MPAA: Pirate Party Politicians Are Illegitimate Thieves
Written by Ernesto on September 12, 2007Last year Pirate Parties were formed all over the world. Their main goal is to protect privacy, culture, and knowledge. The MPAA is not happy with politicians they can’t buy fund, and labels them as illegitimate thieves.
Dean Garfield, director of MPAA’s anti-piracy department, was interviewed by ZDNet recently. When he was asked whether the Pirate Party’s attempts to battle organizations like the MPAA through democratic means is legitimate, he responded: “There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate. There’s nothing philosophically principled about it. They steal copyright content and accept advertising dollars based on taking other people’s work. There’s nothing noble about it.”
Calling a political party illegitimate and their members thieves is a pretty bold statement for an organization who’s feeding politicians thousands of dollars to support their cause. I doubt that Garfield even read their election manifesto, if he did, he would know that the party has nothing to do with stealing copyright.
“This can only be seen as MPAA calling democracy illegitimate. We are a registered political party finishing in the top ten in a parliamentary democracy,” says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party in a response to TorrentFreak. “That these people claim it would somehow be illegitimate to change laws through a parliamentary process shows just how corrupt to the core they are.”
Falkvinge continues: “On the other hand, I think the statement may be partly out of fear. There’s one thing that beats all their lawyers, war chests and monopolies. Just one. That one thing is votes in a democratic election, and that’s what we have and they don’t. These claims are so far out they don’t even reflect sunlight. Unfortunately, that seems to be true for most statements from the Music And Film Industry Associations of America, but we’re also seeing the oldskool politicians slowly starting to understand our counterpoints. It’s going to be an interesting couple of next years.”
It won’t be easy for the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations to take on the Pirate Parties, especially not with such a clueless statement. Europe’s Pirate Parties are on course with their pan-European electoral assault for the 2009 European Elections. To quote Rick Falkvinge: “There is a far better than average chance that this is becoming the next global political movement, and I’m going to claim it already is the next big political movement.”
Sail on.
Previously: How the Porn Industry Plans to Wipe Out BitTorrent
Next: German Pirate Party Celebrates First Birthday
33 Responses
interesting read
Oh come on… my first comment was valid! … next
For once normal people can vote for someone they know isn’t being bought out. Cheers.
God I love acronyms
Extortionists calling theives illegitimate? What is the world coming to.
I feel that it is costing the MPSS more money to fight piracy then they would actually gain from having their way.
If you estimate 1/2 a million americans DLing pirated material. Some of which may already own a copy of the material in question, but it is damaged. and others that would never buy it, but may rent it.
I think the estimated sales gains from the Extinction of piracy wouldn’t be close to their figures.
I think they estimate the avg person to buy 4 dvd’s a year at least. 4 @ $20 =$80*.5 million people = +$40 million in sales.
now as i pointed out, some people dont buy DVD’s, since they arnt as reliable ( kids + dvd = money in the trash).
so lets cut that figure to a third
$40 million * 1/3 = ~$13.3 Million
now if you see the court costs, and employment costs of the staff in anti piracy divisions + the revenue loss of the torrent sites, and other P2P…. it comes out to more then 13.3 million in annual revenue.
thus i see them as reducing total profit for themselves, and other parties involved.
They need to stop worrying about piracy of a few hundred thousand people and keep their profit invested in themselves… not lawyers, and lobbying for unconstitional bullshit.
MPAA can kiss my posterior, and lick my balls.
Politics as usual.
MPAA & RIAA and the non-us copyright protecting agencies are all pieces of crap. When something really goes wrong they act like a ostrich. They put their heads in the ground.
It is true they provide artists with money IF the artist is member. In Belgium they collect your royalties and you get the money if you become a member. If you don’t they keep collecting untill you do become a member. That means a lot of money from international artists isn’t being collected. I don’t know what they do with that money.
There are now 2 Belgian componists whome won a ruling saying they are the original componists of “you are not alone” the hit song from Jackson.
Good! … not really…?
In spite of being a member of Belgian royalty federation they didn’t get royalties for 12 years. They had to file the case themselves and now they only get royalties back from the belgian sales.
so…
1. they don’t defend their customers they need to do it themselves.
2. they don’t have the power to request international funds.
3. apparantly there are some differences between copyright legislations in different countries.
The burden of Marketing is amongst us.
J
I hope by your estimation you are only using 1/2 million for easy maths, The real figure would be a hell of alot more then .5million
Democracy in and of itself doesn’t legitimatize an activity. The simple fact is TPB and many sites like it operate solely to facilitate copyright infringement and they make a tidy sum of ad revenue in the process. If you can’t understand why the industry has grievances with that kind of operation, you’re just being a naive twat that thinks everybody making music and movies is a multi-millionaire celebrity or exec. Likewise, the industry had failed completely at adapting to the new market so it’s no surprise that so many people choose to pirate. We can all agree DRM is a joke digital downloads are generally poor quality and overpriced.
File sharing has become a joke anyway, there’s nothing communal or fun about it anymore. Sites just take scene releases and pass them around. There’s only a select few communities that do their own ripping these days, and what the cater to is way off the anti-piracy radar.
What a clueless statement from a MAFIAA representative.
Doesn’t he understand that copyright was originally granted by the public to benefit the public?
If the majority of a country decides to dismantle copyright it will go away!
And yes, it is *very* philosophical to discuss the negative consequences of copyright in a modern society.
