Senate Majority Leader Takes On File Sharing 591
An anonymous reader writes "Colleges are up in arms — and the entertainment industry is ecstatic — over Sen. Harry Reid's plan to crack down on file sharing by students. Floor votes could be imminent." A commenter on the post said, "Unfortunately we are likely to see neither sense nor principle from the Democrats on this issue, as Hollywood is their biggest cash machine."
Yeah, so I suppose ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You want some copyrighted lyrics? How about this, from The Who [thewho.net]:
*gasp* democrats can be evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise your hand if you thought your congressman would listen to you.
Who would you listen to: a very small donor at best, or the group who bankrolled your campaign(especially the "care about the people" PR)?
Why is this shocking news? Hell as a former die hard repub, I've lost pretty much all faith in the nation and it's future
That is consequence of the one party system (Score:5, Insightful)
The politic system is rotten, third party can't win (even if they had more support, there are so many hurdles for an independent candidate to overcome), majors parties are in fact one, people are cattle and vote based on frivolous fads and superstitions instead of on important issues and past actions.
The "manifest destiny" ended up being a self defeating prophecy, U.S. people got so used to the idea that U.S. fate is to lead the world that forgot to care about their own house and get a decent leadership for themselves.
Re:*gasp* democrats can be evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the last presidential election (2004), the richest 2% of Americans had TWO political parties representing their interests, while the other 98% had NO political parties representing their interests. And that 98% included all of the folks running around waving flags and saying 'I'm free, I'm free, I live in a democracy'"
You know we're in serious trouble wheh Michael Moore sounds (at least on this one occasion) like a beacon of reason
Not that anyone asked, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me cynical, but if a politician shows sense, they won't get enough of the conservative vote to ever get elected. And if they show principle, well, they're probably so lacking in even common sense to ever get liberal vote. So why should we expect either in any measurable form?
That trolling asside, from TFA:
Roads also facilitate theft. Roads also have police to patrol and set up roadblocks if necessary, that sort of thing. But funds are appropriated for such services. If one is to mandate that measures be taken to prevent intellectual property theft, one should provide a plan for funding of such an endeavor. It's not a universities fault that students steal any more than it is a construction worker's fault of someone later uses a road to facilitate a crime because the road happens to go past a bank.
At least, that's the way I see it.
FUD, yes, but useful FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't bring your party up to where people could vote for them with a clean conscience, you can at least bring the other party down and pretend that they're at the same level. Responses, if any, will be along the lines of "yeah, because Democrats are such angels, perfect in every way, and they always do what the people want" which is not what I said. I have long said that Dems and Repubs are about the same when it comes to pork spending, subservience to lobbyists, and general corruption (including legal but unethical stuff), but Repubs are essentially The Torture Party as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to impress me much to beat out The Torture Party.
If the Dems just run as the "We Think Habeus Corpus is Important" party, that's good enough for me, even with the usual complement of pork spending and knee-jerk overreaction that we always expect from congress. I wish Dems were better, but this equivocation where going after filesharers proves that the Dems are just as bad as the Republicans is a bit ridiculous. If torture, habeus corpus, and warrantless surveillance aren't part of the discussion about which party is better, at least right now, then we aren't really having a discussion.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
The report talks about colleges enforcing illegal downloading, not P2P technology. It's funny that even a defender would confuse the two.
Would downloading an HTML file be file sharing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Any hope of balanced coverage? (Score:1, Insightful)
Flat out wrong. Other corporate sources far outweigh Hollywood they just don't sound as good as saying left wing Hollywood rules the Democrats. Also the bulk of the contributions are from individuals not the studios and the rights organizations. I realize there's only one position on Slashdot, copyright holders are evil and file sharers are good, but at least try to appear more balanced. I believe in the freemarket which makes me just this side of Satan but it's a system that worked and supported the production of new content. Free exchange of copyrighted material will eventually dry up the well. It may seem cool to download the latest blockbuster free but revenues are falling and eventually if the trend doesn't reverse they will disappear. The only reason the theaters are still in business is $10 tickets and $5 popcorn. The number of tickets sold have been steadily dropping not as radically as the music industry but it'll eventually get as bad. If you don't care about Hollywood movies why are you downloading them? If you do care then downloading for free is threatening the future of film. Just the facts.
