Did The White House Call For A New SOPA?

from the missed-that-one dept

On Friday, the White House's annual report on "IP enforcement" came out, and we noted the serious problems with the report. However, we did miss a little tidbit that Declan McCullagh picked up on. Hidden in the details of the report, it does suggest that we still need a "legislative solution" to offshore file sharing -- which was the point of SOPA/PIPA:

"We believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools are needed to address offshore infringement."

Now, the report also does reiterate what the White House said earlier during the SOPA/PIPA fight: that it would not support DNS blocking or other legislative efforts that harm the internet, but just saying that it supports some legislation at all seems pretty questionable. If anything, it's probably a wink and a nod towards Hollywood to try again, with something less overreaching. Of course, anything that's cooked up in the backrooms again simply isn't going to go over well, and (as I noted in my previous post on the report) it's a real shame that the White House doesn't even seem to acknowledge that the landscape and awareness on this issue has changed.

Filed Under: ip czar, ipec, pipa, sopa, victoria espinel, white house

Hollywood Up And Comers Recognizing That The Big Gatekeepers May Be More Of A Threat Than Silicon Valley

from the fighting-the-status-quo dept

Despite the MPAA's insistence that it wants to "talk" to Silicon Valley, it still seems to think that just means getting together with Google's lobbyists in Washington DC. Thankfully, the MPAA doesn't really represent the full movie industry, and plenty of young filmmakers realize that the tech industry isn't the enemy and has been providing tons of great tools and services that up-coming filmmakers rely on every day. Some of them are realizing that perhaps the real fight is between the legacy gatekeepers and the up-and-comers... and as such, the up-and-comers should have a much closer relationship with the tech industry.

Gina Hall is a young Hollywood filmmaker who reached out to me and some others in Silicon Valley to begin this discussion, recognizing that perhaps the MPAA's claims don't match up with her best interests:

I feel like the solutions proposed from Hollywood establishment just might be in favor of the status quo rather than helping up-and-comers. Call it a hunch. So while industry bosses are distracted with their fight to sustain the old business model, I figured it might be a good time to start a series of conversations between the tech sector and young Hollywood to make some sense of the seismic shift happening in the industry.

There are a few quotes from me in that article, in which she notes that it really does seem like the tech industry is coming up with all the cool stuff that actually helps young filmmakers today -- from tools (like cheaper cameras) to services (like YouTube) to ways to monetize (like Kickstarter). Old Hollywood? Not so much:

Masnick's M.O. is disruptive innovation -- or as he describes it "how we get cool stuff." Creating cool stuff -- honestly, isn't that what most of us get in the business to do? The problem is, Hollywood isn't responsible for creating enough cool stuff these days (especially locally) to keep us all employed. A lot of the cool stuff is now coming from the tech sector with Hollywood standing idly by. In conversations with those employed with the studios, production companies and agencies around town, I've heard projects worked on self-described as "lame," "derivative," or the backhanded compliment: "Meh, at least it'll make money."

I'm looking forward to her continuing series, showing that the tech industry and young Hollywood are very much in alignment. The only real problem is with the legacy players in the business who are just looking to keep making money the way they used to, without actually changing with the market.

Filed Under: enablers, gatekeepers, gina hall, hollywood, pipa, silicon valley, sopa, young hollywood

Kickstarter Project Looks To Print SOPA/PIPA On... Toilet Paper?

from the where-they-belong? dept

I'm kind of wondering if this one would have gone over better a few months ago, when SOPA and PIPA were still on the legislative agenda, but Andrew Couts at Digital Trends points us to a bit of a silly Kickstarter project to get the text of SOPA and PIPA custom printed on a roll of toilet paper (where they belonged in the first place). SOPA is pretty long, at over 70 pages (PIPA was a lot shorter), but there's still some extra space, where backers can leave their "own messages" for bathroom reading about SOPA or PIPA. So far, the project doesn't have many backers, and looks like it has a pretty good chance of failing, but it is notable just how ingrained the absolute badness of these bills has become in the culture today.

Filed Under: pipa, sopa, toilet paper
Companies: kickstarter

Guess What? Copying Still Isn't Stealing

from the just-saying dept

Every time you think we're done seeing totally ridiculous arguments about file sharing, the old really silly ones pop back up. Musician Logan Lynn has written a pretty silly rant on Huffington Post entitled Guess What? Stealing Is Still Wrong. And, indeed, it is. But nowhere in the article does he actually discuss stealing. He discusses infringement. In silly black and white terms that assumes that every single download is absolutely a lost sale, that no one who downloads ever gives him any money and that his biggest fans are criminals. Crazy stuff.

