White House Cracks Down On Piracy & Counterfeiting 323
GovTechGuy writes "On Tuesday the White House made a show of rolling out an expansive new strategy to combat online piracy and counterfeit goods, to the delight of industry groups. The plan emphasizes targeting foreign websites that host pirated software and movies and increasing the number of investigations and prosecutions by the FBI, FTC, and Justice Department. Here is the complete plan, introduced by the new 'copyright czar,' Victoria Espinel."
The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
Any plans to crack down on the FED? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
Fooled us (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what did we really expect when the Copyright Czar position was created?
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations! You win the first Idiocy Award for conflating physical with intellectual goods as if the distinction hasn't been made millions of times in prior discussions. Bend over and accept your award.
This is what happens when it all goes oversees (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is what happens when the US no longer has any manufacturing and produces very little real, tangible, goods or services. Between executives and shareholders wringing every last penny of quarterly profit at the expense of long-term goals, regulations and unions forcing unsustainable operating expenses, and skyrocketing education costs paired with plummeting education quality, long-term viability of the US business sector is caving.
The only thing the US has left that is of value on the global market is "intellectual property". This means regardless of whether you vote Republican or Democrat, you will get politicians that support crackdowns on piracy and extension of copyright protections.
Product pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a crime against the consumer to force them to keep a product they don't like.
How is it a "crime"? Were you forced into buying the product? Was the product defective? Was the product exactly as it was advertised when sold? I'm sorry, but I see nothing criminal in the fact that a store isn't obligated to accept returns on things that are neither faulty nor were sold under fraudulent terms (and no, the fact that you didn't like it doesn't make the sale fraudulent).
All these Spanish names in government (Score:0, Insightful)
Seems to make sense as we become more third world like Venezuela.. With its phony bureaucratic generals and their shiny medallions.. What a horrible sight... We are entering into truly dark ages
Dear, Victoria Espinel (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a warning to you, we're committed to putting you out of business
I have a warning to you. We're committed to putting you out of business. Not you in person - your friends in the music and film industries. They are relying on broken, decaying business models, and no matter how much you try, you can't save them.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>the same corporations that are waging a campaign to bankrupt college students, instead of working to making college education more affordable.
College already is damn cheap. At state schools about half the tuition is covered by taxpayers. Plus your professors earn very little salary and would actually be better-off quitting & going to work in industry (about $30,000 per year more). And the room rental works out to just $11-12 per night.
I think college is actually quite cheap, and I wish we could have a similar privatized model at the K-12 level. (Gov't schools cost ~$10,000 each year - private is only $3500.)
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
That sure sounds like a system that is designed to favor the rich and powerful corporations, rather than the consumers.
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
try
Exactly.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
If Wal-Mart let me listen to the full album before I bought it, it wouldn't be an issue. If it was legal to listen to the album by downloading it at home before I bought it it would be a non-issue. But if I don't know what I'm getting, and I can't return it, it isn't a product, its a gamble.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a radio host named Alex Jones who gives his stuff away for free (via internet) or for purchase (physical copy), but he doesn't seem to be going bankrupt. He still rakes-in plenty of cash. There are probably other examples, but Jones is the first one that popped into my head.
POINT: Just because the net exists doesn't mean the company will disappear. There are enough people who prefer physical product (like me) that they will continue raking-in millions each year. For them to claim they "lose" is ridiculous. There was no cost to them when I downloaded that Britney song, and even if the net didn't exist, I wouldn't buy her crap anyway.
Re:The people lose again (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the fact that every movie avail on DVD has been out in the theaters already, and reviewed.... and music albums are played on radio stations regularly, and streamed...
Yeah you are right. Walmart is the problem you buy crappy DVD's and music, not you. They absolutely should take back that opened container that you absolutely did not RIP to your media server at home...
Please...
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
Downloading is not the same as stealing, but when you make a copy of a book, CD, or DVD instead of paying for it, you are denying revenue to pay for the creation and distribution of the content. If everyone did that, most wouldn't bother with creating and distributing content, because they wouldn't be able to make a living at it.
Face it. Many Slashdotters are against copyright and patents just because they want to freeload. They don't give a thought to the consequences their actions have.
Re:The people lose again (Score:2, Insightful)
I liked that movie. A better example might be Uwe Boll's "Alone in the Dark" or "House of the Dead". You buy this crap from Walmart. Should you be forced to keep it? No.
I don't care if some future government law merely says Walmart has to give me store credit - it's still better than throwing-away $15 on shit. Hell even candy bar makers warranty their products ("if unsatisfied return the unused portion for a refund"). Why can't record and movie companies follow that example?
