Wait – is this for real? A large American company openly defying the anti-freedom and totalitarian content industry? In comments in the UK media, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took aim at the big content-sponsored PROTECT IP act. The PROTECT IP act is the US internet censorship (the China kind) law, which more or less takes aim directly against Google. In his criticism, Schmidt went far – very far. The content industry obviously isn’t pleased.
We haven’t really discussed the PROTECT IP act yet, so, well, let’s do that. As Ars details, the law is very encompassing, as it would force search engines, internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks to block access to ‘rogue sites’ – you know, stuff like The Pirate Bay, or anything else the content industry and/or the US government deems ‘rogue’. You know, like WikiLeaks. Or sites publishing WikiLeaks documents.
Google’s Eric Schmidt is not happy with this law, and he took aim at it in the UK media. And with ‘took aim at it’, I mean he basically took an RPG and obliterated it, stating it set a “disastrous precedent” for freedom of speech. He then kicked it up a notch. “If there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it’s passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it,” Schmidt stated, “If it’s a request the answer is we wouldn’t do it, if it’s a discussion we wouldn’t do it.”
“I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems,” he continued, “So, ‘let’s whack off the DNS’. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say ‘I don’t like free speech so I’ll whack off all those DNSs’ – that country would be China. It doesn’t seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff.”
This is quite harsh, but in my book, very, very deserved and incredibly encouraging. Schmidt is a bit of a loose cannon at times, and he’s said some creepy stuff over the years, but I couldn’t agree with him more here. Any form of government censorship is bad, even if it passed through the ‘democratic’ system. As a people, you have the right to disregard obviously bad laws – and I’d say we can all agree that censorship laws are bad.
The content industry, obviously, isn’t pleased with Schmidt’s words. “Is Eric Schmidt really suggesting that if Congress passes a law and president Obama signs it, Google wouldn’t follow it? As an American company respected around the world, it’s unfortunate that, at least according to its executive chairman’s comments, Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws,” writes the MPAA’s Michael O’Leary [links to the MPAA website], “We’ve heard this ‘but the law doesn’t apply to me’ argument before – but usually, it comes from content thieves, not a Fortune 500 company. Google should know better. And the notion that China would use a bi-partisan, narrowly tailored bill as a pretext for censorship is laughable, as Google knows, China does what China does.”
I would indeed suggest that if the laws passed by a government no longer seem to be in line with the will of the people, then yes, the people have the right to disregard these laws. The people have made it very clear that current copyright laws no longer fit the will of the people (by clearly disregarding them), and that giving up freedom of speech and enacting censorship is a price they’re not willing to pay. Laws only exist because we collectively decide to follow them – not because a dying industry has enough money to buy them.
The RIAA stepped in as well [links to the RIAA website]. “This is baffling,” the RIAA said, “As a legitimate company, Google has a responsibility to not benefit from criminal activity. In substance and spirit, this contradicts the recent testimony of Google’s General Counsel that the company takes copyright theft seriously and was willing to step up to the plate in a cooperative and serious way.”
Of course, the same applies here: it’s only criminal because the content industry has the money to make it so. Here in The Netherlands we are allowed to download whatever we want, and the content industry hasn’t been collapsing any faster here than it has in the US.
Of course, Schmidt didn’t say they would disregard the law – he merely said they would fight it. All sorts of companies and interest groups fight laws all the time, and Google is no different. However, the usual knee-jerk response from the content industry is to dramatise everything. Or, as a Google spokesperson told Ars Technica, “Of course we abide by the law in every country we do business. We respect what the PROTECT IP Act is trying to accomplish and we’re working closely with Congress to make sure the bill targets sites dedicated to piracy while protecting free expression and legitimate sites.”
The PROTECT IP act is a censorship law, and whether censorship laws are enacted in China or the US, they are always wrong, and we should fight them at every turn. I’m happy Schmidt seems to think so too, because no matter the creepy potential Google has, at least they’re on our side on this one. I don’t think Apple or Microsoft will stand up for free speech like this.
