It's Never Enough: Both RIAA & MPAA Aren't Satisfied With Google Punishing 'Pirate' Sites

from the give-'em-an-inch-and-they'll-ask-for-a-foot dept

If we've learned one thing in watching the RIAA and the MPAA over the years it's that nothing will ever be enough for them in their neverending war against providing people what they want. With Friday's surprise announcement that Google would start filtering searches based on the number of DMCA notices sites got -- something both the RIAA and MPAA have been asking for for ages -- both organizations made it clear that, while they appreciated this step in the right direction, they wanted more.

First, the RIAA's statement:

"Today Google has announced a potentially significant change in its search rankings that can make a meaningful difference to creators: sites that are the subject of large numbers of copyright removal notices may be ranked lower in search results than before. This should result in improved rankings for the licensed music services that pay artists and deliver fans the music they love. This change is an important step in the right direction -- a step we've been urging Google to take for a long time -- and we commend the company for its action.

"As Google itself has acknowledged, this is not the only approach, and of course, the details of implementation will matter. Moreover, there are many more actions that we hope Google will take. But by taking this common-sense step and treating copyright in a way that's consistent with the search firm's approach to other forms of activity on the Internet, Google has signaled a new willingness to value the rights of creators. That is good news indeed. And the online marketplace for the hundreds of licensed digital services embraced by the music business is better today than it was yesterday."

And the MPAA's statement:

"We are optimistic that Google's actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online, and away from the rogue cyberlockers, peer-to-peer sites, and other outlaw enterprises that steal the hard work of creators across the globe. We will be watching this development closely -- the devil is always in the details -- and look forward to Google taking further steps to ensure that its services favor legitimate businesses and creators, not thieves.”

Google may think that such moves will quiet down the complaints from legacy companies who don't want to innovate, but they may find that, like feeding trolls, it just brings out even more requests...

Filed Under: copyright, filtering, search
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

Google Caves To Hollywood Pressure: Will Now Punish Sites That Get Lots Of 'Valid' DMCA Notices

from the whose-master? dept

For quite some time the RIAA and MPAA have been going on and on about how Google can just "fix" its search results by either removing or punishing sites that are deemed as "pirate" sites. We've explained why this is not as easy as the entertainment industry thinks it is, but it appears that the pressure has gotten to Google... and they've just announced that they will, in fact, be punishing sites that they deem as bad players, based on the data they have of how many "valid copyright removal notices" a site gets:

We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.

The company notes that it's just one signal of many and that they will only demote the results, but not remove those sites from the index. In fact, they point out, correctly, that "Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law."

As I understand it, the plan is that for people who search for, say, "watch dark knight rises free online," Google will try to push results that are likely to be unauthorized down the list, and try to have more "authorized" results higher up in the list (though, with a search query like the one above, there may not be any "authorized results" that provide what the person is searching for).

It's that last point where this gets to be troubling. Part of the reason people are searching for such things is that there isn't an easy and legitimate way to get that content. The best result would be for Hollywood to get its act together, realize that its whole windowing procedure is a disaster from the consumers' perspective, and provide more of what consumers want. Instead, the end result is going to be that people do these searches and just get equally frustrated. I don't see how that's good for Hollywood or for Google.

My other concern is that things things that later turn out to be quite legitimate and massive opportunities for authorized and legitimate content, are quite frequently demonized as tools of piracy early on. Imagine an equivalent of this announcement today in the early days of the VCR, when the MPAA insisted that it was evil and infringing. Imagine if when you went into a store to buy a VCR, the store instead pointed you to the movie theater down the road. That might be what Hollywood thought it wanted, but the end result would have been a much smaller home movie market -- not a market that ended up being bigger than the box office market just a few years after Hollywood insisted it was illegal.

Same thing with the first MP3 players. The RIAA sued the Diamond Rio as being a tool for infringement. Imagine if when you went to buy an MP3 player, stores decided to instead tell you you should buy some cassette tapes instead. It enforces an older way of doing business, rather than a new way.

And this applies online as well. Obviously, there's still an ongoing lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement, and YouTube certainly gets a ton of "valid copyright removal notices." Would Google demote search results to YouTube based on this? In the past, Google has punished the search results for other parts of its own business, for violating its rules, so it's entirely possible that YouTube results could get demoted under this system -- though I would imagine that Google believes that the many other "signals" it uses to determine legitimacy would minimize the likelihood of this being an issue.

