Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Joathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and the other day it
Speaker 1: did a high level overview of copyright and fair use
Speaker 1: to things that can be confusing to people in general
Speaker 1: and people on the Internet in particular. Today we're going
Speaker 1: to continue that and talk about some legislation in the
Speaker 1: United States that ties into intellectual property rights and copyright
Speaker 1: and why things are so ridiculously complicated and in some
Speaker 1: cases extreme. Now. Towards the end of the last episode,
Speaker 1: I mentioned a video by Tom Scott who explains copyright
Speaker 1: in general and YouTube's solution to copyright issues in particular,
Speaker 1: and we will definitely come back to that to talk
Speaker 1: more about it. But it is good to get into
Speaker 1: a bit more background on stuff. So early on in
Speaker 1: the days of YouTube, there was a real problem of
Speaker 1: people uploading videos that did not belong to them, which
Speaker 1: honestly is still a thing that happens today, but now
Speaker 1: there are various tools to handle it, and back then
Speaker 1: there weren't. It was a different story in the early
Speaker 1: days of YouTube. YouTube launched in two thousand five, and
Speaker 1: at the time it was not part of Google's empire.
Speaker 1: Google would actually purchase YouTube in October of two thousand six,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it wasn't even the earliest platform that
Speaker 1: allowed users to upload videos. Video had launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand four. But YouTube had a couple of things going
Speaker 1: for it, one of them being that it was fairly
Speaker 1: easy to embed YouTube videos onto other pages. So if
Speaker 1: you were creating like a blog and you wanted to
Speaker 1: include a video on a blog entry, you could upload
Speaker 1: the video to YouTube and then use an embettable player
Speaker 1: and put that in your blog page and folks could
Speaker 1: see it. This was a huge help if you were
Speaker 1: using a blog hosting site that otherwise wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to host your video. Toward the end of two thousand five,
Speaker 1: users uploaded copies of a video that Chris Parnell and
Speaker 1: Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live had made, called Lazy Sunday.
Speaker 1: The video went viral, but NBC, which had ownership rights
Speaker 1: to the video, didn't really want folks watching it on
Speaker 1: other platforms. NBC had its own website and would much
Speaker 1: rather people go there to watch videos because that's where
Speaker 1: NBC could serve up ads and generate revenue from user visits.
Speaker 1: But with the video popping up all over YouTube, NBC
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of control or ability to monetize it,
Speaker 1: and so the huge and extremely well established media company
Speaker 1: reached out to YouTube to make sure that the platform
Speaker 1: would take down the videos, which YouTube did, and then
Speaker 1: other people uploaded it. YouTube would take those videos down too,
Speaker 1: and rents and repeat. Now, we know people upload videos
Speaker 1: to YouTube at a rate that's far too fast for
Speaker 1: anyone to review them before they go up. Right like
Speaker 1: these days, it's more than a hundred hours of content
Speaker 1: that are uploaded every single minute. You literally cannot have
Speaker 1: enough people to review all the content going up on
Speaker 1: YouTube to make sure that you know it all fits standards.
Speaker 1: This is kind of stuff that shakes out over time.
Speaker 1: So YouTube's general policy was that it would wait to
Speaker 1: be told about a video that was violating copyright by
Speaker 1: the copyright holder, and then after receiving a d m
Speaker 1: c A takedown notice, would go and take down the video.
Speaker 1: More about the d m c A in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: YouTube included language in its user interface that urged users
Speaker 1: not to upload stuff that they didn't actually own, So
Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to upload any material that was copyrighted,
Speaker 1: or rather any material that you personally did not hold
Speaker 1: the copyright for. But users could choose to ignore this.
Speaker 1: Some users might have, you know, been pretty ignorant about
Speaker 1: the issues of copyrights, so they were doing it without
Speaker 1: really understanding. But others might have known, but they just
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't care, so they just went ahead
Speaker 1: and uploaded it anyway. I mean, NBC is a big company, right,
Speaker 1: and the video is a funny video, and YouTube is
Speaker 1: where a lot of people were gathering and you could
Speaker 1: get a lot of views over on YouTube. You could
Speaker 1: upload it and suddenly that video goes viral and so
Speaker 1: many people are watching your YouTube channel. But here's another complication.
Speaker 1: YouTube did not introduce ads until the summer of two
Speaker 1: thousand six. So this meant that YouTube users back in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, we're not monetizing their videos because there
Speaker 1: was no way to do that, at least not through
Speaker 1: YouTube directly. I guess you could conceivably get noticed if
Speaker 1: you were uploading interest ing or innovative videos, and you
Speaker 1: might land a gig that way, Like it could be
Speaker 1: almost like an audition or a demo reel. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't really a way to make money directly off of
Speaker 1: YouTube in those days, so it wasn't as though people
Speaker 1: were uploading an NBC owned video and then they were
Speaker 1: making money off of that. So at least there's that right.
Speaker 1: Even though the video went viral and got a million views,
Speaker 1: there was no monetization, so the person who uploaded it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, stealing money or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But as we learned in the last episode, you don't
Speaker 1: have to monetize something for it to be an example
Speaker 1: of copyright infringement. If I took a video that was
Speaker 1: owned by someone else and I duplicated it and uploaded
Speaker 1: it to YouTube, and even if I had all the
Speaker 1: ads turned off for that video, it's still copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: even if I'm not making any money off of it. Heck,
Speaker 1: it's still copyright infringement even if no one ever sees
Speaker 1: that I uploaded the video. I don't have the permission
Speaker 1: to copy and distribute the content, period, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if folks see it or not, or if I
Speaker 1: make money off of it or not. Anyway, NBC was
Speaker 1: totally within the company's legal rights as the owner of
Speaker 1: that I p to demand that YouTube take down the videos,
Speaker 1: and YouTube complied again and again. YouTube complied because of
Speaker 1: something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m
Speaker 1: c A. And in the last episode I talked about
Speaker 1: laws that extended term limits of copyright repeatedly. Remember the
Speaker 1: original term for copyright protection was fourteen years, and then
Speaker 1: there was an option to renew for a second fourteen
Speaker 1: year term, which would give you twenty eight years of
Speaker 1: protection total. The US government expanded this repeatedly, and today
Speaker 1: the rule is that copyright will last the lifetime of
Speaker 1: the author plus an additional seventy years, or for works
Speaker 1: that are owned by you know, corporations work for higher work.
