RIAA Lawyer Complains DMCA May Need Revamp

the simurgh writes "The DMCA is just not providing the kind of protection against online piracy that Congress intended, RIAA lawyer Jennifer Pariser says. The judge in Universal Music Group's copyright suit against Veoh as well as the judge in EMI vs. MP3tunes.com issued similar findings. The courts have now determined the burden of policing the web for infringing materials is on the content owner and not the service provider. Content companies think it is unfair for them to be required to spend resources on scouring the Web when their pirated work helps service providers make money. What they complain about almost as much is that after they notify a service provider of an infringing song or movie clip and they're removed, new copies appear almost immediately. Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense."

Comments

"responsible for policing their own content"

[_0xd0ad]

Working as intended, then.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Joce640k]

Are they offering to share the loot with the ISPs when they win a court case...?

How about a part of the increased profits? According to them they lose tens of billions per year due to piracy. Are they going to reward the ISPs with a fair share of that?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Reverand Dave]

They are really upset because the courts interpreted the law as written instead of how they wanted it. Or maybe they are just mad because the money they spent on congressmen and judges is being over ruled by the actual law.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[poetmatt]

How about they pay for the costs they bring the ISP's to try to filter content in the first place?

Again, I believe that challenge was backed down by the MAFIAA as well...wasn't it worded as "pay a day of our supposedly free costs of youtube"?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Lumpy]

Their claims of Losing money is also vastly different than what happens in reality as well.

Matching their fairytale with another one is absolutely correct.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense.

It's not the government or the ISP's job to monitor and/or determine the usage of the content available on the internet. Were I to publish a game, for example, it would then be up to me as an individual to research, inspect, and determine if anyone is infringing on the copyright of my game. Just because they're a large entity doesn't mean they should be exempted from the same issues facing the individual content owners.

Why should the ISP's be forced to swallow the costs of such a manhunt, when they receive zero benefit from the search, it costs them money, and it displays them negatively in the public light such that their brand is devalued, however slightly.

Essentially, content owners should be, and are, responsible for making sure that everyone who uses their content is abiding by their specified licenses, etc. If you're complaining about the costs that you incur whilst enforcing your licensing model, and want the government to help out, perhaps you should re-evaluate your licensing model. Of course, that particular dead horse has been beaten so severely, at this point, to be unrecognizable.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[poetmatt]

Wait, why are people paying for a video that is free in the first place? There is cost for distribution, but the video has no cost or value - value is determined by those who choose to pay for what they perceive as value - not the other way around.

There is an equivalent to what you're talking about already, but it doesn't work by restricting content and nor would anything that restricts the content itself. It's called flattr.com

Restricting content is a quick way to put anything out of business.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Spazmania]

Shoplifting is a misdemeanor because public order is not achieved through civil torts alone. Infringement via filesharing has become the petty offense of the 21st century. Sooner or later it will need the same treatment.

Before that can happen, the notion of infringement must be revised to something that isn't so expansive as to criminalize ordinary and reasonable behavior. We need a more comprehensive view of the unwaivable rights of the owner of one copy of a work before we can clearly understand when those rights have been exceeded to the copyright owner's detriment. Right now it's getting the Prohibition treatment and that's not sustainable either.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Ash-Fox]

I think the best solution would be if YouTube went to pay-per-view model. Users would get to see for example 1 minute of the video and if they like it, they can quickly pay for access from their wallet.

Why would I use Youtube if I had to do that?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[rtb61]

More importantly why should people who do not infringe copyright be burdened by the costs of what is recognised as a civil infringement. The cost does not go to government, it gets shifted to everyone.

WTF, I go out and legally buy licence material and those ass hats now want me to pay for it copies that they guess might have been made, with evidence that would be laughed out of a criminal court.

This basically stinks of a real effort to create corporate censorship of the web. They want to block all content from the internet via the power of Government and brutish law enforcement, so that only major corporations can publish on the internet, just like the good old days of untroubled uncontested mass media lies on radio, television and the newspapers.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

Shoplifting is a misdemeanor because public order is not achieved through civil torts alone. Infringement via filesharing has become the petty offense of the 21st century. Sooner or later it will need the same treatment.

The trouble is that shoplifting is still primarily enforced by the shop owner. The state does not pay a police officer to stand in every shop and watch for shoplifters, because it isn't cost-effective. And so it is with copyright infringement -- the cost to detect and prosecute an infringement far exceeds the harm it causes.

That is really why copyright for entertainment is failing. People blame the internet, but it isn't the internet. It's the availability of storage devices that cost $0.20/GB. You can pay $100 for a portable hard drive that will hold every song released by all the major labels in the last decade and be left with a fair chunk of free space.

Right now infringement is detected because people share with strangers, so the industry becomes one of the strangers and gets the IP address of the other side of the connection. Never mind that though. Remember six degrees of separation? Even if they somehow stop all infringement on the internet -- which is obviously impossible, but let's make the assumption -- in person sharing is still just as bad. Soon enough you'll be able to get a hard drive that can hold every song ever recorded. Then someone will buy one and put every song ever recorded on it. That person's friends will want a copy, and six degrees of separation later everybody has got it. New releases follow the same path and as time goes on the process becomes more efficient as the people involved improve it. Nobody will care about "filling up their hard drive" and someone will create a piece of software that allows you to mark files as "send to friends" and people you designate as friends will automatically get them the next time your any of your devices is in wireless range of theirs. Then their friends will get them, etc.

Notice that it doesn't matter whatsoever that the copies are made over the internet rather than in person. It doesn't matter whether the number of copies made by each person is small or large, because making each recipient a distributor results in exponential growth that makes the number of generations before everyone has it small regardless of the number of distributions made by each person. And there is no good opportunity for detection because no one is distributing to anyone who they don't trust.

That is the future we have to design copyright around. A future in which zero-cost redistribution is widespread and undetectable. That doesn't mean we should give up the idea of creating a government incentive for authorship, but it does mean that we probably have to give up trying to prohibit the thing we can't effectively prohibit.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Cali Thalen]

The way I see it, they just want to have another place to file a lawsuit (the ISPs). Why file against just the 'infringers' when you can file against everyone who has anything to do with the internet.

Next up, log visitors and file against anyone who saw that there was infringing content but didn't report it.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Tsingi]

A future in which zero-cost redistribution is widespread and undetectable. That doesn't mean we should give up the idea of creating a government incentive for authorship, but it does mean that we probably have to give up trying to prohibit the thing we can't effectively prohibit.

Or we could just arrest everyone on a rotating basis, assume that they are guilty and give them the option of paying a fine or serving jail time on a chain gang.

You might argue that innocent people will be arrested, but I think there would be relatively few. On a percentage basis, probably below the percentage of innocent people executed in Texas.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[arkhan_jg]

Well, precisely. How exactly are companies who don't own the rights supposed to be able to identify who owns what, and whether they are an authorised provider of that material or not? Some copyright owners, especially smaller or indies, do in fact self-publish their work on youtube or other places. Hell, even comedy central and Channel 4 in the UK post their stuff on youtube. The only people who CAN police this stuff are the copyright owners themselves.

If the MAFIAA gets the changes they want, only 'authorised' channels posting material from known large corporate accounts -viewable for a fee, no doubt - would be able to to put up anything on the internet at all - individiuals and small publishers wouldn't be able to set their own distribution network, and no ISP could host anything as they'd never be able to work out who could give permission. You'd be turning the internet into a broadcast-only medium for the biggest content cartel companies only!

Oh. Right.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[antdude]

ISP's what? :P

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[517714]

Not even close. The right to property is inalienable - natural, self evident and universal. Copyright is granted at the whim of the government, it is strictly the construct of a legal system. A government serves its people by protecting the first right, and by granting the second. Enforcement of the latter is not something that all citizens would recognize as being in their interest, and since in most cases the infringer has only potentially deprived the victim of royalties, using the massive power of the government to prosecute is NOT in the public interest.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Curunir_wolf]

or how raising taxes on the people most able to afford it is stifling job creation.

Yes, but how do you raise taxes on the Federal government?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[MysteriousPreacher]

The could work by offering premium content alongside the free stuff. Allow subscriptions/donations services for people wanting to support their favourite angry and opinionated camwhore. Has YouTube ever tried those kinds of things?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Curunir_wolf]

This is just the next step in the fascist system that the PR machines still claim is "capitalism". In 2008, it became in vogue to keep all profits private, but then socialize the debt. Still doing it now, as there are no mortgages anymore without government backing.

So the next step is to socialize expenses.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That is the future we have to design copyright around. A future in which zero-cost redistribution is widespread and undetectable. That doesn't mean we should give up the idea of creating a government incentive for authorship, but it does mean that we probably have to give up trying to prohibit the thing we can't effectively prohibit.

The troubling thing is that we (general "we", the technology workers of the 21st century) are quite capable of effectively preventing almost all copyright infringement. The average Slashdotter just doesn't want to live with the consequences: it would mean locking down the IT infrastructure you can buy in a store; removing anonymity on the Internet; distributing content only via approved, controlled channels; and probably criminalising the possession of open, unrestricted equipment and the use of encryption technologies that could hide illegal behaviour from the auto-censors.

The nerds would be up in arms (both of them) but the average punter wouldn't know any better. On the evidence to date, they would probably play along, in much the same way that they accept Facebook invading their privacy on an unprecedented scale, all kinds of DRM in modern games, and little better than a free CD as compensation in class action suits against the kind of business that employs the same technologies used by virus writers to install covert anti-copying software on their PCs.

If you think it couldn't be done because there would be some kind of popular revolution, I think you're in a lovely world but not the same one as me.

If you think it couldn't be done because it isn't technically possible, I think you haven't thought through the fact that the average punter cannot manufacture complex equipment like CPUs and hard drives themselves, nor set up an effective covert undernet. The authorities will always be able to go after the technology at source, and any black market resistance is never going to achieve the kind of critical mass required to help the average punter continue doing what they're doing.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Kalriath]

They share the revenue from advertising and allow additional advertising with popular video owners.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Spazmania]

let's make the assumption -- in person sharing is still just as bad.

Why would you make that assumption? Would the average man on the street think it unreasonable to make a mix tape and share copies with his friends? Would he still say "yes" if you asked if it was OK to share with his seven billion "closest" friends?

There are no moral absolutes with infringement of intellectual property. Heck, Jefferson thought it shouldn't even be allowed to exist. So, poll the people. Find out where the people draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable copying and derivative work. And then set the law's boundary there.

