Europe To Block ACTA Disconnect Provisions 194
superglaze writes "The European Commission is 'not supporting and will not accept' any attempt to have ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) force countries to disconnect people for downloading copyrighted material, a spokesman for the new EU trade commissioner has said. All the signs are that the new commission, which took office earlier this month, intends to take a hard-line stance against US proposals for a filesharing-related disconnection system. 'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries, but not mandated by the European government itself, and it looks like the new administration wants to keep it that way. From trade commission spokesman John Clancy, quoted in ZDNet UK's article: '[Ac ta] has never been about pursuing infringements by an individual who has a couple of pirated songs on their music player. For several years, the debate has been about what is "commercial scale" [piracy]. EU legislation has left it to each country to define what a commercial scale is and this flexibility should be kept in ACTA.'"
Call Me A Cynic ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Some portions? Pretty much all of it. It already starts with the basic provisions necessary for ACTA to work altogether, like having ISPs retain some sort of connection information (i.e. who connects with whom) past what's necessary to bill their users, which already is a big problem with some countries' privacy laws.
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ISP's already have to keep connection log data in EU.
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Yes, they do. And in more than one countries this caused a lot of headaches because they have/had laws stating explicitly that ISPs must not store that data beyond what's absolutely necessary for billing purposes. At least one country already has a lawsuit up its ass because they couldn't get that mess sorted in time.
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Countries agree to treaties that are contrary to their pre-existing laws all the time; depending on the provisions of the treaty and the fundamental legal structure of the government, either the mere act of ratifying the treaty changes the law or subsequent conforming legislation is required
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... but there's really now way all these countries are going to agree on everything these treaties propose.
Cynic? I'd call that optimistic.
Some portions may even be contrary to a country's current laws, let alone their culture's mindset or philosophy.
That isn't necessarily a problem. In many countries, international treaties trump the constitution. It's stupid and terribly undemocratic (which is also why a culture's mindset and philosophy may not stop international treaties), but it's the way some countries work.
Personally I'd like to see our constitution changed to say that unconstitutional treaties are automatically void, or something like that.
In any case, I'm glad that we're hearing some official EU objections to som
Re:Call Me A Cynic ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think they have failed to agree on the case of Greece?
Not only did Greece cook the books to a degree that only Italy can match, but they also have a huge public sector and pension burden together with a very corrupt system. The damage to the EU if they were to just go in and rescue Greece to 'save' the Euro would be a huge liability that would lead to similar cases happening again.
No, more likely they are agreeing to fail to agree because Greece needs to be kicked into fixing their system. (not to mention that stand is popular amongst the masses despite any depreciation of the Euro)
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Greece is just step one.
A few more Member States are headed for the same destination, and the EU will be forced to act to save them with bailouts.
Either that, or the U.S. will experience a financial meltdown (according to Wall Street Journal within 5 years), and bring down the EU States with it. Similar to what happened in 1929.
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>>>"EU intends to take a hard-line stance against US proposals"
Good for them!
I hope it doesn't lead to war.
(See Rome versus Carthage trade disputes.)
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US would be out of its mind if it attacked EU.
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It wouldn't happen immediately. It would be the result of ~50 years of gradually declining regulations as these two superpowers (EU/US) struggle over economic control of the trans-Atlantic markets, until one day the wrong person becomes the US President or EU President and foolishly decides war is the solution.
It wouldn't be the first time these two continents fought one another. There was the American-French War in the 1740s, as France tried to gain control of the American colonies. The British-American
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> Killing people for a fucking MP3 file !!!!???? ...
MP3 files, and ebooks, and unhindered Internet access, and unhindered Internet use, and unhindered free software use, and
Newspeak is a gradual process.
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Also the reason the United States is pushing ACTA so hard is because we have nothing else to export. Without copyright protection, people can take our songs, movies, and software for free, and destroy our economy.
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I can see your point, but I don't think "this" is the way to do it. Do you?
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That never stopped American politicians before.
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>>>The US is flat, and have never fought and modern wars on their own soil. Got real, please?
Flat? Yeah I guess it is if you ignore the *3* mountain ranges that cross north-to-south. And the modern war we fought in 1917 against Mexico using tanks (they wisely retreated rather than be squashed).
Anyway - hopefully none of this will happen.
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There are a few more Member States heading the same way, yes.
