Copyfight the Power!

[Kionon]

Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight

Relevant to our interests, as are these recent posts by the operator of isohunt:

Since I've been sued by both the MPAA (Hollywood) and threatened by the CRIA (Canadian recording industry), I've talked about what's been happening with our cases. Our CRIA case has also recently received mainstream press attention by the Canadian Press and Globe & Mail. But the question is why? Why do they insist on suing their own customers? Why do they sue search engines like us, who make the internet more useful for everyone?

The problem lies in something fundamentally broken with the copyright system. A choice quote from Cory Doctorow's article on the "copyfight":

So the natural inclination of anyone who is struck by a piece of creative work is to share it. And since "sharing" on the Internet is the same as "copying," this puts you square in copyright's crosshairs. Everyone copies. Dan Glickman, the ex-Congressman who now heads up the Motion Picture Association of America (as pure a copyright maximalist as you could hope to meet) admitted to copying Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated (a scorching critique of the MPAA's rating system) but excused it because the copy was "in [his] vault." To pretend that you do not copy is to adopt the twisted hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated. Everyone knows that they themselves are lying, and a large number of us know that everyone else is lying too.

When the head of the MPAA has to admit to copying the film that criticizes the very industry he represents, an industry group of lobbyists and litigators against such copying, it highlights an important fact beyond the obvious hypocrisy. The internet has completely changed the economics of sharing. When sharing equals copying on the internet and the direct cost of that sharing is effectively $0 (it doesn't cost you anything to share videos on Youtube or BitTorrent), it makes copyright infringement so easy that even Dan Glickman can do it. So easy that a mom like Stephanie Lenz can do it when she posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's music. And I mean no disrespect to them.

This is an age of rampant sharing and remixing, and if you can make the connection between sharing and culture as Doctorow has, you will see this war between rightsholders and consumers will never end and the rightsholders will never win. The band Girl Talk and Lessig and James Boyle and Terry McBride of Nettwerk and isoHunt all echo a common point: Remixing and sharing is good for culture, suing consumers and technologists who enable sharing is destructive for everyone. The internet is a more efficient information machine than the printing press or VCR ever was, and also a whole different animal. It's time the content industries learn to put it to better use as well, by discarding past notions of how business is done based on an economy of scarcity. In Star Trek, currency becomes irrelevant with virtually unlimited "copying" of physical objects with the Replicator. The internet is the Replicator of information. When a 13-month-old dances to Prince's music, copyright infringement is nowhere near his consciousness. It's an endorsement that he likes it, pure and simple.

I've said a number of times that I'm not against copyright, but copyright does need significant reform in the internet age. If all this rampant copying on BitTorrent and the internet has not made a dent in Hollywood's record earnings, why can't we all just get along without rabid lawsuits? Why can't they see that sharing and remixing is a human urge for culture, and when we share and remixes art, it's not a liability but an endorsement for the artist or author or producer?

When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it's not society that's wrong, it's the law. Because no one can really own ideas. Newton once said, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants." It's how the arts and sciences progresses. We share, we inspire and we remix.

If you want to join the copyfight, simply share your thoughts by replying, share this post with your friends, and join isoHunt's Facebook group. With our pending lawsuit against the CRIA in our home country, we may need your voice real soon, especially if you are Canadian. For more on Copyfight and where the word came from, go here.

Update: Since this post is all about warm fuzzy sharing, I shared this post on Torrentfreak as a guest columnist. This post, along with everything I write on isoHunt.com, are published under the CC BY-SA license. Share on!

Update 2: For a book author's perspective, a most interesting response and discussion regarding my post on the Copyfight. ( Edit by SecretSquirrel: Having spoken to Rachel Caine via telephone, she echoed the sentiments on her livejournal. Please do give her posting a read, she makes some good points.)

And:

News about Obama is everywhere, so I'm not going repeat much of them. But of particular importance to file sharing, Obama has always been big on net neutrality (WoW player as FCC co-chair!) and copyright policies. Even though I'm not a US citizen, he has my vote on the internet. And best wishes with fixing the US's economy, because it's kinda dragging down Canada too. Not nice.

In particular to this techie president, this picture from here takes the cake, among thousands taken of him:



Pacman and Apple, can he get any cooler? Too bad he may still have to give up his crackberry. Here's some more great pictures of his campaign.

