Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement 390
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The agreement would give border guards the power to search iPods and cellphones for illegal downloads, as well as to force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, characterizes ACTA this way: 'If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.'"
how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterfeiting to me means items produced as a "look a like" or in similar context, without a license to use the trademark. So, candy or tires or even CPUs can be counterfeit. But IP is not, because only counterfeit is reverse engineering. IP generally gets copied exactly. So how the heck is that counterfeit??
The only way they can apply it is if you have counterfeit CDs or DVDs or similar. But that still applies to the media marks, not the IP. The video is not counterfeit, the media is.
Or is someone selling KDE has "Windows Vista"?
Counterfeit and IP don't exactly make sense.
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:4, Informative)
Except that private copying of music is legal in Canada [cb-cda.gc.ca].
the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Sonds to me like the assholes in power are trying to circumvent the laws for the benefit of American corporate interests..
Time to contact your Member of Parliament [parl.gc.ca] and express your displeasure. Snail mail works best, no stamp is needed.
Easy (Score:3, Interesting)
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Obviously there's a good chance this won't be the case and such detection methods would be easy to defeat but this is what I imagine their thought process would be.
"If we can't prove they bought it, clearly they're guilty!"
they don't (Score:4, Interesting)
ISP records don't have anything to do with it either. This is naked imperialism - a power grab without disguise. It's not about "protecting" brand names, it's about silencing political dissent.
Perverse logic to this Intellectual Property stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone who's been blinded by the IP propaganda term [gnu.org] might confuse "fake" handbags with ripped music. The confusion is intentional and it's designed to take rights away.
Even given that, the demand for ISP logs and invasion of Canadian and EU citizen privacy is ballsy.
Fuck This (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Fuck This (Score:5, Interesting)
America is moving towards an information economy. Those in power are aware of the transformation and are trying to protect future American interests.
When the manufacturing is all being done in the cheapest places (globalization) America will only have her service economy, IP (If America owns Hollywood, she can buy and sell the world's spare time), and such control over business dealings in foreign lands as her businesses can muster and enforce.
Can you get rich by doing your neighbor's laundry if he is doing your in return? The GDP generated by Americans doing services for Americans is only wealth in terms of employment.
If IP is not protected, the only remaining wealth in America will be foreign businesses. Foreign businesses can be nationalized as soon as America's military isn't a major threat.* So suppose these events happened:
1: Rampant piracy makes ownership of IP moot
2: Japanese, Saudi, or Chinese businesses dump their bonds.
That's it! Those two things would bring America crashing to her knees, and destroy the cultural, economic, and military might of the greatest nation on earth. There really is a 3: profit for many powerful people. This is what America's leaders are doing about the situation:
Hiding the extent of the danger
Misguidedly passing draconian IP protection laws
Maintaining a large, secret technological lead (black tech: its real. No, I don't believe in UFOs)
That's what they're doing. I pass no judgment here, I'm just saying, that is the cause of these actions.
*Did you know that 50% of American businesses overseas (overseas divisions)are owned by the Chinese and theoretically controlled by the Chinese government? Did you know that the Saudis can take controll of foreign firms with the flick of a pen?
Libertarian horse poop (Score:5, Insightful)
And the music moguls now want to enforce the ability to check on me. With WHAT??? How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity???? THEY CANNOT!
IP protection isn't the backbone of the US economy. It's an intangibles-fantasy to think so. That's not what my father built, his father built, my mother built, and so on. It's the asset protection mechanism of the nonsensical. It's not innovative, it's not producing return on the intangible asset, it's as flimsy as derivates. Yet I respect the concept of asset ownership, and my rights under the law as a consumer. Now some nitwit's pressured various treaty signators to look at my damn MP3 player-- where's the justice in that??????
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When it comes to checking all iPods, they can't. What is far more likely is that if they have you tagged for some other problem this will mean they can then have your iPod checked over for possible infringing material.
I'm wondering whether they will be thinking that a full iPod means the content is pirated or not.
Also, it's not just music that can be stored on a iPod, or similar music devices. You can stor
Re:Fuck This (Score:5, Insightful)
There's even a precedent: when America was entering the Industrial Revolution, it built up a great deal of its powerful industrial base by "stealing" inventions from Europe. The European countries protested a lot about the U.S. stealing industrial secrets, but that didn't stop the U.S. from using those ideas to leapfrog its competitors into an economic powerhouse.
