Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Pirate Demo
Arioch of Chaos writes "In Sweden, May 1 is still a day when many people get out on the streets to take part in the traditional demonstrations. Today, the Swedish site Piratbyrån organised demonstrations in several Swedish towns, demanding more bandwith and the abolition of intellectual property laws. This picture is just great. More pictures here." Congratulations to whoever made the AYBABTU sign.
I can see how people are justified in demanding human rights like clean water or civil rights like free speech. But is bandwidth really something that humans need to the degree that it should be a "right"? And if so, who's going to pay for it all?
If everyone was a pirate, what would they steal?
More like the o in go.
They think piracy is a right. They at the very least wish to get rid of copyrights so they can perform software piracy without a fear of getting caught. They encourage people to swap copyrighted works burnt on CD's on the demonstration, etc. "Piratbyrån" also means "The Piracy Bureau" in english. Miles from what the EFF stand for, for example.
I think there's a line between fighting for freedom (software patents and so on), and fighting for piracy, and these guys crossed it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Software could be a lot cheaper if there were more cooperation and building on top of eachother's work, which is discouraged by current IP laws (especially software patents). The software development process is becoming more and more like walking through a minefield. Practically endless copyright and software/algorithm/math patents have to go. IP laws are a cludge with the sole purpose of prolonging the business models around not easily reproduced material things into the realm of information which has no such limits.
Intellectual property laws existence is a violation of natural economic law itself. This law declares that when supply is infinitely greater than demand, and marginal cost per item is near-zero, the cost per item should be driven to near-zero as well.
Sound familiar?
There is a serious issue with IP law in the digital age; it's designed to prevent and deal with a whole different class of issues, ones that barely seem relevant when I can copy the entire Library of Congress's contents in a day or two. IP law is an attempt to impose an artificial scarcity on a commodity that not only doesn't need to be scarce, but by its very nature is easier to assume common.
Do you want *proof* that IP laws are quite probably unnecessary?
Look at Linux. Who would ever write a huge undertaking like an operating system only to give it away for free; to more or less mandate that it must be given away for no more than the cost of distribution? Apparently, lots of people. I know, from several years of working in the radio and music industries, more than a few musicians who could give a shit about their music being copied; as long as people are listening to it, they're happy.
As bandwidth becomes larger and cheaper, storage becomes larger and cheaper, etc, etc, we have to find a *better* way to encourage creation *and* consumption. Eventually, we'll have to do it for real objects, if we ever figure out how to do assemblers. But we need to acknowledge that our IP laws are broken in the modern era, and rather than trying to nudge and tweak and suspender up their sagging morass, we need to figure out a sensible approach.
Who cares about what worked for printing presses? Let's figure out what works for GB/s pipes and TB of disk.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Yes, because no-one is going to make things if other people can just take a copy without paying.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Can you actually attempt to demand abolishment of IP rights. Im not sure wether to be horrified or to commend them. Well how about I commned them for there attempt but would be horrified if they succeed.
If you try this in the US, you would have RI/MP AA hitman after you. Im sorry i mean FBI agents working under a hidden clasue of the DMCA that prevents any attempt to undermine copyright.
Satire aside, if they do succeed, they will probably manage to create an IP anarchy. Content providers outside of Sweden would do what they could to prevent content from going into sweden. THose content providers in sweden that dont support this anarchist dream, would probably leave. So what you get in the end, is a place where content is free to all, but there is no content being created. Well except for a few anarchists.
That said, i dont support a place with no ip laws. But i also dont support the path the US has been taking recetnly. IP holders posses alot more power than IP consumers. We need to find a point of balance. IP holders need to allow market forces to shape the the market. Not make thier consumers criminals.
We really need to do a 180 as far as ip law is concerned. Copyright law needs to be reaxamed and balanced in favor of both interests. I suppose this is not going to happen when most people dont know the diffrence. We can vote with our dollars, but most of the dollars are still going the wrong way out of ignorance.
Done ranting... or whatever...
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Linux is a bad example...the GPL exists and works BECAUSE of IP Law, the license gets it's strength from the fact that the only leagal way to copy or derive from a GPL'd work is by accepting the license.
