And for all that Zachary Knight is correct about how the Chinese do it the reality is that millions of Chinese route around the firewall every hour of every day of the week. It's not all that much of a firewall cause it leaks like crazy. Of course, in the context of a nation of a billion people millions doesn't account for all that much but it does show that even at that smallish percentage the firewall leaks like crazy and the authorities only occasionally make a (small) example of someone for doing it. If that's the case in a closed down tight society like China just imagine who much the Great Wall of MPAA will leak if it gets its way in the United States?
First off I hate to tell you this but those papers who published page 3 girls in the UK were widely distributed in the United States in places like New York City, LA and places with large ec-pat populations such as Seattle.
That and it took only a glance or two to figure out that there was a LOT of poetic license being used there to characterize these girls (women, actually) as 16. Some were characterized as 14. When push came to shove, as it did a few times in England, the papers were able to produce properly signed model releases were the aged ranged from 18 to 29. They just looked young. The page 3 mania died off when high speed internet appeared. Ironically, while technially illegal in the US at the time you could get hard core kiddie porn in the adult book stores right across the street from the Pike St Fish Market in Seattle without having to do more than look in the window.
If Roja's servers were located in Spain the issue of seizure would probably never have happened as US law enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction there and, like a lot of the EU, the Department of Homeland Security isn't even recognized as a law enforcement agency. The only way Roja's servers could have been legally seized is if they were physically located within the United States or one of its territories and possession.
I agree with you when you say that it appears to you as what Roja is claiming is that it's legal (apparently) to have a link leading to infringing content in Spain and therefore the rest of the world has to follow their rules. Now, if the rest of us could just convince the United States that just because it's illegal to do that in the USA (and even that is questionable, it seems) doesn't mean that's how the rest of the world operates or has to operate.
If their server was physically located inside of the Untied States or on one of it's territories or possessions then there is no extraterritorial application of US law or any assent to that. A private company cannot make that assertion, in any event, as only the sovereign power in that country has the legal standing necessary to do that be that a legislature, monarch or duly appointed court of law. That said, Roja can say what it likes in that regard it has no meaning or standing in law as it hasn't the ability to legally do that. It's about as far from precedent setting as I can imagine.
The argument is being made in terms of the United States Constitution which also doesn't apply outside of the USA.
I'm not intimately up to date with US case law regarding prior restraint though I do know that US courts generally frown on it. That and the information included that the US Courts have rules that it takes more than a link to demonstrate infringement isn't new either.
I am alarmed that the United States seems to think that infringement is serious enough that it needs to break its own laws as well as centuries of case law, precedent and practice it inherited from England to seize first, ask questions later while denying the owner of the asset the right to appear and defend themselves in open court. It appears that some law officials and courts have forgotten there's more to the old saw about open court being "not only that justice is done but that it is seen to be done" than a nice little phrase that they can ignore now and then. It's vital to ensure that authority does not exceed it's bounds and become tyranny. Copyright and I.P. laws just are not worth the corrosion and corruption of the legal system in this way.
Re: Re: Re: You haven't explained what could replace copyright.
Although I do like the non-transferability part.
I'd also add that what's in the public domain stays there. This would stop the likes of Disney from saying they have a copyright on things like Snow White. (A very very sanitized version of the original.)
On point 5, ootb will sentence you to various and sundry hells for saying that. And me to a few more after I say this.
He didn't charge anyone for the bread and fish dinners he served. So He hung out with "freetards" and copyright haters! Therefore he deserved what the Sanhedrin and Romans did to him!
Re: It's just that nobody on the MPAA side falls for "astroturfing"!
It's not being gleefully dodged. You've had many suggestions. Your problem is that most of them involve a little something called WORK. And THAT you don't want to do.
If you want a custom solution from Mike I'm sure he'll be happy to sign on as a consultant at the usual inflated consultancy rates with 50% up front (pretty much standard), hand it to you and you won't get all that much that's different than you've gotten here. It all involves that dreaded four letter world beginning with W and ending with K. Something you appear to be allergic to.
Anyway, you've not given anyone enough information to give you anything but the most general response. All you've told anyone here is that you want to make a movie and it'll cost $100 million to make (a suspiciously round number and probably just pulled out of the air). I wouldn't invest in that much less offer any advice. Nothing at all about your background, if any, in film making or videography, experience in directing, screen or play writing, not even the broadest notion of the plot line (after all there are only 7 general plot lines possible), experience in editing and cutting and on and on it goes.
IF you came to me with a pitch like that I'd kick your ass out the door.
So you're not being dodged, the question itself is lacking so much information it's impossible to answer in any meaningful way. At least meaningful for you.
So I'll pass on a freebie. WORK on making a pitch and leave your over sized attitude, sense of entitlement and ego in the parking lot. Perhaps the next three towns away, in your case. Come with a CV and a believable figure complete with a cost breakdown TO THE PENNY, and maybe, just maybe as you're a total unknown in the industry (even porn, I assume) someone might be interested. I wouldn't count on it though. Hollywood has been counting its nickles and dimes since a disaster called "Waterworld".
So in the end, you'll get what you've gotten now, lower your expectations, don't expect to make a blockbuster first time out, get some experience and DO IT YOURSELF. Save the hundred million dollar stuff till you have some experience.
Now toddle off or take a valium or both until you have something new and remotely constructive to contribute.
At the moment you're nothing but a troll and I just fed you. I sincerely hope it tasted horrible.
So let me redeem him, at least in part. It's the current distribution channels that he's objecting to and the monopoly rents charged there for that. As noted elsewhere, the creator rarely profits from this arrangement as the MO of "publishers" (physical books, movies, recordings through their cozy arrangements with music publishers) insist the creator sign their copyright over to them. So your oft repeated and incorrect notion that creators benefit directly (or often indirectly) from the copyright regime is false.
As is this" "as it's based on the simple moral principle that WHO created it should have control over it." There is nothing in the statue of Anne, the original US copyright laws derived from it or anything that has followed in the English speaking world that speaks of "moral rights" indirectly or directly. Once again....copyright came about largely to protect English publishers from bankrupting themselves by issuing multiple editions of a title by an author all at the same time. One or more of whom might, just might, have tossed the author a coin or three. It's secondary intent was the promotion of education from which it's possible to derive that walled gardens of copyright were NOT intended, though in many ways that's what we have and THEN to provide the author with the possibility of earning a few coins. There is no guarantee of that, practical or otherwise, as the book may not sell diddly squat in which case the author is on the hook for any advances and other investments the publisher may have made in them.
(The same risk applies to the granting of a patent. Just because you have a patent doesn't guarantee that anyone is the slightest bit interested. There are thousands of them collecting dust that no one, other than the inventor perhaps, has ever turned into a product.)
So it's clear, even to a moron in a hurry, that copyright and/or patent law was never intended as a welfare scheme for authors/creators or those they signed the rights over to as you seem to think. Along with entities such as the RIAA and MPAA and others.
You also persist in the fiction that signing these rights over to a publisher is an agreement freely entered into by two equal and willing parties. The reality is that is you want your book published (or a fictional movie distributed) you must sign your rights over to the publisher or it's not going to get printed/distributed. In strictly legal terms this is called signing a contract under duress. AFAIK it's never been found that way in court because the applicable copyright laws and regulations allow for this. That doesn't change the fact that the parties are equal or that both parties are willing as one is essentially forced into the arrangement.
Unless, you self publish/distribute. The latter as Mike has repeatedly pointed out has been made so much easier with the advent of the Internet, things like file lockers, the evil and wicked bittorrent and a host of other technologies. None of which insist on signing your copyright over. None of which negates or diminishes copyright despite what you seem to think.
They might, however involve a bit more work. As a publisher will demand that work anyway you may as well just do it yourself. (In the form of book tours, band tours, subjecting yourself to endless interviews with bored and totally disinterested reporters, signing books and stuff till your arm is ready to fall off and so on.)
As a total and complete aside, though you brought it up, bands such as U2 got their starts in a garage not a stadium. It then follows logically and realistically that garage bands do, in fact, count.