Doesn't that sound similar to the relationship that the U.S. has with China right now? What could the U.S. possibly offer China that would be worth China deliberately ignoring all those good inventions that it can use to build itself up?
If America really wanted to maintain a technological lead, it would be investing in educating its citizens in hard math & science, investing in applied research, and helping U.S.-only companies use the fruits of that research.
Instead, we get "leaders" who defund public education & finance anti-science propaganda campaigns, and who seem to think that America can keep a position of "world leadership" by waving its military dick around. Between those kinds of leaders & the idiots who blindly follow them, America has pretty much set itself up to be given the "Most Deserving of Becoming a Has-Been Superpower" award.
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the baby boomers?
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:2, Insightful)
Where do you draw the line between whining and merely stating one's opinion? Seems to me like you are a whiny baby-boomer who can't handle the criticism of younger people (I'm 27). See how easy it is to flip that around? I can argue with you and make up negative things about you, rather than actually attacking your opinion with logic.
I got it though, you
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
"Generation-Me" indeed.
Why yes, I do have karma to burn.
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:2)
Over Christmas, my now almost 95 year-old grandfather apologized to me, my sister and our 2 first cousins for the sorry state of the world that my parents generation created.
However, the boomers did such a good job of screwing things up, and peppering our generati
This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
IPods full of American music smuggled past Canadian customs? I'm sure that's exactly how Canadians are getting illicit copies of American music. (And vice versa.)
Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
If you've got a better way to do it, please share... iPod Shuffles are not the most comfortable things to hide in one's ass.
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Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, besides writing my federal representatives what can I, as a voting citizen, do about this ? Making amendments to the Charter and Constitution is a REALLY BIG DEAL and not easy to do. But signing international treaties which can over rule our most supreme national laws is standard practice.
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This is part of "Make everyone criminal". If not enough people are breaking rules, you invent some more rules that they have to break in order to live comfortably.
It produces fear and guilt and thought fear conformity and obedience (you don't want to stand out and give anyone reason to go harass you because you know there is something to be harassed about). It gives base for bullying inconvenient people: they can use your filled ipod to give you minor bitch slap as well as to do mon
This may be a stupid question... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This may be a stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
They must be smoking hash was my first thought.
Seriously, how are they going to take my ipod of 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux .iso images, podcasts, etc., hash them all and compare those to the ones in their database?
I change the ID3v2 tags, add missing ID3v1 tags, store lyrics and album art INTO the actual song file itself, and so on. All of these modifications change the hash. Now because my hash doesn't match theirs, I'm somehow guilty of copyright infringement? I don't think so.
Time to replace the stock firmware on the ipod with one that embeds AES-256 onboard and has to be unlocked before you can play any music from it.
Encryption is the only way to stop this madness.
I have nothing to hide, and therefore they have no reason to look.
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They would just take the iPod. Their opinion would be "fuck you and your 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux
All your base belong to us.
Sounds like (bad pun I know) that the Canadian customs and border patrol is going into the used iPod business. Just taking them away from people and then reselling them, maybe erased
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How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod (i.e. downloaded without buying it in any form), from a song ripped from your private CD collection (which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too), from a song bought from the iTunes store?
They wouldn't necessarily be able to, unless they're obviously labeled something like: Madonna-New_Album_ReleaseGroup
This action brings two thoughts to mind.
1. The war on Copyright Infringement has succedded where the War on Terror & War on Drugs have failed.
2. They're essentially making a civil enforcement matter into a Federal enforcement
They won't, but they needn't care... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's up to you to 1. challenge this and 2. provide evidence that either you were NOT speeding, or that you were speeding for a damned good reason which exempts you from getting a ticket.
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So to get back on-topic...
"How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"
If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.
If it's an MP3, it'll get added to the list of 'probably-illegal' bits of music.
"from a song ripped from your private CD collection"
1. Challenge it, 2. provide evidence that you, in fact, are in posession of that CD.
"(which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too)"
If that is indeed the law - which, last time I checked, it's not - yhen you're screwed even in the above case regardless.
"from a song bought from the iTunes store?"
Presuming you purchased an unprotected MP3 - that purchase should be listed in your iTunes Account. 1. Challenge it, 2. provide the evidence - name Apple if you want.
