After Megaupload, MPAA Targets Other File Sharing Services 214
An anonymous reader writes "It is no secret that the MPAA was a main facilitator of the criminal investigation against Megaupload. While the movie studios have praised the actions of the U.S. Government, they are not satisfied yet. Paramount Pictures' vice president for worldwide content protection identified Fileserve, MediaFire, Wupload, Putlocker and Depositfiles as prime targets that should be shuttered next."
Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh its above the radar. Heck its founders even did jail for it. But they are taking a solid stance and have basically told the MPAA/RIAA to fuck off and have deployed clever lawyers to keep it afloat.
This whole thing really is pissing me off. My band uses these services to facilitate distributing our album and what not, and since a lot of our followers really dont know how to drive bit-torrent, this is the easiest way to get them the goodies.
And because we are distributed across 2 countries (Members in the US and Australia) , we use it to send mixdowns and recording stems when we do stuff.. I mean I guess we probably should move to dropbox for that sort of thing, but the point still remains. These bloody lawyers are trying to ban ALL sharing, and seriously not all, in fact probably most, sharing is piracy.
Its bullshit, these people need to be called out as enemies of the internet and free speech.
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a smaller, (presumably) independent band, the RIAA wouldn't mind killing you off. The RIAA isn't there for small artists; they're there for the few giant names they can push, and any competition is bad competition in their view.
Well neither the RIAA or ARIA have ever done a frigging thing for us, so I don't doubt that. Heck I even had a genine "no no" issue of piracy happen to us once where I found a site in the US selling our MP3s for about half the priace we where selling them. I dont care if you pirate-bay or whatever our songs, its not really about that for us. But don't sell our work without giving us a cut of it, is all we ask.
Well I contacted ARIA, and they said "Oh thats in the US, we cant help you". So I contacted the RIAA and they said "Your australians, we are not really interested sorry."
Well I bet if we where AC/DC or something they would be.
Frankly I'd rather kim dotcom got my money than RIAA or ARIA. At least I'm under know illusions as to who Kim represents.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure you're in a band? You're missing an opportunity here.
As in, I've never met a band who doesn't take a shot at hawking their album, given the opportunity.
Got samples? Music video? Free tracks? I can't be the only curious one, but I guess I was the only one to ask.
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Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:4, Funny)
Well I contacted ARIA, and they said "Oh thats in the US, we cant help you". So I contacted the RIAA and they said "Your australians, we are not really interested sorry."
Why did you offer them australians?
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Insightful)
My band uses these services to facilitate distributing our album and what not
Your label is supposed to handle that for you. If you're not signed with a major label and have the temerity to try to distribute your own music, you're clearly some kind of terrorist socialist pedophile drug dealer pirate, and will be dealt with accordingly.
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if you are an indie filmmaker, you can expect very harsh treatment at the hands of MPAA for your rating.
I just heard an interview with the director of the terrific new documentary Bully and he was talking about how the MPAA wanted to give his movie an "R" even though all of the characters were real teenagers involved in real bullying and the movie is possibly the most important movie for middle and high-school kids to see. He ended up just going "Unrated" which of course will limit his distribution (but it looks like a lot of media people are getting behind him to help out).
I've made a portion of my living as a professional musician, composer and arranger for about 25 years and I won't go near a project with anything but an indie label and not only an indie label but a really small privately-held indie label. I most enjoy self-released work, which in my opinion has now reached a point of quality every bit as good as anything on a major. I only pay for music when I can buy direct from the artist, or very nearly direct. I'm hoping to get to that point with movies someday.
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Take a look at the legislation the *AAs are pushing for. They want the government to enforce 'their' copyrights at taxpayer expense. Smaller government means less resources to do this. It would make it harder for them to come out and say "We think XYZ's website infringes on our sacred copy
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The government is not going to shrink so much that they stop enforcing corporate laws. Here in Canada we have a bunch of conservative small government types in charge. They just got rid of the pesky fisheries regulations because it hurt business having to avoid polluting. They got rid of the pesky food labeling stuff as we can trust business to be honest, especially those Chinese and other 3rd world countries which they're also getting rid of those pesky regulations that was stopping free trade. Costs money
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Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:4)
Re:assessment is totally accurate (Score:2)
I'm getting lost in the meta-humor.
