| Customer or Adversary, Pick One, Not Both |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|07:59 pm] |
Back in January 2006 I made this prediction:Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it's not a trip to be taken lightly. But if you want to see the film everyone is talking about without waiting a year for the home release, you have little choice. When you enter the lobby the first thing you see are long ranks of tiny, thumbprint activated lockers. This is where you must leave all of your electronics...
Turns out I was wrong; it's already getting worse:I was refused access to a Cineworld cinema tonight because I had a laptop in my bag.
I was told it was a new policy to stop people recording the films. I pointed out that my laptop does not have the capability of recording a film. It does not have a camera on it for a start.
So why had I brought it to the cinema I was asked.
I pointed out that like many other people on their way home from work I had a laptop in my bag. That didn’t mean I planned to use it in the cinema. It was just in my bag as that seemed a more sensible option than leaving it in my car.
I was told that they would let me into the film, but I would have to hand my laptop over first and collect it at the end. It turned out that they didn’t have any kind of receipt system in place, so I declined the kind offer to look after my £1500 Sony Vaio that contains all my current work projects, plus some half baked book ideas.
These measures are a part of guidelines for cinemas drawn up by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). Perhaps their desire to control private citizens has overtaken their ability to plan any implementation of their schemes. It's as though they are so used to getting their way through lobbying and the purchase of laws that they have forgotten that something like this entails more than simple yelling, hand waving and the dropping of large bundles of cash at the feet of easy politicians.
Three years ago I considered the possibility that I might never visit the cinema again, a pledge based on the principal that I could not, in good conscience, continue to fund the activities of these people. Three years later and I have kept that pledge. Strangely, in that time, I have had absolutely no qualms about my continued boycotting of this toxic industry, no regrets at passing up three years worth of blockbusters. I can say, in all honesty, that I have not missed the experience at all.
Their continued struggle to introduce this private police state encompassing anyone found in front of a glowing screen only strengthens the resolve to never assist them again. The irony is that, at this rate, tens or even hundreds of thousands may join me unknowingly out of simple irritation and exasperation at being asked to pay for the privilege of being treated like criminals. But it is a certainty that any further drop in revenue that the industry causes for itself will only be used as evidence for the necessity of their tactics.
Here's another prediction, one I'm sure you are all quite capable of making yourselves: It will get worse, and it will not get better until the studios as we know them are long gone.
Via BoingBoing: Brit copyright group says, "No laptops allowed in cinemas" |
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| The Recoding Industry is Dead. Long Live Music! |
[Sep. 18th, 2009|04:32 pm] |
There is very little short of murder that we would not blithely accept the recording industry as being capable of, but this sort of stupidity really just beggars belief. ASCAP and the BMI want to collect royalties on the 30 second track previews in the iTunes store. It seems as though they are determined to cripple what little business they have left, like a man lopping off one of his own fingers every time he drops something.
I doubt there is anyone left that believes the recording industry will still be with us in the future - at least no one intelligent, sane and not actually financially dependant on this dying model. So the question is, what comes after?
Along with radical copyright reform (shortening the term to a maximum of 14 years and excluding all private copying) I've been a supporter of the blanket license in one form or another, preferably something along the lines of an independent, non-profit organisation acting as collecting, tracking and redistribution service for all digital media. But where music is concerned I think something else is going to happen. Or perhaps, something else should happen.
I'll lay it on the line: artist should forget about royalties, forget about the sale of recordings.
In a world of ubiquitous copying technology recordings are worthless. The recording industry only continues to exist on a foundation of past profits from which they exert political pressure, changing minds and laws to favour the old way of doing things. But that foundation and that influence is not going to last. Those old profit margins are never coming back. They will never recover the money they are wasting right now to fight an ill-advised war on the people who use to line their pockets.
If we accept that there is no more money in recordings, what does that leave the artists? It leaves them the skills that they started with; musicians should be paid for playing music, singers should be paid for singing, songwriters should be paid by the artists they write songs for. The future of music as a business is sponsorship and live performance, a future where the distribution of recordings is merely a precursor to this main event. And think how much more inclined punters will be to fork out for concert tickets when they are not paying an idiot who has never played a good note in his life to do something that the punters can do themselves at a microscopic fraction of the cost!
This is not to suggest that all use of recorded music should be free. Commercial uses, uses that attempt to produce a profit from an artist's work, should involve a payment within the term of copyright. But everything else should be written off as normal, private use and beyond copyright including sharing, and playing the music on a radio in a garage.
There is this odd perception that the industry has attempt to encourage, that artists should receive money from the public long after they have completed their work, that we must not stop paying them because they have families and illnesses to support. It is a suggestion that completely ignores the simple truth that these people were not paid enough by the industry that exploited their talents in the first place, and that the only way to support them now is to give huge sums of money to the labels who then offer the artist some thin shaving of the profit. As an excuse for the extension of copyright terms, disingenuous just doesn't cover it.
What remains of the members of The Beatles should not be paid by the public unless they are playing live. When they reached the point that they could no longer play they should, by that time, have saved and invested in a pension to cover the remainder of their lives. Sound familiar? That's because it's they way the rest of us live when our work is not protected by the magical thinking of artificial and self-referential moral logic.
Yes, this situation will be hard on smaller acts. They will have a hard time getting work, they will have to accept small fees and big losses. Well, wake up! That's how it is right now! The music industry has never been a wonderful frictionless fairy-slide into a world made entirely of money and Learjets, and it never will be. Some people will put their whole lives into their art and get nothing for it. It is lamentable, but it is not a problem solved by eternal copyrights and royalty payments on sales of a dead medium. And hasn't this risk always been a part of the allure of making music, the romance, the machismo, the daredevil attitude? No creative process is a sure thing, so no efforts based on this process can truly be relied upon. That is no reason to create a vast complex of logically and morally precarious rules to protect them.
For some this future of real work might sound terrifying. If it truly scares them, then they are either talentless recording industry cling-ons, or are really not cut out for music making.
