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Orrin Hatch to Lead Senate Panel on Copyright, Patents
PontifexPrimus writes "Senator Orrin Hatch, (in)famous for his idea of destroying the computers of copyright violators is to head a Senate 'panel, which will have jurisdiction over copyright, trademark and patent law, as well as treaties intended to protect American intellectual property overseas.' Looks like file sharing will finally be erased once and for all. Oh, and this looks like another field day for those who refuse to subsume patent, trademark and copyright law under the heading of 'IP law.'"
"In addition to piracy and copyright infringement, Leahy hopes to work through the committee to address the new threats of "phishing" and "pharming" -- forms of electronic fraud in which perpetrators impersonate trusted banks, retailers and financial institutions to steal Internet users' personal data, spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said."
Ok really now, why would a sub committee that is dealing with copyrights also be going after people doing phishing attacks.
Either I'm totally missing something here, or this committee has other plans that wont be seen on the surface for a while.
TruePunk | Games
It's tax time - time to run the annual check to see who is sharing their .tax files (and "Tax Return.pdf") with the world.
Good old P2P. You think it's cute that your kid saves a few bucks by downloading music for free. Instead, you set yourself up for identity theft by publishing your complete tax return on the Intarweb.
Gnucleus (or substitute BearShare, Kazaa, or the P2P program of your choice) shows handfuls of people sharing .tax files. But don't try to be a Good Samaritan and tell them! They may shoot the messenger if you let Dad know that Daughter has opened up the confidential files to the world!
It's like telling someone that their zipper's down, and they punch you because you peeked.
Yup, you don't get it.
Copyleft was created as a countermeasure which uses copyright law to subvert the traditional copyright system. With viral copyleft licences, content creators who are sick of the way copyright ties up the rights to creative works while shafting the public domain have created a collection of work which is like a protected public domain - derivative works which build on it must be released back into it.
If copyright law was reasonable, we wouldn't need copyleft. I would gladly sacrifice half of the term for which I am legally able to enforce copyright on my open content licenced work if this meant that the duration of the copyright on conventionally licenced works would also be halved.
Personally, I would like to see a world completely free of copyright and patent restrictions, since I believe them to be inherently nonsensical and unjust (their ostensibly well-intentioned beginnings notwithstanding). Until such a world exists, however (and I don't have high hopes of seeing it in my lifetime), I will continue to release any creative work I ever produce under copyleft licences, because that is one of the only legal ways of fighting against the system which is open to me.
Potential flamebait, but I'm damned curious.
Why are you Americans putting up with this crap? Governments have been violently overthrown for less than what the current administration has done.
Common answer: "Because corporations have a stranglehold on our government. It doesn't really matter who gets elected."
Yes, but you still have some kind of pseudo-democracy.
Why do I not hear of any collective group being formed to help inform Joe Public and try and rally some support? Power in numbers! Don't stand for what is currently being dished out to you. It's insulting.
Hell. There's at least a couple of hundred thousand Americans who read slashdot every day. There's a start.
And I'm not talking about something which just called for a change in administration.. like moveon.org
the stuff that they will come up with and push through might make the Europeans to wake up.
I don't know how this guy does it, who he knows, or how he keeps managing to BS his way into all of these things. Every bill he has attempted to pass has been so infantile in tech knowledge, so utterly chilling, and yet he just manages to do it again and again. And he doesn't even bother to learn, he just twists the words until they meet his agenda. He is like some scary Dilbert boss of the entertainment world, carelessly waving his laser pointer in everyone's eye. But for as much as he screws up (in the tech view anyway) he just keeps rising to the top!
This man is just exhausting already, and I wonder if that it the point. To take all of us who battle this now and just wear us out until we give up. As the years march by, it will simply become a way of life. Isn't there a word for that?
Let's take it off the internet. Let's make entertainment media useful as a tool for socializing again. I want to meet people of similar interests, bring my portable hard drive with me, and share what's on it with my good friends.
Personally, I can bring 25,000+ mp3 songs ripped with EAC/LAME from my own CDs and vinyl. I can't be alone. Someone out there has all that classical music I still need. You know, all that music that's hundreds of years old...
The answer is simple, fool.
Our system is being run by a bunch of facists loosers who drive the car or American government.
They are the drivers of the car. They are not the car. The car works and runs fine.
Our system of government is still better than most others.
The revolution thing was tried in the 1860's.
Go to Gettysburg and weep at the graves before you go telling other people to go and kill someone to fulfil your dreams of what's next.
John Lennon said it best:
"you say you want a revolution. What I want is to change your head".
My fond wish is to open up the minds of fools who support the current administration. I would hope thta these people will learn and grow and be better people.
Violence and revolution are last resorts.
The best change of government is through non-violence.
American Demcracy is having problems in that our leaders no longer seem to believe in or care about democracy.
