“the MPAA failed to show actual evidence of infringement of copyrights by US users on IsoHunt ”
I have a big problem with criminal charges unsupported by evidence. Call me crazy. but I believe in archaic legal ideas like "innocent until proven guilty".
@Anonymous Coward: so long as there's that CD levy Canadians are within their rights to download music.
(As one who lost 6 months worth of photo restoration work when my hard drive died this really annoys me because >I
Some food for thought... yes, evidence would be good. My suspicion is that they can't present evidence because I am quite certain it would prove the opposite: excess copyright HARMS creation.
You know, the funny thing is, if the existing middlemen weren't behaving like jerks they might have carved out new ways of distribution with the emerging independent artists. Guess it's tough to accept anything less after absolute power. Instead, when the indies are established enough to hire distributors there sure isn't going to be work for the old guard as the entirely new industry will have it sewn up.
As one whose grandparents escaped from Russia during the revolution, I have always had a powerful interest in what happened when it became the Soviet Union. From everything I have learned over the years, there was never "free access" to anything except for those few elite (Orwell's "pigs") in positions of power. Perhaps Dr. Ficsor wasn't one of that elite, and now that he sees himself as such an exalted authority he is distressed that we won't slavishly follow his opinion. How dare anyone disagree with him.
@Anonymous Coward... I suspect it's somewhat problematical to bring slander charges when you're anonymous.
@Daemon_ZOGG... Sadly, because Dr. Ficsor is backed by such powerful interests people will listen. Even worse, laws may be written because of his ignorant advocacy. Speak out to your elected representatives!
I've put together a consumer POV public service blog post: StopUBB: DRM is BAD in an effort to explain DRM to the majority of consumers who have no idea what DRM is.... and now, back to xmas prep.
I agree that the writing is on the wall. Progress will inevitably win out as it always does. If the Canadian government should cave to the pressure I would not be the least bit surprised to see the Pirate Party of Canada walking into a majority government. (Canadians are slow to rile, but when we do... )
BUT.
In the meantime the world goes to hell. I don't want to see our best and brightest young people go to jail because greedy corporations can't get enough.
For too long the culture of the entire world has been under the control of a few corporate executives who don't have a clue. They have guessed wrong far more than they've guessed right and the whole world has suffered for it. Actual creators have been forced to hand over copyright and confined in a “company store” economicly. The new way that is open to Independent artists to release their own work has them running scared.
The thing is, the artists who get out there and establish a following will WANT to contract with a distributor. Every moment spent running a distribution network is time spent not making their art. So there will a place for the corporations. Just not the omnipotent one they are used to. It will mean that artists with a following will demand equitable contracts.
The movers and shakers behind ACTA and this EU nightmare are not exhibiting an ability to adapt, instead they're trying to legislate anti-progress. Eventually they will not be able to attract artists of any ability because all the good ones will be making deals with the emerging distribution industry that will work with them rather than control them.
BUT.
In the meantime too many bad things will come of this now. It would be better to stopped it before it is a done deal.
Blog about it, tweet it, dent it, jabber or gwibber it... spread the word outside the technical community.
And most especially tell your elected representatives.
First, I am wondering if the EU is doing all of the things they are demanding of Canada.
The resale rights idea seems particularly insane for the EU. Not just in a horrendous bureaucratic nightmare sense, but in an environmental sense. This will make re-selling impractical and lead to unprecedented volumes of garbage as media people no longer want is thrown out. In north America we still have lots of wide open spaces we can sully with landfills (lots of valleys between the Rockies we can fill in with old CDs and videotapes...) but where is the EU going to put theirs? Last I heard EU lack of space forced them to recycle cemetery plots.
"Copyright term extension is effectively a welfare program for content creators" ... uh, no.... after you're dead fifty years there's no way to improve your welfare.
I know it is a semantic bone to pick but an important one. I suspect you were talking about "content owners" aka "The Copyright Lobby", consisting of corporations who finance and/or distribute movies and music.
As a creator, I know that the industries fighting to force these ridiculous copyright laws on the world are the same industries who have abused their power over the actual creators for decades. Having traditionally wrested copyright from artists they want to extend copyright forever, twenty years at a time.
Their objectives are clearly not to encourage creative output but to control it. If you control enough of it for a long enough time new creation is a positive dis-incentive.
