stories filed under: "sopa"
Watch Out: Widespread Protests Against ACTA Spreading Across Europe
from the wow dept
As we've noted multiple times, it appears the entertainment industry still does not recognize what kind of beast it awoke with its efforts to shove through SOPA and PIPA. While it still believes it was the "tech community" that caused those bills to be shelved, it's been ignoring that a very large segment of internet users have been activated on these issues... and they're angry and willing to be proactive. We've pointed out that lots of attention has turned towards ACTA -- and while it's late in the process, don't underestimate the power of an awful lot of pissed off people who recognize that their internet is being messed with in a way that may harm their ability to communicate.A bunch of folks have been setting up February 11th as a global day of protest against ACTA, and if the entertainment industry thought that the anger would simmer down after the SOPA/PIPA fight, they may have miscalculated again. Just take a look at the live map showing the planned February 11th protests across Europe:
View ACTA Protests Worldwide - Brought to you by stoppacta-protest.info in a larger map
Hollywood Still Doesn't Realize That The Internet Drives Popular Culture Now
from the big-miscalculation dept
Stewart Baker, the former DHS official whose warnings about how SOPA would wreak havoc on online security were instrumental in convincing many of our elected officials that SOPA and PIPA were half-baked legislative disasters, now has a fascinating writeup for The Hollywood Reporter, trying to explain why the Republican Party turned strongly against SOPA/PIPA. We've pointed out a few times, that the different reactions by the Democrats and Republicans to the online protests threaten to cost the Democrats a generation of voters who had previously looked to them as the party that "got" the internet.Of course, where it gets even more insightful is Baker's analysis not just of how the Democratic Party appears to have miscalculated badly the reaction to these bills, but how truly and spectacularly Hollywood has failed to understand what happened -- in part because Hollywood still thinks that it drives pop culture. The truth, however, as Baker points out, is that the internet drives popular culture these days... and on the internet, Hollywood is a big bully:
The [entertainment] industry still doesn't understand its adversary. From the start, studios saw the fight over SOPA as a struggle with a bunch of other companies -- Google and Internet service providers among them -- that were hoping to profit from the Internet travails of the entertainment industry.There's a lot more in Baker's article about the political implications of all of this, which are worth thinking about as well, but I wanted to focus on this key point. Last week, at the Midem music industry conference, I was amazed at how many people from the legacy music business believe, 100%, that the reason SOPA/PIPA were stopped was because Google stepped up its lobbying efforts. I can't even begin to count how many conversations I had with people trying to explain to them that Google only played a small role in what happened, really jumping on the bandwagon pretty late in the game. It was a widespread group of internet users who spoke up, and that really has changed the equation. And Hollywood still can't seem to wrap its mind around that.
That turned out to be wrong. In fact, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.
Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood's bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.
To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well.
That may be because Hollywood was popular culture for so long. It seems to just assume that this is still the case, when there's an awful lot of evidence suggesting otherwise. And really, that explains both Hollywood's confusion in how to deal with all of this, as well as one of the reasons it's lashing out. When Hollywood no longer drives pop culture, it loses its influence, and as it loses its influence, that's going to spell trouble for its business model. The biggest threat to Hollywood's dominance isn't piracy. It's that people no longer view Hollywood as the main source of pop culture any more. Art forms often lose their popularity over time. A few years back, we pointed to a quote from Paul Oskar Kristeller that seems worth highlighting again:
There were important periods in cultural history when the novel, instrumental music, or canvas painting did not exist or have any importance. On the other hand, the sonnet and the epic poem, stained glass and mosaic, fresco painting and book illumination, vase painting and tapestry, bas relief and pottery have all been "major" arts at various times and in a way they no longer are now. Gardening has lost its standing as a fine art since the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the moving picture is a good example of how new techniques may lead to modes of artistic expression for which the aestheticians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had no place in their systems. The branches of the arts all have their rise and decline, and even their birth and death.Perhaps it's not piracy that Hollywood is fighting here. Maybe it's the industry's own cultural relevance.
