UK Culture Secretary: Search Engines Must Magically Stop Piracy Or Else!

from the good-luck-with-that dept

You'd think that after years and years of pointless banter along these lines that people in power would understand just how ridiculous they sound when they try to blame search engines for infringement. TorrentFreak points out that the UK's Culture Secretary Sajid Javid gave a barn raising speech to folks from the British recording industry. It starts out with the usual political fluff about just how important the recording industry is and how much money the government is forking over to the industry in questionable subsidies. And, apparently Javid has no qualms directly admitting to accepting favors (bribes?) from the industry. Specifically he tells a "joke" about now his kids thing he's cool, because he can get hot concert tickets ("my new-found ability to get tickets for the Capital FM Summertime Ball, or Sam Smith at Somerset House!"), whereas in his previous job no one was rushing to give him such favors. It's a joke, but it's pretty telling.

Then, about halfway through, he gets to the meat of the speech, in which Javid talks about the need to (of course) ratchet up copyright laws even more. Because that's the red meat of any speech to the recording industry.

People in your industry have a true vocation. You identify talented artists and record, release and publicise their work not just to make money, but because you love music. You have a passion for it. And intellectual property protection underpins that passion. It allows you to do what you do best. Without enforceable copyright there would be no A&R, no recording studios, no producers, no session musicians, no publicity, no artwork.

Now, copyright law absolutely does enable one particular business model, but to argue that there would be no industry, no producers, no session musicians, no publicity and no artwork without enforceable copyright is just silly. And easily disproved since (1) there was plenty of artwork and music before that (2) there are still plenty of people who produce music without relying on copyright as a business model and (3) "session musicians" tend not have a copyright in the music they play anyway. They get paid session wages. That's not about copyright.

Note how he insists that the recording industry is not in it for the money, but for the "passion." He's pretty sure of this, even though copyright has nothing to do with passion, and everything to do with money. But when it comes to the internet sites he doesn't like, he's absolutely positive the opposite is true:

As I said earlier, you work in music because you love it. Copyright crooks don’t love music. They love money, and they’ve been attracted to the industry solely by its potential to make them rich. Take away their profits and you take away their reason for being.

Interesting. Because most of those sites make almost no money. And, of course, the vast majority of file sharing happens between individuals for no profit at all. Are there some sites making some money from ads? Yes, but it's a tiny amount. And, um, as we've pointed out in the past, if it was such a lucrative business, wouldn't that suggest that the industry players themselves should get into the business and provide a better product?

But, the main point he's making is the favorite trope of the industry: that piracy is really all the big internet companies' fault, and he's demanding that they wave their magic wand, or he'll get legislation passed that forces them to wave their magic wand.

Let me be absolutely clear that I completely agree with Mike Weatherley when he says that the search engines also have to play their part. They must step up and show willing. That’s why Vince Cable and I have written to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, asking them to work with you to stop search results sending people to illegal sites. And let me be perfectly clear: if we don’t see real progress, we will be looking at a legislative approach. In the words of Martin Mills, “technology companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters.”

We wrote about Weatherley's ridiculous comments earlier this year, but apparently Javid would like to double down on them. Here's the stuff he leaves out: what's an "illegal" site? Who defines what is or is not an illegal site? The legacy entertainment industry once claimed that YouTube is an illegal site. Should Google, Microsoft and Yahoo block all traffic to YouTube? Or what about Veoh, which they also declared to be an illegal site, until it was shut down. Only later did a court rule it to be perfectly legal. Oops. Too late.

What about Soundcloud? Or the Internet Archive? Or Vimeo? All of those were on a list that Universal Music helped create a few years ago of "illegal sites" on which no advertising could be placed.

So, again, how exactly are they determining what is and what is not an "illegal" site? That seems kind of important, because history shows this industry isn't very good at figuring it out. Remember, this is the same industry that tried to ban the VCR and the MP3 player entirely. I have a real problem with thinking that they're the final judges on what is a "legal" or "illegal" site.

