Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=18815

by mikebo • 16 years ago

63 109 16 years ago

dailytech.com

techiferous• 16 years ago

How is music piracy different than the following scenario:

(1) I quit my day job and decide to launch a web-based startup.

(2) I base my business plan on a monthly subscription model.

(3) I achieve product/market fit and revenue starts coming in.

(4) A technology emerges that magically makes it easy to copy my SaaS app and use it in its entirety without paying the monthly subscription.

(5) My revenue plummets and I have to completely revamp my business model or go out of business.

This is not a rhetorical question. I honestly want to know what is the difference. Thanks!

nkassis2• 16 years ago

In the case of the Saas app, I think there is usually more to it that can't easily be replicated. For example, while Google email service is very Simialar to what was previously out there, they offer things like large space, reliable (don't laugh) service, trusted branding etc.

Other providers offer quick development of new feature which a copied service can't easily replicate. This is the key, replicability (that's not a word ;p ) or lack of is your protection.

In the end, you can't sit and wait. Even if they don't copy your app, others will offer similar products ( I think this is fair and square) and you will die if you don't continue to provide more to the user.

Ubuntu One is a open source version of dropbox. I don't think dropbox will die because of it. Dropbox hosts the service and offers good support and feature development. Ubuntu's offering might not be as good. Even if it is, Competition is everywhere.

abstractbill• 16 years ago

Assuming your technology #4 really could be created, I don't this is much different from musical piracy. And I'd be just as ok with this as I am with things like peer-to-peer networks existing. Such a technology would be awesome - as you said, it would appear to be magic. And it would be my problem to come up with a new business model, not to outlaw a piece of new technology.

chwahoo6• 16 years ago

Copying things has existed for a while (although it was never as easy as it is now). We chose to develop copyright despite this because we wanted to promote creation of works like books and music.

I don't necessarily disagree with your larger point, but It's worth noting that copyright was created for exactly this purpose (limit distribution of something that would be easy for copiers to distribute, but hard for them to originate).

I suspect copyright is one of the driving forces in the existence of lots of the information and entertainment I enjoy consuming on a day-to-day basis, so I'm skeptical of tossing it out completely.

alexkay2• 16 years ago

Some companies manage to base their SaaS business on free software. Take for example Gitorious, their entire code base is released under AGPL.

If something can be copied, it will be, that's the law of nature. Your business plan should take this into account.

loewenskind6• 16 years ago

How is Gitorious making money? Everything I saw on google said they don't even have a business model. If so it's hardly a good example of what all people who would like to make money from what they're good at (writing software) should be doing.

jamesbritt• 16 years ago

"A technology emerges that magically makes it easy to copy my SaaS app and use it in its entirety without paying the monthly subscription."

Before such technology existed it would make sense to pursue such a business plan.

But suppose such technology already exists, and you know it. It would be sort of foolish to plan a business that assumed such technology would not be used.

Now suppose that this magic technology was not invented for the purpose of copying SaaS apps, but was an inevitable side-effect of other good, useful, desirable technologies.

A side-effect of the technology that allowed you to build your SaaS app in the first place. Oh, and your app helped shut down other existing businesses that were not using this new technology.

That it can copy your site is simply one of a million things it can do.

Do you fight this technology? Freeze it? Criminalize it?

One of my gripes with the IP industrial complex is that there are companies that lucked out on a transitory scarcity because of a particular stage of technological evolution.

Tools existed for mass-producing physical copies and transmitting virtual copies across large distances (i.e tape and CD production, and radio/TV), but there were still sufficient financial and technical barriers to constrain its application.

These businesses were based on the assumption that cheap reproduction and mass data transfer would never become so cheap or so easy that just about anyone could do it with the push of a button.

Bad assumption. And now the cat's out of the bag.

marilyn• 16 years ago

The RIAA and MPAA do need to revamp their business model if they want to evolve into the future with the rest of us.

I often wonder why the movie and music industries don't embrace torrent technology. I would definitely pay a reasonable monthly fee to access legitimate and legal trackers that they manage. It's really win-win as far as I can see. Watch what you want when you wants, and the distributions costs drop to next to nothing.

keefe• 16 years ago

They have money to fill great convoys of dumptrucks and you have nothing?

This is not a joke, it's the reality. If you managed to scrape enough money together to have power in the world, you could start playing power games too.

