As a who's who list of top tech entrepreneurs have come out against PROTECT IP, noting how it will stifle innovation and limit their ability to create jobs, it's no surprise (no surprise at all), that the MPAA's propaganda machine felt the need to get cranking on the sophistry to try to mock the very real concerns of a large group of entrepreneurs. The MPAA's Alex Swartsel -- last seen attacking reporters for accurately predicting the same thing that the MPAA predicted -- has put up a post mocking the many entrepreneurs who wrote and signed the letter, claiming that they did not read the bill.
First, she attacks the claim that the definitions in the bill are vague, by insisting that PROTECT IP is written "so narrowly focused that it covers only websites whose sole purpose is to provide or point to stolen content." Right. But, if Swartsel is going to claim that the entrepreneurs didn't read the bill, then the very least she could have done was to have actually read our letter. In it, we explain, quite clearly, the history of folks like the MPAA, insisting that pretty much every new technology's "sole purpose is to provide or point to stolen content." Need I remind the MPAA that their fearless leader, and the guy whose name sits on the building they now work from once said:
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Forgive tech entrepreneurs building new platforms to allow for better distribution, promotion and monetization of films for worrying about which of them is going to be declared the next "Boston Strangler."
And, let's notice that Swartsel fails to mention that when MPAA members Warner Bros. and Paramount were asked to help create a list that named sites dedicated to infringement, as per the vague definition above, that it included sites like The Internet Archive, as well as some of the key platforms used by artists today, like SoundCloud and Vimeo. Boston Stranglers, all of them.
Next up, she mocks the idea that tech startups might face any legitimate "burdens" from PROTECT IP. And then follows that up by listing out some of the very burdens that we would face under the bill -- including very vague rules about "reasonable measures" that tech companies will have to take to stay in compliance. And what she leaves out is that the MPAA and people like Swartsel are the ones who think they get to define what's reasonable here.
Want proof? Looks no further than EMI insisting that it gets to decide if MP3tunes is in compliance with the DMCA. Or MPAA-member Viacom suing YouTube for a billion dollars, claiming that it was not in compliance with the DMCA because it didn't magically figure out how to block all infringing content. And, really, just look at how much time, effort and money have gone into those two lawsuits alone. The entrepreneurs who signed the letter know that when the MPAA comes to sue, saying that their efforts didn't meet its definition of "reasonable," they're about to end up in court for years, and have to pay millions of dollars to do so.
I'm sorry, Ms. Swartsel, but to a new startup building the next great platform, having to spend millions of dollars and a few years in court is a significant burden that can put many out of business. Just ask Veoh and ReplayTV -- two companies that were, in fact, effectively put out of business by similar lawsuits. Until Ms. Swartsel has to sit in front of her investors and explain to them why we have to spend the money they gave us fighting the MPAA in court, rather than building the next great platform, I'm not really sure she's in a position to comment.
Next up, she claims that the arguments of Paul Vixie, on how PROTECT IP will break key parts of the internet and damage internet security have been "debunked." That's just funny. By "debunked" she means that the MPAA put out a silly statement that effectively said, "hey, if we break the internet, you smart tech people should just go fix it again."
Finally, she does the typical "but think of the starving artist" argument, by calling out Jason Stall and Ellen Seidler, the two poster children for the MPAA for filmmakers who complain about piracy, but fail to actually put in place smarter business models. It's silly to get into a pissing match over this, but why don't we look at filmmakers like Kevin Smith who has pointed out that fans downloading his films "leads to converts," and he then does amazing things to give those converts all sorts of reasons to buy -- such as by using the awesome TopSpin platform. Need we mention that TopSpin's CEO, Ian Rogers, signed the letter worrying about PROTECT IP? Or how about all of the movies currently being funded by Kickstarter, often raising much more money than they would have received otherwise. Andy Baio, who helped build KickStarter, is among those who signed the letter as well.
These entrepreneurs are very reasonably concerned. They're the ones who are actually powering the next generation of fillmmakers and helping them make money. They're not whining about "piracy," but are focused on utilizing these new platforms, the same platforms that the MPAA wants to burden the next time MPAA member studios decide to put them on a list...
If the MPAA was really concerned about filmmakers, it would help them embrace these new platforms that help them make money. Not line them up in a witchhunt for new Boston Stranglers.
