[HN Gopher] U.S. Senators Introduce SMART Copyright Act to Comba...
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U.S. Senators Introduce SMART Copyright Act to Combat Piracy
Author : redm
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-03-21 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| Program_Install wrote:
| I can't believe this is still a thing, from both sides. There is
| no stopping piracy or greed, maybe some speed bumps here and
| there. For the pirates its an access issue, that can range from
| "can't afford" to "can't see it" to simply just "I am cheap". For
| the companies, it's profits, pure and simple. I always wonder
| though how they quantify taking into consideration most pirates
| weren't going to purchase movie/music anyway.
| sschueller wrote:
| What sucks is how the US will pressure the rest of the world to
| also implement this garbage.
|
| https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/downloading-and-uploading_what-...
|
| I am going to cancel my Netflix and start pirating because am not
| going to pay more than Germans for netflix and get an even
| smaller catalog than they get. Germany already pays more than the
| US for a much smaller catalog. We just get take to the cleaner
| just because, no reason whatsoever. The law that would require
| Netflix to pay a percentage to subsidice Swiss movies hasn't even
| been voted on yet and if it does pass will push the price even
| higher.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What? Europe absolutely does not need to get pressured to
| implement restrictive copyright laws. If anything, they are
| pioneers in the field. The european copyright filters laws of
| 2018 were even more insane[0]. And in general, IP right holders
| have a lot more power in the EU than in the US, where the DMCA
| provides quite a lot of protection relatively speaking.
|
| [0] I have not heard a lot about the copyright filters since
| 2018 though. I know the controversial copyright directive has
| been ratified and implemented, but I don't know if it led to
| any concrete change up until now.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The EU changed their copyright directive a few years ago to
| mandate "best practices" as a condition for online safe harbor;
| I find that provision to be equivalent to the SMART Act.
|
| As for paying more for less in Germany... the problem is that
| nobody in the TV industry wants to go to sim-ship[0]. Most
| countries want to have a local-market/local-language TV
| broadcast and production industry, which is only viable if you
| let people portion off rights to their work on a country-by-
| country basis. The subsidy laws you mentioned are part and
| parcel of the same thing.
|
| [0] A game development term that is short for "simultaneous
| ship"; in which you ship all languages in every territory all
| on the same day.
| [deleted]
| dessant wrote:
| But who will even need Better Call Saul when you'll be able to
| watch local exclusives, like Swiss Prince.
| sschueller wrote:
| I can watch Tschugger for free on playsuisse paid for by my
| tax dollars.
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15425948/
| ipnon wrote:
| It's getting to the point that services will simply be hosted
| outside the United States, the index page will say "this site
| shall not be used by United States citizens," and then people can
| go about using the Web like it _already works anyway_. It seems
| Senators don 't understand well what it is they're trying to
| accomplish because they don't understand how the Web works.
| kobalsky wrote:
| > this site shall not be used by United States citizens
|
| so megaupload with a disclaimer? kim dotcom is still fighting
| extradition.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Pretty sure many countries have agreements to recognize US IP
| and its protections, and the ones that don't are incentivized
| (i.e. punished) into recognizing them, as well.
| perihelions wrote:
| Would a government-mandated upload filter pass constitutional
| scrutiny?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Probably. The way copyright law interacts with the Constitution
| is...
|
| - The Constitution itself says Congress can enact copyright
| law, as long as the laws themselves have a finite copyright
| term[0]
|
| - As amended, the Constitution has a prohibition on "Congress"
| (state actors) making laws that circumscribe speech
|
| - Since the intent of the 1st Amendment was not to immediately
| repeal the Copyright Clause, both provisions are valid; the 1st
| Amendment only protects _novel_ acts of speech. The speaker is
| free to prohibit further speech that infringes upon their own.
|
| - However, said speakers (copyright owners) are _not_ free to
| prohibit _any and all_ speech that touches their own. Only
| stuff that actually harms their monopoly on copying. Fair use
| is how copyright law passes constitutional scrutiny.