Corporations should not be allowed to hold copyright. Copyright should be the exclusive right of the creators.
One of the Canadian Copyright Consultation questions asked what it would take to make Canada a leader in copyright reform.
Saying no to these external pressures and making our own laws would do it.
Maybe its just the NCAA showing solidarity for the MPAA.
I don't know about names, but you can't copyright a book or movie title. Then again, Toys are us owns the letter "R" so maybe I'm wrong.... or is that trademark or patent?
Even if the law says you can. no one should be allowed to copyright/trademark/patent an acronym.
What I worry about is that this awful ignorance will kill off freedom (privacy IS freedom) and also file sharing, which is so important.
In the latter part of my StopUBB public service blog post explaining BitTorrent for the non-technically minded, there's a fair bit about "other uses for BitTorrent that are not only legal, but even perfectly acceptable in polite society." I get so angry at all the people slamming P2P when it does so much good.
William Goldman (writer of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid) famously observed of the movie biz: "Nobody Knows Nothing". The same is true of the music biz. Yet for the last half century both of those businesses were controlled by a few executives in a few corporations. When your company is only backing a handful of artists you're not going to be promoting much that's "outside the box".
Dark Helmet is right, we are already seeing "the return to regional art, music, fandom, etc. " because artists can find an audience without selling their souls to a corporation that then enslaves them, making a tiny few mega stars and keeping the rest in penury.
Yes, there have been some really good artists and some really great music in the last fifty years... But many as many really good creators never got a chance because some ignorant executive didn't get it.
Myself I am looking forward to the new golden age of music.
The copyright lobby uses the word Piracy to refer to two very different things.
Bootlegging is commercial copyright infringement: movies or music is copied and mass produced for retail sale, often to an unsuspecting public. Bootleggers make a profit.
Piracy should more properly be called Personal Use Copying because it is non commercial copyright infringement. Pirates don't make a profit. But of course the word “Pirate” sounds so much sexier... my son tells me teen age girls are still swooning over Johnny Depp.
"Pirates" infringe copyright for various reasons, sometimes
accidentally, when making any kind of a recording you better be careful there is no radio or TV playing nearby or YOU will be a pirate too...
oh, and don't sing “Happy Birthday” on your home video to be on the safe side...
to format shift products they have purchased for their own use,
The growing European “Pirate Party” movement is now setting up in Canada. It exists to push for sane copyright reform.
As Mr. Masnick points out copyright should be (and still is in most parts of the world, at least until ACTA, anyway) a civil issue. Music Bootlegging didn't start with the internet, it began the moment the first consumer tape recorder existed.
The irony is that these laws don't actually do anything to fight bootlegging. If anything, industry attempts to criminalize consumers ensures we will not lift a finger against commercial infringement (the same way that bandits are idolized and supported under any repressive regime.) If you accidentally purchase a bootleg movie are you gonna call the RCMP or the FBI? And risk going to jail? I don't think so.
The the movie studios have seen what has been happening in the music biz. 30% of the music industry has gone independent, so musicians no longer have to sell their souls in inequitable record company deals to get recorded. The technology has made DIY possible. It isn't cheap but it is do-able. The movie biz is worried it will happen to them too. Look at Nina Paley's wonderful movie Sita Sings the Blues
If Congress has an extra $30 million laying around I would have thought there would be no end of good works they could perform with that... it might be better spent supporting Bookshare's efforts to make copyright works available to the reading disabled. (Particularly since the increased copyright laws will only make Bookshare's work much more difficult.
But the movie biz (even with record profits) wants the government to become their collection agency. Um. In a world so cash strapped it is difficult to understand why governments would want to do this. Law enforcement is bloody expensive. Who will be paying for this? (Too often governments forget that we are the prime source of their income.)
Tell your government representatives what you think about copyright. If you don't, they will continue to bask in the glow of the “movie star treatment” that has them all aflutter. They need to be reminded that their first responsibility is to you.
This is the Law: Changing It would be More Effective
I doubt suing will get anywhere since the theater was following the law of the land. They acted out of fear that THEY would be in trouble (and they certainly WOULD have) with the MPAA. The ONLY reason she was let off was the media attention.