If you follow the political world these days, you'd think that there was nothing out there that a "bleeding-heart liberal" and a "Tea Party conservative" might agree on. But it appears that the hugely problematic PROTECT IP Act is bringing together such diverse interests. David Segal and Patrick Ruffini -- who probably don't agree on very much at all politically -- teamed up to write an editorial about the problems of PROTECT IP, for OregonLive. The editorial notes the massive unintended consequences likely to come from the bill, and highlights how this is an issue outside of any standard political spectrum. This isn't an issue about political viewpoints. It's an issue about fundamental values and the belief that censorship is wrong.
It's pretty difficult to question Paul Vixie's credibility when it comes to core internet infrastructure. Creator of a variety of key Unix and internet software, he's still most known for his work on BIND, "the most widely used DNS software on the internet." So you would think that when he and a few other core internet technologists spoke up about why PROTECT IP would break fundamental parts of the internet, people would pay attention. Tragically, PROTECT IP supporters, like the MPAA, appear to be totally clueless in arguing against Vixie. Their response is basically "it's fine to break the internet to evil rogue sites."
That, of course, is missing the point. It's not that anyone's worried about breaking the internet for those sites. It's that it will break fundamental parts of the internet for everyone else as well. And... it will do this in a way that won't make a dent in online infringement. Afterdawn sat down with Vixie who gave a clear and concise explanation of why PROTECT IP is a problem. The biggest issue is how it will impact DNSSEC, which adds encrypted signatures to DNS records to make sure that the IP address you're getting is authentic. You want that. Without that, there are significant security risks. But PROTECT IP ignores that.
Explained simply, for DNSSEC to work, it needs to be able to route around errors. But the way PROTECT IP is written, routing around errors will break the law:
Say your browser, when it's trying to decide whether some web site is or is not your bank's web site, sees the modifications or hears no response. It has to be able to try some other mechanism like a proxy or a VPN as a backup solution rather than just giving up (or just accepting the modification and saying "who cares?"). Using a proxy or VPN as a backup solution would, under PROTECT IP, break the law.
And, of course, none of these DNS efforts will actually stop infringement. As the Afterdawn article notes: "Bypassing DNS filtering is trivially easy. All you need to do is configure your computer to use DNS servers outside the US which won't be affected by the law."
And while supporters of PROTECT IP insist that there's nothing to worry about because it only impacts those "foreign websites," that's misleading in the extreme. PROTECT IP will impact a ton of US-based technology companies. First, if we have a less secure internet, that's going to be a problem for obvious reasons. Additionally, the way the law works is that it puts a direct burden on US companies to figure out ways to block sites declared rogue (you know, like the Internet Archive and 50 Cent's personal website), or face liability. This will increase both compliance and legal costs.
In the last few months we've been hearing from more folks in the startup world who are really concerned about the excessive burdens PROTECT IP is going to put on them. If you're an entrepreneur who's worried about this, we'd like to hear about it. Please contact us.
Another editorial has appeared supporting PROTECT IP, this time at the Washington Post. The writer, sporting the unlikely nom de plume "Editorial," makes the usual statements rehashing the usual arguments. In true pro-PROTECT IP fashion, it begins by pretending this act has something to do with counterfeited goods:
CITY SIDEWALKS ONCE were lined with merchants peddling counterfeit designer handbags or second-rate copies of popular movies. Such vendors are less commonplace today, but counterfeit goods have proliferated more than ever, thanks to the Internet.
Fake goods - from sneakers to pharmaceuticals - are produced half a world away but can be marketed to U.S. consumers through foreign Web sites.
So far, so what. If anyone is still clinging to the notion that PROTECT IP is being cobbled together to stop trafficking of counterfeit goods, then these few lines of lead-in should allow them to remain comfortably misinformed. Editorial (or "Ed," for short) gets to the real driving force behind the act in the very next sentence:
Some sites stream pirated U.S.-produced or -owned movies and television shows. Such theft costs the copyright- or trademark-holders billions of dollars each year and thwarts the ability of writers, producers, songwriters and others in the creative arts to earn the royalties they are due.
Costs? Really? Piracy COSTS the rightsholders billions of dollars?
