MPAA Boss Makes Case for ISP Content Filtering 282
creaton writes "At the annual UBS Global & Media Communications Conference yesterday, MPAA boss Dan Glickman banged on the copyright filtering drum during a 45-minute speech. Glickman called piracy the MPAA's #1 issue and told the audience that it cost the studios $6 billion annually. His solution: technology, especially in the form of ISP filtering. 'The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected ... and I think that's a great opportunity.' AT&T has already said it plans to filter content, but others may be more reluctant to go along, notes Ars Technica: 'ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high.'"
Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the MPAA's #1 issue is their high prices and crappy movies.
Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure it is either incorrect on "nothing" and "everything", or "lose" and "gain"...
Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
If the MPAA focused more on assisting ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
By definition, all text, pictures, and video have copyright applied to them at the moment of creation.
It will happen, and here's why... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The **AA's will therefore lobby for an exception to the DMCA for their stuff.
3) Congress will grant it.
Any questions?
Hey guys! Great Idea here...! (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope AT&T doesn't mind getting dragged into pretty much every lawsuit involving one of their customers that comes down the pike now... "what do you mean you're not responsible for the child porn coming out of one of your client's computers!? You filter content now, don't you...?"
(I know, loopholes and such, but at least (IMHO only) the precedent and mechanisms to claim AT&T responsible for all their users' content is now in place. If they filter inbound, they can filter outbound. If they filter movies, they can filter pr0n. If they filter by discrete packet, they should (at least according to a plaintiff in such a lawsuit) be now collaterally responsible for the flow of data through their network.
Re:Wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with ISP filtering... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are willing to accept all of this liability, then I have no problems at all with them filtering network content. I'll still pick one of their competitors that doesn't, however.
hello mpaa (Score:2, Insightful)
you can own atoms: a ham sandwich, your car in the driveway, but bits and bytes, sorry, not yours, never will be
you'll figure it out in 200 years at the rate you are going
Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I had the same reaction. If ISP customers buy internet service for (among other reasons) clandestinely downloading movies, then that customer is one more customer you might not have had before. The only thing ISPs have to lose by limiting downloads is more customers.
...Unless you take his quote as a veiled threat, i.e. "You'll have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing things our way, since we will bend legislators over our knee to provide us with the tools to bitchslap you into line if you don't come around." I'd say that's a logical reading of the quote that seems to conform well with the **IA modus operandi and way of thinking.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice point. People will still get sent to jail, but that won't stop piracy. Eventually, they'll have to admit that the only way to minimize (not stop) piracy is to step on the citizens' legal rights like privacy and free speech.
But even with that, they can't control the world and enforce the same laws without stepping on the other nations' rights.
And not even that will stop piracy.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
See the problem here is that the MPAA is calculating this $6 billion/year number by saying multiplying the number of pirated copies (a number they can only estimate and they probably highball it) times the retail cost of a legitimate copy.
The problem with this is that it completely bypasses all microeconomic theory.
In simple terms, there are a huge number of people that will consume your good if it doesn't cost them anything (or next to nothing), but as soon as you raise the price a little bit, the number of people willing to buy the good drops substantially. This is called the price elasticity of demand.
While there is some limited evidence that the market for piracy has shrank the overall market, it's difficult to tell how much of an effect piracy really has. There are so many other factors (dilution of purchase points, ease of access to new/unsigned bands, etc) that there's some evidence that the total market for media has actually increased substantially, but the record labels are being left out of the equation.
Piracy isn't good, but it is a result of a free society and the deadweight loss (basically: if you tax someone or restrict prices via regulation, the decrease in income from the economy is greater than the income from the tax, so there's 'lost' production that never occurs) incurred by preventing it is astronomical.
IANAE, BIAAEM (I am not an economist, but I am an economist major and I hope to get a PhD in economics down the road)
One VERY simple problem with this sort of thing (Score:4, Insightful)
These filtering systems, and by this I mean systems from Macrovision on VCRs on up to DVDs and internet video, serve not just to protect 'the content' but also serves to lock out any growing or potential competition. Just as the RIAA presumes that all MP3s are illegal, the MPAA presumes that all content online must also be illegal. How can any filter system like that ensure that legal content is permitted unhindered? And when 'legalized' video content is allowed through, what's there to prevent DRM or Watermarking from being stripped from the original data?
What these systems serve best, just as in the case of DVD CCS, not to protect the copyright...or really even the ability to copy, but the right of playback and content formatting and presentation control. How many times have you bought a DVD only to find that there are stupid commercials or previews that you are prevented from skipping? That's the REAL intent as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Can I borrow his dictionary? (Score:5, Insightful)
That still wont address other issues like legal BitTorrent use, the large amount of false positives they'll get, customer complaints about Service X being slow for some reason.
Theres no way this will be s good thing for ISPs in the long term.
also...
if ISPs join together and reject this, theres a chance they can use a common carrier type of defence but once they try to actively filter BitTorrent, wont they be blamed every time they fail.
Interesting response if you get a letter from the MAFIAA... My ISP filters piracy so I shouldn't be able to download anything illegal and if I can its their fault.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one, don't want anyone offering my ISP a few hundred million $ to start filtering content. They just might accept the offer.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were to guess why theater attendance is a bit down from a decade ago, I'd point to gas prices, and less spending money, but also to the fact that with videogames and the internet there is more competing for our entertainment dollar (or hour) than there was 10 years ago.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, after getting Netflix my urge to actually buy DVDs dried up pretty quick. I'll still get stuff here and there (especially if I plan to show it to friends/lend it out), but for the most part my collection has been stagnant for a couple of years now.
