The Warehousing And Delivery Of Digital Goods? Nearly Free, Pretty Easy, Mostly Trivial

from the relax,-be-happy dept

One of the most important moments in the rise of a radical idea is when the fightback begins, because it signals an acceptance by the establishment that the challenger is a real threat. That moment has certainly arrived for open access, most obviously through moves like the Research Works Act, which would have cut off open access to research funded by the US government. That attack soon stalled, but the sniping at open access and its underlying model of free distribution has continued.

Here, for example, is an interesting post by Kent Anderson, who is CEO/Publisher of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, with the title "Not Free, Not Easy, Not Trivial -- The Warehousing and Delivery of Digital Goods." The starting point is as follows:

There is a persistent conceit stemming from the IT arrogance we continue to see around us, but it's one that most IT professionals are finding real problems with -- the notion that storing and distributing digital goods is a trivial, simple matter, adds nothing to their cost, and can be effectively done by amateurs.

As a result, he thinks, there is "a consistent theme among dew-eyed idealists about publishing -- that digital goods are infinitely reproducible at no marginal cost, and therefore can be priced at the rock-bottom price of 'free'."

Well, they're certainly "infinitely reproducible", but nobody seriously claims that can be done at zero marginal cost. It is, however, extremely small. Indeed, in another post, Anderson himself provides a rough estimate for one part of the cost -- the online delivery of a 1Mbyte file: $0.001. It's true that delivering millions of copies would represent a more significant sum, but that ignores things like BitTorrent, which effectively shares the cost of distributing digital goods among many downloaders. Using such P2P delivery systems, the cost to the publisher really is vanishingly small.

But Anderson thinks there are other issues:

Even beyond just their power requirements, digital goods have particular traits that make them difficult to store effectively, challenging to distribute well, and much more effective when handled by paid professionals.

Why might that be?

First, digital goods are not intangible. They occupy physical space, be that on a hard drive, on flash memory, or during transmission. A full Kindle weighs an attogram more when fully loaded with digital goods, and there are hundreds of thousands of Kindles in the field.

According to the source referenced, "the difference between an empty e-reader and a full one is just one attogram" -- a million-trillionth of a gram. Even with "hundreds of thousands of Kindles in the field," that extra fraction of a gram spread around the world is hardly going to be a major problem. But leaving aside the issue of weight, it's certainly true that this data takes up space on storage media:

The proliferation of digital goods -- photos, music, Web pages, blog posts, social media shares, tweets, ratings, movies and videos, and so much more -- puts incredible and growing pressure on metadata management techniques and layers. This means building more and larger warehouses, which adds to both ongoing costs for current users and migration costs as older warehouses are outstripped by new demands. Megabytes become gigabytes become terrabytes become zettabytes and beyond. Where will they all fit?

One answer is "in your pocket:" according to Amazon, a 1 terabyte portable hard disc currently costs around $100. Yes, a zettabyte might be a little more pricey, but judging by this recent large-scale, real-life project, we're still in the sub-petabyte era, so storing all this data isn't really going to require a warehouse -- a few rack systems should suffice.

But independently of where you are going to put it, another question is: Where is all that important metadata going to come from? As Anderson rightly says:

Creating, updating, and tracking the metadata is a chore for owners of digital goods. Poor metadata -- like a photo name off your digital camera of DX0023 -- can make the photo hard to find or use. Better metadata -- usually applied by humans, like "Rose in bloom, August 2006" for that elusive photo -- makes more sense.

That's mostly true, most of the time. But in another paragraph, quoting from a description of the Library of Congress's effort to archive all Twitter messages since 2006, Anderson also shows us why metadata is not always an issue:

Each tweet is a JSON file, containing an immense amount of metadata in addition to the contents of the tweet itself: date and time, number of followers, account creation date, geodata, and so on.

That is, the data comes with "an immense amount of metadata" automatically, because of the way Twitter (wisely) designed its system. And even for datasets that require metadata to be applied by hand, crowdsourcing is proving an efficient and low-cost way of providing it.

