British Labels Propagandizing To Children

from the not-so-much-teaching-as-preaching dept

While the practice of the entertainment industry issuing propaganda to school children is certainly nothing new, every time I see it in practice I shiver involuntairly.  But when I came across a story from the BBC regarding a British label actually coming in to talk directly with high school kids about the many evils of piracy, a couple of questions leapt to mind.

But give the label credit for bringing along toys for the kids to play with this time.  They showed up with a bunch of their music-making equipment to let the kids have a go at producing their own tracks.  But even in this there was an ulterior motive.  They were hoping to show kids (KIDS!) how hard it is to actually make the music they listen to, which would then demonstrate all the many people that are involved in the process.  Why?

"Paul Shedden, Head of Label at Shed Records, explained the project is about raising awareness of the 'unseen' faces in the industry who rely on music sales for their livelihoods.  He said: 'A whole army of people work behind the scenes to bring you new, fresh music.  Everything from the songwriters through to production, artists, engineers, radio pluggers, PR companies all those people need to get paid.  Otherwise they can't continue doing the jobs they love and the music you love will stop coming out.'"

Okay, the first question here is the obvious one: how can the threat of disappearing music production be used when we see more music coming out than ever before?  Want to guess whether the label reps bothered to mention that to the kids?  In addition to that question, I wonder if they brought amongst their toys some of the amazing new technology that's come out which allows artists to do more of this work themselves, rather than rely on an "army" of other folks who "need" to get paid. 

But beyond that is the real question which is at the heart of why I have a problem with this kind of thing.  Why do we let corporate interests speak directly to our children about industry needs and policy?  And why aren't there representatives from opposite sides of the debate alongside them?

Would we let McDonalds come in to speak directly to our children about how they consume food?  Would we allow gun manufacturers to hold audience in the school auditorium for a quick Q&A on gun control laws without representatives from the opposite side of the debate?  Maybe we could get Larry Flynt to come in and hold court at a Saint Mary's School For Girls assembly on what types of jobs are best suited for women?

Or maybe schools should educate and leave industry out of the process entirely.  If I were a parent (which I'm not), I'd be more than a little itchy at the prospect of my kid's school bringing in corporations to teach our children. 

Filed Under: children, music, propaganda, uk

The Pilgrims Would Oppose Net Neutrality?

from the i-mean,-once-they-stopped-worrying-about-surviving dept

There are extremely good reasons to worry about any net neutrality legislation, as we've seen that once the telcos got involved, what came out was really a telco wishlist, rather than anything to actually preserve the key end-to-end principles of the internet. However, that doesn't mean that the principle of "net neutrality" is bad. It's not. There are very good reasons why the internet has been, and should remain, "neutral."

And yet, in the fight against the legislation, it's really amazing how many ridiculous, ignorant arguments are made. For example, a bunch of folks have been sending over the news of some religious talk radio host decrying net neutrality, because it was "wicked stuff" that the Pilgrims wouldn't have wanted.

It is a principle of free market. That's a Biblical principle, that's a historical principle. We have all these quotes from Ben Franklin and Jefferson and Washington and others on free market and how important that is to maintain. That is part of the reason we have prosperity. This is what the Pilgrims brought in, the Puritans brought in, this is free market mentality. Net Neutrality sounds really good, but it is socialism on the Internet.

That's wrong on so many levels, you kind of have to marvel at just how wrong it is. A neutral network is not "socialism." For the most part, it's what we have today. And, seriously, getting rid of neutrality is the opposite of a free market. It would be about the telcos taking all of those government granted subsidies they've received over the years, and using them to put up tollbooths on parts of the web. That's not about the free market at all. It's regulatory capture in the extreme. But, you know... the pilgrims. They sure would have hated net neutrality.

