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Making The Justice Dept. A Copyright Busybody
This bill, put forward by your friends and mine, Msrs. Leahy and Hatch, would task the JD with filing civil actions against "pirates" - essentially putting your tax dollars to work bringing civil actions against college students in the name of the very largest Copyright holders, allowing them even more spare pocket change to spend lobbying to restrict your already shrinking online freedoms. A choice snippet from the floor: "For too long, Federal prosecutors have been hindered in their pursuit of pirates, by the fact that they were limited to bringing criminal charges with high burdens of proof..."
And it gets better: "In the long run, I believe that we must find better mechanisms to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens--our children--are not being constantly tempted to infringe the copyrights that have made America a world leader in the production of creative works." Hold on to your wallets folks, they're telling us to "think of the children" again..."
First postage
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
I use Gentoo; how does this affect me??
The more you make off your copyright and the more protection need, the more you should pay. You create a level below a certain point where you're not taxed (say... $10,000), and then after that, you pay. You could also tie it to length, so a longer copyright would cost more than a new one.
Wow, outsourcing legal work to the goernment, and you don't even need to pay them! Man, is that a racket or what? Up until now, you actually had to be elected to treat taxpayers as your own piggy-bank, thanks to the RIAA and the MPAA, copyright holders (with influence) can now get paid by the american people for... suing the american people!
Yea, fair use and all that crap. Most of the music downloaded is theft. The person has no copy of the song. The movies downloaded, Its theft plain and simple.. That day 0 copy of the next StarWars can and should land you in jail plain and simple. The problem here folks, ever here the old saying "The noisy wheel gets all the grease". Yes a small percentage of people are within there rights, But when you stand up for your rights and try to throw "blanket" statements saying music should just be free and all that you do nothing more then Oil the RIAA wheel so they can move further down the road to reducing our rights. WE are the ones removing our rights. We do this by making stupid statements, by performing illegal actions and in turn throwing fuel in the RIAA fire. If you want to preach stick to the truth, Stick to your rights. Don't sit there and tell me you should be able to download that movie that hasn't even hit the theaters yet and claim to be for the people and all righteous in your actions.
Personal Website
Another anti-copyright article on slashdot. How innovative.
Now hold up here, are you saying that the taxes that are taken out of my summer job are gonna go towards prosecuting my friends that are stealing music during the school year?? Well... can I at least choose who gets axe then?
I suppose it's nice that the fees are reduced for smaller entities. But can individuals or small organizations actually enforce copyright online? I mean, most people don't have the resources to fund drawn out or chronic lawsuits. Is a cease-and-desist letter powerful enough?
Utter and complete crap from our congress yet again. What toads.
If you agree with any of this, feel free to repost it in the future.
Song of the piracy apologist:
(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft," but I do believe in emotively abusing words like "information," "sharing," and "Copyright Enforcement Militia."
(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.
(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even though most pirated works are recent releases.
(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free advertising". I don't buy any of the music I download, of course--but lots of other people probably do.
(6) I believe that ripping off the artists is wrong. The record companies always rip off the artists. Artists support P2P, except the ones that don't (like Metallica), and they don't agree with me, hence they're greedy or their opinion doesn't count or something.
(7) I believe that selling CDs is not a business model, but giving away things for free on the internet is.
(8) I believe that artists should be compensated for their work -- preferably by someone else. I mean, they can sell concert tickets (which someone else can buy) or sell t-shirts (to someone else) or something. As long as someone else subsidises my free ride, I'm coooooool with it.
(9) I believe in capitalism but only support music business models which involve giving away the fruits of ones labor for free.
(10) I believe that copying someone elses music, and redistributing it to my 1,000,000 "best friends" on the internet is sharing. Music is made for sharing. It's my right.
(11) I believe that record companies cracking down on piracy is "greed", but a mob demanding free entertainment is not.
(12) I believe that it's not really "piracy" unless you charge money for it, because, receiving money is wrong, but taking a free ride is fine.
(13) I believe that disallowing copying and redistributing music over Napster is the same as humming my favourite song in public. Because when I hum my favourite song in public, everyone likes it so much that they run home, get out their tape recorders and once they've got a recording of it, they aren't interested in hearing the original any more.
(14) I believe that when illegal behaviour destroys a business, it's "free enterprise at work".
(15) I believe piracy is simply "free advertising." Even though that's what radio is, but with the legal permission of the copyright holder. Basically, what I really want is to be able to choose the songs I want, listen to them whenever I want, but I don't want to have to pay for it. Essentially, I want the whole thing for free with no strings attached.
What I find amusing is that the pirates seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between creative activity and brainless copying.
Since a lot of the people here are GPL/OSS advocates: the "OSS way" applied to this domain is to learn how to play an instrument. Or how to sing or whatever. Then get together with a bunch of other people who can also play music, and make some noise.
One of the unfortunate things that has happened to the OSS movement is that a lot of the loudmouth advocates for it don't understand what it's really about. They view it primarily as a means to get free stuff, and then they turn their eyes from the free stuff to the non-free stuff and think to themselves "maybe I'm entitled to get that one for free too". The noble ideals of grass roots participation in the creative process, and/or supporting it in a principled way (namely, boosting the "free foo" movement by preferring free foo to nonfree foo), or for that matter, any other form of
The point of this isnt REALLY about who stole what, but all of the freedoms... legitimate freedoms we lose so that Super Corp X can keep a few more dollars. And the sad thing is it is perpetual... the more rights they take away, the easier it will be for them to do it again... and again. Until we have nothing left.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Getting a bigger, more productive Patent Office which thousands of new analysts who know their stuff would do a lot to fixing some of the problems in the economy. By putting many people on the payroll who know what bad patents are, the government can ethically protect businesses from the real pirates: the ones who use IP law to control the productive capabilities of American industry.
Reform should not stop here though. The Bush Administration should make it a priority to strip the FDA of most of its discressionary powers to block drugs it thinks "don't do enough" and to give it more resources to expedite the processing of drug safety tests so that drug companies can profit more easily (thus they don't have to charge as much).
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Wait, wouldn't that same bill also allow the Attorney General to prosecute people infringing the GPL? If we use the open licenses more and more, it serves us in the end, no? Or does it apply only to copyrights made with the copyright office? I think this could be indeed a useful law in the future, if used by us GPL lovers. What do you think?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
This is /., not Fantasyland.
[Fantasyland is believed to be a registered trademark of the Walt Disney Corporation. It is used here without permission, but concurrent with the United States Supreme Court decision regarding Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc (1994) and the copyright laws of the United States protecting parody and satire.]
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Cuban security director: "ma'am, Cuba loves its children."
Woman: "Cuba only loves its children until they grow up."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Mrs. Lovejoy "Think of the children! Will somebody please think of the children!"
How about making some of the crappy software companies write cheaper! I buy sotware if I know I'm going to use it on a regular occasion but if I'm doing a school project and need to use something for 5 minutes and probab;y never touch it again, why would I waste $50 of my already taxed to death money? Why does everyone see a big fat dollar sign above my head? I live and go to school in California, the most expensive place to be.
Now you see how all the offshored people feel about having to pay taxes that are then used to pay to help relocate their jobs offshore.
It sucks.
I always thought the deal was the government give a monopoly to a creator in exchange for the creator doing the enforcement of the monopoly. Now government is extending the term (already done) and proposing to take on the role of enforcement also. What is government getting in return for taking on this extra burden? A small increase in filing fees and nothing else? If government is becoming a larger partner in IP enforcement shouldn't they get a larger cut of the IP profits? Somehow I don't think that the Hollywood accounting that goes on in IP companies will ever give government a larger cut.
