WEBVTT - The Copyright Hammer Meets the Internet 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey there, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.840 Joathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:20.439 I love all things tech, and the other day it 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.680 did a high level overview of copyright and fair use 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:28.160 to things that can be confusing to people in general 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.600 and people on the Internet in particular. Today we're going 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.559 to continue that and talk about some legislation in the 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:39.200 United States that ties into intellectual property rights and copyright 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:44.240 and why things are so ridiculously complicated and in some 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.839 cases extreme. Now. Towards the end of the last episode, 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.480 I mentioned a video by Tom Scott who explains copyright 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.800 in general and YouTube's solution to copyright issues in particular, 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.920 and we will definitely come back to that to talk 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.920 more about it. But it is good to get into 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.240 a bit more background on stuff. So early on in 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.200 the days of YouTube, there was a real problem of 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.880 people uploading videos that did not belong to them, which 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:14.959 honestly is still a thing that happens today, but now 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.480 there are various tools to handle it, and back then 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:20.600 there weren't. It was a different story in the early 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.160 days of YouTube. YouTube launched in two thousand five, and 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.640 at the time it was not part of Google's empire. 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.880 Google would actually purchase YouTube in October of two thousand six, 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.120 and in fact, it wasn't even the earliest platform that 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.600 allowed users to upload videos. Video had launched in two 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.640 thousand four. But YouTube had a couple of things going 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:43.840 for it, one of them being that it was fairly 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.480 easy to embed YouTube videos onto other pages. So if 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.160 you were creating like a blog and you wanted to 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.880 include a video on a blog entry, you could upload 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.720 the video to YouTube and then use an embettable player 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.440 and put that in your blog page and folks could 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.080 see it. This was a huge help if you were 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.120 using a blog hosting site that otherwise wouldn't be able 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.640 to host your video. Toward the end of two thousand five, 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.320 users uploaded copies of a video that Chris Parnell and 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:19.840 Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live had made, called Lazy Sunday. 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:24.680 The video went viral, but NBC, which had ownership rights 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.280 to the video, didn't really want folks watching it on 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.480 other platforms. NBC had its own website and would much 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.080 rather people go there to watch videos because that's where 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.640 NBC could serve up ads and generate revenue from user visits. 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.360 But with the video popping up all over YouTube, NBC 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:47.200 didn't have that kind of control or ability to monetize it, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.400 and so the huge and extremely well established media company 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.240 reached out to YouTube to make sure that the platform 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.839 would take down the videos, which YouTube did, and then 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.200 other people uploaded it. YouTube would take those videos down too, 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:08.160 and rents and repeat. Now, we know people upload videos 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.680 to YouTube at a rate that's far too fast for 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:15.000 anyone to review them before they go up. Right like 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.240 these days, it's more than a hundred hours of content 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.080 that are uploaded every single minute. You literally cannot have 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.240 enough people to review all the content going up on 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.079 YouTube to make sure that you know it all fits standards. 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.160 This is kind of stuff that shakes out over time. 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:35.240 So YouTube's general policy was that it would wait to 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.880 be told about a video that was violating copyright by 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.960 the copyright holder, and then after receiving a d m 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.440 c A takedown notice, would go and take down the video. 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:48.600 More about the d m c A in a second. Now, 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.320 YouTube included language in its user interface that urged users 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.600 not to upload stuff that they didn't actually own, So 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:59.240 you weren't supposed to upload any material that was copyrighted, 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:02.760 or rather any material that you personally did not hold 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.760 the copyright for. But users could choose to ignore this. 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.560 Some users might have, you know, been pretty ignorant about 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.640 the issues of copyrights, so they were doing it without 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.600 really understanding. But others might have known, but they just 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.920 you know, I didn't care, so they just went ahead 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:25.120 and uploaded it anyway. I mean, NBC is a big company, right, 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:27.880 and the video is a funny video, and YouTube is 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.680 where a lot of people were gathering and you could 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.479 get a lot of views over on YouTube. You could 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.080 upload it and suddenly that video goes viral and so 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.720 many people are watching your YouTube channel. But here's another complication. 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:44.000 YouTube did not introduce ads until the summer of two 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.479 thousand six. So this meant that YouTube users back in 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.640 two thousand five, we're not monetizing their videos because there 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.320 was no way to do that, at least not through 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:58.720 YouTube directly. I guess you could conceivably get noticed if 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:02.800 you were uploading interest ing or innovative videos, and you 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.000 might land a gig that way, Like it could be 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.920 almost like an audition or a demo reel. But there 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:12.520 wasn't really a way to make money directly off of 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:14.600 YouTube in those days, so it wasn't as though people 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.200 were uploading an NBC owned video and then they were 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:21.599 making money off of that. So at least there's that right. 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.800 Even though the video went viral and got a million views, 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.560 there was no monetization, so the person who uploaded it 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.240 wasn't like, you know, stealing money or anything like that. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:34.960 But as we learned in the last episode, you don't 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.320 have to monetize something for it to be an example 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.560 of copyright infringement. If I took a video that was 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.480 owned by someone else and I duplicated it and uploaded 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:47.080 it to YouTube, and even if I had all the 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:51.120 ads turned off for that video, it's still copyright infringement, 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:53.920 even if I'm not making any money off of it. Heck, 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:57.839 it's still copyright infringement even if no one ever sees 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.159 that I uploaded the video. I don't have the permission 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.480 to copy and distribute the content, period, so it doesn't 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:06.960 matter if folks see it or not, or if I 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.680 make money off of it or not. Anyway, NBC was 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.560 totally within the company's legal rights as the owner of 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:16.720 that I p to demand that YouTube take down the videos, 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:22.599 and YouTube complied again and again. YouTube complied because of 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.120 something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.120 c A. And in the last episode I talked about 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.800 laws that extended term limits of copyright repeatedly. Remember the 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.920 original term for copyright protection was fourteen years, and then 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.520 there was an option to renew for a second fourteen 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.480 year term, which would give you twenty eight years of 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:48.719 protection total. The US government expanded this repeatedly, and today 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.200 the rule is that copyright will last the lifetime of 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:57.000 the author plus an additional seventy years, or for works 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.560 that are owned by you know, corporations work for higher work. 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.360 In other words, copyright lasts from the year of publication 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.559 plus ninety five years, or it lasts from the date 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:14.160 of creation plus one hundred twenty years, whichever expires first. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.520 Because keep in mind, creation and publication are two different things. 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:21.080 Like someone might have written a book in nineteen seventy 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:26.200 that didn't see publication until In that case, you would 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.800 look and say, all right, well, we're gonna go from 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.960 the date of creation plus one hundred twenty years, because 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:36.160 that expires first. Those are big changes, no doubt about it, 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:38.880 to copyright law. I mean they were huge. They really 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.840 push back the date of when copyrighted works are going 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.840 to enter the public domain, at which point anyone can 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.240 make copies and distribute the works without penalty. But we 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.120 covered that in the last episode. So let's talk about 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.920 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m c A. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.480 So in the nineteen nineties, the technological landscape was changing quickly, 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.520 and with it, the ability to copy and distribute media 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:08.320 was also changing. While in previous decades, publishers and creators 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.520 really only had to worry about large entities potentially copying 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:17.240 stuff on a large scale, more recent technologies began to 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.800 make this a possibility for the average person. Now, media 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:25.840 companies were worried that a single person might, say, purchase 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.960 an album on compact disc, then they might rip that 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.080 disc and copy all the music files to a computer. 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.400 Then they might actually use a CD drive and burnable 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.839 c d s, and they might put blank CDs into 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.599 that drive and then you know, put the ripped files 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:47.720 onto the CD just thus duplicating CDs pretty easily and 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:50.720 relatively quickly. I mean it was fairly slow, but you 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:54.319 could actually get drives that could hold multiple blank CDs 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.520 and burn to all of them simultaneously, thus speeding up 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.920 the process. Then you might go and dis review those 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.520 burned c d s, or you might even sell them 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:05.760 to folks at a you know, a rate lower than 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:07.800 what they would pay if they went to the music store. 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:12.080 And that meant that now there was the potential for 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.360 an average person who had access to, you know, a 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:20.520 decent computer two, you know, commit copyright infringement on a 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.360 On a slightly larger scale, entertainment companies viewed this as 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:28.800 a potential existential threat, particularly the music industry in the 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:31.839 early days, because really, you know, we've got to keep 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:35.920 in mind, we're still talking about relatively small files and 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.280 the grand scheme of things, and music files like raw 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.360 audio files are pretty big, but they're not as big 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:48.079 as like a you know, uncompressed high resolution digital movie file. 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.040 And here's the funny thing. We would see the music 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.280 industry overreact to this in a way that had massive blowback, 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.640 and yet other industries would follow very similar pathways when 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:03.719 they faced a comparative scenario themselves a little later on. So, 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.840 to paraphrase the great comedian Peter cook. We learned from 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:12.000 our mistakes and we can repeat them almost exactly. The 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:14.600 d m c A itself was the U S law 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.280 that was meant to bring the US in alignment with 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:23.680 the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty. World Intellectual Property 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:28.120 Organization or WIPEOH is an organization that tries to align 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:35.040 copyright across different borders. This particular treaty was really necessary 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.520 because copyright law is already pretty complicated within a single 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.800 country like the US. Now, as you can imagine, it 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.840 gets way more complicated when you start comparing it against 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.800 other countries. So, like what happens if you have a 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.760 work that was created in the United States, like the 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:56.920 cartoons Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willy by US law receives ninety 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.480 five years of copyright protection when it's all said and done. 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.160 But over in some other countries copyright protection doesn't last 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.480 that long. So does that mean that Steamboat Willie would 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.719 be in the public domain over in that country? I mean, 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.080 the copyright is registered in the United States, But how 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:19.400 does that How does that work in other countries? How 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.040 do other countries recognize that? Anyway? The Whiteoat, as it were, 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.960 is the organization that helps get parody among countries. This 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:32.360 particular act focused on the new challenges of the digital age. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.440 One thing that the treaty and then consequently the d 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:42.000 m c A focused on was anti circumvention tools for 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:47.600 copyright protection. So they were looking at the fact that 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.280 companies were trying to put in protections to prevent people 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:55.240 from copying stuff without permission. Typically, this was in a 0:11:55.320 --> 0:12:00.120 category we would call DRM, or digital rights management. In 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.440 case you're not familiar with DRM, it's typically some sort 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.960 of protective measure in place that restricts or limits the 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:09.440 ability of a consumer to make a copy of a 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.720 piece of digital media. There are a lot of different 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:16.559 ways the companies have created DRM, and some of them 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:19.920 are truly awful. Let's talk about Sony for a second, 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.520 because this one was a doozy. In the mid two thousand's, 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.640 Sony was the target of some pretty massive criticism because 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:32.280 the company had implemented copy protection measures on compact discs 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:35.920 under the Sony BMG music label. And if you were 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:39.440 to take one of those compact discs and you were 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.199 to put it into the optical drive of a computer, 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.719 because by the way computers back then, most of them 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.560 had optical drives. Well anyway, the boot sequence once the 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:53.400 disc went into the drive would initiate an installation of 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:58.120 two pieces of software that were meant to act as DRM. 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:01.360 But what these pieces of software did was they altered 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.360 your computers operating system so that it wouldn't let you 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:10.120 copy the c D bam take that would be music 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:15.800 pirate except um oh. The programs also turned out it 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.880 could facilitate malware that could create backdoor access to your computer, 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:25.520 giving hackers potentially the remote control to your PC. Whoop 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.000 see daisy. They also were tracking lots of activity. They 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.360 were essentially looking to see what you were listening to 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:33.920 and how frequently you listened to it. It was a 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.199 big breach of privacy. So how many c d s 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.520 actually had this kind of DRM on it. It was 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:46.079 somewhere north of twenty million c ds. And the programs 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.720 that the CD installed on your machine were really hard 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.560 to identify and hard to remove, which made it much 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.240 much worse. And also the programs appeared to have some 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:01.800 code that was lifted from other software, which means ironically 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:07.760 that the copy protection software was itself infringing on someone 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:11.680 else's copyright. Sony would end up getting sued in several 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:15.440 class action lawsuits and eventually backtracked on its approach to 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.800 copy protection in two thousand and seven. But yeah, that 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:24.680 was a particularly egregious approach to DRM. Not all DRM 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.320 schemes were harmful to this degree, but all of them 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:34.240 did represent problems. See, while fair use isn't always easy 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:37.840 to establish, as I mentioned in the last episode, fair 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.240 use is still a thing. You still can make fair 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.960 use out of copyrighted material, but if companies put limitations 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:51.120 on how you can access or copy works, the ner 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:55.840 ability to make fair use of a copyrighted work is impacted. 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.200 You technically have the right to do something, but you 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:03.320 don't have any way to actually do it. When Congress 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.960 was drafting the d m c A, they acknowledged that 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:10.240 this was a problem, and they did it anyway. This 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:13.960 meant that even if your use of copyrighted work was 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:19.120 fair use. So let's say that you took uh some music, 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:23.200 you took some copyrighted music, and you did a critique 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.280 where you were explaining the structure of the song. You 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:31.120 were criticizing the use of music and lyrics like it 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.200 was a legit academic approach to treating the music but 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:39.800 you had to use the original work itself. Let's say 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.600 that it also meant you had to circumvent copy protection 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.880 on that digital work to do it. Well, the the 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.840 use was fair, right, it falls under fair use, but 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.560 you would still get in trouble for actually circumventing the 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.200 copy protection. This is kind of like saying, hey, I 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.240 got this stuff. It's behind this locked door over here. 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.760 You are totally free to use that stuff. There's only 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.720 one problem. The only way to get to the stuff 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.960 is if you commit breaking and entering, which by the way, 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.200 is a crime. But you're still free to use the 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:15.800 stuff as long as you can get to it. But 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:17.480 if you get to it, it shows that you've broken 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:19.760 the law. So have fun. Now you might be able 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:21.920 to tell I am not a big fan of this 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:24.520 part of the d m c A, or most copy 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.280 protection schemes for that matter. I find that a lot 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.760 of copy protection ends up causing more harm to legitimate 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:37.200 customers and consumers than it does to discourage piracy. If anything, 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:44.280 copy protection often encourages people to use piracy because part 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:49.000 of piracy typically means stripping away d r M, and 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.240 it may be that someone wants a copy of you know, 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:54.960 a piece of media that doesn't have DRM on it, 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.080 not because they just want to free copy or that 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.160 they want to distribute it or anything that they might 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.000 just want it because there's no hassle there. They don't 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.760 have to deal with the problems of dr M. There 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:11.680 are other issues about copyright that DRM totally interferes with. 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.359 One is that you do have the right to make 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:19.080 backups for your own personal use. If you have an album, 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:22.040 like an old vinyl record album, and you wanted to 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.040 back that up to cassette tape back in the day, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:27.800 you totally could do that as long as as long 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:29.880 as it was for your personal use, so that way, 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:33.760 if something were to happen, like you were to you know, 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.679 the the record was to be damaged or destroyed in 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.159 some way, you would have a backup. That's fine. You 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.320 were allowed to make those things, but DRM made it 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.159 harder or sometimes impossible to do that, So again it 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.479 was a protection that was infringing upon the rights of 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:54.080 the user. Another important part of d M c A 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:58.600 is a section that guarantees safe harbor to service providers, 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:00.879 which was originally can it or to be things like 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.880 I s p S Internet service providers. This provision makes 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:07.400 it clear that an I s P is not at 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.399 fault for the stuff that people on that I s 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.600 P are actually doing. So, in other words, if I'm 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.720 logging onto the Internet via earth Link and then I'm 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:21.639 pirating I don't know all of Poison's greatest hits, earth 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.880 Link isn't liable for the crime that I am committing. 