Copyfight: EFF co-founder enters e-G8 "lion's den," rips into lions
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
That's not to say they don't ever pay for stuff, just look at the success of iTunes or the record-breaking opening weekends of popular movies. But the young generations fundamentally do no have any respect for copyright, especially if it restricts their abilities to enjoy consumption of content.
The times, they are a-changin', whether "the industry" likes it or not.
So the solution is to still post the video, but with a confusing disclaimer like, "this video isn't mine, all music belongs to [artist], no copyright infringement intended". Saying "no copyright infringement intended" while still uploading the video is strange thing to be doing, unless you have a nonstandard understanding of what copyright infringement means.
I may actually go and visit my MP to discuss this issue in person (as opposed to writing, which I have occasionally done in the past but which I suspect doesn't make the same impact as someone looking you in the eye and saying you're doing it wrong for reasons X, Y and Z).
One could argue that young people are less supportive of copyright because they don't own anything that can be copyrighted.
Our commons are the copyrights.
I honestly can't think of a time when I've seen a younger person strongly defend copyright, but that could be my bias.
The reason they gave was that it was against the Bible to steal, and it was stealing. They were your standard crazed Jesus-freaks that are found every so often.
After their hundredth time telling X person they were going to hell for not believing the same exact way they did, everybody ignored them.
If piracy could kill the music industry, it would have killed it by now. The music industry is not dead. Ergo piracy will not kill it.
The industry has always been short-sighted.
You are sort-of right about one thing: people won't pay for the overpriced legacy products to which Big Content clings, and those products will eventually die. Good riddance.
Without Disney overhead, I doubt it would cost US$ 170 million.
Please care to enlighten us as to what the "bigger picture" is?
Edit: I cannot believe I am being dv'd for this. Are people seriously telling me they don't believe opinions and attitudes willl change as they get older? Do you think you're as wise as you'll ever be when you're young?
This is a mistake only young people are capable of making?
You are confusing young people with ignorant people.
But just think about this: I am 23 years old, I barely remember a time when there was no internet. Kids today grow up taking their iPods for granted. They take for granted that music, movies, media of all kind is digital. The take for granted that is easily shared. That there is no fundamental restriction on the consumption of content. Technologically we are at the point where virtually all content is available to virtually everyone at virtually no cost.
Politics and law do not matter. This reality is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is.
(FWIW I did not downvote you)
While many young people's views will change over time on many issues, it seems kind of rude to assume that it's certain they will. For example (and this is not meant to be a comparison to copyright, just an example of attitudes not changing), while it appears to mostly be older people against gay marriage, that does not mean that younger people are misinformed and will change their minds on it as they grow older. Somethings are actually generational shifts in attitude, independent of the generation's age. I do agree that it's possible that the current generation may shift to a more conservative view on copyright as it ages, since that happens with many issues, but it can sound somewhat offensive depending on how you worded it. I think it's a point worth considering, but sadly many people will have a negative reaction against something that looks "You'll get it when you're older", and that may prevent them from considering the idea in a more neutral light.
As for whether it's correct, I'd lean towards "No". I think young people who grow up to produce content they want to commercially develop may, but that's likely going to be a minority. I don't think the majority that casually illegally download things without a second thought will have a change of heart. It being wrong just doesn't seem to enter most people's minds. I think part of the reason is the overly harsh propaganda against it. While there is a core ideal worth considering ("Artists should be compensated for their work"), the ridiculous exaggeration ("Pirating movies supports TERRORISM") leads to people ignoring the issue.
The current, and notoriously short-sighted beneficiaries of the copyright cartel see this as a good thing, as it appears to hand them a massive (and totally unearned) expansion of their power. The (mostly young) people who are most exposed to this hubris display a reassuringly mature recognition of this badness, and resist accordingly.