But... that might not apply to a new up and coming site. Take, for example, the cases of Veoh and MP3Tunes. What both of those companies did was deemed legal by the courts, but both companies went bankrupt due to massive legal fees from being sued by the legacy entertainment industry. Imagine if, on top of that, Google also demoted the results from those sites at the same time. Already, Google is facing antitrust scrutiny for what some companies claim was a policy that demoted Google search results to their pages. While I think those claims are pretty bogus, is Google just opening itself up to a similar antitrust attack on that point?

I recognize that Google has a tricky balancing act here -- trying to keep the entertainment industry off its back, and the governmental pressure that comes with that, while still providing the "best" search results for its users. And I'm sure that Google has tried to use an approach that minimizes the concerns I raise above. But we've already seen, quite clearly, how Google's automated systems often fail when it comes to copyright issues, and the risk for both abuse and bad results seems quite high. At the very least, it's going to bear very close scrutiny to see how Google handles legitimate sites, who get swept up in claims of infringement when they're actually providing legitimate services.

Filed Under: abuse, copyright infringement, dmca notices, innovation, rankings, risks, search results
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

Former MPAA CTO Tells The White House Why SOPA Is The Wrong Approach For IP Enforcement

from the you're-free-to-speak-now,-paul dept

You may recall who Paul Brigner is. He was formerly the Chief Technology Policy Officer for the MPAA, who at one point was tasked with standing up to pretty much every knowledgeable internet engineer in trying to defend why SOPA was both necessary and wouldn't be a technological disaster. This resulted in some wacky arguments. Back in January, he and I faced off on a panel in Washington DC the day before the Internet blackout, in which he tried to defend the MPAA's position on SOPA, though almost everyone who watched the panel noted that his statements appeared half hearted. It was little surprise two months later to see Brigner leave the MPAA to go work for the Internet Society, who fought strongly against SOPA. Since then, Brigner has more or less admitted that SOPA was a bad idea.

So it's not too surprising, but still a bit ironic, to see that Brigner has written the Internet Society's response to the White House's request for comment on IP Enforcement, and much of it explains why any approach that mirrors SOPA is completely unacceptable. From all indications, this has been Brigner's true belief all along, and you can see it in the depth of explanation and knowledge he puts into this letter as compared to his half-hearted "defenses" of the MPAA when he was employed there. What's striking, however, is how directly Brigner's comments today contradict the claims of the MPAA, which he was responsible for defending just a few months ago. It's almost a step by step argument against the MPAA's position: Brigner/ISOC are against mucking with DNS, are in favor of highlighting the importance of due process and protecting civil liberties and in favor of much greater transparency in policy making.

We are also of the opinion that any enforcement attempts – at both national and international levels – should ensure and not jeopardize the stability, interoperability and efficiency of the Internet, its technologies and underlying platforms. The Internet – a network of networks – is based on an open and distributed architecture. This model should be preserved and should surpass any enforcement efforts. For the Internet Society preserving the original nature of the Internet is particularly significant, especially when enforcement is targeting domain names and the Domain Name System (DNS) in general. There are significant concerns from using the DNS as a channel for intellectual property enforcement and various contributions have been made on this issue by both the Internet Society and the technical community. It needs to be highlighted that from a security perspective, in particular, DNS filtering is incompatible with an important security technology called Domain Name Security Extensions or DNSSEC. In fact, there is great potential for DNSSEC to be weakened by proposals that seek to filter domain names. This means that DNS filtering proposals could ultimately reduce global Internet security, introduce new vulnerabilities, and put individual users at risk.

Our second recommendation relates to the legal tools that should be in place in any enforcement design. ISOC would like to stress the absolute need for any enforcement provisions to be prescribed according to the rule of law and due process. We believe that combating online infringement of intellectual property is a significant objective. However, it is equally important that this objective is achieved through lawful and legal paths and in accordance with the notion of constitutional proportionality. In this regard, enforcement provisions – both within and outside the context of intellectual property – should respect the fundamental human rights and civil liberties of individuals and, subsequently, those of Internet users. They should not seek to impose unbearable constitutional constraints and should not prohibit users from exercising their constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of association and freedom of expression.