What Richard is saying, in reality, is that if the citizenry has removed its support for, and by extension, support of copyright then it IS time to goes. Not that I want to see that outcome but that WILL be the case if maximalists like you don't compromise.
I think you're giving them far too much credit for being able to pull off a conspiracy much less enter one.
For members of the US House, they're stuck with a two year electoral cycle and given how much campaigns cost these days are gonna react favourably to big donors. In other words they're for sale to the highest bidder because it's rare once elected that people in congress get turfed. (Well, rare in comparison to parliamentary systems where the shelf life of an MP is about 3.5 years.)
As for the content industry, at the end of the day they depend on global communications as much as the so-called "pirates" do. If they can't get their product outside of the United States because Congress passes silly rules that have that effect then, essentially, they cede the global dominance they have now to, well, Bollywood comes screaming to mind as they turn out films and music on an enormous scale now and will only increase it should these bills pass.
What I'm really saying is that neither the politicians or the content industry have the innate ability to look far enough into the future to pull off a decent conspiracy of that kind.
The unintended consequences of SOPA/PROTECT IP are huge and all of them will do nothing to improve American ability to compete in the global market. A market the content industry is quite used to, takes for granted and needs. It could affect other industries as well including the slowly recovering US auto industry.
In short they haven't a clue what they're doing, they're scrambling only worried about the short term and not considering the long term either for their profit or detriment. Between spreadsheet accounting and two year election cycles it just doesn't occur to them.
Anyway, it's too late. The horse is out the barn, in the fields and he ain't coming back in. Attempts to curtail global communication will be resisted at all levels of society from the individual to the largest corporation outside of the entertainment industry. So will attempts to censor it. That, as much as anything is the source of this proposed bill.
SOPA/PROTECT IP is so onerous and smelly that it won't take much to motivate the public and in some districts it may actually convince people to go to the polls, if for no other reason than to fire those who are in favour of it.
We saw that last week. All it takes is to keep the heat on a slow boil, I expect. This bill will increase that heat to a fast boil and more as it WILL get coverage.
Re: Not your invented "domain censorship", but actual piracy.
primafacie evidence is proof of nothing in a criminal action. If due process demands the return of the "keys" to the site they ought to be returned. Period, full stop. The law you claim to respect so much demands it. Even if you don't like it.
As for your approval of censorship, that's becoming more and more apparent with each post you make. Nothing to do with your disagreements with Mike (or me or anyone else) everything to do with your statements and actions. As that or your approval of actions thousandths of an inch from tyranny can be excused by you provided it's in a cause you believe in.
Should anyone be guilty of binary/black and white thinking, blue, it's you. Again convicted out of your own mouth,typing.
That and, if necessary, I don't bite ankles should I attack. So far it hasn't been necessary because you're so easy to go after, same repeated argument over and over again, cut and pasted from RIAA and MPAA stats and releases, all of which have been completely debunked while you and they refuse to provide evidence for your own positions.
You see the problem is this: You demand respect for copyright because it's the law. Fair enough. Decent position as far as it goes. Even moral and ehtical as far as it goes.
Then you blow the whole thing when YOU don't respect the law when the law says that under due process an asset must be returned to an owner when the situation demands it such as this one. I understand that you don't like it but that doesn't excuse a government operating as if the divine right of kings still existed. It doesn't. That the sovereign power (government) has to obey the law as much as anyone else has been entrenched since Magna Charta doesn't seem to occur to you.
The simple fact is that you can't have it both ways. If you want people to respect copyright by observing it, and many of us here do despite your opinion that we don't merely because we criticize it and how it's applied by some corporate entities. Then you must respect the law when it says due process requires something you don't like. It's really that simple.
Even you should be able to understand that. Because if you don't you lose the moral and ethical high ground you claim.
Unless you don't really care about that and care more about accusing people of being ankle-biters.
All of which leaves the following possibilities:
(1) You're a hypocrite
(2) You're a liar
(3) Your protests to the contrary you submit here by scripts provided by the MPAA or RIAA or both.
(4) You're a shill for the entities named in (3) above [I'd demand a return of whatever it is you were paid if that's true]
(5) you really are as totally clueless and ignorant as your posts paint you to be.
(6) All of the above.
A suggestion is in order no matter what. Please become familiar with how law is applied, how it functions and why it functions the way it does. This is the real world not some badly written TV show. Then become familiar with the evolution and practice of law in the English speaking world since Magna Charta (which marks the starting point in the legal system as we know it) both before and after 1776. Then become familiar with International Law as it applies to concepts like extraterritoriality and the illegality of that.
Finally, please, please, please GROW UP.
I agree that current copyright law is an abomination compared to what it was originally intended for (as is current patent law).
Ironically part of the reason copyright came into existence was top protect publishers from themselves as all too often they found they were publishing the same title by the same author at the same time. And maybe one of them had actually paid the author.
So in part the Statue of Anne provided for copyright for the author so that only one copy was printed in return for the author getting paid for the work. Well kinda, after signing off the copyright to the publisher and the subsequent invention of creative accounting. The other purpose was the promotion of education to ensure that works were available to the public. Not locked behind a walled garden.
And the terms of the granted copyright monopoly were much shorter than they are now as they reach unto the generations yet to be born.
Reasonable length copyright might, in a perfect, world actually lead to more publishers, recording companies and studios to produce creative works, too. (I know, I'm dreaming. But I can do that for a minute or two, can't I? :))
Re: Re: Re: "designed to encourage participation and feedback"
But blue, by his words and actions is cheering loudly as the country progresses into a fascist police state.
Then again, he is operating off the script the RIAA sent him along with the cheque he got plus the promise to train him on how to use a movie or video camera.
Can I simply point out that the issue is due process. Not whether or not the site did whatever or not.
Due process says, criminal, civil or common law that when authorities seize something they are obligated to tell those they seized it from the reasons for it within a reasonable period of time (usually within 72 hours) and if there is a court hearing that the person whose assets have been seized have the RIGHT to be there or their appointed representative (aka lawyer) has the RIGHT to be there and has since Magna Charta.
Star Chamber courts went out with the Middle Ages, though they seem to be making a comeback and what makes me nervous is that people like you see nothing at all wrong with that.
While there may be an alleged instance of infringement, never judges in a court of law so it's still alleged and not legal fact, it's about due process. And that you don't see that shows not only chutzpah but a predilection to the approval of tyranny all in the name of a civil matter.
You may think the price is worth it. I don't and I don't see many people who would. No matter how well founded the RIAA's claims were.
As the site has been returned to its owner without a public court appearance by the government, RIAA or anyone else my suspicion is that the seizure was unreasonable, illegal and without cause.
And no, I don't for one instant believe the 23,000 number. No one sends 23,000 records, CDs or audio clips to one station, website or anywhere for promotional purposes. They send one. Ans in 1. If said entity produces more the usual response is to cut them off not sieze assests.
Nor do I believe your previous protestations that you don't like or support the RIAA, MPAA or government excess. It appears to me that not only do you but you're quite prepared to cheerlead it.
Actions, young fella, me lad, speak louder than words and your actions brand up as supporter of tyranny.
Have fun. The goosestepping class is down the corner and two the left, and turn right at the urinal.
Now THAT would make a good plot for the movie blue is forever threatening to make should someone hand him $100 million to make (interest and repayment free, I assume).
It's an interesting thought but I can't for the life of me buy it, much as I'd love to cause any decent spy would have a backup communications channel and even a half brain dead terrorist probably would too.
Hold on a moment. I'll retract the half brain dead terrorist part. Having seen the intelligence level of some of the IP maximalists around here I'm not at all sure of that. Never, ever underestimate the stupidity of "true believers" --- fundamentalist religious folk, IP maximalists or aliens/mayan 2012 disaster folks. It has no end,
If they are about to face a lawsuit based on "no probable cause" and "unreasonable search and siezure" among other things the government isn't stupid enough to say that even if that seems to be the case.
And they site has lawyers working on that. Read the story again.
What was printed on the label was "promotional use only" and or "for airplay only".
A lot of the time the all night DJs spent part of their shifts making cassette copies of the good stuff and it was out the next morning.