|
| - Because DMCA 512 contains provisions for counter-notices and
| legal penalties for misidentification; people attempting to use
| copyright as a censorship tool can be punished for doing so.
|
| - The SMART Act appears to amend DMCA 512, so said provisions
| would still apply. It also does not mandate upload filters on
| it's own, it just says the Copyright Office may decide to do
| so.
|
| Whether or not an upload filter would violate the 1st would
| require SCOTUS to find that the DMCA counternotice provision is
| too burdensome for speakers making fair uses of copyrighted
| content. I'm not sure that would fly, even with very strict
| upload filters everywhere. Courts don't like having to make
| emergency judgments on these sorts of things, especially in
| situations where the remedy to the problem is "just send a
| counternotice".
|
| If you were able to demonstrate in court that a particular
| mandate for upload filtering unnecessarily burdened speakers,
| then you probably might be able to overturn a _specific_
| Copyright Office SMART Act ruling. However, that would be a
| huge pain in the ass at best.
|
| [0] It is currently undecided if this includes lim (c)->; the
| closest attempt to apply "limited times" (Eldred v. Ashcroft)
| to asymptotic infinities failed. The thing about the Copyright
| Term Extension Act is that it wasn't just a blanket retroactive
| extension of copyrights; there were actual Germany-flavored
| reasons to do so.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Interesting question. My first instinct was to answer "no", but
| after thinking a bit more, I'm less sure.
|
| Does a red light camera pass constitutional scrutiny? I think
| it's kind of the same logic: the law in question is
| constitutional; the new thing is just automating enforcement.
|
| The upload filter might be a bit different, though, because
| it's mandated _on private servers_. Is that enough to swing the
| question? I really don 't know.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| > The upload filter might be a bit different, though, because
| it's mandated on private servers.
|
| Would it be? They can make you do all sorts of things on
| private land. Ever tried to renovate a home in CA?
| beej71 wrote:
| As a regular American consumer and producer of copyrighted
| material, how does this law help me?
| ianbutler wrote:
| This is gross, it's clearly stacked by the middle men and
| otherwise rent seekers that generally own the rights and will
| cause issues for literally everyone else. No doubt this is not
| actually about getting value for the artists, more like the RIAA
| and co.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Maybe the "rights holders" should invent the technology and let
| streaming services use it. That way the "rights holders" are on
| the hook for piracy.
| t0suj4 wrote:
| I've stopped watching shows and movies altogether. I simply don't
| want to deal with this mess.
|
| I just find something else to do. I have couple channels on
| YouTube I watch without recommendations and a couple of twitch
| streamers.
|
| Recently, I've started reading.
| octopoc wrote:
| Yep, same here. I loved watching movies for years. What helped
| me get off it was to always have always have a fun task planned
| for a side project whenever I was going to have a significant
| amount of free time. And, I listen to audiobooks, which
| satisfies my desire for fiction.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Why won't government officials and corporations acknowledge there
| are some issues with digital supply chains and mediums for
| consuming content? Instead they want to strong-arm consumers into
| consuming content the way corporations want them to. I wonder if
| lobbying is at play here.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >The bill requires online hosting services to implement standard
| technical protection measures, designated by the Copyright
| Office.
|
| How does it define an "online hosting service"? Literally any
| computer connected to the internet could potentially be
| considered an online host.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| I think I'm more anti-piracy than the average person and despite
| bitwize being downvoted to oblivion, they are right. You aren't
| entitled to anything anyone creates.
|
| However, piracy is also 100% a service problem that has been
| exacerbated by everyone creating their own streaming services and
| I'm actually really curious how Amazon, Netflix, and Disney get
| away with "exclusive content." The US vs Paramount Pictures[1]
| decided that you can't have exclusive theaters that are owned by
| production companies yet it is entirely fine if they have
| streaming exclusives. If anything, this is an indicator that the
| laws haven't kept up and need to be updated to probably apply to
| streaming as well.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
| autoexec wrote:
| > You aren't entitled to anything anyone creates.
|
| I don't think that's always true even now, but it certainly
| shouldn't be. When something becomes of a part of our culture,
| and our history, it belong to all of us. No one is entitled to
| anything someone else creates until it is shared. Once it is,
| ownership is also somewhat shared.
