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RIAA, MPAA Recruit MasterCard As Internet Police
An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, MasterCard felt the wrath of Anonymous Operation Payback-style DDoS attacks after refusing to process payments that were intended to fund WikiLeaks, the website which began leaking confidential US diplomatic cables last month. Now, the company is preparing to head down another controversial path by pledging to deny transactions which support websites that host pirated movies, music, games, or other copyrighted content. MasterCard lobbyists have also been in talks with entertainment industry trade groups, including the RIAA and the MPAA, and have made it clear that the company will support the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), sources close to the talks have said."
Ok, fine. You are now liable for any criminal transactions you don't block.
If you don't like that, you will send my money where I tell you to.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
will Indy music sites get shut down as well?
pioneer one donations?
Since when did people pay to infringe copyright? I thought the whole point was that you get the stuff for free anyway.
which is totally what she said
While I'm not against Mastercard saying "We won't allow customers to use Mastercard to buy illegal goods", I doubt they'll have a proper list of who to deny.
It would be ironic if suddenly less people allowed Mastercard for online purchases. I gotta imagine that nowadays online transactions are a large proportion of their income.
Cancelled my MasterCard, then chopped it up. Enough people do that, MasterCard will start to wise up.
Of course, I'm probably going to replace it with some flavour of Visa, which is probably just as evil and certainly did jump on the ban-Wikileaks bandwagon.
if you want me to use your service, then you need me to be able to use your service. If I can't use your service for the things I want, that what do I need you for?
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
So let me get this right, money equals speech, according to various Supreme Court Rulings. But a major corporation whose credit and debit vehicles constitute one of the major means for tendering payment, i.e., speech, is permitted to filter your payments to whomever it likes.
In other words, a bank gets to decide when your speech is acceptable and when it isn't.
And, of course, if you're wealthy or powerful enough, this isn't a hindrance. But if you're a working stiff, living on a trickle of cash flow and using revolving credit to solve the logistical problems thereof, you're essentially subject to the bank's approval of your fiscal expression.
Yet another distinction between serfs and lords in the information age.
I can see the fnords!
The entire music industry, worldwide, only sold $15.8 billion in product last year. For comparison, worldwide liquor sales were about $220 billion, and a single booze company, Diageo (Smirnoff Vodka, Johhny Walker, José Cuervo, Baileys, and Guinness Stout) has more revenue than the entire music industry. On a worldwide scale, the music industry is tiny.
On the movie side, MGM just came out of bankruptcy, and Warner is close to it. Hollywood Video went bust months ago, and Blockbuster is in bankruptcy. (Many Blockbuster stores will close after the holiday season.)
In computing, Apple's revenue for fiscal 2010 is about $63 billion. Microsoft revenue was about $60 billion. HP annual revenue is about $120 billion. Dell annual revenue is about $52 billion. Google is around $23 billion. Comcast is around $36 billion. AT&T is at $124 billion. Any of those players could buy out the entire libraries of most music and movie companies.
I'm surprised that Apple hasn't just bought out the music industry, rather than negotiating with it.
you recently submitted a payment to sdf.lonestar.org for your MetaARPA sustaining membership. This site has been identified as a Hacking siteand as such has been blacklisted from our payment processing system. Furthermore your donation to OpenBSD has also been declined for processing as the openBSD project sponsors known hacking activity and said bad things about our unquestionably patrio-tastic freedom war against terror.
in summation your cards with us have also been cancelled as you've been identified without a magnetic ribbon on any vehicles registered in your name, and are obviously not supporting the troops.
please consider purchasing a copy of jeff dunhams 'achmed the terrorist' comedy DVD, as well as anything sufficiently xenophobic, bigoted and patriotic from the Country music top 10/50/100 charts. Once clad only in a sweat-stained american flag and nourished only by fast food, can we consider reactivating any of your perpetual debt engines.
regards,
Master of Cards.
Good people go to bed earlier.
What does this really mean? On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities. This is to be expected both in terms of business ethics and legal liability.
So the question is: who determines which enterprise is criminal / violating copyrights and what are the criteria and what is the process to have someone cut off? What is the appeal process?