If it were not for copyright law, you could just ignore the license and take the code anyway.
Now for the musician point of view, whilst those musician friends of yours might be happy having people listen to their music, whether they payed for it or not, how would they feel if the next mass produced plastic pop star made some record company millions by singing one of their songs without permission, accreditation or compensation?
IP and copyright are about more than some 15 year old kid downloading songs with Kazaa.
I can accept that there are problems with some aspects of current law (duration being the bigest one), but the original intent of the laws are sound. If an artist or coder wants to give away their work they can. Those that don't want to, shouldn't have to.
Advanced users are users too!
This is Sweden here we are talking about, not the United States. Now I know you may find it hard to believe, but there are other kinds of free governments than the one we enjoy here. We are a fairly private sector, pay-for-it-yourself kind of country. That's fine, but Sweden is NOT. They are far more socialist than the US. This means that they pay a LOT more taxes. Like around 65% income tax in the top brackets, not to mention other taxes.
Well, the flipside of the higher taxes is they expect more services. A free government is supposed to be one that serves its people. The reason that they take money from the people is to give them services that they all need and want such as transportation, public safety, health care and so on.
So, if people pay taxes to the government with the understanding they will be used to build broadband infastructure, it is not unreasonable to demand that they actually recieve the broadband as a result.
Just because we here in the US think that broadband ought to be in the hands of private (well, sort of private) corperations does not mean that the rest of the free world shares those views. What's more, if the US government levied a tax to provide unviersal boradband availability, as they levy a tax to provide universal phone availability, I would expect to recieve broadband as a result, as I expect to recieve phone service.
And one that some OSS people take rather seriously. It can be summarized as such:
Information is not a physical good, and shouldn't be treated as such. It costs virtually nothing to make a copy and spread information, and all of that cost is incured by the copier. Thus there should be no ownership of information, it should be free to all to promote progress and free thinking.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't problems with this point of view, but there certianly seem to be problems with the current views on intellectual property. This is a legit stance and one that can certianly be taken seriously. I don't think it's the right answer, but that doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it as not serious.
Looks like everybody missed the point I was trying to make.
I think that it should be possible for both free software and commercial software to co-exist. But IP laws(sensible ones and certainly not software patents) are there for a reason, to help people (not just companies) protect what they have produced.
It's no use rolling out the kernel.org links everytime, who will produce the movies that you enjoy watching if they can't afford the equipment or manpower to produce them.
This is the same with games, a lot of software and music as well.
It looks like most people who replied to my original comment aren't over the age of 16 either and can't see beyond their zealot ways. For reference I'm always recommending alternatives to the Microsoft grindwheel and use Gentoo on my home machine.
Thank you for making the point. And just what laws would those organizations invoke should I create a project called "Apache's GNU OpenOffice GNOME: Debian SourceForge edition"? I don't think they'd be so willing to give up their Intellectual Property when it doesn't suit them.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Also - think outside the box - what about a law that's allows copying but mandates source availability? Sort of a "consumer's right" IP law. (I'm not necessarily advocating that, but I want people to see that there are multiple solutions here, and that the GPL does not depend on copying restrictions.)
Oh, so you're saying that without IP laws, musicians and record companies can still make millions? If that were true, some would considere that great news.
A lot of posters here say "How can they demand the abolishment of IP laws? They must exist!"
Well. Piratbyrån (the bureau of piracy organization) has the opinion that the current IP-Laws does not help and/or protect content creators / artists, they protect the publishers, record companies and stifle innovation. Many artists only want to spread their music and play concerts (where many small artists make most of their money anyway).
An example of todays bad IP-laws; After the artists death the copyright is still valid up to 70(?) years after. That is not protecting the rights of the artist, that is protecting the rights of the owner of the copyrights. - and those are separate issues.
Piratbyrån is of the opinion that the laws of today is formed by and for the major owners of copyrights - such as publishers and record companies, and therefor they want to abolish these laws.
