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
Well, what did we really expect when the Copyright Czar position was created?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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.
=)
...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.
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
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?
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.
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