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Category Archives: piracy

Piracy is the new porn

01 May

Another day, another attempt to stomp out piracy. This time, it’s the U.K. High Court ordering internet providers to block the Pirate Bay. Following an earlier ruling that said the notorious website goes “far beyond merely enabling or assisting” in the sharing of copyrighted materials, the court on Monday told five large ISPs to institute blocking measures. The ISPs, in turn, said they will comply within the next few weeks.

The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde, a modern-day Hugh Hefner.

Watching such news on an almost daily basis, it’s hard not to get the sense that all of this has happened before. And, as they say on Battlestar Galactica, it’s likely to happen again.

For most of the second half of the 20th century, though, it wasn’t piracy that was the target of this large-scale judicial witch hunt, it was porn.

When the first issue of Playboy hit stands in 1953, Hugh Hefner was so afraid of obscenity charges that he didn’t even put his name on the magazine. It was a huge success regardless and the authorities soon came calling. The U.S. Post Office refused the magazine a mailing permit, the equivalent of a modern-day denial-of-service attack. It sure sounds similar to what the U.K. court has just ruled.

Hefner, however, claimed censorship and sued. He said the Post Office had “no business editing magazines” and that it should “stick to delivering the mail.” Presciently, he also added, “This isn’t a new fight. It never is.”

Hefner’s comments were in the context of obscenity, but they apply to piracy as well. The irony is, aside from a few crazies like Rick Santorum, hardly anybody is trying to stamp out porn anymore. It’s here, it’s pervasive and it’s not going away. It’s also one of the easiest things to get on the internet because of piracy, funnily enough.

It’s doubly ironic, then, that after a half century of fighting for their own rights, many porn producers are now on the side of The Establishment in cracking down on piracy. The Boogieman has become the Boogieman Hunter. Piracy, meanwhile, is the new obscenity. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 1, 2012 in copyright, piracy, playboy, sex

 

SOPA, theft and the new Cold War

21 Dec

Much has been written about the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act currently being considered by U.S. Congress. The legislation would allow for the taking down or blocking of websites that aid in legally-grey file-sharing, such as The Pirate Bay. From the heads of major tech companies writing about how the Act would effectively break the internet to commentators chiding politicians for their potentially harmful ignorance on technological issues, just about anyone who is concerned with the internet’s future is frothing mad.

Most of the arguments against SOPA have been bang on, but not many have taken the historical or psychological context of piracy into account. When such aspects are considered, it becomes even clearer just how futile and bone-headed the legislation – if enacted – would be.

It’s handy if we start with defining “piracy.” Under Webster’s traditional meaning, piracy is an act of robbery on the high seas. The only difference between a pirate and a thief, therefore, is water.

Digital piracy obviously doesn’t take place at sea, yet “pirate” somehow emerged as the term of choice for someone who engages in file sharing, rather than “thief.” Why? It’s probably because the people who object to file-sharing – the entertainment industry – think it’s safer and less provocative to call customers “pirates” rather than “thieves.” It’s a small but important idiomatic distinction, so the industry has probably been correct in its approach.

Nevertheless, if we call a spade and spade and refer to digital piracy by what the industry really thinks it is – theft – then we get to the question that usually gets ignored in all of this: Why do people steal? Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on December 21, 2011 in internet, piracy, war

 

The ‘end of free’ is near? Keep dreaming

14 Jul

I had a fun debate with a friend the other night over who was more annoying: Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica, or Paul McGuinness, U2′s manager. Ulrich is, of course, famous for leading the charge against Napster, the file-sharing service that turned the music industry upside down a decade ago. McGuinness, who continues the fight against free downloading today, is basically the drummer’s heir apparent.

My position was that McGuinness is the worse of the duo. While Ulrich struck many as a cry-baby millionaire, at least he had the decency to fight Napster out in the open, in court. McGuinness, however, would rather subtly lobby policy makers to try and get laws changed, partly through publishing op/ed pieces in major newspapers.

A week ago, his latest screed against downloading – headlined “Digital Downloads: The ‘age of free’ is coming to an end” – appeared in The Daily Telegraph. A few days ago, The Globe and Mail published the exact same article, with a sentence or two changed so that it was more “Canada relevant.” To say it’s highly unusual for one major newspaper to regurgitate something another major paper published a week ago would be an understatement. Hmm, I wonder if Bono pulled some strings with his editor buddies?

