U.S. Joins Hollywood in War on Piracy 358
Section_Ei8ht writes to mention a Washington Post article about a new joint initiative between the U.S. government and the entertainment industry. The government will now be aiding efforts abroad to stop copyright infringement. They cite the recent Pirate Bay fiasco, as well as the problems Russia is having with the WTO as a result of their thriving IP black market. From the article: "The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of 'The DaVinci Code,' Chamillionaire's new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free."
Stupidity in action (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need a war on politics, personally. Might actually have some benefits for the public in the long term.
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Funny)
"War on" == already lost (Score:5, Insightful)
As some political commentator once said, once the feds declare war on anything the cause is already lost. How is a "war on piracy" going to actually accomplish anything? All it will do is provide an arena for posturing and bribery^h^h^h^hlobbying.
pretended war (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the war on drugs has made drugs cheap, pure and ubiquitous ...
One correction: pretended war on drugs ... thanks to what the saying "what does not kill you makes you stronger" kicks-in.
I think that real war of people agains politics will kill politics quite effectively in very short time. Same as real war on drugs would have killed drugs and real war on terror would kill terrorists.
Because we can't consider war on drugs being serious when for example even some US soldiers deployed to fight drugs a
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, This is smart for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations' purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty and the war on some drugs, which that other guy forgot.)
Good news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population, meaning that there's about a 50/50 chance that when we need to put someone in prison, or just sue them into the stone age, we'll be able to do so.
All we need now is a war on pr0n, and we'll have around 70% of the population as criminals. Then we turn power over to the Democrats, they can declare the Christian fundies that make up our voting base as McVeigh militia whackjobs, and we'll have absolute power over everybody.
Power corrupts. Absolute power is pretty cool.
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:4, Insightful)
. .
KFG
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about alcohol Prohibition. Before and after Prohibition, a majority of adult Americans drank alcohol at least occasionally. (Perhaps even during it, though we'll never know.) Yet the idea was popular enough to get passed via constitutional amendment, requiring the approval of two thirds of both houses of Congress AND all the state legislatures. Not that it wasn't stupid, it was *so* stupid that 13 years later it became the only amendment ever repealed.
Never underestimate the ability of the American electorate to be precisely that stupid.
A corollary quote... (Score:5, Interesting)
That God
Did not want us to be
All the same
This was
Bad News
For the Governments of The World
As it seemed contrary
To the doctrine of
Portion Controlled Servings
Mankind must be made more uniformly
If
The Future
Was going to work
Various ways were sought
To bind us all together
But, alas
Same-ness was unenforcable
It was about this time
That someone
Came up with the idea of
Total Criminalization
Based on the principle that
If we were All crooks
We could at least be uniform
To some degree
In the eyes of
The Law
Shrewdly our legislators calculated
That most people were
Too lazy to perform a
Real Crime
So new laws were manufactored
Making it possible for anyone
To violate them any time of the day or night,
And
Once we had all broken some kind of law
We'd all be in the same big happy club
Right up there with the President
The most excalted industrialists,
And the clerical big shots
Of all your favorite religions
Total Criminalization
Was the greatest idea of its time
And was vastly popular
Except with those people
Who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws,
So, of course, they had to be
Tricked Into It
Which is one of the reasons why
Music
Was eventually made
Illegal.
--Frank Zappa (from the booklet of Joe's Garage, Acts II & III - 1979)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2)
Satire becoming reality, I'm not sure wether I should laugh or cry about it.
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2, Insightful)
But of course, not prescription drugs, since the makers donate to campaign funds.
And not alcohol, that's OK, even though people drive drunk, because again, Anheuser-Busch has lobbyists.
Of course, tobacco is fatal, too, but that's fine, because the tobacco companies make a lot of money, and know who to talk to in Washington.
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unbelievable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unbelievable (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Unbelievable (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not even true in all cases in the US. One-way streets spring immediately to mind.
At any rate, you're right to criticize the reporting; in fact the article would be grounds for both a civil lawsuit and a motion to dismiss the case. By omitting the term "alleged," the paper has criminalized the defendant and tainted potential jurors. Of course, they're not based in Sweden, so i
Re:Unbelievable (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:4, Insightful)
Internal affairs? International trade is not an internal affair, by definition. When you're violating the copyright of citizens from other countries, it has moved out from being "purely internal" to "international".
"You're allowing wholesale violation of our citizens' internationally recognized copyrights" is hardly the worst reason I've ever heard for objecting to membership in trade organizations, too.
