
Senator Harry Reid Caves: PIPA Postponed - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/20/senator-harry-reid-caves-pipa-postponed/
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simonsarris
Postponed is awfully vague. The senator's two tweets immediately after that
one are more telling:

> There's no reason that legitimate issues raised about PROTECT IP can't be
> resolved. Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly #pipa

> Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I'm
> optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming weeks

He has not had a crisis of conscience. Just a crisis of wording.

~~~
iamandrus
I became critical when he said issues with the bill "[can] be resolved." No,
no they can't.

These bills (SOPA _and_ PIPA) are broken and are unfixable. The only way to
"fix" them is to scrap them and rewrite them.

He also implies that PIPA will generate jobs in the industries most troubled
by piracy, and again I have to disagree. The problem is with these companies
pushing outdated, annoying business models instead of embracing the hundreds
of amazing startups trying to fix the problems these companies have. Jobs
won't be created by passing these bills. That's just the sugarcoating that the
lobbyists use to make the bills look feasible to the Senate.

And I agree fully, creators deserve compensation for their work. As an
entrepeneur, I know the feeling of getting something in return for creating.
But these bills will open Pandora's box and unleash all hell on the Internet
and American citizens. No more fixing. Kill these bills once and for all.

~~~
alexqgb
"The problem is with these companies pushing outdated, annoying business
models instead of embracing the hundreds of amazing startups trying to fix the
problems these companies have."

It's worse than that, in that the business models aren't the only thing that's
outdated. The real problem is that the law itself - to which those models are
inextricably linked - is what has really become archaic.

After all, copyright spent 300 years evolving under a paradigm in which the
ability to copy and distribute, and to make derivations from media were all
highly concentrated in capital intensive operations to which few - if any -
independent citizens had direct access. In that regard, publishing operations
were like Boeing 747s. And these core assumptions are reflected throughout the
law.

Today, the paradigm has inverted. Like the Earth becoming unmoored and
starting to revolve around the now-fixed sun, the emergence of low-cost,
highly distributed general computing has inverted the once-dominant
conception. And like the view of an unmoving Earth at the center of the
cosmos, the entire conception of copying as a strictly limited right has
become unsustainable.

Now it's the law itself that needs to change. The assumptions that are based
on the idea that people don't have secure networked computers need to be
removed, root and branch. Obviously, business models that depend on the old
paradigm will not get "fixed". Rather, they will die. In this sense, the
copyright protected industries actually have a clearer understanding of
technology than they're usually given credit for. The hundreds (indeed,
thousands) of startups wanting to move into the space they occupy are like a
teeming horde of army ants. Left unexposed, the cartels would be swiftly
consumed. The only 'solution' is to double down on the now-archaic law and
maintain what they can while hoping the plutocracy advances far enough to
snuff out democratic process entirely.

Though the timber may be rotten, it still props up the roof of the only
shelter they have. And that's why they will do literally anything to protect
it.

And while there are many many startups, they, too, have a problem in that the
absence of reality-based law will ultimately hurt their prospects as well.
Like the rest of us, they're operating an an Interregnum - the period between
kings - one defined by a collapse that hinders the emergence of its
replacement. The old is dying, but won't permit the new to be born.

My own thought is that real reform would mean realizing that we cannot police
people's lives well enough to enforce copyright at the individual level.
Instead, we need to look at the corporate entity - an entirely non-human
construct - when trying to locate the box-office of the future.

This would mean adapting copyright law so that only incorporated entities
could be subject to its penalties. Individuals can do what they like. But once
they do anything with enough financial scale to merit incorporation, they need
to submit those organizations to the traditional rules governing duplication,
distribution, and derivation.

This would prevent Universal Pictures from making a copy of Harry Potter and
screwing Warner Bros. out of the proceeds from unlicensed public exhibition.
And it would keep Warner Bros. from making movies from J.K. Rowling's books
without dealing with her directly. It would also prevent operator-controlled
commercial services (like Netflix and iTunes) from distributing unauthorized
copies of HP. But it would not prevent people from sharing files among
themselves, or allow user-controlled exchanges to be liable for their
activity. Keep the DMCA takedown as a compromise, acknowledging the corporate
nature of neutral intermediaries, and make systems like YouTube's ContentID
the norm. But go no further.

Admittedly, this is a massive change. And it may not provide for the future of
the existing cartels. But that's not the point. The point is having law that
is clear, constitutional, and aligned with reality. The rest of the chips must
fall where they may. With that in place, new and lasting business models can
finally emerge in peace.

~~~
dissident
I love this post and agree with most of it, but I'd like to point something
out.

> But once they do anything with enough financial scale to merit
> incorporation, they need to submit those organizations to the traditional
> rules governing duplication, distribution, and derivation.

How do we know that we can govern/enforce _that_ law? What if a digital
currency (say, bitcoin) becomes a useful model for online payments, in a way
that cannot be tracked or enforced? The same issues pop up. People can then
profit from others' works.

This may require an additional concession: people should be able to profit
from the service of distributing content, even if they did not create it. But
is that something we're prepared to allow? And if so, how will that affect the
dynamics of distribution and content creation in the future?

In my own perspective, services will have enough of an incentive to publish
and distribute unique content, that it will indirectly subsidize the creation
of it.

~~~
alexqgb
Thanks for the kind words. And I actually see three separate concerns in your
first question.

1\. "How do we know that we can govern/enforce that law?"

The same way we currently do. This plan changes nothing about the way
established companies handle copyright. It simply means we stop trying to
apply those same rules and standards to private individuals, and acknowledge
that business models must change to reflect that limit.