And some news on Creative Commons related to Obama's central and noble theme for a more transparent and accountable government. The TV and radio show Democracy Now! has released all their shows under CC licensing. This is a big win for CC and in further fostering legal use of BitTorrent. The show has already released their content by BitTorrent, all of which are indexed here on isoHunt. Feel free to share this and get involved with politics! It's what Obama and Michael Moore would have wanted.

[Pas]

Read this a few days ago, and honestly, more power to him.

For every rule created there will always be someone willing to break it, no exceptions. I've always considered the internet one of the few places where people have the freedom to do as they please with no bars or restrictions that bind them.

Essentially what it comes down to is one simple word. Profit. If the corporations aren't reaping in a profit, for them something is clearly wrong, whereas this is far from the truth. Now more than ever people are beginning to realize just how useful file sharing services are, and there's a great deal of information freely circulating around thanks to the many services provided by said services.

By forcing these services to comply with their demands, it will only bring about a larger amount of backlash as well as the creation of more, secretive services that will eventually appear to counter the corporations.

And I'm not trying to promote the fact that nobody should pay for original content that many artists have worked long and hard on creating, but I do believe that large companies need to look harder to find a balance instead of trying to seek out more profits. Half the reason people download in the first place is due to the insanely high prices of some products.

One thing I believe that corporations should realize everytime they are claiming to "lose profits because people are downloading their products" is that you can't really lose what you didn't have in the first place. Many people only download it because it is a simple, free way of obtaining something they want. If you stick a price tag on that then I'm sure a lot more people would be a lot less willing to get it. Whenever someone downloads a song, a movie or a show, they are being exposed to said content. The fact alone that the now realize the existence of it should be considered a great step forward, as people wouldn't be willing to pay for something they don't know about in the first place. By using the internet as a means of distribution, what is happening is that there is a lot more free promotion taking place, and in turn more people who know (and in the case that the like it) and are willing to pay for the product.

You've got to realize that they don't want what's best for the consumer, they want what's best for them. Nothing is truly gained by suing or filing lawsuits against torrenting search clients such as isoHunt. Information is not something that can be so easily controlled, and it almost feels as though we're beginning to lose even our means of obtaining this information simply because we are not paying enough for it. It is not about leeching work that people made but more about re-distributing something which people enjoy. Of course, the fact that it is currently available at no cost whatsoever holds a great appeal, and while this may be seen as wrong it is also wrong that most of the profit made by buying products does not go to the original creator but rather the companies that distribute their work. Now consider this, all the companies are essentially doing is promoting the artist and making their work publicly available - for a cost. Compare that to torrenting and downloads, which both promot the artist and put their work in the public domain, while at the same time remaining absolutely free. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which has more appeal. While I do believe there is a need to give the creator back what he worked hard to achieve, I also believe that with things as they are now, and the times moving so rapidly that a better solution is required, a more direct relation between consumer and creator which will allow for a smaller price while maintaining a similar profit margin. We're playing a completely different ballgame now, and it's high time companies learned to keep up.

What isoHunt is essentially doing is providing the means to access information quickly and effectively. It is no different that a weapon. A gun by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on who's hands it is in. Same situation applied, there is no point in suing isoHunt, which only seeks to promote sharing. Where the corporations are losing their profit lies with the actual people who choose to torrent and download, and I would very much like to see them try enforce a lawsuit on the many thousands of people who continue to do so. As a number of people stated in the thread, if this lawsuit is carried out against isoHunt, I see no reason for other search engines such as Google to walk away unharmed either.

While I don't believe there will ever be a perfect solution to this, I do believe that what is currently happening is counter-productive and really just goes to show where the corporations priorities lie.

Lastly, I would like to quote from one of the other members in the original thread because I believe it is highly relavent to this current dilemma and I do agree with what he points out.

I am going to enter into a rather lengthy response here, largely about the natural inclination that people have to share things. However, let me preface this by saying that I firmly believe 1. that our copyright system in the US and Canada is severely broken, but 2. that producers of intellectual property do have a certain right over their creation.

Let's consider the issue of sharing things in an historical context. Flash back to the time of the Beatles. Let's say you've just purchased Sgt. Pepper's on record. You like it. Your natural inclination to share means that you listen to it with friends. If they like it enough, they'll purchase it. Even if they don't buy it, only one of you can have it at a time, so it is highly inconvenient for you to keep swapping it around.
So sharing, at this time, will only lead to increased sales.
Move forward to the era of the tape (I will disregard 8 track for this discussion). Now when you purchase a new album, you listen to it with friends. Generally, if they like it enough, they'll go out and buy it. Sometimes, though, they'll make a copy of yours. Still, the copies do not progress for more than a few generations, because weeks or months will go by before your friend has another friend who wants to make a copy, and then weeks or months before the next level, and generally by that time everyone who wants the album will have purchased one or already made a copy.
Also, people can now record songs from the radio. But since only singles are released, this is not a big deal.
Therefore, in this era, sharing is once again only going to result in increased sales.
The era of the CD sans widespread internet sharing will of course be similar to the tape era, except its harder (at this time) to copy CDs than it was to copy tapes.