The truth is, no matter what happens, music will go on. For as long as there are people there will be music. We couldn't stop them making music if we made it illegal! Why would we think it could disappear just because we change the way we pay the creators?
Face facts: the recoding industry is dead. Long live music! |
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| Beginning of the End |
[Sep. 1st, 2009|12:14 pm] |
 ACCESS TO THIS IP ADDRESS RELATING TO THE PIRATE BAY WEBSITE HAS BEEN BLOCKED
WHY?
On the 24 July 2009, an Order was made by the High Court requiring eircom to block or otherwise disable access by its subscribers to the website thePirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs. The Court was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence presented by the record companies that the PirateBay website is a website that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted sound recordings without the consent of the copyright owners.
eircom recognises the legitimate rights of the owners of copyrighted material and believes that individuals who share or download copyrighted material without the authorisation or the permission of the copyright owner are acting illegally.
The Order further provides that should the PirateBay website content be legitimatised in the future, then eircom has liberty to apply to the Court to have the Order vacated and access to the PirateBay website enabled.
eircom in compliance with the Order has agreed that access to the website the PirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs from the eircom network will be blocked indefinitely from the 1st September 2009.
Previously: |
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| The 1st of September, Remember, Remember |
[Aug. 20th, 2009|01:15 am] |
Things are about to start happening in the War on Irish Internet Users.
According to The Irish Times the recording industry's favourite broadband provider, Eircom, will start blocking thepiratebay.org on September 1st. Well, actually it says "piratebay.org" which is just an alias domain, but who knows...?
The article also mentions that both UPC and BT Ireland have received ultimatums giving them one week to begin blocking the Pirate Bay themselves or face legal action. Both have affirmed their refusal to comply with the demand, stating that such blocking has no basis in Irish law. The article isn't too clear but this notice appears to have been received on the 19th this month.
There's no mention of whether Eircom will begin handing down the first of the Three Strikes warnings at the same time. However, according to a leaked document Eircom's part in the process will prove to be more hands on than previously feared.Eircom has also reserved the right to remove a customer from a particular level or not to effect a disconnection where Eircom has received representations or complaints and believes that the infringement as alleged has not taken place or where there are particular extenuating circumstances which would make the disconnection of the customer unjustified.
Eircom will engage with that person at all times to ensure that there is a full understanding of the issues and that any accidental or unintentional infringement can be identified and remedied.
While it is preferable to their simply taking the recording industry's word for it, this is not to say it is better by much. This engagement will, apparently, be conducted through Eircom's existing customer support system. This support system, I can tell you, is no more than you will have come to expect from a typical telecoms company anywhere in the world.
I feel compelled to give an example of exactly the level of sophistication I have experienced in my very few communications with these people. A few years ago I was helping a friend upgrade his internet connection package with Eircom. This was still dial-up and so required the user to do some manual configuration. My friend wasn't too confident that he'd get it right or even understand what he was being told during the process, so I agreed to stand in for him. Part of the call to the sales department for the upgrade went a lot like this:Operator: ...and can you give me the password?
Me: Sure, it's **********.
Operator: Hmm, that's not what I see here. I've got *********.
Me: [Incredulous pause, since this is the same password used for the associated email account]
Operator: Hello?
Me: Yes... Okay... I'll use that then.
The upgrade went surprisingly smoothly...
Well I'm sure the support teams are much better informed these days and will be quite capable of explaining to distraught parents why their entire household is threatened with losing it's Internet connection because their thirteen-year-old son downloaded a KISS album using a process that is entirely alien to them since their home network is entirely built and maintained by the same child, who also helps them out when they want to use Comic Sans in Word... |
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| Dark Days Ahead for Irish Internet Users |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|04:59 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | censorship, copyright, internet, ireland, irma, music, net neutrality, rant, riaa, technology, three strikes | ] |
Just to catch you up. This year my ISP, Eircom.net, settled a dispute with the Irish Recorded Music Ass. (IRMA) who had taken them to court over illegal file sharing. The claim was that Eircom were complicit in the illegal activities of their users. the evidence against them included internal emails showing Eircom execs joking about copyright infringement.
The out of court settlement, so far as anyone can tell, is entirely one-sided. Eircom have agreed to institute both content filtering - censorship by any other name - and a three-strikes rule - very like the situation promised by the recently defeated EU Telecoms Package. The Industry Ass. will put forward to the courts websites and online services that they feel need to be blocked in Ireland to protect their profit margins and Eircom have agreed not to contest any of them. A sorry little MediaSentry wannabe called DTecNet is in place to monitor internet users and provide accusations which Eircom will be asked to act upon by disconnecting those accused without any room for appeal. Remember, this is the same monitoring technique that lead the RIAA to sue a woman who did not even own a computer! Also keep in mind that this is a private arrangement, there is no public consultation, no democratic or judicial process, no tests for legality or constitutionality. This is the Recording Industry successfully inserting a de facto law without any need to lobby politicians or campaign for public support.
Fine, I'll ditch Eircom in a heartbeat, and I'll be sure to let them know exactly why I, and no doubt many other customers are jumping what has become the Recording Industry patrol boat to man the cruise liner across the dock. I'm thinking I'll sign up with UPC, an international company that bought out NTL and Chorus and that offer better stats for a similar price.
But there's a problem...
Since their success with Eircom the Irish Recorded Music Ass. has been sending threatening letters to all the other ISPs operating in the country (and a few that aren't ISPs at all) offering the same arrangement they offered Eircom and backed by the same threats of legal action. In fact both BT Ireland and UPC are already facing legal proceedings over this.
Eircom is the largest telecoms operator in the Republic, the one-time monopoly holder, their pockets are as deep as they get in the local industry. Even they could not face the legal avalanche that the Recording Industry promised to drop on them - appeal after appeal, case after case. Eircom have a maximum possible consumer base of maybe 2 million households and businesses. Subtract from that the customers who have taken up offers from other companies. What's left does not look like much when placed before the international cartels that are applying monetary leverage across the fulcrum of IRMA. All the other operators here are smaller than that, or at least have a smaller stake in the already tiny market. Even BT will probably settle before the cost of legal activity outstrips their profit margin. It seems we're about to find out.