The music industry has been ravaged by the digital age, the primary culprit being illegal file sharing on websites with practically zero regulation. The past two decades have been something of a Wild West on ye olde Interwebs. No rules, no accountability. By the time the music industry reacted to what was happening, it was too late.

Almost nothing in this paragraph is true. It's a nice fiction that the RIAA/MPAA have been telling the world, but it's simply wrong. The music industry? Growing. Zero regulation? Try 15 anti-piracy laws passed in the last 30 years. No accountability? Should I list out the tens of thousands of lawsuits that copyright holders have filed against those who were file sharing? If you can't get the basics right, it's kinda difficult to take your complaints seriously.

While performing at and attending the CMJ music conference in New York City in fall 2009, I learned that at that time, 91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Record stores are closing, music rags are shutting down, and the glory days of rock and roll are over...

Actually the popular stat at the time was 95%, and it was bogus. And, there's a lot of evidence that the number has actually been dropping, not rising. Record stores closed because they sold CDs which are increasingly obsolete. Music rags are shutting down because music blogs are running rings around them online. The glory days of rock and roll were never quite as glorious as you think...

which I actually don't give even half a shit about. In fact, I'm glad the music industry got destroyed. It was fucked-up anyway, so who cares? Poor (filthy rich) record executives making hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of artists. Boo-hoo. I'm crying for you. Really. I am.

It sure seems like you're complaining.

What pisses me off is having over 91 percent of my personal intellectual property stolen, often before it even has the chance to be finished and released to the world. As a professional musician, a lot of time, hard work, and money goes into making a record. As an independent musician, that money comes directly out of my own pocket. Being a starving artist honestly isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore, people, and getting ripped-off has always sucked.

You didn't have 91% of your intellectual property "stolen." First of all, the number -- whatever it is -- was a general number across the entire global market. That doesn't mean it's the same for all artists. This is basic stats. Second, if tons of people are downloading your works it's because they like your music and that's a good thing and then there are all sorts of ways to get paid.

Even when I was on a major label, I got totally screwed because so much money was put into the recording, printing, PR, and distribution side that trying to recoup from consumer sales based on that 9 percent of people obtaining the album legally was almost impossible. Everyone had the record months before it came out anyway, because of file sharing. The week before it was released, one site that posted download counts on files reported over 18,000 illegal downloads of my record before my lawyer had them take the file down. That alone comes out to $180,000 -- for my songs -- of which I saw $0. My record deal was a 90/10 split at the time, but guess what 90 percent of $0 is? You guessed it! Still $0.

First of all, the "numbers" posted on those sites are usually made up, not real. Second, assuming that every one of those 18,000 people would have paid $10 for the album is simply delusional. Some of them might have. Others might have downloaded first and then decided to buy later. Others might have downloaded, and then told 20 of their closest friends how awesome you are and told them to go buy your album. Or go see a live show. The assumption that this is $180,000 gone is simple fantasy.

Think of it this way: if you were a painter and were putting the finishing touches on your pieces for a show, wouldn't you be upset if someone broke into your studio, took your unfinished paintings, and hung them in their public gallery without your permission? Let's say you had some finished work hanging for sale in your own space, but every time someone saw something they liked, they removed it from the wall, tucked it under their arm, and left without paying for it? What if 100 people came to your show opening and 91 of them decided to steal one of your paintings off the wall? Then what? Paint faster to keep up with the demand?

Think of this way: if you were a painter and were putting the finishing touches on your pieces for a show, wouldn't it be awesome to find out that thousands of people were so eager to find out about your works that they were clamoring for copies online? Let's say you had some finished work hanging for sale in your own space, but every time someone saw something they liked, they made a copy and told a bunch of others about it -- and then paid you to do more paintings? What if 100 people came to your show and 91 of them liked you so much they decided to make copies and find out more about you and how they could support your future work? Then what? Things would be pretty good, right?

I know this is the part where all the kids and hipsters start to roll their eyes and say things like, "You just don't get it, grandpa," and, "It's freedom of speech," but I don't actually believe that stealing my intellectual property is your constitutional right. Sorry, everybody.

If you're going to mock those who are arguing against you, it helps to actually understand their argument. The free speech argument is not that infringement is free speech. It's that ridiculous laws like SOPA create massive collateral damage that do serious harm to free speech.

Next time you hear a song you like, I encourage you to purchase it instead of stealing it. Supporting independent musicians just feels better than robbing us of our livelihood. I promise! Hell, you could even go to your favorite local record store, buy a CD, and look at the cover art for hours. You know, for old times' sake.

