That would be the torrents and the notorious "clouds" and "lockers."
The hapless organizations that are supposed to represent music and movies, just sent in their list of obnoxious places that ignore their takedown requests.
But WHO did they submit the list to? Something called the USTR (United States Trade Representatives). Do they have any power? Of course not. The power is in the hands of GOOGLE and all the arm-twisters who sneer "Copyright is copy WRONG" and "Sharing is FREEDOM OF SPEECH" and "If you regulate the Internet you RUIN OUR FUN."
It's obvious that a site named PIRATE BAY is up to no good, and proudly so. But nobody has, or will, create a law that will force ISP's to block it, put up a flashing warning or banner alerting users that this is a prohibited site, and debit any customer's account $1 the first month, $10 every additional month, for downloading from it.
Meanwhile Turkey Boy from the RIAA and his shower buddies make fools of themselves stating the obvious. They testify about the injustice and harm done to creative people but who are they whining to? The USTR? To a bunch of government dullards who are jealous of the money they think EVERYONE is making!
Since they seem to be in the pocket of GOOGLE and other lobbyists, the USTR and the others simply shrug that Pirate Bay and Kickass aren't stopping anyone from making another comic book hero movie. If these torrents are making a fortune, then it's obvious that De Niro or Disney make even more. They ain't hurtin' right? Neither is Adele or Bono. And blocking a website just because 50% or 99% of its content is illegal is not fair. Zzzzz. Go ahead, blabber Turkey Boy...
There's plenty more of that, and plenty of rebuttal from the cruds who are secretly being paid by GOOGLE and other creeps to pretend to care about "freedom of speech" and the "Chilling Effects" of any form of "censorship."
Can you imagine some lawyer defending a mugger by saying it's "freedom of speech" to say "Your money or your life" and that it's "censorship" to demand that his home be searched for stolen property? It works when the victims are "rich" actors and musicians, or even writers who should be content with getting published and being "famous" and should teach college if they want to make money, and write on weekends. Hell, Philip Roth did that.
Meanwhile, the list of fat cat Kim Dotcom-type scumbags running copyright-stealing websites continues to grow.
Ho hum. And with all this going on, the RIAA continues to maintain a useless "report piracy" page where all complaints are ignored. They don't hire anyone, not even volunteer interns, to file DMCA's that would get rid of the more ridiculous zinny-bloggers who use "cloud" servers that actually do obey takedown requests. Nobody's paying too close attention to EBAY either.
Publishers don't even have an organization to lobby for them. Most publishers use one piracy outfit which will ONLY send in a DMCA if it's a file that could get 100's of downloads in a forum, or involves a recent product. As for EBAY they only act if somebody complains to a publisher's website and the publisher forwards the message...and it's a book the publisher will pay to have protected. I've seen this company's list of "uncooperative" websites. Yes, they pretty much wave a white flag, letting concerned rights owners know that Kickass can do as they please, and so can dozens of others.
And nobody with real power is passing laws or doing anything to stop the abuse.
Isn't this the kind of apathy that allowed Hitler to nearly destroy the world?
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