Has no one else noticed/bothered to point out that this is the very first story published on April Fools?
So wait - on April 2 they release it as "Haha, **AA has NOT targeted those companies".
To which the elephant in the room is "... yet".
**AA goes "Ooh, neat, let's do that!' "
So then April 4'ths news is "D'oh! Now it IS news, therefore our April Fools joke is prophetic!"
Either that, or they get to say "yes, this really is news, but we purposely waited to post it on April F
First AFD story in what time zone? (Score:2)
Has no one else noticed/bothered to point out that this is the very first story published on April Fools?
In what time zone? The anglosphere covers time zones as far east of Greenwich as New Zealand and as far west as Alaska.
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Stop trolling here, Stephen Colbert!
jail time? (Score:2)
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Informative)
Heck its founders even did jail for it.
Actually none of them have. They have been sentenced but only one is actually living in Sweden and his will be served in the community rather than behind bars. The others left ages ago and the authorities have been unable to recover a single penny of assets from them to pay the millions of Euros in fines, and as they are now in countries that won't extradite to the EU there is pretty much no chance of them doing any time. Plus there are still appeals in the pipeline.
Meanwhile the Pirate Bay continues, benefiting from free publicity paid for by the media companies trying to take them down.
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Plus there are still appeals in the pipeline.
No, the supreme court refused to hear it about two months ago so it is final.
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The appeals are at the EU level.
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Its all about risk. if you are *just* running a business and it looks like you may lose everything, including your freedom, its time to bail out of the game. ( like the file storage sites they are going ofter ). And the *AA's know they are fairly easy to eradicate.
If you are making a personal/political statement, then you stand firm. The *AAs know this too... which is why they are finally changing tactics to attack the storage sites, and end users, instead.
And you don't think the RIAA doesn't want you gone
Re:Pirate Bay? (Score:5, Insightful)
MPAA will contact Youtube and get your video removed. They own all music after all.
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You mean RIAA owns all music ;)
Anything having the slightest resemblance to music has a chance of to be taken down on youtube.
Sony is in both sides of the MAFIAA (Score:2)
You mean RIAA owns all music
Now that Vivendi has sold its TV and movie assets to GE and Comcast, and now that Time Warner has sold its record labels to Access Industries, you're right that Sony is the only major record label that's also a major movie studio. Yet I'm under the impression that the movie studios still maintain relationships with record labels for movie soundtracks and music video production. So there's still very much a MAFIAA.
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I have but one suggestion for music distribution: this [etree.org].
vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Informative)
That Paramount actually has a "vice president for worldwide content protection" says plenty.
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. Reminds me of a story from the sixties about General Motors. A customer called GM to complain about his car.
The phone operator asked what was wrong and the guy said a mirror was defective.
"Which mirror?" she asked.
"The side mirror" he replied.
"Which side?"
"The passenger side."
"I'll connect you to the Vice President for Passenger Side Mirrors."
Dunno if it's true or not. My grandfather worked in the US auto industry for 30 years and had lots of interesting stories to tell...
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Funny)
Do you not realize how tough it is to be promoted to that office? The Executive Vice President of Employee Titles (who's also the Creative Director of Padded Résumés and Acting Senior Human Resources Strategist) does not just bandy these things around willy-nilly.
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It's better that 100 guilty walk free than one innocent wrongly convicted or something along those lines is the way the quote goes.
But because 90%* of people use a legal service to perpetrate illegal acts, the 10%* must suffer? A lot of people use cars in the commission of a crime. Should we start banning cars? Don't even get me started on guns...
*made-up figures for illustration purposes only
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:4, Insightful)
They also took it a step further in how they paid people who got the most downloads and got people to subscribe. Even TPB keeps a degree of separation between themselves, the illegal content, and the way they make money, but megaupload was pretty much making money directly off people uploading illegal content and getting subscribers to pay to download it quickly.
Also no-one needs TPB to distribute their personally created music.. Even if your band can't afford the miniscule hosting fees you can just host the torrent file; the whole point of bittorrent is it doesn't need sites like TPB.
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MU was doing heck of a lot more to curb piracy than Pirate Bay has ever done ... Just saying.
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The powers that be don't care how much you do to curb piracy.
