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RCMP Won't Go After Personal Filesharers
mlauzon writes "The RCMP announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use (Google translation). Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers, such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, instead of the cash flow of large corporations. Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the RCMP made clear that Demonoid's users don't have to worry about getting prosecuted, at least not in Canada. 'Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,' Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview. 'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'"
It was too hard to get the horses into people's bedrooms, basements, dorms, etc.
They won't chace Windows users because there's no mount. They will chase *nix users though.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In a sudden outbreak of reason and common sense, a government has decided that its own people are not "the enemy". The US quickly responded that such subversive hippie-dippy communist ideas will not be tolerated on their doorstep.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
The RCMP don't speak for other police forces in Canada--in particular, the provincial police forces (e.g., the Ontario Provincial Police). While I suspect that they won't be aggressively pursuing individuals either, this is no guarantee. I believe the OPP has fairly extensive technology-related policing resources, but I can't substantiate that...
On the one hand it is excellent that a govt. realized they have more pressing issues. On the other this is a bad precedent, they are essentially saying that "if you can't beat them, ignore them". Illegal file-sharing is not proper theft but it is without a doubt a fraud, as you are getting a service (entertainment) without paying for it. Interesting times ahead.
+Raider of the lost BBS
'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'
That's because there is no way to stop it. If I can look at a string of numbers, I can write them down somewhere else. If my computer looks at a string of numbers, *it* can write them down really, really fast somewhere else. And so it isn't possible to stop anyone from making a copy of a digital "work."
You can shut down places where transfers occur, you can *try* to scare people into not copying... but you can't *stop* me from writing down all the 1's and 0's that make up your program or data except to stop me from reading it in the first place. And if you don't let anyone read it, it might as well not exist.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
The RCMP resources are stretched thin like any police force anywhere. Its good to see that they have decided / realized that they have far more important things to do with those resources. Its the right move. I want violent crimes, family abuse, gang related issues, grow ops & drug related crime, and corporate fraud investigated, not children and families who listening to music they downloaded over the internet. I don't need my tax dollars protecting the interests of American megacorporations from children.
Note that this doesn't mean filesharers now get a free pass; the recording industry is still free to prosecute what it views are attacks on its business, but it never should have been allowed to the use the RCMP to do it for them. And its good to see the RCMP come around.
This is a bit ot but hasn't been reported here and my submission was rejected http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/news/Tariff22_07.jsp
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Inspector Fenwick,"Dudley, something must be done about Snidely Whiplash. He is downloading every episode of Cop Rock without compensating the original rights holders." Dudley Do-Right," Inspector Fenwick, you can count on me to get to the bottom of this. BTW, what should I do about your daughter Nell? She downloaded every episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle." Inspector Fenwick,"Never mind that Do-Right, she is downloading those for me."
The US would have little choice. The UK has nukes and subs, and protects Canada.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Selective enforcement is a tool of totalitarianism.
Maybe it's a 'good start', but ultimately the law has to be either changed of enforced.
While we're deciding not to go after people for petty things: How about they stop going after people who commit truly victimless crimes like smoking a joint?
Both will piss the United States off to the same extent.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
For profit piracy is wrong. Personal duplication/sharing is not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why was the RCMP *ever* involved in investigating copyright violation? I always thought (at least here in Canada, where we don't yet have a "DMCA" law) that violation of copyright was a civil infraction. I also thought that the police limited their investigations to criminal infractions.
:-P
Of course, I could very well be totally wrong!
Any Canadian lawyers know of the legislation that our police were acting upon when they were involved?
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
But the US has *more* (*cough*better*cough*) nukes and subs. And land mass to absorb the UK's nukes.
Northern Minnesota has been itching for an "incident" for 150 years. I don't think an abstract idea like "Mutually Assured Destruction" will deter an incursion. One photo set of a captured American partisan fighter being Labatt Blue-boarded and you've got yourself World War III.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
You think you're cool 'cause you're all "rational" and stuff.
expandfairuse.org
Hot Damn, I"m moving to Canada!!!
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Canada. Land of the free and home of the brave.
How could the CRIA have a leg to stand on in shutting down demonoid when downloading music without permission from the copyright holder is legal in Canada?
Another sudden outbreak of common sense?
Now I'm worried. Do RCMP count as horsemen?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
In a sudden outbreak of reason and common sense, a government has decided that its own people are not "the enemy"
The usual fallacious argument. I'm not a fan of the RIAA's *tactics*, but the fact that a whole lot of people break the law doesn't make it OK, and that seems to be the crux of your argument. Basically, people have found a way to get for free what they used to pay for. The fact that they have little chance of being caught have empowered people to break the law, but that's about it.
And please don't make a lame ass 'civil disobediance' arguement next. If you feel that strongly about it, don't listen to the RIAA's tripe *at all,* pirated or not.
Canada's got way more land mass than the U.S. Only country with more land mass than Canada is Russia.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I know at least twenty people that would volunteer for a Labatt Blue-boarding.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Not so, actually. The US has more land than Canada; Canada is the second-largest country in the world only when water that is part of the country is considered as well.
...'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'...
I know how to stop it but no-one heres going to like it. Taking a page from Snow Crash where the network routers police traffic according to democratically arrived at laws, Internet protocols should be regulated in such a way that the network itself enforces distribution licenses. You download you're Linux iso's for free because thats the license in appropriate field of the Bit-Torrent 2009 protocol while material requiring payment has it automatically debited from your account on download, again depending on whats in the license field of the torrent. Regulating the network itself in a way that all licenses from free to ad-supported to subscription to purchase are enforced where it would be difficult to circumvent them (on the network not your computer) would ease issues in other areas that suck because of the lack of regulation of the network: having to put up with the likes of copy-protection on our computers and various nasties (think of the children being exploited) being filtered at the network level. The Internet is not a new phenomenom that magically facilitates people circumventing payment based licenses: before it was the SneakerNet but now that the Internet is a reality, it has become the tool of choice to distribute things beyond their intended audiences.
