Secret Copyright Treaty Timeline Shows Global DMCA 184
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist, a leading critic
of the ACTA secret copyright treaty, has produced a new interactive timeline
that traces its development. The timeline includes links to
leaked documents, videos, and public interest group letters that should generate
increasing concern with a deal that could lead to a global
three-strikes and you're out policy."
Emailgate (Score:5, Insightful)
If any organization needed an emailgate, this is one of them. We need to see who is manipulating and bribing who. Just like the open docs. fiasco.
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The health care fiasco is in a defense appropriations bill. The "we're going to kill babies and stick them on spikes" rider (aka, federal abortion funding) was a subject of some debate among Dems, although I honestly can't follow the health care proposal at the rate it is changing (wait, it's "Medicare at 50" now?), so I don't know where the whole spiked baby thing ended up. At any rate, the Republicans will fight, at least against things being added to the bill.
As more and more "adjusted, homogenized" cl
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I thought the health care fiasco was in the Health Care Fiasco bill which we've been hearing so much about in the news. Got any actual citations on health care stuff being pushed into the defense appropriations bill? Or is this just more Limbaugh/Beck bullshit?
Have you seen the latest on the Antarctic data adjustments? The data from 63 temp sensors was "homoginized" by simply discarding the data from 62 of them and replacing those 62 with the
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I'm Offtopic, but it is interesting how they are lowering the age to qualify for medicare, but I haven't heard anything about lowering the wait time for getting medicare after being declared disabled. It was two years last time I saw. Since medical insurance is tied to employment these days, you have to wonder what the poor saps who become disabled and potentially have to go two years witho
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Yes, I agree. If only there was a wealthy and powerful opposition to the global DMCA to fund such a thing (like probably occurred with the global warming docs).
Re:Emailgate (Score:5, Funny)
I won't name the manipulators and bribers, but I'll give you a hint: their initials are RIAA and MPAA.
I demand to know why myself, Richard Ingus Alfonzo-Almada and my wife Maria Perez Alfonzo-Almada, are being targeted by this smear campaign! We have done nothing!
Re:Emailgate (Score:4, Funny)
Just a note: I don't have six fingers and I didn't kill your father. Please don't hurt me.
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[from his sig]
This comment is worded exactly as intended. Any lame "Fixed that for you" jokes won't be modded into oblivion.
FTFY. You can't mod and post simultaneously.
Doubleplusnotgood! (Score:5, Insightful)
Next thing, I'll be sitting in jail for trying to solve a Rubik's Cube by taking it apart.
Not jail, the wilderness (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a jail policy, they can't imprison you on allegations yet.
Unfortunately they can kick you off the internet for a period of time by allegation alone. You know, that little novelty some of us run hobbies off of, or maybe send the occasional "electronic" letter to our hip friends in other cities through Prodigy.
Let's get real about this. Internet for many people is an integrated part of daily life, you wouldn't cut power or phones from people who allegedly do bad things with it without proving guilt first (or in the rare case preventing immediate harm to someone else). This isn't any different; sure I can survive just fine without internet or power (for a while), but the consequences to my life and livelihood would be apparent pretty quickly.
Worse yet, the authority for removing essential services has an established track record for casting really big nets. The American cousin of the CRIA uses big lawsuits to make up for inadequacies like a city-bound guy with a Hummer... We already have enough issues in this country with a self-governed federal police force, thank-you. Let's sort those bumps out before putting law in the hands of the private sector.
-Matt
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You'd be surprised just how simple your life would become without internet or power ...
For one, you would probably read more books
And you would certainly expose yourself to a lot less red slime from Fox news corp
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And you'd have a hell of a time finding employment if you want to do more than local burger flipping and dish washing.
You weren't expexted to email your CV then (Score:2, Insightful)
You weren't expexted to email your CV then. Mostly because many people didn't have internet (and only businesses had broadband).
Rather like "My grandad didn't need a car to live" well now "everyone" has a car, you can do fuck all if you haven't got one...