Nothing short of pledging your very soul to the cause of their profit margins will satisfy them.
The only reason MU got nailed and TPB didn't was because MU was unfortunate enough to be within reach of the feds and their politically subversive puppet masters, whereas TPB was safely blowing raspberries at the feds from across the ocean.
Believe me, if the MAFIAA could strangle TPB as badly as they did MU they'd do it in a heartbeat.
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But you still need a site to tell people about your torrent. And RIAA will send a DMCA takedown to any site they see doing that.
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Using common sense caching protocols to retain popular downloads does not an intent form. Giving higher scores to frequently accessed information is a very obvious common sense optimization.
The fact that the files that were retained the longest happened to be copyright infringing doesn't prove that MegaUpload willfully contributed to infringement.
All it means is that people really like to pirate stuff.
The only people who deserve blame are
A: The crackers who upload the stuff
B: The users who download it
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:4, Interesting)
Also no-one needs TPB to distribute their personally created music.. Even if your band can't afford the miniscule hosting fees you can just host the torrent file; the whole point of bittorrent is it doesn't need sites like TPB.
Nobody needs anything in this world but food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. The point is, people use The Pirate Bay to distribute legitimately, the number of hits that it gets (according to Alexa, the 206th most visited site in the world [alexa.com]) make it worthwhile to put things there for distribution.
Just because you'd rather throw the baby out with the bathwater doesn't mean the rest of us want to. You don't think the RIAA would cream their jeans if they could just stop all music sharing on the internet, legit or not? You don't think they would abuse their power if given the chance? Come on. They themselves have gotten busted for the same shit. [techdirt.com]
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It's better that the MPAA and all its member companies go out of business than... no, wait, just leave it as the null comparative; it's just better.
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy is only illegal because the law says copying and distributing music is illegal.
People who support piracy are fighting to have the law changed. These people believe that since music can be copied indefinitely and at no cost (even though there is an initial cost of producing the music), the music industry should change to a business model that makes music free.
There are also people who are just fed up with the music industry's abusive behavior. They can sue people who upload music to others for all I care, but many of us are sick of seeing sharing services get shut down - these services have useful, legal purposes. We're m also sick of all the fake DMCA take-downs, the "pay-up or else" letters that target innocent people, the attempts to make wifi network owners liable for how other people use their network, the extradition of young students to the USA for doing something that is legal in their own country, the SLAPP lawsuits, the constantly increasing copyright terms that lock away history from the public (yes, some songs and movies can be considered of historical value), etc.
You can disagree with this, but the fact is, people are not saying the music industry should stop using the protections that the law gives it: they're saying these protections should be taken away. They want to change the law, arguing "but it's the law" is beside the point.
And you won't convince anyone that the music industry should get protections from the law when the music industry behaves the way it does, just like if Hitler were alive you would not succeed at convincing anyone that he should have the right to own a gas chamber.
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, you had me there till Godwin's Law struck.
Gas Chamber = Ripped song?
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they should update their business plan to make most revenue from:
- Legitimate download sites (where artist gets more than 0.01% of revenue)
- Performances, ie. concerts bringing in the dough, and maybe some new innovative live performance formats for more revenue per gig
- Merchandise/fan products
- Physical media as a shelf decoration. pretty much like it is now, but saner pricing, and emphasis on showcasing it, that's why many people buy CDs/DVDs/BluRays, but also give access to digital, online copy which allows more convenient watching than putting the physical media in.
- Direct monetary gifts from fans -> who just want to support the artist, but does not necessarily need more crap etc.
- For some bands, "custom tailored" music, ie. for companies, movies etc. This is already happening but more direct and bigger scale adoption, ie. hourly rates or something like that.
Generally by increasing accessibility they should be able to monetize better.
If i want to buy an album today, i have very few choices: Physical store for media i cannot use since i don't own even a SINGLE "just a cd player", iTunes for devices which i don't own (i don't own iPhone, iPad, iPod or any other apple devices), Spotify for computer only listening (nothing to play in my car).
