Fighting Evil by Moonlight (and Words)

Every once in a while you come across something that riles you up. Well, lots of people do. Today was one of those "once in a while" days that inspired me to rant about something - "S. 978." Be prepared to face a wall of text.

And yes, the title's a direct Sailor Moon reference. =3





CURRENT MUSIC:
Motoi Sakuraba - "Sank Memories, More Deep"
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Original Soundtrack Volume 1: Alicia Side

A track that goes perfectly with today's entry - I'm briefing the general public (that's you guys and gals) about things that we need to fight. I've yet to play a Valkyrie Profile game, but from the sound of the music, it has that tone that makes me want to play it.


Nobuo Uematsu - "SeeD"
Final Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrack

"SeeD" is best heard as background music for any sort of mission briefing, debate, game plan or that idle time between discussing the course of action and actually executing said course of action. Despite the militaristic sound it has (that repeated drum melody coupled with the woodwinds gives it that sound, you know?), it works in virtually any kind of meeting where a "what next" discussion occurs. Whether you're making a plan to hijack a train carrying a tyrannical leader, mapping out your next fly-by route through a star system controlled by an evil empire, or debating the pros and cons between eating waffles or pancakes for breakfast, it fits perfectly with all stages of planning.

(If you got déjà vu reading that, then good - you DID see that paragraph a month ago.)

Quite excellent for today's entry. 'Nuff said.



"Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world."
- Archimedes

As this blog is my place to stand, I'll do my part to influence the world from here.





Afternoon, readers. As this issue has me heated up to a high degree, I'm just going to dive into it now. But first, a disclaimer.





(DISCLAIMER: The White Knight would like you to know that today's following entry is a blog primary based on a topic he admits to having no professional expertise in... politics. However, with thorough research he is able to understand it all (to a point) and will attempt to make it both easy to understand for people like him (the not-so-political-savvy) and entertaining to read (a first for politics, really). The White Knight will do his best to keep this as professional as possible, but as this is a personal blog, there will probably be moments where he forgets that (it happens to all of us). All in all, please be aware that this is all opinion and nothing more - no one paid him to write on this subject; he was just really pissed off about it.)





An Introduction to this Political Squabble
(Read: a "disclaimer" to prove that this isn't just going to be a boring political read.)

In this world, one is eventually going to run into something that riles them up to the point of pressing action. It could be the assassination of a popular leader, the theatrical release of a controversial movie, the announcement of a civil project that would displace thousands of citizens, or a friend who is about to go one step too far with their plan to get back at their ex. While the general public will opt to blindly rally for or against the action, there are those of us who will do a bit of research and compose our opinions in a(n) (not-so-)eloquent manner and hope that we get someone to see the issue in a new light.

Now, before we continue, I'm going to go ahead and say that I am no political enthusiast - if I ever say I'm an expert, I'm probably lying. During my government class in high school, all I did was play Counter-Strike on my laptop and pretend to be typing up my homework. I cite myself as "apathetic" to the political world because the voice of one sensible person is easily drowned out by the mass of blind sheep (or should I say ugly Americans?) baaing positively at whoever threw cool, shiny things at them. If that wasn't enough to inform you about my indifference in regards to politics: between the last few elections that were held in California, I only voted on three things that I actually gave a damn about:

- the 2008 Presidential election

(I voted Obama only because I knew California would be his)

- Proposition 1A

Permission to fund a planned high-speed rail system in California

(I voted for it - sounded really cool for travelers)

- Proposition 8

Denies the rights of same-sex couples to marry in California

(I voted against it - so much for "equality under the law")

So, why trust the words of some twenty-one-year-old whose political knowledge matches that of a potato? I'll tell you: even for someone like me, nobody can say they don't care at all about anything. (Don't try to fight that statement with nihilism; it's a lost cause for both sides.) If something comes down in front of you and threatens to dramatically alter something in your life, odds are you'd do something to fight it if you had the capability to. It's like standing in front of a terrorist who's less than three seconds away from grabbing someone you care about and blowing their brains out with a .44 Magnum revolver right then and there - if you had a Beretta 9mm holstered on your belt at the time, you'd probably pull out the gun and kill that bastard before they had a chance to act.