I think you'll be surprised: folks are smart enough to "get it" that anonymous file sharing is "bad" while friend sharing is "good." A law which respects that prevailing opinion will have few enough offenders to be enforceable.

shoplifting is still primarily enforced by the shop owner

It starts with the shop owner. Who hands it over to police who generally spend a lot more than the stolen goods were worth punishing the offender. If it relied on the shop owner to do the follow through, they wouldn't because it isn't cost effective. And then you'd have a plague of shoplifters who know they can get away with it.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

You're basically saying that Hollywood should declare war on the rest of the world.

I mean forget about consumers. Microsoft wants to sell Visual Studio to random would-be programmers in the general public who can make third party apps that lock people into Windows. Facebook, Amazon and every other web service wants arbitrary Linux hackers improving the kernel that they use on their servers. Exxon wants to be able to produce their own trade secret custom application for oil prospecting and run it on a cheap COTS mobile device.

I don't mean to suggest that we as technology workers should give up the fight because someone else will pick up the slack -- none of those companies is going to really start caring until it gets a lot worse than it already is -- but do you really think that's a war Hollywood can win in the end?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Spazmania]

The right to property is inalienable - natural, self evident and universal.

Tell that to a communist.

And what about Real Estate? The native Americans found nothing natural or self-evident in the European notion that land should be owned.

What about slaves? Ownership of other people is sufficiently self-evident to find permission and rules in the Bible.

Property is whatever our consensus as a people says it is. If we decide a song should be property then it's property. The problem comes along when the law says something out of sync with that consensus -- like asserting that not only is a song property, publicly singing it even when you paid for a copy is stealing.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

Why would you make that assumption?

My assumption is that we could (counter-factually) stop infringement on the internet, and I was explaining why even in that case it doesn't matter because you get to the same place with just sharing in person.

You seem to be arguing that sharing between friends is OK but sharing to the whole world is problematic. What I'm saying is that it leads to the same result. You get a copy of a song from your coworker and your brother gets it from you. Well, keep going like that and very quickly everybody has it. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon and all that. So if you can't stop friend sharing then you're in the same position as just allowing it worldwide -- at the end of the day everyone still ends up having access to a free copy of anything, because everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has it. And it doesn't matter whether you use the internet or a USB stick.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[lorenlal]

Correction: They don't want to block access to anything... They just want to make sure they monetize every single aspect of "accessing that content" that they possibly can. It's not censorship at all, it's profiteering. I think it's horrendously lame to ask for a license for every single copy of something that I can only use "one at a time," but that's their deal, and that's how they set it up.

The problem is: They want to make sure nobody can do anything without paying them... But they don't want to have to "burden" themselves with enforcing that which is theirs. I'm suffering for a good analogy, because I can't really think of anything even remotely close to how silly it is.

Maybe: It's like being robbed, but expecting a store owner to call the police, fill out the reports, and appear in court for you?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

That's not the same thing as being able to hold all the music ever recorded. The latter would change who you can get music from. Right now you can have more music than you can ever listen to, but you'll pick the genres you like and get that music.

As the price of storage falls even more, you won't have to pick the genre. You just say "give me everything" and you get everything and keep it. That means you'll be able to get anything from anybody, because anybody who has anything has everything.

It removes the transactions with strangers. You don't have to find someone who likes Beethoven to get Beethoven's music, you just have to find someone who likes music. Which is most anybody. So you can get everything from someone who is not a stranger and who you trust not to turn you in, making enforcement effectively impossible.

It makes the internet a red herring. Trying to stop infringement at the intermediaries is destined to failure because the role of the intermediaries is to connect those who have something with those who want it. When everybody has everything, you don't need an intermediary. You go to anyone, you get everything. What need is there for an intermediary?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[MaskedSlacker]

NAZIS!

Thought it'd be good to preemptively Godwin this one before it metastasized.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Just to be clear, I don't like the situation I described. I just think that given the way things are going, people around here are naive to think it can't happen.

The legal departments in Hollywood did declare war on the rest of the world, a long time ago. And so far, they are very successfully buying laws that increase the scope of copyright beyond the point of absurdity, mandate (at international level, so governments have a convenient cop-out for introducing unpopular law) draconian measures like three-strikes, introduce statutory damages that are enough to destroy someone's life, and allow for extorting thousands of dollars by abusing the US legal system to threaten people at least some of whom are probably completely innocent.

You suggest that other major technology companies might have opposing interests, but the reality is that Google don't want to fall on the wrong side of constant low-level lawsuits so they have been only too happy to implement a safe harbour/takedown notice system. Microsoft and Apple have been quite happy to introduce DRM'd formats for their media files and to support the very kind of closed path hardware I am talking about via HDCP and the like.

Being a robust distribution channel for Big Media, which these days includes Big Gaming and Big Sports, is a huge part of their future in an age of ubiquitous high-speed Internet access where on-demand everything will become the norm. The more the content providers can lock down their content to pay-per-view rather than recording it on a VCR or buying a DVD that you can lend to friends, the happier a lot of them are going to be. The alternative, where everyone pays a constant subscription fee for an all-you-can-consume buffet that is locked to each individual personally, is almost as appealing for them. They have serious money to throw around, and enough influence that they could seriously damage a platform provider like Microsoft or Apple if they decided to openly favour a competing platform.

Once again, let me stress that I don't like this situation. But it is delusional to think that organisations that are quite happy to openly abuse legislative and judicial processes on several continents in the name of perceived higher profits are going to roll over and let the freeloading continue, and in the security-theatre-obsessed world of media politics today, governments are all too ready to support the kinds of lock-down mechanisms, monitoring tools and censorship that Big Media are demanding.

For the record, I also think that to a certain extent the freeloaders have brought this upon themselves. It does cost a staggering amount to produce these games that the teenies can't live without and the blockbuster movies everyone wants to download from TPB, so if people want to continue enjoying such things, they need to contribute a fair share to the cost of producing them. You can debate whether copyright, either as it stands today or even as a basic idea, is the right way to handle that funding in the Internet age, but you can't change the underlying economic reality. As a guy who's sat on the other side of the fence, but very much as Small Media rather than Big Media, it is painful to watch people openly discussing ripping off your hard work and failing to realise that starting up a new business in this market and producing something the market really wants took a lot of personal sacrifices that most people weren't willing or able to make. I don't want to see a locked down Internet, and I'm surely never going to be filthy rich because of this work, but I would like to see the self-entitlement generation grow a pair and accept that if you want good stuff then at some point you have to support the people who make it.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[AliasMarlowe]

Or we could just arrest everyone on a rotating basis, assume that they are guilty and give them the option of paying a fine or serving jail time on a chain gang.

You might argue that innocent people will be arrested, but I think there would be relatively few. On a percentage basis, probably below the percentage of innocent people executed in Texas.

And if not, I'm sure Texas can be persuaded to increase its executions of innocent people.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Spazmania]

You seem to be arguing that sharing between friends is OK but sharing to the whole world is problematic. What I'm saying is that it leads to the same result.

Were your position correct, "mix tapes" and the like would have been observed to have the same impact as file sharing prior to the Internet's existence, particularly with radio available to serve as a source of relatively clean copies.

At any rate, that's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that there is some level of sharing of intellectual property that a supermajority of Americans intuitively finds to be "OK." Law which criminalizes behavior within that zone is as doomed to failure as Prohibition, but not before hurting a lot of people.

I don't know if sharing between friends falls in that zone. I haven't asked. Neither have you. And for damn sure the RIAA hasn't.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[cheekyjohnson]

The right to property is inalienable - natural, self evident and universal.

What? Care to prove that? I believe the "right to property" is nothing more than your ability to hold onto things and stop others from taking them away. And then the law gets involved and tries to prevent theft.

To me, all property rights are granted by law. I don't believe in "inalienable" rights at all.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

I don't want to see a locked down Internet, and I'm surely never going to be filthy rich because of this work, but I would like to see the self-entitlement generation grow a pair and accept that if you want good stuff then at some point you have to support the people who make it.

That's the whole point. We need a method of compensating artists that is designed in light of digital technology, that gets artists paid without creating an apparatus of widespread censorship and oppression. We can say that people should just pay even though there is no effective enforcement mechanism, but that's just patronage. If we're satisfied with that then we don't need copyright, we just have artists put out their tin cups and let people pay what they feel like paying.

If that isn't good enough then we need fundamental change. That's what's missing from the debate -- Hollywood demands gatekeeper control of our culture and The Pirate Bay demands free shit for no money, but neither of those is right. There needs to be some mechanism whereby you can get any new media for no marginal cost and use it however the heck you like, but where at some point you pay money (like a flat monthly fee) that ends up in the pockets of creators -- and that's creators, not middle men.

I don't care if you want to create something like ASCAP and charge each consumer a fee on top of their internet connection, or just take money from income tax revenues and give it to creators, or you want to have a coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers come together and subsidize media production so that they can sell more devices. What needs to happen is that money moves from $SOMEWHERE into the hands of people who make the stuff we like so that they can afford to keep making it, but then we get to make additional copies of the stuff for free. Because discouraging the production of additional copies is pointless, economically inefficient and prohibitively expensive to enforce, but we still want artists to get paid.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[dbitter1]

Soon enough you'll be able to get a hard drive that can hold every song ever recorded. Then someone will buy one and put every song ever recorded on it. That person's friends will want a copy, and six degrees of separation later everybody has got it. New releases follow the same path and as time goes on the process becomes more efficient as the people involved improve it. Nobody will care about "filling up their hard drive" and someone will create a piece of software that allows you to mark files as "send to friends" and people you designate as friends will automatically get them the next time your any of your devices is in wireless range of theirs. Then their friends will get them, etc.

You, sir, are a genius!

Arguably, using such a device would be "wrong" with respect to copyright infringement... but if we take Linus' (badly paraphrased) quote about not needing backups when the world can mirror it for you out of context, throw in some trust algorithms so your stuff only gets copied to people you know and trust (and maybe safely encrypt?) you end up with one hell of a mesh network!

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Zontar The Mindless]

In 2008, it became in vogue to keep all profits private, but then socialize the debt.

2008? Let me guess, you've been asleep for the last 30 years or so, right?

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[makomk]

The average Slashdotter just doesn't want to live with the consequences: it would mean locking down the IT infrastructure you can buy in a store; removing anonymity on the Internet; distributing content only via approved, controlled channels; and probably criminalising the possession of open, unrestricted equipment and the use of encryption technologies that could hide illegal behaviour from the auto-censors.

So basically, it'd mean not just trampling on the First Amendment, but then burning it and pissing on the ashes, with effective restrictions on political speech and monitoring at a level the Chinese government only wishes it could pull off. I'd hope Slashdotters aren't the only ones that wouldn't want to live with this, otherwise we have a problem.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[makomk]

Were your position correct, "mix tapes" and the like would have been observed to have the same impact as file sharing prior to the Internet's existence, particularly with radio available to serve as a source of relatively clean copies.

