White House Responds To SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN

eefsee writes "The White House today responded to two petitions with a statement titled 'Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet.' They note that 'We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet.' In particular, they cite manipulation of DNS as problematic. But overall the statement is clearly supportive of anti-piracy efforts and lays down this challenge: 'So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right.' So, what's right?"

Comments

Protecting rights

[bonch]

But overall the statement is clearly supportive of anti-piracy efforts...

There's nothing wrong with being supportive of anti-piracy efforts. People deserve to get paid for their work. Those efforts, however, shouldn't undermine technological infrastructure. The White House's statement is overall a condemnation of the legislation, but it does allow leeway for Obama to sign an amended bill that addresses the most pressing concerns.

Given past positions, it will be interesting to see how Slashdotters respond to the question in the submission. Allow me to quote from a recent comment in a GPL discussion:

It annoys the minority of businesses who feel entitled to the free labor of strangers and don't want to give anything back. You see, some people are childish and the most visible mark of childishness is a sense of entitlement. This causes them to feel somehow cheated if you place a few conditions on code that is otherwise free, that no one is forcing them to use if the conditions don't suit them.

The comment was modded up. When it's a case of a GPL violation, the violators who feel entitled to the free labor of strangers are childish and entitled. But in an article on the Pirate Bay, suddenly it's all about demonizing the evil RIAA and MPAA, and piracy is just a cultural revolution that sticks it to the evil corporations--the artists who aren't getting paid don't even enter into the discussion, probably because of the guilty feelings it would inspire to be reminded of the reality of the situation.

The point being that there probably should be an attempt made to hinder online piracy in some way. We can't just let it spiral completely out of control, to the point where it's no longer lucrative to produce anything. Part of the reason the console platform became so appealing to game developers is the reduced amount of piracy compared to the PC platform. In other words, they can actually make money from their work, money that is used to make more games. You can't have a functioning long-term economy in which people never get compensated for anything; people are trying to make a living, and they use the income to produce more contributions to society. If your boss withheld your paycheck and told you that the code you wrote is now theirs free of charge because "information wants to be free," you'd sue for the wages and win. But if the code you wrote is included in a game, and the game appears on Pirate Bay, downloaders will happily pirate it and never even dream of spending a time, and they'll justify it until they're red in the face.

The most common one they use is that it's "free advertising"--that pirating games leads them to purchase games. Correlation doesn't equal causation, however, and the fact they buy games as well as pirate them simply suggests that they like games so much that they acquire them by any means possible, and when they can't pirate, they buy. Either that, or they buy to resolve their feelings of guilt. When Louis CK offered his video for download, he made an interesting comment in an NPR interview:

"And a friend of mine who does torrent stuff a lot says that when torrent users do buy something, they act like they're doing the greatest thing ever. ... They're saying, 'I bought something today. I paid for it. And I didn't steal it. I'm the greatest person alive.' "

I've noticed this attitude as well. It's very, very annoying.

I'm probably risking a lot of downmods here--if there's anything Slashdot seems to dislike more than comments about Slashdot, it's comments that are anti-piracy. But I have karma to burn, and I felt like starting the conversation anyway.

Re:Protecting rights

[rtfa-troll]

When it's a case of a GPL violation, the violators who feel entitled to the free labor of strangers are childish and entitled.

The reason for the existence of copyright owners is to increase the pool of work available to the public (see; e.g. the US constitution). Copyright exists because it is believed that without it people would create fewer works and that would limit the benefit to the public. GPL authors are directly, though their license, putting out works which the public can use for free and with no usage restriction and copying and distribution restrictions limited only to a lack of restriction. You cannot make a direct comparison.

Re:Protecting rights

[darpified]

Part of the reason the console platform became so appealing to game developers is the reduced amount of piracy compared to the PC platform. In other words, they can actually make money from their work, money that is used to make more games

So EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc... Never made any money off of PC games so far? Not that I condone or give a shit either way as far as piracy is concerned, I do give a shit when half-cocked laws created by corporations and their pet politicians are enacted that are to the detriment of the nation. Sure online piracy is bad and could possibly hurt the profit margins of these companies, but this law is so far on the other side of sanity that it's obscene. The middle ground is where it needs to be, but that point was crossed long ago, back before Mickey Mouse (and the associated copyrights,trademarks, yada-yada) became effectively permanent.

