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The Definition of Irony

Posted by Doug Sat, 02 Apr 2005 17:02:00 GMT

Jack Valenti signs a Betamax tape of an unauthorized copy from TV of a Woody Allen movie on the Supreme Courthouse steps. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

The back story. The Napster was sued and shutdown for facilitating copyright infringement. They had a big server farm where everyone went to copy music. As a central entity with copies of infringing works on their servers, they were a ripe target. Lesson learned: when setting up P2P networks design around centralized servers. Enter Grokster, a P2P software company that designs a system with no centralized servers. MGM studios sues the Grokster software company because the users of their software use it to infringe copyrights.

Two courts have struck this down on the grounds of the “bright line” of the original Sony “Betamax” case. The Supreme Court heard the final appeals of MGM a few days ago to basically decide if the Sony case should be reversed. The “bright line” of the Sony case says that if a product has significant non-infringing uses then the inventor can’t be held liable for what his customers do with it. The affect on real innovation of reversing this is astounding. Image the liability an inventor would have to shoulder if someone, somewhere, sometime used their product for copyright infringement. For those of you who need this spelled out, B-A-D N-E-W-S.

The back back story. Back in 1982 when the Sony case was being heard. Jack Valenti was the President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA, essentially the lobby group for all the movie studios). He testified before Congres that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Even though it’s needless to say this I will anyway, he was wrong then. The opposite is true. The VCR has made the American film producers an incredible amount of money.

Jack Valenti is an incredibly frustating man. He’s without a doubt the most successful lobbyist of all time. Don’t let his “I’m just an unsophisticated country boy” act fool you. He’s incredibly intelligent and very smooth. As President of the MPAA he had one goal: make the film industry as much money as possible. The American public was not his concern. He’s recently retired from the MPAA, but I still don’t trust him.

Stories like this one on Boing Boing are exactly why I follow it.

Posted in Copyright | 1 comment

"Reducing piracy offers direct benefits..."

Posted by Doug Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:28:00 GMT

For those who don’t know, I believe the copyright laws have gotten out of balance. They were originally written to promote science and the arts. Today, copyright laws is all about limiting access to that science and art. The Business Software Alliance is the enforcer of the software industry. It’s their job to stop “piracy”. (A small tangent here. I think “piracy” is a bad word to describe copyright violations. I also think “hacker” is a bad word to describe someone who commits computer trespass. Alas, the media has not listened to my pleas.).

I found this post on Boing Boing about the BSA publishing some material on piracy:

Some have attempted to paint copyright piracy as a victimless crime, arguing that “if I make a copy of a computer program, you still get to keep your copy, and we are both better off.” This is hardly the case.

Reducing piracy offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the piracy rate, the larger the IT sector and the greater the benefits.

Seth David Schoen took a funny slant on this and applied it to other concepts. In each case, Seth takes something that we all want and shows having it is at the consequence of some less desirable entity.

Some have attempted to paint reading books as a victimless crime, arguing that “if you read a book, you gain knowledge, and we are all better off.” This is hardly the case.

Reducing reading offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of reading, the larger the television audience and hence the larger the advertising sector, and the greater the benefits.

Some have attempted to paint children’s games as a victimless crime, arguing that “if you and I play tag, we have fun, and we are both better off.” This is hardly the case.

Reducing children’s unstructured recreation offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of unstructured play, the larger the arcade sector, and the greater the benefits.

As a programmer, it’s hard to say that I want a smaller IT sector. Seth quotes “someone” at Red Hat:

His goal was to make the software industry much smaller, and to provide greater benefits to software users and customers in the process. In his view, the software industry was much too large and was extracting much more money than necessary, partly because of limited competition and partly because of defects in its (for lack of a better term) business models.

I think I can agree that with this. Software is too expensive. It’s price/cost seems out of whack with its value. Overall, software still sucks. It still crashes frequently. It’s frequently compromised to do something it shouldn’t or allow something it shouldn’t. That’s just functionality defects. For the most part, software still doesn’t do what users expect. What it does do is hidden from users behind interfaces that aren’t intuitive.

This has turned into a rag on the software industry. It didn’t start out that way. The point is that the software industry and IT sector isn’t something that needs protecting at all cost. Congress shouldn’t keep extending copyright just so that the entrenched software business can keep making money.

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