Paul Vixie: SOPA/PIPA Would Be Good For My Business, But I'm Still Against It
from the the-toothpaste-will-come-out-somewhere dept
Last night, there was an interesting panel at Stanford discussing many of the problems with SOPA. It covered a lot of the ground that we've covered here over the past few months, but there were a few interesting moments. Paul Vixie, who has been a very vocal opponent to DNS blocking, explained why it wouldn't work, and how it would cause a lot of other problems... but he also noted that he was probably going against his own self-interest in making this argument. That's because the problems caused by SOPA/PIPA's DNS blocking would need fixing... and he suggests lots of folks would come to his company and pay for fixes. So it's a pretty principled stand by Vixie.A separate point that was raised by Mark Lemley early on was that this argument that those in the US simply can't go after foreign sites is ridiculous. Under existing law, it's happened plenty of times in the past where copyright holders have gone after sites and companies based outside of the US and dragged those folks into US courts.
The vast majority of the evening proceeded with the implicit assumption that everyone there was categorically opposed to SOPA... but towards the end two execs from Paramount Pictures made it known they were there, and they were very much on the other side. The temperature in the room must have dropped 20 degrees when that happened. To be honest, the panel itself might have had a few more fireworks (though likely wouldn't have been that productive) if there had been a SOPA supporter on the panel itself. Of course, the Paramount guys, in typical Hollywood fashion, made a bunch of false assumptions. Perhaps the best part was when one of them challenged venture capitalist Albert Wenger by claiming that the companies in his portfolio used intellectual property laws to protect their business: to which Wenger immediately shot back that they did not, and that they didn't support such things at all. Instead, he noted that the companies his firm (Union Square Ventures) invests in tend to win in the marketplace by competing and winning. He noted that even if they completely gave away the source code of Tumblr (one of USV's investments), it wouldn't matter. In fact, he pointed out that another company had copied Tumblr feature-for-feature... but they couldn't get users. The point is clear, and it's the same point we've made here for years: focusing on copyright to protect yourself is not a good business model, and not something they invest in. Instead, they focus on things that can succeed by executing even if someone copies them line for line.
Finally, there was an entertaining moment when Andrew Bridges asked the Paramount guys exactly how many sites they saw as a problem. Because, he noted, other studio execs from some of the big Hollywood studios had given him numbers between 10s and a few hundred. And, he noted, if it's just such a small number of sites, then why create massive regulatory issues for the entire internet, rather than trying to deal with the sites. The problem is that Hollywood wants control over much more than what's really "the worst of the worst." However, when someone suggested it was "a couple hundred" sites that were problems, Mark Lemley pointed out that then they should be all done, because ICE has already seized 450 domains.
All in all it was an interesting evening. The specific discussions on the problems of DNS blocking were particularly enlightening. It's why when the House had its ridiculously one-sided hearing on SOPA last month -- in which not a single panelist knew anything about DNS -- they should have had someone like Paul Vixie there to explain the basics of why SOPA and PIPA are bad ideas that won't fix things and will likely make things worse.
There was one metaphor that was used repeatedly through the evening, and it's really quite apt. People kept noting that "the toothpaste is just going to come out somewhere else." It's a good way of noting the unintended consequences here. Plugging this "hole" and then putting pressure on sites may stop certain actions, but it won't deal with the real issue that Hollywood is facing. In fact, it's likely to cause more problems, as the toothpaste squirts out somewhere else, unexpectedly.
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Filed Under: dns, dnssec, paul vixie, protect ip, sopa, unintended consequences
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Yet again...
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Once again, you (and many other opponents of SOPA) are making a basic, false assumption: That it would make piracy go away.
That isn't the intention. It's a question of "tipping" public views on piracy, and the public's access to pirated materials.
Right now, piracy is overt, it is open, and it is big. Anyone can find it, it's all over. It makes it a very easy choice for those looking to obtain the latest movie or music. They can pay for it, or they can easily obtain it through pirate sites - just by typing the movie name and "torrent" into Google.
If you get rid of that first layer of sites, if you make the stuff harder to find (even a little harder), then some people will stop pirating. They may not buy more stuff, but they will not use up their "demand" on pirated material. At some point, if their demand is high enough, they will become legal consumers once again.
Now, if you move 10 - 20% of the current pirates back to being legal consumers, that is a big win for the content producers, and it is also a fairly solid blow against piracy. Piracy depends on all those little individual nodes helping out, sharing files, uploading to file lockers, running P2P, whatever it is... remove some of them, and the network gets weaker.
