isoHunt Founder Gary Fung on Copyfight
Written by Ernesto on November 09, 2008In 2006, isoHunt was one of the first BitTorrent sites to get caught up in a legal battle with the MPAA. In a guest post for TorrentFreak, Fung gives his view on this copyfight, the right and wrong of the current copyright system, and how it’s abused by lobbyists for the wrong reasons.
Guest post by Gary Fung, founder of isoHunt.com.
Since I’ve been sued by both the MPAA (Hollywood) and 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”:
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, Lessig , James Boyle, Terry McBride of Nettwerk and isoHunt all echo a common point: Remixing and sharing is good for culture, suing consumers and technologists that enables 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 for the content industries to 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 needs 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 remix 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 work. We share, we inspire and we remix. For more on Copyfight and where the word came from, go here.
Previously: Piracy Leads to Less Crap says BitTorrent Co-founder
Next: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
53 Responses
another insightful article. Thanks for the read
The Game
+1
I completely agree.
Garry, you’ve said it.
I completely agree with that article, really well written.
May the MPAA burn in hell.
Part of me wishes for Gary Fung to lose. Sure, isohunt will close, but other torrent sites will quickly step up to fill in the gap.
A victory for torrent sites could unleash Hollywood against individual filesharers, much like the RIAA has been doing for the last 5 years, ever since they lost their first appeal in MGM v Grokster, with oppresive lawsuits against tens of thousands of young kids, elderly couples, and even dead people. Now the game industry has joined this lawsuit insanity.
As long as the MPAA is precision-aiming its legal guns against torrent sites – DMCA notices aside – downloaders can enjoy the fruits without the risk. But if Torrent sites like Isohunt win the legal battle, our carefree days of worry-free downloading may abruptly come to an end.
“Significant reform” but how shall it happen? Who shall push for such a thing? I think not that the industry shall ever change for themselves. The people are the ones who need to initiate the change bottom-up.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
Add my vote to poster #1’s vote.
I’m not anti piracy, I pirate quite a lot, but this romantisism of piracy seems a bit disshonest to me. I have no moral issue with pirating music, the record industry is obsolete and must go, musicians will do just fine, if not better without them.
But Movies and software is a different issue. They do cost a lot to make, and realistically I don’t see how continued high quality production of these things can continue if everyone switches to piracy. Movies will still have cinema, but except for major blockbusters, that’s just a small part of the income.
Open source software has proven to be sustainable to a degree, open source still has to prove that it can produce, say a cutting edge video game.
Sure, the internet has a massive potential, but it’s not fair to just shrug our shoulders and say “that’s their problem” when asked how the producers of pirated content will make their living, and keep production going.
#8: responded to similar post as yours on http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=425900&sid=#425900
#5: you got it the other way around. RIAA started suing everything after they won against Napster. By your selfish logic, if we lose, (more of) you are next.
@Gary
thank you for your response.
“As long as the MPAA is precision-aiming its legal guns against torrent sites – DMCA notices aside – downloaders can enjoy the fruits without the risk. But if Torrent sites like Isohunt win the legal battle, our carefree days of worry-free downloading may abruptly come to an end.”
LOL.
What drugs are you smoking, son?
The MPAA has all but given up on persuing individual filesharers because even THEY recognize the futility of it.
The reason they’ve turned the brunt of their attention towards torrent sites is BECAUSE legally persuing downloaders is not a viable tactic.
…Of course, legally persuing torrent sites isn’t a viable tactic either, but that has yet to dawn on them.
The point is, when sites like isoHunt win the legal battle, it’ll simply leave the MAFIAA even more hamstrung than it is now. Not result in some kind of doomsday scenerio where filesharers are rounded up and dragged through the streets. Put down the crackpipe, please.
“But Movies and software is a different issue.”
Movies? To quote Gary Fung, ‘all this rampant copying on BitTorrent and the Internet has not made* a dent in Hollywood’s record earnings’.
* http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080305-for-movie-biz-tales-of-piracy-and-record-profits.html
As for software, if the freeware/opensource/modding community has proven anything, it’s that there’s no justifiable reason why software development has to cost a cent.
You have the gaming industry releang these titles with obscene budgets, and then you have the modding community putting out content for them that’s just as good if not better than the original content.
You have the ’serious’ software industry releasing things like Microsoft Office and Photoshop, with these ridiculous development costs, and then you have things like Open Office and GIMP.