How can anyone select a new provider when it looks like they'll all end up in exactly the same situation?
UPC have publicly stated that they have no intention of folding before the threats. In their own words "UPC intends to vigorously defend its position in court." And this is exactly the stance that lead Eircom to court in the first place. And look where they are now.
Angry yet? |
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| Work Once, Paid Forever! |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|04:49 am] |
The EU has decided that we, the public, must continue to pay performers of musical works for 70 years after they have completed the work. That's another twenty years closer to perpetuity.
Perhaps I should write to my MEP and enquire if this scheme could be extended to other areas of employment. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all paid for the rest of our lives for every job we've ever done? I could really do with getting a half-dozen paychecks every month.
So how about this alternative: performers are paid a decent wage when they perform, and when the performance stops, so does the money! |
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| UK Government Under the Control of Hollywood |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|10:18 pm] |
You may have noticed that the UK government, with the kind assistance of Andrew Burnham MP of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is bowing to Hollywood and the record labels' various enforcement groups, essentially handing them the power to control the uses that UK citizens may make of their internet connections. ISPs have been given until April 2009 to comply with new regulations that will force them to inspect all data transferred through their systems and magically deduce whether or not it involves the sharing of copyrighted material. In the event that sharing is suspected (nothing more is required) the ISP subscriber will receive a strike against them, if they receive three strikes their internet service will be terminated.
No allowances have been made for the technological requirements for deep packet inspection of all traffic that passes through a service providers system. It may safely be presumed that the customers will end up paying extra to have their private data transmissions intercepted and analysed. I have yet to find any comment form Burnham on the morality of cutting off an innocent user when someone else who makes use of the same connection is suspected of sharing - if one family member breaks the rules then everyone in that household loses access this increasingly essential communications service. Nor have I seen any indication from those involved that they have any understanding of the encryption arms race they are about to enter and immediately lose - that will be an awful lot of money spent and trouble caused for a system that will be worked around before it is even put in place. Naturally there is no hint of how the ISP's are to identify copyrighted works from any other shared files. And what are the procedures for proving one's innocence? How does someone with a strike based on a suspicion show that they are not guilty of sharing (baring in mind the technical hurdles already involved in proving positive proof of sharing).
The most sensible response I have heard comes from a Slashdot commenter:
"if all ISPs in the UK staged a strike by cutting Internet access everywhere for two or three days and claim that would be the only possible way to ensure their customers aren't pirating anything, I am sure that the outrage would force another look at the law. And if they did this 2 different times, like once on Thursday Friday and Saturday, it could cause direct deposit information and payroll services to be interrupted. If they did this on again a week later on lets say Monday and Tuesday, there would be so much upset and confusion that those who think they wasn't effected will be."
Personally I will be happy to lose access for a few days if it will do anything to prevent this travesty from going any further. Frankly, the harm done to individual users will not even register compared to the harm done to UK financial sector, not least the content industry. They must learn that the environment has changed and all the legislation in the world cannot change it back. Technology has moved forward and they have failed to follow. Their demise is inevitable, and is only hastened by making enemies of us all. |
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| The Cara Duckworth Translation |
[Jan. 17th, 2008|01:02 am] |
This is a translation of Don Reisinger's interview with the RIAA's Cara Duckworth for CNet. The translation is into English from Bullshit.
Don: Please tell me who you are and what you do.
RIAA: Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA.
Translation: Cara Duckworth, Recording Industry Ass. of America mouthpiece.
Don: What can you tell me about the college deterrence program?
RIAA: Began last February. It was becoming clearer that despite cool new legal services and the ongoing educational efforts, too many students--some of music's biggest fans--were getting their music illegally and learning the wrong lessons about stealing and the law. There had to be a deterrence factor involved so that individuals knew that along with personal consequences (i.e., viruses, spyware infiltrating hard drive) there would also be legal consequences to engaging in illegal downloading behavior. Bringing lawsuits was by no means our first choice, but a necessary step we had to take.
Translation: It seems like the harder we try to make money off those ungrateful little shits the more they turn away from us. I just don't get it, I mean I don't get technology in general so how am I supposed to know about Trojans and viruses... something to do with safe sex, yes? Sony tried giving them that great rootkit for free and they just threw it back in their faces. So now we're going to start dragging our biggest customers through the courts. Makes sense when we think about it.
Don: Why college students?
RIAA: First, it should be clarified that our college campaign is in addition to the lawsuits we file against individuals using commercial ISPs to illegally download and distribute music. Second, college students have reached a stage in life when their music habits are crystallized, and their appreciation for intellectual property has not yet reached its full development. These two points coupled together present challenges to those who would like to be compensated for their creative works. Understanding the value of intellectual property is important to the future job market for many of these students--industries that rely on copyright protection employ more than 11 million workers nationwide and continue to grow.
Translation: Hey, don't get me wrong, we'll make you all pay. But students in particular just don't think the way we want them to, and we at the Ass. are now forced to brainwash them through legal means. Our understanding of intellectual property is firmly fixed in the last century and we want to make damn sure that everyone else's understanding is too. For instance, we are determined not to contemplate any alteration to the standard business model and to do our best to retard technological progress that will inevitably render that model obsolete.
Don: What group of people do you see pirating the most music?
RIAA: While college students used to be some of music's greatest fans, unfortunately that is no longer the case. I would point you to the evidence of the extensiveness of music theft amongst college campuses from Student Monitor and other market research firms to show why we are focusing some of our efforts on universities.
Translation: College brats! Those little bastards! They've got the money, how else did they get into college? They're trying to improve their chances in the job market using money that rightfully belongs to us. If you'd like to see my evidence for this assumption you'll have to buy it, just like we did.
Don: How do you respond to people who say your organization is a group of bullies?
