Thread: A Serious Discussion on Current Copyright Law.

A have been looking through the forums trying to find a serious discussion about copyright infringement and copyright law and I seemed unable to find a good one.

I'd like to share a paper that I wrote (paraphrased parts from online research as well - it is from November 2008), and then I'd like to open the floor for discussion. Anything pertaining to current copyright laws, it's problems and issues, and solutions for the future. I would like to see serious discussion - your one liners "copyrights suck" and spam will be promptly deleted. Please try to stay on topic.

Everyone has done this on some level. From downloading gigabytes of data a day (like me) to getting a burned CD from a friend, to watching a video with a copyrighted song on youtube. It all equalizes to File-Sharing; and therefore Copyright Infringement.


Every month the RIAA and MPAA sue approximately 750 people.
But the question I ask, is why? Why do they insist on continuing to sue their own customers?
Why do they sue search engines like torrent.eu or isohunt.com, who make the Internet more useful for everyone? Why do they sue YouTube for videos people put up?

"The problem lies in something fundamentally broken with the copyright system." - Gary Fung, (founder of ISOhunt).

What is the first thing you do when you find a cool video on youtube? You share it. Its a natural inclination of the human kind. You link it to your friends. "Sharing" on the Internet is the exact same thing as copying, so now this puts every Internet savvy computer user right in the RIAA or MPAA's cross-hairs. Everyone copies. Dan Glickman, the ex-Congressman who is now the president of the MPAA (as much of a copyright maximalist as one could hope to meet) recently admitted to copying the documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated" (a critique of the MPAA's rating system) but later excused himself saying "in [his] vault." Whatever that means.. Pretending that you do not copy is to liken yourself to the screwy hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated. Deep down everyone knows that they themselves are lying, and a large number of us know that everyone else is lying to themselves.

When the president of the MPAA admits to copying, not only a film, but a film that criticizes the very industry he represents, which is an industry chalked full of lobbyists and litigators against this copying, it not only highlights, but emboldens an important fact beyond the obvious hypocrisy. The internet has completely changed the economics of sharing. When sharing equals copying on the internet and the direct cost of that sharing is practically $0 for end users, it makes copyright infringement so easy that even Dan Glickman can do it. So easy that a mom like Stephanie Lenz ( In Defense of Piracy - WSJ.com ) can do it when she posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's music. And I mean no disrespect to them.

In this modern age of easy, rampant sharing and remixing, and if you can make the connection between sharing and culture as many before you have, you will see that this massive war between the rights holders and the consumers will never end and that the rights holders will never win. The bands Girl Talk, Lessig, James Boyle, Terry McBride of Nettwerk, and isoHunt all preach a common point: Remixing is good for cultural progression; suing the consumers, technologists, and technologies that make this kind of sharing possible is destructive for everyone. The internet is a more efficient information machine than the printing press, VCR, CD, or DVD ever was or will ever be, and its a unstopped beast. It's time the content industries learn to put it to better use as well, by discarding the notions of the fact that the current business model is done based on an economy of scarcity. An economy that does not exist in the digital age. In Star Trek, money and scarcity become extinct with virtually unlimited "copying" of physical objects with a Replicator. Sound familiar? The internet is the never-ending, always expanding replicator of information. When a 13-month-old dances to Prince's music, a copyright infringement is nowhere near his consciousness. It's just a subconscious endorsement that he likes it, pure and simple.

Now honestly, I am not completely against copyright laws. I am not some crazy person who thinks every-single law in effect today needs to be stuck down, but it is very obvious that copyright does need significant (rather massive) reform in the internet age. If all this rampant and illegal copying on BitTorrent and the internet has not made a dent in Hollywood's record earnings even in such an economy, why the hell can't we all just get along without running around suing people like rabid dogs bite? Why can't they all see what we see; that sharing media and remixing media is an uncontrollable human urge for culture, and when we share and remix art, it's not a this negative liability that they seem to think, but a positive endorsement for this particular artist, author, and/or producer?

When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it's not society that's wrong, it's the law.
Newton once said,“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

Because ideas can't be owned. Ideas are how the arts and sciences progress. We see, we like, we share, we remix. It's an endless cycle of new discovery.

