Slashdot Mirror
Pirates, Web 2.0, and Hundred Dollar Laptop
Update on the One Laptop per Child Project. dominique_cimafranca writes "Ethan Zuckerman gives a report on his visit to the headquarters of the One Laptop per Child project. Some details on practical design considerations such as the hinge, the rabbit ears, and why the hand crank was ultimately left out (apparently, Kofi Annan broke the crank on a prototype). Several pictures, and a look at the motherboard of the OLPC laptop."
TOR Calls Out Torvalds, Stallman on Web 2.0. theodp writes "In an unusual defense of partner CMP's trademarking of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly points a finger at Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in his rebuttal posts. TOR also says the blogger who posted the O'Reilly-approved cease-and-desist letter from CMP 'owes us an apology for the way he responded' (he got one)."
Fallout from The Pirate Bay Raid. Tyler Too writes "The Swedish national police website has been taken offline by a denial of service attack which started Thursday night. That's not the only fallout from the raid on The Pirate Bay: there's a demonstration planned in Stockholm on Saturday."
U.S. Government Ordered The Pirate Bay Shutdown? mkro writes "According to the Swedish government sponsored tv channel SVT, U.S. government officials -- after being approached by the MPAA -- requested the Swedish justice department to take down The Pirate Bay. According to the story, the Swedish justice department asked police and prosecution to act, but when they explained the laws are too vague, they turned directly to the state attorney and the chief of the national police force."
check out wednesday night on the weekly graph
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
If you're going to abbreviate things like that, make sure they don't abbreviate to actual technologies.
It only took a second or two for me to figure out you weren't talking about EFF, but it was still annoying.
If you haven't foed me yet, what are you waiting for?
...and get to puppetteer your own US foreign policy today!
MPAA: get Heathrow drug dogs sniffing DVDs!
RIAA: get Swedish police shutting down torrents!
GNAA: get chocolate buttsecks!
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Seems the DDoS has stopped and it hasn't been slashdotted yet, see while you can!
http://www.polisen.se/
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
And the guy's writing the article for IEEE Spectrum. Good luck in your next job.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
TOR Calls Out Torvalds, Stallman on Web 2.0. theodp writes "In an unusual defense of partner CMP's trademarking of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly points a finger at Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in his rebuttal posts. TOR also says the blogger who posted the O'Reilly-approved cease-and-desist letter from CMP 'owes us an apology for the way he responded' (he got one)."
If one reads O'Reilly's post, the entire endeavor undertaken in the post is to explain how USUAL the cease and desist letter that was issued is when defending a trademark. And then he cites Torvolds and other as examples of other people who have trademarks they wish to defend. There's no finger pointing going on, nor is there any oddity in his defense. Which again, is the whole point of O'Reilly's discussion. This entire thing has been blown way out of proportion, and i'm amazed that someone can read O'Reilly's piece and then go ahead and incorrectly convey the content.
What irony.
There are lives at stake here!
I sincerely hope that other governmental bodies of the world come to realize that the political influence of the U.S. is simply poison to them. They threaten every democratic society they influence with their agenda. I am increasingly ashamed, embarassed and angered by the tactics used by our government. While I believe it would be painful or maybe just disruptive, but I think that, for starters, the US should be excommunicated from the U.N. and N.A.T.O. alliances for their behavior. Talk about your "monopoly abuse" cases...
It's time other nations started to shun the US even more than they already do. Perhaps then some sort of balance could come from this. The next bout of elections will not come soon enough but even then I'm unsure of how much damage will be reversed.
The fallout from the Pirate Bay seizure is that the minister of justice (Thomas Bodstrom) has been accused of ordering the police to take action after pressure from the US government. Bodstrom, who is the initiator of the EU data retention directive, IP spoofing on Swedish main nodes, extended bugging laws etc., and also known as a proponent of a totalitarian big brother society, has been requested for constitutional hearings.
Pirate Bay will reappear in Ukraine, Russia, The Netherlands and three other countries. People have been very generous with equipment and hosting as soon as they heard it was the Pirate Bay folks asking for assistance.
The Swedish Police site, www.polisen.se, was taken out for a day with a sustained DoS attack. An investigation has been started.
The public is in favor of the Pirate Bay in numbers like 90-10 or so, and most are extremely critical of the action against the Pirate Bay, especially since the police used 50 police officers to seize two computer nerds and their legal representative. A whole slew of innocent operators were also having their machinery seized, in an unconstitutional manner.
The action may have a real political effect, come the September elections.
Since TOR feels that this is a good way to spend the money that we send him when we buy his books the answer is easy.
Stop buying ORA books - just download them from any p2p net on the planet.
Well?! Where is it? :)
The Ombudsman of Justice has decided to launch an investigation to determine if there were any wrongdoings in the raid, including whether the swedish government pressured the police to take action.
And that's how these things should be handled. Tim O'Reilly doesn't deserve an apology. The people with the fulltime lawyers need to learn that they can't send out threats and expect that mistakes are not made public. These actions have a tremendous chilling effect. Therefore any abuse must be brought to light. I can't believe Mr. O'Reilly thinks he deserves confidentiality after his lawyers sent an unjustified letter that could very well kill another man's business.
Days of the US hegemony are numbered. The writing is on the wall. At the moment soverign states pay lip service but when the Euro shift comes and the dollar tanks US arrogance is going to be left screaming at the skies. Don't be ashamed of your govenment, do something about it. The USA was once a bastion of liberty and freethought, it's not too late to save your nations reputation from the ugly minority that weild disproportionate power.
The Swedish national police website has been taken offline by a denial of service attack which started Thursday night.
Because nothing increases support for your cause like DoSing a police website...
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I can't be the only one who first read that as TOR Publishing. I almost had a heart attack. I mean, I can deal with boycotting eBay, MPAA, RIAA, for their IP idiocy, but TOR? Do not play so cruelly with my fragile nerdy heart.
Seriously, I have never heard any one abbreviate Tim O'Reilly TOR.
I was pleasantly surprised to see GNOME running on that thing...it looks like they'll really be able to pull off what they want to do even with the laptop's limited hardware capabilities. It's amazing how much effort Negroponte is putting into thinking about the design...he's even correlating colors to emotions that they invoke...geez. He and his team are doing a good job, they've managed to create a laptop that looks much more attractive than the crap companies like Dell spew out, no wonder people want to buy their own.
They threaten every democratic society they influence with their agenda.
Because the concepts of intellectual property and copyright were invented by the US, and the only people who benefit from those concepts are Americans (it's funny that you are actually implying that Americans are the only ones who produce decent intellectual property).
I think that, for starters, the US should be excommunicated from the U.N. and N.A.T.O. alliances for their behavior.
