Techdirt. Stories filed under "shills" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "shills"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:02:00 PST Dear Hollywood: Hire Better Shills Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130305/03450222202/dear-hollywood-hire-better-shills.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130305/03450222202/dear-hollywood-hire-better-shills.shtml puff piece showing just how much work it is for NBC Universal to keep fighting all those darn pirates. It's basically a propaganda piece starring Rick "Save the Corn Farmers!" Cotton, NBC's general counsel who fights piracy the way that Captain Ahab chases Moby Dick. There are all sorts of problems with the piece, including the fact that it appears to believe that just because NBC is sending a lot more takedowns, it means that the "problem" is growing. Of course, as we were just discussing last week, when you look at the actual data, it makes a pretty clear case for anti-piracy efforts doing nothing to stop piracy, but investment in lots of innovative startups providing consumers what they want being the path to success. But, that's not Cotton's style.

Anyway, Janko Roettgers, over at PaidContent, wrote a nice post debunking much of the story, which quickly got three comments that all sounded vaguely similar in their poor use of the English language -- all of which tried to spin the story into "proof" that greater enforcement, such as the six strikes effort, was needed. Two of them make the laughable claim that each infringement represents "lost revenue." That's not how it works. Here's one of the three comments:
I’m glad the author is pointing out what is pretty clear to people who browse the internet everyday, piracy is still widespread and is evolving every year. Not even taking into account the huge piracy issues overseas, each of these takedown requests represents lost revenue for both views and time spend tracking and reporting this illegal behavior. NBC will and should continue to do this because legal viewing of their content is vital for their business. But the better long term solution is to create a system where NBC isn’t playing a carnival game just to receive the proper copyright benefits for the content they invest so much in.
Of course, the real way to get to that "long term solution" is for NBC to stop playing the carnival game of takedowns -- which do nothing to reduce infringement -- and focus on making sure its content is more widely available from more legitimate sources.

Either way, Janko quickly pointed out that, in a surprise to no one, it was pretty clear that the comments were from DC-based hired shills for the entertainment industry:
Kelseliz, AlexB and SteveFeather, I’m glad you all enjoyed my story. However, I’m not too surprised you all share the same point of view. After all, the three of you commented from the same Washington D.C.-based IP address, and one of the email addresses you left points to a D.C. lobbying firm that gets paid by major labels, rights holder groups and movie studios… but I’m sure that’s all just one big coincidence.
I know that it's common in our comments for people to accuse others of being "shills." Frankly, people jump to the shill label way too fast. While it is clear that some of our commenters do work in the industry, there are very few indications that they are paid to be propaganda spreaders, and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt (similarly, I would urge our commenters to stop throwing around the "shill" term so readily -- unless there's actual evidence, don't leap to unsupported conclusions). That said, in this case it seems pretty blatant that some entertainment industry "friends" from a DC lobbying group are now out trying to spread a very poorly argued concept that we somehow "need" six strikes. I'd suggest that the RIAA, MPAA and others might find better ways to spend their money.

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]]> wow http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130305/03450222202 Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:25:00 PDT Apparently I'm A Google Shill And I Didn't Even Know It Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120824/12563220150/apparently-im-google-shill-i-didnt-even-know-it.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120824/12563220150/apparently-im-google-shill-i-didnt-even-know-it.shtml disclose the names of any "authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish comments on the issues in [the] case." Both sides made filings last week, with Oracle disclosing -- as was already public -- that it had blogger Florian Mueller on staff as a consultant, and mentioning an Oracle employee who blogged about the case. Google, on the other hand, told the court that it hadn't paid anyone to comment on the case at all, but did mention that in the course of its regular activities, it does give money to various companies, some of whom may have had employees who commented on the story. Judge Alsup came back earlier this week and told Google it didn't try hard enough and to find some names to name.

