UK MPs: Google Blocks Child Abuse Images, It Should Block Piracy Too 348
nk497 writes "If Google can block child abuse images, it can also block piracy sites, according to a report from MPs, who said they were 'unimpressed' by Google's 'derisorily ineffective' efforts to battle online piracy, according to a Commons Select Committee report looking into protecting creative industries. John Whittingdale MP, the chair of the Committee — and also a non-executive director at Audio Network, an online music catalogue — noted that Google manages to remove other illegal content. 'Google and others already work with international law enforcement to block for example child porn from search results and it has provided no coherent, responsible reason why it can't do the same for illegal, pirated content,' he said."
Re: Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the best way to argue against them is with insults and the lack of an actual argument. Seriously, if you're going to start the debate, at least provide something tangible.
Child abuse != Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Child abuse and piracy are not comparable. Child abuse is human depravity pushed to such an extreme that is justifiable to use it as a reason to defy common sense. Piracy is simply deviation from the rule of law - it does not warrant ubiquitous censorship of the kind that is being proposed.
Child abuse is machine recognizable; piracy is not (Score:5, Insightful)
Child abuse is machine recognizable; piracy is not.
Pretty easy to understand, numb-nuts.
Obviousness (Score:3, Insightful)
Child pornography is quite obvious without further investigation, copyright can be very complex and right can be claimed by a lot of people. The system can also easily abuse to remove perfectly legal content. But seems that UK MP like to compare pears and apples.... (or that they don't have a clue about what they are talking about)
Re: Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegally downloading said child porn without the copyright holder permission - 10 years for each file and a max fine of $250,000 per image.
Copyright is theft!
The crux is - Copyright is a civil matter; but they've turned it into a criminal one.
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I still get all of my content legally (generally via rental now, ie LoveFilm and Spotify), but if the industries keep acting the way they are, they kind of get what they deserve.
You can't keep ignoring reality either. I have no idea of the real figures, but the vast majority of my friends watch TV shows and listen to music illegally. It kind of sucks, but it's how people are. Expecting everyone to ignore free sources of entertainment is slightly like expecting everyone to use film cameras when digital is available. Or expecting people to go into a dark room full of strangers just to watch a new movie. If they want to keep making money, they should embrace change, rather than fight it tooth and nail.
Re:Obviousness (Score:2, Insightful)
>Child pornography is quite obvious without further investigation
Not really.
* Female parent takes a photo of her child naked in the bath as some kind of happy memory, which she then uses to embarass him in front of his first girlfriend or whatever when looking at a family album (heck, who doesn't have parents like that?)
* Drawings classify in the UK (which is something I don't agree with), which bans a lot of Japanese stuff (I can have sex with a 16-year-old girl, but can't have a drawing of a 17-year-old anime character naked)
* 16-year-old takes a photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend naked
Real child abuse is abhorrant, but might not be easily recongizable either.
Say, if a six-year-old got punched in the face by another six-year-old to the point where it left a bruise. I'm sure you'd have people whispering that his father did it or something.
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:3, Insightful)
It worked fine for at least 50.000 years of human history, artists, musicians etc happily continued creating "culture" without getting payed for it 70 years after their deaths.
Re:Child abuse != Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with their argument is that it is impossible to determine what is piracy and what isn't. You can't block every
You can look at illegal child porn images and instantly know that they're illegal, but you can't just look at a file and know either way if its illegal or not
Re:No comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
This is like saying that because the SWAT and the FBI handle situations involving murder and hostages, that those departments should be more than capable of finding my lost kitten.
Then proceeding to complain that they are not doing so.
Re:apples to oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
Detection of copyrighted material is also problematic in that it is not always readily apparent whether a particular entity has the legal right to distribute certain works and what does or does not constitute fair use and/or legal distribution. The works themselves are not illegal.
Re:Child abuse is machine recognizable; piracy is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to know what we block after piracy?
If we can block child porn and pirate sites, we can also block everything else that somebody, somewhere doesn't like. Right?
Shooting the messenger isn't the way to stop piracy (or child porn for that matter). All it does is drive it underground.
There is no "online piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever this is, it is not "online piracy".
No ships have been illegally seized, not a single cutlass has been brandished. There has been no disturbance of the lawful transfer of goods from one entity to another. No one is being held for ransom.
Violating a licensing "agreement" involves no theft of moneys, nor theft of tangibles, nor theft of services. Making and distributing an unlicensed copy of software, a book, a movie, or music may in some cases reduce the potential for future sales, but that is not a reduction in current value. It only affects speculative value. That is not nice, and there should probably be some legal protection against it, but it is not theft.
Until the legislators who are attempting to write laws start using English words appropriately, there can be no good laws written to cover this new economic activity. Appropriating verbiage from maritime law because "piracy" sounds so menacing is bullshit, plain and simple. Perhaps those who are misusing the word so much should be sent to the waters off Somalia to learn what it means.
Re:Totally agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
So your base assumption is wrong.
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:4, Insightful)
So I take it you don't pay taxes?
Snark aside, you have it absolutely correct. No one has as a "right" to your work. In the real world, however, that only works as long as you don't ever let your creations out of your head. As soon as you casually whistle that catchy little tune you wrote, in earshot of someone else - Game over (potentially). The universe now owns it, and you can go suck eggs.