Speaker 1: In other words, copyright lasts from the year of publication
Speaker 1: plus ninety five years, or it lasts from the date
Speaker 1: of creation plus one hundred twenty years, whichever expires first.
Speaker 1: Because keep in mind, creation and publication are two different things.
Speaker 1: Like someone might have written a book in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: that didn't see publication until In that case, you would
Speaker 1: look and say, all right, well, we're gonna go from
Speaker 1: the date of creation plus one hundred twenty years, because
Speaker 1: that expires first. Those are big changes, no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: to copyright law. I mean they were huge. They really
Speaker 1: push back the date of when copyrighted works are going
Speaker 1: to enter the public domain, at which point anyone can
Speaker 1: make copies and distribute the works without penalty. But we
Speaker 1: covered that in the last episode. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m c A.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen nineties, the technological landscape was changing quickly,
Speaker 1: and with it, the ability to copy and distribute media
Speaker 1: was also changing. While in previous decades, publishers and creators
Speaker 1: really only had to worry about large entities potentially copying
Speaker 1: stuff on a large scale, more recent technologies began to
Speaker 1: make this a possibility for the average person. Now, media
Speaker 1: companies were worried that a single person might, say, purchase
Speaker 1: an album on compact disc, then they might rip that
Speaker 1: disc and copy all the music files to a computer.
Speaker 1: Then they might actually use a CD drive and burnable
Speaker 1: c d s, and they might put blank CDs into
Speaker 1: that drive and then you know, put the ripped files
Speaker 1: onto the CD just thus duplicating CDs pretty easily and
Speaker 1: relatively quickly. I mean it was fairly slow, but you
Speaker 1: could actually get drives that could hold multiple blank CDs
Speaker 1: and burn to all of them simultaneously, thus speeding up
Speaker 1: the process. Then you might go and dis review those
Speaker 1: burned c d s, or you might even sell them
Speaker 1: to folks at a you know, a rate lower than
Speaker 1: what they would pay if they went to the music store.
Speaker 1: And that meant that now there was the potential for
Speaker 1: an average person who had access to, you know, a
Speaker 1: decent computer two, you know, commit copyright infringement on a
Speaker 1: On a slightly larger scale, entertainment companies viewed this as
Speaker 1: a potential existential threat, particularly the music industry in the
Speaker 1: early days, because really, you know, we've got to keep
Speaker 1: in mind, we're still talking about relatively small files and
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, and music files like raw
Speaker 1: audio files are pretty big, but they're not as big
Speaker 1: as like a you know, uncompressed high resolution digital movie file.
Speaker 1: And here's the funny thing. We would see the music
Speaker 1: industry overreact to this in a way that had massive blowback,
Speaker 1: and yet other industries would follow very similar pathways when
Speaker 1: they faced a comparative scenario themselves a little later on. So,
Speaker 1: to paraphrase the great comedian Peter cook. We learned from
Speaker 1: our mistakes and we can repeat them almost exactly. The
Speaker 1: d m c A itself was the U S law
Speaker 1: that was meant to bring the US in alignment with
Speaker 1: the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty. World Intellectual Property
Speaker 1: Organization or WIPEOH is an organization that tries to align
Speaker 1: copyright across different borders. This particular treaty was really necessary
Speaker 1: because copyright law is already pretty complicated within a single
Speaker 1: country like the US. Now, as you can imagine, it
Speaker 1: gets way more complicated when you start comparing it against
Speaker 1: other countries. So, like what happens if you have a
Speaker 1: work that was created in the United States, like the
Speaker 1: cartoons Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willy by US law receives ninety
Speaker 1: five years of copyright protection when it's all said and done.
Speaker 1: But over in some other countries copyright protection doesn't last
Speaker 1: that long. So does that mean that Steamboat Willie would
Speaker 1: be in the public domain over in that country? I mean,
Speaker 1: the copyright is registered in the United States, But how
Speaker 1: does that How does that work in other countries? How
Speaker 1: do other countries recognize that? Anyway? The Whiteoat, as it were,
Speaker 1: is the organization that helps get parody among countries. This
Speaker 1: particular act focused on the new challenges of the digital age.
Speaker 1: One thing that the treaty and then consequently the d
Speaker 1: m c A focused on was anti circumvention tools for
Speaker 1: copyright protection. So they were looking at the fact that
Speaker 1: companies were trying to put in protections to prevent people
Speaker 1: from copying stuff without permission. Typically, this was in a
Speaker 1: category we would call DRM, or digital rights management. In
Speaker 1: case you're not familiar with DRM, it's typically some sort
Speaker 1: of protective measure in place that restricts or limits the
Speaker 1: ability of a consumer to make a copy of a
Speaker 1: piece of digital media. There are a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways the companies have created DRM, and some of them
Speaker 1: are truly awful. Let's talk about Sony for a second,
Speaker 1: because this one was a doozy. In the mid two thousand's,
Speaker 1: Sony was the target of some pretty massive criticism because
Speaker 1: the company had implemented copy protection measures on compact discs
Speaker 1: under the Sony BMG music label. And if you were
Speaker 1: to take one of those compact discs and you were
Speaker 1: to put it into the optical drive of a computer,
Speaker 1: because by the way computers back then, most of them
Speaker 1: had optical drives. Well anyway, the boot sequence once the
Speaker 1: disc went into the drive would initiate an installation of
Speaker 1: two pieces of software that were meant to act as DRM.
Speaker 1: But what these pieces of software did was they altered
Speaker 1: your computers operating system so that it wouldn't let you
Speaker 1: copy the c D bam take that would be music
Speaker 1: pirate except um oh. The programs also turned out it
Speaker 1: could facilitate malware that could create backdoor access to your computer,
Speaker 1: giving hackers potentially the remote control to your PC. Whoop
Speaker 1: see daisy. They also were tracking lots of activity. They
Speaker 1: were essentially looking to see what you were listening to
Speaker 1: and how frequently you listened to it. It was a
Speaker 1: big breach of privacy. So how many c d s
Speaker 1: actually had this kind of DRM on it. It was
Speaker 1: somewhere north of twenty million c ds. And the programs
Speaker 1: that the CD installed on your machine were really hard
Speaker 1: to identify and hard to remove, which made it much
Speaker 1: much worse. And also the programs appeared to have some
Speaker 1: code that was lifted from other software, which means ironically
Speaker 1: that the copy protection software was itself infringing on someone
Speaker 1: else's copyright. Sony would end up getting sued in several
Speaker 1: class action lawsuits and eventually backtracked on its approach to
Speaker 1: copy protection in two thousand and seven. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a particularly egregious approach to DRM. Not all DRM
Speaker 1: schemes were harmful to this degree, but all of them
Speaker 1: did represent problems. See, while fair use isn't always easy
Speaker 1: to establish, as I mentioned in the last episode, fair
Speaker 1: use is still a thing. You still can make fair
Speaker 1: use out of copyrighted material, but if companies put limitations
Speaker 1: on how you can access or copy works, the ner
Speaker 1: ability to make fair use of a copyrighted work is impacted.
