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Viacom's SOPA/PIPA Pitch Video, Annotated
Lauren Weinstein writes "Viacom has just released a video calling for support of global Internet censorship via SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). A truth annotated version of this approximately seven-minute video is now available."
Reader quantumplacet writes with word that the Business Software Alliance (probably for reasons other than this video) has withdrawn its support for SOPA, claiming that "Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill." Writes quantumplacet: "While the BSA has a long history of focusing on the worst offenders and mostly ignoring casual piracy, this still represents a dramatic turnaround as the organization has been a SOPA supporter since the act's inception. BSA President Robert Hollyman posted on the company blog that 'Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights that cannot be compromised. ....Some observers have raised reasonable questions about whether certain SOPA provisions might have unintended consequences in these areas.'"
How many times now have similar bills died, only to be reintroduced under more and more bizarrely inaccurate names? Next time I suspect they'll call it the "Stop Online Pedophiles Act" and use the argument that it can be used to combat child predators. After all, you don't want to support pedophiles *DO YOU*?
I propose a law that mandates that laws introduced in the future can only be called by their official Congressional letter-number designation. I'm calling it the "Super-Patriot I-Love-America Act."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is probably going to get rammed through one way or another. After all, these guys all spend billions of dollars every year buying off our representatives, they're not going to let a pesky thing like the outrage of us plebeians get in the way of clamping down on their Intellectual Property and any other IP they can make an even unreasonable claim to.
I would hope SOPA would get challenged in court and rejected on First Amendment grounds (online censorship of web sites seems an awful lot like an attack on Freedom of Speech, to me, but IANAL or judge) but given some of the other rulings we've seen out of the SCOTUS I'm not so sure it would even get overturned, there. Our court, as it sits, seems to be a lot less concerned about the rights of people and a lot more concerned about the rights of "people", i.e., corporations.
So how long until the corporate masters send a take down notice to youtube for that "obviously" infringing video.
So for those who haven't watched the "annotated" version, allow me to summarize. The production presents a series of film industry professionals talking about how they think things "should" be, why piracy is "not right", and dropping some of the classic inflated statistics that we all know and love. Each annotation is overlayed on top its respective scene to act in shallow rebuttal. The annotations present very few (if any) actual facts in rebuttal, rather relying on the same appeal to emotion and common sense that the original production pursued.
I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints. Rather than "and yet the film industry made record profits", let's drop some actual numbers. If our premise - that these guys have failed to make their case to support SOPA - is correct, then all of the world's facts should back us up.
If you're going to rebut a video, have something more inspiring and concrete than "and yet you want to censor the Internet."
Farnsworth (Youtube) Obligatory.
This is gross. They draw conclusions which are tenuous at best, and completely ignore the actual issues. Are these people ignorant, and were just told to say something for a video, or are they knowingly misinforming the public? Either way, I'm disgusted.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
As a native Spanish slashdotter, I'm amused by the funny names your lawmakers assign to your acts. For reference:
SOPA -> soup
PIPA -> sunflower pipe
ACTA -> proceedings (at least this one is about a formalized document written on paper)
Or is it because any combination of two consonants with two vowels is a valid word in Spanish?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Anyone else find all that South Park stuff being on there is somewhat ironic? Maybe they just need to pitch more that all the episodes save some of the more recent ones (after the first week and then they pop back on) and two taken down for censorship are online for free?
I say Ironic was Trey and Matt stated they pushed for all the episodes being online for free because they were tired of having to pirate their own series whenever they easily wanted to rewatch an episode easily?
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.
