Hollywood Continues Its Worldwide Push To Have ISPs Block Sites Like Pirate Bay

from the why-innovate-when-we-can-legislate! dept

It would appear that the IFPI is following in the footsteps of the US entertainment industry in pushing government around the world to force ISPs to block access to sites and content that the entertainment industry wishes weren't available online. This is the latest in an ongoing effort for the entertainment industry to pretend that the internet needs to conform to the way it wants the world to act, rather than conforming to the way the internet actually works. The push would include requirements such as having ISPs set up massive filters, similar to China's "Great Firewall," to block sites like the Pirate Bay (despite the non-infringing uses of such sites) and also to block any downloads of certain digital audio and video tracks as recorded by a digital fingerprint. The fact that the IFPI is pushing for this is no surprise, given the RIAA/MPAA's similar push within the US, as well as recent efforts in both France and the UK to implement such policies.

There are many, many reasons why such policies aren't just bad, but dangerous to innovation. As we're already seeing elsewhere, the entertainment industry now seems to think that any new innovation that makes it easier to distribute, copy or promote content now needs to get approval from the industry (while also paying a royalty fee). If Hollywood had its way, things like the VCR and the iPod wouldn't even exist -- despite the fact that both devices have helped to provide new life to the entertainment industry. The same will be true of various internet services -- but not if Hollywood succeeds in getting them blocked completely. It's amazing how many times Hollywood will need to relearn this lesson. Every time some new technology comes along, Hollywood freaks out that it might need to adapt -- and yet, time and time again, that new technology has only helped to reinvigorate the industry. Yet, by spreading FUD all over the place, the entertainment industry has become much better at bending politicians' ears to the point that those politicians incorrectly believe that the industry is doomed if it actually needed to adapt and change its business model, despite plenty of historical and economic evidence that those adaptations will come if the market is left alone to innovate.
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Filed Under: filtering, hollywood, ifpi, isps, mpaa, piracy, riaa, unauthorized content
Companies: ifpi


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  • identicon
    Starky, 26 Dec 2007 @ 2:34pm

    Legislation leads to innovation!

    I believe that legislation like this helps encourage innovation. That innovation, however, is done by the pirates, not the industry. If the **AA block one thing, the pirates will adapt and find a new method of pirating things. Of course, lots of tax dollars will be wasted to spur this innovation, and the new methods will be even harder to stop. And then the cycle repeats, leading to more innovation, more money wasted as life support for a dying industry who refuses to accept a new business model, and more pointless, counterproductive legislation.

    Thanks, **AA, for encouraging better methods of piracy!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2007 @ 6:56pm

      Re: Legislation leads to innovation!

      if RIAA/MPAA didn't drive file sharing into the underground, there would be a lot more innovations on efficiently distributing and searching for files.

      Instead it skew researches in the area of harder to detect file sharing and security related area.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Brendan, 26 Dec 2007 @ 2:40pm

    Pirates always win...end of story. We crack "uncrackable" software before it's even released. They kill OiNK, and 5 new sites pop up. When will they learn?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    TriZz, 26 Dec 2007 @ 2:54pm

    Music Industry

    As Trent Reznor said in his recent interview with Wired magazine: Music is essentially free now. He wishes it wasn't this way, but it has been this way for awhile and thinking otherwise is a losing battle.

    If the **AA could have the same view, the same acceptance, TechDirt would have half of the articles it does now.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Tom, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:03pm

    I had never heard of Pirate Bay untill I read this. Now I know, thanks.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Iron Chef, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:07pm

    Innovation is a two prong approach...

    RIAA/MPAA needs to embrace technology, and consider moving from a single distribution channel mentality.

    How long do they truly believe that physical media will be the only legitimate distribution channel?

    Consider our friends at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought Regal Entertainment, and also spun off National Cinemedia. Consider the Book about KKR titled "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco"


    Anyways, NCM is in a great position! National Cinemedia has HD Projectors in a majority of the country's theaters, but are only used to provide ads before the old 35mm runs through the antique projector... Why not use their platform to distribute the finished product?

    Everything is going Digital. Consider George Lucas filming the last StarWars episodes on Sony HDW-F900H.

    http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/view/ShowContent.action?site=biz_en_GB&contentId=1167924 779333

    If Los Angeles fails to embrace the platform, I imagine folks in the Bay Area will... Can you imagine what it will be like when user-created content starts utilizing NCM's platform for content distribution?

    I can only hope the folks at Google folks don't read this, or a swift acquisition may be in the works.

    http://www.ncm.com/

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:08pm

    How can you keep writing the same story and keep on always missunderstanding ?
    If an industry establishes conrol of these things then ther are clearly peole who benefit : those people at the top of the industry profit greatly regardless of whether the industry ultimatley fails and os replaced by a "different" industry. If you think abot who will control any new industry it's pretty clear it will be the same people who "ruined" the old one, whith a couple of new innovatros thrown into the mix.

    When the "new" industry is established techdirt will proclaim this is an example of the "health" of the American system where old stagnant players are replaced wit new more vigerous ones, however the reality is simply that the public and the share holders get screwed for the benefit of the insiders - that's the American way.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Alfred E. Neuman, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:52pm

      Re:

      "How can you keep writing the same story and keep on ..."

