I'm going to start here. This is a hand-lettered sign that appeared in a mom and pop bakery in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn a few years ago. The store owned one of those machines that can print on plates of sugar. And kids could bring in drawings and have the store print a sugar plate for the top of their birthday cake.
我會從這裡開始。 這是幾年前在我居住的布魯克林區 的街坊麵包舖裡 見到的一個手繪標誌。 那家商店擁有一部 可在糖板上打印的機器。 小孩們可帶些繪圖來 請那家商店打印一塊糖板 放在他們的生日蛋糕上。
But unfortunately, one of the things kids liked to draw was cartoon characters. They liked to draw the Little Mermaid, they'd like to draw a smurf, they'd like to draw Micky Mouse. But it turns out to be illegal to print a child's drawing of Micky Mouse onto a plate of sugar. And it's a copyright violation. And policing copyright violations for children's birthday cakes was such a hassle that the College Bakery said, "You know what, we're getting out of that business. If you're an amateur, you don't have access to our machine anymore. If you want a printed sugar birthday cake, you have to use one of our prefab images -- only for professionals."
但不幸的是,其中一種小孩們喜歡繪畫的事物 是卡通人物。 他們喜歡繪畫小美人魚, 他們會畫一個藍精靈,也會畫米老鼠。 原來把小孩畫的米老鼠 印在糖板上 是違法的。 這是侵犯版權的行為。 而監控小孩生日蛋糕 是否侵犯版權 是那麼麻煩,以至於 最終導致那家學院麵包店說, "你知道嗎,我們不幹那門生意了。 假如你是業餘人士, 你不能再用那部機器了。 如果你想印塊糖板放在生日蛋糕上, 你必須使用那些預先製好的圖案 -- 只為專業人士而設的。
So there's two bills in Congress right now. One is called SOPA, the other is called PIPA. SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's from the Senate. PIPA is short for PROTECTIP, which is itself short for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property -- because the congressional aides who name these things have a lot of time on their hands. And what SOPA and PIPA want to do is they want to do this. They want to raise the cost of copyright compliance to the point where people simply get out of the business of offering it as a capability to amateurs.
在國會內現有兩項條例草案。 一項叫做SOPA,而另一項是PIPA。 SOPA代表《制止網上盜版法案》。 它是由參議院提出的。 PIPA是PROTECT IP的簡稱, 而它又是 "防止經濟創造力的 真正網上威脅 及知識產權的盜竊的簡稱 -- 因為命名這些東西的國會議員助理 有太多的時間了。 SOPA和PIPA的目的是 它們想做到這樣。 它們想把 遵守版權法例的成本提高到 一個水平,令人只好結束 向業餘人士提供的服務。
Now the way they propose to do this is to identify sites that are substantially infringing on copyright -- although how those sites are identified is never fully specified in the bills -- and then they want to remove them from the domain name system. They want to take them out of the domain name system. Now the domain name system is the thing that turns human-readable names, like Google.com, into the kinds of addresses machines expect -- 74.125.226.212.
現在他們提出的的做法是 去識別那些 嚴重侵犯版權的網站 -- 雖然在條例草案上完全沒有指定 如何去識別這些網站 -- 然後他們想把那些網站從域名系統中刪除。 他們想把那些網站從域名系統中剔除。 現在,域名系統 是把人類懂得讀出的名字,像谷歌 (Google.com), 翻譯成機器閱讀的 那種網址 -- 74.125.226.212
Now the problem with this model of censorship, of identifying a site and then trying to remove it from the domain name system, is that it won't work. And you'd think that would be a pretty big problem for a law, but Congress seems not to have let that bother them too much. Now the reason it won't work is that you can still type 74.125.226.212 into the browser or you can make it a clickable link and you'll still go to Google. So the policing layer around the problem becomes the real threat of the act.
