U.S. vs. the world on file-sharing

[GullyFoyle]

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6006625.html?part=rss&tag=6006625&subj=news

U.S. vs. the world on file-sharing

Is the United States getting increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world where technology matters are concerned? This week, members of the French Parliament voted to allow free downloads of copyrighted material, a move with provisions similar to a ruling last year by a Canadian judge.

Philosophical differences between the U.S. government and other countries have become abundantly clear in technology-related business matters, as seen in the European Commission's antitrust actions against Microsoft. And other nations have become frustrated with the United States' influence over accepted behavior on the Internet, a medium that ostensibly has no geographic boundaries.

Hollywood's powerful lobbying machine has managed to hold sway in Congress, but its influence wanes quickly beyond U.S. borders. Will an international backlash eventually force fundamental changes in long-held concepts of copyright protections?

Blog community response:

"I am kind of against the idea of illegal downloading. So I guess the France deal is a good compromise. You can download and upload as much as you want (video/audio, no software). But you have to pay the extra taxes on CD writers, blank CDs, and a special copying tax."
--PsyKi's Journal

"French law doing something cool? Yes, they did?If you pay about $8.50 for a royalty fee to download music, then it's legal. No Johnny boy, it is not going to kill your work, it will make you work. Even though people have the songs, they will still go to concerts."
--True Intel

"This policy would be unfair to the majority of France's Net users who do not use P2P. Less than 2 percent will have their P2P downloading subsidized by all the rest. And how would the French government discern who is and isn't using P2P technology to download copyrighted material?"

[Headbanger's Ball]

An internet tax to provide guarenteed income for every internet connection is a good idea to me. However, the greedy music companies won't go for it and they're paying off the government officials so....won't happen. Besides, if it did, the music industry would try for a scaled tax. Probably want to charge based on bandwidth.

But good for the French.

[mbellot]

An internet tax to provide guarenteed income for every internet connection is a good idea to me.

Perhaps for you, and other who download music. But it would royally suck for people like me who don't. Very much like the royalty tax on audio tapes, it doesn't matter what you're really using it for, they get their royalty money. Total BS if you ask me.

Besides, if it did, the music industry would try for a scaled tax. Probably want to charge based on bandwidth.

Even worse, since I use broadband at home to connect to our company server.

But good for the French.

Good for some of the french, not so good for the others who don't participate in P2P.

[Headbanger's Ball]

There are lots of taxes I (we) pay that do not directly benefit us. But this does sound like an easy solution.

[mbellot]

There are lots of taxes I (we) pay that do not directly benefit us.

No doubt, but that hardly means we need one more.

But this does sound like an easy solution.

Easy solutions and politicians are generally a bad combination for the general public.

[Bschuler]

I'd gladly pay $50 a year to avoid accidentally downloading something I shouldn't and being charged $500,000.00. It is almost impossible to download any video files these days without risk. It's crazy!
Currently I live in a panic over what is free to download and what might actually be copyrighted and thus get me a court date. So I stopped downloading any music, movies, etc.. regardless if they say they are public domain or not. Something needs to be done, because no one here knows every copyrighted material by name, etc. and just 1 mistake can ruin your life.

[pdemondo]

We have (had?) something similar for audio CD (and tape) copying in the US. We pay a fee for audio CDs that is paid to the record consortium.
The music industry has been happy to take the roalities but they still don't want to afford the public any copying rights.

So my guess is that the French will have lots of user fees to "compensate"
the recording industry but in the end, the ability to download legally will still be attacked and diminished and eventually eliminated. But, of course, the
fees will remain.

[adam]

U.S. vs. the world on file-sharing

I don't understand the point of this article and I don't see what the US has to do with it. Canada recently ruled that downloading from P2P is legal but uploading is not, and they imposed a subsidy tax to cover the industry. France is considering doing the same thing but its just in the drafting stages right now. There are a couple of other extremely liberal countries in the copyright arena, and some that simply don't enforce copyright law, but the vast majority of countries do not exempt P2P from infringements and there have not been any other announcements of such subsidized downloading plans. So you are talking about 1 country for sure and maybe another taking a liberal stance on P2P, and basicaly the rest of the world including the US going the other way.

Shouldn't this article be titled, "Canada and maybe France vs. the world on file-sharing?"

Basically the article is just announcing France's tentative new legislation and using it as an opportunity to take unrelated potshots. Lame.

[GullyFoyle]

Actually Adam the pressure comes from the US and big media's running dogs the RIAA/MPAA.
I'm not sure about ALL the laws in EVERY country and how they relate to filesharing. And I'm pretty sure you aren't either.
The main point would be that the US is pressured by big media money to act against other nations. So yes the source being the US then clearly it is the US vs everyone else.
Like Russia and the WTO threat.

[edDV]

Any taxation of the internet is a very bad idea. The pols are looking for any way to bleed this medium. Don't fall for these "free download" temptations.