RIAA: I have to step back for a moment. These are certainly heavy issues and none which we take lightly. When an individual is caught illegally downloading music, it sometimes happens that the person creates a stir. The reality of it is that nobody wants to get caught and most people complain when they are. The music industry has lost more than $3 billion in sales over the last few years. Bringing lawsuits is certainly no one's ideal answer--we're well aware of that. But if we had sat on our hands and chosen to do nothing about the piracy problem as the music industry was haemorrhaging jobs and lost sales, imagine what the extent of theft would be today and how the legal marketplace would be struggling to gain traction. The digital music marketplace is demonstrably better because of our efforts.
Translation: They're just whining little crybabies. Wah wah wah, they're picking on me! Wah wah wah, $10,000 per track is too much! Wah wah wah, I don't even own a computer! They're the one's not buying music, they should be giving us money and they're not! Think of all the money we're losing to people who aren't paying for things we never gave them, and trust me: you won't believe how much we never gave them. It's progress that's causing all this. What are we supposed to do just let the world move on and leave us behind? Like hell! If the only way for us to keep our jobs is to make you pay for service you no longer need then so be it. Put up and pay up!
Don: How have you addressed those huge pirating cartels overseas? Are you going for a soft target?
RIAA: Our preference--first and foremost--is to take action against the services themselves that facilitate the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted works. We are actively assisting efforts by policy makers in Washington to encourage countries whose copyright laws have not kept up with the times or who do not appropriately enforce intellectual property violations. Additionally, we are affiliated with IFPI, which represents the interest of the global music community and assists in the enforcement of copyright infringement cases outside of the U.S.
Translation: You mean the physical pirates, the ones selling counterfeit CDs? What, are you shitting me? Some of those guys are real criminals, they got guns and stuff. And they don't speak American so... you know... Oh wait, do you mean The Pirate Bay? Those fuckers! Sweden's turning into some kind of commie paradise. We gotta fix that as soon as possible and it takes money to get laws passed so we need to sue more students, on the double. That thing with getting Russia's WTO membership on the line, that was great move; maybe we could try something like that.
Don: Do you think your policy of lawsuits and settlements work?
RIAA: Absolutely. Since we began this initiative, we've seen a P2P problem that once was growing at dizzying speeds essentially flatten out. People are now more aware of what is legal and illegal when it comes to downloading music. But more importantly, bringing lawsuits is only one piece of the pie--we are actively investing resources in the education of students of all ages on the value of music and importance of copyrights and, perhaps most importantly, music companies are continuously partnering with exciting new services that offer fans an array of innovative opportunities to access their favourite music.
Translation: P2P has stopped growing. That means we're winning. There is absolutely no need to interpret this result as a saturation of the P2P market. You don't honestly believe that everyone who is going to share is already sharing do you? No. That was us. We did that. And we're going to press our advantage by continuing to terrify your kids into thinking the way we want them to, and we'll pay for that by suing the ones that don't learn. See how that works? Also, we're going to find ways to monetise just about everything you can do with music, including things no one's thought of yet. That will make everyone feel better about it.
Don: Why do you think you're such a disliked organization?
RIAA: I don't agree with the loaded premise of the question. In some online quarters, there may be lots of heat about the tough stands we sometimes must take. But amongst the general public, the favorability ratings of the record industry remain as positive as ever and surpass other forms of entertainment like movie or TV studios. I believe my answer to question No. 5 can apply here as well. But let it be said--the RIAA is much more than lawsuits. For example, we also are responsible for the Gold & Platinum program awarding artists who have achieved successful album sales and are active proponents of free speech in music. But no one likes lawsuits, and no one likes to get caught. It's not an ideal situation for any party involved. But with all the new, innovative legal alternatives in the marketplace (and more emerging on almost a daily basis), the music community is proactively offering fans ways to avoid lawsuits and get their favorite music at affordable prices.
Translation: Nonsense, there are lots of people who like us. It's just the ones we take money from or whose business model conflicts with our own that seem to have a problem. Like music lovers... and artists... and consumer groups, and electronics manufacturers, civil rights groups, Swedish communist politicians, anyone who has spent more than a few minutes actually thinking logically about the issues... oh, and the record labels too, those guys have seriously got the hump these days. Hmm, I guess we've bribed a few musicians and politicians into liking us though. And once our plans come to fruition and music lovers have no other option but to do what we tell them, we'll just tell them to like us. It'll be great!
Don: How do you respond to the people who say you're going after grandmothers and young children when you should be going after real criminals in gunships?
RIAA: I'd give them the facts and encourage them not to believe everything they read that aggressively villainizes the organization. We have a physical antipiracy unit that assists law enforcement agents in shutting down piracy operations both big and small. Oftentimes street peddlers selling bootlegged copies of music are also involved in large-scale drug and weapons trafficking, and we find clear evidence of that on raids. As for individuals themselves, we have no way of screening defendants based on demographics, socioeconomic status, or perceived sympathy. Upon initial discovery of a violation, we have an IP address, a sampling of the files that were shared, and a timestamp of the activity. We consistently follow the prescribed legal process to obtain identifying information and always try to be fair and reasonable in resolving each of our cases.
Translation: We'll go after anyone who crosses us, period. We're totally ruthless. Hell, if you're dead we'll just take what we need from your family. You remember that now, next time you start up your BT client. We use technology that produces a set of numbers that provides incontrovertible proof that the people we say guilty are guilty. We don't need to worry about network architecture, or shared IPs, or multiplexing and all that confusing stuff, that just misleads the courts. All they need to know is that we can prove anything we need to with numbers... Except street peddlers, they don't have IP addresses so they're harder to come by. Imagine if we put enough people out on the street to find those guys, there wouldn't be anybody left at the office to sue students.
Don: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
RIAA: Regarding our college initiative, a university's role in reducing the level of piracy on its campus cannot be overemphasized. We have consistently said that the more proactive a school is in the education of its students regarding its IT and enforcement policies, the offering of great legal alternatives so that students can have access to their favorite music (at deeply discounted prices or even for free), and most importantly, implementing effective technology that helps protect the integrity of its network, will lead to fewer instances of violations and fewer instances of hearing from us--a win for everybody!