Filed Under: net neutrality, pilgrims, propaganda

Did ICE Pirate An Anti-Piracy Video From NYC?

from the what's-wrong,-can't-make-your-own? dept

You may recall a few months back we wrote about an NBC Universal backed campaign paid for with NYC taxpayer dollars to put up anti-piracy propaganda around NYC, based on the blatantly false claim that "there's no such thing as a free movie." Ironically, the makers of the propaganda videos had no trouble using the "free" YouTube to host the videos telling people there's no such thing as a free movie. SD points us to the news that Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group has now posted the same video... stripped of references to New York City to its YouTube channel, and put a thing at the end asking people to send infringement notifications to ICE. While I'm sure that ICE got permission from NYC to use these videos (and yes, the headline above is joking), it does seem a bit weird that it would just copy someone else's anti-piracy videos. Considering the pro-copyright defenders around here are always arguing that copying like this is bad when you could "just create your own," will they now say that ICE should have created its own propaganda videos as well? In the meantime, is anyone else disturbed that taxpayer money is being used to fund clearly misleading (or downright dishonest) propaganda videos designed to protect a particular industry?

Filed Under: create your own, ice, propaganda

Band Complains About Massive Downloads Destroying Sales; Researchers Can't Find Any Downloads

from the how-do-you-spell-publicity-stunt? dept

We've mentioned before the Recording Industry astroturfing site in Canada, called "Balanced Copyright for Canada," which is about anything but setting up a "balanced" copyright system in Canada. However, apparently, there was a recent "debate" on that group's Facebook page about some poor Canadian band (who I'm not going to bother naming, for reasons that should become obvious), who put out a press release claiming that it had "gone platinum," if unauthorized downloads were counted. The band claimed that its album had been downloaded over 100,000 times, and complained about people "stealing" from them.

Of course, one curious participant in the debate, Wayne Borean, began to question this press release. He went out and searched the various torrent search engines/trackers, and even searched Google with the filetype:torrent search and came up with no results. In other words, it's not just unlikely that the band's work has been shared 100,000 unauthorized times, it's unlikely that it's being shared at all. TorrentFreak jumped into the fray, and noticed very few Twitter followers, and almost no YouTube views on the band's channel, and also began suspecting stuff. After pressing the band's manager for "proof," TorrentFreak discovered that it came from an search form that returns fake results.

Thus, it does not appear that the band purposely mislead people, but it appears that they don't seem to realize that you can do searches on pretty much any made up thing on certain sites and it will tell you there are tons of results. Of course, since this info has been presented, the band claims that "the music thieves are after us now." Or, they're not. Which might actually be a bigger problem for the band.

Filed Under: copyright, downloads, infringement, propaganda

Why Is Vodafone Spreading False Copyright Propaganda?

from the the-lies-we-tell-children dept

We've gotten used to various copyright industries spreading propaganda about copyright to school children. Nearly all the big copyright trade groups have "educational" curricula that are often not even close to accurate. They leave out things like "fair use" and they include blatantly false statements like "if you didn't pay for it, you stole it." Well, we didn't pay for your propaganda, so...

Still, it's a bit surprising to see others get into the copyright propaganda campaign as well. The latest, apparently, is telco giant Vodafone. Glyn Moody points us to the news that Vodafone Italy has started a typically inaccurate copyright propaganda campaign that makes false and misleading blanket statements like:

"[Parents and teachers should] explain to students that downloading and sharing a file protected by copyright is a crime"

Later on it repeats claims that all downloads without purchase or any download via P2P is illegal. But, of course, that's not true. It may be true in some, even many, cases. But that's not the same thing. If we're going to teach people copyright law, shouldn't it at least be accurate?

Filed Under: copyright, propaganda
Companies: vodafone

Army Propaganda Unit Ordered To Illegally Target US Senators With Psy-Ops Propaganda

from the wrong-target,-general dept

Last week, Rolling Stone broke the news that the US Army's team of psy-ops (psychological operations) specialists in Afghanistan were ordered to target their efforts towards visiting US officials rather than Afghanis. This is highly illegal. US law says that any sort of psy-ops/propaganda efforts can only be targeted at foreign citizens:

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department's own definition, psy-ops -- the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you're not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's what you learn on day one."

The army does have a public affairs team, who is supposed to help on domestic issues, but their focus is more of a PR type role, rather than overt propaganda and misdirection. However, it appears that some of the top Army brass in Afghanistan made it clear that the psy-ops team was to focus almost exclusively on visiting Americans, rather than influencing locals. The goal was to convince US politicians to keep sending more money and more men. The psy-ops team resisted and complained, but were continually ordered to do so. When the head of the team consulted a lawyer about the issue -- and was told by the lawyer that his concerns appeared valid -- the army retaliated by opening an investigation of the guy, Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, with what appear to be ridiculously trumped up charges (such as accusing him of using Facebook too much -- something he'd been encouraged to do by his commanders).

