Except, of course, that the lost sale doctrine does not add up. Based on the claims of losses made by American music and film associations in some court cases, the entire worldwide loss to piracy would amount to a figure far exceeding the size of the entire world economy. Obviously it is totally impossible that real losses to piracy are anywhere near such a figure; people just don't have that kind of money to spend on entertainment. The claim that a copied work is a lost sale is largely bogus; after all, the vast majority of copied works would never have been bought. There are, however, indications that copying has helped artists get exposure, the worst thing for any artist after all is obscurity.
http://news.err.ee/Opinion/6e70e765-a870-4193-94c5-26ab228f14ed
Of course it's bogus. The numbers of supposed lost money are entirely hypothetical, there is no guarantee that any of the pirated copies would have been legally bought.
Fuck greed.
U.S. is now trying to persuade European countries to tighten tighten their own anti-piracy laws. Although, I would suspect the more appropriate word is bully. Don't forget to keep your eyes on ACTA as well.
It's definitely true that these companies aren't losing profits on everything that's downloaded, if they could even come up with an accurate number for that -- how likely is that not to be exaggerated? There's frankly a bunch of junk out there that people don't spend more than ten minutes looking at and would never have thought about buying. Also, for ease of use and speed, torrenting is often 10 times faster than using someone's server. It's far faster to download a cd than it is to rip it to your computer, and takes much less effort.
It gives customs the authority to seize anything at all that they suspect of infringing copy right and destroy them, no judges involved. Where'd due process go? Again, ACTA gives copyright holders ridiculous powers in enforcing their own copyrights and require ISP's to ban alleged piracy related domains.
According to French EP member Kader Arif, "The problem with ACTA is that, by focusing on the fight against violation of intellectual property rights in general, it treats a generic drug just as a counterfeited drug. This means the patent holder can stop the shipping of the drugs to a developing country, seize the cargo and even order the destruction of the drugs as a preventive measure." He continued, "Generic medicines are not counterfeited medicines; they are not the fake version of a drug; they are a generic version of a drug, produced either because the patent on the original drug has expired, or because a country has to put in place public health policies," he said.
"For example, earlier this year German customs officials seized and held
a shipment of the generic drug Amoxicillin which was being shipped
through Germany to a least developed country. The drugs were held for
four weeks apparently because German customs officials were confused by
the alleged similarity of the generic name Amoxicillin with the
GlaxoSmithKlein brand Amoxil." (
www.auilr.org/pdf/26/26.3.7.pdf)
Clearly, as has been shown many times in history, you cannot count on law enforcement and executive agencies to not abuse overly broad laws.
Hiding the negotiations alone is grounds to be suspicious.
Obama signed it, and has no right to make laws in the US.
Getting people informed is a good place to start.
As to the value of the internet, it makes sharing information, doing research, and informing and educating people about anything much easier and faster, and possible where it may have been impossible. It has been invaluable for schools. It is invaluable to programmers and businesses. This list could go on.
