White House Holding Piracy Summit 268
DesScorp writes in to let us know about a White House piracy summit, which is going on this afternoon. Judging by the press accounts, the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders. "Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC, regardless of who is in power, with a White House summit on piracy to be attended by the top executives in Hollywood, as well as the music industry. Vice President Joe Biden will be leading the summit to discuss organized cooperation between the federal government and the entertainment industry on all matters of piracy. Also at the summit will be the Obama Administration's new Copyright Czar, Victoria Espinal. The summit comes after Congress has earmarked $30 million dollars of taxpayer funds for anti-piracy efforts." According to one attendee's tweet, the press was kicked out of the meeting around 20:45 GMT.
!change (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same, isn't it?
I can't wait to hear all of the partisans who rightfully complained about Dick Cheney's energy task force come out of the woodwork to tell us why this is "different".
Re:!change (Score:3, Insightful)
Al Gore Senior was one of the MafiAA's pet stooges who wrote/pushed the 1987 predecessor to the DMCA that tried to criminalize DAT tape unless it had a "copy protection flag" built in.
Amazing how some things never change, indeed!
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh joy. (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah that organized crime commited by pirates is really bad for your nation.
It is if your nation makes billions of dollars developing movies and music. Anyone find it interesting that we routinely run massive trade deficits with China but stand mute while their Government tacitly condones piracy on an industrialized scale? As much as I despise the mafia there are real people working in these industries. It's a safe assumption they don't want to work for free. Can't we find some balance on this issue somewhere between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"?
Information just wants to be free (Score:5, Insightful)
As we said early on, and have continually been proven right, Information just wants to be free.
And no amount of trying to stop that will end up working in the end.
Restore copyright to 17 years renewable only by the author of the work, remove patent protection for software, and let's get back to creating and away from lining CEO's pockets.
Wrong way round (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC"
should be
"Washington DC once again demonstrates its close ties to Hollywood"
It's your political system that's broken - not Hollywood.
Full text (Score:5, Insightful)
"are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders [for now]. "
Re:!change (Score:1, Insightful)
At any rate, a person with a strict interpretation of the Constitution is an example of a Libertarian. Right now, that's exactly what we need. All of the problems we have today with copyright and anything else are the result of the federal government having too much power. A Libertarian is about the only type of candidate who would actually try to do something about that. A Libertarian would also seek to end the ridiculous failure known as the War on (some) Drugs and would not view the current healthcare debate as a reason to expand governmental authority. But just keep voting in the same people who created the system we now know and don't love, because that's real CHANGE. Right?
Re:!change (Score:4, Insightful)
Hooray, I've pissed the right-wing partisans for a change!
Answer me this: What makes you think that because I said Gov. Palin was unqualified that I think that Senator Obama was?
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
" the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders"
The law won't discriminate. Neither will the lawyers.
If they write it, someone will sue.
Fair and Balanced (Score:3, Insightful)
Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC, regardless of who is in power
Industries that generate significant export dollars are guaranteed a hearing in Washington.
Bonus points for cultural exports.
If you are a Brit, ask yourself what the return has been on Sherlock Holmes, The Beatles, James Bond, Harry Potter.
Bonus points for clean industries. Bonus points for tech. Bonus points for skilled labor and labor-intensive industries.
Re:!change (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, of course he was.
Yep, he's qualified. Oh, and:
Now we know (Score:3, Insightful)
where to drop a bomb to rid us of all of the MPAA Assholes in one shot. It gets the RIAA as well. Sweet.
Re:Full text (Score:4, Insightful)
"are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders [for now]. "
You can scratch the "for now" even. Any laws that start in meetings like this aren't going to be "If you bootleg DVDs, you get punishment X per bootleg disk." they're going to be "If you infringe copyright, you get punishment X per infringement." where "infringe" can be taken to mean "bootleg, copy for a friend, download, upload, format shift for yourself, write an unfavorable online review of" and so on, however much the lawyers can twist the word and destroy the spirit in a court of law.
See also: Laws against pedophiles and child pornographers that somehow apply to pairs of consenting teenagers and individual teenagers photographing themselves, laws against racketeers that apply to people not running a racket, laws against drug dealers that apply to people with a lot of cash, etc. etc. etc.
Re:Fair and Balanced (Score:3, Insightful)
Industries that donate significant campaign dollars are guaranteed a hearing in Washington.
Fixed that for you :)
(Snarkiness aside I do get and agree with your main point)
Re:!change nor the first time... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not about the candidates, for they are like puppets. It's about the monied interests who finance their campaigns and put them into office. That's where the real power is, and it's not up for a vote. It's more of a plutocracy. Whether it's Obama or McCain who won the election, either of them has a career in politics only because they know better than to piss off the people who had the clout to put them into office. Therefore, those people always have their interests represented in Washington. Every candidate from either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is elected only because those interests have carefully vetted him/her and are convinced that he/she is not going to rock that boat.
