Category: Piracy

EFF, Public Knowledge, et al Celebrate Defeat of SOPA/PIPA Out of the Blue

Rumors have come to my attention—okay it was splashed all over Twitter—that an event was held yesterday called The Untold Story of SOPA/PIPA. “Defeating SOPA/PIPA didn’t happen overnight,” says the EFF’s promotional page for the event. “Advocacy groups like Public Knowledge fought long and hard for years to raise the alarms about these censorship efforts.”

Where does one begin? By commenting on the offensive or the pathetic? Perhaps the most poignant and direct offense speaks for itself. Because just this morning, I happened to see the following post by a Facebook musician friend:

So our new album, which was just released Monday and cost us tens of thousands of dollars to make and promote (which was borrowed), is already on “file sharing” sites…

Online piracy, including by foreign actors, even almost a decade since the great defeat of SOPA/PIPA, is still a major problem that still costs thousands of independent creators their livelihoods. But don’t let that spoil the party being thrown by a bunch of ivory-tower “activists,” who were in the trenches in 2011 working their index fingers raw, Tweeting and sharing batshit crazy memes and other disinformation about those bills. Or don’t forget to say a prayer for the digital-age powder monkeys of 4Chan who helped spread the word. And as for investments! Well, what about the money (whose money?) spent on SPAM bots to spread the word that SOPA/PIPA would break the internet? Sock puppets have to eat, too, y’know! (Actually, no I guess they don’t.)

The tragedy is that the real “untold story of SOPA/PIPA” is that the public was lied to about how those bills actually worked; lied to that the bills’ opponents “were all for stopping piracy, but not this way;” and lied to about how organic and grassroots the effort was to defeat the bills.  Does anyone today actually believe it was a coincidence that the Internet Association was founded concurrently with the fight against that legislation, or that Google’s lobbying expenditures went from negligible to record-setting during the same period?

Stop SOPA was one of the most successful and well-funded disinformation campaigns in internet history and, as I have said many times, it scared the hell out of me. And not because of the piracy problem. That was just an unfortunate failure for people like my friend quoted above. No, the scary part about the manner in which the legislation was defeated were the lessons the campaign taught to other powerful institutions. It was clear by the mechanisms employed that anyone with enough money could alter the course of history with a few simple lies and mediocre graphic design. I know, right? What was I thinking? That rampant disinformation might threaten democracy itself? Just my hysterical nature, I guess. Because let’s be clear: SOPA/PIPA was not defeated with information or, heaven forbid, debate in Washington. Those bills were defeated by this:

I come from an advertising and marketing background, and that right there is advertising. Very effective advertising. Plenty of my friends shared memes like this one for weeks leading up to the defeat of SOPA/PIPA. But when advertising is designed to frighten the consumer, it should be confronted with skepticism—critical thinking that social media seems especially well designed to weaken among users. How many of my friends read or had the background to understand the legislation? Almost none.

And, yeah, I know. There were articles written about those bills, too. And you could hardly see the puppet strings of collusion despite the uncanny consistency in the language being used—generalized, ominous, and populist, without bothering to mention that the key mechanisms proposed already existed in the law. Like the tweak to injunctive power against foreign piracy sites, which would not have had any effect on the ordinary function of internet activity. And since 2012, SOPA-like enforcement measures (e.g. site blocking) have been implemented in markets around the world, and still no breaking of the internet has occurred.

But I think the most galling aspect about this sad attempt to relive the glory day of January 18, 2012 (you probably forgot, right?) is that nothing about the Republic-shattering events of the last several years has chastened the “free speech” rhetoric of the EFF, Public Knowledge, Sen. Wyden, et al. That they are still eager to call SOPA/PIPA “censorship bills” with straight faces is astounding. Never mind that piracy is not a form of protected speech; but have these organizations learned nothing since 2016? Did they miss the giant sticky note that says the laissez-faire approach to platform governance has been an abysmal failure worldwide? Specifically, do they lack the introspection to recognize the methodological similarity between …

this …

… and this?

If Russian troll farms didn’t read the Stop SOPA Playbook as the ultimate guide to manipulation through social media, they certainly could have. But, again, don’t let events like the U.S. Capitol assault of January 6th ruin all the self-congratulatory fun being had at EFF and Public Knowledge. Though I do have to ask why March 17, 2021? Why the nine year and two-month anniversary of the defeat of SOPA/PIPA? Odd no? Maybe not. Are EFF and PK trying to send a signal to the IP Subcommittee that if it tries to update the failed notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA, they will unleash Godzilla once again? Can’t say for sure. Maybe they just couldn’t get hold of any St. Patrick’s decorations and decided to have a different kind of party.