-Erwos
Double standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:4, Informative)
TFA talks about 1) the Pirate Bay: a tracker site. It doesn't have any copyright files on its servers. Arguably facilitates copyright infringement, but so does Google or Yahoo if you put in the right search terms. 2) AllofMP3: it has the right, under Russian law, to distribute the files it sells. Rights holders can just ask for their royalty checks, they refuse to do so and claim they're being robbed.
Re:Stupidity in action (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Gee, you should be PAYING THEM to download that crap. Eew.
Something I'd like to see: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something I'd like to see: (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is one:
http://w1.nada.kth.se/media/Research/MusicLessons
It has some interesting stuff.
Re:Something I'd like to see: (Score:5, Insightful)
The other problem with such studies are their credibility. Would you believe the results of a study that was funded by the RIAA (or even a copyright friendly government.) A study conducted by a group like downhillbattle.org or the FSF would have the same level of credibility (remember the adage 'Just because you agree with a statement, does not make it true). Ultimately, any study conducted would be hailed by interest groups that agreed with the outcome and ignored by interest groups that did not. Leaving everyone right back where they started, just angrier.
Re:Something I'd like to see: (Score:2)
Re:Something I'd like to see: (Score:2)
Re:To clarify (Score:2)
Re:Something I'd like to see: (Score:2)
Part of the problem as I see it is that there is no way to return these things if we dislike them or they don't work. I realize that it isn't very feasible in some ca
$250 Billion? With a B? (Score:5, Funny)
These 3 products have a value of as much as $250 billion? Wow, these guys really are making too much money. Guess I better go download some more movies.
Re:$250 Billion? With a B? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$250 Billion? With a B? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$250 Billion? With a B? (Score:5, Informative)
Little wonder nobody gives a damn about what they have to say on the issue.
Re:$250 Billion? With a B? (Score:4, Funny)
How much money would we make if we sold 10 copies of Grand Theft Auto to every person on earth? How much money did we actually make? The difference between the two figures is how much we lost due to piracy.
Grand Theft Auto (Score:5, Funny)
Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there anything left to say on this topic? (Score:4, Insightful)
But what are we going to do? Intervene more in the politics of other nations? Yeah they love that. We can go to war to get all our copies of Grand Theft Auto back (right before we ban them for being obscene).
Sooner or later India and China will have a larger say in global economics, and their positions on these topics will carry more weight. I wonder what things will be like when other countries don't bend so easily to the will of the U.S.
Re:Is there anything left to say on this topic? (Score:2)
Which is exactly why the US is so gung-ho about this stuff.
The sooner they can convert the governments of the emerging powers to the stupid side, the stronger the protection of the MAFIAA's business model will be when those countries do dominate the world market.
Yes, there is a huge amount to say (Score:2)
The fact that Linux has taken off in the USA
Since the war on terror worked out so well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Since the war on terror worked out so well (Score:2)
Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?
See the løveli lakes
The wonderful telephøne system
And mani interesting furry animals
then bomb the crap outta them. lousy pirates. [homer]"serves 'em right!"[/homer]
I love contributor links... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully I was correct about all this, but the claims I have made above were made in many long-standing high-score comments in the last discussion about this subject, and not refuted, so hopefully peer review will have made me sound like I know what I'm talking about.
Re:I love contributor links... (Score:2, Funny)
Heh. I just mailed them a link to your posting. Now your credibility is down the pooper.
Re:I love contributor links... (Score:2)
Tell them they kill younglings, too. Rub it in.
Re:I love contributor links... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not your write-up, but that you mailed the author of the article.
This has been in the paper, seen by many thousands. You want to try to educate one guy?
Send it to the opinions/letters to the editor instead.
Re:I love contributor links... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing about "protecting cultural heritage" in the Constitution, and I'm pretty sure we didn't really have much of a cultural heritage when that document was written. It did say something about furthering the arts and sciences though, and there's a good argument to be made that modern IP law is hindering development more than it's protecting it.
well, since you asked for nitpicking.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Viral Marketing in Action? (Score:2, Insightful)
I forsee the future, and it is bleak. What's next, Cory Sherman for President??
"Remember kids, when you download MP3's, you're downloading Com^H^H^HTerrorism."
-Some Bloke
And in other news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Another corporate intiated, tax funded war (Score:2)
Yet another industry that failed to adapt to new technologies that's going to fight until their death.