I always found it odd that this post gets protection of my live time plus seventy years but a new drug only gets seventeen years plus a few extra months the lawyers cheat out of the system at the end of the seventeen years. If something that reduces suffering is only worth 17 years maybe the founding fathers were right to put the copyright term at 28 years.
In the beginning the recording industry ripped off poor (especially black) artists. The film industry moved west in order to avoid payment for their use of patented technology. These two industries are the original pirates, that's why they are so frightened of modern day pirates.
It is only natural that they feed like pigs at the trough that contains the tax receipts. Industries built on theft don't stop doing it once they become "successful", they do more of it and on a much grander scale.
Legislation is in the works to ban the key combinations known as "Ctrl+C" and "Ctrl+V".
are so high in price that only large organizations can afford to apply for them.
I have had many ideas I could not patent, trademark, or copyright because I could not afford to. Plus their database is hard to search, one of them is still in telnet form! When will these databases get into the 21st century?
My former employer said they made 40 patients based on my ideas. I tried to search on the employer's name, but that is not an available option. I searched on my name, which came up with nothing. So obviously they registered the patents in someone else's name as the inventor. Which I later found is not valid to do, as I am the inventor of those ideas.
Give a discount to people based on income level for the fees. For Pete's sake they can gather the info from the IRS for people and the SEC for companies. Also have an idea tax that taxes a small fee for revenue used for the ideas, so the government can collect some money as well.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
And I wouldn't expect Vermont's other Senator, Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), to have many friends in the majority party either.
Remember this next time you're chanting, "Anybody But Bush!"
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
....works that don't have such legal complexity overhead and consumer at risk issues?
i.e. free software...
the more complexity that is built up, the sooner the ever advancing world will move forward beyond such getting in the way complexity.
a simple matter of the ever increasing velocity of reaching new things for us all to benefit from and/or enjoy.
nt
We also know that by and large, "piracy" translates to end users redistributing reduced quality versions of the real products on their own dimes to the profit of the record and film industries. There are a long list of reasons why the Hollywood content cartel do not like letting the free market determine how they get marketed instead of giving them sole discretion as to what the public finds out about a product before release, the main one is that it can make crap movies or records DOA befcre they hit the street as well as take good ones to number 1. However, "protecing businesses from incompetence" is not a proper use of taxpayer funds.
However, the real question here is WHY should the Feds spend our money to assist copyright holders take legal action against end users. Traditionally, that is the copyright holder's problem, which the copyright owner asserts in exchange for the ability to derive income from the copyright.
If you wish to donate YOUR money to the RIAA and MPAA for attacking end users, your privilege. Don't bring the rest of us in to this.
Tech Public Policy stuff
G) the role of the victim copyright owner in providing relevant information for enforcement actions and in the computation of damages;
Not only do we have to pay for the investigations and lawsuits, we have to pay to train people to do them. Furthermore, there seems to be limited legislation setting or limiting the amounts in such suits and that the copyright holder may have the power to decide on amounts. It seems that now some of the possibly exaggerated figures coming from RIAA/MPAA spokespeople may be represented by the government in a court of law. In my mind, copyrights should be protected an piracy is wrong, but this bill seems to have a high cost to the people without providing any clear benefits for them.
_____
Thank you.
OR, the more you consume copyrighted works, the more you should pay, no?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I realize that artists need some sort of protection, but it's really the entrenched ones who worry about this. A friend of mine is a freelance composer of original music for software, radio, TV and film productions, and he's got samples of his work on his site that he's just giving away. Of course, they are copyrighted and if you wanted to use them in your work or sell them, he needs to get paid, but he's not wrapping them in all sorts of layers of protection to ensure it, since what he really wants to do is attract new customers.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Boy, you seem to have had this one Locked & Loaded and ready to fire on a moment's notice.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
about the view that people who make illegal copies should be punished(and usually it's advocated that it should be severe punishment) is that it is simply against the law and therefore WRONG! If anything, law-breaking on a large scale should be an indicator that the law needs to be changed.
People don't realise that it does indeed cost money to produce creative works, and those people who invested in them have a right to protect them. If it costs you $100 million to create a feature film, what incentive is there for you as an investor, a studio, whoever, to put that money in if within a week of the final edit being finished it is distributed to your entire audience for free?
Somebody else here has already pointed out that "open music" is about you going out, playing an instrument, singing, writing lyrics and tunes, putting it all together and distributing it under the terms you want.
The "file-sharing" model is to open enterprise what warezing Win XP is to downloading your favourite Linux distro.
So, instead of trying to take other people's music and distributing it without their permission, how about you actually try and create music people want and give it away under terms like the GPL, much in the same way you do with software now?
No? Why not? No, seriously, I want to know why not...
Fuck the children.
...not only will be making any copy of any "portable" media, illegal, but to legally create anything that resides upon any portable media, you must first be granted a license permitting you to do so.
But if you post AC, how can you prove you wrote those words for the benefit of whoever paid you to write them? Yes, you goofed. Posting astroturf is one thing. Posting RIAA propaganda and not getting paid for it is fucking stupid.
Tech Public Policy stuff
#1 What is the definition of Piracy? Is it making illegal copies and then selling them, or is it just making illegal copies? What about copies for backup purposes or that fall under "Fair Use"?
#2 Most other crimes carry the "burden of proof" on the prosecutor. Why is this one different? Hey there, John Doe is using Kazaa, even though we found no MP3 files on his hard drive besides the ones he bought or has a right too, the fact that he has Kazaa shows that he "Might" be sharing said files with others. We have no evidence of the sharing, but the fact that he uses Kazaa is enough for us to brand him a pirate! Slap an eyepatch and peg-leg on him and send him to jail!
#3 So what pirates are they targeting? While a majority of the pirated copies come from other countries such as China, Russia, etc, we have no legal power over there, so instead we shall target teenagers and college students who don't know any better and only want to share songs with friends, etc. "Sc*w fair use, we got the copyright laws rewritten to exclude it. Jane Doe is using part of a Metallica song in a college presentation, so we will lock her up and throw away the key!
#4 How much money earned is enough? Oh sure we make a ton of money selling $20USD CDs that cost us 50 cents to make and ship, and only give $2USD to the artists, but we could be making more if the John Does and Jane Does of the world stop using our songs without permission and sharing them, while they are promoting our songs and possibly generating more sales, we have a potential to earn even more income by suing these individuals.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
In a criminal case, the government must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". In a civil suit, they must only prove the preponderance of the evidence.
In a criminal case, if the defendant is acquited, the goverment must return the defendant's belongings. In a civil case, the government can seize a person's belongings and the defendant must prove his innocence to get them back.
The most significant difference is that in a criminal case, if the defendant can not afford an attorney, the government must provide one. In a civil case, the defendant is left to fend for himself.
I have to pay 3% of the remaining value on the computer to the local county
Good God, where do you live, Soviet Russia?
Yikes!
People around here are damned near ready to go to war over 0.095% per year.
The argument has been completely substantiated in repeated studies, the ones the RIAA didn't pay for. The only studies that contradict this are the ones the content cartel bought, the same way MS buys FUD studies.