Everyone knew this was happening and no one really made a fuss about it unless the all night DJ backed a cube truck to the door in the morning loaded crates filled with cassettes onto it. /s
Re: You haven't explained what could replace copyright.
"It's inarguable that YOU don't have the right to publicly distribute content that someone else has made. Inarguable. "
Yes it is.
I DO have the right to publicly distribute "content" that is covered both by copyright and the applicable Creative Commons License.
I do have the right to publicly distribute open source documentation , all covered by copyright and the applicable license.
I do have the right to publicly distribute source code for open source software, covered by copyright and, more often than than not covered by the GPL, Apache Public License, the BSD License among others,
Furthermore I'm allowed, indeed encouraged in some cases to modify said content as I please and distribute THAT too.
Even by the MPAA/RIAA's narrow definition of distribute. Oh, and by the way, if I make a copy of a DVD I'm as guilty of infringement as if I put it up on, say (only because they're the eternal whipping boy and what would the MPAA/RIAA do without them!), TBP and subject to the same penalties.
I do have the right to copy material if the use is applicable under fair use/fair dealing and, at times, have been encouraged to do that to, mostly in the writing of academic papers where I can freely quote large expanses of material covered by copyright and cite it later.
So it comes to pass that that your undeniable point (notice the proper English usage and spelling there?) is very deniable on any number of points.
"Mike's movie example in the "can't compete" piece where he disappears $100M "sunk (or fixed) costs" is EXACTLY the case for links sites and files hosts. Mike POSITS "FREE" PRODUCT so that he can then claim that only marginal costs matter. My analysis can be contradicted but never rebutted, because any honest evaluation inevitably leads to: his example works only by ignoring how the movie came to exist, otherwise he has to worry about repaying costs."
Oh, heck, your unmade and never will be made $100 million movie again. That HAD to come up sooner or later, didn't it? One point before I go on is that no investor in his or her right mind will invest $100 million in a movie proposed by a total unknown who has probably never shot a video on anything more complicated that his smart phone before but thinks he has an idea. Not gonna happen ever, not now, not in the past, not in the future WHETHER OR NOT copyright exists.
As for the responsibility for recovery of your theoretical costs (and until you spend it they are theoretical), fixed, sunk, wasted, drugged or drank away or otherwise if you're the producer that's YOUR job, not Mike's mot mine, not anyone else's. Get that into your THICK HEAD!
Now that I've cleared that away. Not to your liking because you're quite unimaginative and don't really want to think about things like that cause you seem to think you ought to be able to make your silly movie and expect to sit back and watch the money roll in. Doesn't work that way, never has, never will and free distribution (which is really what we're arguing about here) makes absolutely no difference. Make a crappy movie, blue, and you're gonna end up owing someone $100 million plus interest.
"It's no coincidence that "can't compete with free" is what exists with rampant piracy"
One more time PROVE that so called piracy leads to losses of sales in recordings or videos. As you consider it criminal I'll hold you to the test for a criminal conviction which is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and please note that "cause the MPAA/RIAA say so" or because "It has to!!!" The first isn't acceptable evidence it's called hearsay. The second is an opinion and isn't evidence either. As neither you nor the entertainment industry seem to want to accept that challenge I have to conclude you have no evidence other that falling back on "it has to be". On the other hand reputable studies tend, overwhelmingly, to conclude the polar opposite. Their methods can be repeated by another researcher and run again to see if the results are the same. They always are.
What the entertainment industry claims is that they won't go into methodology due either to contract arrangements or, making the worst argument under the sun "it's a trade secret!"
Regarding Rapidshare, I know this will disappoint you but a great deal of what they host there is original work. And so what that they charge for a premium download? If I want "pirated" work I know a few thousand places that don't. And Rapidshare does remove infringing content when notified. So much for that nonsense.
Regarding advertising, what neither you nor the entertainment industry seem to grasp is that advertising appearing on a site is, most often, a cost item not a revenue generator. Do you have one iota of an idea how many click throughs it takes before you even begin to get revenue for Google Ads or any other ad server? Didn't think so. It sure as hell isn't going to pay the costs of hosting petabytes of content.
As for what Grooveshark did or didn't do I don't give a damn. If that's the best argument you can come up with you still don't pass the "beyond reasonable doubt" test.
As most of your point by point arguments make about as much sense as plunging my head into rapidly boiling water I'll select some of the "better" ones, at least in terms of comedy.
) studios need to "connect with fans" instead of worry about people getting the content without paying -- as if that isn't THE ESSENTIAL connection!
Actually studios need to "connect with fans" regardless. One of the reasons for this is that they haven't, they've become far less creative and far less compelling and this didn't just start with the advent of widespread internet access. It started long before when, oh, let's say studios got the idea that doing two hour remakes of marginal TV shows such as Wild, Wild West which ended up not looking like the original at all which alienated the cult audience who didn't troop off to see it.
(Meanwhile midnight showings of a movie widely considered to be one of the worst ever made -- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes --- continue to pack em into otherwise mostly empty multiplexes. A movie that's made it's backers rich simply through being horrible and rediscovered 20 years later where we could appreciate just how delightfully horrible.)
One way or another if you have an entertainment product you have to connect with fans. If you don't they aren't interested, copyright or not. If you do they come and will pay for it copyright or not. A few thousand years of no copyright has proven the latter point irrefutably. 400 or so years OF copyright has proven the former. Is there something there that you can't get???????
) technology marches on and piracy can't be stopped
Willful blindness on your part if you want to think differently. But by all means carry on. I'm not agreeing with that statement because I want copyright to cease to exist, far from it. I'm saying that because I'm a realist. (and a tech nerd, I'm guilty of that which I'm sure blackens my name with you but I consider that a gold star.)
) give away and pray is a valid business model
NO ONE has said that. The closest it comes is give away and WORK is a valid business model. But then, even if you have a copyright it's still sell and WORK is a valid business model. A certain amount of prayer is needed either way. I suspect it's the WORK part that you don't want to have to do.
) DNS blocking won't work at all -- OR, at times contradictorily in the same piece: DNS blocking WILL censor large swathes of the Internet
If you knew anything, anything at all about the architecture of the Internet you'd know those aren't contradictory arguments they're factual statements. If you want tutoring on that kind of thing I'm available. $200/hr.
And no copyright hassles cause my out of class materials are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution License which essentially means "fill you boots, do what you want with this just make sure I get credit for my part somewhere here."
) enforcing copyright with SOPA will stifle what Mike inventively terms the "innovation industry" -- whatever called, it's definitely NOT a productive part of society, relies on being in middle to re-distribute
If you mean tech industry which is what Mike was referring to I suggest you go back to grade 3 and learn what the word "productive" means. Your car runs the way it does because of the tech industry. You have your desktop, laptop, smartphone because of the tech industry, how phone calls are processed is because of the tech industry, you get to use ATMs and card swipes because of the tech industry, your shiny new LCD or LED tv is because of the tech industry, aircraft navigate using the products of the tech industry, airports can be as busy a they are without 747s having head on collisions in the sky because of the air traffic control systems which, in part or whole is because of the tech industry, weaponry is as accurate as it is now BECAUSE of the tech industry, your gas mileage in a vehicle is at levels considered impossible even 15 years ago BECAUSE of the tech industry and on it goes. Oh, and operations that were impossible or almost 100% deadly 25 years ago are routine now largely because of advances in the tech industry.
If all that isn't productive output I have no idea what is.
And should you think the entertainment industry is the only place that relies on respect for copyright for its existence it's the tech industry. Just look up how fiercely one company has fought another over copyright issues, how often people have been reminded of it in the tech industry all the way back to Bill Gates warning people about MS's copyright on it's version of BASIC back in the 1970s. Or look at Lotus v. Borland, an action that pretty much killed both of them and let MS walk right up the middle in office and productivity software or, more infamously SCO vs IBM et al. Compared to the tech industry the entertainment industry is a local bike club trying to go up against the Hell's Angels. (BTW, even MS has learned the need to "reach out to fans") It's hard in the extreme to think of anything the entertainment industry has done since the day I was born that is anything close to as productive as the tech industry have been since even 2000.
