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  #1  
Old 01-20-2012, 11:25 AM
John Wagenseil John Wagenseil is offline
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File Share Site Taken Down

Yesterday the entre file share site Megaupload was taken down for hosting copyrighted material.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/te...ref=technology)

In that a large source of pirated material has been eliminated this could benefit designers and publishers of paper models.
However, it also means that the existence of one of the means paper modelers share legitimate material is threatened, since other file sharing sites are also at risk for being taken completely down for the same reasons that Megaupload was taken down.
In the long run sites that host or even refer material were the copy right is ambiguous, or vintage material where the copyright has been abandoned (such as advertisting material, or where the copy right holders no longer exist to get a release from will be of having their owners subjected to criminal prosecution. Site owners will be responsible for everything that is posted to their sites by third parties.
Access to vintage materials from the 1930's and '40s which no one still has a commercial interest in will be forbidden, since there are no explicit documents making the material copyright free. And it would not be worth the legal costs in most cases hunting down the owners, or for large corporate owners if they are located, to take the time to release that material to the public domain. It would be cheaper for them just to ignore it and in effect lock the materail away forever.
We have already seen that this can lead to the shut down of what had been one of the best paper model sites on the web. Herr Pleiner closed his karton model forum since he could not be sure of complying with all German laws governing internet media presentation.
Even releasing a free model to the internet may become an expensive process requiring recourse to attorneys in order to make the item free from copyright restrictions.
For example most of the donated models in the download section are probably not acompanied by extensive legal documentation about their free status, therefore their copy right status is ambiguous, putting just about every one associated with them, from the designer for not following proper proceedures, to the site host to the downloader, could be at risk of legal persecution under laws currently being considered but not yet enacted (SOPA)
This is something to think and decide how it will affect your hobby, the way you obtain entertainment and perhaps even the way you do your job.
If this is a concern to you go to Google or Wiki and see what they have posted on the subject, and consider signing one of the petitions or download a letter you can sent to your senator and congressman.
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  #2  
Old 01-20-2012, 11:57 AM
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Thomas Meek Thomas Meek is offline
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John;
At first, the idea of a law to stop Internet piracy sounds like a good thing, but as you have shown, things are not as simple as they seem. Thank you for explaining how this law could have a negative impact on our hobby. I have written to my Congressman and Senators asking them to vote against this bill if it should reach the Floor.

I am as much against piracy as anybody, but we must be careful that, in fighting piracy (which is theft) we do not destroy our freedom to communicate with each other.
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Old 01-20-2012, 12:53 PM
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whulsey whulsey is offline
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John, some great comments there...especially since with anything such as this you have to be really carefull about not 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'. A lot like the whole airport-TSA thing. Are we any safer versus the level of privacy and freedom lost?
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Old 01-20-2012, 02:30 PM
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cgutzmer cgutzmer is offline
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I agree its a bit over the top to take it all down. But how many non copyrighted things do you find on those filesharing sites vs public domain files. The problem I personally have with those sites is there is no accountability to the person that shared the illegal files. NONE - NADA - ZIP - ZILCH. The most I could do to stop a file from being shared was to report it to the host, they would ALWAYS promptly delete them but then they would just get shared again within a few days (usually)

That dude (or dudette) that shares the file has nothing to lose and total anonymity.

A much better way to fight the problem IMHO is to take that away. For example make them have a REAL account verified with a $1 charge for a lifetime membership via credit card or something similar. If the person is sharing legitimate files then hey no problem, nothing to worry about. I would guess that people that share out hundreds of paper models or songs or movies or whatever else they desire, had their account verified to a real person (themselves) they would be a little more hesitant in what they would share. Well that or their parents would be pretty irate when they got a call....

once again purely my opinion...
Chris
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Old 01-20-2012, 03:22 PM
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SJPONeill SJPONeill is offline
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Agree totally with Chris - that is a good and practical method for overcoming a large proportion of the accountability issues - and for those that whine about not having a credit card, well, just tough...the world is changing...
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Old 01-21-2012, 09:43 PM
John Wagenseil John Wagenseil is offline
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Chris, I agree with you that piracy is a problem and it denies the author of new material the right to profit from his/her work.
The big file sharing sites generate huge profits for their operators through the outright theft of other people's intellectual property.
Taking down Megaupload is not a bad thing. However, what could happen beyond that is a major cause for concern.
Let us assume that SOPA passes and that there was such a thing as a rich and influential paper model publishing industry cartel. What if the paper model cartel decided this site was a threat to its control of the paper model market. Since nothing here is properly licensed, the paper model cartel could use its lobbying power to bring action against this site and have it taken down.