P2P promotes sales. It does NOT displace them unless the product is such crap that the normal fan base for a musician won't buy it. That's why the industry uses Big Champagne for marketing purposes. Google is your friend, look up the studies yourself. You've wasted enough of our time.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.a s.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.02237 %3A&siteId=3&oId=2110-1028-5203059&ontId=1023&lop= nl_ex is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_5/dw.com.com/redir% 3fdestUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthomas.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2F bdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.02237%3A&%3bsiteId=3& %3boId=2110-1028-5203059&%3bontId=1023&%3blo p=nl_ex a s.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.01932 %3A&siteId=3&oId=2110-1028-5203059&ontId=1023&lop= nl_ex is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_5/dw.com.com/redir% 3fdestUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthomas.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2F bdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.01932%3A&%3bsiteId=3& %3boId=2110-1028-5203059&%3bontId=1023&%3blo p=nl_ex a s.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3Ah.r.015 61%3A&siteId=3&oId=2110-1028-5203059&ontId=1023&lo p=nl_ex is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_5/dw.com.com/redir% 3fdestUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthomas.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2F bdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3Ah.r.01561%3A&%3bsiteId=3&a mp%3boId=2110-1028-5203059&%3bontId=1023&%3b lop=nl_ex a s.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.02192 %3A&siteId=3&oId=2110-1028-5203059&ontId=1023&lop= nl_ex is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_5/dw.com.com/redir% 3fdestUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthomas.loc.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2F bdquery%2Fz%3Fd108%3As.02192%3A&%3bsiteId=3& %3boId=2110-1028-5203059&%3bontId=1023&%3blo p=nl_ex 2 37: is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_5/thomas.loc.gov/cg i-bin/bdquery/z%3fd108%3As.02237%3A
The mirror of http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthom
The mirror of http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthom
The mirror of http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthom
The mirror of http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fthom
The mirror of http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.02
Sorry.
Personally I feel i should be able to do ANYTHING i wish.
And i act on that concept every day.
And if some of my actions happen to hurt some company ( at least on paper, it doesnt harm them in reality anyway )with too much money to burn, i really dont care.
You broke the record: that was the longest strawman post I ever saw!
On abortion: "Conservatives want live babies so they can grow up to be dead soldiers"
That's right. All your base.
the USA wants to own this whole planet, and in general the powerful and mighty want more power and greed each day that passes.
the small and unimportant masses get fucked over and over again, have less rights, less money, give all their shit to the already wealthy people, who will never be happy with the bazillions they have already.
this whole system is gonna shut down real soon now. this economy, so called democracies and business systems either capitalism or others dont work well for this planet, but only for a very little part of the people, who have more and more each day.
time for some changes.
"In the long run, I believe that we must find better mechanisms to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens--our children--are not being constantly tempted to infringe the copyrights..."
Yes, and the best way to make sure little Billy doesn't become a mean ol' evil pirate is to have the DOJ prosecute his ass the moment he downloads Barney's latest hit ... :)
(Not that people who listen to Barney's latest hit shouldn't be prosecuted, obviously ... but for different reasons, damnit!)
"That day 0 copy of the next StarWars can and should land you in jail plain and simple. "
Yeah, because a person who has a 0 day copy of Star Wars cost the studios about 10 bucks. Personally, I don't think you go far enough. I think we should kill people who have 0 day copies of movies because after all, protecting George Lucas *has* to be important or else maybe he'll get bored and not make another great great star wars movie.
Penalties should get higher and higher and higher until people *learn* their lesson.
In other news, the house judiciary approved the removal of hands for stealing bread. Bakers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.
So, recognize that I've only had one semester of constitutional law, but....
Article III Section 2 of the US Constitution says that the judicial power applies to "cases" and "Controversies." Under current constitutional doctrine, this means that in order to get into federal courts on a civil matter, there is a requirement that the person bringing the suit have standing: He has to have an injury which can be remedied by the court.
I don't think that the Justice Department would have standing because it neither (1) has been injured nor (2) is an organization litigating the rights of its members, who have been injured -- this is about what happens when the RIAA sues people.
IANAL (yet...), so don't consider this legal advice. But, the whole thing just seems a bit fishy.
And Beatrix Kiddo is gonna kill 'em all.
"For too long, Federal prosecutors have been hindered in their pursuit of pirates, by the fact that they were limited to bringing criminal charges with high burdens of proof..."
Everyone here is talking about whether piracy is right or wrong. Duh. It's wrong. That's not the point.
This law would give the government the authority to punish people based on a preponderance of evidence. There has always been a distinction between civil and criminal law. When there is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but two people are still in dispute, the government is not allowed to get involved, because they tip the balance too much. If there is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, how is the government supposed to decide which side to support? This law is saying in effect, "whenever we're not sure if someone has been wronged or not, the government should back party A." It is completely antithetical to the distinction beetween civil and criminal law.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I presume here that we're treating copyright (and other similar intellectual property) the same as tangible artifacts.
Let's say that someone breaks into my home, and steals my TV. Right now, I can enlist the help of law enforcement, who might catch the person responsible for the theft. If they do, provided I want to pursue this, they could then go ahead and prosecute the thief, and if found guilty would then serve a punishment. I might not get my TV back, but the person who stole it did not 'get a free lunch'.
The same principle seems to be applied here to copyrights. The thing I need to understand, is the theft of a copyright a civil matter, or a criminal matter? If it is a civil matter, then the DoJ certainly does not need to get involved, they have enough to do in the criminal arena. Let the RIAA, the MPAA and all their cronies fund their own lawsuits, just like everyone else who has to fund a civil lawsuit. But if the theft of a copyright is now a criminal matter, and is to be considered a felony, then I see no reason why the person who has a precious artifact stolen has recourse to the police and the DoJ whereas someone who stole a copyright does not have access to these resources - especially if the consequences for the person who stole the artifact is the same for those who stole the copyright.
I personally don't care too much for the RIAA and MPAA's strong-arm tactics, but copyright certainly needs reform. Perhaps there needs to be a two tier copyright system, there would be Copyright I and Copyright II. I would envisage Copyright I to be like existing copyright. It would expire 90 years after the death of the creator, and the Copyright I holders would have recourse to the civil courts for enforcing their rights. It would be cheap to get, but expensive to enforce. There would also be Copyright II. Copyright II would be more expensive to maintain, and as someone mentioned earlier, yes there would be a 'tax', maybe a yearly tax. The Copyright would be tradeable, and would be in force as long as the 'tax' is paid on it (so the likes of Mickey Mouse would be protected forever). Copyright II would however, because of the increased fees that Copyright II holders would pay, would have recourse to law enforcement and the Department of Justice in order to enforce those copyrights, and theft of the copyrights would enjoy penalties like that in criminal theft cases.
That would be my simplistic way of reforming the copyright system.
Mark.
Why not have the RIAA/MPAA start with:
1) Kids, Grandkids and up to 3 generations removed of senators/POTUS who vote/sign the Hatch bill. (4th cousins would be search free)
2) Then, do the same to the DC aides.
3) Then, the people and families of the military.
4) Then, move onto anyone who gets a gov. check for thier work.
5) Then, move on to the states with a similar 'you work for the governement, follow their laws' idea.
Too bad none of the kids of a Senator are willing to be civialy disobient and break the various 'assine' laws passed by Congress. As opposed to just being a drug-using MP3 file swapping citizen who is just hope to not be caught.
what about the right of those who create content to decide how content can be used for a limited time as copyright law allows. What about artists rights to be appropriately compensated for those ideas if the creators don't want to give their content away for free?
Copywrite keeps wrongly getting extending for longer and longer time. however copyright is important idea. GNU is based on the rights copywrite gives.
