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How Much Is Enough? We've Passed 15 'Anti-Piracy' Laws In The Last 30 Years

Justice Department Wants $5 Million To Bolster Its Efforts As Hollywood's Private Police Force

Legal Issues

from the regulatory-capture dept

Wed, Feb 15th 2012 11:00am -

While the proposed Obama 2013 budget for the federal government is supposed to be about cutting extraneous expenditures, one area where it’s seeking more money is to expand the Justice Department’s copyright enforcement efforts. You see, this is what happens when you hand the Justice Department over to the RIAA and MPAA. DOJ is seeking an extra $5 million to focus on these kinds of efforts, to hire 14 new employees, including nine lawyers, claiming that it’s “had an increase in the number of cases that we’re dealing with in IP.” Oh really? You mean like the case of Dajaz1? The site that the DOJ illegally held and censored for over a year? Perhaps if they had a few more lawyers on staff, someone would have taken the time to realize that they were supposed to give the domain back within a specified time frame. Or perhaps they could have used those people to realize that the site was posting music sent by the copyright holders. Of course, that’s not what would happen. Instead, they’d just focus on seizing more sites and creating more collateral damage. The real question, of course, should be why are we allowing the government to be Hollywood’s private police force?

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Comments on “Justice Department Wants $5 Million To Bolster Its Efforts As Hollywood's Private Police Force”

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108 Comments
Rich Kulawiec (profile) says:

Priorities, DoJ, priorities

There have been, since 1980, about 186,000 unsolved murders in the United States — about 6000/year.

If the DoJ would actually like to, you know, maybe kinda consider doing something for the cause of justice, then perhaps it could at least pretend to prioritize finding the killers responsible for these before worrying about bits flying around the Intertubes.

Oh, I know: it’s hard work pursuing these cases, some of which lack substantial evidence. It’s grueling, it’s unglamorous, it doesn’t result in headlines, it can be mind-numbing, depressing, frustrating. It’s much easier to seize a website selling fake NFL t-shirts and hold a press conference.

But those of us who PAY for the DoJ would prefer that it spend its resources pursuing murderers rather than acting as the lapdog of the few dying companies that nobody needs, nobody wants, and nobody will miss when they’re gone.

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

If they create a rape task force, are you going to argue that the DOJ is acting as a private police force for women? Are you going to say that the cops out arresting car thieves are a private police force for car owners?

The fact is that the content creators pay a huge amount of taxes in this country, much more than the folks like Kim Dotcom that you idolize. At the end of the day, the folks in government are going to side with the folks who pay taxes and act like good citizens. If they need some help policing, that’s what the taxes are for.

Plus, I seem to remember that you squawked and squawked when SOPA gave the content creators the ability to shut down web sites on their own. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to insist that the content owners pay for their own policing, you’re going to have to give them the power to do it. Otherwise you’ll need to support the DOJ doing it.

Oh wait. I’m sure you’ll find some way to be against any and all punishment for infringers– while still maintaining that you’re theoretically in support of copyright. Sheesh.

jupiterkansas (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

A rape task force benefits the entire public. Arresting car thieves benefits the entire public. Pursuing copyright infringement only benefits a handful of very wealthy companies (who could easily pay the $5 million themselves without blinking).

But I don’t mind the government going after real copyright infringement. I have a problem with them taking orders from the big wealthy companies, and I don’t think we’ll ever see them asking for more reasonable and enforceable copyright laws that don’t make every single citizen in the country a criminal, including the trolls here.

Loki says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

As usual, your arguments are weak.

Creating a task force or arresting car thieves is not a problem, if they are doing the job they are assigned. If they are just picking up or stopping people they don’t like, without reason or just cause, as they are doing with “IP enforcement” then yeah, I’m going to have a problem with that.

Secondly, comparing Dotcom to the average content creator is not relevant comparison as far as I am concerned. Let’s see what he paid compared to Chris Dodd or Cary Sherman. I can assure you that the average person who pays for their content (and is treated like criminals anyways) pays at least as much as most “content creators”.

As for copyright, given its current incarnation, I no more support the people who abuse it as a welfare system than I do the drunk on the corner who blows his whole check on booze every weeks.

silverscarcat says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

I don’t support the THEFT of stuff, like stealing an artist’s music and deleting all other copies of it.

However… Copying is NOT stealing.

Ugh.

At the end of the day, the government should side with the people who voted them in, not the small minorities of people with money.

But, they won’t, thus people have almost NO regard for copyright these days.

