Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is a Democratic torch-bearer. He is a stalwart progressive, a reliable vote for an economic agenda aimed at helping people. But at the recent Netroots Nation, it was what he didn't talk about that was more important.
On Saturday night (June 9) in Providence in his home state, Whitehouse was literally a torch-bearer. After the close of the Netroots Nation conference there, Whitehouse took part in an evening performance of Waterfire, a combination of performance art with pagan ritual that involves setting fire to wood set in baskets in the middle of the Providence River to the accompaniment of solemn music with attendants dressed in black riding in black boats. The centerpiece of the event is Waterplace Park in downtown Providence, and it was there that the lead boat circled, with Whitehouse in the bow, holding aloft a flaming torch.
Whitehouse had spent considerable time at the conference this year, as he did a year ago, speaking from the big stage but also chatting with conference attendees and with reporters and bloggers, even showing up on a Sunday morning to greet Netroots attendees who did some community cleanup the day after the convention ended.
The crowd, generally of the progressive mind-set, likes him, but are stumped when asked this: Did you know that Senator Whitehouse, a member of the Judiciary Committee, supported the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (aka PIPA), the Senate copyright bill last year?
A sample of responses to that question: "I didn't know that." "Really?" "I'm surprised." It was, to be sure, the one topic he didn't bring up voluntarily in discussion in the middle of the crowd of people who more than likely helped to kill the copyright bills (PIPA and its evil House cousin, the Stop Online Piracy Act, aka SOPA.)
In an interview, Whitehouse was forthrightly unapologetic about taking a stand that flies in the face of the Netroots Nation crowd. His priority is to protect American jobs and support American industry. He said he is worried about the "audio techs and key grips" and others who can't sell their works if those works are pirated. Whitehouse said his big worry are the "foreign criminals" who are selling U.S.-made products: "I still have a problem of criminals in China or Estonia making millions from stolen goods."
Whitehouse said he recognizes now one of the flaws in PIPA -- the proposed requirement that search engines and Internet Service Providers direct Web users away from supposed "pirate" sites, basically rewriting the Domain Name Service (DNS), the phone book of the Internet, an integral part of the Internet plumbing deleting the objectionable sites. Whitehouse said the bill shouldn't have interfered with the fundamental operations of the Internet.
Fooling with the DNS system was the "third rail" of the debate, Whitehouse said. He expected that flaw would be fixed on the Senate floor, had the bill come up for debate. But, he said the House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was "so bad" and the reaction from the public so intense that the Senate leadership chose not to bring the bill to the floor.
That fierce reaction left "a big residue" in Congress, and led to SOPA becoming a verb among the legislative community. To be SOPA'd is to be hit with an intense public reaction and Senators don't want to be hit with it again.
Whitehouse's solution is pretty much the standard in Washington. He said that Google, Facebook and Wikipedia need to "work something out" with the music and art industries.
Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, also put in a lot of time at Netroots Nation, talking to conference-goers and meeting with Maryland residents. He was a co-sponsor of PIPA, but was one of the first to drop off last January when pressure against the bill was mounting. He said he was responding to concerns of Marylanders (a push from the Maryland Juice political blog also helped).
Cardin also told us, as did Whitehouse, that "something needs to be done" to curb the "piracy." He didn't like the PIPA bill "as written."
So from the standpoint of Whitehouse and Cardin, mainstream Democrats, we are at a standoff. Something has to be done, but we aren't sure what, and we don't want to call down the wrath of Internet activists again. A standoff in this instance is good because the ghosts of SOPA and PIPA continue to haunt Capitol Hill. Emissaries from Senate and the House are quietly going around Washington asking tech companies what it would take to "fix" the legislation next year. The entertainment industries never give up.
The world view from Whitehouse and Cardin contrasts sharply with those of two other legislators, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), two of the heroes of the SOPA/PIPA fight who helped to scuttle the bills. Wyden has the longer history in protecting an open Internet, but Issa stood up at a crucial time this winter against the SOPA bill.
The two spoke at the opening session of the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) 2012 conference in New York on June 11. They lauded the citizen activism that brought down the copyright enforcement bills, with Wyden heaping praise on the elimination of the "middlemen" -- the lobbyists, reporters, pollsters, etc.
Both legislators said they wanted an Internet/Digital Bill of Rights. Issa said he wants a right to "free, uncensored Internet," an open unobstructed Internet." He wanted to "get neutrality right," an admirable goal, although he doesn't support the Federal Communications Commission rules, saying the agency didn't have the authority to proceed. (The matter is in court, and it's likely the FCC will lose.)
And yet, and yet, and yet. There are enormous doses of unreality that invade the Whitehouse (as opposed to the White House) view of the world, as there are with the view of Issa and Wyden.
If Whitehouse thinks that the only problem with PIPA was that it tinkered with the internals of the Internet, he was sadly mistaken. That was only one problem. On a Netroots panel, Steven DeMaura of the conservative Americans for Job Security, said it was the ability of companies to bring their own law suits that energized his group. There are many provisions to which conservatives, progressives, pro-Internet activists of all sorts, objected.
While Whitehouse and Cardin want to do "something" on piracy, it's not the sit-down with organizations and companies that will solve the issue. Even if Wikipedia or Reddit or Tumblr were admitted to the club, saying that a small group can work out the problem in isolation won't cut it. A wider, public discussion should take place, starting with an honest assessment of the problem. Whitehouse and Cardin still accept the supposed "harms" of piracy from the entertainment industry -- figures which no one else has been able to replicate or justify.
