
Copyright Industry Madness Takes 6 Years To Catch Up With The Worst Satire Of It - zoowar
http://falkvinge.net/2012/11/10/copyright-industry-reality-takes-six-years-to-catch-up-with-the-worst-satire-of-it/
======
bpatrianakos
Sorry but this actually isn't as bad the article wants you to believe. First
off, they base the whole thing off a Mashable article which is just a
hyperbolic paraphrasing of the patent filing meant to attract eyeballs and
enrage those who are blindly and without question ant-copyright no matter
what. And this author took the bait.

This technology may be used for this purpose but I doubt it will be any time
soon. Patent filings are incredibly vague often times and a system that
detects how many people are in front of a box doesn't necessarily have to be
used to prevent people from watching movies with their friends even if it can.

This article just seems like catnip for people who want go off about how dumb
the copyright industry is and how much they hate copyright in general. The
copyright system may be fucked and it'd be hard to argue otherwise but in this
case, in the context of this article let's just take off the tinfoil hats and
slow down here.

~~~
robotico
Good comment! Although it seems like it MAY have that application, the facts
seem to be conveniently parsed.

That being said, after trying to watch some football on the internet today and
being told I need a cable subscription, it seems like the more people try to
prevent piracy, or in this case just legally not paying subscription fees, the
more it pushes people towards it. Or worse yet (for medial companies), people
decide that it's not worth the effort or even pirating it, and decide to just
do something else, as I did. Sure, some people would be encouraged to buy
cable, but some it certainly just hardens their resolve not to pay for the
crap they put on TV.

I like sports, but I'm not paying for 90% Honey Boo Boo and America's Top
Model to watch the 10% football and other worthwhile content that they have
on!

~~~
jackfoxy
Yes! "decide to just do something else"

Write software, play a musical instrument, have your kids act out a scene from
Shakespeare after dinner. Seriously...unending consumption of entertainment,
even when it is infotainment (and maybe that's actually worse) is not
beneficial to culture, or to you.

------
thenomad
Hmm. Sounds like great technology - but how exactly are they going to tell
that your Kinect is pointing at the same room in which people are watching
video, as opposed to, say:

1) A towel draped over the aforementioned Kinect? 2) The wall? 3) The hallway
outside the room where the movie is being played? 4) Exactly _half_ of the
room, with the people who would bring your movie to an Unauthorised Number Of
Viewers sat in the other half?

~~~
zoowar
My dog isn't going to like being called a pirate.

------
rayiner
I get tired of these screeds. If you're so upset by restrictions, etc, stop
consuming Big Content. Otherwise admit the basic fact in play: those companies
have such a captive audience because everyone wants their content so bad that
they can get away with sorts of crap and people will put up with it. Copyright
isn't to blame here. You see the same thing in other industries where branding
is paramount (think LV bags).

~~~
lucian1900
That means opting out of a large portion of modern culture.

~~~
aes256
I've often wondered if there ought to be some kind of access to culture
defense for copyright infringement.

The creators of copyrighted works reap the benefits of their work becoming
integral parts of popular culture; their status as culturally significant
works afford them a wide range of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits.

At the same time, there is a negative externality associated with a
copyrighted work becoming part of popular culture; insofar as one must stay
abreast of developments in popular culture to continue having meaningful
discussions with friends, to understand the terminology other people use, and
indeed to make their own original contributions to popular culture.

~~~
magicalist
There definitely is. That's a large part of the essence of fair use -- which
allows commentary, parody, and reporting on copyrighted works without any say
by the copyright holder, as well as use in education and research (and, with
the first sale doctrine, allows libraries to lend books, music and movies to
the public for (more or less) free).

~~~
magicalist
Too late to edit, but it's also the point of having all works eventually enter
into the public domain (and a powerful argument for shorter copyright
lengths).

------
DanBC
This kind of copyright stuff is not new.

People have created view once video tapes that cannot be rewound. People have
created limited life DVDs that begin to self-destruct when they come into
contact with air.

Disney[1] used to oppose video for this very reason - you couldn't tell how
many people were watching and so you couldn't charge them each a fee.

[1] I used to be able to find references to this. I can't now. There's a bunch
of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to find than it should.

~~~
bediger4000
_There's a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to
find than it should._

Amen, brother. For a long time, Ed Greer
([http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-
gre...](http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-greer)) was
not mentioned on the internet. He's finally arrived, and his message is:
"Never become too good at something you hate. They'll make you do it the rest
of your life."

I used to have that article pinned to my bulletin board, but it finally
disappeared. No Ed Greer for years. But hey, he's back!

------
gojomo
Sorry, the industry still hasn't caught up with my 'worst satire' of it from
10 years ago:

"DRM Helmets: An Idea Whose Time Has Come"

<http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html>

I must admit, though, that the Kinect-viewer-surveillance patent is an
encouraging step. (Could a future Kinect add a visible-spectrum laser to
temporarily blind unauthorized audience members?)

------
finnw
Related HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762303>

An early version of the joke email (suggesting they actually took about 11
years):
[http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.h...](http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.html)

------
dman
Time to redecorate if you have a living room with mirrored walls

------
safeaim
Here in Norway, the norwegian version of RIAA are trying to get radio playing
in rental cars acknowledged as "playing of music in a public space".

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fdigital%2FRadiolytting-
kan-gi-dyrere-leiebil-7032053.html&act=url)

------
anothermachine
If only there were a way to obscure the Kinect's ability to measure the room.

------
blacktulip
So if M$ patented this technology, does it mean that other companies can not
use this kind of shit to limit their users? If so this would be a good thing.

~~~
Falkvinge
The odd thing here is that the satire description predates the patent monopoly
by six years, and may count as prior art.

~~~
anothermachine
That's ridiculous. Saying "wouldn't it be cool" isn't prior art. Describing a
working system is.

~~~
michaelfeathers
Maybe the law has changed but I heard that a patent for a waterbed was once
refused because Robert Heinlein had described one in a novel.