On the short term you can probably say it hurts the EU to be so reluctant to help Greece due to the fear investors have for those other countries to also default with no help. Yet a few of those countries are actually to a degree relying on the safety net they think are there in order to avoid unpopular political decisions.
The EU as a whole will not benefit from such a situation, and is likely better served with making an example of Greece despite
Re:Call Me A Cynic ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Go Pirate Party? (Score:2)
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Corporation: Open Source is bad for everyone.
Open Source Advocate: No, monopolies are bad for everyone.
BC: Open Source leads to piracy.
OSA: No, monopolies lead to piracy.
BC: It's people like you who are what's wrong with the world today.
OSA: No, it's people like you who are what's wrong with the world today.
Hopefully that will save us about 50 posts in this thread.
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Big Corporation: We use the best tool for the job, be it a free tool or a pay for use one.
Open Source Advocate: No, you should always use open source.
BC: No, sometimes commercial apps are better than the free alternative.
OSA: No, use OSS all the time, no matter what!
BC: It's people like you who are what's wrong with the world today.
OSA: No, it's people like you who are what's wrong with the world today.
This is more what I see here on slashdot. Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
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Also, people need to proselytize, or else OSS gets nowhere.
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, companies don't really care if they need to pay a few hundred to get the programmer Visual Studio and increase his productivity by 1500% instead of using the free Dev-C++.
Same thing as most companies working with graphics aren't shy to buy Photoshop instead of frustrating their workers with GIMP.
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
While you're right, that isn't really the reason in most cases. Else, explain to me the success of SAP, which lowered productivity and increased overhead in most companies it was employed in.
The reason why commercial software is successful is simply that software is not bought by the people who use it the most. Software, like pretty much anything in a large company, is bought by some sort of "buy crap" department, who does often not have any idea what exactly they're doing. They're responsible for buying car spare parts, printing paper, office furniture, computer hardware, cleaning detergents and of course software. Even assuming they know what they're doing in one area (9 out of 10 times NOT, because their expertise is in business administration, for good reason), they will be out of their league most time when they're tasked with buying something.
So they will go for brand names. You can't go wrong with Photoshop because everyone uses it and so you can argue the expense if someone comes and complains. Same applies to Windows and VS. It's used in other big companies and while it may not be the "100% right tool", it also won't be the wrong tool. It's not something you will be questioned about.
Buying "commercial brands" is a way to cover your ass for the "buy crap" department. They don't buy it because it's the right decision, they buy it because it's almost certainly not the wrong one.
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given its name, it sounds like SAP did what it was supposed to do. sap company productivity *badabing*...
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Almost OT:
However photoshop is probably a good idea. Gimp is great, but lacks the odd must have feature for a publishing group. And once you pay for photoshop and windows and a PC... it stll doesn't show up agaist the salary.
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Since you got modded insighful I'll bite. When it is company money people don't care what they spend so long as it follows the right norms. We spent hundreds of dollars on copies of dream weaver because our administration staff manager thought that's the only way you could make websites. It was never used, but that doesn't really matter. Just like you, the higher ups will make the assumption that the software will lead to productivity increases or is necessary to do the job and will write it off without
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in the short term? maybe companies don't care if they have to buy software. In the long term? They end up using open source for a multitude of reasons.
Lots of companies are by default, stupid and shortsighted so it is to be expected.
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No, companies don't really care if they need to pay a few hundred to get the programmer Visual Studio and increase his productivity by 1500% instead of using the free Dev-C++.
Same thing as most companies working with graphics aren't shy to buy Photoshop instead of frustrating their workers with GIMP.
Especially if their worked had lots of practice with the product already. Training usually was with a pirated or free version of the product however, which is exactly Microsoft strategy. So both points are somewhat true. The commercial product is better funded, and is indeed frequently more productive. Its use free of cost however, pirated or free, is questionable. It does steal attention from alternatives which compete based on cost or other factors, such as being open source, rather than design. So pirac
Re: Pirated software and programmer productivity (Score:2)
Any programmer whose productivity in C++ is improved 1500% by using Visual Studio is a really bad programmer, so bad that he more likely has negative productivity, the sort of employee his employer should pay to quit.
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a programmers productivity goes up 1500% because you switched editors/IDE's, maybe the company should consider hiring better programmers.
