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Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Copyright Cops
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Sep 12, 2008 08:54 AM
from the keystone-of-the-law dept.
from the keystone-of-the-law dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the EIPA (the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008), which would create copyright cops. And these cops would take over the RIAA's War on Sharing by filing civil lawsuits and using civil forfeiture laws to take any and all computers engaged in infringement. Worse, they would even seize computers (such as servers or database farms) that house the data of innocent people, and these people would not have any right to get their data back. At best the 'virtual bystanders' who happened to have data on a computer used for infringement could get a protective order saying that no one should go rummaging through their stuff. Perhaps the only good thing in the bill is that they've excluded DMCA circumvention from the list of grounds for seizure. So while the Senators believe this is needed to combat foreign copyright infringement cartels, it's entirely likely that innocent people will be harmed by this law."
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Firehose:Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Copyright Cops by Anonymous Coward
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Citizens Demand To See Secret ACTA Treaty 223 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "One hundred groups of concerned citizens have united to demand a look at the secret ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) treaty and have drafted a letter to their representatives asking for information. We've discussed ACTA before, including what are believed to be parts of ACTA that lawmakers are trying to get a head start on."
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Foreign copyright infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
I only scanned the article, but I don't understand how US pseudo-cops seizing US computers and servers is going to stop foreign copyright infringement. Unless these are somehow international cops, but I doubt that.
Re:Foreign copyright infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Foreign copyright infringement? (Score:5, Funny)
Team America: World Copyright Police. (Puppets of the RIAA/MPAA, how fitting.)
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Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in a nutshell, you now pay for the RIAA to prop up their outdated and failed business model. Well, not really, you pay for people who do it for the RIAA. I kinda fail to see the public interest. Because that's what tax money should be spent on.
When I want to wage a war against my neighbor because I think he might do something illegal (ya know, he's one of those $minorty_group, and we all know they $stereotype), the public doesn't care, as they should. I can't go to the police station and demand that they install some surveillance cams and send a car by his house every couple minutes. Actually, I might have a suit for harrassment on my ass for doing so myself.
Can someone explain why the RIAA is entitled to harrassing people, now not only with their own witchhunters but by people that YOU pay for?
Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're being a little unfair. Considering the amount of bribe-money that's changed hands, they're entitled to a few laws which serve only them and allow them to ride roughshod over the public interest. Geez. Stop being so selfish!
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
What economic system do you prefer to capitalism?
Compared to what we have in the US? I would rather have capitalism.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you even ask the question? The RIAA, etc, aren't Capitalists - they are using the law to create and extend an artificial monopoly, not relying upon the free market. The poster you are attacking is pointing out that they are not Capitalists, that they will try to spin this as just being how good little Capitalists act, but it will be a lie, and so your post shows you generally fall for the lie and start a squabble with people who actually understand the situation. The RIAA wins because that squabbling undermines the people who would organize against the recording industry's version of State Socialism.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is saying to do away with Capitalism. They are saying to reduce Corporatism.
Where large corporations put up large artificial barriers to anyone wishing to compete with them or even modify their products to fit one's lifestyle . Or where they get to enact laws that are clearly in their interest and ignore those that are not.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Interesting)
You talk about "paying for" these people, what a joke. You have no choices anymore. Look at the housing market. Years of construction, millions of people paying every month for years, and with the stroke of a pen, money is printed, currency is devalued, public wealth is transferred to ensure all those defaulted loans are covered. The white collar crooks get the loan money repaid by the government and more importantly, by the time the money becomes utterly devalued, they'll own the deeds for half the country.
If you want to understand what's going on around you, I'd suggest you start reading up about the Great Depression.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
You start with the idea that money is the goal. For centuries and even now music made by musicians had music as a final goal, not money.
In the past economies have blossomed without the need of copyright.
Also you seem to think that the copyright is there to protect the business. It isn't. It is there to protect the right to copy. Solving the issue is not by not copying things anymore, but by making it legal to do so.
In general: if the majority does something that is illegal, then it is not the people that are wrong, it is the law that is wrong.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that technology has changed where you needed a $1 million dollar recording studio twenty years ago we can now use a $2000 PC and importantly you get the same quality of music out of it. The advent of the internet means it is now relatively cheap to get your message out. I believe Sandi Thom showed just how easy it was to gain a large audience through the internet. On top of this technology has made copying intellectual property very cheap (it costs around 10p to copy a DVD.)
Their business model isnâ(TM)t making things and selling them (such a description covers every single business model I can think of.) Their business model is being a middle man in the access to music. They were able to control the supply of music to the masses and in doing so make money from it. Technology has meant they have lost the ability to control that, rather than update their business model and try adding value to their product they continually attack their customer base and work to devalue their business model (paper cd cases, drm, etc..)