We need to address this with a decentralized system they can't crack down on.

nearestneighbor• 16 years ago

> which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense (for example if you searched "torrent daft punk").

I find this difficult to believe.

nkassis2• 16 years ago

I think other sources will be needed before anyone can pass a good judgment on this news.

Making the thought that leads to something criminal criminal, how does that prove you did do something criminal? or is the thought criminal? Searching for something illegal is criminal? I'm confused by this and I hope more details emerge.

In the DRM case. If by-passing DRM because criminal, well... I'll be in for some long time in jail. Using Linux to watch DVDs. This is by far the best example of victimless crime I know. Who did this cost any money too? Was the hack of subverting my computer illegal? That could lead to some interesting new ways to prosecute a person whenever needed.

As for copying, I don't condone it but whats a legal alternative that offers at least the minimum amount of freedom offered by the pirate option?

iTunes and Amazon MP3 proved that DRM wasn't required for good sales. They truly offer the freedom to use the media as you want. There not a lot of reasons to be pirating music anymore. Movies, that's another story.

amalcon• 16 years ago

Not as difficult as this: The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement. UDP is peer-to-peer technology, in every sense of the term (there's no implementation-level difference between the client and server). Is everyone who produces an implementation of UDP going to be in potential violation of this measure?

Either this thing's being massively exaggerated, the people who wrote the law have absolutely no understanding of communications technology, or (more likely) something in between.

pyre5• 16 years ago

Even worse:

  > The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client
  > development a criminal offense if the distributed
  > software was used for infringement.

So if someone uses Skype voice or chat to coordinate the downloading and/or distribution of copyrighted material, could Skype have been 'used for infringement' (it's already a p2p app)? What about people peering Android and/or iOS devices together and sharing files?

r0s• 16 years ago

This is why we have a court system.

This is also why my local ISP claims to have a "Three Strikes" policy regarding infringement complaints. Through scientific experimentation I've discovered they don't enforce this policy. The point of the little performance is to try to avoid having the law interpreted in a court, where evidence trumps accusation.

The idea is that the accusation alone will be a deterrent. It's bad leadership and it's out-side of the letter and spirit of the law.

henning• 16 years ago

Piracy is not theft.

pmccool2• 16 years ago

More to the point, illicit downloading is not piracy. Equating downloading with armed robbery(or worse) at sea is silly.

spudlyo• 16 years ago

It's the kind non-nuanced thinking I've come to expect from Biden.

JesseAldridge2• 16 years ago

Many words in the English language have multiple meanings. "Piracy" is one of them.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piracy

swombat5• 16 years ago

Pirates are cool. I say, let's keep calling it piracy.

davidmurphy• 16 years ago

I respectfully disagree.

Users used to pirate the software my first startup made, and that was not fun.

harpastum• 16 years ago

Theft: the act of taking something from someone unlawfully.

There are a lot of things that aren't fun, and I certainly agree that people pirating your software can be a problem, but there is a distinct difference between theft and illicit downloading.

pyre5• 16 years ago

Theft is criminal and Copyright Infringement is a civil matter (thus far). At least in the eyes of the law, they are different.

Just because users were doing something that negatively affected your business doesn't mean that you can redefine the English language just to make the general population more sympathetic to your complaints. e.g.:

  My employer is *extorting* me by requiring that I work
  for my pay cheque! I should be able to charge my employer
  with extortion!

ElbertF• 16 years ago

If charging for virtual goods isn't a viable business then you need to start doing something else, just because you "want" to make money this way doesn't mean there should be the law for it. People download my software for free and I think it's great.

chwahoo6• 16 years ago

Statements like this can frustrate both sides of the debate. Words like "theft" really consist of a cluster of related meanings. Copyright infringement probably satisfies some of them, but not others. I think your case would be better made by stating more directly what you mean. For example: "piracy does not take away someone else's material goods and so is not as immoral as Biden's comparison with smash-and-grab theft would imply."

This reminds me of an awesome article that discusses the debate about whether or not "obsesity is a disease" http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_que...

ErrantX3• 16 years ago

I've always sat on the fence with this.

One interesting point that was made was that if people keep calling it theft attitudes may change - or maybe it would simply pave the way to making it a criminal offence.

