ISPs Will Now Be Copyright Cops 338
An anonymous reader writes "Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, talks about the new plan by ISPs and content providers to 'crack down on what users can do with their internet connections' using a 6-step warning system to curb online copyright infringement."
Works are based on other works (Score:5, Insightful)
As an artist, I'm dismayed that works that took years of effort and money just get pirated without any compensation at all.
All works of authorship are based in part on other works. Would you want to get your Internet access cut off for having inadvertently included too much of someone else's work in your own work?
Re:I'm Glad For This (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the "war on drugs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't we been arguing this since the invention of the copy machine? As long as people want something bad enough, they will get it. The cat and mouse game will never end and the cat will never win. For every torrent site that gets shut down, 3 new ones appear. The genie technology has been let out of the bottle. People will find new ways to transport and hide/encrypt their files.
Massive Respect for Wendy Seltzer (Score:5, Insightful)
She explicitly said that "study after study has shown that those who pirate the most frequently are also the ones who are willing to pay the most for legal access to that copyrighted material." And then she also pointed out that it's disturbing to see the conglomeration of media companies and service providers like NBC-Comcast.
I like this lady, and I hope she manages to make those points to others!
Only a problem where monopolies exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm Glad For This (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless you happen to have sold out to a big enough publisher (of any kind) capable of bribing the ISPs, they will not care about your valuable content being "illegally" copied.
Re:I'm Glad For This (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm Glad For This (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really crazy how blatant and out of control copyright has become in our society. I'm all for just abandoning or totally revising the concept altogether.
As an academic, I'm dismayed that research up to 70 years old and paid for with public money money can just be locked off for no reason at all. And that the essential right of citizens to acess the public internet can be interdicted by private corporations. It's time governments do something about this.
Re:Just like the "war on illegal variable X" (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't we been arguing this since the invention of the copy machine? As long as people want something bad enough, they will get it. The cat and mouse game will never end and the cat will never win. For every torrent site that gets shut down, 3 new ones appear. The genie technology has been let out of the bottle. People will find new ways to transport and hide/encrypt their files.
If you're of noble birth and choose to make most everything illegal, than you've made most everyone else your slave. Make knowledge illegal and their children and children's children become slaves. Make chiropractic schools illegal and you've made Dr. Bob your new court jester.
Re:I'm Glad For This (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially in the US, we don't really manufacture much anymore. A good percentage of our GDP is intellectual property. So of course people are going to go overboard in protecting it.
Re:Just like the "war on drugs" (Score:2, Insightful)
If the cat kills every mouse, the cat will die. The cat only needs to catch enough mice to sustain it's lifestyle. I think it is a very accurate analogy.
Re:16billion in loses? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an understatement. They've made claims that are greater than the GDP of the entire world.
just plain absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country! In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
The latest research (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:6 Warnings (Score:5, Insightful)
Did your keyboard break? You forgot, "so my neighbors don't loose their connections".
Re:Just like the "war on drugs" (Score:4, Insightful)
People will find new ways to transport and hide/encrypt their files.
Nobody cares about that. The whole idea here is to give new pretense to to spy on people and knock their doors down. Make everybody subject to arrest and their equipment subject to seizure. Yeah, just like the war on drugs, which is still proving to be very profitable, so don't expect much change there.
Re:Works are based on other works (Score:4, Insightful)
How about holding that income protection for a term so that the artist who created it will be long dead before it expires?
How exactly does that encourage the artist or the artist's heirs to produce?
Re:But why do ISPs care? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most ISPs also are content providers so they see it as using their control over their internet connections to increase the revenue of their content. This is why content carriers and content producers should never be allowed to be the same people.
Re:Common carrier status (Score:5, Insightful)
That never has existed for ISPs and lately, the biggest ISPs have dreams and intent on being content providers as well. If they hope to get you to pay for streaming content, they need to limit your access to free materials in whatever forms. So they are not interested in common carrier status. This is precisely why we need network neutrality laws firmly in place... of course, if someone were to try to get it passed, there would be so many little tweaks in there it wouldn't even resemble the original intent. (Look what happened to Obama's healthcare reform... it might have been nice.)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RTFS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Again. Doesn't make it any less stupid, inane, or fucked up.
Re:Plan? It's already started (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the fact that yes, infringement exists, but there is a substantial part of their "audience" that is just plain tired of their crap and have abandoned them. They don't go to movies, they don't buy CDs (that aren't used old stuff), and they don't buy DVDs/Blu Rays... and there's nothing worth torrenting for them. :)
When that group becomes a majority, somehow, some way, these asspiles will figure out how to monetize the ability NOT to watch or otherwise consume their "content." I bet someone's already drawn up a plan, piled some cash into a vault, and put the red button behind a glass cover that says "break only in the event that people stop caring about our crap."
I have seen 1 movie this year in the theater, Thor. It sucked. So I avoided the rest of the movies. I just haven't given a shit for a long time, but now, I'm pretty much done wasting my time. I've got better things to do than to make these pricks richer. For those who continue to do so, I don't mind. I just won't do it. One day, though... you'll get tired of the same, rehashed shit and simply tune them out. I never thought I would, but then again, their efforts to stomp on my liberty hadn't gotten this bad yet.
Re:Just like the "war on illegal variable X" (Score:5, Insightful)
A symptom of having a society that actually governed by rule of law
The idea behind the rule of law is that the law is codified and impartial, as opposed to rule by individual humans who can make different decisions based on how they feel. Now, take a look at the current US legal system, where the outcome of a court case depends to a large degree on how much you can afford to spend on lawyers, whether you make a good impression on the judge, and which judge you happen to appear in front of. Does that really sound like the rule of law to you?