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The copyright industry has had far too much power for many years now. But when I talk to people about this nobody cares. For most people the products of this

The copyright industry has had far too much power for many years now. But when I talk to people about this nobody cares. For most people the products of this industry are just "content" which they use to waste their time so I suppose it makes sense that they don't care too much about it. The tragedy is that the copyright industry controls a large and continually growing part of our culture and their power is only increasing. I was there when a UK music tracker called OiNK's Pink Palace was shut down. The police raided the home of the site owner before dawn and even the home of his father who had no idea what his son was up to. Copyright industry writers wrote the news article, claiming it was "extremely lucrative" and included gems such as "Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found". The site's owner was found not guilty in court several years later, but not before the copyright industry essentially ruined his life. But how does this happen? If you talk to most people they don't understand copyright at all. They think it's some kind of privileged status that you have to pay for, like a trademark or something. Most people are not even aware that they hold copyrights. And why would they? Can the average person summon the police to help protect their copyright? Of course not. It's not even a criminal matter. The police being involved seems nothing short of corruption.

marcoperaza 9y ago
He was running a website that revolved around violating millions of copyrights. Why shouldn't he go to jail? What gives you the right to take someone else's painstakingly created artistic creation and give it away for free to thousands of people, depriving them of the exclusive right to sell their own work. Copyright is both a criminal and civil matter. The civil court system is useful for many things, but it is limited to monetary damages, which is not very helpful when the damages are in the millions and the defendant isn't very wealthy. The penal power of the criminal system is not appropriate for individual people downloading music, but it certainly is for a sophisticated operation involving the illegal distribution of millions of copyrighted works to hundreds of thousands of users. == Edit == Some responses, since I'm rate-limited: >In most cases i read about it's more a matter of the current copyright holder versus the facilitator. Not a matter of the creator versus the actual downloader. Two points. 1. How do you think the current copyright holder got the copyright? They acquired it from the creator by either paying in advance or after the fact or as part of some ongoing deal. 2. If you run a market that you know is used almost exclusively by people selling contraband, do you think that's legal just because you're not the buyer or the seller? In case you don't know, it's not, and you'll go to jail just as if you had sold the contraband. >If the defendant isn't wealthy after distributing all that content, is the content worth millions? Or is the government-enforced business model worth millions? Yes, intellectual property isn't worth anything without government enforcement. But we've decided to, as individual societies and as an entire world by treaty, to provide such enforcement, because we think recognizing such property rights is good for our society. And as for the first point, how much you make by violating other people's rights isn't that relevant. If I steal a truckload of iPhones and give them away for free, I still stole them. I realize IP is very different from physical property, but the profit of the crook isn't that relevant in either.
- otempomores 9y ago
  Eh need gave the right? There is a whole humanity out there with nothing to spend but time and electronic drugs are basically a implementation of the freeze and hibernate proposed in the eighties to solve overpopulations resource consumption. Sorry if a individuals luxery was trampeled to give the world another peacefuller day.
- Spearchucker 9y ago
  Surely if what you say is true, the courts would have found him guilty, no?
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    >Surely if what you say is true, the courts would have found him guilty, no? What are you actually arguing, other than pointing out that he was acquitted? A jury's determination of a person's guilt in a particular case doesn't tell you what the law is, or what it ought to be. Edit: gnode, that’s not true. Only determinations of law, which are only made by judges, are precedent. A jury verdict, which only determines questions of fact, is not precedent at all.
    - gnode 9y ago
      In a common law system, findings of a court set precedent for future trials. So yes, juries do tell you what the law is by telling you how to interpret it.
- b3lvedere 9y ago
  "What gives you the right to take someone else's painstakingly created artistic creation and give it away for free to thousands of people, depriving them of the exclusive right to sell their own work." In most cases i read about it's more a matter of the current copyright holder versus the facilitator. Not a matter of the creator versus the actual downloader. That is exactly the weird paradox that has been going on, especially with the infamous Pirate Bay. The users think they are a super server with super hero admins that "give back to the man". The justice system thinks some super tech criminal is earning millions. They think that, because organisations like the MPAA give out an estimate on what "could have been earned if all those people would actually pay full price for the content they are now consuming". Numbers are magic.. especially if there's a currency sign before them.
expertentipp 9y ago