“Plus, I seem to remember that you squawked and squawked when SOPA gave the content creators the ability to shut down web sites on their own. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to insist that the content owners pay for their own policing, you’re going to have to give them the power to do it. Otherwise you’ll need to support the DOJ doing it.”

You’re right, we don’t want it both ways…

How about this?

The DOJ AND the MPAA/RIAA go away and stop infringing on OUR rights?!

The REAL rights.

Anonymous Coward says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Yes, the DOJ SHOULD be a police force for women, and yes, the DOJ SHOULD be a police force for car owners because they are the citizenry of the country. And the industries that you’re trying to stand up for don’t pay a lot in taxes because they use every loophole imaginable to make sure they don’t.

Chosen Reject (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

The fact is that the content creators pay a huge amount of taxes in this country,

They also receive a lot of tax money in return. Google “movie studio tax” to find out how much money they get from governments almost everywhere.

At the end of the day, the folks in government are going to side with the folks who pay taxes

Then why are they giving tax subsidies to movie studios?

and act like good citizens.

Like Interscope records and their whole drug trafficking thing?
for.

They have the power to do it with the DMCA. Even without the DMCA, if someone is breaking the law, they have the power to sue that person. They’ve done it before, they can still do it. SOPA/PIPA weren’t needed for them to do it.

MrWilson says:

Hey, Obama...

I don’t think the Democrats are going to lose in November regardless, but really, this is a lesser of four evils choice right now.

Obama – DOJ is the enforcement wing of the Entertainment Industry Party, NDAA indefinite detention, etc

Romney – out of touch plutocrat who will say anything to get into office

Gingrich – out of touch megalomaniac who thinks he’s Reagan but makes up his own version of history to justify whatever racist or bigoted ideas spew out of his mouth

Santorum – misogynist who wants to institute religious-based totalitarian policies in the bedroom and the clinic by outlawing abortion and contraception, thinks gay marriage leads to zoophilia and birth control to STDs

weneedhelp (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Too easy:
“If they create a rape task force, are you going to argue that the DOJ is acting as a private police force for women?”
Why yes, the police force IS for women citizens.

“Are you going to say that the cops out arresting car thieves are a private police force for car owners?”
Yes again, car owners are citizens, so yes again.

“The fact is that the content creators pay a huge amount of taxes in this country”
But much less than citizenry in it total, so FAIL.

“At the end of the day, the folks in government are going to side with the folks who pay taxes and act like good citizens.” – What a bunch of horseshit. Folks in government realized with the public outcry against SOPA, exactly who has the power when provoked. No amount of “Taxes” and bribes, could match the threat of being voted out.

“the folks who pay taxes and act like good citizens.”
Just goes to show your sad, sour point of view about life. We ARE good citizens.

“Plus, I seem to remember that you squawked and squawked when SOPA gave the content creators the ability to shut down web sites on their own. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to insist that the content owners pay for their own policing, you’re going to have to give them the power to do it. Otherwise you’ll need to support the DOJ doing it.”
Your memory is crap. What has been “squawked” about is ANY private/government entity being able to shut down a site/payment processing on just an accusation.

Its akin to me accusing you of being a terrorist, and the US just whisks you away to a private jail and tortures you. (Oh wait that’s right simulated drowning is not torture.)

I know, I know, silly us for wanting due process, and expecting our own government to follow the law. – Its pie-rate talk.

Adam J says:

Omfg are you kidding me? With budget cuts all across the board RIMDOJ (RIAAICEMPAADOJ), as they are all pretty much the same entity in regards to copyright and censorship, is asking for more money? My mom is a teacher and the school district she works for cannot even afford to hire a teacher’s aid to help her with all her students but we can spare 5 million for some bullshit? If Obama approves this BS then he better promptly take his ass back to Africa, IMO. JP, that was rude. 😀
On a side note, notice how the acronym RIMDOJ sounds a lot like the word rimjob? Fitting, as the people that head these agencies clearly like to lick ass. Ewwww!
Cheers!

Anonymous Coward says:

What you don’t seem to get Mike, is that it doesn’t matter. You can expose their corruption and sheer idiocy all you want, it doesn’t matter. It has never mattered. It will never matter.

Proof? What’s going on with dajaz1? What about with Roja? Lest we forget the mega mega conspiracy mega. The US are in full totalitarian force, of “Corporate America” and no one will stop them. Why? They are the money.

All the efforts against SOPA/PIPA? Stopped dead in its tracks by the mega fail of the US gov. They have shown, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they will abuse any power they have to protect dead legacy businesses.