|
| If someone wants to write a song and have total control over it
| they just need to keep it to themselves because once I hear it,
| I naturally have a right to hum that tune to myself for the
| rest of the day, or to sing it at the top of my lungs. If
| someone wants total control over a story they write they should
| keep it to themselves because once I hear or read it, it's my
| natural right to be allowed to remember it, think about it,
| talk about it with others, and retell it in my own words.
| Before copyright this was the norm. Stories and songs were
| written and sung, others heard them, repeated what they
| remembered, added in their own changes and continued to share.
| If someone designed an illustration, or a bridge, or a garment,
| once others saw it, they could study it and incorporate those
| designs into their own works freely. Improving and modifying
| those designs however they liked.
|
| Telling people that they are forbidden from saying, writing, or
| re-telling certain things to anyone is a massive imposition on
| our freedoms. We created copyright knowing it would be a
| special exception to the norm. It gave special rights and
| privileges to content creators which would allow them to
| circumvent our rights and limit what we can say or write or
| share for a limited time, and in exchange for these impositions
| on our freedoms copyrighted works were supposed to enter the
| public domain and after that everyone could freely access and
| use them.
|
| It's wasn't even a terrible idea, but it's been perverted and
| corrupted into something that does more harm than good to
| creativity and progress. Now copyright lasts forever, and if
| somehow after centuries copyright does manage to lapse, DRM can
| still keep those works from ever reaching the public. Most of
| what we think of as copyrighted media doesn't even protect
| creators at this point, just corporations who purchased the
| copyrights from the creative minds responsible. Basically, the
| contract between creators and the public good has been
| completely broken. They've paid to have the power of law on
| their side, but in terms of "entitlement" and morality, they
| lost the high ground ages ago.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| How convenient that Patrick Leahy is retiring this year and won't
| be on the hook for screwing his voter base.
| 542458 wrote:
| I'm a bit confused as to how this even solves anything to do with
| piracy even if you take the RIAA's side. Youtube et al already
| have incredibly aggressive copyright filters. I can't actually
| think of a major media platform that is based in the US sphere of
| influence that lacks those filters. At best this sounds like
| reinventing what already exists, but with more bureaucracy.
|
| I'm also confused as to how anybody expects to create an upload
| filter system that respects fair use, given how subjective the
| fair use criteria are. We have already have seen how this works
| out with sites like YouTube - it simply does not work.
|
| I'm triply confused as to how this interacts with the DMCA safe
| harbor provisions. If this doesn't override them, as the bill
| authors say, how does it accomplish anything? Even The Pirate Bay
| nominally accepts DMCA takedown requests - so if sites can
| continue with their existing DMCA processes and be safe from
| being sued, why would anybody bother with implementing the
| technical measures?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| YouTube has aggressive copyright filters, but only for a
| specific set of vetted major media owners. The system is
| actually intended to take copyright disputes outside of the law
| and let Google negotiate a backdoor license with whatever
| company they think has the strongest claim to ownership over
| the content. The average YouTuber is _not_ treated like a
| copyright owner in this arrangement, and has very limited tools
| to go after infringing reuploads of their own content.
|
| Furthermore, there's plenty of other services that don't have a
| Content ID solution, are under the DMCA 512 safe harbor, and
| still have enormous amounts of infringing material, because the
| current notice-and-takedown regime puts all the onus of
| enforcement on the copyright owner. Speaking of, at one point,
| Google would not service automated search requests, and would
| comply with takedowns by... linking the user to the takedown
| request, which has the infringing link on it. Don't ask me how
| that is actually within the safe harbor.
|
| The underlying problem is that DMCA 512 is underspecified; it
| just says you need to take down content when asked and put it
| back up if the uploader is willing to dox themselves. It does
| not say how the company goes about taking down content. SMART
| would change it so the Copyright Office determines how far any
| company has to go in complying with a takedown notice. If they
| say "video sites need a perceptual hash upload filter", then
| any site that hosts video and doesn't have said filters is
| outside of their safe harbor.
