More Details About Paramount's Offer To Law Schools To Teach Them About The Evils Of 'Content Theft'
from the counterbalance? dept
On Friday, we wrote about reports of Paramount Pictures sending overnight letters to a variety of universities, asking to come speak to their students about the whole SOPA/PIPA debate, and why they're all "content thieves," before asking for the students' thoughts on what Paramount should do. The whole thing seemed pretty sketchy. Either way, we've been getting more details on the letter, and have now seen three different copies of the letter -- with one copy (with identifying info redacted) embedded below. Separately, we've seen that the letters went to law schools -- and it appears that Paramount only chose to target some of the bigger name law schools. Basically, it looks like Paramount went through the top law school rankings and just sent the letter to an arbitrary number at the top. I'm curious what the reasoning is here. Why pick just law schools? And why just a few of the big names? And, if the real goal is to understand what happened with SOPA/PIPA... why target law schools at all? Those aren't the students who were heavily involved in all of this. It seems like a transparent attempt to try to convince the next generation of lawyers to come help them try to cripple the internet, rather than work towards advancing innovation.
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Filed Under: copyright, law school, pipa, sopa
Companies: paramount
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Well duh.
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Kinda makes sense
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They're in film schools. And have been for a long time.
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Right. Today they've expanded outreach to law schools. But they have been in film schools for quite awhile. Somehow that is not an issue that Masnick can make to sound nefarious, so it is ignored. Watch out for when they start hitting business schools and seminaries.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Kinda makes sense
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Totally weird...
No going to schools, no stupid presentations and after making your report of possible actions taken based on online sources you can log in to Facebook and spend the rest of the day secretly playing games.
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Re: Totally weird...
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Why not?
Of course, that's not Paramount's objective. But hey, a guy can dream.
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Re: Why not?
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Dont let them know that, they will never come.
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Re: Re: Why not?
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phase 2 of the MPAA offensive
What is really scary to me is that even though they are clueless about technology, they know precisely where to strike to further their goals and encourage artificial, damaging protectionism.
The citizens of the Web need to stage a counteroffensive, and either present opposite these corporate shills or contact the professors involved and work with them to encourage an honest, rigorous debate.
Facing their cannons with our Truth is the only way we can prevail.
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well...
Stacking the Department of Justice with RIAA lawyers didn't work..
so they're hitting them in school and working on the brainwashing.
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Re: well...
They probably will steal (pirate) a ton of ideas off these students.
This is not a 2 way debate they are entering. They are presenting their case as a client.
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A simple way to remove the effects of SOPA would have been to combine two pieces of software. Mix the back end database and search functionality of a distributed search engine like yacy with the code to search for torrents from Ants, shareaza, or aMule. If you want to go further take onion routing and encryption from TOR, and toss them in.
No DNS record to remove. No money being made, so no payment processors to intimidate. And built to help people in oppressive countries communicate freely, so no violating the SOPA section that makes it criminal to circumvent these laws.
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As Suzie Derkins said, as long as you're wishing, you might as well ask for a pony.
Paramount/MPAA specialize in fiction - that's what they do. Even in the event their subject is something that really happened, they 'dramatize' it to within an inch of its life, and it becomes fiction.
And it's not just their "content" that is subject to this treatment.
History? Fiction.
Accounting? Fiction.
Statistics? Fiction.
Laws? Fiction.
You're asking an entity that has absolutely no idea what "truth" means to be honest with you. You might as well wish for that pony.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-brodsky/hollywood-sopa_b_1258240.html?ref=technology
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They also need to open their own.
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Cowardly shilling where all trolls have shilled before!
We should get Vincent Gambini to shoot these MAFIAA execs down: "The two yoots..."
Judge: You know this infringer?
MAFIAA: Yeah, she's my customer.
Judge. Well, that certainly explains the hostility.
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It's already an understood notion that whatever these companies pay for in lobbying has very high rates of returns. But I believe Paramount is really underestimating how much public sentiment is against these backroom deals.
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Was Harvard on the list? When RIAA started the J.Does college lawsuits, not a single letter went to Harvard. It seems Harvard adopted class projects representing defendants in those cases.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of claims against ip addresses, until a couple of years ago, only two lawsuits had been successful.
Their lawsuits were a failure in court. That could be another reason why they are engaging law students - to find a successful strategy.
But they really need to take their case to Harvard to be impressive in this situation.
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They might want to get their terms straight
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Copyright this
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Re: DandonTRJ's Symposium
The real issues are:
(1) how to remove the current business-model roadblocks so that art gets efficiently from creators to fans, and most of the resulting income gets back to creators?
(2) how to roll back legal intervention in so-called "intellectual property" to the minimum needed to achieve a reasonable amount of new art and science?
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But seriously, any school who accepts should also schedule someone from the opposing viewpoint and have a debate rather than a presentation, and let students ask questions based on that. Won't happen, but still.