Re:Wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
ISP's (Score:3, Insightful)
So let me get this straight.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA and MPAA claim billions of dollars in damages due to piracy each year, yet when asked how much an individual download costs, they have no clue.
Get a clue: Clamping down on casual trading is not going to bring increased revenues. People aren't paying because they either see no value, or they feel the process is flawed. Making it harder to find these works won't make anyone suddenly feel as though there is value. People will just start to look elsewhere, or - as usual - get smarter, and find means around this. Virtually all deep packet inspection can be thwarted by encryption, so what exactly is there to be gained except more headaches for those running ISPs and higher prices for their customers?
ISPs... everything to loose? (Score:1, Insightful)
What do ISPs have everything lo loose? They provide connection. Period. That's why customers pay them.
Not for filtering them. Period.
Is this "everything to loose" some kind of a threat? Reminds me a movie line: Go ahead, make my day...
Re:Wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Music industry already got railroaded by something like this; they failed to see that their business had fundamentally changed and now they're trying to find a way to topple the iTunes market dominance. Motion picture folks still haven't totally missed the bus on this one...yet.
It's amazing how technology will cause there to be a fundamental shift in a business and these execs, like Mr. Glickman, are so locked in to their old modes of thought that they refuse to see the new doors that are opening as the old doors are closing. The automobile industry did it to the railroad industry, the internet age did it to the music industry and is on its way to doing it to the movie industry...
It's kinda like evolution, only you get to laugh at 65 year old men who throw temper tantrums about how these evil pirates are stealing billions of dollars a year from them.
Re:Make the MPAA pay for it (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Willing to see more than once in theater -and/or- willing to run out within 48 hours of its release and purchase
2) Buy DVD first week it is out
3) Buy DVD at full price within 2 months of release
4) Buy DVD, maybe, eventually, at no more than 75% normal cost, or a 2-for-1 deal
5) I'll buy it if I see it in the $5 bin at Best Buy
6) Would watch it on TV/Airplane if nothing else on and I can't sleep.
If most of the $6B is from people pirating movies like Gigli, or the animated Spirit Stallion of the Simeron [sp?] just to see how bad it was, you can hardly count them as Tier 1-3. But the $6B probably DOES count them in the higher tiers. Very rarely does a movie found in tier 5 or 6 turn out to be good, although I did see Wild Hogs on an airplane and found The Magnificent 7 in the $5 pile, both of which were much better than anticipated.
Those who will go for tier 1-3 will buy the movie no matter what. Tier 4 people might buy the movie, but they might forget it existed with the latest over-hyped Harry Potter flick or w/ever. Tier 4 movies might end up just getting rented or Netflicked. Tier 5-6 movies are very likely to never be purchased, if simply because they are not worth seeing more than once.
That is Hollywood's problem. Too few of the films are worth seeing more than once, unless you are really drunk or nostalgic for a bad movie from your childhood. So it doesn't make sense for someone to spend $20-$25 for something that will take up space and never be watched again.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
The same with piracy. They will never be able to stop all piracy. Steps should probably be taken to go after the worst offenders (I have little sympathy for people trying to engage in piracy for profit) but going after Grandma for downloading an episode of Law & Order is going to cost them more in goodwill then will gain them in prevention. And it still won't stop piracy.
Visa and Mastercard could stop a ton of credit card fraud by allowing (requiring?) merchants to ID customers, replacing signature verification with some sort of shared secret (PIN code?), etc, etc. Most of this isn't likely to happen, because it would cost them more in customer goodwill (do you want to show your license every time you swipe your card?) and sales then the amount of fraud it would prevent.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
f they had half a clue they'd take a page from the credit card companies.
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implment then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
Exactly. Another example: stores could reduce shoplifting to zero by physically searching every person who leaves the store, but the store owner knows that (a)the payroll for all those security folks probably would exceed the value of the goods lost to theft, and (b)patting down customers and searching their personal handbags and pockets is not a very good way to insure return business to your store. So, you put a few cameras in electronics, designer goods, etc., electronically tag your high dollar items, train personnel to watch for suspicious activity, and that's about it. Some stuff will still go out the door free. You can minimize it, control it to some extent, but you can never eliminate it. In the case of online piracy, really the only way to completely eliminate digital piracy is to shut down the Internet. (I shouldn't post that -- might give some congresscritters ideas...)
What about babysitting?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, right, I forgot; this is Slashdot. No-one has girlfriends, much less spouses and/or children :-)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey guys! Great Idea here...! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know of a single ISP who ever wants to be held legally (and financially) liable for what their users do.
More or less, they do act in that role (the DMCA guarantees most of it), and will happily hide behind the title the nanosecond they get hit with a lawsuit for something one of their users had done.
While you are correct in that they cannot carry the full weight and title (there are differing classes of it, IIRC) - they do have a little that they can hide behind as immunity in any legal proceeding against their users' actions.
Great firewall of America (Score:1, Insightful)
is to step on the citizens' legal rights like privacy and free speech.
And the software to do this is already fully mature thanks to American companies' partnership with the Chinese government. If you don't think it will happen, watch the PBS Frontline episode Tank Man. [pbs.org] After railing on the Chinese government for censoring photos and video on the internet for 50 minutes, the American censors step in during part six and delete out a scene of their own in the name of copyright. It's already happening voluntarily. AT&T is promising you it will ratchet up the online oppression. Those reluctant to follow their lead will be forced to do so due to more legislation like the 1997 NET Act and the DMCA. The software developed in China could easily be deployed here. Copyright *IS* censorship.
Re:Neat (Score:5, Insightful)