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.199 The Safe Harbor had its own provisions in that the 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.919 provider would have to be unaware of my activity. So 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.480 in other words, if they knew about it, they should 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.720 stop it, but if they don't know about it, they're 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:38.879 not at fault. And also they have to have a 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:42.159 copyright policy in place. They are also supposed to have 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.520 a representative that's sort of a point of contact for 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:50.040 media companies to to reach in case of an issue 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:54.240 of copyright infringement that happens across that network. So the 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.280 I s P would react if notified that I was 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.040 up to no good, and as long as it did that, 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.600 then safe Harbor applies. This would later be extended to 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:06.960 web platforms like YouTube. More on YouTube later in this episode. 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:11.320 There were some other provisions that helped layout exceptions and 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.600 such for special cases, like when someone needs to do 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:17.560 computer maintenance, and so they might need to make copies 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:21.440 of software in the process, so that way during the maintenance, 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.520 if if they had to wipe a computer, they could 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.400 reinstall software. Those sort of exceptions were put into the law. 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:31.720 There's also a section in the d m c A 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:36.280 about boat holes as in ships, as in vessels, and 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.960 I am not kidding. Title five of the d m 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.359 c A is the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. And 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.919 you might say, what the heck is this just you know, 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.320 pork that's been added onto an act. Was where we're 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:53.080 big boats getting all up on Congress. It actually was 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.520 because at that point, boat hole designs were not covered 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.280 under copyright law. They were considered part of the form 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.800 and function of boats, so they couldn't they couldn't qualify 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:08.080 for copyright. However, designers wanted a way to protect their 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.880 designs from just being copied without their permission. So this 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.400 was kind of a way of building in some protection. Now, 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.040 when we come back, I'll talk about some instances in 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.520 which companies went a little bit ham when they went 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:23.879 after people who seemed to be in flagrant violation of 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:29.080 copyright laws, and how a few different websites truly wreaked 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:34.159 havoc and change the way companies viewed the protection of 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:45.959 intellectual property forever. But first let's take a quick break. Okay, 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:48.840 so the d M c A was really becoming a 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.040 thing because of the technology of c ds and computers 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.640 that could rip music tracks off of c ds. That 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.760 was really the big going concern in the mid nineties. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.360 That was more of a of a thing than digital 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.520 files were in general. But by the late nineties we 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.840 saw something that would make copying CDs seem tame by comparison. 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.760 We saw the rise of peer to peer file sharing 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.919 networks and later of torrents. Now, first let's clear up 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:19.919 the fact that peer to peer networks and infect torrents 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.840 aren't necessarily a bad thing. They could be used for 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:26.640 all sorts of legitimate purposes. I'll do a quick breakdown 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.040 of what peer to peer networks are and how they work. 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:31.880 And it helps if we start with the standard sort 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:34.320 of networks that we think of when we're talking about 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:38.800 the Internet. So when you use, say, um, a web browser, 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:41.920 and you're using your web browser to access a web page, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.240 what's kind of happening on the back end is that 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:50.240 your computer sends a request up through your internet service provider. 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:53.919 That request goes through routers which direct the request to 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:57.239 the proper web server that's hosting the web page you 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:01.280 want to visit. The web server response to that request 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:05.479 and sends back the respective web page data to your 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.280 web browser, which then displays it as a web page. 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:10.080 So you can kind of think of this system as 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.720 being made up of clients, which would be your computer, or, 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:18.600 more appropriately, in this example, your web browser and servers. 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.280 These are the computers that actually host the data that 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.119 you get to see on your computer now and appear 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.240 to peer network. Every computer that's part of that network 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.560 is an equal or a peer to every other computer 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:36.080 on that network. Each computer provides data and resources to 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.840 the network. Computer is connected to this network can easily 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:42.560 share the data they have stored on them with all 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.600 the other computers on that same network. And typically to 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.320 use a peer to peer network, you would download and 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:53.040 install some software that lets you connect to the network itself. 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:57.640 Usually you can designate a specific folder on your computer 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:01.600 as the place where you both download and share files, 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:05.240 which keeps the rest of your computer sequestered from the 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.920 peer to peer network, so you're not just sharing everything 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.720 peer to peer networks can be used for tons of stuff, 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:16.240 from harnessing the computational resources of a large group of 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:20.520 computers in order to tackle you know, tough computer problems 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:24.160 all the way to distributing software quickly through the network. 