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For one, you would probably read more books
One of these days I want someone to explain to me why reading more books is so important. Not everything that isn't reading books is bad (take that grammar nazis).
Re:Not jail, the wilderness (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately they can kick you off the internet for a period of time by allegation alone. You know, that little novelty some of us run hobbies off of, or maybe send the occasional "electronic" letter to our hip friends in other cities through Prodigy.
That also means anyone could remove any other IP address simply by accusing them of copyright infringement.
By simply sending 3 letters I could remove the computer running RIAA.COM or WHITEHOUSE.GOV
Sure they can move it to another IP address but the time and effort to do so makes printing a few cut & pasted letters seem
worth it. What would happen if a group of individuals got together and started a letter writing campaign claiming copyright
infringement by a whole block of addresses. I cant wait to see how these laws will be abused.
If they add something allowing the person disconnected to sue the accuser (effectively requiring you to pay to prove your innocence)
then set up a limited company and fold it right before any lawsuits start.
Re:Not jail, the wilderness (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put
1: Your letters will be ignored if they're accusing someone important.
If you accuse a senator there's no way in hell they're getting disconnected.
2: If the RIAA accuse everyone in a network block of copyright infringement with no proof then so what?
In theory there are penalties for sending fraudulent DMCA notices but you have to have deep pockets to make it stick and there's probably some crap whereby they only have to prove that they *believed* you were violating copyright because the magic 8 ball said so and hence were acting in good faith.
3: the penalties if you do make it stick are probably a drop in the bucket for the RIAA/MPAA etc
4: If you try to turn it against them and serve notices to them then they will have deep pockets to make it stick to you and will make an example out of you.
5: the penalties which would be a drop in the bucket for the RIAA/MPAA etc will make you bleed out your ears.
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I don't think you understand how it will work. A big ISP will have no problem cutting off some random guy's internet access. (without telling him why, and tech support doesn't know) I doubt they would even think about cutting off the access of a company which probably pays them tens of thousands or perhaps millions of dollars per month for hosting.
So, in reality, unless you are a big player who pays lots of money for hosting, publishing anything will risk losing your internet account. Isn't this how they
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A proper US-DMCA letter makes claims "under penalty of perjury..."
The only part of the letter that the penalty of perjury applies to is a statement that the sender is an authorized representative of the copyright owner. Which is no problem if you're claiming that it's something you hold copyright to. (The copyright does not need to have been filed with the Copyright Office.)
And if you've ever sent them an email, when you wrote that email you automatically got copyright to it. I expect they could argue "f
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A proper US-DMCA letter makes claims "under penalty of perjury..."
The only part of the letter that the penalty of perjury applies to is a statement that the sender is an authorized representative of the copyright owner.
You also have to warrant "that the information is accurate" and, under penalty of perjury, that the copyright has been infringed. Additionally, perjury aside, making false statements could be considered an obstruction of justice that could get you a contempt of court charge.
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You also have to warrant "that the information is accurate" and, under penalty of perjury, that the copyright has been infringed.
Perhaps you could give a cite? No DMCA takedown that I have ever seen, including those that I have personally received, does that. Here's actual text from an actual notice from my files, with names changed to protect the guilty:
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You also have to warrant "that the information is accurate" and, under penalty of perjury, that the copyright has been infringed.
Perhaps you could give a cite? No DMCA takedown that I have ever seen, including those that I have personally received, does that.
17 USC 512 [cornell.edu] provides that, to be effective, a takedown notice must contain "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
Thus, the statement must warrant that the information is accurate, and must further state, under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is an authorized representative or is the owner and that they are allegin
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This isn't a jail policy, they can't imprison you on allegations yet.
Not yet... give them time.
What they can do today though is essentially financially ruin you for life based off of a civil suit.
