Chapter 6: Balance Toppled: Who Owns the Bits?
Automated Crimes, Automated Justice … NET Act Makes Sharing a Crime … The Peer-to-Peer Upheaval … Sharing Goes Decentralized … Authorized Use Only … Forbidden Technology… Copyright Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance … The Limits of Property
You can find a PDF of the Chapter 6 here.
Post your response as a comment and respond to two of your classmates posts.
Globe Learner 
Chapter 6 focuses on copyright and technology competition. Copyright infringement has occurred all the time, from making copies of a book to letters, but with the invention of the Internet, digital copies or music, movies, or books can be made in an instant. Punishments for copyright infringements have increased over the steady years and can be really severe if enough damage has been done. Matching IP addresses to computers geographically can help find the wrong-doer(s) and then enforce the punishments. The war over copyright and the Internet has been escalating for more than 15 years. Infringement with a profit motive first became a crime in 1897, but now in 1997, Congress passed the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, which criminalized any unauthorized copying with retail value over $1000, commercially motivated or not. Two years after the NET Act, Congress passed the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act in 1999, whose supporters claimed that NET was ineffective in stopping “piracy” and penalties needed to be increased. Previous file-sharing set-ups failed because of copyright issues. Peer-to-peer architecture is more efficient use of a network instead of a centralized system, because of increasing Internet traffic. Computers cannot run programs stored on disk without copying the program code to memory. Program code is stored on the computer’s Dynamic Random Access Memory or DRAM. With this ability in all computers, copying and storing links to copy and distribute a book or music file is brought into question of copyright protection for the users who hold them. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the general technique of distributing content together with control information that restricts its use. Many other solutions come into play to help fix copyright protection amongst the users of the Internet.
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With DRM in place on all the software we purchase and use, we must ask if we really own that software after purchasing it. If we somehow lose the ability to get by that DRM to access the software, either by losing a key or say, Servers that manage that DRM going down, we’re left with useless bits. Do we just buy the license to use things now? What do you think?
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I believe that users own a license to use the program or service, but not owning the software itself, that is the parent company’s property. DRM helps restrict those who do not have the permission to use the software or service and I believe that is DRM’s main purpose, to identify who is permissible to use it. If the servers that help run and maintain the software or service shut down for any reason, I believe that we are just left with the bits we have created.
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Should their be such a high penalty to copying information with out permission of the creator?
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The chapter start all by telling of a woman who got sued by the riaa who claimed she illegally downloaded music which was false and was proven to be so even by riaa experts was continued because riaa did not want to set a precedent of backing down. The riaa have made 26000 lawsuits in 5 years. This to me is unfathomable. The book then tells us about forbidden technology inches of 2 lines of perl code that would be able to unscramble encrypted DVDs 4 lines have to be suppress as to not make the book illegal. To me this is interesting how 6 lines of code can make a book with thousands of words illegal.
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Knowing this information, how do you think up-and-coming artists and film makers respond to these acts?
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Chapter 6 is all about copyright, piracy, and infringement. It begins by talking about a woman named Tanya Anderson who one night had the Recording Industry Association of America, they had come to her house claiming that she had illegally downloading 1,200 music tracks. They claimed that she owed upwards to a million dollars for stolen property. Later the case was dismissed when the IRAA couldn’t produce any factual evidence. It then talks about how copyright infringement has become an increasingly huge issue with the advancements of computers, as more people find ways to get these things for free the more money these companies will lose. To combat this the punishment for infringement has gotten a lot more severe and the government introduced the NET act and the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act, but despite all of this the problem still exists. The book also mentions that even though all of this is in place the RIAA still makes upwards of 26,000 lawsuits in 5 years trying to combat this.
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Have you ever downloaded files from the internet that should legally be paid for, such as music, as Tanya Anderson did? I know that I’ve downloaded music before without paying for it, but there are just so many ways to download said music files that the companies responsible don’t even appear to try anymore.
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I’ll be perfectly honest here, I am a big PC gamer, a big limitation of gaming on a PC is that your never really sure if a game will run well on a computer, because of this I have downloaded many games that i didn’t pay for to make sure it will run well first so i don’t blow $60 dollars on a game i cant even play.
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With the knowledge of the amount of code used to illegally download items, how would you prevent this in the future in the process of making the product?
