Will MPAA replace RIAA as Public Enemy No 1?
p2pnet news view RIAA | MPAA News:- “TekSavvy is a Canadian ISP, Mp3Rocket is a US p2p file sharing application,” and, “RealNetworks is a US company trying to turn online music into paying (for it) concern,” p2pnet posted yesterday, going on:
“Apart from the fact they all depend on the Net in one way or another, what else do they have in common? You may be surprised at the answer.
“They’re possibly the first three companies to understand people with products and services they’re trying to promote and sell online have to talk — really talk — to the people they’re trying to sell to.”
The quotes come in a p2pnet story on the fact RealNetworks’ Lacy Kemp is having a lively discourse with p2pnet readers on the subject of the company’s controversial (Hollywood is suing it) RealDVD ripper.
The interaction is called P2P, we suggested.
On the RealDVD, “Like a Brachiosaur sinking into a tar pit, the recording industry as we’ve known it for the past 70 years is very nearly extinct,” says Dan Tynan, but, unlike dinosaurs, the RIAA is trying to drag everyone else into the pit with it”, he says, going on »»»
As a long-time print journalist, I actually feel their pain — slightly.
Newspapers and magazines are following CDs into the fossil fuel bin. Some, like Infoworld, will successfully swap paper for pixels; most won’t. Unless you own a blogging empire, it’s not a good time to be a publisher. (But, with a few random exceptions, publications haven’t been suing their customers for unfettered article swapping.)
The movie industry takes less heat for prosecuting alleged movie pirates, but it’s no better than its reptilian cousins on the audio side. That’s about to change.
The MPAA will soon supplant the RIAA as Public Enemy No. 1 for people who believe that when you buy a copy of something, you actually own it.
Case in point: The dueling lawsuits between the movie studios and RealNetworks over the RealDVD software.
Interestingly, it was Real who sued first — launching a preemptive strike by asking courts in Northern California to declare its DVD copying license legal. It only took a few hours for the studios to respond in kind. Greg Goeckner, general counsel and designated spokesmodel for the MPAA, churned out a few choice sound bites [PDF]:
RealNetworks’ RealDVD should be called “StealDVD. [...] The major motion picture studios have been making major investments in technologies that allow people to access entertainment in a variety of new and legal ways. This includes online video-on-demand, download-to-own, as well as legitimate digital copies for storage and use on computers and portable devices that are increasingly being made available on or with DVDs. Our industry will continue on this path because it gives consumers greater choices than ever.
Except, of course, the choice to take a movie you paid for and make decisions about how and where you watch it.
The movie studios claim Real’s software violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it circumvents copy protection technology built into DVDs. Actually, Real Networks licensed the software that lets them legally de-crypt and re-encrypt DVD content. If they’re guilty of violating the DMCA, so are the manufacturers of every $50 DVD player out there.
Essentially, Real’s software allows you to take a DVD you own and make a legal copy of it on up to five machines. Unless you’ve got the hacking skills of a Jon Lech Johansen, you can’t share these copies with anybody else without handing them the drive you copied the movie to. And if you really wanted to swap movies illegally, there are, oh, about a gajillion easier ways to do it than by abusing RealDVD.
The MPAA’s other argument: Customers will “rent, rip, and return” DVDs from Blockbuster or Netflix. So instead of spending $10 to $20 for the movie at Wal-Mart, you drop $5 at Blockbuster and make copies you can watch on your computer. Real admits that’s possible (and illegal under the terms of its license). But doesn’t that sound like an awful lot of trouble? If I really want to watch a movie over and over and over, I’ll just keep putting it back in my Netflix queue (or simply not return it after I get it the first time). The people who still go to Blockbuster are probably the least likely to have heard of RealDVD, let alone use it.
You can argue legalities all day long (and, if you’re a copyright attorney, make hundreds of dollars an hour doing it). But the fact is that the recording and film industries have been trying to kill off the concepts of fair use and the creative commons for decades. Today’s copyright laws are written by industry lobbyists and handed over to friendly members of Congress for a rubber stamp. They do not represent the will of the people.
Dan Tynan – Tynan on Technology (beta)
[Tynan slugs his personal blog 'Tech talk without the usual BS.' He's been writing and editing stories about technology and its discontents for more than 20 years. During that time he's been an editor in chief and an executive editor for national magazines, written for more than 50 publications, and taken home a closet full of awards. He's also the author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, soon to be a major motion picture starring Ashton Kutcher.]