When software is inherently free to develope in this day and age, you really have to wonder, where exactly are these sky-high budgets going?
hey Gary what do you say about torrentfreak’s position that filesharing is piracy?
i say piracy is theft
piracy is the illegal manufacture and sale of conterfeit products. piracy is stealing revenue which belongs to the copyright holder, piracy is stealing
filesharing is copying, filesharing is not piracy
but torrentfreak says filesharing is piracy! i say torrentfreak is warped
what do you say Gary?
I say Gary is living in his own little world. Our whole BUSINESS is in the creation and licensing of ideas. no one can own IDEAS?? Why not? You can license YOUR ideas and I can license mine. I can’t own my own work so I can license it and put my son through college, Gary?
Moron. I hope they sue you to an utter wasteland.
@Reasoned mind
Maybe if you made an idea that wasn’t SHIT then people might actually pay for it. Problem is Hollywood and the other **AA’s seems to think that everything they create should sell, even if its utter rubbish. Also if you’re an artist with a big label, you don’t own your own work anyways, so the point is moot.
If your IDEA is worth buying, it will sell, plain and simple, this “piracy” has nothing to do with it. People who want it for free are going to get it for free, and the people who want to buy it will buy it, its that simple. I’m sorry you don’t understand this little fact.
As usual, I’m a little torn. I agree with number 8, that in the community we romanticize piracy a lot. This isn’t feeding hungry kids, guys, it’s downloading and uploading very expensive art. Yes, art, and art should be shared. I’m a writer who has been published both by a major publisher and uploaded work for free online. And even I admit that I buy probably 1/10 of even the “good” things I download. It’s too easy to become a glutton to free product.
I agree the best way to support musicians is to go to their concerts, but what about with movies and tv shows, which are an ever-growing portion of downloaded content? The artists in those (as well as the publishing field) receive a small percentage, yes, but they receive an even smaller amount when a film is seen as a downloaded .avi file rather than in a theatre.
Okay, just my thoughts to add to those masses.
#13: listen to the podcast linked about “Who owns ideas” will you? And Intellectual Property 101: you don’t and you can’t copyright or patent ideas. You copyright art which is the tangible result of ideas, or you patent inventions which is also tangible result of ideas. Ideas are human thoughts, and it is ideas behind arts that people remix on.
see http://www.google.com/search?q=patenting+ideas
#13: listen to the podcast linked about “Who owns ideas” will you? And Intellectual Property 101: you don’t and you can’t copyright or patent ideas. You copyright art which is the tangible result of ideas, or you patent inventions which is also tangible result of ideas. Ideas are human thoughts, and it is ideas behind arts that people remix on.
see http://www.google.com/search?q=patenting+ideas
Mr H33t, filesharing is piracy, online piracy usually, so splitting hairs over definitions doesn’t change what it is. You’ve made your point several times before that you don’t agree with TorrentFreak’s use of the word ‘piracy’ but I don’t see TorrentFreak calling YOU warped because you choose to use a different word to describe the same thing.
You have made your point but if you have an insightful article in your head, why not ask TorrentFreak for a guest slot like Gary? You always have SO much to say, why stay lurking in the comments? Stand up man!
Warning to all readers: Gary Fung own a website – in fact he founded it. This makes him one of the nouveau-riche elite that are strangling culture and making it so people have ot visit his website to obtain art.
Art should be FREE for all to use and hand delivered by the artist to our doorsteps. Any other outcome is worse than the horroe of Auswitz, the Cambodian Killing fields and all casualties of both World Wars. Mr. Gary Fung, the fascist Nazi website owner, is constricting the free flow of ideas, culture and art.
I’m surprised that most people here don’t see the wisdom of this. My consciouness is vast because of the free culture I took in. Therefore all reality is melded by my ideas. If you dont get that then you are stupid and mentally retarded. Please, come to my website for more fascinating insights and ideas that I am prepared to grant to you.
Roze
The capitalist system to which we in the West are so devoted has shown its dark side.
I agree that current copyright laws are arcane and outdated. But everyone has a right to get compensated for their work. As a musician, I’m not sure of how I’ll make money in the future. I really want to be able to live off of my musical talent, but do we have to go back to the days of the wandering minstrel?
Yes, all artists should live in squalor and filth. Pack up your possesions into your shitty bomb of a car and hit the road. If you play well enough you might get food scraps from people and the occasional old blanket to clothe yourself in. Artists shouldn’t make any money though. You sound like a capitalist pig of the highest order.