The individual either understands this reality or chooses to believe in the fantasy that the popular vote for major-party candidates has the potential to change the status quo. That popular vote is the direct result of mass media, which in turn is the result of advertising dollars that the candidates receive from those monied interests. The only change permitted under this system is of the "becoming more so" variety. Using copyright law as an example, that's why it becomes more and more restrictive over time (becoming more of what it is) and it's why those restrictions are never reversed.
People who can't understand this and people who are in denial about the fundamental brokenness of this system are going to get upset when you criticize a particular candidate. They can't imagine anything outside of the "Democrat or Republican" duality, and that's the real (and terrible) triumph of our current system. To those people, any negative statement about Candidate A must be equivalent to a positive statement about Candidate B. Asking them to see the fallacy of that kind of thinking is also a request to confront all of their insecurities that revolve around an extreme sense that "something's not right here", a task for which they may lack courage. In the absence of such courage, it's much easier for them to mod you down or insult you. Unfortunately neither response is very surprising when you consider the source.
Should start with huge commercial organizations (Score:3, Insightful)
CRIA is a huge violator. I suspect the RIAA is a similar violator. These organizations should be made to pay in full.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87347/can-cria-recover-from-the-largest-copyright-infringment-case-in-canadian-history/
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Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) was sued for $6 billion (not $60 billion as initially reported) for commercial copyright infringement. The case was only filed and already, it is seemingly beyond the point of damage control for CRIA. The question is, can CRIA recover from what may be the biggest blunder in its history?
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Re:!change (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh good grief. The only thing that did "it" for Alaska was obscenely high energy prices. You could have replaced Palin with Mr. Hanky and got the same effect.
Re:!change (Score:2, Insightful)
Ron Paul wouldn't get into office without a large number of Libertarians joining him. You don't think that all of a sudden enough people are going to wake up and decide to pull the Libertarian lever for POTUS but not for Congress, do you?
Political movements are built from the ground up. Before we see a Libertarian President we'd see Libertarian town councilman, Libertarian State Legislators, maybe a Governor or two, Libertarian Congressman, etc, etc. The only point to third parties running a Presidential candidate is to draw attention to themselves. The real work is done at lower levels of office.
Re:!change (Score:3, Insightful)
Ron Paul is a Republican only slightly more than Joe Lieberman is a Democrat. Paul seems to be regarded with bemusement by fellow Republicans, sort of like Borat's village rapist.
My point is that all the swirly eyed Paulites ran around insisting how different things would be if a Real Libertarian got the nod, with little appreciation that his more radical notions (like going back to the Gold Standard) would more than likely be blocked by Congress anyways. They seemed to consistently ignore the fact there is more to government than the Executive, and a lot, if not most, of the decisions since Abraham Lincoln came along were Congresses as much as the President's.
Re:!change nor the first time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm (Score:4, Insightful)
if i remember the random story yesterday they are slated to break 30bn this year which puts them at 0.2% of the US GDP or better phrased 1/500th of the US GDP.
0.2 doesn't sound like much but 1 in 500 is.. think if they where to disappear 1 in 500 people wouldn't have a livelihood.
i'm not advocating for them - nor do i think the taxpayers should give them anything or pay for their troubles. BUT i think 1 in 500 is enough to justify a meeting at the white house.
while there are bigger companies and sectors - Hollywood isn't small
Re:Ummmm (Score:2, Insightful)
think if they where to disappear 1 in 500 people wouldn't have a livelihood.
"My business model depends on it" is no reason for a law.
Re:Republican? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lincoln was no saint and greatly exceeded his power. The war was not actually a true civil war, since the south had no intention of taking over Washington DC and gaining control of the country. (just like Washington had no intention of taking over England during the American revolution) We only wanted our independence from the tariffs that we had to unfairly pay the north for manufactured goods. Of course the revisionists would say that the war was over slavery and that the southerners were nothing but a bunch of bigoted slaveowners, but that's the way it often goes when the winners of a war get to write the history to cover up their own transgressions. Lincoln was actually more for big government, so he would probably be more in line with the democrats today.
Never mind the fact that the Democrats have historically opposed civil rights legislation up to that point. (the south has historically been predominately democratic or "dixiecratic" for a very long time) The republicans were the ones who pushed it through congress. Johnson probably only signed it because the democratic party wanted the black vote and the actions of the president are much more visible than those of congress. It's too bad that more people don't know how much they've been scammed by these politicians.
And the Democrats aren't? You have more back-room dealing and arm twisting than ever before these days. (for instance, look at what happened to Lieberman recently and how the Louisiana governor got bought off recently)