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DMCA Abuse Widespread
Doc Ruby writes "Via TechDirt, the news that despite the intent of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's very popular to abuse the law by using it merely to compete, without legal basis: 'Supporters of the DMCA claim that only an occasional improper takedown notice gets through. Some new research suggests otherwise. Over 30% of DMCA takedown notices have been deemed improper and potentially illegal.'"
Their legal threats page is a hoot.
On a more serious note, laws like the DMCA that put (arguably) too much power at the hands of copyright holders were always going to be susceptible to abuse. Remaining on the subject of torrent search engines, lokitorrent.com pulled its site down after threats from the MPAA who cited the DMCA, without even going to court. (They later went to court, where it was ruled that the domain owner release all visitor data to the MPAA.) With power like that, where's the incentive not to abuse it?
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
- George Orwell
I like it. Maybe it's been around for a while, but I like the idea better than "Generic man being gagged." So Kudos to whoever made the new YRO icon.
Shocked and dismayed.
cf: DMCA, Patriot Act, Prevention of Terrorism Act (UK), Enabling Act (Weimar Germany)...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Isnt the DMCA also used by porn reseller sites to tell you that you need to own the original DVD before you can download it from them in their disclaimer?
:P
It's never enforced, is it?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I'm afraid it's just much easier to prosecute people who do DMCAish things (facilitate infringment via mechanism stripping) than it is to prosecute people who infringe on a thing by thing basis. I mean, there are hundreds of millions who do the latter, and they're hard to find. Whereas people who do the former usually brag about their successes.
That being said, i think the DMCA sucks and puts in geoprady the legality of all sorts of differnt types of security research while not doing much to protect people's copyrights at all. At this point i feel that some people infringe (when they could just as easily buy) because they feel some kind of injustice has been done upon them via the record industry's tactics.
SARCASM ON: From the rules and regulations of the DMCA user group (Not publicly accessible, so this will cause a take down notice): :SARCASM OFF
Article 2b:
Wrongful notices.
An notice is considered wrongful if the party who send the notice is sued for this notice, and the highest court willing to hear the case decides that the notice has been send wrongful.
Article 2c:
Allowed wrongful notice percentage.
If not more than 60% of the notices gets rejected by a court, the sending of these notices will be considered as an occasional mistake due to the murky nature of the person or company who got the notice initially.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The real disease is the fact that the USA's elected lawmakers are, in many if not most cases, susceptible to pressure and/or bribery by the industry. This is how many of these asinine laws originated.
Unlimited legal campaign contributions, indeed!
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
What I find most disturbing about that statement is that it implies that something a bit less than 70% of DMCA takedown notices are not improper and not illegal. That is a law that is far over-reaching, draconian, and designed for abuse. I guess that's what happens when one lives in the good 'old U.C.A (United Corporations of America).
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The ESA (Entertainment Software Association), a body representing many software companies, sent a threatening letter to Home of the Underdogs a few years ago, demanding that they cease the sale of all copyright materials from their website. They state to be standing behind the DMCA.
...
IDSA is providing this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and 17 USC =A7 512 (c) to make you aware of material on your network or system that infringes the exclusive copyright rights of one or more IDSA members.
IDSA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at theunderdogs.org infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members by offering for illegal sale one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products protected by copyright...
Anyone who has seen this website knows that they do not sell games at all and never have. They provide abandonware downloads - games that have been out of print and not for sale for many years - in the interest of the preservation of culture.
Just another example of clueless bullies hiding behind the DMCA, seemingly for financial gain, but for properties not even for sale! Read the full letter and the webmaster's commentary for full details. http://www.the-underdogs.org/partdeux.php
With the fall of the Canadian Liberal government coming on Monday, Canada will be safe from Bil C-60 the Copyright Act amendment until at least the early Spring. This gives our American oppressed neighbours time to find a job north of the 49th, and spend time backing up their "content protected" CD collection to hard drive, or iPod without fear of abuse from the local constabulary.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I mean, does anyone here really think that if a law puts that much power into the hands of an organized business cartel, that it's NOT going to be abused? Did anyone here NOT see this coming? Frankly, with a law as broad and Monopoly empowering as the DMCA, it was only a matter of time. And not a very long amount of time either.
Now, keep in mind, this is coming from a registered N.Y. State Conservative Party member, who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, and voted for W. TWICE.