So it’s not really that surprising that Google would oppose it then.
And hardly surprising that Apple wouldn’t. Microsoft maybe have something to stand up for. Actually the article was doing very well until that last sentence. Why did there have to be a dig at Apple and / or Microsoft thrown in, especially when it doesn’t really impact one of them?
Are they mentioned just to get those names into the article for the crawlers?
I’d say because they are big supporters of DRM and therefore are also against free speech in a sense.
Although it’s not really apple who wants the DRM, it’s the music and film labels that demand it. Apple has to deal with the devil to deliver the content. Jobs has said multiple times if he had his way he would take the drm out and charge 20/30p a track. It was apple as well as the users that helped drive the current drm less music on iTunes. Any other company would have just left the drm on and not worry about it.
I do agree with the article, it’s a short sighted view by the labels that is only to help speed up their demise, they will need to learn and adapt better and offer media a more fair prices both to the artists and to the consumer.
That’s not entirely true. Apple and Microsoft have contractual obligations with media companies to protect distributed songs, movies, etc with DRM. They wouldn’t have been able to sign those agreements without it.
Why? You’ll find a lot of people agreeing with that assumption. It’s no magic, a simple thought based on long time experience. It’s no more invalid than saying they will oppose, but it has more history to back it up. It’s to Apple and MS to prove it wrong by actually taking the right side for once.
Edited 2011-05-20 05:21 UTC
If this also affects Google’s search engine it probably affects Bing too. So at least Microsoft is affected, and it’d be awesome to see them say “we’ll also fight it”.
It’s not an “if”, it’s simply not possible for Microsoft to avoid this either. Any and all US-based search engines must comply with the law and thus filter the results. This means Bing, Google, Amazon, and so on.
Having to police the search results and filter them is indeed a form of censorship, I agree with them, but there’s more reasons to fight this act than just that: having to police humongous amounts of websites and search results will just create lots of extra work for these companies while the benefit is.. well, negligible; the censored sites will just change names and domains and be back, and the round starts again from the beginning. It’s an endless game of cat-and-mouse that search engine providers simply cannot win.
Google lost the high ground when they quit relying solely on algorithmic rankings to deliver results and started exercising editorial control by tailoring and filtering results to individual users.
They already are censoring results, they just arrogantly believe they are doing it for the good of the user.
There is after all an easier way around it: host search sites outside the U.S. The net will simply route around the “broken part”. If they continue making such foolish laws it will eventually convince enough people that the U.S. and companies bound by U.S. law can not be trusted to handle any Internet infrastructure (DNS, search, etc). After all Google fought this battle in China already by redirecting to the Hong Kong site. They could do the same with the U.S.
When will the government learn that it’s not that hard to route around their stupidity. The real losers by implementing these laws are the people in the country who loose their job because the datacenter is off-shored. I hope search engines take a strong stand on this one and send a clear message. This is very reminiscent of companies off-shoring encryption development due to U.S. export restrictions.
http://cryptome.org/cpi-survey.htm
http://www.infoworld.com/t/business/sun-in-talks-over-us-export-con…
government hacking at internet infrastructure to help corporations is retarded and I hope everyone can get behind that. we aren’t slaves to corporations or governments. we empower both, actually.
We lost the power when the corporations started funneling money into the pockets of politicians which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into politicians pockets which started passing more laws to make more money for the corporations which started funneling more money into the politicians pockets…
Actually it’s:
.
fullstop, period. And that’s the same cause why this practice can’t be changed. Would you vote for taking a large part of your own cash pool away? Right.
There’s no full stop, it’s a viscous cycle that will keep repeating itself until we fall to our knees or we replace these self serving sons of ******* with someone who actually gives a shit about the country and its people instead of a bunch special interest thugs who can pad their pockets more.
And to answer your question, there’s no excuses and no justification. To me, it’s a clear matter of right and wrong and these people passing laws and calling shots keep doing it wrong.