The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's expenses, and they get what in return? I don't think they'd mind all that much. As for NATO, the US provides almost all the logistical support for most NATO missions; it would be quite funny to see NATO try to operate without the US. Considering how and why NATO was formed, it would also be quite humorous to see the US kicked out of that one.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I'm not exactly sure what the pirate bay is but... you won't bother to find out and you won't let it stop you posting.
Do I need to be on Internet2 to use sites that are part of Web 2.0 or is it backwards compatible?
The notion that you would rather kick the US out of the UN first, and not a country like say Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar or China really says something about the level of "insightfulness" on slashdot.
I realize there's a lot of US haters on this site, but this comment rated "insightful" really sums up the lunacy here.
Not that the US is perfect, but it is far better anybody here would like to give credit for. It's really sad too that these hateful comments are coming from self-hating Americans.
TOR : I apologize to IT@Cork for the organizational failure that led to them getting a legal letter rather than a simple email query or phone call.
Wow.
"Gee, buddy, sorry my butler let the dogs chew you a new one, but no hard feelings, right? Hey, here's a twenty for ostomy bags - Let's call it even, 'kay?"
Once you set the lawyers on someone, an "apology" doesn't cut it, Tim.
You AT LEAST owe him a beer. Quite possibly a hooker.
And requesting an apology in return? Poor form indeed!
"So, perhaps now that I've graciously extended a plastic olive branch, you should apologize for trespassing on my carefully manicured lawn in the first place, dontchathink?"
No, Tim, we don't. Rafferty drew attention to some asshole (ie, you) TRADEMARKING yet another already-ubiquitous term. And you find that a tad inconvenient? Not even remotely cool.
And then, trying to shift the blame for your arrogance to Linus and RMS? You have GOT to mean that as a joke, man! Would you also try to blame Mother Theresa for the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Un-frickin'-believable.
"Our homepage had to handle 500,000 visits per second and it's obviously not going to handle that. It's sort of like 10,000 people calling the same phone switch at once." ahahahaha you better get used to it you punk ass bustas :)
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
It might also be worth to mention that by Swedish law it is highly illegal for a politician in the government to give orders to the police or other institution in specific matters such as this. It is called "ministerstyre" (minister's ruling?), and the law is in place as a means to stop corruption.
Dang-it... with the pirate bay shutdown, global warming is sure to pick up speed now.
I am d3matt
Shun the government not the people. Please do not lump everyone with the idiot gasbags that currently run it. Only lump the idiot gasbags with the idiot lemmings who still support them. There are some of us who're trying to change things.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
As a Brit, I vote no to that. We've stuck by the united states through thick and thin. For stupid decision after stupid decision, we've had your back. As a result, the rest of Europe hates us. If the united states were removed from the UN and NATO, well, you might as well just hand our asses to the french and germans on a plate.
So instead of cutting out on us, why don't you just elect a president that doesn't suck next time, 'kay?
Oh no... it's the future.
A US interest has acted abroad previously. This Wikipedia article details the war that Scientology waged against anon.penet.fi.
From the article
In September 1996, an anonymous user posted the confidential writings of the Church of Scientology through the Penet remailer. The Church once again demanded that Julf turn over the identity of one of its users, claiming that the poster had infringed the Church's copyright on the confidential material. The Church was successful in finding the originating e-mail address of the posting before Penet remailed it, but it turned out to be another anonymous remailer: the alpha.c2.org nymserver, a more advanced and more secure remailer which didn't keep a mapping of e-mail addresses that could be subpoenad.
Facing multiple criticism and attacks, and unable to guarantee the anonymity of Penet users, Julf shut down the remailer in September of 1996.
Truly a chilling possibility.
The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's expenses, and they get what in return?
Supposed to, sure. But they don't pay their bills, do they? The USA is currently hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears.
And for wha it's worth, the point of the United Nations is not to allow countries like the USA to buy influence. It's to prevent war. Of course, it can't do its job very well if one of its most powerful members stops paying their bills, ignores their rulings and invades other countries. But go ahead and blame the UN for failing to stop the USA, since that is what the USA is supposed to be "buying" - prevention of war.
Did you intentionally miss the posters point?
The fact is the US pressured another government to take down a site that was LEGAL in the country it was in.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Copyright as we know it was invented in England, but has existed in many other countries, like China, throughout history.
Let me requote from another thread (Thomas Jefferson):
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance."
to make any funny comments about this being in the yro category without being modded down. Besides, Iwouldn't what to say anyway. Good night folks. Catch ya en la mañana.
What?
No, it's interpreted as gormlessness, because we visited your contentless blog to see if you were simply having an off day.
jkfdjg lkgjfdgl jjdflkgjdlkfj glfdjglfdk jglkdfj glkdfg jd
dfglfdjgldf lkfdj glkdfj glk
fdklgjdlf gjlkfdj
gfgjlk df
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
U SEND ME URGENT
Good guy: ;)
:(
Whatever happened to the "just say no" campaigns, maybe another coutry should pick em up and Just Say No to illegal requests from foreign gov'ts
Sounds like the whole "Mom said no, so i'll ask Dad" routinue and Dad bit
Bad guy:
Could there be stuff on there that shouldn't be if they host for others also? and will it bite them in the ass?
Such moral dilemma; should I sit here and continue being screwed over, or should I go down to their level and sue them for interrupting my excercise schedule, and reducing my estimated lifespan by 5 years?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
apparently, Kofi Annan broke the crank
Ouch, I hope Kofi didn't need surgery for his crank!
Ba-Dum-KSSCH!
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the fish!
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
CBC.ca had a story this week on the TV news too, where the MPAA is suing a young man in Vancouver for operating isoHunt. I guess they are stepping up the attacks on torrent sites.
Oh You POS
"Pirate Bay will reappear in Ukraine, Russia, The Netherlands and three other countries."
Warez sites are moving about to other countries, and some are even popping up on Freenet now. I think anonymous p2p will be the next main phase.
The first phase was napster (centralized in many respects), then second generation p2p was gnutella and emule, and now the third generation has Freenet, I2P, GNUnet, Rodi, AntsP2P, Mute, etc. Even if you're not interested in the issue the back and forth conflict between the media companies and programmers is interesting - I wonder who'll win out in the end.
So next time you guys have world war, we'll just sit and watch. Sounds like a plan to me.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
Did anyone else tag this "dupe"?
Fighting ignorance with ignorance.
The US can't convince Iran to give up work on its nuclear program (using either incentives or threats). The US State Department whines about all sorts of things to no avail all the time, and the US proposes all sorts of motions in the UN General Assembly and Security Council that get nowhere. If the government of Sweden doesn't want to do as the US asks, what is the US going to do? The US is a paper tiger; from time to time, it is also a bogeyman brought up to stir up the people -- nothing more, nothing less.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
And i quote:
2.