Translation: We're doing all we can to fight music lovers. In fact, we think we're doing too much! So we need colleges who would otherwise be sitting there minding their own business to do our job for us, preferably without any reimbursement. If they don't then we'll just wring some more cash out of the student body and use it to bribe a few more politicians to put the financial frighteners on them. That's how it works: we bribe the politicians, the politicians scare the colleges, the colleges scare their students, the students give us money. It doesn't end there, of course: once we have our claws in them we can use the colleges to collect our money for us, straight from the students, on the pretence of providing them with legal access to music. And anyone who doesn't pay must be a pirate - we can pick them like fruit!
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| The Only Solution |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|03:18 pm] |
A growing number of Swedish MPs are questioning the logic and legality of the recording industry targeting file sharers and forcing ISPs to help identify them. They have a simple and obvious solution that many of us will find familiar:
"Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state. Today they want to transform the Internet Service Providers into an online police force, and the Antipiracy Bureau wants the authority for themselves to extract the identities of file sharers. Then they can drag the 15-year-old girl who downloaded a Britney Spears song to civil court and sue her."
Those of us with any insight into the industry already knew that this had gone too far, that the recording industry was seeking powers far beyond those required for commerce and that such grasping power-hungry manoeuvring was a sing of bad things to come. Now it seems they have finally push hard enough to raise the heckles of more than a few politicians. Six members of the Swedish Moderate Party drafted the article quoted above taking into account some uncomfortable questions from various government bodies including the Data Inspection Board and The Competition Authority. It draws attention to the issues of privacy, authority, due process and human rights. Since it's publication support has continued to grow and a second article has been signed by 13 members of the Swedish parliament.
Finally there are politicians who are walking into this argument with open eyes instead of overstuffed wallets. Hopefully this movement will produce something akin to reasonable and workable legislation in Sweden, something that protects private citizens and forces the recoding industry to accept that it no longer has a place in the modern world. With a little more luck, such common sense thinking will prove infectious and we will start to see this attitude spread to the rest of Europe. |
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| Glitch |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|10:49 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | civil liberties, copyright, drm, economy, movies, mpaa, music, net neutrality, news, p2p, politics, rant, technology | ] |
Listen, Glick, the movie industry is already doing the one thing that guarantees I will never illegally download their 'products', namely they are now making such deficient, low-brow, half-assed, worthless, over-hyped, over-funded, overwritten, sub intellectual, inadequate, substandard, ridiculous, inferior, scoff-worthy, malodorous, cringe-making, mismanaged, shoddy, insufferable, incompetent and defective low-com-dom crap, that I would never ever even consider wasting one single byte of my precious bandwidth on any of it. I would be perfectly happy to see every last bit of your meritless trash forever erased from the internet were it not for the fact that you are trying to do it by introducing a radically disproportionate mechanism: ending Network Neutrality!
Don't cover your ears Glickster, you need to hear this: Shrek 3 is not important enough to bring an end to our freedom. The only reason the movie industry can say it's losing money now is because they spent way too much on producing something that nobody actually needs and nobody really wants. The Western World will not crumble because they can't turn a profit, but it might if we lose the integrity and security of the single most important communications tool in history.
One way or another the IP delusional industries are one the way out. It's only a matter of time before the average consumer figures out that their 'entertainment' just isn't worth it any more, that the busker on the street outside the cinema is a hell of lot more creative, interesting and memorable than the claptrap movie they just walked out of. How long do you think they'll watch their technology subverted, their personal data ransacked, their legally purchased media disintegrating, and their communications tapped and blocked before they think: "But I didn't even like the Bourne Appendectomy!"
Anyone invested in the movie or recording industries with even an iota of common sense should be selling up now, while their stock is still worth the ferromagnetic material it's stored on. You know it can't go on like this. It just isn't reasonable in consider this a survivable scenario for anyone involved. I mean it. Get out now. This is going to end badly, and you know it.
Glicky, you are not adding to our culture in any positive way beyond uniting the rest of us against you. You are not curing any horrible diseases. You are not on a crusade of righteousness. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are not welcome here. |
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| KISS Off |
[Nov. 17th, 2007|03:39 pm] |
I have never been a fan of KISS, and I never will be thanks to the enlightened opinions of Mr. Gene Simmons:
"The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask." 'Gene Simmons: college kids killed music biz' reuters.com
Sued off the face of the earth? Have their homes and cars taken? I have to wonder if there are actually any 'kids' who would now admit to downloading a Kiss track but, Mr Simmons, do you really want them punished for seeking out your music? Do you think this will make them want to pay for anything you produce ever again?
And if we need any more evidence that this is the drivelous spoutings of a narrow-minded, over-paid half-wit we are presented at the end with this little gem:
"The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on." 'Gene Simmons: college kids killed music biz' reuters.com
... I... I don't even know where to start! Mr. Simmons, gold is expensive because it is extremely useful and attractive while at the same time being VERY RARE. Sure we could all decide that it's worth a lot less but that will just make it harder to come by because getting it out of the ground will become less profitable.
Music, Mr. Simmons, even yours unfortunately, is infinitely abundant, it can be reproduced endlessly and distributed globally at virtually no cost. It's as though music covers the streets like dirt, clogging gutters, and getting trodden unintentionally into people's homes, yet we have this ridiculous system that makes it illegal to bend down and pick any of it up. Bottom line: the monetary value of anything, including music, is inversely proportional to it's availability, if it is infinitely abundant then it's monetary value is indistinguishable from zero.
"As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy." Seriously Mr. Simmons, could you be any more establishment?
