> Why else was a last-minute intervention by Google sufficient to bring the USTR back to the negotiating table on this topic, where the sustained interventions of EFF and 10 other major public interest groups from around the world were not?
It would be interesting to know what prompted the late intervention by Google lobbyists, given that the issues would already have been known by Google, due to awareness efforts by public interest groups.
Does Adobe have lobbyists to represent the interests of their creative professional customers? Or Facebook, which is getting into video distribution?
It's maddening to see how openly corrupt this process is. Having trade negotiations in secret might be defensible, but the direct access and involvement of rich and powerful industries into this process while simply ignoring public interest is incomprehensible. Politicians have fully sold out.
I don't think having trade negotiations in secret is defensible--I think they should have to make this sausage in public view. But the express purpose of this process is protecting the interests of rich American corporations abroad. We want to expand the market for American products, hopefully creating jobs in the process domestically, while limiting access of foreign companies to our markets.
It really is! Trade agreements affect everyone, not just select industries. I can almost understand how "industry experts" need to be consulted if the negotiators are not experts themselves. However, once that is over, the voting process is also completed by people beholden to the select industries and "fast-tracked" through congress.
The worse part of all is that you can't just vote in new politicians to overturn it; breaking a treaty with another country is typically a big deal and much more of a problem then just overturning a law, for example.
Since YouTube started making money, Hollywood wants a larger cut. This prompts google to make international copyright law more permissive, so hollywood's content depreciates in value.
I love cynicism as much as the next guy.
However, but considering Google has been fighting the good fight on TPP since before they owned Youtube (i can personally attest to this, since i worked in the DC office :P), i'm going to suggest you simply have no idea what you are talking about :)
You never believe me when i tell you this, but google honestly did not give a crap about its business interests when it started that fight, it cared about the world being a better place.
You are talking about ~2006. Folks then were much more concerned with "making the world better" (TM) than making money. The folks involved weren't thinking "Hey, 10 years from now, we might own a video company and this might be a net bad for us" or "hey, this might later some day affect ads profits for search". They were thinking "Hey, this would make the world pretty shitty for people, we should try to do something because we have a larger voice than a lot of folks"
(Note that at this time in 2006, google had 3 people in the DC office, including me. I pretty much know all the motivations of my office mates, who were responsible for starting this)
Every time i respond to a post about Google it's some cynical person who can't possibly ever imagine that the reason things are done are not always about profit or business or whatever else. Shocking, i know (Google is a big place, so yeah, nowadays, there's plenty of people with plenty of motives in plenty of places).
When I have direct knowledge of those situations (IE i was in the room), and actually know the reasons things were done, and i'm allowed to talk about it, I try to correct this kind of misinformation.
It's funny to me how history gets rewritten as public perceptions later change.
I don't like everything Google does, and perhaps not even every decision you've been a party to (who knows), but aside from your new habit of ending every other sentence with a smiley, I am grateful to have someone with direct, in-depth knowledge commenting on Googley issues here. Thanks!
That's a personal attack. Those are not allowed here.
HN has many users who work for major tech companies. No doubt everyone is biased in favor of their employer, but people also know the most about things they've personally worked on, and it isn't in anyone's interest for HN to have less knowledge in the threads. The solution is for everyone to post civilly and substantively, not be personally attacked for it, and let readers make up their own minds.
Even Darrel Issa, probably the most aggressive representative that fought SOPA, besides Zoe Lofgren, said in an interview at Stanford I believe, that the politicians changed their minds about SOPA then not because of "the people" but because of the companies lobbying against it.
The US political system is in such a sad state of affairs when politicians have to hear from the corporate lobbyists first whether something is a good idea or not before listening to the people.
Who are "the people"? Probably 90% of the country never gave a shit about SOPA. Politicians weren't going to fundraising rallies in Iowa and having soccer moms and dads come up to them to talk their ears off about SOPA. From the perspective of a politician it's not "the people" versus "corporate lobbyists" it's "random public interest group" versus "representatives of big companies that create jobs."
And that's totally rational and democratic. A random public interest group may or may not represent an opinion that's broadly shared amongst the public and important enough "to the people" to get any votes. But everyone cares about jobs, and if a job-creating industry leader like Google says something is a good idea, then maybe it's one that'll create jobs and get you some votes.
> Ironically enough their complaints may actually undermine their own long-term interests. After all, creative artists of all kinds depend on fair use to make new works—from blockbuster pictures to music to fiction
Lol at the idea of Hollywood creating anything that could be described as creatively artistic.
