Internet Regulation and Censorship - Interesting Open Letter to MPAA

[stonetools]

Mobile read*

Thanks for the words of support. Sorry I've been busy , which is *why I haven't responded. I'll try to cover my answers in one post. What I see here is the false dichotomy- either the lawless though " free" Internet where the rights of the artist are just collateral damage , or *a "muzzled" internet where... What exactly? The society descends into totalitarianism ? The end of civilization , as we know it ? "Draconian measures" ( whatever those are ) are instituted? There is another option- that of "ordered liberty" . An Internet under the rule of law can be just as free and even more productive than a lawless Internet . Indeed, it will be necessarily more productive, as we shall see.*

We should understand that the rule of law is already coming to the Internet. Last year the federal government closed down the three biggest gambling sites on the Internet on charges of illegal gambling, fraud, and money laundering. Do you remember the stars reeling in their courses when that happened? Me neither . Frankly, we want to government to go after those engaged in identity theft, phishing, and the various types of fraud practiced on the Internet , not to mention distribution of child porn and trafficking in underage girls. It seems the only kind of criminal offense that we do not want to enforce on the Internet is copyright enforcement .*

Why is that? My opinion is that the other kinds of Internet offenses are aimed primarily at consumers, whereas copyright infringement focuses on stealing from the producers. *We as consumers don't see that we suffer anything when produces are defrauded. This is a delusion .

People have speculated about my motives for taking my unpopular positions. Is it because I'm a corporate shill? Hardly. It's because I am selfish and more to the point, uncreative.*
I know that I can't write like Steven King or George RR Martin.*
I can't direct a movie like Stephen Spielberg.*
I can't produce a TV series like Game of Thrones.*
I can't write software like the mobile app developers that make my Mobile devices such a joy to use.*

I also know that the reason I get to enjoy the products of these creators * is because they can make money from creating and distributing these products. To paraphrase Mr. Smith, it's not from the benevolence of the author, the publisher or the bookseller by which I get my evenings entertainment but their regard to their self interest. These self interested creators are led by an invisible hand to achieve something ( my entertainment ) that was no *part of their intention .

Without the protection of their intellectual property rights by the law, these creators ( and the people who invest in them) won't be able to profit from their hard work and over time, there will fewer and lower quality products coming into he marketplace. So far this is elementary economics. Unfortunately, many *people here don't see this. They think that high quality entertainment products somehow magically just appear in the marketplace in a process divorced from the making of profit. They don't seem to realize that the people being *ripped off by pirates are mostly not the "" corporations" or the "publishers" but the artists and creators.*

If *i am a shill for anyone it's the artists and creators because I know that I can't make this wonderful stuff and I want them to keep on making it. *To lay it out plainly,*

You can't watch *a movie if it's never made because the studio wont risk investing in it because of threat of piracy.*
You can't hear a song if the songwriter doesn't write it because she won't be able to make money from it
You can't buy a book that the author won't write because its not worth it to him to spend nine months writing a book only to see it massively " shared" online by people who won't pay him a penny.*

So advocating for IP rights protection and the rule of law on the Internet is advocating for the artists, and eventually for the consumer. That's how *I see it.*

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There is another option- that of "ordered liberty" . An Internet under the rule of law can be just as free and even more productive than a lawless Internet . Indeed, it will be necessarily more productive, as we shall see.*

The internet is currently under rule of law. We have laws against copyright infringement, against fraud and plagiarism, against bandwidth theft... and the people who want those laws expanded are, universally, those who think they're not making enough money with the current system.

Note: Not people who worked for companies that went bankrupt. Not agents complaining that their clients aren't getting paid enough for their work. Most of the ones who think the current laws aren't adequate--rather than "not adequately enforced"--are spokesmen for companies in the Fortune 500 set.

Frankly, we want to government to go after those engaged in identity theft, phishing, and the various types of fraud practiced on the Internet , not to mention distribution of child porn and trafficking in underage girls.