Other issues raised by Anderson are that digital goods need to be backed up, and secure, but that's hardly rocket science: open source solutions that cost nothing to acquire (but not to run, obviously) have been around for years. His main concern, however, seems to be about the physical infrastructure required:

Digital warehouses are more expensive to build. Site planning is a major undertaking. A physical warehouse is something a small business owner can buy and construct with relative ease. They aren’t expensive (a concrete pad, a sheet metal structure, some crude HVAC, and a security system is usually all it takes). A digital warehouse is expensive to construct -- servers, site planning, redundant power requirements, high-grade HVAC, earthquake-proofing, and so forth. This means that digital goods have to work off a much higher fixed warehouse cost.

It seems unlikely that it is cheaper to build a typical physical warehouse than to install a typical LAMP stack on rented commodity servers in a few different geographical locations (or in the cloud) to provide resiliency and backups. This exposes the central problem with Anderson's argument about the amount of data that must be handled, and the necessity for huge and expensive infrastructure to handle it: he seems to be lumping together very different kinds of digital data.

In the realm of digital goods, we’re reaching a point at which we’re facing trade-offs. Already, some data sets are propagating at a rate that exceeds Moore’s Law, which may still accurately predict our ability to expand capacity. And these are purposeful data sets. As data becomes an effect of just living -- traffic monitoring software, GPS outputs, tweets, reviews, star ratings, emails, blog posts, song recommendations, text messages -- we as a collective will easily outstrip Moore’s Law with our data. If there’s no place to put it, and nobody to manage it, does it exist?

Yes, genomic data is spewing out of DNA sequencers at an incredible rate; yes, the Large Hadron Collider produces almost unimaginable quantities of data. But these are exceptions: nobody is talking about letting the general public access this stuff in the same way that they can download media files, say. As I've pointed out in a previous post, we are fast approaching the point where we could store every Spotify track on a single hard disc, and the same will soon be true for every film, book -- and academic article.

For the latter, despite Anderson's title, it really is the case that storing and sharing them is nearly free, pretty easy and mostly trivial, which is why open access makes sense and is constantly gaining ground. The sooner traditional publishers stop fearing and fighting this trend, the sooner they can embrace and enjoy the possibilities this new abundance opens up for them.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: data, kent anderson, open access, publishing
Companies: amazon

Nearly 50,000 People Ask Why The Government Is Seizing Their Digital Files

from the speak-out dept

The folks at Demand Progress today filed a brief in one part of the ongoing Megaupload case: the fight over users being able to get their files back. The DOJ is trying to block this, while also wanting the evidence destroyed. The MPAA says it is okay with data being returned... if there is a 100% guarantee that no infringing works are accessed (an impossibly high standard). The Demand Progress filing points out that this whole thing flies in the face of being innocent until proven guilty, and argues that users who are non-parties to the lawsuit should have access to their files.

Related to this, Demand Progress has also put together a petition, asking people to sign on to support a user's right to his or her own files -- and against the government just magically taking files out of the cloud:

One day after the Internet staged a massive blackout to protest Congress's Internet censorship legislation (SOPA/PIPA), the United States responded by seizing millions of ordinary user files hosted on the popular website Megaupload.com.

With an aim of shutting down Megaupload and other Cloud-based hosting services (like Dropbox, YouTube or even your email provider), the government is trying to claim website operators should face decades in prison for the misdeeds of some of their users. But while they pursue trumped up criminal charges against the companies' founders, they are shutting down dozens of websites, and leaving ordinary Internet users without any way of retrieving their files.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak called the case against Megaupload a "threat to innovation." Wozniak likened the Megaupload site to a highway and those who shared pirated movies and songs to speeding motorists. "You don't just shut down the whole street because somebody is speeding," he said.

Numerous laws on the books already give copyright holders plenty of avenues to stop actual infringement, but that's not enough to satisfy Hollywood's lawyers and lobbyists. The prosecutor in the case, Neil MacBride, previously served as the Anti-Piracy Vice President of the Business Software Alliance, where he represented the intellectual property interests of countless multinational corporations.

Now Hollywood's lobbyists, represented by the Motion Picture Association of America, want him to make it nearly impossible for ordinary Internet users to get their property back.