Re:Doubleplusnotgood! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, any other route to global domination would be a bit too obvious, dontcha think? I mean, why make blatantly obvious laws that everyone notices immediately? Instead, you can make opaque, confusing, and outright obscure laws to sneak in and swipe individual liberty, one piece at a time, just like seawater eroding a sand castle on the beach. After all, it's far easier to point at a pile of obfuscation and say "don't worry - only those nasty artist-raping copyright pirates will have to worry about it - you're fine". Next, you can impose laws in the name of, oh, "the environment", then "safety", then "health", of course "the children", and then... well, you get the idea. Give it a pretty name, gloss over the ugly parts, and market it, one small piece at a time. As long as the proletariat is comfortable, they won't mind the ride until it's too late to actually do anything about it.
Besides, fascism-by-bureaucracy is far less messy to accomplish than staging an armed coup. Certainly a bit slower to do, but far more certain (as a bonus, you can condition the masses to actually be comfortable in the new environment. All you have to do is keep them distracted with neat little toys, lots of sexual entertainment, and the occasional celebrity gossip, just like they did it in the old days of Rome...)
Worse than terrorism. (Score:2, Interesting)
These global organizations, as well as global governance, are a far bigger threat to freedom and democracy than terrorism ever could be.
We need politicians who are running on a platform that will directly challenge this sort of behavior. We need politicians who will withdraw our nations from these organizations and treaties.
NAFTA and treaties with various third-world countries have destroyed the American manufacturing base. The American economy will not recover until those treaties are abandoned and manufac
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Good points, all. I just have a short comment.
NAFTA and treaties with various third-world countries have destroyed the American manufacturing base.
You're surely talking about the massive loss in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. over the past 30+ years. While many of these job losses are due to so-called "free trade" treaties, automation via computers has also taken many jobs. Cool stuff is still made in the U.S., just not a whole lot of consumer-grade stuff.
For example, I met a man about 6 months ago who has
automation is terrorism. (Score:2)
Oh yeah. Blame automation for taking "jobs" away. As if a machine doing something will require a person thousands of miles away to do something else in addition.
More likely it is this way because idiots rail against automation and insist everything be handmade, but they don't want to do all that extra labor (or any labor at all), so they ship the jobs to countries where the labor is cheaper.
I remember in the '90s when the news would show robots building cars whenever they talked about automakers. It mad
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I will let you in on a little "secret:" if you have 100% automation, nobody has to do any work!
In the modern world, the upper class owns the machines, and the underclass collects unemployment.
As for the debt problem, it will only be solved when spoiled people learn to live within their means.
You obviously didn't read the link about the debt-based nature of our economy/money supply. There's another good article: "I Want the Earth plus 5%". Look it up.
Psychopaths in major leadership positions of government an
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Pfft, yeah.
We also need, at least in the U.S. and probably elsewhere, representatives and senators that are financially responsible individuals as a whole.
I blew a gasket and wrote my senators and representative about the OMFG unbelievable passing of the senate bill that boosts government spending by 12 percent AND gives government employees a two percent raise. Why? Well, given the financial condition of the country and the already outrageous borrowing that has already been done, they are setting things up
I would propose the public hold secret talks. (Score:4, Funny)
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Bring it on (Score:5, Insightful)
The harder they push in this direction, the more people will realize there is another way [creativecommons.org]
Re:Bring it on (Score:5, Informative)
Question is, will they care? Most folks consume content, not create it. Also, as we've seen in the whole Microsoft vs. FOSS wars, the closed-source guys seem to have better, slicker marketing.
Re:Bring it on (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they will care. Because what is the point of ACTA? More money.
From people who do not have more money.
So it creates financial pressure. And as humans always seek the easiest (most efficient!) way, they will naturally be pressed towards CC and more secretive file sharing (which will become way easier to set up).
ACTA is the classic “tighten your grip, until you are left with nothing”.
There is no way to win this, for the content industry. They can only lose. :)
They get to choose the way it ends. Nothing more.
If they want to choose the faster dead (ACTA), let them.
Re:Bring it on (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no way to win this, for the content industry. They can only lose. They get to choose the way it ends. Nothing more. If they want to choose the faster dead (ACTA), let them. :)
The problem with letting them is the collateral damage. I'm reminded of the cartoon of the criminal holding a child's head next to his with a huge pistol pointing at the two of them. "Stand back or the kid gets it!"
