The Pirate Party's platform is relatively uniform in the various countries where it is organized. It would be very ironic if the unity that Europe has sought for so many decades could come from electing the Pirate Party.
The price increase shows that there isn't unlimited elasticity in what people will pay to watch movies and TV. That is something that Hollywood refuses to believe.
You shouldn't have a problem getting a constitutional scholar to chime in. All of the posters consider ourselves constitutional scholars, economists, legal experts, international relations experts, and supremely knowledgeable about all things tech. Plus a few other things that I won't go into here.
Being a TSA agent is a really rotten job. As an actor in the great Security Theater production the agents are forced to inflict demeaning, intrusive, and mostly meaningless procedures on their fellow citizens. And for that they get paid as little as the TSA can get away with paying.
My solution would be to implement a rational and effective screening system. Among other benefits, it would cut down greatly on the amount of time it takes to screen passengers and that would allow TSA to not hire as many agents. They would also be able to get rid of a lot of expensive hardware like body scanners that are not really very effective. TSA probably wouldn't actually have to lay off any agents because the turnover is extremely high. TSA could use the money saved to increase the salaries of the remaining personnel to a living wage.
If TSA agents felt like they were doing something useful and if they were receiving reasonable wages they would not be as likely to risk their job for a $10 tip.
If Evan Stone has to quit the lawyering business over this, maybe he can get a job with his brother Keith doing beer commercials. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tzc-dB8Xuk
There is one silver lining in all this. Reporters tend to play follow the leader and follow the trend. Once upon a time we had one person go before the Senate for confirmation and it turned out they hadn't withheld social security tax on a housekeeper/nanny. That got a lot of headlines, so now every single candidate that goes up before the Senate has newspaper reporters searching for less than legal housekeepers and nannies.
The MPAA and RIAA have been foisting bogus statistics on the media for years, and the media has routinely accepted it. Now reporters have seen that there are headlines to be made in debunking MPAA stats, and it is usually easy picking.
I actually feel just a tiny bit sorry for people who write reports for the entertainment industry. Their jobs just got a lot harder.
For me, the classic example in the correlation/causality confusion is Mark Twain who said something like "It's true that I fought for the confederacy for six weeks. Then I deserted, and the south fell."
You can usually tell if an iPhone story was written by an Applephile* before you hit the end of the first paragraph. For one thing, they usually deny being an Applephile.
Definition, Applephile: Someone who will love anything if it is shiny and made by Apple. http://goo.gl/3f6iM
There are other ways to protect your copyright. The easiest would be for Kellogg to send MAI a simple license to use the tocan and Mayan images. Kellogg's trademark would be protected by this action just as effectively as with a C&D order. In fact, the license might even be better protection in the long run if MAI ignores the C&D. And a nice letter with the license certainly would be better for Kellogg's public image.
This is what happens to companies when they let lawyers play at being managers.
I think it is refreshing to see a judge actually consider the constitutional basis of the copyright law. I hope there is more of that with all IP issues.
There are well over 200 movies released each year if you include porn. But that raises an interesting question. What percentage of the downloaded movies are porn? My guess is that the majority of illegal downloads are porn by a fair margin.
So, by MPAA logic, fighting piracy in the porn industry should sell more porn. Therefore when your typical conservative, bible-thumping congressman votes to fight piracy, he is really voting to support porn. I hope they remember that when the vote come up on Protect IP.
In the last paragraph Mike says that the MPAA and RIAA are the driving force behind most legal actions. I am not sure that is accurate now. I think that the main driving force is the MPAA. The RIAA goes along with the MPAA, but I think the RIAA is mainly lending moral support at this point. I think the RIAA's main contribution now is that it can provide the image of the poor, starving musicians as victims of piracy; musicians are generally much more sympathetic victims than movie producers and actors.
The RIAA is a economically weaker than it was ten years ago. Any company or industry that is shrinking is forced to pull back on activities that don't show a profit, and the war on piracy falls in this category for the RIAA. Suing private music infringers cost a lot of money and produced very little income while having a plethora of negative effects. Lobbying is expensive and fighting piracy does little if anything to actually increase sales. At the end of the day retracting industries are forced to be pragmatic, and pragmatically fighting pirates is not productive for the RIAA.
The RIAA still has plenty of execs who chant the "Pirates are killing us" mantra. But they also have people working quietly in the opposite direction. I think the MPAA is fortifying the RIAA and keeping it on the bandwagon publicly, but behind the scenes you have a lot of RIAA people promoting bands and artists, especially the ones who have signed "360" deals. Promoting 360 artists means getting their music heard by just about any method possible.
The movie industry and the music labels are in very different situations. The music industry really needs to promote bands and artists. For the music industry, the songs themselves are promotional. The songs bring the fans out to concerts and provide other potential revenue streams. On the other hand, the MPAA sees the movie itself as the revenue stream. For music there is a very plausible argument that a pirated song may very well create a concert ticket sale. It is harder to sell the idea that a pirated movie will sell a movie ticket. There is also a scale factor involved -- it is easier for a music exec to stomach giving away a 99 cent song when it might sell a 100 dollar concert ticket. It is a lot harder for the movie producer to see how giving away a 20 dollar copy of a movie makes sense for getting a one dollar Redbox rental. (Yes, I know that the marginal cost for reproducing the song and the movie are near zero for the industry, but I am talking about the modern business exec who doesn't understand basic microeconomics.)
The final analysis will probably show that unauthorized copying is not hurting the movie industry nearly as much as the MPAA currently believes. However, the movie industry is still doing rather well. At least they can still afford to spend $300 million to pump out mediocre movies. If the industry can afford to that, they can afford to live in fantasy worlds for at least a little while longer. However, as the movie industry continues to price itself out of the market it is going to have to face reality. I am just hoping that they don't manage to do severe damage to the Internet, the rest of the economy, and the First Amendment before that reality sets in for the MPAA.
>>....But if I have to pay such fee it means the artists will be getting the money....
There is practically zero chance the artists will be getting any of the money. Just look at how the RIAA deal with YouTube is set up. They agreement doesn't even pretend to share a cut with the artists. It all goes to the companies, which basically means that a lot of it goes to the company executives and the rest goes to tone-deaf stock holders.
The MPAA and RIAA think that more draconian penalties are the solution to their business model problems. It is just part of the fantasy world that they live in.
It looks like they are trying to censor material someone at the Texas DOT doesn't approve of. Too bad the Texas DOT isn't familiar with the concept of "Freedom of Speech" or that pesky First Amendment thing.
I am sure many nations will be pressured to sign ACTA and then will proceed to ignore its requirements. This will give license to larger nations to ignore the requirements. Only the nations that are controlled by the industry lobbyists will actually attempt to enforce ACTA, and eventually even the IP-heavy countries will end up ignoring ACTA.
ACTA attempts to fight basic economics in too many ways. Economics always beats regulations in the end.
On the post: Pirate Party Takes 9% Of The Vote In Berlin Elections, Wins A Bunch Of Seats In Parliament
On the post: Massive Exodus From Netflix Over Fee Increase
On the post: Do The Statutory Damages Rates For Copyright Infringement Violate The Eighth Amendment?
On the post: Reporter Claims TSA Agent Would Speed People Through Security For $10
My solution would be to implement a rational and effective screening system. Among other benefits, it would cut down greatly on the amount of time it takes to screen passengers and that would allow TSA to not hire as many agents. They would also be able to get rid of a lot of expensive hardware like body scanners that are not really very effective. TSA probably wouldn't actually have to lay off any agents because the turnover is extremely high. TSA could use the money saved to increase the salaries of the remaining personnel to a living wage.
If TSA agents felt like they were doing something useful and if they were receiving reasonable wages they would not be as likely to risk their job for a $10 tip.
On the post: Copyright Troll Evan Stone Sanctioned For More Than $10k For Sending Subpoenas When Court Said To Wait
On the post: MPAA: Bad At Math & Bad At Economics
The MPAA and RIAA have been foisting bogus statistics on the media for years, and the media has routinely accepted it. Now reporters have seen that there are headlines to be made in debunking MPAA stats, and it is usually easy picking.
I actually feel just a tiny bit sorry for people who write reports for the entertainment industry. Their jobs just got a lot harder.
On the post: Sex, Drugs... And Facebook? Moral Panic Police Blaming Social Networks For Kids Being Kids
On the post: Imagine If Everyone Had To Start From Scratch And Reinvent The Wheel Every Time They Wanted To Build A New Car?
