Purported ACTA Wishlist Would Put DMCA To Shame 348
ulash writes "Ars Technica has an article about the (alleged) leaked 'wishlist' that RIAA submitted to the US government back in March of this year listing what they wish to see as a part of ACTA. The list includes such gems as forced filtering of materials by the ISPs, gutting the parts of the DMCA that provides safe harbor to the ISPs, and even restricting supplies of 'optical grade polycarbonate' in countries 'with high rates of production of pirated optical discs.' While the effectiveness of such a 'wishlist' on the law is not by any means objectively measurable, if one takes into account how *AA was instrumentative in the passing of DMCA, I think it is more than likely that they will get at least some of their wishes."
At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a frequently-seen signature says: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like they won't be satisfied until they can charge an "entertainment tax" that everyone on earth has to pay simply for being alive. And of course, dictate exactly how much that tax must be.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's fairly common practice to submit a huge list of "wants" whether your list is business requirements, suggestions for law makers or what you want for Christmas.
Put a few obviously silly items on the list and the ones you really want probably look a bit more plausible. I in no way advocate what they are asking for, but the way they are asking could be considered pretty smart.
Go ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that the US has some kind of monopoly on 'optical grade polycarbonate' but I'd love them to restrict access and see where it gets them.
Hint: All fiber used for telco/datacomms infrastructure is made from glass.
Re:At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
Really what they are going to succeed in doing is continuing the decline of the United States as a global power relative to other countries through restrictive trade practices and strong arm tactics to the point where the U.S. will not be the preferred trading partner because of all of the baggage that comes with it.
In essence, they are selling us down the river.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And if Congress weren't bought and sold by the MAFIAA, they'd get lumps of coals thrown at them.
I never have advocated out-and-out piracy... you want an album to keep in your collection you should buy it instead of downloading or borrowing. But this is pretty much it for me. I fully support any effort to 100% undermine the funding for RIAA member companies. That way the sheer volume of cash they can throw around to bribe, er, "donate" to politicians is reduced so much that the fatcats won't budge for them any longer.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that anytime a large organization abuses its power/influence and Slashdot calls them on it, there are always those like you who rush in to defend said organization? I realize you're probably not really an employee and are probably not a paid shill; however, the reason why such accusations come up from time to time is that it otherwise doesn't make sense.
I'll sum it up for you this way. If your business model requires expanding the power and authority of the federal government and dictating to another industry how many units they may sell (the summary mentioned restricting supplies of "optical grade polycarbonate"), then your business model is broken and deserves to fail. This is true no matter how many artists sign up with you. If "people want to buy it" then these measures are unnecessary. If people don't want to buy it then the industry needs to either fail or find something that people do want. I've read the Constitution, I couldn't find "guarantee the success of an entertainment industry" anywhere in it. People who really think this is a good idea have no clue how dangerous it is to allow government to be so blatantly controlled by a trade industry.
When you asked "What's a better business model that WORKS", that's the question the *AA's should be asking. Instead, they are asking "how can we use government to guarantee the success of our current business model" which is the problem.
Re:Go ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
They are talking about plastic for making CDs, not glass for making telco infrastructure.
Keep in mind these people still think the future is in selling discs to people.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what point (Score:1, Insightful)
When we're quite literally slaves again, and owned by them.
I refuse to buy music. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty simple. I'm not giving these people one fricking dime and its not like songs are something that people absolutely can't live without. There's plenty of free stuff on the radio, I have plenty of songs I've paid for already... why do I need to continue to subsidize a subpar industry giving me all of this crap to begin with.
You know, it never ceases to amaze me, that an industry that proclaims itself to be most on the side of the people, the most liberal, that rips any commercial interest of the right wing as morally wrong, has done more to subvert the rights of mankind in the digital age than any other industry.
Next time Michael Moore or Oliver Stone or Spike Lee makes a film telling me how evil George Bush is for illegal wiretaps, perhaps we might ask them, what about all the raids, wiretaps and assaults on PCs born about by their industry. You can't benefit from digital surveillance and iron fisted prosecution of teenagers while proclaiming to be innocent of it.
If I were President, I would pardon every single person that was ever arrested for the supposed crime of copyright violation, and i would reply to every law that congress passed at the industry's behest, with a signing statement declaring such law to be unconstitutional and a refusal to enforce.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Know when to hold 'em... (Score:5, Insightful)
People will purchase media when obtaining that media is less costly than "pirating" it. You've got three ways to make that happen:
The **AA is happy to keep pounding away at #2, suing en masse, requesting ridiculous measures like those suggested in TFA... but there must be somebody at the headquarters whose pondering #3.