I need non-DRM'd MP3, FLAC or OGG format so i can play it on any of the devices i have, ie. car, phone, computer, ps3
As it stands now, i would need to change to iPhone and purchase via iTunes (at a non-sensible per track price), and change my car audio system to accept iPhone for convenient access to most of my devices. Ofc, for iTunes to work properly i need to change to Mac OSX as well which means buying a mac. This still leaves my PS3, and other DLNA devices out (or has iTunes gained DLNA capability?). No i don't want new expensive devices.
On car i only radio, usb and bluetooth.
On computers i don't even bother installing a DVD drive anymore for longer than OS installation.
I use a Nokia phone (E7, got to love the QWERTY and casing it has!)
So my options are extremely limited! In practice i listen to radio only anymore because access is so ridiculously limited.
I guess there is probably SOME option, but i really can't be arsed to search for such a solution, if i need to put in time to try and find such a solution it's not accessible enough. There is plenty of radio channels to choose from even just from FM, which is easy and convenient :)
Downside is none of the artists i really like gets no monetary gain from me directly in any fashion anymore, only thing they get is from the radio royalties get from me. I wouldn't mind buying a few albums if it meant i could listen on any device of my preference, anywhere, anytime, with or without access to internet.
iTunes Store sells non-DRM'd MP4 (Score:3)
I need non-DRM'd MP3, FLAC or OGG format
iTunes Store sells non-DRM'd MP4, which plays on far more than just iDevices. I'm unfamiliar with Nokia phones because Nokia has failed in North America, but I'm under the impression that newer smartphones that play MP3 will also play MP4, and so can the PlayStation 3 console. If it's a problem, you can always transcode. (Transcoding to a lower bitrate, such as 192 to 128 kbps, generally doesn't add noticeably more artifacts than transcoding from lossless.)
There is plenty of radio channels to choose from even just from FM
In your country, does FM have indie artists, or is
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is only illegal because the law says copying and distributing music is illegal.
Exactly. I remember reading of a US study here on /. concerning sharing music being socially acceptable (I can't fucking find it no matter what I search, so here's the link to the Danish one [torrentfreak.com]) that found that something like 70% of people did not see anything wrong with sharing music with family and friends. The study I'd read dialed it down even further into more specific scenarios, but that one statistic stood out.
My point is, if the vast majority of people have no moral issues sharing music online, then perhaps it's not the people that are the problem, but the law itself. The laws are supposed to reflect the social mores of the day, are they not?
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... something like 70% of people did not see anything wrong with sharing music with family and friends.
And why should it be wrong?!? That's not commercial copying for profit. Those aren't "lost sales." It's free advertising! If family and friends like what you point at them, they'll probably go out and buy some.
I say boycott them until they turn to dust, if that's the way they want to play. They don't deserve to exist and I'm sick and tired of watching them freak out over every damned technical innovation we come up with.
Re:vice president for worldwide content protection (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mind a movie studio making a profit. I DO mind it when that profit is federally mandated, federally guaranteed, and federally enforced. You can blather on and on about a 'free market' all you want, but when federal regulations favoritize an 'industry' that the 'free market' would let die, something is wrong. In media, there is no free market. Under a 'free market', the media companies are responsible for financing their own enforcement of their copyrights. Under current legislation and under legislation 'under consideration' that will pass no matter what, the enforcement is pawned off on the government at tax payer expense. That is not the definitition of a 'free market'. Let the media companies adapt or die, but goddammit, let them pay for enforcing their precious eternal copyrights. It's only right in a free market.
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A free market is when things are freely for sale. This includes laws, regulations and politicians. The free market rewards the most efficient players and what can be more efficient then buying laws to put your competition out of business.
Being able to pay off politicians is often much cheaper then creating, building, and marketing a superior product and customer service is just a money sink hole.
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They make a product for the masses with an expectation of a returned profit.
First, whether or not they have 'expectation of a returned profit' is irrelevant. Just because they planned to make money does not give them the right to make money. If I started a business selling solar-powered eggbeaters (or anything else expensive and useless that nobody wants), it is entirely fair and right that my business should fail and I don't make any money.
Second, and less obviously, the business model they have right now isn't actually to be paid for the product. The product is the creation of th
Countersue (Score:5, Interesting)
When do the various file-sharing services get together and collectively countersue the MPAA for obstruction of commerce, racketeering, and whatever else comes to mind when one industry gets together to choke another?