Speaker 1: You technically have the right to do something, but you
Speaker 1: don't have any way to actually do it. When Congress
Speaker 1: was drafting the d m c A, they acknowledged that
Speaker 1: this was a problem, and they did it anyway. This
Speaker 1: meant that even if your use of copyrighted work was
Speaker 1: fair use. So let's say that you took uh some music,
Speaker 1: you took some copyrighted music, and you did a critique
Speaker 1: where you were explaining the structure of the song. You
Speaker 1: were criticizing the use of music and lyrics like it
Speaker 1: was a legit academic approach to treating the music but
Speaker 1: you had to use the original work itself. Let's say
Speaker 1: that it also meant you had to circumvent copy protection
Speaker 1: on that digital work to do it. Well, the the
Speaker 1: use was fair, right, it falls under fair use, but
Speaker 1: you would still get in trouble for actually circumventing the
Speaker 1: copy protection. This is kind of like saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: got this stuff. It's behind this locked door over here.
Speaker 1: You are totally free to use that stuff. There's only
Speaker 1: one problem. The only way to get to the stuff
Speaker 1: is if you commit breaking and entering, which by the way,
Speaker 1: is a crime. But you're still free to use the
Speaker 1: stuff as long as you can get to it. But
Speaker 1: if you get to it, it shows that you've broken
Speaker 1: the law. So have fun. Now you might be able
Speaker 1: to tell I am not a big fan of this
Speaker 1: part of the d m c A, or most copy
Speaker 1: protection schemes for that matter. I find that a lot
Speaker 1: of copy protection ends up causing more harm to legitimate
Speaker 1: customers and consumers than it does to discourage piracy. If anything,
Speaker 1: copy protection often encourages people to use piracy because part
Speaker 1: of piracy typically means stripping away d r M, and
Speaker 1: it may be that someone wants a copy of you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of media that doesn't have DRM on it,
Speaker 1: not because they just want to free copy or that
Speaker 1: they want to distribute it or anything that they might
Speaker 1: just want it because there's no hassle there. They don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with the problems of dr M. There
Speaker 1: are other issues about copyright that DRM totally interferes with.
Speaker 1: One is that you do have the right to make
Speaker 1: backups for your own personal use. If you have an album,
Speaker 1: like an old vinyl record album, and you wanted to
Speaker 1: back that up to cassette tape back in the day,
Speaker 1: you totally could do that as long as as long
Speaker 1: as it was for your personal use, so that way,
Speaker 1: if something were to happen, like you were to you know,
Speaker 1: the the record was to be damaged or destroyed in
Speaker 1: some way, you would have a backup. That's fine. You
Speaker 1: were allowed to make those things, but DRM made it
Speaker 1: harder or sometimes impossible to do that, So again it
Speaker 1: was a protection that was infringing upon the rights of
Speaker 1: the user. Another important part of d M c A
Speaker 1: is a section that guarantees safe harbor to service providers,
Speaker 1: which was originally can it or to be things like
Speaker 1: I s p S Internet service providers. This provision makes
Speaker 1: it clear that an I s P is not at
Speaker 1: fault for the stuff that people on that I s
Speaker 1: P are actually doing. So, in other words, if I'm
Speaker 1: logging onto the Internet via earth Link and then I'm
Speaker 1: pirating I don't know all of Poison's greatest hits, earth
Speaker 1: Link isn't liable for the crime that I am committing.
Speaker 1: The Safe Harbor had its own provisions in that the
Speaker 1: provider would have to be unaware of my activity. So
Speaker 1: in other words, if they knew about it, they should
Speaker 1: stop it, but if they don't know about it, they're
Speaker 1: not at fault. And also they have to have a
Speaker 1: copyright policy in place. They are also supposed to have
Speaker 1: a representative that's sort of a point of contact for
Speaker 1: media companies to to reach in case of an issue
Speaker 1: of copyright infringement that happens across that network. So the
Speaker 1: I s P would react if notified that I was
Speaker 1: up to no good, and as long as it did that,
Speaker 1: then safe Harbor applies. This would later be extended to
Speaker 1: web platforms like YouTube. More on YouTube later in this episode.
Speaker 1: There were some other provisions that helped layout exceptions and
Speaker 1: such for special cases, like when someone needs to do
Speaker 1: computer maintenance, and so they might need to make copies
Speaker 1: of software in the process, so that way during the maintenance,
Speaker 1: if if they had to wipe a computer, they could
Speaker 1: reinstall software. Those sort of exceptions were put into the law.
Speaker 1: There's also a section in the d m c A
Speaker 1: about boat holes as in ships, as in vessels, and
Speaker 1: I am not kidding. Title five of the d m
Speaker 1: c A is the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. And
Speaker 1: you might say, what the heck is this just you know,
Speaker 1: pork that's been added onto an act. Was where we're
Speaker 1: big boats getting all up on Congress. It actually was
Speaker 1: because at that point, boat hole designs were not covered
Speaker 1: under copyright law. They were considered part of the form
Speaker 1: and function of boats, so they couldn't they couldn't qualify
Speaker 1: for copyright. However, designers wanted a way to protect their
Speaker 1: designs from just being copied without their permission. So this
Speaker 1: was kind of a way of building in some protection. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about some instances in
Speaker 1: which companies went a little bit ham when they went
Speaker 1: after people who seemed to be in flagrant violation of
Speaker 1: copyright laws, and how a few different websites truly wreaked
Speaker 1: havoc and change the way companies viewed the protection of
Speaker 1: intellectual property forever. But first let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the d M c A was really becoming a
Speaker 1: thing because of the technology of c ds and computers
Speaker 1: that could rip music tracks off of c ds. That
Speaker 1: was really the big going concern in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: That was more of a of a thing than digital
Speaker 1: files were in general. But by the late nineties we
Speaker 1: saw something that would make copying CDs seem tame by comparison.
