Google Attorney Slams ACTA Copyright Treaty 157
Hugh Pickens writes "CNET reports that Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel at Google, says ACTA has 'metastasized' from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to a sweeping international legal framework for copyright and the Internet that could increase the liability for Internet intermediaries such as, perhaps, search engines. 'You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages.' One section of ACTA says that Internet providers 'disabling access' to pirated material and adopting a policy dealing with unauthorized 'transmission of materials protected by copyright' would be immune from lawsuits but if they choose not to do so, they could face legal liability. Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do 'damage to the national security.'"
Re:Industrial Last Gasp? (Score:3, Interesting)
where does that leave the future revenue source of the US?
Same as if it does; you assume such IPR wouldn't be made and owned by non-US interests as well. In reality there's little reason to expect such production wouldn't follow the pattern of other manufacturing.
Fundamentally, IPR is equivalent to any other taxation form; stronger protection and enforcement for IPR is equivalent to raising taxes. Depending on where the money goes taxes may or may not serve their purpose well, but they rarely make the economy more competitive.
Re:"Intangible products"? (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't believe me? Try writing a screenplay sometime. Done? It sucks. It beyond sucks. It's an unreadable POS that makes no sense to anyone but you. But the marketing guys think it's awesome, so go ahead and make it. Yeah, you'll need some money and a crew and some overpriced crap big name actors and some VFX houses. And props, makeup, locations, insurance, transportation, post-production, Foley, sound mixing.
While I don't disagree with you Hollywood doesn't seem able to get the first part right very much lately. They think spending more (and then artificially inflating their costs by 500-1000%) on the other parts makes up for not having a good story. Or they'll take a good story and redo it countless times. Then they get these kinds of stupid laws passed because it didn't do quite as well as they were expecting.
Re:"Intangible products"? (Score:4, Interesting)
The scarcity is not the product, but the person/creativity/talent behind the product.
Darwin Reedy [youtube.com] is probably the best known example of how far lack of talent can get you. A bit more scarcity would have been good in this case.
The problem is, once the product is made today it is worthless. Just because it cost tens of millions to make Iron Man 2 doesn't mean I can't download it for free now. So why should I pay for it if it is being offered? Respect? Bah, there is no respect outside of the streetcorner thugs.
Until we have a good answer for this there is no possibility of revenue from digital goods. We are training schoolchildren to take whatever is offered without any thought of payment. These children will grow up and utterly destroy whatever revenue model is left for digital stuff.
Personally, I think the end is coming like a freight train.
Re:Industrial Last Gasp? (Score:4, Interesting)
In some sense it always has. One book I recently enjoyed was "Dangerous Nation" by Robert Kagan. It maps out the key expansionist cycle of the U.S. in its role as the first modern, liberal, mercantile-driven nation: (1) Free U.S. private merchants enter neighboring or foreign nation. (2) Merchants get in some kind of dispute with local business, people, or government. (3) U.S. military steps in to control or annex area in name of protecting U.S. citizens and property. From the earliest days this cycle was explicitly noted by both U.S. and European politicians.
Perhaps I'm dense, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the difference again? (Score:2, Interesting)
I no longer see any distinction between the Republicrats and Democans. Under this political cartel, we've seen our social security go broke, our government bankroll the financial industry, and juice the mortgage market. Foreign policy is a disaster, supporting evil regimes, and standing by while NK gets nukes. There is no more debate on the idea of limited government. Political dissent may now get you tracked and arrested. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011780363_spysettle05m.html
Re:Please, for the kids... (Score:3, Interesting)
But that's the problem, I no longer like either party and I'm not alone in this.
