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posted by martyb on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the they-only-have-to-win-once dept.

Copyright Coalition Asks President Biden to Help Fight Piracy and Big Tech

The CreativeFuture coalition, which represents companies and individuals in the film, TV, music, and publishing industries, is asking President Biden to help fight online piracy. Now that the felony streaming bill and the CASE Act have been passed, big tech companies such as Google and Facebook are key adversaries once again.

[...] With the felony streaming bill and the CASE Act passed, the pro-copyright group already got most of what it asked for in last year's letter. But there is more. In the letter sent this week, CreativeFuture points the finger at an 'enemy' that's closer to home. "As you well know from your years in the Senate and as Vice President, not everyone in Washington is a supporter of copyright. The creative community has often been on the losing end of the battle to improve copyright protections," the group writes.

[...] With this week's letter, the group reminds President Biden of its concerns, calling for support. "We hope that your Administration will support ongoing efforts to ensure that the biggest internet platforms – companies such as Facebook and Google – have greater accountability for addressing the unlawful conduct occurring across their worldwide services."

"We know that you are personally aware of how these platforms can be misused and how they dodge accountability – all while making immense profits," the letter adds.

Letter to President Biden.

Also at The Hill.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:13AM (9 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:13AM (#1117152) Journal
    The copyright mafia will continue to use every opportunity to steal more and more from the host culture until it expires.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:41AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:41AM (#1117158)

      I guess for now we just have to develop a better bittorrent. Until we can get people to change the law, we have to work around it, and them

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:08AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:08AM (#1117162)

        Or just stop consuming it. We don't want their plywood shit. We can make our own content. CC is our savoir.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @10:12AM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @10:12AM (#1117198)

          Decentralized distribution needs to be advanced anyway. Pirated content will always be along for the ride.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:41PM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @06:41PM (#1117306)

            I don't care to consume 'pirated content'. I want to consume permissibly licensed content. The IP cartels want to force me to have no alternatives to their content.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @12:56AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @12:56AM (#1117416)

              I'd like to have my hamburger sans pickle.

              Will I pay for a hamburger with pickles in it, if others can give me one sans pickle....for free?

              With the contempt businesses have shown about my privacy, what t watch, and how I paid for it, I admit I, too, don't much respect honoring their wishlist either.

              Forcing me to accept terms and conditions, without agreeing to any of mine, seems to me an implicit invitation to look elsewhere.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:09AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:09AM (#1117515)

                If others want to underbid you then that's their prerogative. You are free to look elsewhere but don't complain that you want government to force me to consume what you have to offer and deny me any alternatives when I don't want what you have.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:22AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:22AM (#1117521)

                At least you seem to admit that your true objective is not to stop piracy. It's to abolish competition.

                If others want to underbid you then that's their prerogative. You are free to look elsewhere but don't complain that you want government to force me to consume what you have to offer and deny me any alternatives when I don't want what you have.

                IP should not be about the IP holder. It should be about the public interest only. The fact that you have made it about something else is reason to abolish these laws.

                Anyways the dishonest IP extremists need to stop pretending that they are really critics of these laws in favor if 'piracy'. I Get that IP extremists are dishonest but the fact that it's really an IP extremist pretending to be in favor of infringement to undermine their critics is transparent.

                "With the felony streaming bill and the CASE Act passed, the pro-copyright group already got most of what it asked for"

                Unfortunately the dishonest IP extremists used COVID to their advantage. They know people won't physically go out and protest with covid. Perhaps we should rethink our response to covid with respect to protesting.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday February 25 2021, @10:32PM (1 child)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday February 25 2021, @10:32PM (#1117383)

      See, that's just wrong, because in the 1980's we were told about how home taping is killing music, and didn't listen, and as we all know, the music industry collapsed and nobody makes money from music anymore.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @01:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @01:15AM (#1117419)

        I don't pay for ads either, so what's the big deal if I block them?

        I simply won't eat whatever is served me. I won't eat beans and hate mayonnaise. Even if Congress says I gotta eat it.

        I feel the only way to deal with this is to give Congress children's car seats...a steering wheel, a bell, etc, and not connect it to anything. Nothing enforces anything it does.

        Toy phones. Toy pens. Keep them from annoying everyone else, so they can play big cheese, while everyone else attends oo their own welfare.

        It's just there to give the Honorables something to do.

        Give em all Covid masks with built in muffler and podiums with muted mics.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by rigrig on Thursday February 25 2021, @09:37AM

    by rigrig (5129) Subscriber Badge <soylentnews@tubul.net> on Thursday February 25 2021, @09:37AM (#1117193) Homepage

    I think they accidentally sprouted a truth there:

    The creative community has often been on the losing end of the battle to improve copyright protections

    (Well, if you think of actual artists as "the creative community", which the CreativeFuture coalition probably doesn't.)

    --
    No one remembers the singer.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 25 2021, @12:53PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday February 25 2021, @12:53PM (#1117213) Journal

    By now, we're all familiar with the copyright extremists' false reasoning and spurious arguments, but for the, uh, record, it should be pointed out.

    "companies such as Facebook and Google – have greater accountability for addressing the unlawful conduct" Note how they slide "unlawful" into the verbiage while simultaneously being vague about just what conduct they're talking about. Of course everyone knows they're talking about piracy. They're once again trying the loaded statement, trying to smear some conduct as unlawful, when it is clear that the conduct they speak of should be legal. Note that they didn't try to smear it as theft, or immoral, no, they are actually being careful on that point. Yet this is complaining about activity that wouldn't be criminal if they hadn't done their utmost to keep it criminalized, and had some success.

    And once again, they're trying to turn private entities into their enforcement arm. They've always wanted ISPs to police ISP customers for them, and were righteously told to bugger off. Of course they also want public resources spent on this "problem".

    "how these platforms can be misused and how they dodge accountability" Again with the loaded statements. Speaking of misuse, propagandizing is a misuse of language that gets a huge pass. Freedom of Speech seems to cover the freedom to lie. And, woof, how some have used that to the hilt. Demagoguery, how do we deal with that? Criminalizing lying seems a bad idea. Discovering the honest truth can be very hard, and we don't want to punish people for simply being wrong. And we definitely don't want to increase groupthink by chilling our freedom of expression.

    The War on Drugs was a massive failure. The War on Piracy is worse in that while substances can be abused, it's all but impossible to argue that data can be abused in a similar manner. Where, therefore, is the public interest in this matter? They really have to reach to argue that harm is somehow being done. Yeah, yeah, artists will all starve if everyone can freely copy their works without paying them anything. Except there are ways to compensate artists without resorting to laughably futile efforts to regulate copying. Perhaps a violent video game could be considered data that can be abused. Yet the idea that violence in video games can lead to violence in real life is one of those notions that proponents perpetually overreach in their efforts to demonstrate that there is a link. Maybe there is, but if so, they've got to get real about demonstrating it in a convincing manner, without tainting their experiments with their agendas. Instead, they are repeatedly debunked. Then there's the notion that video games are addictive. Another sticky area is porn and the War on Sex. Social conservatives have made a mess of that, and more often than not, their efforts backfire.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:41PM (#1117292)

      "how these platforms can be misused"

      Most anything can be misused. Their goal isn't to stop that which could be misused because it can be misused. Their goal is to abolish user generated content, to stop their intended use.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:20AM (#1117520)

    Need anything else be said.

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