SOPA doesn't solve all the issues, there will always be some "toothpaste" coming out in other directions. But if it makes it harder for pirate sites to operate in the open, if it makes the pirate choice less palatable to consumers, then over time things change.
A little spilled toothpaste is nothing compared to the benefits.
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Re: It's a question of "tipping" public views on piracy, and the public's access to pirated materials.
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Sure, you can remove some of the "little individual nodes". Here's the thing, though - you've acknowledged that there will be toothpaste spilled regardless. This means that more individual nodes will pop up to replace the nodes you've removed. In the end you're not solving anything; you're mostly driving pirates beyond the reach of what SOPA intends to cover. And let's not forget how certain alphabet organisations (MPAA, GEMA, BREIN, etc.) are extremely open to shutting down sites via the lack of due process - regardless of how much of the site is actually "dedicated to infringement", or if any of it is at all.
SOPA is going to have few benefits in addition to what's already in place and a lot of toothpaste is going to be spilled - how is this a good thing?
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The problem is the massive over reach embodied in SOPA. It will inevitably lead to abuse and censorship by both private and governmental actors. It will weaken our economy, not strengthen it. It will divert innovation out of the United States and new services will come from elsewhere instead.
At the end of the day, someone will provide a quality product at a low price and if it doesn't come from content producers within the United States, it will come from somewhere else.
I have already spent money on low cost, quality entertainment from overseas. If Hollywood cannot compete, their jobs will become outsourced too.
SOPA is just the latest in a string of attempts to not deal with the economic realities of today.
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But stealing (or worse, attempting to steal) my constitutional rights and justifying it by LYING and PAYING the our inept government is going to get you lynched at some point.
Or, if not lynched, then locked up for stealing someone's "idea" and not having enough money to "defend" yourself.
Figure it out. Jeez.
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They will have been replaced in the consciousness of their consumers by someone else and I guarantee others are salivating at the prospect of taking a giant bite out of your market share.
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Of course not. Turning the Internet into what our legal system has wrongfully turned everything outside the internet into (a government established monopolized cartel) is the intention. Banning free speech and competition is the intention. Just like they did outside the Internet through broadcasting and cableco monopolies and through laws that deter restaurants and other venues from hosting independent performers.
"It's a question of "tipping" public views on piracy,"
Yes, brainwashing the public to take your side and to take a position that is in your best interest (and not in the public interest) is the intent. Telling the public that they should believe what you believe because somehow your views are better than everyone else's instead of suggesting that the public should decide for themselves is the intent.
"and the public's access to pirated materials."
What about the public's access to public domain materials? Oh wait ...
The public domain competes with monopolized materials and so the public domain has effectively been eliminated through constant copy protection extensions. IOWS, the objective is to deny access to competing materials and to ensure that all materials go through a self interested government established monopolist gatekeeper. Which is exactly what's done outside the Internet.
and you assume that IP laws should even exist to begin with. Call it piracy, call it theft, call it murder, call it charity, call it what you want. Changing what it's called doesn't make it any more immoral and it shouldn't make it any more illegal. When the best argument that you can come up with for your position is to change the name of something and play word games then that is evidence that you are intellectually bankrupt. There is nothing wrong with freely copying as one pleases and it should be legal regardless of what you decide to call it.
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People already see through the bullshit the record labels spew, so trying to get these ppl to believe in their lies is futile.
The truth is, they fuck artists out of money every chance they get. They are the lowest forms of life leeching off of the content creators they claim to fight for.
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- Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap Clap clap
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As if the public should just take for granted that your position is the correct one simply because you said so. and I thought this was supposed to be a democracy.
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"If you get rid of that first layer of sites, if you make the stuff harder to find" ...
You do nothing except drive the development of new and better ways to get around the blockade. This is what the content types just don't realize.
"Now, if you move 10 - 20% of the current pirates back to being legal consumers, that is a big win for the content producers" ...
No it isn't. In the simplest terms, everyday there are more ways for people to entertain themselves. I am charting thirty eight of them, every month "OLD" content slips a little. People only have so much time and money for entertainment.
Here is the key trend ... People are spending more time and money on interactive entertainment, and less on static entertainment ...
So. Hand me that plastic disk, I need something to put my drink on, while I play this video game with my friends online.
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Well, then SOPA has already failed. Before the bill was even up for a debate in Congress, there was a massive public reaction against it. The public's view is well beyond "tipped" - it is overwhelmingly against increased effort to censor the pirates away.
They can pay for it, or they can easily obtain it through pirate sites
Yes, I can easily obtain it through pirate sites. You are absolutely wrong in that I can pay for it if I choose to. Please name for me just one single recently released movie from a major Hollywood studio that I can buy a quality, DRM-free, download in a convenient format at a reasonable price.
