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The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP Act), sending the legislation to the floor for a full vote. The unanimous bipartisan action today drew swift praise from the Hollywood creative community, which has lobbied for the bill, which would target foreign-based websites that are pirating American content for profit and close loopholes that shield them from U.S. laws. The Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Association of Theatre Owners and the MPAA released statements in support of the vote, as did a group comprised of the American Federation of Musicians, AFTRA, the DGA, IATSE, SAG and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). ”The Judiciary Committee took an important step today to stop theft and save jobs,” said Michael O’Leary, the MPAA’s EVP Government Affairs. “By helping shut down rogue websites that profit from stolen films, television shows, and other counterfeit goods, this legislation will protect wages and benefits for the millions of middle class workers who bring America’s creativity to life.” Said the unions’ joint statement: “Let us be very clear: online theft is stealing. It results in thousands of lost jobs and millions of dollars in lost wages for our members. … Today’s passage of the PROTECT IP Act is a significant step toward ending the ‘looting’ of the creative and artistic entertainment works that constitute our members’ hard work, and are an invaluable part of our collective cultural heritage.”
Senate Committee OKs PROTECT IP Act
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This is such bull… it’s all about control, not “lost jobs.” I work in Hollywood as an editor and assistant editor. I am technically the “middle class” worker. Everyone I knows downloads shows and movies. All the VFX people I know, other editors, crew. You could probably arrest the entire middle of the industry for doing it. And profits and grosses are similar to what they’ve always been.
The problem is studios. They don’t want to talk about their funny math where they make dummy companies and charge themselves so they can avoid all taxes, or avoid paying anyone any profits if they have in their contract “net income” rather than “gross income”. And guess what, unless you’re famous and/or a huge power player, you don’t get to pick what your contract is, not if you don’t want the job. So the average crew member and even most post jobs, you get paid well, but the gross of something doesn’t affect you in the slightest. You could edit a massive flop or the biggest film of all time, you’re paycheck is very likely to stay the same.
And people don’t judge you based on how ‘well’ your work does. That’s for the studios. You move from job to job all the time. This is all such disinformation aimed at blinding people who don’t work in the industry. I’m even against piracy, but this moral grandstanding is utter bunk. This is about POWER, pure and simple. Corporations always want more power; they want more power than even the government.
Dude, you’re not wrong, but you’re also not right.
I’m suspicious of your claims, as well: If you actually do work in the industry, surely you know all too well that the almighty studios are *not* the only people creating shows and movies and stuff. Sometimes, those people creating shows and movies and stuff are kinda on the small side…
Furthermore, you’re kind of a jerk for downloading shows and movies and stuff, illegally. Just on the principal of the thing, right?
I mean, if you were the one who busted your ass creating these shows and movies and stuff, bleeding yourself dry while navigating the shark-infested worlds of Hollywood and its denizens, methinks you’d have a different take on downloading those shows and movies and stuff.
And, if you were ever working on a project of mine, and if I ever discovered you were illegally downloading shows and movies and stuff, I’d toss your fuckin’ ass into the unemployment line.
Just on the principal of the thing; no “Big Brother” involved. To wit, a decent person doesn’t steal from the very people who put food on their tables.
Just sayin’.
In my opinion,
Piracy != lost sales
and
Piracy != theft
Theft removes the original; piracy makes a copy of the original. I personally wouldn’t give a crap if I found someone pirating stuff I made, because chances are they wouldn’t buy it in the first place anyway.
The poster Winston is absolutely correct. I work in the industry as well and I’ve seen pirated films passed around by crew members on thumb-drives like it’s no big deal. Because guess what, it isn’t a big deal!
The issue here, as others have stated, is what this means for net neutrality and the protection of free speech on the internet. Piracy is being used to set a precedent for the future censorship of the internet.
I agree with you that piracy is common among people who work in post production as far as people downloading things. That’s because it’s common among everyone under 30. But let’s clear up one thing: Nobody in post would ever engage in physically stealing content from work and uploading it to the internet leaking it for the first time. Never happens. The last time I heard of anything like that happening it was years ago. I think it was an intern, and it was a Super Bowl spot not any content itself. They got caught and from what I remember the repercussions were nasty. All the features that get pirated come from three places: Russian telecines, people actually videotaping it in the theater, and DVD screeners from Academy voters. The people who really are in position to leak this stuff with a few mouse clicks every single day are the ones least likely to do it.
