Copyrights, Six Strikes and Google too

I’m no fan of the RIAA or MPAA, as you can probably guess, as they seem to be nothing more than lawyers willing to litigate for the legacy entertainment providers who refuse to adapt to changing markets. Lately, it appears that everyone and their mother wants to comply with their wishes in order to avoid getting sued or kicked off the Internet. It’s the wrong way of doing business, but the overpaid executives don’t want to change. They want control.

The RIAA is not Happy with Google

I’m not happy with Google either, but not for the same reason. In fact, I’m unhappy for the opposite reason. You see, Google is purposely skewing the results it its search engine to give more prominence to “legitimate” music services, pushing the so-called “pirate” sites down. Read this: RIAA: Google failing on anti-piracy push.

Google’s search algorithm isn’t supposed to favor one website or service over another, except as dictated by the people who search. Is Google afraid of the RIAA? It certainly appears so. If Google should be sued by someone, it should be sued for manually showing favoritism.

Six Strikes

You need to read this: It begins: Six-strikes copyright smackdown starts in US.

There is no way on Earth an IP address can positively identify an individual. Do you need proof? I get malware connections to my web server every day, thousands of times, by residential computers from the major ISPs in question. If they can’t prevent that, based on an IP address alone, how can they identify an individual responsible?

The RIAA and the MPAA are going after BitTorrent users, people who use one torrent client or another to download an unauthorized song or movie – supposedly. The six strikes policy is completely wrong in that it assumes guilt before innocence. How could they possibly know an individual was purposely doing something like that. I’m not saying that people don’t do it, because they do. What I’m saying is that some people do it with a little help from a bit of malware floating around on their Windows PCs.

What exactly is an authorized download anyway? If you own a CD, DVD or Blu-ray copy already and want a copy in a different format, there’s a law that protects your right to do so. How can any entity, other than you, know you don’t already own a copy? This is nothing more than a shakedown. The RIAA and MPAA want to separate you from your dollars any way they can and this is just another weapon in their ever-growing arsenal of bad policies.

The Answer to their Problems

It’s really quite simple, yet the entertainment powers that be can’t or won’t adapt to take advantage of the millions of people who want the media. No, they’d rather litigate to maintain control, spending way more than their stockholders should allow them to.

It the RIAA and MPAA would spend as much time, effort and money to make the media available anywhere and in any format desired, the “piracy” problem would go away in most places. Bankrupting an individual or worse, putting them in jail, won’t make them buy or rent the product.

The Internet is no longer a nice thing to work with. It’s now a requirement in so many facets of life. Are we going to let copyright abuses remove our abilities to survive in the digital age?