I want to see artists honoured for their success, given something that proportionally rewards their contribution to our culture. But this cannot be at the expense of our freedom to participate in that culture, the ability to use our own technology as we see fit and to remain secure in our private matters. That is why I back the concept of a Independent Democratic Blanket License, to free ourselves and support our artists. Yes, change can be scary, it will cost jobs, but it will also create new jobs, whole new business models even. Think of all the cool new media and networking technology we will be designing, building, selling and buying when we can share media without fear for our liberty. Think of all the artists who aren't even given a chance in today's market who could get their music to people's ears and get paid for it through the IDBL. Artists are not the enemy, we're fighting for their freedom too.
So, Mr. Gene "Doesn't have a f---ing clue" Simmons, get your wise on, right now, or we're leaving you behind. |
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| Intellectual Poison |
[Nov. 14th, 2007|12:52 am] |
Is it my imagination or is the recording industry doing the copyfight a favour?
Crunch time may be on us sooner than any of us could hope if the industry continues to make enemies this way. Think of it, they are vilifying themselves to an entire generation, poisoning their own imagined future consumer base in a vain effort to reverse time. There is are nations of kids leaving college over the next few years that have been cajoled and threatened by these idiots, that have lived in fear of being sued, of having their education taken away from them, both individually and now collectively, have seen their own technology broken by absurd legal conditions, seen their computers subverted and turned against them. These kids have seen a dying industry savagely clawing at their freedom in its efforts to preserve its own rotting carcass, becoming so ferocious and incoherent that the only possible future is self-destruction and dissolution. We don't want them around, the kids don't want them, their own artists want out, even being associated with the names of these companies has become a grave offence.
But we're far from done. We still need to see them fail and fall, broken, liquidated down to the last paper-clip to pay back the money they've extorted from music lovers, to pay for the anguish and misery they've caused, to reimburse us for the efforts we have all had to make to work around the god-awful technological atrocities they've inflicted on the world, and not least to pay for the coming apocalypse in the industries they have been stringing along for so long on the promise of a physical future, a promise which now sounds like the delusion of a fancied industrial renaissance.
Anyone who has tied their assets to the recording industry will be facing some stark choices in the next few years. Those with any sense will get out now, and get out fast.
There is no coming back from this.
The future is free. |
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| The Blanket License: A Modest Proposal |
[Oct. 25th, 2007|05:11 pm] |
According to a report from ArsTechnica the fabled Blanket License has once again reared its head, this time in Denmark:
Andy Oram over at O'Reilly Radar noted the recent moves in Denmark to create a system where every ISP user might pay a monthly fee in order to access unlimited P2P music legally.
The proposal has drawn positive feedback from an unlikely source—the local "Piratgruppen."
"It's good that they admit that they cannot solve the problem of falling CD sales by suing their own fans," said Sebastian Gjerding from the Piratgruppen. "It looks like they have understood that they should offer something that is competitive compared to other, free music sources. It is an entirely new admission that hasn't spread internationally yet. IFPI Denmark is on the forefront in this matter. But it is annoying that no action has been taken so far to save many teenagers million-krone fines." ArsTechnica.com
The article notes some obstacles to the proposal. For instance, will this cover just 'local' bands or include international sources? The former would simply prove unenforceable - they'd have less luck detecting where they were downloading from than they currently have detecting if they have downloaded anything at all - while the latter would be a logistical zombie movie complete with everyone dying at the end! Another question is whether this will be a voluntary payment or amount to a tax on all users regardless of whether they ever download music or not?
Despite these sorts of issues, I consider the Blanket License to be the most equitable and, more importantly, most moral alternative to the current media distribution model. Fundamentally it is a concept that makes the most of current technology and encourages further development, while at the same time protecting our right to make use of our own hardware and data.
The problems mentioned in the article are trivial. Yes, the BL should cover artists worldwide but it should be stipulated that they make the claim to receive anything. Yes, the BL should be a mandatory payment, including for businesses - they don't want to make use of it, that's up to them, but since it's there why not let their employees share media on their network without a legal care in the world?
My main problem with the Danish plan is its hopelessly narrow vision, covering only music and only one country. It is comically ineffectual.
Here's the real plan:
The Blanket License should cover all media, it should, in fact, cover anything that can be encoded, uploaded, downloaded or otherwise redistributed, music, movies, TV shows, books, newspapers, 3d printer files, essentially any media that can be rendered as data. It should be run as an opt-in for content creators alone and strictly prohibit music cartels, charities and other non-root content providers. It should also provide a means for those artists who build on the work of others to indicate and reward their contributors.
But there is one element that is by far the most important: the Blanket License must be directly democratic. By this I mean that the distribution of the revenue derived from the BL should be based on what the users are listening to, watching and using, not on some even division or some educated guess informed by random polling. We should literally be voting for our choices and the results of these votes used to calculate the creators' share.s Of course one vote a week is hardly going to be a fair measure, instead we would need at least a hundred votes a week which we could distribute as we see fit (say a maximum of five votes per voter for any one creator). This voting could allow for a mix of voluntary voting (specific choices regardless of what a user has actually downloaded) and user-controlled automated voting (a system that allows vote assignments based on the usage statistics from a media player). No one would be forced to vote, but it would be in their interests to encourage their favourite bands, actors photographers, writers and so on, and automatic voting could allow users to contribute without any real effort.
There will still be a place for record labels as marketing brokers, contracting artists for flat fees or a percentage of their earnings in return for their expertise in development and marketing their creations.
This real Blanket License would be no small undertaking, requiring the development of an international infrastructure and region-by-region legislation to remove the existing legal hurdles faced by users. But the result would be a totally egalitarian forum, the likes of which has not been seen since some mug took a handful of loose change and sang to a wax cylinder. All that would be required for an artist to make money would be to make music and find people who like it enough to vote for it, no contracts, no physical distribution, and most significantly, no risk.
It's ambitious, and naturally it glosses over some real problems. Technically, there are issues with the security involved in electronic voting, ensuring that the votes are genuine rather than the result of malicious software running on client systems, and preventing any third party from accessing usage data and putting user privacy at risk (a premise I call Regime Proofing - designing the system so that should it fall under someone else's control there will not be enough information recorded to identify individual users, though there should still be enough to identify tampering and vandalism [a paradox, I know]). And naturally the entire system would need to be totally transparent if it is to be trusted by artists and consumers.