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:27.680 But the thing that the entertainment industry in general and 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:31.640 the music industry in particular was focusing on was how 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:35.400 it could facilitate piracy. In the late nineties, we saw 0:23:35.440 --> 0:23:39.680 the rise of products like Napster and Khaza and lime 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:44.800 wire and many many others. Napster was the pioneer in 0:23:44.840 --> 0:23:48.600 this space. It was a peer to peer networking software 0:23:49.119 --> 0:23:53.560 and people were using it largely to pirate music. People 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:57.080 would rip songs from c d s and convert the 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:01.320 audio files into compressed formats like MP three because raw 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:03.880 audio files were just so big and broadband speeds were 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:08.480 not super advanced back in the mid nineties. So then 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.760 these compressed files they would store on a shared drive, 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:15.040 they would PLoP onto the peer to peer networks, and 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:17.280 then they would start building out their own collections. They 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:19.640 would offer up the stuff they had and they would 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:22.920 add to their collections from you know, other computers that 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:26.600 were on the network. These services allowed people to search 0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:30.760 out rare bootlegs and other recordings that you couldn't just buy, 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:35.280 like stuff that wasn't available commercially. However, it also allowed 0:24:35.400 --> 0:24:38.679 people to download tons of music that you could, in 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:42.760 theory purchase, but you know, you just opted to download 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:46.479 them for free, so people pirated music like crazy. This 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:50.720 was also an era where malware was running rampant because 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:54.439 a lot of people could upload or share malware on 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:59.240 their computers that posed as if it were say a 0:24:59.359 --> 0:25:02.639 music five l or a software package for like a 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:06.600 game or something. So this was also a buyer beware, 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:10.679 or rather pirate beware era where there was a chance 0:25:11.160 --> 0:25:13.760 that that you know, the song you were about to 0:25:13.800 --> 0:25:17.639 download was in fact, you know, a virus or some 0:25:17.680 --> 0:25:21.800 other form of malware. Now, some people went so wild, 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:26.800 so crazy, they went hug wild in fact, over downloading 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:30.640 music that places like colleges and universities began to ban 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:35.680 access to Napster simply because the Internet traffic from all 0:25:35.720 --> 0:25:39.399 the downloading was clogging things up. So this wasn't because 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:43.520 colleges and universities were necessarily being contacted by you know, 0:25:43.600 --> 0:25:47.600 big record labels or anything. It was more like, hey, 0:25:48.560 --> 0:25:51.879 no one can send an email because everyone over at 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:55.520 five cap of five is downloading the new Britney Spears album. 0:25:55.600 --> 0:25:59.399 So they started to shut down access to it. Napster 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:03.040 lawn in nine, but by two thousand it had become 0:26:03.080 --> 0:26:07.480 the target of numerous lawsuits, with various acts like Metallica 0:26:07.560 --> 0:26:12.040 and music labels and music label industry organizations like the 0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:15.199 r I double A all going after the service. The 0:26:15.320 --> 0:26:18.639 argument was that the service was overwhelmingly being used as 0:26:18.680 --> 0:26:21.680 a way to pirate music on a large scale, and 0:26:21.880 --> 0:26:24.240 it was a pretty big scale. Napster had something like 0:26:24.320 --> 0:26:28.919 eighty million users at one point. Napster took cases all 0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:30.680 the way up to the U. S. Court of Appeals 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:34.199 for the Ninth Circuit. They kept appealing the judgments and 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:37.760 they were trying to argue that the underlying service wasn't 0:26:37.800 --> 0:26:42.040 tied directly to music piracy, and the court agreed that 0:26:42.119 --> 0:26:46.000 there were valid and legal ways to use Napster, that 0:26:46.680 --> 0:26:53.240 the way Napster distributed information on its own wasn't necessarily illegal. However, 0:26:54.000 --> 0:26:59.199 the vast majority of traffic across Napster was illegal, so 0:26:59.240 --> 0:27:02.679 the court order that Napster developed a system to curtail 0:27:03.240 --> 0:27:06.879 the rampant piracy and Napster really couldn't do that. The 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:09.600 problem was such a big one the company just didn't 0:27:09.600 --> 0:27:12.800 have the means to tackle it, So Napster shut down 0:27:12.840 --> 0:27:15.800 in two thousand one. Now you could argue that if 0:27:15.800 --> 0:27:18.600 a company is told, hey, you got to get a 0:27:18.600 --> 0:27:20.720 handle on this, and the company says, well, we gotta 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:22.520 shut down because we can't get a handle on it, 0:27:22.920 --> 0:27:26.200 that there was a legitimate problem. That doesn't take away 0:27:26.240 --> 0:27:29.480 from the fact that the underlying technology that made Napster 0:27:29.560 --> 0:27:34.840 work has nothing, you know, inherently to do with piracy. 0:27:34.880 --> 0:27:38.199 It can be used for that, but it's not the No, 0:27:38.400 --> 0:27:41.640 that's not the purpose of the tech. But it's kind 0:27:41.640 --> 0:27:45.439 of hard to argue against the practical results of the 0:27:45.520 --> 0:27:49.800 use of that technology. And lots of other services similar 0:27:49.840 --> 0:27:53.680 to Napster popped up like they essentially became really popular 0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:57.960 after Napster went away, so piracy was still going like gangbusters. 0:27:58.480 --> 0:28:01.239 Perhaps one of the biggest reason was that, you know, 0:28:01.400 --> 0:28:04.199 there was such a problem with piracy was that it 0:28:04.280 --> 0:28:07.920 was legitimately difficult for music lovers to find and purchase 0:28:08.160 --> 0:28:13.399 digital music online. There weren't really any viable alternatives to 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:16.920 just stealing it. I mean, some companies were offering up 0:28:17.040 --> 0:28:20.720 limited access to their catalogs through their own digital storefronts, 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:24.639 but not very many people were offering up digital downloads 0:28:24.680 --> 0:28:27.920 for purchase. It was not easy to find or buy 0:28:28.000 --> 0:28:32.440 stuff when Apple launched iTunes in two thousand one. At 0:28:32.440 --> 0:28:35.439 that time, iTunes was just a way to rip music 0:28:35.480 --> 0:28:38.760 tracks from c d s and have a digital collection 0:28:38.800 --> 0:28:42.680 of music on your Apple computer or your iPod or whatever. 0:28:43.000 --> 0:28:46.479 But you could not purchase digital songs through iTunes at 0:28:46.560 --> 0:28:49.520 all when it launched. It wasn't until two thousand three 0:28:49.920 --> 0:28:53.840 that the iTunes music store actually came online, so in 0:28:53.880 --> 0:28:57.720 the absence of a legitimate way to purchase music, folks 0:28:57.760 --> 0:29:00.880 turned to illegal means to get it. Now, does this 0:29:00.960 --> 0:29:03.800 mean that if there had been legal ways to buy 0:29:04.040 --> 0:29:07.600 music easily, that piracy wouldn't have been a problem at all. 0:29:08.240 --> 0:29:11.480 Probably not. I'm sure that there had been plenty of 0:29:11.480 --> 0:29:13.360 people who would still want to try and just get 0:29:13.360 --> 0:29:15.760 stuff for free rather than pay for it, But I 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:18.360 bet that piracy wouldn't have been as large of a 0:29:18.400 --> 0:29:22.440 problem as it was. The music industry would after numerous 0:29:22.480 --> 0:29:26.280 cases of people who had downloaded songs, often coupling their 0:29:26.360 --> 0:29:31.640 lawsuits with demands for enormous sums and damages. The goals 0:29:31.640 --> 0:29:35.400 seemed to be not to recapture lost revenue, but to 0:29:35.520 --> 0:29:39.000 scare the ever love and heck out of would be pirates. 0:29:39.440 --> 0:29:43.240 The lawsuits were making examples of people and the message 0:29:43.280 --> 0:29:47.600 was you do not want this to happen to you. 0:29:47.600 --> 0:29:50.120 You see what it's doing to this person, so you 0:29:50.200 --> 0:29:54.880 better not steal any music bucko. So, for example, the 0:29:54.920 --> 0:29:58.120 Recording Industry Association of America the r I double A, 0:29:59.200 --> 0:30:02.760 they sued more were than eighteen thousand individuals in the 0:30:02.760 --> 0:30:06.320 mid two thousand's for illegally sharing music, and in some 0:30:06.400 --> 0:30:12.840 cases they sawt truly astronomical damages in that in that endeavor. 