Online Piracy More Sophisticated and Insidious Than Ever

I haven’t written about enterprise scale piracy in a while. Not because it’s gone anywhere. Quite the contrary, it’s still growing. But it is easy to feel as though all the major points have been covered, that there is nothing much new to say on the matter. Somewhere on this blog, there is at least a post or two responding to just about every rationalization for piracy, and there seems to be little value in repeating most of that. But a new report released by Digital Citizens Alliance, in collaboration with NAGRA Kudelski, does reveal a couple of new topics that deserve the attention of consumers, law enforcement, and policymakers.

The report titled Money for Nothing focuses on the multi-billion-dollar trade in illegal Internet Protocol Television Services (PS IPTV) that DCA currently estimates to be worth at least one billion dollars annually from U. S. operations alone. In a nutshell, the consumer sees an ad, often on a social media site, that offers hundreds, or even thousands, of channels for an inexplicably low subscription fee. The customer buys a black box similar to a cable converter that is typically preloaded with firmware that will stream material (both live TV and recorded motion picture content) that is illegally obtained worldwide through a vast network of pirate server operators.

On the one hand, a consumer who takes an offer to access that much material for $10-$15 a month ought to know something ain’t right; but at the same time, I think about the number of senior citizens who so often fall prey to what would seem like obvious scams. And given the dramatic ways in which TV viewing has changed in last decade or so, it is plausible that many a Boomer might believe these services are legitimate. After all, these illegal services look very slick, with on-screen user interfaces that work just like legit services. And isn’t piracy about free access?

“Because subscribers are paying someone for the content, and because the storefront websites and apps are often well designed, and posing as legitimate, some consumers may believe they are using a legal service.“

The DCA/NAGRA report estimates that there are about nine million American households currently subscribing to pirate IPTV services, and this is a significant number relative to subscription TV overall. In 2013, there were an about 100 million households subscribing to pay TV, today that number is about 86 million, and it is predicted that by 2023, this number will drop to around 73 million subscribers.[1] Those stats measure traditional paid “cable” services and do not reflect how many households have “cut the cord” but also switched to other paid services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.

For instance, Netflix enjoys 167 million U.S. subscribers, and most customers subscribe to more than one of these services, suggesting that willingness to pay for TV and film entertainment is still fairly healthy overall. At the same time, however, nine million pirate IPTV users in a dynamic market is a number to keep an eye on, and it would be useful to have some insight into both the motives and the general understanding among these subscribers. Are they belligerent and still rationalizing piracy? Are they naïve and don’t know that they’re subscribing to criminal organizations? Are they viewers who “cut the cord” but simply want cheap access to TV channels, etc. in addition to the major streaming services?

Whatever the motives or attitudes may be for subscribing to these services, both consumers and law enforcement should be aware that, in addition to harming legitimate production and distribution models, pirate IPTV providers are one part of a whole smorgasbord of online criminal activity. As DCA has reported in the past, piracy sites are honeypots where a visitor has a roughly 30% chance of contracting malware that can be used for identity theft, ransom schemes, spying on households by controlling devices, or directly obtaining money, credit card numbers, or passwords.

Moreover, the new reports states, “NAGRA also found a scheme where the residential Internet connections of pirate IPTV customers are turned over to others – who could potentially use them for illegal activities, such as accessing child pornography, committing fraud, or participating in cyber attacks.” What that means is that the IP addresses of the subscriber base can be tasked as a distributed VPN used by criminals to hide their tracks while engaging in various illegal activities.

So, not only does a pirate IPTV subscription help support cybercrime, but subscribers themselves can wind up implicated if their IP addresses are used in connection with certain activity. So, it is not farfetched to think that paying $10/month for that all-access pass can result in a knock on the door by authorities wanting to question the subscriber about accessing child pornography or some other crime far worse than media piracy. And it cannot be a fun conversation to alibi a major crime by admitting to a lesser one.

 The Money for Nothing title derives from the fact that even the smallest players in the IPTV “industry” can generate substantial profit margins from relatively little investment—because of course they don’t bear the cost of licensing the material they distribute. One irony that’s hard to miss in this regard is that DCA describes a hierarchy of retailers buying distribution credits from wholesalers, which is fundamentally a licensing scheme, albeit for contraband material. Funny how permission is a constant, even among a network of thieves.

As consumers continue to change their viewing habits, and legitimate creators continue to adapt to the changing market, DCA and NAGRA are right to ask that policymakers track the development of these unlicensed IPTV services. Even if they were not directly antagonistic to legitimate distribution models (and they are), they remain intertwined with trafficking, extortion, child pornography, identity theft, and other forms of cybercrime. And nine million supporters of that activity is a lot more than too many.

[1] Source: Statista.

UPDATE: As originally published, I made too casual use of the term IPTV without the qualifier “pirate.” There are legal IPTV services. Thanks to Hugh Stephens for the note.