As I write this, the petition appears to have just short of 50,000 signatures, and the number is increasing rapidly... The Internet vs. Hollywood

Filed Under: congress, data, doj, hollywood, petition, pipa, sopa
Companies: megaupload, mpaa

Your Genome, Your Data

from the other-digital-revolution dept

The computing revolution is not the only one driven by constant scaling of technologies: the field of genomics -- the study of DNA sequences -- has also enjoyed rapid falls in basic costs over the last decade and a half. This means that whereas the first human genome cost around $3 billion to sequence, we are fast approaching the point where it will cost first a few thousand, and then a few hundred dollars to sequence anyone's complete DNA. An interesting post on the Health Affairs Blog points out that neither the law nor society is ready for this.

Companies like 23andMe are already offering people the ability to find out about a range of important genes very simply, and for relatively low cost:

The concern is that someone might learn of that same risk [for breast cancer] for $499 by spitting in a tube and hitting the "breast cancer result" button at 23andMe, a company that will test saliva samples for diseases as well as for DNA ancestry. No one should take an action, such as prophylactic surgery without confirming results from 23andMe, which reports on only the three most common mutations.

Against that background of possibly life-changing or even life-threatening decisions being made on the basis of results obtained from a blob of saliva, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now looking to regulate this market. But in the opinion of the article's authors, there's a danger here:

If regulators impose rules that allow us to obtain genomic data only as a medical service and through a health professional, however, access will never be cheap because it will always be bundled with expensive professional medical services. This is what Germany has done, and we should not follow their lead. By equating genome services to medical services, the German Government has reduced access, significantly limited the possible benefits to their citizens, and dramatically increased the costs.

The authors make a suggestive comparison:

It’s as if [governments] had decided to cut off access to the World Wide Web in response to fears of pornography and copyright infringement. Imagine what the world would be like today if we had passed the Draconian Internet regulation bills proposed a decade ago when the Internet was as young as the nascent genomics sector is now. We would have sucked the water out of the pond that gave birth to the marvels of Google, Wikipedia and Facebook.

There's another parallel, too. Just as with the Internet and its digital deluge, the imminent world of abundant, ultra-cheap genomic data could also could power the growth of a huge new economic sector:

Our curiosity -- and sometimes our health -- will require 'experts' to do the science and to explain its implications. Some of these "genomicists" will be health professionals no doubt: genetic counselors, nurses, social workers, or physicians who learn the intricate math and follow the exploding technical literature. Others will be experts in genealogy, history, ethnicity, engineering and anthropology. New businesses are emerging to create interpretive software and interactive websites that walk us through tours of our genomic data. If you’re young and computer savvy; if you study genetics and read anthropology and history, you may have a job in a field that is just coming to life. That is, if we don’t screw it up by strangling this nascent field in its cradle.

The trick will be to allow these new businesses to aggregate and analyze DNA information while preserving individual privacy and control over genomic data that is unequivocally yours. That's going to be hard, but the potential benefits in terms of improving people's health make it worth striving for. For more information, check out the original post which goes into greater detail.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: data, dna, genome, privacy

Valve Hires Economist-In-Residence To Explore Data From Virtual Economies

from the excellent-news dept

We spend an awful lot of time talking about the economics of digital information, and how it challenges economics that are solely focused on "scarcity." And we've written plenty about how Valve Software has taken a really data-driven approach to its offerings -- often going against "conventional" thinking, but having the data (and revenue) to back up those decisions. So it's neat to see that the company has hired economist Yanis Varoufakis to be its "economist-in-residence" where he'll be exploring the data and sharing some of his findings with the world on a new Valve blog (which doesn't appear to have a Twitter feed... though hopefully they'll fix that). I tend to think it's a good thing when smart companies recognize how they can use real economics (and smart economists) to help them do cool things, so I'm looking forward to what Varoufakis has to say...

Filed Under: data, digital content
Companies: valve

Google Lifts The Veil On Copyright Takedowns: Reveals Detailed Data On Who Requests Link Removals

from the data-data-data dept

As part of Google's ongoing Transparency Report efforts, today the company has released a whole new section on copyright takedowns, containing a huge amount of information on the many takedown requests Google receives. It focuses specifically on the takedowns for search links, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them add other areas later. As you may recall, we were among those who were victimized by a bogus takedown, and a key post about SOPA that we had written was missing from Google search for about a month.

