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Sunday, May 22, 2005

More Lies, Abuse, Other Reprehensible Practices from the Copyright Cartel

A lecturer at Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV in Spain has lost his job and been asked to remove all record of his employment at the university for giving a lecture on the legal uses of P2P networks.

Jorge Cortell has been lecturing on intellectual property at the university for five years. Earlier this month Jorge was asked to give a lecture on P2P as a part of Free Culture week. But Jorge made the mistake of telling Spain’s copyright cartel SGAE, the National Police, and the Attorney General in advance.

During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings). I was even going to use the network to "prove" that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society "SGAE" had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that "P2P networks are ilegal" (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it.

The aforementioned agencies informed their cohorts in the industry cartels and shortly Promusicae – the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA – and our very own MPAA were pouncing on the Dean, the University, and everyone they could find with threats, warnings, lies, and abuse to stop the lecture.

The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association "Promusicae" as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.

Later on that day (May 4th, I will never forget), I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to "make sure I did not teach there again", and on a second call saying "it's your choice, but also your responsibility".

The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.

Once again we have morally reprehensible actions being used to stifle the spread of legal technologies, and justified on the claims of stopping piracy. Mr. Cortell was not engaged in piracy, nor was he promoting it. He was demonstrating the effective use of technology for legally sharing both copyrighted and non-copyrighted works. And once more we have examples that nothing the Copyright Cartel tells us can be trusted – not their numbers, not their judgement of technology, not their interpretation of what’s legal. Lawrence Lessig reports today on how Bilboard magazine legal affairs editor Susan Butler has written a piece grossly misrepresenting Copyright, Creative Commons, and an author’s right to choose:

As Creative Commons chairman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig travels the world encouraging international adoption of Creative Commons, the movement has begun to arouse concern in the music business. Some industry leaders say that the group's approach -- applauded by many -- is in effect a Trojan horse that could erode copyright protection or harm unwitting artists.

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former chairman of the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force.

The Cartel has shown a complete lack of integrity, ethics, and honesty in their actions on Copyright, and they will continue to act this way as long as it works. We need to make sure our legislators know we’re watching, and we will no longer tolerate the making of bad legislation and support of corrupt business practices as a quid pro quo for nice contributions and rubbing elbows with stars. EFF has an action alert on the Broadcast Flag. That’s a good place to start.

The lawyers and lobbyists are moving fast, but you can move faster. Tell your representative you don't want Hollywood to hobble your digital media devices, and knock out the Broadcast Flag for good.

Make your voice heard with the EFF Action Center:

http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=129

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:43 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Copyright, Music, Technology

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Business Software Alliance - The Poor Can Pay Like Everyone Else

Via Ars Technica comes this link to a Business Software Alliance press release proclaiming 2004 software piracy losses in excess of $30 billion.

STOP THE INSANITY!!

The Ars Technica article, thankfully, notes the silliness of  BSA’s 1–to-1 ratio of pirate copies to lost sales:

  However, some of the BSA's claims deserve closer scrutiny. Does US$33 billion in pirated software automatically equate to US$33 billion in lost sales? Actually, it's not even close. Despite the BSA's arguments, each sale of a pirated title does not correspond to a lost sale of a legitimate copy.

They also note that the top piracy offenders - Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe - also have the lowest per-capita GDP and pull a great quote from BSA Regional Director Jeffrey Hardee via an AP story:

If you can afford the hardware, you can afford the software.

This attitude, and the absurd insistence that every pirate copy is a sale forgone, serve to completely undermine the honesty, believability, and effectiveness of Hardee’s position and show him in a harsh light. Let's examine Hardee's World for a moment and see just how this adds up. According the BSA press release:

 

• Although piracy rates decreased in 37 countries, they increased in 34 countries. They remained consistent in 16 countries.
• In more than half the 87 countries studied, the piracy rate exceeded 60 percent. In 24 countries, the piracy rate exceeded 75 percent.
• The countries with the highest piracy rates were Vietnam (92 percent), Ukraine (91 percent), China (90 percent), Zimbabwe (90 percent) and Indonesia (87 percent).
• The countries with the lowest piracy rates were the United States (21 percent), New Zealand (23 percent), Austria (25 percent), Sweden (26 percent), and United Kingdom (27 percent).
• The emerging markets in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa account for over one-third of PC shipments today, but only a tenth of spending on PC software.

Using data from the CIA World Factbook, piracy leader Vietnam ranks 161 in per-capita GDP, with an average annual income equivalent to $2,700 USD and 29% of the population under the poverty level. Runner-up Ukraine ranks 115 at $6,300 USD. Third-place finisher China comes in at 121, with per-capita equivalent of $5,600 USD.

What a stunning development – these people have shown absolutely no interest in spending 5%-10% of an entire year’s wage for a bloated, crashing, overrated piece of software like WindowsXP. That’s like asking the average US Citizen to pay $4,000 – yes, $4,000 – for a copy of Windows. Hello?! Am I the only one that sees how absurd this is? Based on statistics published at ITFacts.biz, the Chinese are buying PCs at the rate of 10–12 million per year. But when you can buy a PC in China for well under $200USD and the OS costs almost 2x that what do you expect?

To their credit, BSA does note that total financial losses from the top pirates are substantially less than losses in the major software markets of North America and Europe. Even though the number of pirated copies as a percentage of total copies in circulation is much smaller in these markets, the overall market size is substantially larger. And, assuming that every pirate copy has cost them a sale is a convenient way to generate some big, scary, “We have to do something NOW!” numbers.

There is certainly a problem with Asian PC makers who bundle bootleg copies of software in order to sell PCs (many do) and therefore profit unfairly from the work of US companies. But there is simply no legitimate economic basis for any of the current “loss estimates.” So long as the RIAA/MPAA/BSA continue to ignore basic economic principles and engage in blatant fabrication to suit their PR and political goals it will be a tough battle to get any popular support for their cause. I do not believe businesses – Chinese or otherwise – should profit from pirated software, but organizations that blatantly lie to achieve their goals are just as bad..

If the piracy cops want honesty from software users maybe they should start with a little honesty in their business practices. I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot – fed ridiculous numbers as if I don’t have sense enough to do basic math. Until these organizations start to put some legitimate piracy/sales ratios in place we have no reason to trust them, pity them, or help them.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:06 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright, Technology

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Another 'Broadcasting is Dead' Story

This article, Piracy is Good, over at Australian site Mindjack, is a good description of the effect technology is having on broadcast television. Author Mark Pesce discusses, in some detail, the use of p2p filesharing technology BitTorrent and, more importantly, proposes some interesting business models for how producers and advertisers can collaborate to create a viable business.

Mark uses a couple of good case studies, including recent download scenarios for Dr. Who and Battlestar Galactica, to make the case that downloading does not necessarily equate to lower viewership. He also offers good analysis of the economic situation broadcasters face – after 50 years of training viewers that TV is free, trying to suddenly convince them they should be paying for everything isn’t going to work.

This, of course, is not news to anyone who regularly reads weblogs, RSS feeds, or uploads pictures to Flickr. But Pesce’s is one of the first articles I’ve seen to dig into the figures around p2p distribution, broadcast viewership, and the relative impact for popular TV episodes.

I’m not ready to concede broadcast is dead – even the latest bittorrent clients are too geeky for mass use – but Pesce’s case for advertisers is compelling. And if one thing is certain, it’s that advertisers follow the market. A commericalized, ad-supported p2p distribution network with viewer tracking can’t be far away.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 1:14 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright, Strategy, Technology

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