In what was ostensibly a meeting of the majors last week to advise the FCC on broadband policy, the COO of Paramount was allowed to wax ignorant for 10 minutes on piracy and file-sharing technology. As a major content provider, they should certainly have some input, but this was sheer soap-boxery. Sure, peer to peer and torrent traffic (legal and otherwise) is going to be a major driver of broadband adoption and major consumer of the resource, but Paramount’s contribution to the discussion didn’t limit itself to germane observation and reasonable speculation.
On the upside, we have a fabulous new quote on the level of Ted Stevens’ “series of tubes” that demonstrates how utterly out of touch people like Paramount’s COO are with actual Internet terminology and capabilities. Behold:
“We are uploading it essentially to a ‘cyber locker,’ which is nothing more than electronic locker on the Internet.”
Mr. Huntsberry, we are in your debt for this immortal chestnut of cyber-wisdom. That’s nothing more than electronic wisdom on the Internet, for those of you who don’t know.
Here is his presentation. It has an air of Reefer Madness to it.
It’s an excellent study in how the RIAA and MPAA are able to show a service solely in the light of illegality. I like to imagine them showing a picture of a hammer. “This is what’s called a hammer, it’s essentially a heavy rock on the end of a stick. This allows the user to beat people with said rock over and over without losing it. The stick portion can also be used to dig up other people’s gardens.” As far as they are concerned, there is no legitimate application for a site like Mininova or, incredibly, something as simple and practical as Drop.io.
Interesting that he’d look at something like Drop.io and not Megaupload or another such widely-misused site. Note that the free accounts at Drop.io are limited to 100MB. Frederick, if I may:
Clearly Drop.io is not at the cutting edge of piracy, however useful it may be for sharing home videos and other medium-sized files.
It’d all be the usual fun and games if this weren’t a public hearing, advising the FCC on broadband policy. It was neither the time nor the place for copyright issue grandstanding. As if that weren’t bad enough, Paramount decided that its own portion of the hearing, a public policy meeting you understand, would be private. Its explanation for asking for this was that the content of the presentation was unpalatable for public consumption. And, disappointingly, the FCC agreed to this ludicrous condition.
Luckily, the concerned citizens at Public Knowledge found a copy of the presentation and put it up on YouTube. They had to snip it from the FCC’s Real Video stream (!) and I’m sure they’re fielding takedown notices as I type this.
There’s a fairly obvious conflict of interest going on here, among other things. Public Knowledge has an excellent breakdown of the issues involved, and Techdirt has a nice follow-up as well, so I’d rather not duplicate their content here, even if I were capable and informed enough to do so.
I have to say, though, the bubble Huntsberry speaks from is pretty entertaining. “This is a site that is clearly an illegal website” indeed. I understand you have to speak for your company’s best interest, but you might want to take your foot out of your mouth first.
[Update: Title changed to have more Ps in it.]
“That’s nothing more than electronic wisdom on the Internet, for those of you who don’t know.”
ROFL
This game of words they play ALL THE TIME calling ‘illegitimate’ activities outright ‘illegal’ pisses me off to no extent. Liar Liar, BS’s for hire!
Amazing stuff… good article!
This guy is an idiot. I can’t believe I watched 5 minutes of his video.
This makes me wonder if the talks concerning prohibition in the US were all that different. These idiots are so sure of the injustice being done to them in the same way that religious bigots were sure alcohol was THE incarnation of evil in this country.
What are they really proposing here? A stop to all uploading on the web?
It scares me that these dinosaurs with deep pockets are held with such high regard and that because their business model isn’t going according to plan, they actually want laws and a justice system formed around enabling their industry to keep hobbling along. They don’t realize that the previously gaged force of globalization that they once drove have been let loose and are turning against them in a social way.
The only way they can stop it is by competing with a better service and experience.
omg people should not be allowed to communicate with each other through the internet, if people use facebook they could instantaneously broadcast url’s to files located directly on their computers!
this should not be allowed!
man, could I have worked some more p-words into the title? [edit: yes]
Hahaha… It was the first thing I noticed… My head hurts…
+1 for alliteration
That was a clear presentation as to the lack of research that the industry has done. I do not agree with piracy, I mean hey, if you have the money there is no reason for you to go off and download it illegally.
However, it is clear that there is a problem with piracy and that if the movie industry wants to survive, they are going to have to do something about it. But this is not the way the leader of an organization needs to go about it. How can you defeat an enemy if you don’t even know how they attack? You can’t.
Do some actual research then get back to us!
Who the heck is this guy anyway — he hardly have a linkedin profile, or anything on the interweb which even describes or suggest where he is born.
Disney initially fought VHS manufacturers because they were worried that they would not be able to charge for movies on a “per view” basis. Disney argued unsuccessfully that VHS would make it easy for people to copy movies without paying to see them in the theater. Now home video sales account for a large portion of Disney’s income.
Even dinosaur-like network television companies are seeing the benefits of releasing low resolution content on services such as Hulu.com, accompanied with advertising and a big button “Buy the whole series on Blu-Ray in Hi-Def now”.
Paramount is just paying lawyers and lobbyists to sandbag around the base of an erupting volcano.
a lot of “P’s” in the title. Well played.
.org you jackass. its a .org!!!
I know. seriously, you’re spending millions on internet policy and you tell people the enemy is mininova dot COM?
I can’t really think of anything worth saying, it’s all so inevitable. Corruption sucks.
here’s my problem with the article. You mention Drop.io and the free accounts limited to 100MB and the fact that Ghost in the Shell is 101.26GB. How about this: Is Drop.Io LICENSED/APPROVED to have this content? If someone signs up for a regular paid account, does the company who owns the rights to the anime get any money from Drop.Io?
Yeah sure you can host some small family videos, but how many people out there actually would visit this site to download those files? You don’t. You go to download (freely) content that costs money not only to produce and license, but to distribute as well. Let be fucking real and stop saying well BT and sites like Drop.Io are for our uses like sharing mp3’s of us singing kumbaya and videos of our little doggy wearing a wienerdog suit. We all know that we uses BT and sites like Drop.Io for iso’s, video, music, and whatever else we’re not willing to pay for.
It’s like I said – if you could outlaw something for having the potential to be misused, no one would have hammers. Or anything, really.
Drop.io, though – it would take a thousand free accounts to host that ghost in the shell collection. I made fun of it because he could have chosen a site that is more friendly to pirates.
yeah maybe he couldve mentioned piratebay since its been in the news.
Still tho, it bothers me when people allude to using services like BT for legitimate uses as an excuse for pirating, but legitimate usage probably equates to 1-2% of all BT traffic.
Oh where do that screenshot of >100GB come from??
a little bird emailed it to me.