Viacom's SOPA/PIPA Pitch Video, Annotated 177
Lauren Weinstein writes "Viacom has just released a video calling for support of global Internet censorship via SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). A truth annotated version of this approximately seven-minute video is now available."
Reader quantumplacet writes with word that the Business Software Alliance (probably for reasons other than this video) has withdrawn its support for SOPA, claiming that "Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill." Writes quantumplacet: "While the BSA has a long history of focusing on the worst offenders and mostly ignoring casual piracy, this still represents a dramatic turnaround as the organization has been a SOPA supporter since the act's inception. BSA President Robert Hollyman posted on the company blog that 'Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights that cannot be compromised. ....Some observers have raised reasonable questions about whether certain SOPA provisions might have unintended consequences in these areas.'"
Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times now have similar bills died, only to be reintroduced under more and more bizarrely inaccurate names? Next time I suspect they'll call it the "Stop Online Pedophiles Act" and use the argument that it can be used to combat child predators. After all, you don't want to support pedophiles *DO YOU*?
I propose a law that mandates that laws introduced in the future can only be called by their official Congressional letter-number designation. I'm calling it the "Super-Patriot I-Love-America Act."
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Insightful)
Either that, or they'll use the "feed the dog a pill" approach. First, they'll chop SOPA up into component parts. Next, they'll hide pieces of it into must-pass legislation. "We need to pass this emergency bill to help those poor flood victims. [mumbled tone]and require ISPs to block whatever websites we tell them to[/mumble]. You don't hate flood victims, do you?" This will keep us from noticing it until much or all of it is already law. Or, at least, that's what the SOPA proponents would hope to achieve. Hopefully, enough eyes will be on those non-related riders to sniff out these hidden pills.
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh. I'm no supporter of Herman Cain, but there is some merit in wanting bills to be shorter and plainer in their language. I would support requiring the entire text of a bill to be read out loud either in committee or on the main chamber floor with a quorum present before a vote on it can be called. That might shorten the bills a bit...
Re: (Score:3)
Either shorten bills, or take longer to pass any during the thrilling readings of thousands of pages. win-win.
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Informative)
Or disallow riders that are not related to the primary bill being passed.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to agree. If it can't stand on its own merits then it doesn't need to be a law.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course, who determines what is related and what isn't?
"Many ISPs have cables that run close to roads. Therefore, these regulations should certainly be part of this highway spending bill..."
Re: (Score:2)
Or disallow riders that are not related to the primary bill being passed.
The problem is there is no clear way to define related or not. Similar to regulating drugs falling under "interstate commerce", they will just come up with some convoluted way in which anything is related to anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, congress is allowed to pass its own rules about how bills are made and worded. The president can't fix this. I would love it if a bill were required to only include provisions relevant to the topic instead of sticking in unrelated amendments. But I don't know how this can be done without congress agreeing to voluntarily restrict themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
The president CAN fix it by vetoing every bill that doesn't comply.
Re: (Score:2)
And, even if Congress were to make such a rule, guess who could decide that they don't need to abide by it? That's right. Congress. So, when it becomes inconvenient (say, when they wanted to sneak a SOPA piece in), they could modify the rule to allow for exceptions.
Re: (Score:2)
So, when it becomes inconvenient (say, when they wanted to sneak a SOPA piece in), they could modify the rule to allow for exceptions.
Creating two classes of citizens is generally ultimately dangerous for the ones who benefit. It was recently revealed that the political class can use any information they obtain in order to profit personally from, and not fall afoul of insider trading laws. This seems obscene.
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Insightful)
"You don't hate flood victims, do you?"
Well, looking at what happened with Katrina... Yes, the Congress does in fact hate flood victims.
Re: (Score:2)
And, after Irene, some members of Congress wanted to delay flood victim relief until everyone in Congress sat down and agreed on what programs would be cut to raise the money for the flood victims. Because what people with no homes to live in and businesses that lost everything really want is for the bureaucrats to make sure all the books are balanced before they get federal disaster relief!
They are devious (Score:2)
Back in 1999 a congressional staffer sneaked four words into the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 that made all the work of their recording artists subject to work for hire rules, meaning the labels would get the copyright. The bill passed and was signed into law.
After the ensuing uproar by the artists when this was discovered, the head of the RIAA tried to play "Oh my, how did this happen? We'll work to fix this."
