EFF Urges US Copyright Office To Reject Proactive 'Piracy' Filters (torrentfreak.com) 55
TorrentFreak: As entertainment companies and Internet services spar over the boundaries of copyright law, the EFF is urging the US Copyright Office to keep "copyright's safe harbors safe." In a petition just filed with the office, the EFF warns that innovation will be stymied if Congress goes ahead with a plan to introduce proactive 'piracy' filters at the expense of the DMCA's current safe harbor provisions. [...] "Major media and entertainment companies and their surrogates want Congress to replace today's DMCA with a new law that would require websites and Internet services to use automated filtering to enforce copyrights. "Systems like these, no matter how sophisticated, cannot accurately determine the copyright status of a work, nor whether a use is licensed, a fair use, or otherwise non-infringing. Simply put, automated filters censor lawful and important speech," the EFF warns.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yup, piracy = murder, won't someone think of the children?
Re:Need to allow proactive filters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Don't forget dystopian (Score:2)
Don't forget distopian / dystopian. :D
I hate it when I make multiple typos.
Re: (Score:2)
We all knowed what you meant.
Re: (Score:1)
The RIAA is counting on it
Re: (Score:1)
Buying a gun isn't a crime.
Intent must have demonstrations before it is a crime.
Buying a gun is not a demonstration UNTIL an attempted assault or an actual one occurrs
Re: (Score:2)
Intent to commit murder is not a crime.
I agreed with you when I read this. Then I thought to myself, "Wait, do you really know for sure?"
No. I really didn't know for sure. [walb.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's conspiracy.
It wasn't the murder they were planning that got them arrested, it was the planning of the murder. It's a subtle but important difference. The charge would have been the same had they been planning to rob a liquor store or mug a little old lady.
Re: (Score:2)
Conspiracy has always been 5 or more people conspiring to commit a crime. When did 4 get tossed in?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Well you're talking law. I was talking language, which often does not match what super intelligent elected officials write. I looked up the definition and it does indeed say 2 now. I think it evolved to match law, but it used to mean 5 or more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
murders have the right to JURY TRAIL & due pro (Score:2)
murders have the right to JURY TRAIL & due process
Re: (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Look at YouTube DCMA takedowns (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen indie bands get DMCA notices on their own original copyright materials. Whatever they are using for take down notices is already broken turning that into an auto filter would be a disaster.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen indie bands get DMCA notices on their own original copyright materials. Whatever they are using for take down notices is already broken turning that into an auto filter would be a tool to protect our business model and markets from competition. Excellent!
FTFY
People talk like they assume that the stifling effects are a bug, and not a deliberate feature for the copyright cartels.
Stop assuming that.
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
A few of them have had RIAA representatives showing up at their concerts to make sure they're not covering any copyright material, but it wasn't just random that was because of competing venues.
I consult for a few indie bands when they are writing and some have asked if I would join when they were short a guitar. Music has somehow become a cutthroat business as apposed to an art and I no longer have any interest in performing.
Seems to me that this is a bit of overreach (Score:5, Interesting)
And would be government censorship.
Now as much as the crowd here likes to shout that word at the drop of a hat, we're looking a the real deal this time. At the very least this easily fits into the idea of prior restraint. You are asking for the government to deny access to part of a communication system based on notion of what you think is going on in commercial terms. There's no overriding government secrets to enforce, no defense materials at stake. Purely commercial.
That right there is more than enough to drive a stake through its heart if the Copyright office had any sense at all.
Prior Restraint (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It would change the burden to qualify for safe harbor from "complies with takedowns" to "applies proactive filter". You're currently free to do neither and you still will be free to do neither. The only question is, how much legal liability do you want for contributing to copyright infringement.
Re: (Score:2)
Penalty for false positives? (Score:1)
The current rules have no feedback to make a copyright holder make sure he has a valid takedown.
So there a just plain wrong takedowns with no consequence.
This proposal gives even more power to these folks.
Given that there has been abuse, does this power come with a long missing feedback/penalty for bad takedowns?
1st amendment issues! (Score:2)
1st amendment issues!
They don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put, automated filters censor lawful and important speech
Collateral damage due to protecting copyrights. The media companies that are encouraging DMCA get replaced don't care about this. They just want their material protected. Hell, they probably would very much like 'fair use' to go away. Anything to tighten the screws, damn the legitimate usages!
This is a very American response to the issue: Shoot first, ask questions later. Automated filters are basically this mentality encoded. Censor first, ask questions later. Protect copyrights first, ask questions later.
Why the hell is it that values that Americans seems to cherish are left at the entrance when they go to work? Fucking disgraceful.
Re: (Score:2)
Why the hell is it that values that Americans seems to cherish are left at the entrance when they go to work? Fucking disgraceful.
Because americans are fucking spoiled hypocritical children.
Good luck with that (Score:3)
new law that would require websites and Internet services to use automated filtering to enforce copyrights.
Given the rise of pretty much every websites flipping on HTTPS, the prevalence of VPN's and other measures to obscure what's really being transmitted to any given IP address, they got a hell of a tall order there to try to 'stomp' on copyright infringement on the fly. You're talking about cracking/decrypting HTTPS on-the-fly, add analysis and comparison to samples. I'm not saying it's impossible, our computers are getting disturbingly fast, but what a fucking waste of resources. All that effort so Joe can't download a copy of your movie? Epic waste of resources, for little-to-no gain whatsoever. Haven't these people learned yet? People who pirate content are rarely people who would EVER buy your stuff.
It could work (Score:2)
Automatic filtering to enforce copyright could work....if there were *steep* and enforceable penalties against media companies for wrongfully censoring / claiming ownership of work that wasn't copyrighted.
I had an original work on youtube (written and performed by me) get taken down on behalf of Warner Brothers for a DMCA violation - which equates to theft - they are claiming to own my work.
If they were responsible for the software that they use that spams out DMCA takedowns and financially liable for their