But now consider the p2p sharing. Suddenly, you are sharing not just with your friends but with thousands of people whom you do not know (I am willing to bet that when you seed a torrent, the majority of those downloading it do not know you. Some might be personal friends, of course, and some might know you through chat groups and discussion sites, but most will be strangers - indeed you will not even find out who they were after the fact). Also when you share with them, they are automatically copying it, in a format that is easy to use.

Now, it is arguable that internet sharing still leads to increased sales (I for one believe it does, based upon reasons which will be discussed). However, I think from the above discussion that it is understandable that people might fear that it would have the opposite effect and decrease the total revenue to the makers of these products. I'm not defending everything they do, but let's face it, sharing over the internet is a completely different thing than sharing used to be. Of course, that's where copyright has an issue, and that's where some adjustments need to be made to have a reasonable set of regulations respecting the rights of both users and producers.

Now, I think sharing results in higher revenue for the makers. In music this is especially true. A band's fanbase is going to increase through people who download their music, and then they're going to go see the shows and possibly buy some of the albums (I myself will not purchase an album from a band that I have not heard before). David Draiman, the frontman for Disturbed, has even stated that he doesn't make any money off record sales at all, but that he knows fans who have told him (at concerts) that they first heard his band on the internet. Even in terms of album sales, I know at least one person who, according to him, would not buy any popular music except for the fact that he can pre-try it via the internet.
For movies, this does not apply, of course. However, it is my understanding that movie rentals do not generate much revenue. Now most people will just rent a movie, and then possibly purchase it. However, I don't see that it makes much difference if a person rents it or sees it via the internet. I for one do not like going to the theatre, but I also refuse to buy a movie without seeing it first. Now, I also tend not to want to rent movies unless I think the movie will be worth it, and I would never rent more than a few movies per months. However, if I hypothetically use the internet to see movies, then I would see more movies and I would therefore find more movies that I actually want to purchase.

I must end this with a somewhat unrelated rant about two advertisements that were in the movie theatres in the past few years. The first was on two years ago or so, and involved a movie stuntman complaining about how he would risk his life and then someone could see the movie for free. Now my understanding was that stuntmen, actors, the director, and so on, get paid a fixed amount for the movie (or an hourly wage), and do NOT get paid based upon the sales. Even if they paid based on box office sales, they're certainly not going to get paid based upon rentals 6-12 months later. So this guy's logic is totally screwed up. He personally loses virtually nothing. The only ones who arguably could lose money in any appreciable amount is the studio.
The second ad is the 'You wouldn't steal a car... don't steal a movie.' One cannot overemphasize that internet sharing, even in its most blatant breaches of copyright, does not meet the definition of theft. Stealing requires that something be taken from party A, by party B, and end in the possession of party B or party C, where C is distinct from A. Copying does not do this. I do not believe violating copyright is usually ethically correct (since it is broken, one could argue that many times it is so), but it is not stealing.

[SF_Phoenix]

One thing I believe that corporations should realize everytime they are claiming to "lose profits because people are downloading their products" is that you can't really lose what you didn't have in the first place. Many people only download it because it is a simple, free way of obtaining something they want. If you stick a price tag on that then I'm sure a lot more people would be a lot less willing to get it. Whenever someone downloads a song, a movie or a show, they are being exposed to said content. The fact alone that the now realize the existence of it should be considered a great step forward, as people wouldn't be willing to pay for something they don't know about in the first place. By using the internet as a means of distribution, what is happening is that there is a lot more free promotion taking place, and in turn more people who know (and in the case that the like it) and are willing to pay for the product.

x2 completely. I haven't gotten around to reading the whole article yet, but I complete agree with Pas here.