The problem with remixes is when you put them on a website that doesn't share revenue with the rights-holders.
I totally agree with the EFF's stated approach at copyright reform [1], but they need to pick better bedfellows.
If Google, SoundCloud and Facebook had their way, there would be NO copyright. These aggregators do not make anything so they have no need for copyright. Copyright to them means giving up a slice of their pie. Whatever pressure they're putting on the TPP is clearly in their own best financial interests.
These companies are making billions of dollars by organizing and displaying the creations of other people while the revenue models of every creative industry are being gutted.
I understand both sides, but the EFF should really try a more balanced approach.
Making representatives of creative industries out to be petulant children doesn't help a god damned thing.
Whatever kind of post-scarcity economy that will ultimately put an end to needing things like copyright, which primarily exists to help intellectual creations function in a market economy, is nowhere in site. The last I checked the rents were still climbing through the roof in almost every creative hub in the Western world.
> Whatever kind of post-scarcity economy that will ultimately put an end to needing things like copyright, which primarily exists to help intellectual creations function in a market economy, is nowhere in site.
There are solutions, but no solutions which will make people into lifetime millionaires for having one hit-single promoted and pushed worldwide by a monolithic music-industry.
I'm sure there will be some people who argue that this is a major problem, but those who still make art for the sake and appreciation of art itself, they can probably cope with that loss.
Movies are different, and certainly more expensive and collaborative projects. So how about them?
Movies have gotten increasingly expensive over the last decades... Maybe that's just a pendulum swing gone too far the wrong way, fuelled by a misguided copyright-regime?
With crowdfunded movies like Kung Fury making due with less than a percent of a regular hollywood flick, maybe maybe it's time Hollywood start looking into what's driving their costs.
Basically: Maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back?
Why is it okay for programmers to be turned into lifetime billionaires for what amounts to an interesting hack and a little hustle (e.g. Facebook), but it's not okay for a musician to make a few large off a successful/popular track that entertains millions and millions of people for years?
I find the double standard evident in these discussions to be ludicrous and frankly elitist. "Our unicorns are completely meritocratic, but yours don't deserve it!"
Then there's this sort of sanctimony, which also always pops up in these discussions:
> ... but those who still make art for the sake and appreciation of art itself ...
Translation: artists should be perfectly content to eat dog food when they get old because theirs is a noble altruistic profession ... says the member of a profession whose average college grads can land six figure gigs as early twenty-somethings and have lifetime earning potential beyond the wildest dreams of your average musician or artist.
Oh the horrible greed of these artists! They want me to pay less than what I spend at Starbucks for a week to listen to an album I might enjoy for the rest of my life!
It's easy to preach altruism for other people or praise others for their noble asceticism. Try a little poverty yourself sometime. It's not romantic. It's not noble. It's not virtue. Poverty is humiliation, defeat, suffering, stress, walking around for years with a rotten tooth because you can't afford a dentist, and knowing you will spend your old age with bedsores and cockroaches.
As far as Hollywood's expenses go: do the makers of these indie films have 401k's or retirement benefits? Hollywood employees do, at least most of them. Providing a real career for people is costly, and Hollywood employs millions of people in real jobs with real benefits.
I guarantee that the makers of indie films are doing so to break into the biz, and that they do not have the intent of being poor forever. Look at what the makers of Primer (arguably the best indie sci-fi flick ever) are doing now. Indie films and crowdfunding are awesome, but they don't eliminate the need for copyright or replace the rest of the business model. They just give more options to indie and emerging artists.
... and don't get me started on the biggest losers in a post-copyright world: writers. Musicians can tour and films have theater runs. When was the last time you attended a live reading of a novel by its author? Writing would vanish as a viable profession. No more novels, no more poetry... at least other than amateurish efforts and fanfic. Writing a real novel of any quality takes years.
I don't necessarily support SOPA or some of what's in leaked TPP documents, but I also do not support those who want to strip artists and the art industry of their rights so that their work can be monetized for free by content mills, portals, and advertisers. Hollywood studios and record labels are not altruistic, but neither are big Silicon Valley tech firms.
Google supports a softening of copyright because it serves their interests -- and because they don't need it! They keep their software in 'the cloud' (trade secrets) and make money by providing a service with it (capital ownership). The software biz as a whole could probably survive without copyright for this reason, and because software has inherent service-like characteristics (the need for constant updates, etc.). Movies, music, and books do not have these characteristics.