Why Women Should Also Lead the Anti-Piracy Effort

In past articles I’ve suggested that anti-piracy should be a form of activism practiced by anyone who stands up for women’s rights. And perhaps now that empowerment of women is the social tidal wave of the season, this proposal will get some traction. There is the ugly truth that some pirate sites serve as verticals for broader organized crime activity, including human trafficking; and there’s also the problem that pirate-site deployment of malware like RATs fosters harassment and exploitation of women and girls. So, it seems logical to me that if one’s environmental consciousness would avoid adding one more plastic bottle to the ocean, then one’s feminist consciousness would likewise avoid enriching pirate sites, which may support these forms of exploitation.

But there’s another point I’d make, and one that may be more obvious than the links between piracy and exploitation. It occurred to me the other day when I read in Variety that Rachel Morrison is the first woman Director of Photography to be nominated for an Academy Award for her work on the indie film Mudbound. Coincidentally, this was just a few hours after I read an editorial by that film’s producer Cassian Elewes titled How Google is Killing the Independent Movie Industry. Elwes focuses on the renegotiation of NAFTA and how the safe harbor provisions in the 1998 DMCA have had the unintended consequence of expanding piracy, which most acutely harms independent filmmakers.

The feminist groundswell generally referred to as the #MeToo movement not only began in the epicenter of the motion picture industry with revelations about Harvey Weinstein, but the industry as a whole was long overdue for correcting its “boys club” problem separate from issues of harassment and assault. In the days before sound was added to motion pictures, women were among the most innovative artists of the budding industry—as writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, studio heads, and even operators of big 35mm, hand-cranked cameras. Sound made production more expensive, leading to more substantial capital investment, which transformed movie-making into a “real job” that men wanted. Thus, the substantial contributions of Alice Guy Blaché and her contemporaries to the new language of cinema are little known by anyone other than students of film history.

Now that the male/female pendulum is finally swinging back toward a more balanced position, one of the best choices fans can make to keep that momentum, to support a craftsperson like Rachel Morrison—and the 1,000 young women who want to follow in her footsteps—is to stop pirating movies. As many have tried to explain, that whole “screw the fat-cat movie moguls” narrative people still cite to justify piracy is a complete myth. The so-called “fat cats” will be fine much longer than the independents, where the margins are lower and the effect of piracy can easily make or break the financial success of a film and prospective investment in the next one. Elwes writes …

“…just during its theatrical run, Dallas Buyers Club suffered roughly 22 million piracy transactions – more than three times the number of legitimate transactions. If just 5 percent of those pirated transactions had been paid tickets, downloads, or rentals, the film would have earned at least an additional $4.4 million (at a low rental fee of $3.99). That kind of money is life or death for an independent film and the filmmakers who sacrificed everything to get their vision onscreen.”

I’ll add that anyone who justifies piracy based on their idea that filmmakers are just those tux-and-gown folks swarmed by paparazzi on the red carpet, should spend a week with a cinematographer and her crew of camera assistants. It’ll be a string of 15-hour days, mostly on your feet, moving very quickly, communicating in a technological patois you won’t understand, and all in the service of key creative decisions worked out weeks or months earlier between the director and the production designer.

It’s fairly common when a film is nominated for a Cinematography Oscar that fans will say, “Yeah, that film is beautiful.” But beauty isn’t necessarily the DP’s objective; it’s actually something much more difficult and subtle than that. It’s making a thousand technical and creative choices, sometimes on the fly, that serve the story in ways the viewer doesn’t consciously observe. Great cinematography is hard, both mentally and physically; and anyone who thinks digital has made the process easier or cheaper only believes this because he doesn’t know how the job actually gets done.

Likewise, anyone who thinks that “pirating the studios into oblivion” is somehow helpful to independents and careers like Morrison’s, don’t know what they’re talking about. The worlds of studio and indie are codependent in numerous ways I won’t repeat here; but just a glance at Morrison’s IMDB page reveals a fairly typical narrative—over 30 credits in the Camera or Electric Department (i.e. learning her craft) beginning in 1999; then cinematographer credits on 43 independent films, TV shows, and documentaries; then her first big, Hollywood movie, Black Panther, releasing this year. But her future career will continue to include many independent films because most films made are indies while the “evil” studios function primarily as distributors.

So, anyone who’s glad to finally see a woman nominated for a Cinematography Oscar—because it really is a long time coming—and would like to see more women in that line-up in the future, can best support this trend by supporting the films themselves with tickets, streaming rentals, paid downloads, etc. Or you can keep supporting some anonymous guys running pirate sites and are at this moment criminally exploiting Morrison’s work on Mudbound for their own profit. See the problem?

 

Photo:  Photoplay magazine (1916). Camera operator, or “crank,” Margery Ordway.  See more information at Library of Congress.