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Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA

THe obvious answer is to quit stealing things and you wont get laws like this.

Laws like this won't stop people from stealing things.
 
THe obvious answer is to quit stealing things and you wont get laws like this.

No.

The obvious answer is for these big media companies to change their business model.

I was listening to Planet Money on NPR. They were talking about the music industry, which has been struggling for the past decade since the internet became proliferate.

They were talking about Katy Perry and how she was the most successful music artist in 2011. They talked to a music exec and the reporters found out that the music company spent about $44 million on producing and promoting her albums.

The profit they got from all her albums, however, was only $8 million.

You see, in the past, music companies focused their business model on selling CDs. And they would spend a lot of money developing the celebrity of an artist to get them popular enough so that people would buy those albums. And so the music artist would make more of their money off of licensing deals and from live shows - things that the recording industry ignored.

But now, with filesharing, the recording industry is getting less and less from selling music despite spending just as much money on developing an album and developing a music artist.

So, very soon, the music industry will change its business model. It will give out recordings for free in order to promote the live shows and licensing that music artists do, of which the music companies will get a cut, and they will get that in return for developing a music artist's celebrity.

So very soon all this copyright protection will be moot anyways since the big media companies will change their business model to adapt to it.

As soon as these laws get passed the free market will make them obsolete.
 
THe obvious answer is to quit stealing things and you wont get laws like this.

Bull****.

Your answer dodges the issue at hand.

The laws we have now - with some tweaking - are more effective and logical than ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, etc. This is demonstrated with the Megaupload thing going on.
 
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I think ya'll are just going to have to take a deep breath and accept the fact that copyrighted material put on the web for the purposes of cheating companies out of making money is going to get tougher and tougher to do.
I think you are just going to have to learn that these types of 'treaties' have far greater implications for internet freedom than 'putting copyrighted material on the web for the purposes of cheating companies out of making money'. If you're simplifying the objections to treaties and bills like this one to that point, then you haven't been paying attention.
 
I think very few people have a problem with that.

More than you think.

I have a problem with it. IMO these copyright holders are trying to use the law to hold back technical progress and prop up their outdated model. The main reasons people use bittorrent isn't that it is free, it is that it is available everywhere and it has a radically better selection of content than any legal. Many people have a cable subscription, go see movies in theaters when they're available and have a netflix subscription. But that only gets you access to like 5% of the media that is out there. Itunes gives you access to more like 20%, but the prices are ridiculous. So, they use bittorrent to fill in the gaps where the old school media vendors fail them.

At first I sided with the RIAA and the MPAA figuring it was reasonable to let them keep the old model alive long enough to stand up new services and technologies that can compete with bittorrent. But instead of doing that, they are apparently just planning on never modernizing their offering and trying to rely on the law to force people to use an outdated system indefinitely.

If they got their act together and stood up an internet based system that had nearly as much content as bittorrent has that charged a fixed monthly fee for all you can watch and charged say $60 a month or something, they would beat bittorrent out of the market in no time. Heck, they could almost certainly be making more money by doing it. They just need to get off their asses and do it, and at this point I think they've used up the window where the law can justifiably force people to use outdated technologies for their profit. If they set up something like that and then they wanted to crack down on people who used bittorrent, that would be fine with me, but using the law to hold back technological progress is a bad path. A well tuned law pushes us forwards, it doesn't hold us back.
 
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Doesn't congress have to approve treaties? If Obama is against SOPA and PIPA it makes him a hypocrite to sign this and give foreign nations the right to regulate US based websites and users. I also agree that the penalties are crazy.

I can see both sides to this issue.

On the one hand, people do "pirate" copyrighted material all the time - music, movies, literature, video games, software applications, etc., etc. Those creators and/or vendors of these "products" deserve to have their property protected against unlawful copy and distribution.