As a general recommendation, we would like to emphasize our belief that all discussions pertaining to the Internet, including those relating to intellectual property - both at a national and international level - should follow open and transparent processes.

It's a great filing overall, and I appreciate the Internet Society's longstanding support for these key principles. Similarly, I think it's great that Brigner appears to have found employment much more in line with his own knowledge, experience and personal views -- but there is something ironic about seeing his name on a filing like this just months after he was tasked with arguing the opposite position.

Speaking of the White House's request for comments, that process is still open until this Friday. Later this week, I'll be sharing what I am submitting as well, but I urge many others to post thoughtful comments of their own. You can see what's already been submitted, and unfortunately, it appears that many (on all sides of the issue) submitted short/ranty "internet comment" style comments. I would urge that anyone seeking to submit a comment write out something a bit more thoughtful and detailed if you would like those in the White House to take them seriously.

Filed Under: comments, cto, paul brigner, white house
Companies: isoc, mpaa

Leaked Documents Detail The MPAA's Plans For Sock Puppetry To Mislead People About Richard O'Dwyer

from the nice-try-guys dept

Honestly, the MPAA needs to hire someone who actually understands a modern media strategy -- rather than a media strategy from the last century. It seems like nearly everything they do or say is calculated to piss off the public, rather than convince them of anything reasonable. Every chance they have to say the right thing, they say the wrong thing. Every chance they have to take a step towards making a connection with the public, they go the other way. We've seen how they call their biggest fans criminals. We've seen how they attack the internet. The latest is their Quixotic campaign against Richard O'Dwyer.

TorrentFreak, which lately has been on a streak of finding and publishing leaked info from the legacy entertainment industry, has done it again, publishing the MPAA's talking points document for responding to press inquiries about O'Dwyer, the UK college student that the US government is trying to extradite from the UK for running TVShack.net. They also have the MPAA's plans to find sock puppets to attack O'Dwyer. The two documents are from July 19th, so it's quite recent, and they try to respond to Jimmy Wales' recent involvement in trying to stop the extradition process. As with any good propaganda, the MPAA appears to take comments out of context to twist them against O'Dwyer. For example, it quotes that the site reminded people of how much money they were saving by watching free videos, rather than paying for movies. But nothing in that statement says that the videos they were watching were infringing copies -- just substitutes for going to the theater.

The sock puppet document is the really telling one, in that they admit that that the "overall media coverage has been and will continue to be challenging." Now, when pretty much everyone sides with O'Dwyer and against the MPAA, a normal, sane organization might think that its strategy is (perhaps) a mistake. But the MPAA instead decides to double down by trying to find sock puppets to publish blog posts and editorials about why O'Dwyer is a dirty stinking criminal:

To counter these assertions, the MPAA and its allies need a coordinated effort to focus more on the criminal activity involved in the operation of TVShack and other similar linking sites. Ideally, this would be done through third parties – but finding third parties – especially in the United Kingdom – has been very difficult so far, so the MPAA must be prepared to respond to media requests on the issue and set the record straight to counter the misinformation campaign by our opponents.

The thing is, the only "misinformation campaign" is coming from the MPAA itself, with these talking points and "how can we get stooges to spin this" document. The folks supporting O'Dwyer have no such things. They just speak the truth.

Furthermore, the documents completely ignore the legal arguments that make the O'Dwyer case incredibly questionable. They, of course, highlight the recent surfthechannel.com ruling in the UK to support the argument that O'Dwyer was breaking the law in the UK and the US. But that ignores the many questions raised by that ruling, and the fact that multiple similar cases went the other way or that similar US cases also seem to be going the other way too (though, that last one came out after this document was written).

There are also some laughable claims about how the decision to go after O'Dwyer was made by Homeland Security and ICE. However, as documents in other cases have shown, ICE relied heavily on claims from the RIAA and MPAA, despite little evidence to support those claims.

Separately, the MPAA weakly tries to hit back on the claims about internet freedom by saying that "this case isn't about Internet freedom. It's about a man profiting from theft." Funny, he hasn't been charged with "theft" as far as I can tell. It seems that the MPAA has trouble with ever being truthful -- even when claiming its providing facts to counter misinformation. And, as the Posner ruling recently showed, being a third party site that has embeds of infringing videos isn't infringing itself -- so arguing that O'Dwyer is some sort of master criminal is pretty laughable.

