piracy and counterfeit goods. I never had any expectation that any major official entity subject to political forces would act to weaken copyright or other "intellectual property" rules, since most commercial content creators want the maximum possible revenue from their work (regardless of broader social consequences to society and creativity). The general mindset is that creativity is fueled by the profit motive, so the more profit the more progress we will see in the arts and sciences. And while this is demonstrably NOT universally true (see open source, as just one example of many) it IS true that vast revenues are generated by copyright laws supporting commercial endeavors and the resources contributed by people so benefiting are of much more use to political campaigns than those who are creating for motivations OTHER than money.
Given that reality, Creative Commons and Open Source style licensing are probably the only practical means of preserving any of the benefits of what used to be the public domain going forward. With the courts suggesting that Congress can yank things OUT of the public domain even after they are placed there, it becomes clear that the best way forward is the "opt-in" community approach. This means, of course, that the body of work available for creative purposes outside of a commercial framework will be drastically reduced. However, the current social and legislative trends suggest that it's all we can hope for. Given that reality, those who prefer this environment can work to improve the tools and content so released in order to build up our own "subculture" over time. If it appeals to enough people, it may eventually function more or less independently of the commercial world without needing commercial content to fall into the public domain (indeed, in some sense this has been the practical situation for virtually the entire lifespan of everyone on this site anyway - how many of us remember any work released commercially in our lifetime that is now public domain?)
However, even this proposed subculture can exist only if it is not thwarted by legislative efforts. So long as works CAN be used without commercial payment, free and open source culture can survive as long as there are people willing to make it survive. My greatest concern is that Big Content will try to push for laws making ANY content available without charge subject to "unfair competition" rules - i.e. make it impossible for anyone to do ANYTHING with ANY content, regardless of license, without some form of concrete financial or goods based payment changing hands between creator and user. This might be phrased as the "Fair Compensation Act" intended to "ensure that content creators are compensated for their efforts" and "able to make a living". Free ANYTHING may be branded as "socialist", "communist", "anti-business" and "un-American". I have heard this feeling expressed - that nothing should be free; every product of any kind should be bought and sold in the open market to ensure fair compensation from users to creators. The existence of ANY free content is unfair competition and a dis-incentive to today's creative minds. Open source software prompts this opinion occasionally - for example, the "market destroying effects" of things like free compilers has ruined the livelihoods of people who might have made commercial tools. If that attitude ever makes it into the letter of the law, we are in Big Trouble - THAT is what we really need to watch for.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion..." --Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith, 1787. ME 6:372
Even if it were feasible to have some sort of economic impact on the media industry, no matter what you do it'll never have any impact. Remember the "Drudge Tax" that the FTC was mulling over (now bear in mind, this was only a report and not something that is going into effect)? "Oh, but that's just Drudge" you say. "He's a right-wing lunatic."
Think about this carefully: the "Drudge Tax" was an idea concocted to make news aggregators (hi, Slashdot!) pay a small tax for linking to third party stories. Essentially, it would be in place to prop up an industry that is effectively in the process of dying. It sounds a lot like something Rupert Murdoch was proposing, too, doesn't it?
Remember, too, that every blank CD-ROM you purchase includes a small fee that goes straight into the coffers of the RIAA to help offset the costs of piracy. Sure, it's only a few cents, but during the peak of CD-ROM sales it was a figure undoubtedly rather high. Worst of all: most people have no idea they are paying what is effectively a tax.
So, no, I don't think that economically hurting the media industry is going to have any effect. Congress will simply levy taxes against the rest of us to keep their buddies afloat. If we truly professed to be a semi-capitalistic society, we would simply let these companies fail when they can no longer afford to keep their doors open. We're not; instead, we sink countless millions of dollars into failing industries simply because they have lobbyists.
You and I? Well, we're just taxpayers. We have no lobbyists. Plus, even if you could convince the vast majority of consumers to not purchase popular media (hint: won't happen), it'll never work. It'll instead be blamed on piracy, and you might just wind up paying a tax on every hardware component you purchase to build a computer, because--by golly--that device might just be used to pirate goods. In fact, I think there was a proposal of the sorts in the works.