For that matter, when does the internet start to crowdfund a bounty in the form of attorneys' fees to go after these guys? [coinconnect.org] Perhaps we were waiting until the ISPs implement "6 Strikes", at which point all the open public WiFi hotspots will necessarily be taken offline or passworded outside common public use.
Re:Countersue (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to get these guys is to cut off their revenue stream. Stop buying [1] their crap.
[1] By "buying" I also mean downloading, for by doing so you are endorsing it, giving it further mindshare.
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The best way to get these guys is to cut off their revenue stream.
While I agree that it's productive, I have to disagree with that statement as written.
Boycotting can be very effective, but it's unlikely to happen significantly with the mainstream media. I more or less boycott the industry just because I don't find it entertainment but insult; however, most people aren't there yet. Either way, taking action in law to stop organized criminal behavior that's plainly detrimenting society is also not only necessary, but an implied duty in a society of laws.
(I know, our soci
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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After all it doesn't matter what the people say or do, the elected officials simply ignore them if it comes down to them or a multinational. throw them out, you just replace shill A with shill B, no change at all.
"Well there's yer problem, buddy!"
We're encountering the symptoms of a lack of political accountability to the law, and to the People.
See my above link for a [darn good] patch for that.
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That's not my point. My point is this - if they're not making any more money, they won't be able to afford to keep crooked senators and buy horrible legislation.
I'm not trying to make a point to the RIAA/MPAA by not giving them money - I'm trying to gut them completely.
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That's not my point. My point is this - if they're not making any more money, they won't be able to afford to keep crooked senators and buy horrible legislation.
I'm not trying to make a point to the RIAA/MPAA by not giving them money - I'm trying to gut them completely.
Now that is a very sound approach!
In order for it to be effective, we'd need to stop the funding completely. Encourage a boycott via internet ("Haven't given the MPAA/RIAA one red cent since [date]" in .sig lines? Mass campaigns to get people to abstain from funding them?
No export for you (Score:2)
This will never stop as long as anyone wants their music, wants it now, and is willing to pay for it.
And is willing to immigrate to a country where the copyright owner is willing to take the customer's money.
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By "buying" I also mean downloading, for by doing so you are endorsing it, giving it further mindshare.
Yeah, well... see, that line of thinking sounds less and less convincing every subsequent time I read it. At this point, I just categorize it as ineffective high-horse moralizing.
Oh, I know it looks good - it looks great - but sadly, it's not true. Whether we download copyrighted content or not, it makes not a lick of difference.
Re:Countersue (Score:5, Interesting)
The best way to get these guys is to cut off their revenue stream. Stop buying [1] their crap.
[1] By "buying" I also mean downloading, for by doing so you are endorsing it, giving it further mindshare.
But the drop in revenue will only be attributed to more pirating.
Yeah. Kindly fuck off with your "stop buying/downloading" and actually get off your ass and give a shit like the rest of us.
I've contacted the EFF about issues like this, what have YOU done, mister "sit around and do jack shit"?
Sorry for cursing, I'm just really peeved about stuff like this.
I'm an indie musician
The ills of the entertainment industry are merely symptoms of a greater problem.
Boycotting in all forms is an excellent plan, while considering options to deal with the real issues (bribery, corruption, crippled economy, laws by the 1% for the 1%, etc.)
When facing civilization-challenging crises, entertainment is something that's rather easy to ignore / boycott.
We're likely on the same side, but I see entertainment as the circuses part of "bread & circuses" and seek farther-ranging solutions, which ought to trickle down into the content industries, copyright, and patents.
Of course, I myself am not exactly sure what to do, and expect any effective solution to be ... messy as hell, probably devastating to many, and entirely unpalatable. At some point, our status quo will be describable in those same terms, and by then maybe some ideas will be on the table with a critical mass of support behind them. Not there yet...
Convince enough others (Score:2)
Re:Countersue (Score:5, Insightful)
So am I, on both counts.
And to answer your earlier question about what I am doing about these abusive organizations: I have stopped giving them money. On the rare occasion I buy music, I buy indie. If everyone did that, then we wouldn't have this problem.
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I stopped buying music completely. Now I just buy band merchandise and go to shows as often as I can. I figure the bands I care about get a far bigger piece of that then their iTunes or Amazon sales...
