Join the Copyfight!

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 2:09 am

Since I've been sued by both the MPAA (Hollywood) and threatened by the CRIA (Canadian recording industry), I've talked about what's been happening with our cases. Our CRIA case has also recently received mainstream press attention by the Canadian Press and Globe & Mail. But the question is why? Why do they insist on suing their own customers? Why do they sue search engines like us, who make the internet more useful for everyone?

The problem lies in something fundamentally broken with the copyright system. A choice quote from Cory Doctorow's article on the "copyfight":

Quote:

So the natural inclination of anyone who is struck by a piece of creative work is to share it. And since "sharing" on the Internet is the same as "copying," this puts you square in copyright's crosshairs. Everyone copies. Dan Glickman, the ex-Congressman who now heads up the Motion Picture Association of America (as pure a copyright maximalist as you could hope to meet) admitted to copying Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated (a scorching critique of the MPAA's rating system) but excused it because the copy was "in [his] vault." To pretend that you do not copy is to adopt the twisted hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated. Everyone knows that they themselves are lying, and a large number of us know that everyone else is lying too.

When the head of the MPAA has to admit to copying the film that criticizes the very industry he represents, an industry group of lobbyists and litigators against such copying, it highlights an important fact beyond the obvious hypocrisy. The internet has completely changed the economics of sharing. When sharing equals copying on the internet and the direct cost of that sharing is effectively $0 (it doesn't cost you anything to share videos on Youtube or BitTorrent), it makes copyright infringement so easy that even Dan Glickman can do it. So easy that a mom like Stephanie Lenz can do it when she posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's music. And I mean no disrespect to them.

This is an age of rampant sharing and remixing, and if you can make the connection between sharing and culture as Doctorow has, you will see this war between rightsholders and consumers will never end and the rightsholders will never win. The band Girl Talk and Lessig and James Boyle and Terry McBride of Nettwerk and isoHunt all echo a common point: Remixing and sharing is good for culture, suing consumers and technologists who enable sharing is destructive for everyone. The internet is a more efficient information machine than the printing press or VCR ever was, and also a whole different animal. It's time the content industries learn to put it to better use as well, by discarding past notions of how business is done based on an economy of scarcity. In Star Trek, currency becomes irrelevant with virtually unlimited "copying" of physical objects with the Replicator. The internet is the Replicator of information. When a 13-month-old dances to Prince's music, copyright infringement is nowhere near his consciousness. It's an endorsement that he likes it, pure and simple.

I've said a number of times that I'm not against copyright, but copyright does need significant reform in the internet age. If all this rampant copying on BitTorrent and the internet has not made a dent in Hollywood's record earnings, why can't we all just get along without rabid lawsuits? Why can't they see that sharing and remixing is a human urge for culture, and when we share and remixes art, it's not a liability but an endorsement for the artist or author or producer?

When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it's not society that's wrong, it's the law. Because no one can really own ideas. Newton once said, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants." It's how the arts and sciences progresses. We share, we inspire and we remix.

If you want to join the copyfight, simply share your thoughts by replying, share this post with your friends, and join isoHunt's Facebook group. With our pending lawsuit against the CRIA in our home country, we may need your voice real soon, especially if you are Canadian. For more on Copyfight and where the word came from, go here.

Update: Since this post is all about warm fuzzy sharing, I shared this post on Torrentfreak as a guest columnist. This post, along with everything I write on isoHunt.com, are published under the CC BY-SA license. Share on!

Update 2: For a book author's perspective, a most interesting response and discussion regarding my post on the Copyfight. ( Edit by SecretSquirrel: Having spoken to Rachel Caine via telephone, she echoed the sentiments on her livejournal. Please do give her posting a read, she makes some good points.)