Fight any taxation of the internet.

[ROF]

Any taxation of internet commodities is a bad idea. It doesn't matter who collects the taxes or levies or whatever else they choose to call these things.

No matter what the proposal, fight internet taxation wherever it appears.

[ebenton]

If France is doing it, it's a cheesy idea. Or maybe that should be: a wine-swilling, cheese-head idea?

[edDV]

If France is doing it, it's a cheesy idea. Or maybe that should be: a wine-swilling, cheese-head idea?

I think we should be paid by the French government to watch French movies. $10 a movie seems fair but maybe the rate should be set to minimum wage :P .

[ebenton]

The French government already pays its people to not work, like, half the year. Watching a French movie would be too much like work.

[adam]

I think subsidies can work decently enough if you can actually separate out what money is going for what. Like with copying music recordings for example. It works well in Canada and the US. But if France taxes the internet then its just going to hurt the average French person. I doubt the average internet user needs or wants to download via P2P enough to justify the tax they pay. A whole lot of people are going to be paying for the actions of a minority. France should just legalize it or not. Don't make people pay.

Honestly I doubt this bill will pass anyway. It seems more like leverage to try to get some of the more media friendly provisions of the DADVSI removed.

[ROF]

I think we should be paid by the French government to watch French movies. $10 a movie seems fair but maybe the rate should be set to minimum wage :P .

This would assure that maybe a few people watch the movies. I know they couldn't pay me to watch anything coming from France. Their movie industry is horrible. I'd rather watch paint dry.

[ebenton]

Yeah, but like I said, the French government already pays people to not work a lot. (8 weeks of vacation, 12 gov. holidays, and 35-hour workweek.) If they paid people to watch their movies, they'd have to give up a couple of future government holidays, like National Cheese Day or Wear a White Flag to the Beach Day.

OK OK This topic has veered off into French-bashing. I'll stop. I don't want to become the New York Times of France.

[ROF]

Yeah, but like I said, the French government already pays people to not work a lot. (8 weeks of vacation, 12 gov. holidays, and 35-hour workweek.)

I'm not living in or paid by the french government yet I get 6 weeks vacation, 12 days personal, 15 holidays per year.

[ebenton]

Wow, that's almost as much. If you figure in the 35-hour work week, that's another 22 days vs. a 40-hour week. So that's 12 weeks and 6 days for the French. You get 9 weeks and 6 days.

I get 3 weeks every year, plus approx. another 13 days (It varies depending upon the days of the week in the Christmas season.). A grand total of 4 weeks and 6 days. Nowhere near your (or the French) level.

Not only that, but *everybody* in France gets that much vacation.

Congratulations on not being French!

[Ironballs]

don't forget the farmers are paid NOT to grow food. What an arse up policy

[GullyFoyle]

Wow, that's almost as much. If you figure in the 35-hour work week, that's another 22 days vs. a 40-hour week. So that's 12 weeks and 6 days for the French. You get 9 weeks and 6 days.

I get 3 weeks every year, plus approx. another 13 days (It varies depending upon the days of the week in the Christmas season.). A grand total of 4 weeks and 6 days. Nowhere near your (or the French) level.

Not only that, but *everybody* in France gets that much vacation.

Congratulations on not being French!

So you are actually celibrating the fact that the French workers are treated better than you? That European, and most of the rest of the world, cares about and respects their workers enough to create social safety nets for them . That the Us is swiftly becoming a third world nation floating in debts that supports employing slaves by their hired corporations?
http://dday.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/12/15312/996

Before anyone gets all smarmy about Europe you may wish to take the time and READ this.
http://207.44.245.159/article8191.htm

America No. 1?

America by the numbers

by Michael Ventura

02/03/05 "ICH" - - No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:

* The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
* The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
* "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
* Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
* "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
* "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
* Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
* Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
* The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
* "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
* "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
* Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
* The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
* "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
* "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
* "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
* The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
* U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
* Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
* Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
* Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
* One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
* "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
* "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
* Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
* "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
* "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Looks like the last laugh is on you.
At least your bosses and government think so.

[pepegot1]

Do you think Georgie Boy would sport for this?

[Cornucopia]

I think we should be paid by the French government to watch French movies. $10 a movie seems fair but maybe the rate should be set to minimum wage :P .

This would assure that maybe a few people watch the movies. I know they couldn't pay me to watch anything coming from France. Their movie industry is horrible. I'd rather watch paint dry.

France's Industry has ups and downs (as does all the others). Lately, I haven't followed the scene, but I would certainly put Truffeau, Tati, and Godard as some of the ICONS of great filmmaking.

Scott

[Cobra]

In response to several complaints, this thread is now being locked and PMs are being written. Please do try to avoid political issues, even when the subject matter tends towards such areas.

Thanks guys.

Have a good new year!

Cobra