Speaker 1: We saw the rise of peer to peer file sharing
Speaker 1: networks and later of torrents. Now, first let's clear up
Speaker 1: the fact that peer to peer networks and infect torrents
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily a bad thing. They could be used for
Speaker 1: all sorts of legitimate purposes. I'll do a quick breakdown
Speaker 1: of what peer to peer networks are and how they work.
Speaker 1: And it helps if we start with the standard sort
Speaker 1: of networks that we think of when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Internet. So when you use, say, um, a web browser,
Speaker 1: and you're using your web browser to access a web page,
Speaker 1: what's kind of happening on the back end is that
Speaker 1: your computer sends a request up through your internet service provider.
Speaker 1: That request goes through routers which direct the request to
Speaker 1: the proper web server that's hosting the web page you
Speaker 1: want to visit. The web server response to that request
Speaker 1: and sends back the respective web page data to your
Speaker 1: web browser, which then displays it as a web page.
Speaker 1: So you can kind of think of this system as
Speaker 1: being made up of clients, which would be your computer, or,
Speaker 1: more appropriately, in this example, your web browser and servers.
Speaker 1: These are the computers that actually host the data that
Speaker 1: you get to see on your computer now and appear
Speaker 1: to peer network. Every computer that's part of that network
Speaker 1: is an equal or a peer to every other computer
Speaker 1: on that network. Each computer provides data and resources to
Speaker 1: the network. Computer is connected to this network can easily
Speaker 1: share the data they have stored on them with all
Speaker 1: the other computers on that same network. And typically to
Speaker 1: use a peer to peer network, you would download and
Speaker 1: install some software that lets you connect to the network itself.
Speaker 1: Usually you can designate a specific folder on your computer
Speaker 1: as the place where you both download and share files,
Speaker 1: which keeps the rest of your computer sequestered from the
Speaker 1: peer to peer network, so you're not just sharing everything
Speaker 1: peer to peer networks can be used for tons of stuff,
Speaker 1: from harnessing the computational resources of a large group of
Speaker 1: computers in order to tackle you know, tough computer problems
Speaker 1: all the way to distributing software quickly through the network.
Speaker 1: But the thing that the entertainment industry in general and
Speaker 1: the music industry in particular was focusing on was how
Speaker 1: it could facilitate piracy. In the late nineties, we saw
Speaker 1: the rise of products like Napster and Khaza and lime
Speaker 1: wire and many many others. Napster was the pioneer in
Speaker 1: this space. It was a peer to peer networking software
Speaker 1: and people were using it largely to pirate music. People
Speaker 1: would rip songs from c d s and convert the
Speaker 1: audio files into compressed formats like MP three because raw
Speaker 1: audio files were just so big and broadband speeds were
Speaker 1: not super advanced back in the mid nineties. So then
Speaker 1: these compressed files they would store on a shared drive,
Speaker 1: they would PLoP onto the peer to peer networks, and
Speaker 1: then they would start building out their own collections. They
Speaker 1: would offer up the stuff they had and they would
Speaker 1: add to their collections from you know, other computers that
Speaker 1: were on the network. These services allowed people to search
Speaker 1: out rare bootlegs and other recordings that you couldn't just buy,
Speaker 1: like stuff that wasn't available commercially. However, it also allowed
Speaker 1: people to download tons of music that you could, in
Speaker 1: theory purchase, but you know, you just opted to download
Speaker 1: them for free, so people pirated music like crazy. This
Speaker 1: was also an era where malware was running rampant because
Speaker 1: a lot of people could upload or share malware on
Speaker 1: their computers that posed as if it were say a
Speaker 1: music five l or a software package for like a
Speaker 1: game or something. So this was also a buyer beware,
Speaker 1: or rather pirate beware era where there was a chance
Speaker 1: that that you know, the song you were about to
Speaker 1: download was in fact, you know, a virus or some
Speaker 1: other form of malware. Now, some people went so wild,
Speaker 1: so crazy, they went hug wild in fact, over downloading
Speaker 1: music that places like colleges and universities began to ban
Speaker 1: access to Napster simply because the Internet traffic from all
Speaker 1: the downloading was clogging things up. So this wasn't because
Speaker 1: colleges and universities were necessarily being contacted by you know,
Speaker 1: big record labels or anything. It was more like, hey,
Speaker 1: no one can send an email because everyone over at
Speaker 1: five cap of five is downloading the new Britney Spears album.
Speaker 1: So they started to shut down access to it. Napster
Speaker 1: lawn in nine, but by two thousand it had become
Speaker 1: the target of numerous lawsuits, with various acts like Metallica
Speaker 1: and music labels and music label industry organizations like the
Speaker 1: r I double A all going after the service. The
Speaker 1: argument was that the service was overwhelmingly being used as
Speaker 1: a way to pirate music on a large scale, and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty big scale. Napster had something like
Speaker 1: eighty million users at one point. Napster took cases all
Speaker 1: the way up to the U. S. Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: for the Ninth Circuit. They kept appealing the judgments and
Speaker 1: they were trying to argue that the underlying service wasn't
Speaker 1: tied directly to music piracy, and the court agreed that
Speaker 1: there were valid and legal ways to use Napster, that
Speaker 1: the way Napster distributed information on its own wasn't necessarily illegal. However,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of traffic across Napster was illegal, so
Speaker 1: the court order that Napster developed a system to curtail
Speaker 1: the rampant piracy and Napster really couldn't do that. The
Speaker 1: problem was such a big one the company just didn't
Speaker 1: have the means to tackle it, So Napster shut down
Speaker 1: in two thousand one. Now you could argue that if
Speaker 1: a company is told, hey, you got to get a
Speaker 1: handle on this, and the company says, well, we gotta
Speaker 1: shut down because we can't get a handle on it,
Speaker 1: that there was a legitimate problem. That doesn't take away
Speaker 1: from the fact that the underlying technology that made Napster
Speaker 1: work has nothing, you know, inherently to do with piracy.