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more likely that the US will try to use US laws on US ISPs to BLOCK foreign/non-US websites -- until those websites conform to US laws.
I don't think it's going to be much fun.
Re:The people lose again (Score:2, Insightful)
So if I go to my library and borrow a book for free, or a DVD or a CD I am stealing? Am I denying revenue to pay for creation and distribution of the content?
I and most people I know have been doing this for a long time with books and guess what - there are still books being written.
Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:1, Insightful)
"Wow, the butler didn't do it. That sucks. No sale."
Most people might read the back cover, maybe the first chapter, read a few reviews online, and decide. Especially if they've read other works by that author. But the whole book?
I'm betting that if you were able to listen to clips of every track on an album, say, 30 seconds worth, that'd be a reasonable compromise. Amazon does this now, and some brick and mortar stores let you listen to a CD before you buy it, in store. It's probaby a "safe bet", to use your gamble analogy, to assume that if 30 seconds out of every track is stuff you don't like, the other 3 or 4 minutes of each track may also not be something you'd like.
The bigger stores might only offer some of the "top 5" albums, but there are some smaller, locally run stores near here that will let me listen to an album in the store for ten or 15 minutes and I can decide if I like it. If I don't buy it, the retailer takes a loss on that CD because he might have to knock a few bucks off if it since it is opened, but I'm pretty sure I spend enough in there to make it worth his while.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
Completely agree. But that cost is recouped many times over, if the product is any good, within the first 5 years or so. Yet, for goods that can be reproduced digitally the cost never goes down after the cost is recouped.
The RIAA and MPAA are losing business because of their own retarded business practices and refusal to fully embrace the Net as a means of low-cost distribution.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
We need a rebellion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They are not virtual goods either. Your close, but missing something. Both terms imply that theft, at some level, in some context can occur. Theft of intellectual property is in impossibility, by the very definitions of the words involved. The cost, or effort, of copying is also irrelevant.
When you give your money for the shiny piece of plastic, you are also granted license rights, that we The Peeps (aka Government), granted copyright holders to bestow upon others.
Only one thing happens when you "pirate" or receive a digital copy of a copyrighted work without compensating the copyright holder: Infringement . The definition, "A violation, as of a law, regulation, or agreement; a breach." does not, and never has, implied Theft which has the definition, "(Law) Criminal law the dishonest taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession".
Now a copyright can be viewed as physical property, but that is the copyright itself. To permanently deprive somebody of their copyright means I somehow transferred those legal entitlements to myself and started receiving money and granting others license to use that work, per my newly and illicitly acquired intellectual property rights.
All of the analogies to physically stealing anything are complete and utter tripe based on fallacious logic, and deliberate misinterpretation of law. Content companies (derogatorily referred to as Big Media) would love to have the act of Infringement conflated with Theft. It serves their purpose to have the public incorrectly associate the two to accomplish fear mongering.
Of course the fact, that no college student or citizen has ever been convicted of theft of an MP3 seems to make no difference. Defendants are always sued for damages as it relates to the acts of infringement in a civil court and not a criminal court. No district attorney has ever prosecuted criminal charges against an ordinary citizen for what we consider to be piracy because it is pointless. It does not meet the definition of criminal levels of infringement which traditionally require intent to profit financially or large scale distribution. Those have been amended in recent times, but nonetheless, nobody has ever been prosecuted criminally for it, despite the fact that torrents and file sharing have involved distribution at what some consider to be large scale.
It makes very little sense, and I don't support piracy. However, I don't support the type of ignorance you were replying to either and it always motivates me to put out yet another post hoping to educate people on what a copyright really is.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
The federal government doesn't meddle in shoplifting either.
In truth, no cop wants to bother with this stuff. This is why Hollywood had to buy this sort of law. Cops would rather chase drug kingpins or bank robbers.
There's simply no glory in shutting down Canal Street.
Re:Dear, Victoria Espinel (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it were feasible to have some sort of economic impact on the media industry, no matter what you do it'll never have any impact. Remember the "Drudge Tax" [washingtontimes.com] that the FTC was mulling over (now bear in mind, this was only a report and not something that is going into effect)? "Oh, but that's just Drudge" you say. "He's a right-wing lunatic."
Think about this carefully: the "Drudge Tax" was an idea concocted to make news aggregators (hi, Slashdot!) pay a small tax for linking to third party stories. Essentially, it would be in place to prop up an industry that is effectively in the process of dying. It sounds a lot like something Rupert Murdoch was proposing, too, doesn't it?