I wouldn’t say it’s pointless to try, but based on all your efforts and the response from your irresponsible government show it’s wasted efforts and they’re here to keep pushing more ridiculous laws to take away all your rights and freedoms, at the benefits of corporations that cannot adapt, but still have more than enough money to call the shots, and buy corrupted government agencies.

Edward Teach says:

Serious ... Or Trolling?

How can we tell?

Trolling, it seems to me, is a form of sarcasm. That is, ironic humor by emphasis. Irony is itself humor by presenting opposites.

Each of these indirections (humor -> irony -> sarcasm) introduces a large fraction of noise into the mix, lowering the proportion of signal.

At some point, you just can’t tell. I think “bob” here has crossed the line from seriousness into trolling.

The eejit (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Hang on. Do you mean content creators like Eminem, who had to sue to get his contractual reiduals from his label?

Do you mean like Gary Friedrich, the co-creator of the modern Ghost Rider franchise, who isn’t legally allowed to tell people he’s the co-creator of said Ghost Rider, due to an IP lawsuit brought by Marvel?

Or do you mean like “Fox” and “Universal”, who merely pay for content to be created?

The eejit (profile) says:

Re:

The law like the one recently passed in Virginia, stating that life starts at conception?

Or the ones that allowed people to literally own other people?

Or ones that prevented people with a different shade of skin colour to get married?

Or ones that made you tip your hats to any passing cows?

Or the ones that legally permitted you to shoot someone, provided that it was from 12 yards away, with a longbow, on the battlements of the castle?

Those laws?

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Traditionally, yes, but that’s because we haven’t seen infringement practiced on such a large scale.

But it matters little if it’s civil or criminal. If someone is able to file a complaint against someone offering a copy for free on the Internet, that person is going either (1) need to call a cop or (2) be able to get at the private information of the infringer. Oh wait, there’s a third option that’s popular around here: give up altogether because bringing the infringer to court might hurt their feelings or force them to hire a lawyer or actually maybe make them feel bad.

You can’t have it both ways. Either the copyright holders get to pry into the private information of everyone on the Internet and– with proof– kick them off the web, or you get the cops to do it.

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

No. A car task force only benefits car owners. If you live in the city, there aren’t that many of them and they tend to be 1%ers. The same goes for cops pursuing jewelry theft and yacht theft. Are you suggesting that we give up on them too?

I think you should try to imagine yourself in the content creator’s shoes. You work really hard on a project. The film costs $200 million to create. You’ve paid union wages and health insurance for everyone on the set. Yet some lazy jerk online wants to give it all away for free.

The cops aren’t just working for the big corporation but also everyone who works for that corporation. Because if the movie theater doesn’t sell those tickets and pop corn, no one is going to plop down $200 million to pay for a crew. Corporations are made of people.

Gwiz (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

You can’t have it both ways. Either the copyright holders get to pry into the private information of everyone on the Internet and– with proof– kick them off the web, or you get the cops to do it.

Copyright holders do that now bob – with due process and under the guidance and direction of a court of law. What’s exactly wrong with that? Why should the taxpayers foot the bill for that? Look, if you want to spend you money on playing wac-a-mole with infringers, go for it, knock yourself out – just leave my money out of the equation, ok?

lolzzzz says:

COPYRIGHT = TAX

no longer aids artists
no longer stimulates invention
no longer protects the rights of the people to have public domain works so they can become part of the process
no longer is about fairness
no longer is about justice

IT IS about money and money only and in this case extreme utter sickening greed.
90% of your losses to civil liberties can be atributed to this crap

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

If only it were that easy. I know quite a few men who don’t want to spend more money on enforcing rape laws. But we have a democracy and if we pass the laws, we should pay to enforce them.

Despite what the folks around here think, copyright has a very broad level of support throughout society. Did someone take a digital picture from your Facebook page and use it in their advertisement? Copyright is there to help. 100% of the people created something copyrightable and I’m sure that most can imagine some case where they would want to stop someone from reproducing that work.

I don’t know what folks keep saying that weakening copyright to make life easier for Big Search’s bottom line is the side of the general public. Big Search is another order of magnitude larger than Big Content.

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

I bet that 100% of the population created something copyrightable today. The percentage that drove a car is markedly smaller and in cities, it’s a tiny minority dominated by the 1%. Go to NYC. Probably more than 95% of the residents don’t own cars. It might even by 99%.

Yet somehow you think that enforcing the theft of cars from the 1% is a perfectly okay use of police resources but protecting the copyright isn’t. Go figure.

bob (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Think of it this way. Let’s say a company comes along and grabs a picture from someone’s Facebook page and uses it in an ad without paying the person. I bet everyone here would be happy to see the copyright law enforced against the company– even if that company were Big Search.