Neither mentioned anything about the entertainment industries trying harder to solve their problems by allowing more consumer access to content. Limiting access to movies or TV shows, or even making it impossible to see programs or movies online because of arbitrary release dates hurts the content business. Making some content subject to data caps and other content exempt hurts consumers.
Failing to recognize research that contradicts the old, unproven saws (accepted by government without confirming evidence) about potential losses from piracy and loss of jobs. While entertainment leaders are great at talking about their studies "proving" losses from piracy, they ignore other research showing that downloaders also buy the most music and other content.
From the Wyden/Issa viewpoint, an Internet Bill of Rights is a fine idea. Issa has proposed some language for one such Bill of Rights, which he said would cover SOPA and PIPA under the right to an "unobstructed Internet." (Issa in the past has voted for bills to toughen copyright enforcement, including the Pro-IP Act that increased government seizure forfeiture authority, which is what the government uses to justify seizing Internet domains.)
Another Bill of Rights-like effort is on Reddit. Others are starting to draft their own versions. Public Knowledge has an Internet Blueprint. These are all worthwhile endeavors. Even if they remain as intangible principles, there is some public value in having them debated and accepted. As Wyden said at PDF, such a document could be used as a benchmark against which legislation could be measured and he thought perhaps half of the Congress could support it given enough time. That seems optimistic.
The question will be whether such a Bill of Rights to protect Internet users would prohibit the abuses proposed in PIPA and SOPA. The conflict between those values will be a debate worth having, and it will be interesting to see where Congressional Netroots boosters come down when the conflict comes up again next year. Then the Netroots will know who their real friends are.
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Geoffrey R. Stone: What the F***?
"Failing to recognize research that contradicts the old, unproven saws (accepted by government without confirming evidence) about potential losses from piracy and loss of jobs. While entertainment leaders are great at talking about their studies "proving" losses from piracy, they ignore other research showing that downloaders also buy the most music and other content."
Which studies? Source of the studies? Numbers from the studies? You question the goverment's willingness to reject these studies as evidence but then you fail to provide such evidence youself. Really?
In Spain, Home of the Most Online Piracy, the film industry went from producing 90 films a year to a mere 25: Reason? All the small and large investors STOPPED financing films because they were loosing money at such catastrophic levels due to online piracy it simply became impossible to finance them any longer. Now all filmmakers are back to the 80's having to fund their films with government grants that, thanks to the bank crisis, are all but gone. A film industry that was thriving not but 7 years ago has vanished....and all those seamstresses, painters, carpenters, electricians, sound engineers, FX specialists, truck drivers, wardrobe handlers, etc are out of work.
Large centralized movie making industries are dying because the tools for making movies are becoming cheaper and cheaper. Anyone can make a movie now with a computer and some easy to acquire software. The role of the "movie industry" as SOLE CONTENT PROVIDER is over, but they are seeking to use the government to try and stop their decline, demanding ever higher revenues from movie theaters in an effort to increase profits, and basically cutting their own throats as fast as possible with such efforts as the MPAA and RIAA. Fewer and fewer people are willing to spend increasing sums to watch a movie in a theater, and that is why investors are no longer investing. Blaming "Piracy" is just an excuse to try and get government to prop up their dying industry and keep an obsolete system functioning as a parasitical drag on society.
BIG MOVIE is dying. In 25 years, it will be just a memory. The more they follow such self destructive courses as SOPA and PIPA, the faster they will turn their remaining consumers against them.
Progress. It DOESN'T CARE who loses their jobs when they become obsolete.
The independets and the studios in Spain or most of Europe are FAR from "big studios", which in all my years arguing over this I have come to identity as basically "the overused excuse of those who have no excuse".
Take, for example, the historical film "Cold Mountain". The battle scenes in the film ALONE costed a fortune: Over 1000 extras
(all which need to be fed, paid, and clothed, and in some cases, transported), at least half with realm accurate Civil War uniforms, a full size on-location film set indluding hudred of Civil War weapon replicas and cannons, specialists, certified explosive handlers, animal handlers, a massive crew to manage it all, all transport gear, hotel fees, trailers, catering, etc. etc.
Your proposal basically had the PAINFUL WEAK FALLACY that from here on out every movie SHOULD be a Truffaut movie. It is lame, infantile, self-serving. It ignored such REALISTIC AND CLEAR facts that it self-dismisses itself and negates its own existance.
Culture is DYING because onine piracy is making impossible for ANYTHING except big studio moviews
And here is a CLUE that your reply is just the same old empty argument: EVEN THOUGH I CLEARLY STATED IN THE VERY FIRST LINE OF MY COMMENT I WAS AGAINST SOPA AND PIPA (which as I predicted, it is almost as if I had not even written it), you STILL brought it up while at the same time failed to show me a VALID STUDY that proofs this article's claim that illegal downloaders buy the most movies, an URBAN MYTH that has been debunked over a 1000 times and of which I have only seen some heavily manipulated "statistics" provided by the cyber-anarchist back in Spain.
Pro-piracy advocates claim everyone else is "manipulating the facts", yet in every case I have seen of a "study" supporting these claims, the "study" was the most radically and miserable attempt at manipulating itself.
One year ago me and another 5 persos did a "censorship" test on many of the hacktivists sites in Spain.