The amount of Individual Freedoms this law steals from people is abhorrent. It offends every Freedom loving, Patriotic bone in my body. Unfortunately, Most people don't see this as a priority. Like many of our laws, it's a "Creeping Freedom Stealer". Much like the old story of the frog in the frying pan, most people won't notice it taking thier Freedom until it's too late.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The DMCA really is a good thing.
Congress passed the DMCA a long while back (a few years now, IIRC). It's obviously withstood the test of time; if there was something illegal about it, the Supreme Court would have already overturned it. So, I don't see where anyone can complain. Obviously the only people who have problems with it are the software/movie pirates, and piracy is bad, right?
We should all just try to get along with the DMCA instead of constantly badmouthing it. It's obviously a valuable and appropriate used piece of legislation.
At least that's what they tout.
And now they are in power, they want a more and more powerful government in all areas - the only thing they are willing to downsize are social programs.
Don't get me wrong, the Democrats suck too.
George Washington was right when he told the American people to avoid a two party system at all costs.
Would these two activities be considered DMCA abuses?
1. A pirated small name Internet software that phones home.
2. Distributing non-broadcast TV shows (example: Stargate Atlantis; BayTSP and MGM).
However, let's put things in perspective. What is *really* the bigger problem right now - a few (even a few thousand), bad yes, abuses of the DMCA or the completely out of control wanton disregard for copyright law that exists in many internet corners? The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
I don't get you US consumers. What can you do to resist? Slashdot is great for bitching and whining but other than awareness-of does little to correct the issues. I don't need to yet in my country (Canada) but you guys from my point-of-view need to engage in some armed insurrection. Not physical arms of course, somebody might get hurt. Instead how about organizing and really using the first box in the defense of liberty, the soap box?
Here's the quote about boxes if I remember it right:
There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.
Shh.
I've read most of it, and it's definately not as scary as US copyright increases, in first reading it states: 31.1 (1) A person who, in providing services related to the operation of the Internet or other digital network, provides any means for the telecommunication of a work or other subject-matter or a reproduction of it through that network does not, solely by reason of providing those means, infringe copyright in that work or other subject-matter. (2) A person referred to in subsection (1) who performs any other acts related to the telecommunication that render it more efficient, including the caching of a reproduction of the work or other subject-matter, does not, by virtue of those acts alone, infringe copyright in the work or other subject-matter. [http://www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/house/ bills/government/C-60/C-60_1/C-60-4E.html%5D
This story just served to remind me how pointless it is to try and enforce law on the internet.
Perhaps the various copyright enforcement agencies would do better if they changed themselves into education agencies.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that piracy kills the product being pirated. Most people like the own the "genuine" article too though (so you make your money in the long run).
Oh hell... this is a big old can of worms. They invent an anarchic network topology (the internet) that is self sustaining and deliberately uncontrollable - then they try to control it.
How stupid is that.
Wellybog
http://www.wellybog.com
ChillingEffects.org keeps a library of submitted DMCA takedown notices.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Anything but Gigli 2!
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
There is a lot of uh... loosely written stuff there that can be interpreted by whatever billion dollar budget company sees fit. I think they just wrote the same stuff over and over again using different synonyms to make it look long, while in fact it's just saying, "HEY! Use us however you want *insert a Captain Plan... err Pollution the power is your's*!
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
But the 30% figure is meaningless. First, it appears to be a purely subjective determination. It's not as if 30% of the notices were determined to be served in violation of the DMCA by yhe courts.
And second, and MUCH worse, is where the notices were obtained. "900 notices collected by the Chilling Effects project."
The sample is NOT an average sample thus the results are flawed. Of course the notices submitted to the Chilling Effect project are going to be egregious. Why else would anyone submit them?! The fact that only 30% were determined to have been served in violation of the DMCA seems pretty good considering the source.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I heard that someone actually had the audacity to put a small piece of tape on the outer edge of one of those DRM'ed Sony CD's to disable the copy protection. What brazen defiance of the DMCA! I'm waiting for the lauch of the ??AA's program of lawsuits to put such vile criminals behind bars where they belong!
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I demand my unfair share, right now or I'm going back to voting ethically and intelligently.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
When it comes to the legal 'industry' they are IN it.. Not just being bribed.
Thats the beauty of being an attorney, the more stupid laws like this, the more money to go around.
And remember, you get paid even if you lose.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If a weak man foolishly walks into an alley in a bad part of town and gets mugged, he is foolish, true. But that does not remove the blame from the mugger.
d =13964842
If a woman wears provocative clothing in a bad part of town late at night and gets raped, maybe she was foolish for attracting attention, but she is not to blame for the rape. The rapist is.
If you leave your home unlocked and you get robbed, you will probably feel angry at yourself for leaving the house unlocked. The blame for the robbery, however, is purely the robber's.
If the American electorate is overly susceptible to media influences, call them gullible. That does not make the shark-like actions of the corporations any more acceptable. Even using the metaphor of a shark (they shouldn't be blamed; it's in their nature) is a better reason to take precautions against them, not a worse one.
If you're still reading this, I had a previous discussion on slashdot where we talked about some of this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167485&ci
The recent amendment to the Texas Constitution further disenfranchises gays and lesbians by denying the right to marry or have legally recognized relationships on the same level as marriage. I'm not trolling; this will likely be used against surviving gay partners by other relatives in order to deprive them of inheritance rights, and used against partners trying to make medical decisions for incapacitated spouses, and used to dismiss adoptive parental rights of surviving partners, etc.
We've been told the law would never be enforced that way, but we know it's a lie. These sorts of things were already happening, but now there's a stronger legal basis for the discrimination.
Attacking the DMCA is like attacking the leaves of a vine, and not the root of it. No matter how hard you pluck off those leaves, they will always grow back in some other form untill you attack the root.
The root of the problem here is societies own belief in copyrights. The DMCA is simply taking it to it's logical conclusion, along with the continuious extensions, and all the other abuses associated with copyright. People need to stop looking at copyrights as ever being a benefit, but rather as a burdon that was bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issue was copy machines and copyrights only lasted a few years. Not anymore. The burden copyrights require is too much to bear in the information age. Contrary to the hype, copyrights don't help many artists, and are anti free market. They are moral sewage that has robbed our culture and given it to hollywood, and they make it so that software companies who would otherwise strive to serve us - strive to controll us. The copyright system needs to die and take it's place on the trash heap of history.
Perhaps the various copyright enforcement agencies would do better if they changed themselves into education agencies.
They would never do that, because educated people would learn that just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor force and the ugly death of the slavery system, the information age is forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the copyright system ... and would realise those arguments about "property" rights are completely bogus.
An educated peoson would realise that the copyright system is directly responsible for Hollywood stealing away American culture. They would realise that it has made it so that software companies strive to controll us rather than serve us. They would realise how the copyright system is directly responsible for students being exploited by publishers on a massive scale. They would realise that the copyright system doesn't help but the tiniest fraction of creators, and that copyrights are antifree market - and lock out more opportunities than they promote.
No, it is still infringement to have a copyrighted game on the web. Those notices are correct.
The problem is that copyright lasts far too long, not that they are being told to take down copyright games. It should be that those downloads would be legal, even if the company was trying to sell them retail.
A) terrorist
B) evildoer
C) liberal
D) anti-American
E) activist
F) heathen
Posting anonymously since I'm a third year law student currently looking for a job :)
The solution to this is actually pretty straightforward; Report the attorney to their state bar association for a ethics breach. In sending out as takedown notice the signing attorney needs to sign the statement stating that there is a good faith belief that there is copyrighted content on the website. If it's patently obvious that there isn't such work then the signed statement is false. Realize that while attorneys represent their clients they are required to make a good faith effort to make sure that any statements they make to the court or on legal documents aren't false. Most likely one or two complaints won't do much, but a flood again an individual attorney might get them sanctioned.
The difference is that as long as corporations are acting within the law and take advantage of laws, or even get laws created - even if these actions are immoral - they have done nothing illegal. The mandate of a corporation is to maximise return for shareholders. If they can get a law passed that forces every household to give them $100 every year, then so be it.
...
I accept that what they are doing is legal. I do. Really. The problem is that it is bad for us (people), and they (corporations) get to decide what is legal. I am not arguing that we sue them, I am arguing that we try to change the ground rules.
With enough pressure they will forget the campaign contributions
Well, no. "Enough pressure" is an impractical goal, because
politicians live and die by the voters ballot
but those ballots are largely driven by campaign spending and
money they can get anywhere.
but the most comes from coporate spending.
There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.
I think "they" got hold of the same list, and their response plan went something like this:
-- MarkusQ
The bad people usually sign up first, and pay the most.
If you guys in the USA don't like it (and I don't think you should), do something. Write to your congressmen and senators. Tell them that the DMCA does lots of harm to your country.
It might not help, but it's a beginning.
...under powers entrusted to me under Section 47, Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number 438476, that Mr Buttle, Archibald, residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Recording Industry Association of America with certain enquiries, the nature of which are ascertained as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that he is liable to certain obligations as specified in Council Order 173497, including financial restitutions which may or may not be incurred if Information Retrieval procedures beyond those incorporated in Article 7 subsections 8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit information leading to permanent arrest. This is your receipt for your husband...thank you. And this is my receipt, for your receipt.
A service provider must satisfy the following critical elements in order to qualify for the "safe harbor" or protection from liability provided by subsection 512(a) (note that subsection 512(k)(1)(A) defines "service provider" as used in subsection 512(a)):
(e) The service provider must not modify the communication selected by the Internet user [512(a)(5)];
so, if you "modify" the email to put "X-Spam" tags in it, you no longer qualify for the "safe harbor" provisions.
in fact, if you put ANY headers with the message, then the communication is "modified".
I fall in those 30% for sure, the hosting companies when recieving DMCA notice will not bother to validate it and will not bother to hear a counter argument in your defence, its easier for them just to unplug your server, even though the law states that they have to allow for a site owner to defend against the take down notice.
Especialy if the content of the site is somewhat questionable and the company issuing the take down notice is big (like microsucks)
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
I've never seen an apropriate DMCA notice, but in the 2004 election, I took out every web site that belonged to a Texas politicianin the other party - one week before the election. I'll do it again in 2006. I plan to take them out 2 months before the election, and file suits to stop them from coming back up.
Life is good, politicians are helpless, and lawyers are too slow to do anything.
God bless Texas!
Andy Out!
Interestingly, if you take a fascist-like view that corporations and governments go hand in hand with one another (i.e. are similar types of entities), and apply libertarian principles of keeping governments to a minimum, then you get the conclusion that not only do the governments have to go, but so do the corporations. And that solves your problem right there.
Libertarianism only makes sense with its proclaimed ideas if it treats corporations that same as governments, and holds both to the same set of standards. This, to me, means that both should be kept as minimal as possible, by holding governments to the same standards of fiscal responsibility that shareholders hold their corporations, and holding corporations to the same standards of social responsibility that we hold governments. There shouldn't be a distinction made between the two because they ARE fundamentally the same - groups of people trying to combine their power to get their way, by manipulating interpersonal and economic interactions however they can get away with it. If we have a problem with one doing one thing, then we should have a problem with the other doing it too.
The only (and very important!) difference between this view and fascism is that fascists hold that neither corporations nor governments should have to be responsible to anyone but themselves, while this view holds that both should be (both socially and fiscally) responsible to everybody they interact with.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What fools these DMCA are. This thing has been around for about 7 years and still the inmates are running the asylum. If anything, at this point the nitpicking parts of the DMCA should just be dropped as they are more of a waste of taxpayer money. We have better things to spend our money on than hidden rootkits, lawyers who sue 12 year olds, and greed corporations who can't get it through their head that their music sucks and that pirates aren't stealing stuff that sucks.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The view that I take on this is what you might call "Populist Libertarianism".
On the traditional political-spectrum chart as taught in political science classes, you have two axis - one of economic freedom and one of interpersonal freedom. Turning the chart on its corner, the "left" is liberalism, high interpersonal and low economic freedom, culminating in a purely socialist direct democracy; on the "right" is conservativism, high economic freedom and low interpersonal freedom, culminating in a purely capitalist complete dictatorship. This is the normal left/right spectrum we usually hear about, and both extreme ends of it have obvious problems with them.
On the "top" is libertarianism, more of all freedoms (as nobody can tell anybody else what do do), culminating in anarchy; on the "bottom" is populism, less of all freedoms (as everybody has some control over what other people do), culminating in tyranny.
When I speak of "Populist Libertarian" I'm basically saying "moderate", but in a way most people don't think of it. People think of moderates in terms of the left/right schism but completely ignore that while we're maintaining some equilibrium between the left and the right, we're sliding gradually toward tyranny on both sides. Tyrannical liberalism becomes Stalin's communism, and tyrannical conservatism becomes Mussolini's fascism. The libertarians have a good point that we need to move away from such tyranny, but as you point out if you go too far in that direction you wind up in anarchy, which has just as many problems of an entirely different sort.
The solution I envision is a system which acknowledges that factions and groups will exist, and allows them to exist, and allows them to form larger groups of groups, and so on and so forth, but applies to every group or meta-group the exact same set of standards as are applied to individual people. The same rules that properly govern interaction between groups of people should apply equally well to groups of groups, and so on. The same kind of standards which apply to a parent running a household should apply to a president running a country, and vice versa. If they don't, there's a problem somewhere in there - either you're governing your household or your country wrong.
As for what exactly those common rules are, I believe in what are more or less the libertarian interpersonal ideals (you can do whatever you want, except do unto others what they don't want) with semi-socialist economic ideals - basically free-market capitalism overlaid with a 50% redistribution of wealth within the group, i.e. half of what anybody brings in is divided up evenly amongst the group. The specific way I encapsulate this is with two pairs of freedoms/responsibilities:
- the freedom of liberty (to do what you want) and the responsibility to respect the liberty of others
- the freedom of security (not to be done unto as you don't want) and the responsibility to respect the security of others.
- the freedom of public property (you can do what you want with anything that's not owned by someone else) and the responsibility to respect public property (not to depreciate its value, which also encompasses environmentalism)
- the freedom of private property (you can control the things you create or acquire) and the responsibility to respect private property (i.e. no theft or vandalism).
The first and third of these are the usual emphasis of liberals, while the second and fourth are the usual emphasis of conservatives. I think they're all equally important.
As to who actually enforces these laws, i.e. who "the government" is, each group has a directly elected triad of leaders, each tasked with a different area of responsibility. The Councillor's job is to oversee the internal working of this group, applying the rules to interactions between the people (or sub-groups, if this is a meta-group) within this group. The Governor's job is to oversee the interaction between this groups and other groups of the same level and act as a
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The legislator clearly left the enforcement in the hands of the companies in this case. It is a bad law, but you will need a revolution to get it taken down. There is no real democratic proces in place anymore to stop companies requesting and getting this kind of law. Early American governments and presidents are turning in their graves in shame for this kind of actions.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
As long as the abortion issue trumps everything else, all manner of obnoxious issues are being pushed through without consequences. The abortion issue is the glue that makes small time christians vote for large immoral corporate policies.
We have 3 dem parties and 4 rep parties.
1 left wing loonie (basically hate america)
2 soft left (were great in the 50's but haven't adapted)
3 centrist left (put them with 4's and we'd have a decent government)
---
4 libertarian conservatives (really want small gov so voters won't elect lg nmbers)
5 corporate conservatives (money behind everything - currently making out like bandits)
6 religious conservatives (abortion, gay marriage, sneaking religion into school/etc.)
7 right wing loonies (basically fascists/insane)
If "6" drops out, the conservatives can't win power. What keeps "6" so focused is abortion. As long as conservatives have power and "6" only cares about those 3 issues (and really #1) then the "5"'s (corp conservatives) are getting any thing they want passed. In some cases (like where IP is involved) they have the votes of the "2" & "3" liberals as well (Disney protection act- indefinate copyright).
---
At this point the conservatives have jerrymandered my district in texas so strongly that my vote on any issue doesn't matter. Almost every vote is 70/30. Doesn't matter if I vote conservative OR liberal- my vote is meaningless. I've had -1- vote matter in the last decade- through out the incumbant by 31 votes (I was #31 I guess). Otherwise, no vote has mattered- all lopsided one way or the other.
---
My current theory is- if the right "wins" on the abortion issue, the "6"'s will lose a lot of their fire and focus.
Once that happens then MAYBE we can start looking at all the things the corporations snuck through while no one was watching the door.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I hate anything that gets in the way of my inalienable right to steal whatever I want. Don't the legislators understand that "I wasn't going to pay for it anyway", "I wanted to try it first", "I am promoting the use of their product"? It is my constitutional right to steal anything in a digital format because it is *easy* and *widespread*. How dare anyone try to stop me from exercising my rights. I should have the right to take whatever I want from a store too without video cameras and security breathing down my neck, but that's another story.