Re:Bring it on (Score:4, Interesting)
the closed-source guys seem to have better, slicker marketing.
Perhaps.
But when Grandma asks me about this 'new' Linux thing and will it get rid of all these virus things, I know there is hope.
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I am going to throw semantics at you and ask:
Just how does someone "consume content"?
This is the problem with the whole copyright argument. Trying to assign a value to the expression of an idea is wrong.
Re:Bring it on (Score:4, Interesting)
There is yet another way. It is called massive civil disobedience.
They can't cut us all off. And I dare them to try.
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See: Iran.
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That only works with physical things. Disconnecting an Internet account is trivial compared to imprisoning someone (which is what you'd need for physical civil disobedience). The level of technical competence of the user will vary the amount of time before they try (potentially unsuccessfully if there is a common blacklist) to get back online, but the mass disconnecting shouldn't be all that difficult.
Re:Bring it on (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, no.
As admirable as you believe the goal is (and I agree with you on that), the means is just *wrong*.
You're talking about organizations that think nothing of sending infringement notices for things that are in the public domian, or copyrighted by the people who post them. "Artist's" groups that send DMCA notices against the wishes of the authors they represent for material that is published by the authors themselves under a CC license.
These are people who send infringement notices based on nothing more than the author's name being similar to one they represent.
They are people who send infringement notices to the wrong place, or "link" infringement to IP addresses that are assigned to printers.
You get three of these? You're off the net. Period. Doesn't matter if the stuff is CC'ed or not. Doesn't matter that the notices are invalid. You're guilty until proven innocent. You have to prove you're innocent, and do it without access to the tools necessary to do so.
THIS IS WRONG
"Bring it on" is entirely the wrong way to approach this - we need to stop it before it happens, not try to fix it after.
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An irony in the struggle between FOSS and proprietary software is that for many people, pirating commercial software is a practical necessity, in part because of the efforts of monopolists to enforce their dominance of the market. How often do you see "Familiarity with OpenOffice.org" in a job description? How many student graphic designers, working their way through school with minimum wage jobs, can use GIMP instead of Photoshop for their class work?
Entertainment media is more complicated, ethically. But
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One necessary thing is stiff penalties for anyone who submits false copyright infringement claims. There are stiff penalties for infringing copyrights, which some claim is "stealing" (they are two different things). However a crime which is much more close to stealing is almost always unpunished. Fraudulently taking down a work infringes on the freedom of the person who made the work.
It is not any different than someone who claims you stole the car you are driving, and elicits the help of police or others
Yes, help creative commons, open source etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
If this is going live, i can foresee open source apps and creative commons goods surge in popularity.
Aren't they shooting themselves in the long term ?
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I can also foresee alot of Open source apps unable to foster because of global copyright laws.
Re:Yes, help creative commons, open source etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
The license under which they are produced allows collaboration and distribution in spite of craziness in other copyright laws.
It doesn't matter - all it takes is someone who is willing to say "hey, that code infringes our copyright". The "offending" code gets removed, and (after the third time) the person who posted it gets kicked off the net.
Good luck trying to clear your name when you don't get to use the internet, and you can't sue to get reconnected because the company that made the claim is in another country.
And if you *do* manage to get it cleared up, the company just says "whoops, I guess I was wrong", and it starts all over again.
Re:Yes, help creative commons, open source etc. (Score:5, Informative)
Given this bastard law, one wouldn't be able to download code regardless.
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Pretty well. Up here, SOCAN are trying to renegotiate higher performance fees [metronews.ca] to get a cut of expected higher revenues for Vancouver transit buskers during the Olympics. It may result in getting the busker program (and SOCAN's revenues from it) cancelled instead. Does it make sense to charge buskers making $50 a weekend a rate much closer to DJs making hundreds of dollars a night?
