Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement

from the keep-digging dept

It's really quite amazing just how badly Chris Dodd still doesn't seem to get what happened in the SOPA/PIPA fight. Every time he opens his mouth to "explain" what happened, he just looks less and less and less aware of what actually happened.

His latest discussion on the topic came at the National Association of Attorneys General meeting in Washington DC -- a "friendly" audience for Dodd. His discussion starts around the 2 hour, 10 minute mark if you want to fast forward the video. For reasons that are unclear, CSPAN has disabled embedding on this video. Either way, Dodd continues to show off that he has no idea what happened. The specific "panel" that he's on is (of course) pretty one-sided. It involves him, old friend Rick Cotton from NBC Universal ("just think about the poor corn farmers!") and then two university officials to talk about how they're forced to censor the internet because of draconian laws that the MPAA pushed through (where there's at least a little pushback on the ridiculousness of copyright law, but just barely).

Dodd does his usual nod to the fact that the MPAA is "pro-internet" and "pro-innovation" and how any "solution" has to keep a free and open internet. That's funny, because the proposal he backed over the last year didn't actually do that. So, it's a bit late to say that now. And, next time, if he really wants to protect the free and open internet, perhaps invite some of the folks who actually built it to the table, rather than shutting them out, calling them liars and trying to dismiss their concerns. It might help people take him more seriously when he talks about how much he loves the internet.

He goes on to talk about how an example of "good" legislation was the kind that the MPAA shoved through a few years ago, forcing colleges and universities to become copyright cops. Not surprisingly, Dodd happens to leave out the part where the MPAA was so egregious in lying with bogus stats to get that law passed that it eventually had to admit it lied. Of course, that didn't stop the law from passing.

From there he launches into a defense of SOPA without naming SOPA. He takes us on a tour for the ages of bogus, debunked or misleading stats, in talking about just how evil "foreign rogue websites" are -- leaving out the actual facts, including that existing laws seem to be doing just fine in tracking those guys down. He neatly conflates counterfeit drugs and bulletproof vests with people downloading movies. Funny, because I don't think anyone's ordering bulletproof vests from Megaupload.com. On top of that, he claims that (unnamed) search engines are reaping billions in profits from these sites, which is flat out bunk.

He concludes by asking the assembled attorneys general for "help" in dealing with this "ever growing problem." Wait, I thought that the MPAA was insisting that the "problem" was getting under control... but now they're admitting that it's "ever growing"? Yeah, okay...

Rick Cotton's talk is no less ridiculous. He kicks off by telling the attorneys general that it's time to end "the wild west" of the internet, and that we can't think of the internet as "Somalia" any more. This is, of course, totally and completely ridiculous and Cotton should be ashamed for such blatant misinformation. After all, he's been a key player in helping to pass many of the 15 different copyright laws in the past 30 years targeting "piracy" -- with many focused directly on the internet. To pretend that the internet is "the wild west" is just flat out ridiculous. He quotes the bogus Mark Monitor report claiming tons and tons of traffic to infringing sites. And while he admits that Megaupload has been shut down, and that it represented a huge portion of that traffic, he ignores the point that this was under existing laws. And yes, he says this right after insisting the internet is lawless.

Rick Cotton is shameless in his disinformation efforts.

When they get to the question section, the first question is to Dodd about SOPA (which neither he nor Cotton mentioned directly). Dodd starts out with his usual talking points about how this was unprecedented -- that the bill had tremendous bipartisan support, and how SOPA was just about foreign sites (ignoring that the original draft of SOPA was not limited to foreign sites -- yay misinformation!). Dodd pretends that a bunch of these sites "learned" from the "over 300" domain seizures to set up in foreign territories -- ignoring that most of the sites he's complaining about have been around for much longer. He also skips over the bogus seizures and the questionable legality of the seizures themselves. Minor details, apparently.

He then states that it's unlikely that these bills will move forward this year, but "there are efforts underway" and he's hopeful that solutions to "this problem" are being worked on.

And he concludes on the doozy that I point out in the title, claiming that the internet itself would have been at risk if the tech industry had "the same attitude" to copyright as they do today:

The internet itself would have been in deep trouble, if you'd had this attitude about copyright twenty years ago -- where the very ideas that gave birth to this industry would be at risk.

Oh really? Which ideas? Ideas about freely sharing information and code? Ideas about not caring if anyone could copy your source code -- in fact requiring that such copying be allowed? To claim that the internet industry's view on copyright law has somehow shifted from being protectionist to not just shows, yet again, how Dodd has absolutely no clue what he's talking about on this subject, and should maybe take some time to talk to people who actually work in the industry before he makes a bigger fool of himself.

From there Mark Shurtleff, Utah's Attorney General, blamed the whole SOPA/PIPA situation on a "well-orchestrated" online campaign that was based on pure lies. Um. It's ridiculous to hear him say this after sitting through nearly an hour of lies from the pro-SOPA/PIPA camp. He even admits that his own kids argued against him. Perhaps he should listen to them, because it appears they were a lot better informed than their father. He notes that he's now afraid that any attorney general that tries to "stick his or her neck out" on these issues will get similar SOPA/PIPA treatment -- so he asks Chris Dodd and Rick Cotton to come up with "a plan" to help them.

