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Op-Ed hijinks
This op-ed by Cary Sherman, head of the RIAA, is the funniest, angriest, and most ironic op-ed I have read in quite some time. Basically, she he argues that the challenges to SOPA/PIPA were all damned lies, and that the media industry was helpless to get their message out. Weep for the media industry.
Excerpt:
While no legislation is perfect, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (or PIPA) was carefully devised, with nearly unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate, and its House counterpart, the Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA), was based on existing statutes and Supreme Court precedents. But at the 11th hour, a flood of e-mails and phone calls to Congress stopped the legislation in its tracks. Was this the result of democracy, or demagoguery?
Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works. Consider, for example, the claim that SOPA and PIPA were “censorship,” a loaded and inflammatory term designed to evoke images of crackdowns on pro-democracy Web sites by China or Iran. Since when is it censorship to shut down an operation that an American court, upon a thorough review of evidence, has determined to be illegal? When the police close down a store fencing stolen goods, it isn’t censorship, but when those stolen goods are fenced online, it is? Wikipedia, Google and others manufactured controversy by unfairly equating SOPA with censorship. They also argued misleadingly that the bills would have required Web sites to “monitor” what their users upload, conveniently ignoring provisions like the “No Duty to Monitor” section.
The hyperbolic mistruths, presented on the home pages of some of the world’s most popular Web sites, amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power. When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading, they are duping their users into accepting as truth what are merely self-serving political declarations.
The EFF published this response.
… it seems to us that the op-ed’s really unfortunate message is that Hollywood still thinks the way forward is for a few executives to sit down together and make a deal. He calls on “the companies” that opposed the bills to come up with “constructive alternatives” and then have a “fact-based conversation” with the entertainment industries. MPAA chair Chris Dodd made a similar call a few weeks ago. Even New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller seems to think this comes down to a few “players”: in his own piece on the battle against the bills, he seemed to assume that Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales is the only person who matters on the other side of this debate.
That’s precisely the wrong approach. It was great to see technology companies and platform hosts like Wikipedia stand up against SOPA and PIPA. But the people Hollywood most needs to consult now are the users of the internet– the millions of people who have found their voice due, in part, to the emergence of technologies and platforms that allow them to speak to a bigger audience then ever before.
The truth is that a broad swath of public interest, consumer rights, and human rights groups were fighting these bills from the get-go, because we saw how they would harm users, not just technology companies and platforms. Due in part to the hard work of this coalition in raising public awareness, millions of those users saw that, too, and that’s why they contacted their Congressional representatives. We weren’t scared by rhetoric, we were scared by what the bills actually proposed, and we were really scared that the proponents didn’t seem to understand their own legislation.
More info here.
Related articles
- RIAA Chief Whines That SOPA Opponents Were “Unfair” (yro.slashdot.org)
- RIAA President: Google ‘Misused Its Power’ by Protesting SOPA (searchenginewatch.com)
- Debunking the record industry shill who said that his amendments to Canada’s proposed copyright law are no big deal (boingboing.net)
SOPA quote of the day
…, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.
Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood’s bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.
To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well.
– Stewart Baker, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, and explaining how Hollywood is losing the culture war with the new online majority.
Related articles
- How Republican opposition derailed SOPA and Protect IP (news.cnet.com)
- Testifying Against SOPA (volokh.com)
Six strikes
The major ISPs have agreed with media companies to implement a “six strikes” program. Under the agreement, when content companies report to an ISP that they believe an ISP customer is accessing illegal content, the ISPs will implement a series of notices intended to get the customer to stop. Ultimately, the customer could be terminated by the ISP if they cease the activity.
The problem with this approach is that it is based merely on claims made by private companies, with no judicial oversight whatsoever. In effect, the ISPs become cops for the media industry and the media industry has the unilateral power to block (or severely degrade) service for those accused. Imagine if a private company could go to the phone company and accuse a customer of using his phone to commit a crime and demand that the phone company take action, including disconnecting the phone. Would we agree to that approach? Since when do private companies engage in law enforcement?
The Center for Democracy & Technology, along with Public Knowledge, said in a joint statement they were concerned about the accord. “We believe it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court,” the groups said.
Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also had concerns. She added, in a telephone interview, that the EFF was “pretty disappointed that ISPs have agreed to serve as a propaganda agent for big media.”
If a media company believes that a person has illegally stolen their content, the law provides existing remedies.
Related articles
- Should you fear new ISP copyright enforcers? (news.cnet.com)
- The Content Industry and ISPs Announce a “Common Framework for Copyright Alerts”: What Does it Mean for Users? (eff.org)
- White House: we “win the future” by making ISPs into copyright cops (arstechnica.com)
A secret treaty
As the New York Times is reporting, there is currently an international effort underway to negotiate a new treaty primarily aimed at protecting intellectual property. And it is being done in secret.
Behind a veil of secrecy, the United States, the European Union, Japan and other countries are forging ahead with plans to coordinate an international crackdown on illegally copied music, movies, designer bags and other goods that change hands in sidewalk souks and Internet bazaars.
Negotiators, under intense pressure from media companies, luxury brands and other corporate victims of piracy, are scrambling to complete a so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by the end of the year.
But the process is running into growing criticism from Internet campaigners, lawmakers and even some people involved in it.
Since when is it good policy to negotiate law in secret and primarily for the benefit of private parties rather than sound policy reasons? One of the possible approaches apparently being considered would mandate some sort of regulations that would require ISPs to disconnect customers who content provider claim have engaged in illegal file sharing. Where is the due process? Why isn’t this just a way for a private industry to get law enforcement for its own protection for free?
More from the EFF, Public Knowledge and James Love.
last.fm and the RIAA
What the hell is this? It appears that last.fm or their parent, CBS, may have delivered a data dump of last.fm users’ listening data to the RIAA. So much for privacy.
I am member of last.fm (for now). But if this is indeed true, I will be gone in the blink of an eye.
RIAA loses a round (Updated)
Over the objections of the RIAA, a Federal judge is allowing a file-copying case to be streamed to the Internet.
A federal judge has agreed to a novel request: streaming parts of an upcoming file-sharing trial over the Internet. Judge Nancy Gertner has granted the request of Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson and students to put the gavel-to-gavel footage on the Internet for any non-commercial use, over the RIAA’s objections. But only on a one-time basis.
Update: The RIAA is so afraid of widespread public disclosure of their litigation tactics that they have appealed the judge’s ruling to stream the trial to the Internet.