0:30:13.320 --> 0:30:15.600 So in one case, the r I Double A sought 0:30:15.760 --> 0:30:20.240 one point five million dollars and damages against a woman 0:30:20.400 --> 0:30:23.719 that the organization said had downloaded and distributed more than 0:30:23.800 --> 0:30:29.480 seventeen hundred songs. Now the lawsuit only included twenty four 0:30:29.920 --> 0:30:32.880 songs in it, and they were asking for damages of 0:30:32.960 --> 0:30:37.240 one and a half million dollars. This was just one case. 0:30:38.000 --> 0:30:41.320 By the way, the woman lost that case. She appealed it, 0:30:41.440 --> 0:30:45.560 she refused to take a settlement out of court, and 0:30:45.800 --> 0:30:49.160 she lost the case multiple times. UM, I actually don't 0:30:49.200 --> 0:30:51.760 know what the current status is of that case, because 0:30:51.760 --> 0:30:55.760 the last I had heard, she had planned on declaring bankruptcy, 0:30:55.920 --> 0:30:58.920 which would get her out of the need to to pay. 0:30:59.680 --> 0:31:01.880 The amount that was being asked for at that point 0:31:01.920 --> 0:31:05.040 was more than two thousand dollars. There were thousands of 0:31:05.040 --> 0:31:07.760 these types of cases, and most of them were settled 0:31:07.800 --> 0:31:10.520 out of court. They didn't actually go to trial. But 0:31:10.600 --> 0:31:14.280 it was a really effective intimidation tactic, and it was 0:31:14.320 --> 0:31:18.440 one that was based largely on faulty logic. So what 0:31:18.480 --> 0:31:21.760 do I mean by that, Well, the way the entertainment industry, 0:31:21.880 --> 0:31:25.360 and it's not just the music labels, the the film 0:31:25.400 --> 0:31:28.440 industry and television industry would do the same thing. The 0:31:28.480 --> 0:31:31.120 way they would figure out, you know, how much how 0:31:31.240 --> 0:31:34.200 much damage is they would ask for was essentially based 0:31:34.240 --> 0:31:36.920 on the idea that really doesn't hold water when you 0:31:36.960 --> 0:31:40.280 look into it, and that idea is that each pirated 0:31:40.360 --> 0:31:44.360 copy of a piece of media represents a lost sale. So, 0:31:44.400 --> 0:31:47.240 in other words, the argument is that if people had 0:31:47.320 --> 0:31:50.920 not stolen things, then those same people would have gone 0:31:50.920 --> 0:31:55.640 and bought a legitimate copy. So in other words, every download, 0:31:56.120 --> 0:32:00.000 every illegal download, represents a lost sale and lost revenue. 0:32:00.240 --> 0:32:03.840 But that's just not necessarily true. It's possible that someone 0:32:03.920 --> 0:32:07.560 might download a piece of media just out of curiosity alone, 0:32:08.000 --> 0:32:10.800 and they have no real desire to own it. That 0:32:10.920 --> 0:32:14.560 kind of person would perhaps never have bought a copy 0:32:14.640 --> 0:32:17.160 of the media at all. They would have just gone without. 0:32:17.760 --> 0:32:20.800 And because we're talking about digital files here, you're not 0:32:20.880 --> 0:32:23.840 looking at the physical loss of a product. It's not 0:32:23.880 --> 0:32:26.720 like going into a store and shoplifting, you know, c 0:32:26.920 --> 0:32:29.480 d s or something. If you did that, while the store, 0:32:29.760 --> 0:32:31.360 you know, would be out those c d s, it 0:32:31.400 --> 0:32:34.320 wouldn't be able to sell any that those specific CDs 0:32:34.320 --> 0:32:37.840 because they would just have been stolen. Digital files, however, 0:32:38.280 --> 0:32:40.240 those are things you just copy. You can make an 0:32:40.240 --> 0:32:43.160 infinite number of copies of digital files, or at least, 0:32:43.560 --> 0:32:47.200 you know, effectively infinite. Obviously you're limited by however much 0:32:47.200 --> 0:32:49.600 storage space you have, but you get the idea. There's 0:32:49.600 --> 0:32:54.120 no scarcity to digital files. So it's a different matter. 0:32:54.680 --> 0:32:58.560 Even the US Government Accountability Office found that the formulas 0:32:58.680 --> 0:33:02.160 that the entertainment industry were using when they were trying 0:33:02.200 --> 0:33:05.959 to make claims of damages just were not supportable. So 0:33:06.000 --> 0:33:09.440 it's not that piracy has no effect on sales. It 0:33:09.880 --> 0:33:13.160 definitely has some effect on sales. But it's more that 0:33:13.240 --> 0:33:17.360 you can't quantify what that effect on sales is. And 0:33:17.360 --> 0:33:20.600 if you can't quantify it, then you can't really assign 0:33:20.760 --> 0:33:24.000 a value to losses because it's impossible to say what 0:33:24.080 --> 0:33:27.560 the losses were. But for several years in the two 0:33:27.560 --> 0:33:31.040 thousands that didn't matter. The r I, double A and 0:33:31.120 --> 0:33:34.480 other organizations tried to crack them on piracy hard, and 0:33:34.520 --> 0:33:38.000 the industry as a whole earned a pretty ugly reputation 0:33:38.040 --> 0:33:41.520 as a result. The courts often found in the favor 0:33:42.120 --> 0:33:44.920 of industry, but it meant that, like everyone was looking 0:33:44.960 --> 0:33:47.800 at these companies and saying, what the heck are you doing. 0:33:47.840 --> 0:33:52.160 You're going after, you know, regular people and demanding these 0:33:52.240 --> 0:33:56.680 astronomical damages. What's really interesting to me is that the 0:33:56.760 --> 0:34:01.120 solution for piracy wasn't really in these gratuitous lawsuits and damages. 0:34:01.160 --> 0:34:04.080 People were still pirrating stuff, it's just that you know 0:34:04.120 --> 0:34:06.320 they were doing so running the risk of being one 0:34:06.360 --> 0:34:09.040 of the examples that would be brought up in a 0:34:09.040 --> 0:34:12.640 court case. And the solution wasn't even in working with 0:34:12.719 --> 0:34:16.920 online stores like iTunes, though that did change things quite 0:34:16.960 --> 0:34:19.920 a bit. The solution was really the method of delivery 0:34:20.040 --> 0:34:25.480 gradually shifting from downloads to streaming, and this was facilitated 0:34:25.480 --> 0:34:28.640 by the rise of the smartphone and the improvement of 0:34:28.680 --> 0:34:33.640 wireless technologies. Why would you pirate music when practically every 0:34:33.680 --> 0:34:37.640 song you have ever heard is available on some streaming platform. 0:34:38.239 --> 0:34:41.439 Lots of them are even ad supported and otherwise free 0:34:41.480 --> 0:34:43.480 to use, so you don't even have to pay a 0:34:43.480 --> 0:34:46.120 subscription to them, so you can listen to these songs 0:34:46.160 --> 0:34:49.480 whenever you like, as long as you have an Internet connection. 0:34:50.120 --> 0:34:53.360 That is what helped pull back music piracy, and the 0:34:53.400 --> 0:34:58.520 fact that the access to the content suddenly became way 0:34:58.640 --> 0:35:02.680 easier and there was no reason to run the risk 0:35:02.760 --> 0:35:07.239 of being an example. But the improvements in broadband connectivity 0:35:08.000 --> 0:35:10.320 would bring with it the chance for people to download 0:35:10.360 --> 0:35:13.160 not just music, but also stuff like TV shows and 0:35:13.239 --> 0:35:16.720 movies and video games. These groups didn't have to worry 0:35:16.800 --> 0:35:18.880 as much in the early days. I mean, video games 0:35:19.000 --> 0:35:21.000 kind of did, but they were starting to get so 0:35:21.000 --> 0:35:25.120 sophisticated that the you know, the cutting edge video games 0:35:25.120 --> 0:35:27.760 of the time were so big most people just didn't 0:35:27.760 --> 0:35:29.800 have the band whip to download them in a reasonable 0:35:29.800 --> 0:35:33.640 amount of time, so they weren't really considerations. However, once 0:35:33.680 --> 0:35:37.320 broadband started catching up that changed. Now, the music industry 0:35:37.360 --> 0:35:39.759 had already gone through this whole process, and you would 0:35:39.760 --> 0:35:41.719 think that these other industries would have looked at that 0:35:41.960 --> 0:35:44.960 and said, all right, well, what worked, what didn't work, 0:35:45.360 --> 0:35:48.480 and will follow best practices, But really they mostly doubled 0:35:48.520 --> 0:35:51.000 down on going the same route that the music industry 0:35:51.040 --> 0:35:54.120 did with pretty similar results. So it's hard to feel 0:35:54.200 --> 0:35:58.759 much sympathy for these multibillion dollar media companies versus the 0:35:58.800 --> 0:36:02.240 individuals who made downloaded a copy of X Men origins 0:36:02.239 --> 0:36:07.520 Wolverine without permission. Companies began lobbying US Congress to once 0:36:07.560 --> 0:36:11.759 again create more legislation that would impose harsher penalties on 0:36:11.920 --> 0:36:16.520 people illegally downloading content, and more importantly, on ways to 0:36:16.680 --> 0:36:20.920 prevent sites that were facilitating these kinds of downloads. The 0:36:20.960 --> 0:36:24.200 Pirate Bay, a site that specialized in serving as sort 0:36:24.200 --> 0:36:27.480 of a database or almost like a Yellow Pages of 0:36:27.560 --> 0:36:31.480 torrent files of various types of media, was constantly in 0:36:31.520 --> 0:36:34.120 the news at this time, and the global nature of 0:36:34.120 --> 0:36:37.520 the Internet meant that sites like the Pirate Bay, which 0:36:37.560 --> 0:36:41.239 was founded in Sweden, which last I checked, is not 0:36:41.360 --> 0:36:44.160 in the United States. It meant that they were beyond 0:36:44.160 --> 0:36:47.600 the jurisdiction of the US. So you have these big 0:36:47.719 --> 0:36:50.759 US based media companies that really wanted to have a 0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:54.239 way to shut down this foreign service, and there just 0:36:54.320 --> 0:36:57.600 weren't many options. It wasn't like they could target a 0:36:57.680 --> 0:36:59.920 YouTube that's based in the United States and make the 0:37:00.080 --> 0:37:03.760 man's you know. They could try and target a Swedish company, 0:37:03.840 --> 0:37:05.480 but that company is saying like, ha ha, you have 0:37:05.520 --> 0:37:08.840 no power here, be gone with you. Moreover, the Pirate 0:37:08.840 --> 0:37:11.680 Bay was just one example, and now the possibility of 0:37:11.719 --> 0:37:13.960 companies in different parts of the world allowing for the 0:37:14.080 --> 0:37:17.840 mass piracy of various types of media was once again 0:37:17.920 --> 0:37:22.320 seen as an existential threat. You could make a pretty 0:37:22.320 --> 0:37:26.600 convincing argument that the history of modern media is a 0:37:26.640 --> 0:37:30.960 series of the industry reacting to something as an existential threat, 0:37:31.640 --> 0:37:34.440 because that's kind of what we see here in the 0:37:34.520 --> 0:37:37.440 United States. What we saw is a consequence of this 0:37:37.600 --> 0:37:41.200 was the proposal of two different but very similar pieces 0:37:41.239 --> 0:37:44.000 of legislation, one in the House of Representatives and one 0:37:44.040 --> 0:37:46.840 in the U S. Senate. There was the Stop Online 0:37:46.840 --> 0:37:49.880 Piracy Act or SOPA, that was the Senate one, and 0:37:49.920 --> 0:37:53.080 there was the Protect I p Act or PIPPA, which 0:37:53.080 --> 0:37:55.399 was the House of Representatives one. Both of those were 0:37:55.400 --> 0:37:59.960 being written around, and the intended purpose of these proposed 0:38:00.120 --> 0:38:04.040 acts was to act as protection for I P holders 0:38:04.120 --> 0:38:08.840 in the United States from the nefarious doings of overseas entities. 0:38:09.239 --> 0:38:13.680 But the solutions were pretty drastic, including the possibility that 0:38:14.440 --> 0:38:18.120 you know, these companies could force governments or or demand 0:38:18.160 --> 0:38:21.680 for governments to order US based I s p s 0:38:21.920 --> 0:38:25.280 to cut off all access to certain sites. In other words, 0:38:25.320 --> 0:38:28.680 to tell US based I s p s, hey don't 0:38:28.719 --> 0:38:32.520 allow any U r l s from these domains to 0:38:32.600 --> 0:38:35.280 be accessible in the United States. So, in other words, 0:38:35.560 --> 0:38:38.440 there would be parts of the Internet that US citizens 0:38:38.440 --> 0:38:42.200 would not be allowed to access, at least not legally 0:38:42.280 --> 0:38:45.120 and not without the aid of something like a VPN 0:38:45.200 --> 0:38:49.200 located in another country. Critics pointed out that this approach 0:38:49.280 --> 0:38:53.440 would have massive consequences with regard to free speech, and 0:38:53.480 --> 0:38:57.360 beyond that, applying the rules would be difficult and uneven. 