Its a question of scale. Noone ever got sued for making mix tapes for personal use. People have gotten in trouble for bootlegging, which is mainly what pnp is used for these day. PNP and "file sharing" is so out of control the government now feels compelled to act. You can thank all those pirates on P2P networks for that.
Don't forget the rights of those who create things.
OK, copyright holders have a right to protect their copyright privileges (they aren't really "rights" in the sense of, say, free speech, which is considered a natural right). The point is that the government should not be subsidizing their right to protect their privileges.
He's a Republican in Democrat clothing. Take a look at his record and note how often he's working with Senators "Disney" and/or Hatch.
"WE are the ones removing our rights. We do this by making stupid statements, by performing illegal actions and in turn throwing fuel in the RIAA fire."
That is complete BULL. WE are not removing our rights. WE are doing nothing of the sort. Making stupid statements isn't against the law, nor do stupid statements make law.
What WE are talking about here is the RIAA and MPAA, which have already milked our wallets, for arguably putting stupid statement in the cineplex, are now getting even more money out of our wallets in order to prosecute ourselves.
It has absolutely nothing to do with whether Star Wars gets taped or whether music is shared illegally, it has to do with who pays for the enforcement.
The Gov't has already granted the copyright. That copyright has allowed the MPAA and RIAA to exist in the first place. That copyright has allowed them to be funded to the hilt.. enough to hire lawyers that sue 12 year old girls.
Wish I had mod points today.
"Hold on to your wallets folks, they're telling us to "think of the children" again..."
In other news, Michael Jackson's lawyers blame the RIAA for the alleged behaviour of their client.
(And for the record, I think MJ is innocent of these charges.)
Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004
This is the so-called PIRATE Act previously Slashdotted. Note that the "related bill" mentioned in that posting does not seem to have materialized yet; it does not seem to be any of the four posted here.
The main thrust of the PIRATE Act is to allow the Attorney General to bring civil actions against copyright violators; before only criminal actions were possible (civil suits had to be filed by the copyright owner). I find it difficult to tell without going and reading Title 18 whether all the money resulting from the suit goes to the copyright owner, but some of it definitely does ("and restitution to the copyright owner"). There's some administrivia in the bill as well, but it seems to do what it claims to.
Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2003 (ART Act)
The official title of this bill says it all: "A bill to provide criminal penalties for unauthorized recording of motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility, to provide criminal and civil penalties for unauthorized distribution of commercial prerelease copyrighted works, and for other purposes." There's some weird stuff going on with it on Thomas; the entire bill seems to have been rewritten at some point, but the number retained. I can't tell how many of the changes, if any, were substantive.
The HTML on the revised bill is broken, but reading the original version, it makes use (but not posession) of camcorders, cameras, and other "audiovisual recording device[s]" in a theater illegal, with a penalty of "not more than 3 years" in prison, or 6 years for a second or subsequent offense. It also sets a minimum value for "prerelease" copyrighted works, which includes movies not out of theaters yet; the assumed minimum for P2P'ing such a work is 10 copies and a total retail value of $2500. Note that this bill specifically targets P2P filesharing; it makes reference to "making [the work] available on a computer network accessible to members of the public who are able to reproduce the work through such access." That last bit seems written to exempt streaming, but I'm sure you'd be ruled against in court if you tried it.
There's also an easy-to-miss bit at the end of the bill which recommends "amend[ing] the Federal sentencing guidelines, as necessary, to provide for increased penalties for offenses involving the illegal reproduction and distribution of works protected under title 17."
United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2003 2004
This one is straightforward and is as described in the posting; it increases patent fees across the board (I can't tell how much without looking at the stuff it amends.) It also allows "small entities" to get a 75% cost savings if they file electronically, and adds "maintenance fees" at 4, 8, and 12 years from filing to keep the patent from expiring early. Sounds sketchy, but I'm not complaining. There's also some stuff about trademarks, which probably doesn't matter much.
Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act of 2004
I don't know why this one was even included. It doesn't really seem relevant to anything; it makes some changes to the definition of "prior art," but it only seems to apply to things developed under a "joint research agreement," so I don't think there's any way it can be other than what it claims, which is "A bill . . . to promote cooperative research involving universities, the public sector, and private enterprises."
Because then there's no incentive for copyright holders to ever release their property.
Well, the figures I've seen from customs activities border enforcement show that detected counterfeit computer software and music and related multimedia have increased 400% in the last couple of years, and piracy rates in this area are 40%.
When you have _actual evidence_ of this level of lost income, which for the government translates into lost taxes, then you understand why the government is stepping in and helping.
I'm sure if the figures were much lower, the government couldn't care less.
Considering a reply to this post made me think of an interesting idea. Open up a music store, stocked full of great music. Allow people to come in and grab a CD with high quality MP3 files of anything they want. But here's the twist: run their credit card through for the purchase price, have them sign it, but keep it on file without putting the charge through (eg: a deposit). Also, make them sign a legally binding contract that:
(1) they can't share the music or they'll face huge financial penalties;
(2) if they don't like the music, they have to send the CD back within 14 days; and
(3) if they do like the music, come back to the store and exchange the CD for the full retail album.
Basically, if they send the CD back they don't get charged. But if they keep the CD or come in and exchange it for the real thing, their credit card purchase gets put through.
It'd be interesting if you could somehow watermark the MP3 so that it wouldn't alter the music quality but would insert a signature with that person's identifier. That way, if it is shared, they get faced with a huge lawsuit and massive fine for breach of the contract they signed.
Would this work? You'd need the participation of the copyright holders, naturally. But it would address the whole "sharing is advertising" thing.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I always thought the deal was the government give a monopoly to a creator in exchange for the creator doing the enforcement of the monopoly.
"to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The deal is that they get the monopoly for the act of creating their works and inventions. There's never been any "principal" decision of who is to enforce it, as far as I know. Certainly, by their right to secure the monopoly, making the government enforce it is fully constitutional.
I think the government should step back and look at what the goal is: To promote the creation of new works and inventions. The expectancy to make money is a driving factor. But if I write a book today, do I expect money in 2150? (which would hopefully be life + 70 for me) No.
Ask any movie producer, book author, music artist when they expect to make money off their work. Sure, sometimes a book like LotR can become massively long after it was written, but did JRR Tolkien make it because it'd be a wildly movie triology in the next millenium? Hell no.
There's two kinds of copyright. One that promotes the creation of new works, and one that promotes the hoarding of existing IP because some works will become "classics". The latter is a cancer that only contributes to making artificial profit, not to advance science nor the arts.
That is why copyright should be cut, massively. A few decades should be more than enough to put it through any normal life cycle (like e.g. cinema -> rental -> dvd sales -> premium channels -> normal channels -> reruns).
What is a concern, is the "pollution" of the setting, like e.g. the Star Trek universe. However, make it real simple. Only what is expired from copyright is expired. E.g. if TOS didn't contain the Borg, but Voyager does, they are copyrighted as long as Voyager.
But if you want to take Capt. Kirk on adventures to meet some completely new and unknown aliens, you're free to do that. If the "original" can't introduce enough new things (new characters, new plots, new items) to live with that during say, 30 years?, well they don't deserve it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The topic does come up often enough that it makes sense to compose a relevant posting ahead of time. If your post is good, then the earlier it's submitted the better odds of getting modded up.
I see nothing wrong with that. I realize you're just pointing out the fact, but likely others will use it as some sort of ad hominem attack.
Dear Mr. [me]:
/
Thank you for contacting me about intellectual property protections. Although we disagree on this issue, it is good to
hear from you.
