The MPAA runs amok
A SMALL TOWN in the former British colony of Virginia is paying the price of not standing up to the MPAA.
Coshocton, which is in Ohio and does not have a great tradition of standing up to authority, decided that it would be a wizard wheeze to turn control of its municipal network over to the movie companies' cartel. After all it did not want any nasty 'pirates' in its fine little town, it wanted only plain decent folk who buy lots of gingham and bake lots of apple pies.
Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie.
We are not talking a big network here. Sometimes it handles 100 people a day during busy times. The closure of the network means that the Coshocton County Sheriff's deputies can't complete a traffic or incident report and out-of-town business people can't park in town and use their laptops to connect to the Internet.
Because the whole network has a single IP address, the town did not know who the pirate was, so the MPAA demanded that the network be shut off.
The case is fairly typical of what has been happening on a wider scale across the world. The MPAA and its music industry cousin the RIAA have been running around, lobbying about the perils of 'piracy' and screaming that they'll be forced out of business and Western civilisation will fall unless peer-to-peer filesharing is stamped out or everyone even suspected of copyright infringement is hounded, fined, booted off the Internet or all of the above plus criminalised.
Rather than engage their brains and tell the entertainment companies along with the RIAA and MPAA to go forth and multiply, politicians seem to want to roll over and give the entertainment industries everything they want.
France was prepared to switch off Internet connections to those the MPAA and RIAA said were 'pirates'. It was only when it was pointed out that this was against the constitution without due process of law that the government backed down, partly.
In the US, the RIAA has been litigious and made a fool of itself by dragging children, the elderly and dead people into court to face 'piracy' charges.
In other words we are not dealing with nice people, we are dealing with bullies and stick-up artists, much like common muggers except they wear suits. We elect people to protect us from such things. Society is supposed to collectvely stand up against the overly aggressive to see that weaker people can thrive and make their contributions as well.
The shutting down of a small town network is a microcosm of what the entertainment industry would do to the Internet if we give it control. Rather than protecting us, lawmakers are happy to give in and switch off whoever the RIAA, MPAA and their cronies point to. In this case it was a whole town, but why not all the users of an ISP, a cable firm, mobile carrier or telecom?
It is clearly time for the body politic to tell these clowns to go away. Any sympathy they might have attracted in their war against 'piracy' they have squandered by their greedy, self-serving, neurotic and paranoid behaviour.
If David Cameron promised that the next time he got an RIAA thug or MPAA goon in his office yammering on about Internet controls that he would tell the berk to get out or be thrown out, I might even vote for him. I might even vote for Gorden Brown if he told the music and film industries to sling their hooks. µ
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Vote for Gorden Brown? That's going a bit too far, everyone knows you can't trust a word he says!!
Gorden Brown? Is she a mythical greek creature?
No sorry, that was a gorgon.
You cannot leave control to the abandoned [for one's greed] because they are merely one and the same. On the theme of "piracy" and other distractions, the thief collects revenue beyond reality and justification because its buddies are the constructors of the charter for perpetual income. Leaders who led in scenting their living dead of vested interests oka Fame, Fortune & Immortality with little evidence of leadership of the living process which is mandatory for progress. The fact that such entites and institutions exist and propagate is not the point for greed is what it is but that they are still standing is the point. Time for them to crumble but that could only happen when their supporters, the fence-sitters, realised their position and take a stand against their own ignorance. Devolution promotes sheeping for the slaughterhouse whereas Evolution promotes sheeping for Reality. Problem is, everyone love lambchops - so long as it is others' lambchops. Viewpoints, the foundation of Divide & Rule, vs Reality.
I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US it seems that every coffee shop, mall, and cafe (and every fourth house on the block) has an unsecured wireless connection, and plenty of the rest have laughable security. If the Internet Police really started cracking down, half the folks in the city would be kicked off the net just for not knowing how to set up their wireless routers, and most of the rest for knowing how to set it up, but for using WEP (very crackable) or 'password' as the password. It's a total free-for-all, and I doubt the ISPs really want to make that huge number of people angry.
Democracy and individual rights go out the window as soon as Big Money and Big Money-Fueled Lawyers enter the picture.
MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft...all have become aggressive, oppressive bully-organizations that sue and intimidate smaller companies and individuals which do not have billions of dollars at their disposal.