On the other hand, there does need to be a better way to police the Internet to deter online piracy without abdicating such duties to foreign entities. Of course, if you read the Act in question, it's really a two-way street at play here, i.e., "If France learns that their intellectual property is being sold illegally over the Internet in Russia, they should be able to contact the ISP in Russia and have the stop the piracy". Maybe I need to study the subject matter more, but on the surface I don't see a problem with this. After all, it's not a "restrictive" measure to be practiced arbitrarily by the host nation, i.e., a media blackout. It's merely a nation trying its best to protect against the unlawful distribution of online countent. Some may think that the policing authority shouldn't be focused on the ISP that committed the infractions but instead should be levelled against the violator itself, but that's the problem - catching that violator is akin to finding a needle in a haystack! Therefore, focusing in on the host ISP is much easier than trying to "find" the "bootlegger" himself.

On the issue of presidental authority to sign the treaty in question: Per Art 2, Sect. 2, clause 2: "[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..."

With that framework in mind, I suggest folks read the following two linked articles to determine for yourselves if the President has side-stepped the Senate concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, towit, I invite your attention to Article 39, footnote 17 of said Agreement.

Strategy for American Innovation: Promote Market-Based Innovation | The White House (See third paragraph under, "Support and protect effective intellectual property rights")

Meet the Women of the Administration: Miriam Sapiro | The White House (See "What has been your favorite moment since you’ve been working at the USTR?" for details)

(Sidenote: This Agreement isn't just w/China as outlined in the footnote to Article 39.)
 
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No.

The obvious answer is for these big media companies to change their business model.

I was listening to Planet Money on NPR. They were talking about the music industry, which has been struggling for the past decade since the internet became proliferate.

They were talking about Katy Perry and how she was the most successful music artist in 2011. They talked to a music exec and the reporters found out that the music company spent about $44 million on producing and promoting her albums.

The profit they got from all her albums, however, was only $8 million.

You see, in the past, music companies focused their business model on selling CDs. And they would spend a lot of money developing the celebrity of an artist to get them popular enough so that people would buy those albums. And so the music artist would make more of their money off of licensing deals and from live shows - things that the recording industry ignored.

But now, with filesharing, the recording industry is getting less and less from selling music despite spending just as much money on developing an album and developing a music artist.

So, very soon, the music industry will change its business model. It will give out recordings for free in order to promote the live shows and licensing that music artists do, of which the music companies will get a cut, and they will get that in return for developing a music artist's celebrity.

So very soon all this copyright protection will be moot anyways since the big media companies will change their business model to adapt to it.

As soon as these laws get passed the free market will make them obsolete.

O.K., so these laws are no big deal.....We will ignore that it's not just music people steal.
 
Bull****.

Your answer dodges the issue at hand.

The laws we have now - with some tweaking - are more effective and logical than ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, etc. This is demonstrated with the Megaupload thing going on.

I don't really disagree there. I've said so in the past. While I agree redundancy is a waste of time and money, redundancy is not going to end the internet as we know it.
 
Look fair enough on that.

But the penalties for doing so are extremely harsh considering it's a victimless crime.

Victimless crime? Who do you think get's hurt when you steal movies, games, programs and TV shows? It's not the higher ups, they have their money invested. It's the lower end staff who lose their jobs.

Victimless my ass.
 
Victimless crime? Who do you think get's hurt when you steal movies, games, programs and TV shows? It's not the higher ups, they have their money invested. It's the lower end staff who lose their jobs.

Victimless my ass.
Really? Do you have some kind of report to back this up? And also, do you have proof that people who 'steal' music, etc. would have bought the products if they weren't available to 'steal'?
 
No, not completely but it sure makes them mad.
Which makes them find better ways to steal. LOL

But again, the implications of treaties and bills like this go far beyond stealing and those implications are the problem. If things like this only affected maliciously illegal copyright violations, then there wouldn't be a problem.
 
Really? Do you have some kind of report to back this up? And also, do you have proof that people who 'steal' music, etc. would have bought the products if they weren't available to 'steal'?

I would never buy a Rolex and yet, I can't sell pirated copies.
 
Which makes them find better ways to steal. LOL

Meh, for some reason I don't find stealing as funny as you do.

But again, the implications of treaties and bills like this go far beyond stealing and those implications are the problem. If things like this only affected maliciously illegal copyright violations, then there wouldn't be a problem.