Now, if you move 10 - 20% of the current pirates back to being legal consumers,
Wait. You want to put tremendous regulatory burden on nearly every bit of the internet, and still not solve 90% of what you think is the piracy problem?
Let's put some hypothetical numbers out there. Let's say that in the western world there are currently about 1 million hard core pirates who you'll never get to pay, and there are 20 million casual pirates who do it when its easy, but pay when its not. Now, your stated goal is to convert 4 million casuals into paying customers. Say you pass SOPA or something similar everywhere. Well, you got your 4 million, so time to celebrate, right? Nope. You've just converted 16 million into hard core pirates (plus the existing first 1 million) who actively tell their friends and family how to get around the blocks, and now there are 100 million casual pirates. Don't believe it'll happen? Look at the history of every time you stamped out one way to infringe, and how its successor became even more popular, easier to use, and harder to track than the last.
But if it makes it harder for pirate sites to operate in the open, if it makes the pirate choice less palatable to consumers, then over time things change.
Half right. Instead of trying to make pirate sites go underground (which has never worked in the history of the internet, by the way - in fact every time you've tried to stop it is has actually gotten easier), why don't you focus on making your product more palatable to consumers? It is easier. It is cheaper. There will be no collateral damage to the rest of the internet. It will make you more money. It will bring your customers back (and more than 10-20% of them).
Why are you so against adapting to reality and actually giving your customers what they want?
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The only thing you do is give me more and more reason to do it and feel good about it.
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Impact on US economy
The Patriot Act has already caused a lot persons and organizations to think about the risks of having their data under control of a US company (e.g. cloud computing).
This will be added on by risk analysis of using domains and IP addresses under US jurisdiction, but more importantly will have them look at the advertising networks and payment facilitators under US jurisdiction.
This makes me wonder what the impact might be when there are more and more reasons to distance oneself from entities under US control.
From the US standpoint it might look as if the advertising and payment markets are solely in control of US companies, there is however successful geographic or language specific competition around the world. Although people might now use a combination of US and non-US service providers, risk aversion might create a situation where they will choose not to use US service providers.
In this respect SOPA and PIPA will, in my opinion, have a negative impact on the US economy. How big of an impact I do not know, but if it happens it will have a long term impact: once people are accustomed to use non-US service providers, and these service providers grow bigger, why go back?
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That isn't the intention. It's a question of "tipping" public views on piracy, and the public's access to pirated materials.
Actually it's about chilling the competion from those who actually use the internet to distribute their own work freely.
By placing burdens on those who provide platforms for user generated content big content hopes to kill the competition that comes from that source. This is a disgraceful agenda.
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when ''a little spilled toothpaste' involves trampling all over the constitution that is supposed to be the foundation of your entire legal system it's far from being 'nothing'
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Of course it doesn't mandate it - it doesn't have to. A significant shift in the market place would make creating viable alternatives into a functional business model. No, nobody is going to give stuff away for free, if that is what you are wishing for.
I think it is also clear that viable alternatives already exist in music (itunes) and movies (Netflix, both disc and streaming) that allow people to obtain the content they want at prices that are pretty hard to argue. As the demand picks up for legal services, others will join the party, and perhaps even new models will come as a result.
It's hard to develop a new business model when you are competing against you own product, being given away for free.
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Even if SOPA works and raises the revenue streams of content providers, the likely collateral damage is likely to not be worth it.
Or to phrase the question directly... is it worth another decade of 10% higher revenue, while all innovation that would have cut into that revenue is shut down before it can start? Do you really think that not innovating new products will improve long-term revenues more than creating something new and brilliant?
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You don't even need that many adjectives. How many of those movies can I even see in the cinema, let alone buy the DVD, in Australia?
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Further, remember that the bottled water industry isn't selling water as much as they are selling bottles. It isn't just water, it's the convenience of that water being in a format you can carry, you can take anywhere, that you can chill, etc.
Music files are music files. A "free tap" version of a song is EXACTLY the same as the paid version, it is just as transportable, it has all the same characteristics.
So sorry, your bottled water comparison sucks.
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If anything, the demand today for this stuff is higher than it was 20 years ago. They don't have to worry about losing customers, because after you have seen Sita Sings the Blues 30 times, you are dying for a decent movie.
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What you seem to fail to realize is that SOPA isn't a way to block a single technology (it doesn't outlaw P2P, example), but rather a tool that can whack any of the moles that come up.