The new transparency platform lets you dig in and see quite a few details about exactly who is issuing takedowns and what they're removing from search. It's using data since last July (when Google set up an organized web-form, so the data is consistent). It may be a bit surprising, but at the top of the list? Microsoft, who has apparently taken down over 2.5 million URLs from Google's search results. Most of the the others in the top 10 aren't too surprising. There's NBC Universal at number two. The RIAA at number three (representing all its member companies). BPI at number five. Universal Music at number seven. Sony Music at number eight. Warner Music doesn't clock in until number 12.

There's also data on which sites are most frequently targeted, which (not surprisingly) lists out a bunch of torrent search sites and file lockers and such. Don't be surprised to see some try to claim that this is an accurate list of "rogue sites" that Google should block entirely. However, if you look carefully at the data, Google also highlights the percentage of pages on those sites for which they've received takedowns, and the vast majority of them are well below 1%. In other words, no one has complained about well over 99% of the pages on these sites. It seems pretty drastic to suggest that these sites are obviously nothing but evil, when so many of their pages don't seem to receive any complaints at all.

Perhaps more important, however, is that Google is also revealing the incredible deluge of takedown requests it receives in search, each of which it tries to check to make sure they're legitimate. As it stands now, Google is processing over 250,000 such requests per week -- which is more than they got in the entire year of 2009. For all of 2011, Google receive 3.3 million copyright takedowns for search... and here we are in just May of 2012, and they're already processing over 1.2 million per month. And while we've heard reports from the usual Google haters that Google is slow to respond to takedowns, it says that its average turnaround time last week was 11 hours. Think about that for a second. It's reviewing each one of these takedowns, getting 250,000 per week... and can still process them in less than 12 hours. That's pretty impressive.

It's also interesting to hear that these reviews catch some pretty flagrant bogus takedown requests:

At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal requests. For example, we recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show, even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our search results.

It's good to see Google catch these, as plenty of other sites would automatically take such content down, just to avoid any question of liability. Of course, it doesn't catch them all. Some get through -- as we ourselves discovered a few months ago. That led us to wonder if this tool could drill down and find the details about takedowns targeting Techdirt, but unfortunately at the moment there doesn't seem to be any way to actually search the list. Hopefully that will change soon. Update: The search function is not currently advertised anywhere, but you can access it by using a URL: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/yourdomain.com/

Of course, this is also a good reminder -- as they note in the Google blog post -- that if you run a website, you should absolutely sign up to use Google's Webmaster tools, which will quickly inform you when one of your URLs are targeted by such a takedown, allowing you to easily file a counternotice.

Either way, this is really fascinating data and an interesting platform, shedding some significant light on just how often copyright holders are trying to take links out of Google, who's doing it and who they're targeting.

Filed Under: data, dmca, takedown, transparency
Companies: bpi, google, microsoft, nbc universal, riaa, sony music, universal music, warner music

MPAA Says Letting Anyone Access Data On Megaupload Servers Would Represent Infringement

from the entitlement? dept

As you may recall, the MPAA is among those who have said that Carpathia, the hosting company Megaupload used, must retain the data on its servers -- even though the Justice Department has said it's done with it and Carpathia was free to delete the evidence. Others, of course have also asked for access to their data. And, most importantly, Megaupload itself has asked if it can keep the data. Carpathia wants nothing to do with it, because it's costing the company $9,000 per day to hang onto the servers without doing anything else with them.

However, in response to all of this, the MPAA has again gone to the court to suggest that if Carpathia gave the content to anyone else, that alone would represent copyright infringement:

The sale or transfer of those copies from Carpathia to Megaupload or any other third party would constitute an unauthorized "distribut[ion] ... to the public" under the Copyright Act

That seems like a pretty big legal stretch by the MPAA's typically overreaching lawyers. Depending on who the content was transferred to, it doesn't automatically mean distribution "to the public."

Of course, the continued insane paranoia of the MPAA continues to shine through in this filing as well. It insists that if Megaupload is given back the servers, it will ship them to some other jurisdiction and immediately relaunch the site:

"A sale or transfer of the servers to Megaupload (or any of the defendants) would raise a significant risk that Megaupload will simply ship the servers, hard drives or other equipment -- and all of the infringing content they contain -- to a foreign jurisdiction and relaunch the infringing Megaupload service, which would result in untold further infringements of the MPAA members’ copyrighted works. If so, the renewed criminal enterprise might be beyond any effective legal remedy."