Then there's this:

Copyright law is a tool to protect the work of creators and makers, not censorship

They should try to tell that to some of the many people whom copyright has been used to censor over the years. The fact that copyright was supposed to be a tool to protect creators does not mean it can't be used for censorship. It is, regularly. The two things are hardly mutually exclusive. And, if the MPAA were being honest (ha ha, I know...) it would note that it doesn't represent the interests of creators and makers at all. It represents the studios, who do whatever they can to rip off content creators... while keeping the copyright for themselves. If the MPAA wants to spew bogus "talking points," (and get sock puppets to do so for it) perhaps it should start by figuring out how to defend its regular actions that block artists from getting paid.

In the end, though, this just highlights how incredibly tone deaf the MPAA and its communications staff is to public perception. Attacking Richard O'Dwyer, who has strong public support behind him is not a winning strategy by any means. I'm trying to figure out what the MPAA thinks it's accomplishing here and I'm drawing a blank. The more the MPAA seeks to demonize O'Dwyer, the worse it looks. Even if he is extradited and convicted, all they're doing is creating another hero/martyr, and more people who think the MPAA is an old, out of touch, unwilling-to-adapt monster, locking up college students. At best, I'm thinking the MPAA thinks this will act as an "education campaign" targeted at other sites running forums like O'Dwyer's. But that seems doubtful at best. Similar sites are all over the internet and have been for years. All this effort is doing is helping the MPAA dig its own hole deeper and deeper. It's like a perfect case study in how not to do communications strategy today.

Filed Under: copyright, extradition, richard o'dwyer, smear campaign, sock puppets, surrogates
Companies: mpaa

Judge Posner: Embedding Infringing Videos Is Not Copyright Infringement, And Neither Is Watching Them

from the at-all dept

Recently we've seen a number of cases, both civil and criminal, brought against websites that involve either links or embeds of videos hosted elsewhere. UK student Richard O'Dwyer is facing extradition and criminal charges for hosting a site that did exactly that. But, as many of us have wondered in the past, how is such a site infringing at all? After all, the videos themselves were uploaded by other people to other sites. The streaming occurs from those other servers. The embed just points people to where the content is, but it does that neutrally, no matter what the content might be.

A few months ago, we wrote about how the MPAA had jumped into a copyright infringement appeal involving porn producer Flava Works against a video "bookmarking" site called MyVidster. The MPAA argued that links and embeds are infringing, in support of a questionable district court ruling against MyVidster.

The appeals court ruling has now come out, written by Judge Posner, and it's absolutely worth reading (embedded below). Posner goes into great detail about how MyVidster's linking and embedding features don't even come close to infringing. They're not infringement and they're not contributory infringement. He goes through a pretty accurate description of how embedding works, and why MyVidster is separate from the uploading/hosting/streaming. But then he notes that those watching the videos aren't even infringing, so there isn't even any infringement for MyVidster to contribute to:

Is myVidster therefore a contributory infringer if a visitor to its website bookmarks the video and later someone clicks on the bookmark and views the video? myVidster is not just adding a frame around the video screen that the visitor is watching. Like a telephone exchange connecting two telephones, it is providing a connection between the server that hosts the video and the computer of myVidster’s visitor. But as long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right, conferred by the Copyright Act, “to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies” and “distribute copies . . . of the copyrighted work to the public.” 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (3). His bypassing Flava’s pay wall by viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it. That is a bad thing to do (in either case) but it is not copyright infringement. The infringer is the customer of Flava who copied Flava’s copyrighted video by uploading it to the Internet.

Got that? It's actually important. He's saying that those who are watching a video that someone else uploaded are not infringing on the reproduction right under copyright. Only the uploader has potentially violated that right. So there can't be a contributory infringement claim over that right.

Of course, copyright includes a few other rights beyond reproduction. There's also the "public performance" right. After running through a few different theories there, Posner again finds no clear case of infringement.