The environment that this Blanket License could create is an exciting one. It would encourage a far greater range of cultural experience for users, exposing them to a vast library of content without restriction and without the increasingly hegemonic filtering of the incumbent distribution businesses. Since each user has already paid for all their downloading there can be none of this quibbling over the rights involved in time- and format-shifting. Download once and the data is yours to do with as you please., you will be free to invent new ways of accessing your culture that have yet to be even dreamed of, and without fear of the shadow of monetisation.
Radiohead's independent venture into alternative digital distribution model was laudable, a worthy experiment, but one dependant on the duality of our current attitude to online media, both legal and illicit. What they received for their effort was charity: not a long term solution, but a round of applause for a worthy effort. In the end we cannot expect to support artists through benevolence alone. How many 'micro-patrons' can we expect to find and persuade to keep giving? Radiohead simply walked out into a new and forbidding wilderness, if anyone is going to follow, we're going to need to build them some roads.
I've previously discussed the impact of unlimited digital distribution on the existing content industry, namely the rapid and near total destruction of physical production interests. Other commentators have suggested that such a vision is unnecessarily apocalyptic, that, for instance, paper books will never disappear, and to an extent I agree. But consider a world in which you can access any book, at any time, for free; can we really expect already struggling publishers to survive that? There will always be a market for dead tree, just as there is still a market for vinyl, but there will also be a reckoning in the market that will see it reduced to little more than a niche. Now consider this situation extended to cover not only book sellers, but music stores, tv stations, cinemas and all the services that depend on them. A whole set of industries is at stake, countless jobs, and a huge chunk of the Western economy.
The Blanket License promises an almost unimaginable upheaval in the 'business of culture', a vision that the entrenched business interests will likely do anything to escape. But consider also that the openness it could bring will foster new technologies and new businesses to exploit those technologies and even new ways of doing business - the economic environment might then be changed rather than destroyed.
I am convinced that, if we are to avoid handing over control of our lives to big business, then this is the way it must be. It is the Blanket License or (without exaggeration) cultural totalitarianism. |
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| Linking a Crime - It are a FACT |
[Oct. 19th, 2007|10:42 pm] |
The Guardian is gleefully frothing over the arrest of a web site owner for allowing visitors to download infringing content [they even trot out that old Lost Sales gag, I expect then to start discussing internet tubes any moment now]. But as with almost all of these cases things are not so clearly defined:
"One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows.
The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today.
A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.
Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed." - guardian.co.uk
Yes, you read that correctly, the site was "providing links" to "illegal film content". This site itself contained nothing illegal, there was no copyrighted content available there, it was not possible to upload or download such content to its server. If there's nothing illegal then there is no crime, if there is no crime then the "26-year-old man from Cheltenham" is innocent. I hope 26yomfC has a a decent, IT-savvy lawyer because this could not only put him in enough cash to keep him comfy for a long time but also protect www.tv-links.co.uk from any future prosecutions.
The issue here is the difference between performing an illegal act and describing one. The TV Links site merely described the locations and methods of acquisition for infringing content, it did not actually perform the infringement. By that same token, any author of a novel that describes a murder should be arrested for murder. Anyone who shows a policeman the location of a stolen car should be arrested for stealing it [yeah, I know, 'car analogy'].
Let's run with that last one: if anything this site was a useful tool for IP delusionals, showing them exactly where to find the actual infringing sites and torrents, happily revealed to them by the very people that so plague them. As a resource you would think it far more valuable than a single highly questionable arrest.
Once again these people have succeeded in pissing me off. Remember to use the Bad Guy Sticker greasemonkey tool while browsing Amazon to help you avoid purchasing products from members of FACT. Give these idiots your money and it will be used to harm your rights, prevent you from using your own tools and content, and to restrict your access to your own culture. |
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| And to Every Book its Copy |
[May. 15th, 2007|02:32 pm] |
This is just too delicious.
Here we have a view on Delusions of Intellectual Property from none other than the 6th century High King of Ireland, Diarmuid. The king is asked to pass judgement on a case involving the copying of a book of gospels owned by St. Uinniau of Moville (Finnian) by St. Columba (Colmcille):
Extract from the Royal Irish Academy (M.S. 24. P. 25.)
At the time Colmcille (521-597) went to the house of Finnian (ob. 579) of Drum Finn and sought the loan of a book from him, viz. Finnian's copy of the Four Gospels, as it were to correct a book, and Colmcille copied it at night unknown to Finnian. Finnian learnt of the copying of the book in theft and was angered and set about bringing him to law about it. "I will give you the judgement of the king of Ireland on it" said Colmcille, "viz. Diarmuid Mac Cearbhaill" (ob. 564) "I will accept that", said Finnian. Both sides went then to Tara where Diarmuid was and told him their tidings, and Finnian alleged the copy of his book, belonged to him. Colmcille said that Finnian's book was none the worse for his copying of it. Said Diarmuid: "To every cow its calf, and to every book its copy." From patentsoffice.ie
Tradition has it that, despite this ruling, the dispute continued to escalate, culminating in 561 with the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne resulting in the killing of many combatants. To atone for these deaths, Colmcille exiled himself from Ireland stating that he would neither see nor set foot in Ireland again. He travelled to Scotland where he worked as a missionary, wishing to convert as many people as had been killed in the battle. And there's a thing about blindfolds and shoes full of dirt, but we're getting away from the point...
Clearly the High King knew BS when he heard it. But, just like modern IP delusionals, Finnian wouldn't take common sense for an answer.
I wonder if Colmcille's exile was not as much to shame Finnian as for atonement?
What this little vignette leads me to consider is how long it will be before we see a minor war fought over the West's control of intellectual resources rather than material ones. |
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| Forever Less One Day |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|03:02 pm] |
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."
- Jack Valenti (1921 - 2007), President of the MPAA, in his testimony to the House of Representatives, 1982.