Home taping was meant to be killing the music industry back then in much the same way as the Internet is now, yes, and industry lobbyists went to quite a lot of trouble to ensure that consumers had no way of making and distributing digital copies of music. They were basically only foiled by the emergence of general-purpose computers capable enough to store and play back high-quality recordings that weren't subject to their restrictions.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Curunir_wolf]

In 2008, it became in vogue to keep all profits private, but then socialize the debt.

2008? Let me guess, you've been asleep for the last 30 years or so, right?

Maybe so. Or longer. FDR created the FDIC, but I don't remember anything close to the $700 billion handed out to cover bank debts in 2008, not to mention the $5 trillion in liabilities through Fannie and Freddie, or the $16 trillion dollars printed up by the Federal Reserve in the months following. So there may have been taxpayer-funded bailouts of private debt before (the student loan debacle in the 1990's comes to mind), but nothing anywhere near the scale of the latest failures, which fully institutionalized the policy.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing is, most places in the world don't care about the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Whether that also includes significant parts of the Federal Government in the United States of America these days is left as an exercise for the reader. As I said, I don't like this reality, but if the US population is willing to put up with a choice between a strip search and a groping in the name of "security" just to fly on a plane, I doubt you're going to see the NRA rising up to defend people's right to rip off the latest CD on-line.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[RubberMallet]

That would be about as successful as the pay-to-view computer problem solutions websites - a few fools would pay because they are too inept to realize there are other options... the rest of us would go use whatever popped up to replace the rapidly insignificant YouTube.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Spugglefink]

Or we could just arrest everyone on a rotating basis, assume that they are guilty and give them the option of paying a fine or serving jail time on a chain gang.

I don't think the powers that be count incarcerated people among the unemployed either. This is a twofer for the government!

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Tsingi]

Or we could just arrest everyone on a rotating basis, assume that they are guilty and give them the option of paying a fine or serving jail time on a chain gang.

I don't think the powers that be count incarcerated people among the unemployed either. This is a twofer for the government!

Sweet, and they wouldn't even be unemployed, they'd be forced to work for prison camp slave wages. That'll teach 'em to not pay the fine.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Gr8Apes]

The real answer to the copyright issue is not to attempt force higher costs for a product than the market will bear. For instance, people will apparently happily pay $0.99 or even $1.29 for a song off of iTunes, millions are selling daily. However, they do not want to pay $20 for a CD, the price that Best Buy's MSRP states (or near enough) and as a result CD sales have tanked.

I still buy the occasional CD (gasp! I know!) when there is more than one worthwhile song on it (Muse or Adele come to mind) but for the most part, most CDs today are abysmal boilerplate formulaic crap with a potential single song that might not be offensive. Who's going to pay more than $1.29 for that? That's what's hurting the music industry, and has been ever since they stopped promoting $0.99 singles in the era of CDs. around the late 80s. Yes, there were insane profits as people switched to CDs and repurchased their favorite albums on a media that did not inherently self-destruct and degenerate with use, but that was a one time event. Apparently the RIAA folks thought it should continue occurring year after year.

The same basic process applies to Video, however here, with a few exceptions, most people will only watch something once, so there's no need to "own" most content. A simple rental or library checkout is fine. I do own a significant collection of movies as well, but most were bought on clearance or received as gifts. After all, a relatively recent movie for less than $4 is pretty hard to beat. Even at that, after watching them, quite a few will go back into the second hand market.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

The problem is in talking about a market price for something that isn't a free market. You could probably sell millions of hard drives for $2000 each if you had a monopoly on manufacturing them, but that doesn't make that the market price -- or at least it makes "market price" as so defined entirely meaningless, because you can make it arbitrarily high by artificially constraining supply.

The problem is that there isn't a free market for music because of the double monopoly: First, copyright gives an official monopoly for a single work to the copyright holder. Then the major distributors buy up all the copyrights, form a cartel and collude to fix prices. Obviously one song is not a perfect substitute for another, but you can bet your bottom dollar that an album selling for $15 won't sell as many copies as one that sells for $0.15, and that the existence of a large quantity of third party albums selling for $0.15 would erode the ability of the cartel to charge $15.

The price you pay on iTunes includes a bunch of things that a real free market wouldn't allow. The record company is using the profits from the artists who sell a lot of copies to subsidize the artists who never sell enough to pay back their advances. The middle men are taking a huge cut because price fixing allows them to charge monopoly rents.

If you took all of that away and put artists against one another in a free market, the price of music would effectively fall to zero -- enough of the artists who spent their money to record an album and then discovered that no one wanted to buy it for a high price would lower their prices in order to at least recover something, or give away recordings as promotion for live events. A large volume of artists doing that would exert pressure on others to do the same, because they would be losing fans to the artists whose recordings are free.

Basically the problem is that there are enough people who aspire to be rock stars for a living that will produce music in their basements, so that if they all had comparable distribution opportunities, the ones who are willing to lose money on recordings as concert promotion would drive down the market price of recordings to zero. The only thing that stops that is the distribution cartel that prevents most of those artists from simultaneously selling below the cartel's price and getting their music into major distribution channels. Try selling your song on iTunes for a penny. (This is why they're so adamant about crushing distribution channels they don't control, like P2P.)

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Gr8Apes]

You're assuming that all music is desirable, or that dropping the price of music to free would diminish the value of desirable music.

In the case of music, for instance, I feel the Black Eyed Peas, Britney Spears, and Justin Beiber all owe me money for inflicting their noise on me in one area or another (you can't turn off a promo TV in a store, you can only walk away) ie, even free I wouldn't listen to it or keep a copy. Recall the running joke that Lars (Metallica) finally found an answer to the pirating of their music: St Anger? Even the torrent sites didn't have it.

So, having established that people that aspire to be rock stars, or even real rock stars, can produce "music" that people wouldn't take for free, I see large holes in that side of your argument. I agree about the middle men forming a cabal and colluding on pricing and milking the artists and the consumers both.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Anthony Mouse]

You're assuming that all music is desirable, or that dropping the price of music to free would diminish the value of desirable music.

All I'm assuming is that some desirable music would be free. Which seems like a pretty fair assumption, considering that there can only be 40 artists in the Top 40 but there are a lot more than 40 desirable artists. And that's even assuming that artists in the Top 40 are desirable.

There exist artists who make good music but nobody buys it because nobody has ever heard of them. Giving away recordings allows them to bootstrap and build a fan base, because people will listen to for free what they wouldn't have paid for. In theory they could then start charging for recordings after they have a fan base, but then the next up and coming artist is trying to become known and giving away music to do it, so you have to "compete with free." And that's fine, because selling out concert halls is good business even if no one will pay for recordings.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that even for an artist who is already popular, it would be more profitable to give away recordings as promotion and then sell 10,000 concert tickets instead of 5000 every Friday night than it would be to sell albums for money and then have fewer fans and sell fewer tickets.

Re:"responsible for policing their own content"

[Gr8Apes]

The first item - 40 current active artists with good music in the top 40? I'd be happy if there were 3 I liked in a given week. This week, there appear to be 1 at the lower end of like, and 3 I'll tolerate if someone has them on. I wouldn't buy any of them for myself, and wouldn't keep them even for free. That would be the "popular" top 40 as determined by the distribution and radio cabal. (Yes, they're a single unit, despite laws against it) Diving into the various genres that appeal to me specifically, there's known bands, but nothing overly appealing at the moment that I don't already own.

Note: the last CD I bought was a year ago - that artist has a song from that CD on the top 40 in that genre today and it was the first song out then - how screwed up is that? Actually, that points out to the real problem with the music industry when the lead single of an album is still on the top 40 a year later. That means that in a year's time, 40 songs together couldn't beat a tired veteran off the charts. It was still in the top 30, and while a decent song, it wasn't that good. Matter of fact, looking at that particular chart, I note a whole roster of music that is older than 6 months. Which caused me to go back and look at the generic top 40, and there too there's a whole host of music that's old. From Spotify I know that albums are being made and released, so why is this admittedly old content still on the charts? Is the new that bad? In some cases, I would have to say yes but some of it has to be at least as acceptable as what's on the charts currently. It's just not getting airplay.

DMCA

[rossdee]

I think that DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so its supposed to last 1000 years before they need to change it.

Re:DMCA

[_0xd0ad]

Wouldn't a digital millennium be 1024 years?

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

That's be a dibigital mibillenium.

Re:DMCA

[Aryden]

bravo, sir, well played.

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

How did "digital" get applied to the electronics realm where data is most commonly dealt with in binary? Quite a few of a computer's problems are caused by the fact that it ISN'T digital.

Re:DMCA

[Kjella]

How did "digital" get applied to the electronics realm where data is most commonly dealt with in binary? Quite a few of a computer's problems are caused by the fact that it ISN'T digital.

Analog vs digital ~= continuous vs discrete. In this context it means countable or enumerable, like your fingers. If it was refering to base 10 it would be called decimal, just like octal is 8 and hexadecimal is 16.

Re:DMCA

[blivit42]

Wouldn't a digital millennium be 1024 years?

No, that would be a mellibinnium.

Re:DMCA

[John Courtland]

Digital can also refer to the fact that you have 10 digits (fingers).

Re:DMCA

[ganjadude]

and john wasnt one of them

Re:DMCA

[_0xd0ad]

How nice of you to assume that where a word comes from is what it currently means.

Re:DMCA

[Greystripe]

Don't know about you but I have 20 digits and if I'm really careful I can count to 40 off them (closing one eye each time I get to 20).

Re:DMCA

[Ant2]

Bought a hard drive lately?

Re:DMCA

[KingMotley]

Why would it imply base 10? You have 20 digits (usually), just like the first numbering system used by the Mayans. You may assume anything you want, but that doesn't make it correct.

Re:DMCA

[JosKarith]

2^20 = 1048576. If you used all your digits as binary digits.

Re:DMCA

[nabsltd]

Wouldn't a digital millennium be 1024 years?

No, that would be a mellibinnium.

My spell check says that you really meant to say "molybdenum".

Re:DMCA

[Bacon Bits]

They must have meant 1000 in base 2.

Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

What's surprising is that anyone even bothers to download the crap put out by the music and movie industries.

Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[hedwards]

Hopefully, the Waaaaaaahmbulance is available.

Seriously, they engage in all manner of illegal investigation and questionable lawsuit, and now they're whining about the fact that it's their responsibility to police their content? If this was a small company, I could totally understand, but this is an industry that takes in billions of dollars every year. If they can't afford to bring a few lawsuits, perhaps they need a new business model.

Re:Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[Huggs]

Definitely worthy of being tagged as such: 'waaaaaambulence'

Re:Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[hedwards]

Sure it does, there's plenty of times when I could have sued, but lacked the financial resources and time to do so.