Good government (i.e. government of, by, and for the people) would avoid open conflict by adjusting the law to the benefit of the people's constitutional liberties, challenging the old commercial order to adapt peacefully or die gracefully. The fact that this isn't happening is de facto evidence of growing corruption. If anything, the wisdom of age makes this less - not more - tolerable as time goes by.
After all, there is no precedent (at least in America) that suggests a system providing total domination over all aspects of cultural and intellectual is a good and worthwhile thing. Indeed, much of America's involvement in the 20th Century revolved around violent opposition to the horrific and miserable places that did try to institute this level of control. Today, we're discovering that we can't even be 'friends' with countries that behave like this (Exhibit A: Egypt), since majorities everywhere find these orders deeply hateful, rendering them inherently unstable. Indeed, no modern totalitarian regime has survived for more than a few decades, let alone the lifetimes that democratic republics boast.
Please don't confuse this with endorsing the draconian punishments heaped on people who infringe on copyrighted works.
It seems to me that the new change is that suddenly, discovery and dissemination are enjoying large-scale volunteer effects, where previously it was just word of mouth. The pre-existing laws presume to deal with for-profit redistributors, and as such are hardly applicable.
The burning question in my mind is whether the volunteering will persist and suffice to meet the offering of the distribution business. Will it result in a karma economy, or will there be a new business area in archival? Will people tire of providing free service when they find themselves preoccupied with the worries of middle age, or will they merely scale back?
You think the Lord of the Rings movies would ever have been made without copyright law? What Kinsella is arguing is that we have no business setting up rules such that a project like that can be economically feasible. (That, I suspect, is likely because Kinsella is an anarchist. He realizes that his preferred system of government (that is, absence thereof) could not support IP; ergo, one must argue that IP is not a desired thing, cuz it sure ain't going to exist in utopia.)
It seems really poorly thought out. If you want copyright-free material, produce it! If you object to copyrighted material, don't consume it! If you're right about it being abhorrent in the digital age, then let all the abhorrers not buy it. It's so easy to just opt out.
If you buy Kinsella's argument, you don't need anything to change about the laws. Just don't participate in the copyright regime. If you really believe in his theory, the moral thing to do is boycott it all. If you say you believe in Kinsella's theory, but go ahead and copy and use stuff the author thought he was going to get paid for, it seem really, really likely to me that what you're really doing is just using intellectual blather to salve your looter conscience.
Trouble struck when Marty Katz was sent to New Zealand. Spending four months there, he told Miramax that the films were more likely to cost $150 million, and with Miramax unable to finance this, and with $15 million already spent, they decided to merge the two films into one. On 17 June 1998, Bob Weinstein presented a treatment of a single two-hour film version of the book. He suggested cutting Bree and the Battle of Helm's Deep, "losing or using" Saruman, merging Rohan and Gondor with Éowyn as Boromir's sister, shortening Rivendell and Moria as well as having Ents prevent the Uruk-hai kidnapping Merry and Pippin.[9] Upset by the idea of "cutting out half the good stuff"[10] Jackson balked, and Miramax declared that any script or work completed by Weta Workshop was theirs.[9] Jackson went around Hollywood for four weeks,[10] showing a thirty-five minute video of their work, before meeting with Mark Ordesky of New Line Cinema.[11] At New Line Cinema, Robert Shaye viewed the video, and then asked why they were making two films when the book was published as three volumes; he wanted to make a film trilogy. Now Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had to write three new scripts. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_film_tril...]
And because of copyright law, we now have a shitty screen version of Atlas Shrugged that takes place in the future? C'mon!
I am not advocating abolition, only reform. I am not sure it is even possible to create copyright-free material in the United States. The producer of the content would be required to explicitly waive copyright.
In other words, you never see a true paradigm shift take place in a single generation. Two or three is the more realistic norm.
I am 19 and make enough that every time I want something (an album, movie, book) I can buy it and I do. I care about copyright, the reason most young people don't is because they don't want to spend their limited income on something they can get for free.