And just a quick word to people who think all bits should be free: If someone wants to give it away for free then more power to them *but* in our economic framework it takes effort to organize all the bits in software and you paying the publisher then them paying their employees then the employees paying their bills is a great way to spread the effort around. Entertainment is hard to make for free right now - operating systems are different, they're infrastructure and there are more obvious benefits to cooperation in them.
Shh.
More importantly, britain has the world's nastiest chemical and biological weapons.
Basically, people have found a way to get for free what they used to pay for. The fact that they have little chance of being caught have empowered people to break the law, but that's about it. You still have not substantiated your implication that what they're doing is wrong. Just because technology previously made it easy to limit distribution via an artificial monopoly doesn't make it right. You're engaging in the Bare Assertion Fallacy. Justify the state of the law.
And please don't make a lame ass 'civil disobediance' arguement next. If you feel that strongly about it, don't listen to the RIAA's tripe *at all,* pirated or not. So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it? Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation? Because it's the law? You're saying the best way to fight bad law is to obey it and mount futile boycott? A debate strategy of telling other people not to bother to defend their position rather than actually presenting arguments in support of your position is intellectually bankrupt*.
* that means "you're a fucking idiot"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
But the US has *more* (*cough*better*cough*) nukes and subs. And land mass to absorb the UK's nukes.
The U.S. won't nuke Canada -- not the Athabasca Oil Sands, anyway.
-kgj
-kgj
FFS, I said I was sorry.
I won't eat the curry again.
Exactly how many people would it take to make it "okay," then? There are 60 million US sharers.
That's not enough for you? Would 100 million suffice? How about 300 million? At what point do we say, "Um, maybe we should make this, um, I dunno, legal or sumtin"?
Ahh, no I must disagree here. In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face. After all, laws are codifications of the boundaries of expected social behaviors; if they do not serve that function, they become broken and do damage to the society in which they operate. Laws also operate to describe to individuals in a society that society's priorities; if those priorities do not serve the person whose asked to obey them at least in some bare capacity, then they cannot be expected to obey or respect them. Laws which seem to demonstrate to a public that they are not the priority to be served will only breed disregard for the authority emanating from all laws, even those which are legitimate. This is a corrosive pattern.
This is not a "lame civil disobedience" argument, just a sober view of the facts on the ground: no law can require respect of principles which are not respected, and by and large by their actions many people, especially of the younger generations, demonstrate they simply do not respect the concept of enshrining exclusive distribution rights for digital content. In such a situation, a government may continue to attempt to instill through the use of force such a respect (e.g. also drugs, prostitution), or realize that resources can be better spent elsewhere and instead decide to try to address the issue in another way, such as Canada seems to be doing.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Is it that hard to translate from Canadian to English?
I like music
Dudley Do-Right does right in this case.
So all the RCMP said is that they are not going to CRIMINALLY prosecute filesharers.
When is the last time that the US has launched a CRIMINAL trial against file sharers? Piracy IS a criminal offense both in the USA and Canada, not just a civil one, but nobody ever launches criminal trials in the US. Sure, the US cops haven't actually pledged NOT to launch criminal trials, but this doesn't change anything on practice as they haven't been actually doing it either. And given that file sharing is notoriously hard to prove in a civil court already, and a criminal court requires MUCH, MUCH higher standards of evidence, permissible police practices, and burden of proof, any criminal campaign to prosecute peer-to-peer filesharing as a criminal offense would be a disaster.
This announcement by the RCMP has absolutely NOTHING to do with the CIVIL persecution of filesharers by the *AA, which has been the real problem, and while civil action is less common in Canada than the USA, this pledge by the RCMP won't do jack squat to curtail it.
Umm... US police forces haven't been focused on personal downloading, either. The RIAA has been targeting downloaders through civil suits. The Canadian Recording Industry Assoc (whose members are international corporations - the Canadian labels have all withdrawn membership) could pursue the same course of action once they manage to push through a few draconian amendments to Canadian law.
Which is why we have MAD to preserve world order. Lets say the US did invade canada with a fairly silly (but technically valid) reason. The US would crush any army the UK could send against it. So they'd really have the choice of using WMD's (of any kind) or sitting quietly in the corner. Now, lets imagine we had a retarded cowboy as president of the US (because that's SO hard to imagine) and he decides to push his luck and say "if you use a WMD on the united states or canada, we'll launch our entire nuclear arsenal at the UK."
Well you still have two choices. Do nothing or use all your WMD. The UK could potentially take out most of the major US cities with nukes, and a good deal more with chemical or biological weapons. Odds are they'd miss a few spots though, and so eventually new cities would return and a greatly reduced (and probably fractured) US would emerge. But before the first nuke landed, all hell would break loose. Do you know what would happen if the US made good on that promise? NOBODY would survive in the UK. Every inch of soil would be quite literally covered by the fireball of 10 different nuclear blasts. It's entirely possible, depending on how well coordinated the attack was for time and penetration, that the UK would be a shallow sea the next morning, as the physical landmass was ejected into the upper atmosphere under hours of sustained nuclear bombardment. On top of that there would be enough nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional weapons remaining to physically destroy every British embassy around the world as well as have decent odds at killing every single british citizen abroad.
If the US and the UK had a nuclear war, the US would come out decimated and probably shattered a dozen years later, but the UK would be literally wiped off the map and forgotten by history by the time china finished writing it.
Besides, if you're auguring biological warfare... between fort detrick and the CDC in atlanta the US probably has a sample of every infectious disease in the world today. And smallpox. The US doesn't have so many chemical weapons, and they haven't bothered weaponizing the diseases we maintain samples of... mostly because they'd be kind of redundant when your nukes could quite literally *glass* every other "developed nation" in the world.
Way to go Canada. Can i please move there now?
yeah, it's own people aren't the enemy until their own people decide to smoke some marijuana, try to protect themselves or speed in a car. who the fuck do you think you're fooling douchebag? this isn't a war against citizens. it's about breaking the law.