Re:Protecting rights

[Anonymous Coward]

-the artists who aren't getting paid don't even enter into the discussion

You're right, they should be a part of the discussion, but not in the way you imply. Artists get paid next to nothing by those greedy bastards and piracy does next to nothing to hurt their non-existent paycheck.

The real question here is not how to stop piracy, but how to make the payed-for product more desirable. The game has changed and so must the strategies involved.

Re:Protecting rights

[Trails]

The problem with the RIAA and MPAA is that their terms aren't reasonable. These two organizations and their member orgs have been dragged kicking and screaming into the new millennium. Their failure to offer reasonably priced compelling legitimate options is what makes the piracy faction so large and so gleeful.

You know what kills piracy? Netflix and Spotify, not SOPA.

Re:Protecting rights

[TheRaven64]

People deserve to get paid for their work

No they don't. At least, not automatically. I've written a big chunk of open source software. Some of it I got paid for, because people found it valuable and paid me to write it. Some of it I did with no expectation of payment, and was not paid for. The work I was not paid for was often harder than the work that I did get paid for, but I don't intrinsically deserve to be paid for it just because it was work. If I dig a hole and then fill it in again, I don't deserve to be compensated, even though I've just done a big chunk of work, but if someone wants to burry something at the bottom of the hole then they would have an incentive to pay me to ensure that the hole is dug.

People who create things that other people consider valuable should be fairly compensated. That is not quite the same thing.

Re:Protecting rights

[Anonymous Coward]

What's astonishing to me is that you are equating the rights of original GPL authors to the rights of middlemen corporate organizations who not only didn't create the material that is most being pirated, but who work their tails off to be sure that they get the profits rather than the original authors.

Let's be very clear about one thing with regards to all legislation in the past 15 years regarding copyrights stuff: It's all about protecting corporate profits and not at all about protecting individuals, so don't go talking about them as if they're the same thing.

Re:Protecting rights

[symbolset]

Bonch is, like me, a slashdot subscriber. You can tell this by the little * next to our UIDs. In return for paying (ridiculously cheap) membership fees to slashdot we get a few bonus features. Among these are the ability to read back any poster's entire comment history, to turn off advertisements, and to see articles a few minutes before they're posted without scanning the Firehose for them.

For me to agree with something Bonch has to say is exceedingly rare. But in this specific case he's got plenty of time to prepare any comment he likes and get it posted first, as do I. I'm guilty of calling copypasta now and then too on AC and new accounts, though I'm trying to get away from that as it doesn't add to the discussion more than it takes away. But the * makes calling copypasta totally inappropriate.

I've not been a fan of stealing content, but I'm coming around to that point of view. Copyright is a social contract where creators get something (a monopoly) in return for something (the improvement of the public domain when the monopoly expires). They're using the corruption of law to get their something without paying the something by preventing the expiration of the monopoly. Complying with this encourages corruption of law. So in the interest of good citizenship until they restore the balance of getting something in return for something, violating copyright isn't a sin: it's your civic duty.

The President is a Constitutional scholar, and it doesn't surprise me that he would come out against these bills that violate our freedoms of speech and due process. I wish I wasn't so cynical that I thought the popular uprising had more to do with it than his skills and experience, his good citizenship.

Re:Protecting rights

[Sir_Sri]

Never made any money is sort of the wrong way to look at it. Sure, 10 years ago the market.. oh wait who gives a shit about 10 years ago? What matters isn't what happened 5 years ago, it's what is happening this year. That's a much murkier question. There's a shift back into PC games as the technology to make sure you get paid for the game has changed. Even a pirated copy you can still sell DLC packs these days.