Filed Under: hollywood, internet, movies, pipa, politics, pop culture, sopa, stewart baker
If Politicians Pushing SOPA/PIPA Want To Create Jobs, They Should Support The Internet -- And Stop Treating Copyright Companies As Special
from the evidence-based-policy-making dept
A key element of the political rhetoric around SOPA/PIPA was the idea that it was about jobs, and that jobs are so critical in the current economic climate that safeguarding them overrides any other concern the Net world might have about the means being proposed to do that. But then the key question becomes: who are really more important in terms of those jobs - the copyright industries, or companies exploiting the potential of the Internet that would be harmed if the Net were hobbled by new legislation?
A timely new McKinsey report entitled "Internet matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity" provides us with some independent evidence on the topic. Here are the relevant findings:
The Internet is a critical element of growth. Both our macroeconomic approach and our statistical approach show that, in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10 percent of GDP growth over the past 15 years. And its influence is expanding. Over the past five years, the Internet’s contribution to GDP growth in these countries doubled to 21 percent.
The latest information (pdf) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) claims the GDP contribution from the "core copyright industries" in the US in the years 2007-2010 went from 6.43% to 6.36% - that is, its contribution to the overall GDP was largely unchanged over this period. So the contribution of the "core copyright industries" to GDP growth over this period was also around 6%. The "core copyright industries" are defined as follows:
The core industries are those industries whose primary purpose is to create, produce, distribute or exhibit copyright materials. These industries include newspapers and periodicals, motion pictures, recorded music, radio and television broadcasting, and computer software.
That is, they include software companies, some of which are doubtless active on the Internet. So the contribution of the non-Internet core copyright industries to the GDP growth from 2007-2010 was less than the 6% figure above. That compares with an overall contribution of the Internet to GDP growth in the mature countries as a whole of 21% (but over five years, not four).
So what about the jobs? Here's McKinsey again:
The Internet is a powerful catalyst for job creation. Some jobs have been destroyed by the emergence of the Internet. However, a detailed analysis of the French economy showed that while the Internet has destroyed 500,000 jobs over the past 15 years, it has created 1.2 million others, a net addition of 700,000 jobs or 2.4 jobs created for every job destroyed. This conclusion is supported by McKinsey’s global SME survey, which found 2.6 jobs were created for every one destroyed.
Again, the IIPA report offers some figures:
the core copyright industries employed 5,496,100 workers in 2007. These workers represented 3.99% of the total U.S. workforce in 2007. By 2010, the number of core copyright employees in the United States had declined by 398,500 workers to 5,097,600.
In an earlier report (pdf), the number of people employed by the core copyright industries in 2002 is given as 5.48 million – roughly the same as in 2007. That is, whether or not the numbers are really representative, there was a net decline in the workforce of the "core copyright industries", which include software and probably some Internet companies, from 2002 to 2010.
By contrast, in France, whose population is roughly a fifth of that of the US, the Internet created some 700,000 jobs net. That was from 1995, but in the early years it is likely that relatively few jobs were created by the then-new Internet, so most of those 700,000 would have been created later on - say 400,000 for the last eight years. In the US, we might expect at least a pro rata number – 2.4 million jobs. That's probably an underestimate, since the US is in the Net vanguard, but even if it's an overestimate, the figure is likely to be much better than the net loss of the core copyright industries.
If the backers of SOPA and PIPA were really as concerned about jobs as they profess to be, they would be doing everything in their power to defend the Internet so as to preserve this incredible engine of growth, not attack it. And they would be pushing the copyright industries to embrace the Internet as rapidly and completely as possible, since the McKinsey report also points out:
Although the Internet has resulted in significant value shifts between sectors in the global economy, our research demonstrates that all industries have benefited from the Web. Indeed, in McKinsey’s global SME survey, we found that 75 percent of the economic impact of the Internet arises from traditional companies that don’t define themselves as pure Internet players. The businesses that have seen the greatest value creation have benefits from innovation leading to higher productivity triggered by the Internet.
Sounds like a perfect solution: instead of fighting the digital revolution tooth and nail, the copyright industries could embrace it like everyone else, stop demanding to be treated like a special case, and start innovating.