) Big Media is propping up "outdated" business models ...but WE have NO idea where those files come from or how they got on our computers...WE have NO duty to be moral and not STEAL work-products or even slightly reward whoever made them (because morality is outdated too: about its only mention on Techdirt is in the phrase "moral panics"); a fundamental but thoroughly pernicious theme is that pirating ... (..."sharing"), and ... moral because approved by self-interest (they even embrace "pirate" as if a positive term)
Show me where Big Media isn't trying to prop up an outdated business model, that is until they've been dragged, kicking and screaming into a newer one. Let me see now, consumer open reel tape recorders were going to be the end for music, later cassette tapes were going to be the end for music, then CDs were going to be the end for music, then mp3 were somehow supposed to kill it off, DVDs were going to kill off movies, somehow. Recordable or tradeable media were always going to kill something or other off.
Except....they didn't. Music sales exploded from the 1950s until the early 1980s before the anyone had a home internet connection and then they began a slow decline. As much as after punk and new wave were done Boomers lost interest in the corporate pablum being fed to us (not reaching out to fans). Sure country took off mostly based on county-rock acts of the 1970s but that was about it. Rap and hip-hop took off among the echo/millennium kids but they lack the numbers of we Boomers because, contrary to expectations, we didn't breed all that much.
Of course, we Boomers have heard this "death of Hollyood" crud since we could remember, the first time I actually remember hearing it is when NBC started to broadcast colour TV shows. Mostly movies at the start, ironically. Apparently they were screaming blue murder when TV first appeared but you'd have to ask people older than me about that. Radio was supposed to kill off the record industry and music industry too after live performances left radio and radio started to play music. But they both continued to thrive. Then came cassettes, then came recordable CDs, then came recordable DVDs, then came dial up Internet, then came high speed Internet and one advance after the other RIAA and MPAA member companies howled at the top of their lungs that it was going to kill their industry. I've been hearing it for 60 some odd years, whether or not I can remember it. Yet they're still here.
After 60 years of crying "wolf" you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe them now. And if I don't believe their self-serving propaganda about this being a respect for copyright issue ( and your even less coherent copying of that, or should I say plagiarism of that howling, speaking of "theft".)
) Mike doesn't want to do away with RIAA / MPAA; he isn't against them AT ALL, only wants to show them how to increase their income...
Mike may not want to see them disappear. Personally I'd not cry a tear if they did. The sooner the better, IMHO.
Then the cry about Mike showing them a better way. And back we come to that tired argument. As for the RIAA and the MPAA they KNOW the better way but they don't want to do that because it means relinquishing control over a carefully constructed distribution and release channel that profits only them, not the creators, not the artists, just them. And the book publishers are more than happy to jump onto that wagon. They've been dragged kicking and screaming into dipping their big toe in it. iTunes and Amazon for example. But they still don't want to go there because this time out they're the minnows and iTunes and Amazon are part of the Orca pod with Microsoft swimming into site to join them.
"copyright IS an artificial restriction precisely because COPYING HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAIRLY EASY -- COMPARED TO producing and promoting new and attractive material from scratch." While I'm glad you admit the first part of that while I partially agree with the second part.
First I hardly see Middle Ages monks blinding and crippling themselves faithfully, word for word, spelling mistake by spelling mistake copying scrolls as easy. Fairly or otherwise.
And yes, the act of creating a story, novel, poem, play or screenplay is harder than mere copying particularly after the moveable type press appeared in Europe. But that doesn't change much. Somehow Shakespeare managed to own a theatre, write plays and sonnets and live extremely comfortably for the time without copyright. And this at a time when the critics of theatre, the audience, saw nothing at all wrong with maiming or murdering an actor or playwright who didn't please them. So let me suggest to you that he worked is ASS off even if Bacon wrote the majority of his works...he was still the front man for that little scam.
All that said if copyright sticks to it's orgininal purpose of promoting "education" and protecting publishers from themselves by 3 or 4 of them issuing the same title at the same time, one of whom MIGHT have given the author something, and then guaranteed the creator payment free from creative accounting I'd have no problem with it. One thing it was NOT designed to become was a welfare program for the MPAA, RIAA or, if and when it comes to that, authors and their families.
The social impact of a culture behind the walled, armed and protected walls of the MPAA/RIAA/Pubishers and blue's garden are incalculable in the long term.
All this to protect, ahh, lemme see now, approximately 0.88% of the American work force. Far, far less than work in, say, the tech industry. And a collection of industries that, in a good year, contribute 0.1% of American GDP (aka wealth).
I gotta ask if it's worth it. Not copyright as a concept which, in it's original intent, I fully support. But this application of it which I do not.
You end with the following:
"hey're (sp) better off NOT wasting time here, just going out and DOING."
Strikes me that with all your whining about your still unmade movie that allegedly will cost $100 million to make and that no one will invest only because of piracy and that you're a total unknown. The latter is more probably true
The doing part is downright laughable. I see nothing in all your whining and complaining that indicates you have the faintest idea of what work is. Entitlement for sure but work, no. More an unwillingness to work. Hint, if you make your blasted movie, copyright or not you're still going to have to promote it, sell it, "connect with fans", perhaps even sell Chinese made t-shirts (Canadian made ones are cheaper and of far better quality I should add, as I suspect are American ones, too if you'd just bother to look), do tours, do interviews with brain dead journalists seconded from the sports desk and all that boring stuff.
Even more I'm willing to bet you've never sat down, written so much as a chapter of fiction, criticism, analysis or explanation of anything much less a movie. I've written lots of all of that but fiction and got great pleasure and sense of accomplishment from all of it and made not so much as a penny on it. That's not why I do it. I do it because I like to. No I love to. And yes, all my work is copyright along with my dandy little Creative Commons License as I believe that it's immoral for me as a Christian (Anglican) to wall in discussion of my faith in case someone just might want to copyright it. Copying seemed ok with Jesus, it was definitely alright with Paul so it's cool with me. As long as I get credit where credit is due. I wrote it.
Not only that I learn from my research and analysis about my faith, the world around me and I learn about me, the person I often find I know less about than anyone else.
Whether or not you want to believe it -- that's what motivates creative people. Just the urge to create, to put something where a nothing has been before, to scratch an itch and make something work where it didn't before. The urge to create, to make something better. Even if that something is me. (And you have no idea what hard work is until you give yourself that task.)
It was that before copyright (or patents) existed. It will be that way long after copyright (or patents) have ceased to exist for whatever reason.
I'm not confident that either has much of a future as they've been corrupted far beyond their original uses. So much so that they would be unrecognizable to those who first proposed them. Still, they're recoverable because the rot hasn't set in too far.
Sadly, blue, there are people like you around who are determined that the rot set in and then determined to corrupt it further so the rot becomes toxic and fatal.
I'm not sure that you're willfully ignorant, just plain old uniformed ignorant, just someone who automatically believes what "authority tells them", a combination of it all or intellectually dishonest as well as the above.
Or that you get paid by the people you shill for.
I doubt the last because you're the last person on earth I'd pay to propagandize on my behalf.
As far as creativity goes one thing I do know is that you're LAZY. No wonder you don't know what work is. You'd rather cut and paste. It may not be piracy, it's plagiarism. And you do it horribly.
Ignoring the detail that poor Lindsay Lohan is something between a slow motion train wreck and a bad comedy these days did you not see that waiting a year to get a case adjudicated ISN'T the story but the direct denial of due process IS.
And did you miss the minor detail that, perhaps, the videos you see are exactly the ones sent to them by a label for promotional use? As admitted to in the story? Ahh, missed that, didn't you. Either that or words didn't engage brain because you refused to see them.
You do manage, however, to make what is as close to the most blatantly racist remark I've seen on this site in quite some time with your statement regarding poor blacks. But then, I guess you feel that poor blacks aren't as able to make up their own minds about the value of something as poor WASPs are. Sorry, I forgot about that after going almost 40 years since the last time I saw it expressed in that way. Me bad!
Oh and just how does one "pirate" a YouTube? Linking you can do, embedding you can do but I've never heard about pirating them. Is this something similar to pirating LOLCatz?
