ISP Copyright Filter Debate Continues: Verizon Stays Away, While Rep. Bono Is All For Filtering

from the not-so-much-a-debate-as-posturing dept

With the entertainment industry actively pushing for ISPs to filter unauthorized content, it seems that the discussion is getting wider and wider attention. Rep. Mary Bono (now Mary Bono Mack), who is rather infamous for the last copyright extension efforts, and who believes that fair use is theft, has now stated that it should be the ISP's responsibility to filter out unauthorized content. Thankfully, she hasn't reached the point of making it mandatory, but it's not surprising to hear her say that she supports the concept of ISP filtering. Not to be left out, Cary Sherman of the RIAA chimed in to note that he doesn't think we need new legislation, but that ISPs should voluntarily start filtering content.

While AT&T agrees (for reasons that still don't make any sense), it's nice to see Verizon feels otherwise. Verizon's Tom Tauke says that the company is not interested in becoming copyright police, noting the inevitable privacy questions this would raise: "We don't want to get into the business of inspecting the bits and figuring out what is and is not appropriate traffic." As much as we tend to disagree with Verizon's position on many policy issues, the company has at least a decent (though, certainly not wonderful) record in protecting privacy. Remember, it was Verizon who initially stood up to the RIAA on trying to get information on customers without filing lawsuits.

Filed Under: cary sherman, copyright filters, isps, mary bono, riaa
Companies: at&t, riaa, verizon

RIAA Can't Explain Why Copyright Damages Should Be Higher

from the um...-just-'cause? dept

Back in December, many people were surprised that Congress had put forth the PRO IP bill that would increase the fines that could be assessed to people found violating copyrights -- especially coming so soon after the outrage over the huge amount allowed under existing law. As Congress is trying to figure this issue out, the US Copyright Office held a roundtable discussion to examine the issue, where it asked the RIAA to explain why larger fines would be a good thing, and even the RIAA couldn't come up with a decent answer. Specifically, RIAA supporters were asked to name a single case where the damages were seen as too low under existing laws, and there was little response. While there was some discussion of cases where the RIAA didn't like the outcome, that wasn't because the fines were limited to too low a number based on the law.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, riaa
Companies: riaa

Judge Says RIAA Should Be Fined For Bundling File Sharing Lawsuits

from the abusing-the-system dept

Years ago, before the RIAA's decision to sue individual file sharers, the group used to send subpoenas to ISPs asking for IP addresses of users even though no lawsuit had actually been filed. Verizon actually stood up and fought the RIAA on this, eventually winning. In response, the RIAA started filing mass lawsuits, suing multiple "John Does" and then using those lawsuits to get subpoenas to the ISPs. Soon afterwards, a judge noticed that this seemed odd, and told the RIAA it needed to start filing individual lawsuits rather than bundling them all together. Unfortunately, other judges have allowed the "bundled" lawsuits, so the RIAA still files them. However, a magistrate judge in Maine is suggesting that the district court judge fine the RIAA lawyers for the practice, noting that the RIAA shows little explanation for why the lawsuits should be bundled.

Filed Under: bundling, copyright, lawsuits, riaa
Companies: riaa

What Good Will A Swedish Lawsuit Against The Pirate Bay Do?

from the hydra dept

It's been expected for a while, but reports are coming out that Swedish prosecutors will finally get around to filing charges against The Pirate Bay this week. If you don't remember, Swedish authorities bowed to US pressure a year and a half ago, and seized the servers of The Pirate Bay, a bittorrent search engine. As was noted at the time, the Pirate Bay doesn't host any infringing content, but simply acts as a search engine -- one that some artists have learned to use to their own advantage. The raid, which the entertainment industry quickly announced represented a "significant blow" against piracy, actually did the reverse. The resulting publicity, garnered the site a lot more attention, which has only continued to grow. It quickly set up new servers outside of Sweden, and it's hard to see a lawsuit doing very much but increasing the amount of attention given to the site. When the actual lawsuit is announced, expect quotes from the RIAA and MPAA about what a big deal this is -- but the only really big deal is how little this lawsuit will do to help the industry. It won't help them adjust to a changing market. It won't help them to adopt necessary new business models. It will only increase the attention given to the Pirate Bay and other sites. We've seen this before with Napster. We've seen this before with Grokster. We've seen this before with Kazaa. So why does the entertainment industry keep doing this?