Speaker 1: It can be used for that, but it's not the No,
Speaker 1: that's not the purpose of the tech. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to argue against the practical results of the
Speaker 1: use of that technology. And lots of other services similar
Speaker 1: to Napster popped up like they essentially became really popular
Speaker 1: after Napster went away, so piracy was still going like gangbusters.
Speaker 1: Perhaps one of the biggest reason was that, you know,
Speaker 1: there was such a problem with piracy was that it
Speaker 1: was legitimately difficult for music lovers to find and purchase
Speaker 1: digital music online. There weren't really any viable alternatives to
Speaker 1: just stealing it. I mean, some companies were offering up
Speaker 1: limited access to their catalogs through their own digital storefronts,
Speaker 1: but not very many people were offering up digital downloads
Speaker 1: for purchase. It was not easy to find or buy
Speaker 1: stuff when Apple launched iTunes in two thousand one. At
Speaker 1: that time, iTunes was just a way to rip music
Speaker 1: tracks from c d s and have a digital collection
Speaker 1: of music on your Apple computer or your iPod or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you could not purchase digital songs through iTunes at
Speaker 1: all when it launched. It wasn't until two thousand three
Speaker 1: that the iTunes music store actually came online, so in
Speaker 1: the absence of a legitimate way to purchase music, folks
Speaker 1: turned to illegal means to get it. Now, does this
Speaker 1: mean that if there had been legal ways to buy
Speaker 1: music easily, that piracy wouldn't have been a problem at all.
Speaker 1: Probably not. I'm sure that there had been plenty of
Speaker 1: people who would still want to try and just get
Speaker 1: stuff for free rather than pay for it, But I
Speaker 1: bet that piracy wouldn't have been as large of a
Speaker 1: problem as it was. The music industry would after numerous
Speaker 1: cases of people who had downloaded songs, often coupling their
Speaker 1: lawsuits with demands for enormous sums and damages. The goals
Speaker 1: seemed to be not to recapture lost revenue, but to
Speaker 1: scare the ever love and heck out of would be pirates.
Speaker 1: The lawsuits were making examples of people and the message
Speaker 1: was you do not want this to happen to you.
Speaker 1: You see what it's doing to this person, so you
Speaker 1: better not steal any music bucko. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: Recording Industry Association of America the r I double A,
Speaker 1: they sued more were than eighteen thousand individuals in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's for illegally sharing music, and in some
Speaker 1: cases they sawt truly astronomical damages in that in that endeavor.
Speaker 1: So in one case, the r I Double A sought
Speaker 1: one point five million dollars and damages against a woman
Speaker 1: that the organization said had downloaded and distributed more than
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred songs. Now the lawsuit only included twenty four
Speaker 1: songs in it, and they were asking for damages of
Speaker 1: one and a half million dollars. This was just one case.
Speaker 1: By the way, the woman lost that case. She appealed it,
Speaker 1: she refused to take a settlement out of court, and
Speaker 1: she lost the case multiple times. UM, I actually don't
Speaker 1: know what the current status is of that case, because
Speaker 1: the last I had heard, she had planned on declaring bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: which would get her out of the need to to pay.
Speaker 1: The amount that was being asked for at that point
Speaker 1: was more than two thousand dollars. There were thousands of
Speaker 1: these types of cases, and most of them were settled
Speaker 1: out of court. They didn't actually go to trial. But
Speaker 1: it was a really effective intimidation tactic, and it was
Speaker 1: one that was based largely on faulty logic. So what
Speaker 1: do I mean by that, Well, the way the entertainment industry,
Speaker 1: and it's not just the music labels, the the film
Speaker 1: industry and television industry would do the same thing. The
Speaker 1: way they would figure out, you know, how much how
Speaker 1: much damage is they would ask for was essentially based
Speaker 1: on the idea that really doesn't hold water when you
Speaker 1: look into it, and that idea is that each pirated
Speaker 1: copy of a piece of media represents a lost sale. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the argument is that if people had
Speaker 1: not stolen things, then those same people would have gone
Speaker 1: and bought a legitimate copy. So in other words, every download,
Speaker 1: every illegal download, represents a lost sale and lost revenue.
Speaker 1: But that's just not necessarily true. It's possible that someone
Speaker 1: might download a piece of media just out of curiosity alone,
Speaker 1: and they have no real desire to own it. That
Speaker 1: kind of person would perhaps never have bought a copy
Speaker 1: of the media at all. They would have just gone without.
Speaker 1: And because we're talking about digital files here, you're not
Speaker 1: looking at the physical loss of a product. It's not
Speaker 1: like going into a store and shoplifting, you know, c
Speaker 1: d s or something. If you did that, while the store,
Speaker 1: you know, would be out those c d s, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to sell any that those specific CDs
Speaker 1: because they would just have been stolen. Digital files, however,
Speaker 1: those are things you just copy. You can make an
Speaker 1: infinite number of copies of digital files, or at least,
Speaker 1: you know, effectively infinite. Obviously you're limited by however much
Speaker 1: storage space you have, but you get the idea. There's
Speaker 1: no scarcity to digital files. So it's a different matter.
Speaker 1: Even the US Government Accountability Office found that the formulas
Speaker 1: that the entertainment industry were using when they were trying
Speaker 1: to make claims of damages just were not supportable. So
Speaker 1: it's not that piracy has no effect on sales. It
Speaker 1: definitely has some effect on sales. But it's more that
Speaker 1: you can't quantify what that effect on sales is. And
Speaker 1: if you can't quantify it, then you can't really assign
Speaker 1: a value to losses because it's impossible to say what
Speaker 1: the losses were. But for several years in the two
Speaker 1: thousands that didn't matter. The r I, double A and
Speaker 1: other organizations tried to crack them on piracy hard, and
Speaker 1: the industry as a whole earned a pretty ugly reputation
Speaker 1: as a result. The courts often found in the favor
Speaker 1: of industry, but it meant that, like everyone was looking
Speaker 1: at these companies and saying, what the heck are you doing.
Speaker 1: You're going after, you know, regular people and demanding these
Speaker 1: astronomical damages. What's really interesting to me is that the
Speaker 1: solution for piracy wasn't really in these gratuitous lawsuits and damages.
