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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."
Working as intended, then.
I think that DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so its supposed to last 1000 years before they need to change it.
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.
It takes electricity to power those copying material. I guess the power companies should also police the web.
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One idiot to bind them all.
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?
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.
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.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
"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?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
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.
"Basically they are complaining the the DMCA makes them responsible for policing their own content at their expense."
All together now, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Too bad."
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
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.
Blar.
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.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
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.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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:
Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording medium" to be:
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.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
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.
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.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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/.
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.
Can someone else pay for lock on my front door too? That seems to be a good analogy for this.
I dont read
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Free Martian Whores!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired