"It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window." -- U.S. VP Joe Biden

While they may never be able to truly defeat piracy and drive it from the lurking depths of the internet, copyright protection attack-dog organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have long dreamed of the day when they would no longer have to pay for their own copyright enforcement. Now that dream is on the verge of coming true, thanks to the Obama administration.

After countless lobbyist dollars from the music and film industry and a brief "public review", the administration rolled out its vision to fight piracy yesterday afternoon. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden -- whose blunt speech has sometime left him in trouble -- did not mince words.

He states, "This is theft, clear and simple. It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window."

The sound-byte comparing downloads to stealing jewels from New York City's finest jeweler quickly lit up the web. Bob Pisano, interim chief executive officer at the Motion Picture Association of America praised the VP, "It is especially critical that the United States has an effective framework for protecting creative content online and enforcing intellectual property rights in the digital environment."

According to the Obama administration, the RIAA, and MPAA, the world economy is pretty much doomed if we don't start prosecuting pirates at home and abroad. Without such a crackdown, businesses will go bankrupt the coalition argues. Biden states, "Piracy hurts, it hurts our economy."

Interestingly, the statements seem to fly in the face of a recent Government Accountability Office study released to U.S. Congress earlier this year, which concluded that there is virtually no evidence for the claimed million dollar losses by the entertainment industry. That study suggested that piracy could even benefit the economy.

Another noteworthy study from three years back notes that virtually every citizen violates intellectual property laws in some way on a daily basis.

The White House press release was full of buzz phrases, but short on details. It did however indicate that the U.S. government may increasingly monitor filesharing networks and BitTorrent sites and assist media groups in their prosecution/threat letter efforts. It speaks of improved "law enforcement efforts at the Federal, state and local level."

The biggest effort, though, will be devoted to cracking down on piracy websites in the U.S. and overseas. The administration was short on details of how exactly it would convince piracy-loving nations like China to change their ways, but it did say it would try to do so by "being as public as we possibly can" about infringement.

The press release states, "As we shine the spotlight on foreign governments that have rogue actors doing illicit business within their borders, it's the government's responsibility to respond."

Such efforts have shown mild success. After lots of threats against the Swedish government by the U.S., the European Union nation finally tried the site's admins last year and found them guilty. The trial was later exposed to be a perversion of the justice system, with the judge who gave the verdict have multiple ties to copyright protection organizations. The verdict -- $3M USD in damages and a year of hard prison time for the admins -- is currently being appealed.

The White House's vision is perhaps a prelude to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which will go before Congress later this year. The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement. It also implements an interesting provision called "imminent infringement", which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense (for example if you searched "torrent daft punk"). This is among the first official "thought crime" provisions to be proposed by the U.S. government. The bill also makes it a criminal offense to bypass DRM.

Ultimately, it should be interesting to see how American taxpayers react to President Obama's decision to spend their money on efforts to prosecute them and try to choke out piracy at home and abroad, particularly when the current evidence is inconclusive of its effects. One thing's for sure, though. Top politicians on both sides of the aisle are firmly behind the music and movie industry anti-piracy and money-collection efforts.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=18815

------------

Fuck that shit. I bolded the especially dangerous part, which basically prosecutes thought crimes.

I'm not sure what they're thinking with this mess, especially since there are much worse problems in this country than "the woes of the music and record industry." I guess it proves that massive lobbying for your cause really does work, and the policy changes always benefit those with the most money.

6/23/2010 1:28:07 PM

This is ridiculous. Obama's administration is taking the losing side on this one, and will end up on the wrong side of history.

Freedom of information and the ease of its spread are directly tied to progress in culture, science, education, art, etc. Capitalists can't make a cut off of it and so they bring in their 2nd favorite butt boys, the Democrats, to save the day.

This should be evidence to Republicans that Democrats are not the filthy socialists they make them out to be and are just as invested in the interests of capital as Republicans.

6/23/2010 1:35:02 PM

Haven't there been court cases that dealt with DRM and how it applies to purchased materials?

6/23/2010 1:46:48 PM

This is totally absurd and wildly dangerous.

Quote :

"The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement."

holy fucking shit! what?

Quote :

"Another noteworthy study from three years back notes that virtually every citizen violates intellectual property laws in some way on a daily basis."

Information wants to be free. Copyright has gone way way too far. WAY too far.

Quote :

"...which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to ____[anything]"

I am almost speechless. I keep saying that we're at the "beginning of the end", but frankly, I don't want to believe that this is really happening. Honestly, I am becoming scared.

Quote :

"This should be evidence to Republicans that Democrats are not the filthy socialists they make them out to be and are just as invested in the interests of capital as Republicans."

This should be evidence to everyone that Republicans and Democrats are a part of the same bilateral effort towards to totalitarianism.

6/23/2010 1:50:35 PM

Quote :

"This should be evidence to everyone that Republicans and Democrats are a part of the same bilateral effort towards to totalitarianism."

I think it's probably more likely to be evidence that many in Congress outright let their deep-pocketed donors write legislation for them, and don't actually read any of it until its already been put in the hopper for consideration. The large media companies tried something similar to this with a "broadcast flag" a few years ago, so they could have the option to "flag" any broadcast program as something your DVR wouldn't be able to record.

6/23/2010 1:55:23 PM

^

Capital gets its way.

6/23/2010 1:57:13 PM

^^
Well yeah, I'm just talking about the big picture.

^
Sure, which isn't necessarily bad.
The thing is, information isn't really capital. We just treat it that way and pretend it somehow "magically" becomes actual property.

6/23/2010 2:00:50 PM

Quote :

"Sure, which isn't necessarily bad. The thing is, information isn't really capital. We just treat it that way and pretend it somehow "magically" becomes actual property."

You can score serious coin off of controlling information via publishing, copyright, etc.

6/23/2010 2:01:30 PM

I mean, I'm all for rights-holders protecting things that they created and have ownership over, but there's a clear attempt to shift the burden of protection on to the shoulders of the consumer of said content. If I'm doing something illegal with a purchased copy, yes, I should get prosecuted. But that's not happening to the majority of customers that are being saddled with restrictive DRM.

6/23/2010 2:03:27 PM

when you steal a CD from sam goody's, you get a ticket, and the cops drive you home to speak to your parents.

you download ke$ha, and you get gang raped by the record industry.


yeah, it's a smash-and-grab alright.

6/23/2010 2:14:55 PM

Not that I agree with extreme anti-piracy methods,

Quote :

"Information wants to be free."

People who make this "information" for a living don't want it to be free. And if it becomes free they will stop producing it.

6/23/2010 2:20:58 PM

Quote :

"People who make this "information" for a living don't want it to be free. And if it becomes free they will stop producing it."

No the people that finance the making of the information don't want it to be free. The people producing the information are, for the most part, under-compensated compared to the mega-profits made by investors who did nothing other than shuffle currency around.

6/23/2010 2:23:40 PM

Honestly, I have lost 'most' sympathy for people who are downloading copyrighted materials... I use to be on the side of the downloaders, because the industry was doing such a good job of holding up progress (being able to pay for a music file). But there are numerous methods for you to download these things now legally. The fact that you either dont have the money to pay for the items or dont want to spend money for the items isnt a good argument.

My comments are directed toward the people downloading movies and music online illegally, only.

6/23/2010 2:25:08 PM

here's my thing:

i download music that i would never, ever buy. like, on a whim, i'll download a song that i only intend to listen to once to fulfill my immediate desire for satisfaction. i still buy music from artists i enjoy. so making it illegal isn't going to make me buy any more than i already do, it's just going to stymie the growth of my music library a little. i don't think i'm alone on this. i really don't think the record industry is going to see a spike in growth because of this, should it go through.

6/23/2010 2:29:50 PM

these are the politicians that YOU PEOPLE voted for

6/23/2010 2:30:13 PM

Quote :

"People who make this "information" for a living don't want it to be free."

Open source, creative commons, and other designers licenses make people plenty of money.

Quote :

"And if it becomes free they will stop producing it"

Yeah, there's no incentive to create anything without money. Before humans had money, copyrights and patents, there were no inventions, no art. No, you're right.
(besides, that's not my point.)

Quote :

"My comments are directed toward the people downloading movies and music online illegally, only"

Cool, lemme borrow your DVD collection so I can rip it.

6/23/2010 2:32:01 PM

Quote :

"these are the politicians that YOU PEOPLE voted for"

Reminder that you don't vote and are equally culpable as your epsilon-causal contribution is equivalent to ours.

6/23/2010 2:32:19 PM

mls... Even if I believe your argument in whole, that you never download music that you listen to regularly, thats not going to be the case for most.

I also believe there are services that allow you to download music on a subscription basis, not per file, which would allow you to operate within the letter of the law.

6/23/2010 2:33:47 PM

Quote :

" Cool, lemme borrow your DVD collection so I can rip it. "

I'm not saying that this hasnt been a problem, but it is virtually unenforceable, generally a pain in the ass, and not worth the effort (I must value my time better than you to hunt down friends with a movie I want to watch, rip it, then watchn it- I'd rather just go to Blockbuster and spend the $5).

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 2:36 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2010 2:35:17 PM

^^^do you want to be shot in the heart, or stabbed in the heart? neither? fuck you, choose one

6/23/2010 2:35:43 PM

Quote :

"^^^do you want to be shot in the heart, or stabbed in the heart? neither? fuck you, choose one"

Choose neither and you get fucked in the ass. A single voter's contribution to a federal election is typically so small as to vanish.

6/23/2010 2:38:28 PM

Quote :

"I also believe there are services that allow you to download music on a subscription basis, not per file, which would allow you to operate within the letter of the law."

if i'm not mistaken, they allow you to rent the music, which means that as soon as that company goes out of business or changes their business model, you lose everything. and aren't some of those services in bed with certain record labels, thereby limiting their library? nuts to that.

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2010 2:39:24 PM

^^or choose one, and still get fucked in the ass

anyway though, i'm getting off topic

6/23/2010 2:40:53 PM

haha, this won't fly

6/23/2010 2:42:49 PM

Quote :

"if i'm not mistaken, they allow you to rent the music, which means that as soon as that company goes out of business or changes their business model, you lose everything. and aren't some of those services in bed with certain record labels, thereby limiting their library? nuts to that."

What can I tell ya... You either pay or download illegally. It would be ashame to be one of those with a 100k bill because you felt the need to extend your library to include songs you'll listen to a couple of times.

6/23/2010 2:44:30 PM

Quote :

"What can I tell ya... You either pay or download illegally. It would be ashame to be one of those with a 100k bill because you felt the need to extend your library to include songs you'll listen to a couple of times."

What incentive do you have to be such a corporate apologist?

6/23/2010 2:46:24 PM

^^which brings me back to my point. the punishment doesn't fit the crime. you wouldn't imprison a jay-walker, would you? if a stolen CD from your local store is worth $15, and if it's truly a smash-and-grab, the punishment should be commensurate with the crime. if you're stealing a cd by Ace of Base, you shouldn't be stuck with the bill equal to the defecit of haiti.


record industry's are hurting because of their inability to respond to evolving market demands and their stubborn desire to hold on to a dying business model. i don't exactly weep for them. sooner or later, artists are going to learn that it will be more cost-effective for them to distribute their music for free/very cheap on their own websites (or some other medium), completely bi-passing the record industry. i hope this happens

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 3:00 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2010 2:46:43 PM

Digital piracy doesn't just affect the record industry. It affects all forms of media and information: software companies, newspapers, book authors/publishers, pay-to-view websites, the film industry, etc. Anything that can be converted to digial media and sold, from a professor's algebra lesson to the repair manual for a 1988 Ford Taurus.

I have definitely pirated hundreds of dollars worth intellectual property from small businesses and even private citizens.

6/23/2010 3:22:05 PM

^^ Exactly how I feel. It's going to be one person with talent that goes viral and collects 100% of their profit by distributing their music online or through their own label.

After that, it will be a no brainer to promote your own music online.

6/23/2010 3:38:12 PM

Quote :

"^^which brings me back to my point. the punishment doesn't fit the crime. you wouldn't imprison a jay-walker, would you? if a stolen CD from your local store is worth $15, and if it's truly a smash-and-grab, the punishment should be commensurate with the crime. if you're stealing a cd by Ace of Base, you shouldn't be stuck with the bill equal to the defecit of haiti."

The record labels are using the tools they have available. You mention the local store in which you would have been hauled in. calling the cops is the method they have available to them. The record labels can't call the police because they dont handle or have the capability of doing this. They do have the capability of sueing to make an example. And its obvious it has had an effect. I do agree that there is no way these people getting sued for 100k actually did 100k of damage. However, they knew what they were doing (most) when they did it.

What's funny, however, is that these people generally are given a chance to quick settle. The idiots who owe a lot of money are generally those who decided to fight.

The ACTUAL cost of most RIAA settlements are less than 5k. If I were given a choice of a criminal record of shoplifting from the local store, or 5k payment, I'll take the payment every day.

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 3:48 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2010 3:45:14 PM

Digital piracy makes my job hundreds of times cheaper and hundreds of times faster. Fuck publishers.

6/23/2010 3:46:18 PM

This bill scares the fuck out of me, for all of the reasons listed above.

Quote :

"But there are numerous methods for you to download these things now legally."

I tend to agree. Now that there are multiple cheap ways to acquire digital movies and music legally, I tend to use those. It has much more to do with the convenience than the legality, though. Back before you could buy a song for a buck from itunes and before netflix and hulu, i'd pirate the shit out of music and movies not because i didn't want to pay for them but because the technophile in me didn't want to deal with physical media anymore.

The industry was about a decade behind the technology, and they've almost caught up. At least for me, bittorrent is far more inconvenient than using the legal methods available to me.

6/23/2010 3:46:31 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, there's no incentive to create anything without money. Before humans had money, copyrights and patents, there were no inventions, no art. No, you're right. (besides, that's not my point.)"

No incentive to do it for a living, thus directing your creative efforts toward it. I'm sure if nobody paid for any information you would still have plenty of useful minimalist apps that let you do various things, and plenty of indie music that a few people like.

But big budget movies and video games? No way.

You can't deny that art of all types got a lot better once people started paying money for it.

6/23/2010 3:46:59 PM

Quote :

"What's funny, however, is that these people generally are given a chance to quick settle."

the "quick settle" should be $20 and a night in jail. seriously, 5k? why are we pretending that this is a reasonable punishment? the record industry may be taking a hit, but trying to recoup their losses from a few people is insane.

6/23/2010 3:53:48 PM

If lawyers only worked for free, then that might work...

6/23/2010 4:00:16 PM

Any way you cut it, these blanket lawsuits are nothing short of extortion.

6/23/2010 4:01:28 PM

if you steal actual property of equal value, you pay $100 in court fees and have to clean up the highway for a week. they're stealing songs, not diamonds.

6/23/2010 4:03:32 PM

Quote :

"What's funny, however, is that these people generally are given a chance to quick settle. The idiots who owe a lot of money are generally those who decided to fight."

No, what's funny is that that is what we call "extortion." That the RIAA can get away with it legally is appalling. it has been shown numerous times that the RIAA has fingered the wrong person. Moreover, a legitimate settlement should be commensurate with the actual crime. Generally you settle for less than the actual cost of the crime would have been. In this case, $5k is a fuckton more than the actual cost of the crime.

6/23/2010 4:05:25 PM

So, they have to hire investigators to find out who is sharing and downloading their content, then they have to hire lawyers to find you and file a lawsuit, and they are only entitled to $20?

It doesnt work that way.

6/23/2010 4:26:44 PM

Quote :

"People who make this "information" for a living don't want it to be free. And if it becomes free they will stop producing it."

If you're a musician and you feel this way, it's time to stop making music, because we're tired of hearing your manufactured garbage anyway. Make music because you love it, not to make a buck. I'd rather people download my music, then come to shows. Besides, most music that a person downloads is music that they would not buy normally. What teenager can afford to pay 15 bucks for a CD? Even if a band is in it for the money, they should understand that it would be better to have their popularity grow through illegal downloading than to simply have no one buy their recordings.

I reject the idea of intellectual property altogether. Whether it's pharmaceuticals, music recordings, ideas, or whatever. Concepts are not property; actual physical material is property. Just because you record music doesn't mean a person should have to pay to listen to it. Yes, I know the mega-corporations are fighting hard to keep this from happening, because they're getting absurdly rich from the whole operation. If government wasn't there to create and endorse these terrible copyright laws, it wouldn't be a problem.

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2010 4:39:41 PM

6/23/2010 4:40:43 PM

d357r0y3r:

Is your political science concentration on communism or something?

6/23/2010 4:43:26 PM

If you think I was endorsing communism with any of that, you either didn't understand what I said or don't understand what communism is.

6/23/2010 4:46:41 PM

This isn't just about music. Musicians can make decent money from tours and shows.

How do high production value movies and video games survive a free information society?

[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 5:00 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2010 5:00:42 PM

Seriously fuck the knowledge pimps that pad their pockets by restricting the flow of free information in the sciences.

6/23/2010 5:01:21 PM

Quote :

"I reject the idea of intellectual property altogether. Whether it's pharmaceuticals, music recordings, ideas, or whatever. Concepts are not property; actual physical material is property."

Should we not pay for video games and other computer programs?

An mp3 file is a physical thing. It's a particular arrangement of bits in memory. A song is not conceptual. It has a clear definition.


[Edited on June 23, 2010 at 5:11 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2010 5:07:36 PM

I'm confused. From what I can tell, we are bigger consumers of legitimate media than ever. Thirty years ago, nobody was all aglow under the Christmas tree unwrapping season one of Simon & Simon. But we are now, and I don't mean season one of 30 Rock...I mean, we're actually buying fucking Simon & Simon...paying money for it...

I think they need to count their blessings.

6/23/2010 5:09:18 PM

Quote :

"Should we not pay for video games and other computer programs?"

Depends on the utility of the computer program.

6/23/2010 5:09:29 PM

The point is that the consumer determines the value of an item by purchasing it or not purchasing it. Not by deciding to have it without purchasing it.

The only argument that could possibly be made here is destroyers: that songs are not "things". I don't agree with it since songs have the definition of non-conceptual things.

6/23/2010 5:13:09 PM

People need to stop viewing "providing capital" as "providing innovation". Just because some guy shuffles currency to a project he thinks is going to generate revenue for him doesn't make him anything other than an unnecessary middleman.

6/23/2010 5:15:23 PM