Next time you have a fan come to your site, I encourage you to offer them proactive reasons to buy instead of just demanding that they hand over cash. Treating your fans as fans and giving them lots of ways to support you just feels better than treating your biggest fans as criminals. I promise! Hell, you could even offer up cool products and bundles, or try a name your own price offering, or any number of other cool new ideas. You know, for modern times' sake.

Filed Under: copying, entitlement, infringement, logan lynn, pipa, sopa, stealing

'Don't Get SOPA'd' Is The New Mantra On Capitol Hill

from the good dept

As we noted when one of the recent cybersecurity bills was introduced in the Senate, it was accompanied by a press release that explicitly stated that this bill wasn't SOPA. While the entertainment industry keeps hoping that the anti-SOPA protests were a one-time experience, apparently the power of internet users is very much on the minds of nearly everyone on Capitol Hill who have turned the phrase "don't get SOPA'd" into a new mantra.

This is excellent news in a number of ways. Congress should fear backlash from going against the will of the people, especially in mucking around with some of the key tools they use to communicate every day. The only issue I take with the article is that it rehashes the false dichotomy that SOPA was "Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood," and quotes lots of people who continue to talk about how the way to avoid "getting SOPA'd" is to talk to the tech industry, but not to internet users themselves. Now, I think that talking to the tech industry is a good place to start, and it is an important stakeholder in understanding the internet, but what drove the SOPA protests was the users. Yes, tech companies helped get their users interested in the topic, but once the users on Tumblr, Reddit and Wikipedia took over, they were the ones driving the bus. The companies themselves took a backseat and, at times, were pressured into going along with what the users wanted, against their own concerns (for example, the date of the January 18th protests, which many "industry insiders" thought was too early, since the Senate wasn't yet in session).

So, while quotes like this are great to see:

“Nobody wants another SOPA moment,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a vocal critic of SOPA, told POLITICO. “The nerds are more powerful than anyone thought, and the tech industry flexed its muscle like never before.”

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) said the anti-SOPA movement showed a certain “coming of political age” for the tech industry, and his colleagues in the House are treading carefully.

“They’re involving the tech community more and are more interested in listening,” said Polis, who also opposed SOPA. “They’re paying closer attention now.”

I think even those two strong allies in the fight against SOPA are missing the mark somewhat. It's not the tech industry that people need to be paying such close attention to. It's the internet users themselves. Ignoring that and just trying to court deals with the companies is a strategy that's likely to backfire.

At the end, the article acknowledges this in a rather backhanded way -- merely using it to suggest that the tech industry really isn't so powerful and that politicians shouldn't worry about another SOPA:

“The rational observers realize there’s a significant overestimation of high tech’s ability to control the netroots,” said one industry lobbyist.

Another lobbyist said it’s “nearly impossible” to get the tech community to engage on policy issues, especially complicated measures that are highly technical, such as cybersecurity, or dry, such as online taxes.

“SOPA was an inflection point and people on the Hill are certainly going to take more notice next time around,” the lobbyist said. “But one incident like that isn’t going to be the huge game changer.”

But notice what's totally ignored here. That the "netroots" -- the internet users who stood up and spoke out by the millions -- still are engaged and aware. The lobbyist is correct that the tech industry can't control the netroots. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to fear concerning another SOPA, it means that politicians need to be open and engaging with the netroots, not just the tech industry.

And this article suggests that folks on Capitol Hill still might not understand that... which is why it actually may be more likely that we'll see another SOPA moment.

Filed Under: capitol hill, copyright, internet, pipa, politics, sopa, tech industry, users

Canada's New Copyright Bill: The Good, The Bad and The Undecided

from the now-is-the-time-to-speak-up dept

After three failed attempts over the past seven years, copyright changes are coming to Canada. Bill C-11 enters the final stage of committee review next week, and after that it's all-but-guaranteed to pass into law. As Michael Geist puts it, "while there will still be some additional opportunities for debate—third reading in the House of Commons, Senate review—the reality is that next week's discussion will largely determine the future of Canadian copyright law."

The bill as written is nowhere near as damaging as SOPA/PIPA or even the DMCA, and it has significant bright spots, such as extending Fair Dealing (our comparatively toothless version of Fair Use) to include parody, satire, education and non-commercial remixes and mash-ups. But it does include one big problem: an anti-circumvention clause that, like the DMCA in America, will make it illegal to break copy protection even for the purposes of legal copying. This makes no more sense under Canadian copyright law than it does anywhere else: if the act of copying is legal, why should the means to do so be illegal? The Canadian Library Association has proposed a common-sense amendment to the so-called "digital locks" provision, clarifying that circumvention is only infringing if it is "for the purpose of an act that is an infringement of the copyright". It makes no sense to exclude such a requirement.