The sad thing is that people continue to fall for this "Big Money-Fueled Advertising", and feel that they have no other option but to continue to give their money to Big Media companies and Big Software companies (that reward them by oppressing them). The thing is, you do have a choice, and can choose to listen to a radio (no law against that "yet") and/or buy second-hand CD's/DVD's that provide no profit to these parasites, and use free, open-source software instead of paying through the nose for proprietary software. Cut off the money supply to these big companies/organizations, and they will become a lot more passive and "nice" (or cease to exist).
- Many musicians are now finding that it is hard to turn their backs on their fans and pretend they do not see the RIAA suing poor people and destroying their lives. Some (such as Avril Lavine for one) are saying that they will not allow anyone to be prosecuted for possessing or sharing one of their songs. Some others are flipping the finger to the media companies, and are beginning to directly distribute their songs (cutting out the whole "greedy middleman" problem). I think it would be great if actors would do the same thing.
Treating all customers like pirates and criminals, incorporating DRM right into consumer software such as Windows 7/Vista is just so very insulting and warped, that personally I will have no part in it. Just think what all the money presently paid to the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft could do if it was instead used to improve society (instead of suing people and paying corporate fat-cats). Cut yourself out of their food chain, and you can start to address this problem.
These people are very smart in some respects. Pretty soon artists with only a few hundred dollars will be able to create and distribute their music to an extremely wide audience with almost as much precision and care as those with millions of dollars. The same goes for the movie industry. Creating content is getting to be a very cheap thing and now only requires talent. The music and movie thugs, knowing that they don't have any of said "talent" are attempting to consolidate power before these new technologies completely supplant them and they disappear into the cold night.
Every time new technology comes along and makes a group of people irrelevant and worthless they cry and moan about it and try to retain the status quo, but things always change, and these money-grubbing assholes will eventually die out when the money stops flowing in.
A few greedy individuals (MPAA/RIAA), are no match for millions of greedy individuals. ;)
Unfettered capitalism, worse thing on this planet. It's far more rampant that your ET or TMZ watching butt realize.
This is why you stick it to the corporations and their henchmen every time you can. Because if not, your children will work in the sweatshop to provide the goods that the current sweatshop employees in China produce for YOU!
Guess what, if they had their way, you'd work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 25 cents an hour too.
Don't agree with me, at least I then will know some people WILL deserve working there, like the ostrich's that deny the truth of what's going on, and thus allowing it to happen.
Nick,
Once again you chose to blame copyright holders for prosecuting violation of copyright law. Wouldn't it be more responsible of this little town to get their wi-fi in order and prosecute anyone who violates copyright law? I'm gonna take a wild guess that maybe their town wi-fi is easily hacked too, making for a not so good situation regarding drivers records and personal info. accessible to police and anyone who hacks their wi-fi.
Whaddaya think Nick is it the MPAA's responsibility to maintain a proper wi-fi network or is it the MPAA's responsibility to prosecute violation of copyright law or lose their rights under copyright law?
Hint: It's the later...
As you have been informed numerous times before, bashing the RIAA, MPAA or other copyright holders will not change copyright laws.
Oh my word. Are you really so naïve my friend?
I don't mean to insult you ad hominem. You've clearly taken some time to write your point of view, which of course you're entitled to. However, you seem to think it's fair that a single incident of filesharing should force an entire wifi network to close down just because the bullies of the MPAA say so.
I fear for you if this is trully the way you act to big business. It's basically bend over and submit without engaging your brain and realising that the action here is COMPLETELY disproportionate to the crime committed.
Enforcement of copyright is being taken to extreme levels: that's the point Nick is making and quite well here. If we were talking about a paedolphile network or terrorists, who harm actual people and are true villains, then maybe this would have some use whilst the real law investigated further. However, this is just someone fed up with being ripped off by the movie moguls.
I wouldn't stand up for enforcers of copyright law if I were you. That's like defending the British National Party or George W Bush. Simply put, they won't stand up for you and your rights but will slowly dillute them in order to protect their own interests, as they see it.
If they ever file against you just buy the item in question from Ebay and tell them "go ahead take me to court I Own the material" If the ISP shuts you down because of offending material just call them up and say it is no longer on my computer.
