Because There Aren't Enough Anti-Piracy Lobbying Groups...
from the we've-got-another-one! dept
There are already a ton of lobbying/industry groups out there that push "anti-piracy" campaigns. You've got the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and ESA, each covering different industry segments. Then, of course, a year ago, a bunch of entertainment industry companies got together and put together the ridiculous Copyright Alliance, whose main mission in life seems to be to spew utterly false propaganda in favor of stronger copyrights at every turn. But, apparently, that just wasn't enough. So, word came out this week of a new anti-piracy lobbying "supergroup" with the innocuous sounding name "Arts+Labs." The big difference here? Well, the entertainment companies convinced a few tech companies to join up as well: AT&T, Microsoft and Cisco. AT&T, of course, has been drifting towards filtering its network -- and Cisco wants to sell filtering equipment. Microsoft, of course, has always been vocally against "piracy" even while quietly admitting how much piracy benefits the company.This new group will be headed by Mike McCurry -- who you may remember as the former head of the anti-net neutrality group "Hands Off the Internet" who had a slight problem in that he couldn't stop lying, and simply ignored it when people called him on it. My favorite, of course, was his claim that Google didn't pay a dime for its bandwidth, and net neutrality was all about making others pay for Google's bandwidth usage. I challenged McCurry to swap his home broadband bill with Google's (which, according to McCurry was "not a dime") to which, Hands Off responded with deafening silence -- though, the group had no problem then lying about our positions on things when it suited the group (and, again, not responding when I asked them to correct their false statements about us).
So, expect a string of similar tactics from this group.
To begin with, the group appears to be positioning "piracy" as something similar to "viruses" or "spam," suggesting an equivalency that should lead to widespread use of filtering equipment. Of course, they seem to be missing the fact that piracy isn't about others with nefarious intent trying to harm or scam you -- but about people getting content that they want. But in Mike McCurry's "up is down, down is up" world, piracy is apparently something that consumers themselves need to be protected from:
"We want consumers to have exponentially greater opportunities to access creative content in a variety of formats, and with confidence that they are safe from viruses, hackers, malware, illegal file trafficking and other net pollution that puts them at risk."
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Filed Under: anti-piracy, arts+labs, copyright, lobbying, mike mccurry
Companies: at&t, cisco, microsoft, nbc universal, viacom
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obviously
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Re: obviously
Do you mean we need more than just them?
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Re: Re: obviously
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Re: Re: obviously
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He has a point.
Obviously, the solution is to make warez, crackz, and keygenz legal. ;)
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Re: He has a point.
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Piracy is about...
"...people getting content that they want...without paying for it."
There. Just wanted to fix your sentence for you.
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Re: Piracy is about...
Didn't you mean that?
If CBS would put their most recent episode of say...CSI:Miami online in a non-DRM'ed HD format (See .mkv) for two dollars- I'd buy it in a minute. Hell, if they made it a torrent, I'd seed it for them too. (Not on Comcrap)
What happens if five million people buy it? (If a season of Enterprise cost $38 million to make, then CSI must be lower.) And they run 24 episodes and make $10 million each.....
I would probably buy every Crime-Time CBS show every week. (Including but not limited to: CSI, CSI:NY, CSI: Miami, NCIS and Numbers.)
I know there are a lot of me out there - willing to pay $$ for content but want it DRM-free. No DRM makes for infinite storage or conversion, and No Windows.
Somebody step up, I'm tired of using my Tivo.
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Re: Re: Piracy is about...
Didn't you mean that?
No, but I'd accept it as "...people getting content that they want, when they want it, and the way they want it, and if they can't get exactly what they want, they'll take it anyway without paying."
The CSI: Miami and NCIS are available for free in HD on the CBS site, but they are streamed instead of downloadable, and there's an ad. I take it that this doesn't meet the requirements.
If your requirements aren't met, does that make pirating copies without authorization okay?
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Filtering
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Car pooling is going to be illegal too
I think that their argument is as valid as the music industry, after all, every person who rides to work with another person can be viewed as a lost sale.
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Only stupid people get viruses from pirated movies and music. Since they're DATA formats, they can't carry viruses.
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Re:
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