0:38:57.920 --> 0:39:00.799 People envisioned a scenario in which U S I s 0:39:00.840 --> 0:39:03.360 p s would have to block access to an entire 0:39:03.440 --> 0:39:07.759 domain because of potentially what one blogger posted on a 0:39:07.800 --> 0:39:11.600 single blog that was located on that domain. So this 0:39:11.680 --> 0:39:14.719 was like a nuclear option that would potentially affect far 0:39:14.840 --> 0:39:18.080 more you know, innocent people than it would for those 0:39:18.080 --> 0:39:22.080 who were actually perpetrating the alleged crimes. A large collection 0:39:22.080 --> 0:39:25.320 of web based companies help protests in early two thousand twelve, 0:39:25.880 --> 0:39:30.000 using a blackout on their web pages to inform visitors 0:39:30.080 --> 0:39:33.520 of the issue and essentially going dark, and the results 0:39:33.520 --> 0:39:37.240 were dramatic. Politicians who had previously expressed support for either 0:39:37.320 --> 0:39:42.440 PIPPA or SOPA abruptly reversed course, including people who had 0:39:42.480 --> 0:39:45.600 sponsored the bills in the first place. So the two 0:39:45.600 --> 0:39:52.000 pieces of legislation were withdrawn from being voted upon the floor. Now, 0:39:52.520 --> 0:39:55.560 the reason they were withdrawn is because if Congress had 0:39:55.600 --> 0:39:59.520 held a vote and the legislation was voted down, that 0:39:59.520 --> 0:40:01.680 would be pretty much the end of that. But by 0:40:01.719 --> 0:40:05.880 removing the bills from consideration, the authors of the bills 0:40:06.000 --> 0:40:08.200 and their supporters would have some time to work on 0:40:08.239 --> 0:40:11.800 it further and potentially reintroduce the bill at a later 0:40:11.920 --> 0:40:16.800 date once the political climate changed. So far that hasn't happened. 0:40:17.120 --> 0:40:19.160 But when we come back, I'll spend some time talking 0:40:19.200 --> 0:40:22.640 a little bit more about copyright and YouTube's specific approach 0:40:22.960 --> 0:40:27.439 to handling copyright claims. But first, let's take another quick 0:40:27.480 --> 0:40:37.799 break Okay, let's talk about YouTube and copyright now. As 0:40:37.840 --> 0:40:41.160 I mentioned, YouTube has a long history with copyright issues, 0:40:41.480 --> 0:40:45.040 and for a while, the general approach was that company 0:40:45.200 --> 0:40:48.360 would claim a copyright ownership of some or all of 0:40:48.400 --> 0:40:51.440 the content that was in a YouTube video, and they 0:40:51.480 --> 0:40:54.320 would send a d m C A takedown notice to YouTube, 0:40:54.760 --> 0:40:59.399 which then would typically take down the video in question. Uh, 0:40:59.440 --> 0:41:02.360 the user or owner of the channel would get a 0:41:02.400 --> 0:41:05.520 copyright strike against them, and if you've got three strikes, 0:41:05.800 --> 0:41:08.280 the channel would get wiped, the account would be deleted, 0:41:08.320 --> 0:41:13.120 all those videos would be removed. Now, ideally, each d 0:41:13.480 --> 0:41:17.080 m C A claim would go through a thorough review 0:41:17.239 --> 0:41:20.360 by some other party to make sure that the claim 0:41:20.440 --> 0:41:24.440 was legitimate. You have to verify that the claimant actually 0:41:24.520 --> 0:41:27.440 holds the rights to the i P in question. You 0:41:27.480 --> 0:41:30.600 have to determine if the use of any material falls 0:41:30.680 --> 0:41:34.160 under the category of fair use, which means that the 0:41:34.200 --> 0:41:37.360 inclusion of that material in the video would need to 0:41:37.400 --> 0:41:41.240 be proven to be you know, legitimate. And YouTube built 0:41:41.320 --> 0:41:44.000 in systems that would let channel owners dispute d m 0:41:44.080 --> 0:41:48.440 C A takedown charges, essentially pushing the matter into arbitration 0:41:48.520 --> 0:41:51.200 that would then ultimately have to go to court. So 0:41:52.440 --> 0:41:55.480 quick overview. Let's say I put up a video. Let's 0:41:55.480 --> 0:41:57.840 say I've got some material in there in the video 0:41:57.920 --> 0:42:01.200 that belongs to someone else, and I get a d 0:42:01.280 --> 0:42:03.440 m C A takedown notice, so YouTube has taken the 0:42:03.520 --> 0:42:06.239 video down. I get a copyright strike against me. I 0:42:06.280 --> 0:42:11.080 decide to dispute this YouTube sends that back to the 0:42:11.160 --> 0:42:16.040 copyright holder, who if they don't respond, then YouTube just 0:42:16.160 --> 0:42:19.160 lifts it and the video comes back online. But if 0:42:19.200 --> 0:42:22.000 they do respond, then essentially the next step is you 0:42:22.080 --> 0:42:25.480 go to court over it. So it wasn't like a 0:42:25.680 --> 0:42:29.759 super awesome thing for the individual because court cases are 0:42:29.880 --> 0:42:35.400 incredibly expensive um and there were some court cases around 0:42:35.480 --> 0:42:39.480 videos containing copyrighted material that helped establish the law around it. So, 0:42:39.560 --> 0:42:42.479 for example, in two thousand eight, a U. S. Court 0:42:42.600 --> 0:42:45.680 ruled that copyright holders couldn't just send a d m 0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:48.759 C a takedown notice unless they first determined that the 0:42:48.880 --> 0:42:52.000 use of the material in the video in question fell 0:42:52.080 --> 0:42:55.120 under a fair use scenario. Because if it is fair use, 0:42:55.520 --> 0:42:57.920 the copyright holder is not supposed to send out the 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:02.200 takedown notice. The key raise there is they're not supposed to. 0:43:02.600 --> 0:43:07.439 It doesn't mean that they necessarily held back flash forward though, 0:43:07.719 --> 0:43:10.160 Google acquired YouTube in two thousand and six, and then 0:43:10.200 --> 0:43:12.920 by two thousand seven started to develop a system that 0:43:13.000 --> 0:43:16.920 acted sort of like a digital finger printing system for companies. 0:43:17.320 --> 0:43:21.080 So it's a system that could scan videos that have 0:43:21.160 --> 0:43:24.439 been uploaded to YouTube and look for patterns in those 0:43:24.520 --> 0:43:29.040 videos that matched a database of copyrighted material owned by 0:43:29.239 --> 0:43:33.319 you know, each individual large media company. So if there 0:43:33.360 --> 0:43:37.799 were a match, well, then you would get a notification saying, hey, 0:43:37.800 --> 0:43:41.279 you've got this possible case of someone making use of 0:43:41.280 --> 0:43:45.279 your copyrighted material without your permission, and then you could 0:43:45.280 --> 0:43:49.480 flag the video. Following that the owner of the I 0:43:49.640 --> 0:43:52.839 P and question so big media company, in other words, 0:43:53.400 --> 0:43:56.080 would have a few options. They could choose to block 0:43:56.160 --> 0:43:59.319 the video completely, which just made it unreachable, or they 0:43:59.320 --> 0:44:02.320 could choose to add advertisements to the video, or to 0:44:02.520 --> 0:44:06.640 co opt existing advertisements and claim the revenue generated by 0:44:06.640 --> 0:44:09.600 the ads for itself. So in other words, yeah, you 0:44:09.600 --> 0:44:12.040 can keep your video up. We're going to collect any 0:44:12.120 --> 0:44:15.040 money that's generated from the fact that you have this 0:44:15.200 --> 0:44:19.239 video there. This was originally called video identification, but later 0:44:19.280 --> 0:44:22.760 became known as Content i D. In two thousand eleven, 0:44:22.800 --> 0:44:26.040 the system went into effect in earnest, and the result 0:44:26.160 --> 0:44:29.600 was that content owners could get revenue from videos that 0:44:29.719 --> 0:44:33.120 included their content, or they could order the videos to 0:44:33.120 --> 0:44:35.880 be totally removed, but that seemed to be slightly less prevalent. 0:44:36.040 --> 0:44:39.480 It does still happen occasionally, but more often than not 0:44:39.560 --> 0:44:41.720 people just say no, I'm just happy to take the money. 0:44:42.160 --> 0:44:46.080 This approach automates stuff. It removes any human review process, 0:44:46.080 --> 0:44:48.880 which also means that no one is really checking to 0:44:48.920 --> 0:44:51.919 make sure that the flagged video is actually infringing upon 0:44:52.000 --> 0:44:55.040 copyright or that it's not a case of fair use. 0:44:55.440 --> 0:44:59.160 So it falls on the channel owner to dispute claims 0:44:59.239 --> 0:45:02.960 and to push for reviews. Meanwhile, if you do get 0:45:03.040 --> 0:45:05.720 hit with enough flags, you might find your whole channel 0:45:05.760 --> 0:45:08.919 shut down and once again, want to refer to Tom 0:45:09.040 --> 0:45:13.040 Scott's great video on this subject, titled YouTube's Copyright System 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:17.480 Isn't Broken, The World's is. Scott gives a personal example 0:45:17.560 --> 0:45:21.120 of a time when the content I D system totally failed. 0:45:21.520 --> 0:45:25.000 So Scott is an independent creator with an impressive following 0:45:25.040 --> 0:45:28.920 of more than three point eight million subscribers. He uploaded 0:45:28.920 --> 0:45:32.040 a video to YouTube and a TV company in Thailand 0:45:32.320 --> 0:45:36.600 took that video incorporated it into a Thai television show 0:45:36.640 --> 0:45:41.799 without asking Scott's permission, and then subsequently uploaded that television 0:45:42.000 --> 0:45:45.680 show episode to YouTube, which is pretty brazen, but what 0:45:45.760 --> 0:45:49.800 happened next was even more so. The company then flagged 0:45:49.880 --> 0:45:54.120 Scott's original video. See content idea as a tool that's 0:45:54.160 --> 0:45:58.680 really only available to big, established media companies. The average 0:45:58.680 --> 0:46:02.480 person does not have access to content i D. So 0:46:02.560 --> 0:46:06.080 this TV company used its access to content i D 0:46:06.320 --> 0:46:10.440 to flag Scott's original video. In other words, the video 0:46:10.680 --> 0:46:15.920 he had made uploaded, and then they subsequently stole and used. 0:46:16.520 --> 0:46:19.239 Scott says it took quite a lot of time to 0:46:19.320 --> 0:46:21.480 sort it all out and to establish that the video 0:46:21.680 --> 0:46:24.920 was in fact his original work, and then it was 0:46:24.960 --> 0:46:29.560 the Tie company that was in violation of copyright, not Scott. Now, 0:46:29.600 --> 0:46:32.640 content i D is a tool that can be revoked, 0:46:32.680 --> 0:46:35.799 so if a company abuses it, there's a chance that 0:46:35.880 --> 0:46:39.280 YouTube will remove the company's access to content i D. 0:46:39.920 --> 0:46:43.000 Tom Scott himself says in that video that he doesn't 0:46:43.000 --> 0:46:46.200 know if that Tie company still has access to content 0:46:46.280 --> 0:46:49.080 i D or not, but it is a pretty clear 0:46:49.840 --> 0:46:53.120 case where he was very much the one who was 0:46:53.200 --> 0:46:57.319 being the victim of abuse that this Tie company was 0:46:57.360 --> 0:47:00.600 abusing the content i D tool in the worst way. 0:47:01.520 --> 0:47:04.200 That being said, Scott also points out that content i 0:47:04.320 --> 0:47:08.520 D works around issues that otherwise would have pretty bleak results. 