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Trump Promises Copyright Crackdown As DoJ Takes Aim At Streaming Pirates (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the criminal-action dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, a panel discussion on the challenges associated with piracy from streaming media boxes took place on Capitol Hill. Hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), "Unboxing the Piracy Threat of Streaming Media Boxes" (video) went ahead with some big name speakers in attendance, not least Neil Fried, Senior Vice President, Federal Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs at the MPAA. ITIF and various industry groups tweeted many interesting comments throughout the event. Kevin Madigan from Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property told the panel that torrent-based content "is becoming obsolete" in an on-demand digital environment that's switching to streaming-based piracy. "There's a criminal enterprise going on here that's stealing content and making a profit," Fried told those in attendance. "The piracy activity out there is bad, it's hurting a lot of economic activity & creators aren't being compensated for their work," he added.

And then, of course, we come to President Trump. Not usually that vocal on matters of intellectual property and piracy, yesterday -- perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not -- he suddenly delivered one of his "something is coming" tweets. "The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft," Trump tweeted. "We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!" Given Trump's tendency to focus on problems overseas causing issues for companies back home, a comment by Kevin Madigan during the panel yesterday immediately comes to mind. "To combat piracy abroad, USTR needs to work with the creative industries to improve enforcement and target the source of pirated material," Madigan said.

11 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Target the source. by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't the source... the movie/TV industry?

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    1. Re:Target the source. by jwymanm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's what I was thinking. Not delivering content without high prices, ads that you can't fast forward even if you purchased the damn media and "license to use it." Constant forever extensions of copyright law..

    2. Re: Target the source. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Be honest. There is only one type of video Trump wants to protect. And he is in it.

  2. Streaming pirate by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

    When I drink a lot of rum, I become a streaming pirate.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. Excellent by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lets let the wars drag on for decades, but we need to take a stand now for copyright!

    1. Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lets let the wars drag on for decades, but we need to take a stand now for copyright!

      The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "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."

      The biggest area that needs attention is the "limited Times" clause. A human is going to live, on average, less than a hundred years. A limited time should be viewed with respect to that basis. 25 seems reasonable to me.

      Limit copyright of the original material to 25 years. Now if people want to change one pixel and apply again, I'm fine with that, but the original material to be protected should be stored in digital form with the Library of Congress or similar, such that anyone can use it for any reason after 25 years. It should be stored such that it can be copied without problems. For things released on DVD or CD it would mean unencrypted DVD or CD information.

      That is the area that needs fixed. If you don't have a digital copy on file for anything you can reasonably be expected to have a digital copy of, then you have no protection for it, or any derivative works. None of this crap where you DRM every thing to death, and then make sure it stays DRM until the stuff has no value because you don't want the old material in the public domain, lest it compete with new material.

      As far as Trump goes, I doubt he cares that much unless they are his shoddy products. He probably was just repeating what the last guy who talked with him told him.

    2. Re:Excellent by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually one of the very first things they did after the US had nominal control of Baghdad, before realizing it was hard to do nation building than they thought, was to try and get the locally appointed legislature to pass some laws. Amongst the laws that the US was intent on pushing through quickly, was an agreement on copyright, patents, and other IP issues. Seriously, that was what they thought was high priority; before getting the country's infrastructure working again we had to make sure that Mickey Mouse was wasn't pirated.

  4. No Money To Spare by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's be honest, regardless of the infinite greed of publishers and extreme desire on their part for extreme poseur status, there is no fucking money left in the economy to pay for their fucking delusions, it's called austerity morons, get fucking used to it. Right now their content and the psuedo celebrities are reaching all time lows in popularity mainly because of the collapse of the saturation advertising model, simply too many venues for advertising for too many products and dilution to insignificance for ads across all platforms. Austerity, people will not starve themselves to buy shitty content, the pseudo celebrities just look like any other egoistic blogger, in fact the pseudo celebrities are forced to act like typical youtubers ie https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (don't bother watching it through just get an idea of the content) because they and their message have become insignificant except for the most gullible believers.

    So they crap on about copying content, as people go hungry, as the middle class is crapped on (the people with the real power), as the poorest a living on the streets, the insanity of insatiable greed, never ever having enough, not matter how many that greed kills.

    Don't expect to sell high priced content to hungry people and expect those hungry people to hate egoistic poseur pseudo celebrities rubbing the poverty of the poor into the face of the poor, starve fuckers, I need my private jet.

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    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. Piracy helps sales by malditaenvidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet the film and other entertainment industries keep posting record years in terms of profits. Piracy has been proven not only not to hurt, but help sales of video games.
    If it can be played it can be copied, they're completely unequipped to deal with piracy, even with the net neutrality repeal in effect.

  6. Wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    You lost me at "Trump Promises..."

    He promised that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. And that that pipeline would be built with American steel. And that he'd be too busy working to have time to go golfing.

    Trump's promises might be worth a dollar, but only if he writes them on a dollar bill.

  7. Re:Copyright trolls are the problem by butzwonker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, the problem is not "IP" itself but the fact that current "IP" law is uniquely designed to aid large corporations and harm the actual artists. The power relation between artist and large publishers are totally asymmetric. The fix: Bind copyright to the artists for 25 years, after which all works enter the public domain, and make sure that contract law is adjusted so that the artists can cancel any contract about their creation, i.e., they can temporarily transfer their creations to companies for marketing and monetization, but it is not possible to buy the copyright to some artwork and the artist can always cancel the contract and set up a new contract with another publisher.

    That would be a pretty hefty change of contract law but it would solve the problem. The problem is that artists are forced to enter contracts that are not in their own interest (e.g. "360 contracts" in record industry), because they are already at the lowest end of the food chain. There is nothing wrong with protecting original artwork for 15 or 25 years. The problem is that right now the whole system is rigged 100% towards large corporations who exploit both artists and customers.

    Patreon and alternative distribution channels have shown that people are perfectly willing to pay artists for their work. They just don't want to give their money to Time Warner so some fat old producer can literally fuck an aspiring new artist in his mansion before she gets a job.