Of course maybe it's just that anybody with a sense for business has better things to do than work for the **AA.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
if they could form their own police force like the Gestapo, they would.
Why bother, when other police forces already do their dirty work for them.
Re:Go ahead (Score:2, Insightful)
As are the lenses in my eyeglasses (or should I say eyeopticalgradepolycarbonates)
Gutting safe harbor would destroy the web (Score:5, Insightful)
This would destroy the free web as we know it. No site would be willing to accept user generated content (at least, no site in the United States) because there is no foolproof way to tell whether the person is uploading home movies or part of a summer blockbuster.
That provision is absolutely necessary for the functioning of the web as-is. Any legislation that would try to remove it would be laughable.
Mandatory copyright filters- good luck with that. More stuff will come in password encrypted rars (including filename, of course), nullifying any benefits of these things. Consumers would have to pay for these moronic devices, which would be expensive if they didn't botttleneck ever-growing connections.}
And, as other posters have said, the United states is not the only country that makes optical disks.
This is a poorly attempted legal solution to an age old technical problem...
Wait, wait. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:As a frequently-seen signature says: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you grow your business year on year without disproportionately raising the tax. Cut costs by lowering lower quality? Make less content? This levels the playing field with the YouTube generation and that's not where the *AAs want to go.
Right now, the monopolies are looking for ways to safeguard the business models which keep them at the top of the game. Since they're still holding all the financial cards, expect this very powerful lobby to continue to shape the rules of your country for the foreseeable future.
Re:At what point (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with the notion that we need to be able to have more involvement in the passing of individual laws (though things like the PATRIOT act would likely still go through when the proponent hit the sheeple's fear nerves when doing the marketing/propaganda when proposing the law..), how is open source a valid model? Are people just going to occasionally put forward patches for the law? Who decides what patches are commited and what are thrown away? etc etc. There will always have to be leadership, and that leadership will have its price.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:4, Insightful)
The industry's business model (make music, sell it) is fine. Except that the people it wants to sell its product to are breaking the law to get their product by other means.
The industry has two options. It can try to get law enforcement to go after a huge number of its customers until the enforcement is a deterrent to the law breaking. Or it can try to make it harder for people to break the law.
Trying the first method is very problematic, as I'm sure you all know, because you can't figure out exactly who was doing the law breaking. The second is incredibly inefficient and causes a huge amount of collateral damage.
I'm not a shill. I dislike the industry enough that I only buy music directly from musicians. But come on, the only problem with their business model is that it is easy to break the law and people are willing to do it.
You may not like that they are doing terrible things to try to stop people from breaking the law, but their business model is not the problem.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:4, Insightful)
But who is the "they" who are pushing this crap? They == the executives who control the current racket. And their "business model" basically boils down to "riding on the backs of the relatively few who actually produce something."
"They" have to fight the future, because the future does not include most of them.
the world you describe never existed (Score:5, Insightful)
ip laws never rewarded creators. it rewarded distributors. one hit musical wonders throughout the 70s and 80s signed away their rights for pennies, were given free rides on corporate jets for a few months, then utterly forgotten about. bands like the beatles and prince got to be powerful because they became popular enough over long enough of a time that they took on the rules of the distributors, and became part of the machinery. but the vast majority of musical creation was never rewarded in real sense that you mean
so the idea ip rewarding creators is a nice idealistic selling point, but it never actually works that way. the rules of power favors the distributors, so they merely shade and juggle the legalese that the ip laws serve them instead of the creators
this leads us to 2 conclusions:
1. destroying ip doesn't actually impoverish creators
2. creators can still tour- you can't distrubte a concert tour on the web. creators can still whore for advertising. creators can be sponsored by corporate masters to make corporate product. and creators can simply enjoy their fame. is money really the only thing that motivates people to create music?
so its a better world without ip. its not like music will suddenly disappear. cheap opo like britney spears and justin timberlake won't even disappear: they'll simply be hired by corporations to produce product that is used for advertising, brand building, etc.
the desire to create music is not dependent upon financial concerns. music predates ip law, duh. most kids pick up the guitar to impress chicks. now if you said making music means you could never seduce a woman ever again, then yeah, music is dead. otherwise, no ip law? no problem. full steam ahead
Re:At what point (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the word actually embodies western culture quite well. We take something, consume it, and throw it away. That's even true when it comes to music in some cases, as in with trashy pop that gets to number one one week and then is gone the next. Despite the fact that digital files are not technically 'consumed' (unless they have some kind of DRM that deletes them after a few days), IMO the the word is fairly accurate even in its economic and political context. Consumers are the ones that make use of all the goods and services that the market provides (ie anyone who isn't self sufficient).
