How We Got To The Point That Hollywood Is Trying To Attack The Internet Via NAFTA
from the a-little-history-lesson dept
Last week we announced our new site EveryoneCreates.org, featuring stories from many different creators of music, books, movies and more about how important the internet and fair use have been to their creations. As we noted, the reason for the site is that the legacy copyright gatekeepers at the MPAA and the RIAA have been using the Trump-requested NAFTA renegotiations to try to undermine both fair use and internet safe harbors by positing a totally false narrative that the internet has somehow "harmed" content creators.
Yet, as we know, and as the stories from various artists show, nothing is further from the truth. For most artists and content creators, the internet has been a huge boon. It has helped them create new art, share it and distribute it to other people, build a fan base and connect with them, and make money selling either their work or related products and services. As we've discussed before, in the past, for most artists, if you did not find a giant gatekeeper to take you on, you were completely out of the market. There was very little "long tail" to be found in most creative industries, because you either were "chosen" by a gatekeeper or you went home and did something else. But the internet has changed that. It has allowed people to go directly to their audiences, or to partner with platforms that help anyone create, distribute, promote and monetize. Indeed, the internet has undoubtedly helped everyone reading this to create art -- whether for profit or just for fun. And if that's the case with you, please share your story.
But it is worth taking a step back and asking an even larger question: how the hell did we get here? How did we get to the point that the MPAA and the RIAA are using NAFTA negotiations to try to undermine the internet. Rest assured: there's a long, long history at play here, and it's important to learn about it. The idea that you can or should regulate the internet or intellectual property in trade agreements should seem strange to most people -- especially as most trade agreements these days are about increasing free trade by removing barriers to trade, and copyright by its very nature is mercantile-style trade protectionism that places artificial limits and costs on trade that might otherwise be cheaper.
An excellent history on this topic comes from the aptly named 2002 book Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy by Peter Drahos and John Braithweaite. It tells the story of how a concerted effort by legacy copyright maximalist organizations laid the groundwork for making sure that copyrights and patents were always included in trade agreements, by getting them in as a key part of the World Trade Organization and by the creation of TRIPS -- Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The book details how the legacy industries turned "intellectual property" from a question of benefiting the public to a solely commercial arena of corporate ownership and trade.
Once that was in place, these same industries wasted little time in exploiting the reframing of issues around copyright and patents. Famously, the DMCA itself was created in this manner. The record labels and movie studios had a friend in the Clinton White House in Bruce Lehman, who wrote a white paper in 1995 requesting draconian changes to copyright law targeting the internet. However, he found little support for it in Congress. Five years ago, Lehman himself admitted that when Congress refused to act he did "an end-run around Congress" by going to Geneva and pushing for a trade agreement via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which required DMCA-like copyright rules.
With that treaty in hand, Lehman and his Hollywood friends came back to Congress, insisting that our "international obligations" now required Congress to create and pass the DMCA, or we'd suddenly face all sorts of trade and diplomatic problems for failing to live up to those "international obligations" that they themselves had put into the trade agreement. Indeed, ever since then, nearly every international trade agreement has included some crazy provisions related to copyright and patents and other IP rights -- all designed to effectively launder these laws through the highly opaque international trade negotiation process, and then insist that legislatures in various countries simply must ratchet up their laws to meet those obligations.
Given all that, there's at least some irony in the fact that these same groups that forced the DMCA on Congress through an international trade agreement back in the mid-1990s are now trying to use a different trade agreement 20 years later to force changes to that very same law (and others). Once again, the process is opaque. And once again, the industry is well connected and represented on a variety of the "Industry Trade Advisory Committees" (ITACs), giving them much greater access to the details of the negotiations while the public is kept in the dark.
But the history here is clear. Moving copyright into trade agreements was a purposeful move, pushed for by legacy industries so they could promote their favored protectionist laws around the globe, in part by moving them away from being designed for the public's benefit and towards a world in which information and knowledge was considered to be privatized, owned, and locked up by default. It ignored the fact that, often, the public can benefit the most when information is open and widely shared. And, decades later, we're still dealing with the fallout from these bad decisions.
And that's why it's so important for policy makers to understand that it's complete hogwash to argue that the RIAA and MPAA are "representing artists" in trying to undermine the internet this way. Most artists recognize that the internet and various platforms are a key part of their ability to create, distribute, share, and support their artwork these days -- and they are not being represented at the NAFTA negotiating table.