From TFA:
"This move by MasterCard is just another in a recent long line of corporations and organizations that are taking it upon themselves to define the legality of situations rather than leaving it to the courts. One problem is that the US federal government is allowing the lobbyists for these organizations to dictate right and wrong. The RIAA and MPAA were the big influence behind the government’s seizure of several domains during the last week of November. "
Worst case, this is a monetary blacklist controlled by the RIAA (eg: RIAA sends unsubstantiated note to Mastercard listing "offenders". Mastercard moves immediately to deny service.) Very nice club for the RIAA to hold.
If I say that people engaged in prostitution are more likely to have STDs, am I a knowledgeable person, or would you convict me of engaging a prostitute? Perhaps I must also be a fool because I know things about 419 scams? Surely I'm a terrorist for seeing weaknesses in the TSA programs.
SIG: HUP
If the WikiLeaks "dirty" fightback taught the world anything then it was that the USA has too much control over critical worldwide infrastructure both technical and practical (Internet and Money) and it has shown that it cannot be trusted to control either. For reasons of their own most nations have been going along with the current world order as it was never openly abused and this allowed tacit approval, but as pressure grows from China, India and an emerging EU/Russia along with growing understanding from the people in these nations the world has in fact already irreparably changed. These sorts of activities will only hasten that change of power much to the detriment of the existing regimes. As the Chinese (and Mr Pratchett) say "May you live in Interesting times", it is a curse for a reason and these are interesting times.
If MasterCard and Visa does this for the MPAA, then anyone filing a lawsuit against any company will also name them as a Defendants so that there can be an order that will prevent MasterCard and Visa from processing payments until the Court is happy.
Fight Spammers!
I'd rather keep a box full of gold or titanium, since they take-up less space, and they can't be devalued by the Federal Reserve's printing presses. As for theft: The Canadian RIAA (and probably US RIAA too) has stolen more from artists then any of us ever could. They owes billions in unpaid royalties to their artists. "The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences." "Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee." "Over the years, the size of the pending list has grown dramatically, now containing over 300,000 songs. From Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen, the artists waiting for payment are far from obscure, as thousands of Canadian and foreign artists have seen their copyrights used without permission and payment." http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I suppose the *IAA kickbacks will be larger than the fees gained on infringing sites.
Which is sort of funny, since it means that MasterCard doesn't think is piracy is significant enough to make money off of.
So.. is this what the next 20 years is going to be like?
Will it be that if you don't play by the corporation's rule they will put you on a black list and you won't even be able to live?
Because that's the direction it looks like it is heading right now. Maybe we're already there as important as the credit reporting agencies already are...
So I can't use a Mastercard to pay for Usenet service, then?
The first rule of Usenet is, you do not talk about Usenet.
For all that (rather tortured) explanation, one simple fact remains: knowledge does not always imply guilt.
People can have friends who experienced the field firsthand (he could be a teen), or they be a researcher in that field (he could be working for the Business Software Alliance), or they could simply be (inaccurately) extrapolating from what he's heard.
If a cc company doesn't like your product, for whatever reason, they'll institute policies banning you and everyone else in your business. Is it legal to buy marijuana in your location? It doesn't matter if you live in one of the many places where it is, cc companies won't knowingly give those merchants accounts. Want to buy pictures of "child models"? Those sites can't get cc companies to work with them simply because their product is icky (not illegal in most countries, just really icky).
Sell something, do something, say something that the cc companies think will make them look bad and they'll cut you off. This is a surprise?
What's surprising to me is that the cc companies have decided that "pirate" sites (or however they define this subset of customers that they're going to cut off) are a sufficiently serious source of bad press that it's worthwhile to cut them off. More people every day are becoming more educated about media distribution, how evil some of the companies involved are, and how not-necessarily-immoral is the whole notion of downloading media. They might derive some public-image profit in the short term among the uneducated but I have to believe that in the long term most of their customers are going to understand this was a really dumb move.
You don't, but the Pirate Bay actively encourages people to go out and buy branded T-shirts and such which support them; this merchandise is manufactured and sold by a third party (of which there are many). I've no doubt other sites do something similar.
Watch how quickly the merchandising companies drop them if Mastercard approach and say "Nice business you got here. Be a shame if you weren't able to accept credit cards any more." The already did something similar with allofmp3.ru.