They of course hired that staffer as their senior VP of lobbying, and he's still
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:4, Funny)
I'm proposing House Resolution HR.6669 which makes Media Lobbyists illegal and being found to be one punishable by summary execution. I'm going to call it the "Hyper-Patriot I-Give-Uncle-Sam-a-Aloe-Vera-lotion-handjob every morning Save the Orphaned Baby Fetuses Act of 2011"
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, you *do* solemnly swear
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy in it's essence - never-ending fight. Especially with freeloaders (yeah, corps, you are freeloaders - 160 - 180 years of copyright protection?! Come on!).
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Informative)
Done.
http://www.opencongress.org/ [opencongress.org]
Re: (Score:2)
If what you say we're true, it would already be done, since congress already has such a page.
Too bad people would rather sit on the street and whine than they would make a change and vote.
Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's even worse that people think voting, at this point, even matters anymore.
If you want change, you're going to have to attack the sources of the problem: political parties, lobbyists, and the media. Voting is for suckers.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the real problem is that there aren't nearly enough voters who agree (or care enough about) that these things are problems. If we want change, we'll have to somehow convince the majority to vote differently than they are now.
I mean, we'd need support either way.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the real problem is that there aren't nearly enough voters who agree (or care enough about) that these things are problems. If we want change, we'll have to somehow convince the majority to vote differently than they are now.
I mean, we'd need support either way.
It's set up that way. You pretty much get 2 choices. And there is a large proportion of voters who care only about 1 issue. Pro Choice / Pro Life is a big one - some people will select a candidate based ONLY on what position they take there. It's not like there's going to be any significant changes there either way.
Re: (Score:2)
just a quick hint - your two choices look pretty much the same to the rest of the world (yep, we're still there). whether you can break free of communist party, er, i mean, those two almost-the-same-parties... we'll see.
Errors were missed. (Score:2, Informative)
The Viacom video used the following shows and products as examples of "piracy":
The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, and South Park.
What do you notice about all of these shows that are being "pirated"? They are all legitimately available for free viewing on their respective websites, on Hulu, etc!
The annotated version failed to challenge the framing of the video and should be ashamed. Here are a few examples:
-"Piracy" involves kidnapping and murder, not copyright in
I don't think it matters... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably going to get rammed through one way or another. After all, these guys all spend billions of dollars every year buying off our representatives, they're not going to let a pesky thing like the outrage of us plebeians get in the way of clamping down on their Intellectual Property and any other IP they can make an even unreasonable claim to.
I would hope SOPA would get challenged in court and rejected on First Amendment grounds (online censorship of web sites seems an awful lot like an attack on Freedom of Speech, to me, but IANAL or judge) but given some of the other rulings we've seen out of the SCOTUS I'm not so sure it would even get overturned, there. Our court, as it sits, seems to be a lot less concerned about the rights of people and a lot more concerned about the rights of "people", i.e., corporations.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Disagree, we stopped this iteration of the bill with nothing more than a wave of emails. Congresscritters hate it when they think people are paying attention. All we need to do is - pay attention.
How long till (Score:5, Insightful)
Annotations... (Score:5, Informative)
So for those who haven't watched the "annotated" version, allow me to summarize. The production presents a series of film industry professionals talking about how they think things "should" be, why piracy is "not right", and dropping some of the classic inflated statistics that we all know and love. Each annotation is overlayed on top its respective scene to act in shallow rebuttal. The annotations present very few (if any) actual facts in rebuttal, rather relying on the same appeal to emotion and common sense that the original production pursued.
I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints. Rather than "and yet the film industry made record profits", let's drop some actual numbers. If our premise - that these guys have failed to make their case to support SOPA - is correct, then all of the world's facts should back us up.
If you're going to rebut a video, have something more inspiring and concrete than "and yet you want to censor the Internet."
Re:Annotations... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Record profits are not healthy. Look at the Basic Materials sector, growing faster than the S&P500 while the Financials don't. Eventually, the Basic Materials sector will slow, and Financials will start to grow again. If this never happens--if we somehow protect XLB--then there is still only so much money, and there will be continuously less wealth as more and more money flows into the mines and refineries. That leaves less money for other economic activity, as everything else starts to wither.
Even
Re:Annotations... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints
The video was very disappointing. It alternated between 'truth annotation' and commentary at random, so it was difficult to tell which things were meant to be translations of what the person was saying and which were comments on what the person was saying.
Re: (Score:3)
If you're going to rebut a video, have something more inspiring and concrete than "and yet you want to censor the Internet."
For me, that is about all I need to hear.