GOOD (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you want to do to avoid it? Log the IP addresses of people using it? People will start onion routing their packets, using also existing onion routers so you can't tell that an IP you got is actually a culprit. Also people will start using "private" trackers and networks more than they already do. To avoid packet identification through mandatory logging at ISPs, packets will get wrapped in other headers (HTTP offers itself due to being the perfect "noise" to duck into).
The article does not say that P2P networks will become illegal which would be strange since there is nothing so fundamentally wrong with P2P computer networks that they have to be banned any more than there is a reason to ban hammers because they are occasionally used to murder people. Using P2P networks to distribute pirated multimedia content and pirated software is however illegal. Unfortunately, at the moment, the only really effective way to stop illegal sharing of pirated software and multimedia content over P2P networks is for educational institutions, government institutions, businesses and even ISPs to disable P2P completely. From my point of view this is unfortunate since I don't pirate software or media content, I cover most of my software needs with FOSS and purchase any additional software and what little multimedia content I use. The fact that people use things like Bittorent to distribute pirated material is unfortunate since it has made it impossible for me to download Linux distributions and other FOSS software that is distributed via Bittorrent when I am at work which has impacted my productivity as a worker. Until recently Linux distributions like Centos, for example, relied heavily on Bittorent for distributing their DVD ISO images and it's only recently that these became fairly widely available via FTP/HTTP. Distributing pirated material off P2P networks isn't a fundamental human right, it's not legal, it's something people are able to do because they can get away with and now draconian measures are being taken to kill off the distribution of pirated material over P2P networks to the huge inconvenience of those of us who use P2P for legitimate purposes. Another reason why this amendment is crap, apart from it's detrimental impact on the legitimate use of P2P, is because it singles out colleges when there are communities and institutions who are much worse than college students when it comes to distributing pirated content and software via P2P so to that extent I agree with you.
Just my €0.02.
Re:Normal democracy in a capitalist nation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. During most of the XX century, more often than not, Washington managed to strike a balance between business interests and the interests of society as a whole - think of the cries of corporate outrage when recordable cassettes and VCRs came out, how it supposedly signaled the end of the world as we now it, etc, and how Washington stood its' ground, deeming the technology legal for public consumption.
However, since the advent of the internet, something snapped. Panicking, ignorant fossils (democrats and republicans alike) who think in terms of dump trucks and series of tubes and don't even know how to bookmark a page in their browsers, have now allowed a few major corporate players to determine, one insidious step at a time, how the internet should work and what constitutes fair use and theft, in the exact opposite direction of what used to be the norm.
A corporate iron grip on western culture is almost complete, on paper, on an unprecedented scale. And now, the do-nothing, good-for-nothing distinguished congressman from Nevada is giving us a glimpse of just who owns everything - those who own him. I am convinced that he is completely ignorant on american legal history of intellectual property and ownership.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply: You can't. So what colleges will do (and already do) is to simply disallow any kind of P2P traffic altogether.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any hope of balanced coverage? (Score:2, Insightful)
I look up the CD on the pirate bay and sure enough it's there and being seeded.
So from my simple experience (I listen to little music and rarely use mp3s) the copyright holder (warner music) really is an evil scumbag and the filesharers are good by doing me a favor by making available to me music that I bought myself. I also have lost respect for this artist for whoring himself out to that label.
The music industry is crying elephant tears about how CD sales are going through the floor. Maybe it's because they are selling a crap product that people don't want to buy (I'm taking the CD back as defective tomorrow). I hope that the freemarket puts them out of business. This would not be a loss.
So much as downloading movies are concerned, the vast majority of the population 99% do not do it. So that's not much of an argument. In any event, what's going to kill hollywood is people not turning off cellphones in theaters.
But in reality, you and I know that you are astroturfing here anyway.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting better (Score:3, Insightful)
You were getting close, but then you said:
Sorry, but the "Hollywood" cash contribution to Democrats is just too small to warrant the phrase "one of the main". It consistently comes in at something like 2.5%.
