Canadian Labour Congress Considers Reversal On IP Policy 112
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Labour Congress is considering a dramatic reversal of its stance on copyright and IP policy. CLC is comparable to the US AFL-CIO, but Canada is over 30% unionized. The campaign 'we must change copyright and IP law to fight evil counterfeiters and copyright pirates' is actually succeeding in Canada. Quoting the CLC's new policy resolution: '... this critical issue requires a far-reaching response involving legislative and regulatory reform, policy change, and allocation of proper resources to combat the problems. The Canadian government must be given the structure and resources to mount a sustained attack on this pervasive problem, both within Canada and internationally. The criminal and civil laws in Canada must provide adequate deterrence. And consumers must be educated that counterfeiting and piracy are not victimless, nuisance crimes, but instead strike at the heart of our long term economic security.'"
Too much kool-aid??? (Score:2)
What is strangest is that Michael Geist seems to have waited 2 years to comment on this...
Re:Too much kool-aid??? (Score:5, Interesting)
He referenced a 2007 CLC document to show that their latest positions on Copyright and IP are not in line with their previous positions.
It's a very timely comment by Prof Geist.
Business unions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Business unions (Score:4, Informative)
Unions supporting intellectual monopoly laws is also self-defeating; costs such as IP added to the economy are one of the reasons western workers have difficulty competing with lower wage countries.
IP laws are not free. Strengthening them is the macroeconomic equivalent of increasing taxation levels such as VAT (which has a similar distribution) across the economy as a whole, and as a non-progressive tax it tends to increase the cost pressure on the lower to mid income groups the most. Pretty much the same group the union members belong to.
Artist and creator compensation are important things, but the current construct of IP laws are far less efficient in getting the money to the right people than even the worst run government programs. Not even a 10th of the money paid by the population reaches the intended group, a level that for any actually accountable and controlled taxation form would cause an uproar.
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I always got music without paying (Score:5, Interesting)
In my case it's difficult to estimate, but it has never been above a few percent and I'm 52 years old. When I was young, we mostly listened to the radio, recorded a few songs on tape, and not very often bought a record.
These days, the radio is mostly shit, a consequence of a monopoly [clearchannel.com] owning the radio stations, but we have the internet to get music without paying directly for it.
Not stealing, I've never stolen anybody's music, I have higher moral standards than some people who sell music [wikipedia.org].
That "enforcement getting serious" is just the media industry bosses realizing they fucked up, but not admitting it. They had a business model based on getting a very small return per item where the production of each item had a very small cost. When they tried to raise the return per item the market said "NO". That's how capitalism works.
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Copyright infringement most certainly is stealing. It's just that what one is stealing isn't actually the music or anything of quantifiably measurable value... which might cause one who tries to rationalize it away as something that isn't important anyways. Funny how people will almost always try to rationalize any wrong behaviour just so they don't have to feel guilty about it, huh?
Not everybody shares your assumptions you know (Score:1)
Funny how you assume everybody has the same ethical principles as you and any genuine differences are merely 'rationalization of what they know is wrong' on their part.
Some people just honestly believe that while sane copyright laws would be best (5, at most 10 years protection and no criminal penalties ever, to begin with), no copyright at all would lead to a better world than the one we're living in right now.
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A world without copyright would merely result in the music and movie industry ending up resembling the current condition of email... that is, it would be so deluged with spam and commercials and advertising to the point that genuinely worthwhile works would be drowned out by the noise.
The noise doesn't matter. In a world without copyright there would be no shortage of net radios, blogs, rating websites, etc., to help you navigate the world of music. The major difference would be that instead of having to rely on payola-based radio stations to tell you what to listen to you would be able to find bloggers who actually /care/ about music to help you out.
But, yeah, you're probably right, what a terrible world that would be.
Sigh... Canadians can copy music, OK? (Score:2)
Copyright infringement most certainly is stealing.
No, it isn't, unless you are legally and grammatically redefining the term (which the corporate propaganda has steadily worked at, successfully in your case). Stealing is when you take real property without returning it, or pass someone's ideas off as your own. Really, consult the dictionary or law. Copyright infringement is closer to libel or fraud than theft.
