Blackmoor Vituperative

An example of real piracy:

Somali pirates hijack ship; 20 Americans aboard
Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 20 American crew members onboard, hundreds of miles from the nearest American military vessel in some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

The 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama was carrying emergency relief to Mombasa, Kenya, when it was hijacked, said Peter Beck-Bang, spokesman for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk. It was the sixth ship seized within a week, a rise that analysts attribute to a new strategy by Somali pirates who are operating far from the warships patrolling the Gulf of Aden.

The company confirmed that the U.S.-flagged vessel has 20 U.S. nationals onboard.

I wonder how — or if — the news media will compare/contrast these real pirates with the so-called “pirates” who buy the latest Hannah Montana song and share it with their friends.

A reminder:

Sharing is not piracy
Copying is not piracy

On a side note, Somalia has not had a functioning government in a couple of decades. Piracy is their most lucrative industry.

Google-owned web site YouTube has decided to block music videos in the UK rather than give in to the Performing Rights Society (PSA) of Music, a group representing artists and publishers in the UK.

“… PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before,” he wrote. “The costs are simply prohibitive for us – under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback.”

He also claims PRS is unwilling to even tell the video streaming site what songs are included in the licensing renewal being negotiated. Walker claims the deal is “like asking a consumer to buy an unmarked CD without knowing what musicians are on it.”

(from YouTube blocks music videos in UK, The Register)

Good for you, YouTube!

Penguin Pete is far more optimistic than I am. The history of media (words, music, images, etc.) in the USA and elsewhere is one of increasing layers of restrictions on consumers, and ever-expanding protections for the media robber barons and the Digital Rights Mafia (DRM).

It will get worse before it gets better. Or, as my grandmother once said, “You can’t get blood out of a turnip, but you can sure ruin the turnip trying.”

Ray Breckerman brings us another horror story from the war being waged on us by the Digital Rights Mafia (DRM): the story of Brittany Kruger, a Michigan college student who has been targeted by the RIAA extortion machine. Brittany’s story is better than most: as a result of her fight, the lies and crimes of RIAA and their MediaSentry stooges are being dragged into the light, hopefully to burn to ash like the blood-sucking monsters they are.

Brittany has written an open letter describing her experiences, and P2Pnet has granted permission to reprint it:

My name is Brittany Kruger. I’m not a criminal. I’m not a tough person. I cry almost every night these days, and I’m scared to death of what is going to happen to me in the future. Most of all I’m not a pirate, I don’t have a peg leg or a hook for a hand, and I don’t raid ships on the high seas looking for booty.I was a regular kid (I may be 22 years old now, but I still rely on my parents for almost everything!). I’ve no real knowledge of the world at this point in life other than how hard it is to establish credit or get a loan.

Today, February 3rd, I had a lovely conversation with one Morgan Schwartzlander [the ‘lead’ at the RIAA settlement extortion centre], and let me just tell you, it was outstanding, so great in fact I got off the phone in tears. My suggested settlement of $2,000 was “ridiculous” compared to their (“not negotiable”) $8,100 settlement.

Morgan will tell you that she is “not legal counsel” but she’ll tell you what she would do if she were in your situation, she’ll give you some statistics about how motions to quash are almost never granted, and then she’ll tell you that whoever suggested your motion to quash is an idiot (I don’t think she knew that was my dad).

I make about $4,500 in a YEAR working at Dairy Queen, and they want a lump sum of $8,000+? I don’t know how that’s going to work. When I buy a song from iTunes, it only cost $.99. Not every college student can have mommy and daddy pay for all their problems to go away.

I was looking through my journal to refresh my bad memory of how everything happened, then I decided that I didn’t want to bore you with dates. So I’m going to tell what I’ve learned about myself these past 2 years.

Today I realized that I cry a lot! Over and over I question myself “am I a bad person?” I’ve never killed anyone, I’m a very sympathetic and forgiving person, I volunteer, and I go to church.