All right, this is indeed a true statement, and point well taken. While a couple of million bucks will not necessarily make or break the Democrats, it's certainly nothing for Harry Reid to sneeze at. And the fact that Democrats get a lot more from the entertainment industry than Republicans do is certainly at least part of the politics at play here.
There's also the fact that the entertainment industry has a lot of public influence unrelated to the size of their cash donations, for obvious reasons. If good relations with "Hollywood" will get positive publicity for Democrats that comes "for free", well hey, no wonder they like it.
But I suspect that this issue is not well understood if we overestimate the influence of "Hollywood" on the Democratic leadership; certainly if we let false assertions about the "biggest cash machine" go unanswered. I think there's also the fact that the entire political class in Washington, Democrats and Republicans, is firmly entrenched in the belief that file sharing is criminal and immoral, and damaging to the economy.
Re:stealing and theft (Score:3, Insightful)
(by the by, the tone of your article makes it sound as if you've got problems with me, personally. Well, I buy my stuff, but that doesn't mean that I disagree with the Pirates (arr.) on all of their points. I think there is a reason for the existence of this "market", and as with many markets, it cannot be force away. Thus an alternative is to be found)
B.
that's incrediby retarded (Score:1, Insightful)
classism is NOT the issue here. please, folks, criticize the us govt. but know your enemy: corporations, not aristocracy
Re:stealing and theft (Score:2, Insightful)
Stealing IP is against the law, and the law is very clear on the matter. When I was younger, I pirated games and music all the time, but as I've gotten older, I really can't justify it simply by stating I don't have the money to legally purchase it. With that defense, do I have the right to go steal a car?
You argue that creating a copy means nothing was actually taken, but both in stealing a movie, and stealing a car involve the producer of said product to lose money. So they are similar. And when you copy a movie, or a song, or software, you enable that to be copied and distributed by even more people. You have repeat the crime. In a P2P network, everyone is doing their part to help the others copy and distribute the illegal goods.
From a legal standpoint, simply stealing is one thing, but distributing is yet another.
If that is what you opt to do, then so be it. Most everyone on the planet breaks laws. We speed, or jay-walk, or litter, or whatever. Piracy seems to be fairly common as well.
But don't try to pretend that there isn't anything wrong with it.
Re:the distinction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Republicans Gone Hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
But is Hollywood "Democrats' biggest cash machine"? No. It's not the biggest source of money to the Democratic Party. I'd like to see some evidence to back up that Republican talking point, before it's promoted on the Slashdot front page.
And are Democrats really the "Hollywood Party"? Schwarzenegger, governor of California, is a Republican - and all Hollywood. Fred Thompson, a favorite of Republicans to run for president next year, is a Republican, a popular TV actor, and all Hollywood. Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the Republican Party, was nothing but Hollywood, after his career as B actor, culminating in roles as California governor, then US president. And of course Hollywood, the ultimate corporate media cash machine, prefers the Republican Party, which represents precisely Hollywood's values: corporate media, rich people, marketing appearance over substance, popularity contests determining power, the lot.
Hollywood is America. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are America. Pretending only Democrats are Hollywood, while Republicans are their real blockbusters, is not really "the American Way". It's the Republican Way. But it's just a made up story, projected on screens across America and the world.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me these are the practical questions that get lost in all the rhetoric.
Re:stealing and theft (Score:3, Insightful)
Protecting IP is quite important I'd say. They're trying to push it here as well. However, whilst protecting you IP, you can still make it easy for a broad market to purchase rights to listen, read or watch such IP. For example, they could provide in several different formats, each with their own price (i.e. hardcovers and paperbacks). Where it goes wrong is that they try to squeeze as much money out of it as they can, which means that for Joe Consumer, the price of what he wants is always slightly above that which he's willing to pay for it. Most consumers still pay for it, hence the position of the pricepoint. It goes wrong when J. C. can only buy one version, the super-duper high-def quadrovox DVD, most probably because the other formats do not provide as much revenue. J. C. can either buy from his (assumed) limited budget, or download.