Re:Another corporate intiated, tax funded war (Score:2)
Re:Another corporate intiated, tax funded war (Score:2)
Every time you read this sort of story... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Every time you read this sort of story... (Score:4, Funny)
Are they even trying anymore?
Re:Every time you read this sort of story... (Score:2)
Do they have to? I doubt it, now that they are backed by the U.S. government - they staked their claims long ago. Those numbers are what FUD is all about, aren't they? Makes "sense", in a way. You don't have to be a politician to trust their figures. But it certainly helps.
Re:Every time you read this sort of story... (Score:3, Insightful)
Labor Laws vs IP Treaties (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, I see. Because neither one is good for Rich White Guys. Carry on, then.
Hello? welcome to the new age (Score:2)
shoud be
"...Rich People"
There a a lot of rich non white people who profit from this behaviour. Like the Chinese, for starters.
Re:Labor Laws vs IP Treaties (Score:2)
Why can't we get the Frnch to reform their employment laws while we're at it? Obviously an over 8% unemploymet rate is bad for them. Let's do something about it!
Every country has it's own ideas about what works and what doesn't as far as the economy is concerned. While we SHOULD try to intervene where major abuses of human rights occur, a 15 hour work day is hardly a massive problem.
SO how much (Score:5, Insightful)
There's No Business Like Show Business (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to pirate something (Score:2, Flamebait)
Stamp out and abolish redundancy! (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like a reporter has a hard time distinguishing between legal jurisdictions. I doubt that the Swedes would have wasted time criminalizing something that was already illegal. This is a perfect example of the fuzzy thinking that most people bring to this (admittedly complex) issue.
Re:Stamp out and abolish redundancy! (Score:2)
This is precisely the issue the author failed to make clear. It isn't clear from the article which of the following is correct:
Not having any experience with Swedish law, I don't know which is correct or any of the supporting details and TFA doesn't provide them.
Bush & Co. does EVERYTHING except serving citi (Score:2)
Almost everything they did from the start of their first term to date have been in expense of majority, in profit of minority.
Minority always having the meaning "wealthy" of course.
IP rights human rights.. corporate states of A (Score:2)
this nation has become so hijacked by a plutocratic and manipulative media elite that the US government now places this on a higher priority than terrorism, human rights violations, and other very good reasons to pressure other nations and refuse to admit them to the wto.
This may be getting old, but I think this is making me physically ill. How on earth can anyone stand by and allow such corruption? how can anyone not suffering from clinical senility go along with this.
I mean.. f**k the national deb
Got agenda? (Score:2)
The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate...
In other news, today The Big Bad Wolf announced that small children were causing serious damage to the forest ecosystem, and that in the future trespassing children would be punished more severely.
Two word summary: "We're fucked." (Score:2)
Joins the war? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mission accomplished!
250 Billion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Books and "The Industry" (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't bought any music or movies in at least five years due to the greedy ****ing **AA - that and everything released has been a -2/10.
Make stuff worth having and we will probably buy it... or you can just sue grandma for downloading without a computer, that always works.
Lost opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup. Potential loss of extortion money always pisses the mob off.
Re:Lost opportunities (Score:2)
US mob vs russian mob (allofmp3, supposedly).
one mob sells me goods cheaper than another. is it wrong to choose the cheaper of the 2 mobs?
(I really don't think either mob is any more ethical than the other. I honestly don't.)
I've never even heard of Chamillionaire. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. (Score:4, Funny)
(Wikipedia's article on Piracy [wikipedia.org].)
Yes Please Spend my Tax Dollars (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to write a letter right now to you all telling you how wonderful an idea this is, to force other countries to adopt our laws so they can pay for entertainment,
Why don't we force them to wear gold stars and send infringers to death camps?
Honestly, with the amount of HIV, poverty, malaria, influenza, strife, famine, and general nastiness out there in the world, I'm glad my hard earned tax dollars are going to s
TFA consists of no research whatsoever (Score:5, Insightful)
HHHHHAAAACCCCCHHHH SHEEEEWWWWWW (Score:2)
Technology progresses as the will of the people. Nobody will ever put this genie all the way back in the bottle, nor should they.
rhY
Ah fantasy accounting (Score:5, Insightful)
Think for a moment about this sentence. No not about the amount or how they arrived at it. Think about that sentence and and the saying, "you can't spend a penny twice".
That amount X is perhaps lost to the content owners BUT it is not somehow evaporating into thin air, that amount saved is being spend on other things.