As others have commented we've love to find all the illegal sites that have pirated YouTubez and a lot of us would like to increase our pirated collection of LOLCatz as well.
(Actually the guy who first posted LOLCats has no problem with them being "pirated" just leave his copyright and website intact and he's happy. Drives more visitors to his site, you see.)
On the post: MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet Without A Problem, Why Can't The US?
Re:
On the post: Puerto 80 Makes Its Argument For Why The Seizure Of Rojadirecta Was Unconstitutional
Re: Re:
That and it took only a glance or two to figure out that there was a LOT of poetic license being used there to characterize these girls (women, actually) as 16. Some were characterized as 14. When push came to shove, as it did a few times in England, the papers were able to produce properly signed model releases were the aged ranged from 18 to 29. They just looked young. The page 3 mania died off when high speed internet appeared. Ironically, while technially illegal in the US at the time you could get hard core kiddie porn in the adult book stores right across the street from the Pike St Fish Market in Seattle without having to do more than look in the window.
If Roja's servers were located in Spain the issue of seizure would probably never have happened as US law enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction there and, like a lot of the EU, the Department of Homeland Security isn't even recognized as a law enforcement agency. The only way Roja's servers could have been legally seized is if they were physically located within the United States or one of its territories and possession.
I agree with you when you say that it appears to you as what Roja is claiming is that it's legal (apparently) to have a link leading to infringing content in Spain and therefore the rest of the world has to follow their rules. Now, if the rest of us could just convince the United States that just because it's illegal to do that in the USA (and even that is questionable, it seems) doesn't mean that's how the rest of the world operates or has to operate.
On the post: Puerto 80 Makes Its Argument For Why The Seizure Of Rojadirecta Was Unconstitutional
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The argument is being made in terms of the United States Constitution which also doesn't apply outside of the USA.
I'm not intimately up to date with US case law regarding prior restraint though I do know that US courts generally frown on it. That and the information included that the US Courts have rules that it takes more than a link to demonstrate infringement isn't new either.
I am alarmed that the United States seems to think that infringement is serious enough that it needs to break its own laws as well as centuries of case law, precedent and practice it inherited from England to seize first, ask questions later while denying the owner of the asset the right to appear and defend themselves in open court. It appears that some law officials and courts have forgotten there's more to the old saw about open court being "not only that justice is done but that it is seen to be done" than a nice little phrase that they can ignore now and then. It's vital to ensure that authority does not exceed it's bounds and become tyranny. Copyright and I.P. laws just are not worth the corrosion and corruption of the legal system in this way.
On the post: MPAA Tries Its Hand At Comedy With A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet
Re: Re: Re: You haven't explained what could replace copyright.
I'd also add that what's in the public domain stays there. This would stop the likes of Disney from saying they have a copyright on things like Snow White. (A very very sanitized version of the original.)
On the post: MPAA Tries Its Hand At Comedy With A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet
Re: Copyright
He didn't charge anyone for the bread and fish dinners he served. So He hung out with "freetards" and copyright haters! Therefore he deserved what the Sanhedrin and Romans did to him!
On the post: Entertainment Industry Still Can't Get Grassroots Support For SOPA/PIPA, Resorts To Trying To Buy Support
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On the post: Entertainment Industry Still Can't Get Grassroots Support For SOPA/PIPA, Resorts To Trying To Buy Support
Re: It's just that nobody on the MPAA side falls for "astroturfing"!
If you want a custom solution from Mike I'm sure he'll be happy to sign on as a consultant at the usual inflated consultancy rates with 50% up front (pretty much standard), hand it to you and you won't get all that much that's different than you've gotten here. It all involves that dreaded four letter world beginning with W and ending with K. Something you appear to be allergic to.
Anyway, you've not given anyone enough information to give you anything but the most general response. All you've told anyone here is that you want to make a movie and it'll cost $100 million to make (a suspiciously round number and probably just pulled out of the air). I wouldn't invest in that much less offer any advice. Nothing at all about your background, if any, in film making or videography, experience in directing, screen or play writing, not even the broadest notion of the plot line (after all there are only 7 general plot lines possible), experience in editing and cutting and on and on it goes.
IF you came to me with a pitch like that I'd kick your ass out the door.
So you're not being dodged, the question itself is lacking so much information it's impossible to answer in any meaningful way. At least meaningful for you.
So I'll pass on a freebie. WORK on making a pitch and leave your over sized attitude, sense of entitlement and ego in the parking lot. Perhaps the next three towns away, in your case. Come with a CV and a believable figure complete with a cost breakdown TO THE PENNY, and maybe, just maybe as you're a total unknown in the industry (even porn, I assume) someone might be interested. I wouldn't count on it though. Hollywood has been counting its nickles and dimes since a disaster called "Waterworld".
So in the end, you'll get what you've gotten now, lower your expectations, don't expect to make a blockbuster first time out, get some experience and DO IT YOURSELF. Save the hundred million dollar stuff till you have some experience.
Now toddle off or take a valium or both until you have something new and remotely constructive to contribute.
At the moment you're nothing but a troll and I just fed you. I sincerely hope it tasted horrible.
On the post: Entertainment Industry Still Can't Get Grassroots Support For SOPA/PIPA, Resorts To Trying To Buy Support
Re: Re: Re:
As is this" "as it's based on the simple moral principle that WHO created it should have control over it." There is nothing in the statue of Anne, the original US copyright laws derived from it or anything that has followed in the English speaking world that speaks of "moral rights" indirectly or directly. Once again....copyright came about largely to protect English publishers from bankrupting themselves by issuing multiple editions of a title by an author all at the same time. One or more of whom might, just might, have tossed the author a coin or three. It's secondary intent was the promotion of education from which it's possible to derive that walled gardens of copyright were NOT intended, though in many ways that's what we have and THEN to provide the author with the possibility of earning a few coins. There is no guarantee of that, practical or otherwise, as the book may not sell diddly squat in which case the author is on the hook for any advances and other investments the publisher may have made in them.
(The same risk applies to the granting of a patent. Just because you have a patent doesn't guarantee that anyone is the slightest bit interested. There are thousands of them collecting dust that no one, other than the inventor perhaps, has ever turned into a product.)
So it's clear, even to a moron in a hurry, that copyright and/or patent law was never intended as a welfare scheme for authors/creators or those they signed the rights over to as you seem to think. Along with entities such as the RIAA and MPAA and others.
You also persist in the fiction that signing these rights over to a publisher is an agreement freely entered into by two equal and willing parties. The reality is that is you want your book published (or a fictional movie distributed) you must sign your rights over to the publisher or it's not going to get printed/distributed. In strictly legal terms this is called signing a contract under duress. AFAIK it's never been found that way in court because the applicable copyright laws and regulations allow for this. That doesn't change the fact that the parties are equal or that both parties are willing as one is essentially forced into the arrangement.
Unless, you self publish/distribute. The latter as Mike has repeatedly pointed out has been made so much easier with the advent of the Internet, things like file lockers, the evil and wicked bittorrent and a host of other technologies. None of which insist on signing your copyright over. None of which negates or diminishes copyright despite what you seem to think.
They might, however involve a bit more work. As a publisher will demand that work anyway you may as well just do it yourself. (In the form of book tours, band tours, subjecting yourself to endless interviews with bored and totally disinterested reporters, signing books and stuff till your arm is ready to fall off and so on.)
As a total and complete aside, though you brought it up, bands such as U2 got their starts in a garage not a stadium. It then follows logically and realistically that garage bands do, in fact, count.
What Richard is saying, in reality, is that if the citizenry has removed its support for, and by extension, support of copyright then it IS time to goes. Not that I want to see that outcome but that WILL be the case if maximalists like you don't compromise.
On the post: Court Dismisses Puerto 80 Rojadirecta Case (For Now)... But Doesn't Give Back The Domain
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For members of the US House, they're stuck with a two year electoral cycle and given how much campaigns cost these days are gonna react favourably to big donors. In other words they're for sale to the highest bidder because it's rare once elected that people in congress get turfed. (Well, rare in comparison to parliamentary systems where the shelf life of an MP is about 3.5 years.)