|
| The solution to fair use under DMCA 512 is to tell the
| complainant to sue you and hand them a service address. I don't
| think that's changing - though practically speaking, if every
| substantial similarity is being prosecuted as infringement then
| you basically lose the right to anonymous fair use. The major
| publishers don't care because...
|
| - They have dedicated staff to handle actual infringement
| issues, and have gone over everything with a fine-toothed comb
|
| - They are large enough to be able to absorb even large damage
| awards, whereas the average independent creative would be
| ruined by even a modest infringement judgment
|
| These are problems mostly orthogonal to the problem of upload
| filters, though - copyright is a hellish nightmare regardless
| of whether or not a few extra people get access to YouTube
| Content ID.
|
| Also, TPB never accepted DMCA takedown requests, that's
| actually how they got shutdown. The prevailing narrative at the
| time was that Sweden had no notice-and-takedown law on the
| books. But that makes no sense, because that law only exists to
| _disclaim_ liability, not create it. If you don 't have DMCA
| 512, that doesn't mean you no longer have to worry about
| takedowns. It means you can be sued for the actions of billions
| of your users. Furthermore, there were standing EU directives
| at the time that would have required Sweden to implement a DMCA
| 512-like law anyway.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'm also confused as to how anybody expects to create an
| upload filter system that respects fair use, given how
| subjective the fair use criteria are. We have already have seen
| how this works out with sites like YouTube - it simply does not
| work._
|
| The groups that want this do not like fair use, either. In
| their ideal world, fair use wouldn't exist and you'd go to
| prison the second you opened a BitTorrent client.
| smegsicle wrote:
| > At best this sounds like reinventing what already exists, but
| with more bureaucracy.
|
| in the absence of an effective predator to bureaucracy besides
| corruption and more bureaucracy, that's all you get- in other
| words, you can't stop progress!
| anonymousab wrote:
| > that respects fair use
|
| The expectation is that fair use, if considered at all, is
| almost wholly up to rightsholders. Ideally (as is the case on
| platforms like YouTube) you allow this control to take place
| well before any legal mechanisms come into play, such that
| there is no legal recourse.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Fascinating how greed and the demand for ever increasing profits
| leads to these cycles of purchase and privacy. First we had
| physical DVDs but studios' greed in extending the theater
| playtime as long as profitable resulted in bootleg recordings so
| people could watch at home. Then torrenting was the final nail to
| this physical media strategy. Netflix arose, consolidating
| content into an even easier experience than torrenting with none
| of the legal/ISP risks. Then Disney and Warner Bros and NBC
| caught on, got greedy, and now we're back to torrenting seemingly
| because people don't want to deal with country licensing,
| platform lock in, fragmentation, or price increases.
|
| Anyone wanting a glimpse at this bill's future can look at
| YouTube's draconian copyright strike engine which ensures artists
| will live in fear of daring to use a 5 second sample of Major
| Music Label Intellectual Property.
|
| Attempts to legislate this (rather than curbing corporate greed)
| will only create a new hydra, one providing ML-resistant
| protections for media against perceptual hashes, greater
| anonymity, and the fertile grounds for stronger piracy.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Don't forget when DVDs shipped with ads that your DVD player
| wouldn't let you skip.
| goosedragons wrote:
| And when Blu-rays started wasting your bandwidth to show you
| ads you can't skip. Such progress.
| autoexec wrote:
| The increased DRM was a bit part of the push to get people
| to switch from DVD to Blu-ray. I've had phone calls with
| confused and frustrated relatives who wanted to know why it
| is they can't play the movie they just bought at the store.
| I had to tell them that it's because their blu-ray player
| needs to be connected to the internet in order to beg for
| permission to play the new movie. The player didn't support
| wireless, so the "easy" options for making it work were to
| either run a very very long ethernet cable up a set of
| stairs and through 5 rooms to let it connect, or to drag
| their blu-ray player as well as their huge TV into the
| basement every so often to connect it, or to buy an
| insanely overpriced wifi adapter made specifically for
| their player and wait for that to arrive by mail, or to
| simply pirate the movie and never have a single problem.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wait, Blu-ray disks can fetch ads from the internet?! Or
| are we talking about the disk IO bandwidth?