It's fairly common for lawsuits to drag on for years during which time you'd have to be paying attorney's fees hoping to get the money back after winning the case.

Re:Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[Vokkyt]

I think planimal means to say "...should not be relevant", as far as legality is concerned. A small business or individual copyright owner should be no more catered to than a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. The law is not supposed to be just for those who can afford it.*

The problem here is that the RIAA seems to be of the opinion that they can just stamp their feet and scream until everyone listens and does what they want, which is not appropriate. All non-large business artists are much more directly impacted by piracy, but they thrive in the exact same environment without the advantages of billion dollar assets and investors. If "random sub-genre of sub-genre metal act" from Whocaresville, OH can eke out a living or even thrive in a pirate's Internet, RIAA backed productions can find a way. I really doubt that the RIAA would be on board if said band were to make the same request about the DMCA, nor would the RIAA throw its weight behind said band.

*Statement is made with a complete understanding that what should be and reality are vastly different things.

Re:Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[nabsltd]

That said, the RIAA should just stop whining and learn to use "free" to make money.

Companies like Netflix and Apple have shown that the RIAA and MPAA companies can still charge for their content and make a boatload of money.

The problem is that every idea that makes a ton of money selling content has come from someone other than the big media companies, who instead spend much of their income fighting against it.

Re:Excuse me, I have a call to place.

[mcgrew]

You use free to drum up sales; Cory Doctorow credits giving his books away in ereader form on his website for his status as a NYT best seller. The RIAA labels, however, aren't really after "pirates", they're after P2P itself, because they have radio and don't need it, while the indies depend on P2P. The RIAA's fight against P2P is actually an anticompetetive, monopolistic move that would have them in prison if they didn't own the government.

In the original, illegal Napster days the RIAA could have given low quality MP3s away and used them as advertising for lossless media with cover art, lyrics, etc. The MPAA could give away low-res movies to sell hi-def blu-rays. Paople will always pay for quality.

Re:crony capitalism

[hedwards]

I knew that they're sales were low, but I had no idea they were that low. Bill Gates could just about buy out the entire industry and have money left over.

LOL Power companies are profiting from infringment

[KingBozo]

It takes electricity to power those copying material. I guess the power companies should also police the web.

---------------
One idiot to bind them all.

QQ for u !

[redelm]

Since the copyright owner is the one who profits from their exclusive legislatively-granted monopoly, they _should_ bear the costs of enforcement. Who else can decide that enforcement is worthwhile? Blanket enforcement is far too chilling on free speech and fair use. Not that the RIAA recognizes either, so why recognize them?

Re:QQ for u !

[CRCulver]

Since the copyright owner is the one who profits from their exclusive legislatively-granted monopoly, they _should_ bear the costs of enforcement.

Sadly, both the public and the government seems to have forgotten that copyright is a government fiat made with the hope of driving artistic production and not a natural right.

Re:QQ for u !

[mcgrew]

Besides that, how can the ISP possibly know that it's infringing without spying on the user? And even then, how is the ISP supposed to know whether or not a suspected pirate file is really illegal?

Folks who download legal music (indies) can easily download RIAA dreck by mistake. Try to get The Station's song "Fingertips" from bittorrent. Do you have any idea how many completely different songs have that name? Try "Scatterbrain", there are hundreds of songs with that name, many legal and many not.

Re:QQ for u !

[nine-times]

Blanket enforcement is far too chilling on free speech and fair use.

No only that, but AFAIK copyright enforcement is optional on the part of the copyright holder. What I mean is, I can copyright a work, and if it gets spread around the Internet for free, I'm fully within my rights to say, "Well I don't really care. I'm fine with people downloading it." I've established my rights to restrict copying/distribution, and technically people are violating my copyright if they make copies without a license, but as the copyright holder, I'm allowed to decide that I don't care and I'm going to permit the violation.

So putting responsibility on service providers is the wrong move. It's almost like having the police go around arresting people for driving cars that they don't own. Maybe they have permission to borrow the car. Maybe my brother borrowed my car without asking, but I don't mind. Let me file a police report that someone stole my car before you go and arrest the person driving it. (Ok, that might not be a perfect analogy, but I'm tired.)

eh?

[ledow]

Because *OBVIOUSLY* it doesn't cost the service providers ANYTHING to go through all those DMCA notices, check the legal validity, ensure the content is on their systems, isolate it and remove, reply to the DMCA, handle appeals etc.

They make it sound like 100% of the burden is on the record companies, etc. when actually there's just as much hassle for everyone involved (courts included). What they've noticed is that there are JUST TOO MANY files out there that could be the valid subject of a legal DMCA notice but that neither they, the courts, or the service providers can really handle the sheer volume. So their complaint is to make someone else pay for it, in time, effort, money and liability when they get it wrong.

I don't think that stands up, really, as an argument. And it makes you wonder why they ever bothered at all. There are international users who will, just for mischief, repost anything that you don't like. And you'll struggle to take it down and will *never* legally stop them posting it somewhere else - or even the same place (it might not even be illegal in their country to "infringe" that copyright, for instance).

I don't think it's a valid response to the problems. Now, if you'd pushed for harsher sentences, greater fines, etc. to try to put people off repeat offending, then your argument would at least be consistent. PR suicide, but consistent. Their next step can really only be pushing for more punishment and harsher law (how they carries to international or anonymous users is left as an exercise to the user), or to realise that it was always a bit pointless to play Whack-a-mole over an MP3 that you're already making MILLIONS from.

The option "It's not working, so we want someone else to do our job and provide repercussions to people who pirate for us" isn't really sensible or logical.

Re:eh?

[UnknowingFool]

Also the service providers know EXACTLY which content is copyrighted and by whom. The enforcement by the copyright holders is exactly how it has been since the beginning. In fact I think it's written in the copyright code.

Re:eh?

[QuasiSteve]

Because *OBVIOUSLY* it doesn't cost the service providers ANYTHING to go through all those DMCA notices, check the legal validity, ensure the content is on their systems, isolate it and remove, reply to the DMCA, handle appeals etc.

Of course it costs them something. For example, as per YouTube, it costs them an automated system that immediately takes down content upon receiving a DMCA complaint, largely unchecked.
Then the user can go through another automated system to suggest that the DMCA complaint is false - a counter-notice.
Then yet another automated system goes over the counter-notice to see if any reasonable number of key words that would suggest the counter-notice is 'valid' exist within it, otherwise it sends back a boilerplate reply saying that you probably didn't have the rights to the material ( see recent DMCA video by Peter Hadfield, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex8r_7nIKzk ).
If it does detect enough keywords, it sends an automated message to both parties to please go screw themselves over in court if they really want to.

Of course, in most cases, DMCA counter-notices are never even sent in.
Which means that a rights holder has to take on legal counsel to set up a DMCA complaint that holds to the legal standards - this costs a bit of money.
Google's automated system then takes care of the rest.
And the user who uploaded the content simply yawns and lets the video be deleted, or posts another video about how the evil companies took away their re-posting of a popular music video where they plastered "Uploaded by TheLulz96" at the beginning and end.

Such a burden, indeed.

Let's face it, as much as we like to dislike the DMCA, and often with good reason (see again the above video), the provisions for Safe Harbor and the limited applicability are wonderful.
The users can keep re-uploading the 'pirated' content. The host can shield themselves with the DMCA and automated systems. The rights holders will have to keep sending new DMCA notices.

Under the current copyright model, I don't think it's entirely insane that rights holders would suggest that if they already filed a DMCA complaint about Video X, that any future upload of Video X also be blocked. If that means the hosting party says "well that requires fingerprinting technology we don't have, but if you want to pay for it...", then I don't think it's unreasonable either that the rights holders do in fact pay for that. Either that or they can keep filing DMCA complaints for every single new upload of the same file.
Similarly, and as YouTube has already implemented, repeat-offending should be punished harder. YouTube eventually closes the account if too many DMCA complaints are received. Of course a new account is also opened fairly easily.

So yes, ultimately, it's pointless, and copyright reform is required. The question is whether both 'sides' will be reasonable about that reform.

Re:eh?

[Kalriath]

ACTA is weak in comparison to TPPA. If you haven't looked into that one - you should. It even screws the USA (by making Medicare bulk pharmaceutical negotiation virtually illegal which will drive up the cost of the program) in its attempts to screw the rest of the world.

Re:eh?

[bryan1945]

"I don't think it's a valid response to the problems. Now, if you'd pushed for harsher sentences, greater fines, etc. to try to put people off repeat offending, then your argument would at least be consistent."

What, the $74 trillion fine wasn't enough?! Shall we go to 12 gabazoolians now?

Yes, so?

[TechForensics]

Yes, so?

Re:Yes, so?

[bryan1945]

Well, I'm out of waffles for breakfast. I think my pantry needs a revamp.

I'm going to go with...

[fallen1]

FUCK THEM. They are raking in fat stacks of cash every year off of their supposedly well-honed machine, they should be responsible for policing their own content. It is not the responsibility of the government of the United States or any other country to police the Internet looking for content violations. Most governments have put in place laws and regulations that allow the "owner" of the content to be able to work within that system and get rid of infringing copies - AT THE OWNER'S EXPENSE. Not at the expense of the taxpayers.

Fuck you if you expect me and 250+ million other taxpayers help you sue for damages when we don't see a dime of that unless we are a luxury car dealer or real estate agent (or a lawyer). Not to mention that the net effect on the United States of corporatism laws like the DMCA and extended copyright periods is that we, as a nation, are less and less LEADING the way into new science and technology frontiers and more and more about holding the status quo or LOSING ground to other nations who don't exactly give a shit about the laws of the United States.

Re:I'm going to go with...

[ewibble]

Just a question why is that point 17 years? where is your source for that information. I especially don't see how it can hold for computer industry where a 17 year old computer is best used as a paper weight.

democratic law

[Anonymous Coward]

Is their any sort of law anywhere that states if x % of a population does something it therefor is now legal?

Could be useful against government agencies/agents turning oppressive.
e.g.: Some bureaucrat sets the max speed of a highway at 10kph. Obviously everyone brakes that speed limit, should police and courts still be allowed to convict them?

Back on topic:
It's called file SHARING. Sharing is caring.
Just like when you had friends visiting and you shared your toys with them to play. Just at a larger scale!

Re:democratic law

[91degrees]

The thing is, while I quite happily and shamelessly download stuff from the internet, I'm not quite sure it should be legal. I consider it a little anti-social to acquire too much media this way. As far as moral reprehensibility goes, I consider it to be equivalent to parking illegally. I'm quite happy to forgive someone who stops for 5 minutes and doesn't cause an obstruction, but don't think that this means we should abolish all parking restrictions.