And, of course, after all of this, the Pentagon and the Army appear to be working on ways to cover this all up by making it look legit. They've done away with the name "psy-ops," changing it to the bland and vague "MISO" (Military Information Support Operations). Also, a few months later, the entire psy-ops team was told, "effective immediately," that they were being renamed from an "information operation cell" to an "information engagement cell," and told their "sole purpose" was to now do public relations, targeting everyone, including the US. So, basically, after going against the law that forbids propaganda targeted at the US, the Army decided to paper it over by taking the soldiers specifically trained for propaganda and pretending they're just PR people.

Filed Under: afghanistan, propaganda, psy-ops, us army

Wikileaks Wasn't The Only Operation HBGary Federal, Palantir And Berico Planned To Defraud

from the with-the-help-of-the-government dept

By now the exposed plan of HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico to attack Wikileaks and its supporters through fraud and deception, in order to help Bank of America, has been discussed widely. However, the leaked HBGary Federal emails suggest that this sort of plan involving these three companies had been used elsewhere. Apparently the US Chamber of Commerce had approached the same three firms to plan a remarkably similar attack on groups that oppose the US Chamber of Commerce.

That leaked plan (embedded below) includes a similar plan to create fake documents and give them to these groups to publish, with the intent of "exposing" them later, to raise questions about their credibility.

That giant US companies and lobbyist organizations are interested in underhanded, dirty tricks is no surprise (though, there's no evidence that either BofA or the CoC agreed to these proposals). However, as Glenn Greenwald (a key target in the original proposal for BofA) explains, what's really troubling is the chummy relationship between these organizations and the US government. The US government is supposed to protect people from frauds perpetrated by big companies. But the evidence here suggests that the federal government was pretty closely connected to all of this.

The reason HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico were even talking to BofA in the first place was because BofA contacted the Justice Department to ask what to do about Wikileaks, and the Justice Department turned them on to the law firm of Huntoon and Williams, who was instrumental in arranging both of these proposals.

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.

The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites. Just consider one amazing example illustrating how this works.

Greenwald's language may be a bit hyperbolic (though, considering he was one of the people "targeted," that seems entirely understandable), but he has a point. And his very next paragraph shows how the government isn't doing its job of protecting people in law enforcement, but is selectively picking what laws to enforce mainly when it protects themselves and big corporations. For example, while the FBI is spending so much time trying to track down Anonymous for its brief virtual sit-ins in the form of temporary DDoS attacks, it has not bothered to put any effort into looking at a similar DDoS attack on Wikileaks itself.

Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted.

That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. The same mindset drives the Government to shield high-level political officials who commit the most serious crimes, while relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers who expose their wrongdoing. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law; those who threaten or subvert it have the full weight of law come crashing down upon them.

This really should trouble people. I'm not a big fan of "conspiracy theories," and I don't believe there's any big Hollywood-style conspiracy going on here. But I do think that the incentives are screwed up, and that our federal government is way too beholden to large private companies whose main goal is protectionism and survival, rather than in benefiting the American public the most. It's incredibly disheartening.

Filed Under: fraud, politics, propaganda, smearing
Companies: bank of america, berico, hbgary federal, huntoon and williams, palantir, us chamber of commerce

Irony Alert: NYC's Anti-Piracy Propaganda Campaign Using 'Free' YouTube

from the free-free-free dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about the anti-piracy propaganda campaign that NYC has been running, paid for by taxpayer dollars, which spreads typical MPAA FUD, and concludes with the line: "There's no such thing as a free movie." However, in looking over the campaign, I just realized that the videos are hosted on YouTube... for free. In other words, while NYC and its Hollywood friends are claiming that if you get something for free, it must be illegal, they're making use of free online services themselves. Without YouTube, they'd have to pay for the hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc. themselves. But this way, they get it for free.