Please note that I am not a member of piratbyrån, if there are someone from piratbyrån here; please explain it a little further.
I saw nobody below the age of 16. Anyway, I was at the demonstration and I don't think we should remove any copyright laws. I think we should reform them. Copyright as we know it is more designed to make companys like the recording companys and microsoft richer. It is a result of several decades lobbying by already wealthy persons and companys. It is definatly past time to look over them again. But if we look past that, The real reason I was there was because the fact that private organizations founded by different companys shouldn't be allowed to do the law enforcement which is what the situation more and more looks like today.
At least as it applies to nations. Freedom, or at least a free society does NOT mean the ability to do whatever you want. That is called Anarchy, and has never worked for a society. A free society is one where the people control the government in an indrect way. That doesn't mean that they are free to do whatever, just that they are free to change the way their government works.
This isn't up for debate, this is what a free country means. You may feel that isn't enough freedom, but that doesn't change how the word is used. In your point of view, there would be NO free countries since they all tell you what you can and can't do, and levy some taxes. Under what seems to be your view, the only real freedom is Anarchy (the absence of government).
Actually, Anarchy is not "the absence of government." It is the absence of the need for a government.
OK, first of all, let up NOT confuse true Marxist communism with any of what is going on in the world today - China et. al. are as faithful to real Marxism as StarShip Troopers the movie was to the book.
/. would let me put an HR here)
The fundamental limiting factor to Marxism is the idea the "the workers own the means of production", which fails miserably in an Industrial Age society, and implodes in an Information Age society.
Consider a chip fab plant - they cost BILLIONS of dollars to build. Now, how many people work at a chip fab? Even if 10,000 people worked at a fab, that would mean that each worker's portion of the plan would come to about 100,000 dollars. Compare that to a furnature factory - which set of workers has to be worth more?
And that is the key problem - some workers need to be worth more than other workers - anathema to the Marxist. And since things like chip plants, auto (or tractor) factories and suchlike cannot be funded by the workers, *something* must come in to fund them. So you either have a) rich people (again, anathema to Marxists) or b) "The State" come in to create the plants. But if "The State" owns the plant, the workers don't own it, and "The State" is not going to give it up.
That was what prevented the Communist nations from being able to scale - Marxism didn't work, they went to "The State", and inefficency prevented them from getting anywhere.
(-- boy I wish
That said, I agree with the parent - and this bunch of wastes of flesh are posterchildren for the free rider problem. And even if we assume the cost of copying software is 0, even if we assume that all electronic content should be Free (in the RMS sense), there is still the little problem that you simply cannot say "router = new Cisco; fiber = new Fiber;" - these are physical things that somebody had to expend resouces to create.
www.eFax.com are spammers
this "don't steal" deal has a counter to it, it DOESN'T work just one way, and here's the serious flaw in predatory "profits at any cost" style capitalism like we have now being promoted as "God's way" when it *clearly isn't*.
Leviticus chapter 19, verses 35 and 36
Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, in weight, or in measure.
Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just bin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.
In other words, don't steal from your potential customers EITHER by lying and charging obscene profits over your costs.
Neither side in the great download and movie debate has a moral leg to stand on there,and the "industry" did it first, in spades, been convicted of it even by our skewed secular laws that already favored them, nothing happened to them of note, and they continued to use "unjust weights and measures" (and bearing false witness) in bribing off the political process to legitimize their unjust thefts. But, stealing what's already stolen is not righteous either, IMO.
And when it comes to other sorts of intellectual property, people who insist on it being "theirs"(closed source propietary software for instance) are shooting themselves in the foot, when we ALL share, thee and thou and me and you, we ALL get to benefit from what the other guy produces. We actually all get richer from it. That's the big picture that the mega profiteers don't seem to grasp yet, they think by keeping information secret and restricted that somehow they'll get "more" when all that happens is the other guy does that to THEM and the only people getting a lot of something for doing practically nothing are the middlemen in that deal, people who produce *nothing* worth sharing. So, to avoid work, to avoid toiling to produce, they just pass laws that insist they get paid somehow off the backs of others, if you follow the economic food chains around.