Why Hasn't The Report Debunking Entire US Foreign IP Policy Received The Attention It Deserves?
from the questions-to-ponder dept
We've written a few times now about the really astoundingly detailed and impressive research report from the Social Science Research Council. It effectively debunks the entire premise behind the US governments foreign IP policy, which focuses almost exclusively on ratcheting up enforcement. The report -- all 440 pages of it -- systematically details why such ratcheting up of enforcement does not, can not and will not help, but shows how alternative business models and pricing models seem to work much better.We've questioned why the US government seems to be ignoring the research, and Reuters blogger Felix Salmon has picked up on this, calling it "the best report ever on media piracy," and bemoaning the fact that it's been almost entirely ignored.
The most depressing aspect of this report is the fact that it doesn’t seem to have caused anything like the splash that it deserves. It’s an astonishing work of cooperative international scholarship, and really ought to fundamentally change the debate about intellectual-property enforcement in arenas with names like WIPO and USTR. But I fear that it’s too sensible and empirical for that. If the Obama Administration isn’t welcoming this report with open arms, then I fear no one will.Indeed. It's really quite depressing. Perhaps it's because the report is so long? I've noticed that those who disagree with it in our comments haven't even bothered trying to take on any of the detailed and thorough analysis in the report itself, preferring instead to mock those of us who are talking about the report. I find this troubling. As someone who believes very strongly in taking in all research and data to better understand something, it seems troubling that when so much effort and research has gone into such a report, critics are writing it off completely without even a cursory analysis of it.
But even more troubling is the fact that the press and our elected officials have mostly been ignoring this as well. I think it's a shame that this report hasn't received much more attention, and I'm going to start sending copies to various elected officials to see if I can get comments on it. Hopefully, many of you will do the same.
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Filed Under: business models, intellectual property, piracy
Companies: ssrc
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To put it bluntly
And when government picks and chooses which research it will heed and which it will ignore, it is clear that truth is clearly not a guiding principle!
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Re: To put it bluntly
I thought that name was "politician".
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Re: Re: To put it bluntly
What can you do.
http://www.copyhype.com/2011/03/how-much-more-evidence/
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Re: Re: Re: To put it bluntly
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Re: Re: Re: To put it bluntly
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Re: To put it bluntly
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there are so many terms for it
luddites, fundies, politicians, republicans, democrats, libertarians, tea partiers, conservatives, liberals.
What it sums up is the same problem across the board: straight up fear of change and inertia against it, even if change is inevitable.
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Re: there are so many terms for it
Reading that, I had this flash where I saw a train full of luddites, fundies, politicians, republicans, democrats, libertarians, tea partiers, conservatives, and liberals heading towards a very large immovable stone wall.
Then it occured to me. There is a lawyer joke in there somewhere.
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Re: Re: there are so many terms for it
The good lawyers were in court trying to overturn the wall in time (the bad lawyers were on the train.)
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Re:
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Why?
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Sometimes...
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Re: Sometimes...
It would solve so many problems. No more food shortage (zombies don't eat corn), no more pollution problem (that sure would drop our carbon footprint), no more bandwidth crunch (OK, I know that's already not real), no more overpopulation. It would make the pharmaceuticals happy because they could sell Zombrex (I have a box on my desk).
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Re: Re: Sometimes...
"No more food shortage"
Maybe for you! What about the zombies? Brains don't grow on trees, you know!? Zombies are people too!
"no more pollution problem"
Yeah, well, it certainly won't be smelling like roses with all those decaying corpses walking around.
"no more bandwidth crunch"
Only if the zombie don't get too hungry. Everything looks crunchy and delicious to a hungry zombie...even bandwidth.
"no more overpopulation"
Hellooo!! Zombie apocalypse!? Overpopulation of zombies? Sheesh...
Well, actually, if the "survivors" get busy shotgunning, overpopulation of zombies won't be a problem for long...
/Tried to be funny
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Re: Re: Re: Sometimes...
Yeah, well, it certainly won't be smelling like roses with all those decaying corpses walking around."
Decaying things release carbon too, so pollution could be a problem but only for a while.
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Re: Re: Sometimes...
Actually, like cows, zombies emit greenhouse gases due to the continual decomposition.
Not only that, but since they not only eat humans, but all sort of living organism, they would create a huge problem with the natural ecosystem as they first devour humans, then animals... then even insects.
Eventually, since the greenhouse gases would cause global warming (according to some), the polar ice caps would melt, causing a rise in the water levels that would eventually cover 95% of the world's surface, submerging the zombies - who don't need to breath and would begin devouring the remaining aquotic animal life.
Without life to eat the plankton - the most abundant source of photosynthesis on the planet - the plankton would overpopulate the oceans, destroying nutrients and without carbon dioxide producing organism left, would eventually starve and die - leaving a dead sea, in a dead world with an uninhabitable atmosphere.