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Filed Under: cda 230, copyright, dmca 512, everyone creates, fair use, international trade agreements, patents, safe harbors, trade agreements, wipo, wto
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Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright holders m
You even claim to "support" copyright! HA! Your whole schtick here for 20 years is to find some way around that word "exclusive" to legalize thefts.
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Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright holde
Mike has no problem with copyright as far as i know, but he has some problems with the current implementations and gatekeeping organizations, as do many people. Including artists who never get their cut from collection societies.
Your bullshit claims are transparent.
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Re: Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright h
Jeez dude, this site has enough credibility problems as is; adding to them with demonstrable lies is not a wise choice lol
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Re: Re: Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyrig
[citation needed]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Mike is a shill for Silicon Valley companies that are essentially grifters; they create nothing and use outdated and archaic laws about the internet to protect their parasitic business model: Others fund and create, they profit.
This is all old news. Mike likes to pretend time stopped in 2006 though lol
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
And maintain a gatekeeper function to determine which works are published — and which ones aren't. That's why he's all over publishing corporations like a rash.
Others fund and create, they profit.
Not true, Blue. They create and fund works of their own, such as this blog post. And mine. I even make my own graphics, how about that, eh?
The fact (which you insist on ignoring) is, there's no such thing as an original work; every story, every song, every film is based on the work of other people somewhere down the line.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
SOPA lost. John Steele lost. Evan Stone lost. Get over yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
What I have seen is you spewing a bunch of lies about what Mike and others have or have not said. You claim to read this site, but you apparently don't actually understand what is being written.
Grow up.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Yup, nothing strikes a nerve at Techdirt like the ugly sting of truth.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Besides which, you didn't actually respond to any of my points so I have to assume you can't prove me wrong so your only recourse to fall back to previously disproved BS.
As for blocking you from the site, we've been over this a million times, no one is blocking you from the site. Get over yourself, scan your computer for viruses, and stop spamming the site with nonsense links. I guarantee your problems will disappear.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
It’s amusing how you sycophants describe pointed dissent as trolling lol
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Pointed dissent is fine. Illogical statements based on verifiable false facts and questionable sites that have a history of being wrong and printing sensational stories is not pointed dissent. That's called being gullible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Second, if you're connecting over wifi on your home network, unless you paid for a static IP address, the same thing applies. Additionally, if that was the case, you would be blocked not only on your phone, but also on your computer and every other device behind your modem/router. In which case it could still be your computer is virus ridden and keeps getting blocked for bad behavior and the next time your IP changed (which you can force) you would be unblocked again.
All this to say, your assertions are so obviously false as to be laughable and the ONLY one who doesn't seem to understand this is you since you apparently lack a basic understanding of computer and internet technology.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
I’m putting it on YouTube and calling it “How Mike Masnick REALLY Feels About Free Speech”
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Nice try. I'll be sure to remember in the future that it's you who is lying about everything and not TD.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Your knowledge
Not only was my post censored (of course!) but Mike tried to block me from getting to the site today.
Huh? I can assure you I did no such thing. I don't even know how I would go about doing such a thing. I imagine that there must be somewhat to block IP addresses from visiting a site altogether, but I don't know how that works, nor have we ever done that. On top of that, I wouldn't do that to someone just for being a really dumb, trollish commenter.
I did not block you. Don't make false accusations.
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Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright holde
In this context they are. Books and other resources - for education or private use - are grouped in with entertainment in IP laws and treaties.
It WAS the law, in 1789. The law has evolved considerably since then.
And that 1789 law never applied to Canada or Mexico. (We're talking about NAFTA after all.)
With significant limitations. A time limit. Exemptions fair use by others. Etc.
Their exclusivity was in monetizing their creations. If I republish their book (whether using a printing press or BitTorrent), I'm violating that exclusivity. If I loan the book to friends or family or put an excerpt in my college essay or news report, I'm in the clear.
The writing here isn't anti-copyright; it's anti-copyright abuse.
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Re:
And how does copyright in its current balance help the general public? I don’t see the public domain getting any bigger. The whole point of copyright was to eventually put works into the public domain after artists had a fair amount of time to monetize those works. What harm could possibly come from putting, say, Michael Jackson’s work in the public domain?
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Re: Re:
What harm? Are you daft? If the filthy public is allowed to get their greasy mitts on Michael Jackson's works what possible reason could he have to create new works? Why would he ever create so much as a tv jingle if he isn't allowed to continue to profit from his works for eternity?