Re:democratic law

[mbone]

In a democracy, if the majority of the population disagrees with a law to the extent of breaking it, the law should be changed and will eventually be changed. It is a measure of how much our democracy has degraded that this is even a matter for discussion.

Re:democratic law

[Pi1grim]

It's not about removing parking restrictions, it's about removing multi-million fines for parking in the wrong spot. Especially if you think that here we are dealing with infinite ammount of parking spots available.
Back on topic: the industry that is well known for extortion and terrorist tactics (what else can you call multi-million fines for downloading an mp3 but an attempt to scare people into submission?) is trying to push it's expenses on the taxpayers. That will be nice — seeing you taxpayers dollars at work, used to sue you.

Re:democratic law

[91degrees]

I agree. The statutory damages are stupid.

I've actually long been a proponent of "parking ticket" level fines for infringement. Not quite sure about the logistics of it, but if there was some way a rights holder could automatically bill you, a reasonable multiple of the value of the "work", possibly charging the downloader rather than the uploader, and with some very simple appeals process, then we'd be able to discourage copyright infringement, compensate the rights holder, and not unduly inconvenience someone for what amounts to mild naughtiness.

I have absolutely no idea how the appeals process would work, which is the real sticking point here.

Re:democratic law

[mcgrew]

Then why is marijuana still illegal? Why does everyone on the highway pass me when I'm doing the speed limit?

Tragedy

[TechForensics]

"Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense."

                My God, how can this be America?

Re:Tragedy

[NatasRevol]

Bailout time for costs!

How would an ISP know if a work is copyrighted?

[Xian97]

How is an ISP expected to be able to determine whether a work is copyrighted or not? A review of an RIAA album might have the same file name as the actual copyrighted work. I remember that has already happened where a takedown was issued for a book report on a Harry Potter novel due to it having a similar title.

Re:How would an ISP know if a work is copyrighted?

[Skapare]

In the mean time, let's introduce a new feature to our friends over at the RIAA and MPAA that will allow them to shift the burden of checking data they store for users to see if it's some pirated content. MD5! That should keep them busy for a few more years before the whining resumes. Just don't tell them, yet, that it's their business model that's broken.

Re:How would an ISP know if a work is copyrighted?

[Devoidoid]

One small correction:

Copyright (in the US at least) is obtained when a work is created and affixed in a physical form. No publication, distribution, or registration necessary.

Carry on.

Pay to protect your own shit

[scharkalvin]

Guess what. The patent system and the copyright system require that holders of such must protect and defend their own material. The patent and copyright laws give them the legal means to do so (but they must provide the lawyers). If they demand that the ISP's do their dirty work, they should be required to pay the ISP's for the service. They have to pay their lawyers.

Re:Pay to protect your own shit

[berzerke]

...The patent system and the copyright system require that holders of such must protect and defend their own material...

True, for now. The danger is Congress hasn't truly represented the people for quite some time, and instead represents those with money. This means those with money, like the RIAA, can have the law changed. That's the real danger.

Queue sound of the world's smallest violins

[oDDmON oUT]

"Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense."

All together now, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Too bad."

Re:I hope they somehow get jailtime for the thieve

[Reverand Dave]

Wow, the RIAA has shills on /. now?

On the other side of the looking glass...

[Magee_MC]

Content companies think it is unfair for them to be required to spend resources on scouring the Web when their pirated work helps service providers make money.

Service providers think that it is unfair for them to be required to spend resources on scouring the Web when a content company's pirated works helps content companies make money from the free advertising.

Can't have it both ways

[2phar]

The deal is we enforce their copyright protection in return for the rights being given to the public domain after a reasonable time. However, they seek to keep extending the term of the copyright. If the people have to wait longer and longer for public domain, you'd expect them to care less and less about protecting the copyright.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[MysteriousPreacher]

I struggle to find sympathy for an industry that has spent decades lobbying to reduce my legal rights. They give me unskillable accusations of thievery when I buy DVDs, and they hobble their products with DRM in order to reduce my ability to enjoy the products I buy. I could use a torrent to find shit of similar quality and without the restrictions. Fuck them. They are like the cottage weavers who smashed the looms that would threaten their livelihood, except that the music industry had the resources to adapt to use the Internet as a revenue stream. Too fucking late - no sympathy.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[hjf]

You might be onto something here... expect a "piracy tax" in your next power bill, and loophole closing (solar panels) in the next few months. I mean, in europe they charge a tax on blank media, that, in theory, goes to "artists".

I agree with him

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA Lawyer Complains DMCA May Need Revamp

I agree. The best revamp would be a repeal.

nae tru neutral third party

[FatSean]

Let the content owners police their content or go out of business. It's not like we have a shortage of musicians, artists, and filmmakers in our society. I'm not paying to fund a third party to protect their business model.

Re:nae tru neutral third party

[jbolden]

Libertarianism is another dimension, that really has nothing to do with what makes sense in this context. In the real world these are major industries and the government does spend money on regulating and helping to advance major industries.

Like everyone else

[Hentes]

If someone hurts your rights, you have to take legal action yourself. Why would the content industry be an exception? And in fact, the DMCA already requires service providers to police their users, as they are bound to remove content upon mere accusations without any proof that it actually infringes the IP of the rightsholder. The content industry should not be treated differently from any other one: if they think someone is hurting their rights they should stand up for themselves and take legal action against the person in question, not run to the government/service provider to help.

Meh

[Kjella]

Content companies think it is unfair for them to be required to spend resources on scouring the Web when their pirated work helps service providers make money.

And car manufacturers should pay for smuggling, because most smuggling happens by cars so clearly that drives the sales of cars. Or transporting stolen goods. Or for speeding, because clearly they make money on letting you speed.

What they complain about almost as much is that after they notify a service provider of an infringing song or movie clip and they're removed, new copies appear almost immediately

And how exactly would putting the burden on the service provider help that? It wouldn't but it makes their impossible problem the ISP or hosting company's impossible problem. If you can't solve it, pass it. You can then wail forever that they're never doing enough.

Re:Meh

[HopefulIntern]

Or for speeding, because clearly they make money on letting you speed.

This is a very good point, and a similarity I often draw when talking about the MAFIAA. Why are car manufacturers not held partially responsible for speeders? After all, they are the ones that make sports cars, that are capable of going twice the maximum speed limit! The police should be funded by GM to help stop speeding! (not really, but that is the point)

intellectual property tax

[Anonymous Coward]

If the RIAA wants their property protected without paying for it directly, then I suggest they start paying property taxes like everybody else who relies on the military or police to protect their property.

The best systems are ones that intrinsically converge to fairness -- e.g. the best way for two people who want cake to cut cake? One person cuts, the other chooses; the system enforces fairness. The best way for intellectual property to be protected? The content owners can pick whatever value they think their content is worth, then pay 4% property tax per year like everybody else. If a million people infringe on their property, each person is only liable for one-millionth of this taxable amount. The competing forces (A. company wants lower taxes so wants to claim their property is worthless, and B. company wants maximum awarded damages and so wants to claim their property is worth trillions) will force the company to self-assess a fair price. If their property is REALLY worth trillions, the company won't hesitate to pay 4% ($40 billion) per year in taxes. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $2 million per year in taxes to protect their property, then it's only worth $50 million, and so if they sue 50,000 people, each person is only liable for a maximum of $1,000. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $0 per year in taxes to protect their property, then their property is worthless and there's no penalty to infringe.

Re:intellectual property tax

[Lumpy]

Agreed.

They can have the changes to the DMCA they want as long as all Intellectual Property is taxed at the claimed price they have put up in the courts... at property tax rates. If at any time they claim a value in court, it will go on record that that is the value for each and every piece of IP of that type industry wide.

Suddenly the RIAA and MPAA, and BSA will shut up.

Re:intellectual property tax

[Culture20]

Tax them for inventory; every possible copy they can push out at maximum bandwidth.

Re:intellectual property tax

[omnichad]

That's almost sensible, and it might even lead to some works being let out of copyright. However, that also means that if I write a short story and never publish it, then it essentially has no value - if someone finds it, there's no copyright to enforce if they steal it and sell it as their own.

Re:intellectual property tax

[NeutronCowboy]

Brilliant. This would fix about 95% of all problems with Intellectual Property. Suddenly, it becomes an asset that needs to be put to work, rather than one that can be hoarded indefinitely.

Re:intellectual property tax

[imahawki]

If the RIAA wants their property protected without paying for it directly, then I suggest they start paying property taxes like everybody else who relies on the military or police to protect their property.

The best systems are ones that intrinsically converge to fairness -- e.g. the best way for two people who want cake to cut cake? One person cuts, the other chooses; the system enforces fairness. The best way for intellectual property to be protected? The content owners can pick whatever value they think their content is worth, then pay 4% property tax per year like everybody else. If a million people infringe on their property, each person is only liable for one-millionth of this taxable amount. The competing forces (A. company wants lower taxes so wants to claim their property is worthless, and B. company wants maximum awarded damages and so wants to claim their property is worth trillions) will force the company to self-assess a fair price. If their property is REALLY worth trillions, the company won't hesitate to pay 4% ($40 billion) per year in taxes. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $2 million per year in taxes to protect their property, then it's only worth $50 million, and so if they sue 50,000 people, each person is only liable for a maximum of $1,000. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $0 per year in taxes to protect their property, then their property is worthless and there's no penalty to infringe.

That system would ROCK. You could just pirate whatever you want. The more people who did it, the lower the per person cost. It would probably drive the cost per song down to about $1 per person per song! Brilliant!

Re:intellectual property tax

[jimmy]

Isn't that the point? Copyright is not a right, it's an artificial, governement granted structure designed to allow the creator time to make a profit on their creation. If there is no value in the creation, then copyright should not be needed.

And copyright is automatically granted (as opposed to trademarks), so if someone *does* make money of your creation at a later date, while still under protection, then you have a legal right to challenge the copier in court to regain the now-non-zero value of your property...

I personally don't think copyright, per se, is wrong - but I strongly agree that it's lasts to long - especially for digital artifacts.

Re:intellectual property tax

[bryan1945]

Your logic disturbs me.

Re:fp

[Lord Lode]

The quality of first posts on slashdot has dramatically decreased during the last year. What is causing this trend?

Seriously?

[SlippyToad]

Maybe these shit-for-brains RIAA execs could have thought that through before they wrote the law?

I mean it's bad enough that we have these dumb-as-a-kumquat soulless automatons deciding what music the rest of us should hear. It's bad enough that they essentially rape their "not really employees" with ridiculous contracts that require them to suck out their own bone marrow in order to have a career at all (one reason I enjoy my music a a private hobby and make far more than most rock musicians as an IT guy), no they have to also insist that the entire world bend itself around their antiquated business model.