Remember, too, that every blank CD-ROM you purchase includes a small fee [torrentfreak.com] that goes straight into the coffers of the RIAA to help offset the costs of piracy. Sure, it's only a few cents, but during the peak of CD-ROM sales it was a figure undoubtedly rather high. Worst of all: most people have no idea they are paying what is effectively a tax.
So, no, I don't think that economically hurting the media industry is going to have any effect. Congress will simply levy taxes against the rest of us to keep their buddies afloat. If we truly professed to be a semi-capitalistic society, we would simply let these companies fail when they can no longer afford to keep their doors open. We're not; instead, we sink countless millions of dollars into failing industries simply because they have lobbyists.
You and I? Well, we're just taxpayers. We have no lobbyists. Plus, even if you could convince the vast majority of consumers to not purchase popular media (hint: won't happen), it'll never work. It'll instead be blamed on piracy, and you might just wind up paying a tax on every hardware component you purchase to build a computer, because--by golly--that device might just be used to pirate goods. In fact, I think there was a proposal of the sorts in the works.
I hate to sound so cynical. Instead, I'll end this on a positive note by welcoming you to serfdom.
Re:Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lucas Entertainment will be sending you a cease and desist notice momentarily....
(err, wait, make that Lucasfilm Limited... best not to get those mixed up)
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like it's categorically impossible to have a rational debate with you about copyright, because anyone who disagrees with you is automatically a pirate.
Enforcement isn't all bad... "sheesh"... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take this story in the context of the Slashdot story earlier today. There are an increasing number of web sites operating outside of the US that are illegally selling products that they don't own. If there is one thing that we should ALL be able to agree upon is that organized crime for profit is not defensible.
The companies selling downloads of movies/etc are directly stealing money from US companies as well as the artistic community that creates them. Say what you will about the MPAA/etc, but at least they are contributing something (i.e. they are actually creating and distributing the movies). Companies that just steal their content and resell it to people are just plain stealing.
Going after organized villainy is a GOOD use of taxpayer resources. We should be supporting these sorts of efforts and contrasting them with the the music industry's war on consumers.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me where I can listen to Juno Reactor's Labyrinth on the radio.
Or, right. Only popular swill gets played (over and over and over and over) on the radio.
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it. Many Slashdotters are against copyright and patents just because they want to freeload. They don't give a thought to the consequences their actions have.
Probably true. But that doesn't change the fact that the business model used by those interested in stricter rules for copyright and patents is undeniably wrong.
Not more manufacturing crap (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not just wrong, it is the opposite of right. Not only does the US still manufacture goods, it has the #1 output of manufactured goods in the entire world. Yes, that's right, more than China even. That is on track to change, the way things are going China will be #1 by around 2020, but because of their growth, but because the US isn't making things. The US is manufacturing more than it has at nearly any other time (the recession has caused a drop, but pre-recession was highest levels ever).
You are just choosing to see things selectively. If you don't know what it is that the US makes, well that is your failing, not a failing of the US economy. There are some mundane things, like steel girders or sewer lids. There are some high tech things like computer processors (most of Intel's fabs are in the US) and DSPs. There are some industrial things like locomotives and heavy construction machinery. There are some specialized things like MRI scanners and nuclear reactors. There are some unexpected things like Toyota cars (Toyota has many US factories).
Doesn't matter, all over the board the US produces a whole lot of stuff. So please, educate yourself before spouting off. This "The US makes nothing but imaginary goods!" thing is tired and incorrect.
I always thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:2, Insightful)
You know the problem with hiring an employee is that you can't get them to work their entire career at your company before you pay them.
Did you sue your parents for bringing you into the world without giving you a complete moment by moment view of your life from birth to death? The funny thing about life in general is that you don't get to try it before you commit to it.
Stop making excuses for taking other people's work without paying.
Finally, no our economy isn't based on convenience. Based on your post in general, I'm guessing that it's probably too much to hope that you'll actually try to be educated before spouting off.
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
hope & change (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything the government subsidizes to "help the people" distorts markets by raising the price or over production.
Anytime someone says "Everything the government [does is bad]" you know they're whargarbling ideology and are not dealing with reality.
That aside, most markets are already distorted for a variety of governmental and non-govermental reasons, long before government subsidies get involved.
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
Was there a 3rd party candidate for presidency who was running on a platform which included "Don't do anything to enforce intellectual property rights?" And if so, is the reason they didn't get elected -really- because they weren't with one of the two parties?