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Now, personally, I don't think this will actually be checked all -that- actively. Lines at airports and the like are queued enough as it is and they're strapped for money just to check for things like, you know, actual terrorists, drug smugglers, etc. That's not to say I'm complacent - I already sent in my letter of protest several weeks back, but we're not exactly part of the G8 countries so that's probably going to do fook all good - but I don't think that the first kid with a few MP3s on his system is going to be shipped to Gitmo either.
Now, with that out of the way, the clauses regarding the restrictions of privacy tools use online (and, possibly, offline; that TrueCrypted drive you've got and such) I find far, far more unsettling (and was the majority of the body of my protest letter; personally I can't really justify saying "I'm only downloading a movie! What's the harm!?", but I did point out the ridiculousness of involving law enforcement officials in this, never mind the penance, and my disagreement with those clauses on those grounds).
I'm still waiting for them to hook this into a "That way we'll get the terrorists, too!"-type defense argument.
But maybe they're not, and they're expecting people, to just fume at the worst bits, then blank those out and just leave it with the anti-piracy bits which might be grudgingly accepted.
AAC format (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.
It's pretty unlikely that any border guard is going to be checking the format of any random song on any random traveler's iPod. Most will most likely happen in the worst case is that the border crosser will have to get a 'certificate of compliance' from a record store or Apple store. You'd bring your i
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a better question is how they'd know if I had paid for the music I purchased from sites like beatport.com or djdownload.com, which are 320kbit MP3 files with no labeling that distinguishes them from any other MP3 I have..
Sure, I can carry around my purchase receipts, but.. fuck that.
Um, okay... (Score:3, Funny)
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I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just one more excuse to induce more fear in the normal population.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Them: Give us your passwords or we'll confiscate your device.
You: But.. I... I've got to make a flight! I have riii--
Them: That's it, Bob! Tase that fucker and keep his iPod! We'll show this twat what we Canadians are all a-boot!
Re:I wonder... (Score:4)
Good morning, Guantanamo!
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If I urgently need a laptop while I'm on a trip, I'll bloody well buy one
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umm, assume you are a terrorist and throw you in jail?
Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:3, Informative)
Constitution easy to subvert (Score:5, Insightful)
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And how exactly does that allow a treaty to remove a part of the constitution? (Crappy politicians defining words however the hell they want aside)
See also Reid v. Covert [wikipedia.org]
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By making it explicit that treaties with foreign powers are no less the "supreme law" of the land than the Constitution itself.
In the simplest terms, the federal government is and always has been supreme in international affairs.
You may be able to argue that you being treated unfairly, that too much is being exposed, that you being asked to asked to accept more, much more, than the treaty requires.
But if the government simply
Re:Constitution easy to subvert (Score:4, Informative)
FALSE. Treaties have the same strength as a law passed by congress, but are not exempt from the Constitution.
"Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision." -- Foster vs Nelson
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Un-Constitutional judicial rulings are void, even if today's generation of judges, executives and legislators are too anti-American to be governed by that simple fact. It's just "might makes right", and not actually right or just. And likely to eventually be overturned, as
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--Q
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Re:Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amendment IV
There are a handful of exceptions to the 4th Amendment.
exigent circumstances
search incident to a lawful arrest
the automobile exception
-the container exception (containers in an automobile)
plain view/feel
And the one that matters in this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception [wikipedia.org]
At the border, the only search that requires probably cause is a "non-routine" physical search. Which basically boils down to anything more invasive than a pat-down of your body.
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Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations [eff.org]
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I am no political scientist (Score:2)
Re:I am no political scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just more stupid American foreign policy.
Just today I read that the the drug war fuelled by America's love of cocaine and marijuana is resulting in thousands of people getting killed in Mexican gang wars over smuggling routes, yet the US War on drugs policy persists, keeping the black market trade the biggest and bloodiest industry in the world.
On the north border they want to remove the rights of people just to make a few cocaine snorting media exec's happy.
And we have seen what US foreign policy has done to the middle east.
Its no wonder so many people hate the US, their politicians have systematically contributed to most of the crap that is currently going on in the world all in the name of consumerism and captialism. Its not about democracy at all, its all about how cheap their gas is and what boat they can buy with their annual bonus.
Re:I am no political scientist (Score:5, Funny)
A few links. (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of these links are several months old; this has been brewing for awhile, and action needs to be taken now to stop it.