MediaLive filed for the trademark on the Web 2.0 Conference back in November 2003, when they first entered into the partnership agreement with O'Reilly on this conference. This was before Web 2.0 became such a popular term -- the filing actually preceded the first conference. However, I wasn't personally aware of this trademark filing till this past February, as a result of discussions with CMP after the MediaLive purchase.
Next, is the issue of proportional response. O'Reilly as an INSTUTION apologized for the gaff that resulted in sending this man a C&D. The shit storm that resulted from his blog, and then the rest of the half-cocked idiots such as parent post was not warranted, accurately sourced, or anything more than mis-reported hearsay. Please, for the love of mike, READ before posting. The apology issued to O'Reilly was justified.
Finally, if you'd read the other comments before posting, no finger pointing has taken place. O'Reilly CITES Torvolds and others as examples of trademark holders who also want to protect their trademarks. Again, if parent post had RTFA (s)he'd know that. But parent post clearly did not.
There are lives at stake here!
This is getting on my nerves: The RIAA and MPAA are not part the US Government. They hold no particular codified legislative, executive, or judiciary power, nor are they agencies a kin to the 3-letters (FBI, EPA, FDA, FCC, CIA, NSA, and so on).
The fact is that they are lobbyist groups; simply petitioners to the US Government. Sadly, they are wealthy, numerous, and well connected petitioners, so they get preferential treatment, but neither of them is a government body any more than any group of citizens. They way they "win" their cases is by having enough money and fear tactics at their disposal to dodge court time and exploit holes in the American judiciary.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
...why don't you just elect a president that doesn't suck next time, 'kay?
You're making the wild assumption that the American people actually elected Bush in 2000 and 2004. (How soon we forget!)
For simplicity's sake (!) we'll ignore US laws which bias our elections to favor only Republicans and Democrats. We'll also ignore that under the US Constitution the antiquated and undemocratic Electoral College selects the president and not the American people ('cause the American people clearly chose Gore in 2000). And, of course, we'll ignore that Corporate America funds our elections and politicians so effectively that corporations sometimes -- literally -- write laws that they then have their politicians enact.
As a Brit I don't expect you to be familiar with such dirty details like that.
But it was the BBC's own Greg Palast whose investigations proved that the 2000 and 2004 elections were blatantly rigged using a wide variety of techniques -- ground-breaking journalism confirmed by others much later.
Well, the next world war will probably be started BY YOU. You're trying quite hard to get 'em going already, it seems.
My thought is, if they don't want you downloading the movies, then why do it? ...
If you think movies are too expensive, which they probably are, then stop supporting them.
Maybe people "stop supporting them" by downloading movies, instead of paying to see them???
I used to think the same, before Bush was elected a SECOND time. Given all the things he and Cheney pulled in the preceding four years, the fact that the majority of plain Americans would vote for the slimeballs again tells me all I need to know about my fellow citizens. Sure, there are a few shining lights, but they are not the majority.
I say this as one who supported Bush over Gore the first time around in 2000 (big mistake).
This was before Web 2.0 became such a popular term
Ah, I see the perfect sanity in that.
I wonder if the Slashdot admins will let me change my handle to "NoTheory (580275) 2.0", as it would clearly represent a radical (and trademarkable) departure from any existing user's account here.
Or, better yet, I should rush out and trademark "Web 2.1"! Thanks, you've just made me rich!
O'Reilly as an INSTUTION apologized
As an institition? WTF does that mean, exactly? Can I apologize as a DIRIGIBLE for offending you with my previous post?
O'Reilly CITES Torvolds and others as examples of trademark holders who also want to protect their trademarks.
You make it sound so tame - Guess what? That particular fallacy has a formal name - "Tu quo que", or to use the more common English phrasing, "But Billy did it, too, and his mom didn't ground him!".
Well American corporations would stop selling goods, the US would use allies in the EU to apply similiar pressure.
Oh, and Hossain thought the same thing, that there was nothing the US could do.
oopsie...
WTO
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. TOR invented the term Web 2.0 and is its biggest promoter. Would you call Google assholes for trademarking "Google"? Apparently you would. Linus only trademarked Linux (tm) long after it became a popular word; is Linus an asshole? Apparently, yes.
2. The guy did apologize, and admitted that he had, in error, previously caused someone *else* too much trouble by blogging before contacting them. He then said that maybe he'll rethink the way he goes about things. If TOR was so out of line to request an apology, the aggreived party might be expected to notice, and say so. Instead, he promptly apologized. Are you more Catholic than the Pope?
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
Wow, what a stunning rebuttal.
Unlike "Notheory (580275) 2.0", web2.0, as much as we like it or not, has actually come to mean something, due in large part to O'Reilly's (the institution) efforts. They were trying to convey something when they copyrighted web 2.0, as dumb a name as it is. Lambasting them for holding the rights for a term that they invented (not made as in the term, but made as in the meaning) is an idiotic and backwards piece of reasoning.
As for O'Reilly's citations, the man is not justifying his behavior based on the behavior of others. He is stating that he is not the only one interested in protecting trademarks. So unless you'd like to make the additional claim that you think the trademark system should be thrown out, you have made a non-point.
There are lives at stake here!
u can go down 2 circuit city TODAY and get a decent laptop for 300 - 400 bucks; this means it costs about 150 - 250 or so to actually make the damm things, which means that if anyone cared, they could produce a 100$ laptop to day, rounding off the numbers for the real world.
Apparently, of all the millions of wealthy people in the world, including all those in China and India and OPEC, not one cares enuf to step up to the plate, but has to have some publicty hound from MIT do it.
I say if hte poor people of hte world are so ill served by their own leaders, screw em - better to buy rifles for the revolution
Senator John Edwards: George W. Bush is the "worst president of our lifetime".
The U.S. government is becoming involved in a culture of all war, all the time, and all surveillance, all the time.
Most people don't realize that former presidents have access to CIA and NSA data. So, if voters in the U.S. elect a president who has family and friends and business associates heavily invested in oil and weapons companies, that president will be able to use the data to spy on competitors. It's not so crude as that; it's much more sneaky, but that's the result.
The main purpose of the Iraq war was to arrange that the Iraq oil profits would go to Americans. Other purposes: 1) Saddam Hussein of Iraq was upsetting the planned artificial scarcity of oil, and oil companies wanted oil prices to go up. (Yes, there is real scarcity, too.) 2) The oil was being sold by Saddam Hussein for euros. If other countries began selling their oil for euros, the dollar, weakened by unprecedented debt, could crash. Instead, the value is going down slowly, making everything more expensive for people in the United States. The weakening of the dollar is equivalent to stealing the value of people's savings. 3) The U.S. government gives perhaps $5 billion each year to Israel; the money is used to kill Arabs. Saddam Hussein had made threatening statements about that, and Paul Wolfowitz arranged that the U.S. would pay for Israel's security, serving his culture against the best interests of his country. (They call it "doctrine" to give it a kind of religious importance.)