Re:Countersue (Score:5, Informative)
"But the drop in revenue will only be attributed to more pirating."
The movie industry has been doing quite well indeed.
Just look at their profits the past ten years. They are breaking profit records year after year. The movie industry has never made so much money in its history.
And all of this in the face of rampant piracy for many years.
What does that tell you?
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Re:Countersue (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, had to fix that for you. No movie ever made has ever turned a profit, none. [wikipedia.org] In fact, some world famous movies are such colossal failures they weren't even able to pay the actors [slashfilm.com] who starred in them.
Re:Countersue (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd click his links, you'd see that they're totally accurate, and also widely accepted practices within the industry. Do you know why all the big stars get a piece of the gross income instead of a piece of the net income? Because, on paper, every movie has lost money, regardless.
Once you hear that such films as Rain Man, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Tim Burton Batman "lost money" according to their studios bullshit accounting practices, it's hard to take any of their claims of "lost revenue" due to piracy seriously.
And it's not limited to the MPAA, either. The RIAA argued that Limewire caused them $75 TRILLION in damages [pcworld.com]. How does anybody credibly believe anything that comes out of these guys mouths?
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A Nazi on a train is ranting nonstop about the Jews. Someone pipes up and says:
"Yes, and those cyclists, too!"
The Nazi thinks a minute and says:
"Why the cyclists?"
To which the other person replies:
"Why the Jews?"
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Yeah, same here. If normal people have to band together by the thousands just to compete on equal footing with these megacorporations with their lawyer brigades, then maybe it's time we examined the inequity of the justice system in this country.
Of course, that'll never happen.
This is why America needs the Affordable Care Act (Score:5, Funny)
The Affordable Care Act failing to pass muster in the Supreme Court would imperil the planned 2013 Legislative Lobby agenda by the RIAA and MPAA to introduce that Affordable Media Act (AMA) which would provide Government Subsidies to help keep Blu-Ray and Access to Media Streaming Services at existing Prices in exchange for the requirement for all American Tax Payers to show proof of the purchase of at least $500 per year in Digital Media from any one of a number of participants in a Government run Media Marketplace (member including Walmart, iTunes Music Store, Amazon and others) or pay a tax penalty of $100,000.00 or 10 years imprisonment since it can be assumed that by not buying media from an authorized Marketplace Member, you are engaged in Copyright Infringement.
American's want online media -- let's provide it to them in a lawful and controlled manner.
DMCA safe harbor status (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know all of these services, but doesn't the DMCA's safe harbor provision exempt them from this sort of witch hunt prosecution, as long as DMCA reports are handled in a timely manner ? You could receive a thousand such reports a day, as long as you promptly take down the content (or challenge false claims), you're supposed to be in the clear, as far as the law is concerned.
I've received such complaints in the past, when one of my hosting clients had their site compromised and was used as a warez drop. I fixed the problem, nuked the offending files and never heard of it again. Given that I'm currently in the process of setting up such a file host (no payments though), I'm a bit concerned about this legal abuse. Youtube allows user uploads, and honors DMCA takedowns, and they seem to be doing just fine. Both sites are hosting user-created content. Both have the potential to carry copyrighted material. Both generate ad revenue from their traffic. What makes a filehost any different ?
Re:DMCA safe harbor status (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to actually stop piracy would be by passing new laws so draconian that I'd rather just see the entire copyright-driven industry destroyed than sacrifice that much freedom or hand so much power to those who can afford lawyers.
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The legal case against Megaupload hinged on a technicality: They took the files down on request, but didn't also take down duplicates of the same file uploaded by someone else, even though they could (as they used file-level dedupe) have done so trivially.
If you take MegaUpload's definition I simply have to have a dynamic link generator, oh I took down the last link but you can push "generate download link" and get a different URL to the same file and that's legal until we get a DMCA takedown for that. Everybody understands that's not how it's supposed to work and the law isn't that into the details as URLs. It simply says "(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed". "The file accessible at URL: $foo" is identification, but i
Different users may have different licenses (Score:2)
it's not the literal URL that is infringing but the file it points to.
I disagree. Say Aerith and Bob have accounts on MU. Aerith is authorized to distribute copies of a given work, but Bob is not. Only Bob's URL is infringing.