Now, you can make the argument that piracy results in lost sales or that a decline in revenues can possibly be attributed to piracy (no really, go ahead... the comment threads are open), but I don't think that you can say that piracy of goods costs these companies anything. Just because the content providers of the US may be routinely filling out large numbers under the heading "PIRATES" in their collective Accounts Payable columns, they are incurring no costs as a result of piracy.
Now, those in the industry may be confused and point to the dollar amount expended to fight piracy as a "cost," but if that's the case, it's very much an optional cost. More to the point, pretty much every dollar spent on this fight is a wasted dollar. For all the good it does them, they may as well just contact major pirates (whoever they are) and offer them X amount of dollars to stop running their piratey websites. Sure, these pirates might take the money and some might even cease their piratical operations, but someone else would take their place and no one would be better off but a limited number of pirates.
In short, discussing piracy as a "cost' when it comes to digital goods is completely misrepresenting what's actually going on here. If we were discussing physical goods, then yes, theft (a word that is perfectly logical when referring to physical goods) could be considered a cost. But when it's just a matter of bandwidth usage paid for by the uploaders and downloaders, then there's no real "cost."
However, the inanity/insanity doesn't stop there. Read on:
Consumers often find themselves saddled with shoddy goods and little or no recourse to get their money back. Unlike domestic sites, these foreign-registered businesses are often out of reach of U.S. laws.
Maybe those consumers who are purchasing counterfeit products are finding themselves with shoddy goods, but I can guarantee you that consumers who are availing themselves of pirated digital goods (movies, music, games) are finding themselves "saddled" with clearly superior goods, free of region locking, DRM, ridiculous street dates, a million anti-piracy intersitials and the like.
It goes on from there, sounding more and more like an MPAA press release than an actual editorial. There's some stuff about how PROTECT IP won't break the internet or violate anyone's free speech. There's talk about how "reasonable" and "fair" it is and how it will only be used to deal with consistent violators (the ever-popular "rogue sites") before wrapping it all up with this paragraph:
The Protect IP Act takes pains to protect Internet service providers, search engines and others that may have done business with a rogue site. They are not required to scour the Internet for offenders nor are they held liable if they happen to host or provide services to a site that is eventually deemed unlawful. They are only required to take "reasonable" and "technically feasible" measures to obey a court order. There may still be room to tweak these provisions to ensure that they are not more sweeping than necessary. But there is a need for a legal tool that stops those who persistently leech off of the innovations of others.
While I would like to believe that efforts enforced by the DHS (in association with the MPAA and RIAA) would result only in tempered responses to the "worst" sites, there is nothing in the collective past of all the entities involved that indicates this would happen. And as has been proven already, what the MPAA/RIAA/DHS feels is reasonable is far removed from what ISPs and search engines feel is reasonable. So the definition of "reasonable" will obviously be left in the hands of those tasked with enforcing the legislation and, as other nations instituting various anti-piracy programs have shown, the public is already persona non grata during the debate of these bills. It can't be too much longer before everyone else on the "outside" of this bill (ISPs, search engines, etc.) finds themselves completely shut out of the input process.
And what exactly is this supposed to mean? "Not more sweeping than necessary?" Everything implemented in a top-down fashion by government entities is "sweeping." The government only knows how to do "macro." That's what government does best. The government should not be in the micromanagement business, but thanks to the fiduciary arm twisting of various lobbyists, it's finding itself in exactly that position. Even worse, "Ed" here is relying on the fact that the government (again, in conjunction with the RIAA and the MPAA) has any idea what "necessary" is and can be counted on to not "sweep" past it.
None of this is truly necessary and as such, it can pretty much be guaranteed that the implementation of PROTECT IP will bring about tons of enthusiastic sweeping with a large number of overreaching brooms. And not only will the taxpayers be handed a broken internet (while being scolded about "why we can't have nice things"), we'll also be expected to pay for the privilege, including any internet repair work down the road.