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You Think This is About Business Models? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that simple. Intellectual property is a relatively new property concept, historically--several hundred years old at most. It goes against human nature. In theory, it incentivizes the creation of new works, but in practice it appears to amp up the noise without significantly improving the signal. It leads to breakdowns of the free market because it is not enforced by physical reality (i.e. there is no scarcity imposed by a lack of raw materials or whatever). Because the scarcity is artificial, the pricing is impossible to truly justify.
There are a number of examples in modern economy that follow the "patron model" of producing works, where a wealthy person or company pays for the creation of intellectual property which is freely distributed in promoting some tangible good (hardware, say). So the present intellectual property model is not the only way to encourage innovation. Furthermore, the Constitution sets aside intellectual property for the advancement of science and useful arts; based on the limited mediums to which it applied (and the limited times as well), our present approach of patenting and copyrighting everything that might be the least bit profitable is probably in violation of the spirit of that law.
This isn't about propping up broken business models, at least not exclusively. This is about preserving a broken way of thinking--a way that is incompatible with most people's sense of fairness. What you should hvae observed is that there'd be no reason for copyright cops if copyright as a concept weren't failing spectacularly, a casualty of the Information Age.
When your choice is between turning to Gestapo tactics to enforce a law that is increasingly problematic from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint, or recognizing the law as so out-of-touch with reality that it's time to move on, I'd say that choosing the former is a genuine act of evil.
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Re:Your tax money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
The business model isn't outdated because it relies on laws to be profitable. As you point out, many businesses do that. "Selling" music isn't outdated. What's outdated is the model of distribution. Who needs a studio to record or distribute his music? I don't.
The refusal, of artists and customrs alike, of big studios and their business model comes from years of feeling ripped off. We have a global market but I can't buy CDs from US bands that aren't distributed in Europe, and neither can I buy US shows on DVD when they appear on DVD in the US. Because of artificial boundaries and territory protection. When the CD emerged, we were told the CDs are hellish expensive because it's a new technology and they will become cheaper when the sales pick up, we gotta wait 'til records disappear and CDs become the medium of choice. Well, records disappeared, CDs became the only medium and they got more expensive.
Instead we got some insane protection mechanisms that broke any standard in the (red) book and the silver discs (they are NOT CDs, I don't want to get sued by Phillips for using their trademarked name "compact disc" for these abominations) didn't play in some players. Could we return those faulty discs? No, we were told to get a new player. If we weren't accused of attempted copyright infringment by returning the disc after allegedly copying it.
Sales plummeted. If you ask me, quite logically so. I don't buy something when I can neither be sure that it works nor be able to return the item if it doesn't. Well, "plummet" is maybe the wrong term. Despite a global decline in economy and many companies in the red, the music industry still went on strong in the black, yet they cried about dwindling sales and of course those pesky pirates are to blame. Not a copy protection that alienates users and cranking out shovelware music nobody wanted to listen to.
Certainly, people copied songs. Some copied entire libraries and looking back at the years around the 2000, it was out of hands. But why did it come to that? It's not like people are hard wired to take stuff without paying. If anything, we've been told from birth that taking anything requires you to buy it. People also usually have moral problems with stealing. So maybe you can explain why they didn't when they copied music?
Today, though, we have two fronts colliding. And neither side is willing to give an inch or only a fraction thereof. A customer is treated like a criminal, while the studios are seen as big, greedy, law-buying monoliths that don't give a rat's ass about their customers. Neither side would willingly offer the other even so much as a glass of water if they should be drowning.
The problem is, though, you can't force anyone to buy. If you want me to buy something, you have to offer me something I want. I don't want music on silver discs that don't play in my hardware. I don't want music on my computer that plays only on this machine and only as long as you allow me to. I don't want DVDs where I can't ignore the ads. I don't want BluRay discs that "fuse" with my player and don't allow me to play them in a different one. I don't want to wait to see a movie that has already been available for months in some other country and could easily be sold here.
That's what I meant when I said outdated. You cannot enforce something against your customers. Your customer sees that it is possible to offer him music without restriction, to offer him movies that give him the movie only and not some unskippable ads and that plays wherever he wants, and he gets it as soon as it is out. Of course people will start looking for ways to get rid of those limitations and they will find them. That they don't have to pay money for it is maybe an added bonus, but usually not the deciding factor.
If you want to survive "legally", without resorting to actually waging a war against your customers, which will hurt you in the long run more than them, you have to offer what your customer wants. Only then he will buy.