0:47:08.560 --> 0:47:11.400 So because of content i D, a video can stay 0:47:11.480 --> 0:47:14.719 up even if it is making what would otherwise be 0:47:14.760 --> 0:47:18.040 considered illegal use of someone else's i P. It's just 0:47:18.160 --> 0:47:20.520 that this someone else would be the one to benefit 0:47:20.600 --> 0:47:24.160 and monetize that video. So for the vast majority of 0:47:24.200 --> 0:47:27.080 YouTube users this isn't really that big of a deal 0:47:27.120 --> 0:47:30.239 because most of them aren't YouTube partners. Most of them 0:47:30.280 --> 0:47:34.480 are not monetizing videos in the first place. For creators 0:47:34.520 --> 0:47:38.600 who are monetizing their videos, such as big time let's 0:47:38.640 --> 0:47:42.600 play gamers or movie critics or you know, things like that, 0:47:43.280 --> 0:47:46.360 it's still very much an issue it if the work 0:47:46.400 --> 0:47:50.120 that they're doing does fall under fair use, they have 0:47:50.200 --> 0:47:53.080 to appeal to try and get flagged videos unflagged and 0:47:53.120 --> 0:47:57.120 to return monetization to their own channels. Another point that 0:47:57.160 --> 0:48:00.960 Scott makes is that YouTube's policies can change, and they 0:48:00.960 --> 0:48:05.120 have changed, often without any real notice, and the consequences 0:48:05.160 --> 0:48:08.960 of those changes can result in massive headaches for channel 0:48:09.040 --> 0:48:12.920 owners and for individual users. So, in other words, just 0:48:13.040 --> 0:48:16.920 because YouTube's policies are one way today doesn't mean you 0:48:16.960 --> 0:48:20.680 can count on them being that same way tomorrow. That 0:48:20.719 --> 0:48:25.239 could change the whole game. Let's start wrapping all this up. 0:48:25.840 --> 0:48:28.400 The history of copyright in the United States has largely 0:48:28.440 --> 0:48:33.440 been one of big consolidated media companies using their substantial 0:48:33.520 --> 0:48:38.360 influence to extend copyright protections and restrict the parameters of 0:48:38.440 --> 0:48:42.120 fair use, and to seek out harsher punishments for people 0:48:42.600 --> 0:48:46.799 and companies that violate the law. It appears as though 0:48:46.840 --> 0:48:49.279 we've at least reached a point where companies are no 0:48:49.320 --> 0:48:53.160 longer going to push for longer copyright terms. So it 0:48:53.239 --> 0:48:57.480 really does seem that Steamboat Willie will in fact finally 0:48:57.719 --> 0:49:01.680 enter public domain in twenty twenty four. Why aren't we 0:49:01.680 --> 0:49:05.440 seeing yet another push to extend copyright terms. It's largely 0:49:05.480 --> 0:49:09.560 because public sentiment is very much against it, and ultimately 0:49:09.960 --> 0:49:12.759 politicians do have to depend upon people voting for them 0:49:12.800 --> 0:49:15.480 to stay in power. Doesn't really matter how much money 0:49:15.480 --> 0:49:18.719 lobbyists drop on them. Ultimately they do have to worry 0:49:18.760 --> 0:49:21.880 about that, and the lobbies have largely thrown in the 0:49:21.920 --> 0:49:25.840 towel on trying to extend copyright terms. Their money is 0:49:25.880 --> 0:49:29.200 better spent at trying to create legislation that makes it 0:49:29.239 --> 0:49:33.120 harder for people to share content without permission. That's not 0:49:33.200 --> 0:49:37.000 necessarily a great thing either. Those laws frequently have unintended 0:49:37.000 --> 0:49:41.160 consequences and they place unfair restrictions on legal rights. But 0:49:41.400 --> 0:49:44.960 you know it's it is shifting the issue a little bit, 0:49:45.280 --> 0:49:48.560 so we're not likely to see copyright terms get extended 0:49:48.600 --> 0:49:52.960 again anytime soon. It's just incredibly unpopular. There are actual 0:49:53.080 --> 0:49:57.400 movements to try and reduce the term limits on copyrights 0:49:57.480 --> 0:49:59.920 rather than to extend them, to kind of roll the 0:50:00.160 --> 0:50:02.479 back a bit and to allow things to enter into 0:50:02.480 --> 0:50:06.400 public domain earlier. Tom Scott and his video also talks 0:50:06.440 --> 0:50:10.360 about the move to try and get small claims case 0:50:10.400 --> 0:50:14.799 courts that would handle things like copyright issues so that 0:50:14.880 --> 0:50:17.160 the average person would have a better chance of being 0:50:17.200 --> 0:50:21.239 able to pursue a claim of fair use and not 0:50:21.680 --> 0:50:27.399 have it be financial burden to do so. Um, that's 0:50:27.440 --> 0:50:30.080 the thing. Even if you are in the right, even 0:50:30.120 --> 0:50:35.839 if your use of copyrighted material falls under fair use, 0:50:36.800 --> 0:50:39.120 you still may have to go to court in order 0:50:39.120 --> 0:50:42.239 to actually prove that, and it can be so expensive 0:50:42.560 --> 0:50:48.120 that it could ruin you financially. And yeah, you might 0:50:48.360 --> 0:50:50.719 be legally in the right, and you might get the 0:50:50.800 --> 0:50:53.640 judgment you wanted, but you'd still have to pay all 0:50:53.680 --> 0:50:56.120 that money to do it. You know, you're not going 0:50:56.160 --> 0:51:00.680 to get a reward for it other than like, oh yeah, 0:51:00.719 --> 0:51:03.759 it turns out you didn't break the law. That's not 0:51:03.880 --> 0:51:06.839 much of a reward, right, Like, you would still owe 0:51:06.840 --> 0:51:09.080 all that money for the court cases. And that's the 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:12.759 real crime here. I was figuratively speaking. It's the real 0:51:12.800 --> 0:51:19.360 crime here because it disincentivizes people from pursuing their actual 0:51:19.520 --> 0:51:26.239 rights because the system favors these big corporations that have 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:30.280 the money to burn, and you know, worst case scenario 0:51:30.480 --> 0:51:33.759 for most of them, they'll settle out of court rather 0:51:33.800 --> 0:51:37.239 than pursue an expensive legal case that they might not win. 0:51:37.960 --> 0:51:41.799 But that's that's small potatoes compared to what it is 0:51:41.880 --> 0:51:45.640 for the individual. So yeah, I agree with Tom Scott. 0:51:45.800 --> 0:51:49.080 I do agree that the world's copyright system is broken 0:51:49.160 --> 0:51:54.080 because it was designed for a world where large publishers, 0:51:54.560 --> 0:51:57.919 or way back in the day, large book printers, we're 0:51:57.960 --> 0:52:00.880 trying to carve out a place for themselves and not 0:52:01.040 --> 0:52:05.600 have the competition unfairly copy works that they had access to. 0:52:06.640 --> 0:52:09.080 And now it's being applied to individuals and it just 0:52:09.239 --> 0:52:13.440 is not a good fit. So that's this full discussion 0:52:13.480 --> 0:52:18.759 about copyright, fair use and the related issues around it. 0:52:18.840 --> 0:52:20.880 Clearly there's a lot more we could go into. I 0:52:20.880 --> 0:52:26.080 didn't touch trademark law at all. That gets into more complications. Um, 0:52:26.160 --> 0:52:29.720 and there are other you know, there are other subtle 0:52:29.800 --> 0:52:33.000 things that we could really dive into, like the ethics 0:52:33.040 --> 0:52:36.520 of piracy. Uh. I think in most cases it's not ethical, 0:52:36.640 --> 0:52:39.640 But at the same time, it could get very frustrating 0:52:39.680 --> 0:52:43.920 for someone if let's say there's a region lock where 0:52:44.760 --> 0:52:47.880 you want to access to a certain type of material, 0:52:48.400 --> 0:52:51.319 you are fully committed to purchasing it. You would buy 0:52:51.320 --> 0:52:53.000 it in a heartbeat if there were a way to 0:52:53.040 --> 0:52:56.160 do so, but because of the region lock, you don't 0:52:56.160 --> 0:52:59.480 have that opportunity. I could see people turning to piracy 0:52:59.520 --> 0:53:03.239 for that, not as a thing that's morally right. I mean, 0:53:03.320 --> 0:53:05.799 just because something exists doesn't mean you have a right 0:53:05.880 --> 0:53:11.040 to access it, but because there's no other option. Uh. 0:53:11.360 --> 0:53:14.319 I've felt that way about there's a British series I 0:53:14.360 --> 0:53:17.080 absolutely love. There is no way for me to get 0:53:17.120 --> 0:53:20.719 it here in the United States legally. Now I have 0:53:20.880 --> 0:53:27.359 not downloaded it illegally, I have not accessed it, you know, illegally. UM. 0:53:27.400 --> 0:53:29.360 I keep looking to see if there's ever going to 0:53:29.440 --> 0:53:32.200 be a US version that I can purchase, because I'll 0:53:32.200 --> 0:53:34.760 do it in a heartbeat. But I can certainly understand 0:53:34.800 --> 0:53:38.759 why someone who likes something like that would go to 0:53:38.840 --> 0:53:42.640 those links because there are no other options. And as 0:53:42.680 --> 0:53:44.719 it turns out, if you create options for people to 0:53:44.760 --> 0:53:50.400 get stuff legally, people get stuff legally. Uh. One of 0:53:50.400 --> 0:53:53.360 the biggest issues that feeds into piracy is just a 0:53:53.480 --> 0:53:57.279 lack of access, which is pretty easy to fix. Enough 0:53:57.320 --> 0:54:00.000 of that soap bucks, I am going to climb down 0:54:00.000 --> 0:54:02.000 in or else I might fall off. I hope you 0:54:02.120 --> 0:54:06.319 enjoyed these episodes about copyright and technology and how it's 0:54:06.320 --> 0:54:10.440 all messy, messy, messy. If you have suggestions for things 0:54:10.480 --> 0:54:12.520 I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, be 0:54:12.600 --> 0:54:14.400 sure to reach out. The best way to do that 0:54:14.520 --> 0:54:17.120 is on Twitter handle for the show It's tech Stuff 0:54:17.280 --> 0:54:21.439 hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. 0:54:22.560 --> 0:54:29.640 Y Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For 0:54:29.719 --> 0:54:32.719 more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart 0:54:32.760 --> 0:54:35.960 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:54:36.000 --> 0:54:36.680 favorite shows.