MPAA boss: 'SOPA isn’t dead yet' Former senator and current head of the Motion Picture Ass. of America Chris Dodd hopes to resurrect the reviled SOPA anti-piracy legislation in another form, but it appears the US House of Representatives is beating him to it a new bill that makes SOPA look sensible. Dodd, speaking in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, …
If I was the media industry I would put a giant muzzle on Chris Dodd speaking to the public. That idiot has done as much to ruin the worldwide economy as all but a few other men. He is proof positive corporate prostitution is truly bipartisan. I understand hiring him was all about him getting his country club legislative former buddies on board the rape of the public but him talking to the public is a receipt for disaster.
The best part of the US system is the total elimination of corruption. It can't be corruption if it is legal to give unlimited money to a legislator to get him to do what you want and best of all their are many ways to not even have to report it.
Still waiting for that comprehensive VPN service review. Focus on
- Servers in non US/ UK/ EU countries (and other satellites like Australia) (and yes UK is/ isn't in EU thanks...)
- PPTP/ OpenVPN support
- Whether logs maintained
Categories
- Best priced
- Best for media streaming
- Best for VOIP
- Best for torrent/ usenet use
TA....
> Anyone who proposes a law with the word Cyber in it should be removed from office
> imemdiately on the grounds of being too stupid to hold office...
Mike Rogers is many things, but stupid isn't one of them.
"Cyber" (used for anything other than actual cybernetics) is a vile construction (for which Gibson is largely to blame), but it's being used here for rhetorical effect. Rogers knows "cyber" suggests to many of his constituents, and those of his peers in Congress, the baffling and frightening world of computer and communication technologies which pose vague threats they have no idea how to combat. Also it has something to do with those damn kids who won't stay off their lawn.
Rogers is quite good at what he does, and what he does is keep getting re-elected so he can promote the burgeoning police state. He's former FBI, after all, and has never lost his desire for broader investigative powers.
CISPA may die a well-deserved death, but you can be sure Rogers will keep writing and sponsoring bills like this. That's what he's done for the past decade (and did for five years previously at the state level). And there's very little chance that Michigan's 8th will vote him out of office - didn't even come close in '08, and that was probably the best opportunity we'll see for a long time.
(Ruppersberger I don't know much about, but while he's a Democrat, he's also a former prosecutor in the organized crime division. And those folks are pretty much always big fans of surveillance; it's their main tool.)
I prefer this reworking.
"Bigoted, resentful behind the time ex-politician pushes for laws on a subject he doesn't understand and liases with people who know even less about how the actual world functions, they do this under the guise of protecting an industry that is only in decline because they will not adapt to a new environment"
Or, to put it more succinctly
"Wanker wants law approved by other wankers for wankerish reasons, also wankers"
would rework one thing on your reworking the part that reads "protecting an industry that is only in decline because they will not adapt to a new environment""
I'd rework it to :
protecting an industry that is in decline because they keep pumping out complete shit no one wants to see, let alone pay them to see because they will not bother making anything worthwhile.
"I'd rework it to :
protecting an industry that is in decline because they keep pumping out complete shit no one wants to see, let alone pay them to see because they will not bother making anything worthwhile."... so the content gets stolen so people can determine that they would not have bought it in the first place.
He does understand it actually. So does the industry.
The problem is that not in their understanding, the problem is in the economical fundamentals based on which the industry operates. It does not try to satisfy demand and match demand to a price. It tries to inflate demand through artificial scarcity. Delay DVD release, delay special release, delay release based on regions, limit how the content is available and so on.
Let's compare that with the music industry - did you notice that RIAA has not been in the news for years and it is just the MPAA now? Of course it would not be - all prices for CDs, downloads, etc are now demand based and made to match actual demand using feedback from sales forecast to sales correlation. The entire idiotic cycle of limited release of singles, then limited release of album, then... is in the gutter with a 5 inch stake in its heart.
What needs to happen to the movie industry is a legilsatively applied Stelios (the real one tried to break their monopoly, but failed, guess airlines are easier). The moment the movie industry stops using economics of artificially induced scarcity and becomes a modern demand based economics system based on demand driven pricing the ever repeating cycle of "one idiotic law proposal after another" will go away.
As long as this is not happening there will be a SOPA every year, rinse repeat, try again. That is what the industry needs and its main lobbist understands it pretty well so do not underestimate him.
> The moment the movie industry stops using economics of artificially induced scarcity and
> becomes a modern demand based economics system based on demand driven pricing the
> ever repeating cycle of "one idiotic law proposal after another" will go away.
No, it won't, because the movie industry is not the only party with an interest in these laws. Mike Rogers doesn't give a damn about the movie industry; he's not Sony Bono or Fritz Hollings.
CISPA is for the police - the real police, particularly Federal investigative agencies. Dodd likes it because he figures the content police can use it too (and indeed they could), and that's fine with Rogers and Ruppersberger because it's more money and influence pushing their bill. It's not the primary motivator, though.
Getting in touch with the crying-all-the-way-to-the-bank content-provider reality, more like. This "reality" being pushed by crying , know-it-all, I-was-there-but-you-weren't El Reg contributors btw.
Now allied with the securo-nazi-congressional-industrial complex. With "bipartisan" support.
One would think these people have checked out the antics of a certain Middle Eastern country where "shoot and cry, shoot and cry" is the order of the day.
Yeah, yeah - you're all big damned heroes. That'd be why you all post under nicknames, want review of things like VPNs and so on (too lazy to look them up yourself?) blah blah blah. It's really funny to see all you guys actually thinking you're Robin Hood ... :)
Maybe the voters will realize the power that they have over these bought-off politicians. Voting the racscals out sounds like the order for today. Politicians feel that removal from political life is more of a threat than losing campaign contributions from the media industry
Thing is, securing one's political footing is the first order of business of just about any politician. Does it come as any surprise that a large number of political elections actually aren't elections at all...because there is no viable opponent to the incumbent? And if there is, odds are pretty good he's just as bad.
In other words, elections are becoming more of a choice between two evils. So tell me, would you rather be dragged through cacti or locked in with rabid racoons?
I agree it's likely this or some other version will eventually pass in the US. The US is a financial oligarchy, so why bother coming up with a business model when you can pay corrupt politicians to create an artificial one for you by restricting public freedom?
I think the simple truth is that privacy on the internet is now effectively over. So many people find your information valuable & want to get hold of it. Google can build up a detailed profile of you through your web searches & by signing on to their services. The NSA sweep up the world's communication data & use supercomputers to try to pick the needles out of the haystacks. There's targetted advertising, illegal hacking by the media, cyber-criminals & the pirate hunters. Heck we even snoop on each other's Facebook profiles. Imagine how many different surveillance systems there are scanning the internet. Doesn't it make more sense to have just one which everyone can use?
Internet privacy isn't all or nothing. You choose how much of your personal information you give up whenever you use a service. El Reg know my IP address whenever I visit, and since I'm currently logged in, they can associate more detailed information.
Google? You can use search without logging on. If you want to use more of its services you pay with your information. Fair enough.
Facebook? et al - don't put anythng on there that you wouldn't want to be public. I don't. And lock all the apps and tagging down to zero.
Government agencies? This is where you need to be writing to your MP/MEP to ensure that information can only be gathered with a court order or warrant.
Internet privacy is only dead if you want it to be.
It's pretty much dead, and there's no one anyone can do to stop it.
Encryption? Install a zero-day malware on the machine and intercept the data before it's encrypted or after it's decrypted (after all, it's useless unless you're able to use it at some point--just intercept it THEN). Virtual machine? Detect it and use a hypervisor exploit to break out. Alternative OS? They already know about those. Airgap? Data has to be transported somehow; jump the airgap that way.
And then there's that business about government interests in exascale computing and long-term archival storage in capacities they've yet to name. IOW, if they don't get you now, they'll just hold it and let Moore's Law catch up so they can get you later.
And if not the governments, then who knows who else wants to pry in...? The big problem about being able to access anyone is being ACCESSIBLE to anyone.
Google et al don't depend on you signing in for their services to gather data about you. They have lots of ways to get it, and they are some of the best at it. They get some data if you run a search from their engine. If you have an account, they get lots of data. When you visit a web page, they likely get data because there's a 90% chance the website is running Google Analytics to generate web stats. All without signing in, and all because the data is assumed to not be not only non-PII, but so non-specific that it couldn't be associated with you. But when you get enough of that non-specific data you can start to analyze, draw trends, and possibly even identify individual users from the data.
Internet privacy is dead, at least in the sense of, if it is worth finding you, someone can do it. The question for most people is: Is it worth finding me? For most of them the answer is 'no' so they are relatively safe.
The trouble with the last paragraph is that, for private companies, EVERY person is worth pursuing because EACH one is a potential sale. That's why spam persists even today, since the return for just snagging one or two people is more than the cost of all that spamming. Google is well-known for its harvesting (and now with Android it's pretty hard to avoid them--block the web, they'll get you with the phone). Facebook's even more notorious as those infamous "Like" buttons can track you down even if you never visit Facebook, even if you never click that button. And more firms are working to get around adblockers by insisting on local hosting (to get around address blocking--blocking the host site is usually a ticket to an unreadable page) or hiding things behind script-block detectors. And with plenty of personal information open to the public (either by government mandate or as a result of using a publicly-available service like the telephone), just ONE detail can put two and two together very darn quickly.
Not just for activists of one sort or another but for everyone. It has been noticable recently that the general population in the UK (those that commentards usually refer to as 'sheeple') have been much more aware of the consequences of proposed legislation (eg the monitoring proposals) and have been objecting.
This puzzled me until someone pointed out that the previous SOPA attempt had made everyone aware of such moves in general.
More SOPA => more awareness. Not a bad thing, really.
it is vitally important to make it clear to your politicians that privacy needs to be protected. those voting for the bill are doing it for money from the lobbyists who are the corporations who want to control the net, and the future. if you can be held indefinatly without trial, and all your communications can be monitored without a propper warrent, then you do not live in the land of the free.
I think we're all just going to have to accept that over the coming decade all western governments, law enforcement and lobby groups will have access to all of your unshielded communications data. They'll probably all have far greater control over data and media as well.
There's nout anyone can do about it.
Well except maybe all those people with massive gun stashes in America.
The only other way to escape the all pervasive eye of government and law enforcement maddness is to live somewhere to poor or disorganised to put such systems in place.
All this does is encourage online file storage places like Mediafire to add "encrypt on upload" features, so the data is never in un-encrypted form on their machines. Police can raid all they want, they have no way to tell what files are stored there, neither can the storage operator.
Piracy of films may be something of a problem that needs some kind of solution but this is not it. Lets just set the pathetic MPAA aside for a minute and look at the people behind this proposed Law.
It indicates the level of fear that lawmakers have of freedom itself.
It also is an indication of the low level of education that now runs rampant throughout America. The erosion of higher education is apparent when politicians who usually represent the lowest common denominator in the general population talk of overt fascist policy as though it were some ideal to be espoused as a virtue and nobody laughs at them. They embolden themselves and the population as a whole suffers more, without a clue as to the inevitability of its consequences that leads to the end of all freedoms. At one time intelligent people crafted the Bill of Rights and thought that it would be set in stone. Unfortunately it was never exported to the world and even more unfortunate was the complete failure of the centers of education to take it seriously enough that people would assume it was the actual core of what America was to be about. It take a Highly Educated population to run a technological "democracy" and obviously, were we are, is not it. This is just one more reason that seems to indicate that vigilance to the cause of Freedom, once a sacred concept.... is slipping into some strange new form of a dark age of unenlightened political will towards actual Fascist politics, to the ruin of all.
This bill is an indicator of what that looks like, should it take root as Law.
Just a momentary burst of annoyance. I thought yours was yet another automated post saying 'crime is wrong, don't do it', ignoring the oppressive features of the legislation.
Your response indicates that there is a real person there, so I apologise for the foul language.
"he was confident the president would address the needs of both Hollywood and those concerned with internet privacy."
Ummm, so that would be the "need" to buy a new yacht? Or the "need" to throw another multi-million dollar awards spectacular so that the industry can feel good about itself for another couple of months?
The problem is not piracy. The problem is greed.
I admit to downloading movies, but if it's good, I pay for it. Sadly it seems the entire entertainment industry has taken on a "quantity over quality" mentality over the last decade or so - roughly the same time period the internet has been popular, which is convenient since they can continue to blame everyone else but themselves.
Right, «Anonymous Coward», the problem is not at all greed on the part of MPAA ; the organisation has paid for the legislators fair and square (at least «fair and square» according to the MPAA's lights) and therefore gets to write precisely the legislation that serves its interest and see to it that it gets passed. Ain't capitalism grand ?!!...
Henri
AC, you, and the people behind this Bill just don't get it. There has been a genuine paradigm shift in the way that people access and pay for entertainment, and the industry has not adapted to it. There are many ways that this could be done which *might* see a reduced profit margin at the top end (for which I shed no tears) for a while, but which would acknowledge that the world has changed, but the only way the greedy bastards see is to try to hold back development through legislation that impacts the innocent more than the guilty (for whatever values of "innocent" and "guilty" you choose to apply).
Seriously, do you really believe that internet privacy should be infringed upon even more just because movie producers don't have the imagination to change the way they do things? If so, you have a very strange set of priorities!
the more appropriate question is: whose greed? The bastages at the MPAA who think they have a God-given right to collect money from you regardless, or the bastage freetards who think that just because they have a copy and can upload it to a torrent everyone else should get it for free?
...
If you answered "trick question, they both are" go to the head of the class.
No one is entitled to anything they don't pay for. I don't like the price that Ferrari charges for their cars so I should just be able to take one without paying for it. I don't like the price of gasoline so I should just be able to steal it.
It's time to stop blaiming others for your inability to deal with reality. If you don't like capitalism move to China and see how life is there.
You don't have to be a freetard to understand passing legislation to defend and prop up obsolete business models is a horrible idea. Even the Supreme Court understood this over 100 years ago by allowing self playing pianos with piano rolls (the original mp3), without the authors explicit permission (although of course royalties are paid). The difference is now people are indifferent and too lazy to stand up for their rights and our leaders are so greedy that their needs now greatly outweigh the obligation they feel towards the public.
No one is passing legislaton to prop up an out of date Biz model. Obviously if the freetards new anything about Biz they'd know you can't steal other people's property and not be punished. So not only are these folks Biz ignorant they are ethically bankrupt perps thinking they can sponge off others.
And if the bis people knew anything about supply and demand they will know that, even then, people voted with their feet, then their wallets, and now with their fingers. At least a good undercurrent of the freetard movement is that the biz people are demanding too much and aren't willing to negotiate down when they find no buyers (the normal trend is to mark down and see about correcting the sore points--please tell me where I can find honest-to-goodness GOOD music anymore). There's also the matter of resale: something people have been used to since the BOOK (how many attempts to block the resale of books have succeeded--then there's the matter of libraries). Top that off with fading limits on copyrights (a privilege which according to fundamental laws is supposed to be limited--like patents--so as to advance the arts in exchange for enriching society) and an economy stuck in the doldrums and you have businesses stuck in the middle of a PR nightmare as their customers (pay attention: business require customers to operate, last I checked) feel they're getting the shaft. And for some people, a little luxury (such as a good night out or a nice tune to hear) is important to maintain a positive mental attitude that translates into social relations and other societal influences.
And were it not for freetards loading up the torrents with so much pirated stuff that it is hard to find the legitimate uses when you look at a tracker, that argument might even play in public. But with the rampant theft anyone with a brain has to support some sort of rewrite of the law to bring balance back to the marketplace. The trick is getting the right balance.
It's reached a point where the music companies and the public can't agree on the balance. Indeed, some people on both sides don't WANT balance (the corporates are answering to their shareholders and the freetards are engaged in civil disobedience, so say each side) and have enough sway to keep the boat rocking. Plus it's the corporations that hold the government's ear right now (IOW, government doesn't have enough fear of the people) in an atmosphere of considerable corporate distrust.
>No one is passing legislaton to prop up an out of date Biz model.
What? Oh you mean Congress extending copyright every time Mickey Mouse might go into the public domain is just a coincidence. Life of the author is not near long enough for copyright. We need to make it so Great Great Great trust fund grandkids can sponge off their ancestors work as well.
>No one is passing legislaton to prop up an out of date Biz model.
DMCA. What you say a security researcher wants to make sure the copy protection is not a root kit backdoor being installed on millions of computer. Oh no no that is not allowed or Sony might lose billions for a six year in a row.
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After all everything should be privately owned and Linux is just another commie plot (tragedy of the commons applies in the digital world as well). After all the National parks are just hippie refuges stopping hard working oil companies from taking whats rightfully theirs and creating jobs. There is no such thing as the public interest or public good, just a bunch of consumers to fleece. Welcome to the Republican party.
there's a very easy solution to the entire issue of IP rights, piracy, transportability, and it's one that the MPAA has already sworn to fight against tooth and nail.
Simple is sometimes the best medicine. and in this case would make life easier for everyone.
When a consumer purchases a virtual or physical copy of a work, then they should be able to transport that work to whatever format they deem desirable. The MPAA definately does not want that, they, in fact, prefer you to be forced to buy a new copy for every distinct platform.
So that leave two possible solutions.
1. Release the content at whatever price point they believe is appropriate for the anticipated cross platform use by purchasers. ( this won't happen btw )
or
2. Clearly state, in not so fine print on the front label what platforms the content is intended for. ( this won't happen either )
The reason number 1 won't happen is that they desperately want that NOT to be solution, because then they'd have to justify the 75$USD price tag they'd want to charge, which nobody would pay, which would kill their movie sales.
The second won't happen because they don't want the consumer to avoid the purchase due to perceived or real limitations on the content delivery method. After all, the MPAA has gone 'on record' stating that the pricing of content includes factoring for re-purchase after media failure, and repurchase for alternat platforms.
The entire piracy/MPAA issue is rooted from the content creators failure to evolve their business models and refusal to admit that their product isn't worth what they want it to be worth.
You gotta find them first, and then you may learn to your dismay that a number of them are based in countries with hostile relations to the West or simply don't want to allow extradition. That's one of the beauties of the Net. It doesn't respect borders while governments HAVE TO.
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