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RIAA Sets Their Sights on Russia
Conor Turton writes to tell us that the RIAA has set their sights on Russia for their newest push into anti-piracy. A recent bill was sponsored in the Senate to deny Russia's entrance into the WTO (among other things) if they did not take major action against piracy. From the press release: "The effective protection of American intellectual property has been sorely lacking in Russia. This resolution is significant because it expresses the will of the U.S. Congress that Russia must take effective action against those who would steal America's knowledge-intensive intellectual property-based goods and services. We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets."
I'm not sure how you read that into my post. I am stating a fact: whether we like it or not, our country makes a hell of a lot of money on intellectual property. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is, as the math texts say, an exercise left to the reader.
The countries that are not signatories to the Berne Convention do not generally have what I consider to be "good" governments, either. If I were to try to come up with a list of five countries in the world that I consider to have "good" governments (and this would be difficult), all of them happen to be signatories.
For reference, the latest list of non-signatories that I could find is: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen. I would not want to live in any of these countries, and the ability to pirate music to my heart's content would not make up for the other issues. Others may feel differently.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I just picked up a VAIO, and was reading the new license agreement. It now includes verbiage that SONY has the right (or a third party) to monitor the system. I have HIPAA covered data on my network, and can not allow anyone access to this data whatsoever, even if they are saying that they are looking for something else. Even a hint of a leak could cause a penalty to be triggered. I guess SONY has lost this sale. For anyone else, I would advise you ALL to look carefully at the license agreements, and think twice about SONY.
I was wondering if anyone knows how much money it costs to buy a piece of legislation. It is a well established fact that our elected officials are addicted to contributions, gifts, and other quid pro quo from special interest groups. I suspect it only costs around $5,000 to $10,000 to get a piece of legislation introduced.
If that is the case, we could start the Slashdot Political Action Committee and bury the RIAA/MPAA with some really interesting legislation. Just a thought.
That ephemeral, rather than concrete, goods are now being touted as Americas most valuable possessions is nothing short of depressing.
Why? You've heard the old saying "give a man a fish...?" Part of the point there is that the knowledge of fishing is more valuable than the actual fish, or the actual fishing is.
Similarly, consider the atomic bomb. What would happen if the US had had two of them bestowed upon us by an alien race, rather than made by scientists? The fact that we could at any time make more was the thing that really clinched the decision to end WWII.
If we export mostly ideas then it is quite possible that we've got more ideas than we have people to handle them, and need to export the work to make them happen. Don't get me wrong: there's certainly lots of laziness and of living off of the squalor of other parts of the world to blame for why we're doing all that exporting of ideas only. But that's not all of it.
Ideas can be precious and highly valuable things, and those who produce them are sometimes the most productive people in the world.
Of course, I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, but you're going to have to do more than make claims without backing them up with facts or even examples.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
One way China is ahead of the game is their artists / music industry have given up on CD sales revenue. The artist makes money, or tries to, by selling concert tickets and with marketing tie-ins. In India bootlegs are available the day they are released. It won't come as much of a suprise to \.ers that, as the US moves toward this model, it is corporate profits and support staff who seem to be taking the heat / losing the livelyhood.
As a career sideman, I feel no pain for the old industry passing (especially the lawyers), but the job of recording engineer is going the way of the hatmaker. Actually that analogy breaks down: The job of recording artist and recording engineer are being merged and will not pay very well. There used to be more work for painters, too.
OT: There's a bigger issue here about labor and specialization - the best singer I've ever knew (hits in the 60s) was taking an occasional plumbing job in the 80s and wasn't bitter: The way he put it was: $30 an hour. This while commanding $2-$4k for 20 - 40 oldies shows a year. I didn't quit playing during the 90s net boom and still work a lot now. I also stay buzzword compliant - this year: AJAX(ugh) and psych-folk(cool).
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I can understand not wanting to live in Afghanistan, or Ethiopia, or Yemen, but.. San Marino? What's wrong with *that* one?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I spent six weeks in Russia this summer. Pirated movies, software and music are indeed rampant throughout the country, certainly not just in the big cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg. Perhaps most interesting is just how accepted this is. It is in fact very difficult to find legitimate movies or music, the upscale video and software shops only sold pirated material.
As common place as piracy is in Russia, I imagine this would be impossible to enforce and likely just ignored.
First off lets go myth busting your arguments.
r egate/H04t02.html
1. IP the biggest export.
http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/industry/otea/usfth/agg
Fact, IP was the Number 4 export for the united states in 2004.
and at about 7.5% of our total exports, it wasn't aa huge a player as you made it out to be.
2. It's one of the reasons why we're one of the richest nations on the planet
BS, we're rich because a. america had vast untapped resources and still widely under utilized natural resource bases b. america stole virtually every piece of technology they could to 'build' their industrial base and c. no major wars rased any of our industrial complexs.
3. it's a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy.
Actually the ammount of profit made off 'ideas' has almost no correlation to qquality of life what so ever. there are a lot of important factors, but frankly ip centric societies (the UK) have managed to prosper with tight IP laws, and 'historically lax' IP nations as the US have also prospered... IP laws come in so late in the equasion that they can't really change a whole lot about an economy...
4. It's no coincidence that countries which don't pay much bother to the Berne Convention and other similar international agreements are by and large shitty places to live.
others called BS on this already, for 103 years the US refused to sign said convention. the entire decade 'of greed' occured before said convention was signed in the US.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Actually you bias is showing: gov is bad. Starve your govenment to death, and then live in a land run by corporate power. Shareholders don't care about human rights. Governments are the only form of "checks and ballances" strong enough to stand up to corporations. Kill governments, and you kill your "inalienable" rights.