Here's how it works. Johnny Inthecloset downloads a few copyrighted pictures and movies of two dudes getting freaky over a P2P network. Gay porn producer then sends out a DMCA extortion letter to Johnny threatening to sue him if he doesn't settle. Of course, since Johnny would rather not have the world know about his particular inclination, he ponies up. Blackmail. Pure and simple. Of course, things may have changed since the RIAA was told they couldn't file the blanket lawsuits, but I'm sure they've found other avenues by now. If nothing else, the online porn purveyors are a clever lot.
Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it:
Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.
The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.
Posting AC because this can be traced back to my company.
:(
I have been ordered now about 5 times to remove posts made on a certain website that HOTLINKED to images on another server. These images were not in any way shape or form stored on one of the servers I run, but rather were just linked from there. Our hosting company forwarded us the DMCA takedown request, and gave us a link to how to generate a PDF response (no legal response seemed possible from what I could see). I informed our hosting company of this, and we were forced to comply, as, otherwise they would unplug our server.
But it was amazing, we were asked to remove posts that contained ONLY a LINK - not the actual content!
I have now been ordered to comply to each similar request by my employer.
I was just thinking about your comment, how this sort of resembles feudalism in a way, and it got me thinking. This is going to be a bit of a long tangent at first but it'll come back around in the end.
I'm writing a book about philosophy - a book on everything really, the politics I've been describing here are in there too - and in a portion of it I write a bit about religion. My final view on religion, as in deities and piety, gods and the worship of them, I call 'naturalist', as I believe that nature - not just like trees and the earth and all that, but the infinite sum total of the entire natural universe - is the only thing that meets the usual "omni" criteria of "God", and thus, proper piety (worship) is to act in accordance with nature, which is what most of the rest of the book is about (both what "God" is, and how you should "worship"; i.e. stuff about reality and morality, physics and ethics).
But after I come to that conclusion I've got this little bit about how this view fits in with "normal" types of religions, so I've got a little overview of religious classifications. It seems societies historically start out polytheist, with the notion that there are some things out there which are gods, and these gods are more or less just extremely powerful people with different wants and opinions and so on, who can be appeased in the same way a powerful person could, and that is how you worship these gods.
From there, people seem to split into two different divergences from this - either they go Monotheist and say No, there aren't a bunch of things out there that are gods, there is only ONE thing out there which is a God, and He has a specific plan and rules and these are absolute, and so the way to worship Him is to follow that plan and make sure that others also follow that plan. This kind of attitude tends to lead to crusades and holy wars and religious bigotry in its extremes.
Alternately, people go Animist and say No, there aren't just a couple of things out there that are gods, ALL things are gods, you and I and the rocks and the trees and animals, all things are gods. The way of worship associated with this is thus to respect all things and diminish yourself ('deflate your ego' so to speak), because you're really nothing more important than anything else. The problem with this is that taken to the extreme people wind up meditating themselves to death, and some such traditions even emphasize this as a goal, to become nothing and dissolve and return to the earth.
The view I described earlier encompasses BOTH of these opposite divergences from polytheism, both monotheism and animism. Yes there is only one god, and yes all things are that god. In effect it's atheist and pantheist at once - no particular thing is a god, but everything all together is god. The way of worship for this involves both following the one true way of the universe and encouraging others to do the same, but it also involves self-diminishment because you can't be certain that what you think is the true way really is, you're just going with your present best guess, so you've got to by considerate of the differences you encounter (both in the sense of being nice to people with differences from you, and actually consider their opinion, as you might learn something from it).
In effect, the scale of monotheist-polytheist-animist is shown not to be a linear scale at all but a loop, and the culmination points of both directions on the scale wrap around and converge at one point on the other side of the loop. This all relates to your comment about feudalism because I just realized there's striking parallels in types of government, just like these types of religion, which makes sense as both are really different types of dogma, declarations of what must be, one claiming to be supernatural in origin and the other just "because we said so".
Cultures seem to start out feudally, by which I mean there are a number of people who are rulers, kings or chieftains or what have you, the people follow and appease the
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
sad nobody recognized a nice brazil reference
Man, you really need that seminar!