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RIAA Chief Whines That SOPA Opponents Were "Unfair"
First time submitter shoutingloudly writes "In a NY Times op-ed today, RIAA chief Cary H. Sherman accuses the opponents of SOPA of having engaged in shady rhetorical tactics. He (wrongly) accuses opponents such as Wikipedia and Google of having disseminated misinformation about the bills. He lashes out at the use of the term 'censorship,' which he calls a 'loaded and inflammatory term.' Most Slashdot readers will get the many unintentional jokes in this inaccurate, hypocritical screed by one of the leaders of the misinformation-and-inflammatory-rhetoric-wielding content industry lobby."
A gem: "As it happens, the television networks that actively supported SOPA and PIPA didn’t take advantage of their broadcast credibility to press their case. That’s partly because 'old media' draws a line between 'news' and 'editorial.' Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don’t recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact."
I didn't like the legislation either, but isn't this headline and summary kind of biased? I don't know...I just feel uncomfortable having the submission frame it specifically to make me react a certain way. I mean, it flat-out states how "most /. readers" will respond. I'd rather just read what Cary Sherman has to say and come to my own conclusions, which will likely align with others here, but at least I arrived there on my own.
Maybe it's just me. Carry on.
Yes, calling a bill that requires ISPs and search engines to block access to certain websites a "censorship" bill is obviously bad -- it gets people angry! We should just sugar coat it and hope that nobody notices that the bill pushes for censorship.
Palm trees and 8
Seriously, RIAA has some balls....
Piracy - originally a violent theft (usually at sea). Equivalent of a mugging. But they've changed it to simply mean unauthorized use.
Theft - the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. Wait, have the downloaders deprived ANYONE of any tangible property? Nope...once again, RIAA has changed meaning to unauthorized use.
So if "unauthorized use" can mean theft and piracy. Then SOPA can mean censorship.
SOPA sucks, but the opponents *were* unfair. Nerds love to break free from their boring lives and pretend that they're freedom fighters, and companies like Google played along because it made the nerds happy--never mind that Google didn't shut down their services like a lot of places did, so they cynically got their cake and ate it too. Same with Slashdot. Slashdot is an advocacy site that gets its page views by stirring up the emotions of a particular demographic, and "first time submitter shoutingloudly" pushed all the right inflammatory buttons up there.
I'm all for changing the legislation, but can we stop with this goofy bogeyman stuff against the RIAA? There are valid reasons to fight against piracy. It ruins the argument to be so silly and inflammatory.
"As it happens, the television networks that actively supported SOPA and PIPA didn’t take advantage of their broadcast credibility to press their case. That’s partly because 'old media' draws a line between 'news' and 'editorial.' Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don’t recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact."
And when does Cary Sherman recognize the ethical boundary of paying off the people who vote on this bill -- a bill which clearly serves his interests?
My work here is dung.
I actually sometimes wonder about the individual people involved in big media.
I mean we like to personify the RIAA and friends.. talking about it as some kind of big bad pure evil entity, but it's actually a huge collection of people all doing their individual (evil) parts. I wonder if these guys actually take these attitudes home with them, or if they just play the part at work/in public.
Please remember that a good paper publishes relevant opinions, not just ones they agree with. I've seen abortion opponents, global warming deniers, and all kinds of whackos published in their letters section, and you can be damn sure the paper doesn't agree with them. I'm not sure they ever publish full-length editorials they truly disagree with, but you still can't take the presence of this piece as the Times endorsement of Sherman's viewpoint.
So please calm down and stop saying things like "I won't click the link. I don't want to in any way encourage the Times to print this stuff". Censorship isn't just suppressing the very existence of opposing views in the media, you know, you can also censor yourself by refusing to even acknowledge and examine the viewpoints of people who disagree with you. You even ultimately censor your friends and peers to some degree when your behavior leads them to stop thinking and automatically ignore data from certain sources or types of people.
So click the damn link. Know what was actually said rather than just knowing the summary opinions and selective quotations from someone who did read it and already thinks like you. Understand that encouraging full-length discourse over sound bites is always a good thing, even if it it means encouraging lobbyists and liars sometimes.
That’s partly because 'old media' draws a line between 'news' and 'editorial.'
They say they do, but did they ever?
they play fast and loose about this too much. I think every subculture group thats ever been covered in the news can attest to this. They have a great way of influencing court decisions by assuming guilt or lack there of on the onset, and using "news" articles to cater to their opinions.
just because they keep the TONE quasi npov(less and less these days), doesn't mean the content is in any one bit NPOV. When they mean "fair and impartial" they just mean they "dead pan" it to have the stylistic elements of being "fair and impartial". Anyone who's ever watched cable news know how skewed it is, and how news broadcasters use heavy bias in their reporting.