Note that there is no third option here, which is that J.C. pays what he's willing to pay (plus perhaps a little bit extra), and accepts some loss in quality (there has to be a tradeoff somewhere). So with those two options available, the flourishing downlaod "market" tells us that many go for option two. There needs to be a store with a slider, in which J. C. can set the quality he wants for the price he's willing to pay, confident in the knowledge that the RIAA won't come knocking on his door.
Now as for my stealing vs. copying argument, it is clear that the producer (in your case) stands to lose. However, it is not as if people came up to the producer and took money out of his pocket. In effect, copying is an indirect method for preventing sales. No one loses a valuable product, but the product itself loses in value. It is similar to many things when viewed in that way. People putting spoilers of harry P. on the web might be devaluating a product. A smear campaign might be devaluating. Commercials might be devaluating some competitors products. Would you, then, call that stealing too?
In my opinion, we should call stealing stealing and copying copying. The implications of both are clear, but there is simply no reason to confuddle the two. Would you not agree?
B.
Democrats (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that's incrediby retarded (Score:3, Insightful)
Or how about term limitations on Congress and Senators and elimnination of life time tenure for judicial officials?
The constitution defines the states as owning the election process for its officials. It seems to me then that each state has the right to decide on term limits for their representatives (Congresspeople and Senators work for the state). So if enough people in a given state vote to limit terms for their reps they should be able to.
The founders of the country envisioned a part-time federal government made up of citizen statesmen that would server for a short time then go home to their jobs/farms/etc. If the politicians were term limited then they wouldn't always be chasing the re-election dollar.
And why should judges get life time appointments? Why not give them say 10 year appointments at any one level. If they can't get an appointment to the next level then they go back to private life.
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
When was the last time you saw the Republicans or the Democrats actually do something that helped the common man instead of the corporations that pay for them to get back in office?
Look, it's common sense really. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Congress-Person. You get a nice paycheck and your name on TV. Your mom is so proud. Now it's crunch time: you actually have to pass a law. You can go two ways on this. You can go one way, and make a couple of your constituents happy, or, you can go the other way and make (insert big-name corporation here) happy. If you pass a law that helps out the individual voters, you might get an extra 10,000 votes next time around, if you're lucky. But, if you make the corporation happy, you will get plenty of money to pay for a campaign that will give you those 10,000 votes, but you can now target those votes in the area/state that will make the most difference to you getting elected. Keep in mind that your competition is going to be getting money from the corps and will be targeting the important states. Now, your choice boils down to this: Do you vote to make people in general like you (by doing what is in their best intrest), or do you vote to make the people in the important areas like you (by targeting them with your campaign)?
And just to keep the system working, anyone who decides to 'do the right thing' and help out the people, doesn't get elected next term. I just love American Politics.
well (Score:3, Insightful)
once upon a time, there was a concept called selfishness. along came a reptile like ayn rand, dressed this concept up in the trappings of philosophy, and rechristened the concept libertarianism. well actually, she favored the term objectivism, and was antagonistic to libertarians as ignorant people: rand was quite antagonistic to libertarians [wikipedia.org]:
so she thought of libertarians as ignorants, and she was right about that. but no matter,
her "objectivism" is still utter intellectual crap. libertarianism is nothing but a code word for selfishness, dressed up in political signals and philosphical portents. but if you dress up a cheap whore in a fine dress, she's still a cheap whore. so it is with libertarians and anyone who spouts that nonsense. her "objectivism" has been completely coopted by the ignorant libertarians even ayn rand detested. she deserves them as her cult followers nonetheless, because whatever she called her thinking, trying to separate herself in vain from the kind of retards her pap appealed to, her thinking was still lame
libertarianism appeals to certain classes of individuals:
1. libertarianism appeals to earnest but naive college students with too many philosophy books under their belt, but without any real life experience, who build castles in the sky in their minds about how the world should or would or could work if people just started behaving in ways people have never behaved in any culture or time period since the dawn of mankind
2. it also appeals to rural folk, who don't understand how they fit into the larger world, and firmly believe themselves to be islands completely owing nothing to anyone else. what they are of course is coccooned within a larger country and system upon which the relative peace and quiet of their worlds depend. but it is hard to see that from the hinterlands until madness marches across the countryside, which it does, unfortunately, in societies that have abandoned the simple common human responsibility we have to take care of each other
3. and it appeals to 40 something selfish assholes behind on their alimony payments, corrupt and personally bankrupt about any give and take in their lives. nothing more needs to be said of such people. we understand them, and we understand why libertarianism appeals to them on a deep level
i put it this way: human nature is both altruistic and selfish. any political philosophy you present to the world has to address both sides of this coin, or you have built a political philosophy which is a nonstarter in the real world, because it doesn't jive with the nature of the humans you are attempting to impose it on
we all understand why communism doesn't work: it depends upon altruism, and doesn't address human selfishness. in a communist system, selfishness still exists, in the human beings in the system, but unaddressed by the system imposed upon them, and so selfishness eats communism apart from the inside
if you will, if a whole co
Re:oh really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm freakin' dyin' over here. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's fucked up. We need more choices.