That, right there, is pretty incredible. A US state attorney general, asking private industry how to help them avoid having to deal with the public speaking out against plans to censor the internet and attack internet openness. Wow.

Dodd responds by saying that the movie industry "needs to move into the social media space. We were not in that space at all." That's pretty ridiculous. The MPAA has a blog. I mean, they don't allow comments on it, and it's sort of the laughingstock of anyone who actually understands these issues, but they have that. They also funded and supplied the key employees for "Creative America" -- the astroturfing group that supposedly is trying to round up supporters for SOPA and had an active Facebook page and blog... though the Facebook page mostly involved discussions about just how laughable Creative America's positions are.

SOPA supporters had an online and social media presence. It's just that they didn't have reality on their side. That's the problem. If Dodd and the MPAA ever bothered to understand what actually happened perhaps he'd stop making these crazy claims.

Either way, the clear conclusion from this talk is that folks like Dodd and Cotton still have no clue what happened and still don't understand the issues at hand. They're still approaching this from the old way of doing things, where it's politics as usual. They're not interested in really understanding what the public was concerned about and they have no intention of actually listening to what was said. All of the strategies discussed were about "reloading" on their side, not about actually talking to the people who understand the internet. It's sad, but it means that SOPA and PIPA will be back, though as Dodd explicitly says "hopefully it won't be called SOPA any more..."

Filed Under: chris dodd, copyright, history, internet, pipa, rick cotton, sopa
Companies: mpaa, nbc

Why Search Engines Can't Just 'Fix' Search Results The Way The MPAA/RIAA Want

from the not-that-simple dept

It's become clear in the past year or so that one key "target" in the legacy entertainment industry's game plan is to force Google to change its search results to have "good sites" rise up and "bad sites" be pushed down. They've been putting pressure on search engines for quite some time now, and have even considered suing Google for not giving it the results they want. Late last year, the RIAA even put out a "report card" in which it complained that Google won't let them program Google's results for everyone else.

This whole focus is a dumb idea for a few reasons. Mostly it's dumb because it (again) misdiagnoses the problem. It assumes, for example, that the reason that people go to file sharing sites is because the results top Google. But that's rarely the case. In fact, if you do searches for various tracks or movies, you'll almost always find legitimate results at the top already. The "issue" comes up when people do those searches in combination with "free" or something along those lines. But, by that point (in most, but not all, cases) the industry has already lost those folks. At that point it's likely that they know they're looking for an unauthorized version, so seeing a more "legitimate" result at the top of the results isn't likely to make much of a difference.

Even if we assume that the industry's theory that Google is magically driving total rubes to unauthorized sites when they really wanted expensive, inconvenient, DRM-laden, limited pay sites, the simple fact is that it's not as easy as they think to "fix" the search results. In many ways this is similar (or perhaps it's just another version of the same exact thing) of the industry talking about how it's "easy" for ISPs, online service providers and everyone else to "just know" when a song or video is infringing -- but then are so confused that they sue over videos they themselves uploaded. Knowing whether or not something is infringing is not as easy as the industry insists.

Similarly, knowing what's a "good" site and a "bad" site isn't so easy either. How would you approach it?

• You could just take a list from the RIAA & MPAA of "good sites" and "bad sites." That raises a bunch of problems. Let's just start with antitrust. Two trade associations representing the biggest record labels (who've had antitrust problems in the past) and Hollywood studios giving Google (already under antitrust scrutiny) a list of winners and losers? Er... DOJ on lines one, two and three. No way is that legal.
• Even if it was legal, not everyone agrees who is "good" and "bad." It's easy for the RIAA and the MPAA to insist that Megaupload -- for example -- is unquestionably "bad." But... then you have major label artists and super successful indie artists speaking out against the shutdown, pointing out that there were plenty of good things about the service. Why does the RIAA get to decide when some of its own artists feel otherwise?
• The RIAA and MPAA don't have a very good history of recognizing a "good" new thing when they see it. In fact, they seem to scream bloody murder (sometimes literally in the case of the VCR) when new useful tools show up. Letting them program Google's search results seems fraught with problems.
• If search engines let the RIAA and MPAA program their results to point to "good sites" and suppress "bad sites," where does it stop? For years we've seen lawsuits against Google from companies that don't like how they show up in the search results. Why don't they get to reprogram Google's results too? Or pick any random industry out of a hat. Car dealers? I'm sure when you do a search on a car they want results to point to a "good" local dealer, rather than a "bad" site that tells you how to get a better deal on a car. Imagine having to do that at scale where every industry has its own interpretation. And then what happens when those interpretations conflict?
• Okay, so if they don't just give Google a list, how does it "know" the "good" sites from the "bad" sites? Again, remember with Megaupload, we've seen plenty of artists say they like the site or its offerings which actually help them make money. Can Google just assume? How? That's not how Google works. If you have any sense of the scale under which any search engine works you know that's an impossible task. There's no way to just know -- especially since sites that are "downgraded" are likely to just set up shop somewhere new and start again. So at scale, the problem becomes even trickier.
• What if there was a "proxy"? Ok. Like what? DMCA notices? If a site gets lots of DMCA notices, it must be bad, right? Okay, so look at ChillingEffects... and you realize that the sites that get the most DMCA takedowns are sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter. It does't seem like a very good proxy, because sites that are popular get lots of takedowns. It doesn't mean they're "bad."
• An "independent" third party? Who is the third party? How do they take into account the issues above? And, again, if you're doing that for one industry, you'd have to do it for all. And that simply doesn't work at scale.