Read, Enjoy, Discuss.

What I find interesting is that their is no cost to the copyright holder. If someone steals a physical product from a company, for example shop lifting a pair of jeans, there is a direct cost to the company. They purchased those jeans from their supplier, and that money is now lost to them.

When someone downloads a file, there is no direct cost to the copyright holder. The industry talks about the cost of piracy, but what they are actually saying is that if a 1000 copies of a product are pirated,and they are selling that product for $10 each, they represent that as costing $10,000. This is incorrect, and indeed misrepresentation. They may have lost revenue opportunity, but even this would not amount to $10,000 as not everyone that pirated a copy would have purchased it, had a pirated copy not been available to them; and in any case lost revenue is not a cost. These companies do not list this number on their balance sheets as a loss.

There are indirect costs, the cost of their anti-piracy measures would be one such cost, but as any accountant will tell you, you cannot apply indirect costs to individual acts of piracy.

I am not a lawyer so someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of UK law, is that when you sue an individual or company you are only able to sue them for costs incurred as a result of the act by the defendant. As the act of piracy in this context does not incur any direct costs, my understanding is there would be no losses to recover.

Therefore suing UK 'pirates' would be pointless. Of course this does not exclude criminal proceedings, where the courts can apply penalties which could include a fine, but money raised through fines, would not go to the copyright holder.

Originally Posted by Arakasi

What I find interesting is that their is no cost to the copyright holder. If someone steals a physical product from a company, for example shop lifting a pair of jeans, there is a direct cost to the company. They purchased those jeans from their supplier, and that money is now lost to them.

When someone downloads a file, there is no direct cost to the copyright holder. The industry talks about the cost of piracy, but what they are actually saying is that if a 1000 copies of a product are pirated,and they are selling that product for $10 each, they represent that as costing $10,000. This is incorrect, and indeed misrepresentation. They may have lost revenue opportunity, but even this would not amount to $10,000 as not everyone that pirated a copy would have purchased it, had a pirated copy not been available to them; and in any case lost revenue is not a cost. These companies do not list this number on their balance sheets as a loss.

There are indirect costs, the cost of their anti-piracy measures would be one such cost, but as any accountant will tell you, you cannot apply indirect costs to individual acts of piracy.

I am not a lawyer so someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of UK law, is that when you sue an individual or company you are only able to sue them for costs incurred as a result of the act by the defendant. As the act of piracy in this context does not incur any direct costs, my understanding is there would be no losses to recover.

Therefore suing UK 'pirates' would be pointless. Of course this does not exclude criminal proceedings, where the courts can apply penalties which could include a fine, but money raised through fines, would not go to the copyright holder.

I agree completely.

You see these companies walk around saying how every copy of a file floating around is equal to a sale that they lost - and your right.. It's not even close.
On top of that fact - their sales are still doing tremendously well even in an economy like today.

I am curious as to your thoughts about a new system.

Ideas starting to catch onto like netflix and hulu+ are brilliant.
I would really like a massive TV database that has everything.. And you pay maybe 15$ a month to access is unlimited. Maybe a Music and Movies one as well?
Thoughts anybody?

Originally Posted by freu0047

I agree completely.

You see these companies walk around saying how every copy of a file floating around is equal to a sale that they lost - and your right.. It's not even close.
On top of that fact - their sales are still doing tremendously well even in an economy like today.

I am curious as to your thoughts about a new system.

Ideas starting to catch onto like netflix and hulu+ are brilliant.
I would really like a massive TV database that has everything.. And you pay maybe 15$ a month to access is unlimited. Maybe a Music and Movies one as well?
Thoughts anybody?

EDIT: Accident

Bandernatch - I meant to quote, but since I'm a mod, the edit button shows up and I accidentally hit edit - and then I somehow deleted part of it and lost what you wrote..
Basically, it was a complete fail and I should be shot.

Feel free to correct what you wrote it you remember. Lol.

Rofl, damn right you should be shot xD

Anywho, I don't really remember what I wrote... Basically the gist of it was that I was also interested in a service such as this, and would pay if they had certain requirements e.g. huge library, dedicated speeds, etc.