They don't allow me to watch it, because I'm not in the USA. But if I watched it on some other site then I would still count towards their however-many-billion statistic of people watching it illegally. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both things I'd probably pay to be able to stream / download (without ads or DRM), but Viacom would rather bitch about piracy and try to get laws passed to make it even more illegal than it already is than sell me what I want. Their video made the point that content is a product - perhaps someone should point out that you only make money from products if you're willing to sell it to potential customers...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I hope SOPA passes. We'll just fix our geek software even better. Encrypted everything, out of band non-deterministic port hopping.. the only hope they'll have is million dollar stat boxes that make lots of wrong guesses and snip VIP VPNs. Our skin will grow over their bandaid.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I hate to defend the MAFIAA, but they really should post a link to the original video in the summary. We should watch what they put out before biasing ourselves with a (probably very accurate) edited version of the video. I'm a believe that more information is better than less. We can't form good opinions of ignorance.
That being said, the original video is crap. You can watch it here.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Sure. Collapse the industry megaliths. They've become entitled behemoth leeches sucking the lifeblood of the world. Content will still be produced, and it might actually improve the general quality of the product to not have huge productions aimed at mass-appeal just to make the largest possible profit margins. The problem isn't piracy. The problem is corporate expectations. When those expectations aren't met, they start crying like children. Guess what? Life isn't fair or certain. It's a zero-sum game. You start with nothing, you end with nothing. Expectations to the contrary are doomed to disappointment. The sooner one accepts that, the better off they'll be.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
They aired this on TV.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103759/not-a-big-deal
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
If this is true, you need to find others like yourself and form a coalition, make your own ads. People need to know that it's not the entire industry crying out on this, that there are opposing voices on the inside.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Daily Show / Colbert Report are blocked from streaming in countries where it's shown on a domestic channel or HAS IN THE PAST been shown on a domestic channel (it's the second part that's asking for trouble)
Yeah, right. Like the corporate drafters of SOPA didn't consider how it would make virtually anything done beyond passively viewing their content a felony. They'll deny it , of course, but they know full well that a prosecutor would be able twist the provisions of SOPA to fit anything they want to nail someone.
Think that won't happen?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Without piracy there would be a lot more content producers, more competition amongst them, better and cheaper content with less restrictions. And people with jobs instead of being pirates.
The sad part is I think you actually believe that.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Kind of Funny putting all those artists talking about their creative work and then an executive calling their work a commodity, indistinguishable from one another from the consumers point of view.
You do resize that's not how the stock market works, right? You can't just choose to buy up the shares of the company unless there are enough sell orders to fullfill the buy order. And I seriously doubt that a sell order volume equivalent to 51% of the company is available for purchase.
On top of that, as someone living in the UK, I'm not "allowed" to watch any of the extended interviews from TDS because the show airs a "Global Edition" here (which is basically a clip show) once a week on a cable TV network I don't have.
Of course it's trivial to get around the "blocking", but that's besides the point. As a result I just download the episodes from the internets after they air and catch up with additional material when I get the time.
As Cory Doctorow wrote today in the Guardian, if you don't provide people with a timely, straightforward, legitimate method to access your products, they'll find their own way to get hold of it and you won't get any money out of it.
The Viacom video used the following shows and products as examples of "piracy":
The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, and South Park.
What do you notice about all of these shows that are being "pirated"? They are all legitimately available for free viewing on their respective websites, on Hulu, etc!
The annotated version failed to challenge the framing of the video and should be ashamed. Here are a few examples:
-"Piracy" involves kidnapping and murder, not copyright infringement.
-"Stealing" deprives an owner of their property. This is also not equivalent to copyright infringement.
-"Intellectual Property" is not protected by U.S. law. U.S. law defines patents, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets (IANAL).
-Copyrights and Patents are defined in the U.S. constitution to encourage continued innovation and creativity. They have already been extended to ridiculous lengths by acts such as the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extention Act." An obvious example is royalties collected from anyone who uses the "Happy Birthday" song publicly.
-DMCA restrictions are already being used to trample "Fair Use". You may not back up your own media.
-Music purchases may not be sold under the "First Sale" doctrine.
-Recording artists have successfully sued record companies for withholding royalties when selling "Best Hits" compilations.
-Artists often do not benefit from their own work (the basis for copyright law). For instance, Michael Jackson was greatly enriched by music written and performed by The Beatles.