In the end, I can't actually see any way that Google can do what the industry wants. I know that someone in the comments below will link to some random site and say something to the effect of "how can Google say this site is legit?!?!" but that ignores how Google actually works. It's an algorithm. It doesn't look at sites like a human does. At scale there's simply no way that Google can have a human check each of the sites in its index.

The problem is that Google isn't designed to prop up the entertainment industry's old business model. It's designed to provide people results for what they're searching for. Those may be two different things. Google's algorithm does try to give users the "best" result for what they're looking for, and quite frequently that is the legitimate, authorized offering, but it's not always so easy there. iTunes sales are mostly done through iTunes' software, rather than on the web, which makes it difficult for Google to track link popularity there. Amazon music and movie sales often initiate from Amazon's own search, rather than Google -- so, again, Google has less data to work with.

Furthermore, if someone does a search for the name of a movie plus "download" when that movie isn't available for download, what is Google supposed to do, exactly? If the movie industry weren't so obsessed with release windows, Google could point people to the authorized download. But without that, how is it supposed to do that? If there is no authorized download, it's going to try its best, and sometimes that's going to be to an unauthorized source.

In the end, for those who keep insisting that this is somehow an obvious solution, and complaining that Google isn't helping, I'm wondering if you can actually explain how it can do a better job, because the more I think through it, the less I think it's even remotely possible for Google to do what the industry wants.

Filed Under: antitrust, bad sites, copyright, fix, good sites, results, search
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

UK Government Pressuring Search Engines To Censor Results In Favor Of Copyright Industries

from the backroom-deals dept

One of the most insidious aspects of recent Internet policy-making is that much of it is taking place behind closed doors, with little or no consultation -- think of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. But there's another dangerous trend: the rise of "informal" agreements between the copyright industries and Internet service providers.

With the implicit threat that tough legislation will be brought in if voluntary agreements aren't drawn up promptly enough, governments are using this technique to avoid even the minimal scrutiny that consultations on proposed new laws would permit. This allows all kinds of bad ideas to be forced through without any evidence that they will help and without the chance for those affected to present their viewpoints.

James Firth has a disturbing post about a proposed "voluntary" scheme involving search engines in the UK:

We know laws such as the UK's Digital Economy Act and America's SOPA/PIPA met incredible resistance from the tech industry and internet users, and readers of this blog and Open Rights Group supporters are already aware the UK government has switched tack from legislating to encouraging agreements directly between service providers and copyright owners.

What we didn't know until now is the extent that the UK government and in particular Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, is pressurising search engines to police search results in a way that goes well beyond notice and take-down.

I'm told a consortium of search engines at a meeting on Tuesday were accused of a "retrograde step" after failing to make progress on a proposal by music rights holders for a system to promote "good" music resellers and demote "bad" in the search rankings.

What is being proposed is out-and-out censorship and doctoring of search engine results through the use of blacklists and whitelists:

The blacklist is of websites accused of infringement. These sites will never appear in search results. That's the whole site, not just the pages from the site with infringing content. And this is not a court process, it's a notification system allowing studios to tell search engines directly who the bad guys are.

A white-list of "approved" online music and film services will be artificially promoted for music/film oriented searches.

That is, absolute power over search engines' results in these areas would be handed to industries that hardly have a good track record for adopting a proportionate approach to tackling unauthorized downloads. In particular, they are unlikely to lose much sleep over all the legitimate content that will become invisible when sites of borderline legality are removed from search engines' results "just to be on the safe side." And there are no indications that there would be any oversight as to who goes on the lists, or any right of appeal -- making it a purely extra-judicial punishment.

The good news is that the search engines seem to be resisting this move -- for the moment. As Firth writes:

I'm told that whilst search engine providers are both keen to strictly abide by all national laws and also willing to work with content owners to provide easy-to-use notice and take-down systems (under the EU E-Commerce Directive and US DMCA), they are "drawing the line" at doctoring search results to suit one relatively small group of economic interests.

The whitelist is anyway problematic, since it might be seen as collusion in anti-competitive behavior, and incur the wrath of the European Commission. Worryingly, one other suggestion from the copyright industries seems to be more acceptable: cutting off the funding of sites in the same way that SOPA proposed.

On funding a meeting was held last Wednesday at the Department for Media, Culture and Sport between rights holders, and advertisers and payment service providers.

I'm told in that meeting a broad consensus was reached to create a blacklist of websites where no advertiser would be allowed to advertise or face expulsion from industry bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

But even that seems an extremely dangerous step to take because it raises important questions about who will draw up such a blacklist, on what criteria, and how will those placed on it be able to appeal.