Originally Posted by freu0047

Ideas starting to catch onto like netflix and hulu+ are brilliant.
I would really like a massive TV database that has everything.. And you pay maybe 15$ a month to access is unlimited. Maybe a Music and Movies one as well?
Thoughts anybody?

I would be interested in a service like this. I torrent a lot of TV shows, many of which are not available in the UK, or not for a significant period of time after they have come out in the US. If I could get access to these shows through a legal site I would be interested, and happy to pay a reasonable fee.

Netflix and Hulu are not accessible from the UK (I know you can get around that using a VPN or Proxy through a US server), but these are sites I would certainly consider using if they were.

In all honest, Not only would 15$ be far fetched, but getting the big 4 production companies to work together and actually allow something like that to happen would blow my mind.

Copyright law--especially in the United States--definitely needs some work. Prison time and absurd financial penalties could await anyone convicted of copyright infringement. Media companies might make inroads against piracy if they made their content available worldwide at the same time, etc. That said, time for a devil's advocate. :)

What if everyone got their content through p2p? No one would pay the creators, and no new content would be made (or at least everything would be much lower quality). The only money changing hands would be for seedboxes and donations to private trackers.

American copyright law has its origins in the Enlightenment principles of encouraging art and innovation. This is why we do not have complete license over the media we own. Perhaps not every snatch is a 1:1 sale loss, but as an aggregate, it is absolutely a loss. We are not obliterating art and innovation with p2p, but piracy absolutely does erode the incentive to create new movies, music, video games, and porn. We live in the golden age of piracy, but is the sun setting on the age of quality media?

That said, back to my torrents...

Bandernatch - I meant to quote, but since I'm a mod, the edit button shows up and I accidentally hit edit - and then I somehow deleted part of it and lost what you wrote..
Basically, it was a complete fail and I should be shot.

Feel free to correct what you wrote it you remember. Lol.

Originally Posted by roastmaster

Copyright law--especially in the United States--definitely needs some work. Prison time and absurd financial penalties could await anyone convicted of copyright infringement. Media companies might make inroads against piracy if they made their content available worldwide at the same time, etc. That said, time for a devil's advocate. :)

What if everyone got their content through p2p? No one would pay the creators, and no new content would be made (or at least everything would be much lower quality). The only money changing hands would be for seedboxes and donations to private trackers.

American copyright law has its origins in the Enlightenment principles of encouraging art and innovation. This is why we do not have complete license over the media we own. Perhaps not every snatch is a 1:1 sale loss, but as an aggregate, it is absolutely a loss. We are not obliterating art and innovation with p2p, but piracy absolutely does erode the incentive to create new movies, music, video games, and porn. We live in the golden age of piracy, but is the sun setting on the age of quality media?

That said, back to my torrents...

Roast, I agree to some extent but technologically we are now getting to the point that musical artists can record and mix in their own studios and it sounds just as professionally done as ever.

I mean for Christ sake, radiohead released their most recent album on their website for free and made more money in donations than they did on any previous record.

Not only that, but the box office for 2010 numbers were higher than ANY previous year in the industry. Is this golden era of piracy actually causing them to even slowdown?

I would even make the argument that piracy increases sales.

Originally Posted by freu0047

I would even make the argument that piracy increases sales.

Well, yes and no. The 'no' being that for obvious reasons, it doesn't increase their sales. The 'yes' being that many people that download just use it as a test copy, and when the real thing comes out/is out they will buy it for full price. Games that don't even make it onto shelves are still valuable to people in the scene and uploaders, and if people like the underdog games, there is a better chance of them buying it.

Basically, piracy gets companies a lot of exposure. That said, piracy also does decrease sales. How many people are really serious about digital photoediting, and don't know what a torrent is? Many people won't buy Photoshop because it is faster and a lot cheaper to just download it. If torrents didn't exist (:o) then more people would buy Adobe products. I don't think many have downloaded Photoshop, and then thought, hey, this is really good, I should probably spend more than a chunk of change to buy it. The point is that buying a $40 video game after "testing" it isn't hard. Buying a $700 application after "testing" it is more than a second thought.