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Hilary Rosen from RIAA will write Iraq's Copyrights?
sould writes "The Register is reporting that Hilary Rosen is to assist in writing Iraq's Intellectual Property laws. Can't have those Iraqi's pirating Eminem now can we?"
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I thought that when we ousted Sadaam, that meant the end of cruel and merciless regimes for the Iraqi people. ;-)
;-)
I wonder if the Republican Guard will instinctively rally around Ms. Rosen?
Someone might shoot her!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
As if the Iraqi people were not burried in oppression, now we're going to mire them up in US patent and IP nonsense. By the time we're through, the people will never have a foothold to get any technological endeavor off the ground. They'll be forever burried by our stupid laws. Of course, bad patent & IP laws are better than being murdered by your government, it's still kind of a sinister trade. The Iraqi people have no idea what we may be getting them into -- until they try to make any significant advances in the global technology industry. Someone explain to me how this isn't colonization?
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Guess somebody has their priorities straight...
Did you know that there is a 2% surcharge on all CD recorders sold that goes directly to the RIAA, and a 2% hidden tax associated with the AHRA that is collected by the RIAA to give to artists, yet only roughly 36% of that 2% goes to the artist. www.boycott-riaa.com
If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges uness I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are. But if I said I didn't have an incentive to to make beneficial or creative works without a copyright monopoly, then all of a sudden people just take it on faith, they don't even question it, they just assume that society would fall apart without them. In my humble opinion, this is intellectually dishonest, especially considering that the entire Renassance happened without copyrights.
The simple fact is, there is no equivalency relationship between copyrights and property rights - incentive does not a right make. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that property has physical limits, while the foundation of copyrights dervives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. The history of Copyrights is not one of rights, but controll of sharing and restricting the open use of knowledge.
That is why people who copy are not criminals, thiefs, or akin to pirates who board ships and murder people. No, infact they are really victims of a cruel deception. A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are litterally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed.
However, this is not the only failure of copyrights - it is just one in many issues related to copyrighrts that are just blown off ignored, or glossed over. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to provide quality material, the failures to provide reasonably priced books to college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few.
While the problems associated with copyrights might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggist issue was Xerox machines, today we are entering into the information age where information is so easy to copy and manipulate that there can be no middle ground. Our society will either half to controll all of it or none of it. Our communications will either half to be monitored or free, our privacy to be either contunuiously probed or protected
In that sense, copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root. The DMCA, infinite extensions, billion dollar lawsiuts, are all just symptoms of a poor belief system - not the cause. So the efforts to find a "middle ground" on copyrights are a failure because they do not address the core issue. That contrary to copyrights, the right to copy and distribute creative works and knowledge is a right!
Like freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to copy things is a right that exists above government. It is a moral right, it is an inherent right, it defines the very nature of the human condition. It is beyond politics and the petition of leaders.
In fact, the entire foundation of politics rests on the notion that it's better to fight wars with words than wars with bloodshed. But to copy things does not require coercion or viloence at all, the rules are not the same. We will not change the copyright situation by petitioning our leaders, or voteing to change the system. No it can only be changed by defiance.
Defiance by holding the belief that people have rights, even if those rights appear contrary to the popular mob or to the system. Defiance, by shedding off the guilt and shame that those who try to impose copyrights impose on us and understanding that they are the ones who should be guilty and shamefull. Defiance by copying and sharing creative works whenever we have acess to them. Defiance by using technologies that make it harder and harder for copyrights to be imposed upon us. And defi
Or maybe we're going to write the laws, and then if their elected representative doesn't enforce them, we'll get a new representative. Or even better, we could help enforce them ourselves. Joy.
this is why she retired/is retiring? Maybe it wasn't about Oil... it was really about securing all that Iraqi IP and Music! The REAL conspiracy is uncovered!
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
This is ironic since the Iraqi Information Minister has apparently been writing the RIAA's sales statistics reports.
Hillary "Heinous Hil" Rosen, Iraqi I.P. Minister
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Isn't this equivalent to having Michael Jackson run a child care center???
Dr. Kevorkian has already been pegged to be their Health Minister.
That's a large part of the point for the RIAA. While Iraq is busy rebuilding it's infrastructure they can effectively impose their brand of IP law on these people with very little in the way of actual resistance.