So if the content industry gets the amount X then other industries will lose an amount X. Put simpler, that kid who has a allowance who just got a movie for free will now spend that money on his cellular phone, fast food, clothes etc etc.
It is the real problem with the content industry. They used to have to contend only with clothes for young kids pocket money. Now there is games and the phone to contend with. If you ever worked for a phone company you will know how many people get into trouble with their mobile phone bill. That is money they can't spend on music/movies/games. You can't pirate cell phone minutes but you can pirate content.
The industry world wide isn't being hurt by pirating, just the industries that are being pirated.
As to the amount, well you then have to simply ask, where the hell would the economy come up with a spare 250 billion dollars. Since that amount of money is unlikely to be stuffed behind the couch, even Bill Gates, the figure is meaningless. You may as well make it a gazillion for all the relevance.
If piracy was eleminated today the only thing that would happen is that you would see a shift in spending patterns. Perhaps the fashion industry needs to get in on the side of the pirates, cause if everyone has to pay for every bit of content they used to get for free, they will have a lot less money to spend on clothes.
The economy is not a infinite idea, there is X money and you can't just wish up an extra amount. That 250 billion just doesn't exist.
War on "Freedom of Press" (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously we cannot have that much freedom. Information is dangerous for the masses.
Only the publishing/media companies know best.
To restore order, publishing should only be done by the big media companies.
The material should of course be screened by the Department of Homeland Security, to fight Terrorism.
120 years for copyright is not enough. 1000 years would be fair.
Restore something even better than the Stationers monopoly of 1557!!
Down with "Freedom of Press (Piracy)".
A quarter of a trillion dollars. Wow! (Score:2)
Seriously, this is the stupidest number they've come up with yet.
Pitty the MPAA (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:2)
In 2005, profits from video sale were up 10%, and despite the fact that it was a really weak year for blockbuster films, box office totals were only down 1%. Here's how some of it breaks down:
Total video revenue: $21 billion
Boxoffice revenue: $23.8 billion
Total revenue: $44.8 billion
Total US generated Revenue: $25.5 billion
Good News. (Score:2)
Never mind the benefit of not having a gigantic US-based software company running your computers for you.
As for the music and movies... who cares. Commercialized popular culture is a disease, so why would anyone want to steal a disease?
Irony (Score:2)
One of the most shoplifted games was "GTA". In fact in one of our stores they had to keep all the games behind the counter.
Imagine that, a game about theft being the most stolen item in the store! HA! Ohh the irony.
What is Piracy anyways? ... (Score:2)
Take away all of the money claimed money loss and then whats wrong about piracy? Take away economics, and the fact that artists need to be paid to live... (i get that beleive me)
I think Piracy is that part of humanity that wishes to evolve towards a free for all world. A kind of "star trek world", where all have access to software reguardless of price, poverty level, intellect, country, or carear.
Piracy is definatly a prot
Why do they always cite the new releases? (Score:3, Insightful)
The true Costs of Piracy! (Score:4, Interesting)
They appear to be taking a page out BSA's [bsa.org] book to reach such conclusions.
Using the entertainment industry's analogy, every P2P download represents a lost sale,
& it sounds & looks good to the average Politician!
Now if we use an example the flaw will become apparent.
Example: If Photoshop's [adobe.com] latest version get's downloaded via P2P 100,000 times does
that mean they lost those sale's?
Answer: At $649 US a pop I very mush doubt it!
Being generous I'd guess only 1% to 2% of those 100,000 people would truly pay
$649 US for Photoshop if that was the only way they could get it.
I think it would be safe to say the true cost of Piracy isn't $250 billion, but closer to the
$2.5 to 5 billion mark anually.
In all likelyhood the U.S. government will spend more than that amount each year hence
forth in fighting Piracy, thanks to the lobby groups mystical figures.
Awww yeah, this will work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Notice what they're doing now. They're flaunting it - before they had cannballs fired from the ship at a Hollywood sign, today they're using an abstract phoenix in the shape of the pirate ship as their logo, and in the blog (see link above) they have offers from many in various servers to set up redundant hosts. The MPAA and RIAA cannot and will not win. They HAVE to come to grips with today's technology or face extinction. Whether or not they want to admit it, P2P and sales CAN coexist. Some folks use it as try-before-you-buy (I've done this, quite recently in fact), and the folks who won't buy, are likely not the target consumer anyway.
