UKNova was an interesting experiment in copyright ethics. They sucessfully operated for years under a strict set of rules. No music. No movies. Only British tv shows allowed.
Nothing ever released on DVD could be posted there. They only kept British tv show content up for thirty days. If news of a dvd release came out, they immediately took down their torrent of that show. The admins at UKNova were real hard asses abut the rules. They followed them to the letter.
They weren’t hiding in a foreign country either. Operated openly in Britain.
RIAA shut them down this week. :rolleyes: Sooner or later some sort of compromise has to be found between the RIAA and fans of tv. UKNova could have been just the model that worked.
To be honest, I can’t generate any outrage. They were providing copyrighted content without permission of the copyright holders. The fact that is “wasn’t commercially available elsewhere” is irrelevant.
The person who creates something gets to decide how it’s used; that can include “not at all.” There’s no moral requirement that everything someone wants to see be available.
I don’t know what “true colors” are being shown here except that copyright owners will insist that their works be used only with their authorization. There’s nothing controversial about that.
And, frankly, I have trouble coming up with any sympathy for yet another business plan that is based on profiting from content created by other people without compensating them for it.
It’s pretty damn simple, if you didn’t make it, you have to ask permission to use it.
I don`t understand why we have to pretend there’s some elusive model that will someday be found that permits content creators to co-exist with the Internet. If the networks don’t stream it for free I buy my shows legally on iTunes (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc). I watch lots of older stuff on Netflix.
I guess if I was more into TV I might be frustrated by the unavailability of truly obscure stuff. But I think I’d be frustrated that the copyright holders haven’t found a way to make it available for a fair price, not that I couldn’t watch it for free.
RIAA has become a catch all name for the copyright wars. They are the most aggressive. There are several other organizations out there. Different names in different countries.
Sooner or later the archaic copyright laws will get updated for the digital world. But, for now the RIAA and their buddies have the upper hand.
No one questions that there is a need for copyright. But there also needs to be digital rights for consumers to. Now we have digital books, music, film, tv. The laws need updating.
It depends on what you mean by “digital rights for consumers.” If you mean “the right to use someone else’s work without permission just because I want to,” then, no, I don’t agree that the laws need updating in this sense.
Regardless of whether digital technology exists or not, it is the copyright owner’s legal–and I say moral as well–right to determine whether anyone gets to see it and if so under what terms.
No one needs to see a particular TV show, so I don’t see exactly where the consumer’s right is being unfairly curtailed here. Leaving aside the issue of fair use for the moment, consumers don’t have rights until they have legally obtained a copy of a work, and it’s the copyright owner’s right to decide whether and how any such works will be created and distributed.
Different organizations in different countries with different constituencies and different interests that make different decisions to take different actions in different places at different times. It makes no sense to use the RIAA as a catch-all, especially in a situation–involving British TV shows–in which it is unlikely that the RIAA–again, an American music industry organization–has a major if any role.
I am very into TV, I’m quite frustrated that some obscure stuff isn’t available. But one of the reasons I’m very into TV is that I respect the people who make it. They get to decide when, how, and even if it’s distributed or to sell the rights to make those decisions. Just because I really want to watch something doesn’t mean I get to. That’s a bizarre sense of entitlement to think that it’s your right to watch a tv show.
If you walk around with a Louisville Slugger then you can pretty much bash heads all you want. That doesn’t make you a good or righteous person. Even if you occasionally bash a bad guy.
I saw UKNova as an experiment. Setup a closely moderated tracker that really tried hard not to step on anybody’s profits. Basically a olive branch held out to the RIAA and other publishers. Everybody knows the law is on their side. They can bash people with impunity. But, how would they react to a tracker that tried to do the right thing?
Well, they swung the club. Fine. That makes them the most bad ass dude on the Internet. At least now we know there’s no meeting these guys half way. No one was challenging the law. They were simply testing to see if these guys had any interest in meeting the Internet half-way.
This war has been fought since the Napster days in 98. It would be nice if some sort of middle ground could be worked out. But, the other side is out for total destruction.
You keep saying that, but they didn’t try to do the right thing. They tried to do something illegal, but pretend they weren’t. They did not have the right to distribute the material they were distributing. The “right thing” would have been to acquire those rights, or to not distribute the material. Companies acquire rights to use stuff every day without getting “RIAA” attention. The process isn’t even hard; I’ve done it a couple times.
I don’t think you’re understanding the near-ubiquitous comments here. You’re assuming that there’s some requirement (or should be some requirement) that people get to have access to everything, regardless of the wishes of the person who created it. There isn’t, and I’d argue strenuously that there shouldn’t be. You do not have the right to the works of others just because they chose not to share them with you.
In this case, who tried to do the right thing? UKNova? Nope. The right thing is not using someone else’s work without permission. Period. It doesn’t matter how much you try “really hard not to step on anybody’s profits.” If you didn’t get their permission, you didn’t do the right thing.
It isn’t simple; quite often there’s no clear copyright holder in the first place.
And “copyright” is not a synonym for “ethics”. Copyright is a legal principle that was established to encourage the creation and selling of creative works (and is presently failingto do its job properly), not an ethical principle.
Sorry dude, you’re wrong on this one.
They violated the copyrights. End of story.
And what does “meeting the Internet half-way” mean? Let some people get away with it some of the time? That’s a great way to get everyone saying “Well you let THEM do it!!”
The issue isn’t black & white. There are grey areas in how copyright should be applied.
For example, I’m strongly against anyone releasing a current movie on the Internet. I understand the studios have a huge investment in a major motion picture. I don’t want to see anyone undercut their theater ticket sales and their dvd sales. They made the product and deserve every penny of profit they can make. The same goes for music that’s released. Don’t undercut a band’s sales. They worked hard creating that album.
I do think copyright should expire after a few years. It’s hard to get excited about someone sharing an out of print cd from the 1970’s. Or some movie made in the 1960’s.
But, for the time being we’re stuck with the archaic copyright laws. Laws written a century before digital media even existed.
Eventually, I’d like to see much shorter copyright ownership. Maybe 20 years? For movies and music? That’s just a number I’m throwing out there. After 20 years the material could be shared non-profit. Anyone that wanted to make a profit off the material would have to wait much longer.
Anyway, that’s something the various legislatures around the world will have to work out. The Internet is a huge place. Lots of those people vote and eventually changes in copyright law will come.
Exactly. The reason some obscure show is not available on DVD might be that it’s not commercially viable - not enough people will buy it to make it worthwhile mastering, pressing, distributing and marketing the discs. Making it available online could well be profitable for the copyright holder. Just because they haven’t yet done so doesn’t give anyone the right to jump in ahead of them and make it available free of charge.