This blog, as my last planned one, was about an article that I read.
The article talks about a college that is standing up for its students. The college receives the infringement letters, and would normally forward them to the student body. This college is standing up to that system, requiring proof before sending it off to the student, to notify them of what they have been accused of. As I remember, lower school systems(junior high and the like) require that a student be told what they had done wrong, before they are suspended/expelled, and given a chance to make their statement and try and prove themselves innocent. A man is given a trial, no matter what crime he committed from fraud to speeding to murder. A man is to be read his rights before he is incarcerated, so should students attending a higher learning facility not have the same right? To have proof before being accused?
The RIAA has had a history of falsely accusing many, MANY people of copyright infringement. A little old lady who has no chance or clue as to what is happening? The RIAA is a bully of the world of law, throwing threats of lawsuits in every direction that anybody uses a song in any form. A mother uploads a video of her son dancing to a Prince song, and the video is taken down without a second question? No chance to defend yourself, not a shred of proof provided, but with a juggernaut like youtube, they are unable to police the content themselves, so they simply remove anything that is marked offensive enough times, or there is a copyright violation allegation. Not proof, allegation, accusation, made against the video, and it is removed without a chance to defend, make your case, but as content gets bigger and more expansive, it will be up to the user base to report a video as offensive or inappropriate. Yet with the RIAA, a single threat is enough to get it removed, where as it takes the community to get a genuinely offensive video removed.
Who is policing this group? It is just a hop, skip and a jump if not less before they, with their indomitable team of lawyers are able to attack any and all who lash out at them. The pseudo-religion Scientology follows the same practices, and even teaches in their religious text to lash out two fold at any and all attackers. The companies that they contract to acquire the "proof" have already been proven to have done more then their fair share of shady dealings with leaked emails from their internal offices. I recall reading a recent a recent article on The Onion which lampoons the RIAA's futile attempts to stem the almost ludicrous spread of file sharing. In the UK, a mechanics garage is being sued because a mechanic had his music loud enough, that passerby's were able to hear the radio. How far is it from a dystopian future in which all content and media must be watched in the privacy of your home, and a certain volume level? With the signing of the PRO-IP act, they now have an official in government office who they will practically have under their thumb, and is in office due to their incessant lobbying. Granted, this is how most things get done, with special interest groups and the like, but an entire new position, with an unknown restriction on power that they'll be able to enact? The future looks bleak for the sharing of ideas and content, even moving into the territory of open-source software such that of Vuze, which recently came under fire for "facilitating copyright infringement", the same bid that is made against many a torrent web sites and search engines.
Should that which displays the content be attacked for the content and sharing? Is the manufacturer of my TV going to be sued into oblivion because it is possible to watch a pirated movie on it? Is Firefox, Google and yahoo going to be forced to remove any and all results when searching for content, even of the legal variety because the RIAA doesn't agree with it? Because Google doesn't have the rights to comedy central, they can't display their page? HDMI is a step in the right direction for the streamlining of connections and universality, but two steps backwards for the implementation of legal content. A friend of mine's father has an HDTV he bought a few years ago, and it does not have an HDMI port, but more then it's fair share of component ports. Is he trying to pirate blu-ray movies? Of course not, he just wants to watch movies and have them look magnificent, but due to the content restrictive nature of blu-ray and it's reliance on HDMI as a means of copy-protection, he won't ever be able to watch every movie he wishes to in full HD. But, because of a sad attempt to, once against stem the spreading of content, people caught in the crossfire suffer.
Times change. This is the one thing, all through history has never changed. What is today, will always be tomorrow. Seventy years ago, what was once unheard of, a black man drinking from the same water fountain as a white man is the norm today. A woman wearing pants would have seen her shamed if not arrested two-hundred years ago. Graffiti artists of the 80's, which were once sought after for major counts of vandalism soon was realized not as the norm, but as a group so large that it was un-policeable, and even is being used for promotional purposes even today. What is piracy today, a fast, efficient, and eco-friendly way to get content, will be the norm of tomorrow. The Pirate Bay, a vastly popular piracy website, hosting all sorts of content has become a one-stop shop web-site for pirates wishing to use any sorts of content recently broke twenty-five million peers. That is twenty-five million consecutive people using their tracker at once. The content they provide ranges from anything from the latest map of DotA, the newest DVD release, an early leak of a CD, or pornography.
Why have content creators and distributors not moved to a system such as this? Host the file on a few of their local servers, provide a torrent file, and get the files out there. The people provide the bandwidth between each other, sending pieces of the file all around to whoever needs it. This method has little to no distribution cost, no non-biodegradable plastic packaging, no annoying wrapper. Provide it on a web-site that is ad-supported, require their proprietary bit torrent software with minor banner ads, sit back, and let people have what they want. Include a premium benefit of using their software, their tracker and web-site. Anything from a clean efficient UI, to a guaranteed speed for each person, and best of all, the ability to download content that you would have gotten any way, but with the knowledge that it is free.
One of my personal favorite TV shows, Heroes had a first season run with an average of 14.3 million viewers. That is just for an individual show, on at a fixed time weekly, spread out over weeks. Just IMAGINE the sickening numbers TV shows would see if their entirety was hosted on bit torrent. If I remember, most TV shows had around ten-thousand people with the completed file for the last episode of Heroes I checked, and that was weeks after it aired, without keeping track of completed downloads. A person can download the first episode even if it has been distributed for months or years, become hooked, and continue returning for the rest till the recent and follow it weekly as soon as it is uploaded.
Content that is currently hosted online, such as ABC's streaming of Heroes behaves much like traditional content, shoe-horned onto the internet. There are commercials you are required to watch, you are unable to save the content, you are required an internet connection, and in general feel very restrictive in addition to being low quality visually, due to the streaming nature. With a torrent file, there is no need for streaming, the only limiter is the hardware, between if the PC is able to run the video at a certain bit-rate, and if the hard drive has enough space.
If there is one thing that history, movies, TV shows and literature, is that sometimes those that go against the grain are sometimes right. Star Wars, 1984, V for Vendetta, the Revolutionary War, all show instances of mostly fictional groups rebelling against the larger group that believes themselves to be in the right. Whether it is the tyrannical British government, the Galactic Empire, or the monarchy of old Brittan, they are all bodies that believe they are right, eventually are overthrown and replaced.
And so I ask, how long until the RIAA, MPAA and the rest are rearranged, disolved or even regulated? Piracy is strong, at least twenty-five million strong, and dominates an estimated one-third of the internet. There is no stopping what is, today, called piracy any more then we could stop the sun rising, the rain raining, or the cake being a lie.
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