現在的問題是這種識別一個網址 然後把它從域名系統移除的 審查模式 是行不通的。 你會想到作為一條法例這是一個相當大的問題, 但國會似乎不覺得那是一回事。 它不行的原因是 你仍可在瀏覽器輸入74.125.226.212 或把它設定為可點擊的連結 而你還是可以去到谷歌的網站。 結果監控 這問題的安排 成為這條法案的真正威脅。
Now to understand how Congress came to write a bill that won't accomplish its stated goals, but will produce a lot of pernicious side effects, you have to understand a little bit about the back story. And the back story is this: SOPA and PIPA, as legislation, were drafted largely by media companies that were founded in the 20th century. The 20th century was a great time to be a media company, because the thing you really had on your side was scarcity. If you were making a TV show, it didn't have to be better than all other TV shows ever made; it only had to be better than the two other shows that were on at the same time -- which is a very low threshold of competitive difficulty. Which meant that if you fielded average content, you got a third of the U.S. public for free -- tens of millions of users for simply doing something that wasn't too terrible. This is like having a license to print money and a barrel of free ink.
要去了解國會如何制定 無法達致其目的 反而會帶來不少副作用的法案, 你必須明白一點背景故事。 背景故事是: SOPA和PIPA,作為法例 主要是在20世紀才出現的 媒體機構所草擬的。 20世紀是媒體機構的黃金時代, 因為你身邊只有的就是稀缺性。 假如你製作電視節目, 它不必比所有其他製作的節目好看; 它只要比另外兩個 同一時間播出的節目好 便可以了 -- 這在競爭難度上 是一個非常低的門檻。 這意謂著 你只要拍出中庸的內容, 便無須花任何的力氣就可得到三份一的美國觀眾 -- 為數以千萬的用戶 只靠簡單地製作些 不太差勁的東西。 這就像得到印刷鈔票的執照 另加一桶免費的油墨。
But technology moved on, as technology is wont to do. And slowly, slowly, at the end of the 20th century, that scarcity started to get eroded -- and I don't mean by digital technology; I mean by analog technology. Cassette tapes, video cassette recorders, even the humble Xerox machine created new opportunities for us to behave in ways that astonished the media business. Because it turned out we're not really couch potatoes. We don't really like to only consume. We do like to consume, but every time one of these new tools came along, it turned out we also like to produce and we like to share. And this freaked the media businesses out -- it freaked them out every time. Jack Valenti, who was the head lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America, once likened the ferocious video cassette recorder to Jack the Ripper and poor, helpless Hollywood to a woman at home alone. That was the level of rhetoric.
但科技發展,就如科技一直進步。 慢慢地,到了20世紀末, 稀缺性開始受到侵蝕 -- 我並非指被數位科技侵蝕; 而我指的是模擬科技。 錄音帶、錄像機、 甚至不起眼的複印機 給我們帶來機會 令我們表現出 令媒體行業驚訝的行為。 最終發現 我們並非"沙發土豆"。 我們真正喜歡的不單是消費。 我們喜歡消費, 但每一次那些新工具出現, 都令人發覺我們亦喜歡參與生產 以及我們喜歡與人分享。 這令媒體行業嚇了一跳 -- 每次都把他們嚇一跳。 Jack Valenti,美國電影協會的 首席說客, 有一次把兇猛的盒帶式錄像機比喻為 開膛手傑克 而把可憐無助的好來塢 比喻為獨自在家的婦女。 這就是他的修辭水平了。
And so the media industries begged, insisted, demanded that Congress do something. And Congress did something. By the early 90s, Congress passed the law that changed everything. And that law was called the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. What the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 said was, look, if people are taping stuff off the radio and then making mixtapes for their friends, that is not a crime. That's okay. Taping and remixing and sharing with your friends is okay. If you make lots and lots of high quality copies and you sell them, that's not okay. But this taping business, fine, let it go. And they thought that they clarified the issue, because they'd set out a clear distinction between legal and illegal copying.