Definition, Applephile: Someone who will love anything if it is shiny and made by Apple. http://goo.gl/3f6iM
On the post: Kellogg's Stakes Claim To Toucans, Mayan Imagery; Issues Cease-and-Desist To Guatemalan Non-Profit
Re:
This is what happens to companies when they let lawyers play at being managers.
On the post: Judge: Using The Copyright System To Force People To Pay Up Is Unconstitutional
On the post: France: Copyright Is More Important Than Human Rights
On the post: MPAA's Bogus 'Piracy' Numbers Mean It Thinks Downloaders Would Buy 200 More DVDs Per Year
So, by MPAA logic, fighting piracy in the porn industry should sell more porn. Therefore when your typical conservative, bible-thumping congressman votes to fight piracy, he is really voting to support porn. I hope they remember that when the vote come up on Protect IP.
On the post: Leaked State Department Cable Confirms What Everyone Already Knew: MPAA Was Behind Bogus Australian ISP Lawsuit
The RIAA is a economically weaker than it was ten years ago. Any company or industry that is shrinking is forced to pull back on activities that don't show a profit, and the war on piracy falls in this category for the RIAA. Suing private music infringers cost a lot of money and produced very little income while having a plethora of negative effects. Lobbying is expensive and fighting piracy does little if anything to actually increase sales. At the end of the day retracting industries are forced to be pragmatic, and pragmatically fighting pirates is not productive for the RIAA.
The RIAA still has plenty of execs who chant the "Pirates are killing us" mantra. But they also have people working quietly in the opposite direction. I think the MPAA is fortifying the RIAA and keeping it on the bandwagon publicly, but behind the scenes you have a lot of RIAA people promoting bands and artists, especially the ones who have signed "360" deals. Promoting 360 artists means getting their music heard by just about any method possible.
The movie industry and the music labels are in very different situations. The music industry really needs to promote bands and artists. For the music industry, the songs themselves are promotional. The songs bring the fans out to concerts and provide other potential revenue streams. On the other hand, the MPAA sees the movie itself as the revenue stream. For music there is a very plausible argument that a pirated song may very well create a concert ticket sale. It is harder to sell the idea that a pirated movie will sell a movie ticket. There is also a scale factor involved -- it is easier for a music exec to stomach giving away a 99 cent song when it might sell a 100 dollar concert ticket. It is a lot harder for the movie producer to see how giving away a 20 dollar copy of a movie makes sense for getting a one dollar Redbox rental. (Yes, I know that the marginal cost for reproducing the song and the movie are near zero for the industry, but I am talking about the modern business exec who doesn't understand basic microeconomics.)
The final analysis will probably show that unauthorized copying is not hurting the movie industry nearly as much as the MPAA currently believes. However, the movie industry is still doing rather well. At least they can still afford to spend $300 million to pump out mediocre movies. If the industry can afford to that, they can afford to live in fantasy worlds for at least a little while longer. However, as the movie industry continues to price itself out of the market it is going to have to face reality. I am just hoping that they don't manage to do severe damage to the Internet, the rest of the economy, and the First Amendment before that reality sets in for the MPAA.
On the post: Dear Sweden: Will You Tax Hard Drives And Give Me A Cut Every Time Someone Visits Techdirt?
Re: Re: au contraire
There is practically zero chance the artists will be getting any of the money. Just look at how the RIAA deal with YouTube is set up. They agreement doesn't even pretend to share a cut with the artists. It all goes to the companies, which basically means that a lot of it goes to the company executives and the rest goes to tone-deaf stock holders.
On the post: What Can Bring Together Opposites On The Traditional Political Spectrum? A Fear Of Censorship Due To PROTECT IP
On the post: Does The Punishment Fit The Crime? Is Manslaughter An Equivalent Crime To Copyright Infringement?
On the post: Court Finds Law Blocking Teachers From Friending Students 'Staggering'; Blocks Implementation
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That is probably one reason Google+ uses "Circles."
On the post: Appeals Court: Arresting Guy For Filming Cops Was A Clear Violation Of Both 1st & 4th Amendments
Re: THey don't care
That isn't true. Section 1983 of the US Code specifically covers this situation.
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/42/21/I/1983
On the post: Don't Mess With Texas... Or, Well, Don't Use That Slogan As A Book Title Or Texas Will Sue
On the post: Report Commissioned By EU Parliament Members Shows ACTA Will Increase Health Risks Worldwide
ACTA attempts to fight basic economics in too many ways. Economics always beats regulations in the end.
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