The problem is that SOPA as written and if strictly applied can make even sites like this one a 'Pirate site' because the public domain status of each of its offerings, each post and each link are not adequately documented. You'd have to contact each content author, each link target and have him/her/it sign off on some legal boiler plate, and attach it to each down load, each internal and external link, each post, and every single image in order to legitimize them. And what if there is a link to a site where copyright law is different from that of the US? Or to a site whose owner does not understand legal English and is unwilling to sign off on the document you must have if you are to legally link to his/her/its content. Bye, bye most Asian models. And bye bye vintage models if you cannot prove they are pre 1923 or that their creators or the heirs of the creators have abandoned copyright.
A lot of open source software and donation ware would also bite the dust if their developers do not have the financial resources to properly document their offerings. Eventually the Open Source Foundation or similar would get around to posting some standard forms to download and paste onto anything you wanted to offer on the internet, but even that might become a problem in recursiveness (certifying that the downloaded legal boilerplate is a legal download that was legitimately downloaded, ect ect) or making it broad enough to fit different media, prose, images, software ect.
You can bet your tuchas that MS for example would spend major dollars to use SOPA as a tool to try put an end to Linux, Open Office and Libre Office downloads and open source alternatives to its media player.
SOPA is a sledge hammer piece of legislation where something more subtle is needed. Megaupload was a major offender of intellectual property law, and was taken down. This shows that intellectual property rights can be protected without creating what essentially amounts to the nationalized internet SOPA would mandate.

(Various micropayment concepts have been floated as methods of seeing that content providers get reimbursed for their creative work. Actually the problem with almost all distribution schemes is that the attornies and distributors get the largest share of the cash flow, and only a tiny trickle gets to the actual content author.)

A heavy handed application of SOPA or similar law can become a vehicle for internet censorship.
The entertainment industry is not facing up to the reality that if a product can be digitized it will be pirated. The movie and music industries within living memory made their money, and a lot of it, with live or theater performances. They want to infinitely scale up their incomes by selling recordings while not being willing to tolerate the risk that the recordings can be copied and distributed outside their market network.
If they do not want their media product pirated with high quality copies, then they should only offer it in the form of live or theatrical performances and forego the home market, or create a technology that makes their product pirate proof while not imposing that technology on people who are willing to forego their product.
The entertainment industry should not be able to use its influence to impose draconian controls on internet access and linking in order to protect an obsolescent marketing model, at the cost of doing damage to the information exchange that keeps the rest of the US economy going.

Last edited by John Wagenseil; 01-21-2012 at 10:06 PM. Reason: more clarity, more commas.
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  #7  
Old 01-23-2012, 06:11 PM
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CharlieC CharlieC is offline
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Looking at the SOPA/PIPA affair from outside the US it seems that you have a legislature which is, at least partially, under the control of corporate copyright owners. The provisions in the proposed law to attack overseas hosted websites to my eyes is just a legalisation of organised standover scams - as in "pay me $xxx or I'll issue a SOPA order to take down your website and the only way to object is to (expensively) take the case to a US court". I run a couple of websites which rely on public domain and out of copyright images and text which could easily be attacked by this legislation.

The whole issue of copyright in the US seems to be approaching a level of idiocy that makes most people just shake their heads. The recent US Supreme Court decisions to allow Congress to arbitrarily extend copyright length and to bring material in the public domain under copyright makes one think that Thomas Jefferson (remember him - one of the signers of the US Constitution) was right in opposing copyright in any form because he believed it would restrict trade and hinder the spread of knowledge.

To imagine that taking down a few file sharing websites is going to materially affect the volume of pirated material around the Internet probably says more about declining education standards and a failure of critical thinking in the US rather than being grounded in any reality. As endless examples have shown - technology beats law every time.

One can forsee a possible end point to all of this with a new "great firewall" to keep the US out of the Internet and let the rest of the world get on with business.

Regards,

Charlie
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Old 01-23-2012, 06:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CharlieC View Post
...
One can forsee a possible end point to all of this with a new "great firewall" to keep the US out of the Internet and let the rest of the world get on with business.

Regards,

Charlie
Think China. Sadly, I too see this coming. Government is not of, by and for the people anymore. It is for big bucks and those with it.
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Old 01-23-2012, 07:10 PM
hancocp hancocp is offline
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The reaction to the Megaupload take-down and arrests is spreading. Filesonic have stopped any form of file sharing so you can only access your own files now, and several other sites (Fileserve, Filejungle) have said they are considering it. Over the last 72 hours there has been a massive purge of uploaded content on all the major filehosting sites.
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Old 01-23-2012, 07:28 PM
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Texman Texman is offline
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I do believe in the copyright issue. Your work is your work, and no one
should make a profit, or deny you your profit, from your work. Lest it be
misunderstood, I do not believe that the broad ranging, swat a fly with
Buick mentality is the best course of action. There are other, more
precise methods, rather than taking down entire sites/internet accessability
options.
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Respect the Paper, RESPECT IT!
GET OFF MY LAWN!
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