And, of course all of this leaves out that very, very, very little piracy happens because of someone going to a search engine and typing in the name of an artist. We looked at the data, and there's almost no evidence that search is a major driver of piracy -- especially when it comes to someone looking up an artist's name or songs. In some cases, where people do searches directly related with copyright infringement, it may help them find an unauthorized track, but it's difficult to believe that the person doing such a search is looking for a way to pay in the first place.

In other words, it's pretty ridiculous to blame search engines for helping people find what they're looking for. The real problem is that the industry hasn't been giving people what they're looking for. Trying to ban search engines from actually helping people isn't exactly a reasonable solution. It's a bad idea that won't work.

The rest of his speech is the usual misleading stats and ridiculous assumptions. He talks about how many unauthorized downloads there are, never bothering to consider how many of those would actually involve payment -- or how many of those might be happening because there aren't useful, cheap and convenient alternatives. It's just all "piracy." He talks about how they're throwing millions at an "education" campaign. This is the old trope that comes up over and over again. "If only," people think, "everyone learned about copyrights, they'd stop infringing." Yeah, right. It's never worked. People don't download unauthorized tracks because they don't know about copyright law. They know. Education is a waste of money -- and nearly all educational campaigns are so laughable that the people they're directed at just laugh at them (often because they actually understand the issues better).

If, as Javid claims, music really "matters" to the UK then creating a bogus "war" with the tech industry (the industry that is actually delivering real solutions) seems like the exact wrong way about helping out. It's just extending the bogus narrative that the recording industry should sit back and let the government and other industries "solve" their failure to adapt to a changing marketplace in which music lovers want a better product.

Filed Under: copyright, culture secretary, education, enforcement, myths, sajid javid, search engines, uk
Companies: bpi

Intellectual Property Casebook Now Available As A Free Download

from the check-it-out dept

About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it'll currently run about $24 on Amazon -- which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there's a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law -- including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.

As mentioned in our last post, Boyle and Jenkins are doing this, in part, because they recognize the insane prices that academic publishers have been getting away with charging for their books:

Partly, we do it because we think the price of legal casebooks and materials is obscene. Law students, who are already facing large debt burdens, are required to buy casebooks that cost $150–$200, and “statutory supplements” that consist mainly of unedited, public domain, Federal statutes for $40 or $50. The total textbook bill for a year can be over $1500. This is not a criticism of casebook authors, but rather of the casebook publishing system. We know well that putting together a casebook is a lot of work and can represent considerable scholarship and pedagogic innovation. We just put together this one and we are proud of it. But we think that the cost is disproportionate and that the benefit flows disproportionately to conventional legal publishers. Some of those costs might have been more justifiable when we did not have mechanisms for free worldwide and almost costless distribution. Some might have been justifiable when we did not have fast, cheap and accurate print on demand services. Now we have both. Legal education is already expensive; we want to play a small part in diminishing the costs of the materials involved.

However, they also note that it's not just about making the books cheaper, but better and more useful:

Our point is not only that the current casebook is vastly too expensive, it is also awkward, inflexible, lacking visual stimulus, incapable of customization and hard to preview and search on the open web. Casebooks do not respond well to the different needs of different professors. Students cannot easily be given free, searchable digital access to all the materials, on all their devices, anywhere, access that does not go away when the course—or the publisher—ends. We can do that.

There are also lots of people outside of law school, or outside this country, who would like to know more about American law—just as there are people outside of computer science who want to know about artificial intelligence. Free is a good price-point for them. Customizable is a good form. This book is merely a beta-test version, but it is an example of what can be done.