I want the government to go after spam, under the laws that forbid unwanted commercial faxing and sometimes laws about fraud/identity theft. (Many spammers forge headers to make themselves hard to identify.) Where is, by the way, all the hot corporate action against spam, phishing, and identity theft? Where's the million-dollar campaign to make bank fraud emails ("Your account has been compromised! Login to our server to verify your details!") a federal felony, and the related legal shifts to make it easy to track down the people doing it?

It seems the only kind of criminal offense that we do not want to enforce on the Internet is copyright enforcement .*

Copyright enforcement is not "criminal" in many cases; it's civil. A lot of us want it to remain that way. The corporations want it to be criminal so that the cost of investigation and enforcement is inflicted on the government, not their own legal departments.

People have speculated about my motives for taking my unpopular positions. Is it because I'm a corporate shill? Hardly.

FWIW, I've never thought you were a corporate shill. I sometimes think you're too prone to believing corporate press releases, but I don't think you get any specific reward for supporting their sides.

It's because I am selfish and more to the point, uncreative.*
I know that I can't write like Steven King or George RR Martin.*
I can't direct a movie like Stephen Spielberg.*
I can't produce a TV series like Game of Thrones.*
I can't write software like the mobile app developers that make my Mobile devices such a joy to use.*

Ah. See, the writers I most wish to support, are not like Steven King or George RR Martin, and legal changes that would help them, might hurt a lot of the authors I love. (I have thoughts on the others, but this is an ebook forum.)

I also know that the reason I get to enjoy the products of these creators * is because they can make money from creating and distributing these products.

This may be one of our major differences. Since I read a lot of fanfic, I'm don't connect "excellent literary skill and lots of content" with "makes money from it." I know that artists will continue to create amazing works with or without cash payment.

It won't be the *same* artists. And I don't want the must-get-paid artists to stop working, so I support them when and how I can. But I think of *commercial* art as a subcategory of "the arts I wish to consume," and therefore want commercial interests balanced against the interests of other approaches.

I don't want commercial art to be the only kind that gets legal protection, and that's one of the ways the new proposed laws fail--they seem to assume that only works with a price tag are subject to infringement. (Am I infringing your copyright by quoting your comment in mine? Would it be infringement if I copied your whole comment to my blog, and commented on it there?)

To paraphrase Mr. Smith, it's not from the benevolence of the author, the publisher or the bookseller by which I get my evenings entertainment

I get a great deal of my entertainment by the benevolence of volunteer coders and volunteer authors. I want them to have an arena where they can continue to share their efforts, and I can share mine.

Without the protection of their intellectual property rights by the law, these creators ( and the people who invest in them) won't be able to profit from their hard work

They have IP rights by law.

and over time, there will fewer and lower quality products coming into he marketplace. So far this is elementary economics.

This presumes that the number and scope of creative works is somehow limited by what kinds are commercially profitable--that reducing profitability will reduce the quality and number of available works. I don't disagree that it's possible, but I don't take it as absolute that either (1) failure to expand copyright infringement punishments will reduce profitability, nor (2) reduction of profitability would destroy "the arts" as we know them.

Unfortunately, many *people here don't see this. They think that high quality entertainment products somehow magically just appear in the marketplace in a process divorced from the making of profit.

Magically? No. But nobody becomes an artist (author, photographer, musician, actor) in order to get rich. The desire to make their art has nothing--directly--to do with the need to make money.

1) The public wants art, of many sorts.
2) The public is willing to pay for art, and has always been willing.
3) There are more artists than the public is willing/able (debatable point) to pay a living wage to.

Sorting out exactly how and to whom the limited payments are assigned, is variable by culture. The current method's pretty good... but I'm not seeing that the proposed changes in IP-related punishments improve things for artists, as opposed to "for the people who've built careers playing middleman for artists' works."

Presumably, those middlemen would pass along some of their increased profits to the artists--but since I know plenty of artists outside of their scope, I'm not convinced that's particularly useful in the long run.

They don't seem to realize that the people being *ripped off by pirates are mostly not the "" corporations" or the "publishers" but the artists and creators.*

Artists whose incomes are tied to corporate decision-making are indeed being hurt. However, I'm not encouraging more restrictive, privacy-invading laws, on the grounds that if I don't, Random House will cut off the contracts of authors I like. Or that BMI will refuse to enter recording contracts with bands I like.