"I find the double standard evident in these discussions to be ludicrous and frankly elitist. "Our unicorns are completely meritocratic, but yours don't deserve it!""
I'm pretty sure the HN gestalt has but one standard, and it's something like "The unicorns are not a good thing and probably mean there's some sort of bubble."
There will probably still be some musicians that make boodles of money under any system, and it probably won't be all that different in number from the rather small number of programmers who manage that. Programming isn't a reliable route to millions, let alone a reliable route to billions!
> If Google, SoundCloud and Facebook had their way, there would be NO copyright.
Every software license enforceable in the US derives its power from copyright law. Without the power of copyright law, one must turn to either trade secret or patent law to protect one's software creations.
A substantial source of both Google's and Facebook's competitive advantage derives from their in-house software. It would be difficult to distribute software to end-users while simultaneously claiming that that software was a trade secret and eligible for protection. Similarly, obtaining patent protection for the bulk of one's software portfolio would be... pretty much impossible.
Your analysis of the copyright stance of those companies needs to be substantially more nuanced. You might read archives of the Google Public Policy blog to refine your opinions on the matter. :)
These companies are all natural monopolies, if someone were to release all of their source code, it wouldn't put a dent in their existing ad-sales marketplaces. The advertisers go to where the eyeballs are, not to where the best source code is. Most of these companies run on open-source software anyways. Google isn't the only company that can crawl the web and slap a CRUD application for selling advertisements on top.
If you haven't noticed, the modus operandi for our industry is to rush out whatever software you can slap together and try to monopolize a marketplace. [1] [2]
If anything, open-source software is the sign that copyright law isn't needed by our industry to function, which is a giant problem for many other industries.
And I agree that they absolutely do care about patents and trademarks. Facebook would be really upset if someone was using their logo on some random iOS photo sharing application.
Facebook and Google would absolutely love to be able to organize and distribute every song, book, and movie on the planet for free and without having to pay anyone for the right to do so.
Copyright protection is huge part of what enables the rights-holder[0] of a work covered by the GPL to force entities who both modify and distribute that work to also distribute their changes to that work. Similar things can be said for any software license.
Google et. al. have done an enormous amount of work to make -allegedly- really good advertising marketplaces. Software drives those marketplaces. If you get the software, you're likely more than half-way to creating a marketplace just as good as Google's, but substantially cheaper, because you didn't pay a dime in R&D.
> ...the modus operandi for our industry is to rush out whatever software you can slap together...
That hasn't been the MO in any company I've worked for. From what I hear out of the SV BigCos, it's not the MO at those places either. Perhaps you're confusing the antics of the swarm of short-lived Valley startups with practices in the rest of the industry.
> Facebook and Google would absolutely love to be able to organize and distribute every song, book, and movie on the planet for free and without having to pay anyone for the right to do so.
That makes sense. That doesn't imply that they wish to abolish copyright. I would very much like to be able to have anything in the world that I wished, gratis. This doesn't mean that I want to legalize theft.
Your views on both copyright and the software industry appear to be overly simplistic. You would probably do well to study the differing protections afforded by copyright, patent, and trade secret laws. Similarly, you should talk -at length- to programmers who work at successful, unsexy companies outside of The Valley. Hell, maybe even spend a few years working for one.
[0] It is -actually- the thing that creates the rights-holder in the first place.
> while the revenue models of every creative industry are being gutted
You say this like it's a bad thing. The established business models in these industries, where the content creators are basically enslaved to the entities that distribute their work, have become obsolete thanks to the Internet. Capitol Records doesn't need to front the budget for an album and pay to press copies anymore. We have crowd funding, digital downloads, etc, not to mention that the quality of digital recording technology has increased to the point where just about anyone who wants to can record an album in their home. The only reason these parasitic entities still exist is that they're bribing politicians to pass legislation to keep them in business.
You make many good points, but you're skimming over the key aspect: people who don't make nor invest in content are selling ads on top of said content and they really don't want to share any of the revenue. It's as simple as that.
BTW, tort and common law copyright means that until we decide to get rid of our entire legal system, people are still going to be successful when they sue for damages, so these issues aren't going anywhere.
The silly thing is there is no reason why aggregators, authors and publishers can't just realign their incentives and develop financial structures that work for everyone. We've been here before!
It would be interesting to know what prompted the late intervention by Google lobbyists, given that the issues would already have been known by Google, due to awareness efforts by public interest groups.
Does Adobe have lobbyists to represent the interests of their creative professional customers? Or Facebook, which is getting into video distribution?