Throughout my career, I have been concerned about the theft of intellectual property and the effect it has on
innovation. Protection of digital content is just one aspect of this effort. On March 23, 2004, the Senate Judiciary
Committee held a hearing on physical piracy, entitled "Counterfeiting and Theft of Tangible Intellectual Property:
Challenges and Solutions," at which the Committee examined the harmful effects of stealing another's creation.
Reasonable estimates show that the U.S. economy loses between $200 billion and $250 billion annually to piracy and
counterfeiting. At that hearing the Committee heard from a representative of Burton Snowboards, which employs 350
people in Vermont. That witness reported that knock-off Burton products have been found in multiple countries, and
fake goods often turn up on internet auction sites.
The improper use of Burton's trademarks is illegal, it is unethical, and it robs the company of revenues it should
rightfully reap but that others siphon off. In the 104th Congress, I introduced the Anticounterfeiting Consumer
Protection Act of 1995, which gave law enforcement additional tools to fight counterfeiting and which became a public
law. I am currently looking at additional legislation that would help hard working Vermonters protect the goods they
produce.
Likewise, downloading music without paying for it, and without the copyright holder's permission prevents artists,
authors, musicians - and those that work behind the scenes to produce creative content - from realizing the benefits
they deserve.. In order for the promise of new technologies to be fully realized, high quality digital content needs
to be easy to use and portable, and I am glad to see that several companies are now offering legal alternatives that
are meeting with success. This is a development I continue to encourage.
While illegally downloading music is wrong, I do not think that handcuffs for copyright infringers should be the
government's only option. That is why, on March 25, 2004, I introduced the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against
Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act." I do not believe in a "one size fits all" system of justice, and the PIRATE Act
will provide needed flexibility by allowing the Justice Department to pursue civil penalties for copyright infringement
when criminal penalties are not appropriate.
Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue, and please keep in touch.
Patrick Leahy
United States Senator
http://leahy.senate.gov
Since counterfeit snowboards seemed totally off the wall to me, here was my reply:
Dear Senator Leahy:
Thank you for your response. It does not, however, show consideration of
many of the most pressing issues in "intellectual property." Please detail
what you are doing to:
- Roll back copyright terms to the reasonable period envisioned by the
writers of the Constitution
- Allow Web "radio" to have the same rights to broadcast music as
over-the-air stations, without the additional fees for using the music
which are currently assessed, which only serve to enforce the broadcast
monopolies while restricting artist access to the public
- Preserve the "fair use" rights that have long been in copyright law
against the large corporations working to remove or negate them through
using encryption technologies
- Undo the chilling effects of the DCMA on free technological development,
where it prevents normal testing and reverse-engineering of encryption
schemes
- Restore restrictions on the number of radio or television stations that
may be owned by any single corporation (surely you are aware of the
political disaster that results f
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"even though CDs have dropped in price over the years."
Unforunately, not true. But it does add vigor to the debate.
I think you mean "Well, the prices have stayed the same, but allowing for inflation..."
Everything else is going down in price (except commodities, but they vary day to day), except CD's. The RIAA cartel can lower the price to $8 and kill off piracy.
Easier to get congress to prosecute trivial cases against a bunch of 18 year old college kids. Great plan. What next? Re-educate high school kids so they know that when they copy MP3's, they're fueling terrorism? Oh wait... that's already being done.
You really are a tool. Why do you apologize so hard for facism?
Eisner's family owns a large estate in SE Vermont for many years.
So, see how Eisner has rewarded Leahy for his work on the Mickey Mouse copyright extension and other acts of kindness.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've seen this post before. How does it get modded at +5 Insignful.
-1 Redundant and -1 Troll seems more appropriate
There would have to be ways to ensure that trivial changes are not enough to make the work somehow "new" enough to qualify for the cheap rates.
I'll gladly sell anyone fifty years of complete copyright protection for a trillion bucks or so.
The main difference between the two is that your post doesn't prevent anyone else from making their own posts. A patent can apply to anything that uses the same underlying idea. This idea is usually much broader than the creative ideas covered by the copyright.
For instance, copyright prevents you from selling (without permission) a Star Trek story involving Kirk and Spock. Imagine if the copyright holders could prevent you from selling any story involving people from Earth exploring other worlds in a spaceship.
It's scary because it provides the federal government with a very effective way to crush political free speech. Why? First, keep in mind that, unlike many countries, including some other democracies, we do not and cannot have seditious libel laws--meaning the government cannot openly ban criticism. For that, we can thank the First Amendment and our culture of independence.
But recall that any effective criticism of the actions of government agencies and politicians will require fair use quotations. Under current law, the government cannot use copyright to attack that sort of unwanted speech. Copyright infringement lawsuits are civil lawsuits, initiated and (even more important) funded by private entities. This law would allow the government to create an "enemies list" to be attacked on alleged copyright violations and open up the entire resources of the federal government in those lawsuits.
Keep in mind that the government does not have to win these cases, it simply has to file a lawsuit to create an enormous burden on its critics. (This is a bit like both the Nixonian and Clintonian administrations using the IRS to attack political opponents.) And remember too that the government doesn't have to sue over the specific book or media production that criticized the government. It can sue in some totally unrelated area. It can crush an opponent without ever appearing to violate the First Amendment. That is what I mean by scary.
Second, the law is stupid because it demonstrates no awareness of just how cluttered, contradictory and filled with gray areas present day copyright law is. Yes, there are areas where the law is not gray, republishing without permission a recent best-selling book for instance. But there's no need for the federal government to intervene in those areas. Civil suits already work quite well there. Will the government intervene in more ambigious areas? If it does, it has taken sides when it shouldn't. If it doesn't the there are lots of people, particularly impoverished authors and publishers, who are being denied help but are forced to pay taxes to fund lawsuits the government does choose to initiate.
Finally, the law is clearly unfair. The bill isn't intended to help a poor author or publisher (like me), who typically can't afford to sue, even if he has a good case. The remarks about "technological challenges," "technical experts," and "electronic data" make it clear that it's the deep-pocketed entertainment industry who'll be getting their legal costs covered by tax-payers. This law is about ordinary citizens being forced to fund lawsuits that only benefit those who can easily afford to file their own civil lawsuits.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
http://www.InklingBooks.com/
Song of the piracy apologist...
(#1) I do not believe in copyright laws.
Senator xxxx,
Please vote "No" on S.2237.
- Having a look at who is sponsoring it (Hatch and Leahy) alone, it is obvious that this is a matter of legislation on behalf of the large media conglomerates.
- This legislation would involve the justice department in pursuing action against casual, non-criminal (civil) infringement.
- This legislation is an attempt on behalf of the large media conglomerates to place upon tax payers the legal bill for pursuing unreasonable and outrageous civil penalties against their sons and daughters in highschool and college.
If we are to be forced to assume the legal bills of the RIAA and MPAA, then it is time to have a legitimate and serious public hearing on the illegitimacy of the ever expanding "Intellectual Property" regime that is:
- Destroying our commons.
- Defying the intent and wisdom of our founders.
- Tying up and suppressing the past 70 years of our history in the pocketbooks of corporate non-entities.
- Inventing a "right to profit" from what was originally a right of the public to promote the interests of the commons.
Disney's archive vault is NOT the commons.
Thank you for your time,
xxxx
Arguments that I grant have some merit.
But I, without doing any appreciable amount of file sharing myself, still find myself opposed to laws supporting the whole Intellectual Property Rights junta.