That exposes one of the key problems with these "voluntary" agreements: those pushing for them have no interest in striking a balance, or in building in safeguards for those most affected -- it's all about getting a quick-and-dirty fix and to hell with the consequences. That's why legislation, with full consultation from all parties, is a far better way of proceeding. After all, it's why we have a legislative process with checks and balances in the first place -- to craft a solution that is both workable and fair. The new fashion for backroom agreements among a small group of unelected insiders is nothing less than an attack on that process, and hence on democracy itself.

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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, filtering, pressure, search results, uk
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

Funny How Sensitive Hollywood Gets When You Threaten To Mess With Its 'Fundamental' Structure

from the but-the-internet?-bah... dept

One of the key points in the SOPA/PIPA debate involved Hollywood -- and the MPAA's Chris Dodd and Michael O'Leary in particular -- dismissing the worries of folks in the tech industry about the rather fundamental changes that these laws would make to both the technological and legal frameworks of the internet. Anytime such a thing was brought up, it was dismissed out of hand. This was most noticeable during the original SOPA hearings in November, where a number of experts were pointing out their concerns with how SOPA would undermine basic internet security principles... and O'Leary dismissed them with a simple statement about how he just didn't believe those concerns to be true.

What shocked many folks in the tech community was just how easily the MPAA sought to dismiss some pretty massive fundamental changes to both the internet and the legal framework around the internet. However, apparently if you dare touch the "fundamental" parts of Hollywood's business, the same MPAA throws a hissy fit. The EU recently had a public consultation on a variety of copyright-related topics, some of which were more interesting than others. One of the topics was on the question of movie release windows, and whether or not they made sense any more. As we've noted there have been many, many studies that suggest that these release windows are actually a big part of the problem for Hollywood, and they're leaving a ton of money on the table by not making movies available in as many convenient ways as possible.

In fact, many of the (non-Hollywood) respondents to the consultation made this point. There's BEUC (a consumers' group) that sees (pdf) "both platform and territorial release windows as outdated." GSMA called for (pdf) support for "flexible and shorter release windows." And EuroISPA was the most stringent (pdf), pointing out that:

the current windowing system is obsolete and seriously damaging the objective of the Digital Agenda, because it hampers the circulation of digital works and discriminate amongst platforms, to the detriment of more innovative technologies and business models

But you get a totally different story when you hear the MPAA's international arm, the MPA, tell its story (pdf). You see, to Hollywood, release windows are a "fundamental" part of its business model, and how dare anyone think of touching it.

The MPA submits that the freedom to set the exact timing for the release of films in various media and various countries is a fundamental feature of the film industry’s business model

Perhaps Hollywood is right, even if so many studies disagree. But, really, if it thinks it can just claim a certain feature is a "fundamental feature of the industry's business model," why does it then feel that there's absolutely no problem to leap into a totally different industry, and muck around with the "fundamental features" of that "industry's business model"? What an incredible sense of entitlement. The MPAA wants the law to keep its business model in place permanently... but if anyone else even dares to ask why Hollywood is trying to muck with their own business model, everyone gets attacked as being misinformed shills.

Filed Under: business models, europe, fundamental, movies, pipa, release windows, sopa
Companies: mpa, mpaa

Chris Dodd Extends SOPA 'Olive Branch' To Silicon Valley... And Proceeds To Bash Them Over The Head With It

from the there-is-only-one-answer-and-it-is-sopa dept

Not this again. Ever since SOPA/PIPA were shelved, we've been hearing from MPAA and RIAA officials about how important it is that they "sit down and meet" with "the opposition." Part of the problem is that they still can't figure out who the opposition really was. They usually blame Google. And sometimes Wikipedia. We keep hearing these requests to work together, but when people take them up on the offer and agree to meet... they seem to chicken out. Another big part of the problem is assuming that the only answer to the challenges they're facing is more legislation... but that's clearly not true.

Either way, a news report making the rounds says that Chris Dodd has "extended an olive branch" to the tech community with a speech he just gave. Already, that's framing this discussion incorrectly. Folks in Silicon Valley have been plenty happy to meet for many, many months. No "olive branch" needed. The MPAA and RIAA done everything to keep the tech industry from the table for nearly all of the SOPA debate. Even after everything happened, folks in Silicon Valley have made it clear that they're happy to meet and discuss stuff with Hollywood. It's just that many of them would like it to be "open." I've heard from a few different folks where "feelers were put out" to see if they wanted to take part in some secretive backroom "negotiations" -- but when they requested more open proceedings, the MPAA/RIAA guys insisted that was a deal breaker.

But really, what you see in this report isn't an olive branch, it's a baseball bat, where Chris Dodd talks up all the opportunities there are, and then starts wacking away at evil pirates destroying all.

MPAA Chief Chris Dodd made a peace overture to Silicon Valley Wednesday, telling an audience that "Hollywood is pro-technology and pro-Internet."

But he also made clear the legislative battle against piracy wasn't over, maintaining that "a strong system of copyright protection for online content is critical to the continued success of the flourishing Internet marketplace."

Except, that's not clear at all. A strong system of content protection has had nothing to do with the current success of the "flourishing internet marketplace." And putting even more protectionism in place only seems likely to make things worse, and drive more people underground. To say that it's critical to the success of the internet seems really preposterous considering how little evidence there is that copyright really plays a major issue here.