Parent
Minor correction (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's entirely likely that only innocent people will be harmed by this law.
There, I fixed it.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
[knock knock]
Hang on, someone is at the door.
Who is it?
The Copyright Cops
What's this about?
Descriptions of games are copyright of Major League Baseball. I'm afraid you'll have to come with us.
As a result the following information is illegal.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, any and all your home computers, if you use bittorrent or download music you need to change your habits. Get a USB hard drive and a live CD to run your computer when you are in EVIL PIRATE MODE. if the live CD you use allows the use of truecrypt on the USB drive, I highly recommend it. If it is found you need plausible deniability. I had hacker friends that hid their USB drive inside a belkin UPS under their desk. nobody questions a UPS with a USB cable out of it, Hiding it in plain sight like that will help deter and distract the invading police during their search.
This way you can hide your usb drive with all the evidence and your regular home PC is pristene and clean with no evidence to condemn you.
Works great, leaves no evidence except that which is on your USB drive. You need to start using habits like the Jews had to use in WWII Germany.. take your drive and hide it well when not in use as you will never know when your home will be raided by the Secret IP police. you need to live a double life, and make sure you have good hiding places for your contraband. also be secret, never brag or tell others about your stash as they may be agents of the IP Police... (Bet you money that in a couple of years they will start a "rat on your parents/neighbors/friends" blitz to encourage people to turn in their neighbors.
Senate Judiciary Committee Members (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Senate Judiciary Committee Members (Score:5, Informative)
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It's just a committee vote (Score:5, Informative)
Not a good thing, but it's not law yet. You still have time to write your congresscritters.
And I see it's tagged "democrats." I find the party's support of the copyright lobby to be rather dismaying, but let's not ignore the fact that more than half of the Republicans on the committee also voted in favor. They're all willing to suck off the media companies, cause most people don't really know enough to care, and most of those that do just bitch about on slashdot.
Re:it's more than likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Same as it's gone over with everything else they've pulled. "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
Nobody of importance will complain. Nobody who complains will be heard from. Not until the copyright cops bust into a few wrong places and get shot; then we'll hear about how copyright infringers are terrorists, and they'll create some even WORSE laws.
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Re:More flaimbait posts. (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, did you read TFA? Because, if the way ars describes it is accurate, the whole law is pretty much inflammatory.
It's downright scary!! The federal government will now pursue civil matters on behalf of private entities, with the inclusion for collateral damage of seizure of entire server farms. So, if you host with someone, and one of their customers infringes, you could lose all of your stuff with little or no recourse.
This is a very scary precedent, and it seems to blur some historical distinctions between federal agencies and private interests.
Cheers
Parent
Re:More flaimbait posts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow me to dispel your insinuations that this department is currently doing the equivalent of what is being proposed.
From their web site [usdoj.gov] ...
Having a department whose job it is to enforce federal statutes on behalf of injured parties is in no way the same as the investigation and enforcement on behalf of large corporate interests.
The presence of the word "civil" in both titles doesn't change the fact that the federal government does not pursue "civil" cases on behalf of companies, and never has. Enforcing the "civil" rights of people is a completely different thing. I suspect you know this, but choose to ignore the distinction.
Cheers
Parent
Re:Seizures? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just another in a long line of laws that America has created where seizing private property is the response.
Before you just, you know, paid a fine, went to jail, and recovered property was returned to the owners when some crime was committed. Now the myriad of crimes have punishments that cover:
I doubt this is the America that people envisioned hundreds of years ago, but what really disturbs me is that I don't think this was the kind of America when I was a kid. It is actually really bothering me these days.
The amount of growing government power to just seize anyone and everything for any amount of time with massive legal hassles to get it or you out of seizure is insane. The concept of government punishment is growing far beyond the crime (share 1000 mp3s with your friends for crap music you would never have bought in the first place) to destroying and shattering peoples live forever.
The laws are being created to circumvent the judicial system. It used to be that the police could be ignored in many cases, because arresting someone really means very little, it was the prosecution that mattered. You might spend a bit of time in jail pre-trial, but prosecution was something you could avoid with the right lawyers.
Realizing this, the laws are being set up now, so the punishment isn't just some "jail time", now you have to spend years recovering even your basic possessions for the laws which now are designed to benefit the agencies itself. Whether prosecuted or not, getting your property back is a very very difficult task.
I just don't see it getting better, but getting worse. Mix laws where people and property can be taken without recourse with the wrong executive body governing the application of those laws and there will be some real problems coming.
But hey, at least I know that when I write some music and sign a song I'll have royalty protection for my music label and I'll get my 5 cents on the dollar.
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Re:Seizures? (Score:5, Insightful)
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