If you give a young person the income to purchase everything without meaning they have to limit their spending on something else I suspect the majority would buy it.
This seems to imply that 20th Century Fox feels entitled to making the kind of profits that would support such exorbitant investments. I liked Avatar as much as the next guy, but the concept of making that much money off of something like music or film is a relatively recent phenomenon, dependent upon the combination of wide distribution with artificial scarcity. Even if Avatar couldn't be made without the kinds of conditions that allow for those kinds of profits, I'm pretty sure I'd trade it for all of the direct and indirect casualties of the recording and film industries; but really, I'm just thoroughly unconvinced that high quality work can't be motivated by more reasonable profits and other less tangible benefits.
see how far you get with any investor if your plan involves changing the law to create more favourable conditions for your profit.
these business models will all eventually die and be replaced by younger people who grew up in this copy and copy alike world and will find new ways of making money but there might be a hell of a lot of collateral damage to the law as they go down.
We already have the IP tax. In my country, it's essentially a value added tax on all digital mass media, regardless of use. The money from that is lumped in with the money from concerts and from playing radio in public, and goes to an entertainment organization that then distributes it to its members and partners as it sees fit.
* compliant software must implement reversible hashing (my favorite)
* use of compliant software may not be used as an argument to prove one's innocence in court
* cloud computing is actually a 'network protocol'
etc.etc.etc.
(a short analysis (in french) http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/63264-hadopi-analyse-speci...)
The G8 is a group of elected officials who represent their respective countries based on democratic process.
The eG8 is a bunch of industry folks who represent no one but their own self-interests.
If the 'real G8' was the heads of General Electric, ExxonMobil, Toyota, ConocoPhillips, Samsung, Berkshire Hathaway, Ford, etc we'd all horrified and out raged.
If the eG8 was a private meeting of industry folks to shoot the shit on whatever, go in right ahead. But if they're going to debate policy it's a total red flag.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more outcry frankly.
Is that accurate? I thought copyright was invented specifically to give a monopoly to creators, in order to encourage innovation/creation.
I think that statement is conflating two separate issues in order to confuse people (the logic being, we needed copyright before mass distribution was possible; it's possible now; therefore, we don't need copyright).
"Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody".
Also worth reading the next few sentences:
" Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
The argument is not that copyright is unnecessary. The argument is that "honoring copyright" and "taking legal action and attempting to secure government oversight to prop up an obsolete, commodity-based business model" are nowhere close to being the same thing.
To assert that Barlow is attempting to confuse is totally disingenuous. The two issues are conflated. They're conflated because the rights-holders have conflated them. He's not sitting on that stage debating a panel of artists and philosophers; the majority of them aren't even proper economists. They're just the guys who have the most to lose if things change, and they're attempting (I would argue illegally/unconstitutionally, but until we can get a handle on lobbyism, 1st and 4th amendment rights violations, and continuing trends towards oligarchy in this country... que será, será) to leverage as much influence as they can muster to legislate their poor business model into continued existence in a world which no longer supports it.
Let's take the honorable Mr. Gianopulos' example: when someone asks you for a couple hundred million dollars to make a movie about some blue aliens, you'd like to be compensated.
First of all, "some blue people on another planet"? Now, I'll be the first to say that I felt Avatar was mostly Pocahontas with better visual effects. But come on. Gianopulos was a poor Greek kid from New York City, he attended college and law school, then immediately went to work in Hollywood. This is his entire life. He's on a stage insisting that the sanctity of these (his?) arts must be protected by any means (currently legal or not) necessary. And he still can't get six words out of his mouth without being completely dismissive of the art he professes a desire to protect. This is one of the two biggest successes of the man's professional career. I wonder if he refers to Titanic as "some fucking thing about a sinking boat."