Personally I'd say the RIAA views its customers more as cattle to be slaughtered, and processed in such a way that no part is 'wasted'. Only they don't realise that in slaughtering every last cow they can right now, they are forgetting that they need to leave some behind to create future generations and further profits.
Re:At what point (Score:5, Insightful)
Really what they are going to succeed in doing is continuing the decline of the United States as a global power relative to other countries
The sellout continues.
Well, except for the fact that the RIAA is controlled by four large multi-national firms. EMI is British, Universal is owned by Vivendi, a French company, the head of Warner music is Canadian and Sony BMG is about as multi-national as you'll find anywhere
Yet these foreigners have more access to "your" representatives than you do. WTF is the point of even going to the polls when our legislators are OWNED lock stock and barrel by foreigners?
No lobbyist from any corporation whose shares are available to ANY foreigner should have any access whatever to "my" representatives. "My" representative doesn't represent me, he represents foreign rich people.
And I'm supposed to respect the laws these bozos write? Sorry, bud, fuck your laws, I'll follow my conscience. The RIAA and its government stooges can go to hell. I'm no longer playing. Since I have no representataion, the only reason I see for respecting the law is their guns. The traitorous Democrats and Republicans have gotten the last vote they'll get from me until they swear off accepting contributions from my enemies. When we get respectable lawmakers writing respectable laws, I'll respect the law. Until then I shall not only ignore it, but I will encourage everyone else to as well.
We fought for independance from foreign overlords (ironically we celebrate it this Friday), only to let them sneak in and steal our country.
It's a sad day for America.
Re:At what point (Score:3, Insightful)
At what point is enough heroin to satisfy a heroin junkie? At what point is enough crack to satisfy a crackhead? At what point is enough money to satisfy a billionaire?
There is no such thing as "enough" with any such addict.
Re:Working hard on losing that cultural dominance? (Score:3, Insightful)
...with all the religious fundamentalists in your country
Actually, those "religious fundamentalists" worship money, although they pretend to be Christians worshiping God. Their prayer:
Our money, who art in the bank, hallowed be thy name
My kingdom come, my will be done on Earth and in outer space
Give me this day my daily income, and forgive nobody
Lead us not into temptation of charity, but deliver us from taxes
For gold is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Let's eat.
It is immoral to buy from RIAA members (Score:4, Insightful)
It is immoral to pay for any CD which is published by an RIAA member. They use the money to corrupt our legislators, abuse our courts and ruin peoples' lives. On the other hand, copyright infringement is illegal, but not immoral; no one is harmed by it except for sleazy lawyers and businessmen.
That's right: downloading music illegally is morally better than paying for it. Ten years ago, it was not so; for indie music, it is not so; but if you pay for major-label music now, then you are helping to ruin lives.
The RIAA is doing everything they can to portray their struggle as one of morals vs. cheapness. It isn't, because they lost the moral high ground. The only remaining excuse for paying for major-label music is ignorance.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just about every time I'm tempted to buy a movie, I think about how many times I've watched rent-and-burned movies. In all, I think I've watched two burned copies more than once. Even the movies I have actually bought just sit there and collect dust.
Every time I'm tempted to buy a CD, I think about first finding a store that lets me listen before I buy, then thinking about spending at least an hour going through albums aimlessly as I have no good way to find what's related to things I already like. If I do find something good, I think about the blank CDR media tax here in Canada and say forget it - I'll get my money's worth out of that tax and just download my music. Besides, it's so much more convenient. I also think about all the CDs I had bought over the years and how much crap is on them. It's time to get my money's worth.
fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm not willing to throw intellectual property under the bus until you can explain to me how people with ideas can distribute their life work and be fairly compensated."
ok, its 2058 and ip law is dead. you just wrote "harry potter and the toilet gnomes". a gazillion kids around the world read it electronically. you get $0
are you unfairly compensated?