[This post originally appeared on Infoworld's Notes From the Field blog.]
p2pnet – RealNetworks uses p2pnet as focus group, October , 2008
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October 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
I don’t think MPAA can really “replace” the RIAA, Jon:
They’re basically the same organization, arguing for the same egregious monopoly powers, and dependent on the exact same copyright increases.
There’s no difference, and there really never has been.
Hell, the corporate megaliths who back the RIAA all have subunits dedicated to movies, so it’s the same behind-the-scenes players using these supposedly “separate” lobbying groups as sockpuppets.
Sorry, but the way you posed the question is EXACTLY the way the Megaliths want you to think about these issues; so long as people still believe (for example) that p2p, copyrights, patents, “fair use”, etc. aren’t related, they’ll all keep concentrating on their narrow issues, instead of challenging the fundamental issue:
Namely, DOES the existing IP regime actually promote “science and the useful arts”? Mounting evidence says no, and diverting ever more resources to futile attempts at ENFORCING the current IP regime has done nothing but stir up a lot of questions.
The more the government panders to the RIAA/MPAA lobbybots, the more resources they divert from REAL issues — like for example the tottering wreckage the rest of the economy has become, two (or is it three?) very unpopular wars, human rights abuses like waterboarding, etc. etc.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
^^ I didn’t expect anyone to take that literally, although the RIAA was the first to deliberately target the people upon whom its masters depend absolutely, and who keep them disgustingly rich.
But it makes a good headline, and Dan writes a good write, and as he says:
“[the MPAA is] no better than its reptilian cousins on the audio side …”
But seriously, you’re talking about communications which until the Net came along were wholly and solely controlled by various elements in the so-called entertainment sector.
That isn’t true any more and it’s becoming harder and harder for the Powers that Used to Be to divert the focus away from, “REAL issues — like for example the tottering wreckage the rest of the economy has become, two (or is it three?) very unpopular wars, human rights abuses like waterboarding, etc. etc.”
Faux News, as SRG calls it, and the other industry un-news sites, are no longer the only information vehicles around.
When I started p2pnet, there was a very distinct division between what was happening online, and what was happening off, and the lamescream print and electronic media still believed they had everything under control — their control.
That may have been true then, but in 2008 the on- and offline print and electronic media frequently find themselves forced to respond, usually inadequately, to what first shows up online.
They used to be Megaliths, but that was then. Now, they’re Brachiosaures, “sinking into a tar pit,” and every time someone, somewhere, shows them up for what they really are, they and their misinformation units sink a little deeper.
Cheers!
October 4th, 2008 at 7:10 am
“The MPAA’s other argument: Customers will “rent, rip, and return” DVDs from Blockbuster or Netflix. So instead of spending $10 to $20 for the movie at Wal-Mart, you drop $5 at Blockbuster and make copies you can watch on your computer.”
This is a valid concern for them, though I think it costs a bit more that $5 to rent a movie a Blockbuster these days. My wife is the one who usually does the renting. Occasionally she will bring home one movie too many given the amount of time we have before they need to be returned. More than once it has been because of an unexpected visit to the emergency room (kidney stones the last time). I admit that in certain cases such as these we will indeed “rip” a rented movie to the computer for later watching. The MPAA would most likely cringe upon hearing that, but we feel we’re entitled to watch the movie we rented at least once. We paid for exactly that privilege after all and it’s perfectly fair IMHO. I’m sure there are all kinds of arguments and excuses one could come up with to argue against that point (some license we’ve agreed to but have likely never read for instance), but even so there is no getting around the fact that it truly is only fair. Fairness, I think, is at the heart of every discussion relating to the use of copyrighted IP and greed/selfishness tends to blind everyone on both sites to that fact. Anyways, once we’ve managed to finally watch the ripped movie, we delete it. If it was really good, we’ll likely buy the DVD at a later date (Blu-ray nowadays, we’ve come to hate standard def). You can’t beat owning your own official (and might I add, legal) copy, one you can watch with alone or with friends and family as many times over as you want, complete with all extras and a nice package. I’m sure there are lots of people out there renting and making cheap copies to keep (or worse, sell) but that is a moral line everyone has to cross one their own and none of my business. Do I sleep comfortably at night? You bet I do.