While the entertainment industry thought that getting PROTECT IP approved was going to be a walk in the park, they've been taken somewhat by surprise at the level of resistance to the bill over the last few months. It looks like they're now trying to break out "the big guns." And, by "big guns" we mean out-of-touch millionaire old fogey rockers who have name brand appeal, but little actual knowledge. In this case, it's an op-ed piece by Don Henley in USA Today. Henley has become quite the curmudgeon over the past few years, lashing out at everyone for not giving him more money. A year ago, he was claiming that it's all YouTube's fault:
And Henley reserved particular ire for YouTube, which he described as a "fence" for stolen intellectual property. "YouTube is one of the biggest violators or copyright laws in the world," he said. "A tremendous amount of the content on YouTube is a copyright violation.... I'm not a fan of YouTube at all for their part in aiding and abetting copyright violations."
Given his belief that YouTube is a "rogue" site, his views on PROTECT IP are especially troubling. It appears that Henley really wants to shut down YouTube. Most of the article is a misguided, misleading or simply false attack on both Google and anyone, such as the EFF, who supports basic user rights:
Critics of this pending legislation need to be honest about the company they keep and why they essentially aid and abet these criminal endeavors. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties group, claims such a bill would "break the Internet," while Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says it sets "a disastrous precedent" for freedom of speech. No one has the freedom to commit or abet crimes on the Internet. Stopping crime on the Internet is not, as EFF says, "censorship." There is no First Amendment right to infringe intellectual property rights.
First of all, no, there is no First Amendment right to infringe, but no one has claimed that there is either. But PROTECT IP goes way, way beyond what Henley describes. He also fails to respond to the "break the Internet" claim, which comes from a group of very well-respected technologists who had a major role in building the internet's core infrastructure. Henley just brushes that off by pretending that Google just wants to keep "accepting untold advertising dollars from illegal online pharmacies."
But the bigger issue is that Henley totally ignores the points that the EFF has raised about the problem of PROTECT IP. He's right that stopping infringement is not censorship, but the bill is extremely broad and goes way beyond stopping infringement. In a weak attempt to do so, it advocates outright censorship with no due process.
In the meantime, if Henley wants to look at "the company anyone keeps," perhaps he should look at his friends who are supporting PROTECT IP. And we should remind Don Henley that not so long ago he was pointing out that piracy isn't a problem, and the real problem was the RIAA and the major record labels. Apparently he's changed his mind.
Oh, and if you'd like to see just how badly Henley is suffering from all this infringement in person, you can buy tickets to an upcoming Eagles concert for $2134 a pop. At least they set aside some "cheap seats" for the kids. The nosebleed seats where you can barely see the stage... those will run you a mere $116. Actually, that's just the list price, and you can't buy a single ticket at that price. You have to buy two. There are some (more expensive) tickets where you can buy just one, but then you have to add in the service fee ($21.65) and a delivery fee ($15). Amusingly, even if you choose to show up and pick up the ticket yourself, you still pay the delivery fee. So the absolute cheapest price you can pay to see Don Henley in concert, in the nosebleed seats will run you... $153.65. Yeah, but all that infringement is killing the music business, huh?
Earlier this week, I went to see Rep. Bob Goodlatte speak at a State of the Net West event in Palo Alto. It was basically a Q&A session, hitting on a variety of points concerning legislation that impacts the tech industry. Honestly, there wasn't too much surprising said, though he was clearly well-briefed and ready for a variety of questions on copyright, patents and privacy -- which were the main themes of the discussion. The one thing that really caught my attention was in response to a question about PROTECT IP asked by EFF lawyer Michael Barclay. Goodlatte noted, correctly, that the current PROTECT IP bill being discussed is the one in the Senate, and that the House has yet to introduce its version, but will in the next few weeks. He claimed that the people working on the bill were definitely aware of the criticism being leveled at the Senate version, and he expected that people would be surprised at the House version. He insisted that it aimed to fix some of the problems of the Senate version, but that it might include some "other things" that might upset the tech community. We'll see what's in there when it's ready, though we've already heard that a version of S.978 -- the bill that can put people in jail for embedding YouTube videos -- will be rolled into the House's version of PROTECT IP. Still, while admitting pretty clearly that the bill was "being driven by" the recording industry and the movie industry, he also noted that they "might not be too happy" with some of the things in the bill when it comes out.
