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PIRATE Act Introduced in Congress
certron writes "Xeni Jardin has written a story for Wired about the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004" aka the PIRATE Act. It and another related bill are designed to criminalize P2P filesharing by lowering the burden of proof for law enforcement and proposing jail terms of up to 10 years. The bill was introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, both of whom received large contributions from the entertainment industries. Under the bill, even sharing a single file (if a judge decides the value is over $10,000) could land a user in jail. Read the full text of Orrin Hatch's remarks."
What we are going to do is use Freenet ( http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ ) and Mute-net ( http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/ ) anonymous P2P applications to exchange files now.
:)
Upload some music and make a music webpage, im in the middle of making an emulator and book webpage.
See you soon
Sharing on a P2P network is not stealing. Copyright infringement is a completely different issue. Jail time is definately the wrong "solution".
are you joking?
read this please.
The rest of the country cannot get these two corrupt, entertainment industry pawns out of office. Only Vermont and Utah residents can. Do not re-elect these two. While it might seem they are doing good, they are doing long-term damage to the country, including your states.
Send a message to Leahy
Send a message to Hatch
Please do it now before these two turn the U.S. citizens into entertainment industry criminals and slaves, and infect every other nation with these ideas.
If you are going to criticize the PIRATE act, first do your homework and learn about it.
The PIRATE Act bill, the one sponsored by Sens Hatch and Leahy, gives the DOJ the power to pursue civil cases against file sharers. According to the article and Sen Hatch's remarks, it does not have the provisions about "up to 10 years in prison" or any of that stuff. According to the article, those provisions are part of a draft bill that hasn't been introduced. The description in the slashdot posting imply that these provisions are part of the PIRATE Act, which they are not.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but if you start writing to your Congresspeople about the PIRATE Act, you will have more credibility if you actually know what you are talking about. If you start talking about provisions that aren't even in the bill, your letter will probably receive very little, if any, consideration.
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
Orrin Hatch: TV/Movies/Music $152,360
Patrick Leahy: TV/Movies/Music $178,000
Copyright law protects the copyright holder, whether that happens to be a record company ... or the artists themselves
I see practical problems with this reasoning, based on the inability for an individual songwriter to retain the copyright and succeed in the music business:
What little faith I had in the US Government is now completely shattered. I expect this out of Hatch, that SOB authored the DMCA, but Leahy!?! Every time I see his name pop up on Slashdot, he's doing something right. I thank $DEITY that there is someone up there on the hill that actually has a clue. Back during the Napster hearings he said,
This could be a brilliant 19-year-old in a college dorm figuring out Gnutella or some like it. You can't stop it. You couldn't stop it even if you wanted to. What we need to do, I think, is make sure copyrights and patent laws actually reflect the new reality.
But that's all gone now. Apparently he's had a change of heart in the past few years. Now, instead of likening P2P to the VCR, he sees 60 million Americans as a gigantic cartel.
The very ease of duplication and distribution that is the hallmark of digital content has meant that piracy of that content is just as easy. The very real - and often realized - threat that creative works will simply be duplicated and distributed freely online has restricted, rather than enhanced, the amount and variety of creative works one can receive over the Internet.
Without reading the text of the act, I can only speculate... but it appears that he is willing to hand the RIAA keys to a bottomless warchest to aid in their crusade against little girls. Until now I had a great deal of respect for the man. Seeing him 'turn to the dark side' is causing my faith in the system to go from shaken to crumbling. If Leahy bows to them, then who's left up there to speak for us?
Actually, the major difference between Microsoft and the others is the cost of entry into the markets. The cost of entering the operating systems market is low (if not negligable thanks to GNU and Linux), the problems competing have to do with closed protocols and platforms and the difficulty supporting third party created software.
By comparison, phone service (and cable service, and electricity, etc) is prohibitively expensive to enter. Laying cables can cost upwards of $10,000 per yard in residential areas. It makes no sense for a would-be competitor to even enter the market unless they can persuade the government to force the incumbent to actively help them.