Flava contends that by providing a connection to websites that contain illegal copies of its copyrighted videos, myVidster is encouraging its subscribers to circumvent Flava’s pay wall, thus reducing Flava’s income. No doubt. But unless those visitors copy the videos they are viewing on the infringers’ websites, myVidster isn’t increasing the amount of infringement.... An employee of Flava who embezzled corporate funds would be doing the same thing—reducing Flava’s income—but would not be infringing Flava’s copyrights by doing so. myVidster displays names and addresses (that’s what the thumbnails are, in effect) of videos hosted elsewhere on the Internet that may or may not be copyrighted. Someone who uses one of those addresses to bypass Flava’s pay wall and watch a copyrighted video for free is no more a copyright infringer than if he had snuck into a movie theater and watched a copyrighted movie without buying a ticket. The facilitator of conduct that doesn’t infringe copyright is not a contributory infringer.

In other words, the person watching the video isn't doing a public performance (though the hosting server may be). But since myVidster is only helping the person watching the video, then it's not violating the public performance right either.

As we noted in our post about the original case, part of the ruling hinged on myVidster losing its DMCA safe harbor protections by not having a repeat infringer policy. But Posner notes that the DMCA safe harbor isn't even in question here because those viewing the videos have not infringed and thus there is no copyright infringement related to myVidster for showing the embeds:

myVidster received “takedown” notices from Flava designed to activate the duty of an Internet service provider to ban repeat infringers from its website, and Flava contends that myVidster failed to comply with the notices. But this is irrelevant unless myVidster is contributing to infringement; a noninfringer doesn’t need a safe harbor.

This ruling makes it clear that watching embedded videos is not infringing and then neither is hosting the embed code. While limited to the 7th Circuit, this ruling could still be quite handy in a number of other cases, including O'Dwyer's and the Rojadirecta case, which also involves embedded videos. Eric Goldman is a bit more skeptical of the impact of the ruling, arguing that Posner reasoning isn't particularly clear (well, he calls it a "train wreck.") While I rarely disagree with Goldman, I'm not convinced that this is such a train wreck. While Posner's explanation is, at times, convoluted, he does clearly make the main point: if there's infringement, it's completely disconnected from the user watching the video and the site doing the embedding.

Either way, Posner vacates the lower courts ruling, and notes that there are a few other issues with the case (mainly having to do with some other aspects of myVidster's business), but the main fight shows no infringement. Oh yeah, and Posner doesn't even reference the MPAA's filing in the case, suggesting how compelling that argument was...

Filed Under: copyright, embedding, hosting, secondary liability, streaming, watching
Companies: flava works, mpaa, myvidster

Is This Real? Is This Recall? MPAA Hosts Screening Of Total Recall To 'Educate' Congress On 'Benefits' Of IP Protection

from the is-that-real?-do-you-recall? dept

It's been said that Hollywood is completely out of ideas, and all it does these days is the same thing over and over again. That seems to be the case both on the policy front and with its movies. So how perfect is it that the MPAA's gift-of-the-month to Congress is a showing of the remake of the movie Total Recall? As we noted in our post about the MPAA's special showing of the latest Batman flick, to get around breaking gift giving guidelines, the MPAA includes a special "educational component," before its movies, which somehow makes it okay. We heard from attendees of the Batman showing that (amazingly) no mention of copyright or piracy issues was made in the "educational" component. Rather it was a presentation about the Natural History Museum and how it was doing things with IMAX, as well as a Time Warner presentation about its online offerings like HBO GO, TV Everywhere and Ultra Violet.

However, this month, the MPAA will more directly address the copyright issue, as you can see in the invite below, where they note the "educational" component will be about "the impact of film in the global economy and the benefit of IP protection to global trade." As the tagline of the movie says, "Is it real? Is it recall?" One has to imagine that the "educational" content will be particularly one sided, and I'd question how "real" the lesson will be. The stats that the MPAA is fond of throwing out are rarely anywhere close to reality. The presentation almost certainly won't "recall" the fact that due to the MPAA's own ridiculously extreme position on "IP protection" in "global trade," the ACTA agreement has more or less killed the agreement (at least for the majority of Europe).

If Congress wants an educational lesson on the role of IP and international trade, they might want to "recall" that the MPAA is just about the last place to go to get any sense of "reality."

