European Commission Calls for Pirate Site Blocking Around the Globe (torrentfreak.com) 29
The European Commission has published its biannual list of foreign countries with problematic copyright policies. One of the highlighted issues is a lack of pirate site blocking, which is seen as an effective enforcement measure, writes TorrentFreak, a news website that tracks piracy news. Interestingly, the EU doesn't mention the United States, which is arguably the most significant country yet to implement an effective site-blocking regime.
FTG (Score:2)
Oh fuck the EU, worry about your own area, quit putting your will on other countries. Begone with ya.
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How is this the fault of the EU? (Score:1)
All the EU is doing is executing on the desires of the land of the free in restricting our freedom to share!
Re:How is this the fault of the EU? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that copyright originally lasted for 14 years and it is the US which kept extending the term, such that everything made in this century will most likely never be freely shareable until most of us who live today are already long dead.
Actually, the US extended its copyright in 1988 [wikipedia.org] to comply with Europe's already-draconian policies. It's thanks to Europe that Disney doesn't even have to file renewal paperwork to ensure their copyrights outlive the creators, the creators' children, and in many cases their childrens' children.
Your heart is in the right place, but brush up on your history.
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But it did in self interest, as wikipedia says:
" Ringer observed that this meant U.S. publishers could pirate the works of English authors like Charles Dickens and publish them cheaper in the new nation than U.S. authors could be published."
Re:FTG (Score:5, Interesting)
There will always be piracy, but there is a significant portion of it that can be stopped by having a consumer bill of rights enforced by government. Things like the following list of items:
1) Enforced compatibility. Companies can create content, but should not be able to force it to be used on any particular platform especially when those platforms give them insight into peoples lives. Currently companies leverage their content to force you to use players and software that give them additional creepy insight into your life. You should be able to use any player or OS software of your choice that allows you to block any information exchange other than the bare minimum to ensure the content was paid for appropriately.
2) No phone home routines, or at the very least no phone home routines that cannot be declined and VERIFIED to be declined. Pinned certificates should be outlawed. It should ALWAYS be possible for the owner of any device to make their own decision to install a proxy and their own certificates to create an authorized man in the middle to be able to verify what their devices are sending in and out of your network about you giving you the ability to block it.
3) Intellectual property can be sold as either IP or a thing. Not both. Companies must choose one or the other at creation time. If you choose to sell your product as intellectual property, then the license can only be sold once. Once you have purchased rights to the IP, you can use that IP in any way and acquire it from any source of your choice for life. If you buy it on CD and it was sold as IP and NOT as a thing, then you bought rights to use the software or music or movie forever even if it shows up on new media types. If a company decides to sell it as a thing, then it is yours outright and they have no more right to limit you in any way shape or form.
4) Rights to usage must be equal across all platforms. Right now you have stupid shit like Youtube being free to use and able to be used mostly anonymously when you are on a PC platform. But if you move to Kodi, iphone or especially android, the android platform is controlled by Google directly, so they have the ability to do stupid shit like enforce that you can't play videos in background unless you pay. On PC that ability is explicit. Most of this would be nullified by BoR #1 above.
5) This one is the biggest of them all. Guaranteed separation of software and hardware in all cases. From phones and tablets to TV's to automobiles. If companies attempt to do stupid shit like artificially crippling features that are inherent in software for the purposes of selling that functionality back to you, it absolutely should be a right to remove their software and apply your own and it should be illegal for companies to write the software or design the hardware in any way that makes this difficult or impossible.
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It's because everything in Europe is already done. That's how come they've got time to worry about crap like this.
Re: FTG (Score:2)
I'm glad some US companies are fed up with their shit and geoblocking European users from their websites and serving up condensending notices about their laws.
Re: FTG (Score:2)
They want to get the old tall ships out of drydock and continue plundering poor countries full of brown skinned people for spices, gold, and other valuables.
They got their asses roundly kicked and kicked out by those countries but they want to go back for a second try.
Why does everyone want to copy China? (Score:2)
It seems that ultimately, what each of these countries want, is their own Great Firewall, not just for blocking sites, but to block things without having to show what is blocked, and what reason it is done.
All this will do is insure a cat and mouse game starts, and causes the population to lose trust in the government. The US learned that with Prohibition. Sweden made the iPredator act, so numerous VPN services were created.
Even if all Internet services were blocked, that isn't going to stop things. Neve
Re:Why does everyone want to copy China? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US likes to give you the illusion of freedom. They'll let you visit the Pirate Bay, but try to download anything and you're likely to get a copyright notice, leading eventually to your internet access being revoked. (I imagine that's one of the outcomes of your social credit score dropping too low in China as well.)
The US likes to pretend that, because it's a "private" company taking your freedom away, that that's somehow different or better than a government agency doing the same. I put private in quotes because the revolving door between, in this case, the FCC and the telcos, blurs the distinction between public and private. It's just as strong a connection as the Chinese Communist Party has with any Chinese company.
Tea and Crumpets (Score:1)
Consume them and be silent.
Thanks.
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Crumpets are the quintessential afternoon tea treat, especially when served warm with lots of butter. It's the extra yeast in the batter that creates the soft texture and delicate holes on top, perfect for soaking up jam and butter. Crumpets are popular in the U.K. and make frequent appearances at British teatime
The UK is... not part... of the EU
Re: Tea and Crumpets (Score:2)
"Your hearing is important, so we initiated Brexit so your hearing is protected from people who want the UK to remain a sovereign entity that isn't controlled by the likes of you."
Wrong focus (Score:1)
Most citizens care far more about spammers, scammers, and robo-calls than entertainment pirates. Yet resources tend to be allocated to the second because deep pockets "talk" louder to those running things.
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I want *FU on my phone and text...
When you get a call or text you don't want, just send *FU (Fuck U).
The number is blocked, and a Dollar plus inflation is subtracted from your phone/communications bill.
A Dollar plus inflation is added to the phone/communications bill of the caller. If the caller can not be identified (and the call can ALWAYs be identified), the originating phone/communications company is on the hook to pay the money.
No more spam phone calls and texts.
Pirates gonna pirate (Score:2)
You'll never stop them. Stop wasting your time. Find better and more economical ways for people to obtain and consume legal media. This is a lot of the reason people look for alternative sources.
Won't someone think of the corporations? (Score:2)
NOOOO, the media corporations need more money AAAAAHHH!
Big mommy going to block every overlay network? (Score:1)
Give me a break. These are RIAA and MPAA shills out to turn the web into a dystopian, corporate monoculture where only they have access and everything contains DRM.
Fair copyright privilege, then we'll talk (Score:4, Insightful)
But then copyright was abused by corporations to make more money, who paid legislators to extend it and extend it.
When copyright terms are returned to a reasonable 5 years - long enough to encourage creativity but not to suppress the spread of knowledge or suppress creation based on previous work - THEN it is reasonable to try and stop copyright infringement.
Until then - PIRATE ON!
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I get all my shit from ***** * and I have no problem accessing it from northern europe. Obscurity does only occassionally exist there, but that's probably out of copyright anyways, so it would be just ripping off the wrong people to upload it there.
* selfcensored in case of drakonian /. rules.
Don't give the US any excuses! (Score:2)
EU may end up giving the US an excuse to start blocking and shutting down websites.
It may start with piracy but the slippery slope will end up at your site.
The EU global overlords at it again (Score:2)
"This website uses cookies. Click OK to continue"
"Your hearing is very important so we randomly lowered the volume for you."
I see that they want to go back to their global empire "company" days, and back to good old fashioned serfdom and oppression of brown people in faraway lands and refering to them as "dogs". I also see my middle finger rising up and pointing eastward in Europe's direction.