Lest we forget. |
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| iPRED2 |
[Apr. 12th, 2007|06:15 pm] |
I hope you will take a moment to go sign this petition against the Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) which is due to go before the European Parliament on April 24th:
If IPRED2 passes in its current form, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime.
Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.
IPRED2's backers say these copycrimes are meant only for professional criminals selling fake merchandise. But Europe already has laws against these fraudsters. With many terms in IPRED2 left unclear or completeley undefined - including "commercial scale" and "incitement" - IPRED2 will expand police authority and make suspects out of legitimate consumers and businesses, slowing innovation and limiting your digital rights.
- copycrime.eu
Besides the fact that we simply do not need any more IP law (really, we need far, far less) the wording of this directing is vague to the point of disingenuousness. Personally I would give the phrase "commercial scale" as much meaning is as "square scale" or "red scale". It leaves the door wide open for interpretation in the effort to punish this newly invented crime.
If you physically copy a CD and give it to an acquaintance, and they then use that CD to create a hundred thousand copies to sell for profit, does that mean you are guilty of 'aiding commercial scale IP infringement"? What if you happen to show up in the same P2P swarm as someone downloading a movie with the intention of making physical copies to sell?
How many copyfight oriented forums and personal blogs out there, including this one, might be considered "incitement" because of their anti-copyright, pro file-sharing stance? I hope the doom9 folks have their ID trails thoroughly obfuscated since their attempts to return our fair use rights are easily interpreted by this directive as aiding, abetting and inciting. Who knows if this law could be used to criminalise something as simple as describing the means to circumvent DRM (like burning iTunes tracks to audio CD then ripping them back into an open format).
Will hardware manufacturers now face criminal investigation for creating devices that might be used in the commission of a crime (where a weapons manufacturer would get off scot-free)? Is this nothing more than a way for the recording industry to persuade hardware developers to sell broken machines?
This directive may be aimed at large scale criminal activity but with language like this it is nothing more than a dragnet for IP-delusional companies and their equally deranged legal departments. Rather than having to pursue civil cases all they have to do is report infringement and present themselves as victims and witnesses.
So-called IP infringement is so simple today that it requires no significant knowledge, no more resources than a networked computer and no more criminal intent than two friends sharing their love of music, movies or any other expression of our culture.
If you do nothing else today, go sign that petition. Don't let bad laws come into force, and certainly not bad laws with such open and easily abused language.
Update: in their article, 'European ISPs: "Aiding and abetting" copyright violations could land our CEOs in jail', Ars Technica points out that recent amendments to the bill now suggests fair use exceptions to national laws and explicitly excludes "acts carried out by private users for personal and not for profits purposes". Good news. But that still leaves this directive with enough interpretive swing to throttle future technical innovations in information technology, to put increasing pressure on our internet service providers to limit our use of what is supposed to be a neutral network, and ultimately tighten the recording industry's grip on our culture. |
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| Pot meets Kettle: Bill Gates and the Recording Industry |
[Dec. 15th, 2006|05:28 pm] |
We've already had the Consumer Electronics Association turning on the content industry over their demands for DRM crippled hardware. Now commercial software producers are beginning to realise they've been lumbered with the same bum-deal. They don't want to have to waste time and money designing systems that prevent their customers from doing what they want, and their customers sure as hell don't want to pay for something that removes their ability to listen to their own music or watch their own movies.
And now Bill Gates himself has waded in with an unexpected observation. From an interview on micropersuasion.com we have this response:
Q) Is digital rights management (DRM) sustainable over the next 10 years?
A) DRM is not where it should be. In the end of the day incentive systems (for artists) make a difference. But we don't have the right thing here in terms of simplicity or interoperability.
Obviously, "where it should be" would be with the recoding industry and out of the way of Microsoft's development path. But referring to copyright as an "incentive system" for artists is particularly telling. Perhaps he is beginning to realize that the all-consuming recording contract no longer has a place in a world where the ability to record data is ubiquitous. Perhaps he realises that the current "incentive system" has exceeded it's useful lifespan and that something else is needed in its place, something that does not throttle new technology or threaten the consumer base. Wishful thinking on my part, perhaps. But here's where it gets really interesting. From a BBC report on the interview we get this little gem:
Blogger Michael Arrington, of Techcrunch.com, said Bill Gates' short-term advice for people wanting to transfer songs from one system to another was to "buy a CD and rip it".
That's right, according to this, Bill Gates has just said that the best thing you can do with DRM is work around it! I guess this means we're not going to see Windows Media Player's MP3 ripping functionality stripped out any time soon.
Still, we need to remember where this is coming from; Windows Vista has some of the most draconian copy-prevention methodologies yet seen and I can't imagine Microsoft is about to see the light of a new open source "incentive system" any time soon. No, what we really have here (on the heals of the Zune Tax) is an early scuffle between two major IP industries, both comprehending that the future may not include them, who have now realised that not only must they screw over their own customers to survive a few more years, but they're going to have to start screwing each other over too. |
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| MPAA Destroys Privacy, Protects Fraud |
[Dec. 1st, 2006|05:32 pm] |
The movie industry has successfully lobbied the American state senate for the right to falsify information in the pursuit of copyright infringement investigations:
The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.
The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.
"The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, 'We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,'" Goldberg said. - Wired (via /.)
In theory such tactics may only be employed by licenced investigators. But ask yourself: who licensed them? Who decided they are worthy to wield the power to dissect your life this way? Did you personally authorise their credentials? I don't know who these people are, you don't know, the people handing them wads of printout containing your personal information think they are you. How is this reasonable?
What is most disturbing about this incident is the realisation that any government of a supposedly enlightened and developed nation is happy to see the entertainment industry shape such significant and far-reaching laws. That bill would not only have affected the movie business but anyone who wants to acquire personal information about a private citizen through fraudulent representation: bank robbers, stalkers, child molesters...
Well done MPAA! Once again you have stopped at literally nothing to protect your thoroughly busted-up data reproduction business model. |
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