Filed Under: congress, education, ip, screenings, total recall, trade negotiations
Companies: mpaa

Terrorists And Pedophiles Get More Protection In UK Than Guy Who Hosted Links To TV Shows

from the terrrorists-don't-bother-the-MPAA dept

For a while now, we've been following the ridiculous story of Richard O'Dwyer, the student in the UK who the US is trying to extradite to face criminal charges, all because he created a website where people linked to streaming TV shows (some legal, some not). At no time did he host illegal content. He just built the site. While the public has spoken out against the extradition, the Home Office, led by Home Secretary Theresa May, has so far held fast to sending O'Dwyer across the Atlantic.

Given all that, it's interesting to see this story, sent over by PressurCookrTheatr, highlighting the kinds of folks that Theresa May and the UK Home Office have refused to extradite over the last few years. It turns out it's a large and growing number, and even includes some terrorists. In those cases, however, May has magically decided that there are "human rights" reasons to keep them in the UK.

• In 2011, at least one terrorist – and possibly up to four – was allowed to stay, as well as up to eight killers and rapists. Also among the total were 20 robbers and up to eight paedophiles, plus as many as four people convicted of firearms offences.
• In 2010, the Home Office conceded in the cases of up to four murderers and up to four people convicted of manslaughter, as well as up to four rapists, up to eight paedophiles and 43 people convicted of violent crime or robbery.

That's from The Telegraph, which found out that and much more via a Freedom of Information Act request. The article has a lot more detail, but it seems pretty clear that May and the UK government have rejected extradition on all sorts of cases involving people accused of all sorts of horrible things. But when it comes to O'Dwyer? Well, you know, the MPAA is upset with him, so he's gotta go...

Apparently many of these decisions were made to avoid violating the Human Rights Act. For example, one guy, a Ukrainian accused of running "Britain's biggest sham marriage racket," has avoided extradition because he has two kids in the UK. What O'Dwyer should have been doing, instead of fighting extradition through legal means, was knocking someone up so he had a kid in the UK to convince Theresa May that he should stay.

Filed Under: extradition, richard o'dwyer, theresa may, uk
Companies: mpaa

Is The Six Strikes Plan Being Delayed Because ISPs Are Pushing Back Against Hollywood Demands?

from the seems-possible dept

As you probably know, last year, the big ISPs agreed to a six strikes plan (really five strikes), after the White House pressured the ISPs to cave to Hollywood's interests. What many of us noticed, of course, is that this backroom deal left the public out of the equation, which was obvious from the fact that it actually takes away some of the public's rights -- for example, by curtailing the definition of the public domain.

Earlier this year, the RIAA said that the program would finally kick off in July. There were some rumors of delays, and then a bunch of sites (including us) got confused about the actual start date. There have been multiple reports now saying that it will actually roll out later in the fall.

Of course, this has a lot of people wondering just what the delay is about. There might be a clue in a piece over at The Daily Dot, where they say that the director of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), Jill Lesser, has hinted strongly that the ISPs disagree with some RIAA/MPAA demands:

Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information, told the Daily Dot that the repeated delays were because the coalition wanted an independent review from the American Arbitration Association.

She hinted that disagreement between the ISPs or the lobbying groups might have held up the process. Responding to a question about the delay, she wrote “members are all very involved in internal planning and review of the alert system, which has been and will continue to be a collaborative process.”

Of course, there's one big thing that happened between when the agreement was made and now: the huge public reaction to SOPA. After that, the EFF rightly called for scrapping the backroom deal and starting a new negotiation that actually involved the public. That recommendation was ignored by Hollywood, of course, but the news of some internal fighting hopefully means that the ISPs are asserting themselves a bit more strongly against excessive RIAA/MPAA demands. Of course, once again, this is why it would be nicer if this debate were in public, rather than hidden behind closed doors.

Filed Under: hollywood, isp, jill lessig, six strikes, sopa
Companies: cci, eff, mpaa, riaa

MPAA Points To Its Roster Of Crappy Online Services And Asks What We're Complaining About

from the nice-try dept

In response to Jimmy Wales reiterating the fact that Hollywood's own failings online are a major cause of infringement, the MPAA has hit back by saying: that's crazy! After all, the studios do Hulu and Netflix, so how can anyone complain?

Wales had used everyone's favorite example these days: the difficulty in finding a legitimate way to pay for Game of Thrones online...