But these people at the RIAA still have a way of making me question myself. Are some people just programmed to be bad no matter how hard they try to be good? That’s exactly how it seems to go for me, one step forward two steps back (or that seems to be how it is for my one person pity party).

Then my mom assures me that it’s not me. The jobs (I call them jobs because I would assume that a career is something that makes you feel good about what you do) these people hold are there to make people feel bad because they don’t have the monetary funds to make all their problems just go away. They are bullies!

I wonder how people like Ms Schwartzlander or Mr Kelso sleep at night, I wonder if they go to church every Sunday and think “I’m a good person”.

[Note: Kelso is Donald J, a Holmes Roberts & Owen attack lawyer acting for the Big 4’s RIAA as it extorts American students such as Brittany.]

I think all the time about how something that I love so much could get me into so much trouble?

I never sold copyrighted music for profit; I used it [P2P] to find new music or to figure out if I liked a band enough to buy their CD (because I hate buying a CD for just one song)! I didn’t think I was hurting the bands that I love by finding more of their music, listening to it, and then buying their CD. That makes no sense.

I didn’t even know what copyright was until got called to the Dean’s Office.

I don’t know how everyone else spends their college life, but for me a large portion consists of printing off endless amounts of documents that use language I don’t understand, making pleasant phone calls to settlement agencies, and racing papers to the local court house.

That’s precious time I could be using (studying or hanging out with friends) that’s wasted because of money.

I wonder how many college students have had to go to the police station to file a complaint about a “private investigator” invading my privacy, and have had the police look at them as if they were totally incompetent?

How many students have had their university hand them over like a piece of meat to hungry billion dollar corporate wolves?

I know that the University of Michigan didn’t do that, and Harvard University didn’t do that.

I feel bad for my roommates and friends too, because I know they get pulled into a lot of the problems that I have. They get caught answering the phone when it’s a settlement agency and have no idea what to do or say.

How are they supposed to comfort me when I’m having a bad day? I know that hundreds of kids at NMU, at one point or another, downloaded music, but they didn’t get their computers hacked into, and get accused like me of being a pirate like me, and they’re lucky for that. I think they know that.

I’m not a regular college student. I’m an example for everyone to stop and look at, with a giant stamp on my forehead that says, “Don’t be like me, because I made one mistake as a teenager that will ruin the rest of my life”.

You might not see my face or name plastered everywhere, but I can guarantee you that I’m in every statistic, you see a poster on the wall warning you against “illegal downloading”.

I’m the person they’re talking about. I might even be one of the “stupid” ones fighting the RIAA.

I’m Doe # 5, but I prefer to be called Brittany, because that’s who I am.

I’m a person, not an IP address or a case number.

I’m a person and no one will ever change that about me. I’m me and no one else will ever tell me different. I need to believe in that. Everyone makes mistakes, and the people who are doing this to me are no different.

I’m scared, and now I worry all the time about what is going to happen to me.

I don’t know if it has made me a stronger person or a weaker person. I have problems sleeping, my hair is falling out in ungodly amounts, I’m having a hard time concentrating in class, but most of all I hate the fact that I’ve pulled my entire family into this.

My dad helps me all the time figuring out what I should do, my mom listens to me when I’m having a bad day and need someone to cry to, my brothers and sister, I’m sure get jipped on the time my parents spend with them, and there’s always that perpetual question “hey isn’t your sister being sued or something for downloading music?”.

Right now it doesn’t seem like this is ever going to end, I’m just now entering the tunnel and the light is miles away.

I know it will end. I just don’t know how long it will take to get there.

I guess Murder by Death was right when they said “Sometimes the line walks you”.

Ray Beckerman is calling for new legislation to protect investors in tech companies from frivolous RIAA lawsuits. Why should investors get special treatment? The problem is not that investors are being sued. The problem is that anyone is being sued.

What we need is not additional legislation to protect investors. What we need is the arrest and conviction of RIAA’s board of directors under federal Rico statues.

