White House Lauds MN RIAA Win, Analysis of Victory

cnet-declan writes "The Bush administration's copyright czar says the RIAA's $222,000 recent jury verdict against a Minnesota woman shows copyright law is 'effective' and working as planned. C|Net's coverage has comments from Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. Israel is formerly a senior Commerce Department official appointed by President Bush in July 2005 who previously worked for Time Warner's public policy arm (Warner Bros. Records is one of the plaintiffs in the RIAA case). The site also features an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher, no fan of the RIAA, on whether Congress will change the law, an analysis of why U.S. copyright law is broken, and four reasons why the RIAA won."

not the same

[WindBourne]

when the radio played the song, it had payed for distributing them. That is the problem with you logic. The problem here, is that the girl did not pay to distribute them. Look, if I buy a CD and then share my music with a friend, and s?he rips it, then that is fair use. IOW, that person and myself have the RIGHT to do that. OTH, if I rip a CD and then offer it you, then I am selling something (for nothing, but still selling since I do not know you). I do not have that right. If I receive stolen property, and then offer it around, I am fencing. That is also illegal. That is what she was doing.

Two things need to be attacked;

1. The length of time of IP. That has become silly. In particular, America's pushing our version is the worst. Australia's was actually, pretty fair. Hopefully, more nations push back against US and push for something like Australia's was.
2. DMCA WRT DVDs/Music. We bought the movie and/or music. It is our right to back it up and use it how we see fit. As long as we are not distributing it, then there should not be an issue.

Though, Good luck. There is not much difference between a dem and pub, other than a pub runs monster deficits. They both love the current version of IP.

They're absolutely correct.

[jimicus]

The purpose of copyright law is to grant a temporary monopoly on the rights to copy a piece of art - be it a painting, song, book or whatever. A bit like a patent provides a temporary monopoly on an invention.

The fact that a lawsuit has been won by the copyright owner demonstrates that the law does exactly what it was intended to do - set out a series of punishments for those who would break the law and copy a piece of art which they have no right to do.

I can see two bones of contention here, but they're more related to how the law is designed than whether or not it's working as intended:

1. Is the law morally justifiable?
2. Is the process of enforcing the law fair?

Both are very reasonable questions. If they're something which is important to the general public, then they'll probably become issues at the next election. But right now, I'd imagine most politicians are more interested in the easy political points - things like crime, education, war in Iraq - than those which are generating a lot of noise on /.

Re: Neocon God

[cheros]

God, that was funny :-).

Class.

Now, if you really want to kick the industry in the chins it's very easy, but I don't have the time for it.

(1) Register a site "BuynoCDsDay" and put SENSIBLE arguments on there why what the RIAA and the record industry in general is doing is wrong. Talk about the RIAA acting as a second police force, talk about the total absence of rational proof (i.e. lack of evidence) and talk also about alternatives (saying something is bad is easy, offering alternatives is evidence you've been thinking about it)

(2) Plan a day somewhere around Xmas where normally their sales volume is quite high and ask people not to buy a single record that day. Nil, none whatsoever, and to tell their friends as well. Give good arguments (for instance, list the consequences of what happens when the RIAA is allowed to continue abusing the law) and maybe also identify that the RIAA is a primary reason of records being so expensive (here's a question for you - it costs millions to make a movie, yet I can buy a movie DVD for the same money as an album CD, why?). Try to go as wide as possible - get people to translate the site as well because the bigger you make this, the more it will hit.

(3) Market the crap out of this site. Talk to The Register, Slashdot it (which means you'll need to keep to text and small image sizes), get it in Boing Boing, Ars Technica etc, the works. Make promos and stick them on YouTube. In other words, keep hitting it. Email the BBC about what you're doing. Get on the news, annoy your parents with it, come up with a good slogan and yell it everywhere - democracy is being able to say what you think (but without insulting people - ther'e such a thing as good manners).

However, there is ONE thing you should not do. Do not promote illegal activity. Breaking copyright is wrong, whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law. Just send a signal to the RIAA that the game is up - and this "win" of theirs (which will surely be challenged) will make all those others accused even fight harder (except the dead ones, of course).

So there, instant revolution recipe. I'll go and take my tablets and lie down now :-)

Re:Liberty and justice

[visualight]

It's been more than 5 years since they got my money. No CD's, No DVD's, and I don't got to the movie theater anymore either. I almost caved for Spiderman3 but I didn't.

I considered going in front of a movie theater with a sign but I figured if it was just me people would just think "look at that crazy guy..." as they were standing in line. If there's like 50 people it would be different.

Re:Copyright czar? Really?

[PixelScuba]

Could be... [wired.com]

Re:Par for the course

[ZoneGray]

Ya have to remember that many of the goodies to copyright holders were handed out by the previous Democrat administration. In better times, Republicans would take a more libertarian stance. Unfortunately, current Republicans have become reflexively "pro-business" instead of favoring free markets. However, if you expect any change when Hollywood's preferred party comes to power.... forget it.

Now... if I were a stockholder listening to these media companies outline their strategy, my first question would be... "Okay, so you're going to stop piracy. That's fine. Now how are you going to sell product?"

Somehow, it's as if the CEOs believe the lawyers' arguments that they'd actually sell $222,000 worth of product if they could stop this woman from pirating. How freaking dumb to you have to be to believe that?

Fact is, they could totally eliminate online piracy, and they'd still be unable to make money selling CD's, and the old record companies show NO skill whatsoever at selling downloads. You can't create value by making your product harder to use. They can extract a little cash, but, to paraphrase Keynes... in the long run, the record companies are all dead.

Re:Par for the course

[Zeinfeld]

That's the good half of the meaning. The bad half of the meaning is that it also means "we intended for courts to award damages of 100,000 times the cost of stolen goods, and for a single mom to be bankrupted for stealing 23 music tracks."

Well what do you expect from this President, compassion?

This is the guy who used to enjoy a good execution in Texas and has made use of torture US state policy. He thinks that Enron shows only that accounting laws are too strict.

Last week he vetoed an act to extend health care coverage to poor kids. And you think carrying water for the RIAA is the worst he is capable of? In Bush world the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth.

If Bush got what he really wanted, single moms would be selected at random to be clubbed to death on prime time television for entertainment value. Bush is Michael Vick on (even more) steroids.

And the establishment media would bleat on endlessly about how fine his character is.

Re:Copyright holders?

[db32]

Hence the suite was "Capitol vs" not "RIAA vs". What is scaring the people is getting slapped with $220,000 fines. This complaint is like saying Unions can't represent workers because the Union doesn't have the individual workers rights assigned to them. And uhm...the musicians are nothing more than cattle producing milk for the farmer, they have no rights and need no representation. They signed over their rights to the recording studio, and the studios got together and formed the RIAA to collectively defend their "rights". You wanna fix the problem, don't go after the RIAA, don't go after the labels, don't even go tell people to stop buying. Tell the greed driven artists to quit signing away their rights to these scumbag organizations.

This help the artist crap that keeps coming up blows my mind. They armed the studios, the studios attacked the people, and now the people want to defend the artists that armed the organization that is attacking them? Fuck the artists, if they want support they need to walk away.

Re:Yeah...

[Merk]

Assuming these are her lawyers, I wouldn't do this. Her lawyers were awful from what I saw. Rather than give them more money, I'd give her money to find some good ones.