Filed Under: lawsuits, mpaa, pirate bay, riaa, sweden

A Little History Lesson On How The Recording Industry Works

from the an-inside-view dept

Jon writes in to tell us about an opinion piece from The Guardian written by Simon Napier-Bell -- a manager for some big name rock bands, including the Yardbirds and Wham! -- giving his historical analysis of how the recording industry killed itself. He notes that it's somewhat systemic. He goes through example after example that shows that the recording industry never recognized that it was in the business of selling everything having to do with the musician, and always through it was just in the business of distribution. He details, in no uncertain terms, the gangster mentality (and connections) of recording industry execs, that were much more focused on exploiting musicians rather than helping them. He digs somewhat into the economics covered by Courtney Love and others. Much of this has been stated elsewhere, but it's yet another reminder that recording industry execs are lying when they talk about how their main focus is to "help artists." If that were true, there were tons of things that the industry would have and should have done differently over the past decade. He also recognizes that there is a place for record labels, but it's a very different one than in the past, and it needs to be focused on selling the scarce goods related to the music, rather than just trying to sell the music itself.

Filed Under: history, recording industry, riaa, simon napier-bell

Full Of SQL And Fury, Signifying Nothing

from the take-that,-RIAA dept

The RIAA's website was hacked early Monday morning — their out-of-date CMS installation proved to be vulnerable to a number of SQL injection attacks — and as you might expect the internet has been having a good laugh about it since.

Well, ha ha. I won't pretend to be immune from a little shadenfreude at the expense of this particular blogospheric bête noir. But in a larger way, this incident validates the RIAA's existence. After all, it's not the RIAA's name that appears on lawsuits filed against P2P users: it's those of the record labels. The association serves a number of functions, but not least among them is its role as a consequence-free focal point for consumer backlash — backlash that most recently channeled itself into meaningless vandalism against a brochureware site that no one visits.

Of course, this displacement of blame works in both directions. It's considerably easier for copyfighting triumphalists to claim they're in the right when the enemy is a constituency-free trade group rather than a business that represents (however poorly) the artists whose work is being appropriated. For this reason, I wouldn't take too seriously the rumors of the RIAA's demise. So long as the labels choose to prosecute their war on filesharers, everyone concerned will have a use for a scapegoat.

Filed Under: hacking, riaa, sql
Companies: riaa

A Psychological Explanation For RIAA Short-Sightedness

from the would-rather-lose-money-than-let-someone-else-make-it dept

In all of the discussions we've had over various business models that could help make the entertainment industry even bigger than it is today, while embracing things like file sharing, we're always shocked to have entertainment industry execs and lobbyists come back with some sort of version "but that's not fair." We saw it when we tried to explain why questions about the economics of file sharing really shouldn't be seen as a moral issue, because if the economics works out with everyone being better off, the moral question should fall by the wayside. Yet, we were still told that it was a moral issue and a question of "fairness." This is true even if what we describe would make the industry more money. On an absolute basis, they would be better off. If you can make twice as much money, even if some people are "freeloading" and not paying anything, wouldn't that be a good thing? Yet, time and time again, we're told that "no" it would not be a good thing, because of those freeloaders. Universal Music CEO Doug Morris even admitted flat out that giving up 10 cents today to make a dollar later means that he's being taken advantage of for that 10 cents. These reactions are not rational.

At times it's been frustrating trying to understand why this is. We've often just assumed that it's caused by a general inertia: that is, it's not easy for someone who's had a successful existing business model to accept the idea that the market has changed and the business model needs to change. That requires effort and effort is not as much fun as coasting on inertia. However, reader Bill Corry writes in with another intriguing possibility. He points to a story in the LA Times discussing some recent behavioral economic studies on how people deal with fairness vs. rationality, suggesting that it explains the RIAA's actions. I'd actually seen all of the studies mentioned in the past, but hadn't associated them with the entertainment industry's struggles. The key part:

Consider one more experimental example to prove the point: the ultimatum game. You are given $100 to split between yourself and your game partner. Whatever division of the money you propose, if your partner accepts it, you each get to keep your share. If, however, your partner rejects it, neither of you gets any money.

