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Big Media Wants More Piracy Busting From Google
suraj.sun writes "Last month, executives from two music-industry trade groups, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), asked Google if it could provide a means to help them track down pirated material more efficiently. Typically, copyright owners are responsible for finding pirated links and alerting Google, which is required by law to quickly remove the links. But Google's response raised eyebrows at some of the labels. James Pond, a Google manager, wrote in a letter dated September 20, that Google would be happy to help — for a price."
WTF is a pirated link?
'Raised eyebrows'? Maybe Google used RIAA's pricing model and asked for $10,000,000 per infringement.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
....and the article don't match. According to the article which I ::gasp:: read, Google is, in general, developing several APIs for direct access to the engine without scraping. Of the three mentioned, one of those options would work for the kind of searches the RIAA wants to do. Google politely pointed this out to the *AAs, but also pointed out they charge a fee for the queries - which, as the article says, could cost the *AAs a very large amount of money if they decided to use the API.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
That's a bargain, considering with each link they lose billions and billions of dollars.
but... but... but they are used to getting what they want, at no charge (usually at the taxpayer's expense). They aren't used to paying for the protection of their outdated distribution-control based business model!
"I understand we charge a standard rate of $5 per thousand queries, which is charged to recover our costs in providing this service," Pond wrote.
A music industry source estimated that such charges could add up to several million dollars a year.
If you burn 5 million dollars, you get... [Dr.EvilVoice]ONE BILLION queries! [/Dr.EvilVoice]
Basically Google want to offset the search cost because they loose the income for the ads when a 3rd party access the search engine directly. And the labels acts surprised that they have to pay for a service.
It's funny how the labels and all the rest of the copyright lobby want to move the policing of pirated material to ISP's and search-providers and not to pay for it. I guess it's a bit of a rude awakening to have to start paying for things when you have had a free ride for decades.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
They already had it, but the world changed while they were busy counting their beeelyuns and admiring their own incredibleness. Now they're desperately trying to make things the way they were, but to do it they have to try and enforce a kind of control that will require personal/consumer rights to take a monumental shit-kicking.
By now, it should be obvious to any lawmaker, businessman, and consumer, that the digital age has affected their business model significantly and fundamentally (not unlike any other market niche in the last hundred years). For the music industry, digitized media is now nothing more than advertising to draw people out to the live performances. And if the movie biz can't cope with the modern realities of the internet, then I assert the best compromise of consumer and supplier rights is that they withdraw from the home market entirely, and show their movies only in their supplied controlled environments (theatres) - y'know, just like before whole home market was ever conceived? The home market was great for a while, lucrative and exploitable, but that pocket of income has dried up.
That doesn't mean one can't *try* and sell a digitized product, but the idea of slapping one's own price on it is an unrealistic expectation. In an age of infinite supply, if we are to maintain an open market, then consumer-determined value, and a way to efficiently employ micropatronage, are the two keystones to keeping that market free.
The telcos get paid rapacious fees by the government to "voluntarily" provide direct intercept rooms for the war on terror. Halliburton and Blackwater get paid highwayman prices for services in the war zones. Now Google is licking its lips over getting a taste of the copyright war booty.
In an America run by authoritarians who love war, war metaphors, getting re-elected for their positions on war, and getting campaign ads sponsored by war-enriched corporations, being anything other than a war profiteer is choosing to be second tier.
Good? Bad? Necessary but regrettable? Maybe all those things in various specific cases. But always: A big chunk of GDP.
Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex. The only thing he missed: That war and war spending is not limited to things involving soldiers and guns. The war metaphor gives us the opportunity to extend war-footing excesses to all our beloved oligarchs.
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You could call them "idiots" or you could call them "tyrants with a limited fief".
They're entirely accustomed to making outrageous demands and having others bend over immediately. Heck, this could be an opening salvo before lobbying the legislature to make it mandatory, no compensation to Google.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes