Crookes, RIAA, MPAA, ICE — 'Linking Is Publishing' 369
newtley writes "What do Canada's Wayne Crookes, the Big 4's RIAA, Hollywood's MPAA and brand new ICE agent Andrew Reynolds have in common? They all claim linking is the same as publishing. Crookes is using it to demand Canada's Supreme Court effectively shut down the net in Canada. With the RIAA and MPAA providing the 'initiative,' the Obama government is using Andrews [read ICE — US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to try to shut down innocent sites for, and on behalf of, Hollywood and Big Music. The sites are 'accused of contributing to online piracy, and it was essential for the domain names to be seized without a trial and without giving the sites a chance to respond. Why? Such sites are 'destroying the US economy.' Forget about legally appointed courts, proof or due process. Hollywood and Big Music rule."
This isn't helping. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a lot of pirates. Some of them have now moved on from "I want free stuff" to "I want to collapse the media empire before it enslaves mankind."
Also, First!
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I don't begrudge anyone pirating anymore.
The only real argument I have left with piracy is that it distorts the market. This is especially seen in the software market - where the incumbent publishers get undeserved market share through piracy - locking out alternatives. Repeat offenders giving piracy the wink-wink-nudg-nudge would be Microsoft, Adobe, and Autodesk. How else would they build their userbase if they made it impossible for HS and college students to pirate full editions?
I know a lot of pirates too. It's laughable how the studios and publishers come up with the "lost profits" that are pulled out of thin air because they assume that every pirated copy would be a bought copy.
My sympathy is gone.
--
BMO
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is something of an odd case. Their situation is complicated by the extent to which their licences are via OEM. No student need ever pirate windows, for every computer comes with it - so unless they are on a development course, that only leaves office, which does have a low-cost student edition. Which is still expensive for a student, but not ridiculously so.
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I imagine they tolerate student piracy so that those students will go on to become professional users and pay for a licence
Adobe offers a student license for a very affordable price. Last I looked it was $300 for a specialized suite of CS5 programs. That is more than fair if you ask me and ends up costing around the same as a couple of textbooks. You can also it for commercial projects with the only restriction being it must be installed on your personal computer (not at work or school).
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:4, Informative)
When I was a poor teen, we didn't have money for software. Most stuff was acquired through erm.. clubs, and copied from school or work.
And $300 is still a chunk of change if you're a college student trying to meet rent on a part time job. It may be more than fair, but still, you don't see Adobe making it impossible to pirate their stuff, which they are more than capable of doing.
Because every poor teenager/student they deny copyright infringement to is a lost customer after college graduation.
--
BMO
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you don't see Adobe making it impossible to pirate their stuff, which they are more than capable of doing.
So many people tried and failed to do this. The pirates usually always crack it, especially if the thing is popular.
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Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Informative)
I imagine they tolerate student piracy so that those students will go on to become professional users and pay for a licence
Adobe offers a student license for a very affordable price. Last I looked it was $300 for a specialized suite of CS5 programs.
WTF, are you insane? My girlfriend (who is a student) will eat for 1 1/2 months on that 300$. Affordable my ass.
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Adobe offers a student license for a very affordable price. Last I looked it was $300 for a specialized suite of CS5 programs.
Anything made with Adobe's student software can not be used for commercial OR public purposes.
It's a $300 demo. It's morally sickening and borderline illegal.
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you could say the $300 investment in food also pays off. Try a month and a half without food and see if you can't see the long-term benefits of the investment ;)
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck, you could put together a simple website for a local business and your costs are recovered.
Except for the fact that the student editions licensing restrictions stating you are not to use it for commercial (aka, freelance) purposes. And I've had friends try to upgrade from a student to a full version to be able to do freelance work, but Adobe's upgrade options from the student edition really don't refund you a high percentage of what you originally paid. And if you don't care about ignoring that licensing restriction, what's going to stop you from just pirating the software in the first place?
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Informative)
Except for the fact that the student editions licensing restrictions stating you are not to use it for commercial
You are entirely incorrect. Read this FAQ [adobe.com] specifically:
Can I use my Adobe Student and Teacher Edition software for commercial use? Yes. You may purchase a Student and Teacher Edition for personal as well as commercial use.
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" that only leaves office, which does have a low-cost student edition. Which is still expensive for a student, but not ridiculously so."
Microsoft just recently dumped OGA. Guess why.
--
BMO
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:4, Insightful)
those students will go on to become professional users and pay for a licence
Nail, meet head (wait...that sounded kinda dirty). I was certainly guilty of pirating Adobe and Autodesk software in grad school. Living on $900 per month was difficult and some of us simply didn't have the grant money and/or disposable income to purchase legit software. Fast forward to today and I have a full paid for version of Adobe Master Suite CS5 and Autodesk Maya 2010 at my workstation at work. They essentially looked the other way when I, and others stole our first hit of sweet sweet software and now that we're hooked they have a guaranteed user base.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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This. I don't begrudge anyone pirating anymore.
This effect has a name - Criminalization of Society [wikipedia.org].
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Actually I believe this is helping, we're one step closer towards the masses realizing they are living in a giant corporate turd.
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Egads! It's worse than I thought - until now I thought we were only living ~on~ a giant corporate turd!
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When they start realizing the the Republican Industrial-Military Complex is quite lame compared to the Democrat's Entertainment-Government Complex maybe somebody will castrate that giant corporate turd.
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an older guy who can afford to buy cd's and stuff.
I choose not to, though. I'm one of those who has had enough bullshit from big media and now ACTIVELY WANTS TO SEE THEM GO BANKRUPT.
I no longer view pirates as kids with no money; I view them as equalizers in the new david and goliath struggle.
I also buy used cd's so that no money goes back to the media companies. the last new cd I bought was probably over 10 years ago.
"meet the new customer; NOT the same as the old customer!" /apologies to The Who
Re:This isn't helping. (Score:4, Informative)
Where do you get that he downloads? I read it as he doesn't buy new, he doesn't download, he just buys used.
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By the logic of the music industry here, if I tell you there's a jewelry store at the mall, I am now guilty of robbing it.
I want free stuff so I take free stuff (Score:3)
I want free stuff so I take free stuff. I walk next door to the library with my laptop. I plug it in at the wired table (they're all wired for 120V). I go to the shelf and pick up an interesting looking DVD or CD. I plug it into my laptop's DVD-RW and just make a copy of it right there. I read magazines and newspapers while the disk is being copied. Or write some code. Then I go home. Or if it is seriously cold weather, I linger in the heated public library and copy another DVD. Instead of rushing
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Destroying the US economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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If these ou
Linking != publishing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but linking is not the same is publishing.
Linking is the equivalent to pointing and shouting "Oh look, a deer!" in the real world.
Now, if I were to do that, I am not putting the deer there. I am simply mentioning that I see one and pointing it out to people. Now, if you mis-use the information if you happen to be within earshot and hear me and you poach that deer, it's not my fault nor my responsibility you did so - even if you are holding a shotgun when I point it out.
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Well if you run a company called "PoachAssist - The Best Spot to Find Animals you Want to Poach" then I'd say you can at least be hit for aiding and abetting
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Of course linking is the same as publishing. Just like when a journalist reports on a crime, he is an accessory after the fact and punished accordingly. They are the same thing, aren't they?
Re:Linking != publishing (Score:5, Insightful)
>Sorry, but linking is not the same is publishing.
The thing is, I think they (the Mafiaa for want of shorthand) know this. That's not, however, the basis for their public statements and actions, legal or otherwise - that's solely based in the 'say and do anything to maintain the self-interested business model we have because we're attached to it and haven't the fucking imagination to adapt and survive (and hopefully prosper).
I think their time is at an end. They are gatekeepers and really they need to become curators - and along with that comes a financial down-shift: a useful and possibly necessary service, that money can be accrued from, but not the all-powerful position that they once had. The smarter ones will jump ship, I think, and adopt this (or a better) strategy, but their time is at an end and the only yhting that can extend it is their wealth (that can buy disproportionate power with politicians to that which any member of a democracy should have) and their rhetoric.
We know their rhetoric is hollow. They know it too. We can only hope the judiciary are also of the same mind and not easily fooled.
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Did you just publish a deer?
Oh look, a million dollars!
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Linking is the equivalent to pointing and shouting "Oh look, a deer!" in the real world.
I think it's more like "Hey, I think you should read this book. It's called <title>, and you can buy it at <store>." According to the "linking == publishing" philosophy, recommending a book to someone like this means that I have stolen the author's work and called it my own.
I'm waiting with some terror for the day when using library resources and reading books in the bookstore without purchase is considered equal to copyright infringement.
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moran, ....
there is a HUGE diff between a 'download right now, almost no choice' (img tags) and an a-href tag that allows you to FOLLOW a link but never ever forced the content to be downloaded without the user wanting it to be so.
music, unless you directly link to playable files (no one does that!) is not an inline embeddable.
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Linking is the equivalent to pointing and shouting "Oh look, a deer!" in the real world.
Doesn't matter, it's still not copying. Doesn't matter what it looks like. It really doesn't matter if you do something like throw it in a frame, or load it directly from another site, there's still no new publishing going on. Knock off the original and the "copy" ceases to exist.
Re:Linking != publishing (Score:4, Funny)
Publish the internet in a single link (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Publish the internet in a single link (Score:5, Funny)
If a link is publishing, then is a link to a link publishing the link which published the original? Does any website that link to google, or to a website that links to google, in effect publish the entire internet?
The answer is of course 'Kevin Bacon'
Linking is Publishing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting.
I guess that means that every single time the US Government has mentioned Wikileaks at press conferences they have themselves published all the documents available at Wikileaks?
I mean - mentioning the name of a website while talking, that's pretty much the same as linking in writing.
I guess Wikileaks is off the hook for publishing the documents then ...
This is dangerous thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linking can't be publishing. If linking is publishing, then Google, Bing, and Yahoo are breaking the law, right now. Guess we'll have to to shut them down.
Re:This is dangerous thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn! I think I just broke the law by mentioning Google, Bing and Yahoo!
Intent (Score:3)
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"Of course they are. But they have exemptions".
Laws are fun that way.
For Realz, Player? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It takes big corporations spending big money to convince people they are ruling the show rather than just being cattle to aforementioned corporate overlords. Tough shit ain't it?
Else, you can take over Antarctica, break a few treaties and start your own country with sane laws but insane weather.
Re:For Realz, Player? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does it take to get a government of the people, for the people, and by the people in today's world?
A revolution.
Re: Be ready to voice an opinion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Very difficult my friend, for the people that are the loudest are right...kindergarten logic.
The real question is, when will be the tipping point in America? At some point there will need to be a march on Washington not for piracy, but privacy on multiple fronts. When these issues start affecting even more of the masses in a daily fashion, this may happen. Everything from airport scanners, to cell phone tracking, to packet inspection, to... I just wonder what will be the metaphorical straw to break the
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I wonder if this is a traditional quorum-sensing problem?
None of us can be bothered to march on Washington to demonstrate because each of us feels only a handful of others would show up. When in fact, none of us really knows for sure how many like-minded citizens would join us.
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Better quorum sensing would allow the people to get organized a little sooner -- but it would also enable the opponents to identify rapidly growing threats and proceed to divide and conquer them.
Typical grass roots movements grow exponentially so sensing the quorum is an easy problem -- once the tipping point is reached, it's obvious to everyone simultaneously. I think that's a good thing.
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In a word: people. Not corporations.
Oh, and getting rid of that blatantly abusive 'a corporation is a person' law would help to make things ~much~ clearer-cut for us all.
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Oh, and getting rid of that blatantly abusive 'a corporation is a person' law would help to make things ~much~ clearer-cut for us all.
Good luck with that one. All the "free market" people will cry foul when you take away their government-granted limited liability.
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What does it take to get a government of the people, for the people, and by the people in today's world?
Same thing it took the first time--an overlord that wasn't respected, a bunch of charismatic people that wanted to change things, and an army to protect #2 from #1.
Stop buying music and movies. (Score:2)
I know, I know, "it's a nice idea, but most people are sheep and will buy anyway". Sad, sad, sad. That's the only solution I can think of, until someone whose voice actually means something can speak up for common sense and start bringing this shit to a halt. Anyone? Bueller?
oh yeah (Score:2)
Then write letters to them explaining WHY you're not buying from them.
they would care about that.
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How about just buying stamps and stationary to send the letters with and write them on; week at least until we start getting pretty hungry. A better idea might be to download some Creative-Commons music and name them as if they were RIAA stuff and let the assholes sue us for infringement? Oh wait that wouldn't work either because the courts aren't astute enough to make the *IAA actually prove what you were offering for download was actually their's, so how about naming the torrent files with the MD5sum of t
Fucking scum (Score:2)
These scumbags - the RIAA and MPAA - act outside the bounds of government to force their worldview on us. When the fuck can I act outsides the bounds of the law?
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The name of Canada's (Score:2)
seemingly most famous imaginary property troll [p2pnet.net] is ...
Wayne Crookes?
Classic.
Crooks, RIAA (Score:2)
Linking can be deceptive! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for laws which ban deceptive linking.
There are all kinds of web sites out there whose operators scrape content, and steal bandwidth, creating the appearance that they created the content and are hosting all the images and other download materials themselves.
This is usually done to try to boost search engine rankings, to bring traffic to other content.
Such practices should be illegal.
It should only be fair use to make this kind of link:
<a href="target site">honest text</a>
It should be obvious to the end user that this is a hyperlink, and the text should make it clear that the user is navigating to someone else's site. An optional nofollow would be allowed, but no other attributes.
Any other form of linking (such as targetting a page into a frame or iframe, or using tags sourced from another site) should require the permission of the target site in order to be legal.
The difference between linking and embedding can't be defined by the underlying technology, but by how it looks. Is there an intent to deceive? If it looks like copying is going on then it must be considered that way.
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It should only be fair use to make this kind of link:
<a href="target site">honest text</a>
Looks like this guy was rickrolled / meatspun one time too many...
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Rickrolling is more of a trick, where the surfer is expecting one thing but is taken somewhere else. For instance, a link to "watch a video of my puppy chasing after a ball", actually takes you to "two girls, one cup".
But I'm talking more about the kind of deception which hurts the target site by stealing content and bandwidth.
The web surfer in this situation is not surprised at all, but rather quite unaware (unless he looks closely at the URL's, and perhaps not even then).
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Do what I did when someone used an image from my host as a forum signature: use .htaccess to replace it with a large, disturbing image if the referrer is that domain.
The hotlinking was gone in less than a day.
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Congrats /. (Score:2)
You have published 5 articles with this one :)
Your freedoms, at the whim of a dozen individuals (Score:5, Insightful)
and these use the vast resources of those corporations to place who support them in power, or pressurize those who are already in power.
and you end up with this situation.
had those shareholders died out, as they should have, of old age, and different people came in place of them, everything would change. at the whim of a dozen individuals. best you would expect them would be to die out fast, just like how the people in middle ages hoped for their oppressive kings or lords to die. there is nothing democratic about a corporation. its private aristocracy. aristocracy privatized. however you put it.
this is the eventual result of capitalism. the one with the gold makes the rule. you are politically free. but because exercise of any freedom is tied to money privately, those who have the money have all the freedoms, and even can restrict the freedoms of those who dont have as much money as them.
economy and politics cannot be separate from each other. never. you cant expect to make one democratic and the other undemocratic and expect it to work. one will affect the other, eventually.
there you have it. 10-20 individuals are set on limiting freedoms of people, even at the cost of hampering a MAJOR new technology that is making the civilization to have a great step forward, and there is nothing you can do about it. the appalling part is, all what is happening are acceptable and legal, in terms of capitalism and its illusion storefront of political freedom.
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How many companies from the NASDAQ 100 of 50 years ago still exist?
Zero...considering NASDAQ is 39 yrs old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASDAQ [wikipedia.org]
The Obama Government? (Score:2)
When did Obama take over the entire government? I thought he was having trouble reigning in the Executive branch.
Or is it "Obama" the new "Liberal Facist Marxist Commie"? Or is it how Canadians refer to the US Government?
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Actually, other than this being a government agency, it has nothing to do with Obama, unless the president is expected to micro-manage every last minutia of government.
In reality, ICE is part of Homeland Security and ever since being created under the Bush administration, everyone has had trouble reigning them in. I'm pretty sure that protecting us from pirated music and movies will not have one iota of impact on terrorism, but hey, maybe they know something that thinking people don't.
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If I'm not mistaken it has to do with the process after the elections of forming a government, whereas in the US the elections do that for us, and the President only gets to select nominees for various agencies.
Should we blame Obama and Steve? (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be the governments that Barak Obama and Steven Harper lead, but is it fair to say that the "X administration" or the "Y government" is party to this scheme?
The RIAA has been trying to change Canadian law since long before Steven Harper was even in parliament, and has worked with all the intervening governments to try to push their position.
If I were to say the "Harper administration" was part of this policy effort, it would suggest that they dreamed up the policy, and were themselves evil. That's not just an insult, it's unfair.
I'd rather insult Mr Harper fairly, by calling him "Steve" and his party the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance" party, or CCRAP*.
--dave
* Yes, that was the party's name at one point. They changed it.
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I'm sure it won't stop your bashing. But the bastion of Canadian politics(aka the Liberal Party), were the forerunners of this same style of legislation ... dun, dun, dun...in 2000.
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I think the point in this case is that both Obama and Harper are actively supporting these schemes. So they're not the evil masterminds, but they certainly are among the stronger minions.
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"is it fair to say that the 'X administration' or the 'Y government' is party to this scheme?"
Yes, inasmuch as those heads of state have the clout to suggest changes in legislation that would prevent abuse by the media corporations. "The buck stops here" still means something in my book.
Economic Darwinism (Score:2)
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Damn You George Bush!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait for Obama to be inaugurated!
Stop the presses! (Score:5, Interesting)
Time for the IT giants to step into the ring (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the RIAA:
That gives us a 2008 estimate of 12 billion dollars in revenue for retail sale of music. Presumably for the RIAA, who "create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States [wikipedia.org]". So a total of about $14.2 billion in revenue.
Now, obviously we also need to take the MPAA into consideration. Again, using 2008 numbers:
Ticket sales grossed about $10 billion. [the-numbers.com] And since quite a lot of people seem to claim (and no, I have no source handy) that home video sales is about the same as ticket sales, then we're looking at around $20 billion in 2008.
Apple's revenue for 2008 in the Americas was $14.5 billion [eweek.com]. Granted, that's a larger geographical area than RIAA's numbers, but then again Apple is a relatively small company in the IT landscape.
How about some of the bigger fish?
IBM reported revenue of $103.6 billion, and pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion [ibm.com].
So, the movie and music industry combined gets up to around $35 billion in 2008 in the US.
IBM (world wide) - $103 billion
Apple (Americas) - $14.5 billion
Google (world wide) - $21.8 billion [google.com]
Microsoft (world wide?) - $60.4 billion [microsoft.com]
Oracle (world wide?) - 22.4 billion [oracle.com]
Dell (world wide?) - 61 billion [dell.com]
Seriously - why the fuck are the IT giants just turning their back on the complete and utter gang rape on things like the Internet, when most of their products would die off the moment it stops working the way it should.
Just buy out the fuckers, boot the executives, lawyers, assistants etc. from their penthouse offices (literally boot them out over the balcony) and just kill off these massively debilitating parasites.
His name is CROOKes (Score:2, Funny)
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Your local library card index... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got my early retirement package! (Score:3)
I think I figured out how to retire early. Make video or some other form of media and copyright it. Let all kinds of people know about it. Then do a google/bing/yahoo search and if they've linked to my media, sue the pants off of them.
If the RIAA thinks that a small website linking is violating copyright, then why don't they go after the big players, too (other than they know that google and the like have the money to fight such an absurd notion).
The music industry is economically insignificant (Score:2)
There were around $15.8 billion in sales in "premium content" in 2010. No economist would consider this industry economically significant, but we have intellectual monopolists shrieking that piracy is shutting down the economy.
But stifling natural markets is destroying the economy: the intellectual monopolists demand control over all copies (of a piece of music, movie, article, etc). This limits your ability to sell or give away the copy you purchased. The downstream control of all copies of a copyrighted w
One word... (Score:2)
Google, Bing, et al? (Score:3)
I know it gets brought up often, but since these 'rules' are so nebulous, when do the giants like Google have to pay out protection money to the 'family'? Tthey wont get shut down of course, but they will get sued ( or just threatened ) and settle out of court, using our tax dollars to fund their attorneys on what should be a civil matter.
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Canadians pay a levy on blank media so the labels would still get enough money to buy more laws.
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Same here in France (and I'm Canadian, so I get it from both ends). If there ever was a law unjustly (and blindly) punishing the innocent, it's that one - I don't like the idea of my giving money to record companies whose crappy artists I don't even listen to every time I burn a DVD of photos for each publication I make. These RIAA guys are just assh*les, but they continue their antics only because we are allowing them to - in part, by buying music! And blank CD's/DVD's... ouch.
Re:boycott all large labels? (Score:5, Insightful)
hahahahaa (Score:2)
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/07/13/1737224 [slashdot.org]
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Unless the money is disappearing from your wallet/bank account, they're not stealing.
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Of course, ICE is part of Homeland Security, which Obama did not create.