Re: (Score:1)
It kind of gets on my nerves that noone seems to get what censorship is. HINT: A book publisher trying to stop people printing unauthorized copies of their book is NOT censorship, full stop.
You want to criticize a bad plan for being a bad plan, act like an adult and focus on the issue rather than bringing in unrelated words like censorship just for the emotional effect.
Re: (Score:2)
From Wikipedia:
"Corporate censorship is censorship by corporations, the sanctioning of speech by spokespersons, employees, and business associates by threat of monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace."
So yes, this is censorship.
Re: (Score:2)
Theyre talking about people who work for or are associated with the company-- that is, if your company told you "dont write a review of Brillo pads, or we will slash your salary". That would be corporate censorship.
RIAA / MPAA being litigious and nasty because people are pirating their stuff isnt censorship at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Theyre talking about people who work for or are associated with the company-- that is, if your company told you "dont write a review of Brillo pads, or we will slash your salary". That would be corporate censorship.
RIAA / MPAA being litigious and nasty because people are pirating their stuff isnt censorship at all.
I don't see how these two are different. Based on their desire to maintain revenue and profits, these content industries are clamping down on those who don't follow their rules. Whether they are employees, customers, or just random individuals doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:2)
One can be illegal, the other is upholding the law. It is going way out of bounds and probably can be fought in court if your employer attempts to control your non-work-related speech through threats about your salary. It is completely legal for Knopf Books to sue you into the ground for reproducing The Golden Compass without securing permission from them or the author. One is censorship, one is just called "suing".
Whether they are employees or not absolutely makes a difference, and you will note that t
Re: (Score:2)
One can be illegal, the other is upholding the law. It is going way out of bounds and probably can be fought in court if your employer attempts to control your non-work-related speech through threats about your salary. It is completely legal for Knopf Books to sue you into the ground for reproducing The Golden Compass without securing permission from them or the author. One is censorship, one is just called "suing".
Whether they are employees or not absolutely makes a difference, and you will note that the wikipedia article referenced explicitly mentioned categories of people who had a business relationship with the corporation. People who do not have a business relationship cannot be subject to "corporate censorship".
I'll concede that the definition of corporate censorship is too narrow for this case. However, this proposal affects more that just alleged copyright infringers which is why people have been screaming censorship. It provides the government with the power to shut down any site with ties to copyright infringement even though the vast majority of the content may not be infringing. When content is removed even though it wasn't infringing material, that is censorship. Corporations will now able to lean on th
Re: (Score:2)
When content is removed even though it wasn't infringing material, that is censorship.
When any content whatsoever is removed, that is censorship. You might agree with the censorship in certain cases, but that doesn't change what it is.
Re: (Score:2)
A book publisher trying to stop people printing unauthorized copies of their book is NOT censorship, full stop.
Like the other poster said, yes it is. It's censoring certain information. It's still censorship even if the copies are unauthorized and you agree with the censorship.
I don't care about the emotional effects. I only care about what it actually is.
Re:Annotations... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thin as it may be, did you see a single "reference" or "fact" to back up any of the Film Industries claims? No, you didn't, because there are no facts to back up their claims.
Heck, up until a few years ago they were still using CASSETTE TAPE sales declines as "proof" piracy was killing the music industry.
I agree, they should have provided the facts, which anyone can get by googling "box office records" the more piracy becomes rampant, the more money they make opening weekend.
The fact remains, they are attempting to control and restrict a GLOBAL network based on US laws. It's a load of crap, based on a load of crap, sprinkled with sugar coated pieces of crap, served on a coal fired piece of crap platter.
My favorite part is how it goes from "downloading" to stopping counterfeit goods. How exactly is restricting MY internet access going to stop companies in China from making fake dora toys? It isn't.
An illegal download is NOT a lost sale, it's a potential lost sale.
If you don't want your business to fail, LEARN TO ADAPT. you can't pull a Steve Jobs and tell the market what they want, that only works for inferior applie iProducts. You have to cater to your target market, and adapt as it changes.
Radio will kill the industry
VHS and BETAMAX will kill the industry
Cassette audio tapes will kill the industry
CDs will kill the industry
DVDs will kill the industry
The internet will kill the industry.
fool me once.........
Re: (Score:2)
Correlation is not causation.
I oppose these bills and I hate the MPAA/RIAA, but suggesting that increased piracy is helping movie ticket sales is a bit silly. Hollywood has record revenue every year due to inflation and rising ticket costs. Add in the expansion of IMAX and 3D screens (with their inflated ticket costs) and you're just going to see more revenue.