The resulting natural devastion from an immortal race of continually hungry predators would be just as catastrophic as long term exposure to pollution or nuclear war.
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Ask the IPCC
I believe it boils down to the fact that a lot of people don't actually care about the objective truth, they care about what feels like it should be true based on their existing prejudices.
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Re: Ask the IPCC
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Re: Re: Ask the IPCC
- state-endorsed slavery is history
- state-endorsed religious, racial and sex-based discrimination is in decline
- corporal and capital punishment are significantly less prevalent than they once were
- sustainability is at least granted lip service in many economies around the world
The dream some folks have of a future where schools and hospitals are fully funded, but the air force has to hold a bake sale to afford a new fighter jet is still rather remote, but it doesn't take much of a review of history to realise just how much the world has changed with the steady rise in the availability of global travel and communications.
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That's Easy
News Media reports on what they are paid to report. Since the news media is all owned by entertainment companies, they are not paid to report on this.
Is that really hard to understand?
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Re: That's Easy
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Re: Re: That's Easy
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Re: That's Easy
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I think the report hurt itself
In one fell swoop, when the report was just released, it effectively set up exactly what most people hate considering. It was the hypocrisy of using law to influence a natural thing.
The Dilemma set up regionalization with its geolocator.
It used price differentiation for a digital good.
It forced the consumer to consider their own moral choice in how badly did they want this good.
Think about the people that come to this site:
Those who would read the report and find good information would come out, probably did "pirate" or even pay $8 for it.
Others, knowing that their careers were based on a stance of ignorance, didn't read the report.
To end, perhaps, even in jest, the consumer's dilemma was too good of a strategy to get the data dispersed.
Copyright really did its job.
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This is no different than a scholarly journal. I'm sure that there are a lot of great papers printed in them, about fascinating research, but I don't want to subscribe to the journals who get the papers for free. Perhaps if I could subscribe to the people doing the work.
A pdf for $8 is a non-starter.
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tl : dr
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That's easy. The press is a part of the copyright industry. Politicians make a ton of reelection money from the copyright industry.
Any other easy questions?
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- The report is called "Media piracy in emerging economies". It sounds irrelevant in discussions about enforcement in developed economies.
- The report is too long. The first part ("Rethinking Piracy", the first 70 pages by Karaganis) is what people need to read.
- The $8 paywall, even though put up ironically or whatever, is keeping people away.
- The politicians have already made the choice to increase enforcement, because so far they've only been listening to one side of the debate. Changing their tune now requires effort.
So. There is nothing that can be done about the last point, but for the rest: I suggest the authors of the report take out the first part and put it in a separate pdf, which they give away for free under a different title (such as "Rethinking Piracy"). Put the pdf under a CC license and let people share it freely.
Mike, if you've been in contact with them please make the suggestion.
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Re:
Fight fire with fire.
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http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/person.2006-06-21.043844-3/person_view
At that point, I realize the report is no less biased than something from the **IA's, and I can understand why nobody touches it. It likely "debunks" one side by filling in it's own bunk.
Nice :) Mike, how about a little honesty in the future?
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Re:
Here's Mitch Bainwall's:
http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/person.2006-06-21.043824-4/person_view
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Re:
Have you read it?
They go through careful details regarding economics, copyright, enforcements (which isn't exclusive to the US), and price points.
Top that off with 30 researchers doing careful analysis for 3 years and you really have a lot of good data that those on the side of copyright enforcement seem to lack.
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Re: Re:
Mike would be all over it like a dirty shift if someone from the **ia's was involved in a pro-copyright report. Why ignore the relationships this group has with well known anti-copyright people?
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Mike would be all over it like a dirty shift if someone from the **ia's was involved in a pro-copyright report. Why ignore the relationships this group has with well known anti-copyright people
1. Lessig had nothing to do with the report as far as I know.
2. I disagree with plenty of Lessig's positions.
3. As someone else pointed out *on this very thread*, Mitch Bainwol, the head of the RIAA, is also a part of SSRC.
So, your claim that I'd be all over it if he had a relationship with the group is plainly false.
It's pretty funny how you can't criticize the report at all so you shift your focus to something totally irrelevant, then make a totally false claim that was already proven false earlier in this thread.
Dude. What happened? You used to at least have some talent in playing the loyal opposition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
No. It's not funny anymore. This crap makes me so mad I type comments of little value with references to copyrighted material (i.e. American culture), or use entirely abusive language because these their comments are so stupid, I don't know what else to say.
I wish there were people willing to put their name behind credible rebuttals to your arguments, but there aren't any. For the ~8 months I've been reading this web-log, I've probably seen maybe 4 decent responses to your posts (wrt to intellectual pooperty issues). These people are an annoyance, and just noise on the line.