Ultimately how I always feel is this; if someone is pirating your work then I don't mind if you call them a thief (in anger or whatever). But if you're not one of those people then it's a weasel word to be using.

itistoday• 16 years ago

Just another symptom of living in an idiocracy. This situation will work well for the for-profit prisons in the United States, who, like the for-profit health insurance companies, make a profit off of people's misery, and will ensure that America remains #1 in persons incarcerated:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-high-...

Thankfully, the article does point out the discrepancies in Biden's claims:

  Interestingly, the statements seem to fly in the face of a  
  recent Government Accountability Office study released to 
  U.S. Congress earlier this year, which concluded that there 
  is virtually no evidence for the claimed million dollar 
  losses by the entertainment industry. That study suggested 
  that piracy could even benefit the economy.

Nevermind facts, we don't care if the evidence suggests that piracy helps the economy, or whether Biden's metaphor is a metaphor and not a substitute for reality, or whether that drug you're taking is not only safe, but healthy, we're still going to toss your ass in jail, or give you a fine you'll spend the rest of your life dealing with.

Ars Technica did a great job thoroughly debunking the claims of the RIAA and MPAA:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits...

And here's their take on the referenced government study:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-governmen...

But in this country, facts don't really have much weight when it comes to policy making.

The irony of all of this is that like the War on Drugs, instead of keeping people safe and happy, this coming War on Piracy will only serve as a drain on America's economy and morale, and yes, could even result in the creation of a dangerous black market. Tax dollars flushed down the toilet for the purpose of spreading misery and soothing the irrational fears of an aging and nervous minority of rich people.

JesseAldridge2• 16 years ago

If you actually read the summary of the linked GAO paper[1], you can see that the authors of this attack piece misrepresented it. Some choice quotes that they neglected to include:

"Negative effects on U.S. industry may include lost sales, lost brand value, and reduced incentives to innovate", "The U.S. economy as a whole may grow more slowly because of reduced innovation and loss of trade revenue", "research in specific industries suggest that the problem is sizeable"

Basically, the report says that piracy has some bad and some good effects, but these effects are extremely difficult to quantify due to the illicit nature of piracy. Nonetheless, piracy is probably a significant problem.

As it becomes easier for people to get stuff without paying for it, production of said stuff will drop. It's common sense, people.

[1] http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423

wazoox2• 16 years ago

> As it becomes easier for people to get stuff without paying for it, production of said stuff will drop.

And so what? The "said stuff" is mainly quality-inversely-proportional-to-budget music and movies. We needn't them anyway.

nailer26• 16 years ago

Piracy doesn't just hurt the RIAA and MPAA. It hurts:

* indie game developers

* Unsigned bands

* authors and book publishers

* OSS companies that sell their compiled binaries training material while giving away their source.

People who create things deserve to be compensated if they wish to. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing.

swombat5• 16 years ago

Nice sense of entitlement you got there.

I'd like to rephrase your statement to:

People who create things should be compensated if we can figure out a system to do so that's not too costly to the general public. "Intellectual property" is a contradictory concept. Claiming that ideas, thoughts, and other non-physical entities "belong" to someone is contradicting the very nature of the universe.

Note: I am an independent content creator (though I don't live from my content at the moment).

ThomPete• 16 years ago

Unsigned bands and authors have always been hurt, not by piracy but by those who didn't sign them.

It used to be that the only way to fame was through the distribution channels that was owned by a few large corps.

That's not how it is today and that's a good thing not a bad thing.

rchi• 16 years ago

I doubt that Obama (with his intellect) genuinely believes that this policy will help the economy at all.

Disappointing on so many levels.

djcapelis2• 16 years ago

Why do you think smart people can't make stupid decisions now and again?

I doubt he's getting full and accurate data and I doubt he's really had time to spend on the issue that this needs given the other major issues that need to be dealt with.

edanm3• 16 years ago

You know, there's the off chance that: 1. He is smart. 2. As the President of the United States, he is getting all the data he needs. 3. You're the one who's wrong.

I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but it sounds a little funny to say "yeah he's either stupid or ignorant" about someone who is very likely neither. It's possible he just disagrees with you, despite being smart and knowledgeable.

patrickk3• 16 years ago

Two words: Special Interests.

He's probably only getting one side of the story, as the anti-piracy lobby has the money, power and influence to be able to bend the ear of those high up enough to make a difference. Spend enough time listening to one side of the debate, and you have the VP eventually making dumb comments like the Tiffany's quote.