Now, it's absolutely true that YouTube could monetize the videos with ads (though, I don't see any on that video right now), but that sort of reinforces the point. There are all sorts of business models that allow you to offer something for "free" to the end user, but are monetized elsewhere. YouTube does exactly that. It offers what would otherwise be quite expensive (hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc.) and gives it all away for free, and has built a whole business around that. There's nothing saying that the movie industry can't do the same thing. Rather than falsely stating that there's no such thing as a "free" (to the consumer) movie, there are certainly plenty of ways that the movie industry could monetize movies that were offered free to consumers. It's just that the legacy players choose not to. And then complain. And get politicians to waste taxpayer money...

Filed Under: anti-piracy, business models, free, hosting, nyc, propaganda
Companies: youtube

NBC Universal & MPAA Get NYC To Run Propaganda 'Anti-Piracy' Ad Campaign

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Jarrett Streebin alerts us to the news (via BusinessInsider) that the the NYC Mayor's Office of Michael Bloomberg is running an unintentionally hilarious ad campaign called Stop Piracy in NYC. This is actually a followup to an effort by the MPAA a few years back to get New York City to put in place even more stringent anti-camcording laws (it was already against the law to record a movie in the theater, but the MPAA demanded that it be made criminal, rather than civil, so that the NYC police could do its job for it). Of course, in order to do this, the MPAA simply made up numbers, claiming that 40% of all pirated movies came from camcorded films in NYC. The world is a large place, so attributing 40% of all such movies to NYC seemed like a stretch -- made even more ridiculous when that same MPAA, just a few days later, claimed that 70% of all camcorded films come from Canada, where it was pushing for similar legislation. 40% plus 70% equals... a great big lie for political purposes -- something the MPAA is no stranger to.

Reading through the details of the "ad campaign," we're not surprised to see the driving force behind it is our old friend, Rick Cotton, the General Counsel at NBC Universal, who often seems to have no shame in saying stuff that makes absolutely no sense concerning movie piracy. Cotton, most famously, is the guy who once made a filing with the FCC where he tried to claim that movie piracy was killing the American corn farmer. This ignored two rather important points: (1) people who watch unauthorized copies of movies can also eat popcorn and (2) corn -- one of the most subsidized crops in the US -- continues to grow as a market. Oh yeah, speaking of growing markets, have we mentioned how the movie industry keeps breaking records at the box office, despite all of this file sharing.

Is NYC spending taxpayer money on Hollywood propaganda, or is it being funded by the MPAA? According to one report, this is funded by the city itself, so, yes NYC taxpayer money is going towards this. The city is trying to downplay the cost, by saying it's using resources it already has, but that also means those resources can't be used for other ads. Wouldn't it actually save more jobs if NYC wasn't wasting taxpayer money on propaganda campaigns based on bogus information?

Anyway, the campaign has some hilariously misleading commercials. One has a guy pretending to offer bootleg DVDs, but if you take one, he says, the depressed looking person holding a boom mic next to him will lose her job. Of course, it's not as if the MPAA and Cotton's company have done everything possible to reject new business models that might keep more people employed. But, none of that matters according to the campaign. It's because some kids, who would never buy the DVD in the first place, download a movie that someone won't get a job. Uh huh. And it ends with the blatantly false line: "There's no such thing as a free movie." Someone should tell Nina Paley or Stevie Long or the folks at Double Edge Films or any of the filmmakers using Vodo, etc. There is such a thing as a free-to-consumer movie, contrary to the ad campaign's central message. In fact, if the message is "if you're watching a movie for free, it's infringing," then people probably shouldn't turn on their TVs to watch movies played on broadcast TV.

The problem, once again, is not "piracy." It's folks like Rick Cotton thinking that the business model that Universal used to have must forever be the same. It's pretty sad that NYC is supporting such backwards thinking.

Filed Under: new york city, piracy, propaganda, rick cotton
Companies: nbc universal

Why Would Attorney General Eric Holder Cite Debunked Stats About 'Piracy'?

from the can't-admit-the-truth? dept

As part of the latest effort by the US to get China to respect US patent, copyright and trademark laws, it's apparently sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Asia to make speeches that are blatantly ridiculous. You can read the text of the speech that Holder recently gave in Hong Kong, and try not to gag at the claims he makes that are either blatantly misleading or simply outright falsehoods. The Attorney General is supposed to enforce the law -- not lie to protect the interests of a few companies.