Copyright infringement dictates that you use the material for personal gain or posess it for 24 hours. It's easy to get around. And the courts have already ruled that you are not responsible for what others use BT for. Cover your ass and nothing can stick to you.
You seem to be equating shutting down a Wi-Fi network with prosecuting a person for copyright infringement. They are not the same thing.
The MPAA should have sued the person who downloaded the movie, not forced the closure of a public service. It's like the MPAA forcing a town to shut down their power station because the electricity was used to power a computer that downloaded a film off the internet. It's not the electricity's fault, just like it's not the fault of the wi-fi network. So why should it be taken away?
While I'm reluctant to digress from the main comment theme of confusing the demands for due process with a request to shut down the entire system of Western Capitalism as we know it, I thought I should point out a minor glitch...
"Virginia Township is one of the twenty-two townships of Coshocton County, Ohio," says a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Township,_Coshocton_County,_Ohio" Wikipedia /a , and that's not really anything to do with the former colony of Virginia. Quite some distance apart, actually.
It seems recently that Nick Farrell has gone from biased articles to pure fabrication. The town decided to shut down the network instead of trying to track down pirate as apparently they didn't have the tech in place. Now I hate the MPAA and related organisations as much as anybody else but this article is just false.
This recession we have had interest rates at almost 0%, VAT reduced by 2.5%, mortgage assistance from the government etc.
Last recession under the Conservatives we had interest rates of 15%, VAT unchanged, no mortgage assistance, record home repossessions, record unemployment etc.
Gordon Brown may lack charisma, but for the average person they are better off with Labour than Conservative.
Be honest, this recession has been a massive global recessionwhile the last one was a minor recession, which has had a larger effect on your and your friends and family's way of life?
This one has been milder for the people I know. Although this time around it has not been possible for people to travel to find work in other European countries, at least at home some things have been done to cushion the blow.
Labour does have some serious flaws with promoting corrupt politicians like Keith Vaz. Keith Vaz is against Call of Duty, lol.
YMMV ;-)
....it's called the vote!
we all know this already, why don't you get this published on some big newspapers opinion page or such?
RIAA/MPAA. If theyd just start making music that people want and like... oh noes who supports Britney after that :(
This just makes people more angry and drives them to priate 100x as much just to spite the MPAA and RIAA, who in recent years have come out with absolutely terrible movies and music, if it can even be called that.
They would beat their own mothers to death had they found their internet connection was being used to pirate music. Not becase she was framed due to using a high-powered G router with absolutely no encryption.
Your logic is a stretch... Why would pirates steal 100X more music or movies if it's all bad as you proclaim?
The good news is the more folks who pirate the more money the copyright holders make in lawsuits against the pirates. It's also cool seeing the pirates end up in prison and being fined millions like the Pirate Bay boys who were in denial for years.
It really is true, what goes around comes around. Steal and go to prison. It's all good.
"...bashing the RIAA, MPAA or other copyright holders will not change copyright laws."
Ohh you'd be suprised. Thats how things are done in US. First comes the trial of public opinion and popularity. The Law usually comes second.
There is no capitalism in America. You've been had! We're as much Capitalist as China is Republican.
Guess who da MPAA gave all dere money to?
Ah say Big O. Big O. Big O...
Can you tell the diff between da two?
Ah say No No No...
Until I read your response I thought people with a point of view so out of alignment with reality only existed as nieve villains in childrens programmes.
I guess you are the type that advocates the arresting of everyone who drives a car, when one person does a hit and run, because thats exactly what this is like.
If this is law enforcement in anyway shape or form, then you must surely agree that carpet bombing is a finely targeted methodology.
You either work the RIAA/MPAA or are paid by them.
Either way people with your type of thinking must be kept away from power and influence.
What on earth gives the MPAA and RIAA to right to believe that their industry should be given special rights and protection over any other?
File sharing has greatly regulated the cost of media, and that is a good thing.
In the 80s a typical record cost £10, in todays money thats about £32 in todays money, a cost most normal people would now consider obscene.
We can thank the ability to copy for the regulation in price, and that is a very good thing, when controlling disgustingly greedy oppressive organisations. Limit the cash, limit the power and influence. The End.