In case you're wondering, while the statutory supplement was available on a CC: BY license (requires just attribution), this casebook is under a CC: BY-NC-SA license. The key differences: the former can be resold commercially while the latter has a block on commercial uses. It also has a "share alike" requirement. While I'm a huge fan of Creative Commons, I've been critical of its licenses that include the non-commercial restriction and believe there are strong reasons to remove them, in part because of a perception and branding problem that people have, which potentially do more harm than good to the Creative Commons brand. Many people believe that all CC licenses are "non-commercial" which has actually limited those who wish to use them to encourage commercial use. Separately, the definition of "non-commercial" can be pretty vague (though, to its credit, Creative Commons has worked hard to clarify).

While Boyle and Jenkins are using an NC license with the casebook, I'm happy that they at least put in a note defining their interpretation of commercial use:

Editor’s note: we interpret this to mean “providing the material above cost.” Digital cost is zero. You are free to reproduce the material in paper form and charge a fee to cover copying costs, but nothing more. This applies both to commercial and non commercial entities.

I still think it would have been fine if they'd skipped the "NC" altogether, but it does not appear to be a huge issue here. On the whole this is great news for folks who want to learn more about copyright, patents and trademark law -- whether you're a law student or just an interested bystander...

Filed Under: casebook, copyright, creative commons, education, free, free download, intellectual property casebook, ip casebook, james boyle, jennifer jenkins, law school, patents, trademark

DailyDirt: Learning How To Teach Teachers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As the school year in the US begins, students are getting their class schedules and teacher assignments -- and some teachers are going to be better than others. One school can be ranked higher than another, but if your kid has a great teacher, school rankings may not be a meaningful measurement. But how do we find or nurture a growing pool of good teachers? That's a tough task that some folks are looking into, and there may be better ways to teach teachers. Here are just a few links on improving teaching skills.

• Tenured professors aren't better teachers than non-tenured professors, but further conclusions are tricky to make. It does make sense that professors who spend more time teaching than on research and publications would be able to hone their teaching skills a bit more. [url]
• Over the course of a school year, the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher can be the amount of material students learn. Bad teachers barely cover half a year's worth of material, whereas a good teacher can cover 1.5 years of a subject. [url]
• Good teachers aren't born. They're taught to be good teachers. It takes effort and skill to diagnose a student's problems for learning various material, and this skill doesn't just appear out of thin air -- nor can it be created by putting teachers into a Darwinian accountability game of standardized test scores. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: education, learning, professors, school, students, teachers, tenure

City Of London Police Inserting 'This Website Has Been Reported To Police' Banner Ads On Websites With No Legal Review

from the that-seems...-dangerous dept

The City of London police have continued to take their bull-in-a-china-shop approach to "stopping piracy" (generally based on a near total misunderstanding of the internet) to it's next level of ridiculousness. The police (which, yes, no need to remind us, represent a square mile in the middle of wider London, though, yes, it covers many big London businesses and financial firms) appear to have bought into Hollywood's fable about "piracy" being the equivalent of "theft" and not being even remotely concerned about the possibility of collateral damage. Back in April, we noted that the City of London Police had been creating a "blacklist" for advertisers of "bad" sites. And, now it's been revealed that advertisers are supposed to insert a ridiculous City of London advertisement on those websites in place of other ads. Like so many poorly thought out "anti-piracy" campaigns, this one seems to be based on two faulty premises. First, that it's somehow easy to determine what is a legitimate site and what is a "pirate" site. Second, that the thing standing between someone using such a site to get their content and going to an authorized site is just a bit of "education." The "education" story has been floating around for decades and there's basically no evidence to support it whatsoever. The idea that someone is going to go to one of these sites, see this ad, and then think "oh man, I had no idea, let me go to this other site recommended by the police instead" is just laughable. Even the idea that they'd read "this website has been reported to the police" and not laugh is kind of ridiculous. Hell, just the idea that the sorts of folks frequenting these sites even look at banner ads is kind of laughable.

In fact, some of us are so conditioned to ad blindness that it actually took a bit of an effort to get me consciously focus on the City of London Police banner ads in that picture -- and I didn't even notice the top banner until I was proofreading this post. Can't imagine that's particularly productive.

