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Discussion on IP piracy
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Post by
Squishalot
Google? Depends. Search results should be automated. Ads should require human approval.
Facebook? Again, depends. People should be able to put whatever content up that they like. Facebook should be accountable to keep an eye on that content, just as banks are accountable for cash moving through their accounts. I'm not saying that they should be approving each video that gets posted, but they should have a system in place that flags suspicious or 'high risk' items and escalates them for inspection, that doesn't simply rely on users to report.
YouTube? Again, I think they should have some sort of system that checks new videos coming on for similarities to content-protected items.
I'm not arguing in favour of censorship and that they should control what gets posted and what doesn't. I'm arguing that they should be accountable to authorities for high risk items. As I said, banks have a regulated system in place where all transactions over $10,000 and any that the bank deems to be 'high risk' are reported to the country's banking regulator. I don't think it's out of the realm of reasonable belief to think that the internet should have a similar system.
As for the cost, the banks currently absorb the cost of checks on your transaction accounts. Technically, they should be charging you for them, but they're offering you the checks for free. If YouTube wants to continue to offer free viewing services, and has to pay monitoring costs, it needs to obtain that revenue from somewhere else then.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
<snip>
When you keep saying 'they wouldn't risk it', what you're implicitly saying is "they wouldn't risk it under SOPA". Agreed. But then, I also agree that SOPA isn't the right legislation as it stands. I would rather a piece of legislation that requires Facebook, YouTube and such to have that level of accountability, without the risk of censure in the event that a piece of piracy is found, since it's not their fault something gets uploaded, but it is their fault if it's not taken down if it's determined to be piracy.
That is the same thing. If they are accountable for what the users post then they will be forced to censor them, so they can't be held accountable.
There is a difference. I'm not suggesting Facebook should do any censoring itself. I'm suggesting that they should have a compile a list of high risk items, and give it to a copyright regulator to decide. Also, see point about accountability and fault.
Which requires vast amounts of manpower and money, most of which is absorbed by the government. The government should not be in charge of this hypothetical internet censorship board and most private internet companies couldn't possibly afford this. Nor would most investors risk their money on user-uploaded content sites.
Again, under my proposed system, they wouldn't be sued if pirated content is up there. You're still thinking in terms of SOPA, and not in terms of principle.
I don't think you understand how much money banks (the largest financial institutions in the world) make in comparison to websites (not).
I know exactly how much money banks make. I also know how much money their transaction accounts lose - I used to look after the savings and deposits analytics portfolio at the biggest bank in Australia.
Now, I don't know how much websites make, but I can Google it, so let's do that, shall we?
http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
In their 2010 audited accounts, Google made US$11 billion in cashflow from their operations - less US$4 billion in capital expenditure, and it means they ended up with US$7 billion in distributable cash profit, essentially.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41521349/ns/business-us_business/t/facebook-profit-try-million/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/07/facebook-revenue-first-half-2011_n_952221.html
Facebook made around US$600m in profit in 2010, and they made US$500m in the first half of 2011.
So, you tell me - do you understand how much money banks make in comparison to websites?
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
Squish - How do you expect a small website, that accepts user input to survive? The internet would become an expensive highway, limiting who uses it, and how much it is used, therefore limiting the exchange of information. The very next step is to license it, regulate it, tax it, and then put up tarrifs, and then have a powerhouse company buy out large sections of websites, with no ability for small websites to even think about starting up. You are carelessly suggesting changing the internet from a free exchange of ideas into a regulated mess. I do not agree, sir.
Post by
Squishalot
You mean the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? It's worked very well for the US. Except what you're arguing is imposing your will on the world, which no single government has (or should have) to do.
No - under my proposal, they would be required to proactively check for things and flag them for the authorities to review. That's quite a significant difference, but not one that would change a website's risk of being shut down.
In relation to imposing my will on the world, I'm not - I'm proposing a system that's better than the current system in dealing with the fundamental issue, and not as damaging as the currently proposed SOPA system.
Gabe's comments are true to an extent, but I disagree that price doesn't form part of the problem. As Adamsm has pointed out, price is a factor in convenience - if something is overly expensive but available legally, the price barrier is, in effect, a convenience barrier. What Gabe doesn't acknowledge is that the service issue is actually caused by the pricing issue, as with the manga-subbing example. The services aren't offered because it's usually not cost effective to offer those services.
How do you expect a small website, that accepts user input to survive?
I'd expect that a small website can keep an eye on the contributions of its users. As moderators, how does the community expect us to keep Wowhead free of advertising, private servers and bots? We do our best, at no charge.
A great example of the changes I'm proposing is in Wowhead's vote abuse script. Koper has written a script to automatically provide moderators with a list of people who spam vote-downs, vote-ups, vote-down all comments by a single user, etc.. It's still up to the moderators to actually inspect and ignore (if they're legitimate votes) or censure (if a user has been abusing the voting system).
