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Hollywood's Secret War With Google
cpt kangarooski writes: Information has come to light (thanks to the recent Sony hack) that the MPAA and six major studios are pondering the legal actions available to them to compel an entity referred to as 'Goliath,' most likely Google, into taking aggressive anti-piracy action on behalf of the entertainment industry. The MPAA and member studios Universal, Sony, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., and Disney have had lengthy email discussions concerning how to block pirate sites at the ISP level, and how to take action at the state level to work around the failure of SOPA in 2012. Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
You want capitalism - you get capitalism. Power always finds a vacuum.
Corporate greed vs individual entitlement. Both extremes are wrong and harmful, and proponents will always use the slippery slope fallacy to prevent any kind of middle-ground from being established.
This battle will never end.
Nor did Movie title, or Sony BMG artist. Why is nobody going to see our movies or buy our artists' music?
Shocking to find the liberal hollywood elite are quite illiberal after all.
Why isn't this front page news everywhere?
General Info and Links:
Full text of the bill can be found here.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681
White House petition:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/protect-our-privacy-and-please-veto-hr-4681-aka-intelligence-authorization-act-fiscal-year-2015/lln5hN5c
Justin Amash's Facebook Post:
https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/812569822115759
Locate your reps:
http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
This is especially important. Find your congressman and let him know you hate this
How your reps voted:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll271.xml
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Altavista
and I thought net neutrality was about throttling.... I didn't realize how much money was opposing net neutrality and the actual reasons.
Comcast (Universal) doesn't need SOPA if the can win the net neutrality battle.
So read it on TD https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leaked-emails-reveal-mpaa-plans-to-pay-elected-officials-to-attack-google.shtml [techdirt.com]
This is not murder.
It is suicide.
Comcast (ISP) owns Universal, who blames Google for linking to copyrighted content which is distributed by Comcast?
I just want to take a moment, at this sympathetic time of year, to say that I really feel for the poor souls who are (or should I say were) responsible for security at Sony. We've all got issues, but those folks must be in a dark place now. For what it's worth I blame the execs who skimped on the IT security budget.
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
It still remains true.
Information costs very little to distribute and the value to humanity by making all information available to everyone is tremendous.
One would be a fool not to try to limit that distribution so that one could capitalize on it.
One would be an even greater fool if one allowed someone else to prevent information to spread.
Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
"Are working with?" I've seen people get the infringement e-mails from Comcast. It's a fait accompli, at least in this area.
something effects them....huh? what, like special effects?
i'm confused. your use of effects affects me negatively.
And any other DRM'd crap.
Do you effect the affected effects, or are you affecting the affected effects, it wasn't quite clear from your affect.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
There's no secret here. Perhaps some old memos used codewords, though.
Pretty sure it is Cox, which has refused to go along with draconian measures that are not required by law.
We have Cox service here in San Diego (at least parts). It's one reason I will not live north of Interstate 8, which is Comcast territory. The difference is night and day.
Comcast pulls all this anti-consumer BS and under-delivers on services.
Cox doesn't put up with it and goes to bat for their customers on privacy. They also over-deliver on services. (I have always got higher than advertised Internet speeds. I currently get 120mbit/sec down/20mbps up on a 100/10 plan, and they just doubled the bandwidth from 50/5 to 100/10.)
Both Comcast and Cox are expensive. You can't have everything.
Every time I hear the Movie industry whine, I can't help think but of them as rich and large fattened swine.
They sit there as gilded celebrities basking in their fame, but the common man his wealth is not the same.
The director, the actor, the writer, the stars, without their fans would never ever have gone so far.
For it is the peoples support that gave them all they have.
Instead they hate the "parasites" who don't worship and pretend they are their lordships.
All they wish as fattened pigs is that you give them more for their wigs.
Well I say no my money's mine, I will not feed the greedy swine.
If you want more look elsewhere, I have nothing left give.
If payment from the ads is not good enough, turn the cameras off. Times have changed. So much for the "art",
....but then I heard they were doing very little to help compromised employees
Then I didn't really care one way or another ( I still feel bad for the employees) ...but then they are trying to screw with average people who happen to want to look at information that is publically available.