But the bigger problem is the one we brought up when it first came out that they were putting together this list in the first place. A totally non-transparent, one-sided system by which these technologically clueless police designate a site to be a "pirate" site seems ripe for abuse and harming perfectly legitimate sites. Remember, of course, the last time the legacy entertainment and online ad industry teamed up on such a list? It included tons of legitimate sites, including the Internet Archive, Soundcloud, Vimeo and BitTorrent's corporate website. It also included a bunch of popular hip hop blogs and 50 Cent's personal website.

One hopes that this new list will be put together with a bit more care, but you never really know. The industry has a way of declaring certain sites "rogue" despite them being perfectly fine. Remember, this is the same industry that tried to outlaw the VCR, the DVR and the MP3 player. It's also the same industry that insisted that both Youtube and Veoh were "pirate" sites, though both sites won in court (not before Veoh went out of business though).

So what happens when the City of London Police put these banner ads on the next YouTube? Does that site have any recourse from this opaque and totally one-sided process? Do they get to sue the police for defamation? And, really, in what world do the City of London Police think they have any jurisdiction outside of a single square mile of land?

Filed Under: advertising, anti-piracy, city of london police, copyright, education

Study: Half Of All Young People In UK Think Digital Content Should Be Free To Download

from the speed-and-convenience dept

One of the abiding delusions of the copyright industry is that if people -- especially the young -- could somehow be "educated" about the value of intellectual monopolies, they would learn to love them -- despite the fact that there is zero evidence any copyright "education" campaign has worked. In this context, some interesting research from the UK, reported by TorrentFreak, explored the attitudes of both young and old to accessing online content. Here's one of the striking results of that work, which suggests that the copyright industries are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of future online users:

half of the up-and-coming generation believes that the Internet should be a content free-for-all. A total of 49% of the 8 to 15-year-olds questioned said that they believe that people should be able to download the content they want from the Internet for nothing.

The following is particularly noteworthy:

The mainstream entertainment companies invariably insist that downloading movies and music without permission is tantamount to stealing. However, when it comes to the UK's children the survey suggests that Big Entertainment has a mountain to climb to have that notion widely adopted. While 16% of children accept that it's wrong to obtain content for free without the creator's permission, just 7% believe that file-sharing is a form of stealing.

That is, 93% of the 614 young people interviewed do not accept the copyright industry's relentless attempts to brand file-sharing as "stealing." This result is comparable with that found by Swedish research among a similar age group. The rest of the UK survey throws useful light on what the main problem is here. Once again, it seems to be about the affordability and usability and online services:

Among the children, whose resources are often more limited, 44% said their motivation was financial, with a quarter of 16-24 year olds reporting that file-sharing is the only way they can afford to access content online.

Unsurprisingly, the issue of accessibility came in at a close second place for both [age] groups. The speed and convenience of file-sharing was cited as a key motivator for use by 41% of adults and 38% of the children.

As Techdirt keeps pointing out to the copyright industry, all these studies suggest the same solution to reducing unauthorized sharing: offering easy-to-use services at fair prices. When will it ever learn? Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: accessibility, copyright, culture, downloading, education, kids

DailyDirt: Should Touch Typing Replace Cursive?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Kids today are bombarded with technology -- touchscreens, keyboards, Xbox controllers, and various gesture-based user interfaces are all competing against the lowly pencil and paper. Sure, finger painting and crayons are still all the rage with toddlers, but once kids get a little older, those activities might not be as attractive as a game of Angry Birds or Mario Kart. Is there any evidence that typing and touchscreens will hinder kids from learning? Here are a few links that seem to point to an association between handwriting and better learning.