Only 15 times? Honestly, I'd say there's a good two orders of magnitude between the most productive development environment and the least. Yes, programmer productivity can vary by an order of magnitude, but I've personally seen a team of 7 engineers get more done with Linux than 40+ could do with Windows.
Look, according to Brooks' Mythical man month, the average programmer can write 1000 lines of code a year. I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired. Here, the difference between editors really can make or break your career. And yes, there is a tremendous difference in the amount of work you can get done with an editor which supports mouse-driven copy/paste, and one that does not. Most people assume editor choice is a matter of preference. Most people don't keep track of their productivity metrics. I, however, do, and I've seen a dramatic difference in the amount of work I'm able to get done. It's not so much that I can't do my job in other editors, but rather, that other editors force an inefficient working paradigm on the user. Consider the difference between someone working in Emacs who has to open a different shell window and grep through header files, vs. an IDE that automatically cross-references the source tree and displays the definitions as the user browses the file. Both coders will get code written, but the second will get it done much faster than the first, all other things being equal.
Granted, a poor programmer won't be made great by a great IDE, but a good programmer with professional ethics is going to insist on having the tools needed to do the job in the most efficient manner. It's not whining to ask for the proper tools; rather, it's foolish to expect good results when one uses the wrong tool for the job. It's not 1970 anymore, and the days of programmers ruling the roost are long gone. Business now expects *everything* to be faster-cheaper-better, and you can't deliver that writing code with ed.
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I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired.
Really? That's awful! I almost always prefer the concise solution over the verbose one. Judging programmers by how many lines of code they write, sounds like a recipe for really ugly code.
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> mouse-driven copy/paste
If that's how you rack up 10k lines of code then it's surely all shite, of the really smelly variety.
> someone working in Emacs
In our shop the emacen are also the top performers... by miles. Not having to take one hand of the keyboard all the time is a major time saver.
Oh, and beyond the IDEs... one word, valgrind. Open, free... and has improved our code to the point where we have literally saved millions of dollars in hardware cost... we quite simply did not have to buy mor
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Yes, programmer productivity can vary by an order of magnitude, but I've personally seen a team of 7 engineers get more done with Linux than 40+ could do with Windows.
Unless they are programming Windows applications ... then those 7 would be less productive.
Look, according to Brooks' Mythical man month, the average programmer can write 1000 lines of code a year. I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired.
1,000 lines a year? 10,000 lines a year? I'm working on some new projects right now (new as in 'from scratch') and I've written several 1,000 lines of code in the last two weeks. Now, if I were just doing updates or maintenance I may not write 1,000 lines of new code all year. Judging programmers based on line count is ludicrous.
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>>>Mythical man month, the average programmer can write 1000 lines of code a year.
That's it?
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Honestly, I'd say there's a good two orders of magnitude between the most productive development environment and the least.
Controlling for language and operating system, the idea that an IDE or set of development tools can increase the productivity of an average programmer by a factor of 100 is insane. A factor of two, on average, maybe. More than that is evidence that the programmers don't actually have to think, i.e. they are glorified code monkeys writing trivial code of the sort that any talented sixt
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only 15 times? Honestly, I'd say there's a good two orders of magnitude between the most productive development environment and the least.
Indeed Visual Studio is orders of magnitude better than edlin, which is orders of magnitude better than flipping dip switches on the front panel.
These are clearly relevant comparisons.
Look, according to Brooks' Mythical man month, the average programmer can write 1000 lines of code a year. I, however, work in a company where anyone who *can't* write 10k+ per year is at serious risk of getting fired.
I think they meant written and fully debugged, like 1000 lines of good code a year. I've also heard 20 lines a day of fully debugged code a day, which sounds more reasonable.
Personally, I'd run screaming from any job that looked at how many lines of code I've written as a measure of my worth as an employee, rather than how much I get done regardless of the amount of lines of code it took.
And yes, there is a tremendous difference in the amount of work you can get done with an editor which supports mouse-driven copy/paste, and one that does not.
LOL, that's a good one.
Consider the difference between someone working in Emacs who has to open a different shell window and grep through header files
That's funny, I use emacs, and I just hit ^C-s-g to see definitions. Can't remember the last time I had to grep.
Business now expects *everything* to be faster-cheaper-better, and you can't deliver that writing code with ed.