(The attitude illustrated in the preceding paragraph is the foremost reason many of us consider these people to be pig-fuckers, incidentally. I'm going to step outside the bounds of rational discourse for a moment and risk some downvotes to make an audacious assertion: If you (not you, edanm, who I'm replying to, but you, the reader) believe that these multi-billion dollar media conglomerates actually concern themselves with art or the livelihoods of artists, or that they intend to protect anything but their own bottom lines, or that they are somehow entitled to the role of sole, perpetual rights holders and distributors of any media created by anyone, anywhere, ever (as their comments indicate that they believe they are), you need to please see your way right the hell out of this discussion—maybe do some light reading, I'd recommend starting with Lessig's Free Culture— because you clearly don't understand what the fuck is going on here. Yeah, there was a lot of hyperbole in there. I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to sort out whether or not I'm full of shit.)
Now, down to brass tacks. What Mr. Gianopulos is really concerned with is Avatar as a vehicle for his well-deserved compensation. So let's take a look, shall we?
Avatar budget: ~$237,000,000
Avatar worldwide gross as of Jan 2011: $2,039,472,387+
All of this is to say, in FY 2000, if you knew how to work the internet and were so inclined, you could get anything you wanted, for free. Maybe you had to wait a few days for it to download on your dial-up connection, and it may have occupied 20% of the remaining free space on your 20 Gb hard drive, but you could get it. All those people who paid repeatedly to see "The Phantom Menace" multiple times in theatres? They definitely knew how to download a copy of it well before it was released on DVD. And yet they still paid. Weird, right?
Flash forward a decade, when broadband is prevalent, storage is cheap, and the tools and understanding required to download any given copyrighted work are not merely the domain of geeks and organized crime, but are in fact readily available to your dentist, my mom, an increasing percentage of the elderly, and everyone on earth under 25 years old. Also, probably dogs. Yet 20th Century Fox managed to nearly double FY 2000s yearly gross with a single film. But Mr. Gianopulos is concerned about compensation. Better call the lawyers. Actually, better just get international heads of state to issue mandates that henceforth Sony/BMG, Time Warner, CBS, NewsCorp, Viaporn...I apologize, Viacom, NBC/Universal/GE?/Comcast??/Whatthefuck and the weeping ghost of Walt Disney are the sole arbiters and proprietors of any creation which may be construed as "media," and furthermore will act as government contractors wherein they will be responsible to define and enforce the meanings of the words "art," "artist," "music," "culture," "innovation," and most importantly, "deserve."
None of this even begins to address the astronomical budget of a film like Avatar in an age when a $200 cell phone can record higher quality video for a longer period of time than a $15,000 professional camera and $40,000 worth of film could 15 years ago, nor the fact that marketing ANYTHING to a worldwide potential customer base has gone from "complicated and expensive" to "marginally free, and the easiest shit ever." My passion, music, also suffers great tribulation resulting from the decisions of the aforementioned pig-fuckers, and as you'd imagine I have quite a lot to say on the topic, but I've already written a ton here, best to let some of you tell me why I'm doing it wrong before I carry on.
[1] http://newscorp.com/report2000/filmed_ent.html
(edit: changed caps to ital, removed superfluous characters)
Definitely untrue. Consider just the lens.
You'll note that despite its phenomenal financial success, Avatar was unsuccessful in its bid for Best Picture, an accolade which one would assume is of greater importance than "moneymoneymoneymoneymoney" to artists (read: the people who actually make this stuff). The Hurt Locker—a film which cost ~$11M to produce—came away with that honor. Perhaps if Mr. Gianopulos is concerned with ensuring his fair compensation, he should stop allowing James Cameron to convince him it costs $300M to make a movie people will pay to see.
As an aside, if you want to float me $55,000 I bet I can find a way to arrange a few dozen iPhone camera sensors into an array that would beat the pants off of any "professional" solution available c. 1995.
But insofar as media conglomerates addressing this matter internally, why would they? It's not a problem for them.
Their revenues have been on a steady climb since ever. They know god damn well how little overlap exists in the groups "definitely going to pay for it" and "would consider downloading it for free." But they would have you believe that every "illegal" download represents a lost conversion.
