SOPA: The Year of the Zombie Internet

I haven't really talked about issues like these in a while, but there is a hugely important bill making its way through Congress right now that could make the Internet a mere shell of what it is right now. It's called the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA), and it has terrible implications for the whole Internet as it exists today.

But you must be wondering, "Isn't stopping piracy a good thing? What could possibly be bad about it? And won't it do its job right? What's there to worry about?"

1. I don't know if stopping piracy is such a good thing. Study after study has shown that piracy is merely a symptom of a need being unfulfilled. No, that need is not "greedy freetards wanting everything for free". It's people getting content they like in formats they can use in an easy way for reasonable prices. Many studies have shown that once iTunes came around selling music super-conveniently for $0.99 apiece and once that music started coming without DRM (which was supposedly made to increase sales by preventing piracy), piracy of the songs on iTunes dropped precipitously. All you need to do is compete with piracy by giving people something even more compelling; it may sound strange, but while it may be free of charge, piracy isn't actually all that convenient to carry out. And despite what major movie studios and record labels would like you to believe, you actually have to dig pretty deep into search results on sites like Google to find actual pirated content.

2. There are tons of things horrible about it. Foremost among them, it basically upends the justice system which requires that defendants be innocent until proven guilty and which requires that defendants be able to defend themselves in a court of law. This throws all that out the window: now, people can be punished severely just on accusations of infringement, and the burden of proof falls on said defendant and the website that supposedly enabled the infringement (even if it was a link to a link to a link or if the content was generated by other users of the site, not by webmasters). Basically, the big record and movie studios have admitted that they're too lazy to police their own content, so they're asking the government to do it for them and to play by their rules.

3. No, it won't necessarily do its job right. Recently, Warner Brothers admitted that it took down a whole bunch of legitimate content from other sites that they didn't even own in the first place. And Viacom has had a history of legally uploading its own videos to YouTube; under SOPA, it could basically shut down YouTube for its own stunts like that.

4. Well, considering what I've already told you, it should be pretty obvious by now that the Internet would be a far, far worse place under SOPA. Everyone from civil libertarians (i.e. the ACLU) to tech companies to small independent productions studios to libraries to lawyers to [et cetera] have come out against it. Petitions are growing by the day. It's really only supported by Hollywood and the recording studios (and maybe the big drug companies too who don't want to admit that generic drugs are legal and are not counterfeits). It's gotten to the point where a recent House of Representatives hearing was carefully stacked with 5 speakers supporting SOPA and only 1 speaking against it. That should tip you off as to how flimsy the case for SOPA really is.

There are a whole bunch of different petitions going out around the Internet. I myself have signed about 3 of them. Please, sign the petitions, tell your friends, and call your senators and representatives in Congress and convince them that you, as a humble constituent, matter more than big entertainment lobbies, and that the government can do better than being Hollywood's hired thugs. Do it before it's too late!

(Note: this law has gone through a few different names. In 2009 and 2010, it was called "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeiting Act" (COICA). After that it was called PROTECT-IP. After that it was called E-PARASITE, though I genuinely thought the sponsors of the bill were unwittingly referring to themselves as the "e-parasites", as they have just been reaping all the rewards of the Internet and are now going to kill it to make sure no one else can. Now it's called SOPA.)

Presumed Innocent Unless A Digital Pirate

There's a new article (Gautham Nagesh, The Hill) that talks about a new bill being put through Congress regarding tougher restrictions on file sharing. Let's go through it, piece by piece.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee including chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would create an expedited process for DoJ to shut down websites providing pirated materials.
“Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods costs American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs,” Leahy said in a statement. “Protecting intellectual property is not uniquely a Democratic or Republican priority — it is a bipartisan priority.”