Yeah, I can see how given a choice between Visual Studio and ed you'd go with Visual Studio. That is a decision I agree with 100%.
But seriously, VC is a fine IDE. The difference between it and other fine IDEs is not an order of magnitude.
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It's been ages since I've used it, and I wouldn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole now, but Visual Studio was the first time I was really impressed by a piece of software from Microsoft. It's pretty good. But if I'm going to pay for an IDE, I'll probably go for IntelliJ.
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>>>people need to proselytize, or else OSS gets nowhere.
Want the new Windows 7? ;-)
Want the new OS X 10.6?
Don't have $200?
No problem. Goto ubuntu.com and get a FREE OS that's just as good as Windows 7. Guaranteed or your money back.
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would not call Ubuntu "just as good as Windows 7" for the same reason that I would not call a pry bar "just as good as a hammer." They are similar and can both be used for hammering nails in and pulling nails out, but the pry bar is better at prying nails out (and a bunch of other things) but a hammer is still better and hamming nails in.
If you tell somebody that Ubuntu is just as good as Windows, the person will expect Ubuntu to be just as good as Windows at every single thing he did with Windows, and will end up thinking Ubuntu sucks.
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I personally would go with the pry bar. You never know when there will be a resonance cascade.
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>>>will end up thinking Ubuntu sucks.
Oh well.
Hopefully the number of people who enjoy getting a FREE operating system and saving $200 every ~3 years will outnumber those who don't like it.
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Those are the sorts of people you don't need to lie and use deceptive advertising to hook.
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Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
The common ground may be what's politically realistic in the short term, that's just a given. Best solution is usually something else however. In the case of IP, it would involve aiming to modify laws. In my opinion, restricting the validity of IP would be a good start compromise.
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This is more what I see here on slashdot. Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
That's because facts do not exist, and all opinions are equally right, amirite?
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Man, I would actually love to work for a large company that would accept OpenSource as a POSSIBLE solution, right now it's kicked to the curb on mention.
Going into a meeting probably next week to discuss Subversion, they feel it would be a security risk since it's Free Software. Nevermind that the platform is Solaris and their baby, VSS, probably won't like running on a *NIX system much.
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Big Corporation: We use the best tool for the job, be it a free tool or a pay for use one.
Open Source Advocate: No, you should always use open source.
Because free software is always the best tool for the job. Because the user knows what it does.
BC: No, sometimes commercial apps are better than the free alternative.
This is an unfounded statement. I cannot compare software on merits unless I know what the software does. Windows 7 may seem to be a speed demon, but that is irrelevant if it reports my habits and Microsoft or FBI can root it at will. More dramatically, any piece software that aspires to be used for science is a scam, unless it is free. If it is prop
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>>>This is more what I see here on slashdot. Somewhere in the middle is the common ground.
Yes middle ground is better. I like to use the commercial Windows OS because it is the "default" OS that everyone uses and very well-supported (I'm still using Windows 98!). But I use open-source for everything else because I'm too cheap to open my wallet, and don't see the need to buy software when OSS alternatives are "good enough" for web browsing, word processing, movie watching, and so on.
trivia -
My fir
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Open Source Advocate: Hey! Wait!
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even that.
I was for while the CTO of a large company. Never again, but that's another story. You often have no choice but to buy their crap. Even if you know that some OSS tool would do the trick better, easier and of course cheaper. Nobody wants change in their office world. They are already used to the previous version of whatever you get to buy. So whatever change you plan to employ will be met with utmost resistance, on all levels, from your CEO to the post office grunt. Even if the change meant they'd have to trade their wash board for a washer/dryer combo that fills itself, they'd complain that there is no wash board so they have no idea how to use it.
You can now either use a lot of effort to overcome that resistance (which sometimes borders on sabotage) and risk being the scapegoat should the tinyest bit go wrong, or just rubberstamp the purchase of the next version of the (maybe even inferior) tool you had for the last 20 years, which will cause at least as many headaches but nobody will complain about that.
Be honest! Which one will you choose?
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Even if you know that some OSS tool would do the trick better, easier and of course cheaper. Nobody wants change in their office world. They are already used to the previous version of whatever you get to buy. So whatever change you plan to employ will be met with utmost resistance, on all levels, from your CEO to the post office grunt.