I haven't yet run into an American who really likes any of them, actually. But if you start making change it'll get much, much worse before it'll get better. A good example is the UK, which has the same lame system and recently held an election - you can find the results here [wikipedia.org] but I'll quote the most important bits:
Conservative - 306 seats - 10,706,647 votes - 47.1% of the seats - 36.1% of the votes
Labour - 258 seats - 8,604,358 votes - 39.7% of the seats - 29.0% of the votes
Liberal Democrat - 57 seats - 6,827,938 votes - 8.8% of the seats - 23.0& of the votes
Now the liberals are a huge third party with 23% of the votes - numbers a US third party can only dream of. What do they get for that? Next to nothing. 9% of the seats while a party only 6% larger gets 40%. Everything is rigged against a third party rising, you can see that even if labour and the liberals joined forced they would barely be larger than the conservaties despite having 52% of the votes between them. The conservatives could form an alliancewith some of the smaller parties and rule with less than 40% popular support. Democracy in action.
actually the usa is left of center (Score:2, Interesting)
sure, places like canada and the netherlands are to our left, but far more are to our right: the entire muslim world, for example, plenty of third world countries. we even have better freedom of speech protection than up in canuckistan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#North_America [wikipedia.org]
i consider myself left leaning and greatly admire canada, there's plenty about your country that the usa would be wise to emulate
but its pretty silly to see you castigate the usa for being so right leaning from a GLOBAL standpoint when you can't even keep track of how far left canada itself is on the world stage
go ahead and castigate the usa from a canda-centric point of view, that's perfectly in your right. but when it comes to wordliness, you have a ways to go, as you don't have a good grasp of the true international range of ideologies. unfortunately, its quite right wing out there. really
Re:Google (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, and I disagree.
The real problem is, there aren't nearly enough voices protesting ACTA. Google will be listened to, but there are to many other big money voices clamoring in favor of ACTA. Google will be bullied and whipped into conformance. Understand that ACTA seems to have the backing of some of the deepest pockets in the United States, and around the world - not to mention the United States government.
Google may have enough clout to temper some of the most vile clauses of ACTA, but IMHO, ACTA is going through, and it's going to suck galaxies of money through garden hoses.
Re:iron man 2 will be seen IN THE CINEMA HOUSE (Score:3, Interesting)
Only because the release of the movie in the cinema house is before the release on download/disc. I know many people that can fit more than enough close friends for a sociological experience in their home theater, myself included. The great part is that I don't have to listen to some idiot chomping popcorn while his son sends another text message with the light of his phone killing everyone's view of the screen.
Re:"Intangible products"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, you may have gone a little far.
I was afraid you might have felt that way. Among the greater challenges to reform or political change is when folk have a hard time agreeing on what destination to approach while changing, and when in-fighting undermines solidarity. As an abolitionist I end up in a fair number of arguments against the 7-14'ers, but it sure would be nice if we could somehow pool our efforts so as not to Life-Of-Brian each other.
Among 7-14'ers, you sound pretty open minded so I'm happy to let you know my position a little better.
While I think it's possible that circumstances could result in it being impossible for there to be any possible copyright law that is better than no copyright law at all, in terms of the benefit to the public, which is the only valid metric, I don't think that we're currently in that situation. I'm happy to listen to arguments otherwise, though.
I thank you for being able to comprehend such a possibility, and formally submit that we are there now.
There have been few times in history when the effects of Copyright law could really be compared empirically with the creative output of areas with zero copyright. One such time is the late 1700s, when Brittian had copyright and the rest of the world did not. Thomas Jefferson wrote his opinion on the subject [uchicago.edu], while the ink on the constitution was still dry, and clarified that he detected no less or greater creative output from countries lacking copyright law than from Great Brittian. It appears as though we chose to side with copyright from the beginning merely because it was a novel idea, and it might lead to greater creativity. I submit that whatever great creativity we have output cannot be reliably credited to the presence of Copyright.
Little data can be gathered beyond that point, as the Berne convention and others has forced the entire globe to honor our fragile IP system or risk rendering it meaningless. Since certain entities such as The Pirate Bay have had success flouting the Berne Convention, the balloon has effectively been punctured. Right now, today, any person on the internet can obtain high fidelity digital copies of every popular, copyright protected work for free, instantly, and conveniently. This may not be legal, but legal consequences are less likely to befall you than when you drive 5mph over the speed limit so that is of little consequence.