Certainly doesn't seem that way on a map - but most map projections are incredibly deceiving. CIA factbook figures:
RUSSIA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html
total: 17,075,200 sq km
land: 16,995,800 sq km
water: 79,400 sq km
CHINA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
total: 9,596,960 sq km
land: 9,326,410 sq km
water: 270,550 sq km
USA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
total: 9,826,630 sq km
land: 9,161,923 sq km
water: 664,707 sq km
note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia ( add some for the all the islands, if counting )
CANADA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ca.html
total: 9,984,670 sq km
land: 9,093,507 sq km
water: 891,163 sq km
Reasons to move to Canada:
1. You won't get prosecuted for piracy
2. Our dollar is now worth more than the US dollar
3. We don't have perfect leaders, but most if not all are more intelligent than Bush
4. We still have some degree of privacy left (aka. our telcos dont spy on us)
5. We have beautiful natural wonders
6. We have much greater diversity of cultures, weather & landscapes.
7. Our beer is much better (& stronger)
8. You can throw a rock in urban cities and hit 3 starbuck locations.
9. We rule at ice hockey
10. You get to wear a tuque, pet a beaver, eat maple syrup, and say eh? instead of huh?
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
The automatic Google translation (from French to English) is relatively of really good quality. Try plugging the original article into Babelfish and see how lousy it does by comparison.
One point that particularly amazed me is that Google not only tanslates the acronym right (GRC => RCMP), but even the acronym's meaning (Gendarmerie royale du Canada => Royal Canadian Mounted Police), even though that's not anywhere close to a literal translation!
Does anyone know more about how they do this? Do they use user suggestions for this?
the only thing that is illegitimate on it's face is your bullshit argument.
the majority of people do not download music. the majority of canadians aren't even on the fucking internet, you twit. and by your logic the drinking age should be lower as more people drink under the age of 18/19, speeding should be legal and marijuana should be legal since more people have smoked it.
the only reason you talk up canada in this debate is because you're a thief. it's that simple. it has nothing to do with intellectual rights. it has nothing to do with artists rights. it has nothing to do with an outdated business model. it's about theft. pure and simple.
According to a study by Industry Canada, file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I think it is required at this point to alter the madness that is current IP law.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
11. free health care!
I hope Canada has no financial ties with the US. Otherwise they'll find some punishing language buried in some upcoming bill tying the US's honoring those "ties" unless RCMP's come up with a "technology solution" to punish online file sharer's. Hmmm...some Commie Republocrat Demblican is probably trying to figure this out as we speak.
How does this affect users worldwide out of US jurisdiction?
Look Forge | Free Classifieds Buy and Sell http://www.lookforge.com/
You oppose punishing people who violate copyright in the privacy of their own homes, but you support punishing people who grow a plant in the privacy of their own homes?
Area
Total: 9,984,670 km (2nd)
Water (%): 8.92 (891,163 km)
Thus, Canada has 9,093,507 sq km of land mass.
United States
Area
- Total 9,826,630 km [1](3rd2)
3,793,079 sq mi
- Water (%) 6.76
Thus, the United States has 9,162,350 sq km of land mass.
9 093 506 sq km (Canada's land mass) is less than 9,162,350 sq km (the US land mass), therefore your statement seems incorrect. Canada does have more total area, but more of that area is water.
Industries do not have any inherent right to exist. Is producing cars "clearly wrong" due to their effects on the buggy whip industry?
The reason I am asking, is because there was a group of Canadians that setup a web site, manily about copyright & file sharing issues that relate specifically to Canadians and there was also a forum...I've been trying to remember it; but unfortunately it has completely slipped my mind. Does anyone remember?!
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
Your numbers seem to be incontrovertible. That'll teach me to go off of things like "Canada is the second largest country in the world" when we only care about the part that you can walk on.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
In the United States, it USED to mean that people have the DUTY to fight/ignore/snub their noses at oppressive laws that turn millions of citizens into lawbreakers. Of course, that was before the widespread usage of designer legistation, where corporations (through their BRIBING-OOPS, I meant lobbying- of public officials) decide what should be legal. I'm not sure it even exists today among the brainless robotiod trolls that the average American has become.....
...per capita. We Americans have more gun laws!
...which makes sense since we don't enforce our laws much even though we certainly have more lawyers.
"3. We don't have perfect leaders, but most if not all are more intelligent than Bush"
I'm not sure that really means much.
I think it's more to the point that we're dealing with increasingly unenforceable laws, save in the most arbitrary of fashions via pretty questionable detection methods and even more questionable legal methods.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I await your long proboscis, USA.
There, fixed that for you.
The RCMP announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use (Google translation). Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers, such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, instead of the cash flow of large corporations
Or mustachioed villains who tie young women to railroad tracks.
"In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face."
Are we talking about file sharing? The majority of US citizens (or Canadian citizens, for that matter) do not use P2P apps. US Internet usage is 73%; your assertation would be that that five in seven Internet users pirate music using P2P. I doubt that even five in seven college students pirate music via P2P, and P2P usage is heavily weighted among the under-24 set.
My guess is that the majority of your friends like using P2P to get their tunes -- I certainly have no argument there. But one should look at the big picture.
As the rest of your argument appears to be based on the assertion that the majority of citizens use P2P software, I'm not sure where that's going. "Most college students not fans of copyright law" is a statement that might very well be true. But that does not make copyright law unjust.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
How does that get rated "3; Interesting"?
Canada has its own military and even crazy george wouldn't nuke Canada.
Troll or Offtopic is what it should be rated.
Now who lives in The Home of The Free?
8^)
Ed
Nice populism but that's not what my government decided. It's quite clear that the only reason the RCMP isn't going after file sharers is because they don't have the resources to do so.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
It must be nice and easy living in your little black and white world. Why don't you step into the real world once and a while and see that things aren't quite so simple. If you're capable of rational thought, that is.
"According to a study by Industry Canada [michaelgeist.ca], file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs."
