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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
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
Some people have already been thinking about the legal implications of 3D printers. You might be interested in the following paper:
"The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing"
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.
Protecting the industry that votes Democrat and squelching free speech that criticizes the party in power.
Protecting the copyright cartels is one of the few things both parties agree on. Don't forget that Sonny Bono, author/sponsor of the copyright for eternity-on-the-installment-plan, was a Republican. Both houses passed this stinking piece of legislative manure by voice vote, which makes it impossible to determine who voted for or against. Republicans controlled both the h
Take your partisan nitwittery elsewhere, where the audience isn't persuaded by facts. Freep, perhaps.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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