I'm more than a little wary of giving the government more power in dealing with issues relating to digital copying and such, especially if that increase in power does not come with increased checks and balances or caveats limiting such actions in some way. And really, Mr. Leahy? Online piracy results in "hundreds of thousands of lost jobs"? Doesn't copying and modifying works digitally open up new avenues of creativity and progress? How could that possibly cost jobs?
The article goes on to talk about how the DoJ could obtain a court order to shut down an infringing site by showing "'substantial and repeated role in online piracy and counterfeiting'". It would then require the site owners "to petition the court to have the order lifted".
First of all, I think it's misguided (at best) to lump together piracy and counterfeiting. I don't think torrent sites deal with counterfeit goods. Oh, wait, I can think of a loophole: the site would have to deal with "online piracy and counterfeiting", so if it only deals with online piracy, it can't be shut down. Yay! Except that the media lobbies will likely convince the DoJ that both are somehow occurring simultaneously and that any amount is "substantial and repeated", so the site must be shut down (even if many of the torrents are legal, like those of Linux distributions). Oh, think of the poor artists!
The bigger problem I have with this, however, is that it essentially turns the presumption of innocence on its head. If this was a regular case, it would be on the plaintiffs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that such infringement occurred and that it caused huge damages and that this is why the site should be shut down. Now, the site owner (who may or may not know what activity is going on between users of the site) bears the full burden of proving innocence. Even nastier criminal trials have presumption of innocence and shorter jail sentences/lesser fines. Is copyright infringement really that bad? (I agree that counterfeiting of physical goods isn't a good thing especially for products like foods and medicines, as these counterfeit goods could potentially be life-threatening to consumers. That said, how are copies of songs life-threatening to anyone?)

The article concludes by describing the Chamber of Commerce's (one of the primary groups involved in introducing the bill into Congress) estimates of losses due to piracy, and quotes a sponsor of the bill on its benefits to all parties involved. Please tell me again how piracy costs jobs, and please tell me with a straight face how piracy is causing financial losses when the MPAA itself admits that the movie industry has been growing at a record pace this past decade; finally, please do tell me how consumers benefit from even more draconian restrictions on online content. I'd love to know!

It's Official: Free Online Content Distribution Helps Analog Counterparts

As a few readers of this blog have noticed (judging by my blog statistics), I have modified the layout slightly. I have removed the "Popular Posts", "Labels", and "Archives" widgets from the sidebar to clean it up; I have created pages in their stead (and replaced them on the sidebar with a "Recent Comments" widget) — "Archives" is now its own page, while "Popular Posts" and "Labels" have been combined in the "Popular Posts" page (but each has its own subheading). Furthermore, I have created a "Useful Links" static page, and this is where the content of this post comes in: the "Useful Links" page has a collection of links that I would recommend readers of this blog to read for a better understand of the economics relating to open source, free culture, etc. There are also 3 useful videos (dealing with similar things) that I have embedded on that page, one of which I will also embed in this post, as it has to do very much with the topic. I got the idea for this post from TechDirt's article on the same, which also includes this video:

A Presentation regarding Online Content Distribution's Impact on Analog Counterparts

TechDirt's article does a very good job of summarizing the key points of the video (as it's a long video), so I won't repeat them here. Please do read that portion of the original article (and if you are so inclined, by all means watch the video).
A couple commenters on the TechDirt article said things like, "Of course things like this would be presented at a Google conference because this is exactly what Google wants to hear!" At first, though I generally disagreed with this statement (as the research itself doesn't appear to be funded by Google), I couldn't shake the possibility out of my head. Then, I found this Washington Post article written by Howard Kurtz about how online news articles and videos supplement newspaper/newsmagazine readership and TV news viewership. The article goes on to discuss perceptions of bias (among other things) in the mainstream media by people of various ideologies and political affiliations. I think it's interesting that this story should come out so soon after TechDirt's publication of the video on its website, as it talks about how people get their news (which the video does not discuss) and it does not seem to be funded by major Internet companies. The article does note that while newspaper readership is down by quite a few percentage points from just a few years ago, this doesn't seem to be caused by the presence of online counterparts; in fact, the online counterparts is in some cases increasing print readership, which is an effect similar to one discussed in the video where a TV showing of a movie increases its DVD sales almost immediately.
Mr. Murdoch, are you still thinking of taking your websites off of Google's indexes? If so, I can say (with a fair amount of confidence, especially when compared to before) that you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Counter-Debunking the 1% Myth