well, now you are a world famous author idolized by most kids in the world. thats a lot of power and fame. how does that power and fame get turned into $? lots of ways: autographed copies, private readings, personalized content for rich fans, etc. you could make a tidy little enjoyable living doing that
furthermore, how much $ did albert einstein get for general relativity? how much money did shakespeare get for hamlet?
what do they get?
they get immortality. respect from their peers. renown, love, admiration past their lifetimes
how do those qualities figure into your calculation of "fair compensation"?
in other words, there are more motivations in this world than just $. that if no money were ever guranteed again for any work of art, guess what: art would go right on being made. because anyone who is really producing art, is tapping into something that isn't motivated by money in the first place, and is rewarded with something more valuable than money in the end
and you STILL get related revenue streams to make you quite comfortably rich
Who is that behind the curtains? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problems here are Sony etc who fund the *AA and set the agenda.
*AA gets all the headlines and the hate, but the companies hiding behind them seem to get a free pass for some reason.
How about always listing the *AA backers in any *AA story?
Re:At what point (Score:3, Insightful)
It is the way of it. If someone wants money and power, there are generally ways to get it. Those that aren't interested aren't going to be putting as much time towards open source governance anyway. I'm not saying the current system is the right one, and I hate corruption, but open sourcing everything isn't going to get rid of all corruption either.
Those power-hungry, corrupt, egomaniacal people will still be able to manipulate people as much as they currently are. Having the ability to vote on individual issues will help a little, but not entirely, because the public is easily manipulated through education and media. Most people who write OSS are quite intelligent, so I wouldn't mind if they had legislative power. Now, instead imagine that instead it was the inhabitants of MySpace, or the viewers of Fox News that had control over the law. Would you want that? How does open source government deal with the fact that a lot of people are dumb and easily manipulated? The ones with money are still going to be the ones who can push their own agenda the most, unless advertising and campaigning was made illegal. But if it was, they'd pay people to vote for it to be made legal. Meh.
Re:What about when the **AA's are out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the price, if the price is too high, don't buy it. (A price that you think is too high does not justify breaking the law to get it.)
First: breaking a law is not inherently bad. Breaking a bad law is at best a neutral act, and sometimes can be a good act. When 60% of your "customers" break a law, there is something terribly wrong with your business model AND the law. When the law is completely written by the industry, and exists only for the good of the industry, there also is something terribly wrong.
Laws exist for the common good, not for the good of corporations, unless the two intersect.
Buying directly from musicians don't work, since they have to buy their copies from the label. And most the time are contractually limited from being able to produce independent albums.
Parties shall... (Score:3, Insightful)
5. Provide for the availability of civil and injunctive relief against landlords that fail to reasonably exercise their ability to control the infringing conduct of their tenants.
This is clearly targeting those pesky universities.
Re:At what point (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh the *head* of Warner is Canadian - that makes them a 'foreign' company?
Governments all over the world are kowtowing to the US, who began all this garbage. Don't try and tar the rest of the world with the US's brush please.
Your country has been taken over by the Neocons and the Religious Extreme Right.
And their aim is to take over the entire world.
If there is an "Axis of Evil" (phrase co-created by the appalling David Frum who is, I am ashamed to say, Canadian) then it is Hollywood-Washington.
Re:At what point (Score:4, Insightful)
So when you get elected and go to serve your term in Congress, you catch a bus to DC and stay in some cheap hotel/apartment. Or maybe you get a ride with a friend who happens to be going that way, and stay at the house of some other friend who happens to have a spare bedroom. And maybe that ride happens to be in a private jet and the spare bedroom is in an unoccupied (but nicely furnished) house in the best part of town. And you always have lunch with friends (who always seem to pick up the tab) and somebody always invites you over for dinner.... You often chat with your friends over lunch or dinner, or maybe at the golf course, and they don't exactly ask for favors but they do present some really compelling arguments for or against some public policy in which they've taken an interest. They're eloquent and erudite and really seem to have thought about this stuff a lot, so at some level you trust their judgment and it helps form your impression of the zeitgeist. It sure is nice to have so many smart, successful, and generous friends! Where were they before you got elected to Congress? Oh, that's right, they were helping out (on a strictly volunteer basis, as friends) with your campaign.
Re:At what point (Score:3, Insightful)
You missed one...
Citizen! Have you seen any Hollywood blockbuster films recently?
No, I went to see an independent fi--
TERRORIST!!!!
Re:At what point (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly? When you can only rent their music. Their dream is to have a pay-per-listen system set up.