This study was torn to bits when it was first covered on Slashdot a few weeks ago. The non-file-sharing group includes people who have no significant interest in music; they don't buy music anyway. But 100% of the music file sharers are music fans and thus there's a possibility that they'll buy music. It's a bit tricky to explain here; this is one of those instances where Venn diagrams come in handy. It's all too easy to confuse correlation with causation here, but it's not the case.
A more useful study would compare two groups of music fans; one made up of people who acquire their music via P2P; the other made up of people who do not. I doubt that the end result would be the same.
Either way, there's a false dichotomy here: if you're a P2P fan you have lots of ways to find new music; if you don't pirate music as a "try before you buy" mechanism, then you do not. Yet I (and plenty of people like me) have absolutely no trouble finding new music and exploring new artists and genres, without resorting to piracy. iTunes is set up quite well to encourage this sort of exploration; there's also Pandora, last.fm, and countless alternative streaming radio stations. While I've no doubt that there are P2P fans who've used P2P to find new music, anybody who attempts to imply that piracy is the only way to find new music is simply trying to justify their behavior, at the expense of honesty.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Do us Canadians get a say as to whether nukes get fired over us?
http://watching-eyes.blogspot.com/
"My guess is that the majority of your friends like using P2P to get their tunes -- I certainly have no argument there. But one should look at the big picture."
most slashdotters seem to think their little corner of the planet is somehow representative of the public at large. it's a big problem around here when it comes down to having people see that things they feel will cause a gushing revolution are hardly even a crack in the dyke in the real world. this is the same reason that we keep hearing that linux is winning victories everywhere when the fact is that outside of the server room the numbers have pretty much remained within a couple of percent of where there were 5 years ago.
I agree that fighting piracy is a futile battle. However, monetary reward for creativity is arguable the primary driving force for innovation in the US. Ubiquitous piracy might be impacting the drive for innovation - case in point: anyone hear about that strike in Hollywood?
Ontario named their regional police force the OPP?
I'm down with the Ontario police. (Yeah you know me!)
Kudos to the RCMP for finally recognizing the obvious. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to go after organized criminals who make zillions of copies of counterfeit content and whatnot, then to go after individuals who have nothing better to do than download something for personal use. This way, you eliminate huge amounts of copyright violations by targeting a small number of arch criminals.
As a Canadian myself. All I have to say to you and others who make fun of Canada is... Bahahahaha!!! I can download whatever I want now!
Make fun of the horses all you want, their obviously smart enough.
-hps
Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society. The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Australia, while we're having a belt at comparing measurements ...
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/as.html
total: 7,686,850 sq km
land: 7,617,930 sq km
water: 68,920 sq km
About 15,748 sq km of which is NOT freaking desert only inhabited by lizards.
Dear Mods,
Different viewpoints than your own != Flamebait.
It does not affect anybody outside northern America. Arenabg http://arenabg.com/ is both better seeded and has newer stuff then demonoid.
Yes, a few hundred years ago they used to hang the hungry peasants for hunting game on the Landlords Estate. That was the LAW, but times have changed and that law no longer applies. And neither does a pile of other crappy laws that created class distinction by giving certain groups of people "SPECIAL RIGHTS".
Patent and copyright laws are no different than the segregation laws that finally got knocked down. It is an anachronism, belongs in another time and place, where the monarchy could control the presses and thus control the dissemination of subversive (to them) ideas.
Everyone who ever wrote a sentence, or came up with an idea, was educated in the school system, and by the society that they live in. And since the actual nature of thought being what it actually is, it needs foundational material on which to build. Ideas are not actually unique they are just recycled and applied in different context. The working concept of a computer existed many years before there was an actual computer. Ever hear of Charles Babbage? Shakespeare or Newton or Angelo are always somewhere in the background. So then where do these special RIGHTS come from????
Well, are we talking land surface area or land mass? I say since Canada has the majority of the Rockies that should tip the scale for Canada's favor. And about China... wow, I guess the figures were revised once they reacquired Hong Kong?
And the Arrogant Worms (see Saskatchewan Pirate song above) also have something to say about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxDDcTc64c
Arrogant Worms
Canada's Really Big
When I look around me, I can't believe what I see
It seems as if this country has lost its will to live
The economy is lousy, we barely have an army
But we can still stand proudly cuz Canada's really big
We're the second largest country on this planet earth
And if Russia keeps on shrinking then soon we'll be
first
(As long as we keep Quebec)
The USA has tanks and Switzerland has banks
They can keep them thanks, they just don't amount
Cuz when you get down to it, you find out what the truth
is
It isn't what you do with it its the size that counts
Most people will tell you that France is pretty large
But you can put fourteen France's into this land of ours
(It's take a lot of work, It'd take a whole lot of work)
We're larger than Malaysia, almost as big as Asia
We're bigger than Australia and it's a continent
So big we seldom bother to go see one another
Though we often go to other countries for vacations
Our mountains are very pointy, our prairies are not
The rest is kinda bumpy, but man do we have a lot
(we've got a lot of land, we've got a whole lot of land)
So stand up and be proud and sing out very loud
We stand out from the crowd cuz Canada's really big
When he says the majority of citizens, he obviously means the majority of citizens the law is relevant to. If I were to say 'The majority of citizens follow/break traffic laws' I would mean the majority of citizens who drive cars. So in this case, only the majority of internet users is relevant, since the law isn't relevant to those not on the internet. This would mean only 36.6% of US Citizens would have to use p2p. I'm sure this number is still much higher than the actual usage, but you still shouldn't misinterpret his comment.
.. that owns all these guns.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I have no duty to the "community" other than not infringing others' rights to life, liberty, and property.
Wrong. You have the duty of participating in a jury. You have the duty of paying taxes. You have the duty of obeying the law. You have the duty of reporting crimes that you witness. You have the duty of defending your homeland in case of attack. You have the duty of participating in the political process. There are many others.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Of course RHCP won't go after personal filesharers, p2p is probably the leading cause of their suc- Wait, what were we talking about again?
Free music, that is!