Now, the moderators in this system aren't doing anything they wouldn't be doing in the first place, but they have access to more targeted information about high risk occurrences, rather than random checks. It means that those who abuse are much more likely to be caught than previously. Does it cost Wowhead any more to do this? Well, it cost Koper's time to set the script up, but nothing more. The script proactively checks for issues and flags them for authorities (i.e. moderators and admins) to review. The authorities stop wasting their time looking at random things, and focus on issue-identified things. This is precisely what I'm proposing for Google, YouTube, Facebook and the like.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
How do you expect a small website, that accepts user input to survive?
I'd expect that a small website can keep an eye on the contributions of its users. As moderators, how does the community expect us to keep Wowhead free of advertising, private servers and bots? We do our best, at no charge.
I said a small website. Someone with one volunteer employee/owner. You have to admit that if a website wanted to start up as a competitor to wowhead, it would be a thousand times easier without SOPA. It might cost a couple grand without SOPA, and tens of thousands with SOPA, as that website would have to hire employees to monitor all input.
Post by
Adamsm
So I guess, under SOPA, any and all Fan-fiction sites could be shut down, since people are using other people's intellectual property when they create stories using characters from a specific universe.....wonder if that means they can take down the L&RP section of Wowhead?
Post by
Kristopher
So I guess, under SOPA, any and all Fan-fiction sites could be shut down, since people are using other people's intellectual property when they create stories using characters from a specific universe.....wonder if that means they can take down the L&RP section of Wowhead?
Or Wowhead itself, perhaps.
Post by
Squishalot
Checking events logs is hardly comparable in difficulty to automatically comparing something uploaded to every piece of copyrighted material ever even if it's recorded on a camcorder or inverted (like some people do to get around it) or detect people singing a copyrighted song or displaying a copyrighted image or reading a copyrighted text.
You do realise that people invert images
in order
to avoid the automated checks? How do you think song recognition software works? These things are in our lifetime right now. Just because the technology isn't perfect doesn't mean it can't (isn't) be(ing) implemented.
It's even easier when you've got entire videos, rather than the 15-20sec snippets that Shazam and other software uses. You have a lot of properties that you can check - file size, video length, average colour metrics, tags, etc.. All it takes is for a company to put together a database of objectively measurable characteristics, and compare that database back to a database of copyright material, and highlight the top 5% closest ones for people to manually inspect. It's not that difficult.
I said a small website. Someone with one volunteer employee/owner. You have to admit that if a website wanted to start up as a competitor to wowhead, it would be a thousand times easier without SOPA. It might cost a couple grand without SOPA, and tens of thousands with SOPA, as that website would have to hire employees to monitor all input.
I have a blog that I run with my girlfriend. It has comments on it from people. I keep an eye on those comments. Done. I look at Gevlon's blog (i.e. Greedy Goblin), and he moderates each and every single comment on the blog. It's doable.
The thing is, with user-uploaded content, if you're getting enough content from contributors, you will also get people willing to be volunteers to moderate that content. So it doesn't really matter if you're a big site or a small site, your moderation is still scalable.
And again - I'm not arguing in favour of SOPA. You wouldn't need to hire employees to monitor all input directly under my proposal. You'd only need to compile a list of content that meets certain regulated criteria to provide to a copyright regulator.
So I guess, under SOPA, any and all Fan-fiction sites could be shut down, since people are using other people's intellectual property when they create stories using characters from a specific universe.....wonder if that means they can take down the L&RP section of Wowhead?
Fan fiction is protected under parody, if I'm not mistaken. That's why
Darths and Droids
hasn't been shut down by George Lucas yet (not for lack of trying). That being said, again, I'm trying to steer this discussion away from SOPA.
Or Wowhead itself, perhaps.
As I mentioned before, it's not that difficult for ZAM to talk to Blizzard and get approved as a database / fan-site. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it already does (note - I have no confirmed knowledge of whether they actually do or not, that's the realms of the paid staff, i.e. not me).(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
Rankkor
As I mentioned before, it's not that difficult for ZAM to talk to Blizzard and get approved as a database / fan-site. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it already does (note - I have no confirmed knowledge of whether they actually do or not, that's the realms of the paid staff, i.e. not me).
well, considering they have direct links on their website that lead to wowhead, I'd say they don't mind the existence of this site.
If (God forbid) SOPA gets approved, it wouldn't be that far fetched to think that blizzard would step in to protect this site.
After all, and this is no gloating, nor exaggeration, one of the main reasons Wow remains a juggernaught MMO is precisely due to a comprehensive Database like this still running. Something that not every other MMO has.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
The legal mess you've described would require it to be perfect.
Since when? I've already said - you just need it to have a hit rate of better-than-random. All such a system does is highlight high risk content for people to inspect. It's exactly like a credit scoring system that takes your personal details, determines if you're a good credit risk or not, and sends it on to someone to check if it's unsure.
There is no singular collection of copyrighted materials. This back catalogue of them you suggest would be one of the most expensive databases in history. The one YouTube has only includes media from Viacom who have bought the right to remove any video they want from it. The method you propose would not scratch the surface of copyrighted materials nor do current methods.
You've obviously never seen the databases held by banks, on anything. I don't think that the number of copyrighted materials exceeds the number of transactions made on the NYSE every 1/100th of a second, for the last few decades. Or the number of transactions made via credit card in the US, or globally. A list of copyright materials is peanuts by comparison.