Speaker 1: People were still pirrating stuff, it's just that you know
Speaker 1: they were doing so running the risk of being one
Speaker 1: of the examples that would be brought up in a
Speaker 1: court case. And the solution wasn't even in working with
Speaker 1: online stores like iTunes, though that did change things quite
Speaker 1: a bit. The solution was really the method of delivery
Speaker 1: gradually shifting from downloads to streaming, and this was facilitated
Speaker 1: by the rise of the smartphone and the improvement of
Speaker 1: wireless technologies. Why would you pirate music when practically every
Speaker 1: song you have ever heard is available on some streaming platform.
Speaker 1: Lots of them are even ad supported and otherwise free
Speaker 1: to use, so you don't even have to pay a
Speaker 1: subscription to them, so you can listen to these songs
Speaker 1: whenever you like, as long as you have an Internet connection.
Speaker 1: That is what helped pull back music piracy, and the
Speaker 1: fact that the access to the content suddenly became way
Speaker 1: easier and there was no reason to run the risk
Speaker 1: of being an example. But the improvements in broadband connectivity
Speaker 1: would bring with it the chance for people to download
Speaker 1: not just music, but also stuff like TV shows and
Speaker 1: movies and video games. These groups didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: as much in the early days. I mean, video games
Speaker 1: kind of did, but they were starting to get so
Speaker 1: sophisticated that the you know, the cutting edge video games
Speaker 1: of the time were so big most people just didn't
Speaker 1: have the band whip to download them in a reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of time, so they weren't really considerations. However, once
Speaker 1: broadband started catching up that changed. Now, the music industry
Speaker 1: had already gone through this whole process, and you would
Speaker 1: think that these other industries would have looked at that
Speaker 1: and said, all right, well, what worked, what didn't work,
Speaker 1: and will follow best practices, But really they mostly doubled
Speaker 1: down on going the same route that the music industry
Speaker 1: did with pretty similar results. So it's hard to feel
Speaker 1: much sympathy for these multibillion dollar media companies versus the
Speaker 1: individuals who made downloaded a copy of X Men origins
Speaker 1: Wolverine without permission. Companies began lobbying US Congress to once
Speaker 1: again create more legislation that would impose harsher penalties on
Speaker 1: people illegally downloading content, and more importantly, on ways to
Speaker 1: prevent sites that were facilitating these kinds of downloads. The
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay, a site that specialized in serving as sort
Speaker 1: of a database or almost like a Yellow Pages of
Speaker 1: torrent files of various types of media, was constantly in
Speaker 1: the news at this time, and the global nature of
Speaker 1: the Internet meant that sites like the Pirate Bay, which
Speaker 1: was founded in Sweden, which last I checked, is not
Speaker 1: in the United States. It meant that they were beyond
Speaker 1: the jurisdiction of the US. So you have these big
Speaker 1: US based media companies that really wanted to have a
Speaker 1: way to shut down this foreign service, and there just
Speaker 1: weren't many options. It wasn't like they could target a
Speaker 1: YouTube that's based in the United States and make the
Speaker 1: man's you know. They could try and target a Swedish company,
Speaker 1: but that company is saying like, ha ha, you have
Speaker 1: no power here, be gone with you. Moreover, the Pirate
Speaker 1: Bay was just one example, and now the possibility of
Speaker 1: companies in different parts of the world allowing for the
Speaker 1: mass piracy of various types of media was once again
Speaker 1: seen as an existential threat. You could make a pretty
Speaker 1: convincing argument that the history of modern media is a
Speaker 1: series of the industry reacting to something as an existential threat,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of what we see here in the
Speaker 1: United States. What we saw is a consequence of this
Speaker 1: was the proposal of two different but very similar pieces
Speaker 1: of legislation, one in the House of Representatives and one
Speaker 1: in the U S. Senate. There was the Stop Online
Speaker 1: Piracy Act or SOPA, that was the Senate one, and
Speaker 1: there was the Protect I p Act or PIPPA, which
Speaker 1: was the House of Representatives one. Both of those were
Speaker 1: being written around, and the intended purpose of these proposed
Speaker 1: acts was to act as protection for I P holders
Speaker 1: in the United States from the nefarious doings of overseas entities.
Speaker 1: But the solutions were pretty drastic, including the possibility that
Speaker 1: you know, these companies could force governments or or demand
Speaker 1: for governments to order US based I s p s
Speaker 1: to cut off all access to certain sites. In other words,
Speaker 1: to tell US based I s p s, hey don't
Speaker 1: allow any U r l s from these domains to
Speaker 1: be accessible in the United States. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: there would be parts of the Internet that US citizens
Speaker 1: would not be allowed to access, at least not legally
Speaker 1: and not without the aid of something like a VPN
Speaker 1: located in another country. Critics pointed out that this approach
Speaker 1: would have massive consequences with regard to free speech, and
Speaker 1: beyond that, applying the rules would be difficult and uneven.