Sure some individuals(who are clearly mentally deranged) might suggest that the fact that he's dead means that no amount of money will incentivize him to create anything ever again, but as this is such an obvious red herring it deserves no attention or rebuttal.
Really now, without copyright why would anyone create anything? As history shows unless people have a guaranteed profit from their works(which of course is the sole purpose of copyright, despite what those filthy socialist commies who claim that the public is the intended beneficiary might say) nothing is or ever will be created.
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Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright holde
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Lawyers, headline writers, and Alex Jones.
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Re: Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright h
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I think Blue does this on purpose so he can track responses to his inane prattling easier.
I always try to remove them when I respond.
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Re: Your next-to-last paragraph simply lies that "knowledge" and "information" are same as entertainments. They are not. You are claiming "public good" will result from changing current copyright balance. It will not. You are claiming that copyright holde
Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
For limited times, Blue. LIMITED MEANS LIMITED.
And for the umpteenth time, the only situation in which theft occurs in a copyright context is when a claim to ownership of the copyright is made by someone whose claim is illegitimate. And every time the copyright terms are extended yet again — that's when they are robbing We the People. Do keep up.
Oh, and your corporate "GLOBALIST" bias is showing. Funny how that only ever seems to apply to IPR.
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This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
On that site, Masnick wrote:
Step 1) Create!
Step 2) ??????
Step 3) Profit!
It's that pesky STEP 2 which is called copyright that links creations to profits, silly college boy. Without the profit from creations being protected -- guaranteed by gov't authorized by common law of We The People -- no one has much incentive to create.
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Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
It like most bands do not make their money from copyrighted recordings, but rather from live performances, where their is a live performance tax collected by the performing rights organizations. Copyright is actually costing them money.
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But that takes work, and treating your fans like people rather that just walking wallets whose money you are owed.
Much easier to just make something(or even better get someone else to make it, require the rights to it from the actual creator, and then sell it yourself) and then sit back and demand that people pay you what you think it's worth.
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Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
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Re: Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
I can put a name to the best example of profit not being a motive for the creation of new artistic works: fanfiction.
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Re: Re: Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
The top two incentives for creating works, in no particular order, are pretty certainly: art for art’s sake and getting laid.
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Re: Re: Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel of love. I tried and I tried to run and hide, I even tried to run away. Ya just can't hide from the funnel of love.
That might be the best example in fiction-writing, but I think there's a pretty good case to be made that the free/open-source software movement is the best example.
(Free software and profit are, of course, not mutually exclusive. But the GNU tools, the Linux kernel, et al were originally created as personal projects. You could argue that Linux has a profit motive now, but that's not the reason it was created, and you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the GNU Project, Debian, et al were ever about profits.)
Hell, I've had a blog for 20ish years and never turned a profit at it. (I've sold the occasional T-shirt, audiobook, and short story -- and when I say "occasional", I think my lifetime sales come out to under $100 -- but advertising that stuff was never the main purpose of my blog; writing for its own sake was.) I write because I like to write.
Hell, I'm writing this right now. I'm sure not writing it because I think I'm going to get paid for it, but here it is: I created a work (small by itself but part of what's probably a fairly substantial body of work in this comments section over the course of the last year and a half or so), for no reason other than because I enjoy writing stuff like this.
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Re: Re: Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
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Re: This is actually just another attempt to funnel traffic from mighty Techdirt to another site on which users will magically solve all problems.
It's that pesky STEP 2 which is called copyright that links creations to profits, silly college boy. Without the profit from creations being protected -- guaranteed by gov't authorized by common law of We The People -- no one has much incentive to create.
That is patently rubbish.
Ever seen a Disney cartoon? Every one of the classics has invalidated your argument. Snow White? Public domain. Sleeping Beauty? Public domain. Robin Hood? Public domain. Oh, and Osamu Tezuka wants a word with you regarding Kimba the White Lion.
Finally, creations are not "protected" by copyright, all it does is give copyright HOLDERS, who are not necessarily creators, the right to sue for infringement.
Incentive? The main incentive for Disney to create their cartoons was not copyright, it was the public domain. Deal with it! Even the Authors Guild has recognised this.
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For a start their members are not creators, but rather people who control the output of real creators. Further the more they can control publication, the easier it is for them to give bad terms to real creators, because when getting through the gate is rare, there is always a queue from which to pick the next creator to exploit.