There's nothing "conservative" about Republicans. Some Republicans are responsible leaders, but others have formed a kind of crime syndicate to sell the U.S. government to whomever can use influence to make money. See U.S. Federal Deficit by Political Party.
U.S. Vice-president Cheney, whose friends and family and business associates are invested in oil and weapons, had a secret meeting with oil executives. A few months later, the price of gas rose enormously. Coincidence?
--
Taxpayer Karma: If you give money to kill people, expect your own quality of life to diminish.
Well American corporations would stop selling goods,
In capitalism, you don't make money by not selling any goods. The US government would have to impose a trade embargo to forcefully prevent corporations from selling to Swedes. This move would piss off a lot of people, would get a lot of negative press, etc.
US would use allies in the EU to apply similar pressure.
What allies? Even if there were any (Poland?), the EU regulations almost certainly prevent one EU member from embargoing another.
Oh, and Hossain thought the same thing, that there was nothing the US could do.
The US tried all sorts of diplomatic maneuvers against Hussein. They tried embargoing Hussein. In the end, it changed nothing for Hussein. He stayed in power, and his personal life did not become much worse. It wasn't until the US used its military that they actually accomplished anything. After Gulf War II, and the way it was portrayed by the media and received by the public, the US won't be using military force anytime soon, and they certainly won't be using it against Sweden, so I fail to see your point.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Please do not lump everyone with the idiot gasbags that currently run it.
Who are the idiot gasbags running it for? The USA is still pretending to be a democratic republic, isn't it? Then the idiot gasbags are running it on your behalf, with your authority, assuming you are a USA citizen with the power to vote.
Only lump the idiot gasbags with the idiot lemmings who still support them.
Paid taxes lately? Then you are directly paying for crap like this, and, therefore, one of the idiot lemmings that supports them.
In other news, I've trademarked "404" (my slashdot user id number).
From now on, all use of "404" on the internet is subject to licensing fee.
"At O'Reilly, we've even had to send a cease-and-desist letter once, to a company that was publishing technical books with the picture of an animal on the cover."
Any animal? Even animals O'Reilly has never used in a book cover? My first reaction to this is that there's something very wrong about that. Trademark law has become a lot worse now that things like "trade dress" are considered trademarks. Makes me sick.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Dang, I feel like I just fell from the Moon. What is Pirate Bay and why do
people care about it? Was it a web-site, a hosting company? I gather so far that
it had something to do with the internet, and judging by the name it might have
been a warez site or a warez-friendly host, but that's just a guess. Anyone care
to enlighten me.
I love the parallels O'Reilly draws in his radar article. Wikipedia is trademarked by Wikipedia, Linux is trademarked by Linus, Mozilla is trademarked by the Mozilla Foundation, therefore it's ok for CMP to trademark Web 2.0. People generally don't have a problem with trademarks, people have a problem with abusive trademarks. ie, trademarking a term for the value of the term itself, not because your company is necessarily linked to that term. All that said, I'm not sure how Web 2.0 can be a valid trademark. Web is an invalid trademark since it's already in common currency, so how can you stick a version number on the end of it and suddenly make it trademarkable?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I am a licensor and translator of PC dating-sim games from Japan ("hentai games"), which were pirated in massive, massive numbers through the Pirate Bay. Seriously -- for every copy I sell, maybe 100 copies are being pirated through their site, according to the torrent download numbers, at least. I am overjoyed that they've been taken down and hope they stay down forever. Unlike "big pockets" movie studios, I am an independent software publisher to whom the rate of piracy will mean life or death. I am not sorry at all to see these guys gone.
http://www.jastusa.com
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Read the damn article, seriously. He's talking about trademarking the CONFERENCE, not the term Web 2.0. Jeez.
Seriously... you think that now people who can not get the hentai games through TPB will actually buy them? Even supposing they don't find another source for DLing the games I guess they will just go on and DL som images/films and skip the "interactivity"... Sorry dude..
There are two demonstrations tomorrow (Swedish content) (Saturday, June 3; one in Stockholm at 15:00 and one in Gothenburg at 15:30. The location in Stockholm is Mynttorget, and in Gothenburg they're keeping the demonstration at Gustav Adolfs Torg.
Ok. Here is a crappy translation of the swedish article to english.
The US government behind closing of site
The US government was behind the raid against the filesharing network Pirate Bay yesterday, according to sources to the SVT news program Rapport.
In april a delegation with members of the justice department and the police met up with american authorities who brought the issue up by request of the MPAA. The interest organisation of Hollywood.
The justice department then requested the police and prosecutors to act. When they replied that the legal issues where unclear the minister of justice's secretary of state contacted the state prosecutor and the state chief of police who in turn ordered action.
Minister rule
The Pirate Bay has openly challenged right-holders within the film and music industry. Nevertheless many in the internet society are surprised of the actions of the swedish authorities.
This is what happened according to sources. The american interest organisation MPAA contacted the gorvernment in the white house. The american department of foreign affairs then contacted the swedish department of foreign affairs and demanded the issue with Pirate bay be solved.
According to the source the prosecutor and the police was ordered to act and describes the actions of the secretary of state as minister rule.
The media?
You've only got it half right. Instead what we need to do is close the borders completely, tell the rest of the world "You're on your own", pull all the troops home from everywhere and take the time to cleanup our own house.
Hell while we're at it, cut off all foreign aid and use the money right here at home and then rethink our entire foreign policy and if we completely closed the borders and I do mean completely, cut everyone out of the American Markets and pulled all of our troops home, how long do you think it would take the entire worlds economy to collapse? How long do you think it would take before the rest of the world demanded America get involved? Earthquakes,Typhoons and other natural disasters?
So what could we do in a single Presidential Term of 4 years? How about starting to clean up much of the political corruption and problems with FEMA and other agencies. How about getting our educational system back on track and passing universal health care? Why not straighten out the IRS and getting out Tax Burden back down to a real 20% instead of the 50-75% the middle class now pays? I think many of these issues could be resolved and a start made on fixing them in a single 4 year term and that once we've straightened our house up, we can then invite guests over to visit.
In fact, he doesn't even mention Richard Stallman or any trademarks he may have registered, directly or indirectly, throughout the whole article.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
My thought is, if they don't want you downloading the movies, then why do it?
/ARRR!
They're not listening to me, so why should I listen to them?