Now I think it might be time to download some sony files from the internet.
It is like anti-karma. Maybe next time something bad happens to me I will go punch a baby.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leaked-emails-reveal-mpaa-plans-to-pay-elected-officials-to-attack-google.shtml
Its not legal actions, its illegal actions, essentially bribing elected officials to harrass and persecute Google into doing what they want, even though what they want is actually impossible....unless they simply want Google shut down. Which might be what they want. Of course, someone else will take their place, perhaps in another country this time, one that hates Western interests even.
there might be something to debate here...
I'm sure there was a lot of laughter over the hack in the offices of Sony Pictures' competitors over the last few days. Now that industry-wide strategy stuff from the leak like this is starting to get attention I wonder if they are still quite so amused...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
A greater concern, in my mind, is insisting private companies to take on the role of law enforcement. This has been a trend for decades.
...and Disney
Who's the largest Disney shareholder and who declared thermo nuclear war on Google?
Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
Doesn't this cause Comcast to forfeit 'Common Carrier' status under laws like the DMCA? My understanding was that ISPs basically said "we can't be held liable for copyright infringement because we can't monitor everything going across our wires for violations" and the government agreed that it all made sense. If Comcast now actually can monitor all the content rolling across its wires without any apparent undue burden, can't every copyright owner then sue Comcast for infringement if it isn't actively removing unlawfully distributed copyrighted works from its wires?
In other words, can't I copyright a 10 second video of myself slamming my head against a wall, then upload it to Bit Torrent with a clearly written copyright notice stating that one must send me a check for $50 Billion to view the clip, then sue Comcast into oblivion when someone on their network actually downloads it?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
> Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
Yet another reason not to do business with Comcast. As if we needed one.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Sorry but I have no respect for some who refuses to pay ten bucks to own a movie or two bucks to rent. You are losers.
The ironic part is that many slashdot users say they are conservative. Well, if you want to steal intellectual property because you're not as rich as a talented actor, that's called communism.
While they keep fighting their own customers, Indie artists and movie makers are slowly eating their market share. Seriously, even these days I can find enough quality shows and even movies to watch on YouTube. Give it another XY years and Hollywood would be squeezed into some small niche market only few people will care about and I will not be one of them.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
There's no comparison between college students and wage slaves downloading from TPB and conglomerates like Disney or Sony, who between them have the better part of $200 billion in market capitalization.
They will never stop DRM piracy or drugs as long as the profit margins are so high. There will always be people who are just as greedy as the media companies.
I live in a "no place special" medium small town in the Philippines. I know a "50 something" retired guy whose hobby is archiving pirated music. He claims to have "more than 250,000 albums" on HDD's. Sounds impossible but maybe he means "songs". Anyway.... he's recently discovered "M-Disk" bluRay media which the US Navy claims is good for at least 1000 years.... so he's archiving his HDD's to M-disk. He shares with anyone who asks. World wide there are probably thousands, possible tens of thousands of people doing the same thing. There will always be a way to spread it around on the net.
Movies too. The local "DVD pirate shops" sell DVD quality copies of recent movies for U$0.40 to U$0.80. They can "special order" almost anything and have it in a few days. They say the local wholesaler has "any movie ever sold on DVD". The pirated ones seem to be better quality too. Five years ago I bought a complete set of the first six Harry Potter movies in fancy box, etc. legally in the US for about $80. After less than eighteen months here they had all failed from some kind of surface delam. I was pissed enough that I replaced them with pirated versions for about $5 total. The pirated ones are still going strong... my kids play them through about once a month. I know that the tropic climate here is tough on DVD's but geez....
Forty years ago I was a partner in a record store (vinyl) so I know a little about how it works and how much profit is built into each distribution layer. The percentage that most artists get is so small that they could cut the middlemen out of the system, cut prices by 90% and still (on average) pocket as much as they do now. At that price it wouldn't be worth the trouble to pirate. Let the "Labels", the "reps", the distributers, the wholesalers and the brick and morter retailers starve, they're not serving anyone any more. That business model is like a cancer patient kept alive on the machines but in this case the machines are the many millions of dollars the DRM guys inject into congress.
