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Congress Pressures DoJ With PIRATE Part II
Anonymous Pirate writes "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have re-introduced the 'PIRATE Act' (pdf) to Congress. According to Ars Technica, the purpose of this act is to get the DoJ to go after individual copyright infringers. It would allow the Department of Justice to bring civil lawsuits instead of criminal ones so that they would be able to prosecute copyright infringers with only a minimal burden of proof, rather than the heavier burden required for criminal prosecution." Took a long time to do a sequel; we first talked about this proposal quite some time ago.
So let me get this straight: we can't even get a commitment from this DOJ to enforce to enforce things like the laws against torture or the constitutional authority of congress to conduct oversight into the actions of the executive branch, trust them not to use their power for partisan purposes, or even to hire qualified people who graduated from real law schools, but we're going to let them start filing civil suits on behalf of plaintiffs who (generally) could well afford to file for themselves, and would, if they had a shred of merit?
Great. That's just great.
--MarkusQ
That makes sense, but in a case like this, how could the state even have standing to sue? It's not like they are the copyright holder. With a polluting corporation, the state could argue that the offender is damaging the public commons, and thus demonstrate harm; where is the harm to the state involved in one person making a copy of a book, movie, or song, or in helping another to do so?
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I KNOW, Radiohead is offering their new album online for as much as you want to pay, but they can afford to.
Bull. Sorry, but that's just completely bass-ackwards. I *am* in an indie band, and these days people can now get a chance to hear our material that never would have before, because of the music cartels' history of locking up radio/TV/CD sales to exclude anyone not owned by them. We've done the same thing as Radiohead has now for a good while. It's been an overall win for us.
We *want* people to copy and share our music! That's free exposure, and the kind of word-of-mouth promotion that can't be bought. We will continue to encourage people to share our music, even if we were to get as famous as U2 or Radiohead or Led Zeppelin.
We sell physical CDs and video DVDs and other merchandise at shows. We state right on the media that it's fine to share, and if they feel what we've created is worth it to them, send a little money our way to help us keep creating. We receive enough to let us keep going.
CD sales aren't the end game, they're a means. They get us fans. They are a promotion tool, nothing more.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
One citizen, one vote... however, one corporation, many, many zeros on a vote figure! I am sure that exact monetary value of a vote could be assessed and it wouldn't come out too pricey. In fact, I'm certain that political parties and politicians' "advisers" do operate with that figures when they make their decisions. It is an ugly thought, breaks the rosy picture we have about Democracy, but we should get over the shock and get on with calculations in order to regain the hold of our destiny.
Ad hoc Citizen groups and specific, limited in scope, political initiatives, especially those in favor of common citizens' interests but going against particular interests of corporations, should be able to make independent (from major political parties) pressure funds, "political initiative unions" with sole purpose of lobbying and counter-lobbying.
The rich (i.e. large corporations) get their wealth from the poor(-er then themselves), where most of money lays. It is not a phrase or anecdote: Hypothetic possession of more then half of whole monetary mass in circulation would be a sure sign of loss (sitting on top of claim that can never be satisfied and is therefore void - the rest of the world is bankrupt, your money is worthless paper or meaningless integer number).
That same amount of money, transferred from low density multitude of small "hoards" ("the poor") toward small number of large "hoards" ("the rich") and then from them toward world of politics to be converted into power, could be also used for other purpose, it could be "turned around and pointed backwards", simply take a shorter path and come to destination from other side.
If someone uses money begotten from us to make us pay more by furthering unjust laws made to rip us off some more (common example would be avoiding proper taxation), we should be able to counter that by spending our money on exactly the opposite goal instead. Net effect would be elevation of price of political favors. Equilibrium will shift a little bit toward the people and part of thus gained funds (keeping more money in citizens' wallets) could be "reinvested" to secure the control of public over democratic process.
It is perfectly capitalistic way for masses to limit the power of the plutocrats. No violence, no revolutions, no plunder, just playing the same game as they do, making same moves they do. Organizing masses over common, limited goals is well-known and proven strategy of, e.g. trade unions. It could work in lobbying too.
Money talks, votes babble. As long as people have money, they can have the power too. Just don't try to solve all world's problems at once. First things first, make the system work and keep it safe!
Because piracy begets piracy. It devalues things. If half the people on your block got their homes for free, how could you convince somebody to pay you $250k for YOURS?
There is a culture now that is very pervasive amongst those that are in the late 20's on down that music should be free as in beer. To many, it's almost outrageous to suggest that music should be paid for.
You can't give something away free for those who "can't afford it" and charge the ones that can. Pretty soon the ones that can are going to feel swindled and they're going to at least be TEMPTED to think that if it's free for everyone else, it ought to be free for them, too.