Only a complete numb-nuts moron would think of a song as a physical item, and that's been the downfall of the entire RIAA's asshole-to-the-face business model. Once they started suing their customers the game was up. People FUCKING HATE big companies. They FUCKING HATE record companies. The artists FUCKING HATE record companies.

Dear RIAA, we FUCKING HATE YOU. Signed, EVERYONE ELSE.

Wow

[AdamJS]

They are actually complaining that the law doesn't let them win any case they want, with impunity.
Jesus.

Settlements?

[mwvdlee]

How about all the money they get from copyright lawsuits and settlements?
Doesn't that money cover legal expenses?
Or do they want to make profit off of copyright infringement?

Re:Cost Shifting?

[MickyTheIdiot]

Sounds familiar. Corporate success in the new age isn't about making good products and succeeding on the merits, it's about shifting all the costs onto the backs of others. Meritocracy indeed...

Pay no attention.

[mbone]

RIAA has shown itself to be incompetent in the making of public policy. That is clear. The hard part will be convincing Congress of that.

Re:Pay no attention.

[Aryden]

Congress has shown itself to be incompetent in the making of public policy. That is clear. The hard part will be convincing people of that.

FTFY

Re:Pay no attention.

[mbone]

Touche

Bingo!

[PopeRatzo]

Sadly, both the public and the government seems to have forgotten that copyright is a government fiat made with the hope of driving artistic production and not a natural right.

Most insightful comment.

A corporation does not have the "right" to exist, or to make a profit, or to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The best thing that could happen is if every member of the RIAA was boycotted to the point of going out of business, just to show them who's boss. I know I'm doing my part.

Re:Bingo!

[CodeHxr]

Sadly, both the public and the government seems to have forgotten that copyright is a government fiat made with the hope of driving artistic production and not a natural right.

Most insightful comment.

A corporation does not have the "right" to exist, or to make a profit, or to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The best thing that could happen is if every member of the RIAA was boycotted to the point of going out of business, just to show them who's boss. I know I'm doing my part.

I've been doing it for years. :)

Re:Bingo!

[rrohbeck]

But, but, but.. corporations are people too! So shouldn't they have a right to happiness?

Re:Bingo!

[bryan1945]

And wouldn't it be nice if actual real people could get all the perks of being a corporation, too? Corporation = person is the most nut-numbing idea.

Sooner or later

[grilled-cheese]

Sooner or later they're going to realize that the internet is not conducive to their monopolistic, pricing model. I expect at some point they're just going to try and blanket take down all media on the internet, then come up with their own Internet3 crippled with DRM. Of course they'll sell signing keys and leases to indy publishers after enough red tape and time...

Re:crony capitalism

[MickyTheIdiot]

Copyright and Patents are merely two systems of dozens that are broken in the exact same way.

This happens when people can buy power in the government and can write their own laws.

Isn't the DMCA to protect physical media?

[msobkow]

Of course it doesn't do much to protect online content -- the DMCA was to stop use of "circumvention measures" such as decoding and ripping DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. All it does is make it illegal to decrypt stuff.

Welcome to Earth

[JustAnotherIdiot]

What they complain about almost as much is that after they notify a service provider of an infringing song or movie clip and they're removed, new copies appear almost immediately.

That tends to be how things work with humans. You tell them no, and instantly people do everything in their power to do it anyway, even if they had no interest before.

Re:Welcome to Earth

[mcgrew]

Indeed. Alcohol consumption doubled during prohibition.

Re:I hope they somehow get jailtime for the thieve

[NatasRevol]

I'm leeching AND seeding - right now! Do I get 2 weeks, or overlapping sentences?

Because a $50 piece of software is the same as a week in jail.

I agree...

[thestudio_bob]

I agree with this guy 100%!!! But to make it easier for the ISP's to censor these infringing works, then we need to have complete and total access to all of the movie and record industries contracts, licensing agreements and accounting books. That way they can easily check an infringement claim to make sure that they really do have "rights" to said works.

Re:I agree...

[gstrickler]

And the ISPs would also need full access to the digital source for all their copyrighted media. I mean, how can they look for copies if they don't have unencrypted source to all the copyrighted material? Hashes are completely insufficient because those would be defeated by simply changing one byte and/or of the data. With full, unencrypted source media, then the ISP could compare all new media files uploaded to see it it's a close match to the source and flag those that are close for manual review.

See, a nice technological solution to a behavioral/legal issue. Of course, it would cost a fortune, would be pretty easy to bypass, someone at an ISP would accidentally release the unencrypted source, and the rights holders would never go for it, but it makes as much sense as anything the MAFIAA has suggested.

Update suggested by RIAA.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This whole business of filing law suits and waiting for the courts to act etc is taking too much of time. RIAA just wants to let loose a few people with some stout leather belts to punish anyone caught downloading illegal songs. They seem to have acquired some training materials from the YouTube. Not sure if they downloaded that video legally.

Re:Update suggested by RIAA.

[cpghost]

This whole business of filing law suits and waiting for the courts to act etc is taking too much of time.

That's what they thought, and what they've convinced the US Government to forcefully communicate to foreign governments (see leaked US cables). Indeed, in some places in the world, 3-strikes HADOPI-like regimes are exactly about this: extrajudicial punishments with no recourse. Maybe, just maybe, it's only fair that the US people get a taste of the bitter medicine that their own government is recklessly pushing down other peoples' throats. Because, frankly, without some domestic pressure, this international madness will continue, and get worse over time.

I say make it fair

[DarkOx]

The copyright owner has always born the cost of enforcement, or at least detection of infringement and that is fair because they are the ones deriving the benefit from the protection copyright offers them.

Its not like service providers and site operators are not burdened by compliance with all those take down requests. It cuts both ways. The content industry as usual wants a free ride.

So I say we as a society offer them this: Service providers,site operators, and individuals will be responsible for being able to show they rights to publish or reproduce anything they do. The content industry will lose implicit copyright. In other words if you don't explicitly file for copyright its public domain; and you PAY in taxes to hold a copyright every year, at the end of the year. Lets set that one at about 25% of net income derived from the work; to put it inline with capital gains.

I bet the quit asking.

Re:I say make it fair

[omnichad]

So who pays the taxes for GPL software? My personal photo collection is public domain? Implicit copyright has a lot of value and I wouldn't give that up just to have cheaper music.

Re:I say make it fair

[mcgrew]

You already have to register the copyright in order to sue. The price, unlike patents, is affordable to most ($30 the last time I looked), to raise it would, like patents, put copyrighting something prohibitively expensive for most individuals... and artists and musicians usually don't earn a lot of money for their crafts.

Re:I say make it fair

[DarkOx]

25% of the income derived from the work. Register your photo collection or GPL software if you want it protected by copyright. If you are not charging for it, or not even making it available for that matter -- your tax obligation should be pretty affordable. 25% of nothing but one quarter of NOTHING.

Retailers too?

[hawguy]

I heard that there's a similar move afoot by retailers across the nation. They are tired of having to police their own stores for shoplifting, and their research shows that most thieves make their getaway in an automobile, so they are going to force automakers to include merchandise antitheft scanners in all cars. They are tired of automakers making all of that profit from stolen goods. If someone enters a car with a product that hadn't had the antitheft tag deactivated, the car will immediately explode.

They think its unlikely that any innocent people will be caught but even if they are, it's for the sake of profits so it needs to be done.

Irresponsible content producers

[bitbucketeer]

Responsible content producers don't produce content they can't afford to protect.

A perfectly reasonable point of view!

[erroneus]

The RIAA's view is perfectly reasonable. Why should they pay to protect their stuff when they already paid a LOT of money and continue to pay a lot of money buying politicians and laws like the DMCA.

Their complaint is that they have ALREADY paid and shouldn't have to pay more. But you know, that's not how bribery works... you don't just bribe one or a few. You bribe them ALL.

Seriously, no

[gzipped_tar]

I'm not an American but that doesn't prevent me from feeling deeply disturbed by the thing going on out there. I'm affected by the DMCA insanity in a very absurd way: for quite a few times I was searching some physics-related topics on Google, only to be greeted by an almost empty list of non-useful results and a notice that basically said "Sorry, we have the search results, but because of the DMCA, we can't show you."

I mean, the heck. If there's some evil commie zombie terrorist ripping the good guys off by pushing physics-related web pages online, then why does a mindless search bot have to be silenced? Impressive. You guys can even make Google shut up. This would be the wet dream of the Chinese government.

And now they want *more*? As if it's not been crazy enough.

This is insane. Seriously, you guys of the USA have been great. It makes me sad seeing you on the verge of falling into a Kafkaesque fiasco. And I fully understand what's happening to you may as well strike us someday.

Re:Seriously, no

[Raenex]

This is insane. Seriously, you guys of the USA have been great. It makes me sad seeing you on the verge of falling into a Kafkaesque fiasco. And I fully understand what's happening to you may as well strike us someday.

Where is "us"? Because there are many places well ahead of the United States. At least in the United States you don't get your Internet shut off. As for the DMCA, it's not the worst thing in the world. There are standard procedures to get content re-instated, though if the content violates copyright then obviously it may not be.

new postings

[Skapare]

What they complain about almost as much is that after they notify a service provider of an infringing song or movie clip and they're removed, new copies appear almost immediately.

What they (content providers) need to do is consider WHY so many people will re-post the content that was removed. Trouble is, in their little ivory towers, where they lack real knowledge of the real world, they will be totally unable to see reality. And this is why they are still using their failed business model.

Re:new postings

[gzipped_tar]

They're not ivory-tower hermits out of touch with reality. Greed has clouded their eyes.

Hopefully, greed leads to foolishness, and a fool and his money are soon parted. Which may in turn explain why they're so desperately whining.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[msauve]

"in europe they charge a tax on blank media"

They do that in the US, too.

Because of this, you can borrow CDs from your friends or a library, and copy them for yourself, and it's all perfectly legal. 17 USC, Chapter 10, Subchapter A, Section 1008 specifically states:

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording medium" to be:

any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.

In more common language, this refers to audio/music CD-R discs, which are made to work in digital audio recorders (it also covers cassette tapes, FWIW). These discs are different from the more common data CD-Rs, in that they contain special digital markings (standard data CD-Rs won't work in digital audio recorders). In addition, by law a royalty has been paid on this blank media. These royalty payments are in turn distributed to copyright holders (see Section 1006 of the law cited above). They usually cost slightly more than data CD-R discs, but they can be found for less than $0.25 each.

The law which allows this was enacted at the urging of the RIAA, so thanks go to them for all the CDs I got for a quarter instead of $15.

Economics fail

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The RIAA is learning that there is no free lunch, which is just as fundamental to understanding business as supply and demand.

They should probably figure out how much they're really losing before they force ISPs to scare their customers away.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[ksd1337]

Why would they want to? They're getting paid when you download!