The real problem here is that Dodd still continues to refuse to define the problem correctly. He still assumes (or publicly proclaims) that the answer is content protection. A truly open conversation wouldn't start with such assumptions, but would do more to establish a framework and details. And then you get things like this:

Speaking to the Atlanta Press Club on Wednesday, Dodd said that "nearly one-quarter of all global Internet traffic is copyright theft. And at the heart of the problem is the proliferation of parasitic foreign rogue sites whose sole purpose is to facilitate, and profit from, the theft of international property."

Of course, as has also been pointed out, this "one-quarter of all global Internet traffic" bit is misleading, because it's counting all sorts of things that might not be infringing. But, more to the point, Netflix alone appears to use up about approximately the same amount of bandwidth. And what that suggests is that the problem isn't that big. If you converted everyone who he's talking about to Netflix... you'd just have another Netflix. That's a decent-sized company, but nothing miraculous. It just looks big because everyone's focused on the wrong numbers -- such as the byte size of traffic, rather than what's actually being shared and why.

"We cannot draw up a business model that accounts for the wholesale theft of our product," he said. "It's true for pharmacies. It's true for the automobile industry. It's true for software developers. And it's true for us."

Of course, once again, he's misusing the term "theft," which is pretty disappointing and again suggests the lack of a real "olive branch" here. But, furthermore, this statement is also plainly wrong. What he's arguing is that companies can't compete with free. But, er... plenty of "copyright" businesses do exactly that. One need look no further than the open source community. There, Dodd would discover that there have been some very large companies that built on top of products that the company can't lock down, and that versions of those products will be available for free. And many open source companies have done well -- even as they have to compete with free versions of identical products. They've built great business models. To say that Dodd himself (or the studios) "cannot draw up a business model" that deals with the market situation is a statement on Dodd and the industry -- not on the possibility of such business models. Of course, there are more and more people discovering business models that work... but rather than let that happen, Dodd is demanding a law?

And, really, it comes back to this again: this isn't an olive branch. Dodd isn't seeking input from those who understand these issues. He's pretending to offer an olive branch to get some "negotiations" started, where they won't listen or take the time to understand the real issue. Instead, they'll just beat everyone over the head with the branch and insist that their ridiculously bad plans to expand copyright enforcement are the only way to go.

He said that "copyright legislation helped to create the Internet of today -- not to mention providing companies like Apple with the incentive to -- as they say -- think different, and to think big."

This part is just intellectually dishonest. Very little of the success of the internet today had anything to do with copyright law. In fact, large parts of the success of the internet were due to exceptions to copyright law, such as those from the open source community.

"The coalition supporting a crackdown on ... criminal sites includes companies large and small who produce movies, TV shows, music, software, photography, prescription drugs, consumer electronics -- everyone from Gibson Guitars to the Ultimate Fighting Championship."

Um, sounds like Dodd's talking points need a refresh. Gibson Guitar dropped its support of SOPA...

"If you believe that freedom of speech does not imply, and the ability to innovate does not require, a license to steal, if you believe that the men and women who work hard to make films and TV shows deserve to be fairly compensated ... I invite you to join this coalition and help us move towards a solution to this problem."

See, that's not an olive branch at all. That's just flat out misrepresenting the position of those who opposed SOPA. No one says that there's a "license to steal" or that people should be allowed to break the law willy nilly. Nor is anyone saying that those who "work hard" shouldn't be compensated. There are tons of laws on the books already -- many of which are already being overaggressively enforced. We're saying that there are existing ways to deal with these issues that don't have the collateral damage that a SOPA or PIPA would have -- by not involving legislation at all, but letting the market figure things out, as it's already been doing.

Again, if Dodd wants to meet and put forth a real olive branch, he should try not attacking those he's supposedly reaching out to or misrepresenting their position. Otherwise it's tough to see much sincerity there...

Filed Under: chris dodd, copyright, olive branch, silicon valley, sopa
Companies: mpaa

MPAA Hires Four Ex-Federal Government Employees, Including One From ICE & Another From The White House

from the watch-that-revolving-door dept

It appears that the famed "revolving door" between government and the big entertainment industry lobbyists continues. The MPAA has announced four new hires -- all of whom come from roles within the government, and who raise significant questions about who they were working for when they were in their government positions.

Alex Swartsel, who has worked for several Democratic senators and campaigns, is the new director of global policy. Brian Cohen, who has worked in the Justice Department and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is the new director for external state government affairs.

Lauren Pastarnack, who has worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the new director of government affairs. And Kate Bedingfield, who joins the MPAA from the White House Communications Office, is the new director of strategic communications.

Two of these aren't huge surprises. The Pastarnack hire hit the news a few months ago, when people noticed that she jumped from being a point person on PIPA to working directly for the MPAA. Swartsel's name may also be familiar. We tangled with her last summer, when she bizarrely took to the MPAA's blog to attack reporter Janko Roettger for accurately predicting that bad economic news might lead people to seek out unauthorized sources of movies, rather than paying through the nose for authorized versions. Now, the MPAA's former boss had said the exact same thing, but according to Swartsel it's somehow "intellectually dishonest" to point out what might happen. Swartsel also was the one who flat out mocked the concerns of tech entrepreneurs concerning SOPA and PIPA. Turns out she did all this as a "consultant" to the MPAA -- and they thought she did such a bang up job that they've hired her full time as "director of global policy."