I can barely go up to 40 most days!!
There's your problem. You've got to do it at night. The 401 is clear enough at 3:00am to hit those speeds. Not that I've tried it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
... they trample on peoples lefts too ;)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
The usual fallacious argument. I'm not a fan of the RIAA's *tactics*, but the fact that a whole lot of people break the law doesn't make it OK, [...]
Uh, yes, yes it does. In fact, if "a whole lot of people" break a law, that's prima facie evidence that the law is, in some way, flawed and should either be struck from the books or reimplemented.
[...] and that seems to be the crux of your argument.
The crux of your argument seems to be the law is unchanging, infallible and objective. Given that it is none of these things, I'd say your argument is baseless.
Guess that makes 21 then.
John
and by your logic the drinking age should be lower as more people drink under the age of 18/19, speeding should be legal and marijuana should be legal since more people have smoked it.
Exactly. Did you have a point ?
I disagree that patent and copyright laws are anachronistic. It would be true to say, however, that the current form of them is not what their creators meant them to be.
Copyright and patents are actually the future of the United States economy.
Every day less "stuff" is made in the US and more "stuff" manufacturing is shipped offshore. About the only thing the US still actually makes is "ideas", and it's government/powers-that-be are going to do everything in their power to make sure those "ideas" stay US owned and controlled using such things as Copyrights, Patents, "Free Trade Agreements" and the like.
I don't agree with "the system" myself, but it's still heading that way...
but it is without a doubt a fraud
According to this article:
In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain.
When I copy a bunch of data from a CD to my hard drive, honestly tell you what the data is, honestly tell you who made it, honestly tell you that I am neither of these people and don't own any distribution rights, and then give you a duplicate of it for free, where is there any deception?
Once we stop this practice of trying to make the act out to be something more morally repugnant than it is, we discover that it is "copyright infringement" and nothing more. It is not theft. It is not counterfeiting. It is not fraud. It is definitely not piracy. It is copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement is illegal. However, in the minds of the overwhelming majority, it should not be illegal. People simply do not respect the notion that having created some arrangement of data automatically gives one a monopoly over its distribution and duplication.
I read this on a bumper sticker: If the people lead, the leaders will follow. I agree. Some people can attempt to go through the proper channels to get laws changed. If the channels are blocked or otherwise unwieldy, those people will fail. The rest, however, will simply ignore the law until it goes away.
And that seems to be precisely what is happening.
To the industry, it doesn't matter whether somebody doesn't pay because they're copying for free, or because they simply don't like music. The only difference is, it's presumably easier to force a pirate to pay than to make people like music. Presumably.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Pandora doesn't work in Canada.
2/3 Of Canadians are on the internet which is about the same as America. And yes Marijuana should be legalized, the drinking age should be lowered and there are plenty of areas where the speed limits are retardedly low. I think I hear your cousin/wife calling and I think your mother/grandma wants you to fix her computer, perhaps you should go and help them.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
"Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society."
I don't think it was intentional, but you're slippery-sloping here. "it's okay to copy a CD owned by a family member" does not equal "it's okay to offer a copy to 1,000,000 of your closest friends on P2P."
"The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices."
Well, to answer your question literally, the constitution puts it thusly: "to promote the progress and science of useful arts." But beyond the touchy-feely stuff, IP is a huge money-maker for the US; we probably put out more of it than any other country. If you're perplexed by the relative size of the music industry (viz. vs. the storage industry, as you mentioned), keep in mind that IP laws also protect books, films, software, and so on. And as other countries continue to get better at doing the things that have traditionally been money-makers for the US, our collective creative output is going to become an even more vital part of our economy. Remember what Neal Stephenson wrote in Snow Crash: the US excels only in music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery.
And, that's why the US has strong copyright laws: to protect our economic interests. It's an ugly, unfortunate situation, but our government sees the US as being in an economic cold war with pretty much the rest of the world.
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years -- and I'm concerned that you chose that word deliberately, like Red State politicians stating that gays don't "special" laws giving them the same rights as others. Pick any industry and it's susceptible to loss; the retail industry deals with shrinkage and nobody here would claim that laws against shoplifting are "special" and in place to prop up the retail industry.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
(Sigh). That's why I want to move myself and my family to outer space.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
My exact same argument applies to if you asked your mother if she would like a copy of her favorite song from a p2p file sharing program or not. Compare it to if you asked her if she would like a stolen CD from the local music store. One will get you a slap about the ear, the other will won't. That's the point.. the average person is not morally outraged by illicit copying. The average person has no interest in these laws. They exist for industry at the expense of the public. And no, you're absolutely wrong in the belief that IP is anything but a minor industry. Weapons and agriculture are big sectors. Books, movies, music and software, are nothing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Correction: as an Alaskan I would like to point out that Canada is not north, it is east.
Those are all side effects of it being illegal, not the activity itself.
What about speed limits?
Most people break at least 1 every time they drive.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Yeah that's what I thought too. Doesn't he have any good examples of widely-broken laws which are actually good laws? Because drinking age, speed limits, and marijuana prohibition are downright terrible examples. The drinking age should be lower. I don't know how low, but lower, maybe graduated or something, but certainly the current state of that law is suboptimal. And it's not that "speeding" should be "legal", rather that speed limits should be higher, especially considering the high-quality cars with great handling that we have today. Older crappier cars should drive slower, and big trucks should drive slower, but a Jetta can do 75 safely, perhaps higher. And marijuana, don't get me started.
What is the most widely-broken law you can think of which is (in your opinion) a good law? None come to my mind.
A personal belief that piracy is okay (and thus not paying for something someone else has created) is the crux of your argument. I disagree with that, I think it is wrong. Given that, every other argument you make is pretty much immaterial.
Yes. Goodbye.
Well, keeping the price high anyway.
:).
Keep the price and the buyer high
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Benton Fraser uses Kazaa.
Jesus could walk on water, so if Canadians are as Jesus-loving as some Americans, water counts too.
