This is a slippery slope. Once you do it for copyright, "politically incorrect" sites will be right behind, followed by any site that does not uphold truth, justice, and the American way.
I voted with my feet. I cleared my browsing history, tweaked the services I use, made a few other housekeeping changes, and finally changed my default search engine to non-tracking service.
A lot of the companies whining about Pinterest probably pay small fortunes to SEO's trying to get more traffic driven to them.
Perhaps Pinterest set up its business model all wrong. They should have advertised themselves as traffic drivers and said something like "Pay me $100,000 a year and I will drive traffic to your site." If you charge the gatekeepers enough, they will be your best friend and defend what you are doing to the death.
The problem with Pinterest is that they are doing it for free, and too many people believe that when something is free it has no value.
Pinterest is also contending with small-minded people who assume everything is a zero-sum game. They believe that if Pinterest is making money then they must be loosing money somehow. A lot of small-minded business people just cannot grasp the concept of a game where everybody wins. Frankly, the only way to lose in the Pinterest game is to not play.
Fortunately the super-rich are not lonely because they have a club that includes several Nascar team owners. Mitt Romney is the current president of the club which traces its origins back to its founder, Marie Antoinette. The club is currently considering changing its motto to "Let them drive two Cadillacs."
>>Are people making software that can get stuff deleted from the Internet as fast as it can be created?
In a word, yes.
It doesn't really take much software development to do this. Most of the big services have API's that let you search on keywords. Other API's (or something like them) let you file DCMA notices. Put them together and search for a keyword. "Torrent" perhaps. This gets you all of the sites that offer torrents, but there is a lot of collateral damage to sights like Techdirt that only talk about torrents.
It sounds like Armovore was a startup that had some amateurish software to do this. It sounds very much like a company set up to try to get some business from major rights holders. The TD takedown appears to have happened on a test run of the system. It shows how cheap the takedowns are and the flippant way that they are handled when they do test runs on a live system.
The companies that do these "birdsong" takedowns always seem to treat the news of odd takedowns as silly little accidents, and they always fail to see why other people are so upset about them. Takedowns are easy and ridiculously cheap for them; it is hard for them to see why one little takedown is important.
The flip side of this is that having your work taken down can be a big deal. It can be important financially, or in the case of the Techdirt post it was an extremely important piece of work that journalists and others needed to be finding. Having something taken down can also make you feel violated, especially when you discover that there is almost nothing practical that you can do to get the decision reversed in most cases.
We need to fix the system to put a real cost on bogus takedowns as well as a notice and chance to appeal before the actual takedown happens. Some of this would involve the DCMA and legal changes. However, other takedowns would involve companies like Google getting a bit of a backbone and implementing some kind of counter-notice for their own internal processes that are not directly covered by DCMA takedown issues. There should also be the strict enforcement of the part of the rules that says only the copyright holder themselves can take down the content.
One huge problem is that there usually is no real cost for "mistakes" so there is no need to protect against them. On the other hand, these companies make their money by filing takedown on behalf of rights holders, so they have a huge incentive to take down lots of stuff whether it is actually infringing or not.
This notation can sum up a lot of DRM and other problems, even those not relating to piracy.
For example, let's figure out the true cost of a heavily-DRM'd game. The total cost for the consumer is
$M +$T +$P +$I.
Let's put actual numbers in.
Game cost $M is $50.
Time cost $T for most games is pretty low if you download them, and we don't normally worry too much about windowing and stuff for video games. Manufactures have done a decent job of making games available quickly, so $T is under a dollar. Lets just say $T is 0 or close to it.
DRM hits hard at pain-in-the-but costs. You can't load it on all of your computers, and you may have to deal with the need for 100% reliable internet connections. Even then, servers may go down. There is also a risk factor that goes into $P. What if I my computer dies and I loose my $M investment? What if the company rewrites their DRM policy and leaves me out in the cold? What if there is something I don't realize about the DRM that I don't know about? $P is high for a lot of modern games. Let's say it $P=50.