Given her former attacks on reporting the truth and concerns of the tech industry, it seems pretty clear that the MPAA is not moving in the direction of their promised open conversation with the tech industry and internet users concerning solutions to infringement. It sounds like they're moving in the other direction.

A further indication of that, of course, is the hiring of Cohen, direct from the MPAA's private police force... better known as ICE. Remember, when ICE launched Operation In Our Sites to illegally seize and censor websites, it did so directly from Disney's headquarters. The close relationship between ICE and the MPAA should worry everyone. The fact that there's a revolving door in employment between the two should be cause for an investigation concerning possible corruption. But, of course, that won't happen... when that kind of revolving door also includes someone like Bedingfield, coming straight out of the White House.

It's stories like this that make you realize why the MPAA is so powerful. It knows that it has a strong hold on government employees, because it's offering a bunch of them high paying jobs once they leave their government positions. And, as Jack Abramoff has explained, the best trick in a lobbyist's pocket is to tell a government employee that there's a job waiting for them any time in the future -- because they're technically working for the lobbyist from that moment forward.

Filed Under: alex swartsel, brian cohen, ice, kate bedingfield, lauren pastarnack, lobbyists, politics, revolving door, white house
Companies: mpaa

MPAA: Ripping DVDs Shouldn't Be Allowed Because It Takes Away Our Ability To Charge You Multiple Times For The Same Content

from the um,-wow dept

It's that time again when the Librarian of Congress is considering special exemptions to the DMCA's anti-cicrumvention provisions. One of the key proposals, which we discussed earlier, was Public Knowledge's request to allow people to rip DVDs for personal use -- just as we are all currently able to rip CDs for personal use (such as for moving music to a portable device). The MPAA (along with the RIAA and others) have responded to the exemption requests (pdf) with all sorts of crazy claims, but let's focus in on the DVD ripping question, because it's there that the insanity of Hollywood logic becomes clear.

Effectively, the MPAA is arguing that there is no evidence that ripping a DVD itself is legal, and since anti-circumvention exemptions are only supposed to be for legal purposes, this exemption should not apply. Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of the fact that we need to apply for exemptions to make legal acts legal (I know, I know...), this is quite a statement by the MPAA. While it's true that there hasn't been an official ruling on the legality of ripping a DVD, the fact that CD ripping is considered legal seems to suggest that movie ripping is comparable.

But the bigger point is that the MPAA is arguing that because they offer limited, expensive and annoying ways for you to watch movies elsewhere, you shouldn't have the right to place shift on your own:

Copyright owners include with many DVD and Blu- Ray disc purchases digital copies of motion pictures that may be reproduced to mobile devices and computers pursuant to licenses. Blu-Ray disc purchasers can also take advantage of "Managed Copy" services that are scheduled to launch in the U.S. later this year. Movie distributors and technology companies are also making available services such as UltraViolet, which enables consumers to access motion pictures on a variety of devices through streaming and downloading. Many movies and television shows are also available online through services such as Comcast Xfinity, Hulu and Netflix, or websites operated by broadcasters or cable channels, which consumers can enjoy from any U.S. location with internet access. With all of these marketplace solutions to the alleged problem PK points to, it is unlikely that the presence of CSS on DVDs is going to have a substantial adverse impact on the ability of consumers to space shift in the coming three years.

Notice that almost all of these "market solutions" mean you have to pay multiple times for the same content -- and they ignore the fact that these offerings are all very limited and may not have the content on the DVDs people have. Public Knowledge has a quick summary of how these "solutions" are not solutions at all:

The MPAA had two specific suggestions. First, consumers could re-purchase access to a subscription service such as Netflix of Hulu. They did not dwell on the fact that 1) this would require you to pay again to access a movie you already own; 2) these services require a high speed internet connection in order to work; 3) There is a reasonable chance that the movie you own is not available on any of those services at any given time; and 4) MPAA member studios regularly pull videos that were once available on those services off of those same services.

The MPAA’s second suggestion was even less helpful. In their comments, they pointed to Warner Brothers’ DVD2Blu program. This program allows people to use their existing DVDs as a coupon towards the purchase of a handful of Warner Blu-Ray disks. They did not dwell on the fact that 1) this program is limited to Warner Brothers films; 2) the program is limited to 25 exchanges per household; 3) while some Blu-Ray disks include digital copies that can be moved to other devices, it is unclear how many of the disks in the DVD2Blu program include that option; 4) only 100 movies are included in the entire program; and 5) each exchange costs at least $4.95 plus shipping (which, for the record, is about as much as it would cost to buy the digital file from Amazon.).

When you think about it, this is really quite crazy. They're saying because they offer you an option to pay for a way too expensive, very limited option that might not really exist, you shouldn't have the right to rip your DVDs. This would be like the recording industry claiming you can no longer rip CDs because they offer a limited locked down selection of music in an online store. People would revolt at such a claim, and they should find the MPAA's ridiculous claims here equally as revolting.

