RIAA Failed To Disclose Expert's Lobbying History To "Six-Strikes" Partners 90
concealment writes "A month before the controversial 'six strikes' anti-piracy plan goes live in the U.S., the responsible Center of Copyright Information (CCI) is dealing with a small crisis. As it turns out the RIAA failed to mention to its partners that the 'impartial and independent' technology expert they retained previously lobbied for the music industry group. In a response to the controversy, CCI is now considering whether it should hire another expert to evaluate the anti-piracy monitoring technology."
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the ISP was granted a local monopoly, received government money to build the infrastructure, was granted access to right-of-ways, or was licensed spectruem, it had better not be within its rights to punish citizens for alleged infringements.
Re:Vote With Your Wallet (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't just the pirating itself. It is the word of mouth that follows when the games and movies are discussed with friends and co-workers.
With music and games borrowing makes more sense because it is like sampling. But for consume once or consume rarely material like books and movies borrowing doesn't add anything so much as world of mouth. You could have 1000 people read your book and have every single one of them buy it, or you could have 100,000 people read your book and have 10,000 of them buy it. Which method do you think does a better job of boosting your next book's sales? Same with movies except all those people might be crediting a genre or a studio, or a couple actors, rather than the writer getting the credit.
Do people still pirate music? Pandora is more than sufficient for that.
I don't even think people listen to music anymore. They just shake their asses to bass thump patterns at clubs.
Re:Lucrative Business (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is the startup costs required for the necessary resources (assuming US based):
1. Five in-house lawyers (one general counsel, one copyright law, one criminal attorney, two contract law [ to avoid getting cut off by upstream providers ])
2. Three firms for outside counsel (one copyright, one contract, one criminal)
3. Five lobbyists - 2 local/state, 2 US House, 1 US Senate
4. One public relations team to unspin the argument that you are harboring pedophiles and terrorists
5. One government relations team
6. One fully funded 527/PAC
7. One marketing team to explain to "normal" users why they should pay more for privacy (to dilute the percentage of your customers who are pedophiles and terrorists)
8. Six hookers on standby
9. 10 kilos of cocaine
Oh, and you might need some of those computery things too.
Re:Lucrative Business (Score:2, Interesting)
Used to be a DSL provider that would advertise on Slashdot how you could run servers and they'd respect your privacy.
Then they got busted lying about it.
You think you can do it but the laws in place firmly forbid it.
And the only way to stop it is to kill all members of government at all levels to send a message.
Yea, that's not happening. Nobody and no-group has the cajones to do it. We can't even stand up against election fraud.