For the game companies, I am sure they would argue that the $I Integrity cost for a purchased game is 0. However, it isn't for a lot of gamers. Just go take a look at r/gaming in Reddit. You will find posts like this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/q2n36/stop_buying_ea_games_or_stop_complaining/ . A lot of gamers hate EA because of the DRM. For these people buying a game from EA or other heavy DRM sources results in guilt from supporting the DRM system. I will put $I at 5. It probably isn't a lot, but it is there. It is more for some people, and less for others. It may be small now, but it could grow with time.
So the ultimate cost of a DRM'd game is 50+50+5. Unfortunately we don't have a good way to equate the units so we can't just add them. The lesson that the game companies need to realize is that inconvenience is part of the real cost that customers factor into the purchase. I have no doubt that the companies do studies about what would happen to their sales numbers if they doubled or halved the $M cost of their games. But how many of them take into account what the sales figures would be if they doubled or halved the $P and $I factors.
It seems like suing a non-French company is close to a certain win in France. If the non-French company is Google, then it is a slam-dunk guaranteed win.
-NSA doesn't yet have the ability to spy on every single American, but if they do... Oh, wait. Yes, they do. And they want more authority. But we can trust them. It is probably OK. They would never use their power for evil or for anything like monitoring political descent or trying to boost the businesses of lobbying groups.
Re: Plus points for spine, but minus for lack of low-end offerings
Limited offerings and missing features are most likely start-up growing pains. It has to be especially tough setting up a full blown hosting service with a specific niche that caters to a clientele that will be international and potentially problematic.
The First Amendment should be enough justification in itself for federal anti-SLAPP laws.
A law against false claim of copyright or trademark could also include anti-SLAPP provisions. Many SLAPP examples use copyright in order to take advantage of DCMA takedowns. There could be treble damages if the false claim of copyright is results in stifling criticism or competition. In order to be effective, the law making false claim an offense would need to state failure to take fair use into account would constitute a false claim. This would be important because there is often some type of quotation or "head shot" issue that is the basis of the copyright claim being used for SLAPP.
>>politicians that have no understanding AT ALL concerning the Bills they are introducing, have no clue AT ALL about the implications of the Bills they are introducing, no clue AT ALL about how the Internet works, are TOO FUCKING OLD to be telling people what they can and cant do,
Politicians don't need to know. The lobbyists tell them everything they need to know. If anonymous wants to upset someone who really matters, they should hack the lobbyist who wrote the bill.
The artists probably figured out that most of the money would be sticking to the pockets of the collection society, and very little would make its way through to them. Plus, the artists themselves are likely to be big users of the media that is being taxed.
I am amazed at how many highly trained business people get trapped by fear and moral outrage and totally ignore the economic and business side of decisions.
Of course the DRM promoters are happy to fan the flames of fear and moral outrage at piracy. Their existence depends totally on their clients being so afraid of piracy that that they forget to ever ask how much DRM is really costing them in money, tech support, and dissatisfied customers. Businesses that sell DRM can never afford to have their clients ask what opportunities they are giving up in order to implement DRM.
If top executives would start doing their real job, which is to ask tough questions, they would probably ditch most of the DRM they are using and increase their own bottom lines in the process.
Certificate Authorities make huge amounts of money and the effectively control some important Internet governing and standards committees, so we can expect a huge fight when people realize the system is not nearly as secure as it pretends to be.
Sorry about the double post. The blockquote problem is fixed below:
The CNN article is talking about a different issue, although it does reference the situation Mike is talking about in the article.
The CNN article is saying that some other services are modifying their services or going away entirely so that they don't face the same fate as Megaupload. It doesn't contradict the main point of Mike's article which is that users are simply going elsewhere. From the CNN article:
However for some, the elimination of Megaupload as a file-hosting option has made vetting pirated content more difficult.
Daniel Raimer, a spokesman for Switzerland-based file host RapidShare, said the company's anti-abuse department has been working overtime since the day last month when Megaupload went offline. The workload is not caused by an increased emphasis on removing copyrighted material, he said, but is necessary to vet a massive influx of files from new customers -- Megaupload's customers.
So ICE once again successfully chased US jobs overseas without reducing piracy or helping the bottom line of any of the *AA companies. Way to go, ICE!
Rapidshare's comment is especially interesting because it implies that lots of legitimate users of Megaupload are being forced to seek off-shore services.
On the post: UK Government Pressuring Search Engines To Censor Results In Favor Of Copyright Industries
On the post: Google Asking For Trouble With Its New Privacy Policy; EU Official Questions Legality
On the post: In All This Talk Of Pinterest And Copyright, The Fact That It's Driving Massive Traffic Seems Important
Perhaps Pinterest set up its business model all wrong. They should have advertised themselves as traffic drivers and said something like "Pay me $100,000 a year and I will drive traffic to your site." If you charge the gatekeepers enough, they will be your best friend and defend what you are doing to the death.
The problem with Pinterest is that they are doing it for free, and too many people believe that when something is free it has no value.
Pinterest is also contending with small-minded people who assume everything is a zero-sum game. They believe that if Pinterest is making money then they must be loosing money somehow. A lot of small-minded business people just cannot grasp the concept of a game where everybody wins. Frankly, the only way to lose in the Pinterest game is to not play.
On the post: Big Bank CEO Who Makes $23 Million Says Press Should Stop Focusing On Bank Compensation... Because Reporters Are Overpaid?
Fortunately the super-rich are not lonely because they have a club that includes several Nascar team owners. Mitt Romney is the current president of the club which traces its origins back to its founder, Marie Antoinette. The club is currently considering changing its motto to "Let them drive two Cadillacs."
On the post: Funny How Sensitive Hollywood Gets When You Threaten To Mess With Its 'Fundamental' Structure
On the post: Company That Issued Bogus Takedown Says It Was All A Mistake, Apologizes
Re: Is this like Rumblefish
In a word, yes.
It doesn't really take much software development to do this. Most of the big services have API's that let you search on keywords. Other API's (or something like them) let you file DCMA notices. Put them together and search for a keyword. "Torrent" perhaps. This gets you all of the sites that offer torrents, but there is a lot of collateral damage to sights like Techdirt that only talk about torrents.
It sounds like Armovore was a startup that had some amateurish software to do this. It sounds very much like a company set up to try to get some business from major rights holders. The TD takedown appears to have happened on a test run of the system. It shows how cheap the takedowns are and the flippant way that they are handled when they do test runs on a live system.
On the post: Company That Issued Bogus Takedown Says It Was All A Mistake, Apologizes
The flip side of this is that having your work taken down can be a big deal. It can be important financially, or in the case of the Techdirt post it was an extremely important piece of work that journalists and others needed to be finding. Having something taken down can also make you feel violated, especially when you discover that there is almost nothing practical that you can do to get the decision reversed in most cases.
We need to fix the system to put a real cost on bogus takedowns as well as a notice and chance to appeal before the actual takedown happens. Some of this would involve the DCMA and legal changes. However, other takedowns would involve companies like Google getting a bit of a backbone and implementing some kind of counter-notice for their own internal processes that are not directly covered by DCMA takedown issues. There should also be the strict enforcement of the part of the rules that says only the copyright holder themselves can take down the content.
On the post: Rumblefish CEO: Claiming Copyright On Your Incidental Recordings Of Birds Was Merely A Series Of Unfortunate Errors
On the post: If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know
For example, let's figure out the true cost of a heavily-DRM'd game. The total cost for the consumer is
$M +$T +$P +$I.
Let's put actual numbers in.
Game cost $M is $50.
Time cost $T for most games is pretty low if you download them, and we don't normally worry too much about windowing and stuff for video games. Manufactures have done a decent job of making games available quickly, so $T is under a dollar. Lets just say $T is 0 or close to it.
DRM hits hard at pain-in-the-but costs. You can't load it on all of your computers, and you may have to deal with the need for 100% reliable internet connections. Even then, servers may go down. There is also a risk factor that goes into $P. What if I my computer dies and I loose my $M investment? What if the company rewrites their DRM policy and leaves me out in the cold? What if there is something I don't realize about the DRM that I don't know about? $P is high for a lot of modern games. Let's say it $P=50.
For the game companies, I am sure they would argue that the $I Integrity cost for a purchased game is 0. However, it isn't for a lot of gamers. Just go take a look at r/gaming in Reddit. You will find posts like this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/q2n36/stop_buying_ea_games_or_stop_complaining/ . A lot of gamers hate EA because of the DRM. For these people buying a game from EA or other heavy DRM sources results in guilt from supporting the DRM system. I will put $I at 5. It probably isn't a lot, but it is there. It is more for some people, and less for others. It may be small now, but it could grow with time.
So the ultimate cost of a DRM'd game is 50+50+5. Unfortunately we don't have a good way to equate the units so we can't just add them. The lesson that the game companies need to realize is that inconvenience is part of the real cost that customers factor into the purchase. I have no doubt that the companies do studies about what would happen to their sales numbers if they doubled or halved the $M cost of their games. But how many of them take into account what the sales figures would be if they doubled or halved the $P and $I factors.
On the post: Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France...
On the post: NSA: 'Anonymous Might One Day Hack Power Grids!' Anonymous: 'Huh?!?'
On the post: The 'New' Righthaven Offers Discount To Techdirt Readers Who Want 'Spineful' Hosting
Re: Plus points for spine, but minus for lack of low-end offerings
On the post: Romney Campaign's Finance Co-Chair Accused Of Being SLAPP-Happy
Re: No way!
A law against false claim of copyright or trademark could also include anti-SLAPP provisions. Many SLAPP examples use copyright in order to take advantage of DCMA takedowns. There could be treble damages if the false claim of copyright is results in stifling criticism or competition. In order to be effective, the law making false claim an offense would need to state failure to take fair use into account would constitute a false claim. This would be important because there is often some type of quotation or "head shot" issue that is the basis of the copyright claim being used for SLAPP.
On the post: Vic Toews Apparently Not A Fan Of Others Seeing His Personal Data
Re:
Politicians don't need to know. The lobbyists tell them everything they need to know. If anonymous wants to upset someone who really matters, they should hack the lobbyist who wrote the bill.
On the post: Portuguese Artists Association Struggled To Get Even 100 Members On List In Favor Of Exorbitant New Private Copying Levies
On the post: Sony Music Raised Prices On Whitney Houston's Music... Less Than 30 Minutes After She Died
On the post: How Publishers Repeated The Same Mistake As Record Labels: DRM Obsession Gave Amazon Dominant Position
Of course the DRM promoters are happy to fan the flames of fear and moral outrage at piracy. Their existence depends totally on their clients being so afraid of piracy that that they forget to ever ask how much DRM is really costing them in money, tech support, and dissatisfied customers. Businesses that sell DRM can never afford to have their clients ask what opportunities they are giving up in order to implement DRM.
If top executives would start doing their real job, which is to ask tough questions, they would probably ditch most of the DRM they are using and increase their own bottom lines in the process.
On the post: 'The Economist' And 'Financial Times' Already Writing Off ACTA As Dead
On the post: Trustwave Admits It Issued A Certificate To Allow Company To Run Man-In-The-Middle Attacks
On the post: Evidence Shows That Megaupload Shutdown Had No Real Impact On Infringement
Re: Re:
The CNN article is talking about a different issue, although it does reference the situation Mike is talking about in the article.
The CNN article is saying that some other services are modifying their services or going away entirely so that they don't face the same fate as Megaupload. It doesn't contradict the main point of Mike's article which is that users are simply going elsewhere. From the CNN article:
So ICE once again successfully chased US jobs overseas without reducing piracy or helping the bottom line of any of the *AA companies. Way to go, ICE!
Rapidshare's comment is especially interesting because it implies that lots of legitimate users of Megaupload are being forced to seek off-shore services.
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