I think it might be fair to say that piracy hasn't not been shown to significantly hurt the movie industry to date, I don't think there is sufficient
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints. Rather than "and yet the film industry made record profits", let's drop some actual numbers. If our premise - that these guys have failed to make their case to support SOPA - is correct, then all of the world's facts should back us up.
Precisely this. Far too many arguments and debates simply turn into dogmatic slanging matches, where both sides make meaningless assertions without taking any time to construct a reasonable argument. If SOPA is as bad as people say there should be piles of ammunition to use against it.
Why aren't people challenging these figures about piracy and demanding to see the factual evidence? Why aren't people combing the industry produced literature on the subject and pointing out blatant corruptions of fact and any
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
o the fake dora's are 10 times cheaper than the original ones, that are actually the same ones (made in the same country, by the same labor, with the same production cost...)
Yea, that doesnt follow. The knockoffs can be made with different materials (read: lead paint), no QA, etc. Having been there and been burned on knockoff products, I know that to assume what youre assuming is a recipe for disappointment (im still holding out hope on my "North Face" jacket tho).
Re:Annotations... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Annotations... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't counter emotive appeals with facts. While it may be logically sound and correct, people don't care about logic and correctness.
The only proper way to expose half-truths and emotional BS is to clearly show why theyre half-truths and BS. Responding with your own BS just makes people realize that noone is capable of rational discussion anymore, and causes both sides to lose credibility.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, to look at our politics, media, etc. the last few years, one would think we are incapable of rational discourse anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
One WOULD think that, but I would hope a discussion board like slashdot wouldnt take the stance "facts are retarded, use emotion".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, I rather thought that was the GP's point: noone is capable of rational discussion, so you might as well just yell as loudly as you can, over and over again, until people are simply brainwashed or numbed by the shouting.
No facts, just appeals to emotion and cheap trickery, repeated ad nauseum, to a population that is uninterested, unwilling, or unable to determine the difference.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the problem is that the strongest opposition to these type of acts seems unfortunately to come not from a sincere desire to reform the copyright system, spur the economy, or protect free speech, but simply because people want to use bittorrent.
There are good reasons to change the copyright system, but if youre looking to college students to argue for those when its easier to pull out the good old satire "you wouldnt download a car would you", you will be disappointed.
I almost started to cry... (Score:2)
....just how they. don't. get. it.
And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.
For the rest...industry going down and shareholders crying cramping their coffers "Nooooo, not ooooour moooooneeeeey! Where is infinite profits!?". Just put them out of misery.
Re:I almost started to cry... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.
They don't allow me to watch it, because I'm not in the USA. But if I watched it on some other site then I would still count towards their however-many-billion statistic of people watching it illegally. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both things I'd probably pay to be able to stream / download (without ads or DRM), but Viacom would rather bitch about piracy and try to get laws passed to make it even more illegal than it already is than sell me what I want. Their video made the point that content is a product - perhaps someone should point out that you only make money from products if you're willing to sell it to potential customers...
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I almost started to cry... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
On top of that, as someone living in the UK, I'm not "allowed" to watch any of the extended interviews from TDS because the show airs a "Global Edition" here (which is basically a clip show) once a week on a cable TV network I don't have.
Of course it's trivial to get around the "blocking", but that's besides the point. As a result I just download the episodes from the internets after they air and catch up with additional material when I get the time.
As Cory Doctorow wrote today in the Guardian [guardian.co.uk], if you don't
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow, you misunderstand the function of television marketing. They DO NOT want to sell you access to the show. They want you to watch ads with the show. Important, expensive ads that are relevent to your geographic area and relate to things you want to buy - and can buy. If you are outside of the marketing area there are no ads like this for you.
Sure, they might be able to set up a deal with advertisers in Netherlands, Spain, Brazil or whereever it is you happen to be. But there is no concentration
Re: (Score:2)
Apple/Google should just buy Disney (Score:2, Interesting)
Disney's market cap is ~ $60 billion. Either Apple or Google could buy half of that with their cash on hand.
Once they had control, they could make one major media player start acting in everyone's best interest.
Re: (Score:3)
You do resize that's not how the stock market works, right? You can't just choose to buy up the shares of the company unless there are enough sell orders to fullfill the buy order. And I seriously doubt that a sell order volume equivalent to 51% of the company is available for purchase.
