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World Intellectual Property Day
Dotnaught writes "The Business Software Alliance wants everyone to know that today is World Intellectual Property Day, 'an initiative to educate young people about how intellectual property rights foster innovation, creativity and economic opportunity.' To mark the occasion, CopyNight, a monthly gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law, is hosting a get-together tonight in various cities throughout the U.S."
Hmmm....
WIPD (whipped).
Sounds about right.
Not even subtle.
Oh well.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
It was just recently reported that 6 of those cities events were cancelled by an injunction filed by national porn chain, Copy Night.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
CopyNight, a monthly gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law, is hosting a get-together tonight in various cities throughout the U.S.
Cool! Does that get-together include a CD/DVD swap session?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
has anyone here seen the online ads where they ask if you want to get back your old employer by reporting them to the BSA?
This guy is way out there
The BSA.... aren't they the ones that terrorize small businesses and threaten to audit their software licenses? (And without a glimmer of a search warrant, either.)
I'll take a stab at this...
GCC
BASH
GNU/HURD
Linux
Minix
Those are a few of the things which would not have been invented had it not been for copyright law and the restrictions surrounding the use and distribution of UNIX.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
I Celibrated by downloading some music and a couple movies.
*Cheers*
Amazing! This is almost exactly the opposite of Software Freedom Day!
Strange, I thought "CopyNight" referred to the legendary obscene things people do on the Xerox after returning drunk from the office Xmas party...
...
By signing up with allofmp3.com. Wish I had done it sooner, it's absolutely fantastic.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
World Intellectual Property Day Was My Idea!
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Let's celebrate!
There's so much to celebrate.
Laws that allow others to lock their ideas away so no one can use them.
Laws that allow organised price fixing.
Laws that allow people to own ideas that should belong to everyone. Everything down to your own DNA has some form of IP on it.
Rejoice world.
Gimme a break!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
We already have a World Cancer Day and a World AIDS day, why shouldn't we have a World Intellectual Property Day too? I'd like to give my support to all the victims of Intellectual Property and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.
Re: minix
I deliberately chose that example not because it's Free Software but it was still created in response to the restricted nature of the UNIX source code.
Andy needed something to base his class on, copyright law kept him from being able to use UNIX, so he wrote Minix. The license he distributed it under (which was a result of the needs of his publisher, if I remember right) is neither here nor there to the point I was making.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
I am a fan of IP as well. that last line of your post I take issue with. Every day patents expire, even software patents, however, here in the US copyrights have not expired in years, and it is quite likely no copyrights ever will.
I'd be surprised if he did beg to differ. Without copyright law, it would not have been necessary to re-create Unix and the Unix infrastruction (including the C compiler).
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
"We must continue our shared public-private efforts to deter piracy and promote intellectual property rights in every corner of the globe. Our children's ability to learn, create and innovate must be protected now and in the decades ahead."
A classic maneuver; stating two unrelated topics in the same paragraph deceiving lay readers into drawing nonexistent conclusions between them. This is especially prevalent with statistics, where correlations between two data sets are often shown (which do exist), but where any actual connection between the two is purely happenstance. For example: "After using product X for 2 weeks Rob's weight dropped 25 pounds." At first glance Rob's use of product X and his weight seem to be related, but their not. The real reason for his weight drop was he stopped having his hourly burrito during that time period.
- Piracy and children have nothing in common, and this man's an asshole for even implying such a connection exists.
P.S.: apologies for the very US-centric map which makes Toronto appear not to be on dry land - I'd welcome pointers to any usable (public domain or Creative Commons) maps that include Canada. - David
What a surprise, they don't want to pay for intellectual property either.
Interesting. Please share your definition of "rapid" with the rest of us.
Well I for one intend to celebrate by reposting this ....
A Bitter Protest Against Copyrights
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion ... or they said there is no
incentive to grow food, unless farmers
could rip up your garden ... most people would
see these as the awful values that they are.
But if they say that there is no incentive to
make beneficial or creative works without the
power to restrict what people copy (copyrights),
then all too many people just take it on
faith. They don't even question it, as if
incentive makes rights, as if society would fall
apart without them. But just as much of the
Renaissance happened without copyrights so
should the information age.
Calling copyrights "intellectual property" is intellectually dishonest. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from mutual respect and the fact that not everybody can posses something at the same time. The foundation of copyrights derives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. Copyrights are about control, censorship, and not a free market property. In fact, they cheapen property rights by treating things that have natural limits in supply such as food, shelter, and medicine like information that does not.
Worse, is how people who copy are slandered with names such as "thief" and "pirate", as if copying was akin to boarding a ship and murdering people. They are even accused of stealing food out of the mouths of starving artists. Yet these verbal assaults hide a cold and calculated lie, the one that says "copyrights benefit creative people". The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even barred or sued from sharing their own creations in public, while others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves. Copyrights not only cause them to be drowned out in a sea of hype, but do so deceptively.
However, these aren't the only problems related to copyrights. They are just a sample of many that are constantly blown off, glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to offer quality material, the failures of the market to offer competitively priced books for college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few. Their hypocritical pleas like, "how will we make money without copyrights?" is like a mobster asking "how will I make money with out victims to extort?"
The burdens of imposing copyrights might have been bearable a quarter century ago when the biggest issue was copy machines. But today in the information age there is no technical distinction between copyright content and free speech content. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate, there can be no "middle ground". Our society must make a choice: Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy will either have to intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and free expression will either have to be abridged or unabridged. Any institution that has the power to control one, must have the power to control all. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root!
Consider parallels to other periods of transition like the industrial revolution:
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was