And, as a canadian, you should read Canada's Copyright Act before expounding publicly on what is right and wrong about copying. Private copying of m
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The way you are going, theft would also be remembering a movie or a tune after you've seen or heard it.
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Why are you being so adamant and evasive at the same time? Either you aren't sure of which you speak, or you are embarrassed at your mangling of syntax.
Something is not being deprived, there is no object in question, nor is there a misrepresentation of authorship, in everyday copyright infringement.
There is a loss of control on the part of the author. This is not a thing, it is a quality of relations or condition. Any loss exists in the realm of the imaginary, such as potential income. That is why lawmakers
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Well, since you're arguing on a linguistic and syntactical level, you would be well advised to brush up!
1. "real" refers to material objects, in this legalistic sense
2. "rights", while actual and existent, are not "real" objects
3. deprivation of rights is 'theft' only in a colloquial shorthand, and abused in order to muddy the debate
As a copyright holder and producer/distributor of many cultural works (books and magazines, music, audio and video documentaries, film, photography, websites, performances, and
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Copyright is, by definition, the exclusive right to copy a particular work. If somebody else copies it without permission, by the very definition of "exclusive", the value of the copyright is compromised, and the author no longer has as much (not financial worth) as he did before the infringement. That, whether or not the infringer places any worth whatsoever on this exclusivity that the author had, is quite definitely theft. The only issue is that because the infringer may not necessarily place such va
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OK, IANAL and this is not court, so if you want to insist on the word theft that's fine.
What is illegal, and what is wrong, do not always overlap. Is it wrong to speed in a 40kph zone on the highway? Yeah, if it's a construction zone. If it's a speed trap meant to filch you of money unreasonably, and you just passed a donut shoppe full of cop cars, the average driver wouldn't have moral qualms about doing a reasonable speed, and justly so. If you yourself wouldn't, then it might be fair to call you a freak.
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That may be a fair assessment, as I can honestly say that although I have sped on occasion, it has never once been willful, but always a matter of carelessness in not paying enough attention to my actual speed.
Oh, and just for the record, I also heavily advocate the notion of consumers being able to without limitation make their own copies of copyrighted works for their own personal use, as such limited scope cannot not impact anyone else
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Well no, I wasn't calling you a freak for driving the speed limit, I drive like a little old lady myself, but reread, I explicitly cited the case of an unreasonable speed limit with ulterior motives!
And, I think you still haven't read sec. 80 of the Act... if I let a friend copy a cd that I've purchased, or even that I've copied from another friend, that isn't infringement. However, a restaurant playing the radio is infringement... more crap.
Your assessment of harm overlooks network effects, and a host of o
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I don't see how "network effects" would come into play if a copy were genuinely made for the personal use of the person who made the copy, unless it was misappropriated (which itself would be another crime).
And yeah, I know that copying copyrighted works that you borrowed isn't infringement... although again, if it was strictly for the personal use of the person who made the copy, I don't really see the problem. If a person loans out a copy they made, or offers it for distribution in any way, it ceases
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Not at all.
An author's exclusive right to their writings is natural and self-evident.
Copyright is a transferable privilege (a reproduction monopoly) that helps secure this right.
Theft would be to remove or copy a work to which an author had an exclusive right without the author's permission.
Infringement would be to make a copy (of a legitimate copy in your possession) without its copyright holder's permission.
An author's exclusive ri
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By your logic, any attempt to argue that copyright infringement is not necessarily stealing is only merely related to the fact that the arguer stands to benefit from the alleged stealing.
By my logic, you wouldn't even know if your behaviour of classifying all copyright infringement as stealing was wrong, because you are not allowed to question it.
The law should be rational, rationalization is essential to its process and understanding
Do you not care for the extent of copyright law and its value to society a
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Actually, it is my assertion is that even though it can be shown how copyright infringement is completely equivalent to theft, a person who would want to argue otherwise would likely dismiss it anyways because they like the benefits that they get from infringing on copyright and do not want to feel guilty about it.
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And what percentage of your music is paid for?
I've had an emusic subscription since I heard of them, so pretty much all of it. Which exchanged maybe three or four CD purchases per year for $12 per month, ie, at least tripling the amount I spend on music. Of course, I also get at least six times as much music so it's a fair deal.
Where was all the concern about "artist compensation"
The concern over artist and creator compensation has always been there, since the beginning of copyright. The fact that you appar
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Wobblies FTW! The business unions were heavily infiltrated in Canada by the early '50s and began organising labour strictly for the purposes of maintaining a standard of living and steady workforce, while entrenching the power of the means of production in the status quo.
The history of the Canadian Auto Workers (well, UAW at the time) is very instructive in this sense, since it was a vanguard union. Just ask the retired old-timers of Local 444. Once the radicals had been weeded out, especially the wobblies
Yes, sensible reforms are needed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its good to see them backing sensible reforms to end needless piracy by shortening the copyright term to 18 years with a single 18 year extension while also reforming patent laws to outlaw software and buisiness model patents and change the review process for normal patents to make it easier for 3rd parties to file prior art.
Oh wait a minute, I think when they said "reform" they meant to say "ruin."
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if by justice system you mean prison industry, then yes, everything is working as intended!
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Mmmm... eyeballs....
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm running out of places to move to.
Anybody want to take over a small island with me, in the interests of (intellectual) freedom? Seriously, I feel as though the realm of ideas is my favourite playground, and with each extension & perversion of copyright law another bully shows up. Today I can't use the slide. Tomorrow, the swings. Content should be created to be used, not merely sold like some cheap toy. /bitter
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright (and patents) was created so that artists and inventors could work for themselves, rather than a rich patron, which had been the case for centuries before. It had the goal of encouraging the creation of new works and allowing for more artistic freedom than existed.
It failed.
I'll grant that it may have worked for a time, but big corporations eventually came in and perverted it into a state-enforced version of the old patron system.
Copyright was never about trying to make labor compensated, and for good reason; it's an asinine idea. Why should someone make money simply for doing what they want? If what they do is worth money, someone out there will pay for it. It is not the state's place to try to protect *ANY* person's business. That's the basic principal of the free market, which the US and many of the other copyright-loving countries supposedly believe in.
Even if you refuse to accept that copyright was not intended for that purpose, it's obvious it does a piss-poor job of compensating effort. The few people who happen to have been taken under the wing of their corporate patrons are richer than the vast majority of humans, and most everyone else trying to produce some kind of artistic work is as much a 'starving artist' as ever, and by most measures worse off.
By now, just shortly into copyrighting works if you look at the big picture, we're already running out of totally original ideas. Some say such a thing doesn't even exist, but it's debatable so I won't assert that. It is, however, a fact that it is almost impossible to create any kind of work in the modern world without running the risk of violating someone's copyright, patent or trademark. The effect? The bar of entry is raised to only those who can afford it... the ultra-rich, and the media conglomerates.
The simple fact of the matter is, copyright just ensures that the old patron system not only live on, but is more entrenched legally AND socially than ever before. It has failed it's purpose, it has failed us, and we as the people who it was supposed to serve now need to take back what is ours.
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Actually, nobody knows what the impact of copyright and patents is. There were plenty of creative works before copyright, but the cost of replication has gone down. The reason IP has not changed is that people are afraid to change it, not any rational reason.
The 100% solution all the time except Tuesdays (Score:2)
It is not the state's place to try to protect *ANY* person's business.
When arguments go too far. Next up, business owner robs competitor, says arrest amounts to encouraging monopolies.
and we as the people who it was supposed to serve now need to take back what is ours.
That explains the Ace of Base tracklist. You didn't listen to it though... right?
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Not exactly. There are plenty of original works being created by pe
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Agreed. Human labor shouldn't ever be compensated. When are you coming over to change my oil?
When are YOU going to pay to the guy/gal who told you that oil has to be changed? You took away information, it had been very useful to you, you probably freely shared it around although it was not your original work in first place, and yet chances are you never actually compensated that person, even worse, you deprived that person from her income and deserved fame (the person had remained anonymous to this day and probably poor) by telling everybody, for free, about changing oil.
You should be thrown into s
compelling labor vs. not (Score:2)
If someone voluntarily showed up and changed your oil, unasked, they would be out of line to demand payment.
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True, but I invited him over to do some labor for me free. Come to think of it ... do you have a sponge and some Mr. Clean? I could think of few other labor intensive tasks I wouldn't mind having freely performed.
Yes yes yes, to any pedants who wish to point out that it is trivial to duplicate a song but not trivial to clean out my storage closet ... seriously, I get that. By the same token, it seems that people who are so hip on "file sharing" seem to forget that creative products are incredibly time co
no one's requiring them to make music (Score:2)
If I commissioned a symphony from a guy, he went off and spent 6 months writing it, and then I refused to pay him, sure, he'd have a legitimate beef, and that would be analogous to "hiring" someone to come clean your place and then failing to pay him.
But if some guy goes off, entirely unasked, and writes some music, I don't see why he has the right to expect any money in return. Maybe people will buy something from him anyway, or donate money in appreciation of his art, but it's not as if they hired him for
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ah, the old intellectual-property canard (Score:2)
The only thing Colgate has the right to, imo, is the physical product in their warehouses. I cannot go steal it, because then they would no longer have it. Similarly, IKEA has a right to keep its shelves, and I can't go take them. But if I can get an IKEA-lookalike shelf without buying one from IKEA (say, I buy some plywood and recreate their design), they don't really have a right to stop me. Artists also have the right to all property they own; I cannot go steal their LPs, or their couches, or their tour
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BAM! That's a copyright dude and you just contradicted yourself.
A copyright is a legally binding contract between you, the government, and the artist. Among other things, it grants the artists the right to restrict duplication and distribution, both of which are alluded t
I agree with voluntarily entered-into restrictions (Score:2)
In the NDA scenario, the only person liable is the person who signed the NDA and then violated it. I think it's perfectly legitimate for people to choose to voluntarily enter into contracts, and for there to be legal proceedings if they violate those contracts.
On the other hand, if I go download some music off the internet, I'm not violating any contract with the artist, because I never signed one. Why the music is on the internet in the first place, I don't know. Maybe the artist put it there, or maybe som
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I never asked Colgate for toothpaste. Does mean I can go get a free tube whenever I want? Not unless Colgate decides to let me have it, which they could do.
That's because materials are limited and in this case owned by Colgate. You didn't ask them to invent toothpaste, but since they have a limited quantity and you can't make it yourself, you're damned right you have to hope Colgate decides to let you have some. Usually their answer is yes - for a price.
However, if replicators existed that could fabricate t
Labour only applies to performance, not composing. (Score:2)
creative products are incredibly time consuming to make. Yes, distribution is cheap, but by focusing only on distribution, the entire creative process is ignored.
As Jacques Attali has pointed out, the exchange value placed on music, since the 1500's, has always dealt with this problem. There is simply no way to accurately compensate the labour of composition. Because of this, reproductions (sheet music initially and recordings now) are priced according to their use value to the audience, i.e. what the market will bear. It has been used as a rallying point for capitalism, especially in the early stages.
So, your argument about the creative process is unfortunately de
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
When are you coming over to change my oil?
as soon as you will agree to pay me monthly for that ONE oil change .. for the rest of my life
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Hey, that's a bargain! If you were a musician, your children's children's children would keep getting paid for 80 years after your death. Or so the current law says, I'm sure that Mickey Mouse will get some more protection before time's up.
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I'm running out of places to move to.
Try "Washington, DC".
More knee jerk (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest in a string of bad lawmaking in an attempt to solve the piracy problem with a bad solution.
Let's just take a step back and look at the big picture for a moment. Piracy is only a problem because some (not all!) information and media businesses depend on a consumer cost downloads business model, which is marginalized by mass consumer circumvention of piracy.
Our collective response (or rather the collective response of our lawmakers) has been to increase penalties and (attempt to) increase control and regulation of the internet. This, however, always fails to achieve the desired effect. The endgame to this trend is complete and total regulation of the internet.
What does that mean? The only way to logistically enforce noncommercial copyright infringement committed by ordinary internet users is to monitor absolutely everything and cripple everyone's ability to make encrypted transmissions. The very openness of the internet has to be totally and utterly obliterated before true enforcement of antipiracy laws can occur.
I submit that since this is an unattainable goal, that we should just say screw is and legalize noncommercial copyright infringement. An unenforceable law doesn't belong on the books. As soon as lawmakers and our economy stop subsidizing clearly obsolete business models, then we can truly move on and realize the full potential of what the internet offers our society: limitless copying of information at negligible costs to everyone. A truly amazing ability.
The only alternative is to destroy the openness of the internet, which won't happen, or the slow, painful, inevitable market failure of businesses which depend on consumer cost downloads. For better or worse, they'll die at the hands of piracy if they don't find a business model that's actually enforceable.
And for those of you who might counter with an argument about how prices are decided by what the market is willing to pay, I respectfully ask you to again look at the bigger picture. What the market is willing top pay is fluid and is on a downward trend. The mp3 is 99 cents now. In ten years it may be 50 cents. In twenty it may be 10 cents. In thirty it may be less than ten cents. In forty it may be fractions of a cent. In fifty it may be free.
Actual time lines may very, but the end will be the same, a race to the bottom. If consumers don't get what they want from the market, they will resort to piracy. Businesses impacted today and in the future will either have to adapt or die. Draconian laws will not save them, nor will misguided moralizing. It's not our moral responsibility to subsidize their obsolescence, nor is it our duty to invent replacement business models for them.
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I'm willing to give intellectual ideas and any other non-cultural intellectual property 7 years. This includes patents on scientific ideas of every kind you can imagine. Cultural patents (music, literature, etc.) I give 15 years. A generation can listen to and love music for 15 years. After that, its the next generations turn. No one is really going to listen to their parents music. 7 years for the other, because you might be the brightest in your generation, but the second brightest should be given a
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That is dependent on geography. In some states a few relatives with shotguns, a preacher, and a quick shindig make it legal.
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I spoke to an RCMP officer about this once and the reply was "there's MUCH worse stuff going on there than the counterfeit sales".
So what societal problems would you prefer they focus on? Stuff that endangers lives, or stuff that makes a small dent in corporation's revenue? (Law enforcement budgets are not infinite, so you can't answer "both").
That said, they frequently do large stings that close up lots of shops and seize huge amounts of goods, all over Toronto at the same time. (I hear about such stings a
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So what societal problems would you prefer they focus on? Stuff that endangers lives, or stuff that makes a small dent in corporation's revenue
May I add that market-stall counterfeiting is petty fraud, compared to the crazy big money fraud that is far too common on Bay Street in Toronto. The social costs just don't compare: Counterfeit Al is defrauding Corporation X out of a few bucks, but Con Broker Bruce is defrauding 'widows and orphans' out of billions. Every frakkin day.
Attainable -- not desirable, however. (Score:1)
Perhaps attainable, actually. A full lockdown would be possible if it were made law and enforced at the source.
If USA says that all users must subscribe to the internet from the USA, and also stipulate that all ISP must follow the strict guidelines applied, then you have an enforced internet.
People won't tolerate that, however. They will bypass it.
The goal of a regulated internet is attainable, yet not with the desired results. The effect would be devastating.
Re:Attainable -- not desirable, however. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh. You mean like the War on Drugs?
The U.S prison system is the largest in the world, but it is also the fastest expanding system too. It serves private interests to the tune of billions to create policies that fill these prisons as fast as possible. Every single person is worth between 30K and 100K per year to the system.
Why would creating a whole new War be that far fetched? There are people in prison now simply for possessing a plant that kills nobody by itself, has proven medicinal values, and on it's own is harmless. These people do not represent a danger to society, and the only real danger is created by the illegal transactions through the policies themselves. They are however involved in a controversial argument which is used to turn them into highly profitable "cattle". The rest of society pays this bill in ever increasing amounts each year.
Your future may actually come to pass where I am in prison and your tax dollars are paying for me to be there, simply because I participated in an unregulated communications infrastructure that might possibly facilitate the infringement of copyrights.