In any event, in his article McGuinness praised the recent deal struck in the United States between entertainment companies and internet service providers, where the ISPs agreed to act as copyright cops. Most of the country’s major ISPs have agreed to initiate a so-called graduated response system where subscribers who download copyrighted work will be warned several times, after which their internet access will be slowed and potentially even cut off.

McGuinness said this was great, that ISPs finally taking responsibility for what goes over their networks is part of a worldwide trend:

The US is not the first country where ISPs have started to cooperate with rights holders. Similarly sensible thinking broke out in France in 2007, thanks to President Sarkozy. France, along with a growing number of other countries, including South Korea and most recently New Zealand, has introduced a so-called graduated response law, obliging ISPs to take proactive steps to help curb copyright abuse. The UK has passed its Digital Economy Act which, if it is implemented effectively, will go down a similar route.

Perhaps he’s right. Like their American brethren, Canadian ISPs have so far – to their credit – resisted the pressure to become copyright cops, an exemption they would continue to enjoy under the latest proposed copyright legislation. However, I’m sure it would surprise nobody if this eventually changes, either by the ISPs following their American cousins’ lead and folding like a cheap accordion, or by the Canadian government beating them to it.

Nevertheless, cops or no cops, McGuinness and those who agree with him are missing one very important fact: the “age of free” is nowhere near an end, simply because the ability to get stuff “free” is not based on opportunity, it’s based on desire.

For all of human history, people have wanted to get something for nothing – it’s in our very nature. Whether or not we have been able to do so has been directly commensurate to the opportunities we’ve had. The internet has provided that opportunity on an unprecedented level; short of taking it away entirely, nothing will sate that desire. To say the age of free is coming to an end, then, is to suggest that the Rapture is well and truly upon us, or that the plug is about to be pulled on the internet. That’s hardly the case.

The technological opportunity to satisfy the desire for free is going to keep growing, and exponentially so. The only thing that may be “over” are the days of unencrypted file-sharing. ISP warnings and threats will spur the growth and advancement of encryption, virtual private networks, IP spoofing and, heck, even some good old-fashioned switching from one service provider to another. Maybe some smaller rogue ISPs will even use this in their marketing: “Get your service from us; We don’t bend over for the entertainment industry!”

What is definitely over are the days of people willing to fork over lots of cash for goods they now know are cheap to produce and distribute, which is something the entertainment industry just doesn’t seem to get. There is an acceptable middle ground between “free” and what they would like to see, and it is slowly but surely manifesting. Jesse Brown recently mused on this in a blog post, wherein he argued that the internet is basically a giant dollar store. Creators are selling songs, apps, games, ebooks and all kinds of other stuff for just 99 cents and not many seem to be complaining – it’s only the big companies and industries, like U2 Inc., that are.

What’s over are the days of huge profits for such monoliths. Sorry Lars, sorry Paul. The desire for free – or very nearly free – has always been here and it’s not going anywhere.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on July 14, 2011 in internet, piracy

 

What to do about vertical integration? Absolutely nothing

23 Jun

There’s a fun spectacle going on in Ottawa right now called the “Vertical Integration Hearings,” which is basically a pillow fight by the telecom industry in front of the CRTC over who owns what. It’s fun when you consider that the whole exercise is a complete waste of time other than being regulatory theatre at its finest for fans of that sort of thing.

In a nutshell, Canadian telecom is now lorded over by four relative giants: Bell, Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor. Each has telecom concerns, such as internet, wireless, television and phone businesses, as well as broadcast and print holdings. For those keeping score, Bell has CTV and the Globe and Mail, Rogers has CityTV and a host of magazines including Macleans, Shaw has Canwest (Global) and the National Post, while Quebecor has the Sun newspapers and TV and a bunch of French channels. Because these companies own both the content and the methods of distributing it, they are considered to be “vertically integrated” (as opposed to horizontally integrated, which is what you sometimes become with your significant other).

The point of the hearings is to answer the question: What’s to stop these companies from keeping their content from the other guys? If CTV (via TSN) has the rights to NHL programming, for example, what’s to stop Bell from offering hockey only to its own customers? And what if Rogers chose to do the same with MLB baseball or some other sport? In such a scenario, customers would have to get TV subscriptions from both Bell and Rogers if they wanted to get all of that programming. The same concerns also apply to the internet and wireless, where all content is migrating to.