Hopefully Google will be able to kill this crappy bill. It’s amazing how Congress is willing to trip over itself to throw away the rights and freedoms of Americans for contributions from corporations.
This bill criminalizes simply linking to a file. It allows the government to block websites. Hello! The government blocking websites? Isn’t that what the Chinese and every other dictator does?
Look at how web addresses are seized now. There’s no way for innocent people to fight to reclaim their domain names! Someone just accuses you and suddenly you’re offline.
The fear of Government control is a little unwarranted. It’s about punishing people for committing crimes. It’s like walking into Target filling up your cart and walking out without paying. If people could get away with it they would… but it’s still theft. With the access people have today society is quickly changing the way it views right vs. wrong. It is wrong to steal… people do not have an inherent right to just take things with out paying for them.
@ B. Wrong analogy. this bill is more like the FCC monitoring your radio listening habits and arresting you if you recorded a song to cassette or your hard drive. The content is out there and will always be out there. There is not enough money in the US gov’t budget to stop it.
I’m cautiously optimistic that this won’t get passed. A hold is going to be placed on it, so hopefully it won’t get to go before a vote and it can die there. This should be a lesson for Hollywood: Provide a bill that doesn’t stifle free speech or innovation and you might get it passed.
good luck with this guys!
piracy is a great way to make these media companies less awful!
or bankrupt!
Thsi bill needs to get done ASAP. The people that are complaining here are obviously people that enjoying stealing things instead of paying for them.
For the record, I can list at least a dozen TV shows that I have later watched with commercials or bought DVD releases of that I would never have bought had I not sampled the first season via illegal downloading first. Stuff I wasn’t willing to pay to try, didn’t want to jump in two or three seasons in, but was curious about. I have always been very puzzled why studious are so eager to stop getting my money through this approach.
I can list far more things I pirated after sighing irritatedly that I couldn’t buy them on iTunes. Which has generally puzzled me more. I have frequently tried to pay studios for things and been stymied. Unsurprisingly, I went and got them through other channels instead.
If studios want to fight piracy, make everything available digitally in a prompt, convenient, and fairly priced manner. It’s not rocket surgery.
No, what the people complaining here don’t want is the government regulating the Internet. What we would like is an industry that’s had a fifteen year head start on the problem to figure out how to sell content in a way that consumers want to buy it. And *when* consumers want to buy it. As Phil points out, every download is a consumer screaming, “Don’t make me wait!” Don’t make me wait for the west coast feed, don’t make me wait for the run in my local theater, don’t make me wait for the DVD box set, don’t make me wait for the Netflix/iTunes windows.
The problem isn’t the Internet. The problem is an industry that’s locked into an outmoded distribution model. The consumer shouldn’t be punished for that. A poster above likened illegal downloading to not paying at Target. But this act is like the buggywhip lobby convincing the government to mandate that we must all buy buggywhips for our horseless carriages.
Mark my words: The war against freedom of information is likely to be as successful as the War on Drugs.
What you guys fail to address is the fact that there are independent filmmakers whose entire career hinges on their films turning a small profit. And when pirates bootleg their films before they get a chance to compete against the big boys, and then can’t sell enough dvd’s to make a buck and then their movies get pulled from shelves, well that’s not fair. Piracy may be a blip on corporate radars, but for the little independent filmmaker, it’s basically the end of an era of making a profit on dvd.
So true — I saw bootleg DVDs on the street in Thailand for my friend’s $1 million-budgeted indie feature that has yet to recoup its costs. At least this new bill would cut down on some of the even-more-widespread torrenting.
I don’t get the correlation between torrents and pirated DVD’s in Thailand on the street. Do you really think this bill will stop bootleg DVD’s? IF you do, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
From the industry that brought you Hollywood creative bookeeping, comes a bill like this. Everyone who reads DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD and works in this town, knows full well what crooks, tax cheats, gross cheats, residual cheats the studios are!
Nobody steals like the studios do. Copyright protection be damned… its all about government control and the mass media do the bidding of the government -or should I say the criminal cabal that passes as the government. As for loss of jobs…
What a BS bill. Once again a great example of corporations controlling their puppets in government to stifle peoples’ rights. The rest of the world should tell the US to STFU and quit trying to hijack the internet.
There will always be piracy — this bill will just make it harder for complete shitheads (i.e., most consumers) who aren’t tech savvy from stumbling into pirated downloads when they’re looking for the real thing.
Hopefully, this bill dies before it can do any damage. Maybe if Hollywood would make films more readily available to the consumer, they wouldn’t have to use other means to gain access to the ones they want to see. There are any number of films that have been available overseas for sometimes years and still have not been released stateside.