I doubt they'll be too disappointed (other than being upset that it's not draconian enough), but his statements at least raised some basic questions about how you could fix PROTECT IP. Larry Downes takes a stab at the five essential changes needed to fix the bill. He goes into more detail at that link, but the quick version:
Don't destabilize the domain name system
Leave search engines and hyperlinks out
No private enforcement
Correct ongoing abuses by DHS
Clearly define "rogue" Web site
If I had to guess, I would think that the House bill might actually tackle number one, but I doubt any of the others are under serious consideration. There has been some push for number three, but the entertainment industry lobbyists are salivating so heavily over that one I can't see them giving it up. I haven't seen any indication that anyone (other than Rep. Lofgren) in the House seems to care about the DHS's abuses, so that's out.
But, really, a bigger question may be whether PROTECT IP is needed at all? I agree that the five changes listed above would be a massive improvement, and would make the bill significantly less objectionable. But, why is this even needed? In this era when we're supposed to be focused on evidence-based copyright changes, the industry doesn't show any evidence of actual harm caused by these "rogue sites." They just insist that they must be "losing" billions. But that ignores the point made over and over again in the research: which is that this is a business model issue, not a legal issue. If the industry spent one-tenth the effort it spends on crafting bad legislation on actually innovating and creating services that people like, this wouldn't even be considered a problem at all.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who tries to estimate the cost to taxpayers of all new laws proposed by Congress has put out its report on the PROTECT IP Act, noting that it will cost taxpayers $47 million (pdf) from 2012 to 2016. Specifically, the CBO notes that the Justice Department would have to go out and hire 48 new people (22 special agents and 26 support staff) to act as Hollywood's censor police -- and that the annual cost will run about $10 million. Separately, the CBO notes that outside of the cost for taxpayers, the law would certainly impose costs on a variety of tech companies, by placing liability and requirements on them in regards to sites picked by Hollywood and the Justice Department to censor (you know, sites like that bastion of "piracy," the Internet Archive, which Hollywood has already put on its evil pirates list). However, it does not estimate that additional cost on those companies, since it will depend heavily on "future judicial proceedings."
For all the stories of doom and gloom in various entertainment industry segments due to "piracy," the deeper you look, the more you realize that each of these areas seems to be growing quite nicely, contrary to what's being claimed. Remember last week, when we showed the US Chamber of Commerce's propaganda video in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, in which various artists claimed that their industries were being "hurt" by internet piracy? It included clips of the author Tracy Deebs (who also goes by the name Tracy Wolff), claiming that "piracy" had hurt the publishing industry badly and suggesting that she might lose her deal because book publishers don't believe she can sell enough books.
Well, tragically for Deebs/Wolff, the actual data suggests she and the US Chamber of Commerce are totally full of it. FormerAC points us to some new reports showing that the publishing industry is growing thanks to the rise of digital:
BookStats, a comprehensive survey conducted by two major trade groups that was released early Tuesday, revealed that in 2010 publishers generated net revenue of $27.9 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over 2008. Publishers sold 2.57 billion books in all formats in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008.
Deebs, who it should be noted, writes young adult fiction, and who markets her own young adult fiction book as "a paranormal romance," might be most interested in this particular line:
Juvenile books, which include the current young-adult craze for paranormal and dystopian fiction, grew 6.6 percent over three years.
Deebs uses the name Tracy Wolff when publishing "adult fiction." And thus, I'm sure she's also interested in the following line:
One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.
So, once again, we have to ask both Deebs and the US Chamber of Commerce who is exploiting her apparently false claims, exactly how was she a "victim"? It certainly looks like the market is thriving. If Deebs isn't capitalizing on that, it's probably because either her book is no good or she's not doing a very good job selling it. Perhaps the Chamber of Commerce can help her with that, rather than having her appear in ridiculous videos in support of a bad law that promotes internet censorship.
It's so chock full of blatantly wrong, clueless or misleading statements that the only people this would be convincing for are the purely ignorant -- but I guess that's the Chamber's main target audience. Let's take a look at some of the statements and people in the video, who it appears the Chamber of Commerce didn't review too carefully:
"The idea that I have to accept as a filmmaker that a certain percentage of the people who see my stuff are never going to pay me for it... in film school, I never thought I'd have to live with that. What other business would it be okay to lose 50% of your product and not receive income for it?"
