Music Industry Sues Irish Government For Piracy 341
bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."
Get in line... (Score:4, Insightful)
immunity? (Score:2, Insightful)
I support sovereign immunity is going to an issue pretty quickly.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
ARE THESE GUYS CRAZY?
They're filthy rich and entitled and want to be more of both.
Separation of Powers? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the case of using judicial mean to "force" changes to the law itself, which is in the legislative area.
Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Irish Gov should sue the music industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to know what else you can sue the government for. If they had the death penalty for petty theft, I bet you'd see a lot less theft. Can drug addicts sue the government for not imprisoning their dealers? Can convicted dealers sue because the government didn't imprison their clients? There's endless fun to be had!
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
ARE THESE GUYS CRAZY?
If there was any doubt before now, it has been removed.
If they weren't completely batshit insane they would have sued a government with some money.
Re:What Are They Expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is only one way to stop the MAFIAA. Cut copyright to 50 years, and tell them if they don't back the fuck off, you're going to cut it to 20 years.
That wont stop them, at best that will only slow them down. They'll happily keep suing even if copyright is cut to 3 months. Long copyrights aren't to protect older works, they are designed to protect newer works from having to compete with older works.
The best solution is to change copyright so that the cartels cant own copyrights rather they can be contracted for distribution by the actual content creators, ergo, cant sue over something they cant own. Then jailing any media exec who even thinks of getting out of line for life + 70 years.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Give us back our public domain! (Score:5, Insightful)
We've lost the plot somewhere. 5-year copyright swelled to 7, 14, 28, 50, 75, 90, 120 years...
With each increase of copyright duration, the copyright lobbies have robbed the public of that much more creative works. We, the public, have fulfilled our end of the bargain, and we have granted a monopoly to the rights holders. They taken a tool we bought them, purchased with our tax dollars and our court system, and they have turned it into a weapon of control against us.
We have the power to take this weapon away from them any time we want--lobbyists and politicians be damned. Do not give these companies one cent. They are using what we gave them to exert ultimate control over us. Until they start giving back to the public domain, feel free to add "torrent" to any search for their creative works.
Re:LOL (Score:0, Insightful)
So you would support a ban on alcohol?
It's a poison sold for ingestion of the general public.
Re:Give us back our public domain! (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't understand why there is no world wide movement for requesting setting back copyright terms to 20 years? Even in UK 100 year law extention just passed. BBC article on it was wrote like PR bullshit from recording companies. That's what's happening - journalism ignores this issue (some of them willingly, some of them are not allowed to even think about it, but lots of them simply don't care, because it's "difficult" subject for beer/pizza/tv junkies to understand).
I say - we need 20 year limit back on track. With current media consumption it is more than enough for company to regain costs, and see if it's even are ready to regain costs. Argue that everyone can squeeze enough profit from 20 year term. Copyright cartel will hard time to explain why they need 100 years.
Suing the Irish government (Score:4, Insightful)
File sharing? So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they say file sharing is killing the music industry. Even if they're right (and that's by no means a given) ... so what? People can still record and distribute music without any music industry. With computers and the Internet it's easy and pretty cheap. But even if somehow all musicians decided to stop recording and distributing ... again, so what? We can live without recorded music. All the money people currently spend on CDs would be spent on other entertainment instead, such as live performances.
Copyright is a tool for the benefit of society, not a natural right of artists (or the parasites who trick them into lopsided contracts) to make money. As far as music goes, there's just no measurable benefit to society to justify any significant effort or expense on copyright enforcement.
I say the proper response to this demand is to declare music to be outside the scope of copyright. Entertainers, learn your place and watch your step.
Music is no longer a "product". (Score:3, Insightful)
Music is no longer a "product"; it is becoming a "service". (Streaming, downloading, etc). Music has actually been a service throughout most of human history, i.e., before recorded music you had to go where the musicians were to hear them. The "record business", starting around 1905, turned music into a product -- records, then cassette tapes, then CDs. The product is essentially "containers" for music that require a distribution infrastructure. But today we no longer need those containers and distribution costs nothing. How the "record companies" initially got so much power over the musicians is a sad story. Imagine if the people making wine bottles had control over what wines got made!