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Honestly, i’m not so sure there is, like with what i said about digital storage and protection, there isn’t a real surefire way to keep everyone from being able to get something. I feel this is actually the biggest weakness of the internet and online data.
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With a great multitude of people constantly trying to get some free stuff should the companies even try any more. I mean their will be some way others find to make more pathways to download free content should people just stop trying to stop it.
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Chapter 6 deals with ownership of things that are no longer physical; stuff you can’t touch; yknow, bits, all that stuff that our data is converted to on computers. Copyright law has existed for a long, long time, and so too has infringement on copyright and the theft of copyrighted property, damaging people monetarily in most cases. With computers, it became incredibly easy to illegally obtain music, games, art, movies, books, and more by seeking out versions of these articles that had been encoded into bits and stored on accessible servers. This presented a (to say it as Donald Trump would) YUUUUGE problem for companies trying to make money off of the technological boom, such as music companies. The chapter recalls the instance in which Tanya Andersen was pressed with a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America for allegedly downloading music for which they were responsible. This led to a, once again, YUUUUUGE controversy. The RIAA wants to combat piracy and make people pay for the crimes they commit, but sometimes, the person in question may have had their computer infected with malware that led to the illegal operations occurring in the background without their knowledge. IP Addresses are tracked and linked to certain people, but this is an often ineffective form of targeting criminals, as IP addresses are very easily mutated, shifted around by an ISP, or shared by several people. The NET Act was passed by the U.S. government to try to standardize the way piracy and copyright infringement was combated. Peer to Peer services became a popular way to circumvent a lot of copyright and anti-piracy laws, such as Napster, which allowed file sharing directly among people; say you have a music file that isn’t on the site; you say you want to share it, and BAM, people can download that file from your computer, and not a server. This means that multiple people can have the same file hosted, so there is no one central server that authorities can eliminate to prevent copyright infringement and piracy. This led to the next evolution: DRM, or Disc Rights Management, which authorizes certain software to be run only if certain requirements are met; typically, these requirements are that you legally purchased the item and possess some sort of key or means of accessing the software that can only be obtained by legally purchasing the item. These laws continue to evolve even today, and piracy remains a problem. Some companies also try to levy the laws to their advantage to eliminate competition by claiming that that competition is somehow stealing their ideas. It’s a very very different world when our data is stored in bits and those bits are easily transferred, but I like it. I like being able to share files so easily and quickly.
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Do you personally feel that these businesses are hurt bad enough by these profit loses to really do something about it? I mean if these companies are losing millions of dollars to piracy, you would think they would be much more serious about the prevention of it. And if so, why haven’t they already?
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In chapter six, it talks about copyright laws. It speaks specifically of the NET Act or the No Electronic Theft Act. With this law in particular, it changed so that even if you stole something for your own use and not for commercial gain, you would still be heavily fined. It treats unauthorized copying of items that retail for over $1000 as a criminal charge violation. Another one is the DMCA or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law made the copying and distribution of DVDs and its contents offensive. To aid or even disclose information of how to do the act is an offense. These laws affect my life because being the music and movie lover I am, I need to know whether or not my ways of retrieving my entertainment are legal.
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One way that companies have been keeping digital products secure is by forcing the user that owns this porduct to always be connected to the internet, this is called Always-on/Always-online DRM. The companies actually force the program not to unlock for the user if they are not connected to their server. Do you think this is right for them to do this? Because this essentially labels anyone not connected to the internet a malicious user.
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In what situation do you think makes a property “illegal” if let’s say a song has some originality but mixed in with someone else’s beats or lyrics?
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Copyrights and intellectual propertt can be easily stolen and copied using bits and the internet. Controlling illegal copies of copyrighted content is difficult. The RIAA has been trying to protect their property by using unconventional methods.
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Wow we have gotten to copyright laws the ever permanent problem with technology being so advanced. As we all know even by first hand experience the illegal download of content is a major problem faceing industries today. Mainly because they lose out on profit of content they have ownership to. But this problem has been looked at at many angles and the punishment has been only increasing. Yet all attempts to stop, slow down, or punish people for this crime has proven to do nothing not even make a dent in this problem. From moveing from a central power to sever or local levels and even then, this continues to be a problem. So what would actually stop this complete control of the American people’s computer to keep constant tracking of what is done on the computers is it even worth it I mean are these artist actually suffering any for this loss?