Last April, Shepard Fairey mobilized his legal team to send Baxter Orr a cease and desist order threatening legal action against him. The Austin, Texas, artist made a parody of Fairey’s Andre the Giant design, adorning it with a SARS mask and the title “Protect Yourself.”

Now the Associated Press is suing Fairey for copyright infringement for using a wire service photo as a model for his artwork

What comes around goes around. Personally, I think both suits are absurd, and simply illuminate the absurdity of our copyright laws and the legal system that keeps them in place.

A few years ago, I read a polemic that predicted that our current legal system would eventually be replaced with one sweeping law against everything, and that the purpose of the justice system would be to prosecute those who are unpopular or lack the financial resources to fight back against their oppressors.

I hate to say it, but it looks like that day is approaching faster than even I expected.

Judge Campbell has distinguished between the actual bits stored on the World of Warcraft disk (which he called the “literal elements” of the game) and the interface elements the user encounters as he’s actually playing the game (which he dubbed “non-literal elements”). In his ruling last summer, Judge Campbell ruled that Glider did not violate the DMCA with respect to the “literal elements” because Warden did not “effectively control” access to those elements: they are stored, unencrypted, on the World of Warcraft disk. But he deferred until this month’s trial the question of whether Glider violated the DMCA with respect to the “non-literal elements.”

[…]

MDY argued that these “non-literal elements” did not constitute a distinct copyrighted work, and therefore could not trigger DMCA liability. The firm offered two arguments. First, the law only grants protection to works that are fixed in a tangible medium, and MDY argued that the “non-literal elements” were too ephemeral to qualify. The judge rejected this argument, holding that it was sufficient that the “non-literal elements” could be recorded by screen-capture software, even if Glider didn’t actually do so. Second, MDY argued that the “non-literal elements” were not created solely by Blizzard, but by the interaction of Blizzard’s software with the user. Hence, if the game experience was copyrighted, it would be the joint work of Blizzard and its users. The judge tersely rejected this argument as well.

[…]

Ars talked to two legal experts at Public Knowledge, a public interest organization that filed an amicus brief in the MDY case last year. Staff attorney Sherwin Siy compared Wednesday’s decisions to past decisions that tried to use the DMCA to limit competition in the garage door opener and printer industries. He noted that the purpose of warden seemed less to control access to a copyrighted work than to a network service—quite a different thing. Siy’s colleague Jef Pearlman agreed, warning that if the courts weren’t careful, we could end up in a situation where “because anything can contain copyrighted works, any access to anything becomes a DMCA violation.”

(from Judge’s ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling, Ars Technica)

We all knew that the DMCA was an abomination, but I wonder how many of us expected it to be this bad. I certainly didn’t. I think this case illustrates both the monstrous nature of the DCMA and the absurdity of our current copyright laws.

In the context of a restitution motion, in United States of America v. Dove, the RIAA’s “download equals lost sale” theory has been flatly rejected.

In a 16-page opinion, District Judge James P. Jones, sitting in the Western Disrict of Virginia, denied the RIAA’s request for restitution, holding the RIAA’s reasoning to be unsound:

It is a basic principle of economics that as price increases, demand decreases. Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product. Like the court in Hudson, I am skeptical that customers would pay $7.22 or $19 for something they got for free. Certainly 100% of the illegal downloads through Elite Torrents did not result in the loss of a sale, but both Lionsgate and RIAA estimate their losses based on this faulty assumption.

(from RIAA’s “download equals lost sale” theory rejected by federal court in Virginia; restitution motion denied in USA v. Dove, Recording Industry vs The People)

I love Lawrence Lessig. He is one of a tiny handful of clueful people that actually gets some attention from the media. If only lawmakers paid attention.

You have probably heard it by now, but Apple has announced that all music on iTunes will be free of DRM.

iTunes is still AAC-only, so I won’t be using iTunes, myself. Still, this is a milestone in the fight against the corrupt Digital Rights Mafia.