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It's vague enough for lawyers to argue over.
Politics is the issue, not any vagueness in the DMCA. The FBI and Justice Department could be going after the RIAA/MPAA for collusion, price fixing, fraud or any number of things, but politics says they go after Kim Dotcom and try to equate bit-torrent with terrorism.
The only way to actually stop piracy would be by passing new laws so draconian that I'd rather just see the entire copyright-driven industry destroyed than sacrifice that much freedom or hand so much power to those who can afford lawyers.
Wish more people saw it this way. Hollywood cannot survive as it is today; it has to adjust to the Internet like every other company.
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"The "red flag" test stems from the language in the statute that requires that an OSP not be “aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.” The "red flag" test contains both a subjective and an objective element. Objectively, the OSP must have knowledge that the material resides on its system. Subjectively, the "infringing activity would have been apparent to a reasonable person operating under the same or similar circumstances.""
These services exist for no other
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Most of them are not based in the US so the DMCA does not apply. Megaupload's mistake was to have servers in the US. Everyone else learned from that and is now making sure they don't have any assets under US law at all.
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DMCA provided fair harbor, and many other countries don't provide an equivalent, so it's not like moving to a country without it would necessarily benefit. You can look at the ongoing saga of Pirate Bay to see proof of that.
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I know at least MediaFire is being used by larger companies for legal purposes. A recently started company is using them as their main distribution method. Does the MAFIAA just want to shut down all competing digital distribution? What's next - Band Camp?
I know one of the accusations about Megaupload (which is very plausible, really) was that they simply removed the discovered links, not the actual files, when receiving a takedown notice. I doubt this is standard practice in the file hosting business, thoug
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Considering that I can simply do a search with the song title and artist name, and find a song on youtube, how effective has this tool been?
Re:DMCA safe harbor status (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably more effective than you think. One of the things YouTube did was to give copyright holders the option to profit from advertisements on the video, so it's quite possible that they are up there with after-the-fact permission. Some of the songs on YouTube are actually official videos from the holders, in particular Vevo [wikipedia.org]. I'm guessing the rest just don't care enough to have the videos taken down, as I've seen some of them up for years.
Slashdot starts April 1st by bring the room down (Score:2)
Wow. We've gone from "OMG Ponies!" to "Turn off the lights the internet is over"
The MPAA and RIAA have shit all over April Fool's day.
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Proposed solution: Content addressible networking. (Score:2)
I'm not talking about piracy, but anything that needs to distribute lots of data without spending a fortune on a CDN. Linux package repos, patches, freely-distributable content, that sort of thing. Storage is cheap now. Something like freenet, but without the need for performance-hurting paranoia in ever
I pirate most of my music from Youtube (Score:3)
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I see you enjoy double-encoded 128/192 kbps mp3s.
I'd like to thank the MPAA (Score:3)
Anyhow, I don't count myself as a diehard pirate, but I didn't even know about 4/5 sites listed, so I thank the MPAA for improving my options.
Wont Buy (Score:2)
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Yeah, that's what musicians do. Start businesses.
Ozzy Osborne soda is the best.
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Oh man, the bottlecap could be made of rubber and shaped like a bat's head and you'd open it by biting it off.
I would buy it by the case.
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Breaking the law is breaking the law.. I can't wait for the coming DNS blocks. Finally a software developer or musician wont have to worry about starting a business and getting ripped off by people who want to enjoy his work for free.
MPAA may be full of shit, but at the same time it's annoying how anti-piracy comments always get robotically modded down in Slashdot. I just think it's good to look objectively at both sides of the coin.
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MPAA may be full of shit, but at the same time it's annoying how anti-piracy comments always get robotically modded down in Slashdot. I just think it's good to look objectively at both sides of the coin.