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yes, some Blu-rays when given an internet connection will
| fetch new trailers.
| autoexec wrote:
| A once popular illustration of the issue:
| https://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg
| uncomputation wrote:
| Also framing the discussion of whether or not you are entitled
| to view media or not is a dead end IMO. Rather than do the
| typical Western philosophy thing and try to define and
| rationalize "property" or "rights," let's look at the world as
| is, as a system of incentives and rational actors.
|
| If it is easy to watch $(UK-licensed TV show) from America,
| people will do it and then the production and distribution
| companies get exactly 0 dollars and in fact will lose money
| fighting a losing whack-a-mole war against torrents.
|
| If it is easy to log in to netflix dot com (NOTE: netflix, not
| (NFLX | DIS | HBO | AMZN | HULU | NBC)) to watch $(show),
| people will do that and you can let Netflix and production
| companies fight about the beans.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| I didn't see any mention of fixing the biggest problem with the
| current system: no penalties for false claims.
|
| If I post a video of myself playing moonlight sonata to youtube,
| and somebody puts a copyright claim (or more than one) against
| it, then it gets taken down and I suffer the consequences, but
| there is no mechanism for penalties for what amounts to fraud by
| the claimant. They should automatically get fined (payed to both
| me and youtube), and if damages were more severe I should be able
| to bring them to court to receive larger damages. Claimants
| should also get strikes the same way posters due, too many false
| claims and you then have to manually prove the copyright is yours
| before youtube takes the video down.
|
| The above example was for youtube, but broadly this is how it
| should work. If copyright protection action cause harm, because
| of false claims (either accidental or intentional) then the
| claimant gets punished.
| gutitout wrote:
| This legislation is to protect those that paid for the
| legislation directly. It is not intended for the tax payers.
| partiallypro wrote:
| It took me abnout 6-7 months to get an account restored because
| the appeal process with Facebook took that long. I even reached
| out to the actual copyright holder and got a letter saying I
| could reuse the video (a very short clip, maybe 10 seconds)
| which was automatically flagged by Facebook. I can't even
| imagine the appeals hoops you'd have to jump through with this
| new proposal.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The system will never be set up to punish rights holders as it
| is meant to enrich them.
| nullc wrote:
| If you were objectively harmed you shouldn't need any
| additional law to go after them for damages ... except for the
| fact that youtube absolutely refuses to tell you who filed the
| false complaint (as I've personally experienced).
|
| You could try to bring an action joining youtube but google is
| so wealthy that it's nearly essentially immune to litigation,
| including by states-- so it would be a waste of time.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| - A false DMCA takedown notice can result in a lawsuit
| including damages and legal fees.
|
| - Most YouTube takedowns have nothing to do with the DMCA as
| YouTube has their own proprietary system. This system is
| extrajudicial. This system has the type of problems you're
| raising and little recourse.
|
| I actually think the DMCA takedown process itself is
| problematic, but YouTube's own private one is a whole extra
| level of abusive.
|
| People need to remember that laws reforming the DMCA would do
| nothing to fix YouTube's system, unless they outright banned
| YouTube/Google from operating an extrajudicial system.
| magila wrote:
| In theory one can be sued for filing false takedown notices.
| In practice it never happens because it requires proving that
| the defendant _knowingly_ sent a false notice. This is an
| impossible burden of proof because the defendant can just
| plead ignorance and /or incompetence.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Among other things, the senators stress that all government-
| imposed protection tools and takedown measures will go through a
| consultation process, where all stakeholders and the public are
| allowed to have their say._
|
| If history is any indicator, the public can have their say, but
| that won't be who the government is listening to. That, or it
| will be the clusterfuck that was the FCC's public comment period
| on net neutrality. Hope always springs eternal for me that
| Senators and Congressfolk will act in good faith (EDIT: toward
| their constituents), but I'm also realistic in that they probably
| won't.
