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CCIA Calls Copyright Wiretaps 'Hollywood's PATRIOT Act'
An anonymous reader writes "Ars is reporting that the CCIA, a trade group representing companies like AMD, Facebook, Oracle, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, is calling the copyright wiretaps requested by the IP Czar 'Hollywood's PATRIOT Act.' For those who don't remember, IP Czar Victoria Espinel recently wrote a report calling for more charges of felony copyright infringement under the NET Act, as well as felony charges for illegal web streaming, authorization for the use of wiretaps in going after copyright infringement cases, and several other measures. In short, this means that the copyright cops are coming online."
Most people realize the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) act sucks, due to how it's used to spy on innocent americans. Likewise this wiretapping to catch people downloading songs, sucks.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
they understand. they understand very well that they dont want anyone other than themselves to succeed, no businesses competing them, customers feeding off their hand, on the terms they want them to.
and your explanation of the fundamentals of internet's success does not mean shit to them, neither they care - they want to have it, and you under their control.
explanations and talk will not do any good. you need to act, if you want to defend your interests.
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In only two states in the Union are you legally secure in pointing a loaded weapon at someone you catch in the act of robbing you. In most parts of the country, if a group of guys are loading the entire contents of your home into a moving truck, you become a felon if you even "shoot to wound" one of them. You can't even knee-cap them with a .22, but copyright owners can get $150k statutory damages on the spot for copying a single throwaway picture from a local rag.
I'm a conservative and most of the conservatives who know me used to think I was nuts on copyright law until I began to show them how utterly insane our system is. The closest parallel for the common man is a military legal code that won't allow a soldier to rough up a prisoner who he knows has useful intelligence, but that lets field commanders deploy low-yield tactical nukes on villages that remain neutral.
It's such an inversion of the natural order and justice that it's sickening. We don't allow a man being subjected to an armed robbery to confidently use lethal force on his assailant (note: I am advocating that victims of armed robbery should always be legally authorized to use lethal force to resolve an armed robbery situation), but we let big copyright utterly destroy families over sharing a dozen songs.
I think that is the craziest part! I love how we (the tax payers) are going to have to pay for the wiretaps, personal to comb though the wiretapped info, and cost of court cases that are brought. All so that the corporations can continue to make money by having us buy their products, and not have to pay to gather the evedince against those they deem pirates.
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" --Benjamin Franklin
No, see, there is a problem. The problem is that record companies and movie studios are good at distributing things in record stores and movie theaters, whereas companies like Apple, Amazon and Netflix are good at distributing things on the Internet. That means once everything is being distributed over the Internet, there is no more need for a record label as an intermediary -- the artist pays for some studio time, which is getting less expensive all the time, makes a digital recording and puts it for sale on iTunes without a record label. A bunch of famous actors get together with a big name director, fund the picture out of their own pockets or with venture capital, put it streaming on Netflix and sell DVDs on Amazon and cut out the studios.
If the incumbent middle men haven't established dominance over Internet distribution and legislated all the alternatives out of existence by the time people stop buying CDs and DVDs at Wal-mart, they're going to have to face competing distributors shaving down their margins and eroding their market share. That's a very serious problem for them, and that's what all of this is really about.