The thing is, most folks who go to film school end up with almost no one ever paying to see a film that they make. If you're actually getting people who want to see your films, then you're doing something right -- and then the challenge is for you to put in place a business model that works. And it does work. We've seen plenty of filmmakers who have embraced having most people see their works for free and they still make good money by connecting with fans and giving real reasons to buy beyond that. And, no, you haven't "lost" 50% of your product. Your product is still there. What you failed to do is to build a good business model.
And even if we really were talking about 50% of your "product" not selling, plenty of businesses end up in that position... and their job, as business people, is to figure out ways to make money. Just because you invest in something and make a product, it doesn't mean people have to buy. No one turns 100% of their "effort" into revenue. Complaining about people not buying is not a legal issue, it's a business model one.
It seems kind of ironic that the Chamber of Commerce of all operations seems to not want to help this filmmaker create a business model, but instead wants to exploit his situation to pass a bad law that won't help him at all.
Oh, and we should mention that the filmmaker in question appears to be Dano Johnson, and he's most well known for the movie Flatland. Flatland, you say? Isn't that the old book? Why, yes, yes it is. And in this little interview clip with Dano Johnson and his producer partner Seth Caplan, they brag about the fact that the book is in the public domain so they didn't have to pay for it.
Yes, this is perfectly legal, but it highlights the cognitive dissonance and internal inconsistencies in Johnson's argument. He talks up the moral arguments for why creators "should" get revenue any time their work is used, but clearly recognizes the benefits of content that can be used without licensing, and which can be built upon without payment. Yet, if there's a "moral" argument for paying creators, then shouldn't he have also paid for this work?
Dano then goes away for a bit and we get an author:
"Used to be where they would give you a two, three, four book contract. That's not the case any more. Now we have to do well with the first book or there won't be a second book."
First of all, while there are some multi-book contracts, they were never quite as popular as some people think, and getting away from them has happened mainly because they were bad deals for everyone (including the author in many cases), which has nothing whatsoever to do with "piracy." This woman, "Tracy Deebs" seems to just assume that "piracy" is why such contracts have gone away. She offers no evidence.
"Internet piracy affects this greatly because the numbers get skewed. People are downloading stuff for free."
Or they could go to the library and get the book for free. Ban libraries, because Tracy Deebs says they're killing her ability to make money!
Perhaps Ms. Deebs should check in on the writings of JA Konrath who found no evidence that file sharing hurts sales. He's also found that he's much better off without one of those "two, three or four book contracts," because he makes a lot more money self-publishing ebooks at much cheaper prices. And this is especially true in the "young adult" space, which is what Deebs writes for these days, where Amanda Hockling figured out how to self-publish and sell over 100,000 books a month.
Oops. Just like with Dano Johnson, it looks like the problem here is the failure to put in place a good business model, rather than anything having to do with file sharing. Perhaps she should be looking to the Chamber of Commerce for help with that, rather than letting them get her to support a law with massive unintended consequences that won't help her one bit.
Johnson then returns:
"As an independent animator, we decided to make this film. We didn't really have any investors, so we were all putting in our time for free, with the hope to sell the film, and once it's successful pay ourselves back... While we've been successful, we can also see that we've lost a significant amount of revenue."
Surely, as a one-time film school student, he knows that most films don't ever become "successful." Just the fact that he has been successful is an accomplishment -- in part thanks to his ability to build on the public domain (and then lock up the resulting work). And how does he know that his success is not due to the film being more widely available and more people knowing about it? If you look at the website for the Flatland movie, you can see that the film is available to buy and it appears that plenty of people are buying it. Furthermore, according to IMDB and Wikipedia, it looks like Johnson has helped make a 3D-IMAX version of the film which will be released this fall. That seems like a smart move. Johnson is figuring out that he can do things to compete with the free versions by making an experience that can't easily be copied. Given the subject matter, I would expect that schools will be a prime target to take classrooms full of kids to see Flatland in IMAX 3D. So where is his proof of "lost revenue"? How does he know that he hasn't gained sales from people finding out about the films online?
Then we move on to a musician, Guy Forsyth.
"There's a hole in the system, and it's where the artists aren't getting paid for the work that they're doing."
Interesting. I was curious about Guy Forsyth and so I discovered that his main claim to fame as a musician was as a part of The Asylum Street Spankers:
Founded by Christina Marrs, Wammo and Guy Forsyth after a legendary party at the famous Dabbs Hotel along the Llano River in Texas, the band began by busking on the streets of Austin and playing for tips in bars. In their earliest days, the Spankers' repertoire consisted almost entirely of country, blues, jazz, swing and Tin Pan Alley songs dating from the 1890s to the 1950s with a particular emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s.