Now there's blood in the water, because "Hollywood" is one of the few industries left in America which still makes any money, and as belts continue to tighten, highly compensated lobbyists (including the most highly compensated, Cary Sherman [1]) will be more and more successful in convincing conservative politicians that they need to vote to protect entrepreneurship and (not really) free market capitalism, and liberal politicians that they need to lend their support to secure the livelihoods of our poor struggling artists. The more sinister elements in all of our governing bodies will jump at any opportunity to introduce legislation which further erodes liberty but allows them to monitor/control that damn Internet thing. All the while, most artists still get fucked by the system, ClearChannel/LiveNation/GoldenVoice are still shitty, evil monopolies, and the executives of major media firms laugh uproariously all the way to the bank.
I sincerely doubt that the change will come from within. Not that there aren't people who work for those organizations who care passionately about the arts, who understand technology and its implications in significant and meaningful ways, who generally have their hearts in the right places. There will be a place for them in the arts economy of the future, but somebody new will be signing their cheques (or bitcoins).
The decision-makers at the top are the ones who give off the impression that they'd prefer to hide in their opulent executive chambers, doing their damndest to legislate their competitors out of existence, and ultimately bleed to death, gripping stacks of money, gold bullion spilling from their pockets, then actually compete on the free market, and perhaps die an honorable death.
The Guardian conducted an interview with electronic music pioneer, brilliant composer, omni-talented artist and all-around genius Brian Eno last year, wherein he stated the following:
"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along."
Two important points here:
1. This was going to happen no matter what. These firms rose to prominence during an odd period in the ongoing history of our world civilization when ideas, emotions, and artistic expressions could be recorded, duplicated, and feasibly distributed to consumers around the world. They happened to exist at an exact moment on the timeline when it was just cheap enough that it could be accomplished, but just expensive enough that a large firm was required to organize workers, consolidate (what was, at the time, very expensive) equipment, and coordinate distribution to drive marginal costs down. That moment in time is passing. Marginal costs to produce and distribute media are rapidly approaching zero.
2. The inevitability of these changes in market conditions is no reason to vilify media conglomerates. They did just spend about 60 years betting on all the wrong horses, but no one could know that the Internet (and all it entails) was coming. The reason to vilify these organizations lies in their reactions to these changes. I'm not going to go down the list, suffice it to say that much resentment towards labels/studios/production groups/etc. has built up, not just on behalf of artists and others with a dog in the fight, but in average consumers. That resentment just didn't exist a decade or two ago. The "rights-holders" fought the inevitable, and now not only are they going to lose, but they've so antagonized their customers—the only people who may have been able to prop them up long-term if only due to sympathy—that people who previously wouldn't have given a shit are now positively giddy at the idea of someone like Jim Gianopulos standing, defeated and alone, with nothing but a stupid look on his face and all his fucking whale blubber.
I assert that in no way is the continued existence of these lumbering, bumbling, crumbling dinosaurs a requisite condition for humans to have the opportunity to create, distribute, access or enjoy art, in any of its forms, anywhere.
I'll be happy to watch them suffer, and eventually die. And that's on them. 100%.
[1] http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/05/21/a...
(edit: quote formatting)
Not what I mean. I mean things like exactly when and why they started doing it.
"I sincerely doubt that the change will come from within. "
Yea, but someone else could do the debugging and maybe fix the root cause.
If I've assumed at least one thing correctly and by "it" you mean producers and studio heads artificially inflating budgets in order to ultimately line their own pockets and the pockets of their friends, I would find it hard to believe that there has been any point in the entertainment industry's history when that hasn't been prevalent.
As to the "why," what, you don't like money? Here, have some more money, now now do you like it? Rinse, repeat.
I'll venture that we're doing the debugging right now, as we discuss this matter. The debugging occurs every time a 14 year old reads about these issues and wonders how the hell it could be possible, let alone legal, for these entities to behave so miserably.
