RIAA: LulzSec & Anonymous Show Why We Need PROTECT IP

from the say-what-now? dept

Ah, the RIAA will apparently stoop to pretty much any old ridiculous argument to get PROTECT IP passed, I guess. The RIAA’s Mitch Glazier has written a typically ridiculous blog post defending PROTECT IP. Most of it tries (and fails) to counter the very credible claims of folks like Paul Vixie (who knows this stuff) that PROTECT IP (1) won’t work and (2) will break the internet and cause tremendous collateral damage. The arguments against Vixie pretty much amount to quoting people, who have known associations with those backing PROTECT IP, saying that “eh, things won’t be that bad, and we can minimize unintended consequences.”

But where it gets totally ridiculous, as noted by ZeroPaid, is at the end, where Glazier honestly tries to claim that PROTECT IP is needed… because of LulzSec. I’m not kidding:

And in a world where hackers set their sights on new targets every day ? most recently the official United States Senate website, allegedly the CIA?s public website and Arizona?s law enforcement database ? do we think a lawless Internet defended to the extreme is a good thing?

If I understand the argument Glazier is making here correctly, it’s that “some people totally unrelated to any of this do bad stuff on the internet, thus it’s fine to break the internet to protect the obsolete business model of the people who pay me.” Is that convincing? The fact that there has been some hactivism going on of late has absolutely nothing to do with PROTECT IP.

And, in the meantime, if Glazier’s point is that we need to “protect” musicians, perhaps he should focus on doing something about the guy who works for the RIAA who once (as a Congressional staffer) tried (and temporarily succeeded) to take away the right of musicians to reclaim their copyrights by secretly changing the definition of “work for hire,” by making an overnight change in an unrelated bill that no one noticed until the bill was already passed. This is the same guy who went to work for the RIAA a few months later, on a half-a-million dollars a year salary. Oh wait… that guy was also named Mitch Glazier.

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Comments on “RIAA: LulzSec & Anonymous Show Why We Need PROTECT IP”

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40 Comments
Jay (profile) says:

See Mike, here’s the problem.

When Mitch Glazier makes a statement such as this, the public isn’t the audience. The public isn’t even in the same league as those who are the audience of these “negotiations”.

Remember, we have Senators that are downright dumb when it comes to piracy. They aren’t going to know Mitch Glazier’s background in “typo correction” anymore than the average Senator doesn’t know what oversight means.

Now we’re asking all of these people to go against the grain and against all of the money for their morals that they checked at the door when they became a Senator/Congressmen. With a few exceptions, how many of them actually would vote no when the money is so much?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

See Mike, here’s the problem.

When Mitch Glazier makes a statement such as this, the public isn’t the audience. The public isn’t even in the same league as those who are the audience of these “negotiations”.

Remember, we have Senators that are downright dumb when it comes to piracy. They aren’t going to know Mitch Glazier’s background in “typo correction” anymore than the average Senator doesn’t know what oversight means.

Now we’re asking all of these people to go against the grain and against all of the money for their morals that they checked at the door when they became a Senator/Congressmen. With a few exceptions, how many of them actually would vote no when the money is so much?

So my take from this is that you are defeated. You have conceded that Protect IP is a slam dunk and now there’s nothing left but to lay down the inflammatory rhetoric. There are reasoned arguments to make. Allegations of stupidity, corruption, immorality, etc. is the refuge of the uninformed, lazy or defeated. In turn it allows the entire opposition viewpoint to be marginalized as being a collection of nutjobs, radical zealots and professional malcontents.

Jay (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Hi Buck, welcome back.

So let’s get this straight:

Instead of looking at all of the money passed around, you’d rather sit here and attack the person, yet again, and go off on a tangent where you don’t even respond to reasoned debate, but obfuscate the issues raised.

Like here, where the understanding is that Mitch Glazier’s argument is targeted at Congress, which is why the dissonance is strong in him.

Or how about the valid data that shows the largest contributions?

Here’s the top 5 since you seem not to notice: (For the bill funds on the left, against the bill funds on the right)

Barbara Boxer CA $1,625,823 $122,115
Harry Reid NV $1,302,249 $262,500
Al Franken MN $1,231,850 $45,905
K. Gillibrand NY $1,218,737 $106,805
Chuck Schumer NY $1,174,200 $109,650

Now just look at all that money coming to Senators… Maybe next time, read the quotes instead of going on a tangent.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

So I’m not sure what you are saying,. Do you contend that money comes in to Senators with a note that says “Here’s $10,000 to oppose Protect IP”? Otherwise I’d be interested to know how you make these tallies. Are these monies totals? How do you know that they are to influence the vote on that bill and not another one of dozens being considered, Methinks I smell bullshit.

Jay (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

It’s right here

The money to support the bill is 8.5 times more than the $4.9 mil to vote no to it.

You can even see the time line of the contributions, which allows people to see when the most money came in (Sep-Oct 2010) Just from looking at the graph, that’s when the hugest surge of lobby funds goes in. Which makes sense considering every two years election day is in November.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Sorry Masnick, but you can’t pick and choose here. You either agree or not with the idea of interference in the internet.

You can’t say it’s ok to censor one entity but then say it’s not necessary for another.

Would you prefer if we used spammers as an example?