Roze
Its good to have sites like Isohunt around, it keeps the heat off the sites that are actually good. Couldnt care less about the public sites & search engines. Have fun guys and thx for drawing all the attention away from the good sites.
btw tho Gary i wish you the best of luck even tho i dont use your site. You stand up to many that few do.
“I really want to be able to live off of my musical talent, but do we have to go back to the days of the wandering minstrel?”
You’ll live off of your musical talent if it’s good enough to inspire people to support you.
Wandering mintrels? Get real.
We live in the age of the Internet, where one artist can instantly expose their work to millions of people, without costing themselves a cent.
ROFL, you are CLUELESS in the extreme.
Name some artists that have done that without a marketing machine behind them.
Please – I can think of one (Basshunter) but he’s remarkable because it actually HAPPENED. There are 100s of thousands that are trying that and guess what? Hardly anyone knows aout them.
Go back to school child, you don’t deserve to be part of the adult world you dumb shit.
Pretending as if you are preventing ‘the poor’ from the rich and arrogant Hollywood industry and operate isohunt as some sort of benefactor…. but suppress that you run this business just because you become loaded of ad income.
Very hypocritical!
“We live in the age of the Internet, where one artist can instantly expose their work to millions of people, without costing themselves a cent.”
True, but then again, most of my work has been exposed to millions of people for a couple years now (through dedicated music sites, flash games, etc.), and I have yet to experience the monetary benevolence of the listeners. Sure, I get 20 bucks here and there from amateur flash developers to use a loop of mine in a game or animation, but I have never received a donation from a supportive fan.
I know a lot of musicians more talented than I, and they say the same thing. It’s not about the talent of the musician, it’s the willingness of the people to pay for something they could get for free elsewhere. Radiohead can get their fans to pay up because they have the popularity. I, however, am just another small producer who isn’t worth the money, and if I DO demand payment, they just go to another guy.
@Harry Chung
Hypocritical? I suppose running a large site like that costs absolutely nothing either right?
actually piracy was a bunch a dudes on a ship going around raiding and looting. think like vikings, HEY wait a minute sweden , norway finland, ya now it makes sense must be genetic LOL
anyhow
remember the word says copyRIGHT
that is me the citizen granting YOU THE PRIVILEGE of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY rights. As such i would say that as you are not benefiting me in society i would argue you have abused such a right and like when you speed or drink and drive YOU LOSE the PRVILIEDGE and RIGHT to DRIVE YOUR CRAP TO US CONSUMERS.
how can it benefit me if the copyright = lifetime of artist +95 years? or 50 or 30 or 15?
software anyone buying zorg for the vic 20 lately ( 1981 game cartridge?)
no? i see.
Sharing is a good thing
-GOD
honkies only do piracy crime because they are weak
Rozi
http://5chan.ru
The MPAA and RIAA are redundant middlemen. Times have changed and distribution models have changed. The distribution of media online needs to orientate for the artists benefit rather than the distributors benefit. Fans would happily pay for a work of art if it didn’t a majority percentage of royalties for these middlemen. Piracy needs to collapse these middlemen, so the artists are left to find alternative distribution channels that give them more control.
“ROFL, you are CLUELESS in the extreme.
Name some artists that have done that without a marketing machine behind them.”
Haha.
You shouldn’t go around calling other people clueless when you’re clearly too stupid to tie your own shoes, kid.
What part of “one artist can instantly expose their work to millions of people, without costing themselves a cent” didn’t you understand? The Internet is currently the world’s biggest marketting machine, and it’s absolutely free to get it behind you. If you can’t even muster up the effort to post something to YouTube, then woe be to your lazy ass.
“True, but then again, most of my work has been exposed to millions of people for a couple years now (through dedicated music sites, flash games, etc.), and I have yet to experience the monetary benevolence of the listeners.”
Then the cold hard truth is, most of your work isn’t good enough to make a single one of the millions of people who have been exposed to to it over the course of several years give you a dime. Unless you’ve done a really poor job of getting the point accross that you need donations(err, you do NEED them, right?), then that’s just the way it is.
“I know a lot of musicians more talented than I, and they say the same thing. It’s not about the talent of the musician, it’s the willingness of the people to pay for something they could get for free elsewhere. ”
What? Musicians scapegoating filesharing because they don’t want to admit that it actually IS about talent, and theirs isn’t good enough to carry them?