Copyright hoarders (not necessarily content creators) consider anyone sharing the content they hold copyright to as competition and attack will full fury, destroying humans' lives and jamming the local jurisdictions. They use all available strategies - top-down (PB in Sweden), bottom-up (cease and desist letter plague in Germany). How anyone competent allows them for doing it is unimaginable, there must be fraud and corruption involved.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to say "those corporate money grabbers are evil" but in reality nobody cares who to pirate from. I've seen one writer who was relatively popular, beg his readers to buy his books instead of pirating it, because publisher was going to end his contract, because it was just not very profitable with all the pirating. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. One programmer I knew decided to do shareware in early 2000-s. His program became pretty successful in several months (2-3x times larger revenue than average salary in the country at the time), he could live off it. First time he got cracked and program went on pirating sites his sales were damaged considerably, he added some protection, new features etc. After some time he got cracked again and sales were damaged again. This time he said "screw it", stopped working on the program and got regular job. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. Of course I understand the appeal of pirated content, sometimes it's the only usable way to get something, especially for some old movies/series. And it put pressure on large media companies for content delivery technologies etc. But it's not all fun and giggles, it's a complex issues requiring global discussion and compromises.
  - netzone 9y ago
    I agree. And this is why I no longer pirate stuff, if I can get it legally in a reasonable way. For me as a non-american though, there is a serious lack of content available to me, which means that if I want to watch something, sometimes the only available option is to pirate it.
    - 9y ago
scirocco 9y ago
Reminds me of the case with TPB. The court argued for large sums of ad revenue and the founders were like: “no idea where that money went because we never saw it”
ptero 9y ago
> But how does this happen? IMO both the patent and the copyright laws, at least in the US, are broken. The original goal was good: encourage individual inventors to make technology that the whole society will benefit from at a price of some limitation on use by society for a short period of time. In the current system, "the whole society will benefit" part does not work because time limits are too high -- at the modern technology pace, in 20 years most inventions are obsolete. I think the best way to fix it is to drastically shorten the time the invention is protected, which would require major compromises. Unfortunately, the discussion now seems very polarized: it seems to be "all information should be free" against "copyright everything and it needs to last longer, longer, longer" as major camps with little in the middle.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >The original goal was good: encourage individual inventors to make technology that the whole society will benefit from at a price of some limitation on use by society for a short period of time I know this is the common belief of the origin of patent law, but is there actually any evidence that this is the case? As I understand patent law originated as a way for monarchy to maintain control over innovation and intellect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_roll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_roll
  - kbutler 9y ago
    The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8 https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8 Yes, patents existed before the US Constitution, but the reason the practice was formalized in the US was to promote progress.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - adrianratnapala 9y ago
imglorp 9y ago
I think the content industry is the one really driving this whole net neutrality thing, even more than the ISP business. If you follow the money, content is around a $2 trillion annual business, and ISPs are only a few hundred billion.
- okreallywtf 9y ago
  Do you have a source to a link between the content industry and anti-NN? I assume there is more to it than just "they have a lot more money".
  - imglorp 9y ago
    Well, the OP for one. Their anti piracy efforts are legendary, and pressing ISPs to filter VPN's and BT would be in their interest.
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    I have personally argued this point: the copyright industry's business model is based on making deals with centralized distribution services. They have no concept of peer-to-peer in their world, only of producer-consumer relationships. That is why when faced with something like BitTorrent they panic and start suing individuals, hoping to scare people away from new technologies. Copyright companies often try to divide people by geographic region, something that the Internet has made fundamentally difficult for them (see e.g. VPNs as a way to evade region-locked streaming services; or people downloading pirated copies before the official release in their country). So Hollywood would love a non-neutrality network. It would give them greater power to block BitTorrent, VPN services, etc. They might complain about the fees being charged for priority access, but they would rather deal with that problem than with the impact a neutral network has on their business.
qwerty456127 9y ago
Content is the new oil, isn't it?
TallGuyShort 9y ago
For me it sunk in upon seeing the the Department of Homeland Security now puts their seal anti-piracy warnings. So the copyright industry now has a direct line to "the terrorists hate our freedom."
JohnTHaller 9y ago
There's a reason I coined the term 'MAFIAA' for them: http://mafiaa.org/ http://mafiaa.org/
giancarlostoro 9y ago
It gets better: I overheard a cop once saying that he has an Amazon Fire Stick and he streams movies and shows to other cops. He then said its not illegal if you stream it. The cops get involved cause they don't understand it anymore than others do in some cases. You just gotta get to some ones boss and you are forced to follow orders even if they're wrong. I live in the USA btw so might be different from elsewhere. Cops are not lawyers I guess...
- damagednoob 9y ago
  I know cops who do this and I think it's just wilful ignorance.
marcosdumay 9y ago
That's the real disaster. It's a completely irrelevant industry, small by any measure and with a completely dispensable value lobbying against essential things like the freedom of press and affordable education material. And winning.
user5994461 9y ago
Not here to play devil advocates but the distribution of pirated content is actually extremely lucrative. They get at least a few dollars per thousand views. It adds up really quickly when any video will quickly get hundreds of thousands of views, multiplied by the number of episodes, multiplied by the number of shows. Pirating content is serious business. It can also be free and makes no money to the site owner but that's usually not how it's done.
kakarot 9y ago
Stallman's view on use of the word content: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Content https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Conten... . . .it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages the works themselves. If you don't agree with that attitude, you can call them “works” or “publications.”