This also seems like a reach. All of the principles are under arrest and facing extradition to the US where they'll face criminal charges. One would imagine they all recognize that it doesn't do their case any good to set the site up again in another jurisdiction.

Filed Under: data, hosting, infringement
Companies: carpathia, megaupload, mpaa

DailyDirt: Tracking Down Your Food

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Poking through your fridge for a snack doesn't quite count as hunting for food. Not too many of us actually kill what we eat or farm fruits and vegetables, but there are a few online tools that'll help people see where they're food is coming from. Here are just a few examples of food-tracking projects that could bring some aspects of farming closer to home.

• Keeping track of nearly every aspect of a pig's life and "afterlife" seems like a huge project, but the pork industry is starting to collect data on where your sausage and pork chops grew up. Who needs to play Farmville when there'll be real-time systems keeping track of actual farm animals that you can eat in real life...? [url]
• Chicken trackers have been available for a few years now, allowing people to easily see where their poultry came from. Stalking your chicken could make it more appetizing. [url]
• The US Department of Agriculture has an online mapping tool for finding "food deserts" -- not desserts -- where there is limited availability of healthy foods. This online map doesn't show where there isn't any pizza delivery service, but maybe it should so it gets more traffic. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: data, food, food deserts, mapping tools, tracking, usda

Hollywood, Once Again, Sets A Record At The Box Office

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Considering how much time the MPAA has spent arguing that the sky is falling, that jobs are disappearing and the movie industry is collapsing, you'd have to imagine that its PR people had to think long and hard about how they "spin" the news that global box-office receipts set yet another new record in 2011, as they rose by 3%. It really is quite the PR challenge, and the MPAA pulls it off with a bizarre press release patting itself on the back, and then insisting that piracy is right now... just about... this close... no, really... finally.... maybe... having an impact. How's this for awkward:

"Innovation and technology continue to be a driving force for our business," Dodd said. "People are driven to fill theater seats by the promise of great films and a great, technologically enhanced movie going experience. But online content theft continues to threaten the economic success of our industry -- an industry that employs millions of Americans and brings money into the U.S. economy from around the world. We should protect that success, not undermine it by stealing products and cutting the revenue it puts into the U.S. economy."

Yup. Love the spin, overpaid MPAA PR people: "protect that success"? Good stuff. "We're dying so bad that we're setting tremendous new records..." Digging into the details a bit, yes, the US numbers were off ever so slightly, but there's growing evidence that was almost entirely about the quality (rather, lack of quality) of the movies that were released last year, as the MPAA is also gleefully talking about how domestic box office is already up by 14% this year. And, even with the very slight dip last year, the MPAA notes that domestic box office is up 6% in the last 5 years, so the trend is still clearly upward. They also note that 67% of all people in the US and Canada went to the movies at least once in 2011, with the younger generation again going quite frequently -- with the 25 to 39 demographic and the 18 to 24 demographic (also known as the prime demographics for knowing their way around the dark underbelly of the interwebs) being the biggest movie-goers.

Also, pretty much anywhere around the globe that you look, box office revenue is up. Over the last five years, box-office revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa is up a whopping 24%. Asia Pacific? Up 38%. Latin America? Up an astounding 86%.

Buried deep within the MPAA's report is the basic admission that the reason for the drop in 2011 certainly wasn't "piracy," but rather the lack of Avatar:

3D box office was down $400 million in 2011 compared to 2010, which contained Avatar’s record-breaking 3D box office performance, while 2D box office was consistent with 2010.

Some keep trying to make a big deal out of the fact that the actual number of tickets sold has shown a steady decline, but that's silly. No business is focused on maximizing tickets sold. They focus on maximizing revenue. If the goal was to maximize tickets sold, that's easy, just lower the price to a penny and watch the number of tickets sold go sky high. Instead, as the report shows, ticket prices have continued to rise, though it rose by the smallest amount (1%) in 2011 that it has since 2002. That suggests, at least, that earlier in the decade they may have been underpricing a bit, but may have found something of a ceiling, for the time being.