FOX News
MSNBC
CNN
Even before this, they had a long history of skewing the news in any dirrection they like. They NEVER lived up to the standards they pretended to. Like the rest of their arguments, its a bold face lie. This is about command and control, and their made up authority.
I do not mean in the 'bubble boy' sense. Specifically, I do not think that Sherman interacts with anyone not in a position where piracy has caused real damage to their income, or who does not have a personal interest in maintaining the current copyright laws. There is no one who Sherman is talking to who is going to say anything negative about copyright.
Talking to Sherman about the privacy situation is like trying to talk to your grandmother about the internet. You may work with the internet every day and you may be aware of what Meme's are, you have an opinion on Facebooks privacy policies, and you know enough not to click on links to a certain .cx domain. If you work in that world every day, and all of your friends work in that world every day, it gets harder to relate to people who chose to live a life without an internet connection.
I have no doubt that Sherman was truly surprised at the amount of visible and high profile backlash because in Shermans world, he cannot understand why a 'normal' every day person would have a problem with SOPA and PIPA. So clearly someone else must have manipulated the agenda to turn the masses against his agenda. So I bet that Sherman is certain that once he carefully explains his position that everyone will understand why SOPA / PIPA is a good thing.
END COMMUNICATION
"Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American PROPERTY from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs."
From the Constitution Article 1 Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It's not theft of property. It is a violation of your Congressionally granted limited monopoly.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
We have record profits but want more money. This is a crucial issue that Congress needs to tackle, because record profits aren't enough. To that end, we think that we should have the right to seize personal property without due process. And even though we're currently abusing the DCMA (filing mass take-downs for content they don't own or review), we feel we need more power and promise not to abuse it for censorship.
Why wouldn't people support that?
The RIAA holds artists back from making more money by fighting the adoption of digital music. As content becomes more convenient to digest, people will consume more of it. Stop fighting consumers and embrace them. That is the way to combat piracy. Just look at iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming, HBO Go, Spotify, etc. etc.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Yeah, wouldn't want to step out of the echo chamber.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Or "steal". You wouldn't steal a car....
The music and movie industries have blatantly twisted word to their advantage for far too long. The only reason they are "surprised" and "shocked" now is that after decades of the general public just rolling over, the industries finally woke the sleeping giant, which they expected to remain asleep despite their incessant poking.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
What's the matter? Afraid of contrary opinons? /. is Fox News for nerds.
Cary Sherman still thinks this is a battle between "Google and Wikipedia" vs "Media Companies". And that the only reason his companies lost is because the other companies had better PR.
He still doesn't get that what happened was the people who consume the content - content linked to by GOOG, content distributed by Wikipedia, and content licensed by RIAA and MPAA - who finally got off their duffs and exercised their rights as citizens to demand that their elected representatives actually represent them.
No, I think he really does get it -- but it's easier to build a case against Google and Wikipedia as the next big evils to legislate against. Google, Wikipedia, and the open Internet in general are anathema to the old top-down television-and-radio style of content provision. I don't think he's trying to sway public opinion, he's making a calculated misrepresentation to emphasize the perceived danger of these two with Congress and thereby pave the way for the next round of paid-for dubious laws that help narrow the competition. The more the MAFIAA can turn the Internet into just another TV channel, the more they can extend their ride on the gravy train.
He really does get it. And that makes him more dangerous.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
These statements are not backed up. Given the industry's history of exaggerating their claims, I put the onus on them to prove that these numbers are in any way correct.
Yet the author's use of "theft" and "piracy" are totally neutral, without any intent to evoke particular emotions in the readership?
This is being purposefully obtuse. The claims of 'censorship' were about collatoral damage: that the laws would have a chilling effect and would be open to abuse. No one was directly equating "shutting down online counterfitting sites" with censorship. (Although, of course, the difference between shutting down a physical store and an online presence is indeed that the Internet is all about communication/data-transfer, and curtailing communication is essentially censorship.)
This is an interesting claim. But if the author is sure that the "No Duty to Monitor" section protects conveyors of content, then why not spell that argument out in detail? Why not quote from the bill, and explain how this protection works? That is the very crux of the disagreement, it would seem, yet the author just mentions it in passing.
This is perhaps the only valid point in the entire piece. It is true that Wikipedia and Google (in very different ways) strive for some measure of neutral transmission of information. I can see how one could argue that using their position as trusted sources of information to spread their own viewpoint is an abuse. However:
1. This is begging the question, by assuming that what Wikipedia and Google were reporting was incorrect. But that is precisely what the debate is about: is it true that SOPA/PIPA would lead to collatoral censorship? If the claim is true (and as far as I can tell, it is), then Wikipedia spreading that information was just another manifestation of them spreading truthful statements.
