The White House Wants To Hear From You Concerning Its Strategy For Intellectual Property Enforcement
from the take-this-seriously dept
Victoria Espinel, the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, has announced the opening of a public comment period for people to give their thoughts to the administration on what it should be doing about "intellectual property enforcement." As always happens with "public comment" periods, expect large filings from big special interests. Also, I wouldn't expect any major change to come from this. However, I would still recommend submitting carefully argued, well-thought-out filings on your thoughts concerning the White House's approach to "enforcing" intellectual property. While I do not always agree with Espinel or the administration in how it handles these things, I have found them to be very open to actually listening to concerns from people -- much more so than other parts of the government that have taken a specific view on these issues and have no interest in budging. Espinel, at the very least, is actually interested in opposing viewpoints and the more detailed, thoughtful arguments she hears, the better. The key part of her request is as follows:I believe that essential to the development of an effective enforcement strategy, is ensuring that any approaches that are considered to be particularly effective as well as any concerns with the present approach to intellectual property enforcement are understood by policymakers.I will be submitting my own thoughts, which I will also publish here, but for those thinking about what to say, I would focus on this sentence above. Historically, many of the government's approaches have not been at all effective, and have created a number of significant problems -- most of which have been ignored by the government (either willfully or through ignorance). This really is a chance to provide examples of why the current policy is not effective (and will never be effective if it keeps on the current path) as well as the "concerns" with the current approach, such as the criminalization of expressive behavior and the outright censorship of media publications.
As always, if you are filing comments with the government, make sure to proofread them carefully, and make your arguments clear and persuasive. The details of how to submit can be found here. Submissions are due by July 25th at 5pm ET.
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Filed Under: enforcement, intellectual property, policy, public comment, victoria espinel, white house
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As with the "consultations" that we have had in the UK you can expect even the most well argued and well thought out suggestions to be dismissed as "factually inaccurate" or some such insulting phrase (When we all know that it is the industry comments that are factually inaccurate).
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be more effective to come up with some more extreme positions with the objective of moving the "centre ground" in the right direction. After all the other side does this all the time.
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Re: Comments
They are fishing for reasons to enforce copyright MOAAR HEAVILY, by pushing in a direction, you have to push harder in the other direction.
Once it becomes "Law".... NO fucking chance of removing it.
I am afraid that in all reality, logic is not now the middle ground and all the well reasoned arguments are ignored.
Showing them moaar reasonable arguments is in all probability, just another "thief rationalizing their evil actions"
Moving the middle ground (to reality) is what is required.
How you do that is a good question.
Suggestions.... (add moaar and edit the useless ones you disagree with)
(straight to the point, repeating like fuck aka...brainwashing aka..the MAFFIA's game)
Copying is NOT theft.
Counterfeiting is not the same as filesharing.
One copy does NOT equal one lost sale.
The internet thrives while old media dies.
People make a fortune giving out their work on the internet.
Copyright is TOO EXTREME
Copyright does NOT work on the internet
NO copyright would be better for the internet than todays copyright
Copyright Monopolies War on culture and people sharing
If you don't reform copyright to be more lenient and adaptable to the internet, it should be abolished online.
(counterfeiting and fraud will exist but they have laws )
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Enforce?
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No they don't. They have to ACT like they want to hear from you so they can say they did before promptly ignoring anything not from industry insiders.
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You have won this round of Spot The Disingenuous Pandering!
Unfortunately, there are no prizes
and the game never ends.
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She's not the one the letters should be going to. They should be going to politicians. Just be sure to include a Paypal payment. It's the only way they'll make bills turn to laws.
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For decades, all we've heard from the White House is "We're supporting Hollywood" despite the majority opposition.
We're talking about the same politicians who received the following memo from Disney:
"To our President,
For all the years of supporting our draconian changes in copyright law, we bestow upon the White House our facilities in Florida to use at any time and free of charge. Just bring your own ice."
Next thing we see is I.C.E. taking center stage bragging how they took down websites without due process.
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For profit only
If someone is making money from infringement, then they should be punished. Not sure how much or even how, but I do not agree with monetary gain directly from other's work.
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Re: For profit only
Would you criminalize a restaurant for copying the dishes of another?
Would you criminalize anyone else for copying something really?
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Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
There will be negative effects, but the vast bulk of them will be focused on lazy, cheap jerks who want their content for free. And is that really bad? Not for me and not for anyone who believes in giving the creators control over their hard work. It's not bad for anyone who believes in giving artists a chance to make money on their real talent -- enough money to buy health care.
I personally think there should be more enforcement because piracy is the real censorship. It deprives the creators of the chance to make a living creating. Piracy destroys careers and sends people searching for day jobs.
And don't give me any whining about free this and sharing. Copyright and free sharing can easily co-exist as the open source world shows us. It's all about artists rights and you're all about hating on the artists.