Earlier today, Google did its filing and apparently found some names... including mine! Yes, I know that we've had some haters declaring for years that I'm a Google shill, so this must be the confirmation of all their conspiracy theories, rumors and attacks, right? Well, no. I'm named in the section about CCIA -- the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Why? Because CCIA sponsored some research that we did. Here's what the filing states:
The CCIA has commissioned studies by Mike Masnick, CEO of Floor64. See http://www.floor64.com/about.php. Mr. Masnick has commented on the case on the TechDirt website and on his personal friendfeed.com account. See Ex. X (available at http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/11050519050/boom-jury-says-no-patentinfringement- google-oracle-case.shtml and at http://friendfeed.com/mmasnick/a3a94012/jurygoogle- did-not-infringe-on-oracle-patents).
And, yes, CCIA has commissioned a study by my company (Floor64) which I co-authored. And that's, uh, public knowledge. Here's my post back in January announcing the Sky is Rising report, in which it says, upfront, that it was sponsored by CCIA. And, of course, you can go check out the Sky is Rising report yourself directly, which has a nice big CCIA logo on the front. Hell, if you want, you can also donate some money for the ebook version -- and it, too, will come with the CCIA logo.

I'm not sure how that has anything to do with Google. Google is a CCIA member, as are a bunch of other companies. And, honestly, if you'd asked me yesterday, I would have said that I thought Oracle was a CCIA member too, because it's an organization that represents a bunch of top tech companies, including Microsoft, eBay, Sprint, Facebook, AMD, Fujitsu, Dish Networks and more. However, it appears that Oracle is not a CCIA member, though I only learned this today from the filing, which also notes that Oracle and Sun used to be CCIA members. So, I'm not sure what any of that says about anything.

And, of course, if the point of this exercise is to uncover "shills" who are really speaking on behalf of companies without disclosing it, once again this argument falls down. My position on issues related to copyright and patents has been pretty damn consistent since before Google existed. And that continues up until today. I will regularly call out Google for patent and copyright behavior that I believe is bad. And that's because I say what I think. The editorial content of this site has never been for sale, nor will it ever be. Because the only way I survive in this business is with my reputation.

Also, I'm not sure what's with the Friendfeed link in the filing. To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about Friendfeed, which I thought was shut down after Facebook bought the company. But I believe my Friendfeed just sucked in my Twitter account and Techdirt's Twitter account into a single feed. And apparently it lives on without my knowledge.

Separately, because all of this struck me as interesting, I remembered that we did some work with Oracle too! And, just as with what we did with CCIA, it was disclosed publicly at the time. Oracle (along with Intel) sponsored a section of our site, and a series of webinars that we did. And yet, Oracle did not disclose me in their original filing and I don't believe that they filed a new filing here either. Of course, as with CCIA, our relationship with Oracle did not include them having any say in editorial either. In fact, with the order as broad as it was from Judge Alsup, I'd argue that there's a much stronger argument that I should be in the Oracle filing than the Google one. But, of course, Oracle didn't include us because it was a random blog sponsorship thing they did a while back which had nothing to do with editorial (or even intellectual property issues).

In the end, this comes right back to some of the concerns that were raised about Judge Alsup's broad order in the first place. If you want to find tenuous connections, they exist. In fact, Google's filing lists out a bunch of other names (including many people who I know or consider friends), almost all of whom have a long, long history of holding the exact same positions, and where the connection to "Google money" is, at best, weak.

Like many folks, I was curious to see who would be named on both of these lists, but the order was so broad that it seems to have swept me up into it (on one side, though a broad reading says it would make more sense for me to be on the other one!), and that's silly. I'm a big boy and I can handle people not understanding the details here and attacking me, but the fact that we did unrelated research for a different organization that Google is a member of -- and that gets me named on a list of "shills" just doesn't seem right.

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]]> well-that's-awkward http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120824/12563220150 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:51:41 PST Once Again, SOPA Supporters Caught 'Copying' Others' Works In An Effort To Shut Down Sites For Copying Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120111/04340817375/once-again-sopa-supporters-caught-copying-others-works-effort-to-shut-down-sites-copying.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120111/04340817375/once-again-sopa-supporters-caught-copying-others-works-effort-to-shut-down-sites-copying.shtml "remixing" an anti-SOPA email alert from Public Knowledge, and turning it into a pro-SOPA argument. But this next one seems even worse. SOPA supporters, such as the MPAA and the very same Creative America, seemed overjoyed to point folks to an opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune by the state's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, claiming to support SOPA and PIPA.