IMO the best solution to that kind of problems is a direct democratic decision by the jurisdiction's population (in that case the whole U.S.). Create a few sets of rules (e.g. a "green one" topping at 55 mph, one that's in line with your neighbour's limits and perhaps one without any limits (just on highways?)), create a few sets of punishments for breaking said rules (going over the limit costs ya lots of green, your license, nothing). Send said lists and some pros and cons (by the respective political groups, of course) to every voting person, let em vote it off.
I'm pretty sure in most cases medium fines with medium speed limits would be voted for. People want security, yet be able to travel quickly. They want others with disprespect for said security to be punished accordingly yet know they'll get caught too some day.
Pretty much the same for filesharing, if you ask me. A rather large part of the population not being able to relate to the problem at hand (as opposed to driving) may skew the decision, but I'm sure a consent could be found and wouldn't be so different from what Canada's doing now.
Drinking age? Why not stick to 18, like the rest of the world?
Marijuana? My suggestion: legalize, no driving while high, 18+ (like cigs & co).
Speed limits? No idea bout the situation in the U.S., but you're a democracy. Vote! (I don't think speeds can be limited differently for different cars of one "class", though.)
You are making an assertion ("Piracy is Wrong") so the burden of proof falls on YOU, not him.
Some of us dod believe that he walked on water, but just assume that it was in the winter.
Anyone got a light for my sig?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I live in Canada, never in my life have I heard of *anyone* being arrested or prosecuted for sharing media files for personal use. For business use, yes. For resale, yes. But does anyone have an example of any case of a personal, noncommercial use leading to a formal charge? From where I live, and probably most other Canadians, this is the RCMP saying, 'We are now officially not going to do what we've informally never been doing in the first place.' Perhaps to send a message to certain lobbying groups which are applying pressure? Or perhaps even to send a message to the current Canadian government, which is more friendly to big media companies than the preceding one. That message being, 'Don't go passing any laws that we don't see any way to enforce.'
I'm confused. Ummm... This sounds like .. like.. common sense. It can't be. Common sense just does not come from these organizations. It requires intelligence and acceptance of reality.
Honestly, i expected all of Islam to convert to Christianity, George Bush to get a sex change, and Elvis to start singing again in Vegas before any of the organizations would come close to admitting the technological futility of their position let alone stop going after individuals.
I'm going outside to wait for the UFOs to land with all those clones of Jessica Alba.
Heheheh - I feel like a kid again. The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy just became real.
Animoog.org
Canada is the second-largest country in the world only when water that is part of the country is considered as well.
It's true, Canada is not as large (in land area) as many people think. Individual Canadians, on the other hand, are enormous. Many in the U.S. don't realize that the average Canadian is over 2.4 metres (eight feet) tall and can easily weigh over 120 kg (260 lbs).
I disagree that patent and copyright laws are anachronistic. It would be true to say, however, that the current form of them is not what their creators meant them to be.
There are actually two issues here. The first is how much patent and copyright laws represent what the inventors of them intended. e.g. the original intent of copyright was state control of what could be published. (Probably with lots of lobbying by clerics who had, prior to the printing press, a monopoly on producing copies of books.)
The second issue is what purposes such things could reasonably serve now.
RCMP stands for "Royal Canadian Mounted Police".
I'm not a fan of the current copyright laws, and unlike a lot of people on here I'm happy to come out and say: not only have I ripped a metric fuckload of media over the years, I've downloaded a shitload of it too. I guess that says which side of the debate on copyright I sit on. However, I have to point out that your arguments are so easy to rebut that somebody has to do it, and given a lack of people willing to argue it properly I'll play devil's advocate.
:) but in all likely hood they are trying to make a living. So these creative works are goods - in the sense that they are tradable items.
Why would it be wrong to copy media ie what justification does the current law have?
People get too hung up on the final part of ownership. I heard this (digital) media and so I've taken a copy of it. I haven't deprived the original owner of it so no transfer has occurred. The universe appears to agree with me that digital media cannot be copy controlled - yay! I win.
What about the flip side? At some point somebody created that song / film / etc. In a very real sense they are the owner of that media (lets ignore scumsuckers like the RIAA for a moment). Did they do this for the sheer joy of benefiting their fellow man? It would be nice to believe so (and I'm an academic so I can believe that people do that
Now, we may argue that because the natural state of the universe seems to make it impossible to prevent copying digital information that these cannnot be trade goods, and that we should abolish copyright law. But would that action benefit us as a society? Most (if not all) of our laws are things that we have decided improve our society, but which need to be imposed on people because they contradict the natural state of the world. Thou shalt not murder - purely a social convention to improve the world that we live in. Very easy to ignore, just ask OJ.
And therein lies the justification for copyright laws. They allow a class of creative people to trade the goods that they produce in a manner that gives them a living. And as a result we live in a richer, more creative society.
The function of parasites like the RIAA, and their attempts to pervert not just copyright law but most of the technological progress in CS for their benefit is left as an exercise for the reader. Apologies for rambling and logical fallacies, but I'm having the day off work with the flu, and despite mainlining ibuprofin and lemsip I'm a little below par.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years
Other legal concepts have been around for thousands of years. A Roman would easily understand the idea of laws against theft or fraud whereas they wouldn't when it came to copyright.
Since anyone can invent an internet protocol, just by writing code and distributing it, this has as much of a chance of happening as everyone using P2P to share music voluntarily switching to Amazon and iTunes.
The Internet is not a new phenomenom that magically facilitates people circumventing payment based licenses
Uh, roger cucumber velvet nosegay. Lamington tirade pluto frock swizzlestick. Tangiers rapscallion squeamish ossifrage? Tautology plenitude fabulous dishwater. Telemann pluperfect autocrat clerestory Borgia antigen!
True. I thought that was what the levy on blank media was for...
What about speed limits?
Most people break at least 1 every time they drive.
If speed limits are sensible they will be observed. If they are drastically different from the appropriate speed for the road (in either direction) they will tend to be ignored.