Speaker 1: People envisioned a scenario in which U S I s
Speaker 1: p s would have to block access to an entire
Speaker 1: domain because of potentially what one blogger posted on a
Speaker 1: single blog that was located on that domain. So this
Speaker 1: was like a nuclear option that would potentially affect far
Speaker 1: more you know, innocent people than it would for those
Speaker 1: who were actually perpetrating the alleged crimes. A large collection
Speaker 1: of web based companies help protests in early two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: using a blackout on their web pages to inform visitors
Speaker 1: of the issue and essentially going dark, and the results
Speaker 1: were dramatic. Politicians who had previously expressed support for either
Speaker 1: PIPPA or SOPA abruptly reversed course, including people who had
Speaker 1: sponsored the bills in the first place. So the two
Speaker 1: pieces of legislation were withdrawn from being voted upon the floor. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason they were withdrawn is because if Congress had
Speaker 1: held a vote and the legislation was voted down, that
Speaker 1: would be pretty much the end of that. But by
Speaker 1: removing the bills from consideration, the authors of the bills
Speaker 1: and their supporters would have some time to work on
Speaker 1: it further and potentially reintroduce the bill at a later
Speaker 1: date once the political climate changed. So far that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: But when we come back, I'll spend some time talking
Speaker 1: a little bit more about copyright and YouTube's specific approach
Speaker 1: to handling copyright claims. But first, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break Okay, let's talk about YouTube and copyright now. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned, YouTube has a long history with copyright issues,
Speaker 1: and for a while, the general approach was that company
Speaker 1: would claim a copyright ownership of some or all of
Speaker 1: the content that was in a YouTube video, and they
Speaker 1: would send a d m C A takedown notice to YouTube,
Speaker 1: which then would typically take down the video in question. Uh,
Speaker 1: the user or owner of the channel would get a
Speaker 1: copyright strike against them, and if you've got three strikes,
Speaker 1: the channel would get wiped, the account would be deleted,
Speaker 1: all those videos would be removed. Now, ideally, each d
Speaker 1: m C A claim would go through a thorough review
Speaker 1: by some other party to make sure that the claim
Speaker 1: was legitimate. You have to verify that the claimant actually
Speaker 1: holds the rights to the i P in question. You
Speaker 1: have to determine if the use of any material falls
Speaker 1: under the category of fair use, which means that the
Speaker 1: inclusion of that material in the video would need to
Speaker 1: be proven to be you know, legitimate. And YouTube built
Speaker 1: in systems that would let channel owners dispute d m
Speaker 1: C A takedown charges, essentially pushing the matter into arbitration
Speaker 1: that would then ultimately have to go to court. So
Speaker 1: quick overview. Let's say I put up a video. Let's
Speaker 1: say I've got some material in there in the video
Speaker 1: that belongs to someone else, and I get a d
Speaker 1: m C A takedown notice, so YouTube has taken the
Speaker 1: video down. I get a copyright strike against me. I
Speaker 1: decide to dispute this YouTube sends that back to the
Speaker 1: copyright holder, who if they don't respond, then YouTube just
Speaker 1: lifts it and the video comes back online. But if
Speaker 1: they do respond, then essentially the next step is you
Speaker 1: go to court over it. So it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: super awesome thing for the individual because court cases are
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive um and there were some court cases around
Speaker 1: videos containing copyrighted material that helped establish the law around it. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in two thousand eight, a U. S. Court
Speaker 1: ruled that copyright holders couldn't just send a d m
Speaker 1: C a takedown notice unless they first determined that the
Speaker 1: use of the material in the video in question fell
Speaker 1: under a fair use scenario. Because if it is fair use,
Speaker 1: the copyright holder is not supposed to send out the
Speaker 1: takedown notice. The key raise there is they're not supposed to.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that they necessarily held back flash forward though,
Speaker 1: Google acquired YouTube in two thousand and six, and then
Speaker 1: by two thousand seven started to develop a system that
Speaker 1: acted sort of like a digital finger printing system for companies.
Speaker 1: So it's a system that could scan videos that have
Speaker 1: been uploaded to YouTube and look for patterns in those
Speaker 1: videos that matched a database of copyrighted material owned by
Speaker 1: you know, each individual large media company. So if there
Speaker 1: were a match, well, then you would get a notification saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you've got this possible case of someone making use of
Speaker 1: your copyrighted material without your permission, and then you could
Speaker 1: flag the video. Following that the owner of the I
Speaker 1: P and question so big media company, in other words,
Speaker 1: would have a few options. They could choose to block
Speaker 1: the video completely, which just made it unreachable, or they
Speaker 1: could choose to add advertisements to the video, or to
Speaker 1: co opt existing advertisements and claim the revenue generated by
Speaker 1: the ads for itself. So in other words, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can keep your video up. We're going to collect any
Speaker 1: money that's generated from the fact that you have this
Speaker 1: video there. This was originally called video identification, but later
Speaker 1: became known as Content i D. In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: the system went into effect in earnest, and the result
Speaker 1: was that content owners could get revenue from videos that
Speaker 1: included their content, or they could order the videos to
Speaker 1: be totally removed, but that seemed to be slightly less prevalent.
Speaker 1: It does still happen occasionally, but more often than not
Speaker 1: people just say no, I'm just happy to take the money.
Speaker 1: This approach automates stuff. It removes any human review process,
Speaker 1: which also means that no one is really checking to
Speaker 1: make sure that the flagged video is actually infringing upon
Speaker 1: copyright or that it's not a case of fair use.
Speaker 1: So it falls on the channel owner to dispute claims
Speaker 1: and to push for reviews. Meanwhile, if you do get
Speaker 1: hit with enough flags, you might find your whole channel
Speaker 1: shut down and once again, want to refer to Tom
Speaker 1: Scott's great video on this subject, titled YouTube's Copyright System
Speaker 1: Isn't Broken, The World's is. Scott gives a personal example
Speaker 1: of a time when the content I D system totally failed.
Speaker 1: So Scott is an independent creator with an impressive following
Speaker 1: of more than three point eight million subscribers. He uploaded
Speaker 1: a video to YouTube and a TV company in Thailand
Speaker 1: took that video incorporated it into a Thai television show
Speaker 1: without asking Scott's permission, and then subsequently uploaded that television
Speaker 1: show episode to YouTube, which is pretty brazen, but what
Speaker 1: happened next was even more so. The company then flagged
Speaker 1: Scott's original video. See content idea as a tool that's
Speaker 1: really only available to big, established media companies. The average
Speaker 1: person does not have access to content i D. So
Speaker 1: this TV company used its access to content i D
Speaker 1: to flag Scott's original video. In other words, the video
Speaker 1: he had made uploaded, and then they subsequently stole and used.
Speaker 1: Scott says it took quite a lot of time to
Speaker 1: sort it all out and to establish that the video
Speaker 1: was in fact his original work, and then it was
Speaker 1: the Tie company that was in violation of copyright, not Scott. Now,
Speaker 1: content i D is a tool that can be revoked,
Speaker 1: so if a company abuses it, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: YouTube will remove the company's access to content i D.
Speaker 1: Tom Scott himself says in that video that he doesn't
Speaker 1: know if that Tie company still has access to content
Speaker 1: i D or not, but it is a pretty clear
Speaker 1: case where he was very much the one who was
Speaker 1: being the victim of abuse that this Tie company was
Speaker 1: abusing the content i D tool in the worst way.
Speaker 1: That being said, Scott also points out that content i
Speaker 1: D works around issues that otherwise would have pretty bleak results.