After kicking it off with (yet another) conflation of serious counterfeiting issues (that actually put people's lives in danger) with file sharing of music, movies and software, he simply parrots the totally debunked BSA's stats on unauthorized software:

The global software industry is a prime example.

Indeed. If you look at open source software and how they've been able to put together incredible businesses, and enable all sorts of innovation by being the core building blocks of the internet, the web, email and giant companies like Google and Facebook, it really is a prime example of how "piracy" isn't a legal issue, but a business model one. Or wait, did you mean something different?

According to recent industry reports, it is now estimated that, worldwide, more than 40 percent of all software installed on personal computers is obtained illegally -- with forgone revenues to the software industry topping $50 billion.

Yes, according to industry reports. But not according to reality. The "foregone revenue" number is based on a simply laughable claim of a 1:1 ratio of unauthorized copies to "foregone revenue." No intellectually honest person would suggest that number is accurate.

These are funds that could have been invested in new jobs and next-generation technologies.

Right, except Holder ignores the fact that those funds didn't disappear. It's just that rather than going to a few companies with gov't granted monopolies, they went into actual companies doing stuff with the software. That means, those funds did get invested in new jobs and next-generation technologies. In fact, some of the evidence suggests that the money went towards creating even more jobs than it would have if it had gone towards paying for software.

And software piracy affects more than just the software industry -- since, for every $1 of PC software sold, it's estimated that more than $3 of revenues are lost to local IT support and distribution services. Other IP and support industries are seeing the same ripple effect of losses -- and current trends are alarming.

Oh, wait, so you do understand ripple effects. It's just that Eric Holder seems to think ripple effects only go in one direction. They don't. And, um, you do realize that counting "ripple effects" is blatantly misleading in that it's really recounting the same dollars multiple times. Could it be that US Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't understand basic economics and math? Or is he simply accepting widely-debunked claims from an industry that clearly benefits from folks like him repeating those claims? Neither answer seems particularly flattering to Holder.

He then goes on to scold China (without naming them directly) for not doing enough to prop up American businesses. Well, that's not how he puts it, of course, but it's what he's basically saying. Apparently, he hasn't realized that China has been a quick study in figuring out how to use intellectual property laws to hold back foreign companies operating in China -- including many US companies. Encouraging China to respect intellectual property laws is simply encouraging them to harm American companies and innovation, while giving the government more tools to suppress free speech. This is really troubling and dangerous. And, what's most upsetting is that folks like Holder don't even seem to have considered these sorts of reactions.

Next up, he simply makes stuff up to win political brownie points:

As many of you know, last year, President Obama created a new leadership role in the White House -- Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator -- and appointed Victoria Espinel to fill this position.

Except, um, that's not true. President Obama did not create that role. It was created by the (problematic) ProIP bill, which was signed by President Bush, not Obama. Now, Obama did hire the first IP czar, and figure out which department it would go in, but only in response to the law signed by his predecessor. To claim he created the role is blatantly false. This may be a minor point, but it highlights that Holder seems to have filled this entire speech with statements that seem to show a disconnect from reality.

Last December, Vice President Biden convened the administration's first intellectual property summit, which brought together cabinet officials and industry leaders to discuss intellectual property rights and policies

Right. The "summit," which only brought in one side of the debate and kicked out the press. The Attorney General is supposed to uphold the law, right? He must have learned at some point that the entire point of copyright and patent laws is to benefit the public by "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts," right? So, if you're going to convene a "summit" about such intellectual property, wouldn't you expect that the real stakeholders should be present as well -- rather than just a few industry folks seeking regulatory capture and an increase in monopoly rents at the expense of the public?

To build on the contributions and achievements of our prosecutors and investigators, in February of this year, I reestablished the Justice Department's Task Force on Intellectual Property.

Right, at the same time that you were de-emphasizing the importance of things like stopping identity fraud and finding missing persons. But helping prop up a few companies who contribute a lot to political campaigns? We'll get right on that...

There's a lot more like that in the speech, but honestly, the whole thing is shameful. It's a pure propaganda piece for a few industries, at the expense of the public good.

Filed Under: china, eric holder, intellectual property, piracy, propaganda, statistics