Now that's pretty cool, and I'd be interested in seeing Forsyth play, but I'm curious if, when they were out busking, he was paying the rightsholders from those songs that were still under copyright. In fact, the Wikipedia entry notes that it was only after Forsyth left the band that they started playing more original songs. So, once again, we have someone who builds off the culture of others, but now supports laws that would make that harder, if not impossible, for others to do the same. For shame.
On top of that, his claim that there's a "hole" and that musicians aren't getting paid any more has been debunked over and over again. While plenty of studies have shown that record labels haven't been earning as much, they've also showed that actual musicians are making noticeably more money these days. And they're doing it by putting in place innovative business models -- the kind of thing you'd think the US Chamber of Commerce would be helping with, rather than ignoring.
Then the video bounces back to both Deebs and Johnson, complaining about "free," and making assumptions about how each download is a lost sale. That's the same theme pushed by the next person, "actress" Krista Betts:
"As an actress, I'm used to those residual checks coming in and I open the mailbox, and I'm getting all excited... 'Oh! Screen Actors Guild!' And I open it up and the check is for... oh, about eight dollars. And I just stopped for a moment and thought 'I wonder, how much the check would have been had everyone purchased the DVD."
Well, if "everyone" had purchased the DVD you'd have the best selling movie of all time. I'm guessing she means had everyone who downloaded it purchased it, which is ridiculous. Most of the people downloading would never have purchased it in the first place. Anyway, I was curious what DVD this might be, and according to IMDB Krista Betts appeared in one movie... in 2002 called "Lone Star State of Mind," It does not appear to have much of a wide release, and the only five reviewers who reviewed the movie on Rotten Tomatoes all hated the movie. For example, check out this review:
While watching, this tended to remind me of "Raising Arizona", with only one exception: Raising Arizona is good, and this is bad, really bad. There's a movie that you can watch that is so bad that it makes you feel like tearing your eyebrows off one by one just to numb the pain. The cliches are so thick in this film that it inevitably tears down the film with no chance of recovery. There's practically every known cliche and stereotype in this film applying to Texan people.
So, Krista, I'm not sure, but the fact that you're still getting even $8 for a film you did a decade ago, which barely moved the needle and apparently had reviewers wanting to tear their eyebrows out... perhaps that's not something to complain about. No one pays me for the work I did a decade ago, and I don't think it drove anyone to tear out any eyebrows.
Then there are a bunch of quotes comparing file sharing to theft. First from Johnson:
"For me, you buy a ticket. You buy a digital download."
But you don't buy the rights to a story. That's too expensive. Obviously, there are exceptions -- such as the one at the end of the interview video above with Johnson, where he plugs the free showing of Flatland. Sometimes, apparently, you don't have to buy a ticket, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Back to Forsyth:
"You go out to your car and the window is busted and you look inside, and you're like 'oh, they grabbed my wallet, they grabbed the stereo out of the dash.' It's that same feeling that someone has reached in and taken something away from you. Something that you worked hard to earn."
Except it's not like that at all and anyone who's being intellectually honest in this debate knows that. Nothing has been "taken" from him. No one has smashed a window. He's not missing a wallet. He's not missing a stereo. Plenty of musicians have done amazingly well by embracing what their fans want, embracing free, recognizing the value of promotion. That Forsyth apparently hasn't done so isn't a reason to change the law. It's a reason to point Forsyth to some of the many case studies of musicians who are doing it right.
On to Deebs:
"If internet piracy caused me to lose my contracts because I didn't sell enough books, then I would have a really hard time picking up another publisher. And this is my job. This is how I make my income. This is how I support my family."
Actually Deebs, whose real name appears to be Tracy Wolff, admits in various online bios that her "job" is teaching writing at a local college. But, more to the point, just because you make your living one way, does NOT mean that Congress automatically has to pass laws to make sure you always make your living that way. Even more important is that the real problem isn't "internet piracy." Nowhere does she show that "internet piracy" actually harms her sales, and nearly all of the evidence we've seen for books shows no harm to sales from downloadable books. Again, Konrath's writings and empirical studies on this are compelling. The real problem, as she sneaks into the latter half of the sentence is that she didn't sell enough books. That's a business model problem. Since tons of authors are selling more and more books than ever before (and many are doing it through self-publishing), I'm not sure I see the real "problem" here.
