Why Big Media Is Going Nuclear Against The DMCA | Hacker News Reader

Why Big Media Is Going Nuclear Against The DMCA

techcrunch.com

41 pointsjacquesm33 comments

The DMCA "ushered an era of investment, innovation and job creation?" Well, I suppose, but that's an incredibly charitable way to put it. I think "failed to prevent an era of investment, innovation and job creation" might be more accurate. The DMCA was introduced at the behest of big media; it just didn't go far enough to protect their interests.

A lot of the good things that happen do so mostly by accident. The DMCA's Safe Harbor was one of these things.

> When Congress updated copyright laws and passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, it ushered an era of investment, innovation and job creation. In the decade since, companies like Google, YouTube and Twitter have emerged thanks to the Act

Haha, this is satire, right?

It would be more accurate to say that the safe harbor provision of DMCA, rather than the DMCA as a whole, helped innovation.

Actually it would be more accurate to say that the safe harbor provision didn't block (all) innovation. It certainly didn't help in any way.

The only thing I haven't noticed anyone mention is that these laws only affect the US. Other countries will be free to let their companies continue without this draconian legislation. With Pirate parties gaining strength in various countries in Europe it would be an uphill struggle to get this type of legislation happening there. Does this mean that these type of companies and their jobs will spring up elsewhere?

They can spring up wherever they want, but they'll be blocked in the US and thus will have access to a lot fewer users.

I think you are missing some perspective. China has more online users than the US these days. The EU has more people online that the US. I bet it would chafe Warner Bros' butt just as badly if 100k people pirate their movie in the Europe as it would if 100k people in US did the same.

If you told a company that planned to sell to 3+ billion people that you could cut several tens of millions in legal fees a year by dropping 200m users they would probably take you up on it. Lord knows most of the world's online betting companies are not in the US. The big media companies in the US are pissing in their own water supply, they just don't realise it yet.

They're betting it's the 1990s again and they'll be able to get their laws enacted and enforced everywhere that matters.

Google, Twitter and Facebook should join up and make politicians, ahem, an offer they can't refuse: Any politician voting for this bill will have any search-result, tweet, post, status or link in which they're mentioned prefixed with a strongly worded warning that they're paid cronies helping the content industry destroy the Internet.

Now THAT's a nuclear option.

(a) That's potentially libellous (b) That's potentially monopolist behaviour (c) That'll freak the politicans out and make them side with TMCs in thinking that those upstart silicon valley companies are too arrogant and powerful and must be stopped (i.e. it will backfire)

a: Not if it's kept entirely factual.

b: There's an argument to be made that if money is speech, then certainly speech itself can enjoy the same protections. Did I mention it's a nuclear option?

c: Yeah, it might. But politicians sing along to Big Content's tune because they're powerful. Reminding them, perhaps in a more delicate fashion, that "Big Internet" is also powerful and will not sit idly by while politicians help it's competitors attack them.

Presumably Twitter as a private company has every right to reject accounts from certain people, Google has every right to remove them from their index and Facebook is bound to be able to find someway in which the politician violated their terms of service.

Nothing sinister in that - it's just like every financial institution in the world deciding simultaneously they won't deal with wikileaks donations

a) Reporting a fact is Libelous?

b) I believe the word you are looking for is Cartel rather than Monopoly, but in either case; if the bill passes they have other problems.

c) It's not a fair tactic; but there's nothing to stop Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft from coordinating on having a day where they banner link to a "Stop the power grab!" site. Singling out individual politicians is problematic.

Seriously though, as a country this whole thing is a sideshow. Our society has become too top heavy and the rights and resources have become too concentrated to the point where the average person no longer believes the social contract is for their long term benefit. That's a very dangerous place to be, and we're worried about losing access to a few cat videos?

Cat videos? Really? Eliminating the Safe-harbor provisions is killing all and every site that distributes user created content.

Hell, even discussion sites like Hacker News could be affected: what if someone posts someone else's copyright content here, like a user posted the Scientology texts on Slashdot? Would YCombinator be OK with being legally responsible for the infringement? Slashdot had to take it down, but without Safe Harbor, they could've been sued.

Wikipedia, Youtube, Vimeo, Blogspot, Wordpress.com, Tumblr, you can say goodbye to all of them.

More: even if you build your own site - which is outside of the possibilities of 99% of the people in the first place - are you really safe? After all, the hosting company could be liable!

It's ultimately the destruction of the creative freedom we enjoy on the Web, converting it into TV 2.0, where all the content is created by the media companies and your only option is changing the channel.

Is that as important as being able to eat or have a place to sleep? No, of course not. But it doesn't mean it's not damn important.

"""Cat videos? Really? Eliminating the Safe-harbor provisions is killing all and every site that distributes user created content."""

Which roughly amounts to cat videos.

You do realize you're using one of them right now? I don't see any cat videos.

Yeah, because HN represents a large percentage of the interwebs, right? Or is "roughly" difficult to understand?

That's because they keep downvoting them .

That's potentially monopolist behaviour

That's not illegal. Using a monopoly to destroy or harm the competition is. There's nothing anti-competitive in this proposal.

Personally, considering they are well-funded, doing normal lobbying is just better IMO.

(d) Awesome

Wait. Doesn't the DMCA allow for the prosecution of DRM-breakers and content-copiers? Shouldn't the headline read that "Big Media is Going Nuclear For the DMCA"? or at least, "Big Media is Going Nuclear Against the DMCA's Safe Harbors"?

Also, what does Wikileaks have to do with any of this? I'm sure the author has some good points here, but it seems like he's just throwing in the latest Net-freedom controversies for the hell of it. Wikileaks did not run into opposition primarily because of copyright/DRM violations. It's been blocked for allegedly/ostensibly breaking other kinds of laws (such as national security-related ones).

Big Media doesn't want to prosecute the DRM-breakers and content-copiers. They've discovered that it isn't profitable because it's too hard to hunt down every last person who pirates a movie and win against them in court. They'd rather destroy an entire industry and eliminate thousands of jobs so that they don't have to bother with the legal system.

Not to mention several studies have found that pirates are the industry's best customers, suing them is majorly counter-productive.

Yeah, the "going nuclear" bit seems to be a headline in search of a story. What the content industry is doing is draconian enough, but the headline is just a total non sequitur.

Theoretically if WikiLeaks were to publish damning internal corporate documents, they'd be violating copyright. I'm not sure if there are any exceptions anywhere for whistleblowing in respect to copyright violations.

It's kind of a moot point because WL's biggest drops have been governmental, which are non-copyrightable by definition. I guess it's just meant to be a hedge against future leaks.

As far as I was aware only the US government has everything in the public domain. In most commonwealth countries, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, India, et al, the copyright is either vested in the Crown or the sovereign state itself.

I don't know about the article, but the industry hates it because it leaves the burden of enforcing their copyright on them and they don't want to. They want someone else to do it for them, probably the government.

And yet, there's no one else who can reasonably bear the burden. After all, infringement is a matter of permission. Other people can guess about who has authorized what, but no one but the copyright holder actually knows. And more than one person has, for example, released their own work on The Pirate Bay (even a "pirate edition" of that one game!) Moreover, as the Viacom case showed, sometimes even they can't keep track of who they authorized to do what and if they can't do it themselves, nobody else should be expected to do it for them.

> After all, infringement is a matter of permission

The obvious solution is to make it impossible to give certain kinds of permission, like how it's impossible to give up your 'moral rights' under German law, for example: If the government sees someone using something without being able to show they have paid for it and are operating under restrictions, they are committing piracy. If you gave it to them without enforcing those restrictions, you induced them to commit piracy, probably a more serious crime.