My God!!! (Score:2)
Let 'em review (Score:2)
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I hope they pass it (Score:2)
Re:I hope they pass it (Score:4, Insightful)
well then... (Score:2)
Of course, pity the person who legally format shifted music they own in accordance with various fair use or national copyright doctrines around the world.
Or pity the person who legally purchased mp3's without drm; unless they carry all of their purchase reciepts with them!
How can they tell? (Score:2)
So where should Linux Symposium be held now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Will this force Linux conferences to be held outside the US, Canada and the EU? Of course Alan Cox lives in the EU. It really makes one not wish to even travel through the region, which is pretty difficult if you think about air travel hubs, etc.
Bombs maybe, MP3s NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
redundant issue (Score:2, Informative)
The ignorance of youth (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought that WE had little respect for our elders, but you punks take the cake (and eat it too). We didn't "sit around protesting", we marched around protesting. And what we protested was what the previous generations had fucked up.
We were being drafted to be cannon fodder for a useless war. Some of us volunteered for that useless war out of patriotism (I did). The protests finally eneded thath war. Meanwhile you little whiners are too busy chasing filthy lucre and getting your nipples pierced and foreheads tattood to care that an oil man becaise President and started a useless war for the sole purpose of enriching himself. At least my dad's generation's rich people who starte dthe Vietnam war thought )prehaps correctly) that they were fighting communism, a laudible goal to them.
My generation's protests stopped the war and made the President resign. Where are your protests of the Iraq war? Your stupid generation doesn't even have to be drafted!
Some of us protested the rape of the environment. We got the Clean Air act and teh Clean Water act passed. We got CFCs banned. What are you gutless wimps doing about global warmning? Buying SUVs!
My generation built sna is still building houses, like the one you live in. The parts of the electrical grid my dad din't build were built by those who followed him.
My dad's generation invented computers, but my generation pur those giant building sized machines on your desktop. My generation put VCRs and CDs and DVDs on the narket. My generation made the entire cell phone infrastructure.
My dad's generation smoked cigarettes. My generation smoked pot. Your generation smokes crack.
Your generation uses my generation's music in their fucktardedly stupid commercials. Neither my nor my dad's generation did that.
My generation was pretty ignorant of history, but we were pikers when it comes to your generation.
What has your generation done, except invent internet trolling?
Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Informative)
The third page of the article explains how the US is able to get away with such outrageous requests:
So the proposal is, "surrender your citizens rights or we will make it cost you." The answer should be, "without rights, you will just take our money anyway, no thanks."
CoRaF (Score:5, Insightful)
Paragraph 1 of the Charter says that
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It'll cost you seven figures to get there.
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The problem is that Canada has this big loophole in it's charter of rights called the "non withstanding clause"
That's not a loophole, it is a safeguard in the event a critical or popular law gets struck down (e.g. a specific law that allows holding a minor or other individual when it is determined that he has a pattern of dangerous crimes that make him a threat to society and himself.) Any law passed under that clause also automatically sunsets after five years. If the population wants to get rid of the law, they can easily vote for another party.
The clause also only applies to some aspects of the Charter of Righ
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So a critical law which violates rights should still be allowed to stand?
Including or excluding laws that put violent criminals in jail?
Seriously, if you believe that the example I gave shouldn't be allowed to stand, you might as well give children a carte blanche to commit murder. The law in question was designed to prevent young offenders known to have a pattern of criminal behaviour from committing additional crimes. Within 24 hours of it being struck down, the individual stole a car and caused a car accident.
Or a popular law which violates the rights of a minority should be allowed to stand?
There is no such thing. The closest match is Quebec's language
Mod parent up. (Score:3, Insightful)
screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
16 hour work days, food that's poison, obesity, insurance and medicine they can't afford. At some point it collapses on itself because there's only so much greed an economy can stand. We are entering a recession [infowars.com] exactly as predicted by Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in 2006 [prisonplanet.com].
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares?
At least we will have all of our needs taken care of by the government.
I mean, what do we need? Food, shelter, and companionship.
All are offered free of charge at your local prison.
Sarcasm (maybe not) aside, I mean, how the *uck can someone tell if my iPod has illegal or legal downloads on it? I can tell you for a fact, that I don't even know which are legal or illegal, they all look the same to me. Well, now some of the low bitrate ones, I might question, but how would anybody else?