Both sides of WHAT coin? "Anti-piracy" is "anti-sharing". A sane society shares ideas. Copyright was supposed to be a temporary monopoly on the act of copying so that creators (not corporations) could gain some financial benefit before the work entered the public domain, about a generation after it was created. Now, there's no such deal; no work has entered the public domain since 1923, and they are unlikely ever to as long as Disney keeps buying copyright extensions (20 years every 18 years that go by,
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This isn't about women or boys getting fired. This is about principles. Copyright originally had a limited term and it no longer effectively does, to society's detriment. I'm not spinning any sort of downloading of any specific show or piece of media. I'm saying there's a beast in Washington that is destroying our rights. And it won't stop until it has sucked all the gold off the table, like in Cowboys and Aliens. We've tried changing the laws, see Eldred v. Ashcroft. [wikipedia.org]
Just like the laws against pot; y
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OK, this is a great example of this [slashdot.org] so let's go through it and I'll explain:
We already share ideas. We publish them in these things called scientific journals. You can even purchase books which explain these ideas in a clear and lucid style. But even otherwise forcing someone to share something is also what a sane society does not do.
Copyright is a prohibition on sharing. You are now claiming that its absence would be to force people to share. This is obviously a lie; something is not mandatory just because it isn't prohibited.
Trying to spin downloading an episode of The Office as "sharing ideas" is ridiculous. Though entitled people such as yourself already assume that you are free to enjoy other peoples hard work by breaking copyright law. I don't get why people are opposed to enforcing laws.
An unsupported conclusory statement, then an ad hominem attack followed by appeal to authority and a non-sequitur. You're really racking up the points there -- and the first three are pretty obvious, so let me just point out the last one i
Re:Thats great news. (Score:4, Insightful)
MPAA may be full of shit, but at the same time it's annoying how anti-piracy comments always get robotically modded down in Slashdot. I just think it's good to look objectively at both sides of the coin.
To reiterate what the previous response has already pointed out, the comments that get modded down are not flagged as trolls because they're anti-piracy, it's because they are actually trolls. The arguments they put forth almost invariably consist entirely of some combination of rhetorical exaggeration, false analogies, tautological question begging and unjustified moral indignation. They provide no reasoning, they're just pure flame bait.
The main problem with the "anti-piracy" position is that there is almost nothing legitimate they can ask for that they do not already have. The existing laws go so far above and beyond what is reasonable to "fight piracy" that anyone arguing in favor of further extensions is inherently a dangerous extremist seemingly incapable of articulating a justifiable position. They advance an unsustainable framework of debate over which the only possible subject of compromise is the magnitude and timing of further increases in enforcement powers, rather than facilitating necessary and productive efforts to mitigate the outrageous damage already being caused by the legislation that their previous efforts have pushed through against all reason and justice.
Re:Thats great news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Infringing copyright to consume and enjoy material someone else has produced is equivalent to "saving jews"? Dude.. you are fucked up in the head.
The statement being replied to did not express the wrongness of copyright infringement, but of breaking the law. If the law is the basis on which you decide morality then it would seem you would have to conclude that saving Jews from Nazi persecution when they were in government was an immoral action since it was illegal. If you can't abide by that conclusion then you need a more thorough justification to claim that copyright infringement is wrong.
An average high school student could be expected to understand that point without having it explained. I pity you, since either your intellect is insufficient to understand the point or your character is insufficient to require you to make an honest argument. Both are serious deficiencies.
Why don't you hire an artist to produce content for you? Then you own it, you can do whatever with it, including sharing it with others for free.
My wife is a musician and we are quite ok without locking the internet down. Recording artists from major labels now put their songs on youtube for free and still sell copies. Why they are still getting bent out of shape over file sharing is beyond me.
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Recording artists from major labels now put their songs on youtube for free and still sell copies. Why they are still getting bent out of shape over file sharing is beyond me.
They're not. The middle-men, i.e., the RIAA, is the one getting bent out of shape.
The internet has basically eroded their hold on distribution and they're fucking pissed off about it. The whole "stealing from artists" line is just propaganda, the RIAA has been fucking stealing from artists since it's inception. Here's a suit from just a few years ago that, using their own calculations when going after individual copyright-infringers, found $6 BILLION in damages due to piracy by the CRIA (the Canadian wi [techdirt.com]
Third party claims (Score:2)
Infringing copyright to consume and enjoy material someone else has produced
Say I consume and enjoy material someone else has produced under license from someone else. That doesn't stop a third party from making a copyright claim on someone else's material. We've seen a third party make a copyright claim on bird songs of all things.
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They've already got the politicians deep enough in their pockets they may as well have sovereign immunity.