因此媒體行業 懇求、堅持、要求 國會採取行動。 而國會真的應他們所求。 90年代初,國會通過了一條 改變一切的法案。 該法案被稱為1992年 家居錄音法。 1992年家居錄音法指出 如果人們從無線電台錄下廣播 再製造混音帶送給友人, 並不算犯法。這是沒問題的。 錄音和混音 和跟友人分享是沒問題的。 如果你製造大量高品質的拷貝,然後售賣, 便有問題了。 但這是錄音業務, 好,算了吧! 他們以為弄清了問題, 因為他們定出了 合法和非法複製的清晰區別。
But that wasn't what the media businesses wanted. They had wanted Congress to outlaw copying full-stop. So when the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 was passed, the media businesses gave up on the idea of legal versus illegal distinctions for copying because it was clear that if Congress was acting in their framework, they might actually increase the rights of citizens to participate in our own media environment. So they went for plan B. It took them a while to formulate plan B.
但這並非媒體行業想要的。 他們想國會 把複製定為非法,句號。 因此當通過1992年的家居錄音法時, 媒體行業放棄了 區分合法和非法複製這個念頭 因為很明顯 如果國會根據他們的框架行事, 他們實際可能增加市民的權利 去介入我們媒體的環境。 於是他們進行了B計劃。 他們花了一段時間來制訂 B計劃。
Plan B appeared in its first full-blown form in 1998 -- something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a complicated piece of legislation, a lot of moving parts. But the main thrust of the DMCA was that it was legal to sell you uncopyable digital material -- except that there's no such things as uncopyable digital material. It would be, as Ed Felton once famously said, "Like handing out water that wasn't wet." Bits are copyable. That's what computers do. That is a side effect of their ordinary operation.
在1998年 B計劃全面面世 -- 所謂數碼千禧年版權法 (DMCA)。 它是一項複雜的法例,含有很多活動的部份。 但DMCA的主旨 是向你銷售 無法複製的數碼材料是合法的 -- 只是無法複製的數碼材料並不存在。 這就像 Ed Felton 的一句名言, "像遞出 不濕的水一樣。" 數碼位元是可以複製的。這正是電腦的功能。 這是普通電腦操作的副作用。
So in order to fake the ability to sell uncopyable bits, the DMCA also made it legal to force you to use systems that broke the copying function of your devices. Every DVD player and game player and television and computer you brought home -- no matter what you thought you were getting when you bought it -- could be broken by the content industries, if they wanted to set that as a condition of selling you the content. And to make sure you didn't realize, or didn't enact their capabilities as general purpose computing devices, they also made it illegal for you to try to reset the copyability of that content. The DMCA marks the moment when the media industries gave up on the legal system of distinguishing between legal and illegal copying and simply tried to prevent copying through technical means.
所以為了假裝 有售賣無法複製的位元的能力, DMCA亦把 強制你使用會破壞你的器材的複製功能的系統 定為合法。 每一部你帶回家的DVD放影機和遊戲機 以及電視機和電腦 -- 無論在購買時你以為會得到的東西 -- 都可被內容供應行業毀壞, 如果他們要把它定為售賣內容給你的一項條件。 為了使你不察覺, 或者不去使用 一般運算器的功能 他們也把 重設那些內容的複製性 定為非法。 DMCA標誌著 媒體工業 放棄區別 合法和非法複製的法律制度 並且,轉為簡單地 嘗試阻止複製的那一個時刻。
Now the DMCA had, and is continuing to have, a lot of complicated effects, but in this one domain, limiting sharing, it has mostly not worked. And the main reason it hasn't worked is the Internet has turned out to be far more popular and far more powerful than anyone imagined. The mixtape, the fanzine, that was nothing compared to what we're seeing now with the Internet. We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online. We share written things, we share images, we share audio, we share video. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've made. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've found. Some of the stuff we share is stuff we've made out of what we've found, and all of it horrifies those industries.