Why? Because, despite all the logic you produce, I see my rights being steadily eroded in favor of the big media corporations. And I see the government spending more and more money to prop up what amounts to piracy against of my rights - those fair use rights that have been part of US law for years now.
And these rights are being eroded in favor of short term profits, often at the expense of any real creativity in the fields that the corporations purport to benefit.
And the more that continues, the more I find myself thinking that despite the logic in your arguments, despite the support that I think artists deserve, despite all my sympathies for the hard working creators, the price is just plain too high.
It's called an 'income tax'.
So if you make $1000 by selling copies of your music, and I make $1000 by running a restaurant, do you think your $1000 of income should be taxed differently than mine?
I don't mean to sound trollish, but shouldn't terrorism be the DOJ's biggest focus right now? There's been an attack on Turkey and Spain this year alone. Between this recent bill and John Ashcroft's assault on porn, the JD is getting distracted.
This is a repost of an comment, which admitted to being a repost as well, from a story earlier this week.
Can't these people come up with their own arguments?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
The argument is that this is legislation on behalf of large corporate interests.
If you had any idea of the voting record and campaign contribution histories of these individuals, you would know that this is legislation either directly written by or in its language and intent approved by, these same interests.
We're speaking about Orin "Give the RIAA the power to remotely disable computers" Hatch, here.
Further, senators do not actually read these messages. Well, a grunt sometimes gives them a sampling of letters from constituents to read, but for the most part they are checked "constituent" or "non-constituent" and "for X" or "against X".
There is no point in crafting an "argument" when your audience will only be an intern giving 2-5 seconds per letter.
Shoot fast, furious, and from the hip. If you can agitate your opponent with rhetoric and ideology, you're 90% there.
when I tried to apply for them. Also you only listed the basic copyright fee, which is misleading if you need more than that.
My ideas or products are worth more than those fees, but I am dirt poor and have lived paycheck to paycheck giving ideas and products to companies that paid me very little to work for them. I am now out of work, and they fruadlently filed the patents on my ideas without having me sign the papers, as I am the originator of those ideas and products.
I have not earned an income since 2002, so applying for those fees are out of reach for me.
I feel like I have been used like a tissue, and thrown away once I got enough raises or gave my employers enough IP that they didn't need me anymore.
$335 to $385 may seem like a small fee to you, but it is way more than I can afford due to my economic status. I have no angel investors, no grants, cannot get a loan, and no source of income available, plus nobody will give me a job. Being out of work since 2002 is also something that counts against me. I feel like I have been blackballed by many corporations with a "do not hire" flag on my employment record.
So since you seem to know it all, how can I earn the income to get the $400 or whatever to file the patents and trademarks for my ideas? If it keeps up, I may become homeless soon.
The most I ever made from a Lemonade stand was $20, at 15 cents a glass. They tax the kiddies now for doing that, BTW.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Notice the person making this claim never actually buys tickets or t-shirts themselves. It's always "someone else."
Perhaps in your blind community it is, but personally, if I like the tune, I'll buy it. I've even had albums specially ordered in, based on what I've heard from Napster/Morheus/WinMX/etc. And I have no scruples with making a copy of a CD, or ripping tracks to MP3, arranging to the order I want to listen to them in the car/at home, whatever - because I've paid to listen to the music. As for the comment about radio stations, free advertising, etc - what about non-needletime records? Presumably, by your argument - these are fair game? And the bit about what price CDs retail at? I haven't seen them drop in years (I'm in the UK, btw). And weren't they supposed to be near-indestructible when they were introduced? Now you just need to leave one out of the case for half an hour and it skips all over the place. Cost-cutting on the protective material, was it? My heart bleeds.
And let's get this straight - when you talk about stealing from recording artists - what you really mean is theft from ponytail record execs. So don't say people are taking food from an artist's mouth, instead - say people are taking cocaine from a suit's nostrils. It's far more accurate.
Song of the RIAA apologist: Gimme more, gimme more, gimme it now, I need my next fix of cocaine and my latest manufactured boyband is flopping and I need to blame it on something or I get fired. Oooooh, what's this Kazaa thingy? Methinks I spy a scapegoat...
Everyone here is talking about whether piracy is right or wrong. Duh. It's wrong.
Of cource piracy is wrong, but were not talking about people who board ships and murder people here, we're talking about illegal copying - which is not wrong in the slightest. No more wrong than refusing to go to the back of the bus (if you get it)
I think you're the one that's missing the point. In the eyes of the internet, there is no difference between free speech content and copyright content - when you set up soneone with power to censor one, than its unaviodable that they also will have power over the other. Copyrights are immoral, they are unenforcable, and they have no place in the information age. They simply need to go.
-John Van Voorhis
Coming from a country that built itself on infringing existing copyrights. Look back at the history of the USA and how it used to deal with copyright. Now they want the Criminal Justice System to also prosecute Civil cases. Since when has the establishment been civilian? The sooner the USA stops the commercialisation of the government (see Senator Disney and Senator RIAA as examples) then perhaps the government might get back to being "for the people, by the people".
I hope somebody steals your car with the excuse that they did not believe in property-ownership laws.
I hope they don't, but they're welcome to a COPY of my car. You fucking idiot.
http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/index.html
If you're interested in technology and society issues, the blog also has articles on Harvard and the Unabomber, a review of an early scifi classic film ("The Day the Earth Stood Still"), as well as Tolkien's attitude toward technology and racism.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
but Merriam Webster disagrees.
Main Entry: piracy
Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratEs pirate
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
Consider Disney and Pinnichio. Right now, stipulate that it's sitting in a vault, earning $0 in income. (If not the case for Pinocchio, then consider another film).
If Disney gets it out of the vault, they can make $X million in gross revenue, with $C million in costs. It's the judgement of Disney's management that $X is less than $C. If $X were more than $C then Disney, profit-maximizing corporation that they are, would distribute Pinocchio and make a profit of ($X-$C) that way.
Your proposal is to increase $C by adding another tax to income from copyrighted materials. That makes Disney MORE likely to keep Pinocchio in the vault (no revenue, no expenses), rather than take it out of the vault (same revenue, increased expenses).
Oh, and what is the "fair market value" of 20 million copies of the Linux kernel which contain my copyrighted material? Do you want me to pay tax on that every year? It's a tiny amount of material, to be sure, but I do own the copyright on it.
Uh, no. He's starting from the premise that if people consume what you offer for sale, then they'll pay the price you set. If they don't want to pay your price (and can't talk you down), they simply won't consume it. Your premise is true, but irrelevant. You might as well argue that shoplifting is OK, because the store owner opened his store without an "inherent guarantee to make money."
But MP3.com did not use any osrt of GPL model. And, in fact, in the end they co-opted lots of "old school" label music without getting permission from the owners of those copyrights, ultimately putting all those garage bands who trusted them in direct competition with Madonna and Eminem. This didn't help those garage artists AND it led to their ultimate demise.
Without any copyright every indie artist would have even less chance to compete with megastudios. It's easy to talk about them as plantation owners, but the fact is these are not physical goods we're talking about - and those "plantations" would have their place with or without laws protecting them. Remember Pat Boone? Little Richard? Elvis? All those white boys taking the music from black boys and making money for those "plantation owners" without giving the creators their due? With no copyright protection at all EVERY garage band in the country striving for fame and/or fortune become subjects of those plantation owners.
We may not all have an equal chance at fame with the system as it is, but stripping away all copyright protections would make it even harder - not to mention all that GPL protected code that would end up in Windows uber-release XP2005. I don't know about you, but I don't contribute to GPL projects so that my work can go into the back pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
I don't know much about copyright, but what if it could be transferred to a corporate entity that doesn't die off?