I disagree in one important way. The primary issue isn’t that the politicians don’t care. The problem is if you give a group of people (Congress) unlimited control over everything imaginable and every aspect over everyone else’s lives, down to how much salt they are allowed to eat and where their kids and go to school, you will not get a good result no matter how much the lawmakers “care.”
They simply have too much control. Areas of private life and private business that had been “off limits” to government control for hundreds of years are now routine political decisions. As long as those politicians are controlling everything, businesses will always have a compelling reason to make sure the law comes out written in their favor.
In about 99.999% of cases nowadays it would be far better for the government to say, “I’m staying out of that — that is none of my business,” and not even pass a law. Does anyone need this law? Really? Each new law, especially the laws passed in the US over the past 12y or so, makes everything just one more step worse. Just stop already!
I agree with your disagreement, better said. Maybe one day we can fill this ever growing hole we’ve allowed back in without having to fall flat on our faces.
Yes it’s called corporatism. Sometimes it starts as politicians essentially blackmailing corporations for their campaign money, lest they be regulated out of existence or a mafia hit with anti-trust laws. So what I’m saying is it’s not always the corporations that initiate the cycle you described so well.
‘Evil genes’ exist not just in corporations, but all aspects of human society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Genes
Schmidt’s comments are self-serving. Google is the biggest content thief on the web (eg Youtube, Google Books, etc).
Of course he wants “freedom of speech” over content protection!
What the hell? Why is this modded down? Might be a bit harsh but it’s spot on. Google isn’t against this because it’s about free speech, it’s because it affects their bottom line.
Google is against anything that would force them to police the internet, and always has been. They’ve gone along with the laws in China because they have to, and don’t want to see the same situation play out in the US.
The CCIA trade group has backed up what Google is saying, and Microsoft is a member. Along with Yahoo, Google, and several other big tech companies. It’s really only the content industries that are behind this, other companies are generally either against or indifferent.
Edited 2011-05-20 05:25 UTC
Large companies do what they think is best to make (as much) profit (as possible). Most of the time you don’t have to search for another reason when Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and others make decisions.
If you only look at the number of ads on those sites.. that already is enough reason for Google.
Tomorrow I’m going to rob a bank. If I get caught, I’ll just complain my freedom to redistribute money equally between me and the bank is being oppressed.
You don’t get it.
Very few people will disagree with the laws you’re breaking there. The situation’s a little different for copyright laws, hmm?
I hope Google gives the content industry a proper bloody nose over this. People need to learn to be careful of who they piss off. What if Google were to suddenly stifle all search results on the RIAA’s top selling artists, or the MPAA’s top rating movies? Suspend the official record company and artist Youtube accounts? It’s remarkable how short sighted people can be when they think they’re better than everyone else. I work in a phone shop, and you’d think people would be careful of pissing me off since I can find their home address in five seconds. My motto: always be courteous, you never know who knows a great recipe for napalm and has access to a cellular carrier’s entire customer database…. … … Wink.
They won’t because Google aren’t that stupid.
Ahem…
I doubt the public would be too happy if their favourite bands and movies started disappearing off search results. I think Facebook and Bing would be all too happy to pick up the slack. Also, don’t underestimate the lobbying power of these halcyon entities; they’ve got lot of money and a lot of friends and actions like that would be pounced upon with every anti-trust accusation they can dream of.
There are countless eyes watching for anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviour in Google, and behaviour like the above would smack and quickly draw a “please explain” from many interested parties.
P.S. Boasting about your lax attitude towards customer’s private data and your ability to create incendiary weapons is not very professional and is downright idiotic.
Note to self: don’t joke on the internet.
While you will be on your way don’t forget to steal a car and a handbag. A television and a movie might come in handy afterwards.
None of that is nearly as heinous as downloading a TV show episode, however… now *that’s* serious…
You wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a baby…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
Sorry for my poor english skill …
Downloading or getting copies of copyrighted content set to be sold … we don’t pay is thief… I respect that. My music is paid ( I have almost the whole collection of Mike Oldfield dicography, and then Genesis etc.. to say that even if their music is 15-30 years old. ) as long as the industry holds the copyrights, they are master of their proprietary contents.