Why would it die? It’s probably one of the few things both sides can agree on.
Not if they’re getting donations from the broadband or computer industries. Think about it: The Don’t Steal Tires Act sounds great if you’re Firestone, but maybe if you’re in the oil industry, you’ve got your reasons for not wanting it to pass…
Wyden has blocked the bill.
Hollywood makes the mistake of assuming that people who download illegally would pay to see the movie/show if illegal downloads weren’t available. Pirates don’t pay, period. These people either can’t, or won’t pay to see the product they download, so it’s not as if an illegal download equals the loss of a sale. An illegal download is just an illegal download, the film/TV industry would not have received that person’s money anyway, so there is no significant financial loss for the industry.
This is the first salvo in what will be a long struggle by the federal government to censor the Internet. Today it’s pirate sites, later it will be fringe political sites, porn sites, and worst of all, consumer advocate/corporate watchdog sites. Once the government gets it’s foot in the door with online censorship, or denial of access, there will be no stopping it, or turning back. All this is being risked to shut down sites used by people who would not pay for the movie ticket or the DVD anyway.
Don’t be ridiculous. Your free speech rights aren’t violated if you’re not allowed tonpirate movies. Get over it. Pay 7 dollars a month for streaming Netflix and call it a day.
I think some of you are missing the point: they cannot be trusted to not abuse the PROTECT IP Act. The bill, as written, is chock full of options that can be used to censor anything anyone feels like, from links to pirated movies to websites organizing people for social change. It’s written to be easy to abuse. Look at chillingeffects.org sometime to get an idea of what can be done now without the PROTECT IP Act; it would only get worse if it were passed into law.
Anyone care to explain how a US bill can extend US law internationally? That would seem to be even more imperialistic that usual.
Protecting intellectual property rights should be a concern for anyone making a living or otherwise having a vested interest in the entertainment business. Wholesale infringement of US-made content and product is a major industry in countries like China and India where there is no cultural bias against it. And in the US we have a growing culture of people expecting to take entertainment, music, TV, movies, without paying for it and thinking this is OK. It’s not OK. Other industries hawkishly protect their IP, while the entertainment industry is lax. (Does anybody remember the ads in the Hollywood Reporter in the early 90′s with the three little monkeys “See no evil, hear no evil…” placed by tech companies warning against the coming of digital technology and offering pre-emptive protections?) The entertainment industry cannot afford to give anything away. The IP laws are not strong enough, and more importantly, our cultural values regarding respecting and paying for the creative works of others (and the financial investments made to produce those works on a large scale)has deteriorated, to the detriment to everyone who creates or toils in this business.
Any one who has the slightest brain capacity can see this is a foot-hold in a means to control internet content. Policies like this are constantly used to work against the people to control in the way of big business, and political agenda. READ HOW THE BILL IS DRAFTED! You are an a naive sucker if you think this “Protect ip” bill will adhere to which what it was argued to do. (shakes head)
Piracy != innovation
Piracy != free speech
Looks like Big Tech has done a stellar job convincing some of you morons that the grass is blue and the sky is green. I’m impressed.
Don’t forget that the ones that brought you the Pirate Bay already have plans to implement the Darknet. It will be another computer at a secret location that will take the place of ICANN to allow those of us who want to have a free Internet to create our own that is outside the system. You’ll see. The senators that are creating this bill are fools. I have seen happen other times where some control tries to come down and this could be for anything. Then some prodigy child comes along and quickly circumvents a multimillion dollar protection. Remember DeCSS. It was the name of the decryption method used on DVD’s to copy them. Created by a 17 year old Norwegian kid. It will be a never ending battle that neither side is going to win.
The roar of a dying lion. Laws won’t stop piracy.
By the way, piracy did force the hand of many executives to finally invest in online distribution of affordable content. Up until recently, many execs still thought they were operating in the eighties.
Creative destruction works.
Is there any reason the WGA (Writers Guild of America) didn’t weigh in on this thing? What’s up with that? It’s the only above-the-line union not listed as lobbying on this legislation.
List of other countries that limit internet use of citizens…
1. North Korea
2. Iran
3. China
4. Libya
5. Syria
6. Vietnam
7. Cuba
8. Nepal
9. Saudi Arabia
10. Belarus
11. Maldives
12. Myanmar/Burma
13. Uzbekistan
14. Turkmenistan
15. Tunisia