2. These entities do have a right to let their opinion be known.
3. The opinion piece provides no reason why these companies would be misinforming the populace. What is it they hope to get out of it? Their stated reason is simple: that they wanted to stop the legislation because they couldn't continue operating under the legislation. The author provides no evidence, not even spurious reasoning in fact, for any other motivation. So, one could accuse them of being mistaken, but to accuse them of pushing an ideology is wrongheaded.
This is laughable. Mainstream media has a well-documented history of injecting bias into their reporting (everything from their selection of what to cover, to how events are described, to thinly-veiled ed
I don't see the summary like that at all. We all know the MAFIAA is reactionary, brutal, and flat wrong. They thoroughly deserve that reputation. They earned it by suing thousands of ordinary people, in an attempt to terrorize us all into giving up the Internet. And by trying to impose DRM on the public. The Sony BMG Root Kit fiasco alone is enough to condemn them, but they've tried much more than that. And they earned their reputation still more by bribing and suborning our legislators into supporting their insane vision, and attempting to hide what they do. Their motives in trying to keep ACTA secret are painfully obvious. They've shown no regard whatever for the damage they've done to the public and artists, while screaming very loudly and selfishly about the supposed damage done to them. At the very least, holding back public libraries from going digital costs us all huge amounts of money in maintaining, housing and tracking "dead tree" copies. Yet the damage they've done is as nothing to the damage they would do if they could.
No, it isn't bias to call it like it is. I don't feel there's much left to debate except the details of what will replace copyright, and so what'd I'd like to do is move on to that, not keep rehashing this controversy that's become almost as fake as the controversy between Creationism and Evolution. They of course refuse to admit it and want to keep it alive, to "teach the controversy", and they have some success because there are a lot of uninformed people who haven't heard or thought much about the issue. Moving on, how can we once and for all end this threat to our freedoms? Shut down this attitude so hard that anyone who ever again dares to raise it will find themselves sidelined in the same way that flat-earthers and other kooks are? A "Freedom of Knowledge" constitutional amendment perhaps?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
the NY times is a very reputable paper. They've allowed an OP-ED from the head of the industry under assault to defend his position in an essay, which is more than reasonable.
Even if it is a 1. blatantly false 2. nothing more than propaganda.
There's an echo chamber more isolated than the NYT? I'd think you'd need total sensory deprivation for that. It's kind funny to see this rant in the pages of a paper whose political bias while reporting knows no bounds. But the NYT has every right to be totally in the bag for their favorite political causes, and Google has ever right to do the same - that's exactly freedom of the press.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So, correct me if I'm understanding this correctly, the RIAA and MPAA are upset because they:
And they're upset because some organizations put a spotlight on their activities and now they are crying because they didn't get their way? I really don't want to live in a world where these guys have their way.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
So I can steal GPL code then? Technology lets me do it, after all.
Yes, you can.
Well, technically, no, you can't--you can violate the copyright license under which GPL code is distributed, but you can't actually steal it, unless you're physically taking away the author's hard drives, etc.
But seriously, I think the reason most folks on /. have a problem with GPL violations is because of the hypocrisy involved. Companies viciously enforce their copyrights, but then violate copyright law when it's convenient for them to do so.
Hatta's comment might be flamebait, but it's also pretty much true. Virtually costless, anonymous duplication fundamentally alters the economic underpinnings of modern intellectual property law, and there's really no going back. It doesn't matter how many op-eds Cary Sherman or the Author's Guild publish about how it's unethical to violate copyright... when you confront humanity with the ability to duplicate something of value at essentially no cost, there's only one reasonable result to expect, and it isn't self-control. This doesn't justify the behavior, but reality doesn't need a justification.
IP law needs a total and fundamental reworking to remain relevant in the next century. Whether or not this happens, culture will survive... how creative works are created and disseminated may change significantly, but culture existed long before IP was even a concept.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You've never actually read the NYT, have you? I know of precious few sources which have more diversity of opinion. Among other things, they run a regular (almost daily) feature called "Room for Debate", in which people with widely varying opinions respond to a central question. Here's the one on SOPA/PIPA. I linked to an opinion you'd probably agree with, but you'll find several others.
You can disagree with them all you want. But when you start complaining that they post opinions you don't like while simultaneously calling them an echo chamber, you're just being a hypocrite.
Completeness is far more useful than "lack of bias".
Perhaps you are unique, but in practice, completeness increases the acceptance of incorrect information. When you give "fair and balanced" exposure to the Flat Earth Society, then people begin to think that there may be something to that Flat Earth idea. Further, that the "other" networks don't give equal time to a provably false idea is proof that Flat Earth is true and it's a conspiracy to keep the truth from us.
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