The other major concern is the amendments requested by content industry representatives, which if accepted would turn C-11 from a relatively tame bill into a monstrous cousin of SOPA/PIPA. Proposals include notice-and-takedown systems, graduated response from ISPs, website blocking provisions, warrantless access to subscriber information, and many of the other worst parts of SOPA/PIPA and the DMCA. Additionally, the licensing agency Access Copyright is opposing the bill's expansion of Fair Dealing, and even trying to go in the opposite direction and scale it back.

All these proposals will be reviewed by the committee in a "clause-by-clause" review of the bill. For Canadians who value progressive copyright and a free and open internet, the good news is that most of the bad amendments will likely be rejected, both because the committee members are well aware of the massive public backlash against SOPA/PIPA, and because many of the proposals are not the mere "technical amendments" that are permitted at this stage. But there are no guarantees, and that means that now is an essential time to make your voice heard, and ensure that the right decisions are made about the future of Copyright in Canada. We must let our representatives know that we support common-sense changes to the digital locks provision, and oppose the SOPA-fication of the bill by industry groups, as well as the attack on Fair Dealing by Access Copyright.

Geist has provided a convenient list of e-mail addresses for all the committee members, and Open Media's Say No tool allows you to contact your Member of Parliament—though it does not allow you to enter a custom message, so I recommend finding and contacting your MP directly. I also hope that American and international readers will not see this as a purely Canadian issue: it is, in fact, a part of ongoing American efforts to introduce stronger copyright wherever possible. Canadian copyright legislation has been largely driven by U.S. interests and pressure tactics like the USTR's Special 301 report. You can be confident that if the American government gets its wish and Canada enacts harsher copyright laws, they will soon be pushing to "harmonize" the law and bring the same restrictions back to the U.S.

In many ways, Canada is benefitting from the fallout of the SOPA/PIPA protests, which is helping to shield us from the worst of the proposed changes—but that cannot be an excuse for complacency. If we make the effort to fix the problems with C-11, and push back against industry proposals that aim to inject it with new, bigger problems, we can emerge from this process as an example of the right way to approach evolving copyright law.

Filed Under: c-11, canada, copyright, dmca, fair dealing, fair use, pipa, restrictions, sopa

Senator Moran Chats With Techdirt About SOPA, Innovation And The Importance Of An Open Internet

from the another-senator-recognizing-the-role-of-innovation dept

It's no secret that one of our key concerns over the years has been the lack of elected officials who seem to really get many of the issue that concern us the most -- leading to a feeling, especially among the internet generation, that Congress doesn't actually represent us. There have been a few exceptions along the way, and certainly Senator Ron Wyden has long been established as one of the few politicians who really understands the importance of innovation and an open internet (as well as important civil liberties issues). However, we are starting to see a small, but growing, number of elected officials recognizing the importance of these issues.

One who has been especially interesting over the last few months is Senator Jerry Moran, from Kansas. After Senator Wyden, Senator Moran was one of the first Senators to recognize the problems with PIPA and to take a stand against the bill, agreeing to put a hold on it and to filibuster against it, if it came to the floor. He's also the key Senator behind the Startup Act, which we've noted actually appears to be a strong proactive bill designed to clear out some innovation-hindering regulations, while clearing the field for new startups and innovations that create jobs and cool services.

Given all that, I was excited to get to spend some time with Senator Moran to talk about a variety of these issues and get his thoughts on them. For those of you attending SXSW this weekend, it's also worth noting that Senator Moran will be hosting a panel at the event on this very topic: "Encouraging Innovation and Empowering Entrepreneurs." That's happening Sunday at 3:30 at the AT&T Conference Hotel.

I started off the talk with Senator Moran by asking him about the fight over PIPA, and where his key concerns were. The Senator gave a pretty comprehensive answer that laid out how he views the fight over PIPA in the larger context of the overall economy, as well as the importance of innovation in creating new jobs and growing the economy. He noted that, if we're going to be developing the economy and helping "the people who have ideas and want to innovate," the internet is the key cog in making it all work. It was a key theme that came up multiple times in our discussion and is an important driving force behind his stance on many of these issues. When we dug into his decision to oppose PIPA, it's no surprise that it was a discussion with Senator Wyden that helped him fully understand the issues.

I had the fortune of having Senator Wyden come visit with me last year on this topic asking if I would be interested in the effort to keep SOPA and PIPA from becoming law. With a little bit of research and my sense that, if we create a bureaucratic challenge to those who use the internet, that we're going to lose the ability to innovate and to create new businesses that allow people who have ideas to take those ideas to market and to have success. Also, recognizing that the internet has become the voice of democracy in our country. So you're always going to have concerns about the ability to express your opinion in using the internet.