That's not against open source, that's a barrier to competition at all. But what I think is that too many in large corporations have been involved - or rather victim of - huge switchover projects that just don't go well. It turns out that this other huge software company that looked so shiny on the outside got equally much dirt on the inside but nobody wants to really back out of a huge migration project and admit this was a waste of time and money. The migration is pushed through, focus is held on the shin
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I was always trying to push hard against such musical chairs rotations. The argument that usually sealed the deal was that people are people and will try to stay in contact with collegues they like. The 1% productivity push because you move A closer to B because he needs the resource B provides more than C who he switched offices with is nulled the moment he goes two floors down for his coffee break to hang out with his old buddies.
And considering that people made more coffee breaks than trips to the printe
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Big Corporation: have a nice entertaining trip with our lobbyists while you think about our point of view
Open Source Advocate: Hey! Wait!
Open Source Advocate: Use our open source programs and I'll blow you!
Re:Go Pirate Party? (Score:4, Insightful)
Big Corporation: Open Source is bad for everyone.
Open Source Advocate: No, monopolies are bad for everyone.
Politician: Open source is good for the poor! It's free! Think of the children!
Big Corporation: Damn.
Open Source Advocate: Well..... (shrug)..... whatever works. Open source is good for the children! Free Ubuntu or Puppy Linux for everyone! Goto www.freeubuntu.com or www.freepuppy.com for your free computer OS.
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Goto www.freeubuntu.com or www.freepuppy.com for your free computer OS.
Damn! I was really hoping that www.freepuppy.com was a real site. What a letdown.
A few months ago, I saw a cute sign in a store warning visitors that unaccompanied children would be given an espresso and a free puppy.
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Actually, I'm working at home right now, so nobody but my ISP (and the NSA and google ;-) can see what I'm doing online. It's becoming fairly common for companies to save IT expenses by having everyone who can work at home. It's sorta like a return to the bad old days of "cottage industry", where most people work at home and are responsible for all their expenses, but the megacorps that control the "market" are in charge^Wcontrol of the distribution of goods (and profits).
I do have a few demos on my home
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This isn't an argument, it's just simple contradiction!
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It's both! Every argument starts out as people at contradictory points. After all, if the points were compatible, they wouldn't be arguing.
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Piracy undermines the ability of software developers to create the software that the public wants to use. The long term consequences is to deprive the public of software by undermining the engines that create it.
While it would be nice to believe that open-source would step in to fill the nitch left by piracy-bankrupted companies, I have a hard time believing that open-source, through volunteer effo
Follow the money (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, more and more studies show that the biggest sharers are also the biggest buyers of cultural products. It is not much about following the money than following the ideology and stupidity...
Bullshit (Score:2)
i hate this american way of thinking : first sell EVERYthing, including thoughts concepts even basic logic mechanisms to private people, then come up trying to defend their feudal rights over even the logical thought process. yea, it has gone THAT far, if you havent been following the crap that goes on in u.s. patent office - numerous corporations have been trying to patent simple logic arguments and processes as software patents. the implications of this, naturally, as anyone with 2 brain cells can underst
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Just an interesting observation, but at times you compared the US to individual countries, and at other times compared it to the EU. There's more to that split personality than you think.
For the first half of its history, the US considered itself a collection of states (as in nation states). Strongly connected, but individual, much like the EU members. Now days we act like one country, but the laws and governance are still the original system. There are treaties between states (though they sometimes go
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Great post, wish I had mod points.
BGates - "People should be discreet about piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BGates - "People should be discreet about pirac (Score:5, Funny)
Let he who is without copyright infringement cast the first takedown notice.
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Let he who is without copyright infringement cast the first takedown notice.
Do as we say not as we do...
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True story: when I was a kid, I shoplifted once and didn't get caught. Out of curiosity, does this mean that if I ever own a store, I can never prosecute anyone for shoplifting?
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No, and this is a perfect example of why that quote is absolutely bullshit. If everybody followed it then nobody would have stopped the Nazis because every country involved has invaded others and committed crimes against humanity at one point in their past. (with apologies to godwin)
Microsoft Admits Company Benefits From Piracy (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course it does. If you purchase MS software, they have both revenue and market share. If you pirate MS software, they don't get revenue, but they do get market share. If you use $NON_MS_SOFTWARE, their competitors gain market share (and possibly revenue, if you buy it). If Microsoft (or any other company, for that matter) has to choose between revenue+market share, market share, or neither, their choices will generally be in that order.
Doesn't really solve much though (Score:5, Interesting)
All this means is that international lobbying doesn't have a nice easy single point they can go to in order to get similar laws to be enacted in all EU member states.
Being as there is no EU-wide proposal to explicitly ban member states from imposing internet disconnection, it follows that the lobbyists will talk to individual countries instead.
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>>>Being as there is no EU-wide proposal to explicitly ban member states from imposing internet disconnection
Why not? What's stopping the EU Parliament from making continent-wide laws such as "3 strike"? From my reading of the EU Lisbon Treaty (constitution) there's nothing to prevent them from doing that.
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Sure there is. Countries will start leaving the EU if it imposes laws that the member countries do not like.
It remains to be seen if the EU member states that think they can leave at will run into the same situation as the US member states that thought they could leave at will in 1860.
there are. (Score:2)
there are base principles like freedom of speech, freedom of information, and other human rights.
and there will be individual countries coming up with recognizing internet connectivity as a legal right. finland was the first one. european union countries will follow. the next likely ones will be sweden and norway.
eu is that kind of union, aside from britain. britain actually, shouldnt have been in eu in the first place, for they are not compatible with anything eu represents.
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>>>there are base principles like freedom of speech, freedom of information, and other human rights.
My "country" of Pennsylvania has a constitutional, legal right to free speech and security from warrantless police searches, but that didn't stop the U.S. from passing the Patriot Act that violates both. This is why I don't see what's holding back the EU Parliament from doing the same.
.
>>>britain actually, shouldnt have been in eu in the first place, for they are not compatible with anythin
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What's stopping the EU Parliament from making continent-wide laws such as "3 strike"?
Factions in the EU Parliament that don't like to keep some sense of justice intact, I guess. Then again, the biggest faction in the EU parliament is the Berlusconi faction, so I don't know how well this will turn out.
Central Legislation and Rights (Score:2)
The treaty is not the central issue here, it is far more complicated than that.
First of all you have to be a lawyer, understand European legal systems (not Anglo-American "Common Law") and know EU law to really discuss this. I happen to qualify :)
Even if the EU wanted to impose a three strike law it would have to overcome a number of obstacles. I believe it could be argued that it would be in conflict with the constitutions of several of the EU member nations. You see as the EU is NOT a federal government,
UK experience (Score:5, Informative)
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See also: US handling of ACTA. (Oh no, we're not passing any stupid laws without involving the actual legislators. It's those foreigners.
"downloading coyprighted material" (Score:5, Insightful)
Something is wrong with the way we keep using the phrase "downloading copyrighted material" like it implies something illegal is going on.
The Linux kernel is copyrighted. Me downloading it is not illegal.
If I buy a book for my Kindle and download it, that's not illegal either.
But they are examples of downloading copyrighted material.
There needs to be a language adjustment such that we use "illegally downloading copyrighted material" instead.
Re:"downloading coyprighted material" (Score:5, Insightful)
Something is wrong with the way we keep using the phrase "downloading copyrighted material" like it implies something illegal is going on.
It illustrates how industry lobby manages to mold what we say and think through repetition of a term or opinion thousands of times. It's not our opinion, but we usually say what we have read somewhere. And indeed, digital information in general has been productized, everything is now interpreted as a priced, owned, sold, market-valued product even if it isn't a commercial product or even a product at all.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
How can you distinguish between illegally available copyrighted material and legally material before you downloaded it? How can I know that a publisher of a software, video or song is publishing it illegally and not have the permission of the copyright owner?
If I go, for example, to http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/ [gog.com] (where I can buy older games and download it) or http://www.abandonia.com/ [abandonia.com] (where I can download abandoned games), how can I know if the publisher have the permissions to do so?
After this "three
Re: (Score:2)
Even that's not right, it's not illegal - it's unlawful (in the UK at least).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Something's wrong when we think that DOWNLOADING is the problem. All the RIAA cases (and their massive financial demands) have arisen from UPLOADING not downloading.
Police blackmail cyber-cafes in Brazil (Score:5, Interesting)
Counterfeiting? (Score:3, Informative)
I imagine most warez groups will be quite insulted to have their work branded as counterfeiting... Counterfeit goods are typically cheap (often inferior) copies which are falsely sold as originals...