Personally, I often wait for movies to hit cable or DVD before I watch them (usually cable first and if I like it I buy the DVD), unless it's a movie I want to see in the highest possible resolution, then I'll go to the theater and hope they bothered to focus the projector. I am mainly part of the secondary market - the market that the MPAA fought tooth and nail against when they tried to block home video from becoming reality. I buy lots of DVDs (although admittedly not since the MPAA illegally caused thepiratebay.org to come down for all of three days), probably too many, but I rarely go to the theater because so few new movies are worth the hassle.
As an aside where politics is concerned, rather than just the MPAA's stupidity: Is it IP that will be the final straw and get people to say "enough is enough" and actually get out and VOTE, or run for office, or do whatever else it takes to institute change? Will the reality that Joe Sixpack's Hi-Def television will not display Hi-Def from legitimate content with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray but will display pirated content at full resolution make him realize that it is the politicians he put in power which enabled this sort of bullshit to happen? Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's television, because he gets pissy when the telly goes on the fritz, and I would not want to be the one responsible! It'll be the boston tea party of the new millennium, only it'll be HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs!
Actually, if it is IP which causes major changes for the better, it would be a pretty sad statement of today's society.
The Pirate Party of the United States (Score:3, Interesting)
But now The Pirate Party of the United States is emerging what could happen now?
http://www.pirate-party.us/ [pirate-party.us]
A war on human nature? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because that is what enforcing music copyright is all about. The single reason why there are music pirates is because music has ALWAYS been free. Since the dawn of time, it has been free. Free to listen to. Free to create. Free to copy (when copying became possible). Free to share.
People have always shared music, and no one has ever thought they were criminals when they did it. ESPECIALLY not the publishing industry in the USA when they flagrantly spent decades ripping off sheet music from Europe, and printing it for local consumption. (Hello China! I'm Pot, are you kettle?)
See, this is the whole ball of wax right here: There's NOTHING WRONG with sharing music. There never has been, and there never will be. Fuck the law - the law is a TOTAL ass in this regard. When did musicians get the idea they should earn 20 Million a year? That's fucked.
Sharing music isn't "copyright infringement". It definitely isn't "piracy". (Piracy involves sailing, murder and grappling hooks). It's just Civil Disobedience. And it's great!
It is only in recent times that music has been deemed to be "property" (LOL - what a concept) and that it can be "stolen" (LOL! "Theft" removes the item from the owner. Ipso facto, sharing is not stealing, and it is not theft.) but the population has NEVER accepted these laws.
In general, copyright laws are acceptable to a population provided they are not affected by the law. Americans have been stupid to allow Congress to repeatedly rape the public domain of the vast majority of material that should be in it right now. Just why this has been allowed to happen, I am not sure. Nor do I really care: I live in New Zealand!
One day, the American public will quite literally, stand up and say "ENOUGH IS E-FUCKING-NOUGH! IF YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR MONEY IN 7 YEARS - FUCK YOU!".
There's no reason why anything should be protected beyond 7 years.
Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oooh, it cost $200 million to make, and just made $650 million in worldwide profits so far.
I feel so sorry for them.
You guys must stop downloading that movie right now!
You aid crippling the movie industry! Just look at where we are today!
Re:I thought all GTA players were criminals anyway (Score:2)
Re:IP not property (Score:4, Insightful)
Thomas Jefferson is right but you, and pretty much everybody else misunderstands copyright when they quote him as you did here. His analogy basically gets it wrong, regardless of how poetic and insightful it may initially seem. Ideas are free to use and take as you like. Copyright doesn't stop this, never has, never will. What copyright protects is the expression of an idea in a tangible medium. What does this mean? Let's use the Da Vinci Code fiasco as an example (because it was mentioned in the summary). Three authors jointly wrote a book called Holy Blood Holy Grail where they established the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene sired a child and his bloodline is potentially still in existence today. That's the idea. These three authors expressed their idea in the form of a non-fictional historical account of the facts behind this theory. Dan Brown took the idea and wrote a fictional story around the premise. the subsequent court case against Dan Brown failed simply because his expression of the theory (idea) was vastly different from the HBHG historical account. It doesn't matter how unique an idea is, and the theory presented by HBHG is rather unique, the only protection one will receive is for the uniqueness of the expression once it's fixed in a tangible medium (book, music, play, sculpture, painting, etc.).
Re:IP not property (Score:2)
Re:Pirates are parasites (Score:2, Interesting)
One thing I'm suprised no one has brought up, all my friends have said the same thing, if they charged a more reasonable price for music and