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Fluffeh writes:
"In a written statement to a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the DMCA takedown system, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman informed lawmakers about the ongoing struggle against online piracy. 'All those links to infringing music files that were automatically repopulated by each pirate site after today's takedown will be re-indexed and appear in search results tomorrow. Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It's like Groundhog Day for takedowns,' Sherman says.
Google, however, clearly disagrees with the RIAA, Katherine Oyama, Google's Senior Copyright Policy Counsel said 'The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives to piracy, as services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated. The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:13PM
It appears the RIAA are quixotically attacking the open nature of the Internet. Traditional law enforcement agencies and legal actions against individual sharers have been entirely unsuccessful in bringing about any meaningful reduction in copyright infringement, so the RIAA are leveraging Google's (and others) previous court case losses alleging complicity with file sharers to force them to take enforcement action. Between Google and the RIAA, they effectively control the entire process of discovery, assessment and action against copyright infringement - there is no law enforcement oversight or accountability in the process any more until after the fact when someone complains about their mistakes.
I'll take bets on the following two things happening in 2014:
1) Distributed search engines like Yacy will see a significant increase in their usage, sophistication and resilience as centralized search engines are forced to perform more and more blocking of the content people want.
2) The RIAA will come out against 3D printers saying they can be used to print illegally obtained music.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @02:38PM
The RIAA doesn't care to (just) stop piracy. They want to stop all competition. There is plenty of evidence for that. One example is just look at the fact that, outside the Internet, these collection agencies have made it difficult for restaurants and other venues to host independent performers without paying them a high extortion fee under the pretext that someone 'might' infringe. Even bakeries are afraid of allowing children to draw custom drawings on their birthday cakes because they have been threatened by these collection agencies. Some child might draw Spongebob on their cake and that would be infringement. The horrors!!! and even if hosting independent performers is technically legal the threat of an expensive lawsuit is enough to deter most venues from hosting them. This hurts the restaurant, it hurts the artists, it hurts consumers, and it only helps the selfish parasite middlemen.
(Score: 3) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:54PM
Keep in mind that the RIAA is effectively an amalgam of the various music distribution labels that are already screwing the crap out of the artists who make their money in the first place. I was merely commenting on their methods, I took it as read that everyone knew it's all about these asshats taking personal possession of someone's money through any means available.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that fear of reprisals against copyright infringement has become paranoia of epic proportions and is causing irreparable damage to even the simplest forms of human culture. I worry that one day I'll get arrested and imprisoned on the way home for retelling a joke I heard in the office that turns out to have been written by a stand-up comedian under contract with Humour Inc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:40AM
Fiddlers Crossing in Tehachapi, CA (folkie music venue) is one place I know of which specifies that all acts must perform their own compositions or traditional tunes; nothing that is still under copyright by someone else.
-- gewg_