
On pirates and piracy  - jamesbritt
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/on-pirates-and-piracy.html
======
breck
Joel Spolsky offered the one and only sensible way to fight back that will
actually work: go on the offensive and get legislation introduced to roll back
the extensions of copyright & other IP laws.

For example: "Roll back length of copyright protection to the minimum
necessary "to promote the useful arts." Maybe 10 years?"

Not only should these laws be rolled back anyway IMO, but by merely pushing
for these you'll drain the resources of the RIAA&co so their offensive
campaign stops.

([https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSy...](https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSyaTf))

~~~
earbitscom
I could seemingly get behind a much shorter copyright term. However, won't the
enforcement measures needed to protect those new works be just as complex,
ineffective or invasive as they are for 70 year copyrights? Enforcing
copyrighted works, no matter how long or short the period, would require much
the same overreaching action, right?

~~~
billswift
Because many "pirates", especially the more competent ones, are motivated in
part by the sheer immorality of the copyright extensions (or so many have
claimed here on HN and a few other places I frequent). In many ways, copyright
enforcement is in a similar place to the enforcement of Prohibition at the end
of the 1920s, where otherwise law-abiding citizens willingly broke what they
considered bad law.

------
benvanderbeek
This part of the final paragraph summarizes it well.

"[St] Augustine tells the parable of a pirate captain who is captured and
brought before Alexander the Great. The emperor says "How dare you terrorize
the seas"? The pirate captain replies, "How dare you terrorize the whole
world? Because I only have one ship, I'm called a pirate; because you have a
great navy, you're called an emperor." The difference between a pirate and an
emperor is one of scale only."

------
jerf
"At O'Reilly, we had a narrow escape a few years ago. "Head First Java" starts
each chapter with an image taken from an old movie for which the copyright had
expired, placing the movie in the public domain. Someone collected several of
those movies into DVDs and copyrighted the DVD. Luckily, we discovered it (and
were able to find new images) before we published the book and ended up with a
court summons."

I don't think that's how it works. You can take anything you want out of the
public domain, make minimal changes to it meeting a certain standard, and
copyright the result, but that only gives you a copyright to the result. You
don't suddenly own the thing in the public domain, which would be utterly
absurd.

They may have been concerned about getting sued by someone claiming they took
it from their resulting copyright work rather than the original public domain
work, but even that would have been very easy to defend against and a lawsuit
in bad faith to boot. (And those are just a constant threat, regardless.)

I'll copy to only being a very interested layman and not a lawyer, but I've
never heard of individuals being able to just reach out and grab things out of
public domain at will and fully own them. If that were possible then there
would simply be no such thing as public domain, and that's not the case.

~~~
thyrsus
O'Reilly may have (expensively) prevailed in court heretofore, but now we have
the Supreme Court declaring that works once in the public domain can be
retrieved into private possession. It's an open question whether that ruling
would have applied in this case - all the better to explode the legal fees.
Good call by O'Reilly.

~~~
Volpe
Which ruling was that? do you have a link?

~~~
Jimmie
Here: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-
re...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-re-copyright-
of-public-domain-works/)

It was only a few days ago.

~~~
Volpe
I thought you might be referring to that. That ruling isn't really a precedent
for "Public works being re-copyrighted". It was a little more complex and
related to a treaty the U.S had agreed to.

The works in question were still under copyright in other countries.

------
bad_user
This article has a really good point - the discussion should shift from SOPA
to how fucked-up and rotten these industries have become, on how they are
destroying jobs, on how they are stifling creativity and ripping-off authors,
on how they've abused the DMCA and on how they are bribing politicians.

~~~
Volpe
Now now, everyone bribes politicians you can't single out one industry ;)

~~~
bad_user
Well, you can discus the morality of donations, but when you make public
statements such as [1]:

    
    
         Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ 
         for support need to understand that this industry 
         is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up 
         for them when their job is at stake.
    

If that's not bribery, then what is?