現在DMCA已經,而且還會繼續,帶來很多複雜的影響, 但在這一個範疇,限制共享的範疇上, 它差不多完全無效。 它不行的主要原因是 網際網絡遠比任何人想像的 更受歡迎和更有力。 混音帶、友儕之間的雜誌, 根本無法可與網際網絡 比擬。 我們身處一個世界 那裡大多數超過12歲的 美國公民 都會與他人在網上共享一些東西。 我們共享書寫的東西,我們共享影像, 我們共享音頻,我們共享影片。 有些共享的東西是我們自己製作的。 有些共享的東西是我們找到的。 有些共享的東西是 從我們找到的東西再製作出來的。 這些都令那些工業感到害怕。
So PIPA and SOPA are round two. But where the DMCA was surgical -- we want to go down into your computer, we want to go down into your television set, down into your game machine, and prevent it from doing what they said it would do at the store -- PIPA and SOPA are nuclear and they're saying, we want to go anywhere in the world and censor content. Now the mechanism, as I said, for doing this, is you need to take out anybody pointing to those IP addresses. You need to take them out of search engines, you need to take them out of online directories, you need to take them out of user lists. And because the biggest producers of content on the Internet are not Google and Yahoo, they're us, we're the people getting policed. Because in the end, the real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another.
所以PIPA和SOPA 是第二回合。 DMCA屬外科手術式的 -- 我們想進入你的電腦, 我們想進入你的電視機,進入你的遊戲機, 去阻止那些在售貨店裡他們告訴你 所能做得到的功能的運作。 PIPA和SOPA則是核武 他們說,我想去地球任何角落 和審查內容。 現在達成這目的的機制,像我所說的, 是要你拿掉 任何指向那些網址的人士。 你要把他們從搜索引擎拿掉, 你要把他們從網上目錄拿掉, 你要把他們從用戶名單拿掉。 由於互聯網上最大的內容生產商 並非谷歌或雅虎, 而是我們, 我們正是受到監控的對象。 由於最終 實施PIPA和SOPA 的真正威脅 是我們與其他人共享事物的能力。
So what PIPA and SOPA risk doing is taking a centuries-old legal concept, innocent until proven guilty, and reversing it -- guilty until proven innocent. You can't share until you show us that you're not sharing something we don't like. Suddenly, the burden of proof for legal versus illegal falls affirmatively on us and on the services that might be offering us any new capabilities. And if it costs even a dime to police a user, that will crush a service with a hundred million users.
所以PIPA和SOPA犯險 把歷史悠久的法律概念, 被證實有罪前是無辜的, 扭轉過來變成 -- 被證實無辜前是有罪的。 你不能共享 除非先向我們證明 你並非共享一些 我們不喜歡的東西。 突然間,要證明合法與非法的責任 肯定地落在我們身上 以及那些可能 為我們提供新功能的服務上。 即使只要一分錢的成本 去監控一名用戶, 那已足以毀掉 一項擁有上億萬用戶的服務。
So this is the Internet they have in mind. Imagine this sign everywhere -- except imagine it doesn't say College Bakery, imagine it says YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Imagine it says TED, because the comments can't be policed at any acceptable cost. The real effects of SOPA and PIPA are going to be different than the proposed effects. The threat, in fact, is this inversion of the burden of proof, where we suddenly are all treated like thieves at every moment we're given the freedom to create, to produce or to share. And the people who provide those capabilities to us -- the YouTubes, the Facebooks, the Twitters and TEDs -- are in the business of having to police us, or being on the hook for contributory infringement.
這就是他們心目中想要的互聯網。 想像一下隨處可見這樣一個標誌 -- 除了想像它不是叫做學院麵包店, 想像它叫做YouTube 或Facebook和Twitter。 想像它叫做TED, 這些評論 在任何可接受的代價下都不可受到監控。 SOPA和PIPA真正的影響 將會與其建議的影響不同。 它們的威脅,事實上, 是舉證責任的倒罝, 在我們得到自由去創作、 去製作和共享的每一刻裡 我們突然間 覺得都被看待成小偷一樣。 那些向我們提供這些功能的人們 -- YouTube、Facebook、Twitter和TED的員工 -- 變成了經營須要監控我們 的生意, 又或者可能成為侵權的共犯。
There's two things you can do to help stop this -- a simple thing and a complicated thing, an easy thing and a hard thing. The simple thing, the easy thing, is this: if you're an American citizen, call your representative, call your senator. When you look at the people who co-signed on the SOPA bill, people who've co-signed on PIPA, what you see is that they have cumulatively received millions and millions of dollars from the traditional media industries. You don't have millions and millions of dollars, but you can call your representatives, and you can remind them that you vote, and you can ask not to be treated like a thief, and you can suggest that you would prefer that the Internet not be broken.