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Exactly, they don't represent creators, they represent gatekeepers. An open internet helps the first, but it's a serious threat to the second, hence the repeated lies and attacks against it.
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Telling tactics
They know they the public would object if they were to flatly present their demands to lawmakers, where it might face some scrutiny by people they don't own, so they slip their demands in via 'trade' agreements, which, for some strange reason, are conducted more and more these days in total secrecy.
Almost like they don't want the public to know what's in them until it's too late.
That they strive to bypass the public entirely, which includes the creators they supposedly care so very much for makes clear who they are actually serving and 'protecting', and it's most certainly neither the public nor creators.
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Anyone?
Based on giving STARS to those who are Honest, Honorable, Truth worthy, Trustworthy, HUMAN(yes we all make mistakes and LEARN from them)..(we need 5)
We get to RATE all these persons and Corps responsible for this country. LETS start sending out Badges with Stars on them, and a Small letter suggesting that ANY star can be removed upon finding out That they have NOT done good by this country in each of these forms, and the Badge can be removed at any time.. That we send this info out to EVERY ONE(small fee) Updated of WHO got one, HAD ONE, LOST ONE, LOST stars...
Being HUMAN means you stand up and declare all your faults and what you have done that needs to be FIXED...we are all human. But its the only time you can apologize for your past. After that point, there can be NO/FEW excuses.
Lets talk to our States and representatives and SEE how they feel.. LETS make this POPULAR..A NEW FAD...get 1-2 to have the badge and wear it..and others will wonder IF THEY SHOULD..
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How we got here
My #1 reason for cord-cutting is to avoid giving them money. It won't work if I sign up for online services that give them money anyway.
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Keep dreaming
There is a con artist who gives $5,000 seminars on the same topic who will let you "steal" the book because it's just thinly disguised marketing content for a seminar that teaches what was stolen from my last book etc.
It's nice of you to dismiss the payhecks of someone not yourself. If you don't like something, don't buy it, but don't steal it as well. Piracy deprives the nation of jobs and tax revenue. It is hardly a minor offense.
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Re: Keep dreaming
Well, that means you make even less money from the book, than competing with the pirates.
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Re: Keep dreaming
I have a book that will teach you how to cut your energy bill by $2,000 a year. What's it worth to you? Sorry, can't publish it because of piracy.
Please explain how you can't publish something "because of piracy." That makes no sense to me. Yes, pirated copies may mean some people get it for free. But many people may still pay for it (the success stories of various authors we've seen suggests that books still sell quite well).
There is a con artist who gives $5,000 seminars on the same topic who will let you "steal" the book because it's just thinly disguised marketing content for a seminar that teaches what was stolen from my last book etc.
Sounds like someone found a good business model focusing on selling the scarcity (events/seminars) rather than the abundant (digital content). Why not do the same and charge a little less and clean up since apparently you claim to know the subject much better.
It's nice of you to dismiss the payhecks of someone not yourself.
Where did we do that? I don't believe we've done anything of the sort.
If you don't like something, don't buy it, but don't steal it as well. Piracy deprives the nation of jobs and tax revenue. It is hardly a minor offense.
Infringement is not stealing, of course. And the studies on the economic impact suggest it's mixed.
But if you want to talk about depriving the nation of jobs and tax revenue... wouldn't "cutting your energy bill by $2,000 a year" do a lot more damage? It would certainly harm electric utilities and a variety of other related services, no? But that's okay, right?
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Re: Re: Keep dreaming
I await the inevitable C&D.
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Re: Keep dreaming
I have a book that will teach you how to cut your energy bill by $2,000 a year
Sounds like one of those messages vomited by spambots on easy weight loss. Which I don't see nowadays thanks to my browser's adblocker. I suppose you're going to call me installing one an act of "stealing" too, huh?
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Re: Keep dreaming
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Re: Keep dreaming
Newsflash, content creators don't have total control over what something is worth, part of that is based on what people are willing to pay for it. If no one is willing to pay a million dollars for your house, do you force them to pay it or do you lower your price?
Ever heard of supply and demand? You've got the supply but if there is no demand for it, you're screwed. If you make it easier to get a hold of and lower the price, demand will go up.
Why do people pay for Netflix instead of just pirating everything? Piracy is arguably easier and much cheaper, yet people are still willing to pay.
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