Introducing "S. 978," the (Almost-Legal) Friend Nobody Likes
(And I don't mean the Dane Cook sketch, either.)

Recently a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook that provoked me to whip out my own metaphorical pistol. Allow me to introduce you all to "S. 978," a bill that seeks "To amend the criminal penalty provision for criminal infringement of a copyright, and for other purposes" - known in the (media) world as the "Anti-Streaming Bill."(Click the link.) The proposed bill protects the works of the entertainment industries, attacks any form of a "public performance by electronic means" and allows the government to slap criminal charges on violators.

Now, unless you're really into the world of politics and law (that's like saying you're a patriotic American who loves Canada), all the words in that document and the above paragraph probably made as much sense as me saying that giraffes spat calculus at the sun. Here's my interpretation of the law, boiled down so the rest of us normal people (and "normal" people) can make sense of it:

If you were to engage in a "public performance by electronic means" - that is to say, stream anything with a copyright in any kind of electronic medium (e.g.: blogs, YouTube videos, etc.) - a certain amount of times a year and made a bit of money off of it, you either need a license to do so... or you can face criminal charges and go to jail.

That too confusing? Want a simpler explanation on what "S. 978" will do?

Streaming copyrighted content in any form of digital media can be considered a felony.



Explaining "S. 978"
(Let's hope this makes sense.)

Still confused? Let me give some backstory and some explanations.

There are two types of law: criminal and civil. Criminal law deals with high crimes and the federal government, and punishes those found guilty with jail time. Civil law deals with virtually everything else - a settlement between a party that was screwed over in some way and another party that was responsible for said screwing over.

Historically, most cases involving copyright law stayed with the civil side. Copyright holders usually responded to potential infringements via cease-and-desist letters and/or monetary fines, and life went on jail-free. Of course, this usually applied to cases where copyright infringement was intentional and the violator intended to make money or claim the work as theirs - usually companies will leave someone alone so long as they're not trying to make a profit off of it. Regardless of the case's origins or outcomes, the federal government (and the criminal charges) would only step in if you aptly refused to pay or ignored the cease-and-desist letters.

To apply it to everyday form, here's a hypothetical scenario: suppose you just went on YouTube and uploaded a music video you made containing clips from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope backed by Offspring's "One Fine Day." It proved to be funny and popular, so you went ahead and made a dozen more music videos using more Star Wars movie clips and more Offspring songs, making sure that on all the videos you made a disclaimer saying the original video clips and songs weren't yours. Assuming the copyright holders (read: George Lucas and the Offspring) believed you were committing copyright infringement anyway, the most they could do is send you cease-and-desist letters demanding that you take the videos off YouTube, contact YouTube and have them remove the videos themselves, or file a civil suit against you and demand that you pay them for using their work.

"S. 978" proposes to change that by allowing both the copyright holders and the government to skip the civilities and go straight to criminal court for any form of copyright infringement. Quoting David Graham of www.shoryuken.com:

According to the bill as it’s currently written, if you engage in "public performances by electronic means" 10 or more times over a 180 day period, and if either the total economic value of those performances exceeds $2500 or the cost of getting the copyright holder’s permission to perform exceeds $5000, then you can potentially get fined and put in jail for 5 years.

"S. 978" apparently ignores disclaimers entirely, charging would-be infringers if "the total retail value of the performances, or the total economic value of such public performances to the infringer or to the copyright owner, would exceed $2,500" - meaning that if you were to make a website for these videos that somehow cost or netted you over $2500 OR if George Lucas or the Offspring felt as if you "robbed" them of more than $2500, then the criminal charges can commence. So, that hypothetical civil suit George Lucas or the Offspring can pull off now has the legal potential of locking you up for half a decade - all because you wanted to make an entertaining music video.

What makes this part worse is that I said "both the copyright holders and the government." "S. 978" is so loosely worded that copyright holders need not be the ones suing a potential infringer - Uncle Sam can do it all on his own, regardless of what the copyright holders have to say about the issue.