Wales also argued that the entertainment industry needs to continue adjusting its business model so it offers people the content they want. Citing a personal example, Wales noted how he can’t watch HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series at home in London even though he’s willing to pay for it.

“I think that he media industry needs to say, 'Look, why don’t we sell people what they want to buy,’ and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,” he said.

A smart and consumer-focused MPAA might note that they're trying their best but they realize there are still gaps and they hope to continue to improve. But, you know, that's not how the MPAA rolls. Instead, they send out spokesperson Kate Bedingfield -- who just recently joined the MPAA from the White House -- to insist that Wales was crazy for suggesting they need to make more efforts to please customers. You see, in the mind of the MPAA, as long as they've done something, they've clearly done enough.

“Our studios are constantly partnering and innovating new ways for audiences to watch the movies and TV shows they love: Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Crackle, UltraViolet, Epix, MUBI – and that just barely scratches the surface,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman at the MPAA. “There are more legitimate avenues available today to watch movies and TV shows online than ever before, and our studios are continuing to innovate every day to bring audiences even more options.”

“At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,” Bedingfield added.

In other words, don't actually address what Wales said. Don't respond to his specific complaint. Insist that because you're doing something, even if it doesn't solve the problem he noted, you're clearly doing enough... and then revert back to talking point numero uno: oh, poor us, we're harmed! So harmed. Harmed into our best years ever at the box office... (oh wait, they leave that last part out).

Seriously, the MPAA needs to hire communications people who actually deal with consumers, rather than politically-focused ones. They seem to have absolutely zero sense of how to respond to the public on anything without making themselves look worse. The last two decades of RIAA/MPAA communications have been a long-term case study in exactly how to do everything wrong.

Filed Under: game of thrones, hollywood, jimmy wales, piracy, ultraviolet
Companies: hbo, hulu, mpaa

Will The Failures Of SOPA & ACTA Highlight The End Of The MPAA & RIAA's Disproportionate Influence On Policy?

from the this-isn't-industry-vs.-the-public dept

Following the rejection of ACTA and the surprising USTR recognition of copyright exceptions and limitations, Harold Feld has a really worthwhile postgame analysis that highlights why pretty much every other industry (and the US government) should be pissed off at the MPAA and the RIAA. Basically, he points out that there were aspects of reasonableness in those efforts: some of the parts focused on real counterfeiting. But because the MPAA and RIAA decided to use an incredibly heavy-handed approach to get the US government to include totally unrelated copyright issues among them, both proposals completely flopped. If those efforts had just focused on the issue of real harm -- true counterfeit products that are confusing people and even putting lives at risk -- no one would be opposed. But due to this ongoing desire to conflate copyright infringement with counterfeit drugs, they overplayed their hand -- and all of that effort is now wasted.

Keep in mind that the majority of people working for USTR don’t like to waste effort any more than the rest of us, and the realization that a significant portion of the rest of the world may reject whatever final deal negotiators agree to if it goes too far on copyright is no doubt causing many to rethink their positions. In addition, USTR has many other industries it services besides Hollywood. They need trade agreements — and USTR is required to negotiate these. The Hollywood crazy train on intellectual property enforcement now very visibly threatens the ability to get future trade agreements ratified by Congress or by foreign governments. The manufacturing sector, the retail sector, and others that have until now tolerated Hollywood’s demands in the interest of maintaining a united industry front will not sacrifice their own international trade interests for the Entertainment industry — and will push USTR to negotiate agreements that actually have a chance at ratification.

This, obviously, seems like a good thing. As he notes, the USTR now has a lot of incentives to actually be more open and to listen to those who helped kill off SOPA and ACTA. If they actually want to have their proposals mean something, they might as well start talking to those who have the influence to do something meaningful. And that's less and less the RIAA and the MPAA.

Of course, this goes even further than that. While Feld talks up the increasing importance of activists in the conversation, I'd argue that it should also lead to most other industries pushing back on the RIAA/MPAA's crazy demands as well. Perhaps the US Chamber of Commerce will start to reconsider pushing the RIAA/MPAA point of view when it's clearly harmful to the interests of most other industries.

Filed Under: acta, hollywood, pipa, sopa, ustr
Companies: chamber of commerce, mpaa, riaa