Are you that cheap that you don't want to fork out 10 dollars to go see it at a theatre or pay 3 dollars to rent it at Blockbuster?
In some parts of the world, such as the part I live in, it's substantially more than ten bucks. Not to mention the whole "I have to actually go to the movie theatre and sit next to cell-phone-guy instead of staying at home in a comfy chair" issue.
If you think movies are too expensive, which they probably are, then stop supporting them.
Way ahead of you on that one. If you believe the MPAA, not only am I not supporting them, I'm actively destroying them!
Maybe you are such a big loser you just don't have anything better to do besides pirate others copy righted works. In that case get some therapy and learn some social skills.
Oh the horror. Some jackass on the internet thinks I'm a loser. Truly this is a wake-up call for me. I now see the error of my ways. Forgive me, jackass, for I have sinned and wish to repent!
Back in the real world, engaging in piracy doesn't mean you lack social skills. Just so you know.
Listen, it isn't our fault that the rest of the countries who were in power before us FAILED! We didn't ask for it to be our turn but it happened. So yeah, we've made some mistakes. Shit happens. Maybe one of these other countries will step up and make the world a perfect place (like they havn't done...um, EVER). But I would bet that 100 years from now, the new superpower will be fucking up just like us, and hopefully my kids will be there shitting all over them, and telling them how fucked they are.
I do not find it a surprise that someone can be so wrong but I am surprised that someone that writes something that is so far from correct can be modded up to 5. The concepts of patents and copyright are older that the US and seeing as the US has historically been the haven for business built on other countries ideas your assertion is ridiculous. While you drink your Bud (a Czech copyright) and sit in front of your internet browser (a British invention) ranting on about how the US invents and owns all things great, you might ponder why the rest of the world gets fed up with the USA.
The US may promise to pay a high proportion of the UN's expenses but the US only actually starts to pay what it owes when it wants something in return, i.e. when lobbying for another war. Most of the world would rather do without the US's promises as well as the US's wars. The US owes the UN rather than bankroles the UN. In return the US stiffles the democratic role of the UN by refusing visas to people with opinions different to the US's thereby stopping them from speaking at the UN. Many people feel that for the UN to continue it needs to break its ties with the US so that it can become more democratic as it should be.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Swedish Embassy, Washington DC, United States: +1 202 467 2600
Swedish Embassy, London, United Kingdom: +44 (0)20 7917 6400
Swedish Embassy, Ottawa, Canada: +1 613 241 8553
Swedish Embassy, Canberra, Australia: +61 (0)2 6270 2700 (Chancery)
Swedish Embassy, Pretoria, South Africa: +27 (0)12 426 6400
Swedish Embassy, Dublin, Ireland: +353 (0)1 474 4000
Consulate-General of Sweden, Wellington, New Zealand: +64 (0)4 499 9895
especially since the police used 50 police officers to seize two computer nerds and their legal representative.
Sorry to break the emotional run here, but you can't seize a nerd. Well you could, but that's called rape, and is a more complicated issue. And what's that about the lawyer...I didn't know lawyers hang out in server rooms. Probably the only decent lawyer in the world, tho.
The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's expenses,
"supposed to" is the keyword there. Last I checked, they were several years behind in payment. There was a time (I think during the late 90s) where the UN was in serious financial trouble due to the US outright refusal to pay their share.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
All governments are evil, mine currently covertly runs/bribes/blackmails many pacific islands governments, brutalises refugees and supports bribing Saddam Hussain at the same time as bombing the living shit out of Iraq but still manages to be seen as one of the nicer ones in this world. Sure, yours gets up to more mischief, but that is mainly because it has more resources.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
A wise man. He must be spinning in his grave. He's talking about patents but I suspect he would consider copyrights in the same vein. Today, in the country he helped found, copyrights are not only considered a natural right, they are inheritable and can even be assigned to non-corporeal entities. Modern copyrights (at least those assigned to non-corporeal entities) show every sign of being eternal as well. Singular indeed.
Actually the trademark is for "Web 2.0" in relation to any conference, gathering, etc. They didn't just trademark their own conference name, they went for the term in any context involving conferences. Big difference.
CMP's trademark (#78322306) is only for two categories, and they're both related to conferences. So CMP has the exclusive right to have conferences called "Web 2.0". But if you want to release software that's "Web 2.0 ready", for example, you should be OK. CMP tried to make broader claims, got shot down by the USPTO, and had to settle for a relatively narrow trademark. You can get all this from the USPTO web site, although it's hard to link to their search engine results.
Would you also try to blame Mother Theresa for the spread of AIDS in Africa?
At the risk of losing some positive Karma for wandering off-topic, I *would* blame her for her resistance to the usage of condoms, which is certainly related to the spread of AIDS everywhere.
actualy, I cannot find a link to it right now but the US has overpaid when you take into acount the cost of military expenses from UN peace keeping and other misions.
I remeber my congress critter making that statement once when the UN was threatening to take veto power away. I guess we said we cited that and said we would withdraw or something to that effect if it happeneed and those talks disapeared.
Now it will be slashdotted and the DoS continues...
you forgot to mention that those embargos on Iraq weren't effective because countries like france and germany made secrete deals with it so they could get oil for the cheap/.
Any embargo on any other country would probably be the same. Look at Cuba. Mexico and other countries make a mint off selling Cuba american goods. It wasn't untill recently that Cuba exhiled american money too. What kind of emargo effect is that?
So we stop sellng the sweeds goods, All that does is introduce another middleman. Nothing real will happen!
>The US can't convince Iran to give up work on its nuclear program (using either incentives or threats).
>>>>They threaten every democratic society they influence with their agenda.
Unless you're arguing Iran is a democratic society, you're bringing up an example that is outside the scope of the original argument.
>>>Because the concepts of intellectual property and copyright were invented by the US,
If I didn't invent the knife I stab you with, does it matter a whole lot to you that I'm not the inventor?
>>>and the only people who benefit from those concepts are Americans
If others benefit from my killing you, does it matter that I did it for my own ends regardless of others wishes?
>>>(it's funny that you are actually implying that Americans are the only ones who produce decent intellectual property).
He actually didn't say anything implying such. The thing he *did* state was that the United States abuses other countries for its own ends. If anything, this would be an indication that the United States is less interested in competing on worth and more interested in using their military or political might to get what they want.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Ok, how about every just start calling these things Web 2.1 an we'll be done with it already...
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
It's no wonder America doesn't mind paying for 1/4 of the UN budget. Money well spent if it prevents decent intellectual property from being developed in other nations.
"I sincerely hope that other governmental bodies of the world come to realize that the political influence of the U.S. is simply poison to them."
Please. Move. To. Canada.