It's also probably worth mentioning that for all this talk about how evil it is not to pay the "creators" of various things, the Chamber of Commerce is relying on Drupal to manage the astroturf "Fight Online Theft" site that this content comes from. How much do you think the Chamber of Commerce donated to the Drupal Association? And, of course, they're getting free bandwidth, hosting and high quality video playback software from YouTube (rogue site!). For all this hand-waving about how evil it is not to pay creators, it seems that the US Chamber of Commerce is plenty happy to save money by using free things. Either the folks there recognize the cost advantage of not having to worry about licensing all the time, or they seem to implicitly recognize the "quality" of software and services that (according to them) never should have been created since they're available for "free." Either way, the US Chamber of Commerce appears to be completely inconsistent in what it says and what it does... just like many of the folks in the video.
I have to admit that I'm pretty shocked that this was the "best" that the US Chamber of Commerce could come up with. None of the stories is remotely compelling. You have two folks who relied on the works of others, but now want to block that off for others, and then a woman who is complaining that she's not getting enough money from residuals from a decade old movie that no one liked. And, finally, an author who appears to not be familiar with the new opportunities enabled through publishing today thanks to the internet.
And for this they want us to change the laws in such a way that will break the fundamental architecture of the internet, hinder innovation, tie up companies in needless litigation, apply additional liability to all sorts of companies, encourage blatant censorship of websites without trials and do absolutely nothing to help artists make more money? Sorry, but no thanks.
You may recall that last week we had a post about a new propaganda campaign from the lobbying giant, the US Chamber of Commerce (who thrives off the fact that people falsely assume they're the US Department of Commerce, rather than a private lobbying group). The video, in support of the terrible and dangerous PROTECT IP Act continues the favorite talking points of the dishonest supporters of that bill, which is to conflate the problem of fake (and potentially dangerous) drugs with copyright infringement. The two things are totally and completely different, but by tugging on your heart strings about someone who died from ingesting fake drugs, the US Chamber of Commerce (and other lobbyists and politicians) hopes to ram through the PROTECT IP Act, despite its myriad problems. In this case, the campaign involved a heart-string-pulling video from a woman talking about a friend of hers who had died after taking some counterfeit drugs that had lead in them.
Of course, the folks in the Techdirt community quickly pointed out numerous other problems with the propaganda campaign, including the fact that the "example" in the video took place in Canada, meaning that a US law wouldn't have meant anything at all. Separately, and more importantly, it was pointed out that the Operation in Our Sites effort by ICE, which was the basis for PROTECT IP, has yet to target a single online drug site. They just use the scare factor of fake drugs to go after websites based on questionable reasons and evidence.
One of our regular commenters, Prometheefeu, suggested that the woman in the video might not know that she was being manipulated this way by the US Chamber of Commerce and suggested that the community here team up to draft a letter to explainwhy her friend's tragic story is being exploited by the US Chamber of Commerce to support a law that's really focused on an entirely different issue. Prometheefeu mentioned that he had found the woman's address and phone number, but he did not give that information out. He just suggested that we write her a letter. He even explicitly told people not to harass (or, as he said, "prank/lulz") the woman, noting (correctly) that this would make you a "counterproductive idiot."
All of this is perfectly reasonable. Unless, of course, you're the US Chamber of Commerce.
They called us and left a voicemail specifically calling out that comment, and saying that our commenter was calling for people to "harass" the woman in their video and asking us to delete the comment. Now, it seems that we're all in agreement that harassing this woman would be idiotic. But, apparently the US Chamber of Commerce feels that writing a reasoned letter to someone to explain why the Chamber of Commerce is manipulating your story counts as "harassment."
Now that strikes me as something of a double standard. After all, the Chamber of Commerce itself runs campaigns asking people to send "20,000 letters in 20 days" in order to flood Congress in support of certain bills. But, someone wants to draft a single letter to someone who appears in a ridiculously misleading US Chamber of Commerce video... and it's harassment?