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Filed Under: economics, enterpreneurs, jobs, pipa, sopa, startups, studies
The SOPA/PIPA Protest Shows Why There Needs To Be Complete Transparency With TPP
from the keeping-stuff-secret-is-simply-not-an-option dept
Lawyer Jonathan Band has written up an execllent analysis for why what happened with SOPA/PIPA (pdf) demonstrates why the Obama administration and the USTR in particular must be significantly more transparent when it comes to TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. TPP, of course, is the evil stepchild of ACTA. Rather than learning that excessive secrecy in ACTA was the wrong approach, it appears that the USTR simply determined that since it got away with being so secret with ACTA, it might as well double down and be even more secret with TPP. Not only that, but early reports and leaks from the ultra-secret TPP negotiations suggest that the USTR -- once again acting as the MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce's personal waterboys -- was trying to shove in every bad idea that it failed to get into ACTA.However, as Band notes in his paper, the problems with excessive copyright legislation that impacts the internet is becoming a big issue with the public, and that shouldn't be taken lightly. Most of the paper goes through the specific problems of SOPA and PIPA, as well as the public's response to the attempts by the MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce to push through such a ridiculously bad bill that would impact internet sites worldwide. It then uses that to explain why the USTR simply needs to be more transparent:
The transparency surrounding TPP must increase. If the public feels that the provisions included in TPP jeopardize the openness of the Internet, it will strongly oppose the adoption of TPP. To prevent this from happening, the negotiations concerning the IP chapter must become more transparent. Drafts must be made available online for public comment. The fact that in the past some trade negotiations have had little transparency is irrelevant. The SOPA experience demonstrates that a new era of public engagement in IP policy has begunFurthermore, Band makes the point that the USTR (and any government, really) can no longer pretend that copyright laws are obscure laws that do not impact the public. The public has hopefully now clearly established itself as a very important -- if not the most important -- stakeholder in any debates around copyright issues going forward.
Internet users care deeply about its vitality. The overwhelming public opposition to SOPA and PIPA generated by just one day of online protests indicates that the members of the public will take strong and immediate political action to protect this medium which has become a central part of their lives at home, school, and work. IP, at least to the extent it intersects with the Internet, is no longer an issue of only narrow technical interest.Finally, the paper makes it clear that, no matter how many times the lobbyists backing these bills and trade agreements like to pretend that they don't impact US sites, that's simply laughable, and the public knows it:
IP rules can have a significant impact on legitimate websites. The Internet democratizes commerce and communications. Platforms such as eBay or YouTube allow individuals and businesses of all sizes to reach large audiences and markets. But IP rules that place too heavy a legal burden on the platforms for user activities, as do SOPA and PIPA, will constrain the growth of this Twenty-First Century medium of trade and discourse.These points seem obvious to many of us. The real question is whether or not the administration and the USTR recognize it yet. The fact that it's still been negotating the TPP agreement in secrecy suggests not. That it thinks it can get away with such blatant rent seeking for Hollywood interests, in the face of a public that is now paying attention to these issues shows an incredible disrespect for the public's best interests. It's a shameful statement on whose interests the USTR is really representing -- and the nature of crony capitalism in the US government these days.
IP rules can affect international trade. The Internet does not recognize national boundaries. IP rules in one country can affect the operation of websites in another country. SOPA and PIPA would not only impose liability in the United States on non-U.S. websites that may be legal in their host countries; they also would interfere with the operation of these websites in their host countries. Provisions like SOPA and PIPA would allow countries – and indeed, individual companies – to erect trade barriers without following multilaterally agreed procedures with notice and due process.
Filed Under: acta, pipa, protect ip, sopa, tpp, transparency
CreativeAmerica Literally Resorts To Buying Signatures
from the grassroots! dept
Remember CreativeAmerica? This is the slickly produced operation that claims to be a "grassroots" organization in favor of SOPA and PIPA... but which is actually funded by the major studios, staffed by former MPAA employees, and has had all the major studios directly pushing employees and partners to sign up for the program -- even to the point of threatening to take away business if they don't sign.This is also the group that was caught copying an anti-SOPA activism letter, and using the exact same words as if it was written by themselves (I guess they're fine with plagiarism). It's also been caught using funny math to pump up its tiny number of supporters.
In December, we joked that CreativeAmerica had resorted to buying support, after it released a big (and expensive) advertising campaign all over TV and on some big screens in Times Square. Not exactly a "grass roots" operation.