I hate to sound so cynical. Instead, I'll end this on a positive note by welcoming you to serfdom.
He who has no
According to Ars, reaction to the report has been positive, even from Public Knowledge. You know, one a-them digital hippy organizations that campaign for peoples' rights. There won't be any gov't-sanctioned three-strikes or Internet filtering, and they're going to get the Department of Commerce to put together an ultimate report on financial harm from piracy (good luck with that, but A for effort since they mentioned that the media industries are basically making shit up). It really doesn't sound all that bad, and it could have been much worse.
And then we have this Slashdot summary, making it out to be all doom and gloom, as though the feds weren't even going to try to hide that they're in bed with Big Content. As the subject line says, am I missing something here?
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
"Were you forced into buying the product?" Yes, in order to succeed in the class, I was required to buy the selected textbook. And no, not last year's used edition, the brand new edition with at a premium. That's as closed to "forced to buy the product" as I can think of short of a gun barrel in my mouth.
Take this story in the context of the Slashdot story earlier today. There are an increasing number of web sites operating outside of the US that are illegally selling products that they don't own. If there is one thing that we should ALL be able to agree upon is that organized crime for profit is not defensible.
The companies selling downloads of movies/etc are directly stealing money from US companies as well as the artistic community that creates them. Say what you will about the MPAA/etc, but at least they are contributing something (i.e. they are actually creating and distributing the movies). Companies that just steal their content and resell it to people are just plain stealing.
Going after organized villainy is a GOOD use of taxpayer resources. We should be supporting these sorts of efforts and contrasting them with the the music industry's war on consumers.
Evolution: love it or leave it
That is not just wrong, it is the opposite of right. Not only does the US still manufacture goods, it has the #1 output of manufactured goods in the entire world. Yes, that's right, more than China even. That is on track to change, the way things are going China will be #1 by around 2020, but because of their growth, but because the US isn't making things. The US is manufacturing more than it has at nearly any other time (the recession has caused a drop, but pre-recession was highest levels ever).
You are just choosing to see things selectively. If you don't know what it is that the US makes, well that is your failing, not a failing of the US economy. There are some mundane things, like steel girders or sewer lids. There are some high tech things like computer processors (most of Intel's fabs are in the US) and DSPs. There are some industrial things like locomotives and heavy construction machinery. There are some specialized things like MRI scanners and nuclear reactors. There are some unexpected things like Toyota cars (Toyota has many US factories).
Doesn't matter, all over the board the US produces a whole lot of stuff. So please, educate yourself before spouting off. This "The US makes nothing but imaginary goods!" thing is tired and incorrect.
....that the reason America made (past tense) great movies was because of it's culture. America had true heros and the free and competitive nature of American life, both at home and abroad, was the basis for it's revenue and productive success. There was such a thing as an American hero, and Americans enriched the lives of those outside of its boundaries. America helped rebuild Europe and Japan, and was a key figure in preventing the spread of communism, or otherwise promoting the free market system. Spy stories, WWII stories, stories about the future and technology are some of my favourites. However, nowadays, America produces what besides the film industry/ recording industry? Sure they design iPods, but if there is nobody getting wages paid for them in America, all of the dollars are eventually going overseas. So now, what does it do? America needs vast reform, both in energy (re: wasted resources allocation to fund big multinationals), and in industry too. So instead of producing a movie about the positive and interesting work America has done, The Hurt Locker (which maybe accurately represents modern American life) won some awards which was good for the American side of things, while completely leaving out how others felt (Avatar), which showed an alternative side as to how minerals (re oil) were being used in a conflict against indigenous people's.) Perhaps the US should stick to writing films about well...producing movies and the copyright struggle in America. It would be true, and that is what I feel lacks from most of the movies today: they are based on odd tales. I am sure if they presented a balanced view, in a movie about America (which was successful in the past), even I might start going to the theatres again, and people might start to begin to see what is wrong with America today.