• What are kids missing out on if they don't learn how to write in cursive? Some brain scans show that more grey matter is activated when writing in cursive, and some studies suggest that handwriting leads to being more expressive (compared to typing). [url]
• Only a handful of states require teaching cursive in schools. Keyboard skills may be increasingly necessary to enter essays into computer-based standardized tests, so teaching cursive isn't as critical to doing well on tests.... [url]
• It might be better to take notes with handwriting, rather than on a laptop. Students taking notes on laptops are more likely to record lectures verbatim and not actually digest any of the material as they took notes (even when warned not to do so!), and even though students typing their notes could take down more information, it didn't help them retain any more of it. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: common core, cursive, education, handwriting, learning, standardized tests, typing

UK ISPs Agree To Send Out Intimidation Notices For Claimed Infringement

from the educational-program dept

Despite no real evidence of effectiveness, various UK ISPs have now agreed to start sending out "educational" "alerts" to subscribers that copyright holders accuse of using their internet connection for unauthorized file sharing. This is a modification on the US "six strikes" system, in that these latest alerts are even more meaningless. Unlike the US's "voluntary" system, in which ISPs may take some limited punitive measures, the UK ISPs won't do that. They won't even tell users about the possibility of punitive measures. They'll basically just say "hey, someone spotted you doing something, and we think maybe you should knock it off."

The deal has been struck with the BPI, which represents the British music industry, and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which covers film.

The bodies had originally suggested the letters should tell repeat infringers about possible punitive measures.

They also wanted access to a database of known illegal downloaders, opening the possibility of further legal action against individuals. Continue reading the main story

However, following almost four years of debate between the two sides, the final draft of the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (Vcap) contains neither of those key measures.

Of course, as the BBC article notes, the MPAA/BPI and others wanted much stricter measures, but were unable to get them. And that means this is nothing more than a foot in the door plan. It's easy to make a prediction: when copyright infringement doesn't magically stop, these groups will go running back to the ISPs (and to the UK government) whining about how more "needs to be done."

Within the leaked agreement, one important point: if this system does not have a big effect on piracy, then rights holders will call for the "rapid implementation" of the Digital Economy Act, and all the strict measures that come with it.

Steve Kuncewicz, an expert in online and internet law, agreed. He speculated that the deal "may be a Trojan horse exercise in gathering intelligence about how seriously downloaders take threats".

In other words, if it can be shown that asking nicely does not have a significant effect on curbing piracy, rights holders will for the first time have a seriously credible set of data with which to apply pressure for harder enforcement on those who simply do not want to pay for entertainment.

I would question the "seriously credible set of data." Showing that asking nicely doesn't stop infringement doesn't mean that suddenly pulling out the big ban hammer will actually stop infringement. At this point there's plenty of "seriously credible data" that tougher laws don't stop infringement (or, at least, if they do short term, it doesn't last very long). But, you know, to the big copyright lobbyists, greater enforcement is the only hammer they know. Actually providing consumers with what they want is a concept that they don't spend any time exploring.

Filed Under: copyright, education, isps, notices, uk

Student-Targeting Data Harvester inBloom Closes Shop, CEO Blames Parents For Their 'Misdirected Criticism'

from the if-you-can't-beat-'em,-blame-'em dept

It is with no great sadness that I bring you the news that schoolkid data harvester inBloom will be shutting down. Many schools were looking for a better way to quantify their student body, and this solution seemed to be just as much of a judgment error as any.

People may like Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets, but they still value privacy, especially when it comes to their kids. It may seem counterintuitive, but that's the way it is. It's one thing if your kids give this information up voluntarily. It's quite another when it's extracted by their educators and handed off to a third party.

People are a little touchy about data collection nowadays.

They were most certainly touchy about inBloom, a non-profit that was offering to house and manage student data for public school districts across the US by extracting a dizzying array of information - we're talking 400 data fields - from disparate school databases as well as from new, optional, sometimes intrusive categories that inBloom also offered.

inBloom went further than just collecting data sets on grades, attendance, etc. It dug deep (as deep as school administrators would allow it to), looking for info on household members, as well as (in one case) hoovering up students' social security numbers despite its own policies against the collection of this personal data.