Well, I’ll be darned. Who woulda thunk it.
The willingness of people to pay for something they could get for free elsewhere is based upon whether or not they feel the artist in question is worth monetarily supporting.
At the end of the day, the guy was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, no use moaning about it now!
stand up, and take your whipping like a man, and stop crying about it.
http://www.aquariumfish.me
All art, music, etc. is a remix or a mashup of something that’s come before. Our modern architecture is heavily based on Ancient Greek architecture. Yet, Greece hasn’t sued us for borrowing from them so far. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from Ancient Greek plays for his plays. The Italian Renaissance sculptors based their statues heavily on (you guessed it) Ancient Greek statues.
So mixing and mashing is nothing new and certainly nothing people should be sued for!
for music – you go to shows, buy merch, hey sometimes buy the record if the album means that much to you and you want/need the hard copy/status symbol sitting pretty on your shelf
For tv – go to a taping and pay, buy merch, or i dunno about this one because you know what i haven’t watched TV in years – oh wait my friend and i rented the little britain DVD which was helllarious! ok so in that case – wait a minute! do you really think little britain costs that fucking much to produce!?
ok if you want a creative budget – talk to the advertisers – endorse their products on billboards and the like – that is have the actors endorse the products – this goes for films as well if they want big budget production – have the actors promote – cross promote – especially with the tv show guys though –
for films – viewing a film in a nice theater properly is an experience that isn’t exactly easily replicable! ! ! need i say more? hey you want the hard copy/status symbol sitting lookin’ pretty on ya shelf! – there’s a market for that! always has been always will – it may be niche but you know what that’s capitalism for ya – get in where ya fit in – know your limitations – stick with the punches –
for books – books will never go completely out of vogue unless paper becomes so scarce as to warrant it –
i hate crepuscular light from my lcd – when i pick up a book it is such a welcome respite – i wanna get away – i wanna get lost in the book – i want to shut my laptop and give my eyes a rest –
in the meantime – the internet as the world’s largest library cultivates the minds of billions – qualifying the cultural landscape and in turn expanding the market possibilities – as opposed to reducing the market possibilities because the consumer has been starved of “cultural” exposure to the point that he has lost all ability to appreciate anything of nuance or subtlety instead he is complacent and willing to accept the crudest most homogoneic, manufactured results
in his labour, in his fellow men and in himself.
I met Gary Fung in Wisconsin, my hometown. He’s a prick. He kept showing off that he makes so much money from isohunt.
the point is the mainstream media do not call filesharing “piracy”, they call it “illegal downloads”
if you were to publish, for example, the accusation the pirate bay was involved in criminal piracy then you would be in serious trouble with the law
this is not an issue of semantics. piracy is well defined as a crime and you see it written in court transcripts and government records
torrentfreak is not alone in the criminalisation of filesharers, the MPAA and RIAA are also very keen to label filesharers are criminal pirates
you have got to ask yourself what game torrentfreak are playing. they give a compliment with the left hand, they label filesharers to be criminals with the right
this trivialisation of the language and the message about filesharing is ultimately self-defeating because it demonstrates an ultimate disrespect for the subject
if at the end of the day torrentfreak is nothing more than another pet project of the pirate bay then they have missed the opportunity for torrentfreak to be the voice of filesharers and will ultimately share the same destiny as TPB
i have seen enough to know that Ernesto and Enigmax are good guys and their hearts are absolutely in the right place. but if we fail to tell our best friends their behaviour stinks then we are no friends at all
http://www.h33t.com one of 10,000 torrent sites that are not the pirate bay and are not in any way pirates
i apologise for not responding to the topic by Gary. i happen to agree with everthing Mr Fung says, he is a true ambassador of filesharing
i grabbed the opportunity to highlight to Gary what is happening here on torrentfreak
unlike the “pirates” who are NOT going to stand in a Swedish court of law and say “we are copyright pirates, guilty as charged”. those “pirates” you are being told to follow are tap dancing furiously to save their skins
piracy is theft. filesharing is copying
filesharing is freedom of information, freedom of acess, freedom of opportunity
gary makes a lot of money by giving away artist’s hard work for free. he is a parasite and a hypocrite of the highest order and i for one, hope he is sued back into oblivion.
you sir, are no internet age robin hood. you are just another fat cat thief.
I think this issue is best explained by south park in faith + 1
http://allsp.com/
@h33t : Look, you seem really enthusistic about your viewpoint and I applaud you for that: we need more people like you.
