Why ACTA Sounds Good To Me
ACTA aka Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is getting a lot of press recently, especially from the likes of TechDirt and Broadband News. ACTA is the most recent lightning rod for those who are critical of the music and entertainment industry intellectual property concerns. ACTA is a good thing for the very reasons that the anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA crowd completely overlook – that artists who are not distributed through these publishing venues are being ripped off every day and the DMCA falls short in providing any sort of protection.There are thousands of independent providers of licenseable music, photos, stock art, games and 3D content that make a living by licensing their content to digital production houses, studios and end users of all kinds – independent providers that do not publish through a large corporation. These are creative people who work out of their home offices or small business locations.
The independents are getting ripped off just as the the big corporations are. But instead of having a broad distribution and repurposing network for their intellectual property, the independent has much more limited resources, and a drop of income in licensing means bills don’t get paid.
The DMCA by itself, doesn’t provide any protection from repeat offender or inequitable reporting mechanisms.
The user of a user account on a network may have files he’s posted pulled from the posted message on the website. There is no recourse if this same user account is used minutes later to repost the files.
There is a specific process used for submitting a DMCA Takedown Notice to a provider. All and good if the same mechanism was used to post/validate the product to begin with. Let me illustrate why this is inequitable.
A Meshbox artist created a model and texture set that a pirate took and reused portions from in a commercial product sold through the official store of Second Life. Although setting up a sales account is very easy to do, and posting a new model through that venue is something you can do in minutes on the internet; to have the stolen work pulled from the site required an official notice be faxed to Linden Labs. This was done, and the file was promptly removed the same day. However, what recourse is there concerning any sales of this stolen property? There is no guarantee that the same file won’t be reposted minutes later. That the file was pulled and not challenged under DMCA provisions indicates that Linden Labs at least acknowledges that some wrong doing took place.
What makes this even worse is the collusive nature of internet advertising in this kind of piracy. Here is how it works.
A warez site is set up, and the owner gets a page view/click-through compensation account through an internet advertising company. The site receives heavy traffic, possibly benefiting in page ranking on Google to have the stolen IP appear even higher on Google searches than the original IP owner. The network owner isn’t selling the software, but he’s still making money by providing a venue for the theft to occur. The site owner ends up with a domain property worth something on the domain resale market, and an ongoing revenue stream.
What really gets me is Mike Masnick’s statement:
There is simply no reason for ACTA, at all. It is nothing but an attempt by the entertainment industry to put massive restrictions on the internet, place liability on lots of third parties, and do nothing to push themselves to adapt to a changing marketplace with new business models.
Okay Mike, this is not what I and many independents see going on. I think there are inequities in Big IP. When I bought a VHS tape of a movie years ago, I didn’t sign on for it to have a variable end-of-life depending on how cheaply made the tape was. To me, I should be able to enjoy that version of the movie – under a software like IP based EULA – perpetually. I didn’t buy the Blu-Ray version, or the 20th anniversary version of the movie, both of which would naturally have derived but otherwise new original work in it. And I agree, it should be an enjoyment based license I can use on various devices.
Yes, I agree something needs to be changed there – but the often quoted Shakespeare comes to mind – “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport”. You’d like to smack down Big IP, but you are entirely overlooking the real independent artist who doesn’t want their intellectual goods stolen freely off of their apple cart.