Sure, 3 or 4 years ago a few big studios surmised that there wasn't enough money in PC versions, and so didn't make any (think fable 2). But for a lot of reasons that market has shifted - and what matters is what the market will look like in 2012, which is that shift continuing. Steam, which is a giant DRM platform, makes the PC appealing, if you're a small indie outfit there's no 30k developer kit (see the Wii....), and no competition from first party or big studios (seriously, who wants to compete with Uncharted 3, or Skyrim?), and now with the way Steam works your game can get front page attention in between major releases at least. That's actually the new 'big thing' in our business is that piracy matters a lot less than when all these really good games are coming out, and trying to find when to squeeze yourself into their release cycles. We're competing on time, not money. Money is not completely solved, but mostly. We've cut retailers out of the process, and sure, digital takes 30%, but before it was more like 60, so you make more money per copy, your game has a longer tail, you're locking them to steam. Sure, steam *can* be cracked, but most people don't want to risk their steam account for one game they could buy for 5 dollars. They'll take that risk for portal2 for 60 bucks, but not for a game you're selling for 5 or 10.

Because piracy wasn't ever really dealt with, the market changed. We now have 'free' games, where you basically buy anything worth having in the game online. We have online games, or DLC or a little bit of both, which means now the thing that can be pirated is not the real value, the real value is in 12 dollars in DLC you're going to sell someone, or the 15 dollars a month and that's all going into your coffers, not to Gamestop or Walmart. It's meant there's a lot less room for innovation in the market. Basically the innovation happens at the top (kinect), you get crazy lucky with a product like minecraft or magicka, or you live on government handouts and hope that works for you. Most small developers are fleeing consoles and PC, because the risk is too high, for all of the help steam provides. You make 20 facebook/android/ios games in the time it takes to make one decent game, and odds are, collecting a 50% government subsidy that you can crawl along breaking even, and you hope for your farmville.

As a practical matter legislation isn't going to stop piracy. It's too easy. The market had to change. But the market is now split between people who make experiences like Skyrim, Mass effect etc... and basically gambling, and hoping enough suckers will spend 300 bucks on your game to keep you afloat (Star Trek Online). I'm not sure that's made it better for consumers. Steam made things better (as did their competitors, the Xbox market, PSN etc.) but the only way to survive making traditional games is if you can be big enough to absorb the losses due to piracy. That's not really a great model, and my nagging (but uninformed) suspicion is that the Xbox 3 and PS4 will be looking a lot more like a software as a service model, where everything important is done over the internet, and any disks you do get will only serve to limit the amount of downloading you need to do, but for it to work, you'll need to constantly authenticate with them.

It isn't that complicated

[Brain-Fu]

If the economy depends on the imposition of artificial scarcity on an abundant good, then the terms have to be reasonable.

20 year copyright term limits are very reasonable. The current term limits + options to extend are absolutely unreasonable, and they drive people to rebellion.

Also, while it is true that a punishment should be a deterrent to crime, the punishment must also be within the order-of-magnitude of actual damages in order to be just. The current punishments are outright ridiculous, and they also drive people to rebellion.

Make fair laws and enforce them fairly, and watch the people happily fall in line.

Re:It isn't that complicated

[Elbows]

20 year copyright term limits are very reasonable. The current term limits + options to extend are absolutely unreasonable, and they drive people to rebellion.

I mostly agree with you, and I definitely favor shorter copyright terms. But I doubt that 20+ year-old works make up a significant chunk of online piracy. People are largely downloading recent movies, games, and music, and limiting copyright to 20 years probably won't put much of a dent in it.

Re:It isn't that complicated

[Dunbal]

Without copyright, the only way to get paid in the digital age is through draconian DRM and black box playback devices.

No, that doesn't stop piracy either. Perhaps the only way to get paid is by actually doing something worth getting paid for, like giving me a physical copy of a book, or a concert I can go to, etc. But throwing me in jail for downloading the movie that I missed last night when it was on my cable channel - well go to hell, you don't deserve to get paid, YOU are the one who deserves to get locked up.

Re:It isn't that complicated

[gweihir]

I do not think I do: Here, you cannot access product quality without using it. And for using it you already have to pay in full. So not I have it backwards, but the relationship actually is backwards. The entertainment industry however invests quite a lot of money to obscure that fact.

As to someone still losing something, that is not true, things are more complicated. Although the industry would have you believe this in order to enforce the analogy with physical goods. Which is wrong. The reality is murky. Some people have observed actually gaining from compensationless copying, and at least for more obscure musicians it has been demonstrated it is a boon, as it gets people to their concerts and donate without huge advertisement budgets being necessary. No, no, it is not clear what the economics are and they are provable not that simple.