Such a situation would of course be a nightmare, yet there have already been instances of it – in May, Bell announced it would stop carrying Sun TV because Quebecor was apparently charging too much for it. (Not that many would consider living without Sun TV a nightmare, but you get the drift.)

A number of commentators have argued that this is very bad and consumers will ultimately suffer for it, which means the CRTC must put rules into place to prevent it from happening.

I couldn’t disagree more. This is a classic case of the CRTC needing to stay the hell away because it’s related to several other issues the regulator has recently messed up or is currently in danger of messing up.

The answer to the question above, about what’s to keep companies from tying up exclusive content, is simple: competition, which comes in several forms. Firstly, as York University professor David Ellis so eloquently argued recently, the regulator needs to get its “grimy paws off my Netflix.” To summarize, the CRTC is currently considering whether it should regulate so-called over-the-top internet services, including Netflix, YouTube and the like, but it most certainly should not. If the CRTC foolishly decides otherwise and does try to get involved, it will enter its own regulatory form of the Vietnam or Afghanistan war. Its mission will be hopeless and it will be endless.

Over-the-top services need to be left alone and possibly even nurtured as competition to vertical integration. Of course, the CRTC has already nearly screwed that up when it gave its blessing to usage-based internet billing, which would have effectively castrated such services. Amazingly, and somewhat perversely, the market responded by working as it should. Since the regulator fouled up, the public got outraged, the government threatened action and the industry – Shaw and Telus so far – have responded by significantly increasing their internet usage limits. The others will have to follow suit or risk even more consumer anger.

If the vertically integrated companies want to shackle down content with exclusivity, they should be allowed to go ahead and try. If consumers have all the internet data they want to play with, they will quickly find their content through other legitimate over-the-top services and, failing that, they’ll turn to less-legitimate options such as BitTorrent.

This sort of “piracy” is the ultimate competition. File-sharing and other questionably legal methods of acquiring content are constantly improving, both in terms of ease of use and encryption. It’s been proven over and over that when content providers make it more difficult or expensive for consumers to acquire the stuff they want, they not only turn to alternative means, they feel justified in doing so. It’s also been proven that legal and technological responses can’t stop this sort of thing, they only make it improve even more.

So bring on the exclusive vertical integration. Anyone who tries it will soon learn the folly of their ways as consumers turn to other options, as well as the fact that many people who do go that route never come back.

 
8 Comments

Posted by on June 23, 2011 in bell, bittorrent, piracy, rogers, shaw, telecommunications

 

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High internet usage does not equal great service

04 Apr

I hope you all caught my little April Fool’s joke on Friday and that no one took me seriously. That post was a reprint of an op-ed written by Mirko Bibic, Bell’s head lobbyist, in the National Post last week. I couldn’t think of anything funnier to post than an article claiming that Canada gets cheaper, faster and better internet than many other countries.

In that vein, a lot of internet-related stuff happened last week, what with all the CRTC filings on usage-based billing and Netflix offering lower video quality and so on. Hopefully this week we can get back to talking about fun stuff.

Before we do, one last thing that probably needs addressing is the latest talking point that’s been popping up in recent polemics from telecom lobbyists and their idealogue allies. Over the past few months, the folks at internet marketing research company comScore issued some statistics on worldwide internet trends that have shown Canadians to be among the most frequent users of online services such as YouTube and Facebook.

In December comScore reported that about 21 million Canadians visit YouTube per month, where they watch an average of 147 videos each. Both measures are higher, per capita, than in the United States. Google backed that up by saying Canada is first in the world in terms of per capita YouTube consumption.

The research company’s more recent report, issued in March, also shows Canadians are first or second in the world in terms of total time spent online and how many websites they visit.

Some of these figures have led telecom supporters to make some rather far-reaching claims. First, one consultant/lobbyist suggested the “study appears to shoot down charges that usage sensitive pricing inhibits Canadians from heavy use of internet services” and that it “gives credence to why Canadian internet access networks may be experiencing different levels of stress from that experienced in other countries.”

Then, Martin Masse and Paul Beaudry – a pair of fellows at the Montreal Economic Institute, Maxime Bernier’s old stomping grounds – figured that all this time Canadians spend online is proof that they have great internet services.