Yes, it was ridiculous. No it shouldn't have happened. But it did and it could just as easily have gone the other way. Because the MPAA supported laws do not make distinctions between Commercial Bootlegging and Personal Use Copying, both of which are lumped together under the term "piracy". If you are making a video while you walk down the street and pass a TV store that is running a film and you record one frame of it you will have broken this law.
The laws need to be changed. A.C.T.A. will make things much much worse.
Laurel L. Russwurm (profile), 4 Dec 2009 @ 11:06am
@senshikaze... people need to know bad things are happening before they can protest. Since our governments are acting in secrecy ("national security") and since the big media companies are behind ACTA, surprise, it isn't talked about much if at all in mainstream media.
@Hephaestus - maybe, but: since the entire negotiation it being done in secret we don't know what the law will entail... BitTorrent and encryption may well be completely illegal under ACTA. If I was a soulless major media company exec pushing for global domination that's what I'd be after. The point is WE DON'T KNOW.
In Canada currently our backbone ISP carrier is allowed to use DPI to identify bitTorrent traffic so they can throttle it-- and since any encrypted traffic might be bitTorrent they are given a free pass to throttle anything encrypted as well. Stopping the same traffic dead would be child's play. they HAVE the technology. If ACTA should make file sharing illegal it will cause grave damage to open source software, Project Gutenberg, and the emerging independent music industry which uses file sharing for promo & distribution. This would be a shame as THIS MAGAZINE's article Pay indie artists and break the music monopoly — Legalize Music Piracy said “Independent musicians make up about 30 percent of the music industry now. That’s $150 million going to independent artists in Canada alone.”
According to Bytesyle TV, AFTER ACTA is done negotiations will be TOO LATE for American citizens to make any complaints because this negotiation does not require congressional ratification (its being undertaken under an under an "executive order").
This makes it incredibly important for American citizens with concerns to speak up NOW to your elected representatives. Spreading the word to your less technical friends would help too. Later will be too late.
On the post: IsoHunt Loses Big; Court Says: You Induce, You Lose
(As one who lost 6 months worth of photo restoration work when my hard drive died this really annoys me because >I
On the post: IsoHunt Loses Big; Court Says: You Induce, You Lose
I have a big problem with criminal charges unsupported by evidence. Call me crazy. but I believe in archaic legal ideas like "innocent until proven guilty".
@Anonymous Coward: so long as there's that CD levy Canadians are within their rights to download music.
(As one who lost 6 months worth of photo restoration work when my hard drive died this really annoys me because >I
On the post: Hungarian Copyright Treaty Author Insists That Those Who Don't Like Anti-Circumvention Clauses Are 'Hatred-Driven' Maoists
those middlemen are sure fighting hard
You know, the funny thing is, if the existing middlemen weren't behaving like jerks they might have carved out new ways of distribution with the emerging independent artists. Guess it's tough to accept anything less after absolute power. Instead, when the indies are established enough to hire distributors there sure isn't going to be work for the old guard as the entirely new industry will have it sewn up.
As one whose grandparents escaped from Russia during the revolution, I have always had a powerful interest in what happened when it became the Soviet Union. From everything I have learned over the years, there was never "free access" to anything except for those few elite (Orwell's "pigs") in positions of power. Perhaps Dr. Ficsor wasn't one of that elite, and now that he sees himself as such an exalted authority he is distressed that we won't slavishly follow his opinion. How dare anyone disagree with him.
@Anonymous Coward... I suspect it's somewhat problematical to bring slander charges when you're anonymous.
@Daemon_ZOGG... Sadly, because Dr. Ficsor is backed by such powerful interests people will listen. Even worse, laws may be written because of his ignorant advocacy. Speak out to your elected representatives!
I've put together a consumer POV public service blog post: StopUBB: DRM is BAD in an effort to explain DRM to the majority of consumers who have no idea what DRM is.... and now, back to xmas prep.
On the post: Canada Also Getting Pushed By EU On Ridiculous Copyright Policies
re: SMILING EAR TO EAR ....
BUT.
In the meantime the world goes to hell. I don't want to see our best and brightest young people go to jail because greedy corporations can't get enough.
I don't want to see file sharing become illegal (likely the next salvo) because “There are other uses for BitTorrent that are not only legal, but even perfectly acceptable in polite society.” It's so important and the damage to the open source movement would be incredible.