To your average Iraqi, who CARES if they have no concept of fair use.. after all they have no running water, much less a CD burner.
This is not without precedent. In the wake of WWII our media conglomerates also imposed similiar types of oppressive IP law in France and West Germany which basically shut down their film makers..
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Bush lauded the work being done to restore basic services and order in Iraq after Saddam's ouster, but warned "the building of a new Iraq will take time." He said the United States will help Iraqis create a democratic society.
"America has no intention of imposing our form of government or our culture," he said. "Yet we will ensure that all Iraqis have a voice in the new government and all citizens have their rights protected."
My emphasis added. That's what Bush said in a speech in Michigan on Monday to Iraqi-Americans. Guess we're tossing that one out the window...
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Copyright law is entirely separate from property law, and as such "intellectual property" as a term is an attempt to sell the concept of copyright as a property right to lessen the outcry over the continuous attack on fair use and the public domain.
I can't believe that. I'm sure that at least one of our proud 24-hour news stations would be all over that. Someone check the No-Spin Zone!
Face it, folks: This is an administration which plays the press perfectly and gets away with an astounding amount of this bullshit. We're just lucky it's not in the US this time -- he could be appointing more Enron lackies to head the army or obviously business-biased people to set policy. And he gets away with it 'cause the 24 hour "news" channels don't have the will or the stones to make, afraid that they'll lose interviews or access or credibility among people who made the WWE and NASCAR such powerhouses.
(sigh) Sorry, I guess my cynicism got out for a run again. I'm off to watch a few more hours of Fox News and MSNBC. Maybe I can hear another eloquent defense of that poor Senator from PA who's under attack by crazy lefties just because he hates homosexuals.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
And no, I'm not trolling.
Please don't fall into the trap of believing that all Iraqis are necessarily tribal, tent-dwelling folk - Iraq has a sizeable, educated, (and often relatively westernised) middle class.
Remember, they had running water until the US and UK bombed them.
Mod early, mod often.
Here are some news stroies (Google is your friend):
* Palast, BBC journalist, says war is profit-maker for Bush allies
* Post-war carve-up to benefit CDMA standard, record industry
* Journalist says media is biased on war
I encourage you to check out Greg Palast's site. He is the BBC reporter that the original article mentions and the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Interesting read.
If they're already saying "The laws will be created by the following people", listing amongst them people who aren't even Iraqi, then why are they not being called on it? Why is no media entity asking why the US and UK governments are imposing laws on a country they claim to have liberated?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Back in the day, the colonists "brought a new religion and civilization to the heathens in Africa"... and exploited the natural resources.
Now The United Corporations of America goes and "liberates the Iraqi from despotism in order to instore a democracy"... and exploit the natural resources.
Nothing changed, just the name and the countries doing it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
"To wish death upon a person simply because her viewpoints are different from yours is completely barbaric."
Republican. Barbaric. Whichever.
More seriously, WTF is up with worrying about IP laws in a country that collectively doesn't have running water? Are photocopiers and CD burners so much a problem in a nation where most "modern" technology has been embargo'd for the last 12 years?
I can see it now: "Whip the camels faster, Ali, we almost have 'Jagged Little Pill'"
OTOH, Ms. Rosen is free for the first time to establish her dream: The Elite P2P Death Squad.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
They're writing a copyright law for a country that needs clean water and food? give us a break.
Besides, as somebody else mentioned here, Iraq already has copyright laws.
They are not cavemen you know.
...they just don't have copyright with a life + 75 year span. (They have life + 25 up to a maximum of 50 years) They also don't have 97.000.000.000$ fines for copyright violation.
<rant-mode>
One could reasonably argue that when it came to copyright, if nothing else, Iraq actually had more sane laws than both the US and the EU.
I'm, sure that will change real soon now though.
</rant-mode>
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
The oil industry makes campaign contributions. Result: US troops are sent to protect the oil wells and the Oil Ministry.
The RIAA makes campaign contributions. Result: US lawyers are sent to protect the latest Britney Spears and Eminem albums.
The Iraqi National Museum doesn't contribute to the campaign. Result: The museum gets looted, and priceless artifacts thousands of years old are stolen or destroyed.
Perhaps property owners in Damascus should take notice? Or is this just a wild conspiracy theory?
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?