How about this.... a law that says "artists may not sell their rights, only license them, and they cannot license just one vendor" there must at least be two. Maybe then we'd have "efficient markets" and piracy will quite naturally go the way of the bootleggers.
so blow me, comcast.
the more you try to fuck us over, the more you'll find 'streams of strange octets' hitting your switches and routers.
in fact, even if you don't fuck us over, this is going to happen.
the net IS going encrypted. count on it.
so, enjoy your fucking DPI while it lasts. your spying gravy train won't keep running forever.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
google has the power to all but eradicate illegal downloading. They already do a similar thing with blocking chlid porn, which is nearly impossible to find just by searching on google.
Dont worry, Eric Holder (and slimy filth like him) will go crying to congress, telling them all about how but-hurt strong elliptical curve crypto makes them because it stops them being able to indiscriminately decode all that data going over the inter-tubes. (Gotta use language the congress critters understand you know.) "Normal citizens should have nothing to hide, and thus shouldn't have any reason to use such dangerous, 'munitions grade' cryptography!" they will whine. "Such strong crypto should only be used by government agencies, and we should have a strong hand in approving publicly used cryptographic libraries and functions!" they will sob at the congressional hearing. "Imagine how terrible it would be if Osama Bin-Laden had been able to fully encrypt all of his traffic end-to-end, and was able to use redundant, distributed proxies to hide his location!", and other such "oooh! Spooky! Baaaaad things will happen if we cant keep our tentacles in everyone's stuff!" type arguments.
Just look at how butt-hurt they are already about google and apple implementing strong full-device crypto on android and ios devices. You can bet they would be moaning about how sandy their manginas feel if full end-to-end strong encryption with strong, true-random keys were to be used at every point on the internet.
"Why, we would have to actually use real agents that arent just jackbooted thugs in uniform, and use actual detective and police work to have government intelligence instead of just dumping hundreds of terabytes of collected feeds into a giant sorting and collating algorithm! Think about how much that would reduce our response times should a major terrorist action be started! Why, we might not even know about it until it happened! WHooooo! Scary! Better give us what we want so you can feel safe!"
And, at that point, you would end up with government mandated weaknesses in your VPN security, in your proxies, and even in your very network switches themselves. Perhaps even wholly secondary channels tracking routing to collect data exchange meta-data to help identify "suspicious" use patterns, etc.
Eric Holder and his slimewad cock-goblin friends would be all over that shit like stink on shit, and the corrupt and horribly incompetent congress critters would be wiggling their asses every which way to give it to them. Bet on it.
... the studios only have power because you give it to them.
You watch their movies, either at the cinema, or on DVD, or via Netflix. You buy their tie-in games and associated merchandise. No, not those other people, YOU.
You wail about Hollywood throwing their weight around, when you're the one helping fatten the beast.
You want to make an impact? Don't waste your time posting on /. or scribbling emails to politicians whose staff will send you a form reply before hitting the delete button. That won't do a single damn thing to Hollywood.
Here's what you can do. It will be difficult. It will be hard, oh so very fucking hard, because like a monkey in a shock machine you've been trained all your life to never ever EVER do what I'm about to tell you to do.
Stop. Watching.
Don't watch their movies. Or their TV shows. Not in the cinema, not on the big screen on the wall via DVD or streaming or cable or the antenna. Don't pirate it. Don't acquire it for watching later. Give them neither your time nor your money. Most of all, do not give them your attention. Don't buy the related magazines, or visit the related web sites.
Stop.
Their lifeblood comes from your eyeballs. Just turn away and don't look. They have no other power over you.
But so few of you will turn away. That's why I titled this "one last time". Because I've been saying this too long, and no one can hear me over the rising soundtrack that Hollywood pumps into your brains, and you love it. So I won't bother you anymore.
Best of luck, and may your masters choose to show you nice things as they drain you dry.
Just about any movie or song you want can be found for free on YouTube. It puts MegaUpload to shame.