As for the content industry, at the end of the day they depend on global communications as much as the so-called "pirates" do. If they can't get their product outside of the United States because Congress passes silly rules that have that effect then, essentially, they cede the global dominance they have now to, well, Bollywood comes screaming to mind as they turn out films and music on an enormous scale now and will only increase it should these bills pass.
What I'm really saying is that neither the politicians or the content industry have the innate ability to look far enough into the future to pull off a decent conspiracy of that kind.
The unintended consequences of SOPA/PROTECT IP are huge and all of them will do nothing to improve American ability to compete in the global market. A market the content industry is quite used to, takes for granted and needs. It could affect other industries as well including the slowly recovering US auto industry.
In short they haven't a clue what they're doing, they're scrambling only worried about the short term and not considering the long term either for their profit or detriment. Between spreadsheet accounting and two year election cycles it just doesn't occur to them.
Anyway, it's too late. The horse is out the barn, in the fields and he ain't coming back in. Attempts to curtail global communication will be resisted at all levels of society from the individual to the largest corporation outside of the entertainment industry. So will attempts to censor it. That, as much as anything is the source of this proposed bill.
SOPA/PROTECT IP is so onerous and smelly that it won't take much to motivate the public and in some districts it may actually convince people to go to the polls, if for no other reason than to fire those who are in favour of it.
We saw that last week. All it takes is to keep the heat on a slow boil, I expect. This bill will increase that heat to a fast boil and more as it WILL get coverage.
Here we go!
On the post: Court Dismisses Puerto 80 Rojadirecta Case (For Now)... But Doesn't Give Back The Domain
Re: Not your invented "domain censorship", but actual piracy.
As for your approval of censorship, that's becoming more and more apparent with each post you make. Nothing to do with your disagreements with Mike (or me or anyone else) everything to do with your statements and actions. As that or your approval of actions thousandths of an inch from tyranny can be excused by you provided it's in a cause you believe in.
Should anyone be guilty of binary/black and white thinking, blue, it's you. Again convicted out of your own mouth,typing.
That and, if necessary, I don't bite ankles should I attack. So far it hasn't been necessary because you're so easy to go after, same repeated argument over and over again, cut and pasted from RIAA and MPAA stats and releases, all of which have been completely debunked while you and they refuse to provide evidence for your own positions.
You see the problem is this: You demand respect for copyright because it's the law. Fair enough. Decent position as far as it goes. Even moral and ehtical as far as it goes.
Then you blow the whole thing when YOU don't respect the law when the law says that under due process an asset must be returned to an owner when the situation demands it such as this one. I understand that you don't like it but that doesn't excuse a government operating as if the divine right of kings still existed. It doesn't. That the sovereign power (government) has to obey the law as much as anyone else has been entrenched since Magna Charta doesn't seem to occur to you.
The simple fact is that you can't have it both ways. If you want people to respect copyright by observing it, and many of us here do despite your opinion that we don't merely because we criticize it and how it's applied by some corporate entities. Then you must respect the law when it says due process requires something you don't like. It's really that simple.
Even you should be able to understand that. Because if you don't you lose the moral and ethical high ground you claim.
Unless you don't really care about that and care more about accusing people of being ankle-biters.
All of which leaves the following possibilities:
(1) You're a hypocrite
(2) You're a liar
(3) Your protests to the contrary you submit here by scripts provided by the MPAA or RIAA or both.
(4) You're a shill for the entities named in (3) above [I'd demand a return of whatever it is you were paid if that's true]
(5) you really are as totally clueless and ignorant as your posts paint you to be.
(6) All of the above.
A suggestion is in order no matter what. Please become familiar with how law is applied, how it functions and why it functions the way it does. This is the real world not some badly written TV show. Then become familiar with the evolution and practice of law in the English speaking world since Magna Charta (which marks the starting point in the legal system as we know it) both before and after 1776. Then become familiar with International Law as it applies to concepts like extraterritoriality and the illegality of that.
Finally, please, please, please GROW UP.
On the post: Details On SOPA/PIPA Alternative Released... With Open Requests For Feedback
Re: Re:
Ironically part of the reason copyright came into existence was top protect publishers from themselves as all too often they found they were publishing the same title by the same author at the same time. And maybe one of them had actually paid the author.
So in part the Statue of Anne provided for copyright for the author so that only one copy was printed in return for the author getting paid for the work. Well kinda, after signing off the copyright to the publisher and the subsequent invention of creative accounting. The other purpose was the promotion of education to ensure that works were available to the public. Not locked behind a walled garden.
And the terms of the granted copyright monopoly were much shorter than they are now as they reach unto the generations yet to be born.
Reasonable length copyright might, in a perfect, world actually lead to more publishers, recording companies and studios to produce creative works, too. (I know, I'm dreaming. But I can do that for a minute or two, can't I? :))
On the post: Details On SOPA/PIPA Alternative Released... With Open Requests For Feedback
Re: Re: Re: "designed to encourage participation and feedback"
Then again, he is operating off the script the RIAA sent him along with the cheque he got plus the promise to train him on how to use a movie or video camera.
On the post: RIAA Doesn't Apologize For Year-Long Blog Censorship; Just Stands By Its Claim That The Site Broke The Law
Re: You're simply hard of understanding, Mike.
Due process says, criminal, civil or common law that when authorities seize something they are obligated to tell those they seized it from the reasons for it within a reasonable period of time (usually within 72 hours) and if there is a court hearing that the person whose assets have been seized have the RIGHT to be there or their appointed representative (aka lawyer) has the RIGHT to be there and has since Magna Charta.
Star Chamber courts went out with the Middle Ages, though they seem to be making a comeback and what makes me nervous is that people like you see nothing at all wrong with that.
While there may be an alleged instance of infringement, never judges in a court of law so it's still alleged and not legal fact, it's about due process. And that you don't see that shows not only chutzpah but a predilection to the approval of tyranny all in the name of a civil matter.
You may think the price is worth it. I don't and I don't see many people who would. No matter how well founded the RIAA's claims were.
As the site has been returned to its owner without a public court appearance by the government, RIAA or anyone else my suspicion is that the seizure was unreasonable, illegal and without cause.
And no, I don't for one instant believe the 23,000 number. No one sends 23,000 records, CDs or audio clips to one station, website or anywhere for promotional purposes. They send one. Ans in 1. If said entity produces more the usual response is to cut them off not sieze assests.
Nor do I believe your previous protestations that you don't like or support the RIAA, MPAA or government excess. It appears to me that not only do you but you're quite prepared to cheerlead it.
Actions, young fella, me lad, speak louder than words and your actions brand up as supporter of tyranny.
Have fun. The goosestepping class is down the corner and two the left, and turn right at the urinal.
On the post: RIAA Doesn't Apologize For Year-Long Blog Censorship; Just Stands By Its Claim That The Site Broke The Law
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It's an interesting thought but I can't for the life of me buy it, much as I'd love to cause any decent spy would have a backup communications channel and even a half brain dead terrorist probably would too.
Hold on a moment. I'll retract the half brain dead terrorist part. Having seen the intelligence level of some of the IP maximalists around here I'm not at all sure of that. Never, ever underestimate the stupidity of "true believers" --- fundamentalist religious folk, IP maximalists or aliens/mayan 2012 disaster folks. It has no end,
On the post: RIAA Doesn't Apologize For Year-Long Blog Censorship; Just Stands By Its Claim That The Site Broke The Law
Re: Re: Re:
And they site has lawyers working on that. Read the story again.
On the post: RIAA Doesn't Apologize For Year-Long Blog Censorship; Just Stands By Its Claim That The Site Broke The Law
Re: You're simply hard of understanding, Mike.
A lot of the time the all night DJs spent part of their shifts making cassette copies of the good stuff and it was out the next morning.
Everyone knew this was happening and no one really made a fuss about it unless the all night DJ backed a cube truck to the door in the morning loaded crates filled with cassettes onto it. /s
On the post: RIAA Doesn't Apologize For Year-Long Blog Censorship; Just Stands By Its Claim That The Site Broke The Law
Re: Re: You're simply hard of understanding, Mike.
Is that clear enough?