As we know, when PIPA (and SOPA) were first introduced, they were pretty much guaranteed to pass, if you believed the prevailing thoughts on the matter. The entertainment industry gets those types of bills passed. So an early and vocal stand against those bills and against many colleagues was a tough position to take -- and Moran even admitted to me that he didn't think the bills could be stopped. He noted that after Senator Wyden convinced him that "this was the right position to take":

I didn't expect to necessarily have success. All the so-called powerful players -- entertainment industries, Chamber of Commerce, significant, influential Senators -- really were on the other side of this issue.

But it was the internet and its users -- the very folks he was seeking to protect -- who helped prove that his position could prevail:

Senator Wyden and I agreed to place a hold on the bill. We agreed that when the bill came to the floor, that we were going to filibuster, and make it difficult for the bill to become law. However as a result of efforts by those who use the internet and people from across the country, my view that this would be an uphill climb became overshadowed by the outpouring of citizen input to members of the Senate. As we look back at that historic moment, the voice of the internet was successful in turning back all those powerful interests that I thought would make it very difficult to stop SOPA or PIPA.

Given just how surprising it was, even to those who were deep in the fight, I wondered what his thoughts were on what the protests against these bills really meant. Did he believe it was a true shift in how Congress would handle itself? Or was it just a "one time" deal, as the MPAA and RIAA have been suggesting lately?

The ability to convince the Majority Leader not to put this bill on the floor really was a significant moment -- not just for that legislation, but I have no doubt that the ability of people who use the internet to influence the outcome of decisions made in Washington DC is significant. We now know that it can be done. I have no doubt that the internet becomes the provider of information and the ability to influence the people who make decisions in Washington DC. I don't see it at all as a one time event. My colleagues are much more likely to be paying attention to tech issues, knowing that there is a voice that can come our way very quickly, very easily and in significant magnitude.

And part of what made the whole thing so powerful was that the internet didn't just enable people to speak out, it enabled people who never had a voice in Congress before to impact what was happening.

I represent the folks of Kansas, and this issue gave me the opportunity to have conversations with constituents that my guess is rarely, if ever, visited with me as a Senator, or other elected officials on other issues facing the country. But this was something they cared strongly about. And they had the background and the information -- and became interested in a way that set a whole new set of constituents involved in the political process of telling members of Congress what they think is important. And I would envision that's something that continues and doesn't go away and is available for the right issue now and in the future.

And, as an example of how this matters, we had a "high tech task force" meeting for Senators, which is normally attended by just a couple Senators and staff, but I would guess that there were more than a dozen Senators who came to this task force meeting. Again, I think that a way to get elected officials' attention is now through the internet. As a result of that happening, I think you see Senators paying more attention to issues that are important to the tech community.

On that note, we began to talk about other such issues of importance, such as the Startup Act, and again, he noted his general philosophy on how these things impact the wider economy. This isn't a small issue to him, it's part of a much larger issue of trying to get to the core of fixing our economy, rather than merely duct taping over things. And that means not just treating the symptoms, but really seeking a true cure -- and that means going back to the heart of what makes the economy tick and to grow, which is entrepreneurial innovation.

I'm in Congress, in part, because of a belief that our country's fiscal condition is serious, that deficits matter, that we're spending money we don't have -- we've got to get our budget in balance. It became clear to me, just watching the administration and Congress, that there's an inability, an unwillingness, a lack of commitment to solving this problem. Or even addressing this problem. So, it became clear to me that another way to approach the deficit is to grow the economy. I started looking for what's the proven record for success in creating jobs. I became acquainted with research done by the Kaufman Foundation -- they generally focus on entrepreneurship -- and discovered about job creation in this country, the net job gains have been occurring over the last decade mostly from startup companies.

So, based on Kaufman Foundation research, I started to pursue the idea, "what is it that we can do to create an environment in this country, where a person who has a better shot of getting the product to market, has the necessary capital, doesn't spend all their time fighting the bureaucracy and regulations, has the necessary talent pool and labor force." That culminated in the Startup Act.

If we're going to have a growing economy with entrepreneurship and new ideas, starting a company becomes very important. And not just for the purpose of providing revenue for the government to pay down its debt, but in the process of creating an entrepreneurial environment that helps someone with an idea take it to market and pursue success, we're also putting lots of Americans to work and they are better able to live that thing we call the American Dream.

I've said before that I think the ideas in the bill are pretty common sense and uncontroversial. I've also discussed how most of these issues are completely non-partisan. They're just good ideas in general, and Senator Moran made pretty much the exact same point. In talking about how he got Senator Mark Warner to co-sponsor the Startup Act, Moran noted that this is not a partisan issue at all.