This kind of reminds me of the fight in King Kong between Kong and the T-Rex. Kong being Google, and T-Rex being Comcrap and all the others. Guess who ended up on the cutting room floor? Spain was just thrown into the cutting heap because they don't understand how the internet works. Now? They are complaining because "it's unfair"! Go suck on a stick dickheads!
Does this count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_water
Ever considered that the $80 set of the six Harry Potter movies could have been pirated to begin with? No idea, but a slight possibility.
I know Disney has a replacement program (although not necessarily cheap compared to pirating it) at http://www.disneystudioshelp.com/detail_TOPSUPP_DiscReplace__SUPPORT.html
I don't know if Warner Bros. has a replacement program. But if these businesses want to be protected by law, maybe we should legislate a requirement that they replace damaged discs at cost for printing and mailing them.
I think I spent about $60 getting the Harry Potter HD bundle with Comcast. I think it allows me to download it too, to devices, if I can figure that out.
As for Comcast and other cable companies, more people should call up their loyalty dept. and ask for deals. Not that I got it on the Harry Potter bundle, but it was a sale price I think at the time.
As for copyright, I think we need to make it two-tiers. Maybe after 10 years for certain types of media, we should make it legal to pirate it for personal use. That is, not selling it, but having it. I don't know if it'd hurt DVD sales or not. After all, if someone enjoys something, won't they go out and buy the disc? (Pirates selling discs would still be illegal.)
If the tiny industries of Hollywood and the four record companies sue for trillions, then start taxing that value. An IP tax. Pay up or lower the damage claims. Quid pro quo.
24: torture works because reasons and Cheney said so. Producers were neocons.
I'm trying to have a conversation with the Arrow writers about their support of torture as a valid tool to extract truth. No response so far.
Whatever happened in between the Hollywood studios and Google don't worry as much as the following:
Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen
My question being this --- are the 'traffic inspection' legal?
Right next to this story is Sourceforge top downloads.
3rd is Azureus bit torrent client.
Not that we would use bit torrent to pirate, only share Linux dvd images.
Arrrrr
Where's yr buccaneers
on yr buckin ead
Go well
If it weren't for easy access to TV through the internet, I'd watch none of their crap at all. I didn't for a long time until the cable company arbitrarily cranked my internet speed up from the slowest possible package I could buy from them. Apparently, it's no longer possible to get the really, really slow package for cheap bastards. Too bad.
So now downloading TV shows is possible.
TV is a drug filled with stupid, and now I'm somewhat addicted. That zombie show is distracting, and that guy who plays Agent Coulson is fun to watch. And there was some other crap out there... Oh yeah. Damn you, Stephen Moffat. You're a horrible writer.
But, sure let 'em shut it all down. I'll just get more social time and I'm sure my brain will be healthier for it.
How do they expect to control the masses through TV if they make people pay for it? I sure as hell won't.
Yes, then shortly after they introduce the backdoors, Russian and Chinese "hackers" will exploit them to steal everyone's credit card info, ssn, secret blueprints, celebrity nudes, and etc. But of course, no one in the media will make the connection between the backdoors and breakins.
"Security at Sony Pictures wasn’t breached, it was abandoned."
http://www.cringely.com/2014/12/10/executive-ego-sony-pictures-network-hack/
they have been at war with google for years now look how badly they got them to brake youtube to the point even legit stuff gets flagged by fake shadow company's just to harass channels. and even there sad attempts to block less then legit sites.
Why not wrap it up in the BS that is Net neutrality and then they can let the government be their lapdogs footing the bill to find "copyright infringement" like they always have?
It's the MPAA pushing for this. Google has recently decided that they will cease any and all cooperation with this entity, and instead work on more feasible and sane measures with the individual studios.
https://torrentfreak.com/furio...
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Assuming 3 MB per song (in MP3 format) and 10 songs per album, on average, 250,000 albums would take up only about 7.5 TB. That's not too far-fetched: the whole thing could even fit on one disk!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What's it like getting your ass kicked by apk + downmodding to hide it 20x http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... ?