For too long the culture of the entire world has been under the control of a few corporate executives who don't have a clue. They have guessed wrong far more than they've guessed right and the whole world has suffered for it. Actual creators have been forced to hand over copyright and confined in a “company store” economicly. The new way that is open to Independent artists to release their own work has them running scared.
The thing is, the artists who get out there and establish a following will WANT to contract with a distributor. Every moment spent running a distribution network is time spent not making their art. So there will a place for the corporations. Just not the omnipotent one they are used to. It will mean that artists with a following will demand equitable contracts.
The movers and shakers behind ACTA and this EU nightmare are not exhibiting an ability to adapt, instead they're trying to legislate anti-progress. Eventually they will not be able to attract artists of any ability because all the good ones will be making deals with the emerging distribution industry that will work with them rather than control them.
BUT.
In the meantime too many bad things will come of this now. It would be better to stopped it before it is a done deal.
Blog about it, tweet it, dent it, jabber or gwibber it... spread the word outside the technical community.
And most especially tell your elected representatives.
On the post: Canada Also Getting Pushed By EU On Ridiculous Copyright Policies
a couple of things
The resale rights idea seems particularly insane for the EU. Not just in a horrendous bureaucratic nightmare sense, but in an environmental sense. This will make re-selling impractical and lead to unprecedented volumes of garbage as media people no longer want is thrown out. In north America we still have lots of wide open spaces we can sully with landfills (lots of valleys between the Rockies we can fill in with old CDs and videotapes...) but where is the EU going to put theirs? Last I heard EU lack of space forced them to recycle cemetery plots.
"Copyright term extension is effectively a welfare program for content creators" ... uh, no.... after you're dead fifty years there's no way to improve your welfare.
I know it is a semantic bone to pick but an important one. I suspect you were talking about "content owners" aka "The Copyright Lobby", consisting of corporations who finance and/or distribute movies and music.
As a creator, I know that the industries fighting to force these ridiculous copyright laws on the world are the same industries who have abused their power over the actual creators for decades. Having traditionally wrested copyright from artists they want to extend copyright forever, twenty years at a time.
Their objectives are clearly not to encourage creative output but to control it. If you control enough of it for a long enough time new creation is a positive dis-incentive.
Corporations should not be allowed to hold copyright. Copyright should be the exclusive right of the creators.
One of the Canadian Copyright Consultation questions asked what it would take to make Canada a leader in copyright reform.
Saying no to these external pressures and making our own laws would do it.
On the post: NCAA Tries To Bully Fan Discussion Site Into Handing Over Its Domain Name
Maybe its just the NCAA showing solidarity for the MPAA.
Even if the law says you can. no one should be allowed to copyright/trademark/patent an acronym.
On the post: Songwriters Guild: Network Neutrality Means More Piracy
2 sides: Canadian music take on P2P
What I worry about is that this awful ignorance will kill off freedom (privacy IS freedom) and also file sharing, which is so important.
In the latter part of my StopUBB public service blog post explaining BitTorrent for the non-technically minded, there's a fair bit about "other uses for BitTorrent that are not only legal, but even perfectly acceptable in polite society." I get so angry at all the people slamming P2P when it does so much good.
William Goldman (writer of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid) famously observed of the movie biz: "Nobody Knows Nothing". The same is true of the music biz. Yet for the last half century both of those businesses were controlled by a few executives in a few corporations. When your company is only backing a handful of artists you're not going to be promoting much that's "outside the box".
Dark Helmet is right, we are already seeing "the return to regional art, music, fandom, etc. " because artists can find an audience without selling their souls to a corporation that then enslaves them, making a tiny few mega stars and keeping the rest in penury.
Yes, there have been some really good artists and some really great music in the last fifty years... But many as many really good creators never got a chance because some ignorant executive didn't get it.
Myself I am looking forward to the new golden age of music.
On the post: Congress Gives $30 Million To Fight 'Piracy'
priorities
Bootlegging is commercial copyright infringement: movies or music is copied and mass produced for retail sale, often to an unsuspecting public. Bootleggers make a profit.