In the US, this has always been the case. There is currently no law preventing me from laying cables to start a phone company or provide cable, indeed there are laws requiring local governments give me the necessary permissions to do so. Despite this, the only time you really see new entrants in either markets are where they can find alternatives - microwave and satellite TV, for instance.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
How exactly is the Government footing the bill for the RIAA's civil suits?
Ummm, I don't know, maybe by having the DOJ provide the lawyers and do the suing for them? Quoting Leahy's press release:
The Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act (PIRATE Act) would extend DOJ's current authority to permit its filing of civil copyright infringement cases.
Wow! Now the RIAA doesn't even have to sue. Big Brother will do it for him.
Last night Verizon-NYC upgraded software systems on the phone network. Unforunately the 911 crashed hard and did not come back up. The backup system was, regrettably, also incompatible with the software upgrade. So for all of a busy Friday night in a city of 8+ million people, callers to 911 received a busy signal. Who cares to guess how many people were killed by Verizon last night?
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Dear Senator $congresscritter,
I am writing to urge you to speak out against the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004 (the so called PIRATE act) sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy.
This act would have far reaching negative consequences, resulting in the further criminalisation of hundreds of thousands of your constituents and result in widespread abuses of civil law. A law like this flies in the face of common sense and given that it so lowers the standards of proof required, is ripe for corrupt selective enforcement.
Please consider instead offering a solution similar to that which has worked for the radio industry for decades, where compulsory licensing has allowed artists to be rewarded and has allowed millions of people to enjoy the gift of music without being treated as criminals.
Yours $nameyou can find your senators by following this link
I'm not disagreeing with you that the OJ thing was a fiasco. However, courts don't find people "innocent". In the last few years, it seems that news organizations have been using the "pleaded innocent" phrase over and over. Even NPR. Nobody pleads innocent, they plead "not guilty". In terms of a verdict, the jury gets to chose "guilty" or "not guilty". A not guilty verdict simply means that the state failed to prove that defendant was guilty. It does not mean that the person is innocent, just that guilt was not proven, i.e., "not guilty".
I know news organizations think people are too stupid to understand the phrase "not guilty". I don't think that's the case though. If you describe the quality of a restaraunt using words such as
- bad - not bad - good
People will easily understand that "not bad" doesn't mean the place is great. It just means it doesn't suck. "Guilty - not guilty - innocent" works the same way.What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Let companies have the rights the constitution entitles them
So what rights would these be, pray tell? The constitution grants _no_ rights, not a damn thing to companies or coorporations. Not one teensy tiny right to speak of.
What it does do is secure for authors the exclusive right to copy their works for limited times, to promote science and the arts, yadda yadda yadda. Most importantly, its an _obligation_ on authors as much as it is protection for them. If they arent living up to their end of the 'copyright bargain', that is, if their works are NOT entering public domain after 'a limited time', then they themselves are in violation of copyright law.
Every copy-protected CD, every encrypted DVD or ebook, every 'copyright protected' console or media player sold - all of these essentially render the copyright deal null and void concerning the specific product.
If they dont follow the law themselves, expecting to 'have their cake and eat it too' is a little bit far fetched, wouldnt you say?
That's false. I work at a recording studio. We have several steady customers that come to us for recording their cd's. They distribute their cd's over the internet which brings them some profit but mainly serves to drum up intrest in their live shows which provide for the majority of their income. These aren't even locally large names, very smalltime. But the formula holds true for larger artists. Record sales pay the record company, artist profit from touring. Only the most wildly successfull albums make enough money for the artist to see a sizeable return after the record company takes it's cut.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Hmm.. let's see:
Top Industries
The top industries supporting Patrick Leahy are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $320,845
2 TV/Movies/Music $178,000
3 Lobbyists $143,262
Just a coincidence, right?
The Music of Senator Orrin Hatch
And, as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.
-Flakbait
Temporary Minister of Propoganda for the Assyrian Empire
You know, I found this really neat website where you can find out all about who your senators and stuff voted for. I'm going to try submitting it as a story to slashdot, since many people ask how to find out this information.