However, you are seriously misguided young man: as thye law currently stands two things are true:
1) Filesharers ARE criminals.
2) Filesharers ARE pirates.
Indeed, there really isn’t a great deal of difference between the two types of people according to the law.
Ernesto asked me to straighten that out for you because of your accusations that TF is accusing filesharers of being criminals. I’m afraid they are as the law stands. Both Ernesto and enigmax are getting a little sick and tired of reading your posts regarding this so they told me they ignore stuff you post for the most part.
There’s times when you just have to acknowledge reality and not confuse your own ideals with reality. Seeking like-minded people to validate you here won’t change reality I’m afraid. :(
Hope that helps: feel free to comment some more if you want to discuss this further OK.
Kind Regards, Gary
An important point to remember when discussing laws is they are not the same everywhere.
It is a shame TF are ignoring h33t’s comments. He makes a number of interesting points I’d like to see more on. For the record I am not h33t. Merely a member of numerous torrent sites – including h33t.
If laws don’t currently make a distinction between for-profit piracy and non-profit piracy then that is something that needs to be addressed and changed.
Gary what law is it you refer to? i assume you are talking about the USA and Canada. i request you to provide a reference to American law that criminalises a filesharer. i can tell you now you will not find a law that fits. what is more, the issue of updating our legislations to reflect the nature of modern technology and social behaviour is what is at the heart of this debate. the anti-p2p want to see filesharing criminalised, filesharers want to see rights enshrined in legislation to protect the digital environment from corporate and government (same thing) control and taxation of sharing
listening to you i find it extraordinary the American/Canadian police forces do not act vociferously against filesharers. according to you there is a question to be answered why the police authorities are being selective in which criminals they prosecute. sure they act against criminal copyright pirates but i do not see a police action anywhere against people filesharing on public networks. nowhere in the world does it happen
i speak for the European Union where the European Parliament has voted explicitly NOT to criminalise petty filesharing. there is not a single member state of the European Union where there is legislation outlawing filesharing and making it a criminal offense. this has been documented on torrentfreak
the anti-p2p tactics to obtain IP addresses by misleading courts of criminal activity (minimum criteria to get a court order) to obtain orders against ISP’s to reveal IP’s then subsequently dropping the allegations before discovery. this has been documented on torrentfreak
the 3 strikes policy abandoned in Denmark, and struggling everywhere to gain acceptance, is not targeted against criminals. if filesharers were criminals the anti-p2p would have a field day mopping them all up and putting them in prison. again this is all very well documented on torrentfreak
The Pirate Bay case, the basis for the defense is there is no such crime as facilitating copyright infringement. however, in every country in Europe there sure as hell is a crime of facilitation aka aiding and abetting criminal activity. in Europe there is a even a crime of “encouraging” criminal adventure. all this is well documented on torrentfreak
the list of articles on torrentfreak is long, i could go on but you get the point, the distinction between criminal piracy and filesharing is clearly evidenced by the activity of the courts and police and governments who do not treat filesharing as criminal. even the MPAA and RIAA and their respective clone outposts in Europe do not treat filesharers as criminals
i am a genuinely honest citizen, i want to do what is best for my country, i obey the laws and i support my goverment. when i see a crime i call the cops and if possible i do what i can to stop it. do you dial 999 or 911 when you find a filesharer? in Europe it is a criminal offense punishable by prison if you fail to report a crime. according to your argument Gray then we should all telephone the police authorities when we discover a filesharer
outside of the European Union and the continent of North America, in the rest of the world where the vast majority of filesharers reside, the situation is even clearer. safe to say that filesharers in the rest of the world act for the vast majority with impunity from concepts of intellectual property rights applied to digital data
everything i see on torrentfreak speaks to this contradition. painfully they shoehorn filesharing into the piracy debate and it dont fit. pirates own factories producing millions if not billions of dollars of counterfeit products. it is organised crime and people are murdered for it
piracy is criminal endeavour for commercial profit. the courts and governments and policy treat copyright piracy as criminal. they make a distinction between piracy and filesharers. filesharing is not piracy
filesharers sit at home on their computers and share an mp3 and an avi. those who cannot see the difference between criminal piracy and petty filesharing need an education and that is where torrentfreak is letting the side down. government, the courts, the police, they all see the difference, it is time you see the difference too
can we afford to be so lame as to confuse ourselves with criminals? is that 9 year old girl sharing an mp3 a criminal? are you a criminal? NO
can we win the war for freedom of information, access and opportunity? YES WE CAN
TF does not have nick registration. Until then, anyone can claim to be Gary Fung and me being him can say I made no other comment other than the first 2 on first page.
no worries it was a home goal by the opposition, or someone simply wanting more of the h33t
btw if you are in Europe you dial 112 to report criminal filesharers to the police
http://www.h33t.com says “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something. Thomas A. Edison”
FTA: “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 work. We share, we inspire and we remix.”