Piracy should more properly be called Personal Use Copying because it is non commercial copyright infringement. Pirates don't make a profit. But of course the word “Pirate” sounds so much sexier... my son tells me teen age girls are still swooning over Johnny Depp.
"Pirates" infringe copyright for various reasons, sometimes
- accidentally, when making any kind of a recording you better be careful there is no radio or TV playing nearby or YOU will be a pirate too...
- oh, and don't sing “Happy Birthday” on your home video to be on the safe side...
- to format shift products they have purchased for their own use,
- to make available to the disabled,
- or to share with friends on the internet.
Which is why it's called “file sharing” in the wind: Personal Use Copying vs. BootleggingThe growing European “Pirate Party” movement is now setting up in Canada. It exists to push for sane copyright reform.
As Mr. Masnick points out copyright should be (and still is in most parts of the world, at least until ACTA, anyway) a civil issue. Music Bootlegging didn't start with the internet, it began the moment the first consumer tape recorder existed.
The irony is that these laws don't actually do anything to fight bootlegging. If anything, industry attempts to criminalize consumers ensures we will not lift a finger against commercial infringement (the same way that bandits are idolized and supported under any repressive regime.) If you accidentally purchase a bootleg movie are you gonna call the RCMP or the FBI? And risk going to jail? I don't think so.
The the movie studios have seen what has been happening in the music biz. 30% of the music industry has gone independent, so musicians no longer have to sell their souls in inequitable record company deals to get recorded. The technology has made DIY possible. It isn't cheap but it is do-able. The movie biz is worried it will happen to them too. Look at Nina Paley's wonderful movie Sita Sings the Blues
If Congress has an extra $30 million laying around I would have thought there would be no end of good works they could perform with that... it might be better spent supporting Bookshare's efforts to make copyright works available to the reading disabled. (Particularly since the increased copyright laws will only make Bookshare's work much more difficult.
But the movie biz (even with record profits) wants the government to become their collection agency. Um. In a world so cash strapped it is difficult to understand why governments would want to do this. Law enforcement is bloody expensive. Who will be paying for this? (Too often governments forget that we are the prime source of their income.)
Tell your government representatives what you think about copyright. If you don't, they will continue to bask in the glow of the “movie star treatment” that has them all aflutter. They need to be reminded that their first responsibility is to you.
On the post: Woman Arrested For Filming Snippets Of 'New Moon' May Sue Theater
This is the Law: Changing It would be More Effective
Yes, it was ridiculous. No it shouldn't have happened. But it did and it could just as easily have gone the other way. Because the MPAA supported laws do not make distinctions between Commercial Bootlegging and Personal Use Copying, both of which are lumped together under the term "piracy". If you are making a video while you walk down the street and pass a TV store that is running a film and you record one frame of it you will have broken this law.
The laws need to be changed. A.C.T.A. will make things much much worse.
( A.C.T.A. is still BAD )
Speak out!
Tell your elected representatives what you think. Currently they believe everything the MPAA tells them. If enough voters complain they will hear.
On the post: Why Would Countries Leave ACTA Negotiations If Text Was Public?
@Hephaestus - maybe, but: since the entire negotiation it being done in secret we don't know what the law will entail... BitTorrent and encryption may well be completely illegal under ACTA. If I was a soulless major media company exec pushing for global domination that's what I'd be after. The point is WE DON'T KNOW.
In Canada currently our backbone ISP carrier is allowed to use DPI to identify bitTorrent traffic so they can throttle it-- and since any encrypted traffic might be bitTorrent they are given a free pass to throttle anything encrypted as well. Stopping the same traffic dead would be child's play. they HAVE the technology. If ACTA should make file sharing illegal it will cause grave damage to open source software, Project Gutenberg, and the emerging independent music industry which uses file sharing for promo & distribution. This would be a shame as THIS MAGAZINE's article Pay indie artists and break the music monopoly — Legalize Music Piracy said “Independent musicians make up about 30 percent of the music industry now. That’s $150 million going to independent artists in Canada alone.”
According to Bytesyle TV, AFTER ACTA is done negotiations will be TOO LATE for American citizens to make any complaints because this negotiation does not require congressional ratification (its being undertaken under an under an "executive order").
This makes it incredibly important for American citizens with concerns to speak up NOW to your elected representatives. Spreading the word to your less technical friends would help too. Later will be too late.
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