What most companies fail to realize is that there are many people (quite possibly the majority of downloaders) that would have not given the game/movie a second thought if they had to pay for it. Mentality being "if it's free, why not try it out?" If they like it enough, they'll go buy it. Sometimes human beings are strange for the fact that they will go buy themselves a copy of something because it makes them feel better (for status maybe? dunno). It's exactly as Pas states, its free promotion in a sense. I downloaded Audiosurf (yes I was a cheap bastid), but after playing for one day, I just thought this game was too awesome and I had to buy it. I bought it the next day. Then I introduced it to my friends, who first torrented it as well, but then ended up buying it too. Did anyone lose out here? I don't think so. This isn't the only case either, I've bought plenty of games after 'aquiring' them in other means.

Now, I do have a friend who says that he'll "never pay a cent for a game", and he is a heavy gamer. This is the mentality that I disagree with. If you like it so much, you should get it.

For AMVing, it's a bit different, since we don't exactly use the anime for watching only, we need the dvds for quality purposes (and maybe collection purposes). I would never buy an anime I haven't watched, that could end very badly. Which then brings us to watching freely, either from friend or from the internet. Both have the same outcome for me, if the series was awesome, I'll get it, simple as that.

As for AMVs themselves, I find them a great source of advertisement. Companies don't seem to see it this way because they only look at money and the fact that part of their stuff is shown on the internet without paying them. Chii's Kanon AMV got me into the series, and I am in the process of buying those dvds. After watching ScorpionP's IC track with Munto, I was prepared to buy it without watching the whole thing beforehand, since the IC track was a good enough advertisement for me, but the stores didn't have it. The only way to get it was to travel out of the province, and even then I'd have to hunt around because it wasn't guaranteed, which is absurd. I emailed sites like BestBuy and Futureshop asking when they would get new stock - no replies. If you're not going to help me out by restocking, you shouldn't be complaining that we aren't buying your stuff. I now own a non-legit copy of Munto because of that. I was even willing to buy online for this, which I am really against - I have only done this once - and yet that still failed because of the 'out of stock and no reply'. They dug their own grave on this one.

Then there's the ridiculous Bill-C61 coming for Canada. They are going to turn Canada into a backwards country with this. Illegal to back up your movies and illegal to rip dvds, illegal to do this illegal to do that. They may start stuffing DRM everywhere too. The day they do that is the day I stop buying dvds, and I'm sure many citizens are with me on that - and this is the very thing that they are trying to promote by doing this - complete irony.

Now, I'm not sure if I have gone off-topic here, so I'll go ahead and read the article.

[SF_Phoenix]

...I would never buy an anime I haven't watched...

whoops, meant to say "I would never buy an anime I haven't watched, or at least seen part of it, although the majority of the time it is the former."

[Sukunai]

This is the 21st century not the 20th.

It's not about laws and justifications, it's about reality.

I don't need to buy it. They need to get that in their heads.

If they want me to buy it, make buying it more attractive, or stfu and hurry on out of business.

A movie today is a few hours and a broadband connection and a newshosting service.
I don't really need the dvd case and jacket and the silk screened dvd so badly I will pay 25+ bucks for it.

Music is even easier as the data is even smaller.

I can't think of a single game I can't find online free.
And interestingly enough, the online downloadables don't have disruptive or destructive or frustrating copy protection programming. It's ironic, that the only people that suffer with copy protection, are the honest people that bought the product.

Way to go big business, you only piss off the people that pay for your product.

I think the hardest lesson that business needs to learn, is that copy protection software is precisely useless.
If you paid anything for copy protection software for your product, you were robbed.

Now as to the anime relevance. Well I usually will see good movies in a threater, and then later want a copy.
Why should I have to buy a dvd of anime before I have ever seen it?
So if they kill off fan subbing, well then they are likely only going to massively lobotomize the anime market.

[Megamom]

We want to condemn for sharing ... but they are the ones who are condemned.

[JaddziaDax]

This is all a double edged sword... While you have honest users that use the system and still funnel money into the industry, you will also have a lot of users that feel that they are entitled to free media and will throw hissy fits if they don't get their free media.