If the MPAA stopped there, it would be crazy enough... but no, in the mind of Hollywood, they have to take it even further. They claim that because the ability to rip your DVD might take away their ability to keep charging you for the same content over and over again, that it goes against the purpose of copyright law. Seriously. They're actually claiming that their ridiculous "windows" are "new business models" that copyright law is designed to encourage:

In fact, granting PK’s proposed exemption would be directly counter to the purpose of this rulemaking. It would undermine emerging business models that increase access to creative works in precisely the manner Congress intended the DMCA to promote.

But that's pure bullcrap. The business models in question do not "increase access." They increase the ways in which you can pay. If they want to increase access, they would let you rip your damn movie.

It is clear that access controls have increased consumers’ options with respect to motion pictures in digital formats. The Register should not interfere with that progress. Instead, she should endorse it.

Up is down, black is white, day is night. Controls have increased consumer options? No freaking way. Controls have limited options... but have allowed the MPAA studios to set up tollbooths and charge people multiple times for content they legally had purchased the rights to.

Filed Under: circumvention, css, dmca, dvds, exemptions, fair use, ripping
Companies: mpaa

Justice Department Wants $5 Million To Bolster Its Efforts As Hollywood's Private Police Force

from the regulatory-capture dept

While the proposed Obama 2013 budget for the federal government is supposed to be about cutting extraneous expenditures, one area where it's seeking more money is to expand the Justice Department's copyright enforcement efforts. You see, this is what happens when you hand the Justice Department over to the RIAA and MPAA. DOJ is seeking an extra $5 million to focus on these kinds of efforts, to hire 14 new employees, including nine lawyers, claiming that it's "had an increase in the number of cases that we're dealing with in IP." Oh really? You mean like the case of Dajaz1? The site that the DOJ illegally held and censored for over a year? Perhaps if they had a few more lawyers on staff, someone would have taken the time to realize that they were supposed to give the domain back within a specified time frame. Or perhaps they could have used those people to realize that the site was posting music sent by the copyright holders. Of course, that's not what would happen. Instead, they'd just focus on seizing more sites and creating more collateral damage. The real question, of course, should be why are we allowing the government to be Hollywood's private police force?

Filed Under: budget, copyright, doj, justice department, regulatory capture
Companies: mpaa, riaa

Open Offer To Chris Dodd & Cary Sherman: Meet The Internet Online And In The Open

from the no-more-backroom-deals dept

We've covered how the RIAA's Cary Sherman and the MPAA's Chris Dodd have both taken the strategy of first slamming everyone who took part in the internet protests against SOPA/PIPA as somehow being misinformed corporate pawns... but then concluding by expressing a desire to "meet" to discuss solutions. The problem, of course, is that both of them still think that it was Google that killed SOPA/PIPA, and so their idea of a "meeting" is to get Google into a back room and to "negotiate a deal." But, as many people have been pointing out, that isn't going to cut it.

So let's make a clear offer to Chris Dodd, Cary Sherman and the rest of the corporate supporters of SOPA/PIPA: You want to meet? Let's meet. But let the meeting be open and public. Let's have it outside of DC. Pick a place. Let it involve representatives from public interest, civil service, consumer rights, human rights groups, as well as internet communities such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Let it involve the actual companies you seek to regulate as well, from the tech industry (meaning not just Google, but also the startups these bills would have hit the hardest), and the actual technologists who understand the impact of what you seek to do. And then let's stream the whole thing online, and have it with a system that lets everyone, including those watching the stream, contribute comments and questions.
Is this of interest? Over the past few weeks I've spoken to numerous people representing a variety of different groups, and they've all expressed interest in such a meeting. So how about you? You asked for a meeting. The community is happy to meet. But we want it to be open and transparent. And we want real internet users to be able to take part.

So, let's see if you're serious.

Filed Under: cary sherman, chris dodd, copyright, infringement, meeting
Companies: mpaa, riaa

NY Times: RIAA & MPAA Exaggerate Piracy Impact Stats... But We're Going To Assume They're True Anyway

from the really? dept

Sometimes you have to wonder if the NY Times is simply trying to hurt its own credibility. That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading the editorial by Eduardo Porter concerning the impact of unauthorized file sharing on the economics of the creative industries. While he admits that the RIAA and MPAA have "tended to exaggerate piracy's economic costs and threat to jobs," he then goes on to more or less repeat their arguments anyway. But the editorial is a classic case of how one misleads with statistics in a variety of ways. First, he shows the declines in recorded music sales and in-home movie sales, as if that's proof that the industry has been harmed by infringement. But, as we just recently showed with our The Sky Is Rising report, people are still spending more on entertainment -- it's just that some of the money has gone elsewhere.

And is it really any surprise at all that money has moved away from direct sales? It's not a piracy problem, it's a market adjustment thanks to the shift in the ability to buy singles in music, combined with the more efficient means of distribution, meaning that people no longer have to pay $20 for a CD to get the one or two songs they want. In the meantime, all of that money stayed in the wider industry (something that Porter completely ignores -- why?!?). The amount of money that's gone to concert tickets has gone way up. The amount of money from publishing? Up. The amount of money from licensing? Up. And here's the key part that Porter totally and completely ignores: those other areas of the business which are all up? Those are the areas that give much bigger cuts to actual artists. Artists rarely made any money from direct music sales in the past anyway. So, today more people are making more money from music than ever before... but you wouldn't know that from Porter's laughable analysis.