But when The government is using the population freedom and money to protect the industry, that government becomes a dictator. Anyway we know all who/what is really holding the power: $$$
We were really glad to hear Schmidt’s comments here at the office. We’ve been working on COICA since it was introduced last year, and we’re deeply opposed to PROTECT IP. These laws are all introduced with heavy industry lobbying and very little in the way of verifiable, independent datasets describing the economic damage. In fact just earlier this week a report came out of the UK showing how devoid of substantiated facts most of the lobby groups’, like RIAA and MPAA, reasoning is.
If you’re as concerned about these issues as we are, check out our site and petition against PROTECT IP. We can also help you contact your Congressperson to make your voice heard! http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs
Edited 2011-05-20 16:25 UTC
Hey everyone, including the MPAA spoksman. Lets not loose track of what is being said by Schmidt.
The comments made by Schmidt are against enacting censorship laws in the form of dns control. He is not approving of piracy.
If the MPAA guy can’t make money in the movie business, then quit making movies and get a real job.
Edited 2011-05-20 18:13 UTC
There’s nothing inherently special about a domain registration. It’s like a license to do business. And when companies violate the law, they lose their license to do business. Ergo, a website that consistently violates international law loses its domain registration in dns.
Google doesn’t like this because, frankly, they see business benefits (e.g. driving more search, more more advertising, more profits) to indexing pirated content. THUS, I wouldn’t take Google’s opinion on search because they have an obvious conflict of interests here.
Um, I think that the average person would agree that making movies is a “real job”. I’m not a big fan of many of the crappy movies that come out of Hollywood and elsewhere; but, at the same time, if they’re going to invest $$$ in generating content, they deserve to profit from that content; ergo, international copyright law needs to be enforced.
Edited 2011-05-20 20:31 UTC
“He should get a real job” of course sounds a bit harsh. I ment a job that pays money instead of a hobby. Obviously Hollywood isn’t making any money on their movies anymore or they wouldn’t be crying to the govt to get involved.
Good article, but I take issue with this. Most people agree with some level of censorship. In the UK we have censorship laws that prohibit incitement to violence, religious hatred, indecent pseudo-photographs, violent films for children, and discussing the private lives of rich bankers (amongst many others). This is all censorship, but many people consider the question of whether it’s right or wrong to be one of boundaries.
In this case I think the question is whether censorship is a justified means of preventing other laws from being broken (e.g. violence, or in this case copyright infringement). If the argument against is simply “censorship is always wrong” then I think the argument will be lost: most people don’t believe this, I’m afraid.
The american people have long ago given away their civil liberties and freedom. And I’m not talking only about this “PROTECT IP act”, they gave away much more important liberties and rights. What we see today are the consequences.
Some people confuse petty crime for censorship. Stealing products over the internet is no different than stealing from a local store. Crime is crime and the Government has a right to enforce order.
Except there is no theft taking place.
One side of Google talks this good game about opposing to censorship practice the MPAA wants to impose, but another face is already blocking rooted Android users from movie rentals to appease the MPAA.
Google can’t be trusted.
Who cares about motives?
In my country, our independence movement started as a tax revolt led by a cabal of wealthy, freeloading merchants. In part to make sure that no one would tax them so much again, they later guaranteed a lot of freedoms and imposed several inefficient restrictions on the government. (I also hear that a few other countries were pretty inspired.)
It’s about protecting intellectual property, right? does it say somewhere that people cannot post their opinion online, as well as their works, if they want?
Come on Thom. Please. Stop writing sensational articles just to gather hits. I joined OS News because at one time, I found it an invaluable source of information about operating systems and technologies. I don’t disagree with posting news concerning technology-related laws, but you are getting too far with your opinion that IP protection equals censorship. It’s just illogical to think so.