Filed Under: box office, chris dodd, data, global, movies
Companies: mpaa

MPAA Asks For Megaupload Data To Be Retained So It Can Sue Users... Then Insists It Didn't Really Mean That

from the how-not-to-win-fans-or-build-businesses dept

There are days that the actions of the MPAA just make you shake your head and wonder just what goes through the minds of the lawyers running that insane asylum. The latest is the news that they're considering suing Megaupload users directly, as if their reputation wasn't already mud. The details actually have to do with the fight over whether or not the data on Megaupload's servers is going to be deleted. There was a point, soon after the shutdown, when it was suggested that, due to a lack of anyone able to still pay the bills, the hosting provider that Megaupload used, Carpathia Hosting, would soon wipe the servers clean. That struck me as odd, because I would have thought that the data on those servers represented evidence in a criminal case -- but for reasons still not clear, the government insists it has no need for the data and that Carpathia is free to delete it. I won't even begin to speculate over the fact that the person who sent the letter to Carpathia suggesting this also happens to be the BSA's former head anti-piracy VP. An ex-anti-piracy exec for an industry lobbyist, now running a criminal anti-piracy case, basically telling the data center to delete evidence? Hmm...

Others, of course, were concerned about both the evidence that could exonerate Megaupload as well as the legitimate files that were going to be lost -- so there was an effort made to try to have the files retained, and the hosting firm has said (for now) that they won't delete the data, despite the fact it is costing the company $9,000 per day to maintain these servers and the 25 petabytes of data they contain. But it wants to.

So here's the surprise. Those fighting to keep the data have an unexpected ally: the MPAA. Yes, you see the MPAA wants to keep its options open and is considering directly suing users who may have used Megaupload for infringement -- and for that to work, they'd need that data to remain available. This came out in a filing by Carpathia to the court, in which it notes that there is significant interest in keeping the data around, but it wants out of the burden of paying for all of this and having to retain the data itself. The filing notes that Megaupload itself wants the data for its defense, the EFF wants to help users get legit files back... and the MPAA wants the data to sue people. Apparently, unbeknownst to the public until now, the MPAA sent Carpathia a letter arguing in agreement with Megaupload and the EFF that the data shouldn't be destroyed, but only because the MPAA wants to have access to the data in case it decides to go hogwild and completely and permanently destroy its reputation by suing users directly. From the letter the MPAA sent Carpathia:

Independent of the ongoing criminal proceeding, the Studios have civil claims against the operators of Megaupload, and potentially also against those who have knowingly or materially contributed to the infringement occurring through Megaupload...

... In light of the potential civil claims by the Studios, we demand that Carpathia preserve all material in its possession, custody, or control, including electronic data and databases, related to Megaupload or its operations. This would include, but is not limited to, all information identifying or otherwise related to the content files uploaded to, stored on and/or downloaded from Megaupload; all data associated with those content files, the uploading or downloading of those files, and the Megaupload users who uploaded or downloaded those files; all data reflecting or related to payments to third parties (including Carpathia) by the Megaupload operators; all data reflecting or related to payments to the Megaupload operators, including by users and other third parties, all electronic records regarding communications by the individuals involved in Megaupload's operations; and all internal documents and communications regarding Megaupload.

Of course, recognizing just how bad its own lawyers' statements are on the matter, the MPAA has sent in its PR folks to try to clean up the mess. Almost immediately after David Kravets at Wired published the original article highlighting this, MPAA PR people started calling him insisting that it wasn't true at all. MPAA PR VP Howard Gantman told Kravets that the MPAA has no intention to sue users, despite the clear language of the letter it sent Carpathia.

“The reason we did that filing so that there is a possibility that litigation might be pursued against Megaupload or various intermediaries involved in Megaupload’s operation. We’re not talking about individual users...”

That's not what the plain language of the letter itself clearly states -- but never let facts get in the way of a good yarn spun by MPAA PR people desperately trying to make the organization seem not 100% evil. But, this is how the MPAA thinks: lawyers shoot their mouths off with threats first, and the PR folks are left to do cleanup. That's what happens when you put the lawyers in charge, without any real knowledge of technology, business or just how ridiculously bad they make themselves look with their extreme positions. And then they wonder why no one sides with them in debates like the one over SOPA. Perhaps it's because their position is so crazy that anyone with the slightest bit of common sense would have known to stay miles away. But that's not how the MPAA rolls. It goes to crazytown and beyond, and then just denies it was thinking about suing users, despite claiming exactly that.

Filed Under: copyright, data, lawsuits
Companies: megaupload, mpaa