Making a big fuss about speed limits can lead to sitations of people driving too fast for the conditions whilst still being "under".
IMO the best solution to that kind of problems is a direct democratic decision by the jurisdiction's population (in that case the whole U.S.). Create a few sets of rules (e.g. a "green one" topping at 55 mph, one that's in line with your neighbour's limits and perhaps one without any limits (just on highways?)), create a few sets of punishments for breaking said rules (going over the limit costs ya lots of green, your license, nothing). Send said lists and some pros and cons (by the respective political groups, of course) to every voting person, let em vote it off. I'm pretty sure in most cases medium fines with medium speed limits would be voted for. People want security, yet be able to travel quickly. They want others with disprespect for said security to be punished accordingly yet know they'll get caught too some day.
One basic problem with speed limits is that a speed which is safe can vary greatly. e.g. in daylight, with a dry road and little traffic 90mph might be a perfectly acceptable driving speed. Whereas in the dark, with heavy traffic, a wet load and fog anything over 20mph might be highly dangerous. Yet taking the average of these and saying "The speed limit is 55mph" is rather daft.
First they build a communist style healthcare which provides the rich with the same shitty care as the plebs. Now they refuse to prosecute people for heinous crimes like downloading copyrighted music.
In tomorrow's news:
"Fellow Americans, I, uh.., Al-GAYDA!! Al-Gayda. On our borders, Al-Gayda! Uh, terrorist camps in Canada. We have hard, concrete hard, evidence type proof, of the Al-Gayda in canada. And I say to you, my people, the United States will not stand idle when evil builds camps in our backyard. Now I've told the President of Canada, Queen Elizabeth, that if they won't shut down the camps, and provide us with the proof that the camps is shut down the United States will take action! I've also told them to disarm their weapons of mass distrucshun an all them terr-ists. People of America, I promise to you that I'll elimnate the threat to our southern borders! God Bless America!" ***ROARING APPLAUSE AND CHEERING FROM A HUGE CROWD*** (despite the fact that the speech was delivered from the Oval Office).
As for Echelon, the system spies on us without any telco involvement needed... and the multi-national nature of the beast means that the UK part spies on canadians and vice versa.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Where do you get that "the majority of canadians aren't even on the internet?". I would say if you did your research, you'd find that the percentage of us on the 'net is comparable to the percentage in the US.
As for "thief" and "laws", the personal use copyright clause in Canada specifically states (and has been interpreted as such) that P2P use constitutes personal use and is not illegal. The CRIA may be working to change that, but they haven't changed it yet. There's a little hurdle in the media levy they collect, in exchange for which, the personal use clause remains untouched.
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
"And no, you're absolutely wrong in the belief that IP is anything but a minor industry. Weapons and agriculture are big sectors. Books, movies, music and software, are nothing."
I think there's a disconnect here between what you think should be the government's economic priorities, and what the government does. That's fine, but you asked why copyright law exists, and the answer is because the government thinks it's vital to our economy. The department of commerce has stated that IP industries represent 40 percent of U.S. economic growth -- 40 percent! -- and more than one-third of the value of all publicly traded U.S. companies.
Simply put, the government isn't messing around. At 40% growth, they know where their bread is buttered. And, reading between the lines, "publicly traded U.S. companies" means "...which pay taxes." You and I will have to agree to disagree on the definition of "minor" in this context, but at least you can understand that with a growth of 40%, the government has plenty of motivation to protect their interests.
And so it goes. Perhaps there will be a future day in which the weapons and agriculture export businesses are experiencing 40% growth, and -- The Pirate Bay willing -- our IP export business is foundering. When that happens, perhaps it will bring about changes in our laws. But despite what you or I say, that's the reality today.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
And just because technology currently makes it easy to distribute doesn't make it wrong to ask to be compensated for work.
Producing software, music, movies, art, whatever, still costs money, even if the distribution is much, much cheaper. I'm no fan of the RIAA, but I completely disagree that digital media should be free. The cost should be reduced to compensate for cheaper distribution (not to mention cutting out the middleman), but the creators of the work should still be compensated, if they choose so (I just want to be clear that I think the creator of the work should decide what the price is, whether it's free or not, or whether they should be paid in money or goats).
So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it?
No, it's because disobeying a bad law can still cost you money and time in jail.
And because it sets a dangerous precedent. Who gets to decide which laws should be obeyed or disobeyed? If I don't like the drinking and driving law, can I disobey that one?
Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation?
I hope you're not seriously comparing the morality between segregation and free downloads. If you don't think there's a difference, and think that these two issues are at the same level on the "morality" scale, then we can just end the debate here, because I just don't have the capability or the desire to explain why that's wrong.
Gotta love Northern logic, it makes sense, unlike Southern logic.
A few assumptions, please correct if I am mistaken:
* Canada has a private copying levy, whereby a portion of the sales of most recording media goes to Canadian artists.
* In effect, Canadian courts have ruled this makes the private copying of music legal.
* The CRIA looks after the interest of Canadian recording artists.
* Demonoid supplies links which facilitates the download of, among other things, works produced by Canadian recording artists.
How can the CRIA legally threaten a webhost to shut down a site which is involved in activities which - for all intents and purposes - are legal in the nation which you represent? What am I missing?
When you spend 20$, and 25 cents of it goes to the author of the music, "paying for something someone else has created" is not exactly the issue.
The problem with people like you is that you've no concept of the history of copyright law, why it exists, and what its role is in the economy today.
If you think it all comes down to "paying for something someone else has created", you'd probably have more than a few personal reservations about the current state of copyright laws.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Jaywalking? That's probably the most often broken law on the books, and it leads to dozens of s every year.
What about seat-belt laws? When they came into effect, EVERYONE broke them all the time. By your logic, they should immediately have been repealed.
I agree with many of your points, but there's more to law than just popularity.
Beavers are quite rare here these days. They've been mostly replaced by naked mole rats.
The original article and the RCMP quote in it are only about music sharing. That might be worth putting in the headline, eh?
Reasons NOT to move to canada:
1) It's friggin COLD!