I'll indicate once more that I believe the root cause of this excess lies in these unsustainable institutions and the selfish people who lead them. Leave art to the artists, we'll/they'll figure out how to make money doing it, I'm sure. If you're a failed lawyer or a failed artist or just a plain-vanilla opportunist and you want to run a commodity business, sell canned peaches. Or literally anything else in the world where there's an economic incentive tied to an actual physical object, anywhere but your own mind.
That last part doesnt seem to have changed that much actually. What changed is that now they try to mess with it anyway.
And, let's be honest, all this was and is about absolutely nothing but the music and movie industry crying over allegedly lost sales. Only the wordings used to describe it have changed. (now it was "a more civilized internet"... that sheer smug-ness is hard to miss.)
How can two expendable industries have that much influence on politics??? Even with all their lobbying and "donations". It is not like we would suddenly lose our western culture without them.
Exactly. The only thing they have done by intervening is amplified the anarchy. In this, at least, they are fulfilling their role as entertainment providers.
IMO the internet is even MORE of a wild-west type of place right now than it was ten years ago, despite or even because of attempts at regulation and corporate intervention. Whether this is all about to collapse in on itself, well, thats the million dollar question.
I believe it is. Look what is going on. The people who makes the decisions have no understanding of the technology or its possibilities within a societal context.
It is the same reason Kevin Mitnick was put in solitary for so long. People in power make poor decisions with misinformation.
I say let it collapse and we will move on to the next thing. I remember people in the late 90s, early 00s remarking the internet is a fad. I vehemently disagreed at the time.
Now, I believe it to be more likely than less likely.
Who knows, maybe Mark Zuckerberg is our Francisco D'Anconia?
"Speech has to be free but movies cost money."
I doubt he even meant this to be a double entendre. He is literally trying to be reasonable by suggesting that people should not have to pay blood money to 20th Century Fox in order to post something to their blog. He is seriously trying to illustrate benevolence here.
So I doubt that trying to reason with these people serves a purpose.
I think this is debatable. It depends on how the summit is eventually presented by mainstream media. If they say there's EFF co-founder, and the panel concluded that we should lock this IP leak machine that is the Internet, then Cory and you are right.
But I've already heard news on the radio (France culture, in France) which talked a good deal about freedom, and let speak a spokesman from LQDN. So there's a good chance that the actual report from a good deal of the mainstream media is that the industries said one thing, and the EFF said another. They may even report that the EFF said the e-G8 is something the EFF doesn't approve of. In that case, Cory and you would be mistaken.
In the end, however we probably need both. Someone who won't go to avoid legitimizing this farce, and another one who go take the heat to secure a minimum media coverage for dissent.
If all those against, lets say "censorship", are silent when a major debate is being heard on it, then who do you think will get all the PR, and win in the end?
I think for Cory it is a privilege that he was invited and it would have been a privilege to take part in the debate. It is an important debate, whatever their motives may be. We are at a turning point, and all voices ought to be heard, lest we, our society, makes an irrational decision because of the silence of some.
Speak louder. That is, after all, what needs to be protected.
But anyone who didn't back the interests of mass media going into that forum had to know that the deck was stacked against them. That is, that they would be regarded as a sideshow - a token representative from outside the sphere of consensus. That's all John Barlow is here. Let's have EFF put together a similar event and see how many representatives from the copyright regime show up. Let's see if they get Jim Gianopulos from 20th Century Fox.
Let's not pretend this entire conference was anything other than a PR stunt. These are the same assholes behind ACTA.
I love how you talk about challenging people on their merits, right after calling them "pig-fuckers".
"They know what they are about, and it is decidedly not the best interests of society, or even creative expression."
I'm sure they're after profit first and foremost (like many people), but that doesn't mean what they're advocating isn't in the best interests of society as well.
Why not try making an actual argument instead of name calling and saying that it's not use reasoning with them?