Greevar (profile) says:

Hackers and Intellectual Property?

Intellect is generally considered the power of thought and property is something one possesses that others do not. So to say that your thoughts belong to you exclusively is, on its face, an attempt to claim ownership of ideas you conceive. Thus, it highlights how ridiculous this PROTECT IP Act really is. By claiming the right to ownership of “thought property”, they try to leverage that false concept to support an even more unsupportable and unrealistic law. So it is of no surprise that they would go so far as to take hacktivists LulzSec and Anonymous, draw a line between them and say that it directly relates to copyright. Logic and rational thinking went away as soon as money became part of the equation. Money drives most people to do all sorts of things they would otherwise say is wrong and/or crazy.

Anonymous Coward says:

When DMCA was up for consideration for law, the RIAA who was pushing the bill said that it would only use it for the proper things. At the time I was saying this isn’t just for RIAA’s benefit but will be a national law. Just because you can’t see a use for it at the moment of conception into a law won’t mean it will either go away nor be reserved for one particular group.

Sure enough we have seen what a mess it has become. It is now used for everything from false take downs to a method used to attempt to control speech with a handful of pretty much every other reason you can think of thrown in. It’s turned into a snake’s nest.

ACTA has been in session around the world. The effects of that if the world becomes signatory will be felt for a long time to come. Just like DMCA, it too will be another snake’s nest.

When the net gets killed so it can be all the corporation’s wet dream of a world wide market without the need of brick and mortar stores, it will also turn to being the best place to rob. Crime won’t go away because you have a law.

The only thing that will reduce crime is security. That one item has proven over and over to prevent robbery. You make it tough enough to break in, the chances of robbery go down as the criminal will go somewhere else for easier pickings.

Making laws has never changed moral behavior. Prohibition did’t work, anti-abortion laws won’t work, nor does the War on Drugs work. All are attempts at changing moral behavior into what some group sees as what it should be. Throwing money at enforcing those laws only makes for smarter criminals, not for making them mind moral laws.

The proposed Protect IP is worse in that it isn’t trying to enforce moral law, it’s trying to enforce the equivalent of sectioning off a piece of atmosphere and claiming sole ownership to it. That’s even worse than increasing security as there’s no place to build a fence to increase security in imagination land.

gorehound (profile) says:

Frak You RIAA

all i wanted to say was a big finger in the air fuck you to these clowns at the RIAA.
i refuse to pay one damn cent for any of your manufactured BS.NOTA !!!
I will never support any artist who signs with these asses.I would rather take what I owned by the now RIAA pig signer and throw their shit into my garbage.
You will never take our rights away.We will fight PROTECT-IP as best as we can.We do have rights in this country and PROTECT-IP goes against the Constitution of this country.You and your paid-off cronies in Washington will not be able to lock down the Internet.GET A FUCKEN LIFE.
We will do what we have to in our intelligent techie way to circumvent any BS you try and put in our way for freedom of the Internet.
YOU ARE FOOLS !!!
You would rather waste even more of our tax paying money to play Internet Cop or whatever you want to call it.You would rather force ISP’s to foot part of this disgusting bill forcing prices for Internet Access to go up just when our great economy is so well off.
YOUR DAY WILL COME !!!
one of these days you will get what you traitors to the US way of freedom deserve and it will not be pretty for you.
YOUR INDUSTRY IS A DINOSAUR !!!
like the old but cool reptiles of the past your day has come.Even Mick Jagger came out and said a few years ago that your greedy shit industry would not sign The rolling Stones now.The days you took chances and gave us unigue and cool artists is long gone by decades.You are nothing but a dinosaur about to go extinct.
ARTISTS DO NOT NEED THESE ASSES !!!
any artist nowadays can put their own stuff out,book their own tours, and put together their own merchandise.use facebook,internet,music reviews,etc.No artist even needs to be on these bloated piece of feces labels.Just go DIY and reap the money you make instead of being reamed up the ass.

aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh…..enough ranting and raving.I am frothing at the mouth over PROTECT-IP

PS: make sure to not ever give a vote to any of the government who agreed with this toilet paper.

Ur mom says:

He didn’t say how it could actually stop hackers. It wouldn’t, even if the gov took their website down what would that actually accomplish? They’d still hack. They still have twitter, irc, paste bin etc.

What a ridiculous comment, he’s just desperately throwing anything out there now that every respected technologist and venture capitalist is against it.

Daemon_ZOGG (profile) says:

To Hell With The MAFIAA groups

Rene Summer, Director of Government and Industry Relations at Ericsson, submitted: “Unnecessary restrictions and virtual barriers take away fundamental freedoms and breed pirates,”.
Until the MAFIAA groups change their status quo to a competetive business model.. I recommend, and openly encourage, the following: Use a public Wi-Fi, use various encryption techniques to tunnel through their firewall/proxy. Make sure your location is not within the establishment that offers the access. Don’t use micro$oft or apple OS as a computing medium. Always mask/falsify your MAC address. Don’t describe your specific exploit techniques and personal experiences to others. Get whatever you need and move on to the next available Wi-Fi. Don’t use the same Wi-Fi more than twice in one month. Whatever works for you.. keep it to yorself. Most importantly, Enjoy the Revolution! Power To The People. Power To Anonymous. Power To Lulzsec. Nuff Said!

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