~Mike
Feel free to repost this (with attribution if you feel like it) in response to reposts of the above article.
And that (the parent), folks, is called generalization, and is the song of the hypocrite, one who won't bother to read any rational arguments and instead, much like the people parent mentions in their post, takes a sample (chosen by the parent to support his argument) instead of considering the true point of some of us here.
We have the internet now. We have discovered that digital information can be copied flawlessly in seconds, millions of times over. Hence, we use this ability, combined with having media in a file, to access the media we want to watch. Is it wrong to access information that isn't yours? Yes, of course it is. Is it wrong for recording companies to try to suppress the internet as a way of distributing music because it would force them to innovate and create subscription services that would benefit both themselves, the artists, and their customers? Yes, it is.
Recording companies realize that they have a pretty sweet deal as it is with their current, fully controlled distribution system (CD, radio, TV). Of course, these media are also largely controlled by the recording companies. ClearChannel. MTV. Resellers that, like the recording companies themselves, will not create a subscription service that benefits customers.
Do you not think that if a service was put in place that charged a nominal monthly rate for unlimited download access to a fast peer to peer network and benefitted the artists who made their work available to it that people would use it? As good as Kazaa and many of the other peer to peer networks are, they are often filled with spyware and other ways that the programmers can make money, often in annoying and legally questionable ways. If a service was in place where people could access fast downloads of the music (or other media, though starting with music would probably be best) they want, without any of the crap that comes with many P2P services, I believe that many would want to use it.
But back to the rebuttal. I admit that many of the points the parent makes are true. Sharing is not free advertising. Sharing is illegal. Sharing is piracy. Wait... Did I just admit half of the parent's post? Oh yes... that's because it was misguided attacks at only a few other posts, none of which really had any merit. Scratch that. ONE other post. Once again, the hypocrite is very good at taking the words of some and indicating that these are the words of all.
Why should the record companies invest in a subscription service for their works? Well, for one thing, it's what their customers want. For another, their industry is on the verge of collapse as it is. The internet is an enabler for artists, as well. If artists created their own distribution system, and distributed their works through digital file formats, what would be left for the recording companies to claim? CD pressing? Entirely unnecessary. Talent finding? If you have talent, distribute your files though this service and you will be heard. Studio recording? Can be found through independant shops. Marketing? Perhaps, but again, go to a marketing company. If they feel that you have talent and are a good risk, they'll help you.
Additionally, without such a distribution system, artists may go alternative routes and try new methods of releasing works while gaining funds, like the Digital Art Auction (finally starting to get ready for actual auctions) or the Street Performer Protocol. These make copyright entirely unnecessary, and if they gain popularity, may make much of the media on peer to peer networks fully legal.
But perhaps it's because I'm not an apologist that some of the things I am saying here make sense. In that form it shows that the parent is targetting the unrational trolls of our side and misrepresenting us as being
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Feel free to repost this reply too (and my appoligies for feeding trolls):
1) Allowing people to download one Britney Spears Song off Kazaa is the same as selling 500000 counterfeit albums of the same artist. (Ok, maybe with Ms. Spears, the cultural damage is just as bad, but I am not one to advocate censorship nor is this the point.)
2) After all people who download songs don't care about the artists anyway.
3) Threatening college students with millions of dollars worth of civil damages is great because it is the way of capitalism.
4) All copyright owners have the moral right to enforce any terms on the use of their material that they see fit.
5) Copyright ownership is somehow morally equivalent to real estate ownership, and should be protected perptetually.
6) The Home Recording Act was written by a bunch of patsys, though we do like our tax in it.
7) Loaning your CD to your friends so they can rip the MP3s off and put on their Ipod is Piracy (possibly protected under the Home Recording Act, but what do they care)
Look, quite frankly, I like the fact that the horrible bullys at the RIAA are behaving publically as, well horrible bullys. I hope that this does help to improve the indie record labels' outlooks and I hope that it also helps freely redistributable music communities (creative commons etc). But if you don't think that the CTEA and the DMCA are causing serious long-term harm to our society, then we have bigger issues to work out. These guys think "Gimme your work, that's mine FOREVER!!!!"
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I emailed both of mine and one from a previous state I lived in. I did the third because I know him and think he is fairly honest. If that gets three nay votes I'll take it. Sometimes congresscritters do the right thing either; by mistake or if enough pressure from voters is applied.
The 3 of them know that I'm a veteran and I vote!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Considering that blockbuster movies make "no money" and the whole idea falls apart. Production accountancy is the last, greatest legal lie.
The fact of the matter is that the answer is to roll back the bull, get rid of software patents, reduce copyright to the original lengths, get the corporations out of the legislation business...
And then mabye lynch them for being butt-heads. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
IOW, I couldn't give a rat's ass about your argument, as lawsuits and laws are for those who can afford them - ie. the guys who screwed the artists in the first place.
This system is broken, and your BS doesn't fix it.
The truth is, as someone who has pirated music, I just dont give a crap about stealing music. Now I guess I could try and justify it with the standard reasons but you already know them.
Why dont the holier-than-thou anti-piracy types justify their position. The reason they dont, I believe, is because to them being on the side of the law is all that matters.
Either that or they believe in the "free market" and that by engaging in piracy you are somehow
'distorting' the market. As though there were such a thing as a free market in the music business.
Why you would defend the music establishment is beyond me. This is an industry whos meat & potatoes revolves entirely around leveraging as much dosh as possible out of Mom & Pops wallets by way of their children.
And they're fucking good at it too. When asked what they think they will be when they grow up, surveys show that the kids of today all basically think they're going to be fuckin famous. It's patently absurd. I really feel sorry for the little buggers actually. Not only are they constantly fed shit ideas/products but they have little to no exercise as well, and are so fat that it is believed a whole generation of kids are going to have serious heart problems by their mid-30's!
Oh Yes, I can see the future now. An entire generation of fat thirty-somethings living at home still clinging to the belief that a talent scout will 'find' them and shower them with fame, fortune and a triple by-pass operation.
Now what was I talking about, oh yeah piracy....
Imagine if the copyright holders could prevent you from selling any story involving people from Earth exploring other worlds in a spaceship.
It's possible for a copyright-owning plaintiff to win a copyright infringement lawsuit over only four copied notes. It's possible for the plaintiff to win a copyright infringement lawsuit over a melody that both sides agree the defendant didn't consciously know he was copying at the time he did it. See also this rant.
A friend of mine is a freelance composer of original music for software, radio, TV and film productions
When your friend creates musical works, what precautions does he take to prevent himself from subconsciously copying another composer's copyrighted works?
Destroying copyright doesn't destroy the outlets. It still takes an expensive FCC license to get a tv station and even more money to keep it running. You think without copyright MTV is going to be any quicker to put you into rotation? The Britney Spears and Jessica Simpsons would stll dominate because they have the money behind them. No copyright would change the kind of deals those people get, but for indie artists all it would do is leave them vulnerable to exploitation without ANY means of recourse; your band's underground music website becomes popular? Great! We'll use your music to sell pepsi... and you won't get a fucking thing - thanks so much for breaking down those "monopolies on popular culture."
Russia has just about zero enforcement of what little copyright protection exists in their laws. So, do you think MTV Russia is some sort of free range of Russian indie artists? Hmmmm... p diddy, Britney, Elton, Jessica... sure doesn't look that much different. And what Russian lables are those Russian artists on who DO get played on mtv.ru? EMI, Warner, Sony...