Pro-ACTA arguments are disingenuous (Score:5, Informative)
If one follows the link in TFA to Michael Geist's interactive timeline, there's an element that leads to a short video of a debate in the Canadian Houses of Parliament-- one member says ACTA is a tool of US corporate interests and will lock millions of users out of the net; the government minister who responds says anything in ACTA is "subservient to the acts of this Parliament". What he DOESN'T say, and what the member is not sharp enough to pick up in the swift give-and-take of debate, is that *once the treaty is in place*, there is NO more subservience to *anything* (short of something on the order of a US Constitutional Amendment". This is the point: the people and even those of their representatives who want to derail this blindsiding juggernaut *will be able to do nothing* once the treaty is signed, and *saying the treaty is subject to US or Canadian law* is a pure, cynical smokescreen. An ounce of prevention here can accomplish what no amount of cure can fix. ACTA negotiations must be transparent. If we don't fight for that the corporate interests will do an end run around our rights.
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Re:Pro-ACTA arguments are disingenuous (Score:4, Interesting)
If one follows the link in TFA to Michael Geist's interactive timeline, there's an element that leads to a short video of a debate in the Canadian Houses of Parliament-- one member says ACTA is a tool of US corporate interests and will lock millions of users out of the net; the government minister who responds says anything in ACTA is "subservient to the acts of this Parliament". What he DOESN'T say, and what the member is not sharp enough to pick up in the swift give-and-take of debate, is that *once the treaty is in place*, there is NO more subservience to *anything*
Clearly you have no understanding of the role of treaties in Canadian law.
Unlike our American neighbours to the south, treaties have *no legal force on their own*. That's right, they do *not* become the law of the land. Rather, once a treaty is ratified, it's up to the government to then pass laws which harmonize Canadian law with the treaty provisions. But that's *not legally required*. ie, there's nothing stopping the house from simply refusing to pass laws to harmonize Canadian law with our treaty obligations.
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And what amount of public pressure will ever move the government to repudiate a treaty that serves the interests of the principal government campaign contributors?
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And what amount of public pressure will ever move the government to repudiate a treaty that serves the interests of the principal government campaign contributors?
Well, given that campaign contributions are severely curtailed in Canada, I'd say this particular issue you've cited isn't terribly relevant (thank you Elections Canada). In fact, the track record of our government thus far indicates that the government isn't terribly influenced by the copyright cartel (a DMCA-like law has been proposed multiple
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and this changes what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intellectual property is an invention of the rich countries to force the poor countries into an economic model that benefits them. Knowledge has always been power, and the developed countries of the world realize that by locking up their books and restricting the free trade of information and knowledge, they can effectively keep those countries enslaved -- producing real, material goods, in exchange for imaginary ones.
That, people, is the true objective of intellectual property. You people think they care about you making pirate copies of CDs and DVDs? How pathetically self-centered! The truth is much bigger than your hard drive contents.
digital sharecropping (Score:2)
Intellectual property is an invention of the rich countries to force the poor countries into an economic model that benefits them. Knowledge has always been power, and the developed countries of the world realize that by locking up their books and restricting the free trade of information and knowledge, they can effectively keep those countries enslaved -- producing real, material goods, in exchange for imaginary ones.
digital sharecropping. nuff sed.
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digital sharecropping. nuff sed.
How interesting that you mention farming. The way copyright and patent law works now, it would be illegal for me to use irrigation and farming techniques any more modern than at least 1880 (150 years plus the life of the author). Think about that when people talk about the war on "piracy". It's not -- we're on the right side (by distributing this stuff for free and attacking their business model) but we're here for all the wrong reasons.
Hackers need to return to their roots: Deep down inside, we know that f
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You're used to being in a position where the majority of information disseminated to the public is informed by you, and has repercus
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Patents only last 20 years. Copyrights do not prevent you from making anything but another copy of the book/cd/dvd/etc.
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Patents and intellectual property are one things.
But this treaty and others go further than that.
Dont be so simplistic.
they already enforce that all countries that trade with the US, must respect international treaties. Copyright and intellectual property was one of the first many many years ago.
the stuff they are pushing through now is much more focused on addressing open information leakage. They want to gain some level of control over information spread.
Its not just the US. Its the EU. The EU tends to be
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Re:You sound like Fox Mulder... (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is that the developing world would benefit from greater IP protection, as IP currently has functionally **no** protection in most of it.
The developing world would benefit more from spending all of their money developing infrastructure instead of licensing and importing it in exchange for their natural and human resources. Their economy is not like ours: The multiplication effect is such that for every dollar they invest in infrastructure, the return on investment would be three, even as much as five times. The multiplication effect is lower in developed countries because we are operating close to or at the production possibilities curve. Although it seems like only pennies on the dollar to license these technologies, for them it represents a major investment rather than part of the aggregate cost.
It's not just RIAA/MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think it is bullocks dreamed up by people who never created art in their entire lives. Nobody is going to pay for "IP" when they need food on the table. Furthermore, these laws will be used to silence the critics of political interests.
It is precisely the free exchange of ideas that creates intellectual wealth, which is why these laws are fundamentally counter-productive in their goals.
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There is more than MUSIC and MOVIES to the whole "Intellectual Property" BS invented by the propagandists (aka Public Relations, as they call themselves.)
The RIAA and MPAA may not have direct reach in other nations, especially the ones where people are not so preoccupied with consumerism but they help support the imperial corporate movement because it benefits them locally and eventually internationally.
Agra Business is far more involved in the I.P. imperialism than the entertainment industry is. Look into
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Government is created to try and preserve the rights men were born with.
I happen to think that I own the toil of my hands and the ingenuity of my mind. What does it mean to own something? Exclusive control of that thing.
On a desert island, I certainly own the work of my hands and mind. Why should I give up that control just because someone thinks themself my neighbor?
I shouldn't, and in the United States, at least originally, you weren't asked to.
It turns out that a large part of the law deals with prese
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You got the idea, while preaching means that are diametrically opposed to accomplishing it. Ideas are indeed the foundation of civilization, but it's the spread of ideas and their widespread application that induces civilization, not ideas locked up and caged and available only at arbitrary cost from their progenitor. Ownership is a fundamental aspect of individual freedom, but ownership of ideas damages societal freedom.
Copyrights and patents stifle progress and act as a brake against innovation that le
Re:and this changes what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:and this changes what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Government is created to try and preserve the rights men were born with.
We're born with rights? I wasn't aware of any viable a priori or empirical proofs towards that conclusion. What the hell is a right, where the hell do they come from? Neither of these questions have been answered to any degree of certainty. Generally all they are is convenient slogans used to make an emotive argument towards their own agenda. Functionally they are nothing more than a social construct. All persuasive descriptions of rights are merely normative proscriptions (Kant's Categorical Imperative, the various social contracts, etc...), and not descriptive systems of actual innate rights.
Also who is to say who owns what? Do you own your land, the land that someone stole from the Native Americans?
s the idea of ownership is the most fundamental concept of a free man [certainly, a man must be allowed to own himself! another idea that is unique amongst world governments to the US constitution...]
Personally ownership/property would be secondary to the basics of survival, since the latter necessarily precludes the former. Looking at the history of society, the so-called "innate right" to personal property is a relative newcomer, with early communities being rather communistic (i.e. community property), and much of the time after the widespread advent of "private property" much of the population didn't actually have this right, being that all land/property was the Crowns. For an innate right, it springs up REALLY late in the game.
Also, how can we say that the US Constitution "allowed a man to own himself", and was "unique" in this? We were one of the last countries to realize that a large segment of the population WASN'T property. In half of our history I could claim ownership over you, based solely on your level of melanin. Hell, we didn't even realize that women had rights until rather late in the game, and they were over half the population.
The US was a backwards country based off of economic exploitation and not any conception of "rights". In some regards we still fall into this mold.
Intellectual Property is the basic realization that ideas are the most valuable things in human history, and that a man ought to be free to own his ideas -- just like he is when he's alone on an island.