I can't wait until Bush is out of office either, but I am almost just as tired of reading children writing about how bad things are in the US (as they type the post from their new Dual Core Apple Powerbook, while jacked in to their new 60gb iPod at the school their parents paid for, made possible by *gasp* capitalism.) If the other governmental bodies of the world came to the erroneous conclusion that the political influence of the U.S. is simply poison to them, what do you think they would do? Take their ball and go home? LOL. There is a dream that that might work if all the countries bound together and decided to cooperate whilst taking their ball and exiting stage left. But really, come on. Damm!t you just goaded me into posting on slashdot, you bastard!
The vast, vast majority of people only want to live a happy, comfortable life without intimate intrusion from someone else's ideology and (possibly largely) differing beliefs. Everyone should still be able to Get Along.
At the root of many of the problems is a lack of understanding and fear of the unknown. A language barrier and an ignorance of each others' culture can instill an instant fear between two people. I believe that our last hope may be the internet. As information freely flows between people (filters and censorship are eroding this already, but it's still early) their understanding of each other grows, and they can begin to understand what it's like to be in the other's position. As language translation technology matures (we see this already in the voice translation boxes the US military uses), the language barriers can be taken down. Understanding and respect grows as people freely communicate, and this fosters peace.
Alas, this idyllic and naive future is hard to see coming to pass. There is still an enormous amount of work to do. People shroud themselves in a comforting blanket of ignorance whenever it suits them. Often, I think this is because that as much as people lack understanding and respect, and so have distrust and fear, what really terrifies them is true understanding. Look at the people in the USA that have such a fear of immigrants. All they see is "immigrants taking jobs" and "destruction of culture". What about all the jobs created? The immigrants will need housing, food, and all sorts of products to live. New jobs will be made to provide for them. The arguments are just excuses made manifest from fear. People simply fear the unknown. Have people ever thought that perhaps the reason immigrants band together in their own clusters is that they feel threatened because the "natives" are so unwelcoming and distrustful?
I've gone far off topic here in my rant. Really, I just feel that the internet is our last, best hope of creating links between different cultures and ideologies. Get everyone understanding one another and put aside that fear. Yes, there are Bad people out there, and there always will be. But most everyone really just wants the same thing; to live.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
...for all their "new" servers!
What allies?
I can think of three alternatives. Either you are totally ignorant; or you are one of those Americans with a persecution complex; or you are trolling.
You seriously think the USA has no allies in the EU?
In the end, it changed nothing for Hussein.
Nonsense. He was no longer invading other countries and his military capability was utterly decimated.
Oh, fuck you. O'Reilly reaped what he sowed, it's that simple.
Simple fact: O'Reilly sent a cease and desist order to someone for using "Web 2.0", which simply shouldn't be trademarkable. End of story.
Don't care how "normal" it is, it's wrong when other people do it. Don't care that Torvalds has enforced the Linux trademark - guess what, Linux isn't quite generic like "Web 2.0" is.
Nothing O'Reilly says will ever change the facts: first, O'Reilly (company) trademarked "Web 2.0", an extremely generic term (which shouldn't be trademarkable), and second, that they sent a cease and desist letter to someone for using "Web 2.0".
That's all the facts needed. Case closed. Fuck O'Reilly (company) for trademarking "Web 2.0", fuck Tim O'Reilly for demanding an apology, and fuck you for defending his actions.
If copyright infringement and directly aiding it is legal in Sweden, then Sweden is in violation of the Berne Convention treaty.
Usually, newspapers and letters to the editors go on here saying that "...we dont blame the American people, we blame the American government...". Considering that the American government is a democratic one (so much so that it thinks it right to "impose" its democratic vision to other countries) it is correct to blame the people as they are the ones who elected the governemnt. And those who didnt vote are to blame as well, because the government represents them and its their responsibility to elect the right one. Otherwise, they are responsible for the elected governments actions and should share the blame.
That old saying was always implied yelling "fire!" when there isn't one. If there is a fire, such as when burning gasoline is on you, then there's nothing wrong with it.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
...for the 10 people that will be there. That's about how many people care about the cause and could take the time to be there. As much as I support the cause, the nerds of the world are electorally non-existent.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
1) Doing what someone else wants just because they want it is way beyond dumb
2) The people suing in no way _need_ more money. On the contrary, maybe they need to be homeless for a few weeks.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
n00b.
Check again:
[In 2000] the United States is expected to get its payments for the $1 billion a year regular or administrative U.N. budget reduced from 25 percent to 22 percent. For fluctuating peacekeeping expenses, estimated at $3 billion, U.S. obligations are expected to fall from 30 percent to about 26 or 27 percent.
Congress had refused to pay most of the $1.5 billion Washington owes to the United Nations until the rate of U.S. payments was cut.
Maybe you were thinking of the WWII debt that Britain owed the US and finally paid off this year? Or the WWI debt that Britain (and many other European countries) still owe the US but have defaulted / stopped maintenance payments on?
Approximately two-thirds of foreign securities held by American investors fell into default over the course of the Depression decade. Contemporaries believed that the experience had a lingering impact on the attitudes of American investors.
everything in moderation
If Sweden can be so easily coerced by the US, then that's Sweden's problem. What's the MPAA gonna do if the Swedish government told them to go fuck themselves?
Nobody is aiding copyright infringement. The Pirate Bay merely made available *links* to file-sharing nodes, just like Google or Yahoo does (yes, you can find illegal stuff there, too).
How come those sites have not yet been raided? Are they paying good taxes? Or did they just bribe or know the right people?
Wrong.
everything in moderation
Tim O'Reilly submarine patented the community with Web2.0
Never using Web2.0(tm) (or (sm)) and promoting its use.
Now the term is in common use only Tim can hold conferences gatherings classes education or and live event with "Web2.0" in the title.
***
To shuffle away criticism he has totally spurious examples such as LINUX and APACHE trademarks. These are totally known about marks to protect community interests registered by foundations with clear aims and policies for use.
***
If this had not been publicised then the next charity to get a C&D might have folded. It is highly important that Lawyers letters are publicised.
So asking Tom for an apology is highly offensive - and suggest bad practice for the community.
***
Tim was on holiday many expected him to help resolve the situation with something cool that would form good practice for the community.
Instead he tries to spin the issue away by flapping his mouth so his pals can say he has done something.
***
This is a very regressive step by a respected community leader. More of a hissy fit than anything else.
***
So mod the parent up - and look out for those other o'Reilly CMP service marks like "Software Development".
***
As many people enjoy O'reilly patronage expect little criticism from the usual sources.
BTW, how is 30% (then) or 25% (now) a fair share at all? The US and Japan combined pay 40% (more if you include "peacekeeping mission" financing) -- that doesn't seem right.
everything in moderation
Well, you could read up on contributory copyright infringement, safe harbor provisions and other elements of US copyright law. Or you could just assume that Google is bribing people.