I believe there would be because stealing is the problem but I'm always willing to see examples where I'm wrong.
 
Meh, for some reason I don't find stealing as funny as you do.
Meh, I find it funny when people advocate solutions to problems that actually worsen the problems especially when those people think that making people mad (LOL) matters. I also tend not to get all bent out of shape about things outside of my control.

I believe there would be because stealing is the problem but I'm always willing to see examples where I'm wrong.
I don't know how you could see examples of a hypothetical scenario. However, if you read anything about protests against SOPA, then you would know that the main arguments against it were about things other than stealing.
 
I would never buy a Rolex and yet, I can't sell pirated copies.
What is your point? Obviously you can't sell pirated copies because Rolexes can't be downloaded, copied and shared over the internet while the original Rolex stays intact and with its owner. My point was that pirated music, etc. would only affect people if those who stole the music, etc. would have paid for it had they not had access to the pirated versions. If they wouldn't have paid for it, then nobody lost any money.
 
Meh, I find it funny when people advocate solutions to problems that actually worsen the problems especially when those people think that making people mad (LOL) matters. I also tend not to get all bent out of shape about things outside of my control.

Nobody has shown where it will worsen the problem.

I don't know how you could see examples of a hypothetical scenario. However, if you read anything about protests against SOPA, then you would know that the main arguments against it were about things other than stealing.

Of course, who wants to admit they are stealing?
 
What is your point? Obviously you can't sell pirated copies because Rolexes can't be downloaded, copied and shared over the internet while the original Rolex stays intact and with its owner. My point was that pirated music, etc. would only affect people if those who stole the music, etc. would have paid for it had they not had access to the pirated versions. If they wouldn't have paid for it, then nobody lost any money.

I would never buy a real Rolex. My buying a fake does not then harm them in any way. Right?

There is no proof that the shoplifter would have bought the $200 hand bag either.
 
Nobody has shown where it will worsen the problem.

Ignoring what has been said, quoted != "nobody has shown..."



Of course, who wants to admit they are stealing?

Or admit when they're putting words in people's mouthes?


BTW ever hear of the edit button, or not posting so quickly and looking at, responding to the posts you want to reply to?
 
Ignoring what has been said, quoted != "nobody has shown..."

You can say anything. I've been shown video's stating that 911 was a creation of the government and that we never landed on the moon also.

Or admit when they're putting words in people's mouthes?

I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth. In various posts about this many have stated here that indeed they will steal because the creators of the product want too much for it.

Nobody is going to go on record with that arguement though where it matters.

BTW ever hear of the edit button, or not posting so quickly and looking at, responding to the posts you want to reply to?

Nice attempt to make the discussion about me.
 
I would never buy a real Rolex. My buying a fake does not then harm them in any way. Right?

There is no proof that the shoplifter would have bought the $200 hand bag either.

It costs money to make multiple handbags. If a bunch of people stole handbags that took money to produce, then the company would lose money. On the other hand the files don't have a manufacturing cost other than the original copy. If people illegally download something that they wouldn't pay money for, the company doesn't take a loss.
 
I have a question for President Obama, was he attempting to usurp the authority of Congress when it comes to intellectual property and was he standing in the shows of congress when he signed this treaty?

Intellectual property is governed by Congress: Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the US Constitution The Congress shall have Power: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

This is enforced by the Commerce Clause of the constitution which states: Article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution:The Congress shall have Power: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.


While he has executive authority to make this treaty a question of whether the treaty is enforceable is another issue.

Those that had requested Obama to take this action include:

Copyright Alliance

Motion Picture Association of America

National Association of Manufacturers

Recording Industry Association of America

Software & Information Industry Association

Any thoughts?
 
It costs money to make multiple handbags. If a bunch of people stole handbags that took money to produce, then the company would lose money. On the other hand the files don't have a manufacturing cost other than the original copy. If people illegally download something that they wouldn't pay money for, the company doesn't take a loss.

But those who refuse to steal the product does with higher costs to them. In the end, if they decide to steal nobody gets the product as it's never created in the first place.
 
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