Either way, it appears the group has gone more direct now: to the point that it's literally paying people for signatures. I've received very credible evidence, that a consulting firm hired by CreativeAmerica is now offering to pay people to get signatures on CreativeAmerica's petition. The following email was forwarded to me, with some details redacted to protect privacy:
the organization I am doing work for is Creative America, which is a grassroots organization that is working to stop foreign rogue websites from illegally distributing American content such as books, music, films, etc.... These specific websites costs the U.S. and the 2.2 million middle class industry workers $5.5 billion in wages and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Your job would be just collecting signatures from whoever is interested in signing up for updates. A newsletter may come once a month and anyone can unsubscribe if they don’t want it. We don’t care if they do; all I care about is getting initial signups.This raises even more questions about the already anemic number of people supporting CreativeAmerica and its pro-SOPA, pro-PIPA, MPAA-driven agenda. As the email makes clear, they're willing to pay as many people as possible to get signatures to make the group look larger than it is. That's pretty crazy. I think we can be pretty sure that the millions of people who spoke out against SOPA/PIPA did so without someone paying them $1 per call or email.
The hours are flexible and we will pay you $1/signature, so if you collect 100 signatures a week, we would pay you $100/week. We will also pay for you to go to local film festivals in the area (SXSW, Austin Film Festival, etc.). We are also taking as many people as possible, so if you have some friends who are interested in doing it we can take them as well. Let me know your thoughts....
Filed Under: astroturfing, buying support, copyright, grassroots, pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: creativeamerica, mpaa
Hollywood Gets To Party With TPP Negotiators; Public Interest Groups Get Thrown Out Of Hotel
from the yeah,-that-doesn't-look-corrupt-at-all dept
We've been talking about the ridiculous levels of secrecy around the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement -- a trade agreement that is being designed to push through basically everything that Hollywood wants in international copyright law. Last week, we mentioned that various civil society groups were planning to hold an open meeting about TPP in the same hotel where the negotiations were being held (in Hollywood, of course).However, it appears that once the USTR found out about this, it got the hotel to cancel the group's reservation at the hotel. According to Sean Flynn, the Associate Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) at American University:
The public interest briefing was booked last week and advertised to all delegations, including the host USTR. An hour after the invitation was sent, we received a cancellation of our venue by the hotel. The cancellation by by Sophie Jones, Event Sales Manager, Sofitel Los Angeles stated:Okay. I guess if no other groups are allowed in the meeting space that day it's understandable. Except... oops... someone in the group confirmed that the hotel was lying:“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but unfortunately we will not be able to move forward with your luncheon for Tuesday January 31st. It was brought to my attention that we have a confidential group in house and we will not be allowing any other groups in the meeting space that day. Again, my apologies for the late notice. Hopefully we can work together in the near future.”
After receiving the cancellation, members of an advocacy organization called the hotel and were able to book a room for a claimed private event not related to the TPP. Apparently only TPP-related events were banned from the hotel at the request of an unidentified party. USTR is serving as the host of this meeting.Well, at least MPAA execs were similarly blocked from access to the negotiators, too, right? Nope:
The film industry did not have similar problems – they hosted a multi-hour tour of 20th Century Fox Studies last night, led by a representative of the studio’s government relations office.Yeah. This is what corruption looks, smells and tastes like. And the MPAA still doesn't get it. They still think that backroom deals like this are fine and that the public won't notice or care. That's quite a bet to make, and one they may regret.
Filed Under: acta, hollywood, secrecy, sopa, tpp, trade negotiations
Companies: mpaa
Pro-SOPA Folks Push Fact-Challenged Op-Eds
from the at-the-sopa... dept
It seems that, in the wake of the big protests that helped shelve (for now, at least) SOPA and PIPA, the pro-SOPA folks have started pushing people to write op-eds in various publications about how important SOPA/PIPA are -- while simultaneously dismissing the concerns of those who opposed the bills. I keep seeing more of them, but wanted to dig into three recent examples, all of which show how the pro-SOPA folks are trying to distort the debate through either outright falsehoods, or carefully misleading statements.We'll start with Duff McKagan, the founding bassist for Guns N' Roses. He wrote a piece for Seatle Weekly telling people to stop whining about SOPA and PIPA. The logic here doesn't make much sense to me. His argument is that people should have done big web protests about online infringement, not about attempts to censor the internet. Now, obviously, he thinks that's in his own best interests -- but, as we've seen pretty clearly over the years (and contrary to his claims), these reports of infringement destroying the entertainment industry is just not supported by the data.
