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| Wikileaks: Police Arrested Movie Pirate As “A Personal Favor” To Movie Official Posted: 30 Apr 2011 07:01 AM PDT Between 2004 and mid 2006, the Scene group 'maVen' released some of the best 'Telesync' versions of pirated movies onto the internet including Bourne Supremacy, Collateral, Spongebob Squarepants, Mission Impossible 3 and Superman Returns. Then, at the end of July 2006, 'maVen' releases suddenly stopped. It transpired that the FBI, at the behest of the MPAA, had been investigating ‘maVen' and had labeled him the ‘world leader’ in movie piracy. They handed their file to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in April 2006. By September, Geremi Adam was under arrest after 'camming' the movies How to Eat Fried Worms and Invincible. At the time, camming a movie in Canada wasn’t an offense so unsurprisingly, Adam was released. Someone clearly wanted maVen out of action and Adam punished. One month later Adam was arrested again. The arrest triggered a chain of events which would lead to Adam, who had a history of depression, enduring a 14 month wait for any charges to be brought. He went on the run, was detained and eventually sentenced to jail. Adam began using drugs in jail to cope with his imprisonment and shortly after his release he tragically died of an overdose. So who was pulling the strings behind the scenes to ensure that so many resources were spent on chasing Adam who, with his camming, wasn’t even committing a crime? Thanks to a US diplomatic cable dated 12th December 2006 and released by Wikileaks this week, we now have the answer. The cable begins by revealing that having previously reported in March 2006 that 40 to 50% of all pirate movies around the world could be linked to camming in Montreal, by the third quarter of that year the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association’s (CMPDA) had revised that figure down to 18%. The cable reported that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) considered camming to be a low priority issue and doubted the reports of how much damage it was doing to Canadian industry. As a result they preferred to focus their IP-related resources on dealing with serious issues such as counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The RCMP had encouraged the CMPDA to finance their own civil action to enforce their rights. Although not detailed by name, it is clear that when the cable reported that the individual behind most of Montreal’s camming had been arrested twice, there could be little doubt it was referring to Geremi Adam. The RCMP, at this stage, had been clear – Adam would not receive jail time. The cable goes on to bemoan the lack of effective legislation to deal with camming and at one stage even refers to it as a “high-tech pastime”. It describes how Adam operated, suggesting a “drag and drop” operation which allowed “films such as The Chronicles of Narnia [to] be shown in a Montreal theater and later sold in DVD form on big city streets within a matter of hours.” According to the cable, proving distribution was the key to a successful prosecution. In end, the fact that Adam’s cammed copies appeared online was enough to land him in jail. His initial arrest, however, was prompted by less official means. “With regard to the arrest of the individual who had been pursued by the CMPDA, RCMP officers stated that they arrested the individual ‘as a personal favor’ to a CMPDA official, and that they did not view theater camcording as a major issue’,” reads the US diplomatic cable. “The officers said that IPR holders could pursue legal action against suspects engaged The cable reveals that the RCMP carried out this “favor” despite believing that Adam was “a small player” who was not receiving “lucrative financial rewards for his work.” “One RCMP officer expressed concern that the RCMP not be seen as ‘the enforcement arm of industry’, noting that the ‘industry comes to [the RCMP] more and more’ with requests for action,” the cable concludes. The full cable can be read here. Source: Wikileaks: Police Arrested Movie Pirate As “A Personal Favor” To Movie Official |
| Why The Copyright Industry Isn’t a Legitimate Stakeholder in Copyright Posted: 30 Apr 2011 06:05 AM PDT All through the history of copyright, its motivation has been very clear. In the United States Constitution, it is worded “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts”. But the purpose of the monopoly is to maximize the available culture. Nothing more and nothing less. Some people, and corporations in particular, claim that the purpose of the copyright monopoly is for a certain profession to make money. That was never the case, and frankly, the idea is revolting to any democracy and functioning market. Bricklayers don’t have laws guaranteeing they make money, marketers don’t, plumbers don’t, and nobody else does, either. However, the means of achieving the maximization of the available culture has been to give some creators a monopoly on the opportunity — not the right, but the opportunity — to make money off of a creative work. This has been the means to maximize culture for the public at large, and never the end in itself. This also means that the only legitimate stakeholder in copyright legislation is the public. The monopoly is indeed a balance, but not the “balance” between corporate profits and human rights that the copyright industry likes to paint and pretend. In fact, the copyright industry is not part of the balance at all. The copyright monopoly legislation is a balance between the public’s interest of having access to culture, and the same public’s interest of having new culture created. That’s it. Those are the two values that go into determining the wording of the copyright monopoly. The copyright industry always demands to be regarded as a stakeholder in this monopoly. But to give them that status would be to royally confuse the means of the copyright monopoly with its end. If they were a stakeholder, they would never agree to anything that went against their interests. But the copyright industry is not a stakeholder. They are merely a beneficiary of the copyright monopoly. Just because you benefit from something, you don’t get to affect its future. Actually, it goes even further: particularly if you benefit from something, you don’t get to affect its future. Let’s take an analogy. Blackwater Security benefits from United States foreign policy. Does that mean that Blackwater is a stakeholder in the US foreign policy, and should get a seat at the drafting table? Of course it doesn’t. The notion would be horrifying, with quite predictable outcomes. Yet, we accept this horrendous construction in the case of the copyright monopoly, with just the outcomes predicted. Using a similar analogy from Europe, there are many regiment towns that would disappear if the regiment was closed. That doesn’t mean that town get to influence the national defense policy. The issue that some thousands of people would be unemployed in the case of closing the regiment would have to be solved by job market policy — but not by giving the regiment town a seat when drafting the national defense policy, and for all intents and purposes, give them a veto against killing their own current jobs. Imagine if Blackwater Security had a veto against ending a particular war. Next, imagine if the copyright industry had a veto of giving the public more access to public culture. So in the same way, it’s totally insane to give the copyright industry the same kind of veto against reductions in legislation that benefit them. The copyright industry is not a legitimate stakeholder in the legislation of the copyright monopoly. — — — Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at http://falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Follow Rick Falkvinge on Twitter as @Falkvinge and on Facebook as /rickfalkvinge. Source: Why The Copyright Industry Isn’t a Legitimate Stakeholder in Copyright |
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