I’m suprised they never learn, pirate bay and pirate party are (in Sweden) _COMPLETELY_ different organizations they have different goals, different structure and different leaders (some members might in both though).
Calling a political party and it’s members “thieves” is quite harsh…
Y’know, we all love to bash on the MAFIAA and their clueless ways. On the one hand, they are desperately trying to hang on to an outmoded business model and on the other hand they’re trying to make as much money as possible with flimsy-evidence lawsuits. What we really need to do is stop pissing and moaning about the MAFIAA and start actually pushing back by stopping supporting their old business model and stop buying their music. Of, course that’s way easier said than done, because I would have a hard time doing that. Imagine, though, three months of no revenue from CD sales because we refuse to bow to the MAFIAA…
[quote comment="164039"]Democracy in and of itself doesn’t legitimatize an activity.[/quote]
Nor does paying off democratic politicians.
[quote comment="164039"]The simple fact is TPB and many sites like it operate solely to facilitate copyright infringement and they make a tidy sum of ad revenue in the process.[/quote]
Define “tidy sum”? I bet the MPAA makes more prosecuting scared college students and disabled single mothers (as well as deposing said disabled mothers’ grade-school children without their parents’ knowledge or consent).
[quote comment="164039"]If you can’t understand why the industry has grievances with that kind of operation, you’re just being a naive twat that thinks everybody making music and movies is a multi-millionaire celebrity or exec.[/quote]
And you’re a naive twat if you think these artists are always the ones making money from it… the only ones who profit are the multimillionaire celebrities and execs… and the celebrities only keep their status for so long as the exec decides they’re worth it. Go ahead, see how many musicians are still well-off two years after leaving the industry.
[quote comment="164039"]Likewise, the industry had failed completely at adapting to the new market so it’s no surprise that so many people choose to pirate.[/quote]
Meh. I think that even if the industry had adapted, most people who pirate wouldn’t want to pay execs for the blood, sweat, tears and sometimes deaths of musicians who simply want to make it big. It’s a complete difference in modes of thought: Industrial-age controls versus Information-age freedoms. These moguls and their companies are relics of the past, and their activities only nail shut their own coffins. Consumers hold the power, not the companies.
[quote comment="164039"]
File sharing has become a joke anyway, there’s nothing communal or fun about it anymore. Sites just take scene releases and pass them around. There’s only a select few communities that do their own ripping these days, and what the cater to is way off the anti-piracy radar.[/quote]
There doesn’t need to be any “community” who does its own ripping… and in fact there are many people who are trying to build communities on the web, but there are also people who are actively seeking to disrupt these communities, as well as jerkwads who just want the goods and don’t want to talk to anyone… the Pirate Party was a direct outgrowth of these communities, because of this kind of interference, but with their entry into politics, it looks like they got an excellent education about the way things really are. Pity the MAFIAA (et al.) are so clueless as to think that they’re going to win a battle against the social tide of 1% of the planet’s population (to quote their figures… which are inflated to fit their whim, since nobody seems able to prove directly that anything has even happened… sources of information and data collection methods have never been cited, apparently).
I can’t stand ANY politician here in the United States…they’re ALL corrupt. Thieves, liars, child molesters, all bought off on top of it…The MPAA is no better. Long Live P2P! At least we’re HONEST about it! Anf hey, the supreme court decided in the early 1980’s that people taping shows with a VCR for home use was legal…this was when the early MPAA freaked out and tried to stop VCRs…go figure, the y just $uck…
Quite an unfortunate name for those guys, MAFIA:America. Just have to hope there wont be a MAFIA:Europe too!
Call in-the PIRATE ARMY! Dun dun dah dun, dun dun dah DUNNNNN!!!!!!
Here’s my humble assessment of Dean Garfield and the entertainment cartel he represents.
“They ["the people"] aren’t able to see the value and hard work that goes into making a movie. It’s a real investment. It requires not only vision and great storytelling, but real capital investment. It costs a little over $100 million to make and market a movie.”
so he’s saying that “the people” aren’t able to see something that is in fact quite well known. what’s really going on here is that people are no longer worshiping commodities and images as sacred, and that’s bad news for any cartel that depends on the image.
“I’m also not of the view that we have a monopoly on perfection.”
freudian slip? although they’re more of an oligopoly than a monopoly, but why split hairs?
he goes on specifically to say that the MPAA’s major strategy has been “education and deterrents” and to “change behavior”
i.e., re-educate us on the sacredness of the image
“We’re in the truly nascent stages of the Internet as a multimedia delivery mechanism.”
it’s not a communication network, it’s a content delivery mechanism. this is truly outrageous, that people see the Internet in this way.
“For us, BitTorrent holds real promise because our stuff is really large.”
in other words, “we’d love to charge you for our content delivery, while you use your bandwidth to do it for us.”
“There’s nothing philosophically principled about it. They [The Pirate Bay] steal copyright content and accept advertising dollars based on taking other people’s work. There’s nothing noble about it.”
actually, our swedish comrades are quite engaged with philosophical theory. i just wish they’d do more work in english so the international community could engage them in a conversation.
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To them democracy is illegitimate…
Where the MPAA is from government is ran buy corporations.
THe idea of democracy is so beyond there understanding just like understanting what the customer wants.
Its funny they call out pirate parties when them and there sicking
use of lobbyiest to bend lawls so they can extort people for money well not giving it to the artists they claim to fight.
I dont see your noble BS highground there Dean D-Bag
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