I'm not going to be bullied with "give us what we want or we'll punish the artists you love."

You can't watch *a movie if it's never made because the studio wont risk investing in it because of threat of piracy.*
You can't hear a song if the songwriter doesn't write it because she won't be able to make money from it
You can't buy a book that the author won't write because its not worth it to him to spend nine months writing a book only to see it massively " shared" online by people who won't pay him a penny.*

I won't pay for a movie that's incompatible with my DVD player. (Had to remove the Area 2 restrictions to play Santa Sangre.)

I won't pay for hear a song that won't play on my MP3 player. (Off-brand; doesn't support DRM.)

I won't pay for an ebook that won't transfer between my home computer, work computer, laptop & ebook readers. I won't pay for a physical book I don't intend to want to use as a reference work for several decades.

It doesn't matter to me whether I "can't" get access to art that's not made, if the stuff that's produced is in formats I'm not interested in. I have no direct interest in supporting artists who're working in media I don't consume. I can allow that they're useful for *someone*, and I support the *concept* of that art, but I'm not putting my dollars--nor my voting support--toward art that's outside of my range. I'm certainly not willing to limit the abilities and rights of artists whose art I *do* consume in order to support art that I have no interest in.

[stonetools]

The Internet is under the rule of law -in theory . There is unquestionably rampant copyright infringement , fraud, and plagiarism on the internet, especially from non-US rogue sites. Plenty of independent musicians complain about piracy . Google the post, " the Internet: the paradise that should have been" for someone who argues that that a lawless Internet has been a disaster for independent musician.

There has been corporate action vs spam. The gmail , hotmail, and yahoo Emil systems are mostly free of spam , thanks to better filtering.

There is a strong government interest in protecting against IP infringement . In the US A, the government Established IP rights at the very beginning, putting it in the Constitution. ( fwiw, it's also in the UN Declaration of Human Rights). Their decision to emphasize the protection of IP Rights paid off in a flourishing of arts, science and technology in the United States that continues to this day.

I can't see how enforcing copyright law would hurt any author- quite the contrary . Maybe you can elucidate .
We certainly agree that all art deserves legal protection. *As to non- commercial art, I salute them for trying, but I am not under the romantic delusion that the true artist must create only for arts sake and should be unconcerned with " filthy lucre." I think that is bullocks, frankly. Nobody wants to be a starving artist- including. Starving artists. Most artists "WANT to make a living from the art, and are desperately unhappy when they can't . Those who can't make a living from the art don't continue to starve- they stop doing art and move on to another line of work.*

It's important to understand that good art is hard, and that truly great art is HARD. It takes a lot of time, effort, and expense to get good enough to make great art. The play AMADEUS makes Mozart's creation of music seem effortless, but as Malcolm Gladwell points out even Mozart practiced relentlessly for most of his formative years before he became great.

Even good art is generally produced by people who worked long and hard to become good to produce art that people were willing to pay for- in short, by professionals.
Hobbyists tend to create art that at best is just good enough , and frankly most of it isn't even that. We understand that, and praise them for trying, but we wouldn't pay for it, even if offered for sale. *Still, it is protected by copyright. Copyright means, lest we forget, that the artist controls what is to be done with their work, rather than some get-quick-rich operator .If you want to encourage ALL art, you make sure that other people can't rip off artists by copying their work and illegally profiting from it.


Bottom line, if you want a plentiful supply of quality art, science, and technology , you protect intellectual property- and not only by paying lip service to the idea with vague statements that those so called artists who are interested in money maybe should be paid, but by actual enforcement of those rights.
In another arena, the way the federal government ended segregation in the south was by "ending segregation"- by actually enforcing the civil rights laws. *When the pre- *1964 legislation proved inadequate, they passed and enforced new legislation- over the objections of those who worried about the federal government crushing "states rights".