That isn't saying that we should kill them. Hell no!
We need them to understand how they have become undemocratic and elitest and get them to be more like their forefathers who choose not to be like them.
The neocons betray not just us, but their ancestors. They betray the founding fathers, the soldiers who died in war for democracy.
Their sentance should be that they should grow and learn and become better democrats (small d).
Change the government by enlightening the people who are in government. Change the president by educating him.
I don't like a lot about our current President but if I knew of anything that was a plot against him then I would turn in anyone who would harm him.
If you advocate violence, then you must be prepared to have your own sentance dropped upon your own head. Look what happened to Ropspierre (did I spell that right?).
Non-violence is the answer, people.
Good old ornery Orrin. Remember when he took money from Novell, Sun, Oracle and AOL to fight Microsoft in the late 90's. Back then, many in the OSS community cheered him on for his integrity and forthrightness in taking on Microsoft. I guess cheering him on can't buy as much "integrity" as cold hard cash and the use of a corporate jet for his campaign.
Is this sig nificant?
Don't forget the whole 'p2p should be illegal because h4x0rz use it to steal muzak' thing, regardless of whether it has any other uses. Oh, and 'let's allow people to patent trivial software constructs that have been in use for 25 years' too.
.iso format, or in a zip archive must be warez...
Maybe I'm just a bit jaded because in all this crap, nowhere is there a need for 1) responsibility or 2) accountability on the part of the copyright cartels. But of course, we all know that anything shared via bittorrent, or in
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
"field day" is an american cultural refrence anymore.
A field day was the day all the kids ran around outside and acted like total morons and got medals and awards for doing it.
And in this case. Field day fits perfect.
To start taking anonymous p2p more seriously...
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
(in)famous for his idea of destroying the computers of copyright violators
If I had Windows XP, I'd be concerned - a destroyed computer means calling up Microsoft and being on hold for hours, trying to explain that this dude named Orin (who'd think?) destroyed my old computer, and that now I'm going to put my legal copy of XP on a new machine.
It doesn't sound promising. The Microsoft call center will have to have a special option in their system: "Computer destroyed by Orin Hatch".
Maybe Sen. Hatch should watch the tech companies that are using techs to train their replacments so they can send the jobs overseas if he wants to protect American innovation and economic growth.
In a statement, Hatch declared that the panel would have an "aggressive agenda" and highlighted the issue of patent reform, saying, "We need strong patent protection to give incentives for innovation and economic growth."
Senator Hatch Introduces Bill to Burn People's Eyes Out Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today introduced legislation authorizing the use of high-powered microwave lasers to burn out the eyes of non-paying viewers of copyrighted material. "If we could develop technology which just burned out the parts of their brains where the illegal memories are stored, that'd be fine with me--but we can burn their eyes out right now!" said Hatch, while introducing the Hatch/Hollywood Eyeball Evisceration Act.
Bookburning on the Internet If you say "If you must smoke marijuana, filter the smoke with a water pipe and don't even think of driving afterwards." or "...don't use dirty needles. Clean them with bleach or find a syringe exchange program."
I think these statements are good advice. But if U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein have their way, it will soon be a felony to publish these statements in any book, newspaper, magazine, web site, or even to utter them or link to a web site containing them. The Hatch/Feinstein Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 makes these statements illegal because they "pertain" to an act that violates federal controlled-substance laws
Nobel Laureates Denounce Hatch's Patent Bill
Orrin Hatch's Glass House Has Bin Laden's Name on It Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch told Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. It was worth it, he said.
Hatch support for converting our interstate highways into toll roads.
Collections of Information Antipiracy Act This bill makes it legal to get the goods on you.
American database providers render an invaluable service by collecting, organizing, and disseminating billions of bits of information from myriad sources of every possible sector of our economy.
I could do a bit more research on the good Senator, but then I'd be post 387 and no one would ever read this.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
A question that distills the issue; it it worse to steal, or to sell what you have stolen? There are plausible justifications for theft, ie immediate survival, which has been claimed far more often than events warrant. To sell that stolen property erases any claim to have needed it for immediate survival, when the urgent need stops, the ethical thing to do is to return it or something of agreed value to the person or people it is stolen from.
Taking this view, it seems obvious to me. From a profit/loss record, it would seem that they are equally guilty, until you factor in the 'intellectual property equals physical property' idea, which would suggest that every copy of stolen intellectual property sold is a separate offense.
What do we think?
You seriously see no difference between a) a company/person taking someone else's copyrighted work (GPL'ed code et al.) with the explicit purpose of making (more) money / increasing their profit margin and b) a person downloading/sharing a copyrighted work (a movie, Windows, et al.) without any motives of making money?
Sure we can identify complementing definitions of profit (profit by obtaining access to more copyrighted works by sharing - the old "ratio ftp" strategy at work) 'til we turn blue, but c'mon for chrissakes, it's a world of difference (money = power and all that..).