This. /MPAA
Posted a response on my blog:
http://www.davidgilson.co.uk/2008/11/thoughts-on-copyright/
“Our whole BUSINESS is the creation and licensing of ideas”
Sure. And the whole “business” of the transatlantic slave trade was trafficking in human beings for profit.
Newsflash: the worst error this “civilization” ever made was creating the notion of copyright in the first place. THAT’s where the enormous development budgets on things come from: thousands of dollars for a fifteen second snippet of video? Study up on the whole “clearance” issue, Poisoned Mind — of COURSE you’ll defend a system which is intensely lucrative to you, and damn the consequences.
What gets me is how Fung can still believe in ANY FORM of “copyright” as valid. If “remixing and sharing” are “vital to culture” (and, yes, I believe that they are) then any legal fictions which impose penalties for such activities — EVEN IF such coercive nonsense happens to be lucrative for a vanishingly small subset of the populace, is a bad thing.
And before anybody starts bleating about the “capitalist” system, you can go suck it: “capitalists” hate competition and markets. Patents exist for ONE reason: so that the patent-holders can get the State to jackboot any “unauthorized” competitors. It’s a “cornered” market, ostensibly for a “limited time”.
The ONLY good thing about patents is that they eventually expire, allow other competitors into the field, and consequently lower prices.
Likewise, “copyright” is a similar State-backed monopoly whose sole purpose is to impose artificial conditions of scarcity by stipulating who is “permitted” to provide what “content”.
If the only thing making your “business model” lucrative is the ability to unleash jackbooted thugs on your competition, then maybe your “business model” doesn’t deserve to exist.
ah!…atleast a torrent admin who speaks sense of how p2p ought to go hand in hand with the entertainment business…………unlike tpb.
is this The Henry S. Emrich?
you blew me away with that one. i was until now on the benches over copyright law but you sold me the whole winning game
under no circumstances go against Gary Fung. he is in the bleeding edge position that needs a mechanism to convert current injustice to right. he is spending dollars but more than that he has the guts to make a stand
i have to go plan a path for this one because i had not previously accepted copyright to be a scarcity mechanism. ouch that hurts. but it is true
notice how torrentfreak repeats FILESHARING IS PIRACY in all the subsequent blogs to this one. Ernesto, Enigmax, you are wrong. it is easy to replace you when you refuse to be the voice of the filesharer
i will speak the unsaid that everyone has been thinking forever. i wish you luck as the voice of The Pirate Bay. you PIRATES deserve the shared future you deserve
http://www.h33t.com will post no longer on this blog
let it be a contest of systems. let the Pirates who would criminalise Filesharers fail
I’m a trim carpenter/Cabinet maker by trade, and it seems to me that anyone that thinks that they can have a moment of inspiration (ie lyrics, vocals) and get paid for the rest of their life is insane. If that’s the case then trademarks, and patents should last for life as well. Why is it that artists should receive royalties for their lifetime but someone who spends their life perfecting their trade gets nothing but a pat on the back and a “well done buddy”?? We all work to make a living, and the thought that someone can work for a few years of their life and receive compensation in the millions for the rest of their life is incomprehensible to me.
In the end, I think the individuals who make money off creating content are going to have to think of a new approach to making money from the content they create.
Using the applications of the internet and social networking sites it is easy to market a message, idea or product to millions of people around the world at very low cost. Generating hype for a movie, series, product is now very accessible and cheap with more and more of the world joining the online community. So those content creators who supposedly take a dent in earnings will need to find new business models that are applicable the the new set of rules that apply in the information age.
Look at micheal moore, He releases movies for free on the internet that cost him millions of dollars to produce, because he realises that the publicity and widespread knowledge of his efforts will repay him, either by giving him a voice to make change or by being hired for talks and shows around the world which will make him more money.
Micheal moore is a real trailblazer
Cheers
Chris
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