Just one little tiny problem... there appears to be a fair bit of evidence that Shurtleff "copied" his work from elsewhere and simply "remixed" the work of others. TorrentFreak goes into great detail how many of the statements in the opinion piece supposedly written by Shurtleff, have appeared elsewhere from pro-SOPA folks.
To back up this claim we will highlight a few sentences from the Attorney General’s article, and compare them with those previously delivered by the MPAA and affiliated pro-copyright groups.

The first sentence that caught our attention is: “It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers.”

Strong words, but also familiar ones. In fact, former MPAA President Bob Pisano uttered exactly the same words in 2010 when he congratulated the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimously approving the COICA bill, the predecessor to SOPA and PIPA.
They go on to find lots of other rather complex phrases that show up in both Shurtleff's "new" opinion piece... and lobbying efforts from times past. In fact, the whole thing seems like a classic "remix" -- cutting and pasting lots of works from elsewhere, and creating something "new" out of it. Who knows if this reaches the legal standard for copyright infringement... but it certainly calls into serious question either the legitimacy of the op-ed... or, the competence of Shurtleff. Once again, we think such remixing is good and should be allowed. But it's pretty crazy to argue for laws like SOPA... and do so with what certainly sounds like plagiarized phrases from elsewhere.

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]]> telling... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120111/04340817375 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:30:00 PDT Lameflix: Netflix Hires Actors To Give Interviews Pretending To Be Excited About Canadian Netflix Launch Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100922/11460011124/lameflix-netflix-hires-actors-to-give-interviews-pretending-to-be-excited-about-canadian-netflix-launch.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100922/11460011124/lameflix-netflix-hires-actors-to-give-interviews-pretending-to-be-excited-about-canadian-netflix-launch.shtml right over the years, but that doesn't preclude them from making a wrong step. Apparently, with the company's launch in Canada, it decided to hire actors to pretend they were really excited at the launch event (found via Mathew Ingram). Not only that, but many of the paid "actors" were then made available to journalists to interviews about how excited they were... without revealing that they were being paid by Netflix. They were apparently given the following instructions:
"Extras are to behave as members of the public, out and about enjoying their day-to-day life, who happen upon a street event for Netflix and stop by to check it out," reads an information sheet handed out to extras.

"Extras are to look really excited, particularly if asked by media to do any interviews about the prospect of Netflix in Canada."
Netflix has since apologized, and claimed that the "script" wasn't supposed to be given to the "extras," but was merely to get the permit for the launch event, which they had described as a "documentary." Either way, the fact that no one saw a problem with this before it got this far is pretty damning.

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]]> eh? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100922/11460011124 Fri, 7 Sep 2007 13:56:22 PDT Copyright Lobby Continues To Pretend Fair Use Is Not A Right Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070906/212508.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070906/212508.shtml overreaching copyright statement on a website that made claims to rights that copyright simply does not grant. In the comments, someone responded with the silly line that fair use is not a right, it's just a "defense." This is both wrong and misleading. It is true that fair use is a defense that can be used in court -- but the reason it can be used as a defense is because it's a right provided to people who are making use of copyrighted works without permission. This was explained quite clearly by Adam Wasserman in our comments.

Apparently, the whole "fair use isn't a right" line is a part of the copyright lobby's talking points this week, as Patrick Ross (who is paid to promote stronger copyright laws) has written up an entire editorial at News.com stating that fair use is not a right. He's flat out wrong. The entire reason that a fair use defense is allowed is because it is a right. The rest of Ross's argument is typically misleading or outright wrong. He never explains why it's okay for companies to exaggerate and lie about what copyright allows them to do -- other than to suggest it would just be too complicated to have a copyright notice that accurately explains fair use. It may true that it would be cumbersome, but that doesn't explain why copyright holders get to lie about what kind of protections copyright provides them. Ross, as per usual, believes that the rights of the copyright holder are more important than the rights of the user (which is exactly the opposite of why copyrights were put in place in the first place). Therefore, he writes as though trampling on users' rights is no big deal, as long as it protects all copyright holders' rights. Unfortunately for Ross, our nation's founders were quite worried about the dangers of granting monopoly protection and were much more focused on protecting the rights of citizens to make use of information. They were quite clear that monopolies need to have their limits -- and too many companies are overstepping those limits.

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