I contend that more people create digital photos each day than own a car. Soon there will be more cell phone handsets in the world than people. So it’s getting quite close to 99% that will soon have recording equipment.

bob (profile) says:

Priorities, DoJ, priorities

Actually, murder is usually pursued by the local police, not the DOJ which in this case probably means the FBI. But trust me, they’re devoting significantly more resources to terrorism and murder and everything in between. They’ve got room for copyright. Or are you arguing that the police should drop EVERYTHING and just pursue murder cases?

jupiterkansas (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

I’m just going to ignore the stupid only 1% have cars. I think it’s closer to 67%

But if my car is stolen, I’m out thousands of dollars to replace the new car.

If my photo is infringed, I have not lost any money at all. It’s simply that someone else has made money off with my work. Chances are they’re not going to make enough off of it for me to drag them to court, but if they did that’s exactly why we have copyright law. The police are not involved at all.

jupiterkansas (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

But Bob, my movie is going to cost $600 million to create. Please enact laws to ensure my movie turns a profit. The future of art depends on it.

It’s entirely possible that Hollywood could make cheaper films (and 99% of them are much less than $100 million.) Countries around the world routinely make films on much smaller budgets than Hollywood. Hollywood is a black hole money pit from hell and legislation is their last hope of maintaining their bloated budgets and 1% lifestyles (you know, owning cars and all that).

Of course, you don’t know how much the average movie costs because they don’t tell us anymore. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/01/business/fi-cotown-mpaa1

What the police should be doing is investigating their shady and probably criminal accounting practices.

Anonymous Coward says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

Funny, I live in a city, and I can tell you that the mass transit system, such as it is, is underutilized… because MOST people have cars. So, try again? Maybe actually cite something to back it up?

But let us go back to copyright infringement. The DOJ has no business, whatsoever, involving itself in civil disputes. Neither do the FBI, the Federal Marshals, the state, county or local police. You call a cop about a civil matter, they’ll tell you to file in court, they cannot help you. So while you stand there, steadfast in the belief that the DOJ should be helping private industry, reality is telling you to shut the hell up.

LC (profile) says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

“If they create a rape task force, are you going to argue that the DOJ is acting as a private police force for women? Are you going to say that the cops out arresting car thieves are a private police force for car owners?”

Seeing as rape and car theft are both criminal offenses, and that women and car owners are both citizens, that’s reasonable. It’s nothing like what’s happening here: having law enforcement enforce civil law. And cut your “1% own cars” bullshit, please. Where I live, 70% of people drive cars as a matter of course in their day-to-day lives, and close to 99% own one.

“The fact is that the content creators pay a huge amount of taxes in this country”

They’d be paying a lot more tax if Congress closed the many, many loopholes they use to pay as little tax as possible. And with their failure to pass the draconian SOPA/PIPA bills, I can’t see Congress and the President doing that and pissing of their Hollywood paymasters more.

“At the end of the day, the folks in government are going to side with the folks who pay taxes and act like good citizens.”

Above point aside, the Government did it’s job properly when the majority of the people who contacted them about SOPA/PIPA were NOT in favor. After all, this is a democratic nation, correct? It’s only sad that the threat of losing votes was required to make them stop, rather then them simply stopping it because it’s appalling public policy. And the people would still pay more tax than Hollywood even if they were being 100% honest with their taxes.

The biggest complaint people had in relation to SOPA was how it could have sites shut down or their finances cut off on a mere accusation. Would you like it if SOPA/PIPA gave corporations the ability to declare you are a terrorist and whisk you off to a secret prison indefinitely without trial to be tortured (oh wait, the government already has the power to do this under the PATRIOT act).

Next shill post…

Anonymous Coward says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

But let us go back to copyright infringement. The DOJ has no business, whatsoever, involving itself in civil disputes. Neither do the FBI, the Federal Marshals, the state, county or local police. You call a cop about a civil matter, they’ll tell you to file in court, they cannot help you. So while you stand there, steadfast in the belief that the DOJ should be helping private industry, reality is telling you to shut the hell up.

If you look around, it seems like the DoJ is focused on criminal infringement like TVShack, Ninjavideo, Megaupload, etc. You’re OK with that, right?

Anonymous Coward says:

Hey, everyone is entitled to policing.

What the police should be doing is investigating their shady and probably criminal accounting practices.

Yes, please. If they’re going to ask for more of my tax dollars to do something, I’d like it to be something worthwhile and long overdue and actually FOR the artists these corps keep holding up as poster children.

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