Stand against Online Censorship

Ernest Worthing

Ernest Worthing

Im sure many of you have heard about this but in case you have not, please visit this link and watch the video: http://vimeo.com/blog:460

The internet has far more benefits and advantages for global communication and progress to just be censored because of one negative aspect like copyright infringement.

Please learn more about it by clicking the link above and then help fight against it by visiting this site:http://americancensorship.org/ where you can quickly fill in a small form to voice your concern.

Also, if you can, please help spread the word by the posting it in any other forums you visit, facebook, youtube, your own site etc.

If you watch the video or send the form, please post in this thread telling us about it so that more people are encouraged and follow your example!

Thanks for ur time!
 
It's a scary thought as someone could have a blog or site the government doesn't like and they could use the pretense of these bills to infringe on their first amendment rights.

Though, there's always hope that congress will act like congress and get nothing done.

Link shared.
 
Hmmmm, let me play devil's advocate. Before I start, I can see the possibility of un-intented consequences in this bill, but I do think this video may be over selling those.

Let say I make a product and it's being stolen. A lot. What can I do?

How is it censorship to stop somebody from having stolen material on a site? Don't have stolen material on your site and you're fine.

I used to shoot a lot of indie films and made a decent living do so, but with rampant piracy I saw that work start to dry up. The jobs that paid a decent wage. It became a world of making $100 a day or $1000 a day and no in between. The movies that were being made were either $10,000 or $10,000,000. Some of that was the market and some of that was caused by piracy.

A lot of folks will point at the big studios and say they are making millions which is true so if I steal from them it's no big deal, but if Sony loses several million from to piracy then that money cannot got to Sony Classics which makes indie movies . It's a trickle down loss and the small people get hurt. Jim Carrey doesn't tfeel the pain. The grips and camera dept.
gets hurt because less movies get made . Those at the top of the food chain do fine., but those at the middle or bottom loss jobs.

I can see both sides, but piracy has to be stopped because it is killing indies who want to make a living.


I know this is going to be a hot button issue but please let's keep the discussion civil.
Scott
 
I don't like the idea of corporations picking which sites are permanently shut down. That's bad, and will be abused beyond piracy into competition I'm sure.

I do like the idea of cutting advertising revenue and essentially placing an embargo on piracy sites.
 
I dont know....It is hard to download Independent movies. Thats wy I watch them in The Lumiere....Independent movies are hard to find as a torrent fille. So I dont agree with Scot...
 
Taking something without permission is morally and ethically wrong, as well as illegal. I don't agree with all aspects of this law, but this kind of thing will eventually happen. If people would NOT download movies, music, and TV shows illegally, it would be a lot less likely to get a law like this passed.

Even if this particular bill doesn't get passed, another one like eventually WILL get passed. It's inevitable. The Internet is the wild, wild west and sooner or later the law will come to town. Everyone on the issue of piracy has always tried to say to me (especially on this forum) that piracy is here to stay, just get used to it.... I think that it isn't here to stay and when it comes crashing down, so will a lot of the freedom of speech. Much like the FCC regulating the radio and eventually television - the Internet will soon be under the jurisdiction of them or some other new form control.

Why? Because people are downloading things illegally and many people have lost jobs and a lot of money over it. Duh.

The irony is that people want a job in the industry that they are helping to destroy with illegal downloads. This is like trying to become a crew member on the Titanic after it hits the iceberg. Then this petition is like saying, "Don't let them stop me from doing things that are illegal because they might (maybe) stop me from doing something legal too..."
 
I don't know jack about law, and I haven't read the proposed law, but if what is presented in this video is true, then the law just goes way too far (and doesn't even sound like it'd be very effective).

If there was a way to scale it back so that only sites that are dedicated to pirating (or at least where it's active), like piratebay, etc., then I would support it. I don't think you can totally eliminate piracy, but if you can push it further underground, then perhaps you could significantly curtail it. Right now, it's so out in the open that even the computer-illiterate could figure out how to do it.
 
Feutus Lapdance said:
Jea...richt....as if I buy more CD's and DVD's... if this law is past....HAHAHAHHAHAHAhAh.
Click to expand...

Hopefully you won't and you won't have access to them either. That would be they way things are supposed to be. You are not entitled to watch a movie without permission or someone paying for it.
 
It's people like Feutus that cause the content providers to do everything
they can to get a law like this passed. I, too, think this law reaches too
far and has the potential of being used poorly, but this is what we are
heading towards because so many people feel it is their entitlement
to watch movies and own music without paying.

I have seen exactly what Scott has seen - the almost total elimination
of the $80,000 to $250,000 movies. That's where I made a good portion
of my living as a writer/director for many years. And rampant piracy and
torrents are the reason. People have grown accustom to not paying for
music and movies and TV shows. Even people who someday hope to make
a living in the business.
 
I can see too why there should, and to some degree, there is censorship already if someone proves they are the copyright owners of material, they can have videos yanked.

YouTube needs better controls at times for some of the videos that end up getting posted on their site, not just rough cuts of studo productions, but also government videos made for the sole purpose of only being shown to people in the government and not to go public.
 
I don't think YouTube is really the target of this bill. I'm sure if it passes they will get some hassle and those "baby dancing" videos with copyrighted music in the BG will have a harder time, but YouTube does a pretty good job about stopping the posting of copyrighted content. Do it once, they pull the video and warn you, do it again and you're banned.

YouTube is already a lot harder to deal with if you monetize your videos or are a partner. They pulled monetization (user being paid for ads) off of two of our videos because of music. One had some music from VCP and they wanted me to get a letter from them saying that I had the rights to use it stating my name, username and video URL specifically because the "royalty free agreement wasn't good enough" and the other video had a custom score done by a friend and his letter saying that he wrote it and we had permission to make money off of it stating the URL and everything else they wanted wasn't good enough.

This last video we uploaded, I had to give them all of the above, plus purchase receipts for the stock music to get it passed.

This bill, like most regulation law, effects small business and start-ups the most because they can't afford to have the attorneys on staff to fight for their rights when the bigger corporations sue them.

Again, piracy is absolutely 100% wrong, but handing the reins to private massive corporations to sue their competition into the ground isn't the right way to do it.
 
Here's my simple question, how is it censorship to stop people from using somebody else's intellectual property without their permission? Most people would be outraged is they'd just finished writing a script and somebody walked in, snagged it and made it. The internet has created a mass of people who think everything should be free. Movies, music and TV shows. Well somebody has to create those shows and those people have to eat and have a place to sleep. If you steal material, you are in a sense taking food off these fine creative people's plate. Pretty soon, the creative people will have do something else and we loose a group of future filmmakers.

Scott
 
scottspears said:
Here's my simple question, how is it censorship to stop people from using somebody else's intellectual property without their permission? Most people would be outraged is they'd just finished writing a script and somebody walked in, snagged it and made it. The internet has created a mass of people who think everything should be free. Movies, music and TV shows. Well somebody has to create those shows and those people have to eat and have a place to sleep. If you steal material, you are in a sense taking food off these fine creative people's plate. Pretty soon, the creative people will have do something else and we loose a group of future filmmakers.

Scott
Click to expand...

It would be censorship if youtube were shut down, yes. Shut down piratebay? That's curtailing the theft. Shut down youtube? Censorship.
 
"It would be censorship if youtube were shut down, yes. Shut down piratebay? That's curtailing the theft. Shut down youtube? Censorship."
Click to expand...

If a pawn shop sells stolen property, then it should be closed. Is that censorship? Is that restriction of trade? No, that's enforcing the law. Youtube has to police itself to make sure they aren't hosting stolen property.

I had my demo reel on youtube with copyrighted music (I forgot about it because I'd cut it so long ago) and youtube censored the audio so my reel played silently. I quickly composed some music using loops that I owned and uploaded the new version to make it legal.

Again, I've seen the damage piracy has done to indie movies and something has to be done. This law may be taking a bit too far, but something has to be put in place.

Scott
 
sonnyboo said:
Hopefully you won't and you won't have access to them either. That would be they way things are supposed to be. You are not entitled to watch a movie without permission or someone paying for it.
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Sory for my coment.....but I look at it not from a Movie perspective but from a DJ perspective....I love to buy Vinyl...and to explore and find new sound I download a amount of songs....for example I downloaded al the stuf of Bare noise and Reso....Now I can listen to this and select the tracks I realy like and order them From SAMSAM (or Toolboxrecords.com). So....downloading this helpt me make a better selection......
 
Feutus Lapdance said:
Sory for my coment.....but I look at it not from a Movie perspective but from a DJ perspective....I love to buy Vinyl...and to explore and find new sound I download a amount of songs....for example I downloaded al the stuf of Bare noise and Reso....Now I can listen to this and select the tracks I realy like and order them From SAMSAM (or Toolboxrecords.com). So....downloading this helpt me make a better selection......
Click to expand...

Downloading certainly DOES let you listen to more stuff. However, I don't know if you remember how many noise and experimental labels were around pressing cds in the 90s. In the early 2000s, many of them switched to cd-r. These days, if they exist at all, they're digital labels. The people who were hit hardest were the small, weird and obscure people. It does make me sad.

Of course, lots of the European noise scene has gone back to cassettes (much like the tape-trading days of the 80s). As a consumer, it's certainly nice that I don't have to shell out $25 for an import cd limited to 200 copies (because, really, only 300 people would like it to begin with) just to hear it, but now they're not even pressing the limited copies.

The technology is here; there just needs to be a better way for the artists to monetize it. I think some sort of micro-payment would be better; would you pay a small fee to listen to all of an artists' work, and then another small fee for what you want to keep?

And of course, AS an artist, we want you to listen to the whole album, start to finish, damnit ;)
 
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