RIAA Hires ATF Chief - Now The Copyright Cops May Really Bust Down Your Door
from the great... dept
The latest hire by the RIAA is Bradley Buckles, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He's going to head up their anti-piracy efforts and their relationship with law enforcement agencies. I'd imagine this isn't good news for anyone involved in file sharing. It certainly doesn't suggest that the recording industry is looking for a discussion about how to update their business model, but would prefer to simply bust down doors and throw people in jail. If he's really going after true counterfeiting operations that are making up fake CDs and selling them on the streets, that's fine - and his experience could be helpful. However, if he starts sending the police and other law enforcement after 12-year-old kids downloading nursery rhymes, it might not go over so well.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
New business model
1. Create a COPS like reality show where camera crews follow this guy and his team of enforcers serving subpoenas, seizing computers, and otherwise enforcing (their) Truth, (their) Justice, and (their version of) The American Way.
2. Sydnicate and earn fees based on traditional teevision market rules, since they understand those.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Truth Stranger than Fiction
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Inevitability
The "War Against Piracy" is a war that cannot be won.
Well, not realistically.
DRM, content management OSs, government action, fines, lawsuits, legal changes, etc will have little long-term effect. Why? Because free information is widely disseminated. Right now I can download one mp3 in a minute; in ten years it will be one video in a minute; in twenty years it will be one video store in a minute.
Of course, a country can make laws to limit hard disk size and bandwidth. I'll be the first out of such a country. In the long run, free countries will out-innovate countries with "disk size limits."
Stop trying to fight a war that cannot be won. There's no way to combat the new "digital sin" of piracy; we'll just have to update our social systems accordingly.
PS: Compare this with the machine technology developed in the 18th century; according to Marx, such technology was the cause of the downfall of feudalism and the rise of the free market/capitalism. Compare the medieval Church's doctrine with Copyright law. We have "material freedom", as a result of "material technology". We have yet to obtain "idea-expression freedom", but if it came, it would be a result of "idea-expression technology", i.e. the home printing press, the PC.
[ link to this | view in thread ]