|
| If one has the time, click the "facts and myths" link in the
| article[0]. Or as I like to call it "vague rebuttals, and the
| straw man arguments that they rebut".
|
| [0]
| https://www.tillis.senate.gov/services/files/BBDBFA87-17CA-4...
| excalibur wrote:
| > If history is any indicator, the public can have their say,
| but that won't be who the government is listening to.
|
| The government officials selling political favors and the
| company executives buying them are the ones we should be
| putting in prison here.
| fivestarman wrote:
| There are a lot of problems in the world and the US right now,
| and these shmucks are busy worrying about online piracy?
| vibrio wrote:
| ...and daylight savings time.
| autoexec wrote:
| > There are a lot of problems in the world and the US right
| now, and these shmucks are busy worrying about online piracy?
|
| In the US our lawmakers just do what they're being paid for.
| They're paid by the media cartel to improve that industry's
| profits and protect their ability to act as gatekeepers
| controlling what we're allowed to see or hear.
|
| Our rights, freedoms, and desires don't matter to lawmakers.
| Only corporations and a very small number of extremely wealthy
| individuals have representation in government. The average
| American citizen and honest grassroots campaigns have
| essentially zero impact on policy.
| (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...).
| kobalsky wrote:
| this is exactly when politicians get to pass all the ugly crap
| the public hates.
| insickness wrote:
| This article is far better written that most mainstream news
| articles on any topic. It provides detailed and balanced coverage
| of both sides of this issue. Wasn't expecting that from a site
| called TorrentFreak.
| Cyclical wrote:
| Torrentfreak has for many years been a very reliable, well-
| researched news source for issues related to internet copyright
| law. I've personally been reading it since before the SOPA/PIPA
| era, when their coverage was an important nexus of information
| on the legislation.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Now they want to scan the files on my hosting providers. Imagine
| another Panama Papers drop or something similar being shared and
| how quick the government will use a system like this to delete
| the files and disable your hosting accounts.
| Arubis wrote:
| Setting aside the arguments around infringement equaling/not
| equaling actual theft, is the actual incidence of piracy high
| enough that it's on beancounters' radar? I may be wrong, but my
| impression is that streaming made it a non-issue. This feels like
| a smokescreen.
| 542458 wrote:
| I can't speak to media piracy, but I previously did work with a
| large supplier of professional software. This is not stuff
| people often use for fun, and the software had free and easy-
| to-get student versions available. The software still saw 80+%
| piracy in many markets according to internal metrics. This is a
| big part of why companies are so enthusiastic about cloud
| everything - recurring revenue is nice, but unpirateable
| recurring revenue is even nicer.
|
| That's not to defend this bill. It sounds like rubbish to me.
| meeriee wrote:
| Does making pirating some software impossible actually
| increase its sales revenue? I'd wager that most people who
| pirate software wouldn't want to, are even have the means to
| pay for the full price of the software.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Tools like Photoshop, Ableton, ArcGIS, Maya, AutoCAD, or
| Matlab rely on widespread piracy to remain the industry
| standard (also cheaper student versions and university site
| licenses, but those aren't enough by themselves), and make up
| the lost income by soaking professional users from
| established firms. If large numbers of people can't
| affordably access these, they will adopt some alternative
| cheaper tool and ultimately bleed users, understanding, and
| activity away.
| sschueller wrote:
| Obviously, but no one wants to go after the crimes their donors
| have committed. From tax "avoiding" to outright fraud. The
| amount of money lost to the tax payer by these actual criminals
| makes the small amount lost to piracy look like traces of
| cocaine on a dollar bill.
| gernb wrote:
| I'm totally on board with copying is not theft
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
|
| Except that it is something. I go to my tax accountant, have
| them calculate my taxes, then, when they send me the filled out
| paperwork I make a copy, send back the originals, and say "No
| thanks. Didn't really need this". What would we call that?
| Theft of time? Theft of labor? Breach of contract? (I didn't
| sign a contract). Breach of implied contract? Does any of this
| apply to movies/music? It feels similar except there's more
| than 1 person making a copy and they didn't "pre-order". Do
| those differences matter? It still feels like taking the
| product of someone's labor without compensating them for it,
| same as the tax accountant example.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| The analogy fails because the tax accountant has finite time
| to spend completing tax returns and your action directly took
| some of that time. Whereas with IP, there are not a limited
| amount of bits to copy and you making that copy did not
| restrict the availability of those bits to someone else.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Please don't cancel your Netflix and Disney+ subscriptions. These
| laws don't come cheap!