Warez on the other hand, at least the kind you download, is quite clearly labelled as warez and often branded by the group who ripped it, and is usually a superior product to the original work as the warez copies have drm schemes and other nasties removed.
as long as... (Score:2)
there are less judges, police, lawyers or soldiers then ordinary people in a nation, maintaining any kind of draconian law will fail in the long run.
Definition of Piracy... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The logic of piracy, and the fallacy of copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
The following excerpts of text are taken from a person's comments in a (then) ongoing discussion in comments section of a CNN news piece about digital 'piracy'. The guy
was arguing with copyright activists and shills, and have made innumerable good points to the ultimate end of silencing almost the most shrill shill. i have taken the
liberty of gathering his comments, and i will be posting it on discussion in slashdot in relevant subjects, so that it will help many people who are having difficulties
in understanding how flawed the copyright business and intellectual property is, and how little sympathy one should have for those perpetrating and enforcing them.
These comments are krehator's comments. they are listed in a last to first fashion, the first comments being at the bottom of the text, and the last comment he made being
on top (directly below
==
The truth anti-pirates don't want anyone to believe? I'll use myself as an example. I have been a pirate for decades. I know more about pirating and the facts behind it
than any of the anti-pirates on this sound-off who spew fallacies without any experience.
I download and share movies, software, and rarely music. I'm not a big music fan but I will admit that music is highly pirated. I have no interest in pirated books and
honestly have never witnessesed a big demand for it, outside of students in college. Plus, there is a lot of free material on the Internet which is better. I also use a
lot of freeware "open source" software, because it is quickly becoming better than commercial products.
I support freeware and open source and I do donate to those causes because they EARN my loyalty. Every Operating Systems I have installed is legal. I use Linux
distributions on many of my computers, instead of Windows, because only computer dummies pay for faulty products! Microsoft should be sued for knowingly selling faulty
products. However, according to anti-pirates, businesses are allowed to do that. Only people must live up to moral standards. Wait a minute......aren't businesses
operated by people? Hmmmmm.
Anyway,
I pirate (directly through me) approximately 100 gigabytes of mixed data each month. It varies depending on what is out there. I don't get it from torrents, P2P, or web
sites. Those are not the most reliable, secure, fastest, or primary routes. Those are distractions for novice computer users and the media looking for a story. The
primary routes for pirated data cannot be stopped. Copy protection is not designed to stop hardcore pirates. It is meant to stop the Average Joe from easily sharing with
his friend. A lot of pirating work is done to enable the Average Joe, who then initiates a wave of sharing. Look, some things are true even if you don't want to believe
it.
The deeper inner workings of the pirate community are secured better than the launch codes for missile silos. The people getting caught are low level people who get
replaced in minutes. Anti-pirates have no idea what they are talking about when they try to uncover the real pirate world or describe our motivations. They are akin to
cavemen describing an airplane as an "evil hungry fire bird". Most of what anti-pirates and the industry tells the media and consumers is smoke and mirrors to defend
their own greedy immorality. Pirates get labeled as evil, while greedy and dishonest companies play victim. "oh poor us, we can only make 1 billion dollars this year".
Shyeah, that wins support from consumers and small businesses living on a real budget (laugh).
Of all the data I download per month, 80% is not even for me, and will never be used by me. It is shared with others like me who may or may not value what I have. Of the
20% that interests me, only a very small portion will be deemed as worthy of keeping, after being thoroughly tested. I may find a single good program out of a 1,000 I
download. If that program is superb, and provides m
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At no point in your rambling, barely coherent post were you even close to anything that could be considered proper formatting. Everyone in this thread is now angrier for having scrolled through it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Fail (Score:2)
"'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries, but not mandated by the European government itself, and it looks like the new administration wants to keep it that way."
So historically all this means is that the U.S. will go around and thumb-screw the individual countries into doing what we want. We have the technology.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
D'oh! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The war on terror has always been in Europe, it was just a secret...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be nice when the day comes when open source has taken over and all of this will be a moot point.
Not likely. We should note that, as Bruce Perens and others pointed out the the open-source court decision story the other day, for open-source software to stay open and available requires that it be copyrighted (and/or patented), and accompanied by the right license that's been vetted by knowledgeable lawyers. Corporations like to treat open source as public domain, which permits them to make their own
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently you missed the announcement: Open source is piracy.