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 7:58 am

No matter what, P2P and ''illegal'' sharing will always exist online. I mean, you can't stop it. They can sue as many people as they want and it will still go on. Even if they were to do something drastic to stop it, it will continue on more backwater sites. If anyone takes the time to actually look within that matrix, they will find a lot more shit in torrents than popular sites like IsoHunt and such.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:11 am

Ya they will not be able to shut down the site...Legally they really dont have anything to stand on...and I am telling all my buddies about the facebook group =]

happy hunting cheers =]

Also, you I agree with you about the internet and how things need to change, back before the internet I can see how the copyright laws apply and such, but now on the internet things have changed =] and nothing is going to work untill everything thats "touched" by the internet in some way of "File sharing", changes. Its like when you move to another country, if you do not learn the culture and language you will not survive, so when something is introduced into a new environment such as copyright stuff and the internet "file sharing" the whole thing starts to turn upside down, and instead of adapting and maybe seeing an advantage in this stuff, people stop going forward and sue while in reverse trying to get out of this stuff....We are entering a new age, and laws and policies from the past simply do not work anymore, and need to be changed =]

have fun in court lol =]

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 9:58 am

"Upload Rate 2163 kB/s, Uploaded bytes:1232.01 GB"

I am doing all i can Very Happy

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 10:50 am

Lol good job man =]

i am going to buy iso supporter status soon =] hang on lol

Happy lawsuit-cheers

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:55 am

Good on ya CrazyMcCool. I just got mine a few weeks ago. But money isn't always everthing. The voice of the users behind the site can be a much more powerful tool in the fight. Me being a Canadian hoser would like to help do what i'm able to keep this great site and community alive and hope many others do the same.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 1:35 pm

I would love to just post this rant somewhere more meaningful but here I go.

First, this site rocks, use it all the time. It was the first torrent search engine I ever stumbled across. I always keep up with the news but just read.

Now let me start by saying any argument against downloading copyrighted content is asinine. Seriously, there is no legit excuse. There should not be a way to twist the law to make it so. Fact is, someone made a tangible product and should deserve some returns for it. These returns can come in whatever form what so ever. With the torrent networks up and massive there is no tracking this stuff, the authors get no returns. They get serious fan base, lots of people's fame is through torrents. Sadly, a high seed count on your albums torrent doesn't pay the bills.

Copyright is broken, big companies are greedy, people want this media and they want pounds of it. They want new content spewing into their face 24/7. Yet the big companies just spew garbage, charge to much, give way to little and act absolutely foolish in the eye of greed. I think most everyone can agree, if that album cost maybe $3 instead of $20 we would feel more included to buy it via a torrent network, have legit ownership. If software wasn't so bloody over priced people would actually buy it. How many computer users have gone their entire life on the PC without actually buying a single piece of the software they use? I wonder why, some of the software is as much as a new computer, nobody will pay those prices.

Now the torrent search sites. The tactic they take in court is smart, obvious, and to the immediate reader the best choice for everyone. Lets see who benefits here. You get sued, get some publicity, collect massive donations to pay the law suit, basically will consume a ton of your time for the next while. Your stance is that you are just a search engine. Which is really a fancy way of saying, "don't blame me, blame the people who put up torrents." So your site is innocent and gains ad revenue all which is possible because of the people who post the torrents. I call this a symbiotic relationship. Both parties are needed to make this work. Benefits are not really seen here except in the form of profits. The people suing you need this to actually have a job. You can enjoy this for extra attention or profits perhaps in a counter if that is possible. From the outside it looks like nobody really benefits here so lets blame the guys who sued first.

Honestly, I hope it goes well for you and nothing financially bad happens to you. I also hope there is a good solution in the future to all this time and money wasted. Until we find a way to make everyone happy: downloaders and the original authors. That works for everyone. I will continue to be a hypocrite, take this stance and use torrents.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 2:56 pm

halsafar, I agree with you for the most parts. Yes copying without ever paying would not be sustainable. But studies have shown that some downloaders are also the biggest spenders on CD's, concerts and box office tickets. Some, not all, but as I've linked in my original post, Hollywood is making billions and have steady revenue growth, despite they telling the public they are losing billions to piracy since the advent of BitTorrent, but telling investors something very different above. So by their own industry-wide statistics, BitTorrent and "piracy" is at worst break even from before BitTorrent existed, if not contributed to their record earnings.

When you try to determine whether file sharing is beneficial to the content producer, you have to look at different classes of users in the bigger picture (those who just pirate, those who pirate only what is no longer commercially available, those who pirate because their friends told them about something new they never knew and would have never bought, etc.) and what is the overall influence on sales. And of course, if we can make file sharing pay directly to content producers, the better. Consider Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model. Fans have shown they are willing to support their artists even when they don't have to.