Also remember that music, writing, poetry, sciences, etc. developed before copyright. The financing models there were donation, patronage and being wealthy. For example, in classical British theater, the troupe was financed by donations after the performance. So do not give me than nonsense.

Looking grim.

[forkfail]

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here?

I really don't understand why further regulation is needed here to protect the rights of the content owners. Are there not copyright laws in effect? Don't they already have the ability to take down sites (with a certain amount of due process), sue for damages, etc?

I often see the use and positive impact of regulation (not dumping raw sewage in the river, etc) - but I still don't follow what exactly the need really is to provide more control to the corporations over the net (I absolutely understand their desire for it, but not any valid reason why there should be any further corporate control allowed).

The timbre of this administration remains the same. It gave away health care by inches to the corporations until they were able to declare "we win!" while trying to look like they were actually fighting. And now they're doing the same with the 'net, as far as I can tell: putting on a dog and pony show, but preparing to hand the show over to those paying the lobbyists.

What is right:

[bky1701]

Abolish copyright. We gave it a 200 year trial, and it has not served its purpose of making artists self-sufficient. Instead, it has only further entrenched the patron model by giving the patrons legal teeth, handing our culture over to corporations and the insanely rich. Further, we're seeing more and more that free speech and copyright are completely incompatible. It's time we decide which we care more about: a fictitious emotion-backed economic system, or basic human rights.

Solutions

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

This.

A part of the solution is to be less draconian in punishment and more successful at catching people. Violating copyright is something that should basically be a traffic offense, and instead the law literally makes every American a felon.

A part of the solution is to establish reasonable protections. Copyright terms have been extended periodically since the first copyright act was passed in 1790 or so. It is insane--nobody, and I mean nobody, is making a decision about whether to invest based on potential profits fifty years from now. While perhaps extended protection is fair for works that have never turned a profit or where the profit is not significant compared to the labor involved, it certainly is not justified once fifteen years have passed and a work has earned a 1000% return. We need something more just than the current blanket number of years.

A part of the solution is international relations. If a foreign nation doesn't enforce a reasonable copyright law, we dredge up some sanctions or incentives if they are cost-justified. This makes it so that it will be in the other nation's interest to enforce copyright law. If we can't pay them enough from profits to make it a net gain for them to enforce copyright law, then economically speaking it shouldn't be enforced. (Obviously unless transaction costs of the incentive structure are too high, but that's a relatively narrow range of profits).

What's Right? Repeal the DMCA and ACTA

[Bob9113]

'So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right.'

Easy -- repeal the DMCA and ACTA, don't pass SOPA, PIPA, or OPEN, roll copyright back to, say, 50 years, and give that a ten year test run while we do some serious data gathering and analysis.

Most of our copyright law over the past 15 years has been "The sky is falling" stuff. Wild overstepping of the balance between copyright holders and the interests of the public. We are spending an enormous amount of money doing a lousy job of protecting something that might not need protecting, and might not work any longer. We have very little data on the cost/benefit of all this enforcement, no research on alternatives, what data we do have shows extremely poor correlation between enforcement and increased revenue, does not consider the cost of new business models foregone, and the data that we have that claims to show the cost of infringement is based on the wildly inaccurate theory that every infringement is a foregone sale.

The right answer, if you are a copyright supporter like me, is to ease back to something that the public will be less likely to revolt against while we do some serious objective research on the problem. The right answer is to find out how we can fund the progress of science and the useful arts under this new reality. Copying does not cost any money any more. That is a fundamental change that we need to adapt to. Copyright was invented based on a premise that is no longer true. Failing to consider the new reality and research how to adapt to it is as stupid as Krushchev insisting on Communism. Nice theory, except it does not work.

We need to think about that and come up with a solution, not just fire wildly into the dark. None of the legislation over the past 15 years has made a hint of a dent in infringement. Same thing we've been saying ever since the DMCA was just a twinkle in the RIAA's eye. These laws cannot work, mathematically speaking, because reality has changed. We need to stop the wishful madness and think of how to turn free copying into a win. Seeing as how it is a massive boon to society to be able to reproduce things for free, that shouldn't be too hard. We are making this harder than it needs to be.