      How can you keep misspelling words and continue to use incorrect grammer?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        William Johnson III, 26 Dec 2007 @ 5:29pm

        Re: Re:

        @ Alfred E. Neumann
        How can you keep misspelling words and continue to use incorrect grammer?

        You must be a first generation American. Welcome to our country!

        Just so you know, Americans have been known for challenging the rules. It happens every generation. Have you heard of the Revolutionary War? Civil War? The Sixties?

        If your here to prescribe to us a process of this "Grammar" you speak of, I say thanks. We don't need it. Chances are your here on a visa or something.

        Keep your Queens English back in your own country (India) and let us run the country as we see fit.

        Warmest Regards,


        William Johnson III

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Nick (profile), 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:42pm

    Simply put, RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BSA and others must deal with piracy and adapt business models so that freedom of speech can survive. Big Content has already shown that it will abuse such tools to silence critics in the name of IP protection.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:53pm

    This syntactically makes no sense:

    How can you keep writing the same story and keep on always missunderstanding ?
    If an industry establishes conrol of these things then ther are clearly peole who benefit : those people at the top of the industry profit greatly regardless of whether the industry ultimatley fails and os replaced by a "different" industry. If you think abot who will control any new industry it's pretty clear it will be the same people who "ruined" the old one, whith a couple of new innovatros thrown into the mix.

    When the "new" industry is established techdirt will proclaim this is an example of the "health" of the American system where old stagnant players are replaced wit new more vigerous ones, however the reality is simply that the public and the share holders get screwed for the benefit of the insiders - that's the American way.

    I read your first two sentences and was genuinely excited to hear what you had to say, regardless of my own opinions on the subject. But... then... it never made any sense, or had any point for that matter.

    And from what little sense you did make; the issue isn't WHO makes the money. CEO's salaries are hard to justify morally but they do incur the most responsibility of any other single employee in the corporation so they are always going to make the most money whether it is excessive or not.

    The POINT is that the industry is trying to use copyright laws as a tool to persecute the public in ways that copyright laws were never intended to enable.

    Thanks though, I'll copy you to my gallery of clown-posts!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    The point is,,,, 26 Dec 2007 @ 3:56pm

    Consider this

    Paper is used for legal and illegal content.
    CD media is used for legal and illegal content.
    DVD media is used for legal and illegal content.
    Internet is used for legal and illegal content.

    Maybe all those manufacturers should also filter their clients.

    Sounds stupid doesn't it.... yet their trying ...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      amaress, 26 Dec 2007 @ 4:58pm

      Re: Consider this

      That's a good point. The paper manufactures should start selling paper that you can't print on. That will reduce the illegal copyright issues there...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2007 @ 6:51pm

    I wonder what will actually make them stop running their companies to death?

    It seem that their attitude is irreversible and their death is inevitable.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Captain Nemo, 26 Dec 2007 @ 7:56pm

    Why bother?

    All good encryption gives the receiver access to the code, so that they can decrypt it. If we trust a machine to do this, the machine will screw up. Period.
    You also risk alienating people when they don't have the machine with the code, like iTunes and the iPod.
    And you'll never stop P2P, without watching every single bit, byte, and baud that goes through any machine, anywhere. Or you can kill all the coders. Your choice.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Disgusted, 26 Dec 2007 @ 9:55pm

    Time to end copyright

    The big corporations (and a few individuals) have so wrecked the copyright situation that copyrights should be eliminated completely. Cancel all existing copyrights and don't issue any new ones.

    Drastic? Yes, but some problems need drastic solutions, and I think this is one that does.

    Will it hurt some people or corporations? Maybe, but probably not as much as you might imagine, and possibly it would benefit many who fear it because it will force them to stop wasting time and energy on making their products less desirable to their customers.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    mike allen, 27 Dec 2007 @ 4:26am

    coppyright and patents

    The Law lords here in the the UK have ruled that some softwear cannot be patented because it is MATHS and you cant patent maths. A great leap forward which must be taken to its logical conclution. You cant copyright digital music because it is maths ie ones and zeros and you cant copyright maths Check it out Mike.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Wizard Prang, 27 Dec 2007 @ 6:41am

    We _DO_ need copyright...

    ... but what we don't need is one written by and for the content industry, with their "it's ours forever" mentality and their habit of trying to stop every new technology that has come along in the past fifty years.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Hegemon, 27 Dec 2007 @ 6:45am

    Lessons That Should Have Been Learned From the VCR

    It is interesting how closely the battles against online content mirror the industry's war on VCRs, as mentioned in the above article. The difference this time around is that no third party company has been able to stand up against the industry and prove that someone can be successful in the space. Back in the beginning of video rentals, Vestron came in and made a fortune distributing movies on video for the major studios, who all thought home video rentals were a passing fad that would just lead to piracy and lost revenue. Later, Vestron folded when the studios saw the wisdom of distributing their own movies.

    However, the **AA have a much tighter stranglehold on distributors than they did then, and all the third party offerings have been so overpriced and so saddled with DRM that they have no value to consumers. If the industry associations had any brains, they would follow their past pattern to success. That is, let a bunch of third-party companies come in to the space and take all the risk of finding a business model that works, then follow the lead(s) of the successful one(s).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ferin, 28 Dec 2007 @ 4:57am

    New business model

    Here's a new idea. Fire every lawyer and current executive in cahrge of prosecuting these moronic plans for the (maf)iaa, with no severance. Then use the savings to invest in drm-less content distribution channels.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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