[d@DCC] MPAA releases the lawyers...

[Russell McOrmond]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, Tim Meehan wrote:

> Don't forget too that some police forces are beginning to highlight how
> P2P is used for trading child pornography.  I think regulation (or at
> the very least a hard-to-spoof identification system) in P2P is
> inevitable because of that factor alone.

  Where the USA has their Communists and Terrorists, Canada has Child
Pornographers -- a hot-button issue abused to justify the violation of
human rights.

  Every decentralized communications media can be abused to trade child
porn.  Does that justify abolishing article 19 of the United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights?  I would think not.

  The copyright lawsuits are at odds with the public good you describe
here.  The more P2P systems are attacked, the more underground and
protected they will become, and the harder it is to identify participants.  
If stopping the spread of child porn was an issue that the government was
the least bit concerned with the Government would be stepping in and
stepping-on the Canadian branches of the RIAA/MPAA/etc extremists.

  Hello RIAA/MPAA/BSA (and Canadian clones), this is the Government: 
      "Your Fired!"

> As mentioned previously, P2P is introduced to most people in an infringing
> context, and I don't know how you can change that.

  I'm not so sure that everyone is introduced to P2P in the context of
doing something that is wrong or illegal. I think what is infringing and
what is not isn't so black-and-white, and that this has a considerable
impact on the issue. This confusion has been brought into the act by the
very people doing their chicken-little "the sky is falling" act.

  If you asked these same people if they believed that musicians should
get paid for their work, I bet a majority would say "yes". I bet they
would also say that they would pay money if they thought it would get to
the musicians.  Yet again, the industry associations are in the way of
that happening.

  We have folks like Graham Henderson, president, Canadian Recording
Industry Association going on ROBTv claiming that music reception
(downloading) for personal use is infringing in Canada when clearly it is
not under the private copying regime.  The copyright board and the federal
court both ruled on this, and if they are silly enough to bring it to the
Supremes this will be confirmed in the highest court in the land.  They
know what the law says:  they were the ones who lobbied for it in the
first place.

  They then go to parliamentary committee meetings and claim that there is 
a loophole in the Copyright act that makes unauthorized music distribution 
(uploading) legal in Canada, something that is equally false to what they 
claim to private citizens.

  They get caught in both lies all the time, and anyone is supposed to 
believe them on anything else they say?

  If the recording industry didn't want P2P downloading to be legalized
and legitimized in Canada, then they should not have lobbied for the
private copying regime which they should have realized would have caused
them damage.  If they didn't realize it then that is only because they
refused to listen, much like how they are ignoring all the warnings about
the unintended consequences of DRM.  If they think P2P is harming them
(and that is a quite legitimate debate), they have seen nothing yet when
compared to the harm DRM will do to the music industry.

  It is really hard to feel any sympathy for people who are the cause of
their own pain.

  If the recording industry wanted to prove that *unauthorized* P2P
distribution is infringing in Canada, then they could have spent the few
minutes it would have taken to collect and provide adequate evidence of
this unauthorized distribution to the courts.

> As for those "you're STEALING!" ads, they had little effect...as one
> friend put it: "Advertising on TV is seen as BS -- and also as a fair
> trade-off for getting the show, regardless of if it's off the air, over
> a cable network, whatever. People that hack systems tend to do so
> because they watch a lot of TV.  So when these CAAST ads are shown,
> they're seen in an especially negative light.

  These ads don't have any credibility given the credibility of the people 
pushing them.  I think that this can be changed if people with more 
credibility were talking about it.

  Having major record executives (or their "employee" musicians) saying
that unauthorized P2P distribution is stealing has no credibility as most
of the harm to the ability of musicians to make a living at their craft
comes from the major labels themselves.

  We also should all know for a fact that unauthorized P2P reception of
music is legal, and that authorized P2P distribution is also legal, so
their claims that P2P is illegal make no sense at all.


  As to CAAST?  As a FLOSS developer called a pirate by them in each of
their studies, I don't think anyone should trust any of their bogus
"studies".

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Have you, your family, your friends (, your enemies) signed the
 Petition to the Canadian Parliament for Users' Rights in Copyright?
 http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/