Re:true believers? ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) I never said the European system was better. I don't believe it is. "Glowingly?" I was being pretty dispassionate about the differences in our systems, I thought.
2) I believe everyone has the right to be represented in their government; even (and especially, given their minority status) the fringe lefties and right-wingers. The founding fathers felt the same way.
3) You said:I disagree. I believe the real strength of our federalist limited-democratic republic is that the whims of the majority do not and can not drown out the voices and rights of the minority, no matter their political persuasion. It's precisely why the founding fathers didn't create a pure democracy (tyranny of the majority).
Re:learned helplessness (Score:3, Insightful)
If you know of anything else I can do to help bring about change I would be more than glad to hear it. But accusing me of helping to create a fascist state is not constructive, nor is it going to change the fact that this country's political system is broken; very, very, broken.
Re:So the Republicans would be better? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
That just goes to show that if you put out a good product and don't abuse your customers too much, people will still pay for your stuff even if it is readily available for free.
That is the "business model shift" that both the RIAA and the MPAA need to make. They need to stop acting like they are entitled to success. They have to act like they are willing to work for it. This goes equally for AMC that thinks it can get away with showing commercials for some lame ass sitcom before Harry Potter 5.
The RIAA simply needs to stop being an ass. Admittedly, this may be impossible for them to do. They've been doing it for so long.
As I like to say: When it comes to ripping off artists, consumers really are amateurs compared to the labels.
HOWTO form a single issue pressure group. (Score:2, Insightful)
History says college students will not become politically active like this and the likely outcome... More slashdot posts, more parties, more bitching at politicians. The politicians KNOW you will not act they can take the money and use your college administrations against you and your tuition.
NO ACTION == NO FILE SHARING.
Do something, anything really.
Re:No way to combat filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
People abusing the existing Tor system for Bittorrent is a bad enough problem, and I think it's indicative of where efforts like that are going to end up: the people who create Onion routing nodes aren't doing it so that script kiddies can download Warez or pirate movies, and the script kiddies who want to download Warez or movies aren't going to set up onion-routing nodes, because it just increases the chance that they'll be targeted by the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/FBI and have their computer seized. (Granted, they'll be targeted for something that somebody else is doing, but that's not going to be of much help when they're going over their hard drive with a fine-tooth comb.)
Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you have said so far is that anyone who refuses to work with the system is helping it to break, and if you think the system is broken, there is no reason to try to work with it.
So what should someone who believes the system is broken do? I can't do nothing because that makes me a fascist, and I can't work within the system for to try and improve it because that makes me a hypocrite. The only options left, that I can see, are working outside the system by manipulating the vote, or a second revolution, which I am hesitant to initiate until all other options have been tried.
Is there another option I've missed? Or are you just argueing to argue now?
Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, both the Democrats and Republicans are bought and paid for by special interest groups. You are only kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
You can't blame Reid (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll stop here lest this turn into a 3 page rant that no one reads.
Reid may be able to make young people vote. (Score:3, Insightful)
Already, the Internet, open source, blogs, and file sharing carry a strong echo of the flower power generation. Their movement may have died down but some of their root concepts have sprung forward in time to shake the foundations of old school business, politics, and press. Technology is no longer just for geeks - trying to squash these technologies is the perfect way to anger and motivate young people for whom these technologies have become an essential part of life. Could a political movement based on personal freedoms take hold again among the young?