Looks like file sharing will finally be erased once and for all
In case people don't understand sarcasm on the net, he was being sarcastic.
I mean, let's say Hatch outlaws file sharing...even say outlawing Bittorrent and things of that nature...will that change anything? The ONLY way to totally 100% stop piracy and file sharing over the Internet is to totally turn off the Internet. That's right, turn the entire thing off.
And trust me, it's only a matter of time before some idiot gets up there and proposes that.
And they're too busy with putting 500,000 dollar fines on radio people that may say "fuck" and having hearings on Baseball. I mean, what the FUCK are these idiots doing up there in Washington? Baseball?!?! WHO THE FUCK CARES! Tax dollars at work folks.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Unfortunately, we have only a two party system.
One local politician in the last election cycle told everybody that they could not be a good mormon and vote for a Democrat.
That leaves just lil' ol' Orrin the republican.
This was before the gay marriage bruhaha. Needless to say now, it's bleak if you are a Democrat running for major office in Utah.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Sure, this is OT, but it shows how OH thinks. Did anyone see the Lonely Planet program with Justine Shapiro that covered DC? She was given a guided tour of the Capitol by Orrin Hatch. At one point he said to her "You are in the center of the capital of the world". With LP not being an American publication, I'm interested to know if this comment was sensored/corrected for non-American viewers. Or did LP just allow the rest of the world to confirm their opinion of us?
hahahahaha, he's got the MPEG copyright flag turned OFF on those files.
I think this is partly due to a misunderstanding of capitalism among Americans. It looks like most Americans think capitalism == giving top priority to companies. Just like they think that communism == censorship and oppresion of people. They seem to equate the implementation of these ideologies in some countries to the actual theory itself. (and also some misunderstanding about these implementations, including thinking that things are more extreme than they actually are and some completely false beliefs)
1- With your CD, you can do whatever pleases you and are not as such restricted in the destination media (for example i can use my CDs to fill my computer, my iRiver and my car sound system)
2- You own your CD, i can lend my CDs to my friends, i can't lend my DRM-infected media files
Keep in mind that if music is to be treated like software, then your copy can only be played on one player at a time. If you loan the CD to a friend, you can't technically use the MP3 you made on your computer when the CD is lent out.
This culminates from a variety of court cases, but cheifly results from the ability to make an "archival copy", which the courts have affirmed.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"the compete lack of proven harm for the 'crime', the insane and inhuman penalties, with protecting a revenue stream a primary motive, the parallels are surprising."
/CDs you can face 4 years in jail and a $50,000.00 fine for each DVD or CD.
If you don't think those inhuman penalties are intended to strike fear and terror in the hearts of citizens, what do you think they are intended to do?
Now, I don't want to get into calling people terrorists at this point, I will restrict myself to commenting on what I think the results of the penalties are.
In my country recently, some "Copyright Control Coalition" (I don't actually remember what they called themselves) has begun putting ads in one of our national papers.
From memory, this gist of it is if you are selling or simply posess what are termed illegal DVDs
What do you think an ad like this is intended to do it not strike fear and terror into the hearts of the citizens?
Please note, they have made no actual effort to educate the public as to how this actually works. Like, can a person who went to a store in a major shopping center/mall and bought what they thought was a legitimate CD and now has it in their home, go to jail and have to pay $50,000.00 for having this CD in their home?
You see, if that is really the case, which is what I think the ad wants us to believe, I need to destroy all of my legitimate CDs as well as all of my possibly questionable ones that I bought in good faith. I just can't afford to run the risk.
Also, if these are the effects of the laws that the big boys have managed to have passed, no more money from my family is going to go to them. No movies in the theatre, no more buying CDs and DVDs, nothing. I don't know what I am going to do without books and magazines. Hey can I afford to take the risk of buying a newspaper? Is this a back door way to curtail the freedom of the press? (That's a joke.) I do notice that they only mention illegal CDs/DVDs and not books or other items which might be a violation of copyright.
They also make no effort to educate the public as to what makes a CD or a DVD illegal. From their name though, it must concern some sort of violation of copyrights. Would a CD with a lifted and non-cleared sample in a song released by a major label be considered an illegal CD and subject the purchaser to the same penalties?
Would a person convicted under such circumstances be able to sue the major label? If so, I can see a new money making industry for these once piratical islands. (The Bahamas: - a histroy of piracy, wrecking, running - guns, rum, drugs.) (That's a joke too.)
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
- weaning them from stupid TV programs
- teaching them to get their news from various sources and exercise a critical look on them (i.e. not relying solely on Fox News)
- rather than dismissing all proposals from politicians as "technocratic" or "too complicated", have those politicians actually explain what they are up to, take a role in public protests when necessary: reclaim a decent, vivid political life.
That list could contain many more items, of course...In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.