You can tapdance around in circles on this one, but it is likely in a SOPA world that, at least in the US, obtaining pirated material will be incrementally harder, and those people who are "soft pirates" and do it only because it is easy will stop doing it.
"No it isn't. In the simplest terms, everyday there are more ways for people to entertain themselves. I am charting thirty eight of them, every month "OLD" content slips a little. People only have so much time and money for entertainment. "
Do tell. 38 ways? Sounds more like you have found 37 ways to position your hand when you are alone in a dark room, but please, enlighten us.
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Like in Belgium?
Where they blocked the Pirate Bay and every pirate found its way to it again in a week?
Yep, I see how hard it will be.
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I heard that before and it always ends up a dud.
DRM will make it harder! we all know how hard it is.
The DMCA will make it harder!
Pirate increases and only legal business, legal blogs are the ones really target by that stupid law.
SOPA will save us all!
Sorry but I have to laugh, SOPA does nothing to stop pirates, since they don't depend on websites to find illegal stuff, are you going to shutdown Facebook? Twitter? Flickr? and other places? that may slow it down a bit until everyone start using things like YACY that is a distributed search engine that can't be censored and it can be used to crawl the deep web(aka deepnet, invisible net).
So stop being delusional, you are not going to reduce anything, what you will do is increase the security of the pirates making them harder to track and making law enforcement men cry.
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Music:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlabel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_m usic
Games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free,_open_source_video_games
Books:
http ://www.archive.org/index.php
http://runeberg.org/
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
http:// librivox.org/
Movies & TV:
http://vimeo.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://vodo.net/
http://www.mininova.org/
http:// www.getmiro.com/
http://www.wreckamovie.com/
http://www.snowblind-film.com/
http://blender.org/
You people are not the only game in town anymore.
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You can tap dance around in circles on this one, but that's what they said about the DMCA. They were wrong about that and they're wrong about this too.
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You seem to fail to realize that the internet is a communication tool, unless you can block all communications ending the internet and disconnect all their peers you won't be able to stop "piracy" or reduce it.
Are you going to end Facebook?
People can create forums there dedicated to infringiment and post magnet links all day long and get that indexed with something like YaCy that is censorship resistant.
Look how well that worked for Belgium, all the Belgian pirates in a week found their way to the Pirate Bay again, they just asked around and everybody knew how to bypass that and you expect SOPA to fare better? only if you believe Belgians are smarter than Americans.
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and if so many people won't do it only because our legal system makes it so difficult then perhaps it should just be legal, at least if we are to have a representative government. I advocate we abolish IP, especially since so many people seem to think these laws aren't important enough to pay much attention to as you seem to even admit.
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Did you know that in Japan the movie industry there surpassed Hollywood?
Did you know that in China the government is happy to not let Hollywood movies in?
Did you know that Russians do some great movies for themselves now?
Did you know I can pirate stuff without an internet connection? and I do get better quality not that compressed shite from the Pirate Bay that looks like it was recorded from the TV.
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Small wonder then you're for the legacy industries; you have a deep-seated loathing for due process.
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No, tell me you didn't say that LoL
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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mafiaafire-piratebay-dancing/
How hard is to install and add-on?
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This doesn't get any more money to the creators, but that does not bother SOPA supporters.
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You do realize that you cannot win the game "whack a mole." Each iteration through the game gets harder as the moles pop-up and retreat quicker and the game gets infinitely harder. So now instead of paying for whack a mole yourself though, you are going to make everyone else pay for it.
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[citation needed]
I admit though, they are extremely relevant right now. However if, and that's a strong if, they really are able to clamp down on movie piracy many consumers will move onto other things. It's not because they are all dirty pirates who will never pay anyway. The internet hype machine will no longer be working for Hollywood. It will promote what is immediately available and convenient.
"If anything, the demand today for this stuff is higher than it was 20 years ago. They don't have to worry about losing customers, because after you have seen Sita Sings the Blues 30 times, you are dying for a decent movie.""
Yes, due to the massive exposure that the internet has brought, Hollywood has more fans than ever. Demand is high. It is a new golden age in content. What happens when hype becomes more scarce due to Hollywood content becoming more scarce?
It seems like a losing strategy to me.
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But where can I find some of these 'public tipping' videos? Do they involve **AA goons running up to sleeping people and tipping their beds then running away laughing? Sounds like it could be a 'hoot', or am I not understanding this correctly?
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I think if the government was truly intent on securing the web from cyber-pirates, then they would work on a specific firewall design that would track any form of breach detected, instead of just spying on people attempting to voice their public views on stupidity and ironicisms.
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It's up now
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