I'm a Republican, he's a Democrat. And there's nothing in this bill that shouldn't be supported by both parties -- by people with just good judgment and common sense -- and a desire to see good things happen in this country. There ought not to be partisanship to this stuff.

We got into a longer discussion about the fact that many of the people involved in the SOPA/PIPA fight were looking to be "proactive" going forward, and looking for a positive agenda they could get behind -- and I wondered if there were elements of that in the Startup Act. Senator Moran pointed out that we've seen how the community can stop a bad bill, but it would be interesting to see if they can embrace a good bill as well, and highlighted that, at the roots, there were some key similarities on these issues:

The regulatory environment is very similar to [one of the key concerns in] SOPA and PIPA: a belief that if you're going to spend all your time as an entrepreneur hiring lawyers to get through the mess of bringing your business to fruition, you're probably not going to be successful. That was one of the problems of SOPA and PIPA. It was forcing folks to spend their time litigating, as opposed to pursing a new idea. So I think there are some common threads between the issues.

One of the aspects of the Startup Act that I found really compelling was the part that requires that an actual cost/benefit analysis be done on new regulations that will have an economic impact on startups. As I've mentioned here before, it struck me as totally absurd that this isn't a key part of all legislative efforts, where there's a real analysis not just of the benefits of a particular piece of legislation, but of the costs too. Senator Moran clearly agreed, and was pretty emphatic about it:

This is just common sense! Everything we do in government should have an analysis as to whether or not the benefits exceed the cost. This is what I hope most Americans would realize: this is just about good government.

He did note that there were some agencies that already have this requirement, but the goal here was to cover the rest, which are a big part of the government.

Of course, there are other issues beyond The Startup Act, so I asked him what he thought was important concerning the open internet and what's coming down the road. He brought up his involvement and his strong, strong belief in open spectrum and making sure that new spectrum auctions include open spectrum that can be used for WiFi (or WiFi-like open offerings) that allow for much freer innovation in services and devices. This is a big and important issue, which we've covered in the past, and I'm glad to hear that Senator Moran is also involved there.

However, he then said it was really important to realize that the fights over SOPA and PIPA are not over.

The concepts of SOPA and PIPA are not over. There still is a significant constituency -- a powerful group of members of Congress and interest groups -- that want to see something like SOPA and PIPA accomplished. So we need to continue to be vigilant about our efforts in an open internet.... While we had success, in Washington, DC, nothing ever really goes away. We have to remain vigilant that these issues don't surface at sometime, maybe even unexpectedly.

We got into a short discussion on the OPEN Act, where much of it focused on the process by which OPEN came about, making use of Representative Issa's "Madison" platform to allow for discussions, comments and feedback directly on the bill itself. I asked how he felt about such crowdsourcing of legislative efforts and if it had a future in Congress.

Legislators who have concerns about keeping the internet open ought to be very open and seek input from people who deal with the internet, who care strongly about these issues, whose livelihoods depend on the internet. So, I think it's very consistent for someone with a philosophy of an open internet to be very open in seeking solutions, suggestions and even criticisms of legislation. I think that's a new development, and the internet provides a new way [of doing that].... That platform allows us to seek input before mistakes are made and before a piece of legislation gets so far down the legislative path as SOPA and PIPA did.

This is a growing opportunity for policy makers soliciting input, and a great way for those who want to participate in the political process to provide that input.

And, finally, we talked about ACTA and TPP and what was going on there and whether or not he had concerns about both the substance of those efforts and the process by which they are happening.

These are examples of what I was talking about before on the importance of being vigilant. These issues may surface again in different forms, in unexpected ways. These international agreements... what I know about the Constitution is that a treaty must be ratified by the United States Senate. So while it's been negotiated and signed by the President, I would argue that it's not effective until the Senate ratifies it -- and no such ratification, that I know of, is expected.

This is why the folks who care about an open internet need to stay vigilant.

We touched on a few other topics, such as increasing access to broadband and how that's a "great equalizer" for all sorts of communities, including many of the rural communities that he represents. The conversation with Senator Moran was quite interesting and enjoyable, and it's good to find more elected officials who appear to be directly interested in encouraging innovation, and recognizing the role that innovation plays in economic growth -- and how bad regulations can all-too-easily hinder that kind of growth and the prosperity it creates. There were, of course, plenty of other issues we could have talked about, but the Senator was kind enough to spend a lot more time than we had initially allotted in this conversation, and I didn't want to keep him any longer. Perhaps in the future, we'll have a chance to revisit these and other issues that I know are important to the community here, and can perhaps dig in even more on some of them.

Once again, for those of you at SXSW this weekend, it'll probably be worth your time to stop by and see Senator Moran at his panel discussing many of these same issues.