Ah, but that's quite a long way from the question here. The question is, does hosting a tracker constitute copyright infringement? Swedish law is (as I understand it) particularly vague on this question, and it's not the job of an American lobbying group to decide Swedish legal questions. The Berne Convention says *nothing* about contributory infringement either, so that argument's out of the window, too.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
The problem with trademarking the term "Web 2.0" is that people have started using it as a generic term for a technology, but now a company wants to claim it for a product. That's clearly tempting, because having a term establish itself as a generic term and then getting a trademark on it is a lot cheaper than creating and marketing a proprietary brand name from scratch.
That is not the same as what happened with Linux or Wikipedia, which all referred specific products. It's like trademarking the term "software engineering" and telling people that they can't hold a conference with the name "software engineering" in the title.
If the trademark on the "Web 2.0 Conference" is narrow, then there is no problem--you could still hold the "Web 2.0 World Congress" and the "Joint Conferences on Web 2.0 Technologies". But if CMP wants to assert control over any and all uses of "Web 2.0" in conference titles, then we should regard the term "Web 2.0" as proprietary and stop using it to refer generically to the next generation of web technologies.
So, the best thing is probably to drop "Web 2.0" from our language (it's pretty silly anyway) and refer to these technologies as something else: NextGenWeb or WebTech 2 whatever. If it helps, just think "CMP Web 2.0" everytime you are tempted to use the term "Web 2.0".
The fact is the US pressured another government to take down a site that was LEGAL in the country it was in.
The travesty of this situation is not what the US did, but what Swedenish politicians did (if early reports are to be believed). Many nations bitch to the US all the time about hosting web sites that are illegal and the US merrily ignores them. The US in turn gives China crap about the websites that they take down and China merrily ignores the US. Governments leaning on other governments to enforce their values is pretty normal. Hell, I expect my government to try and nudge other governments to hold similar values through diplomatic means.
The real crime here is if the Swedish authorities bent to US pressure; or more specifically, if Swedish politicians bent to US pressure and in turn pressured Swedish law enforcement agencies to take an illegal action.. The crime is not the US trying to get the Swedish authorities to take action. The crime is that the Swedish authorities responded illegally to pressure from another nation.
I am not saying I am a fan of US copyright law. US copyright law in fact sucks mightily. That said, I am far more worried that another nation's politicians would cave into US pressure and order their police to enforce a law that doesn't exist and Sweden.
...the people as they are the ones who elected the governemnt
y for further assistance.
Sorry, that's not the way elections work here (can you say electoral college?). And there are so many things wrong with the idea that America is a true democracy and the government represents it's people that I really don't have time (or intereest) to detail them all.
oh and
Considering that the American government is a democratic one (so much so that it thinks it right to "impose" its democratic vision to other countries)
You're saying that the nature of a highly democratic government is to impose it's vision on other countries? Please reference http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democrac
Our wealth breeds emptiness
England, actually.
However the concept that the US is the centre of the universe was most definitely invented by the US.
O'Reilly wrote: "I don't believe that the arguments about prior use of the term, or about "genericization" have a legal -- or even a moral -- basis."
This suggests that O'Reilly has a common, and incorrect, view of the basis of trademark law. He seems to think that trademark law gives people like him rights because he "invented" something and therefore should own it.
But the purpose of trademark law is not to give companies control of valuable pieces of our language, the purpose of trademark law is to ensure that the public has reliable identifiers for goods and services. It's a free market trick to achieve a service to the public that happens to have worked fairly well in the past because the interests of companies and the public align.
But make no mistake about it: the interest of the trademark holder is merely a means to an end; the ethical foundation of trademark law is exclusively the public interest.
the new server is being configured
quick traceroute to new server
tracert
brings us to the new location, 85.17.40.37, Leaseweb datacenter in the Netherlands
damn i better get out of that datacenter, ive dozen of clients in same datacenter and ip range
I'm not that informed about US law (European here), but common sense doesn't show me the significant difference from a HTTP-link to illegal content, and a link to Bittorrent clients serving illegal content.
It's just linking. If anybody cares, they could simply connect to google or to TBP's tracker, get the linked data, and then sue whoveer is REALLY illegally redistributing copyrighted content. Awww, tooo hard for guv'ment slobs... No seriously, they should. I'm sure a fair share of file-sharing members actually reside in US and EU countries where the police COULD intervene.
This TBP thing is (a) fishy and (b) unnecessary/useless.
Damn, I thought their placeholder page that claimed a day or three of downtime was all bravado!
Seems that The Pirate Bay is up and running again.
It's BACK! How about them apples?! The rule of law prevails in other countries. As a U.S. citizen, I'm jealous.
Don't think so, odds are you'll be the ones starting it...
No. O'Reilly as an INSTUTION screwed up and recieved an appropriately web2.0 response. They should just admit that they deserved it and move on.
It's as fishy as they come ("I'm not touching you! AH-AH!") but you can't claim it's useless: it's one of the biggest torrent sites and they have daily users in the tens/hundreds of thousands. SOMEBODY must find it useful :). :P)
If you were argiung that it would be unnecessary if only movies were not so expensive and there were a legal download system... even then, cheap people would find a use for TPB sites (I, for one
Global warming is a cube.
Well, I do argue that the availability of a download system AS GOOD AS file sharing (minus the price, obviously; but it should be cheaper than CDs/DVDs, because it costs less to the distributor) would make a lot of sense.
Of course this doesn't justify downloading of illegal movies, but it's a big reason. The rest - people who wouldn't buy anyway - shouldn't be interesting to a company. If I sold software, I'd sure be angry about the kids who shared it, but I'd have to face the reality that these kids would never afford it anyway.
Killing TBP is useless for the one reason, that out there are loads more download sites. The way to fight piracy would be to sue the hundreds/thousands TBP *users* that live in EU or USA and that *could* be sued, not to take down a replaceable server with dubious means. It wouldn't make the RIAA any money, but it would deter some kids from pirating more.
According to the Swedish government sponsored tv channel SVT...
This statement is misleading. SVT is funded by the people, more specifically every household with a TV reciever, which must pay 5 SEK each day (~70 cent) to SVT. There is no money flow from the swedish government to SVT.
"Oh shit!" doesn't even begin to cover it!
http://tpbeng.blogspot.com/
The US is supposed to pay UN dues, just like everyone else. Pity they don't. You could always try paying your dues before complaining.
How much of the UN's work is created by the US's interventions in other sovereign nations? I'd say that you are getting a hell of a lot more than you are paying for, and certainly more than you deserve. Shame on you people!
