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E.U. Commission Suggests Permissive Copyright Rule
An anonymous reader submits "ITworld.com is reporting: 'The European Commission on Thursday presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry.'"
It appears as though they would be mutualy exclusive, which is definetly a good thing. Any Europeans who follow these things know for sure.
At any right sweet if it passes, but it is still only a draft and the Media Groups will be lobying hard for changes so one can only hope it remains unscathed.
37 - what does it stand for really...
Great! The Europeans are sensible about all of this. Downloading music off of the internet is no different than recording music off of the radio and digitizing it. All music is just sound waves anyway.
I think that anyone that resells copyrighted material deserves whatever the content mafia deems possible.
If the content cartel would just ease up about suing all of their potential customers, they wouldnt have a problem with piracy. Each industry has its own issues to deal with.
Software. Makes $80 billion dollars, loses $12 billion on piracy.
Software activation and antipiracy stuff (MICROSOFT AND QUICKEN) are a hassle to customers. They have to justify their existence in the face of open sourced competition.
Movies. Makes a couple of billion dollars (I'm guessing maybe more), loses millions to crappy divx screeners and stuff. People are buying $20 DVDs buy the handful, renting DVD's for $4, and going to movies for $7 a whole hell of a lot! I find it hard to belive their claims about piracy when they are making money hand over fist. Given to head in the sand syndrome when they didnt allow Linux Users to have a version of DVD viewing software. If a bunch of programmers can make their own OS, then decoding DVDs must be trivially easy (Especially when Xing leaves a key around in plain sight--- geniuses). Region Coding is just a sham. Stop now and youll sell more movies. Go digital in projection screens and stop whining about costs to get movies out to justify delayed releases. Global simultaneous releases will do a lot to squashing piracy. Keep those DVD prices at $20 or less.
Music Industry. Must move away from selling CD's a lot. Must sell DRM-less digital download in the MP3, Mp4, or SHN format. Must convince stores like best buy to install kiosks that allow users to hook up iPods or Nomads to swipe credit cards and get albums for $2 (this reduces payoffs to teamsters and costs to get cds pressed and stuff), and singles for $0.10. It;d be a gold mine and I'd buy like crazy. In the meantime, stop suing your customers, stop peddling locked cds WITHOUT LABELING THEM, YOU DECEITFUL BASTARDS, and ease up on piracy. Lastly, dont pay broadcasters to play songs. Thats got you in a bigger bind than this. Oh, and get much more responsive to consumer tastes and demands. And never again sell a Britney Spears to the american public. Spears will be a porn star within 5 years, as if Christina Aguilera isnt one.
If the music industry doesnt serve its customers, it will become irrelevant. Why do you think that your devoted mouthpiece and IT whipping bitch Hilary Rosen left your sorry excuse for an industry? You guys suck, and we are taking our money elsewhere.
Completely fair. Punish those with jail time or steep fines that profit from other's intellectual property (cds, movies, music, art). Yet leave the average joe who wishes to "sample" those to see if they themselves deem it worthy of a purchase.
IMHO the music industry could've saved itself. About 5 years ago, Target introduced Custom Compilation CD Burner Centers...IIRC Wherehouse had them too (except wherehouse you had to send away for it). Target allowed you to choose up to 12 songs and it'd burn it on the spot. I think it was $20. Well hell that would have worked if the big guns would've licensed they're music but it was just unpopular music or really old music so it never flew.
Sorry music industry but now your being punish for your own transgressions against the massess who once supported your livelihood. Hope that's some music to your ears. No more cha-ching-a-ling-a-ding for you.
It seems it's almost obligatory that any crime gets linked to terrorism now days
Whew! At least some politicians are showing intelligence.
US always tries to do the "Good Thing" but goes all backwards about it - ie during the War On Drugs they didn't focus enough on the source of the drugs, and too much on the "end-user", during the War On Terrorism, they are overthrowing political regimes(I'm not saying they shouldn't but thats the wrong way to go about it), while they should be cutting off the money supply to terrorism that flows from America itself. Now they do do some of the right stuff too, but primarily US politians loose focus too quickly.
Lets hope that EU will set a good example, by targeting the source of the disease instead of the symptoms.
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> This is quite reasonable.
I cant help but agree, and its probably the first time that I can think of the European Union doing something reasonable. Since commercial copyright theft is believed to fund organized criminals who also control drugs and prostitution, then the EU has said catagroically that these people are a lot worse than those who infringe copyright at home. Hooray!
I'd still like to see the copyright laws returned to 14 years after publication, but you cant win them all.
I think there's a world (no pun intended :-) of difference between an internal market and an external market. The EU is doing more or less what EU-people expect if they "protect" EU-people from external states.
The (horrendously large) french farm subsidies are an internal matter for the EU to sort out, and mainly came from the way in which the EU was set up, with Britain excluded from the EU until "appropriate" safeguards had been made for French farmers.
[History, as far as I recall]
Britain had a far more efficient farming style, wanted to join the EU => France was scared, so as anEU member France lobbied for EU subsidies as a condition for UK entrance. The UK eventually agreed that there were still sufficiently large advantages to be had by membership, and reduced its' original proposed EU payments as well. Britain entered the EU, and France kept their farmers employed.
[/History]
The ideal would be to wean people off subsidies, but I still see the above as the EU "protecting" member states (in this case, France) from external interests (in this case, the UK) . Whether I agree with the subsidies or not isn't really relevant...
As for poverty being the root cause of India & China's resurgence, I don't doubt it's an economic argument that's the cause of the dilemma. I was trying to point out that a practice is being established... Any innate industry feeds from its market, and if the market disappears, so does the industry...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Italy? Campaign contibutions? Ah!
We passed that stage long ago, now we directly elect people who have money and power, not their cronies!
(Yes, I'm Italian, and looking for a way out!)
dakkar - mobilis in mobile
Honestly, though, it's hard over here getting support for a war in Iraq. The ignorant patriot has become sort of a humorous stereotye in other countries, but in actuality there is just no way the RIAA could force America to wage war.
Still, you do have a good point. Analysis of the Telecommunications Act of 1997 (I believe it was 1997, but I'm not sure) is proof of the massive media conglomerates power in Congress (the Act actually helped perpetuate this).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
..euh... I actually wanted to speak about modern Russia. The status quo there is that commercial use of copyrighted matherial is by default forbiden, but private and non-commercial use is not, at the condition that the copyright holder MAY always request the distributer to withdraw the copyrighted material and the distributer HAS to comply to the request or be charged in court.
This means that people are allowed to publish mp3s, books, video on the internet provided that they do not get any money from their publishing and that they have not been contacted by the copyright holder with the request to withdraw their copyrighted works
Sounds like the EU is getting to have the same idea of copyright.
I always find that funny, Robbie wiliams who said P2P networks were great, got hammered for promoting "Drugs and Prostitution". WTF/
Anyhow, there are four systems,
1: The controled market (that the goverment loves)
2: The free market (the odd job on the side etc.. not taxed)
3: The black market (selling things that are illeagal)
4: and fraud.
So yeh, I like drugs... , I never quite understood pating for sex? maybe if it was a bit more kinky than your partner would do...
Do I give a fuck about the government.... umm..... nope.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The EU is not a country - yet - but a coordinated free trade zone. For an economic comparisoon, a proper comparison would be between NAFTA and the EU, which are much more similar in size. Also, by the time the EU lets in the "poor" Eastern European countries to increase its size the US will have let some "poor" South or Central American country into NAFTA by then, and they will remain relatively equal in size.
This entire analysis of population ignores the fact that the US/NAFTA is by far the largest economy on earth, and that Europe needs the US more than the US need Europe (which is the true test of any negotiation)
However, it does raise two interesting points of demographics - First, through NAFTA, hemispheric considerations, and other factors the US is slowly coming to be less a European country in North America and more of an "Americas" country. This will only increase as immigration from Latin America increases. The latest US census figure really show this (Hispanics are now the second largest minority in America). The US always has a natural empathy for countries where more of its immigrants came from. The "special" relationship with Britain and Israel. Ireland and Poland being such good friends of the US, etc. Now the countries of Latin America. This always makes good domestic and international sense for the U.S.
Secondly, higher standards of living mean fewer children - both the U.S. and Europe aren't having enough children domestically to maintain their existing populations (neither is Russia and its dying for it, but thats another matter). Immigration is therefore key to any population growth, especially immigration from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Population growth is therefore tied to the ability to absorb immigrant populations into your country, educate them, and make them productive members of your workforce. In this area, nobody has ever been better than the US, and Europe has a long way to go.
That said, many European nations are sick of being bullied by the US (rightly so) and will work together more often in the future for their own interests rather than caving to the US. And since a little humility once in awhile is a good thing, this is in the interests of the US, too.