Society use your Sciences
I'm of the mindset that the media industry at large is hurting not so much because of piracy but because of quality and the inability to adapt. Me? I used to by CDs whenever I'd hunt for music. Now, I just purchase it from Amazon if it's available; if not, I do without. (Before anyone whines about lossy codecs, I might remind you that this is simply an anecdote; I honestly can't tell the difference between FLAC and MP3 for the majority of what I own except in very rare circumstances. If you can tell the difference, by all means purchase something you can encode in the format you desire.) I don't watch a lot of movies anymore, and the most recent thing I watched was an old series I enjoyed that Hulu happened to have.
So, it's great that they have the average consumer in mind.
But, I feel Ars missed something of value in this statement by Espinel (a copyright Czar? seriously? we have an entire legal framework put in place to enforce copyright, and we now need a copyright Czar to watch over all of this?):
(Original emphasis is not mine.)
Read that quote. Got it?
Now, I want you to read it again--carefully this time. Specifically, minus the distracting bits:
Emphasis mine.
I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like a subtle (or maybe not to subtle) hint to industry that it needs to start cracking down on illicit behavior. Specifically, I'm talking about deep packet inspection. More importantly, her words imply to me that even Google would need to filter its results for potentially illegal download links.
But wait, there's more!
Judging by the reaction of Public Knowledge, I suspect that all such "circumvention devices" are indeed software applications that might help pull content off otherwise DRM-protected discs. Really, this statement better reads as "We're going to let the RIAA and MPAA look at all of this stuff and tell us whether it violates the DMCA. If it does, then we'll punish the authors."
To me, though, the most comical bit was this:
Oh really? We have all these fanciful ideas and if any one of those evil pirates overseas is in an area where we can't enforce our IP laws, we're screwed!
So tell me, aside from the little blurb about online pharmacies (which I do think ought to be shut down, but that's another rant entirely mainly because I suspect they pay for a vast majority of spam delivery), what part of this sounds as if it's not simply a thinly veiled attempt at selling ISP-level packet filtering?
He who has no
I tried to warn you liberal clowns that Hussein Obama was not the "white knight" you idiots thought he was. He is about CONTROL. Control over every aspect of you life. What you can eat, where you can work, go to school, what you can read, watch, hear and download. The government will not be happy until we have our "new world order", but, for that to happen, they have to completely destroy the U.S. economy, the constitution, and demoralize the people. Haven't you idiots ever heard of a dictator that didn't promise the world, then after he is in complete power, turn on the very people who put him there?
Just redirect everything to China, and let them do the filtering... One more thing we can outsource..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Piracy is IDF paramilitary terrorists raiding aid convoys bringing food and medicine to Gaza. When are the denizens of the Whitehouse going to crack down on that?
One only needs to point to the BP disaster for a demonstration of the attitude of companies these days. If you can do it and not get arrested then it is right. The only difference between the oil industry and pirates is that the oil industry has the resources to bend the law to be favorable to them. I think it has become indisputable that 'legitimate corporations' will do anything they can to make a lot of bucks.
And so, I'm sorry but until I see a difference of attitude in private enterprise, until they stand up to the qualities that they profess law or not, I will continue to applaud those 'pirates' who use their resourcefulness to provide a product in a better way and profit from it. For they will never hurt me as much as BP has. They will never kill as many livelihoods as BP has. Add to that the whole wall-street fiasco.
I'm tired of hearing about the law, because corporate law has become a washed out, bought out joke that only helps profits of the powerful.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It is more and more apparent, that President Obama and his Administration, with his "Hope and Change" machinations are really "More of the Same, and Much Much Worse!" (TM)
With a little bit more of an expanded view, however, it is really Democrats and Republicans that are "More of the Same, and Much Much Worse!"
Both of the two major parties need a severe wake-up call, namely, less and less of them should be voted into office to the point where it starts messing with their power base, campaign financing and the like. That's really the only thing that will get their attention and start governing "...for the people..." and not "... for the multi-national corporations that give me nice fat campaign donation checks".