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| I wonder if they'll finally come after that one thing we don't
| talk about, that I use constantly for music and TV shows.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| I don't pirate music, I don't pirate games, I don't pirate
| software, I don't pirate anything but TV and movies and the
| reason is simple: piracy is a service problem for me. I know
| where to get music/games/software, I have no idea where to get
| the movies and TV I want to watch, they're spread over 20
| different services, 90% of which are not available in my country
| and the ones that are don't have that specific content available
| in my country, I've even ran into issues where a streaming
| service say they for sure have some content and I just need to
| sign up to start watching, great! but after signing up and paying
| boop nope that content isn't available in your country anymore.
| And even in the cases I find the content available I am treated
| like a pirate, use a browser without DRM support? nope go away,
| use a VPN even when connected to the country your payment details
| come from? nope go away, oh and by the way we removed that
| content you were watching but we still have season 1 and 2 if you
| want anything after that it's on this other streaming platform
| and no it's not in your country. Even when everything goes right
| I get a highly compressed stream with all sorts of ugly
| artifacting. Piracy fixes every single one of those issues for me
| so I will continue to do it without feeling bad about it. I am
| very willing to pay for these services by why would I if paying
| is an inherently worse experience? And I didn't even list all the
| issues I've faced with these services.
| bitwize wrote:
| You are not entitled to any movies or television shows at any
| quality at all because it's not your IP. If someone wants to
| shoot a movie and then lock it in a vault, never to be seen by
| anyone, Prince-style, that is their right. If they want to
| change it to remove and permanently memory-hole offensive
| elements, that is their right. If they want to release it only
| in certain formats, up to and including theatrical-only
| releases, that is their right. Because they own the copyright
| and hence, control over how the work is distributed and
| exhibited.
|
| So take what they offer you or leave it. Anything else is a
| violation of the law.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Well I don't like the law. Should we keep it just because
| it's the law? That'd be committing the is-ought fallacy:
| https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-
| definit...
| drusepth wrote:
| I would guess the general consensus is that you should
| change the law, but abide by it while it's still the law.
| autoexec wrote:
| > So take what they offer you or leave it. Anything else is a
| violation of the law.
|
| Just because it's legal for companies to screw you over
| doesn't make it right or desirable. If they force us to work
| outside of the law to protect ourselves and our right to
| access and make use of our own history and culture that's
| what we'll do.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Fair use says you're often entitled to parts of IP-protected
| works for the purposes of education, exposition, parody,
| reverse engineering, the historical record, etc.
|
| A journalist's right to fair use of IP is often hampered by
| the platforms the IP is distributed under. If Google had
| their way, journalists wouldn't be able to use yt-dlp, or
| other clients, to include clips from content published on
| YouTube in their reporting.
| fuckdang1234 wrote:
| kmeisthax wrote:
| We are arguing if the law _should_ work that way, not if it
| already does or not.
|
| And personally, I don't think it should. The purpose of
| copyright law is to make it economically viable to publish
| creative works. Ashcanning your own work very much goes
| against the copyright bargain, but we don't have any legal
| provision to counteract it yet.
| [deleted]
| andmarios wrote:
| I disagree with your statement, because IP is a human
| construct that was created in order to help creators profit
| from their works so they can create more, and of higher
| quality works.
|
| It is a very expensive construct, both in public resources
| (e.g to create, protect, and enforce the law), and towards
| humanity's progress (i.e free access to books, inventions,
| etc would benefit the planet).
|
| So for creators to get the benefits of the letter of the IP
| law, they should respect the spirit of the law, which is to
| give gated access to everyone.