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
Bob, this is the simple thing you fail to understand: it is not automatically obvious that creators deserve total control over what they create. Not everyone believes that, despite what you seem to assume. Some control? Perhaps. Complete control? Nope. Not right, and not possible anyway.
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Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
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Re: Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
You think the foundational truth is that artists deserve control. It's not. The foundational truth is that artists have no control. From there, we can agree to give them control if we want.
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
Yeah, you keep believing that piracy is costing actors their jobs. Unless you show me evidence that proves it, I'm not bothering going to explain that you are wrong in that "point" in your post.
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Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
No - sorry they can't.
Free sharing requires that the technology is exploited to minimise the remaining residual cost of copying. This means that mechanisms like bit-torrent and services like Megaupload must be freely available. Otherwise the cost of hosting becomes an issue. You might think that being able to host your own material on your own website addresses the problem but it doesn't. The moment you get significant interest the cost of bandwidth suddenly becomes an issue - or worse you find your site is offline because you've exceeded your bandwidth limit. Bit-torrent and file lockers sidestep this issue.
If those technologies are available then copyright enforcement is not practical - so co-existence is not viable.
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Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
So we don't need to have Pirate Bay to have open source. Heck, most of the open source companies have proprietary arms and they use the proprietary software to cross-subsidize the open stuff. Yup. Without copyright, this open source software wouldn't exist.
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Re: Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
Really? I don't see my ISP bill go up when I use bittorrent. Maybe that's because the only cost to me is my time? I can only download so much at a time, so I have to chose what I want to spend that download time on.
"Without copyright, this open source software wouldn't exist."
That's a flat out lie and you know it. People make open source software for three reasons: Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. They have the freedom to decide what they create (autonomy), they gain proficiency through creating it (mastery), and it gives them meaning in what they do (purpose). That's what makes open source exist. It's also why people learn to pain, sing, play an instrument, etc. Sure, the money helps, but it isn't mandatory. It's also for those reasons that creativity and art will continue to progress, even if copyright disappears. Copyright isn't an inevitability, it's a crutch for weak business models.
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
Now, I will grant you that I do have an HD antenna and as a basketball fan I did watch the abomination that was this years Finals...so I suppose that since I was watching that for free (whilst ignoring the commercials) I was in fact stealing it. Now I suppose that Kevin Durant is going to come to my house to rough me up.
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
Well, since the case is rapidly falling apart and the U.S. is basically grasping at any straw it can to try and keep it's case from being laughed out of New Zealand, where they need to prove they have enough evidence to extradite Dotcom, I don't feel much of a need to ask Kim Dotcom anything. And I fail to see how that is any sign of whether enforcement is effective.
Then again, you're bob. So let me ask you, how did enforcement work out with Dajaz1. Wasn't there rampant piracy on there? Per RIAA claims. Where did that lead? Oh, that's right. Nowhere. See bob, if you want to cherry pick key points, it makes your claims sound righteous and correct, but when you look at the big picture, those of us with a clue and with the ability to not view everything as a vast Google orchestrated conspiracy, can see that you're flat out wrong and enforcement is failing left and right.
"And I'm still waiting for anyone for the parade of real victims who stored their kids' birthday movies on Kim Dotcom's site before the evil government destroyed it. Yet the parade of sympathetic victims never arrives. The EFF has been out trolling for them months now. When will they have that press conference?"
Well, it wouldn't matter would it. The U.S. has already effectively declared it's not their problem. And the people can't very well petition Megaupload to release their stuff now, can they? And Carpathia is the one left holding the bag to keep those servers maintained and running (to a degree), so I doubt they'd want to foot the bill for that as well. But I doubt the EFF wants to have a press conference before they're prepared to move forward. As I mentioned above, the Megaupload was a huge blow for copyright enforcement... and the U.S. let the world know that, ditto Dajaz1. Til, you know... the entire case fell apart and they were forced to let things quietly return to normal. Making a huge statement tends to backfire, especially if you can't back it up. "Mission Accomplished" being one of the best I've ever seen in my life. Man, the ridicule that one banner brought was insane. Again, your point isn't much of a point at all.
"There will be negative effects, but the vast bulk of them will be focused on lazy, cheap jerks who want their content for free. And is that really bad? Not for me and not for anyone who believes in giving the creators control over their hard work. It's not bad for anyone who believes in giving artists a chance to make money on their real talent -- enough money to buy health care."
bob, negative effects are being felt already, on most of them on legitimate services and companies. Cloud computing took a blow 10 years ago in the mp3.com suit. Where we are now is where we should've been a decade ago, ten years later and we're back to suits and attempts to stifle innovation and put us back yet another ten years. The only difference is now some big companies have stepped into the game and can quite easily take on the legacy industries trying to stifle innovation. Google, Amazon, Apple, Dropbox and a few others. And even then they're being forced to make sacrifices. Lest we forget that early on Amazon and Google were both being bitched at for allowing people to upload their music. Now Dropbox has had to do away with public folders. As an XDA Developers Forum member, that is quite the problem for someone who loves to share and download ROMs, which are created from the Android Open Source code provided by Google. Now we have to find new methods to share such things, just because someone MAY use Dropbox to share a song.