And then of course there was Bibic’s piece last week, wherein he said that all of that YouTube watching is responsible for network congestion despite Bell’s investments in upgrading capacity.

Well, if one were to adopt the tactics of these lobbyists, the easy target would be to criticize comScore’s methodology. The reports don’t explain how the company came to its conclusions. In terms of website visits, for example, comScore doesn’t disclose how it monitored activity or even which websites were tracked. But hey, I’m not a telecom lobbyist (nor would I wish that fate upon anyone) so I won’t go there.

If we can take the results at face value, it’s far more constructive to try and explain why they are so. Why do Canadians spend so much time online and particularly with YouTube? Is it because it’s so cold here that we sit huddled in front of our computer screens for warmth?

Of course not. There are many factors that contribute to the likely explanation. The first is that Canada was, once upon a time, a world broadband leader. When our phone and cable companies actually competed against each other a decade ago, Canadians did indeed have some of the fastest and cheapest high-speed internet access around. This established a legacy – Canadians took to the internet and learned its value before much of the rest of the world.

As we all know, that early advantage has been squandered but the legacy remains. Canadian services aren’t the best anymore, but the public is still very much hooked on the internet. That’s probably why we surf a lot and connect on Facebook a lot.

As for YouTube, it is foolish to look at its success in Canada in isolation. YouTube’s success has, for the most part, been built on the back of copyrighted content. People don’t really go to YouTube to see user-generated content like some kid’s birthday party or someone’s cat chasing its tail, they go to see Fonzie jump the shark and crazy wrestler promos. Sure, in recent years Google has moved YouTube toward the straight and narrow so visitors can now watch the latest awful music videos legally, but let’s face facts – the site has historically been (and still is) a gold mine of copyrighted content that can’t be found anywhere else, especially in Canada.

In the U.S., not so much. Americans have many more legal sources from where they can get their video. Not only do they have Hulu, but their versions of iTunes, Netflix, Xbox Live, Playstation Store and so on have far better and deeper libraries than the Canadian equivalents. American online video consumption is therefore very likely to be far more fragmented among those sources, whereas Canadians are likely to focus their attention on the one source that provides the stuff they want to see, legal or not.

It’s a theory that’s backed up by another tidbit: Canadians appear to be prolific users of peer-to-peer file-sharing. While the statistics are from 2009 and somewhat dated, The Pirate Bay – the unkillable king of torrent sites – has shown Canada to be among the top file-sharing countries. By total number of peers Canada does well, as does the U.S., but it really kicks butt on a per-capita basis.

Some take this as a failure of copyright law but I take it to mean two things: first, Canadians are more aware of all the television and movies coming out the United States than people in other countries, which is natural given their proximity to it, but also that they don’t have proper online access to that video content. I’ve argued before that piracy only becomes a problem when there is a lack of easy and affordable legal options, not when copyright law is failing. The success of YouTube and Pirate Bay seem to figure into that theory very well.

Moreover, the fact that so many people are using YouTube and file-sharing to get their video content seems to indicate that they would rather sidestep traditional providers such as cable and satellite companies altogether. That’s ironic given those companies are also the same big internet service providers who think all this video consumption is somehow an endorsement of their networks.

So, don’t believe the lobbyists’ hype. Canadians’ proclivity for using the Web in general is the product of a bygone era – one where our internet services were actually the envy of the world. Our current fascination with quasi-legal video services is indicative of a desire to get video content online, but the lack of proper channels in which to do so. In no way should Canadians’ love of the internet be confused with having good and cheap services.

For Canadians, there is no turning back. They clearly want to live their lives and consume their content online, so perhaps the higher costs that usage-based billing would bring won’t deter them. That’s not to say that this online proficiency should be taken advantage of and milked, because it surely shouldn’t. As for whether all this activity is responsible for heightened congestion issues here in Canada, that’s another bit of nonsense put forward by the industry. For an excellent-if-somewhat-technical explanation of how networks work and how congestion happens – and why it probably isn’t really happening in Canada despite what the big ISPs say – check out a paper released last week by Bill St. Arnaud. Having served as the chief research officer for CANARIE, Canada’s advanced research network, he knows what he’s talking about.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on April 4, 2011 in internet, piracy, telecommunications

 
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