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How do you think these people should be punished?
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How does the Copyright infringement have ties in with the technology itself? Wouldn’t it be the same as a patent to a new invention?
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In this chapter (chapter 6) it talks about copyright laws. It talks a lot about the NET act. Which is basically making illegal to use copyrighted material for anything including non-commercial things. (I will pick back up on this later…)
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So picking it back up… this copyright thing is actually a big deal. While everyone is copyrighting their work, people can still obtain the work for free and use it for free without getting in trouble (for the most part) because of the internet. Me personally i think that musicians (mainly) will have the most trouble with this, but also movie makers and so forth…
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Chapter 6 of Blown to Bits is all about how copyrights and intellectual property can be easily stolen and copied using bits and the internet. Controlling illegal copies of copyrighted content is very hard to do without placing very hard legislation on the internet, which will result in a loss of rights that the internet is fighting so hard to retain. The RIAA, which is the Recording Industry of Association of America, has been trying very hard to protect their property by using unconventional methods to protect their property, which includes often searching and pestering people about how they obtained copies of their music. The reason this is an issue is because the record labels can no longer protect the music they produce, and as a result are losing massive amounts of profits.
One Point that I found interesting about copyright protection is how in 1984, Sony was sued by the Motion Pictures Association of America because they thought that the VCR was breaking their copyright because it provided a machine that could easily let anyone copy their movies, and compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler. I find it interesting that other companies to this day still reference this case while defending their questionable methods of copying and sharing copyrighted information.
Personally I think that the record labels have lost the war on protecting their music and need to revamp their whole business. It is almost impossible for record lables to continue making money using their current bussiness plan. Unfortunately I can see no possible way for them to make money in the age of the internet. No matter what they do, there is always a way for users to get around it while hiding behind the consititution whiel the record lables try to make claims on their property. The other issue for record lables are that home recording equipment is getting much more sophisiticated, making home recording a much more profitable business.
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From the previous chapters, we learn that everything is stored as bits, and will be able to be recovered some way or another. No matter how hard we put copyrights on it, there will be scammers out there that will find a way. Especially now, where this information can be easily accessed and done by a common web user, like you and I. The music industry is a huge victim of this. There are tons of people that refuse to pay for music and download it illegally. There have been massive losses in profits from this scandalous act, and there’s really is nothing to do about it.
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Chapter six deals with the common case of copyrights and intellectual property that some items could be easily hijacked and copied using the little bits and the internet itself. A well-known example of this is the time in 1984, where Sony was accused and sued for the VCR machine, which allowed was breaking a copyright rule because it provided an exact copy of a movie. Due to this, studios were losing profit along with record label companies with inconvenient methods led to a massive downfall in their sales as well, considering that many people are downloading songs that are the exact copy from the original instead of buying CD’s.
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Chapter six revisits the idea of widely accessible information that entered the internet and how easy it truly is to get, but now it’s easier because people do it for you. Copyright laws have existed for a long time but with the creation of the internet, the protection of these rights have become incredibly difficult. The illegal download of media is incredibly easy to pull off and very hard to get caught doing so. This directly impacts revenue of artists and creators and even adversely affects advertisers. Unfortunately the signs of this effect shows no sign of slowing down.
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Personally I think that the record labels have lost the war on protecting their music and need to revamp their whole business. It is almost impossible for record labels to continue making money using their current business plan. Unfortunately I can see no possible way for them to make money in the age of the internet. No matter what they do, there is always a way for users to get around it while hiding behind the constitution while the record labels try to make claims on their property. The other issue for record labels are that home recording equipment is getting much more sophisticated, making home recording a much more profitable business. i’m so done
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Chapter 6 of Blown to Bits is all about how copyrights and intellectual property can be easily stolen and copied using bits and the internet. Controlling illegal copies of copyrighted content is very hard to do without placing very hard legislation on the internet, which will result in a loss of rights that the internet is fighting so hard to retain. The Recording Industry of Association of America, has been trying very hard to protect their property by using unconventional methods to protect their property, which includes often searching and pestering people about how they obtained copies of their music. The reason this is an issue is because the record labels can no longer protect the music they produce, and as a result are losing massive amounts of profits.
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