marcoperaza 9y ago

He was running a website that revolved around violating millions of copyrights. Why shouldn't he go to jail? What gives you the right to take someone else's painstakingly created artistic creation and give it away for free to thousands of people, depriving them of the exclusive right to sell their own work. Copyright is both a criminal and civil matter. The civil court system is useful for many things, but it is limited to monetary damages, which is not very helpful when the damages are in the millions and the defendant isn't very wealthy. The penal power of the criminal system is not appropriate for individual people downloading music, but it certainly is for a sophisticated operation involving the illegal distribution of millions of copyrighted works to hundreds of thousands of users. == Edit == Some responses, since I'm rate-limited: >In most cases i read about it's more a matter of the current copyright holder versus the facilitator. Not a matter of the creator versus the actual downloader. Two points. 1. How do you think the current copyright holder got the copyright? They acquired it from the creator by either paying in advance or after the fact or as part of some ongoing deal. 2. If you run a market that you know is used almost exclusively by people selling contraband, do you think that's legal just because you're not the buyer or the seller? In case you don't know, it's not, and you'll go to jail just as if you had sold the contraband. >If the defendant isn't wealthy after distributing all that content, is the content worth millions? Or is the government-enforced business model worth millions? Yes, intellectual property isn't worth anything without government enforcement. But we've decided to, as individual societies and as an entire world by treaty, to provide such enforcement, because we think recognizing such property rights is good for our society. And as for the first point, how much you make by violating other people's rights isn't that relevant. If I steal a truckload of iPhones and give them away for free, I still stole them. I realize IP is very different from physical property, but the profit of the crook isn't that relevant in either.

otempomores 9y ago
Eh need gave the right? There is a whole humanity out there with nothing to spend but time and electronic drugs are basically a implementation of the freeze and hibernate proposed in the eighties to solve overpopulations resource consumption. Sorry if a individuals luxery was trampeled to give the world another peacefuller day.
Spearchucker 9y ago
Surely if what you say is true, the courts would have found him guilty, no?
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  >Surely if what you say is true, the courts would have found him guilty, no? What are you actually arguing, other than pointing out that he was acquitted? A jury's determination of a person's guilt in a particular case doesn't tell you what the law is, or what it ought to be. Edit: gnode, that’s not true. Only determinations of law, which are only made by judges, are precedent. A jury verdict, which only determines questions of fact, is not precedent at all.
  - gnode 9y ago
    In a common law system, findings of a court set precedent for future trials. So yes, juries do tell you what the law is by telling you how to interpret it.
b3lvedere 9y ago
"What gives you the right to take someone else's painstakingly created artistic creation and give it away for free to thousands of people, depriving them of the exclusive right to sell their own work." In most cases i read about it's more a matter of the current copyright holder versus the facilitator. Not a matter of the creator versus the actual downloader. That is exactly the weird paradox that has been going on, especially with the infamous Pirate Bay. The users think they are a super server with super hero admins that "give back to the man". The justice system thinks some super tech criminal is earning millions. They think that, because organisations like the MPAA give out an estimate on what "could have been earned if all those people would actually pay full price for the content they are now consuming". Numbers are magic.. especially if there's a currency sign before them.

expertentipp 9y ago

Copyright hoarders (not necessarily content creators) consider anyone sharing the content they hold copyright to as competition and attack will full fury, destroying humans' lives and jamming the local jurisdictions. They use all available strategies - top-down (PB in Sweden), bottom-up (cease and desist letter plague in Germany). How anyone competent allows them for doing it is unimaginable, there must be fraud and corruption involved.

