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| Infamous Fish-Hook Move |
I’m not going to pretend I fully support Internet regulation
and governmental piracy controls. But
I’m also not 100% certain that streaming sites adequately protect the artists
they broadcast. For me, there are a lot
of unclear and undefined demarcations.
On one hand I can’t police the entire web on my own, and I would
appreciate someone uncovering misuse on my behalf. At the same time, if you give a thief an inch,
he’ll take you for a mile. This applies
to both ends of the argument: ignoring copyright infringement on the basis of 1st
Amendment rights, or allowing power to rest in uncertain hands of
legislation. Should the power to
regulate and police be with the streamers?
I believe so. But then we have
cases like the YouTube
vs. Viacom one of 2010. This was one
of those, “He Says, She Says” cases where both try to “fish-hook” the other side
out of the way. An embarrassing amount
of evidence surfaced, proving gross levels of arrogance and the conflagrant
abuse of power – on both sides. Viacom
said YouTube had the responsibility to prevent copyrighted material from
appearing on their site, but turned a blind eye for fear of losing site
traffic. But Viacom stacked up as no
saint, either. A head executive was
quoted directing viral videos be made to look like fan rip-offs - then uploaded
to YouTube from a non-business affiliated location. We want to trust big companies with big
resources to keep the fighting clean. We
want to think that we don’t need Big Brother chiming in. But here we are witnessing a failure of the private
sector to keep things honest, or the outright creation of big-box pirating
sites like “Megauploads.” Positioned as a
file-storage and sharing site, MU says their piracy-policing tools show they
are trying to do things right. But the
U.S. government says their “safe harbor” resources are just a cover. They claim instead that Megauploads
is one of the largest piracy hubs on the net.
Similar to Viacom and YouTube, lead executives left soft-copy trails
throughout their email exchanges suggesting awareness and support of illegal
practices. Even if the case fails
to gain traction, it is still another example of media powers disregarding copyright
laws. But such pride doesn’t exist
solely on a bigger corporate scale. New schemes
and pirating practices are maturing like mold on bread every day. In March of this year, a twenty-something from
Southern California admitted to illegally collecting copyrighted movies to
share on the net. IMAGiNE Group, the
company he worked for, was purposed to circumvent pirates by streaming movies
online as they hit the theater. Ironically
their employee Sean
Lovelady, along with other co-conspirators, illegally captured audio from
film premieres to enjoin with stolen video of the film available online. In short, IMAGiNE employed pirates. Their pirated content was uploaded to servers
owned by IMAGiNE. Employees of IMAGiNE
shared the copyrighted information with each other. Did IMAGiNE know? The case doesn’t say. Even if they weren’t, did they set in place
preventative measures against system manipulation? The question could be posed to YouTube,
Viacom and Megauploads, all the same. So
who will be their fact checker?
Enter from left stage: SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act,
on the heels of PIPA, the Protect IP Act.
The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, already shuts down
pirated content in singularity, but the SOPA and PIPA are designed to attack
sites as a whole. According to the
Justice Department, it isn’t enough to simply delete offending content but the sites
that host the stolen content. Sounds
reasonable enough – like shutting down crack houses for making and selling
drugs. Of course pirated media are not
life-threatening substances, but a law is a law: creations are under copyright
protection the moment they are created.
If someone breaks that law, they are accountable for the
consequences. Silicon Valley argues it
will stifle
innovation and deter start-ups from “starting up” for fear of costly legal fees
in the event of ‘accidental’ copyright violation. But do doctors picket against expensive
liability insurance? Do construction
companies storm Washington for being required to have Worker’s Compensation? No. They
don’t because accidents happen. Without
those types of insurance, they could lose their business. In the long run, it protects them. If you want to run a business then treat your
company like one. There are costs
associated, and if budding Internet companies want to operate, then they will
have to put in fail-safes to keep it running.
Copyright cases surface all the time, and injunctions are ordered at the
expense of the offending party – whether unwitting or not. If you don’t want to go to court, perform due
diligence in keeping you site clean.
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| Spotify says NO to SOPA/PIPA |
But let me step off my soapbox and examine the other side of
the argument – the one I’ve previously stated: Crooks abuse power. In theory, involvement by the Justice
Department would help artists protect their source of income. But do we have a clean record with regards to
corruption and greed? No. Referring back to the “crack house” example,
how many times do we hear of cops who have fallen from grace, taking spoils for
themselves? Respect for governing power
has not had a good track record in our country.
I want to slap the hands of pirating enablers just as much as any other
artist, but I also don’t want another Pandora box of regulations and policies opened
– one that, based on historical facts, will likely be manipulated for gain. So here I am – we are, stuck between a rock
and a hard place. The cases above prove
piracy is no small peanuts. But should
we trust a government agency to take stewardship over it? Which is the lesser of two evils: ‘trust’
companies to police their own hosted content, or give Big Brother a pass to suffocate
free flow of information like Russia, China or Iran? Tricky indeed.
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