Point is, before the internet, there was radio. And artists "bribed" DJ's to give their songs more airtime, played for free, so they can gain more exposure. File sharing does the same, and more, by democratizing sharing and remixing, making fans their friends' personal DJ's. Democratization means loss of centralized control from the broadcasting model (TV, radio) and that's why we have to copyfight. The real fight is between consumers and technologists against media cartels, comfortable with their distribution control over the cables, airwaves and plastic discs.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:46 pm

halsafar wrote:

Fact is, someone made a tangible product and should deserve some returns for it.

True,but a bakery only charges me once for the same bread.

I have to buy a 20 dollar dvd eventhough i paid 20 dollar to see it in the cinema,paid 17 dollar to see it on my telephone and i paid 14 dollar to play the soundtrack in my car,12 dollar to play that same soundtrack on my i-pod and another 8 dollar to listen to it on the same telephone i already watch the movie on.
All with less quality and less ability to do what i please with it but that is not enough,i still have to pay every time i buy a empty dvd to capture my daughters birthday.
Not to mention that dvds dont have eternal life,my harddisk doesnt either and its maditory to buy a new i-pod every three months in wich case i have to buy all i bought again and again and again.

Greedy is something that you cannot talk right,because its so downright wrong.

As long as writing a moviescript or popsong is awarded with more(and futhermore for a long period of time) then what a average assembly line worker is awarded with we have the moral advantage,no matter how much money "they" pay the lawmakers to make us believe otherwise.

"They" are making fun of us,watch a episode of mtv cribs and you know how hard they are laughing.

P.s.
I wish i still got paid for work i did 5 years ago,or that i am beeing paid eventhough i am dead for 45 years and in heaven already.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:50 pm

halsafar

dude great job i agree with you 100% its like you spoke my mind =]

keep it up

happy hunting cheers =]

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 4:30 pm

I think sharing your copy of copyrighted material is okay.

I think so for three reasons:

1. It should be yours to do with as you wish.

2. The copyright laws are plain wrong.

3. People will do it anyway and laws should reflect what people will do.

Point 2 is the one that people mainly will argue back and forward about. Laws.

Copyright law is intended to get an author a fair return for his work.

It was created at a time when writers could only get published via publishing houses which paid writers poorly.

i.e. it was intended to help writers, not publishers.

Today the profits are made by publishers and it is publishers everywhere who are mounting the massive campaigns.

Book publishers - a quiet little backwater now - video publishers, music cd and dvd publishers.

Film studios. Record labels. Etc., etc. Mega business. Punting for megaprofits.

There is no justification for their claim to megaprofits. They are not authors. They are merely copyers. Copying is a trivial exercise in today's world.

they are also distributors. Distribution is a trivial exercise in today's world.

This leaves the authors. Actors, singers, dancers, bands, whatever.

The fact is that they should have already got a just reward for their work.

There is no justification for them to reap megarewards, millions, billions of dollars. None. None at all.

But that is what they, too, are punting for.

No one is asking for just rewards for authorship. No one. Because it is already thee.

Everyone is asking for unjust, unjustifiable, megarewards for all concerned with the business, whatever it may be, records, cds, dvds, etc..

Everyone, especially including the share holders in these multinational companies.

What right have I, as a share holder in MGM, to demand rewards from everyone and anyone that purchases any copy of a piece of work anywhere in the world continually and continually through increasing sales until I'm filthy rich? Without ever having done anything but buy an MGM share? With some of my extra wealth. While millions - billions - on this planet can't even feed themselves?

I have no right.

No one has any right to demand megarewards.

BUT... we've become accustomed to it. Kids at school nowadays dream of it, it is their life gaol: be a pop star and get megarewards.

It is bullshit. Not right. Not fair. Not proper. Not reasonable. Not just.

Copyright law as manifested and operated in the world today is a manifestation of nothing more than rampant greed.

And that is not what coyright law was ever meant to be. Is not.

Copyright law was intended to help the poor, literally, the poor author being robbed.

We see all around the world today the inevitable outcome of rampant greed, don't we?

That's the whole point. That's an end on it. Extraordinary unjustifiable returns.

But there's more one can add. One can point out that these things are no longer worth what they were in the original. Songs, records, music, never was worth much. I mean it didn't take much to make it. A singer thought up a song or borrowed one and sang it with happy choice of musical backing and it fortuitiously became a hit, fine. Cost to produce: a few dollars. We all know this. That is part of the insane culture we have now that I mentioned that seeks mega unjustifiable rewards as a life goal.