The top album in 1999, “Millennium” by the Backstreet Boys, sold 9.4 million copies. The top 2011 album, Adele’s “21,” sold 5.8 million.

Two things on this: (1) again, while not everyone is buying the music, the money is still going to the artists -- in fact I'd bet that Adele made out nicely on the live side. (2) What Porter completely ignores is that there's a lot more competition today. So of course the top selling album sells less. Because unlike in 1999, not everyone is being pressured into listening to just one or two superstars, but we can all find our own niches. Some of us think this is a good thing. And then there's Porter.

Hollywood was hit by piracy somewhat later because movie files are bigger and require more Internet bandwidth. But home entertainment sales -- a huge chunk of movie revenues -- fell every year from 2004 to 2010.

Perhaps we should stop here to mention that if Hollywood had had its way 30 years ago, there would be no home movie business. That's because the MPAA fought hard to ban the VCR as an evil tool of piracy -- just like torrent search engines and cyberlockers today. So, forgive me for not exactly caring when Hollywood whines about this particular bit of revenue going away.

But, once again, let's look at what really happened here. The key reason why the sales fell over that time was because as most people shifted online, the studios fought as hard as possible to keep movies from being sold online. Instead, they focused on a ridiculous, years-long fight over which would be the new physical disc standard: HD-DVD or Blu-ray. That fight is what killed sales more than anything else. People didn't want to buy because they didn't want to commit to a standard that only had some movies, and which might go away, leaving people stranded. By the time Blu-ray finally won, there was enough bandwidth that people just wanted their movies online... but Hollywood had no interest in delivering it. When Netflix finally was able to start offering some movies online, the massive success of that setup caused Hollywood to freak out, and spend the next few years trying to either limit Netflix (and any competitors) or jack up the prices on Netflix to make it hard for Netflix to make money without raising its own prices.

So, sorry, but the problems Hollywood has with home theater revenue? That's got nothing to do with piracy.

While box-office revenues have benefited from rising ticket prices, movie attendance has been steadily declining.

I've seen this point made a few times, and all I can think is who cares? I mean, honestly, the whole point is to maximize revenue, not to maximize attendance. If the goal was to maximize attendance, then that's easy: just throw the doors open for free and you'll have maximum attendance. But, of course, that's not the goal. As for fewer people going, once again, we're talking about a market with much more competition, especially from the internet (legally!) and video games.

Of course, not every pirated download displaces the sale of a book, album or movie. But when it comes to music, most economic studies have concluded that piracy accounts for the vast majority or even entirety of the sales decline.

Sorry, but we have to call bull on this one. "Most" economic studies? I've never seen any. In this case, the study points to a recent study done by Stan Liebowitz, the entertainment industry's favorite economist. He's been making the same claims for years, and I've yet to see a single other economist agree with him. So I have no idea where this "most" comes from. Most of the economic evidence I've seen suggests otherwise.

From there, Porter just gets downright insulting. He dismisses all of the tons of new content being produced by claiming that it's just hobbyists, and somehow those people don't count:

Many Internet enthusiasts say that this change isn’t unhealthy, and that the Web makes more ventures possible. They point out that while piracy may be cutting the pay of record label executives, it doesn’t seem to have stopped musicians from making new music. According to Nielsen, 75,300 albums were released in 2010, 25 percent more than in 2005. But new releases that sold more than 1,000 copies fell to about 4,700 from 8,000 during that time. The wave of creation that is more hobby than profession has little to do with piracy, and would likely be unaffected by laws to curb illicit downloads.

This isn't just insulting, it's missing the point. First, Nielsen numbers are hardly complete, as Jeff Price at TuneCore constantly reminds the world (apparently Porter doesn't pay much attention to anyone outside of Nielsen). But, more importantly, Porter once again seems to assume that the only way to make money is through selling music. That's wrong.

But if professional musicians, movie directors and writers can’t make money from their art, they will probably make less of it.

Probably? The evidence says two things: (1) they're actually making more money -- perhaps just not from "selling their art," and (2) they seem to be making more of it, not less. Instead of Porter's "probably" why don't we go with reality? Independent producers say piracy is already making it harder to raise money for small and mid-budget movies. And yet, as was just reported in the NY Times (the paper Porter writes for), new technologies and services are popping up every day to help finance small and mid-budget movies... such as Kickstarter.

The big problem with Porter's analysis is he assumes a static world in which no one can change or adapt. What we've seen, out here in reality, is that content creators are adapting. So, sure, as we've said, infringement will hurt your business if you're stupid and don't adapt. But if you actually take the time to understand what the market wants, and then embrace your fans, the artists who do that are finding that they're making more money than they were before. So, yes, piracy harms you: if you're stupid. That's no reason to change the law.

Filed Under: eduardo porter, infringement, piracy, stats
Companies: mpaa, riaa