The fury from the Internet class is that the broad language in the pieces of legislation will be bad for start-ups, might prevent the next YouTube, or give the government the ability to take down a whole site because of one link to copyrighted works. In short, they're opposed to the legislation because they think it will be bad for the Internet business.No, actually, the fury was that it would be bad for internet users -- including, by the way, plenty of musicians. And, again, the evidence that piracy has "claimed" half the market is simply not there. The recorded music business was a temporary bubble, but that money continued to flow (and grow) into the wider music industry. And, the prospect of making a living as a musician has not decreased -- it's increased. What McKagan doesn't recognize is that, in the past, nearly everyone who went into the music business was not as lucky as he was. Nearly all of them ended up getting pushed out while making next to nothing. Today, however, thanks to the very "internet businesses" he doesn't care about -- companies like TuneCore and TopSpin and Kickstarter and Bandcamp -- plenty of new artists can make a living that they wouldn't have been able to make before. They don't have to rely on Universal Music or EMI or Warner Music or Sony Music. They can do it themselves.
Bad for business. Anti-piracy legislation could be bad for the Internet business. It almost takes my breath away. Internet piracy has claimed half of the recorded music business, and made the prospect of making a living as a musician harder for artists of all rank and file. Why didn't Google, or Facebook, or Wikipedia ever stand in solidarity with musicians, actors, and writers - most of whom have never known fame and fortune - as their works were stolen with no recourse on their sites?
Then we move on to Gavin Polone, writing for NY Mag, about why he supports SOPA and his theory for why the entertainment industry "blew it" in trying to get this bill passed.
I have funded two films with my own money and am considering doing a third. Most of the people working on those films were not rich people, but rather middle-class craftsmen who make high-five-figure to low-six-figure sums per year. My decision on whether to fund another movie, thereby employing more people, will be based on whether or not I get my money back on the last two, and my prospects for making money on another. If a film of mine is put on a file-sharing site like Pirate Bay, Movieberry, and Newsbin2, and is then downloaded to potential customers, I lose revenue. Nobody is going to pay to see a movie in a theater, rent a DVD, or legitimately download or stream a movie once they already have it from a free pirate site.If you think that way, perhaps it's true. But if you actually don't have a closed mind and look around at what other people are doing and realize that people are more than willing to pay if you treat them right, the entire premise that Polone has is wrong. Of course, if you naturally assume that your fans are evil, then don't be surprised if they don't want to support you.
Other industries have laws to protect them against third parties whose businesses facilitate a crime. Why not entertainment?Ah, the "lawless" argument. This is ridiculous. Copyright law has been adjusted 16 times in the last 35 years, much of it to deal with new digital technologies. To claim that there are no laws to protect you is simply ridiculous. But, more to the point, as we've said over and over again, the best protection is to connect with your fans rather than pretend they're all out to get you. Polone fails there. That's his fault, not everyone else's.
This is in no way censorship. A widely read op-ed piece by Rebecca MacKinnon in the New York Times likened SOPA and PIPA to China’s Internet firewall, which is used by that government to stifle criticism of its policies. This is a ridiculous exaggeration. There is no intent to suppress speech in these bills, only theft, and the risks of anyone being unable to find an outlet for their free speech because of SOPA or PIPA is minimal.It is not a ridiculous exaggeration at all. And the intent of the bill is meaningless compared to how it will be used -- and we know that it will be used for censorship because we've already seen existing copyright law used for censorship. This isn't a theory, this is reality.
Blocking offenders will not break the Internet nor security. I’ve read numerous articles in which techies claim that DNS (Domain Name System) blocking — which forces ISPs to not allow access to sites determined to be trafficking in stolen entertainment — will undermine security and/or “break” the Internet. Like many of you, I am not versed enough on technical issues to explain how DNS blocking programs work or what may be the right method to ensure Internet security.Uh, yeah. I don't get this crazy tech stuff, but I'm sure what all those "experts" say is untrue. Sheesh. He goes on to say that because he can't play online poker any more, and because some ISPs block child porn or malware, clearly blocking wouldn't break the internet. Perhaps he should try actually understanding the details next time. The big issue is DNSSEC, not just DNS, and even Comcast (one of the major supporters of the bill) has admitted that DNS redirects are incompatible with DNSSEC. Furthermore, the fact that he can't play internet poker any more isn't because of DNS blocking. It's because of a (questionable) US law that cut off money transfers to those companies -- an approach that many of the folks against SOPA/PIPA supported in the OPEN Act which allowed for exactly the system that made it harder (but not impossible) for poker sites to function in the US. Look, it's okay to not understand complicated tech, but to use an example that has nothing to do with the tech, and actually supports what folks on the other side of the debate are saying? That just makes you look silly...