Filed Under: jerry moran, pipa, sopa, startup act

Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement

from the keep-digging dept

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick Cotton is shameless in his disinformation efforts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIAA Still Doesn't Get It: Hopes SOPA Opposition Was A 'One-Time Experience'

from the you-don't-know-what-you're-up-against dept

In a previous post, I looked at the first part of Andrew Keen's interview with RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. In the second half of the interview, Sherman fields some audience questions collected on Twitter, and his answers further expose the serious problems with his understanding of what's happening in music, what happened with SOPA, and what's happening to his industry.

The first question directly challenges Sherman over his NYTimes op-ed in which he claimed the massive opposition to SOPA/PIPA was somehow undemocratic, asking him if he really thinks an informed populace is a bad thing. But Sherman is still convinced that it was all a misinformation campaign by Google (though he avoids using the name):

I obviously think that an informed electorate is a great thing. The question is whether they were really informed or whether they were being misinformed. That was the point of the op-ed: that there was a lot of misinformation about the bill that was being circulated, and that was accepted by readers online in terms of "if it comes from these sources it must be true." I know that a lot of members of Congress who had worked very hard on the legislation were very frustrated that they couldn't get out their side of the story, that this legislation was not what it was represented to be. So my op-ed was not intended to really raise questions about whether the legislation was good or bad, but that everybody has a responsibility to be accurate and really factual about what the legislation provides. Otherwise those platforms can be used in ways that aren't engaging the electorate in a good way, but rather in an anti-democratic way.

Sorry, but Cary Sherman is not allowed to accuse others of misinformation—not unless he's going into comedy. In the first half of the interview, and in his op-ed, Sherman attempts constant deception. He talks about the dangers of counterfeit products to play up the unrelated issue of copyright infringement; he presents laughably incomplete data; he insists there was "No Duty To Monitor" in SOPA/PIPA, ignoring the fact that where there was no "duty" there was extreme liability incentive; he claims that Anonymous' DDOS attacks are the "real" censorship in a blatant misuse of the term—the list goes on and on. And can we just pause for a moment to marvel at the sheer insanity of the claim that Congress "couldn't get their side of the story" heard? Congress? The folks who keep multiple 24-hour cable channels fed with stories at every second of every week of every month? They couldn't "get their side of the story" out? Now that's misinformation. Sherman is a misinformation artist, and he'd even be a good one if he wasn't also so naïve, as the rest of his response demonstrates:

Hopefully that was a one time experience that came from a lot of different things coming together, where a lot of different people came to the conclusion that this was a terrible piece of legislation. I think Congress got that message loud and clear. But in the future, think of how that could be abused for bad purposes. I think all of us have an interest in making sure that we hold ourselves on the internet to the same high standards that we've tried to hold ourselves in the offline world, whether it's newspapers or broadcast journalism or whatever. There ought to be clarity and integrity with respect to the facts.

That's right: he hopes millions of people actively participating in the democratic process with the help of online tools was a one-time experience. Putting aside the fact that it makes you question his values, this statement demonstrates that he's a fool. His industry has pushed and pushed for decades, eroding freedoms and locking up culture through deals negotiated in back rooms, and they finally reached the breaking point. The world woke up, and Sherman thinks he can just wait for them to fall asleep again.

He also still can't get it through his head that the internet is not separate, and that media is just people communicating. Newspapers and broadcast news are no more or less perfect than online news, and only the most oblivious commentators truly believe they are paragons of journalistic ideals that can serve as an example to newcomers. Besides, plenty of traditional sources were opposed to SOPA/PIPA as well.

On the topic of newspapers, the next question asks Sherman for his thoughts on their approach online. He notes that many have yet to find the advertising dollars they hoped for, and says it's "interesting" (wink wink) that so many are moving towards paywalls. I won't respond to that, because Mike said it all last week: let 'em.

Another reader asks what he thinks of online services that let artists go directly to fans:

You know, I have nothing with cutting out the middleman. I think that if an artist wants to go it alone, go it without a middleman, that is the artist's choice. And for some artists it can work very well. It hasn't happened that way: most artists who have been more majorly successful have had the help of a label, it could be an indie label or a major label. What they provide is the marketing and promotion that is so clearly necessary to distinguish yourself in this day and age. In 2010 you had 75,000 new albums released. 70,000 of them, that's 94%, sold less than 1000 copies. That isn't much to make a commercial career out of. It's hard to see how you could make a career as a musician when you're selling less than 1000 copies of your recording, unless all you're really doing is live gigs and you're making a few extra bucks by selling some recordings.