It started out big, hauling in contracts with nine states in early 2013. By November, parental backlash against the data mining of their kids resulted in that number shrinking to only three. Less than six months later, inBloom appears to be completely dead.

The CEO of inBloom (Iwan Streichenberger) made the announcement in a longish, mostly self-serving post at inBloom's website, taking care to lay the blame of a bad idea at a bad time (and, apparently, badly implemented) at the feet of the public, which simply "misunderstood" how marvelous inBloom's data slurping was.

Over the last year, the incredibly talented team at inBloom has developed and launched a technical solution that addresses the complex challenges that teachers, educators and parents face when trying to best utilize the student data available to them. That solution can provide a high impact and cost-effective service to every school district across the country, enabling teachers to more easily tailor education to students' individual learning needs. It is a shame that the progress of this important innovation has been stalled because of generalized public concerns about data misuse, even though inBloom has world-class security and privacy protections that have raised the bar for school districts and the industry as a whole.

Shame about that pesky "public," eh? Likes Facebook, hates the idea that their kids being mined for data via compulsory education. But rather than admit the public might have a point, inBloom's CEO thinks people just don't get it.

The use of technology to tailor instruction for individual students is still an emerging concept and inBloom provides a technical solution that has never been seen before. As a result, it has been the subject of mischaracterizations and a lightning rod for misdirected criticism.

Streichenberger will be "winding" the company down over the next several months, presumably from his current position on the cross. Once this is shuttered, he may be able to move on to lucrative positions with other unfairly maligned data harvesters like the NSA. Or maybe he can seek solace within the educational system itself, where he can find colleagues in administrative positions who also suffer greatly from "mischaracterizations" and "misdirected criticism" in their student-related endeavors.

Look, I realize it's tough to see your dream business being forced out of existence, but as irrational as it sounds in this era of oversharing (and over-collection), people still want to believe their kids aren't being used as data conduits by their schools or any other entities beyond. inBloom's CEO believes parents were just misled somehow and have fallen victim to their baseless paranoia. But to be a parent is to be paranoid, even needlessly. Telling them they're wrong won't change it, and telling them they're wrong when your company isn't 100% in the right is only going make those paying attention even more resistant to the next company and their "for the children" data harvesting schemes.

Filed Under: data, education, harvesting, privacy, students
Companies: inbloom

Virginia Prosecutor Educates Sexting Teens Rather Than Prosecuting Them

from the good-guys dept

When a moral panic really gets rolling, it often seems like there isn't enough inertia in the world to slow it down. It sure seemed that way to me when it came to "sexting", the term for people, often young folks who don't fully appreciate the consequences, sending around naked pictures of themselves or their friends. I think there might be a great many older folks who forget what it was like to be a kid and then couple that with a general fear of digital technologies and suddenly the sky is falling. That's how you end up with prosecutors who look to charge young people who engage in sexting under child pornography laws, despite the inherent ridiculousness of that situation.

Fortunately, there are indeed some smart people in government, such as Louisa County prosecutor Rusty McGuire of Virginia, who has decided against charging young people for sexting and instead do a bit of education.

According to reports from the Central Virginian and the Associated Press, an investigation by the county sheriff’s office uncovered more than 1,000 nude or sexually suggestive photos posted to Instagram accounts and shared between more than 100 teenagers in Louisa and surrounding counties. But unlike other teen sexting rings that have made national news—where sexters have been brought up on felony pornography charges or disciplined by their schools—Louisa has opted to respond to the scandalous headlines with a refreshing dose of common sense. Major Donald Lowe told the AP that although the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office is still scouring student cellphones for signs of nonconsensual sexual activity, which could result in criminal charges, most students involved won’t be prosecuted. “We said from the beginning that we’re not going to label everyone who participated in this a sex offender,” he said. “There’s no reason to destroy people’s lives and careers over this.”