On the post: MPAA Tries Its Hand At Comedy With A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet
Re: Re: You haven't explained what could replace copyright.
On the post: MPAA Tries Its Hand At Comedy With A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet
Re: You haven't explained what could replace copyright.
Yes it is.
I DO have the right to publicly distribute "content" that is covered both by copyright and the applicable Creative Commons License.
I do have the right to publicly distribute open source documentation , all covered by copyright and the applicable license.
I do have the right to publicly distribute source code for open source software, covered by copyright and, more often than than not covered by the GPL, Apache Public License, the BSD License among others,
Furthermore I'm allowed, indeed encouraged in some cases to modify said content as I please and distribute THAT too.
Even by the MPAA/RIAA's narrow definition of distribute. Oh, and by the way, if I make a copy of a DVD I'm as guilty of infringement as if I put it up on, say (only because they're the eternal whipping boy and what would the MPAA/RIAA do without them!), TBP and subject to the same penalties.
I do have the right to copy material if the use is applicable under fair use/fair dealing and, at times, have been encouraged to do that to, mostly in the writing of academic papers where I can freely quote large expanses of material covered by copyright and cite it later.
So it comes to pass that that your undeniable point (notice the proper English usage and spelling there?) is very deniable on any number of points.
"Mike's movie example in the "can't compete" piece where he disappears $100M "sunk (or fixed) costs" is EXACTLY the case for links sites and files hosts. Mike POSITS "FREE" PRODUCT so that he can then claim that only marginal costs matter. My analysis can be contradicted but never rebutted, because any honest evaluation inevitably leads to: his example works only by ignoring how the movie came to exist, otherwise he has to worry about repaying costs."
Oh, heck, your unmade and never will be made $100 million movie again. That HAD to come up sooner or later, didn't it? One point before I go on is that no investor in his or her right mind will invest $100 million in a movie proposed by a total unknown who has probably never shot a video on anything more complicated that his smart phone before but thinks he has an idea. Not gonna happen ever, not now, not in the past, not in the future WHETHER OR NOT copyright exists.
As for the responsibility for recovery of your theoretical costs (and until you spend it they are theoretical), fixed, sunk, wasted, drugged or drank away or otherwise if you're the producer that's YOUR job, not Mike's mot mine, not anyone else's. Get that into your THICK HEAD!
Now that I've cleared that away. Not to your liking because you're quite unimaginative and don't really want to think about things like that cause you seem to think you ought to be able to make your silly movie and expect to sit back and watch the money roll in. Doesn't work that way, never has, never will and free distribution (which is really what we're arguing about here) makes absolutely no difference. Make a crappy movie, blue, and you're gonna end up owing someone $100 million plus interest.
"It's no coincidence that "can't compete with free" is what exists with rampant piracy"
One more time PROVE that so called piracy leads to losses of sales in recordings or videos. As you consider it criminal I'll hold you to the test for a criminal conviction which is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and please note that "cause the MPAA/RIAA say so" or because "It has to!!!" The first isn't acceptable evidence it's called hearsay. The second is an opinion and isn't evidence either. As neither you nor the entertainment industry seem to want to accept that challenge I have to conclude you have no evidence other that falling back on "it has to be". On the other hand reputable studies tend, overwhelmingly, to conclude the polar opposite. Their methods can be repeated by another researcher and run again to see if the results are the same. They always are.
What the entertainment industry claims is that they won't go into methodology due either to contract arrangements or, making the worst argument under the sun "it's a trade secret!"
Regarding Rapidshare, I know this will disappoint you but a great deal of what they host there is original work. And so what that they charge for a premium download? If I want "pirated" work I know a few thousand places that don't. And Rapidshare does remove infringing content when notified. So much for that nonsense.
Regarding advertising, what neither you nor the entertainment industry seem to grasp is that advertising appearing on a site is, most often, a cost item not a revenue generator. Do you have one iota of an idea how many click throughs it takes before you even begin to get revenue for Google Ads or any other ad server? Didn't think so. It sure as hell isn't going to pay the costs of hosting petabytes of content.
As for what Grooveshark did or didn't do I don't give a damn. If that's the best argument you can come up with you still don't pass the "beyond reasonable doubt" test.
As most of your point by point arguments make about as much sense as plunging my head into rapidly boiling water I'll select some of the "better" ones, at least in terms of comedy.
) studios need to "connect with fans" instead of worry about people getting the content without paying -- as if that isn't THE ESSENTIAL connection!
Actually studios need to "connect with fans" regardless. One of the reasons for this is that they haven't, they've become far less creative and far less compelling and this didn't just start with the advent of widespread internet access. It started long before when, oh, let's say studios got the idea that doing two hour remakes of marginal TV shows such as Wild, Wild West which ended up not looking like the original at all which alienated the cult audience who didn't troop off to see it.
(Meanwhile midnight showings of a movie widely considered to be one of the worst ever made -- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes --- continue to pack em into otherwise mostly empty multiplexes. A movie that's made it's backers rich simply through being horrible and rediscovered 20 years later where we could appreciate just how delightfully horrible.)
One way or another if you have an entertainment product you have to connect with fans. If you don't they aren't interested, copyright or not. If you do they come and will pay for it copyright or not. A few thousand years of no copyright has proven the latter point irrefutably. 400 or so years OF copyright has proven the former. Is there something there that you can't get???????
) technology marches on and piracy can't be stopped
Willful blindness on your part if you want to think differently. But by all means carry on. I'm not agreeing with that statement because I want copyright to cease to exist, far from it. I'm saying that because I'm a realist. (and a tech nerd, I'm guilty of that which I'm sure blackens my name with you but I consider that a gold star.)
) give away and pray is a valid business model
NO ONE has said that. The closest it comes is give away and WORK is a valid business model. But then, even if you have a copyright it's still sell and WORK is a valid business model. A certain amount of prayer is needed either way. I suspect it's the WORK part that you don't want to have to do.
) DNS blocking won't work at all -- OR, at times contradictorily in the same piece: DNS blocking WILL censor large swathes of the Internet
If you knew anything, anything at all about the architecture of the Internet you'd know those aren't contradictory arguments they're factual statements. If you want tutoring on that kind of thing I'm available. $200/hr.
And no copyright hassles cause my out of class materials are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution License which essentially means "fill you boots, do what you want with this just make sure I get credit for my part somewhere here."
) enforcing copyright with SOPA will stifle what Mike inventively terms the "innovation industry" -- whatever called, it's definitely NOT a productive part of society, relies on being in middle to re-distribute
If you mean tech industry which is what Mike was referring to I suggest you go back to grade 3 and learn what the word "productive" means. Your car runs the way it does because of the tech industry. You have your desktop, laptop, smartphone because of the tech industry, how phone calls are processed is because of the tech industry, you get to use ATMs and card swipes because of the tech industry, your shiny new LCD or LED tv is because of the tech industry, aircraft navigate using the products of the tech industry, airports can be as busy a they are without 747s having head on collisions in the sky because of the air traffic control systems which, in part or whole is because of the tech industry, weaponry is as accurate as it is now BECAUSE of the tech industry, your gas mileage in a vehicle is at levels considered impossible even 15 years ago BECAUSE of the tech industry and on it goes. Oh, and operations that were impossible or almost 100% deadly 25 years ago are routine now largely because of advances in the tech industry.
If all that isn't productive output I have no idea what is.
And should you think the entertainment industry is the only place that relies on respect for copyright for its existence it's the tech industry. Just look up how fiercely one company has fought another over copyright issues, how often people have been reminded of it in the tech industry all the way back to Bill Gates warning people about MS's copyright on it's version of BASIC back in the 1970s. Or look at Lotus v. Borland, an action that pretty much killed both of them and let MS walk right up the middle in office and productivity software or, more infamously SCO vs IBM et al. Compared to the tech industry the entertainment industry is a local bike club trying to go up against the Hell's Angels. (BTW, even MS has learned the need to "reach out to fans") It's hard in the extreme to think of anything the entertainment industry has done since the day I was born that is anything close to as productive as the tech industry have been since even 2000.