And your own holy Constitution craps on that idea. Governments exist for the good of society (a collective entity of individuals), and not for YOU, or any other person. Copyright, and IP in general, exists for the benefit of all members of society, and not just you. Thus the idea of a limited monopoly on your intellectual creation. The only reason you get this small monopoly is to sucker you into creating more stuff (using your greed for the benefit of the society as a whole), there is no high-falutin' "the effluvia that flows from your brain is sacrosanct" clause in the constitution. There is two reasons for this; the first being that there is no proof that the founding fathers were rugged individualists (in the sense we mean today, they probably would have giggled madly at Ayn Rand, and the modern libertarian party), and that it is incredibly naive to think that any individuals ideas came from a vacuum, you owe your great idea to great ideas before that. If all individual ideas were walled off, there would be no progress since without the old ideas, there are no new ideas.
Not "humanity, the pool of humans", but "humanity -- the essence of what a man is".
Featherless bipeds? There is no "essence", people are free to create their own essence. My idea of what I would probably piss you off, and visa versa. Human nature, is by nature, almost infinitely malleable. Personally I do think that IP is largely meaningless, outside of a way to blackmail creators into creating more. I can't smell, see, or measure IP, therefore it is no more real than any other mere idea. Ideas should always be subjugated by that which exists
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I happen to think that I own the toil of my hands and the ingenuity of my mind.
You can think whatever you like, it doesn't make it correct.
Say you walk by a construction site after everyone's gone home, and decide you're gonna use the materials there to build a house. Do you own the house? After all, it was done with "the toil of your hands and the ingenuity of your mind".
But no - you will find that the owners of the materials and the land own the house, not you. And *they* will be the ones that have "exclusive control" over it.
Creativity does not occur in a vacuum. Writing music
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No, 14 years was set way back when people were expected to only live until 40.
Since both patents and copyrights in the US were originally 14 years, and patents are now 20, 20 years must be the correct amount for copyrights, too!
read your history books, corporate goons (Score:5, Insightful)
technology tames the law
the law never tames technology
not for want of trying of course
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I can do this too,
Making haikus about stuff.
It is very fun.
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twas 5-7-5
mine was 7-9-8, yes?
troll has haiku win
Re:read your history books, corporate goons (Score:5, Funny)
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
Re: (Score:2)
i say tomato
and you say tomatillo
or rutabaga
exiciting times! (Score:2)
As a cyberpunk RPG'r, I'm excited for the opportunity to live just a little cyberpunk.
It's starting.
sneaky... (Score:3, Insightful)
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The "authorities" have now realised that the internet allows people to collaborate and learn openly whats really going on in the world, and how the puzzle fits togther. this to them is danderous
:) As in, "makes their scalps itch and shed flakes?"
I know, that's just a typo, but it's a good one. Almost Freudian: this kind of freedom of information makes their skin crawl.
Anyway, this comment (without typo) brought to mind a Monty Python sketch [orangecow.org] most apropos:
Re:sneaky... (Score:4, Insightful)
Its crucial that the internet remain fully open !!!! Its thats simple.
Nah. Not even. If only one single stream of communication remains open, that’s enough to pipe the whole internet trough. If we have, we pipe every tcp/ip packet trough twitter. If we have, we form direct wlan-to-wlan nets. We do not even need providers in any city of reasonable size. Soon with mobile phones, this will even become bigger. In theory, you can use any mobile phone as a gateway.
The can/box, and it won’t ever close again. It’s that simple.
Re: (Score:2)
New World Order (Score:2)
Ever wonder what that phrase meant?
It means a few elite rich folks controlling, well, everyone else regardless of silly little local laws or constitutions.
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to the 21st Century revival of Feudalism.
I for one welcome my media overlord, as a good serf should. I hope I don't pressed into his peasant militia in his campaign against his neighboring Baron.
Re: (Score:2)
oh, modern feudalism have been here for a while now.
i would claim it got started ones USA made corporations citizens...