What would be nice is to find a compromise between artists/producers and the consumers.
~~~~~~~~

As for the "theater comparison" (I go to the theater and see it before I decide to buy it or not) perhaps you should go to a Convention sometime, cause there's plenty of "free" anime to watch after you pay to get into the con. It would be similar to going to the theater, they even project them onto large screens!

However I believe the big issue with Anime (for any place that is not Japan) lies in the fact that there are some series that are just not going to get licensed, so we would never see them otherwise. Sometimes if they do get licensed then we get offered a product that is just as good as the free products we can find online, just as good as bootlegs or sometimes worse in quality than free/cheaper alternatives.

The same argument can be made for any media from any country for people who live in a different country from the one that originally made it. Downloading truly is the only way to get the product.
~~~~~~~~~

As for ISO Hunt, they are getting sued for enabling... the same reason the Tube is under lawsuits as well.. it's not a matter of "well it's the users that are doing it not the site!" it's a matter of "well this site here is enabling people to act in a way that is not according to the law". That and the fact it's a lot easier to go after the source of the enabling than it is to go after the thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of users.
~~~~~~~~~

I actually don't like hearing the baby video being used as an example to make their argument, while it's a valid argument in the case of remix it's not a valid argument in the case of people who offer up entire copyrighted works for anyone to download.

The baby video has shoddy audio, and it's not like she even mixed the audio into the video, it was playing in the room in the background.

Somehow I don't like the idea of Remix being pooled in with "media pirating" even if it is by default similar.

[Bauzi]

I can understand if are discussions about stealing software and movies and about how it is somehow advertising, but for god´s sake: Things like AMVs just have to be free!

Music industry is like a dinosaur. Who needs them? I can download songs from the internet or even the official artists website and support them much more with buying a fancy T-shirt instead of an overpriced cd.

I think industry should realize that I, as audience, just can´t every fucking piece of movie, cd or game that´s comeing out.
In the end there is no way to stop illegal file sharing and all they come up with are things like songs on usb sticks? How perfedic!

Yeah we need change.
Wouldn´t you pay 5 to 10 bucks per month for a music (DRM free) flat rate from the musical industry? I would if the amount of various music and genres is alright.

[Infinity Squared]

Yeah we need change.
Wouldn´t you pay 5 to 10 bucks per month for a music (DRM free) flat rate from the musical industry? I would if the amount of various music and genres is alright.

Yeah, exactly... that kind of thinking I will endorse. Some reasonable set price that ought to be going straight to the artists and I'd have no qualms about it.

There are artists which I know to be consistently creating music that I like, so I don't even think twice about buying their albums. However a greater majority of them out there are unknown or a mix bag for me, so I almost invariably will need to sample first before I even consider whether or not they are worth it, and even then, it would probably be only when I've realised they're consistently good that I go ahead with parting with my hard earned cash. And I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks this way.

The corporations I think will not be changing their thinking and attitude soon enough. Maybe if any change will occur, it will need to start coming from the artists themselves.

These debates get nowhere.

[pettruchio]

For anime, 9 times out of 10 the anime distributed in America is outrageously priced. Most of us simply can't afford the anime out there. And with series like Naruto and Bleach....they never end....how can we afford something like that with where the economy is these days. Having said that I have an impressive (I think) collection of anime that I have bought over the years, mostly due to the wonderful website Rightstuf. All of it is legitimate and most was on sale for a price that I could afford. I love anime and I want to support the artist that made it. If they can't afford to make it then we won't get to see it. And everything should have a price, it makes it "worth" something. But the prices that the corporations shove into our faces often times are ridiculous and there simply isn't enough incentive for me to buy it. In the case of Naruto....there are so many typos and mistakes in the subtitles that VIZ put out that I couldn't believe I wasted my money buying something like that when the corporation didn't care enough to put out quality product. I won't get into the what they did to the dub. We all know that part.

In a few years DVDs will be obsolete in favor of IPods and other such devices anyway so corporations aren't going to lower their prices on their DVDs now when it won't make that much of a difference in their capital.

In terms of AMVs well, I would say 4/5ths of all the music I currently own (via cd) I heard from an amv. I liked the song so much I researched the artist and then went and bought the cd. However, before buying an entire cd I did find some of their other music online and listened to it. Buying 10-15 songs for about a dollar a piece now can get expensive and I want to make sure its worth it to buy it in the first place. Having said that, now I have a horde of cds that are really nothing more than coasters since all of my cd players don't work anymore and I have moved all of my music to my MP3 player.

Not to cop an FMA soap box but equivalent exchange is important. The younger generation has grown up with the idea that things are free in the world and paying for something isn't necessary...and that isn't good for anyone. However with the way the economy is, entertainment isn't as important as simply living. So spending money on dvds and cds is something that many people can't afford to do right now. I think that corporations should realize that by not lowering their prices to keep up with the way the demand is they are the ones digging their own graves. Like its mentioned above I agree that a compromise should be made to benefit not only the artists but also the consumer. However the reality of it is the rich want to get richer and so they choose to sue instead of working to find a solution to this problem.