Caitlyn Martin of O'Reilly Broadcast has another interesting article about why the figure of Linux market share is quite a bit more than the oft-quoted 1%. She starts out by doing a bit of math: (1 Linux netbook)/(3 total netbooks) * (18 total netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) = (6 Linux netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) — Linux netbook sales alone constitute 6% of the total desktop market. I can't argue with that. It's also a really impressive number; the number for total Linux desktop sales (that includes desktops, laptops, and netbooks) will obviously be higher — I don't know by how much, but the total number is certainly at least 6%. I think it's great that Linux desktop sales have come this far.
The bigger question regards the meaning of this number, and I believe the problems with this article occur before and after the calculations. For one, the author starts by saying that Linux market share in servers and embedded systems is significant. I don't think anyone ever doubted this, and several studies have shown that Linux distributions are in fact in the majority on these types of hardware. Therefore, I think it isn't quite right to start the article like this when the title clearly indicates a discussion about Linux desktop market share. That said, this is a fairly minor issue.
The article's argument gets more murky when Steve Ballmer is brought into the discussion. It has been written repeatedly that the presentation referenced clearly shows that the biggest threat to Microsoft Windows is illegally copied versions of Microsoft Windows (not Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD). Why? This is the case in many countries with poorer populations, as people simply can't afford to buy a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows. Furthermore, Linux adoption in these countries is low because the computers sold there often don't have the tools (Internet connection, working USB port, working disk writer drive) to create a live CD/USB, and there's no cost advantage to using Linux as people will just copy Microsoft Windows. A lot of commenters in the linked article also point out that in these countries where unlicensed use of Microsoft Windows is rampant, it is cheaper, in fact, to buy a machine with Linux preinstalled and then wipe the hard drive and install an unlicensed copy of Microsoft Windows. I don't doubt the verity of this. That said, the 6% figure is for the US, where unlicensed Microsoft Windows use is likely to be much lower; therein lies another problem, as statistics for US Linux market share is being compared to statistics for worldwide Microsoft Windows market share.
And why should Steve Ballmer know about precise statistics for Linux and Mac OS X usage? It certainly is easy to look at sales statistics and see what percentage of computers are sold with licensed copies of Microsoft Windows; also, as Microsoft "phones home" to see which copies of Windows are licensed and which are not, it should be pretty easy to tell how many unlicensed copies of Windows are being used. While one can safely conclude that the rest of the pie is occupied by Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X, it is not so clear how much each contender has of that slice of the pie. I guess one way of telling how many people use Mac OS X is by tracking sales of Microsoft Office for Mac, but this is problematic as many Mac OS X users stay away from Microsoft Office and instead use iWork, OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice, or a web-based productivity suite.
So why would Steve Ballmer put Linux market share at or above Mac OS X market share? Microsoft knows that it can compete with Apple's Mac OS X in terms of features (in some ways) and price, so Mac OS X isn't really considered a huge threat. On the other hand, Linux can do most of the things a typical computer user wants (e.g. web browsing, productivity, peripheral support) for free, which does technically pose a serious threat to Microsoft Windows. At the same time, Microsoft has repeatedly accused the free software community (and Linux in particular) of infringing upon its patents. Therefore, Microsoft is pegging Linux market share that high in order to justify those accusations — if Linux market share is that high, then of course Linux needs to be stopped before such patent infringement gets out of control! (This is what I would imagine a Microsoft executive saying at such a presentation.)
I won't argue that Linux desktop sales make up at least 6% of total desktop sales. Usage is a different matter entirely and should not be treated the same as sales figures.

Some Sanity from the Mainstream Media on Movie Piracy

This comes from a recent article (Mike Ryan, Yahoo! Movies) about how piracy is affecting box office sales of Iron Man 2.
For once, the author (who is probably not a copyright law/tech law junkie; I am not exasperated with this particular author but with mainstream reporters on the subject in general) recognizes that the impact of piracy on box office sales is tiny. The only reason why it is making news is because Paramount has released the film in other countries before releasing it in the US and Canada, so people here will have an even bigger reason to watch a foreign pirated version (as, unlike other movies, this movie would not have been seen by them). The author also recognizes that with the movie Avatar, people had a reason to go into the theaters as the pirated copies were of the 2D version (as current home recording equipment isn't sophisticated enough to allow copying 3D movies without losing the 3-dimensionality of the film) while the theaters were showing the film in 3D. Even the producers of Iron Man 2 admit that they could have made more money at the box office by making the movie 3D (with respect to people not pirating 3D films), and they don't rail on end about how piracy is killing box office sales (because they probably know that it isn't).
At last, I see some sanity in mainstream observers of the movie industry.

The Film Industry's Next Avatar

I mean "avatar" as a pun on the movie title and the word as meaning incarnation. It stems from this article (Marguerite Reardon, CNET) talking about Avatar director James Cameron's take on film piracy.
In a few words: he gets it.
He gets that to actually be successful in the marketplace, one must innovate; profits are not one's birthright. Where was all the fuss about the plethora of tech companies failing early last decade? Yet when filmmakers see their products being pirated, they put ever-more restrictions on the media which are ever-quicker bypassed in a vicious cycle both for the filmmakers and for the purchasers of unpirated copies. They also claim to be "victims", though the vast majority of data (not coming from the MPAA) shows that film companies are making ever-increasing profits through...theater ticket sales. I also talk about this in an earlier post.
Somehow, film companies aren't getting the fact that theater viewing is making a comeback. James Cameron understands that DVD sales are a venue for advertising, while the theater sales are the real deal.
He understands that the way to combat piracy is not to be restrictive, threatening, or litigious; rather, the way to combat piracy (and this is true of any medium - books, music, etc.) is to make acquisition of legitimate copies easier and more compelling than acquisition of pirated copies. Hence, he made the movie Avatar with 3-D graphics, which is only available in theaters; now, to see all the cool effects, people must go to theaters - watching it on DVD or on the computer is only half the experience (because as far as I know, once the effects are removed, the plot itself is a really poorly written soap opera).
A part of me goes against the notion that movies must resort to gimmicks like 3-D viewing as compelling reasons for people to attend cinema showings (as opposed to buying or pirating the DVD) - the movie has got to have substance behind all the show. That said, the movie makers are creative enough to think of some appropriate way to make their movie seem better in the theaters than on DVD (legal or pirated) - otherwise their movies wouldn't do well in terms of sales in the first place.
I understand that it is hard work for people to make a movie, and that this goes to waste when movies are pirated; what this means, though, is that movie makers need to work a little bit harder in terms of finding new ways to make cinema viewings worth people's money. By the time 3-D technology hits mainstream TVs and computers, James Cameron and other directors should be able to think of even more innovative ways to capture people's attention.

More Evidence Against the MPAA and RIAA

This article (Andres Guadamuz, TechnoLlama) is pretty detailed and has pretty good analysis on why the RIAA and MPAA's repeated cries of industry-ruining piracy are wrong.
Let me simply say that as more legal digital sales occur, piracy drops. Also, there is a wave of renewed interest in actually going to movie theaters and music concerts (as opposed to buying albums or film DVDs). However, neither the RIAA nor the MPAA wants anyone to believe this.

2010 January 3: National Security and Book Piracy

The first thing I would like to talk about is national security - specifically the recent failed bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit and the aftermath.
I think the way President Obama handled the issue showed that with respect to national security, he is as out of touch as George W. Bush was. Obama was vacationing in Hawaii when this happened and didn't even make an official response until 72 hours later.
More seriously, the government just couldn't connect the dots with respect to this terrorist. I have chastised Bush for not connecting the obvious dots before 9/11, and I am chastising Obama even more for not connecting the even more obvious dots.
For goodness sake, the terrorist's dad, after the terrorist dissolved ties with his family, went to the US Embassy to warn the ambassadors/other officials of his son's radicalization and to ensure that appropriate action is taken.
Appropriate action, anyone?
Umm, can anyone say oops?
To make matters worse, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that regarding how the terrorist managed to slip through standard security, "the system worked".
What?
The system worked?
I don't even want to know what it would be like if it didn't work. Apocalypse now, anyone (pun definitely intended)?
Then, Napolitano clarified her previous statement, saying that "in this case, the system didn't work".
That didn't do her any favors (in my eyes).
Then, finally, Obama comes on the scene.
I definitely agree with Newsweek's analysis that his acknowledgement of the heroism of the passengers who subdued the terrorist was lacking, and that he should have been more full-on in the praise. To turn this into action, he should have increased the Citizen Corps's (the volunteer body designed for citizens to fight terrorism like this) budget and not the DHS's.
Furthermore, he said he would [and I'm paraphrasing here] "work with the Yemeni government". (The terrorist received training in Arabic and bombmaking in Yemen.)
What?
His "no-drama" approach has reached its physical limit. He really needs to take a hard stand against this sort of action. What could possibly happen through negotiation with the Yemeni government?
Obama has really dropped the ball on national security. He had better pick it up soon.

The second thing I want to talk about is book piracy - specifically, Native American poet and author Sherman Alexie's take on it.
Basically, he believes it is bad, which I agree with. However, he goes on to say that the open-source culture is fostering this, and that the whole culture is bad. He has also said that e-book readers are "elitist", on the grounds that poor rural people will not be able to buy them.
I think that last statement alone throws out his credibility on talking about new technologies and how they will shape the way we read.
Seriously? "Elitist"?
It's of course not going to be as expensive when it becomes more widespread. Furthermore, a lot of people even now don't have the money to purchase physical books, let alone e-books. That's why they go to the library to read/borrow their books. I foresee a similar thing happening in the future, at which point the readers themselves will be cheap enough for the people referred to by Alexie to publish.
I'm not going to pick on Alexie's misrepresentation of open-source culture, as it was a mix-up of terminology. That would just be mean and unfair of me.
I won't focus on Alexie anymore, as it pretty clear that he is pretty out of touch on the benefits and power such new technologies bestow. Of course, he also believes in going in person around the country to promote his book, especially in small towns; this is admirable, so I will leave him alone (his works seem to be pretty good on their own (i.e. discounting his views on technology)).
The larger point is about the future of reading, writing, and publishing.
With the very low prices of computers and word processing programs (heck, OpenOffice.org is free, as is AbiWord), it is very easy to physically type a book. The problem comes with then distributing it, ensuring that the author derives a fair return for this distribution. Now, it is very easy and cheap (though not totally free) to scan a published paper book and upload it to the Internet.
While reading through the comments on said article in Slashdot, I came across an idea which I thought was genius and should define future publishing; ironically, the basic concept is actually very old.
Charles Dickens used to publish his books in magazines in parts: basically, he would publish chapter 1 in one week's publication of the magazine, chapter 2 in the next week's publication, etc. He made huge profits from this, after which he published the entire book as a whole.
Stephen King has employed a similar system online; he can capitalize on his already-earned fame as a writer to do this. For some of his books, he has published chapter 1 online and would only publish the next chapter if he gets a certain number of legitimate sales for chapter 1 (or the current chapter). The vast majority of readers are willing to pay for the books and would rather acquire the book legally and not illegally, meaning that he has earned record profits from this model. After each chapter's sales target is met, the book is then published as a whole.
I think it's a model that can work for everyone, and it's a great model for its total reliance on the free market to determine whether the author floats or sinks, while creating an (not legally-binding) artificial scarcity that can only be circumvented through further purchase.
Granted, Stephen King can do this due to his already-earned fame, but other authors can and are doing it too. I see a new model in which the first 1 or 2 books by an author are distributed online for free (while donations are accepted), and if a sufficiently large fanbase is gathered, the aforementioned model can be employed.
Libraries could still operate; they could buy the fully-published physical book once it does become published.
Publishers and the WGA, your modus operandi is horribly outdated. People have been complaining about the current system, but until now, no suitable alternative has been proposed. Here it is.
I know there are probably a lot of flaws I haven't thought through. Please post those and any other suggestions/thoughts in the comments!

On Console Games, Corporate Tech Lobbies, and the MPAA

I found 3 articles that piqued my interest, so I wanted to talk about them all in this post. As a result, this post may get rather long, so consider yourself warned. Be patient; it'll be fine.

This article (Ben Hardwidge, bit-tech.net) proposes, counter to the numerous death knells of PC gaming, that console gaming will be the first to die.
I agree with the premise and the numbers. All of the console manufacturers are bleeding money, mainly from their current console divisions. What is most telling is that the best selling console for each month of the last few years has been the PS2 (not the PS3); while the PS3 has been the loser (saleswise) of every month since its introduction (I think).
From my own perspective, I find console gaming not to be very fun unless other people are over. I have a PS2, but again, I only play with other friends. The same goes for these friends who have newer systems like the XBox360 (and XBox Live). PC gaming is simply more conducive to single player gaming than consoles are. That's why I'm not getting a new system of any kind to "keep up"; it'll be a waste.

The next article (Robert Silberman, Economic Times - India Times) deals with Microsoft against copyright infringers.
Microsoft brought its case against 4 infringers to Delhi in order to wield more influence on the decision; it simultaneously harassed the defendants even though they were still innocent.
In response, the Supreme Court of India ruled that Microsoft, having offices in the respective cities of the defendants, had to bring the cases there. Furthermore, the company had to compensate these defendants as well as pay other fines for misconduct.
In an era where more and more politicians are bought off by large companies and Microsoft goes virtually unchallenged in the US, it's nice to see a judge like this stand up against Microsoft.

The final article talks about Hollywood's record revenues for 2009.
I think the article hits the nail on the head in every way.
Despite the repeated whining by the MPAA about the industry being torn to pieces by piracy, the truth is that this myth is being torn to pieces by these numbers.
What's even more outrageous is that an industry executive of some sort tried to spin it in a negative light, calling it the "only" bright spot of the year while trying to maintain the myth of dark times for Hollywood because of piracy.
The last part of the article is right too. While the movie can be downloaded off of the Internet, they aren't really an adequate substitute for a real [possibly at-home, on-TV] theater experience. What downloading the movie then does is expose others to the movie, making them want to watch the real deal in the theater or rent/buy it on DVD. This is also true of music, when music recordings are distributed freely, live concert sales (the big revenue maker for the artist, much bigger than record sales) shoot up.
It basically proves that all the media industries and lobbies are after with copyright is total control over their works, not protection of any kind for the artists.

What Will Stop the MPAA?

This is really unfortunate (Kathie Dickerson, Coshocton Tribune).
This is the kind of overzealous copyright enforcement I am worried will become a common occurrence in the future; it's why I don't support copyrights in general.
To summarize, the MPAA (movie making industry lobby) has shut down an entire town's wifi because of a single illegally downloaded movie.
I don't support such illegal downloads. I also don't support the myriad restrictions on movie files, but I don't support illegally downloading a movie for free if a fee is charged. People will pay a fee if they feel like the product is worth it. Those that don't but still acquire the movie are stealing; it is in fact the same as eating an apple that isn't yours (though that's where the idea-property analogy ends).
Yet, why should an entire town have to suffer for a single isolated online theft? Should a national grocery store chain (by analogy with the MPAA's nationwide presence) close down one of its stores just because the store owner realizes that a single item has been taken (say, a candy next to the check-out counter) without being paid for? That would be ruinous for the townspeople.
Please, if you find yourself in a situation like this, ask the MPAA, RIAA, or whatever to stop.
This story has also been reported on BoingBoing and Slashdot; you can read more there.

RIAA, Stay of Of Elementary Schools!

It's another day and yet another blow upon freedom of creativity. Yes folks, the RIAA is at it again. This time, they are created curricula for elementary and middle schools, starting from 3rd grade.
You heard that right, 3rd grade. I'll get back to that later.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/back-to-school-with-riaa-funded-curriculum.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
First, I'll look at what's totally wrong with this activity guide.
The activities for elementary and middle school students are identical save the tools used, but that's besides the point. Now I only need to do half the ranting!
Songlifting.
What in the name of Kanye West is that?
It's a term the RIAA made up for the express purpose of furthering this activity. It has no other meaning outside of this context.
Next, those numbers are way off. It certainly does not cost the music industry over $7 million in lost sales due to copyright violations, and even if it did, it makes so much more money from actual sales that it doesn't really matter.
Next, who is affected by songlifting?
It's really just the RIAA. The truth is, if people are given a listen to a song, they are more likely to actually go out and buy the CD by themselves. Even otherwise, the CDs generate positive publicity which will reflect positively upon the artists in concerts and such. Only the recording industry is hurt, and they want to shout that out.

Next, draw the copyright symbol (©) on the chalkboard. Ask if students know what this symbol means and where they might have seen it (books, posters, CDs, etc.). Explain that the copyright symbol is used to identify the owner of a piece of intellectual property and serves as a reminder that it is illegal for anyone to copy or distribute that property without the owner’s permission. Students should understand that copyright law automatically protects intellectual property whether or not it is marked with the copyright symbol. You might also inform them that our nation’s Founders included copyright protection in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), believing that it would encourage creativity by giving the creators of intellectual property an exclusive right to profit from their artistic talents.

This preceding quote is possibly my favorite part because it's the least correct. Here's something I suggest: Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Lessig should all go around the country to different schools and draw the copyleft (intentionally the horizontal mirror-image of the copyright symbol) and ask them what it means. It's pretty well known in the freedomware (I'm gonna start using that term as a less ambiguous synonym of free software/software libre) community, which seems to be a mutual antagonist of industries like the RIAA. I'm pretty sure not too many teachers would get it either. Why should the RIAA be forcing copyright down 3rd-graders' throats?
Most importantly is my beef with the term intellectual property. I'll say it here, and it largely reflects the views of people like Stallman and Lessig.
Intellectual property is a near-farce.
That's right, it's a near-farce.
It's not totally a farce because initially, other people should not take credit for someone's work. However, intellectual "property" is not like physical property in that when someone else takes it, the original owner does not lose it. If I take your table, you are now minus one table. However, if I take your design for a table and tweak it a bit, you still have your original design. I will expand more upon this only if you ask me to elaborate on a specific point.
Furthermore, this interpretation of copyright completely ignores fair use. Fair use is the use of an author's work for free without the author's permission, and can be done if the author explicitly gives such permission or implicitly does so by letting a copyright or patent expire. Many artists do this in that they give away their songs for free on the interwebs. The RIAA, of course, collectively sticks its fingers in its ears and starts screaming like a siren when it hears the words "fair use".
Also, my other beef with copyright law is the term itself. It used to be that one had an exclusive copyright of 14 years with a possibility of one renewal, making a maximum total of 28 years; this has increased to 95 years. Also, before, the burden of making the copyright was on the author; now, for whatever reason, this is automatic. The former terms were implied in the Constitution and were explicitly stated in contemporaneous laws. I find it ironic that the RIAA uses the word "believes" to refer to the Framers' desire to encourage creativity through limited copyrights; then again, the RIAA makes no mention of an originally limited copyright.
Yup, the RIAA has a lot wrong in that one paragraph.
The next activity just strengthens that.

So the RIAA basically wants children to know that they must bow to its demands, and that fair and free use do not exist (and neither should limited copyrights with burden on the holder). More to the point, "piracy" is explicitly mentioned twice (in different word forms) while "fair use" is never even implied.

But my bigger problem is, why are they doing this to children?
Middle school students are fine candidates for this because they are just getting into mp3 players, CD mixes, online file sharing, and that sort of stuff. They should know about copyright law, but it should not be exclusively from one point of view; they should know both points of view and have the ability to decide between the two.
More importantly, though, is that elementary schoolers have much fewer, if any, such interests. They aren't as much into technology and probably have no idea what such things as file sharing are. So why does the RIAA feel the need to pursue such indoctrination?
I guess it's because they think it's best to get them while they're young.
But that's just wrong.
Teachers, please use some common sense and don't let private industries control public education like this.

Can Anyone Say "DRM Sucks"?

For those of you who don't know me too well, I really like The Sims. It's a great game, and I've been playing it since version 1 onto version 2. For TS2, I have the original version with the Nightlife and Seasons expansion packs.
These two are not severely restricted. All expansions after seasons are.
With the release of Spore, for whatever reason, Electronic Arts (EA) became more paranoid about its "intellectual property". It felt that simply disallowing people from copying their game disks wasn't enough, which is what they had been doing for many years using the SafeDisk technology. Since then, they have moved to SecuROM.
SecuROM is a piece of software made by Sony that purports to curb piracy. It does so by actually limiting the number of times that a user can install the game on his/her computer (to around 5 times total, I believe). That's not all, however. Once installed along with the game, SecuROM cannot be removed unless special tools are used. That's right, uninstalling the game does nothing to SecuROM unless you use SecuROM's own uninstaller, and if you do that with the game still installed then the game becomes inoperable; if you then want to reinstall the game, SecuROM shows up again and counts one more install down.
It gets worse, though. Not only does SecuROM limit your installs, it requires that the user have web access or else that user won't be able to play the game; this allows SecuROM to automatically "phone home" to get backdoor updates for itself and continually verify that you are an absolute angel. Furthermore, there has been a huge number of people with SecuROM-tagged games (SPORE, BioShock, Mass Effect, and TS2 expansions after but excluding Seasons) that have lost the functionality of their optical (CD/DVD), USB, and hard drives from having SecuROM on their computers and no way to remove it without also crippling the game in question. In fact, far too many people had to reformat their computers because of SecuROM.
Basically, SecuROM is a computer virus that goes unmentioned in the aforementioned games' EULAs and essentially takes the Windows hostage (as far as I know, Mac versions of the games do not have SecuROM (lucky!)). The word "virus" is not meant to be an analog; in fact, most competent antivirus scanners identify SecuROM as a type of virus (a rootkit, I believe)! What's worse is that this virus is corporate-sponsored for the sole purpose of deterring pirates who were going to hack the game to release it for free anyway. To that end, the SecuROM-tagged games in question had some of the fastest cracking times in history, all of them being cracked and released in under 24 hours after official release.
I was going to get TS2 Bon Voyage today, but after reading about SecuROM I'm glad I saved my $20. I have seen some places say that since Spore, Mass Effect, and BioShock, (i.e. for all of the newer TS2 expansions) SecuROM has removed the install limit, but I still wouldn't trust it lest my hardware totally break down.
The last argument I will make is more about the issues with SecuROM's assumptions about licensing and copyright, so for more information, I strongly recommend reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. It's a great book (available freely online, no copyright violations involved) about the issues of copyrights and licensing and how they all affect us today.
The issue is that SecuROM assumes that by trying to install the game on multiple computers, you are a pirate. Computer pirates make copies of games to give to others and sometimes make profits from them too. The problem with this allegation is that when a pirate makes a copy for someone else, the pirate and the recipient both have the software at a cost to the original software-maker rather than to the pirate. However, if person A wants to show person B the game but they only want to have one copy between them and share it, it will at any point in time be at a cost to one of them rather than to the software-maker; the original maker has not lost anything in this case, and if anything, the other person will be more inclined to buy him/herself the game for the better of the original software-maker. SecuROM calls that piracy. That's like calling your letting your friend read the book you bought for a few hours and then giving it back for you to read piracy; unless you charge him for it, the analogy is nonsense.
Thankfully, TS3 went back to SafeDisk instead of SecuROM, and as I will need a laptop for next year soon and TS3 doesn't support my current video card or RAM specs, I will gladly wait for it along with the new computer.
Folks, please: if you know anyone who wants to buy any of the SecuROM-tagged games listed above, show them this and search for "problems with SecuROM"; that should be enough to convince them otherwise. Thank you EA for ending your addition of SecuROM with games and replacing it again with SafeDisk, and everyone please get together to petition EA for an official way to remove SecuROM without ruining the game or getting sued!