Now, for those of you already getting your ire up for a rebuttal, the question should always be, "How is justice best served?" I would think the answer to that question should generally be to stop illicit or unwanted behavior while making sure everyone involved is impacted as beneficially as possible. That isn't done by prosecuting children who simply aren't capable of a full understanding of the consequences of their actions. Educating them on the law and the consequences, on the other hand, seems to do the job nicely. With that in mind, McGuire is actively engaging students on their turf.

Louisa schools are expanding programs to teach teenagers “the dangers of social media and how to make smart choices” and are launching a program for parents to help discuss the issue with their kids. McGuire “talks about the importance of not doing any [sexting] activities,” Straley told me. “If you put it out there, it doesn’t go away. Teenagers need to know that and understand that when they put it out there, they’re more or less saying that they’re OK with the world seeing this.”

This is called hitting the nail on the head. Instead of throwing the legal book at someone, you educate everyone. Share some stories about how these kinds of actions have had negative impacts, get parents involved on the issue, and meet kids on a level playing field where you openly and honestly discuss why this might not be such a good idea. Kids are kids and teenagers are going to be interested in sex, no matter what you do. But kids are also generally smarter than I think most of us adults give them credit for and they can grasp the true impact of these actions if someone takes the time to lay it out for them.

Meanwhile, no children are suddenly living with a sexual predator label for the rest of their lives. That's the best solution all around.

Filed Under: education, prosecution, prosecutor, sexting, teens, virginia

Hollywood Hires New Person To Make Same Old Mistakes In Fighting Against The Future

from the good-luck-with-that dept

A few weeks ago, a friend sent over a link to a website called CreativeFutures -- a Hollywood-created organization to (of course) push for anti-piracy efforts. What was really weird about it was that it seemed almost identical to a different such organization, called Creative America, which the same studios had used as a center piece in pushing SOPA, but which had gone quiet. The NY Times, however, has cleared up the mystery. Apparently, CreativeFutures is Creative America, with a new name and a new leader... who seems to be pulling out the same bad playbook on how to deal with innovative technologies that have changed the market for video. Here's a tip: any time you see someone insisting that "the answer" to dealing with widespread infringement is "more education," you know that you're dealing with someone who is either ignorant, or not particularly serious concerning the issue. And yet, here is CreativeFutures new boss, who the NY Times describes as "sassy," Ruth Vitale:

One idea — though now it is no more than that — is to build alliances with educational nonprofit groups that might enforce the notion that stealing an artist’s work online is just like lifting from a classmate’s desk.

“It’s as simple as this: One kid does a painting, and another kid comes up and puts his name on it,” Ms. Vitale said.

For decades, the industry has kept insisting that all people really needed was a bit of "education" and they would magically start shoveling money back down the same payment channels they used to. But, of course, that's never worked. Because it's never been an education issue. It's always been a service problem, in that the industry fails to make works available in a convenient way that consumers want. Yes, the industry has gotten better at this over the years, but they still make it way, way too difficult, and that's why there's infringement.

Second, of course, is if the education is focused on having someone else put a name on your work, well, that's plagiarism, not copyright infringement -- and there's a pretty big distinction there. And, here's the thing: people understand that difference inherently. Pretending that they don't -- as Ms. Vitale seems to do here -- is acting as if the general public is stupid. Pedantically talking down to the very public you want to support you, telling them they need to be educated, and then "educating" them with bullshit misleading analogies that have nothing to do with the actual situation and totally misdiagnose the issue... is not exactly a well thought-out strategy.

Perhaps, instead of throwing money away on bogus groups like the re-christened CreativeFutures, the movie industry would be better off, you know, letting innovators build better services instead of ones that are totally hamstrung and locked up in ways that are annoying and inconvenient to the public. But, if there's one thing we've learned in decades of watching the MPAA and RIAA do the wrong thing it's that, when given the choice between treating consumers as idiots and actually listening to them, they'll always choose the path where they treat customers as idiots.

Filed Under: copyright, education, hollywood, ruth vitale
Companies: creative america, creative futures, mpaa