) Big Media is propping up "outdated" business models ...but WE have NO idea where those files come from or how they got on our computers...WE have NO duty to be moral and not STEAL work-products or even slightly reward whoever made them (because morality is outdated too: about its only mention on Techdirt is in the phrase "moral panics"); a fundamental but thoroughly pernicious theme is that pirating ... (..."sharing"), and ... moral because approved by self-interest (they even embrace "pirate" as if a positive term)
Show me where Big Media isn't trying to prop up an outdated business model, that is until they've been dragged, kicking and screaming into a newer one. Let me see now, consumer open reel tape recorders were going to be the end for music, later cassette tapes were going to be the end for music, then CDs were going to be the end for music, then mp3 were somehow supposed to kill it off, DVDs were going to kill off movies, somehow. Recordable or tradeable media were always going to kill something or other off.
Except....they didn't. Music sales exploded from the 1950s until the early 1980s before the anyone had a home internet connection and then they began a slow decline. As much as after punk and new wave were done Boomers lost interest in the corporate pablum being fed to us (not reaching out to fans). Sure country took off mostly based on county-rock acts of the 1970s but that was about it. Rap and hip-hop took off among the echo/millennium kids but they lack the numbers of we Boomers because, contrary to expectations, we didn't breed all that much.
Of course, we Boomers have heard this "death of Hollyood" crud since we could remember, the first time I actually remember hearing it is when NBC started to broadcast colour TV shows. Mostly movies at the start, ironically. Apparently they were screaming blue murder when TV first appeared but you'd have to ask people older than me about that. Radio was supposed to kill off the record industry and music industry too after live performances left radio and radio started to play music. But they both continued to thrive. Then came cassettes, then came recordable CDs, then came recordable DVDs, then came dial up Internet, then came high speed Internet and one advance after the other RIAA and MPAA member companies howled at the top of their lungs that it was going to kill their industry. I've been hearing it for 60 some odd years, whether or not I can remember it. Yet they're still here.
After 60 years of crying "wolf" you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe them now. And if I don't believe their self-serving propaganda about this being a respect for copyright issue ( and your even less coherent copying of that, or should I say plagiarism of that howling, speaking of "theft".)
) Mike doesn't want to do away with RIAA / MPAA; he isn't against them AT ALL, only wants to show them how to increase their income...
Mike may not want to see them disappear. Personally I'd not cry a tear if they did. The sooner the better, IMHO.
Then the cry about Mike showing them a better way. And back we come to that tired argument. As for the RIAA and the MPAA they KNOW the better way but they don't want to do that because it means relinquishing control over a carefully constructed distribution and release channel that profits only them, not the creators, not the artists, just them. And the book publishers are more than happy to jump onto that wagon. They've been dragged kicking and screaming into dipping their big toe in it. iTunes and Amazon for example. But they still don't want to go there because this time out they're the minnows and iTunes and Amazon are part of the Orca pod with Microsoft swimming into site to join them.
"copyright IS an artificial restriction precisely because COPYING HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAIRLY EASY -- COMPARED TO producing and promoting new and attractive material from scratch." While I'm glad you admit the first part of that while I partially agree with the second part.
First I hardly see Middle Ages monks blinding and crippling themselves faithfully, word for word, spelling mistake by spelling mistake copying scrolls as easy. Fairly or otherwise.
And yes, the act of creating a story, novel, poem, play or screenplay is harder than mere copying particularly after the moveable type press appeared in Europe. But that doesn't change much. Somehow Shakespeare managed to own a theatre, write plays and sonnets and live extremely comfortably for the time without copyright. And this at a time when the critics of theatre, the audience, saw nothing at all wrong with maiming or murdering an actor or playwright who didn't please them. So let me suggest to you that he worked is ASS off even if Bacon wrote the majority of his works...he was still the front man for that little scam.
All that said if copyright sticks to it's orgininal purpose of promoting "education" and protecting publishers from themselves by 3 or 4 of them issuing the same title at the same time, one of whom MIGHT have given the author something, and then guaranteed the creator payment free from creative accounting I'd have no problem with it. One thing it was NOT designed to become was a welfare program for the MPAA, RIAA or, if and when it comes to that, authors and their families.
The social impact of a culture behind the walled, armed and protected walls of the MPAA/RIAA/Pubishers and blue's garden are incalculable in the long term.
All this to protect, ahh, lemme see now, approximately 0.88% of the American work force. Far, far less than work in, say, the tech industry. And a collection of industries that, in a good year, contribute 0.1% of American GDP (aka wealth).
I gotta ask if it's worth it. Not copyright as a concept which, in it's original intent, I fully support. But this application of it which I do not.
You end with the following:
"hey're (sp) better off NOT wasting time here, just going out and DOING."
Strikes me that with all your whining about your still unmade movie that allegedly will cost $100 million to make and that no one will invest only because of piracy and that you're a total unknown. The latter is more probably true
The doing part is downright laughable. I see nothing in all your whining and complaining that indicates you have the faintest idea of what work is. Entitlement for sure but work, no. More an unwillingness to work. Hint, if you make your blasted movie, copyright or not you're still going to have to promote it, sell it, "connect with fans", perhaps even sell Chinese made t-shirts (Canadian made ones are cheaper and of far better quality I should add, as I suspect are American ones, too if you'd just bother to look), do tours, do interviews with brain dead journalists seconded from the sports desk and all that boring stuff.
Even more I'm willing to bet you've never sat down, written so much as a chapter of fiction, criticism, analysis or explanation of anything much less a movie. I've written lots of all of that but fiction and got great pleasure and sense of accomplishment from all of it and made not so much as a penny on it. That's not why I do it. I do it because I like to. No I love to. And yes, all my work is copyright along with my dandy little Creative Commons License as I believe that it's immoral for me as a Christian (Anglican) to wall in discussion of my faith in case someone just might want to copyright it. Copying seemed ok with Jesus, it was definitely alright with Paul so it's cool with me. As long as I get credit where credit is due. I wrote it.
Not only that I learn from my research and analysis about my faith, the world around me and I learn about me, the person I often find I know less about than anyone else.
Whether or not you want to believe it -- that's what motivates creative people. Just the urge to create, to put something where a nothing has been before, to scratch an itch and make something work where it didn't before. The urge to create, to make something better. Even if that something is me. (And you have no idea what hard work is until you give yourself that task.)
It was that before copyright (or patents) existed. It will be that way long after copyright (or patents) have ceased to exist for whatever reason.
I'm not confident that either has much of a future as they've been corrupted far beyond their original uses. So much so that they would be unrecognizable to those who first proposed them. Still, they're recoverable because the rot hasn't set in too far.
Sadly, blue, there are people like you around who are determined that the rot set in and then determined to corrupt it further so the rot becomes toxic and fatal.
I'm not sure that you're willfully ignorant, just plain old uniformed ignorant, just someone who automatically believes what "authority tells them", a combination of it all or intellectually dishonest as well as the above.
Or that you get paid by the people you shill for.
I doubt the last because you're the last person on earth I'd pay to propagandize on my behalf.
As far as creativity goes one thing I do know is that you're LAZY. No wonder you don't know what work is. You'd rather cut and paste. It may not be piracy, it's plagiarism. And you do it horribly.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
And did you miss the minor detail that, perhaps, the videos you see are exactly the ones sent to them by a label for promotional use? As admitted to in the story? Ahh, missed that, didn't you. Either that or words didn't engage brain because you refused to see them.
You do manage, however, to make what is as close to the most blatantly racist remark I've seen on this site in quite some time with your statement regarding poor blacks. But then, I guess you feel that poor blacks aren't as able to make up their own minds about the value of something as poor WASPs are. Sorry, I forgot about that after going almost 40 years since the last time I saw it expressed in that way. Me bad!
Oh and just how does one "pirate" a YouTube? Linking you can do, embedding you can do but I've never heard about pirating them. Is this something similar to pirating LOLCatz?
As others have commented we've love to find all the illegal sites that have pirated YouTubez and a lot of us would like to increase our pirated collection of LOLCatz as well.
(Actually the guy who first posted LOLCats has no problem with them being "pirated" just leave his copyright and website intact and he's happy. Drives more visitors to his site, you see.)
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