All I can say is... (Score:2)
...if you're not participating in FreeNet [freenetproject.org] by now, you'd damned well better start. It's likely to be the last place left (assuming it isn't outlawed).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I am against Freenet, but how is it going to protect you against a "three accusations and your ISP cuts you off" law? In this respect, Freenet will probably screw you. After all, say one freesite hosts 3 images of Mickey Mouse, then all the movie studio "representative" has to do is access them through your node, and you will be cut off.
But this "three strikes" law is worse. As we have seen with the DMCA, you just need 3 assholes to want to censor you to cut you off. The question is will you be a
Democracy no? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So how does a bill get introduced that is not readable by the public?
Insert it in the middle of a 2000 page "economic stimulus package" or "health care reform act" or "climate change cap-and-trade bill" that "must be passed as soon as possible, don't bother reading it, we'll fix it later (except we never do because we need to fixate on the next (invented) crisis)".
What! Me cynical?
If you haven't already (Score:2)
Brilliant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because perpetual copyright wasn't enough for these greedy fucktards.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I'm against captain-obvious troll-feeding, but this is one case where I think a response is merited.
ACTA awareness needs to reach as far as it possibly can. We are, quite literally, talking about the future of the world here: A global treaty that promises to have a profound effect upon the freedom of all of us is being negotiated in secret.
The maximum must be brought to light before the widest audience. If that means dupe stories, then I'm all for dupes.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, problem is most of us here in the USA are already used to the oppressive laws against consumers so we already do our DMCA violations in secret.
I have to live as if the SS will come smashing down my door in search of contraband. All because I'm a wierdo that wants to have his own Video on demand system with a server full of my DVD's, HDDVD's and Blu Rays, ready to play in any room.
I'm evil, destroying all that is American by not being patriotic and switching discs and cluttering up my living room with cabinets full of discs (Destroying the economy by not buying furniture to hold them! OMG!)
Honestly I took the stand that I don't give a rats-ass what laws are passed and what they say. The laws are un-just so I not only ignore them, I am in contempt of them. I'll do what I want, if I have to design in a system to automatically destroy "evidence" when they storm the house, then so be it. It's the price I pay for living in a country where we gave up being by the people and for the people.
The USA is for the Corporations and by the Corporations....Anyone saying otherwise is either blind or watches Fox News too much.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
The USA is for the Corporations and by the Corporations....Anyone saying otherwise is either blind or watches Fox News too much.
I object! Blind people have a physical handicap, not a mental handicap, and should not be lumped together with Fox News viewers!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How quickly we do forget -- Dimitri Skylarov [wikipedia.org] was arrested for enabling the sort of fair use activities described. Note also that "Sklyarov was being arrested for something that was perfectly legal in his jurisdiction" (Russia at the time having no anti-circumvention laws).
I see the ACTA as an attempt by the Global Powers to make the "decryption loophole" disappear
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
My view is, that the Internet by its very definition does not make it possible for such a treaty to be any more that a pipe dream.
We already have darknets, wich are way beyond the grasp of any legislation. They would have to literally shut down the internet, to even stop it for more than a month. After that everyone would just have a personal net with all the wlan nodes around, completely and literally routing around the net. Everyone who knows how to do it, will do it. And everybody else will ask those, to do it for them. Even if that becomes illegal, it will become like selling weed. (A war long lost.) But it won’t ever stop.
Because inside, everybody knows what is right and wrong. And that ACTA is not right. Even the hypocrites who say the opposite, secretly use Bittorrent.
Until there is nothing else left for them, than to give up.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
So, you're ignoring them, right? (Score:3, Interesting)
My view is, that the Internet by its very definition does not make it possible for such a treaty to be any more that a pipe dream.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
So, basically what you're saying is, is that you're at the "ignoring" stage of the whole process?
Btw (Score:2)
I think the treaty also imposes French style three strikes laws which are a fundamental violation of human rights not that the internet has become so widespread. (Fine print : yes rights may be revoked by courts, but ACTA bypasses the courts.)
We've had almost continuously accelerating cultural, scientific, and technological advancement and increasing levels of freedom for quite some time now, most cultures have collapsed back upon idiocy eventually. Imho, copyright law and patent law have already achieved
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