Using the hypothetical scenario again, let's say that both George Lucas and the Offspring decide to drop the civil suit because they realize your music videos are making their works more popular than they originally were. (Some copyright cases end up like this - works that don't intentionally make a profit are like free advertisement for them, so the copyright holders let it slide.) Despite their blessings, they didn't actually license you to make those videos, so the U.S. government (backed by "S. 978") decides to lock you up because they perceive your music videos as infringing copyrights anyway.

...what... ...the... ...*BEEP!*...!?



Defining a Confusing Term
(Making sense out of the insensible...)

While that explains what the law does, it doesn't explain what could be the most confusing phrase in this bill: "public performance by electronic means." That's the difficult problem - again, this bill is so loosely defined that it opens the floodgates for infringement cases across America.

In the digital age, we have various ways of communicating and expressing ourselves - especially when it comes to the Internet. There are many videos, pieces of artwork and other forms of digital medium out there that lampoon, pay tribute to, parody, emulate, or were inspired by something that is copyrighted by someone else. "S. 978" was originally meant to make sure that the public can't put up live video streams of anything copyrighted, but the open-ended definition of "public performance" just complicates things by dragging everything into the malestrom. What makes this all worse is that when the creators of "S. 978" realized just how open-ended the definition of "public performance" was, they decided to keep it as is.



So what is a "public performance by electronic means," then? Here's what it could mean:

It's a photo montage of Harry Potter art you drew set to music from the films.

It's that video your friends made of themselves drunkenly lip-syncing to Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" in a Stormtrooper outfit.

It's that Street Fighter III: Third Strike tournament video from Evo2004.

It's a Counter-Strike machinima showcased as a very comedic reality show.

It's an online review of a video game you own interspersed with gameplay from said game.

It's Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's famed Zero Punctuation series.

It's a video blog with a section of How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson yelling "Suit up!" a number of times before the scene cuts to the blogger who is now suited up.

It's footage of your friend watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen who suddenly decides to smash the TV and DVD with a metal baseball bat.

It's anything and everything involving anything that's copyrighted, regardless of its (il)legality, the blessings of the copyright holders, or if actual copyright infringement is even present.





Summarizing Why This Affects You and What Can Be Done to Stop This
(The time to act is NOW.)

Originally, the article I read about this comes from a website that primarily deals with video games. Now, while "S. 978" affects me as a video game enthusiast (and much of the video gaming world, for that matter), it doesn't apply to just the video game industry - rather, it applies to practically any form of copyrightable material, from music to books to movies. This means that even the average Joe is at risk if they do anything involving copyrighted medium.

People who know better than to claim someone else's work as theirs and simply want to humor or inform the world about something in the media without making money are now at risk should this bill pass... all because the entertainment companies and associations want to make sure "their" money and rights stays as "theirs."

If I remember correctly, our government was supposed to represent the people, but instead we have a system that would rather support the profits of media conglomerates who believe we're "stealing" their money.

So, if you want to fight this "Anti-Streaming Bill" and the ridiculousness residing within it, then you have a number of options. What is probably the fastest is clicking this link over at Demand Progress and sending out a letter to tell Congress to fight "S. 978."





*deep breath*





That's it from me. In my view, "S. 978" can be interpreted as a violation of the First Amendment. I understand what they're trying to do (which is: make sure copyright infringement is actually dealt with), but at the same time it hurts those who have no intention of committing anything illegal. I'm honestly sick of these (proposed) "punish the many because of the few" laws that limit the freedoms of normal people who just want to have fun and know how to do so in a legal and safe manner. I just thought I'd inform you all about this ridiculous bill before I headed off to work.

If you want more information, you can read David Graham's article on Shoryuken.com and his follow-up to the article, do so research of your own about "S. 978" or talk to someone else trying to make sense of this mess of a bill.

I think I need to calm down, so I'll see you all later at work or something. Take care of yourselves and your digital works, and do your part to get this crap off our table!