Re:What Are They Expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was enough time for books being carted on horsedrawn wagons to a largely illiterate population to make money, it's enough time for your shit song and dumb assed movie to make money.
I don't think that 18th century Americans were largely illiterate. Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet (published in 1776) sold 600,000 copies to a population of 3,000,000 people - that's 1 copy for every 5 people. Of those 3,000,000 people, 1 in 5 were slaves and 1 in 2 were indentured servants. Oh sure, a lot of people probably bought several copies of it and performed the colonial equivalent of sticking it under strangers' windshield wipers. But still, I think that a national ratio of 1:5 for a non-religious printed publication is impressive, especially if hardly anybody could have even read it at the time.
What would be the equivalent of Common Sense today? 61.6 million copies of something for 308 million Americans? Is there a single book, newspaper article, political manifesto, or any other publication that comes close to that today? Sure, there's probably a TV show or movie or something that almost everybody today has seen, but I'm more interested in comparing the overall interest in reading between 1776 and 2012 (especially when the reading requires the commitment of paying to read a print publication rather than checking Google News three times a day for the cost of electricity). The most widely-read publication of today, as far as I can tell, is AARP Magazine, with a circulation of 22.4 million in 2011, roughly 1/3 what Common Sense achieved over 200 years ago. Except I don't think that really counts. AARP is a periodical and it has had 50+ years to get to where it is now.
Re:Get in line... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, U2 isn't an option - they've already moved their publishing business to the Netherlands, after the Irish government capped the tax exemption on artists at a mere €250,000.
Err, I don't know the full story, but is there a tax exemption on programmers ? Potato growers ? Brewers ? Slutty fat chicks ? WTF, does being an 'artist' make you above the tax code now ?!? That's a hell of a superpower.
That cap seems absolutely fine to me. Even at 25000 it would be fine. Actually I think 0 is the better number.
Re:what is the MAFIAA going get? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one thinking that they don't want money, they want precedent?
Really, can a corporation really sue a government for not passing a law and win??!
That's not even wink&nod bribery, that's outright treason!
Re:The Irish, being a compliant group... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Irish government creates laws. Judges are there to judge if things are done in compliance with the law. If there's no law against file sharing then the judge couldn't ever judge file sharing to be unlawful, could he? What do they expect from the judge other than him saying "you are right, there are indeed no laws against this. Now what?"
Re:The Irish, being a compliant group... (Score:5, Insightful)
What baffles me the most is that "the music industry" is a supranational entity.
It's not "the US music industry association", or "the Irish music industry cartel", or something like that.
There is a supranational entity, named "the music industry", and it is both big and concrete enough to sue a country that doesn't play for 'its' interests.
That is a lost battle, that there is a cartel that, in our heads, represents the whole "music industry" of the world, and speaks for all the people related to music.
What they do with that power is also important, of course, but the fact that they detent it is an issue itself.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
You should do some research. I'll break it down for you.
Being in an enclosed space with a smoker = bad. Being within four feet continually of a smoker outside = bad. Walking down the street and passing a smoker = not bad. As much as the haters would like to get x banned. For any reason they can come up with. Even one that make no sense scientifically. They keep using it anyway. All the other things are bad. No one will notice if i include something that is not bad.
Its the MBAs & lawyers not the artists (Score:5, Insightful)
We had music be for we had the wheel; culture existed before copyright. Besides, we have more than enough PAST music that little new is being created. This protectionist system is not adding much benefit to society.
Nobody has a right to a job doing whatever they want to do. Industries must be allowed to die when their time has come! This isn't about car company bail outs, we still need cars. This is more like banning teleporters because it'll put the airlines out of business.
The greed mentality is what it is always about; take everything away from you as possible and make you pay somebody who controls it. We've gone so far as to privatize ownership of WATER, including the rain and make people pay for the water collecting naturally in their own backyard- literally. It has been done and that evil thinking continues to spread; as CRAZY as that sounds the issue will come to your area someday in the future unless trends change. Privatization has always been about handing power to the politically connected so they can leverage that power into profit and it never has anything to do about helping anybody. Copyright has NOTHING (today) to do with helping the "starving" artists and everything about control.
Re:The Irish, being a compliant group... (Score:3, Insightful)