Is it even possible for a candidate, any candidate, to run without a budget of at least a couple hundred million? And if not, is it any surprise that the choices you get can be quickly summarized as corporate whores A through D?
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just redirect everything to China, and let them do the filtering... One more thing we can outsource..
Re:The people lose again (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. You must be insanely naive. Every PhD level candidate (successful or not) has more or less the same story these days -- they work far harder than their counterparts in "private sector". The main reason is competition and the pressure to publish and teach. Its not easy getting your PhD, and its even harder to get tenure and be successful. If anything most of these qualified people are quitting early at the Masters level to find jobs, or after being a PhD level prof for a while, leaving universities to get things that are more lucrative. Science in particular is a great road to poverty when it comes to university research....
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
You've obviously been here for a while, and seen this before, but I'll post anyway.
I don't disagree with you; I don't agree with you either. I'm a quasi-artist. my father is a musician (he helped invent rock-a-billy, sorry), and has recently had a company in Sweden republishing some of his old records without his permission. My daughter is a artist & photographer.
All of us agree that there needs to be a way to keep others from profiting from our work; the website that hosts something my family did, and didn't ask for permission to use it, should be subject to a civil penalty for doing so that should be tied to the amount of profit they made from it, with a cash penalty for the original unauthorized use, POSSIBLY based on the value of the art, where possible. But it's not criminal, no one was harmed except in their wallet.
We are vehemently against the criminalization that the government is starting; one of the things we've started doing is offering unlimited use licenses to any family stuff for anyone that is being targeted by a criminal trial, free of charge (it's not happened, and probably never will, but I still think it's a good idea).
The main issue, however, is fair use. Any copyrighted work should be free to use for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, scholarship, derivative works, or parody. it's long standing U.S. Law, and the current initiative, while they are presenting it as a means of dealing with counterfeit products and sites selling copies of copyrighted works, will have a strong chilling effect on fair use; law enforcement and purported copyright holders WILL attempt to use this to shut down sites hosting blogs, parodies, derivative works, etc.
In direct answer to your statement, this could mean more of the same content will be produced.. but it's going to have a stifling effect on new artists and those who create new types of art, and have a negative impact on media reviewers, fan sites & parody, to name a few targets.
What piracy is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Piracy is IDF paramilitary terrorists raiding aid convoys bringing food and medicine to Gaza. When are the denizens of the Whitehouse going to crack down on that?
Re:The people lose again (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need entitlement to download a song any more than you need entitlement to listen to it on the radio. Sending and receiving information is a fundamental right. It's you who needs entitlement to curtail this right in any way, and strong entitlement at that.
BP and piracy, more related then one might think (Score:3, Insightful)
And so, I'm sorry but until I see a difference of attitude in private enterprise, until they stand up to the qualities that they profess law or not, I will continue to applaud those 'pirates' who use their resourcefulness to provide a product in a better way and profit from it. For they will never hurt me as much as BP has. They will never kill as many livelihoods as BP has. Add to that the whole wall-street fiasco.
I'm tired of hearing about the law, because corporate law has become a washed out, bought out joke that only helps profits of the powerful.
Re:The people lose again (Score:5, Insightful)
For how long, perpetuity? You say that your father invented rock-a-billy. Wikipedia claims that this style of music was invented in the 50s. So we are looking now at 60 years ago. So something your father created and released 60 years ago should still be generating revenue for you and your family? What about when it gets to 100 years, 200? When does it get to become part of our shared cultural heritage, that anyone should be able to enjoy? Never? When you made "enough" money from it?
I get that you want to make money for work your father did 50 or 60 years ago, but if i build a computer or a house or a deck for someone, i don't then get collect royalties and expect them to support me 60 years later. Or in your example, ask permission to have a dinner party on the deck. You are basically denying people access to a part of the culture, because you want to make more money. I get it, and honestly, if i was in the same position Im not saying I wouldn't do the exact same thing. It does also complicate things that they are charging money for it. Ideally, no one should have to pay for any music. Sometimes for rare things that are simply not available anywhere, you end up paying someone who has access to the content. What I would do if I were you, is release the content in question on your own website as a digital download for a small fee to cover hosting and bandwidth (perhaps 5$ an album). You could very easily destroy any profit that this sweedish company is making overnight.
Thats a creative solution to your problem, which allows you to make some money and also allows people access to perhaps hard to find recordings. Music is about telling a story. No one has a right to determine who can and cannot listen to stories. The whole of humanities oral traditions are at stake with the locking up and denying of access to culture.