Wikipedia blackout

MarcoD

By now, I would like to see some real numbers. Like, what profit now comes from the Internet -even online sales of content,- vs what does dwindling CD sales cost the industry.

I really have the feeling that they are crippling an entire massive industry because of the closure of some CD/DVD shops.

Pythagorean

I imagine that would be hard to quantify: how many people that pirate stuff would have actually bought the stuff had they not been able to pirate it? How many people would have bought the stuff at full price had they not known a distributing pirate?

Hard to guess, methinks

ginru

The culprit is Progress and how old powers simply can't adapt to it.

The other day I saw a discussion on a public news show. The pro-SOPA guy looked like the typical 6-figure, grey-haired, suit-and-tie executive using the smokescreen excuse of losing jobs (as if he wouldn't cut or ship them overseas for more profit). Give him a top hat and cane, and he'd look like he jumped right out of the Monopoly board game.

The anti-SOPA guy was younger, enthusiastic about the future, and seemed full of passion for new ideas and technology's potential, basically the poster boy for companies like Apple and Google that adapt and succeed in this new economy. They focus on making the consumer happy through innovation. It's like in that Social Network movie, the visionary kids are now the CEOs.

Meanwhile Rich Uncle Pennybags can only rely on old formulas of success, giving consumers an endless supply of remakes, sequels, recycled content and reality TV. And then they're surprised when the disgruntled consumer would rather spend their money elsewhere. And worse yet is that when they get desperate they go crying to the government to bail them out at the consumers' expense (again).

Congress would welcome it too as they have more in common with that older, entrenched power. I feel if you give them an inch they'd gladly take a yard to use in fighting all of their wasteful abstract wars (Piracy, Drugs, Terror). Likely, they'd keep growing the role and power of government while demanding even more power/money to fight those same wars when the results don't pan out as expected. Too much mutual backscratching going on there between the two Pennybags of Big Gov and Big Biz, IMO.

Sadly, I think all of these issues would be better served by a more pro-active, market-based approach in order to stay ahead of the problem. Instead of fighting Progress, the music execs should have been the ones to have created Napster way before it came along to undermine them. Focus on a progressive relationship with the consumer and they'll reward you with loyalty and a fan culture much like Apple's.

Instead, the entertainment powers take a reactionary approach to everything by over-milking old models and either fearing new ones or hollowly duplicating them. So I won't shed a tear over their inevitable failure, just like IMO, they never felt sorry for the weaker competition that they crushed in their own march to success. My personal preference is always for the creative innovators that embrace the future.

jasonoz

Wow! How did so many opinions change in one day?

I'm hoping it was public opposition against SOPA that made them change their minds, and not some kind of pay off!

MarcoD

When I think of it, then my money goes to the media industry (a lot from the US) through DVD sales and indirectly through the subscription costs of cable (lots of television content is also from the US.)

I am kind-of waiting until YouTube finishes a deal with content providers since I want to get rid of cable and just watch the latest series and movies on the Internet directly when released (there's a lag of half a year, some series are never released.) It could even mean that more money ends up in the US than through the established lines since all local 'overhead' is removed.

(IMO, most of the online content providers still have the business model wrong. People are used to, and want, a flat rate subscription. Something like World of Warcraft. If one could pay ten bucks a month, like ordinary cable, to get the latest content, I am pretty sure half the world would subscribe.)

(You can also probably derive a business model from looking at an average household spending on media, say $15 on subscription and $30 on CD/DVD a month. Then the public will never go for a pay-per-item model, since even at $0.99 one can't get enough content in comparison to the competition, TV. But a $5 subscription to, say, latest HBO releases, a $1 for news, and $5 for other stuff (like kids, comedy, or even adult channels) would probably be reasonable.)

Curious3141

The payoff is votes. The threat (implied or otherwise) that their public will not put them back into power if they don't vote the right way.

At least democracy sort of still works in America (I've given up all hope for the sham in my own country).

This ain't over, not by a long shot. I'm sure there are some mad machinations in the background by the MAFIAA. Waiting for the next salvo.

rcgldr

What SOPA and PIPA are attempting to do is force the private sector to screen out web sites or references or links to those web sites that offer torrent seeds or direct downloads of copyrighted material in countries where copyright laws are mostly ignored. In these countries, there's virtually no retail market because the average income of the population is so low, so there's a thriving black market that includes duplication of product packaging as well as the product itself. The copyright owners can't really do anything about this situation, and they don't care unless those pirated products make their way into countries where there is a retail market.

One initial issue with these proposals were provisions that would penalize USA companies like internet service providers for not actively screening out all DNS links to web sites in foreign countries declared to be pirate sites. The DNS clause was removed from SOPA, I don't know about PIPA.

Another issue is that any web site that allows its users to post text or data, such as a forum, chat room, web hosting service, or any web site with a search feature (bing, google, yahoo, ...), ... , could be penalized for not screening all posted content that could contain copyrighted material or links or torrent seeds, including multiple levels of indirection, ..., to copyrighted material or a description of how to do this or reveal some some trade secret.

Youtube tries to screen uploads, but just about any song can be found on youtube and downloaded. Youtube videos could contain text or speech in a video with information on how to access copyrighted content, such as a link or a search term. In some cases, such as clips from movies or music, eventually the video will get removed, or if multiple infractions occur, the account shut down, but then another one will spring up to replace it. However one common result of including music as part of the background of a video, is that youtube places an ad on the video and sends the proceeds to the copyright owner, or to godigital whichs owns a service that auto-screens youtube videos and files "matched third party content" claims to allow those ads to be placed giving a portion of the ad revenue to the copyright owner. Apparently this system is somewhat abused, making false claims to generate revenue from those ads.