But movies sometimes take millions of dollars to make, don't they? Yes, they do. And none of them have any 'right' to a return. Many of them flop. When they flop does anyone run around saying we should pay the actors, musicians, directors, producers, the company involved, etc.. , etc.. ?

No. It is heartless. A flop is a flop and no one has any 'right' to just rewards. They've blown it. Bad luck. We never give them a second thought.

But if it makes money then suddenly we're on this bandwagon of chasing copyright infringement, in order to maximise profits, in order to gain mega profits... all in the name of a 'right'. There is no such right.

If no one wants to come see your movie then too bad.

If no one want to come see it but some will download a free copy and look at that, then okay, you're doing a bit better. Good for you.

If many want to see your movie (or listen to your music, etc..) then you're doing better. Good for you again

If many want to see it and many want to download it then great, you're really getting across, excellent for you.

And that's all about it. that's all about the question of 'fair return' as it applies both to flops (who no one gives damn about) and successes (which no one needs to give a damn about).

But there's this to add: nowadays they don't need to cost millions. The world is turning. The world is changing. Nowadays the best movies may well be on You tube, made with a digital camera.

The population of the world, so recently mere forelock tugging serfs (think of the state of the workers in 1900 in UK, USA, Europe) is growing away from its dumb masses gawping at Hollywood productions and lapping up soap operas and other formula gunk.

You don't know what the world is like today because it is in the hands of the kids and it'll be ten or more years before they grab the reins and being to show us.

But their values have changed as their opportunities and their abilities have changed.

No kid before now could share his thoughts and his treasures with all the world. But now any kid can.

Many kids before now might have thought it unfair that so many millions, billions of kids in the world have nothing when the kid himself has so much - but could do nothing about it.

Now the kid can do something about it. The kid can share.

And if a kid today wants to share then they should be able to share because this rampant greed paradigm doesn't work and is sickening and has sickened the very earth itself.

It's kinda like that.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:04 pm

Sorry, but it does cost money to share content. We're talking the cost of hardware, at the very least, and the electricity it consumes in order to push the bits around. Internet started out as a VERY expensive research project funded by DARPA, a US military agency, btw. Where would we be without cables and boxes that push all that content through cables? Sure, there's research going on to bring wireless data transmission to replace all those cables, but in the meantime, we all have to make sure that those cables are not broken in a hard-to-reach place. It does cost money just for the upkeep of the wires that bring us all this content that we share over Internet. I think that we should not forget that even though the Internet is a virtual world, it was only made possible thanks to the real, physical world, where you can't just replicate wires like you copy a computer file. I read somewhere that a mile of high-speed Internet cabling can cost about $1 million. And that's just one mile. Just 1/21600, or 0.00004629% of the Earth's circumference. Just imagine how expensive the Internet backbone is. My point is, even without the copyrights stuff, we're still looking at a very expensive system that is still susceptible to power outages. And this is what we rely on for entertainment and other stuff...

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:21 pm

abrogard wrote:

I think sharing your copy of copyrighted material is okay.

I think so for three reasons:

1. It should be yours to do with as you wish.

What about people who wish to plagiarize and exploit someone else's work?

Quote:

2. The copyright laws are plain wrong.

The law always contains a remedy. Usually it is the interpretation of the law which is the problem rather than the law itself.

Quote:

3. People will do it anyway and laws should reflect what people will do.

Law looks to the intent. What people do (the tangible) is a result of their intent (the intangible).

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:38 pm

The stuff that we are able to get off of this website is all shared, someone uploaded it.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:59 pm

Okay I was using isoHunt as a way to determine what movies I was going to go buy. My internet provider shut me off for downloading "Baby Mama" through bittorrent. They had all the info what I downloaded, when and what program I used. So fine I won't download movies anymore. I got an 8.99 a month subscription to NetFlix. They have lots of movies I can watch online for free. I have watched more movies through them then I ever did through isoHunt and I can do that at any time. I am not even going to bother buying the movies anymore. So how are they making money now? Several other things I have downloaded (and uploaded) I bought a "hard" copy of and now I just want it in electronic form. I am not against people getting paid for the work they put into it, It does take time and money and energy to create these items. But at some point in time you have to say "Okay you bought it use it in whatever form you need." The world has become too "portable" to restrict the use of what you buy or charge you for every way you want to use it. They spend more money finding and punishing every "transgressor" than they make if they would just shutup and let people be. Confused