Re:QQ 4 u !

[redelm]

Precisely! Arguments from Mark Twain through to the 1995 Sonny Bono copyright extention are invalid and possibly unconstituional:

Since copyright is to encourage writers and artists to create, it must be prospective and not retroactive. Retroactive grants ("extentions") cannot influence creation already made!

Second, as a prospective inducement, copyright is subject to the power of compound interest -- 15 years is close to 25 and 95 is not much more when discounted at commercial rates of interest. A short term would be sufficient inducement/reward, and longer terms are wasteful and hobble society. Patents only run 17 years! Why should copyrights be longer? The value of series like Sherlock Holmes, StarTrek/Wars was initially in the creation, but now is mostly in the preceptions (mindshare) of society at large. The claim has lapsed.

Burden of the holder

[Rinisari]

The burden of preserving the "sanctity" of copyrights and patents has always fallen on the holder. This ensures that the holder is earnest in keeping their government-sanctioned property to themselves. It's simply a problem of our court system that enforcing these rights has become very expensive.

Cost of Piracy Overstated

[DERoss]

The cost of piracy in Canada was grossly overstated in an attempt to impose draconian controls on the transport of music. The Canadian Intellectual Property Council (an agency of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce) actually proposed that travelers entering the country have their luggage searched for counterfeit recordings.

On investigation,it was discovered that the Council based its estimated cost of piracy on data circulating in the U.S. The U.S. costs were contained in various reports from the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). However, neither agency could substantiate the data. Their estimates of the costs of piracy turned out to be "brain farts" with no real substance.

See http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5841/125/ and the follow-up http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5850/125/.

Externalizing Costs (i.e. Subsidies)

[Anonymous Coward]

Their proposal doesn't reduce costs a cent; it changes who pays for it. They're asking for a classical Corporate Welfare subsidy.

What's funny is that xxAA are typically thought of as typical "left coasters," exactly the kind of people who (theoretically) see the big picture about externalities being subsidies, thereby causing their leftiness to "wrap around" and end up being more conservative than the conservatives who want to continue using government force to grant subsidies at the expense of freedom. By asking for this subsidy, they're kind of publicly renouncing all that, so declaring themselves are more Republican than Democrat. (Note I'm not saying subsidies themselves are a Republican thing, just this type of approach to them.)

Bad timing, considering their new best-friend party doesn't even have a serious presidential contender for next year's election. They're going to have to count on the small-government Tea Party hype continuing, in order to elect more Republicans so that they can get their bigger-government plan passed.

There's a darker side to this, BTW. The obvious change DMCA needs is elimination of the anti-circumvention stuff. That alone could impact piracy quite a bit, thus reducing the overall costs of piracy policing (regardless of who pays for it), since there would be less of it happening. This is where RIAA vs MPAA distinction comes in, though: it's the RIAA who is asking for this. That implies people are still pirating music, which unlike video, typically doesn't have DRM. Is RIAA just being MPAA's mouthpiece here (their members do have a lot of overlap and the two organizations' goals are similar)? Or are there really still a lot of assholes out there who are pirating stuff that they could buy and have it Just Work anyway, without the need for pirates (or illegal software/equipment "traffickers") to remove the DRM? If you're pirating music, you are helping to keep shit like DMCA around.

Another solution

[loshwomp]

Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense.

Perhaps it is copyright law that should be changed instead. For starters, we could limit the inconvenience of policing their own content at their own expense to 15 years.

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[icebraining]

You can't prove copyright infringement based solely on the title. There's no infringement if I shoot my own film and upload it with the same title as someone else's film. To prove infringement, you need to look at the actual data.

Re:fp

[paiute]

The GNAA strike?

Can someone else pay for lock on my front door too

[Ash Vince]

Can someone else pay for lock on my front door too? That seems to be a good analogy for this.

That's a big rock you're rolling uphill

[paiute]

Seeing as how all content acquires copyright the moment it is created, then how is any ISP supposed to ban copyrighted material from its pipes?

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[Theaetetus]

You can't prove copyright infringement based solely on the title. There's no infringement if I shoot my own film and upload it with the same title as someone else's film. To prove infringement, you need to look at the actual data.

That's the opposite of what I was saying... If I post "New Lady Gaga Video" on YouTube and her label sends a takedown notice, there's nothing stopping me (other than taste) from immediately reposting it as "New Gaga Video", "New Official Lady Gaga Video", "New Lady Gaga Video 4 U!", etc. That's kind of a big loophole.
So, yes, to prove infringement, you need to look at the actual data... and once a takedown notice has been received, it should be relatively trivial to make a hash of the file and then check for other newly posted files with an identical hash, or do similar comparisons.

Name of their new proposal

[gstrickler]

DMCAA - Digital Mafia Collection Agency Act.

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[Attila Dimedici]

No, they're complaining that the DMCA's safe harbor provisions have a loophole that allows content providers to be free of liability, even when the same infringing content is posted over, and over, and over again.

That is not a "loophole". In order for it to be a loophole, it would have to allow the ISPs to be intentionally encouraging the posting of copyrighted material and not be held liable. The courts have found several services that were not explicitly and solely about copyright infringement liable because they encouraged the use of the service for the purpose of copyright infringement. So, there is no loophole.
The content industry is complaining because they thought they would be able to use the DMCA to shut down copyright infringement and it has not worked out that way.

Obligatory Dead Kennedys quote

[Phreakiture]

But sales are slumping
And no-one will say why
Couldn't be you put out one to many lousy records . . . .

-MTV Get Off the Air

Re:Obligatory Dead Kennedys quote

[ewibble]

Could it be that we are in a recession, people are finding it hard to afford food and music isn't their priority.

I know that's crazy talk

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[Pi1grim]

Why should it be a problem for the content provider? The copyright holder needs it — let him implement a crawler that will scan the web and send a DMCA takedown notice when it finds a copyrighted video. Any way you put it — it's a problem of the copyright holder, so let him deal with it. What you are proposing is letting the ISP cover all the costs (guess who's really gonna end up paying for it) so that copyright holders can keep raking in all the money.

Civil Disobedience

[LordThyGod]

We, the people (ha!), have a moral obligation to not only ignore laws that are clearly designed to work against, but to subvert them through civil disobedience and any other means to render them impossible to enforce. Like prohibition ... eat, DRINK, and be merry.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[hjf]

Chill out, dude. It was a firmware feature (like DVD region lock, which is usually easily circumvented), and some companies decided to honor it, and others didn't. Philips CD recorders (stand alone audio units), sold in Argentina didn't work with non-audio CDs. There was no obligation for them to do that. They did it because they sold media too.

On the other hand, Philips DVD players, at the beginning, were factory region-unlocked (because in the late 90s DVDs were rare down here, and people used to order from US stores). Nowadays they're region locked.

Re:fp

[Penguinisto]

Perhaps the Occupy Goatse movement is clogging the works?

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[The Moof]

If I post "New Lady Gaga Video" on YouTube and her label sends a takedown notice, there's nothing stopping me (other than taste) from immediately reposting it as "New Gaga Video", "New Official Lady Gaga Video", "New Lady Gaga Video 4 U!", etc. That's kind of a big loophole.

That's because you're thinking it falls under the wrong law. They should be going after you for a trademark violation instead of a copyright violation. "New Gaga Video" could be fine, but when you put up a video like "New Official Lady Gaga Video," you're pretty screwed.

summary

[amoeba1911]

Let me summarize this article for you:
RIAA/MPAA convinced congress with big contributions that they need extra laws to protect their outdated, inefficient business model but they forgot to convince the judges who apply the actual laws.
Congress has been bought a long time ago by private interest; they're no longer working for the people and although we still pay for a chunk of their luxurious lifestyles their source of livelihood comes from elsewhere. The judges are still on government payroll, so they can use common sense and make decisions that benefit mankind instead of bending to private interest.
Solution: put the judges on payroll.

Re:summary

[Time_Ngler]

Why is their business model outdated? That people have found a way to circumvent it by committing a crime without being caught?
Is the sale of videogames an outdated business model, too?

Re:summary

[Time_Ngler]

Non-commercial duplication for personal use is permitted.

Err, what? I don't think so...

Re:crony capitalism

[mcgrew]

No, they're both broken, but in completely different ways. Anyone can get a copyright, registring one is only about $30. Patents cost thousands and are hard to get. In that respect patents are broken, copyright not.

But patents only last 17 years, while copyright lasts effectively forever. In that respect patents are ok, copyright is broken.

Can you imagine the technological stagnation if patents lasted as long as copyrights? That's how art and music are suffering. And if copyrights were as costly as patents, only corporations and very rich individuals could obtain a copyright.

Re:crony capitalism

[kanweg]

No, they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. With a patent there is a finite time in your life time (of up to 20 years and only if the patentee pays maintenance fees), there is a high threshold of obtaining them (although stuff slips through), and the applicant provides society with an accurate description of the invention and the way to implement it (of course, the latter is where software patents go wrong, as they don't get much deeper than stating a wish), at the expense of the applicant. Although a bit coarse tool, but both society and patentee benefit.

With copyright, well, I agree with you that it is broken. In return for the right, society gets zip, in particular if the copyright holder doesn't stick to his end of the bargain by releasing the work with DRM, thus basically guaranteeing that the work will not enter the public domain (because the technology is outdated and no longer available) after the ridiculously long term of protection for which the copyright holder didn't have to pay.

Sorry, facts are facts.
Bert

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[icebraining]

So they re-encode the film with slightly different parameters and the hash check fails. What have we gained exactly?

They've been used to buying enforcement

[Quila]

A few million in lobbying money thrown around over the years has bought a LOT of US government enforcement of their copyrights for them.

They would like to continue this trend, as recently they've found out they don't like the expense and public backlash of enforcing themselves.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[Reverand Dave]

That is an extremely valid point and I think both are valid. I guess the backlash really speaks to the separation that most people have built up in their minds between the RIAA and MPAA, and the Media they are purchasing. Most people hate the RIAA and MPAA, but don't see their purchase of a CD, DVD, or iTunes file as direct support of these organizations even though it clearly is.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[Tsingi]

A few million in lobbying money thrown around over the years has bought a LOT of US government enforcement of their copyrights for them.

They would like to continue this trend, as recently they've found out they don't like the expense and public backlash of enforcing themselves.

I would imagine that senators, congressmen, judges, and the like are getting expensive with the legalization of bribery. It could very well come to pass that the MAFIAA can no longer afford the payola.

That would be sweet.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[lorenlal]

Many of us hate the RIAA, but we like the music and some of us are actually willing to purchase said music... Sadly, depending on the channel, we may have to give them some money. But that doesn't mean we've forgotten that link. Some of us feel that it's important to legally purchase the music of our favorite artists, and are willing to concede that some of it goes to them.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[MaskedSlacker]

That would be sweet.