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The U.S prison system is the largest in the world, but it is also the fastest expanding system too. It serves private interests to the tune of billions to create policies that fill these prisons as fast as possible. Every single person is worth between 30K and 100K per year to the system.
This is one of the main reasons why I suspect that our general slide towards either communism or fascism may be unstoppable. It's becoming more cost effective for the lower 25% or so of the demographic to be in prison than it is for them to be out of it.
This, of course, is not economically sustainable, but it is useful to create what amounts to a slave class to whom work is more important as a means of staying out of prison than making a living. All that's needed is a socially acceptable way to make prison
Tell me (Score:2)
Why?
Give us reasons, not rhetoric.
Not in Canada (Score:2)
There is a difference between such nonsense gaining traction in Canada and a couple business people in power. A BIG difference.
Utter Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterfeiting is actually quite rare. It's difficult, costly, and dangerous. The vast majority of that crap occurs at swapmeets and shady street vendors. It makes up a very very small percentage of copyright infringement. It's also the easiest to stop, in Canada or the U.S at least. Forget about it in China, or some other country. Rule of thumb, is that once your copyrighted works leave the country, they are no longer your copyrighted works. Good luck with China and a myriad of other countries.
Piracy is far more prolific, since the supply is easier to attain. Just go to any number of public or private torrent trackers and you have huge amounts of content to infringe upon its copyrights.
Striking at the heart of the long term economic security of Canada or any other country? Pure, Unadulterated, and Absolute Fucking Nonsense.
Every Specific Action of Copyright Infringement != Loss of Sale
If the average person has 10 pieces of gold total to spend 1 piece of gold each on copyrighted works and instead pirates 1,000 different copyrighted works, you cannot say that the market lost 1,000 pieces of gold. That's just common sense.
If an entire country's "heart" of its economy is sales of copyrighted works, ITS FUCKED. It can never get above the 10 pieces of gold each in the first place, all the while pushing inaccurate data about losses that are at least 10 times the total amount of possible revenue.
Counterfeiting and Piracy are the smallest and most insignificant impact on the economy. What is dying is an outdated business model that cannot adapt to changes in society.
Trying to turn it into some national security issue is just a farce.
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It's also total strawman.
Consider the piracy of software, for instance. Let's take...ooh, I don't know, err...Photoshop for instance. Massively pirated, and pretty expensive. You might correctly say that should I pirate a copy of Photoshop, Adobe has not lost a sale o
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The most prolific use of the strawman logical fallacy, is the strawman logical fallacy itself. Your assertion that it is so, does not make my statement any less valid. What I have stated is a FACT. Additionally, it is not a position that I am
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Yes. An awful lot of italics and capital letters could have been saved by just writing that one sentence...
"I deny that assertion, as any program that costs money would still not be purchased, and open source projects are not hurt by the loss that specific user."
Ah, now here we part company then. I directly assert that use of a product or pro
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Ahhhh, but tell me what you really think. It's interesting that you did not reference what was in italics, namely your failed attempt to use the strawman logical fallacy to refute my post :) It's okay, keeping complaining about the italics,
Copyright violations IMPROVE the market (Score:2)
You are contributing to improve the market, not damaging it.
When the Gimp developers notice that many people prefer to copy Photoshop illegally instead of using Gimp legally and free, they will take a closer look at what Photoshop has that Gimp lacks. They will try to add equivalent or better features to Gimp. In the end, the Gimp users
isn't that actually *good* for the IP firms? (Score:2)
Your argument sounds like a pretty good case for piracy being damaging to free alternatives (like open-source software), but possibly a case for it being beneficial to large, established purveyors of expensive software, like Adobe and Microsoft. It seems like, if piracy were 100% stamped out tomorrow, it would lead to a significant loss of for-cost-software's market share.
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"Consider the piracy of software, for instance. "Let's take...ooh, I don't know, err...Photoshop for instance. Massively pirated, and pretty expensive. You might correctly say that should I pirate a copy of Photoshop, Adobe has not lost a sale of Photoshop since I was never going to buy it anyway.
This is too simplistic though. I wasn't going to buy Photoshop, so what could I have done?"
There is a fundamental, philosophical, problem with the traditional means of distribution: the product is abundant.
Cars are
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Agreed... if you dont have something tangible to produce and your entire market is based on 'Intellectual Property' well I got news for you not every country is a signatory to these copyright treaties. Even then there have been Canadians who have had their copyrights broken in England and England just gave them the finger for the most part because they didnt sign some super new upgraded treaty (WIPO) that the US wants everyone to sign now that'll force governments to adopt ridiculous DMCA like laws.
Counterfeiting, rare? (Score:1)
I think that depends on what you qualify as "counterfeiting" and where you live. In big cities (Toronto, Vancouver/Richmond, etc) you can usually find quite a few places (usually in Chinese malls, etc) that sell bootleg CD's, DVD's, etc, as well as imitation name-brands, etc
There's a mall full of shops like this about 5-10km from where I live, and probably at least half of what they sell there is fake/counterfeit.
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Counterfeiting is rare when you compare against the instances of Piracy. Even if every swapmeet in the U.S and Canada had 100% of its booths dedicated to counterfeited wares, it would still represent less than 1% of all cases of infringement. That is what makes it rare.
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Not really. Its all over the place in flea markets, and god did my family get caught a lot. Its not the main way piracy occurs, correct, but its a significant chunk anyway. Very typical of small computer stores that will "sell" you photoshop and MS Office for cheap...
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No really, it is. It's not even significant. When you compare all cases of infringement, counterfeiting represents far less than 1% of all instances. That's rare by any definition. It's far more con
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wow (Score:4, Funny)
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copyright (Score:1)
should be shortened. we generic drug industry (also xerox) shows what happens when you open things up.
besides, it's MY cd now and I can do what i want with it..
NOT theirs.
pat
Can it be won? (Score:2)
I mean can this one be won? IPs, laptop check, looking for CDs in hand baggage? And what about flash drives with the size of a penny and a capacity of 100 GB? HD of 1TB? And it's only a modest beginning.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about IP (Score:2)
The CLC is a major component of Canada's socialist axis. They don't give a damn about IP, but they can be depended on to support anything that involves more regulation, the more invasive the better.
What it's really about is what Greenpeace calls "moving the needle". It's about getting people adjusted to having the government regulating the most trivial aspects of our lives. When a sufficient level of docility has been reached, an authoritarian socialist state can safely be established.
What gets my attention
Re: (Score:2)
Speak for yourself, Darlin'.
The agenda isn't secret--It's been open since at least Lester B.(Nobel Prize-Winning Twit) Pearson.
Moreover, there's no plan to change anything about the US. Our left-wing NGOs have their hands full just changing Canada and turning it into a colony of the United Nations. Among other problems, the Albertans and Outer Ontarians refuse to cooperate, and an attempt to disarm the population seems to have failed.
IP Maximalism? Bring it on. (Score:2)
I think things will have to get worse before they get better. Let them deploy the most draconian measures they can - if they want to learn the hard way, then so be it.
This is the Prohibition of our era, and it's going to be just as disastrous. But freedom always wins in the end.
I predict that this is the start of the end of the net at we know it, and the beginning of the new systems that will replace it - beyond the reach of the IP maximalists, the bloodsucking commercial interests and the media monopolies.
Re: (Score:2)
Strike (Score:1)
I think it is time for the users / buyers of audio and video to strike. Not to buy anything new for 1 week. Let us show them how pissed of we are.
United we stand !
Before and After... (Score:1)
Harper's new Senators are appointed.
Victimless crimes (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Citizens need to see the benefit to society (Score:2)
If IP law is "good for our country" or "our society", then the average citizen should be able to see the benefits. If the average citizen can't see any benefits or sees only benefits for corporations, but none for the citizenry/society, then it's a 'one-way' deal only benefiting a select group.
That is inherently unfair in a free and equal society.
I assert that the problem is the "Mickey-Mouse" copyright extension and a similar problem with patent-life in relation to the useful life of technology and techno
Referendum (Score:1)