Speaker 1: So because of content i D, a video can stay
Speaker 1: up even if it is making what would otherwise be
Speaker 1: considered illegal use of someone else's i P. It's just
Speaker 1: that this someone else would be the one to benefit
Speaker 1: and monetize that video. So for the vast majority of
Speaker 1: YouTube users this isn't really that big of a deal
Speaker 1: because most of them aren't YouTube partners. Most of them
Speaker 1: are not monetizing videos in the first place. For creators
Speaker 1: who are monetizing their videos, such as big time let's
Speaker 1: play gamers or movie critics or you know, things like that,
Speaker 1: it's still very much an issue it if the work
Speaker 1: that they're doing does fall under fair use, they have
Speaker 1: to appeal to try and get flagged videos unflagged and
Speaker 1: to return monetization to their own channels. Another point that
Speaker 1: Scott makes is that YouTube's policies can change, and they
Speaker 1: have changed, often without any real notice, and the consequences
Speaker 1: of those changes can result in massive headaches for channel
Speaker 1: owners and for individual users. So, in other words, just
Speaker 1: because YouTube's policies are one way today doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: can count on them being that same way tomorrow. That
Speaker 1: could change the whole game. Let's start wrapping all this up.
Speaker 1: The history of copyright in the United States has largely
Speaker 1: been one of big consolidated media companies using their substantial
Speaker 1: influence to extend copyright protections and restrict the parameters of
Speaker 1: fair use, and to seek out harsher punishments for people
Speaker 1: and companies that violate the law. It appears as though
Speaker 1: we've at least reached a point where companies are no
Speaker 1: longer going to push for longer copyright terms. So it
Speaker 1: really does seem that Steamboat Willie will in fact finally
Speaker 1: enter public domain in twenty twenty four. Why aren't we
Speaker 1: seeing yet another push to extend copyright terms. It's largely
Speaker 1: because public sentiment is very much against it, and ultimately
Speaker 1: politicians do have to depend upon people voting for them
Speaker 1: to stay in power. Doesn't really matter how much money
Speaker 1: lobbyists drop on them. Ultimately they do have to worry
Speaker 1: about that, and the lobbies have largely thrown in the
Speaker 1: towel on trying to extend copyright terms. Their money is
Speaker 1: better spent at trying to create legislation that makes it
Speaker 1: harder for people to share content without permission. That's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a great thing either. Those laws frequently have unintended
Speaker 1: consequences and they place unfair restrictions on legal rights. But
Speaker 1: you know it's it is shifting the issue a little bit,
Speaker 1: so we're not likely to see copyright terms get extended
Speaker 1: again anytime soon. It's just incredibly unpopular. There are actual
Speaker 1: movements to try and reduce the term limits on copyrights
Speaker 1: rather than to extend them, to kind of roll the
Speaker 1: back a bit and to allow things to enter into
Speaker 1: public domain earlier. Tom Scott and his video also talks
Speaker 1: about the move to try and get small claims case
Speaker 1: courts that would handle things like copyright issues so that
Speaker 1: the average person would have a better chance of being
Speaker 1: able to pursue a claim of fair use and not
Speaker 1: have it be financial burden to do so. Um, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Even if you are in the right, even
Speaker 1: if your use of copyrighted material falls under fair use,
Speaker 1: you still may have to go to court in order
Speaker 1: to actually prove that, and it can be so expensive
Speaker 1: that it could ruin you financially. And yeah, you might
Speaker 1: be legally in the right, and you might get the
Speaker 1: judgment you wanted, but you'd still have to pay all
Speaker 1: that money to do it. You know, you're not going
Speaker 1: to get a reward for it other than like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out you didn't break the law. That's not
Speaker 1: much of a reward, right, Like, you would still owe
Speaker 1: all that money for the court cases. And that's the
Speaker 1: real crime here. I was figuratively speaking. It's the real
Speaker 1: crime here because it disincentivizes people from pursuing their actual
Speaker 1: rights because the system favors these big corporations that have
Speaker 1: the money to burn, and you know, worst case scenario
Speaker 1: for most of them, they'll settle out of court rather
Speaker 1: than pursue an expensive legal case that they might not win.
Speaker 1: But that's that's small potatoes compared to what it is
Speaker 1: for the individual. So yeah, I agree with Tom Scott.
Speaker 1: I do agree that the world's copyright system is broken
Speaker 1: because it was designed for a world where large publishers,
Speaker 1: or way back in the day, large book printers, we're
Speaker 1: trying to carve out a place for themselves and not
Speaker 1: have the competition unfairly copy works that they had access to.
Speaker 1: And now it's being applied to individuals and it just
Speaker 1: is not a good fit. So that's this full discussion
Speaker 1: about copyright, fair use and the related issues around it.
Speaker 1: Clearly there's a lot more we could go into. I
Speaker 1: didn't touch trademark law at all. That gets into more complications. Um,
Speaker 1: and there are other you know, there are other subtle
Speaker 1: things that we could really dive into, like the ethics
Speaker 1: of piracy. Uh. I think in most cases it's not ethical,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it could get very frustrating
Speaker 1: for someone if let's say there's a region lock where
Speaker 1: you want to access to a certain type of material,
Speaker 1: you are fully committed to purchasing it. You would buy
Speaker 1: it in a heartbeat if there were a way to
Speaker 1: do so, but because of the region lock, you don't
Speaker 1: have that opportunity. I could see people turning to piracy
Speaker 1: for that, not as a thing that's morally right. I mean,
Speaker 1: just because something exists doesn't mean you have a right
Speaker 1: to access it, but because there's no other option. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've felt that way about there's a British series I
Speaker 1: absolutely love. There is no way for me to get
Speaker 1: it here in the United States legally. Now I have
Speaker 1: not downloaded it illegally, I have not accessed it, you know, illegally. UM.
Speaker 1: I keep looking to see if there's ever going to
Speaker 1: be a US version that I can purchase, because I'll
Speaker 1: do it in a heartbeat. But I can certainly understand
Speaker 1: why someone who likes something like that would go to
Speaker 1: those links because there are no other options. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, if you create options for people to
Speaker 1: get stuff legally, people get stuff legally. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest issues that feeds into piracy is just a
Speaker 1: lack of access, which is pretty easy to fix. Enough
Speaker 1: of that soap bucks, I am going to climb down
Speaker 1: in or else I might fall off. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed these episodes about copyright and technology and how it's
Speaker 1: all messy, messy, messy. If you have suggestions for things
Speaker 1: I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, be
Speaker 1: sure to reach out. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is on Twitter handle for the show It's tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Y Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.