It's a muddled response, because the numbers he presents are from SoundScan and do not include the very direct-to-fan services he's supposed to be talking about. More importantly, it shows how limited his thinking is: other than live shows, he ignores every single artist revenue stream, even the traditional ones like licensing. Mere number of albums sold is not enough information to decide if an artist can build a career, and it never has been. Sherman continues, rightly recognizing that there are still very important roles for middlemen services today, but failing to realize that his industry is not the only player:

The point is that for some artists who want to go it alone, that's great, many of the artists that we see are great at making music, they're great at performing, but business is not what they want to do, promotion is not what they want to do. There are some obvious exceptions to that, but that's what record companies do, that's what managers do. They're all intermediaries in a way, but they are intermediaries that grow the audience, that improve the demand for that artist's creative work.

What he ignores is that the traditional record label model is not the only way to offer these services. Increasingly, it's the worst way: even in the first part of the interview he admitted that labels are no longer benefiting artists the way they used to. Artists who eschew labels may have to do some of the legwork of promotions and business, but the tools are all there for them. They can use Bandcamp. They can use TuneCore. They can use Topspin. They can use Bandzoogle. They don't need label help to find a distributor and build a website and launch a merch store—they can do it all in a few clicks. Good middlemen are enablers, while record labels still want to be all-powerful gatekeepers, as Sherman makes disgustingly clear:

There's no doubt that there's going to be a continuing role for record companies. That role may change over time, but the more you've got online capability for anyone with a guitar and a little bit of recording equipment to get online and try to become a musician, the more you need specialists to designate and separate the wheat from the chaff, who is worth listening to, who is worth promoting and marketing. That's what record companies have traditionally done. They have been the talent scouts and then they have put their financial and human resources into actually marketing and promoting that talent and helping to shape it. How many artist pages are there on MySpace right now? Who can figure out who to listen to? So having a curation function that record companies perform is becoming more important, not less.

I hope Sherman has fun separating the wheat from the chaff on MySpace (sigh) while the rest of the world leaves him in its dust. The astonishing arrogance of his statements just underline the problem: the recording industry sees itself as the arbiter of culture, and isn't willing to give up even a shred of control. The internet has enabled countless new curation models, from the ease of setting up a music blog to the algorithmic possibilities of recommendation engines to the ongoing social curation of Facebook and Twitter—we don't need executives to "designate" who is worth listening to based on ROI projections. Promotion takes only a fraction of the "financial and human resources" that it once did, and artists are increasingly unwilling to sign over their entire careers for something they can do themselves.

The next question is about ways to enforce intellectual property rights without damaging innovation and creativity, and Sherman calls for balance (as long as that balance is completely in his favor):

It's finding that sweet spot between protecting content and creators and creativity, and ensuring that you're not losing the benefits of innovation in technology, that is a difficult thing to do. There are ways that it can be done that aren't now being taken advantage of. YouTube for example, anything goes up there, but once it's taken down they have a mechanism, a filter to make sure that it doesn't go back up. Why aren't other websites doing that? Why, when other websites are being told that particular content is illegally being posted, don't they take more aggressive measures to prevent it from being put up there, or being put back up there? There are now technologies available that make it really easy to identify copyrighted content in a way where it can be protected but all the other benefits of the technology would be available. So there are ways for the technology to be used to actually improve the situation for creators and maintain technological innovation, we just need more of a will to see it done.

If it's "really easy" to identify infringing material, why did Viacom sue YouTube over 100 videos they themselves uploaded? How did Rumblefish accidentally claim ownership of birdsong? Why have the feds been seizing domains over label-authorized material? Why did Universal Music declare 50 Cent's own website to be a rogue site? It's only "easy" if you don't care about legitimate material getting caught in the crossfire—and indeed, even Sherman's own wording notes that it's only easy to identify "copyrighted" content, not infringing content.

There is some more discussion, covering Sherman's shock that the streaming services his industry has fought at every turn are not suddenly making him rich—but it's all pretty routine. Sherman closes out the interview with a statement that would have sounded optimistic and forward-thinking ten years ago, but today sounds like an obsolete industry playing catch-up, pretending to embrace something they have fought for years, and fantasizing that they can exert control over something that is happening without and despite them:

I think that one of the things we've learned is that it's not likely to be one big thing, it's likely to be a lot of little things, it could be thousands of little things. There are so many niches in the music market in the way that people want music and the way that people use music and in the type of people who use it, that we think that there are going to have to be a lot of different models to try and monetize many different ways in which content is delivered to consumers. And we're actually optimistic that over time we're going to be finding a lot of those models and they're going to add up to a viable revenue stream for the industry.

"Over time"? Sorry, guy-who-just-noticed-MySpace: time's up.

Filed Under: cary sherman, misinformation, pipa, sopa
Companies: riaa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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