Bittersweet is the term you're looking for, I think.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[Tsingi]

That would be sweet.

Bittersweet is the term you're looking for, I think.

I considered that, but it didn't ring sarcastic.

Re:They've been used to buying enforcement

[Nefarious Wheel]

Many of us hate the RIAA, but we like the music and some of us are actually willing to purchase said music... Sadly, depending on the channel, we may have to give them some money. But that doesn't mean we've forgotten that link. Some of us feel that it's important to legally purchase the music of our favorite artists, and are willing to concede that some of it goes to them.

...and some of us do not. Independent music is a better buy. I will gladly (and frequently do) buy music. It's civilised. However, the band of companies behind RIAA will get not one dollar from me, simply because I don't like them. Call it "their marketing dollars in action".

Heel!

[flybefree]

Looks like it's time for them to crack the whip on their little bitch Diane Feinstein to introduce some onerous new bill on their behalf.

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[Theaetetus]

So they re-encode the film with slightly different parameters and the hash check fails. What have we gained exactly?

The infringer now has to repeat their efforts, reducing the desirability and efficiency of repeat posting. Victory.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[Anonymous Coward]

wow - I actually just went and checked the source... assuming this hasn't been superceded, how do more people not know about this ?
especially since it covers _distribution_ (for non commercial use) - eg youtube, bit torrent, etc. And nothing in the language restricts it to CD's ..
it refers to '...a medium for making digital music recordings...' sounds like a hard drive to me ?

Anyone know if this is superceded by some other law ?

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[msauve]

No, they don't - you simply don't know what you're talking about. What you have either isn't legally classified at a "digital audio recording device", probably because it's made to copy data CDs, too., or it's an illegal device in the US.

The recorders and media I mentioned make use of SCMS, which is legally required in the US and many other countries.

To comply with copyright legislation in various countries, Digital Audio Home Recorders will only make recordings on CD-R and CD-RW discs bearing the appropriate 'audio' logo. These discs are subject to levies which are payable to the relevant copyright protection associations.

-- http://www.mam-a.com/audio_technical

One can use a computer or other device to copy an audio CD onto a data CD/R, but to do so legally, you must use the special Audio CD/R media.

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[icebraining]

Any decent programmer could write an auto-uploader that monitors a page and re-encodes/re-uploads if deleted. Effort, you say?

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[Vokkyt]

You're not thinking about maximizing profit here -- the Power Companies are looking to maximize profit and understand the hydra that is pirating -- for every site shut down, more pop up. That means more time spent by users searching, which means more power. It's a fucking racket, I tell ya.

Music industry is too tiny to justify legislation

[Animats]

The music industry is tiny. North American total music recorded music sales are about $12 billion a year. In comparison, Apple revenue is about $63 billion a year, and Google revenue is about $23 billion.

We can't have some two-bit dying industry mess up one of the major engines of economic growth in America.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[Aryden]

My 1 year old Sony digital theater system with Audio/Video recording doesn't care one whit what type of disk you use as long as it has enough storage for the media you are copying/writing. So there has to be devices out there that aren't classified under this title, yet do exactly what this title seems to cover.

RIAA Radar

[ThatsNotPudding]

Check http://www.riaaradar.com/ before buying any music. If an artist / group is on this list, contact them and tell them why you will not be buying their music anymore.

Then are we all in agreement?

[Arancaytar]

The law is a pile of crap and needs to be tossed out yesterday. And now even the RIAA agrees!

Re:Music industry is too tiny to justify legislati

[Arancaytar]

So if Apple, Google and Microsoft were to stop suing each other for a few days, they could buy up the entire recording industry. Of course, a music industry owned by these three (or worse, just one of them) would be hardly preferable to what we have now.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[msauve]

You need to refer to the statute:

A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use...

and

A "digital audio copied recording" is a reproduction in a digital recording format of a digital musical recording, whether that reproduction is made directly from another digital musical recording or indirectly from a transmission.

I would guess that your device isn't considered a "digital audio recording device" because it's primary purpose is recording A/V works (movies, TV), not musical audio.

Re:Music industry is too tiny to justify legislati

[Aryden]

Yes we can, it happens all the time. It's almost never the biggest or smartest dog in the yard, but the loudest that annoys the shit out of you.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[Aryden]

Right, but my point is that it does the same things yet is not covered. Thus the law is circumvented.

RIAA Policy

[sl4shd0rk]

If you have music, we own it. If you have a computer with music on it, we own that too. If your computer is in your car, parked in front of your house guess what? ours.

Nobody is forcing them to do the policing!

[Agent0013]

Why don't they just stop then? Nobody is making them spend the money policing their content. They admit it themselves that the effort they put in is completly wasted as new copies pop up almost immediately. So it makes ecconomic sense to stop spending money trying to find and remove the content. I guess they are not smart enough to read their own balance sheets!

RIAA "We'll keep appealing

[ILongForDarkness]

until you give us a backdoor to everyone's bank account so we can take the money that is ours without the inconvenience of proving that something was stolen or that there was a loss." :-)

Bohoo hooo

[lordmetroid]

Someone call the Muwaaambulance!

Adding this line because the stupid filter do not let me post a perfectly good post because the original text above apparently contains too much repetition.

Warring corporations may save freedom

[JDG1980]

Ideally, the fact that the majority of the US population detests the *AA's position on this issue would be enough to stop them. However, that's not how things work in America, especially in our post-Citizens United world. What may save us, though, is that not all large corporations are on the *AA's side here. Google, for instance, probably doesn't want to be held legally responsible for everything everyone posts to YouTube. And Google is bigger than the whole recording industry put together. In the past, the *AAs have gotten their way because there was no corporate behemoth ready to stand up to them. That may have changed.

Of course, it would be better yet if we could fix representative democracy in the US so that Congressmen actually did what their voters want, as opposed to what lobbyists and campaign contributors tell them to.

Nor do we

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Nor do we require toll boths to prevent drugs from being transported, or cigarettes of booze that have not had the proper State taxes collected. Basically its not their job, nor should it be.

Maybe if the Media companies used the free market and the capitalist system, and paid those companies for each pirating they stopped, maybe that incentive would work to stop the flow.. Oh wait, then that would probably cost as much as the profits that would have incurred.. Oh yeh , thats why they went after the law route, so they could externalize the cost of collecting their money. I say repeal the bad law, make them find a new business model that works in this new environment rather than trying to keep the horse shoe buisness making money.

Re:QQ 4 u !

[bunkie21]

The best thing about turning over the idiotic copyright extensions would be that we could legally undo all of the awful changes Lucas made to what was perfectly fine in the first place.

Re:I hope they somehow get jailtime for the thieve

[Imrik]

Does that include a week for the RIAA seeder who logged the IP of the offender?

Working exactly as intended...at the time

[Daffy Duck]

The DMCA passed in 1998. At that time, peer-to-peer file sharing wasn't even a blip on the radar (Napster started in 1999). So the infringement that Congress had in mind was that people would be posting files to their AOL accounts etc., and therefore it was the ISP's own servers that would contain the infringing content. That's why the DMCA as written pretty much excludes pure carriers from liability (section 512a). It would have been like blaming the phone company for blackmail since they make money off of the ransom calls.

Now, of course, the *IAA want a new P2P-aware DMCA to correct their mistake. The law they bought only defended against a threat that turned out to be irrelevant within a couple of years.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[Kalriath]

Uh no, read the rest of the comment, where he actually defines "a medium for making digital music recordings". A hard drive would NOT meet the statutory requirements.

Re:QQ 4 u !

[kevmeister]

The problem began when some person, probably in PR, came up with the term "Intellectual property". It caught on as the RIAA and others realized the power of the term in making it seem that that information can be "owned" like a house or a car. Now the meme has taken hold, people ARE thinking of information in the same class and, instead of fostering innovation, it is strangling it.

And don't forget to let your congress critter know what you think of the "Protect IP" act which will largely codify that information is "owned" and take it further by allowing them to control what is said on the Internet. (Not that it will help unless you have the sort of money that can compete with the entertainment lobby.) "Protect IP" will be the end of the Internet as we know it.

What more do you expect ...

[sydbarrett74]

... from a corporate whore, bought and paid for? Look up her LinkedIn profile. Furthermore, her daddy is a prominent, Big Business-friendly judge. 'Nuff said.

Re:LOL Power companies are profiting from infringm

[DinDaddy]

Magnets are also to blame. If anyone knew how they worked, we could regulate them.

Re:Basically, but not accurately

[anomalous3]

Yes, but this would probably cut it in half, because it would require more effort on the part of the people uploading it. Why spend valuable CPU cycles transcoding a video? The technical barrier is not really higher than basic uploading, but enough that it would weed out a number of people.

Re:crony capitalism

[shutdown -p now]

All good points, but I think that 17 years for patents is way too much still. It may have made sense back in 19th century, where the industrial and scientific revolution was winding up - but now we patent so many things that 17 years is eternity. That, and the fact that many patents are for very trivial things (but that's a separate problem in and of itself.

What I want to see is a form of "property tax" for copyrights and patents. The first few years are free, and then it increases the longer you hold it, to reflect the harm done to the society by monopolizing an invention for too long. If you can afford to pay for this, fine, go ahead, we'll spend the money on something else that's useful. If you don't pay, it's public domain from there on.

I'm a reasonable person

[bryan1945]

But where do I find these people so I can slap them with a fish? Soon they'll be complaining that it's not fair they have to wipe their own butts.

Aww...

[WillyWanker]

Poor things. Won't someone once think of the billionaires?!?!?!?

Re:crony capitalism

[mcgrew]

All good points, but I think that 17 years for patents is way too much still

For many things, yes. Electronic devices come to mind. But 17 years isn't excessive for a drug patent. There are a lot of things wrong with the patent system (software patents, trivial patents, obvious patents, etc) but I don't think the 17 years is much of a hurdle, but then 17 years doesn't seem very long to someone who's been here almost 60 years.

Rather than a "property tax" I'd rather see copyright length brought down to a reasonable term -- say, 17 years. There is no reason whatever for "Gone With the Wind" to still be covered by copyright. The RIAA should not be selling "licenses" to the works of Janice Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. Copyright and patents are for "promoting the useful arts and sciences" are are to get people to make art and inventions, but how is Joplin or Hendrix supposed to make new works? The current laws do the opposite of what the Constitution indended.

To what end?

[FatSean]

China doesn't care one whit about obeying these restrictions.

Re:To what end?

[jbolden]

First off, China has done some copyright enforcement within its borders. That's one of the reasons old version of Windows are common but newer ones are not. Second, even if you were right, so what?