Richard Stallman probably would probably not clear White House security checks (joke)

huhtenberg• 16 years ago

I hope this is just a lip service to quieten the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists. At least to a larger degree it is. Perhaps some changes will be made to the legislation, but nothing as far reaching as "criminalizing p2p development" (whatever it is).

chris11• 16 years ago

This is more than lip service, Obama filled the DOJ with former RIAA lawyers. And Biden's always been pro-RIAA. It may be cynicism, but Biden's statement is really not surprising.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html

cmelbye• 16 years ago

As the President of the United States, he would have the power to stop this policy from being put in motion. If he had the intellect, he would realize that this is a bad idea and he would stop it. At this rate, he'll doing as much bad as McCain does to the Internet in my opinion.

nailer26• 16 years ago

Saying 'if he was smart, he wouldn't stop piracy' begs the question why taking creative works without permission isn't worth stopping.

chwahoo6• 16 years ago

Aside from attributing all this to the RIAA and the MPAA, I can see a line of thought that might move policy makers in this direction. As time goes on, an increasingly large slice of the U.S. (and world) economy is coming from non-physical goods like software, movies, writing, speaking, etc. Politicians who acknowledge this would want to promote an economic environment that will let these growing industries thrive. I would imagine this is the thinking behind ACTA - we want the world to respect copyright since we expect to rely heavily on it. While people like to (rightly) point out that a downloaded song or movie is not equal to a lost sale, the potential for easy, private transfer of data WILL eat into sales significantly over time if not "controlled."

What the politicians don't seem to acknowledge is that the products of this process are not scarce (although the inputs to the process are). Enforcing the illusion of scarcity (particularly with all the great privacy/crypto we have) must be extremely heavy-handed. We'll have to choose between severe restrictions in our communication (which should bother everyone) and less production of the software and movies that we desire (which would be unfortunate).

swombat5• 16 years ago

What they also fail to see is that the outputs of this process are also the inputs of this process. Imposing artificial scarcity on the output restricts the input, which diminishes the output, which further affects the input, etc.

Every piece of intellectual output takes as input many, many pieces that have come before.

chwahoo6• 16 years ago

That's a great point. The truly great works motivate derivative works and copyright doesn't play well with this. No work exists in a vacuum so locking up lots of our culture behind copyright will limit the space of ideas pursued. I've read that book publishers won't even allow quoting from other books without permission from the publisher (they don't trust fair-use).

Still, many of the other inputs: the time of lots of people (many of them very talented) and the money of investors are definitely scarce. I think it's a tricky balancing act. However, I'm not sure the status quo is so terrible. By getting permission or paying, many copyrighted works can be used in new works. In cases where they can't some works may not be created. Along the way, creators can be compensated.

patrickk3• 16 years ago

The problem with enforcing controls on the web is that even if they are well-meaning and protect copyright holders in the short term, they do untold damage in the long term that can't be estimated or anticipated ahead of time (the butterfly effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect).

Do you think if the internet was 100% government regulated or by a company (e.g. AOL) from day one, that is would have grown and developed as quickly and as well as it has? Or that the many opportunities for creating a web-based business would exist? Of course they wouldn't, because they would have been stifled by well-meaning legislation. The cost and bureaucracy to startups would increase massively. Piracy isn't nice, but it is the price to pay for an open and independent global network. (/rant)

nailer26• 16 years ago

Good to hear. Anyone on HN that makes something - whether it's been ripped off before or not - needs to be able to know they can do something about it should it happen.

patrickk3• 16 years ago

Very uncool, Obama. Very uncool.

He obviously never read this quote from the world's richest man (talking about piracy in China):

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Source: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropir...

If the Obama started listening to smart people in the tech and music industry, not to mention the young people who voted him into power, then he would make far more informed decisions.

ScotterC• 16 years ago

I find it hard to argue that piracy is beneficial. I am of the mind that intellectual property rights are currently inadequate from my own experiences in patent law.

My main beef is that the RIAA and MPAA have a defunct business model and they are wielding the U.S. legal system as a tool to punish non-violent criminals severely.

_flag• 16 years ago

I really don't understand how anyone expects to stop people from downloading things for free. It's even possible to get songs directly off youtube and tv shows directly off hulu, just as it is possible to record songs directly off the radio. Nobody seems to notice though.

Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown

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