If it weren't for the funny comments I often read, I would have had to stop reading the comments section entirely.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
2. ... Ok, well. I'll own up to a few some other time.
3. The 'Media Research Hub' that people are pointing to is just a sort of structured wikipedia for the media research sector related to an earlier project, not a list of SSRC partners, staff, board members or whatever. It has about 4000 profiles in it. Sadly, it never achieved critical mass and is growing out of date. It's main utility, at this point, is to make a large tier of developing-world researchers more googleable, which is why we've left it up. It may have served its purpose at this point.
4. I'm sensitive to the evolving pros/cons of the Consumer's Dilemma license and am genuinely interested to know how big that subset of potential readers is that:
Our guess has been: very small, but we could be wrong. We probably will re-CC-license it, eventually, for the CD license haters out there. I will wager that it's very hard to read past page 1 of the 440 without getting the point about incomes, pricing, and access barriers.
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Have you made a "fuss" about the data or is it more about the "put out and pray" approach?
I know that I would probably use the data to bring up great arguments and I would love to buy the book (You don't have Google Checkout! >_
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The report has traveled pretty far in some circles--notably anywhere that uses the word 'tech' in or around the title. The business press has been slow to pick it up but that may be changing. The Brazilian press has covered it exhaustively, but appears to operate in total isolation from other national presses, including elsewhere in Latin America.
Re the policy community -- not a peep in the US, but I can't say that's unexpected. The favorable coverage on this site and elsewhere has been very gratifying but I don't think any of us (the MPEE researchers) expect the primary policy audience to be in the US. IP policy is possibly the last area of strong bipartisan consensus. I'd be astonished if our report shook that. But we do expect US policymakers to have to deal with the report as other countries take it up. That path seems more likely.
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What point? The one where you NOT managed to bring up ANY facts that would discredit the study?
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but even that is not up to the level of lameness that I have grown accustomed too...
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Re:
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It has no lobby groups behind it to give it to bought and paid for politicians with a cover letter containing their "talking points"
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Maybe...
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Re: Maybe...
report
report
:)
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Re:
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How much are you going to brib... I mean contribute to their campaign funds?
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SSRC report, ACTA
Please see the parliamentary questions I asked the European Commission.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/search.do?type=QP&language=EN&term=7&autho r=96945
Best,
Marietje Schaake
@MarietjeD66
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Re: SSRC report, ACTA
1) How effective is it to file these questions in this manner, and Is there any obligation to respond?
2) Why are these questions offered in a word doc (where the file extension is incorrectly ".do"), whereas your other submissions are web-viewable?
I wish I were as active as you seem to be in trying take responsibility for these issues (not to say I agree with the Libya-related stances 'cause I didn't dig-in). Good stuff.
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Re: SSRC report, ACTA
Please forgive my disbelief, but are you an elected official with some sense of ethics? I'm not sure if I believe in the existence of such things, but I'm going to believe it for now anyway. So, thanks a whole bunch, and keep on, keepin' on!
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My favorite part (so far)
This illustrates the problem perfectly. The big multinational record companies can't compete in the Bolivian market. So what happens when they pull out? Does music suddenly disappear, as they would have us believe? On the contrary, a vibrant local music scene has fourished,
Get over yourself big media ... you aren't needed. People will create content without you. If IP laws were entirely done away with, the only losers would be the lawyers.
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Re: My favorite part (so far)
I almost moved to Bolivia as the US invaded Iraq in '03. I wish I had the balls to have seen that through. What a great, yet cash-poor, country!
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Caught out lying
This got me curious. I was wondering how they got their numbers. So I did some research, and wrote the article One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them.
One Soul Thrust is the band. The play Rock, pretty good stuff really. The fun part of this is, that when I tried to follow up the numbers, I couldn't find a SINGLE torrent of their music. Not one. I also couldn't find it on the Gnutella network.
I've talked to the band members by email. They seem like nice people, but not technologically savvy. So my feeling is that someone is trying take advantage of them. I don't know exactly how or why, the only thing I'm certain of is that there's money involved somewhere.
Wayne
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Oh, and...
Someone thinks that there is more money for them this way. It doesn't matter that it might cause a lot of other people misery, they think that they can make an extra 0.05% if the rules work in this manner, so they are going to push for it. And they are pushing hard.
To bad if you disagree.
Pardon my cynicism.
Wayne
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No Doubt
Politicians do not care because no one have paid them off to tell them they should care. Now if the authors contributed money to their campaign..... at least more than the people who do not want them to care about it.
In either case the politicians will actually never read it. They want it summarized up in one page with lots of pictures and bundled with a wad of cash.
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Yeah..... No.
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Abolish Copyright
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