RIAA: ‘US copyright law is broken’
p2pnet view P2P | RIAA:- RIAA spinzoid Cary Sherman (right) says current US copyright law is broken — that it “isn’t working” for content creators any longer, according to CNet News.
So the many millions of dollars spent by the RIAA to promote the law, and claims by him and other RIAA employees that ‘piracy’ was being kept in check, were just bovine excreta?
Acording to Sherman, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act has “loopholes” that “allow broadband providers and Web companies to turn a blind eye to customers’ unlawful activities without suffering any legal consequences”, says the story.
His statement assumes ISPs and webcos have some kind of responsibilty for what their customers do.
If that kind of thinking prevailed anywhere else, there’d be chaos.
Picture it: Ford sued every time a drunk driver kills an innocent pedestrian.
But we’re talking about the RIAA and its owners, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian). For them, no position is so bizarre or ridiculous that it can’t be adopted. And no one will say anything about it, least of all the lamescream media.
“The DMCA isn’t working for content people at all,” Sherman told the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum, says CNet, quotinghim as stating, “You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It’s simply not possible.”
Interesting. But before we get to that, “In response to a question from CNET, Sherman said it may be necessary for the U.S. Congress to enact a new law formalizing agreements with intermediaries such as broadband providers, Web hosts, payment processors, and search engines” says the story, going on:
“The RIAA would strongly prefer informal agreements inked with intermediaries, Sherman said: ‘We’re working on [discussions with broadband providers], and we’d like to extend that kind of relationship — not just to ISPs, but [also to] search engines, payment processors, advertisers’.”
In Big Music’s perfect world, all companies even remotely associated with the music industry would be ratting out their customers left, right and centre.
‘Monitoring software installed on people’s computers … ‘
Sherman’s observations about monitoring difficulties notwithstanding, “We already know that content providers don’t care one bit about hard-fought concepts like freedom and privacy, but the joint proposals by the RIAA and MPAA to the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator really blew my brains out”, p2pnet quoted Thom Holwerda as saying in OS News recently.
He’d been moved to comment by a Deep Links post from Richard Esguerra, staff activist for the (EFF) Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Monitoring software installed on people’s computers, border inspections – “it’s all there, and then some”, said Holwerda, continuing >>>
As you may recall, the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator made a request late February for comments on how the United States should handle intellectual property enforcement within the current administration. Apart from advice from the public and organisations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, big content itself is of course also allowed to shine their light on the matter. Which is good.
What isn’t good, sadly, are the idiotic measures they’ve come up with. If it were up to the RIAA, MPAA, and similar organisations, the American public’s privacy isn’t worth a darn dime. For instance, they state that people should install software on their computers that continuously scans the hard drive for files that may infringe copyright, similar to how antivirus software works. While they add the “voluntary” modifier, the Sony rootkit fiasco has shown us that these people are not to be trusted.
Not only should such software be installed and used by ordinary people, network administrators should install them network-wide as well. Big content already managed to buy talk US Congress into forcing institutions of higher education into employing such technologies on their campuses back in 2008.
If that wasn’t enough, big content also wants to use border controls and customs as means to combat intellectual property infringement. They want customs to inquire people about infringing content, and taking into account the contents of the latest leaked ACTA proposals, this would also include unlimited access to digital music players and laptops at the border.
But wait, there’s more! The RIAA and MPAA also want to bully countries with more modern and balanced copyright laws, such as The Netherlands. They suggest using the infamous Special 301 report, a list which identifies countries that, according to the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA have too loose IP protection laws. What’s too loose? Canada is listed because it requires customs to have court orders before searching digital devices at the border. Chile is listed because it instated fair use exceptions to copyright. Israel is listed because DMCA-like legislation was rejected there because it was deemed ineffective.
Countries listed in the Special 301 report would then be “put [...] on notice that dealing with such hotbeds of copyright theft will be an important topic of bilateral engagement with the U.S. in the year to come”. In other words, the US should sour relationships with allied countries just because their democratic processes work better (and thus more accurately reflect the will of the people, namely that individual downloading and fair use are not wrong).
Lastly, the RIAA and MPAA want to enact a joint task force with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that should pro-actively prevent the leaking of summer blockbusters (among other things). “An interagency task force should work with industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary,” they say.
I wish I was making this stuff up. We can laugh all we want (and as a Dutchman living with relatively modern copyright laws, I most certainly do point and laugh), but the fact of the matter is that these proposals are not as unlikely to be accepted as it seems.
The Obama administration has already sided squarely with the ACTA proposals, which are more or less exactly the same.
Don’t be surprised to see these proposals come into effect sooner rather than later.
Since I don’t want to be writing the same thing over and over again, let me just copy what I said in a comment on our previous article about this subject.
Should the government have protected companies that made carriages when cars became popular? Should they have supported typewriter makers when word processing software became capable enough? Should they spend tax dollars supporting oil companies once an alternative becomes available? If the Microsoft Windows ecosystem were to ever suffer some sort of devastating blow leading to a mass exodus of users, should the government enact laws to force people to use Windows and buy Windows software anyway, because else so many jobs would be lost?
Or… Should companies and business models just adapt or die?
“What’s more important to you, Mr President? - Holwerda asks in OS News.
“Those juicy RIAA/MPAA campaign dollars, or the rights of the American people?”
No need to stay tuned.
… and identi.ca
CNet News – RIAA: U.S. copyright law ‘isn’t working’, August 23, 2010
p2pnet – RIAA, MPAA to IP czarina Espinel: II, April 16, 2010
OS News – RIAA/MPAA Want Monitoring Software, Border Checks, April 15, 2010
Deep Links – The Entertainment Industry’s Dystopia of the Future, April 14, 2010
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August 25th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Parasites are parasites and the only way to cure such an infestation is to kill them all.
Corporate parasitism is no exception. These entertainment parasites will continue to ravage the society and the economy until they are all dead. Let’s work harder on achieving this goal.
August 25th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
The DMCA is unconstitutional and this human garbage of Shitman think that this is not unconstitutional enough!
I believe we should take away it’s Us citizenship and send him to North Korea where he will be able to impose the death penalty for file sharing.
August 28th, 2010 at 8:26 am
You know this is the same ole drivel they been spewing for years nobody pays any attention to this crap.The other night I couldn’t sleep got up turned the TV on and was channel surfing and ran across an interview with Gene Simmons of KISS and I only caught part of it but he was saying (and I’m paraphrasing a bit) “If I catch you downloading my music I’ll take your home your kitty and everything else you own” what a Moran when I was a kid I was huge KISS fan but now that I’m old they are totally irrelevant to me just like the RIAA Talk all you want nobody is listening.