Difficult, I know, but evolution is tough for everybody. And we already accept
that companies die all the time. There's nothing special about media companies
that should permit them to stop the clock so they can live forever.

Instead, rights-holders can maintain their relevance by sucking it up and
proceeding accordingly, or they can die trying. But we can't allow them to
respond to the 21st century, and the rise of ubiquitous general computing by
insisting that the Internet's architecture be reworked to support the powers
of surveillance and censorship that effective enforcement at the individual
level unavoidably requires.

2\. "What if a digital currency (say, bitcoin) becomes a useful model for
online payments, in a way that cannot be tracked or enforced?"

If a legally chartered corporation starts using bitcoin to evade regulatory
oversight, I suspect the practice wouldn't be limited to IP payments only. Nor
do I think the IRS would tolerate it for one hot second. In other words, I
don't think this is a problem that this plan needs to solve.

3\. "...People can then profit from others' works."

True, but under the scheme I'm proposing, they wouldn't need bitcoin to do it.
They could freely profit using credit cards if they liked. What I'm suggesting
is that "profit" and "commerce" are potentially too intimate to be the
triggers for a set of rules as heavy-duty as copyright.

In the same way that the IRS doesn't demand that 1099's be issued to anyone
receiving less than $600 in a year, we need to recognize that commerce and
profit at a certain scale, not in general, is what engages the law. Exactly
what that scale is can be hard to say. I don't even try. Instead, I just used
incorporation as a shining line that triggers involvement.

This has the moral value of protecting the cultural liberty of actual humans,
while asserting that corporations DO NOT share the same liberty. It also has
practical value in that corporations have quarterly reporting requirements
that make general audits much more reliable. And it economic development value
in that it creates a bounded but otherwise very unrestricted economic space in
which new cultural forms can freely gestate and develop, without worrying that
they become "infringers" the second a single dollar changes hands.

For example: you live in Brooklyn and you want to host a rooftop party where
you screen movies, play music, drink beer, and enjoy summer. You arrange for
all of the above, then charge people a $10 cover. The object is to cover
costs, but who knows, perhaps you make a few bucks on the deal. So what?
Should the law allow various rights holders to extract rent from this
situation? My feeling is no. Indeed, they really can't. And for that reason,
they really shouldn't be free to outlaw this either.

Now what happens if the film series takes off? The City demands that you get a
liquor licence. The landlord (who is surprisingly cool) wants a small cut and
proof of insurance. You actually have to treat this like a business. And maybe
there's a decent business here. But do you want the personal liability
involved? Or would you rather incorporate?

Assuming you incorporate, the whole deal changes. This is where you become
part of the larger system that transfers money from audiences to the people
making the stuff that attracts them. How those terms work is TBD. Obviously,
rights holders don't want them to be too stringent, since that encourages
people to take greater and greater risks before biting the bullet and joining
the payment structure. They also need to reconcile themselves to the idea that
cultural freedom with a bit of money involved is like adolescence for
operations that aren't kids, but aren't adults.

In terms of the developing the next generation, that stage is vital. And being
smart enough to leave it alone is in rights holder's interests. If they stop
trying to kill fledgling operations while they're figuring themselves out,
they'll actually be in a position to benefit from a new generation of really
capable adults who will help find new markets for their products. But they
have to let those nascent businesses develop freely and independently. And
they have to respect the will of a democratic populace that thinks this kind
of liberty is a good thing.

Incorporating is like turning 18, or 21. We all know that there are people who
are still very immature at those ages, and others who have reached maturity a
few years earlier. But qualifying who is and is not a legal adult based on
those personal differences is a fool's errand. Instead, we have bright shining
lines that are hard to fudge, and that work well enough to live with.

And to be honest, knowing what I know about the ambitions of people who are
attracted to media as a business, there will be plenty of people doing
everything they can to put the kid's table behind them, and take a seat with
the grown ups.

------
josefresco
Reid's official statement on his .gov website
([http://democrats.senate.gov/2012/01/20/reid-statement-on-
int...](http://democrats.senate.gov/2012/01/20/reid-statement-on-intellectual-
property-bill/)) said the movie industry alone 'supports' 2.2 million
Americans. A claim Maddox humorously pointed out was clearly wrong even if you
factor in the "related" jobs like food service: <http://maddox.xmission.com/>

------
dugmartin
I have a feeling it will be postponed until the "2012 Omnibus Save the
Children & Support the Troops" bill is up for a vote and it is added as a
rider to the section dealing with funding terrorist groups. Probably right
before the November elections.

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namidark
Postponed until the media coverage dies down and they can pass it when no one
is paying attention as an amendment to another bill

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JumpCrisscross
"Postponed". Lovely.

~~~
spodek
If only postponed meant for the life of the author plus seventy years.

------
Vivtek
"So we can find a better solution."

Yeah. Make Hollywood run a real business without jackbooted support, that
would be a better solution.

You know what happened here? For a couple of hours on Wednesday, a whole bunch
of Americans realized that politics might actually affect their lives - and
Congress felt the icy knife of knowledge of how close they came to utter
destruction of their gravy train. Because if that American beast ever actually
wakes up, times are going to get interesting.

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Iv
Postponed is not enough.

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joejohnson
>> Both bills have now been tabled. Hearings on the Stop Online Privacy Act
(SOPA)...

Hahaha. I think it should read Stop Online _Piracy_ Act.

------
lonnierenda
I agree with the general theme of the comments. "Postponed" sounds more like
"regrouping" to me.

~~~
lallysingh
It also gives them time to squeeze more money out of the relevant lobbying
groups.