And I'm not a pirate. I pay for the content I consume, mostly books (because I can do without the latest Hollywood Michael Bay suckfest, if I want to be stupidly entertained I'll just get drunk and watch my friends argued, much more value for my dollar that way and I lose less brain cells).
And if you really cared about creators and giving them control over their hard work, rather than sit around blasting Google and pirates all day long, like you do, you'd harp at the labels and studios who try and wrangle away copyright control from the actual creators. You'd seek to make them leveraging their power against creators through contracts to gain creative control over the creators copyrighted material.
"I personally think there should be more enforcement because piracy is the real censorship. It deprives the creators of the chance to make a living creating. Piracy destroys careers and sends people searching for day jobs. "
Piracy is not censorship. Fuck. I hate explaining censorship day in and day out to morons like you. I'm not gonna do it today. If anyone wants to handle this, please by all means do so.
It, piracy, deprives no one of nothing. You can still try and make a living. That's all any of us do. If you can't make it, for any reason, you find something else to do. That's how things work. HMOs moved in to my area of Texas, many in the health care field have lost their jobs. Guess what? They didn't sit around bitching. They learned new skills or found new opportunities for employment. And life moved on.
Show us one example, one legitimate example of a career destroyed by privacy. We'll wait. We also want proof backing up said example. Irrefutable proof. You say piracy destroys careers, now back it up.
"And don't give me any whining about free this and sharing. Copyright and free sharing can easily co-exist as the open source world shows us. It's all about artists rights and you're all about hating on the artists."
When you can go a day without whining about Big Search and Big Hardware you can tell others not to whine about sharing, til then stfu.
As for artists, that's right bob. We hate them all. That's why I'm going to get a ticket (or two, one for my girl too) to Louis C.K.'s show as soon as he's near us. Or near enough that we can go see him easily. That's why other people on this site donated to Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter project. That's why Mike wrote about Dan Bull making the charts, with a single only available on one of those horrible websites. /s
bob you're an idiot. Seriously. Get a clue and think before you post.
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Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement
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Actually...
The problem is that the current laws do not discriminate. All consumers are criminals in the eyes of the current laws, for things we were doing long before the internet evolved. Now technology has evolved and the content industry is lagging far behind and wants Congress to make up for its lack of willingness to adapt.
So yes to stricter enforcement, IF the content industry can A) work out a way to grant us open access for a reasonable fee and B) ratchet back the length of copyright. Two lifetimes is just far too long. Even one lifetime is excessive.
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... They'll probably lock me up for suggesting such an idea, maybe call me a pirate in the process.
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Well, you could instead join the EFF. Or just send the EFF money�perhaps anonymously.
Or, if you're on the outs with the EFFers, then could I suggest the CDT? Or perhaps some other organization?
At any rate: Don't just sit there and weep� ORGANIZE!
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Arguments to use
That being said, we should tell the White House about the overwhelming negative effects of forceful disconnection from the Internet. Everything from bill payments to schoolwork is now done on-line, so the punishment does not fit the 'civil infringement.'
Next, let's look at the many (many) ways that identification is flawed. Unlike a fingerprint or a mugshot, an IP address is not a person. It is almost nonsensical that the government could be considering legal actions on what is, in actual fact, hearsay. I seem to recall a TechDirt article from two weeks ago where an EU minister (or some such) was accused of downloading infringing content and the response was "innocent until proven guilty' - except that isn't what is proposed with 3 strikes laws.
Finally, let's talk about the failed war on drugs. The fact that a high percentage of young black men will be forever part of the penal system (either currently incarcerated or stuck with the stigma on their record), and all of the attendant social ills that causes (absentee fathers, inability to earn an education or job skills), should provide guidance here. Additionally, the government exacerbates the drug problem by creating a two-tier system of justice (reference penalties for crack vs. cocaine, which is really black vs. white). I fully expect that model to be used here for the war on infringement. This will become yet another way to disenfranchise a group of people - namely, those that are either too poor or too smart to pay Hollywood's premium for digital (unreal) goods.
I encourage everyone to use the comment system at the White House. But do it smart and put forth rational arguments.
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Re: Arguments to use
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Please make all musicians spend their hard earned cash and numerous hours and days in a recording studio making music for me to rip off without compensating them.
Thank you very much.
Yours,
Freetardo J McGillicuddy"
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Also the Americans with disabilities (ie the Deaf)are quite offended your music is not in Braille, seems quite discriminatory.....
I could see a class action law suit against music makers on these grounds
/s
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Please continue using that guitar I built without paying me royalties every time you use it. I'm broke and it is unfair that you continue to make money with my hard work. I am forming a new collection society and they will be by with an extortionate offer shortly.
Thank you very much.
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Copying is not a problem and doesn't need "enforcement", specially the kind that undermines democracy.
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