How much should you offer? Why not suggest a $90-$10 split? If your game partner is a rational, self-interested money-maximizer -- the very embodiment of Homo economicus -- he isn't going to turn down a free 10 bucks, is he? He is. Research shows that proposals that offer much less than a $70-$30 split are usually rejected.

Why? Because they aren't fair. Says who? Says the moral emotion of "reciprocal altruism," which evolved over the Paleolithic eons to demand fairness on the part of our potential exchange partners. "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" only works if I know you will respond with something approaching parity. The moral sense of fairness is hard-wired into our brains and is an emotion shared by most people and primates tested for it, including people from non-Western cultures and those living close to how our Paleolithic ancestors lived.

So, perhaps the industry is to be forgiven. It's not that they're completely blind to the fact that they're giving up potentially millions of dollars in forgone profits from not embracing new models that also benefit "freeloaders." It's just that we're all hardwired to make bad economic decisions when that happens.

Filed Under: behavioral economics, business models, economics, riaa
Companies: riaa

Latest Trick From RIAA: Pissing Off Music Reviewers With Annoying Voice Over Anti-Piracy Messages

from the can-they-be-this-clueless? dept

It's no secret that the way that many albums get leaked online before their release date is via review copies that are sent out widely to music reviewers and radio stations. Apparently, the big record labels have been employing a new strategy to prevent that from happening. As TorrentFreak notes, they're putting annoying anti-piracy voice over throughout the CD. Thus, just as you're listening to a song, the music will fade out, and a voice over will announce some message about piracy and unauthorized uploads. This is pissing off reviewers, such as the one here who did his review of the album with the voice overs ("an album that can best be described as perhaps the Mona Lisa after a 2 year old covered in chocolate has crawled all over it. Yes it might once have been a great painting, and yes you can still see that greatness, but really all you can see now is little chocolate hand prints.") In other words, in its effort to prevent the inevitable, the labels are pissing off the reviewers of the album by making it impossible to actually hear the album as it was intended to be heard.

Filed Under: music reviews, riaa, voice overs
Companies: riaa

Digital Watermarks Are Not The Answer

from the the-next-rabbit-hole dept

It was quite predictable that as the recording industry finally realized that DRM was a bad idea that it would move on to digital watermarking. The idea sounds appealing. It doesn't have the feature that people hate about DRM: preventing you from doing what you want with the music you've purchased -- but it does have a number of other downsides. First, it tends to degrade the quality of the audio. Second, it's often relatively easy to remove the watermark, making it effectively useless. Third, if watermarks are used to link a specific file to a specific user (which the industry insists it isn't doing... yet), it suddenly becomes a huge liability just to have those music files. Imagine if you lose your iPod full of watermarked tracks, and all of those tracks find their way onto file sharing sites? Even more importantly, the whole concept of watermarking is counterproductive to what music files should be about. If the industry were smart and understood the basic economics of what was happening, they'd want people to be sharing music. They should want people to be their biggest (free!) promoters of music. They should want people to be spreading the music of their musicians as a way to get the word out. The whole concept of watermarking goes against that very idea. It's more backwards thinking from an industry that is more focused on protecting an old way of doing business, rather than recognizing the opportunities of a new way of doing business.

Filed Under: copy protection, drm, recording industry, riaa, tracking, watermarks
Companies: riaa

EFF Files Brief In Howell Case, Says 'Making Available' Is Not Infringement

from the infringement-needs-to-show-infringement dept

While much of the attention paid to the RIAA's case against Jeffrey Howell has been on the incorrect assertion that the RIAA was claiming Howell infringed simply for ripping his own CDs, what the RIAA is actually claiming is still quite questionable. What it was really claiming was that simply by putting any files (ripped or downloaded) into a shared folder, he was infringing. This is the same "making available" theory that the RIAA has been pushing for quite some time -- despite having courts clearly say that making available is not infringement. Of course, by constantly pushing this point in case after case (and usually losing), the RIAA has found a few judges who agree -- though, it almost always comes in cases where the defendant is acting as his or her own lawyer, rather than having a real lawyer defend the case. The key question is what part actually constitutes infringement. Is it actually having the copy made, or just offering the file up? With most courts agreeing that the actual act of making the copy has to occur, the EFF has filed an amicus brief in the Howell case, notifying the judge of all the various cases where "making available" has been rejected as being infringement.

Filed Under: eff, howell, making available, riaa
Companies: eff, riaa