Did you ever see that movie? Kevin Spacey played Buddy Ackerman, the most obnoxious studio executive ever. One night, when his assistant had just a wee bit too much of his boss' behavior, he took Buddy hostage and practiced all sorts of interesting revenge on him. The bit with the paper cuts and lemons stands out in my mind. Anyway, whenever I read a story about the MPAA or the RIAA "cracking down" on file sharing and P2P networks, Buddy is the guy I cast in my mind as the suit.
Courtesy of Mike over at Tech Dirt, we have this lovely story that seems to have gotten lost in the Pope Shuffle.
File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most Draconian expansion of online piracy penalties in years.The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.
If signed into law, as expected, the bill would dramatically lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more." {...}
So, let's say that you've downloaded the newest, hottest Britney Spears song. You may have liked it, you may have not. You may have thought that this "prerelease" copy was crap as far as the technical aspects were concerned, but that's really quite irrelevant at this point. You may have forgotten all about it. You may be listening to it everyday, fully intending to buy the CD when it comes out. You, my dear friend, log onto Limewire or some other Peer To Peer network, blissful---or not---with your Britney.
This, my friend, is when you just committed a felony.
According to the MPAA, the RIAA and the federal government, you've just made this bit of prereleased, copyright protected bit of entertainment available for distribution by logging into a Peer-To-Peer network. Hence you're guilty of the same sort of piracy as a street vendor and you will be punished accordingly. Just by having the offending item in your shared folder, you're committing a felony. Never mind that if someone moved to download it and you quashed the download. You're still committing a felony. A felony that's punishable by three years worth of jail time and a fine of a quarter of a million dollars. As Mike at Tech Dirt so eloquently puts it:
The entertainment industry continues to insist that they're just looking for "balance" in trying to fight file sharing -- but the evidence suggests that they're just being purposely vindictive. They're not looking at ways to improve their business or how to better provide what people want. They just want to punish people.{...}
This is part of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act I was railing against the other day. This passed the House today and has already been approved by the Senate. It's on its way to the President we speak.
Lovely.
One can only imagine how smug Buddy is tonight, safe in his Beverly Hills mansion, where the Cristal and the beleuga flow freely. One wonders, however, if he realizes that his whole house of cards will come crashing down sooner rather than later because of his actions.
Posted by Kathy at April 20, 2005 12:54 AMDang. I couldn't get past the phrase ' lost in the Pope shuffle,' without laughing.
Sounds like a new dance step, eh?
Posted by: sadie at April 20, 2005 10:24 AMI've worked in the industry for a long time now and have some very harsh views about the whole 'downloading of pirated materials' issue. I'll save the rant though and just say that stealing is stealing and I think it is a shame that people are intent on thieving music (doesn't matter how you label it... let's call a spade a spade) by file-sharing. Someone is going to have to pay for it and it usually ends up being those at the end of the line. A friend, Jez, used to liken it a little to the entire population of London walking into your bathroom anytime day or night and peeing in your toilet. Without even asking your permission. Sure the toilet is being used for what it was made for... but really, everyone should get their own!
Until something happens (and that means the stopping of illegal downloading/sharing and it also requires the industry need to wake up and become flexible on some issues... 6 of one/half a dozen of the other...) then we will continue to have people peeing on the walls of our streets and crapping in our private toilets.
Oooops. Sorry, I ranted a little. My bad! :/
You're more than welcome to rant here, Puff. I just think it's a wee bit ridiculous to charge someone with a felony criminal case for perhaps having one downloaded song that hasn't been released in their shared folder. It's vindictive and the punishment does not fit the crime. I'm sorry, but it doesn't. There is a difference between the dude who goes out and films a movie at the theater and then sells it on the web---someone who actively distributes the pilfered material and profits from it---and someone who just logs onto Limewire. Under this law, they're guilty of the same crime. Is that fair? Nope.
Another part of that act, ironically enough, legalized Clear Play's unauthorized copyright violations with their edit-out-the-dirty DVD players.I don't see Congress coming down hard on those copyright violations, do you? Once the Prez signs that bill, copyright violations at the hands of ClearPlay become the law of the land.
As I see it, the business model is changing: the entertainment industry is going to have to change with the times or they are going to find themselves to be obsolete. Moby (of whom I am not a huge fan) said a while back why should he have to put up with a record company when he can put his own material out on the web? He makes a good point. He'd be richer, too, because he wouldn't have to surrender his copyright to the label. Until they see that there is value in file sharing, they're going to be throwing gobs of money at a problem they will never be able to solve. I'm sorry, but it's just not going to ever going to go away. The government surely can't do a thing about it: they're years behind as it is. File sharing, for better or worse, is here to stay. Limewire, KaZaa and Morpheus resulted from the demise of Napster. BitTorrent showed up because people were getting busted for using Limewire. For every move the entertainment industry makes in this respect, the file sharers make another one in opposition. Until the entertainment industry decides to stop playing the game and think outside of the box, this is game of tit for tate is going to escalate.
And that's stupid, because all it does is drive up the cost of everything.
But that's just my opinion---I could be wrong ;)
Posted by: Kathy at April 20, 2005 02:25 PMp2p softwares are inevitable just like mr.smith from matrix.. always evolving.
by the way, i love that movie, swimming with the sharks. do u have a copy kathy?
best, j
Posted by: j at July 30, 2005 09:46 PM