Back in college, I may or may not have run an mp3-sharing FTP site off my computer that was registered on Oth.net. My roommates downloaded bootleg “cams” and “screeners” through IRC, and we watched them on a modded Playstation that could play VCDs. I thought nothing of it; we were poor college students. Everyone was doing it. This was the age of Napster and college-wide network shares.
In my first apartment after college, in 2001, I had my computer connected up through Time Warner Cable. One day, they shut off my internet. When I called to inquire, they said the a record label associated with the RIAA had reported me as in violation of copyright infringement for sharing copyrighted music files. I think they had a list of about 40-50 tracks they specifically had called out as hosted by my computer available for people to download.
This was before all the RIAA lawsuits started. TWC told me to remove any file sharing software and public access to my music and they would reinstate my internet connection. No harm, no foul. I got off with a warning.
Had this been 2-5 years later, I could have been hit with a $3000-$5000 “settlement fee” for the same offense. Or if I fought it? I might have ended up with a $2 million judgement against me, like Jammie Thomas-Rasset in 2007. I got lucky. I don’t download or share music anymore.
Piracy today is rampant. If you could persuade teenagers to be honest with you, most would tell you they don’t buy music – they have tools to rip the tracks off of the audio in Youtube videos, or they torrent them, or download from sites like the recently-shut-down MegaUpload. Some people boast of terabytes of music in their archives – an amount which would cost any normal purchaser thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to acquire “honestly”.
SOPA and PIPA are obviously flawed measures, and would do a much greater order of magnitude of damage to the internet than any benefit they’d provide to the RIAA and MPAA. But lobbyists and lawmakers are going to continue to push and push for these kind of regulatory actions because of all this piracy. The recording and motion picture industries are mired in old technology, and they believe they cannot survive if the piracy continues. (Whether they actually can or not is something I’ve not seen enough information on to have a firm opinion about, but I suspect that there are enough innovative groups and labels out there that are getting by without the frivolous lawsuits that the RIAA and MPAA’s whole arguments are thrown into a doubtful light.)
So if SOPA and PIPA won’t work, can we eliminate piracy by means other than legislation? Probably not. Especially not if the public mindset continues to be “Everyone’s Doing It”, and people believe they’re immune from reprisal because they’re “just one in a million”, or they’re “just downloading one movie only, and not even a good one at that” (both arguments I’ve actually heard for justifying piracy).
Killing piracy is like curing poverty – idealistically, it would just require enough people to care enough to take action (or stop taking action, as the case may be) to effect change. Realistically, if parents don’t govern their kids’ behavior, colleges don’t crack down on their students’ activities, and ISPs don’t punish ALL offenders, the number of incidences of piracy is not going to decrease. And the only way to really get ANY of that to occur is to make piracy not only so illegal, but so prohibitively costly to NOT monitor and protect against it that ISPs, college campuses, and individual families begin to comply.
The men and women in Congress know this. Every day, lobbyists from the RIAA and MPAA hound them with this truth. And so they work to develop bills like SOPA and PIPA to fight back. Yes, these bills are horrendous and could break the internet as we know it today. If they do come to a vote next week, they probably won’t pass. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to just go away. Just like music and movie piracy, the legislation to combat piracy is going to keep popping up, rearing its ugly head until the lobbyists can ram through something to help out the record and movie labels (assuming anything can, at this point).
So stay strong, stay informed, and keep fighting against censorship, but be aware that it’s going to be a long battle ahead. Oh, and if you can, consider obtaining your music and movies legally instead of bootlegging them. It’s not going to end the piracy, but I’d REALLY hate to see your name on the next lawsuit filed by the RIAA/MPAA.
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January 19th, 2012 on 4:31 PM
It’s nice to read a well thought-out post on the actual issues instead of seeing more mindless website black-outs and SOPA=SATAN reblogs.
January 21st, 2012 on 12:34 AM
I did a mindless website black-out myself… but I also tried very hard to articulate WHY these bills worry me.
I love mashups, and I’d say from my experience consuming those alone says that companies ALREADY have powerful tools at their disposal. The Warner Brothers, Viacom, and EMI corporations and subsidiaries already throw their weight around like an 800-lb. gorilla.
January 23rd, 2012 on 9:23 PM
I don’t think the website black-outs were necessarily a bad thing (heck, I did one myself) but definitely speaking up on the issue rather than simply regurgitating someone else’s viewpoint is more likely to get the issue heard by friends/family. Glad you guys have spent the time to look into it, too!
January 20th, 2012 on 6:20 PM
Very good, thoughtful, post. I have one concern about what Congress is doing that stands out from the rest. Yes, piracy is a problem but I think that very few people in Congress actually understand the internet well enough to craft appropriate legislation for its use. When you put people like that in charge of regulation and legislation that’s just asking for trouble.
January 23rd, 2012 on 9:25 PM
Agreed, Margy! When the researchers and specialists who helped develop key concepts and protocols with the Internet speak up and say “HEY! You don’t know it, but what you’ve suggested is completely asinine and will BREAK THE INTERNET!” I would hope more people would listen. Apparently they needed the amplification of millions more people behind them to get the message across, though.
January 21st, 2012 on 12:31 AM
This is how my father-in-law said it to me (and it should be noted that he’s politically conservative):
“Politicians seem to find something that needs fixing and instead of using a screwdriver to do the repairs they use a jackhammer. I know of several laws that are major overkill. I think that these are likely to be among them.”
I can definitely believe it’s a jack and sledgehammer approach when small ball hammers and screwdrivers are called for.
Don’t get me wrong, Ross, I do understand your reasoning and appreciate your fair debate (more so as it’d be considered “devil’s advocate”). I’ve thought about this issue long, and hard. One reason why I moved over to open source, and then Linux, was because I wasn’t interested in cracks, warez, etc.
I do think the RIAA and MPAA need to have sufficient resistance. I understand it’s not a question of if the Internet will get regulated– but when– yet I think it’s fair to fight to have it done right, in ways that do not destroy creativity.
I also think the system of patents and copyright law is broken. They need overhauling, as the original intent is not to protect ideas– but to give corporations weapons to fight each other. Of course… there’s also a lot that would be in the public domain, now, but *cough*Disney*cough*Mickey Mouse*cough*cough*
January 21st, 2012 on 12:05 PM
Good post, Ross — glad that you got out of the Napstering business early!
I think Margy has the right of it — that today’s technology has outstripped our legislators’ ability to craft a decent law. Legislators get the language for bills from lobbyists (in this case RIAA) and go from there, which is too bad, because this leads to short-sighted flawed pieces of legislation like the ones we see now.
I will say that as someone whose livelihood depends on intellectual property I am appalled at the casual acceptance of piracy by so many. Who am I hurting? Well, you’re hurting the artists. They already have enough money! Who the #$^@ are you to decide that in a free market economy. If you like an artist’s new album, buy it, or stream it legally on Spotify or whatever (and put up with commercials). Is that so much of an imposition?
January 23rd, 2012 on 9:28 PM
TANSTAAFL, Steve. If more people accepted that there’s a price behind all the things they take for granted, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m right with you on the IP thing – our company is looking at the China market, and although we’d like to do business over there, the place is so rife with IP-thieves that it is making us tread REALLY carefully on any engineering work that would potentially be moved outside of our central office…