Why are the FBI so dramatic about Copyright?

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Hey!
Is it me or is the FBI a little over dramatic when it comes to copyright?
With the raid they did on Kim Dotcom, youd think he was the second Osama Bin Ladin.... They where acting like he was a serial killer.
So why? Why are they so dramatic about this kind of stuff?

Some of it is for show to deter others, some of it is because rich people are losing money.

You notice it is mostly Media copyright and not patent violations?

No-one cares if someone's idea get stolen.. but if a million dollar production video gets shared for free on the internet all hell breaks loose!


As a side note he had amassed a small fortune because of megaupload... so he had assests for them to go after/seize.

Because the laws were unfairly made by corporate/rich people. If you actually take a look at the history of copyright, no one should respect it anymore since corporations have successfully stolen peoples right to own their own products and stolen the public domain.

The whole purpose behind it was to promote useful arts and sciences, unfortunately the law has become completely corrupt and criminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_ ... ension_Act

http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/ ... efault.htm

Yep, because copyright=money in someone's pockets. When money is involved, everyone wants a piece of the pie! Not to mention, all of those bigwig movie producers have some pretty darn good lawyers lol.

The bottom line is that copyright violation is theft. Sure, some big corporations may have taken things too far... And I do believe that people should be able to OWN the things they buy...

However, I also believe that producers of media deserve to profit from their labors.

You like watching movies and playing games that cost millions to produce? If so, you need to pay for for doing so. If you don't, it won't be long before NOBODY will be willing to produce anything.

That's economics, pure and simple.

As simply as I can put this, the copyright industry (the MPAA, RIAA, the big 5 publishers, etc) used to make money off of scarcity. Someone had to be a "gatekeeper" deciding which books, music, movies, etc would be published, and then a corporation controlled the physical manufacture of goods and the distribution to retail outlets.

Digital media is "frictionless" - if one copy can be made of a digital file, everyone on the planet can have a copy. This has caused a race to the bottom, where there is no friction and every digital file can spread instantly. Money is made from the friction. Without friction, no gatekeepers are needed. No manufacturing has to happen. Before, I'd want something badly enough to pay a corporation to prepare it, package it, and sell it to me. That's no longer true.

The survival of the copyright industry is in doubt. The copyright industry has a vast back catalogue of old books, music, movies, etc which they sell to generate revenue. So if there is no friction, everyone can have an instant copy of this material, if they want it. Once that's possible, how do you make any money? You can't. You make money from friction, and there is no more friction.

The copyright industry has a lot of money. They are using the legal system to get laws passed and draconian punishments enforced to deter the race to the bottom and introduce friction again. Punishments for copyright violation are more harsh than punishments for physical crimes against other people.

Also, the copyright industry is trying to introduce artificial scarcity again using things like DRM, bandwidth caps, etc. Anything to add the friction back. You can study the recent Microsoft Office 2013 story as an example. They're trying to make Office a disposable commodity, where you buy a new copy every time you get a new computer. This is artificial scarcity. (Obviously the software itself can run on any computer. There's no friction.) Microsoft is trying to teach young people that software has to be purchased every time a computer is purchased. (Old people like me think this is silly, but then old people like me use LaTeX and they hope will eventually die off leaving only people they've trained to buy software every time a new computer is purchased.)

Contrast the copyright industry's approach to that of Amazon.com. Amazon is embracing the lack of friction. They let anyone publish for their platform, creating a race to the bottom where authors make an average of less than $500/year on their works. There's more supply than demand. And the Kindle Fire is sold at cost, creating a frictionless device with no margin - how does any other hardware manufacturer compete with a company that doesn't want to make a profit? Amazon makes its money from logistics and distribution, both digital and physical. Amazon just wants a cut of everything that moves from point A to point B.

Of course, Amazon.com consistently loses money. Part of the race to the bottom. How can any company be profitable by eliminating friction when friction is how you make money?

Another contrast is the patronage model, popularized by Kickstarter. You can pay up-front for someone to create something new that you want. If enough people want something new, then they pay ahead of time. The creator makes whatever it is, and from then on it's frictionless and spreads. The creator gets money up-front. (This model doesn't work for the copyright industry, because it has a back catalogue of old stuff.)

The problem with organizations like MPAA is that they are increasingly becoming nothing more than a transaction cost, an obstacle between the producers and the consumers of digital entertainment. They have outlived their usefulness in the digital age, and they have failed to adapt to more modern platforms. The future of the motion picture industry is in streaming/cloud services. No need for MPAA dinosaurs here.

For instance, a lot of people no longer want to sit at a *specific* time watching a *specific* TV channel showing a *single* episode of a TV series with commercial breaks every 15 minutes. Instead, go on Netflix... get a view-on-demand full season at a click of a button.

I am against piracy, but I have little or no sympathy for MPAA either, as they are pirates themselves due to Hollywood accounting.

Simple, the same people who own a lot of copyrights are also largely the same people that have bought the government. Do you think these people care if some poor schmuck gets killed on some non-descript street corner? But they sure as hell care if you've made copies of some movie.

The reason is that's the way Amer... sorry 'Merica does things, with far more force and brutality than what's needed. :)

As a creative person who holds the copyright on several intellectual properties... I of two minds on this.

first of all, the intent of the originally copyright law was 14 years with an option to renew for another 14. The concept was that after 28 years, a work was either part of our collective/public consciousness and should be entered into the public domain or dead to the world.

Today's copyright law is a mockery of the original intent and the big companies (even if they have sacrificed their claim to copyright) will fight, fight, fight for something that doesn't benefit the IP creator in any manner.

That being said...I support copyright law.

Speaking from experience... I have had someone steal my work... not a copy of one of my finished films, but someone took my script, ripped it up and made a derivative work without permission. A female friend of mine in the same situation has stated that having her IP stolen was "Akin to mental rape."

So...I support copyright law... I do not support the way some people have been treated as a response to copyright law.

That being said... To coffee_converter... If you think america has been hard on copyright violators...I recommend you hit the search engines and see how other countries have handled it... it's a cake walk.

good for you, though personally I have completely given up on copyright law, and I think it might be technically unconstitutional (making a derivative work could be considered to be part of my freedom of speech).

ACTUALLY... copyright law was in the original constitution.

Yes and then there was an ammendment, the first ammendment.
To be honest, I don't think the founding fathers quite understood that the idea of copyright kind of goes against the idea of freedom of speech.

I think that they did... and freedom of speech is not infringed by copyright law.

Copyright clause of the constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

First amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You can say anything you want. That is a protected right. But to steal someone's work is not protected.

Its the "securing for limited Times" part that's been completely perverted. I think this is known as the "Mickey Mouse rule", because literally every time the copyright on Micky Mouse is about to expire, Disney lobbies congress and - poof! - the term on all copyrights is retroactively extended.

Beyond that though I support copyright law too, but the original poster in this thread is correct - the law enforcement and other efforts devoted to prevent copyright theft is vastly disproportional to the resources they devote to more serious problems.

I agree whole heartedly...

I honestly feel the founding father's intent should be upheld and once corporate personhood is revoked, copyright law will be for the better