Anyway, you can click on any senate session and see what votes were taken. Then you can click to find out how each senator voted.
Here ya go
Like what I said? You might like my music
"That first statement just shines of intelligence."
Well, I'll help out here. You might be too young to remember a '70's era joke, so:
"Jane, you ignorant slut" was the first line out of... um, back up a sec, more background:
The 60 Minutes show in the '70's had a brief end-of-every-show segment called "Point:Counterpoint". In it, a conservative pundit and a liberal pundit each had a minute to speak on a point. One side spoke, and then the other side counterpointed.
Now, on Saturday Night Live, a parody was run every week as well. In it, Dan Akroyd was the conservative reactionary and Jane Curtin the liberal representative. Every week, Jane went first. Then, the Angry Conservative would respond.
The first line out of his thin-lipped mask of anger was: "Jane, you ignorant slut." Then he went on to further insult her.
Back in the day, this was parody. Now, it's the basis of Fox News/MS-NBC news "coverage" every day, NOT meant as a joke, but I digress.
The poster was being self-deprecating, not insulting. Hope I helped.
The average mainstream artist makes no where near $1M a year.
Unless you are talking about the less than 100 artists a year that make it in the top 10.
The average artist has to pay for people like me -- musicians, producers, sound engineers, music techs, studio gophers and otherwise. We don't come cheap -- i.e., we aren't paid like the taco bell employee, and honestly, its not that much more than computer technology jobs -- you need a few dozen of these around to get the job done. Making music is a business. The business might make a million dollars, but there are people to get paid, and investors (and generally, thats what the music companies are -- investors, they give you X amount of money in hopes of recouping their investments).
Most guys I know that are in it for the long haul live pretty modestly. The president of the local home town bank probably brings home more $$$. Guys that are in it for their first hit, spend and over spend and they LOOK like that have a lot of money, until the folks that need to get paid start asking for the money. I know one guy that pays me in gear because he never has any cash -- at least he did until I realized the gear was most likely not his, but on someone elses dime. Its like paying one credit card with another. And then these idiots go bankrupt. Honestly, you and I could live this exact same way for a couple of years if we were given two big credit cards and just kept transfering the balance (I did this the first year I was in college -- $5k in credit card purchases ended up costing me $20k because of it -- I know folks that were a LOT worse -- but I was still an idiot).
Next time you watch MTV Cribs, just realize the banks, the taxman, bankruptcy courts and the little people like me own all that -- it isn't the artist.
As for my crap not being worth the money -- the $14 on eBay. It might not be worth it. I have quite a few folks telling me it is. If its not worth it to someone else, then they don't *NEED* them. No one is going to go hungry, no children are going to be put out of their homes if they can't aquire my products cheaply. Past that, we had to pay a lot of money for licensing for our products. One was a replication of another technology, for which we aquired permission and licensing before we even started. Regardless if it isn't worth it for one person, then they are free to contact the same persons and get the appropriate licensing, or to develop an equivelent that doesn't require any someone elses work. If they can do it cheaper, fine -- I welcome fair competition. Hell, on my website, a *LOT* of our competitors use our forums. A lot advertise on our site -- the idea of the site was a community for folks that created content for a specific group of musicians...most of our competitors are also folks we have worked with or licensed our sounds to for specific areas that they would do better in marketting them.
Competition isn't a problem...unfair competition is. Taking something someone else creates and remarketting it as their own -- or just a free alternative -- is unfair competition.
As for buying a CD with 3 decent songs -- quite honestly, if I spend $12 on 3 decent songs, I'm happy to hear the rest in their original context -- even if they aren't radio friendly. $1 a song is WAY too cheap -- yeah, I use those services, but I'm willing to give a musician my cash for their cd if even a few make me happy. Then again, I know what goes into making music, and thus for me, there is more value in it...the average consumer thinks 4 musicians show up for two weeks and a polished cd comes out of it all by themselves.