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I'm less sure how they plan to scan the tens of thousands of media files on a given iPod. Perhaps since you're already waiting several hours to check in to make sure you haven't got a pair of nailscissors with which you might manicure someone to death the rationale is to make you wait at the other end too.
Naturally the whole question of how many Pirates and Ninjas there a
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:screwed. (Score:4, Informative)
The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use. ... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.
and
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.
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But this nation's CD rippers are in good company. Bush admitted to having The Beatles on his iPod long before they were available as a digital download.
My captcha was nicely relevant: judicial
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, how about another group of nutjobs - the "Federal Reserve". Since the CPI numbers are meaningless, and the GDP numbers are bogus (compare pre-Clinton and post-Clinton numbers for a good example why), let's look at the relative buying power of the US Dollar, since that's a lot harder to fudge.
Here ya go. [federalreserve.gov]
The numbers to look at are the Broad and Major Currency numbers. These indices are relative to a specific point in time - Jan 97 and Mar 73, respectively).
So, looking at the most recent YOY data (APR-APR) - the US dollar has dropped 9.3% YOY compared to a broad group of our trading partners, and nearly 12% YOY when compared to other major currencies. Contrast this to a 4% YOY (broad) or a 4.7% (major) for the 12 month period before that.
You don't know what you're talking about (Score:5, Informative)
The exchange rate has little to do with purchasing power, since it is heavily dependent on trade. The exchange rate has gone up because the US has a trade defecit, which is flooding foregin markets with dollars. Add to this the fact that the dollar has long been overvalued, and it's not hard to understand why the exchange rate is falling. It is basically a market correction, which should utimatelly ballance out our trade defecit (as exchange rates fall, imports will decrease and exports will increase).
Relative purchasing power must be determined by compairing some kind of price index (such as the CPI). Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's simply the only way to compare relative purchasing power. The exchange rate only effects the price of imported goods, and therefore does not say a lot about price levels in general. Especially when you consider that China fixes their exchange rate to the dollar, and all petrolium is sold in dollars.
Re:Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Informative)
What amazes me is it says about searching iPod's for illegal content... And in Canada currently it's LEGAL to download music. (Despite the CRIA's objections.)
For so long I've been proud to live in Canada, but with that fucktard Harper at the helm they're trying more and more to make it America 2.
Re:Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me is how they figure they can identify illegal content.
Seriously, how the hell can a border services agent tell that the MP3s on my iPod have all been legally ripped from CDs I have purchased? They can't. I buy probably close to about $1000 CDN in CDs each year, all of which end up ripped and played on my iPods or in mixes.
If they simply look and say anything which isn't an AAC bought from the iTunes store then they'll be flagging a tremendous amount of people for no good reason.
There is simply no way that from an iPod you can verify the pedigree of the songs on it.
Amen to that. Harper et al are really sucking up to Bush just far too much. Though, I must say I reserve some bile for the asshat American government (NOT everyday Americans, for you knee jerk mods) for shoving these &*^%&*(^ laws down everyone's throats. America's chief export nowadays seems to be laws to protect the *AA's and screw the rest of us.
This really is appalling.
Cheers
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Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt any explanation could be more accurate and simple at the same time.
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Pay attention to this shit, because party politics is just another big, fat, red herring the corporate drones are waving in your face. Neither party has your interests at heart.
What "Free Trade" Looks Like. (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents are one small but important piece of the IP Empire which demands universally oppressive laws.
The list goes on and on but it has one common theme, your rights mean nothing, shut up and get back to work for the man.
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Well, if they would come in through legal channels...they would be treated like any other legal immigrant. I don't think anyone has much a problem with legal immigration into the US.
However, ILLEGAL immigrants have broken the law, an
The real answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Repeal copyright. All of it. If they want to fight, give 'em a fight. Let us not piddle about minor interpretations of legalisms. Let's gut the whole thing. Patents too. Both of them were designed to promote progress and now the serve the opposite purpose. They should be done away with.
Patents shall not issue. Copyrights shall not be granted. All patents and copyrights are void. (New amendment)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:5, Interesting)
Avoid the proxies in Sweden etc. as they are subject to EU law, Switzerland is not subject to EU law and do no reveal your identity to anyone.
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