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I worked with Al Perry...
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Geez Chubby, maybe it is simply people exercising their free speech rights. Is that a problem?
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What's really pitiful is how the groveling Masnick supplicants jump off of their knees to defend his idiotic assertions. Hopefully your actions will be noted and you will get your well-deserved pat on the head.
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Actually it' a simple and credible extrapolation given their constant previous lies.
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Over the last few weeks, you have been slammed by the publiic for your ham-fisted overreaches which you like to call SOPA and PIPA. The amount of public pushback only surprised you as you obviously believe that with large amounts of money dedicated to such lofty goals as lobbying, you get to write all the rules and the public be damned which motivates us to respond to you with a mass wave of the "one fingered salute".
We have attempted to open discourse with you and your colleages several times over the last few years through several means about these and related issues. We would be happy to give you a formal presentation followed by an open discussion period and have in fact, made several such offers in the past yet you and your colleages seem intent on being resistant to any such discussions.
Either way, our goal is to foster an understanding about the importance and proper enforcement of copyright and the exchange of ideas which would lead to a reduction in copyright infringement while still fostering better ideas to bring content to consumers in a method that is benificial to the industry in general AND consumers rather than the one way over-reaching methods which are quite honestly, very anti-consumer. We think about and discuss these issues on a daily basis but over the last few months it has become painfully clear to us that you still have a lot to learn. We would love to bring these ideas to the table and discuss them openly with you and other representatives of your industry, but you have continually locked us out of the process and we have come to the eventual realization that you simply do not care about your customers.
Please feel free to reach out to us at any time should you wish to talk about possible dates where we can meet and discuss the issues that both parties feel are incredibly important.
Many thanks,
The rest of the internet around the world.
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Link to Document
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Sickening arrogance
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Re: Sickening arrogance
And the piracy apologists call it "sharing". So what?
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Your post reads like a Troll comment thread. Fine, I will take the bait. You open your post with a blatantly false statement, at no point in the letter is anyone called a content thief. That first lie sets the stage for all the misinformation you present in the post. You wonder why the letters were sent to law schools, and then suggest that they only sent them to prestigious law schools. The reason for that is obvious; they are seeking expert advice on future legislation. I would hazard to guess that these letters went to expert legal scholars. The letters weren't targeting these schools because of infringement or in an attempt to sway the student population or even public opinion; they are an attempt to seek advice for future legislation.
The only way that any person could draw the conclusions you presented in your post is if that person has such a jaded view that he is no longer able to discuss the issues without bias. You have proven that you are such a person; you have become completely and irrevocably aligned against the content industry. None of your posts are unbiased - in essence you have become the Fox News of content-distribution technology news.
Just as you claim that the content industry is becoming irrelevant, your own bias is making you less relevant in the content distribution debate. Any content company that would listen to your opinions should have its entire management team fired by its board and if a board of directors approved your consulting services the stockholders should revolt.
As I said before, your post reads like a troll comment and if it was it was successful. If you were serious, I have lost all faith in anything you write from this day forward.
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From this day forward??? Chubby's been in full tinfoil hat mode for more than a year.
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Or am I violating your right to anonymity by pointing out that you threatened to leave at some point in the it seems now ridiculously distant past?
But yeah, that's right. Rather than debunk what Mike has said, with proof/evidence/facts/etc, go straight for the ad homs. It just shows how much more intelligent and reasonable you are, heck by my counts, you should be running a site like Techdirt. But PRO-Stupid laws, bad business decisions, etc. Things of that sort. And you can grow a great many followers by insulting anyone who contradicts you or has the tenacity and nerve to ask you to cite some sources and back up what you say.
Hmm. That actually sounds like a good idea. You should seriously get on that, then pay me for the rest of my life (then my children after me, then my grandchildren after them, and so on and so forth) for coming up with one great idea/product. I will no longer have to work ever again and can take a moral high ground whenever anyone questions me by just calling them all "freetards" or "chubby" or "tinfoil wearing". You know, things like that.
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You have me confused with someone else, loser.
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The letter refers to 'content theft' and content theft is presumably done by ... content thieves.
and it's not theft, it's infringement. Yes, indeed, they still have a lot to learn. and so do you.
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Paramount's Discussion Solicitation
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You can wikipedia it. Assuming you're not one of those ACs who says Wikipedia supports piracy and all that. Which shouldn't matter, because the ruling is a matter of public record and there are other sources confirming what the Supreme Court justices decided.
Which basically says YOU are wrong. The Supreme Court views it, to be honest, in a way that completely contradicts your statement and flat out says it's not theft, it's copying. The original is still there. The only crime being committed is infringing on another's copyright.
Oh you ACs. Really grasping at straws aren't you? Even straws that are easily disproved with a quick search and some actual information.
I believe you are an idiot. That makes it so. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable. Maybe you should change your actions, instead of trying to change reality to suit your biased point of view.
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