有兩件事你可以做的 去幫我們制止此事 -- 一件簡單和一件複雜的事, 一件容易和一件困難的事, 簡單容易的事是: 如果你是美國公民, 請你致電你的眾議員,致電你的參議員。 當你看到 共同簽署SOPA法案的人, 共同簽署PIPA法案的人, 你看到的是他們 從傳統的媒體工業合共收取了 數以百萬計的金錢。 你沒有數以百萬的美元, 但你可致電你的眾議員, 你可提醒他們你有投票權, 你可要求不要被當作小偷, 你可建議你寧願 網際網絡不被破壞。
And if you're not an American citizen, you can contact American citizens that you know and encourage them to do the same. Because this seems like a national issue, but it is not. These industries will not be content with breaking our Internet. If they break it, they will break it for everybody. That's the easy thing. That's the simple thing.
如果你並非美國公民, 你可聯絡你認識的美國公民 並鼓勵他們做同樣的事情。 因為這看起來像是單一國家的問題, 但事實並非如此。 這些行業並不滿足於 單單破壞我們的網絡。 如果要破壞它,他們會破壞所有人的。 這是容易的事。 這是簡單的事。
The hard thing is this: get ready, because more is coming. SOPA is simply a reversion of COICA, which was purposed last year, which did not pass. And all of this goes back to the failure of the DMCA to disallow sharing as a technical means. And the DMCA goes back to the Audio Home Recording Act, which horrified those industries. Because the whole business of actually suggesting that someone is breaking the law and then gathering evidence and proving that, that turns out to be really inconvenient. "We'd prefer not to do that," says the content industries. And what they want is not to have to do that. They don't want legal distinctions between legal and illegal sharing. They just want the sharing to go away.
困難的那件事是這樣: 請充份準備,因為陸續有來。 SOPA簡單地只是反轉了COICA, 那是去年提議但沒被通過的法案。 而這一切可以追溯到 DMCA未能 以技術手段禁止共享。 DMCA又可追溯到家居錄音法, 那條令到這些行業害怕的法例。 因為 實際暗示有人違法 然後收集證據去證明它的整件事, 原來真的是很不方便的。 "我們並不想那樣做" 內容工業說。 其實他們希望的是不必要那樣做。 他們不想定下 合法和非法共享的法律區別。 他們只想讓共享消失。
PIPA and SOPA are not oddities, they're not anomalies, they're not events. They're the next turn of this particular screw, which has been going on 20 years now. And if we defeat these, as I hope we do, more is coming. Because until we convince Congress that the way to deal with copyright violation is the way copyright violation was dealt with with Napster, with YouTube, which is to have a trial with all the presentation of evidence and the hashing out of facts and the assessment of remedies that goes on in democratic societies. That's the way to handle this.
PIPA和SOPA並非怪事,它們並非異常現象, 它們也不單是一些事件。 它們是進一步上緊這一口特別的螺絲, 而到現在為止這已持續了20年。 如果我們打倒它們,我希望我們成功, 它們還會陸續有來。 因為直至我們說服國會 處理侵犯版權的做法 應像處理Napster和YouTube侵犯版權那樣做, 就是進行在民主社會中所見 透過羅列證據 以及核對事實和評估補救措施的一次審訊。 這才是處理這個問題的適當做法。
In the meantime, the hard thing to do is to be ready. Because that's the real message of PIPA and SOPA. Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming -- not producing, not sharing -- and we should say, "No."
在此期間, 困難的事是要做好準備。 因為這是PIPA和SOPA真正的訊息。 時代華納曾作出呼喚 他們想我們回到沙發上, 只事消費 -- 不事生產,不要共享 -- 而我們應該說,"不"。
Thank you.
謝謝!
(Applause)
(掌聲)