[1]
[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate-
chris-dodd-and-mpaa-bribery-after-he-publicly-admited-bribing-politicans-
pass/DffX0YQv)

~~~
mc32
How is that any different from a private citizen saying, "Those who count on
the elderly for support need to understand we'll be watching very carefully
who's going to stand up for MedicAid when their jobs are at stake"?

Bribery is, "Hey congressperson, I've got twenty thousand dollars that are
yours if you change ordinance code to allow alcohol to be served at local gas
stations."

Usually the FBI is very keen to find corrupt politicians, so if there is a
whiff, and for all we know, there might be in this case, but we don't know
yet, they'll pursue it. Here's a partial list:
<http://www.topix.com/forum/world/russia/TTEIUECQCP1EGDHCL>

It's not always clear-cut, but my understanding is that there needs to be an
implication of a promise of direct action as a result of exchange of goods,
money, services, etc.

~~~
bad_user
I view donations this way ... _I like you, I hope you succeed, here's some
money to go forth and kick-ass_.

I view donations-related bribery this way ... _my interests are important,
here's some money to let you know how important they are ... you do know that
I sell alcohol at local gas stations, right? Also, did I mention how I only
sponsor politicians that serve my interests?_.

Yes, that's not explicit by itself. $500,000 ending up in some bank account is
the explicit part. The government's purpose is to serve the interests of all
the country's citizens, instead of listening to the highest bidder. How can
that still be framed as free speech beats me.

------
drostie
I commented on the original but I think that others here might also value this
here:

I liked this post and the way that it turns the question of piracy upon
itself, but I still felt like there were about three dramatic ideas missing,
so I wrote those up and put them on my web site briefly:

<http://drostie.org/on_copying.html>

I fear I was too verbose in that essay and perhaps I will edit it more later
-- but basically, those ideas are (1) that easy copying has led to an absurd
situation where you can buy things without getting them; (2) that copying is
both absurdly natural and restricting copying is absurdly natural, so that we
feel entitled to do both; and (3) that the media companies today face an
absurd situation where they fight for their lives -- and as Y Combinator said,
they might do quite a bit of damage on their way down.

------
Dn_Ab
I have to say, if how this SOPA,PIPA,ACTA,megavideo stuff is working out was
planned ahead, expected, executed and coordinated; I can't help but be
incredibly impressed. If they anticipated and had plans for all these paths
then I have to admit my admiration for their brilliance.

From a game theoretic point of view these lobbyists or government groups or
what have you were doing 5-step+ thinking. With respect to the recent events,
everyone, including the tech community got played. Maybe not a Xanatos Gambit
but verging on it.

Over time they quietly passed a slew of boring laws with aggregate equivalence
near enough to SOPA - just without the concentrated firepower. With the recent
ACTA, there is now an international baseline for the basic framework to tackle
these things. In the US, SOPA and PIPA could have even been red herrings.
Tying up attention bandwidth and energy so they could later go ahead and pass
future laws and enact similar initiatives, with SOPA as the new reference
point. Knowing the people would be drained and full from victory. Basic
psychology. And if SOPA passed, well the more the merrier.

With that in place - even in the case of the failure of SOPA, the implications
were clear. Nuclear options are on the table. Regardless of the success of the
bill, they had a target, a well known centralized file sharing service. There
were plenty of others, why megaupload? It is one of the most well known with
some of the largest mindshare. Make an example of them and send a signal to
similar and future services. With SOPA fresh in mind and now megaupload's
demise, a chain reaction of similar services are either ending sharing or
plain shutting down and taking people's files with them. Causing a cascade to
all other services built on them - some legitimate the rest questionable.

With this case a precedent is set, the significance and direction of which I
am not studied enough to know. But anyways, this is just for file sharing and
counterfeiting services no? They deserve to be taken down as most of their
stuff is illegal. Even if the things that we feared would happen in the event
of SOPA is now voluntarily occurring to that group they should have known the
risks when choosing to take that direction.

I don't know if it is appropriate to post the "First they came for the..."
that is making its way around (maybe too much) but from an intellectual point
of view this is amazing to watch unfold. Most of these bill writers probably
have positive intent but the interactions involved are extremely nonlinear and
sensitive, humans are not yet anywhere near intelligent enough to try and
control such a dynamic and complex network without unintentionally compounding
the scope, destabilization and extent of their actions. Morphing the entire
network of interactions into something with consequences no one can truly
predict.

But even as many fall, the constant energy into the system will likely create
a more complex, less centralized and bullet proof internet and society in
general (hopefully). So I suppose the good thing is that the media company
truly care about the internet. They are pushing its evolution to something
more robust and are fighting complacency. Just need to be careful to not
overwhelm positive energy with dissipative forces and cause extinction.