I guess it's time to rally the troops by bringing up that ol' devil DRM. It's irrelevant to the present discussion, unfortunately.
The point is that in the continuing absence of effective copyright protection, there would be a decline in quality professional art offered in ANY format. To put it bluntly, you can't strip DRM from the ebook that doesn't get written or from the movie that doesn't get made.
I might add that DRM is an example of your preferred approach to copyright protection - a private, non-governmental approach to a particular copyright protection problem.
I would argue that as effective, actual rule of law is brought to the Internet, there will be less of a need for these private solutions that often conflict with each other. I frankly would prefer a universal government solution in this area enacted by legislators accountable to me, rather than corporate heads accountable to shareholders.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Copyright means, lest we forget, that the artist controls what is to be done with their work, rather than some get-quick-rich operator.

The author is only in control until they pass the rights to someone else (publisher/record company, etc.). The author can't make money while they are in control. So copyright failed.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There is a strong government interest in protecting against IP infringement . In the US A, the government Established IP rights at the very beginning, putting it in the Constitution. ( fwiw, it's also in the UN Declaration of Human Rights). Their decision to emphasize the protection of IP Rights paid off in a flourishing of arts, science and technology in the United States that continues to this day.

In fact, there is a very good thread on here about how US Publishers became established by refusing to respect copyright laws. In the US and some other countries there is a strong government interest in protecting against IP infringement. In China and many other developing countries, there is an interest in not doing so, though in China this is changing as the economy develops.

Generally speaking the laws being proposed are not intellectual property laws per se. They are laws to try to make enforcement of such rights in cyberspace feasible. The problem is that the nature of the internet makes this almost impossible. No one country controls the internet. The actions of US Government Agencies in seizing domain names has already resulted in some sites leaving the United States, and has spurred the development of more robust alternatives to the DNS system. As an earlier poster pointed out, the internet treats this type of interference as damage to be routed around. Efforts by China and many of the Middle Eastern countries to censor the Net have effectively failed. It is trivially easy for even relatively unsophisticated users to connect through proxy servers, the Tor Network, Freenet or many other alternatives. To criminalise such encrypted communications denies their legitimate and important uses, and would require extensive resources to monitor. And, of course, such monitoring would develop into a battle between the hackers and the governments, such as is already occurring with the so-called great firewall of China. To stand any chance of success, effective enforcement would require unprecedented co-operation between sovereign nations, the like of which the World has never seen. Not to mention draconian restrictions on individual freedoms.

And why? Publishing has until relatively recently been protected from the situation faced by the Movie and Music Industries by the fact that copying paper books was simply not generally worthwhile. Copying of EBooks is trivially easy, and difficult to detect. So is production of EBooks. The traditional role of publishers has changed dramatically, and also become far less valuable. Barriers to entry into the industry have been dramatically reduced. New Business Models have been implemented by businesses like Smashwords and Lulu, not to mention Amazon. They offer authors a much greater share of revenues than they have enjoyed in the past. My experience is that prices outside of the agency publishers are much lower, yet most authors are probably making as much or more than they otherwise would have. Some of the better books I have read recently cost no more than a few dollars. But, like other industries, the Agency Publishers are trying to preserve their existing prices and business models.

Yet it is not the end of the world. When you think about it, it is quite surprising that there is apparently a very large number of people who still buy their books rather than pirate them. I think the piracy problem is much exaggerated. Amazon is thriving, as is Smashwords and Lulu. Even the dinosaurs of the industry continue to flourish, though the writing is on the Wall for them. They must adapt or die. To pass draconian laws to preserve their business model is simply not warranted, and would in my view harm rather than help the vast majority of authors.

There will always be some piracy, though losses from it are usually exaggerated outrageously. Live with it. But be comforted that that human nature is not as bad as it is often painted. It would seem that there are a very large number of people who will do the right thing if treated fairly. If the existing top publishers don't learn this then their successors will be those who do.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I can't see how enforcing copyright law would hurt any author- quite the contrary . Maybe you can elucidate .

Dead artist don't create. That makes life + X an contra productive measure, except for middlemen...

EX POST FACTO law is a bad thing, even if one of the first supreme court justices was running from debtor's prison...(Look it up).

When are you going to realize the the artist is collateral damage for the middlmen's profit...