Moving on, we have the new poster boy for the pro-SOPA movement, David Newhoff, who compared the arguments against SOPA/PIPA to the "death panels" used in the healthcare debate -- claiming that the arguments of internet users worldwide were no more truthful than the claims of death panels from the healthcare proposal. That's funny. It's also wrong. Lots of people opposed to SOPA/PIPA laid out detailed, factual arguments for why these bills were dangerous. And we have plenty of very real evidence of how these laws will be abused (and how existing law is already abused).
But what's really funny is that if anyone is guilty of "death paneling," it has been the pro-SOPA/PIPA forces -- insisting that their industry is being decimated, when it's actually growing. They're the ones calling things "piracy" and "theft" when we're talking about infringement. They're the ones talking about starving artists, when more artists are making money from their content creations than ever before. They're the ones talking about less art will be created when we're living in a time of massive abundance of artistic creations. Yes, there are exaggerations in this debate, but I'd put up the anti-SOPA/PIPA side against the pro-side anytime, and it's entirely clear that the anti-side has the facts on their side much more than the SOPA/PIPA supporters do.
Is The 'Legislative Solution' To Online Infringement To Create A Content Use Registry?
from the focusing-on-the-positive,-not-the-negative dept
While the White House has been asking the tech/internet world to come up with their own "best ideas" concerning legislative solutions for copyright issues, it's a question that rubs many the wrong way. As folks like Tim O'Reilly have noted, this seems to be starting from a pre-determined outcome without evidence. Furthermore, as Nat Torkington has pointed out, the tech industry has been offering tons of solutions for years, in the form of new and useful tools and services that create new business models.I will say that I tend to agree wholeheartedly with O'Reilly and Torkington. Before rushing in to a "legislative solution," I'd sure like to see some evidence that a legislative solution (1) is needed and (2) would actually work. Nearly all the evidence suggests neither condition is true.
However, are there more creative legislative solutions that come from thinking out of the box? Ian Rogers, the CEO of TopSpin, who has been a vocal opponent of SOPA/PIPA, (despite his close relatioinship with many in the recording industry) has an interesting proposal that he's put forth that's worth thinking about. It starts from a different perspective. Rather than using the opportunity to directly tackle this undefined "problem," he looks at solving a different problem: the fact that it's difficult (to impossible) and expensive to license music for an online service. So his suggestion is really based on dealing with that issue by creating a giant registry whereby copyright holders could indicate what they're willing to license and at what price. He notes that this is an idea that doesn't directly need a legislative solution -- and, in fact, notes that he's tried to build something like that in the past. However, multiple attempts to build this haven't gone very far. He suggests a more official version might be able to really go somewhere.
As a part of this, then, he'd offer up a "quid pro quo" to the SOPA/PIPA supporters of the world. Basically, online services -- streaming sites, cyberlockers, etc. -- would have to make use of a fingerprinting system to run checks back to this registry -- such that if someone uploaded a song, the site could quickly determine if it was "okay" to stream/download, and if not, kick it back to the uploader to deal with it.
In thinking about this, there are some things I like, and some I don't. I do like the fact that this solution isn't really just focused on "stopping piracy," but rather in building a tool that would actually be useful in expanding businesses. This is a key thing that many of us on this side of the debate keep asking copyright maximalists:
Which is more important? Making more money or stopping piracy?I think the only rational answer is that making more money should be the focus. What good is "stopping piracy" if it doesn't lead to greater sales? Obviously, many maximalists believe that "stopping piracy" automatically leads to greater sales. I'd argue that the jury is still out on that point. Either way, if a proposal is just focused on "stopping piracy," without any actual effort to make sure that the real focus is on maximizing revenue, then I think it's dead in the water.
This proposal, however, has as its key part, a tool -- the registry -- that is much more focused on solving a business problem, rather than an enforcement one. That it also has, almost as a side effect, the ability to have an impact on the enforcement side, certainly makes it pretty interesting.