My guess is that one of wikipedia's concerns would be the cost of trying to screen every bit of content added to wikipedia. Who would maintain an up to date list of every link, DNS, text description, ... that could be used to access pirated content?

Galteeth

Right, it's fine, under current laws. I was trying to illustrate the danger of this legislation. Under SOPA, even linking to copyrighted content could theoretically be grounds for a block. This is one of the many complaints, it makes user feedback forums a liability for websites since anyone can link to anything. It opens up a hornets nest of potential censorship.

Galteeth

SOPA appears to be dead. Yay internet!

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-m...th-decides-to/


Also, a bit of irony:


http://www.chron.com/news/local_news...om-2648232.php

cmb

He [Republican Senator Lamar Smith] said: "The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store.

Really? Has it not been made to be a theft, by modern conceptions of 'Intellectual Property'?

Theft is 'taking something, without the intention of giving it back'. How can data be 'taken' and 'not given back'?

It was once considered a mark of academic credibility to copy books (before printing). Until very recently, many composers (or, even, still - depending on your cynicism) thought nothing of taking another composer's tune and 'elaborating' on it, to call it their own. It was the performance which was the money making part, not the creation of a recording.

Misuse of someone else's IP has evolved in law, and it is not unreasonable to seek to protect the cost and effort one puts into the creation of IP. But theft is the wrong word, and is nothing at all like stealing physical property.

Jimmy Snyder

It's not stealing the copy, it's stealing the right to copy.

cmb

Stealing is well-defined and includes the act of denying use to the legal title holder or his agents.

IP is not stolen, it is infringed. IP offences are unlawful infringements on rights to exclusive use/sales thereof.

It is like saying that if a Policeman arrests you he has stolen your right to go about your business. That is, he has actually taken something off you. It's pedantics, maybe, but it is not right. He may have infringed your right to go about your business (he might well have done that lawfully), but he has not stolen something from you.

Curious3141

More precisely: "Theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it."

The "intent to deprive the rightful owner" is the all-important part. This holds even if the thief decides to later return the goods (he still had the original intent to deprive at the time of commission of the crime).

Copyright violation is NOT theft. It's more akin to using water from your well without your permission (even when you have a great excess, so you will never be short). In fact, even this is not accurate since in a lot of cases, the "victim" (in the parallel with the "theft" analogy) is a willing party to the file-sharing - *someone* originally has to buy the music/movie to start sharing it online, right?

So using the analogy to determine the "victim" here is meaningless. The "victim" in copyright cases is said to be the holder of the copyright. They superimpose the faces of the artistes so the little people can make the emotional connection, but in most cases, the copyrights are held by faceless corporate entities trafficking in billions of dollars per annum. If one goes back to the "theft" analogy, it's like Lamar Smith is accusing you of stealing, not from the store per se, but from Kellogg's or Black and Decker directly. It makes absolutely no sense, but when was sense to be expected from a politician?

What's going on here is that the physical medium for the transmission of the product has become redundant. It's the data stream, the 1s and 0s that's become the real commodity. Unfortunately, it's also a commodity that's eminently suited to being effortlessly duplicated ad nauseam, unless it's crippled in some way with DRM (a rather ironic moniker, because rights are actually being taken away from the consumer, without any real rights being conferred on the artistes who dreamt up the product). So instead of a purchasing sort of structure, they're forced to go to a licensing one - when you buy music, a movie or an ebook, you're only buying the licence to use it in certain approved ways. Anything outside those bounds, you're breaking the law. But it still isn't *theft*!

Allow me to meander a little tangentially here - I often think about the "Star Trek" economy - with "replicators" in common use. Right now, when we need to use a hammer or a lawnmower or a car and we don't have one, we have to go to a rightful owner we know and borrow one. Neither the makers nor the designers of those implements are likely to be coming after us. But what if, one day, we could just take a friend's thing and replicate one for ourselves from valueless raw materials? Would the designers of that thing (the "IP holders") come after us for copyright infringement? In Star Trek, stuff like this revolutionised the economy to the extent that it no longer made sense to be remotely capitalistic, but would we get so lucky if that day ever came? Or would we lurch into a half-enlightened state where the only things of value became energy (assuming there was a limited supply and no trivial way to collect/extract it oneself) and "IP"? Will we ever free ourselves of the tethers to greed? I guess it remains to be seen.

Jimmy Snyder

So theft is bad and infringing is good?

Hurkyl

Apple makes hardware and Google sells ad space on its services. Neither one is an example of how to succeed at being a content provider.

(edit: I had meant to say "content producer" when I wrote this)

MarcoD

Yah, I feel a bit silly since I didn't know Netflix (unavailable in my country) already sells flat rate services. I have the feeling that there's a small battle going on between the old manner of doing business, the new manner of doing business, and what are now illegal unrestricted content providers.

I looked at youtube, they want to offer a similar service as Netflix, but they only wanted to throw 100 million at the problem. Which isn't enough to buy enough content and break the hegemony of cable, and at the same time is probably too much given that you can also look at content with no cost illegally.

The problem is that YouTube would need to become a content producer (to break the old hegemonies), a content provider, and needs several tens of millions of subscribers at a low cost flat rate at the same time.

Char. Limit

Please point to where someone says infringing is good. You know you need evidence for that sort of claim.