Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown

kajidono · Jun 23, 2010

While they may never be able to truly defeat piracy and drive it from the lurking depths of the internet, copyright protection attack-dog organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have long dreamed of the day when they would no longer have to pay for their own copyright enforcement. Now that dream is on the verge of coming true, thanks to the Obama administration.

After countless lobbyist dollars from the music and film industry and a brief "public review", the administration rolled out its vision to fight piracy yesterday afternoon. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden -- whose blunt speech has sometime left him in trouble -- did not mince words.

He states, "This is theft, clear and simple. It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window."

The sound-byte comparing downloads to stealing jewels from New York City's finest jeweler quickly lit up the web. Bob Pisano, interim chief executive officer at the Motion Picture Association of America praised the VP, "It is especially critical that the United States has an effective framework for protecting creative content online and enforcing intellectual property rights in the digital environment."

According to the Obama administration, the RIAA, and MPAA, the world economy is pretty much doomed if we don't start prosecuting pirates at home and abroad. Without such a crackdown, businesses will go bankrupt the coalition argues. Biden states, "Piracy hurts, it hurts our economy."

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.

Another noteworthy study from three years back notes that virtually every citizen violates intellectual property laws in some way on a daily basis.

The White House press release was full of buzz phrases, but short on details. It did however indicate that the U.S. government may increasingly monitor filesharing networks and BitTorrent sites and assist media groups in their prosecution/threat letter efforts. It speaks of improved "law enforcement efforts at the Federal, state and local level."

The White House's vision is perhaps a prelude to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which will go before Congress later this year. The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement. It also implements an interesting provision called "imminent infringement", 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"). This is among the first official "thought crime" provisions to be proposed by the U.S. government. The bill also makes it a criminal offense to bypass DRM.
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http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=18815

Having solved all other problems, our glorious leader has decided to come after you.

Hardlyevr · Jun 23, 2010

and of course they want to be able to shut down the entire internet in case of an emergency, but of course no specific description of what would warrant that kind of censorship, oops I mean action.

jeepskate99 · Jun 23, 2010

Hardlyevr said: ↑

and of course they want to be able to shut down the entire internet in case of an emergency, but of course no specific description of what would warrant that kind of censorship, oops I mean action.
Click to expand...

Haven't heard that one yet. As far as evidence of losses goes, I think it's clear to anyone that knows anything about torrents.

kajidono · Jun 23, 2010

jeepskate99 said: ↑

Haven't heard that one yet. As far as evidence of losses goes, I think it's clear to anyone that knows anything about torrents.
Click to expand...

Ah, you said torrents. You're going to jail.

lonewolf4ad · Jun 23, 2010

just another reason to keep doing illegal downloads.

fight the system!

Humerox · Jun 23, 2010

Funny how copyright was originally set up to protect works for a reasonable period of time at taxpayer expense, with the payback being public domain after that period.

Now the taxpayer gets to protect copyright pretty much forever with nothing in return.

Yay.

MrMustard · Jun 24, 2010

A few months ago when the latest Ubuntu Linux came out, Bittorrent was the ONLY way you could download it. The direct download link wasn't working, probably overwhelmed with too much traffic. Bittorrent clients have legitimate legal uses. Then there is the fact that the movie industry is enjoying record profits in theater ticket sales, and that will only get bigger as more and more movies with 3d come out like Avatar. You can't pirate 3d, it doesn't show up on on a normal LCD or CRT screen. Piracy is only having a small impact on DVD sales. They could combat this by simply making the DVDs worth buying, by putting extras on them. When you download a pirated DVD from the pirate sites, you get the movie, that's it. I don't see this as a major problem worth solving.

lonewolf4ad · Jun 25, 2010

How about theatres start making insane profits off of the consumer.

pay out the arse for tickets
pay out the arse for soda, popcorn, etc..
seats suck, stereo not really that great.

OR

download it and enjoy it from the comfort of your home, with space to spread out, drink of your choice at reasonable cost from the store. and snack of your choice..

SCREW THE SYSTEM

kajidono · Jun 25, 2010

And none of this stuff would have ever been put up for download, like the netflicks downloads, etc, if the pirates hadn't hung on for so long. The big fat companies have tried everything to force their crappy outdated business model down everyones throats and we got tired of it a long time ago. Hell, ask all the musicians who are now suing the RIAA for their money what they think. That's right, out of all the money the music industry has collected in the name of their "artists," not one dime of it actually made it to the bands.

Winchester Magnum · Jun 25, 2010

This post of mine is copyrighted material. If copy/pasted or quoted into anyone elses, but not limited to, personal thread, post, signature, facespace, mybook, ect, there will be litigation!!!!

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