Without copyright protection indie artists don't suddenly become more marketable - they just become even easier to exploit.
And so do programmers.
sculpture is somewhat annoying to send over P2P right now. But this is a short term thing, and ultimately wouldn't last.
It won't last because here's exactly how sculptures will be ripped: Just shine a grid of laser beams at a sculpture placed on a turntable. Take picture. Rotate. Repeat. Process pictures into a mesh. Distribute mesh in 3D interchange format.
If you want to accelerate "getting there", then invest in companies that make 3D printers. Or wait 20 years for the patents to run out, and prices for sculpture replicators will go into a downward spiral.
Can you really, with fair conscience...
A politicians conscience is indistinguishable from his bankbook.
It doesn't matter. Freedom is about responsibility as much as liberty. Choosing to violate the law does not negate our freedom so long as we are likewise held responsible. Problem is, corporations like this are increasingly held less responsible for their ever-expandig freedoms.
Do I have the right to shoot the noise dog next door to be "free" of the noise?
Damn skippy. A dog is property - if my neighbor won't take care of the fucker and the police won't help, you damn betcha I'll resolve the matter myself. I won't use a gun (that's illegal in most cities) but I've done it before using other, quieter, means. It didn't result in a civil action but I was fully prepared for it: I'm sure he knew who did it, as I had spoken with him before and warned him of the end effect of failure to comply with his neighbor's (polite) request. If more people would have the guts to do this, there'd be a lot fewer barking dogs annoying entire neighborhoods of people.
Why not?
I just told you why - you tell me why not.
When our "freedoms" and illegal cross steps have to be taken. By supporting the illegal actions regardless of the cause or ideal behind it you bolster the RIAA's arguments.
The RIAA's argument is it's illegal - your argument then is just another circular validation of theirs.
The fact is we are in the process of redefining fair use - fundamentally that is ALL this boils down to. The SCOTUS has repeatedly defended certain "liberties" because of the impracticalities of enforcement, often relating to the substantial loss of privacy such enforcement would entail. We, therefore, have a responsibility (there's that word again) as technically competent developers to create as many technological means of defending our "rights" as we are able. The more able we are to prove the impracticalities of defending these laws, the better served we will be in the end - when these ridiculously overreaching laws are finally challenged in the courts.
There is an inherent conflict of interest when a Drug Company goes through clinical tests. They want to get their money's worth, the FDA wants safety. Read about Antidepressants & suicide. The most recent prescription boondoggles I can think of are the whole problem with Phen-Phen, hormone therapy for women causing heart attacks, and now antidepressants causing kids to suicide.
Drug companies have a 20 odd years until their patents expire, so they suppress studies, encourage off-label use (ie. giving medicine to age groups it wasn't tested on) and whatever other techniques they can use to get the drug to market and make their investment back
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You are right when you say a person needs standing, but the justice department in this case would be acting on behalf of the U.S. government. You can ask your con law professor why this is different. (Civil actions by the government are very common - securities actions, environmental actions, etc.)
With great power comes great fan noise.
After the first two patents you are awarded, the multiplier will begin to double with each new patent you apply for. This will help to prevent companies for applying for stupid schitt patents, because it will increase their multiplier. They will only do it on stuff that's really worth it. Oh, but to be fair, as time passes between patent applications, the multiplier will begin to decrease slowly, so if you are legitimately developing stuff that is HARD to develop, then it makes sense that you'll have a few years between patent applications.
Furthermore, the length in time of a patent would depend on many factors, such as the ones described in the first paragraph (e.g., a huge multinational's patents might last 1/3 as long as a garage enthusiast who stumbles across some great invention), the industry involved (e.g., software patents would last, say, two years at MOST), the difficulty and expense incurred in making the invention (which would have to be kept track of and audited, or else this number would be assumed to be ZERO), etc. Also, the amount you intend to charge for selling the invention individually, and for licensing the patent would be taken into account. That is, if it will legitimately take you ten years to break even on the costs of developing your invention, that will likely increase the time length of your patent (but no patent will ever last more than 20 years). However, if you say the unit cost will be two cents and the licensing will cost ten bucks, just to get a long patent life, and then you start selling the units at $5000 and the licenses and $10000000000000000000000000, then the patent office would actually monitor that and reduce the term of your patent accordingly. Say, you could deviate up to 15% (plus an adjustment for inflation or deflation, to make things fair) in price increases, and up to any amount in decreases, without suffering a shortened patent
The above should help aspiring inventors working in their garages or basements. But all of that simply means that huge multinational corporations will create a holding company to create a single patent and then license that patent for 0.00000000000000000001 cents per millenium. To avoid that, the law would state a few things: First, that the computations above would also apply to the licensees of a patent, and that licensee, in addition to paying license fees, will have to pay a licensing tax. In other words, say Microsoft invents something, opens a tiny company for the sole purpose of holding the patent, to make the patent application cheap, and then licenses it to itself for really cheap, and to others at exhorbitant prices, and then cites trade secrets when refusing to tell anyone what the price it pays is. What I'm saying here would mean that Microsoft would pay the peanuts to its holding company, but it would pay hundreds of thousands in patent licensing taxes to the government. However, that will not hold true for any nonprofit endeavors. So if some joe shmoe GPL developer or academic licenses the same patent, he wouldn't pay jack schitt in taxes, because if the license is for nonprofit reasons, there will be notaxes on patent licenses.
Finally, where will all these horrendous fees and patent taxes go? They will fund a better patent office, where many more patent examiners will be able to take a lot more time and resources to examine and really research these patents.
Oh, and there was one other thing that I forgot: A working model MUST be built and WORKING according to the patent. No more patenting ideas. You must be able to demonstrate that it works according to plan before you can patent it.
> including raising fees, raising fees more for those who most use the system, and providing discounts for small entities (who'da thunk?)
Big corp A need patent.
A create small company B.
B files patent with extra reduced cost (being small).
A buys up B for 1$.
Maybe you should just get up earlier to write stuff.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Even the title says it all:
"Protecting Intellectual Rights Against THEFT and Expropriation Act of 2004"
Theft is taking someones property from them.
Copyright infringement is making a copy without permission.
This is a -1 TROLL bill.
Instead of "For the Good of Society" when the nazi's exterminated people they didn't like, our politikians use the term, "It for the Children!!!!" when passing authoritarian measures. It is a cop out phrase used when passing unpopular legislation or refusing to pass something the People want.
When the states were finally allowed once again to set their own speed limits, critics of that idea mentioned that 75 mph speed limits would be bad for the children.
The only patent reform we need to to stop granting patents for the fucking obvious! That by itself would eliminate about 95%+ of all patents.
I hope this doesn't extend to patents too
Lets take the drug companies as an example. They would all buy Patent II we will assume. So a drug company buys this patent on some new drug; lets say it stops hiv from progressing or something. So then we have a patented drug that costs even more (due to the tax which will be passed to the consumer) than the already huge american prescription costs. Those that can't afford it also have no chance of getting a generic ever! So I guess they can just die.
That's true. Taxing based on "assesed worth" is a different plan, similar to the old Henry George single tax on unimproved land, and motivated by the same reasons.
So, what's the assessed value of the linux kernel, and who is responsible for the tax?
If the assessed value is $0, then there are no damages when SCO, Linksys, or other companies infringe the license. If the assessed value is anywhere near the actual value to users, then who's liable for the billions of dollars in taxes?