Washington needs to hear your best ideas…

Stealing political opponents’ yard-signs is scummy. Using bogus copyright claims to take down their videos is even scummier.

In October 2008, less than a month before that year’s election, the McCain-Palin Campaign complained that its videos were being wrongfully taken down by bogus DMCA claims.

McCain Campaign Feels DMCA Sting:

[O]verreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech. Numerous times during the course of the campaign, our advertisements or web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine. The uses at issue have been the inclusion of fewer than ten seconds of footage from news broadcasts in campaign ads or videos, as a basis for commentary on the issues presented in the news reports, or on the reports themselves. These are paradigmatic examples of fair use…

Political speech is supposed to get the highest protection.

When the DMCA is used to censor political campaign speech, less than a month before the election, then the DMCA needs drastic surgery.

the white house says a lot of things it doesn’t do. (NDAA)

Thank God for an election year. This is the way government should work all the time. By listening to the people.

Just because copying a movie is easier than copying an iphone for my own personal use doesn’t mean it should be illegal. If I make a copy of a physical item for my own personal use it is perfectly legal.

Don?t limit your opinion to what?s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what?s right.
[…]
Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders.

How to eliminate 99% of piracy:
1. Provide better service than the pirates.
2. Watch profits go up.
3. Admit that Gabe Newell was right.

If I was running the MPAA and/or RIAA, I’d have something like Steam made for movies and/or music. Make stuff easy to find and buy, stream to any device you own at no additional cost, have sales all the time, weekend demos, etc.

Let’s quote the rest of the statement, shall we? All the way to the end:

“So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don?t limit your opinion to what?s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what?s right. Already, many members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you?ll continue to be part of it.”

So our of everything the White House said, what the MPAA got was that Obama definitely believes stronger legislation is needed? This is the kind of complete intellectual dishonesty that is making me increasingly anti-copyright.

If he were trying to justify illegal behavior, he’d be a supporter of the RIAA.

People live almost twice as long now though. As well as the fact they had no idea that things like movies or sound recordings would ever exist.
75 years seems fine to me- average lifetime.

And not always filtered.

There’s scarcely a sentence in that that isn’t misleading.

The solution is obvious end copyright, is the root of all evil.

Is not up to the Whit House to decide what others should do in their own homes and will never be, the people prepared to be ignore are the ones trying to force their vision on the commons, they will find themselves standing alone.

To remind people, copyright was only for scientific works and learning material any other stuff had zero protections, musicians didn’t had protections, movies didn’t had protections, designs didn’t had protections, computer programs didn’t had protections.

Also people should consider the necessity of copyright at all.

Copyright should end.

Where is the theft?

The theft of market share?

That is not a problem for law enforcement that is a problem for market forces, if you can’t convince people why they should go to you instead of the other guy, you should be broking deals with that other guy to sell something.

Ubuntu is free anybody can copy it, modify it and even sell it even they want too, and there are people who do, does it stop others from buying from the original creator? Nope in fact it helps them because they serve the people who serve others.

The reason we have copyrights is because some douche 200 years ago wanted a monopoly and he got it, now is time to end that monopoly.

Those politicians keep saying that they must protect something.

The thing is there is nothing to protect if they really wanted to protect anything they would have let the industry deal with itself the incumbents would go down and new ones would be born, they don’t like destructive creation, well too bad, reality is all based on it, you can’t escape that, the Sun will explode someday and a new one will be born elsewhere, the earth will end someday, people die, inventions are forgotten to be rediscovered latter again.

To protect some industry at the expense of democracy doesn’t seem like a good deal for me at all.

Income before taxes != Income after taxes.

Get the raw numbers and make it equally painful to everyone.

Let’s not forget that Obama’s word is worth about as much as a $3 bill.

This is the guy who was against retro-active immunity for the telcom companies while running, and then upheld it once in office. This is the guy who claimed he wanted a more open government, but more Freedom of Information requests have been denied under his presidency than any other. This is the guy who promised to veto the NDAA, and then happily signed it.

He lies like almost every other politician, saying whatever the people want to hear and then doing whatever he pleases.

Snore.

Very shortly after piracy became an apparent problem, the 9/11 attacks occurred. For YEARS afterward, federal law enforcement concerned itself with terrorism at the expense of all other crimes.

After the Bush reign ended, the Justice department returned to a balanced law enforcement approach.

Pirates and anti-IP zealots have long made the mistake that technology won some battle, when in reality law enforcement just wasn’t prosecuting. That created goofballs like you, who think copyright is over and a new reality now exists.

You’re idiots.

Well if that is all the reason people need to not care about some opinion, why would anyone care about yours either?

Are you saying Bush Jr ruled the United States since the introduction of Track-8 tapes?

Nobody ever took copyright seriously except for business that depend on the government to exist, but people don’t depend on the government, they were not created by an act of law and they never observed copyrights.

Law enforcement is not even prosecuting right now, where are the new RIAA “educational” campaign?

Oh that is right they abandoned that approach because it wasn’t working LoL

I would feel a little better if they spoke out against this when they first got wind of the bill. Nothing like waiting until you know that there are a significant number of people mad about something before you speak out.

Actually Google makes most of its money through its search engine. You can’t just say, its just indexing and organizing information. It’s way too big and powerful and its doing more then that. Listen I’m not saying what you’ve been hearing from pro SOPA supporters. All I’m saying is that search engines have the power to block certain information, just like they have an option to block mature content for kids. It’s like a food recall.. all I’m saying is to take counterfeit and illegal sites out of its search engine results.