Just thought i'd mention that as of one hour ago the pirate bay is back online. So are some of the other organisations hit in this raid.
they are back online fyi, with a new logo :D
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
When they took the TPB servers they also took the servers for a bunch of other companies.
I just checked and TPB is back online, but none of the other companies, who had nothing to do with filesharing whatsoever, are back online.
Well done Swedish Police, you managed to close down TPB for about as long as the DDOS attack against your website lasted, and in the process your destroyed the website for 20+ legit companies.
The way to fight piracy would be to sue the hundreds/thousands TBP *users* that live in EU or USA and that *could* be sued, not to take down a replaceable server with dubious means
Oh yeah taking the server down was utterly stupid. I had misunderstood your point...
Sueing TPB users in batches of 1000 might yeald better results on the short term. Recently some 100's guys in Germany were sued for sharing more then 500 files on Emule - that scared me much more then this TPB operation did. But in the long run, I think an all-out war on piracy waged by the *AA would only drive piracy were it couldn't be prosecuted anymore: way, way underground. Cypto, Tor, Freenet, mesh networks... good luck going after pirates out THERE! The *AA stand no chance - in a few years piracy will be virtually unstoppable. Maybe by then producers will have realized that the best way to have someone do something is to operate on the related market(s). Maybe work on the prices, or the quality, or both, of content.
Global warming is a cube.
The US is supposed to pay UN dues, just like everyone else. Pity they don't. You could always try paying your dues before complaining.
How much of the UN's work is created by the US's interventions in other sovereign nations? I'd say that you are getting a hell of a lot more than you are paying for, and certainly more than you deserve. Shame on you people!
We'll see. Right now the industry doesn't care to compete, and is still busy whining and lobbying government to introduce ever more violent measures (and surveillance etc.) to control its "bad bad" citizens.
"a law that doesn't exist [in] Sweden"
I guess that if you get all your information from torrent sites, you can be made to believe anything...
They don't have that many friends either! Apart from the UK and even thats restricted to Mr Blair. The population / Media here in the UK are very critical of Tony Blair and Gerorgy Bush's close "Relationship". Often it's the butt of jokes.
America would find it very hard to embargo (blockade) Sweden because it's illegal to prevent free trade between EU member nations. Sweden will just import goods via another EU country. America would have to cut trade with the whole of the EU. I don't see that winning many friends.
Yes and now Iraq is in turmoil to the point of near civil war. Al-Qaeda now has a new base of operation (Saddam as brutal as he was, was no friend of Osama). The Muslim world is enraged at the West making the world a far more dangerous place and the US has left itself impotent in the face of Iran's Weapons program.
Either you are ignorant of world affairs. A Republican with a Nationalist complex or I've just fed a troll. Either way your statements are so far from reality they can't even see it.
you cant trademark a conference, dumbass (and you claimed to RTFA??)
...have stolen machines belonging...
You don't get it. It's not theft. It's just a minor case of trespassing and PP (physical property) infringement. Hardly as serious as stealing music.
TPB can always buy some new computers. It's not like they cost that much. Computers are nearly free these days.
But once you copy a song you can't uncopy it. IP crime is irreversible and results in real losses that can be measured in terms of billions of dollars. See the difference?
The police should just get a slap on the wrist. If they were to arrest themselves it would be out of propertion compared to the IP crimes commited by our younger generation.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Well, you could read up on contributory copyright infringement, safe harbor provisions and other elements of US copyright law.
Oh come on!
BitTorrent.com struck a deal even with MPAA a while ago, to make this thing legal:
http://bittorrent.com/
Now tell me, how the fuck is this providing any less of a safe harbor for copyright holders?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Of course, once the discussion of copyright as a natural right is tabled, we are still left with the discussion of whether it is a good idea or not.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The US military can be and arguably has been used to protect corporate interests.
If the push to move oil and gold to the Euro and the doomsayers about the dollar valuation are correct, we may see this tested soon.
vi? Who's that?
Now I spend more time gaming and reading, and watch close to zero TV and movies.
Not saying it'll work for everyone, or even for me forever, but it's a refreshing change.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
But did you know that California and perhaps other states to follow plan to do away with their electoral college and award their state's electoral votes in accordance with the popular vote? This activity is being fought by some claiming that this undermines our democracy. When I heard that, I was left wondering what could be MORE democratic that electing the president as directly by the people's votes as possible?
It would be something of a miracle to see the electoral college done away with. I'm undecided about doing away with electoral votes entirely. (It would put all focus on campaigning on specific, higher-density populations, rendering the votes of many regions in the US practically worthless.)
You should consider moving here and voting yourself. We've got an open door policy when it comes to immigrants.
"While you drink your Bud (a Czech copyright)"
Same family otherwise no connection other than they have some sort of agreement regarding where each will sell their products. The US Budweiser is pure crap(as are Busch, Coors, etc. essentially all mass produced domestic beers).
"and sit in front of your internet browser (a British invention) ranting on about how the US invents and owns all things great, you might ponder why the rest of the world gets fed up with the USA."
Technically this is more of a Swiss invention as it was "invented" in Switzerland at a Swiss university, using Swiss funds. Additionally it can be argued that hypertext like browser systems existed MANY years prior to the initial browser.
This does not even mention how basic that browser was, and that the web never really went anywhere until AMERICAN university student wrote mosaic, and then went on to Netscape. BTW this was ALL performed using a device using an AMERICAN invention commonly known as the microprocessor, which is based upon another AMERICAN invention known as the transistor, need I continue? Or can you rebut with many worthwhile things that have actually been invented outside of the US in the last 80y?
i hope sweden falls too. they are a bunch of pussies to cave to sony/warner or US/canada. if they can't be a sovriegn state and stand up for their people, then they deserve to fall too.
as for the US, the three branches of gov have been replaced by RIAA, MPAA, and tv.
i disable sigs
I am ashamed of Sweden. It is turning into a corporate controlled Police State like the rest of Europe, hell, like the rest of the world.
That's the funniest thing I've read in weeks.
As far as I know (NAL), there isn't any existing _law_ against linking to copyrighted material in the US - only a series of court decisions, which are not binding on Sweden (a civil law country anyway, so even if they were Swedish court decisions...)
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Can't he do both? Maybe he is doing both!
$META_SIG_JOKE
Pretty Steep Fall for a country that was once called the "British Empire" and had NY times gushing that the "British Empire" is here to stay to rule all Waves and all english speaking people...
You wanted to ride on the coat-tails of a more powerful country to realize your original "legacy" dream while US bore the brunt of casualties in Iraq. Agreed, US is a big brute and stupid, but you guys are cunning and wily like Machiavelli.
US would come out of this mess a better, more responsible country: Not you, as long as you don't stop your cunning tactics of hitching a ride on someone's back and breaking it.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer