<i>"Whether we are talking about fake Kevlar vests... or a bolt that fails on an airplane engine, we cannot afford to purchase fake goods. This is not just about the new Robin Hood movie," said Biden.</i><p>Maybe my interpretation is wrong, but the "logic" seems to be: piracy is about copyright (one kind of intellectual property) infringement, counterfeit goods are about trademark (another kind of intellectual property) infringement, therefore they should be in the same bag. That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?
Media piracy and fake Kevlar vests are completely different issues.<p>A few random points that should be considered about media piracy:
1) Copyright exists to encourage the creation of new works - ie to benefit the public, not the creators per se.
2) Copyright is a two-edged sword. Maybe knowing that you can copyright a song encourages your creativity. But knowing that they can't reuse your song discourages someone else's. (And reuse of others' work is old - classical composers borrowed others' music or poetry frequently.)
3) Consumers should recognize that NEVER buying movies, music, etc, but ALWAYS pirating them, will mean that some media, like music, is much harder to make, and other media, like big-budget films, are impossible. So it's in fans' interest to buy at least sometimes.
4) On the other hand, media producers have not convincingly shown (to my knowledge) that piracy is really hurting them. Clearly not every download is a lost sale: demand at price 0 will always be greater than at price $15, and piracy may expose people to band which they later buy from (this has happened to me). A decline in music revenues may be partly linked to a rise in video games and other entertainment.
They want to protect the public from unsafe false copies? I can suggest this for software: educate the public on the use of simple cryptographic tools. The public needs to know how to check for themselves that their torrented copy is an authentic copy.<p>If they want to protect obsolete business models from technology, I would suggest the following: reduce the privacy and freedom of the entire public by spending lots of public money on big brother programs.<p>The article gave me the uneasy feeling that they are trying to use the first problem to justify the second solution.
So, I guess this is the USA's side of compliance to the new copyright treaty that was being cooked up in secret?<p>It's so tiresome seeing copyright infringement conflated with the counterfeit physical goods which may cause their users physical harm due to not complying with expected specifications.
"Piracy hurts, it hurts our economy," Vice President Joe Biden said in releasing the 61-page plan drafted<p>61-page draft and ask him to sum it up and he will go nuts!! He has no idea what he is speaking of..just a beau talk
In the end Piracy saves us...
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Recently, I came across one of the best things I've ever read on the whole IP topic: Against Intellectual Monopoly: <a href="http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm</a><p>Don't be fooled by the shitty site, these are Cambridge professors, they just also put the book online.<p>It shows lots of amazing examples throughout history where the concept of IP actually hurt business, not helped. One good example: Dickens was heavily copied and sold here in America, because British copyrights didn't apply here. In the UK, his books sold for $6 each; in America, they sold for $0.06 (or so).<p>He made more money here.