Frankly, I think your attitudes are destructive and disturbingly authoritarian.
Thank you. I think your attitudes on piracy are morally abhorrent as well.
I also find it amusing that you think any of this would stop actual pirates. All this would do is kill social media sites, and P2P will continue as normal while everyone else loses out.
Did I say that it would? It would remove one form of it. P2P is an entirely different beast, however. No, I haven't thought of a way that would adequately deal with P2P piracy.
Post by
Adamsm
So I guess, under SOPA, any and all Fan-fiction sites could be shut down, since people are using other people's intellectual property when they create stories using characters from a specific universe.....wonder if that means they can take down the L&RP section of Wowhead?
Fan fiction is protected under parody, if I'm not mistaken. That's why
Darths and Droids
hasn't been shut down by George Lucas yet (not for lack of trying). That being said, again, I'm trying to steer this discussion away from SOPA./shrug Well, it is one connected to the other at this point, since the thing could still go through. And if it does, then there goes the parody loop hole, as the writer of today's queue mentioned:
Thundrek asked:
What's the Blizzard take on the SOPA bill? What would it mean if it passes for sites likes these?
Blizzard hasn't taken any official stand, and neither has Activision.
What would it mean for a site like WoW Insider? To be honest, I don't know. I do know that our parent company, AOL, has lawyers who would be heavily consulted to determine the feasibility of running content like WoW Moviewatch or Around Azeroth. We have a good relationship with Blizzard, so I don't think anything would happen on that front, but could P Diddy Puff Mommy get upset that some artist is making fun of his/her stuff in a WoW movie parody? Yup. And could that mean we'd be in trouble with SOPA/PIPA? Yup.
Either way, if it happens, we'll just have to wait and see what the particular results are.
Also, all this should only be taken for my own ramblings and not in any way a statement by the site or our parent company.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
I have. And you're thinking of the wrong metric, quantity of transactions is a meaningless amount, the size of the important information in a bank transaction is a few kilobytes at best and in an extremely simple and unified format, just storing every movie listed on
IMDb
would take over 190TB, then every TV show and you're already up to 425TB. And that's assuming they have them in !@#$ty SD rip, they'd need to store up to 1080p versions of them to detect HD copyrighted media which would increase the space required by exponential amounts.
That confirms for me that you haven't seen these systems. For each transaction in my bank's database, there was at least:
1) Date/time information
2) The account being used
3) The customer owning the account
4) The payment method
5) The card used
6) The source of the transaction
7) The merchant associated with the transaction
8) The counterparty associated with the transaction
9) Several fields around the physical location of the transaction
And more. All in all, there were about 50-60 fields associated with each transaction. A lot of them were blank, in a lot of cases, but it's not just about "$X coming out at this time".
How do you come to 190TB for the movie database? And what precisely are you planning on storing? You sound like you want to store the full video - that's where I'm telling you that you don't need to. You need to inspect the video and capture general, measurable properties like file size, average volume and video length, not each and every frame.
You keep coming back to this banking system example and it's a completely flawed one. Comparing unified and extremely simplistic data with existing networks is child's play compared to automated video analysis.
You keep thinking that to compare videos, you need to compare each and every frame. That's a child's way of thinking of things - looking for exactly identical items. That's not what people would (and should) do in real life. You look for other, easier to compare items that are strong correlational indicators of identical items, thus saving you significant amounts of processing time.
Post by
MyTie
I have. And you're thinking of the wrong metric, quantity of transactions is a meaningless amount, the size of the important information in a bank transaction is a few kilobytes at best and in an extremely simple and unified format, just storing every movie listed on
IMDb
would take over 190TB, then every TV show and you're already up to 425TB. And that's assuming they have them in !@#$ty SD rip, they'd need to store up to 1080p versions of them to detect HD copyrighted media which would increase the space required by exponential amounts.
That confirms for me that you haven't seen these systems. For each transaction in my bank's database, there was at least:
1) Date/time information
2) The account being used
3) The customer owning the account
4) The payment method
5) The card used
6) The source of the transaction
7) The merchant associated with the transaction
8) The counterparty associated with the transaction
9) Several fields around the physical location of the transaction
And more. All in all, there were about 50-60 fields associated with each transaction. A lot of them were blank, in a lot of cases, but it's not just about "$X coming out at this time".
What about the loss of anonymity? That spurred the middle east uprisings. Information is one of the best tools to unhinge ruthless despots and dictators. I, for one, am all for the free exchange of information without having to have names attached to everything. The importance of ending piracy is overshadowed by the importance of freedom.
Post by
Squishalot
What about the loss of anonymity? That spurred the middle east uprisings. Information is one of the best tools to unhinge ruthless despots and dictators. I, for one, am all for the free exchange of information without having to have names attached to everything. The importance of ending piracy is overshadowed by the importance of freedom.
Who said anything about loss of anonymity? Who is Squishalot? Is there a name attached to him, or his YouTube uploads, or his forum messages? No.
There's no less anonymity from the uploading of videos and having them scanned for copyright material than there is from you posting on Wowhead.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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