| croes wrote:
| Sorry, it's hard for me to feel sorry for an industry that
| moved to California to avoid patent claims.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _You are not entitled to any movies or television shows at
| any quality at all because it 's not your IP. _
|
| That's not true:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_science_and_culture
| and https://cultureactioneurope.org/files/2015/02/2015UNESCO
| --Co...
|
| Some examples from the PDF:
|
| > _Disability advocates have long expressed concern that
| copyright law can impede the adaptation of works into formats
| functional for people with disabilities when copyright
| holders fail to publish works in accessible formats, such as
| Braille, or allow others to do so. To resolve that problem,
| many countries have adopted copyright exceptions and
| limitations allowing authorized not-for-profit organizations
| to produce and distribute accessible works to persons with
| disabilities._
|
| > _Problems of translation and linguistic barriers likewise
| are of concern for speakers of non-dominant languages.
| Copyright regimes are formally neutral regarding the language
| of a work. In practice, however, the results are widely
| disparate, as copyright protection offers little financial
| incentive to write and publish in most of the world's
| languages. People able to speak English, French or Spanish
| can select reading material from millions of books; however,
| those unable to speak a globally used language may enjoy
| access to very few. The vastly unequal distribution of
| published literary works across languages poses a significant
| barrier to the right to take part in cultural life for
| linguistic communities not offering a major publishing
| market. The issue is not limited to reading for pleasure;
| that also impacts the ability to pursue education and
| knowledge, take part in debates on social and political
| issues and earn a livelihood as a writer._
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'm entitled to whatever I can get my hands on.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| I don't like the idea of running my life within the confines
| of IP law of another country especially considering that IP
| law is wholly moulded by giant corporations like Disney and
| not based on anything that actually makes sense for the
| modern provider/consumer digital world.
|
| And breaking a law I don't agree with definitely won't keep
| me up at night, in fact if they catch me and force me to pay
| for all the content I downloaded it will still end up being a
| more convenient experience as I am very willing to pay in the
| first place.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| akomtu wrote:
| This "violation of the law" is similar to speeding on a
| deserted highway: the law was broken, but no harm was done to
| anyone and there is no way to even check if the law was
| broken.
| ianbutler wrote:
| > Anything else is a violation of the law.
|
| Oh no! Good luck enforcing that, it's worked out stellar so
| far.
| gernb wrote:
| I pirate because I don't want to be tracked. I don't want
| Amazon, AppleTV, Netflix, building a profile on me based on my
| viewing history.
| 015a wrote:
| I feel the opposite, actually. I'm a pretty staunch privacy
| advocate, but the biggest thing I feel when, say, "obtaining"
| "through unspecified means" the latest season of Star Trek
| Discovery is: the studios who made this have no idea I'm
| watching this, and if enough people did that, it'd look like
| no one was watching it, so they're less likely to make a
| season 4.
|
| The secondary argument is, they use that viewing history to
| influence the production of new shows ("people like shows set
| in space, lets make more space shows"). I also don't feel
| this is unreasonable. Ultimately this isn't tracking
| journalists' movements in an authoritarian regime; its
| entertainment. If my viewing history leads to the production
| of more shows I enjoy, who is losing?
|
| Not all tracking is bad. Pragmatically, its not an open-and-
| shut thing, for me.
| t0suj4 wrote:
| The same way Mozilla is removing features based on metrics?
| No, thanks.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If that's what's actually happening on the back end,
| they're doing a pretty bad job with my recommendations.
| What I suspect is really happening, though, is that the
| data collection and analytics are being used to optimize
| revenue, whether it be from advertising, minimizing
| production costs or ascertaining just how much bullshit
| users will put up with, and not to build or release higher
| quality products. That, or the data is sold.
| [deleted]
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If companies don't make content available in your country, they
| don't have a reasonable case for complaining about piracy. You
| were never a customer to begin with, so no profit is being
| lost.
|
| Yes, they might complain that they were going to make that
| content available in your country after they have extracted as
| much profit as possible through geofencing, which further
| erodes their case because then they already made more profit
| than they would without geofencing.
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