Re: (Score:2)
To add, the only other way to get the controlling stake would be to work a deal with someone or some group of shareholders who own a controlling stake to sell there shares. This is also equally an unlikely situation.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't want to live on this planet anymore (Score:3)
This is gross. They draw conclusions which are tenuous at best, and completely ignore the actual issues. Are these people ignorant, and were just told to say something for a video, or are they knowingly misinforming the public? Either way, I'm disgusted.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What's with the funny names? (Score:5, Funny)
As a native Spanish slashdotter, I'm amused by the funny names your lawmakers assign to your acts. For reference:
SOPA -> soup
PIPA -> sunflower pipe
ACTA -> proceedings (at least this one is about a formalized document written on paper)
Or is it because any combination of two consonants with two vowels is a valid word in Spanish?
Re: (Score:1)
Except GNAA, I mean.
Re: (Score:1)
SOPA -> stick PIPA -> touching
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
in my language: SOPA -> stick PIPA -> touching
Funny, I PIPA my SOPA almost daily...
South Park (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone else find all that South Park stuff being on there is somewhat ironic? Maybe they just need to pitch more that all the episodes save some of the more recent ones (after the first week and then they pop back on) and two taken down for censorship are online for free?
I say Ironic was Trey and Matt stated they pushed for all the episodes being online for free because they were tired of having to pirate their own series whenever they easily wanted to rewatch an episode easily?
More ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
They aired this on TV.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103759/not-a-big-deal [southparkstudios.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile - outside the U.S. of A....
We can't see them in the U.K. or Ireland, where we only get "chosen" episodes.
Same goes for Comedy central shows like Jon Stewart + Colbert.
And... South Park.
Who cares. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope SOPA passes. We'll just fix our geek software even better. Encrypted everything, out of band non-deterministic port hopping.. the only hope they'll have is million dollar stat boxes that make lots of wrong guesses and snip VIP VPNs. Our skin will grow over their bandaid.
Re: (Score:2)
[...] the only hope they'll have is million dollar stat boxes that make lots of wrong guesses and snip VIP VPNs.
At the customer's and/or taxpayer's expense, in more than one way...
Re: (Score:2)
it's such a silly attitude. you'll get taxes on empty cd-rs, on music players, on hard disks, on any portable - or non-portable - devices with any storage.
oops, those are already in place in many locations. awesome how parasites have managed to sneak all this in.
Re: (Score:2)
Your optimism is amusing. Has that started happening in France yet?
A little one-sided, no? (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, the original video is crap. You can watch it here [viacom.com].
BSA ignores casual piracy? (Score:2)
While the BSA has a long history of focusing on the worst offenders and mostly ignoring casual piracy . . .
That is not the way I understand it. Having been to their web-site, it seems to me the BSA gloats, non-stop, about collecting $60K - $90K fines from people who are not "pirates" at all. For example, people who think the COA is proff of ownership.
SOPA Unintended Consequences? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Like the corporate drafters of SOPA didn't consider how it would make virtually anything done beyond passively viewing their content a felony. They'll deny it , of course, but they know full well that a prosecutor would be able twist the provisions of SOPA to fit anything they want to nail someone.
Think that won't happen?
'Our Biggest Commodity' (Score:2)
Kind of Funny putting all those artists talking about their creative work and then an executive calling their work a commodity, indistinguishable from one another from the consumers point of view.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm a producer. I don't like SOPA. I'm afraid larger companies will use it to bully me out of the market.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To answer your question, artists don't produce anything necessary for continued survival. Art is not only subjective, it's luxury.
Re: (Score:3)
Without piracy there would be a lot more content producers, more competition amongst them, better and cheaper content with less restrictions. And people with jobs instead of being pirates.
The sad part is I think you actually believe that.
Re: (Score:2)
Does anyone actually have an alternative or better solution?
Not this. Stop worrying so much about the potential loss of potential profit. It's being treated as some kind of national security issue.
Re: (Score:2)
And introducing laws like this, even if they fed your family (highly doubt it), is not a good solution, in my opinion.
I was just stating that I do not believe that introducing draconian legislation is a good solution.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that for most people under 30 the Internet has always been a source of free stuff. If it is out there, there is no way for the ISP, the government or their parents to prevent them from accessing it. The result of the last 15-20 years is a level of expectation that is pervasive.
Today if I want to watch a TV show I can (a) go to an "official" web site where I can view some recent episodes - but possibly not the one I want, or I can download the whole season from somewhere "unofficial" and get