For better or worse, compensating the author of a creative work very much depends on the charitable, even grateful, feelings those works inspire in their audience. I want my favorite bands to produce more, and do my best to get money to them; on the flip side of that, I loathe my favorite bands' labels, and wouldn't stop to piss on their execs in I found them dying of thirst in the Sahara. This leads to a bit of cognitive dissonance, obviously, which I personally resolve by doing my best to compensate the artists directly (concerts, merchandise, direct sales, etc) while shamelessly pirating anything actually released by the parasites that "own" them.
Difference in how it is illegal. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a difference in how it is illegal. No, I did not write "how illegal it is", read the sentence again.
With child porn, the content itself is illegal. No discussions, end of story. With piracy, the same content can be illegal to download from one site, and legal to download from another site. Because the content doesn't matter, whether or not somebody has permission to distribute matters.
I have downloaded a game called Portal. First I downloaded the Windows version from The Pirate Bay. About a month ago, I downloaded the Linux version from something called Steam. That's the same game (though for two different operating systems). Yet, one version is distributed illegally (the torrent users don't have a distribution license), the other is distributed legally (Steam is owned by Valve, creators of Portal).
How is a web crawler going to tell the difference between Portal (illegal) and Portal (legal)? Sometimes even humans have trouble telling the difference, as shown by the story a couple of years ago where a shop owner was busted with hundreds of pirated Firefox discs.
Re: Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disagreeing with the current political party. They DESPERATELY want that to be blocked.
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who don't you explain why we should not have all the stuff we want for free?
It worked fine for at least 50.000 years of human history, artists, musicians etc happily continued creating "culture" without getting payed for it 70 years after their deaths.
You can have all of the stuff you want for free. On the other hand, if you want somebody else to produce it for you, they don't have to produce it for you for free. But, you, yourself, can do it for free.
As for the rest of your post, at least since the Middle Ages and probably long before that, the arts were supported by the wealthy and the artisans could only "perform" with the permission of their sponsor. Back then, the artisans were more like indentured servants. As long as they pleased the king, the prince, or whomever, they got to eat and ply their trade. If not, well, there is a reason why artists have the reputation of being starving.
Re:Piracy rationalizations in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
I preordered Iron Man 3 on BR. It wasn't shipping yet, so I downloaded a copy.
What the fuck was their problem with making me wait to watch a movie I enjoyed with my kids?
They could just as easily sell the movies at the theatre. But they don't. It's still all about the buggy whips.
Re:Totally agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good music was pirated to death
Actually, no, the heyday of music sales was also the heyday of Napster. Music sales drops directly correlate to (A) the lowered number of premiere band and album launches and (B) the music industry's lack of ability to forced-obsolescence much of their product compared to past years. Tapes wore out; Vinyl required great care. The music industry enjoyed a massive boost with CDs largely because they could resell the same old crap, plus all their "new acts", on CD and people would actually buy the various greatest-hit collections and album re-releases on CD because their old copies were degrading and not playing back at the same quality.
The nice thing about digital, though, is it doesn't degrade. And people have learned about transferring things device to device, and their RIGHT to do so.
There's also the nice rise of the single again, with people able to buy just the TRACKS they want rather than having to buy a shitty-ass album to get the one track they liked that was way overplayed on the radio from this summer's one-hit wonder. Great for consumers, lousy for coke-addled music execs who counted on selling CD albums at $19.99 forever.
The music industry is in decline because all they are producing is Biebers, Gagas, and twerking bimbos rather than elevating the best new acts. They do this because they can get the Biebers, Gagas, and twerking bimbos cheap and sign them to a long term contract early (much like Disney's "this is how we sell sex to 5 year old girls" tools, the Jonas Brothers, or the former trajectory of most Boy Bands).
What it would take for the music industry to stop the decline is to start producing a better product again. "Piracy" did not cause the Biebers, Gagas, etc. The relentless drive of one-hit wonder crap albums, tweeny-pop boybands, twerking bimbos, Lesbos Like Bieber, and on and on caused people to be leery of buying product sight-unseen.
Re:Totally agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think most artists are lazy fucks who think that doing work for about 3 months should entitle them to a lifetime of luxury. I prefer to support people who actually play music. You know, concerts.
Nope, haven't bough music in years. But I have been to more than a few concerts.
The big difference: Valid use. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a big difference between Child Porn and Pirated content:
Pornographic pictures of children when seen can be objectively judged as child porn and easily filtered. If you see it, it's Illegal, and filter it. Save the hash- if you see the hash again, immediately block it.
Copyrighted content has to be judged if the person distributing it has clearances to distribute it. If you see a stream of a TV show, how do you know instantly (and automatically) that it's illegal? Even if you've found an illegal instance, you can't automatically block all subsequent instances as they may be Fair use, or authorized IE: song used as background on a commercial. Since it contains a copyrighted song, should google block it from YouTube automatically, even though the car company that posted the video has paperwork giving them clearance?
It's not easy to block copyright infringements without blocking valid uses. There is no valid use of Child Porn under the law.
It is a slippery slope... (Score:4, Insightful)
From blocking things that are illegal everywhere to thing are illegal in some places.
The reason why child porn is blocked is because the person pictured is the underage victim of a crime
and the creation of child porn is a mala in se offense (illegal because its bad in of itself) because its the distribution of the product of child abuse.
software piracy is a malum prohibitum offense (illegal for statutory reasons).
The right to enforce copyright should lie with the copyright holder not the state. Not all copyright holders choose to exercise their rights or have constructively abandoned their rights (aka Abandonware), something the law has not been updated to reflect.