That said, there are reasons why I'm not convinced that this would actually work. As Rogers notes, the work to build this is non-trivial, but doable. I agree, but that non-trivial problem means that certain "choices" are going to be inherent to the design, and that worries me. We'd be building a central registry really on pure assumptions both of how it would be used and what the coders think. That's almost certainly going to lead to unintended consequences -- and it's those consequences that I fear. How do you predict exactly how this works? How do you program in every option that doesn't lock you into a paradigm that might not make sense? What if someone -- either content provider or service provider -- who wants to do something unique, innovative and wonderful, but for which the registry doesn't have an "entry?" Then what? The fear is that it ends up locking in the business models issues programmed into it... and I'm not sure we know enough about the market to try to define those issues yet.
Second, we already have some pieces of this kind of thing in place already. Things like machine readable licenses, for example, is something that Creative Commons has done, and there are probably plenty of lessons to be learned there. However, even Creative Commons has run into issues at times, and has had to regularly adjust its actual licenses when they realize that current licenses don't really match a need. That's easier to do when you're just issuing licenses. When you're talking about the entire structure of a very large database, the challenges to change features to accomodate innovation and new business models becomes increasingly difficult.
In the end, though, I'm happy to see more creative proposals coming out that don't just take the same old path. I'm not sure I'd fully support any such legislation (it may depend heavily on the details). But I do appreciate that as a starting point, this is something different that truly does seem to focus on a particular and known issue (the difficulty of licensing) and tries to use that as a starting point for a more reasonable solution. It's certainly worth thinking about.
Filed Under: content registrty, ian rogers, pipa, sopa
The SOPA/PIPA Protests Were Not Pro-Piracy... They Were Anti-Crony Capitalism
from the time-to-realize-that dept
Larry Lessig has an excellent article over at The Nation, that puts the events of January 18th into perspective. He talks about the Supreme Court's Golan ruling, which rejects the idea that copyright is really limited in any way under the Constitution:The Supreme Court, however, reversed that finding, crafting an opinion that all but guarantees Congress a constitutional “free ride” within the copyright field. Only two justices dissented—Justice Breyer, who had dissented in Eldred, and Justice Alito, to his credit as a conservative originalist. The rest were happy to signal to the copyright bar: Constitution time is over. Pay no attention to that puzzling clause at the core of the Constitution’s enumerated powers. The hint that it would be as vigorously defended as other clauses was now officially rejected. We had tried. And we had lost.But, as he noted, at the very same moment the Supreme Court was granting copyright maximalists and their lobbyists free reign over expanding copyright, something very different was happening out in the free world: it was rejecting those same laws:
That new generation is now responsible for the extraordinary victory achieved on January 18. After months of rallying activists of all stripes, including liberals and conservatives, technology companies and free software activists, the protest against SOPA and PIPA achieved critical mass. With the support of the traditionally non-activist Wikipedia, the Internet community staged a powerful and effective shut down of critical parts of the web, awakening millions to the fight that had been brewing for almost a year. That fight didn’t try to affirm any “right” to “pirate” anyone’s work. Instead, the anger in this battle was about the extremism of Hollywood’s response. It was fair and true to say that this statute would effect a kind of “censorship” unknown in the history of the Internet (at least in the United States). That fact was a critical motivation to fight it.And it is that final point that many in Hollywood still fail to understand. They positioned this whole battle as if it was about the right to enforce laws on a lawless internet vs. those who wanted to pirate. But pretty much everyone can see through that facade. And, as we've said before (and will say again), this was never about just this bill. You can see that in the continued focus of people on other efforts by these industries to push through bad policies -- such as ACTA and TPP. No, this was a rejection of crony capitalism -- an attempt by one industry to push through laws that solely benefit some of its biggest players, at the expense of everyone else. But the real question, as Lessig lays out, is whether or not this movement can expand to really make that point clear:
The (Internet) giant has stopped this craziness—here and now. But the challenge is for the giant to recognize the need to stop this craziness generally. We need a system that is not so easily captured by crony capitalists. We need a government that is not so easily bought. And if only the giant could be brought to demand this too, in the few moments we have before it falls back to sleep, then this war—this “copyright war,” this war that Jack Valenti used to call his own “terrorist war,” where apparently the “terrorists” are our children—will have been worth every bit of the battle.It's a key challenge, and one that I believe the internet community is up to tackling. But it's going to take quite a fight against those who are entrenched in power already.
Filed Under: acta, copyright, internet, larry lessig, pipa, sopa, supreme court, tpp