In spite of the fact that the availability and knowledge of Piracy has met a saturation point, the profits of multi-million dollar films remains secure. People will continue to pay for media they can get for free, so long as the price is fair to provide convenience and guaranteed quality with a little extra to express their patronage. So long as they are not forced into uncomfortable formats or hassling DRM.
Example. We discussed Avatar before, right? My wife wanted to watch it. I did not simply tell her it could be downloaded for free, she knows I'm a pirate and watches TV shows and many movies I download, even asks me to get things for her. I did not simply tell her I can download it, I told her I had already downloaded it. I pointed to the media center and told her she was two clicks away from watching it, and she still bought the DVD while she was out.
She's not a videophile, we've got a miserable video pipeline anyway (composite video through an analogue switch to a 27" 4:3 CRT) she even hates widescreen letterboxing because everything is made too small. No, she was just out and had to wonder if the copy I downloaded had hardsubs baked in it, so she conveniently grabbed the copy at Wal-Mart.
Then of course she got it home and it wouldn't play at all [gizmodo.com].
It is healthier for producers to accept that customers want media in whatever format is convenient, and after th
Re:"Intangible products"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was afraid you might have felt that way. Among the greater challenges to reform or political change is when folk have a hard time agreeing on what destination to approach while changing, and when in-fighting undermines solidarity.
Well, we at least are agreed on the need for reform, and as I suspect that most if not all of those reforms will involve either reducing the length and scope of copyright, or at least not enlarging it, surely we can at least work together on those parts of our agendas that are compatible. I see no need for in-fighting until at least something has been accomplished, letting the members of coalitions fall away naturally as they become satisfied. This may mean that there aren't enough people on board to go the whole way to copyright abolition, but at least the abolitionists get closer to their goal, too. Plus, working together gives each group an extended period of close contact with the other, and the chance to share ideas and perhaps even convince people to jump from one to another.
Among 7-14'ers, you sound pretty open minded so I'm happy to let you know my position a little better.
I can only guess that what you mean by that are people who support the 14+14 year term of the 1790 act, though I'm not sure where the '7' comes from. In any case, I don't support that, except at most by coincidence.
Rather, I'm interested in maximizing the public benefit. The 14+14 year term that people sometimes want to resurrect is simply a traditional term, but not one founded on anything relevant. IIRC, it's vaguely related to the length of an apprenticeship in 16th century England. I'd like to see some proper studies done to determine what the optimal length of copyright is for various types of works (e.g. books, software, movies, etc.), that are scientific, and not just revivals of past term lengths, or outright guesses. I saw a paper a few years ago that came up with a maximum of 15 years; I'd like to see more such studies, by more economists.
I submit that whatever great creativity we have output cannot be reliably credited to the presence of Copyright.
Well, I'd agree with you for some things anyway. Copyrights on architectural works could be abolished outright and no one would ever notice. And for the same reason, the recent noises about copyrights on clothing designs need to be challenged. The US has managed to prove its point v. Europe as to databases.
The fine arts mostly could get by without copyright; an original Picasso is worth a lot (a fact which he was known to exploit), but a poster of a Picasso is not. Counterfeiting a work of art and passing it off as an original is merely fraud, and we don't need copyright to handle that. Some level of copyright might be appropriate for more commercially minded fine artists (Thomas Kinkade is technically a fine artist), but at least let's have rigorous formalities requirements so that they have to register in order to get a copyright, and have to renew the copyright frequently up to the maximum term length (which is actually something that ought to be required across the board for copyright).
Then of course she got it home and it wouldn't play at all.
Minor nit: that was an article about DRM preventing a movie theater from screening the film, not about DRM preventing someone from watching the DVD at home. But I've heard the stories about that, so let's move on.
It is healthier for producers to accept that customers want media in whatever format is convenient, and after they get that media it is conceivable that it will be format shifted, shared with friends, and shared with strangers. Producers should accept that some people will experience their media without paying for it.
I agree. But I think that we can have this in practice -- well, except for the part where we can convince producers to accept it -- with well-crafted exceptions to copyright. For example, I've long supported the idea of making otherwise infringing activity engaged in by natural persons