‘Piracy’ isn’t a priority
p2pnet.net News:- Speaking to an invited group of high school students at UCLA yesterday, US attorney general Alberto Gonzalez sent a message to the MPAA, and to Hollywood as a whole.
When it comes to “internet piracy” and intellectual property theft, the US Department of Justice has “bigger fish to fry”, such as combating terrorism, he stated unequivocally, says Variety.
Although acknowledging the DoJ is obligated to go after criminals, it’ll use its limited resources to “focus on what’s most effective”, such as relying on tips and “evidence” of “piracy” from the studios, and suggesting that civil actions (by the cartels) against alleged thieves are more appropriate than attempts at criminal enforcement, says the story.
Actor James Cromwell, current secretary-treasurer of the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG), also spoke at the gathering in an attempt to brainwash American youth into thinking they’re criminals for participating in activities which aren’t illegal.
Confronted by several high school students in the audience who asked why they should have to pay outrageous prices for cinema tickets and DVD’s so the studios could justify multimillion-dollar budgets and salaries for its stars, Cromwell replied with the usual MPAA party line - that most cast and crew members are paid middle-class salaries and would suffer by lower residuals from DVD and ticket sales.
He avoided answering the question: Why must we pay such a high price to subsidize bigger budgets for the studios and high salaries for the stars?
‘Earning more money than ever’
Again, I, and others within the filesharing community, emphatically state that FILESHARING IS NOT A CRIME!
Copying and sharing in any way of legally-purchased so-called “copyright-protected” materials – especially, and specifically, for personal use without profit or intention of profiting - is not a crime. Filesharers are not criminals, nor are they “pirates”.
The mainstream media, fueled by the statements and unfounded allegations of the cartels that filesharing is bankrupting their industries, are more than eager to comply and label innocent children, parents and dead grandmothers as “pirates” and hardened criminals.
They continually ignore the fact that if billions of dollars are being lost, it’s only due to the illegal sales of black market DVD’s and CD’s produced and sold by sophisticated international counterfeit rings, highly organized in reproducing and distributing hundreds of thousands of discs per day.
These counterfeit rings are the pirates and criminals.
Filesharers are committing no crimes and are not the causing the financial losses (real or perceived) alleged by the studios.
Recent box office and sales statistics show the RIAA and MPAA owners are earning more money now than ever before, and have seen a steady increase in these figures over the past few years, despite the growing popularity of p2p technology, as well as the cartels’ threats to victimize and criminalize innocent people around the world with their “sue ‘em all” campaign.
These terrorist activities are used to scare people into submitting to the will of the cartels, forcing innocent people to settle out of court, thereby stealing life savings and bankrupting whole families in the process.
catflap - p2pnet
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See:-
Variety - Is piracy a priority?, April 28, 2005
April 29th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
Filesharing ISN’T a crime.
“It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright.”
Distributing a work without the copyright holder’s permission is. Filesharing is just the scapegoat.
A movie studio or record label holds the copyright to a given work. It’s fully within their rights under US copyright law to legally prosecute anyone who violates that ownership. The Berne Convention loosely allows legal prosecution of anyone outside the country of the copyright holder.
Fair use doesn’t include distributing quantities of copyrighted work, even if the distribution doesn’t net the distributor any compensation. (I wanted to use remuneration here, but that would have hurt me more than it did you.)
But that aside, filesharing doesn’t seem to be hurting the studios much, with increasing and record profits these last few years. I do feel that the price could have been made more attractive, but the damage has already been done. Making it free at this point would be the only way of getting people to “buy” product. It’s just too easy to download it from non-authorized sources. The authorized ones are just too much of a joke to be taken seriously.
We all have to realize that, as much as we may not like it, it is illegal to “share” music and movies, simply because they are protected under local and international copyright law.
April 29th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
thats good copy catflap
as far as this administration is concerned (with the exception of orrin hatch R)
your average file sharer isn’t their problem
its as bad as oh, speeding??
now kporn, fraud and id theft is a different story
April 30th, 2005 at 4:27 am
That’s part of the problem….these cartels are better protected by law than children or abused women. GW just signed into law that by it’s punishment equates making a crappy camcorder copy of a movie to manslaughter. Intellectual property has become a more valuable asset than human life.
April 30th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
This is a distraction, to try to discourage youth from getting politically involved to correct this policy mistake. This isn’t as much of a domestic issue for the USA as much as it is a foreign policy issue. The United States economy is in a massive deficit situation, and the USTR needs to find ways to finance this insanity. The two areas where the US has large trade surpluses is arms and “intangibles” such as PCT (Patent, copyright, trademark) royalty fees.
This means that for the USTR that imposition of those few methods of creation, distribution and funding of creativity and innovation where the USA dominates *IS* a priority. This is clearly opposed to all the anti-protectionist anti-free market, anti-free trade stuff that we heard from governments in the past, but they have been able to dupe people into thinking that protecting a subset of US special interests is somehow “recognizing international standards”. Orwellian double-speak for you.
Canadians should check out the words used in the USA’s 2005 Special 301 report:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/4801
May 1st, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Yes.
But, every time this issue comes up, it’s always “Filesharing isn’t illegal.”
The RIAA and the MPAA are like any other large corporations. And, they have enough money to lobby the government to do what they want.
The market for music and movies literally changed overnight. The studios were caught unaware, with their pants down, and every other phrase you can think of for saying “How’d that happen?” And, since they were caught unaware, they overreact.
But, back to the point.
Perhaps you should begin writing your local and federal government and ask them if a movie is really worth more than a life. Be polite, it will get you farther. Don’t rant. Do you agree with copyright law? Point that out. How about pricing? Too much? Say this may be a possible cause for the problem. But you have to tell the people in charge.
That’s the only way anything will get done.