aquadrop 9y ago
It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to say "those corporate money grabbers are evil" but in reality nobody cares who to pirate from. I've seen one writer who was relatively popular, beg his readers to buy his books instead of pirating it, because publisher was going to end his contract, because it was just not very profitable with all the pirating. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. One programmer I knew decided to do shareware in early 2000-s. His program became pretty successful in several months (2-3x times larger revenue than average salary in the country at the time), he could live off it. First time he got cracked and program went on pirating sites his sales were damaged considerably, he added some protection, new features etc. After some time he got cracked again and sales were damaged again. This time he said "screw it", stopped working on the program and got regular job. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. Of course I understand the appeal of pirated content, sometimes it's the only usable way to get something, especially for some old movies/series. And it put pressure on large media companies for content delivery technologies etc. But it's not all fun and giggles, it's a complex issues requiring global discussion and compromises.
- netzone 9y ago
  I agree. And this is why I no longer pirate stuff, if I can get it legally in a reasonable way. For me as a non-american though, there is a serious lack of content available to me, which means that if I want to watch something, sometimes the only available option is to pirate it.
  - 9y ago

scirocco 9y ago

Reminds me of the case with TPB. The court argued for large sums of ad revenue and the founders were like: “no idea where that money went because we never saw it”

ptero 9y ago

> But how does this happen? IMO both the patent and the copyright laws, at least in the US, are broken. The original goal was good: encourage individual inventors to make technology that the whole society will benefit from at a price of some limitation on use by society for a short period of time. In the current system, "the whole society will benefit" part does not work because time limits are too high -- at the modern technology pace, in 20 years most inventions are obsolete. I think the best way to fix it is to drastically shorten the time the invention is protected, which would require major compromises. Unfortunately, the discussion now seems very polarized: it seems to be "all information should be free" against "copyright everything and it needs to last longer, longer, longer" as major camps with little in the middle.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>The original goal was good: encourage individual inventors to make technology that the whole society will benefit from at a price of some limitation on use by society for a short period of time I know this is the common belief of the origin of patent law, but is there actually any evidence that this is the case? As I understand patent law originated as a way for monarchy to maintain control over innovation and intellect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_roll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_roll
- kbutler 9y ago
  The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8 https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8 Yes, patents existed before the US Constitution, but the reason the practice was formalized in the US was to promote progress.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago

imglorp 9y ago

I think the content industry is the one really driving this whole net neutrality thing, even more than the ISP business. If you follow the money, content is around a $2 trillion annual business, and ISPs are only a few hundred billion.

okreallywtf 9y ago
Do you have a source to a link between the content industry and anti-NN? I assume there is more to it than just "they have a lot more money".
- imglorp 9y ago
  Well, the OP for one. Their anti piracy efforts are legendary, and pressing ISPs to filter VPN's and BT would be in their interest.
- betterunix2 9y ago
  I have personally argued this point: the copyright industry's business model is based on making deals with centralized distribution services. They have no concept of peer-to-peer in their world, only of producer-consumer relationships. That is why when faced with something like BitTorrent they panic and start suing individuals, hoping to scare people away from new technologies. Copyright companies often try to divide people by geographic region, something that the Internet has made fundamentally difficult for them (see e.g. VPNs as a way to evade region-locked streaming services; or people downloading pirated copies before the official release in their country). So Hollywood would love a non-neutrality network. It would give them greater power to block BitTorrent, VPN services, etc. They might complain about the fees being charged for priority access, but they would rather deal with that problem than with the impact a neutral network has on their business.

qwerty456127 9y ago

Content is the new oil, isn't it?

TallGuyShort 9y ago

For me it sunk in upon seeing the the Department of Homeland Security now puts their seal anti-piracy warnings. So the copyright industry now has a direct line to "the terrorists hate our freedom."

JohnTHaller 9y ago

There's a reason I coined the term 'MAFIAA' for them: http://mafiaa.org/ http://mafiaa.org/

giancarlostoro 9y ago

It gets better: I overheard a cop once saying that he has an Amazon Fire Stick and he streams movies and shows to other cops. He then said its not illegal if you stream it. The cops get involved cause they don't understand it anymore than others do in some cases. You just gotta get to some ones boss and you are forced to follow orders even if they're wrong. I live in the USA btw so might be different from elsewhere. Cops are not lawyers I guess...

damagednoob 9y ago
I know cops who do this and I think it's just wilful ignorance.

marcosdumay 9y ago

That's the real disaster. It's a completely irrelevant industry, small by any measure and with a completely dispensable value lobbying against essential things like the freedom of press and affordable education material. And winning.

user5994461 9y ago

Not here to play devil advocates but the distribution of pirated content is actually extremely lucrative. They get at least a few dollars per thousand views. It adds up really quickly when any video will quickly get hundreds of thousands of views, multiplied by the number of episodes, multiplied by the number of shows. Pirating content is serious business. It can also be free and makes no money to the site owner but that's usually not how it's done.

kakarot 9y ago

Stallman's view on use of the word content: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Content https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Conten... . . .it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages the works themselves. If you don't agree with that attitude, you can call them “works” or “publications.”