2) You think your taxes are high? Don't ask about ours!
3) Traffic in Toronto is worse than New York.
4) Our military is so small, we have to pick fights with Denmark.
5) You can't go to a concert without getting high from second-hand smoke.
6) Yanks debate about pulling out of Iraq, we debate about pulling out of Afghanistan.
7) Anyone who's seen our last prime minister know that the parent post was lying about the intelligence of our leaders.
8) The same prime minister managed to hold office for 12 years. No term limits is NOT a good thing!
9) After a while it gets REALLY annoying to have every American you meet ask you "y'all got electricity up there?"
Actually, I would prefer the water over all the land. US is already having problems with water not to mention China and rest of the world. Canada has something like 10% of all the non-ice-locked drinkable water. US already has plans to try to export Canada's best resource many times in the past including something called NAWAPA [1]. Too bad US, you can't have it.
[1] - http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html
Bullshit. Speed limits are traffic laws that are routinely *broken*. This results in *thousands* of deaths in US alone each and every year. Yet, police is not enforcing these common-sense laws. People that drive according to the laws, are harassed not only by other reckless drivers but sometimes also by police. Ever driven last at no more than the posting speed limit? Anyone ever receive a ticket for driving "too fast for conditions" even when they are driving under the posted speed limit? (that's another law that is not really enforced - sad but true as you can see every winter and fog patches from the crashes on the road)
Speed kills. Everyone that is not a retard knows that. Police knows that. But they do not enforce the laws because too many people are breaking the rules.
This case is exactly the same. Copyright violation is wrong. Police do not enforce it because they would be overwhelmed. They do not pick and choose what laws they'll enforce based on some mystical scoring system. It is not their job.
Do you know what would happen if the US made good on that promise? NOBODY would survive in the UK. Every inch of soil would be quite literally covered by the fireball of 10 different nuclear blasts
Doh! Wind drift would spread the nuclear fallout across the northern hemisphere and since the Earth rotates west to east, apparently, the USA would be on the receiving end of some of the USA-launched over UK nuclear warheads.
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/c20032004fs-e.html
Votator.com implements a fair voting scheme (free
Specifically, the deep fried Mars Bar.
More seriously, some of what Porton Down came up with in the fifties was just scary. Ever heard of VX? World's most hideous poison. Made in England. And we sold the recipe to the Americans, in exchange for, er... the blueprints to the hydrogen bomb.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Offering is one thing, but actual copies are another. Nobody ever seeds to a ratio of 1,000,000. Look at the typical seeding ratio of the typical BitTorrent user, and there you have the number of close friends they've copied the CD on to. Me, I usually cut it out around 2.0, but some torrents just don't have enough traffic to get that high in any reasonable time...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Seatbelt laws should be repealed. There is plenty of research showing that car safety features encourage less safe driving; drivers always operate at the level of risk they are comfortable with. Unfortunately, although car drivers are no worse off pedestrians and other road users are now at greater risk. Ultimately, seatbelts transfer risk from car occupants to everyone else. This is wrong.
I'm bothered by both sides of this argument.
I think it actually is wrong, not just illegal, to download music and movies without paying for them. Making those things costs money, and without people paying for content, nobody gets paid and nothing gets made. I suppose a lot of people have some kind of faith in the notion that generous, creative people will somehow fill the void, but I'm not so sure. I admit, I like those ridiculous, high-budget movies that Hollywood makes. If the industry plays by the rules, makes the movies, pays everyone for their services to do so, distributes the work so they can be reimbursed at a profit, and offers options for us to be able to watch their movies over and over again at home, it seems that circumventing the system just to avoid paying is a bogus thing to do.
On the other hand, I don't think downloading a movie is exactly the same as running a dvd cloning factory. At worst, I'd think it's fair to be fined along the same lines as a seatbelt violation. The many thousands of dollars in penalties that people get hit with is out of control, which makes it impossible for me to even hear the industry's side of the story. I don't buy the whole, "It's costing us TRILLIONS!", for all the reasons everyone here is already familiar with. I also don't like the idea that I can't make copies of the movies I've bought. But I just don't think it's ok to take a copy and put it online for everyone to view without paying, unless the movie's maker said it's ok.
I guess I think of it like I think of software. I try to respect all software licenses. If it's closed source, I don't download without purchasing and I never redistribute. If it's OSS, I respect the author's choice of licenses, try to contribute when I'm capable enough to do so, and while irrelevant to all this, I often donate. Now if I don't like the conditions under which a piece of software is provided, I simply choose something else. I don't circumvent the whole process. Now, if someone started offering movies for download, at a lower cost, in a timely way and in a format that works equally well on all of my equipment (dvd player, windows pc, linux lappy), I'd gladly take my money elsewhere and buy that instead. I suppose that pipe-dream would require a method by which you could consistently enforce the seatbelt-ticket-type fine... which may never happen.
So anyway, maybe it makes me the chump, but I guess it is a case of right and wrong for me.
hey chef, the tails of shrimp are not food, and I didn't order finger food, so cut them off.
Depending on how they are cooked, tails of prawns (shrimp if you prefer) are food. They are nice and crunchy.
meh
Producing software, music, movies, art, whatever, still costs money, even if the distribution is much, much cheaper.
The problem with your argument is that it is based on the notion that work inherently deserves some form of compensation. I could work all day at pounding your car with a sledgehammer. How much do you owe me for that day's work? I spent all day calling people "ass-pump". Now others are calling people "ass-pump". Do they owe me money? There is no natural right to compensation for work without prior arrangement (i.e. contract). I'm no fan of the RIAA, but I completely disagree that digital media should be free. Digital media is free, there is no "should be" about it. It's the same price as a conversation between two people. How much should an hour of conversation cost? The cost should be reduced to compensate for cheaper distribution (not to mention cutting out the middleman), but the creators of the work should still be compensated, if they choose so (I just want to be clear that I think the creator of the work should decide what the price is, whether it's free or not, or whether they should be paid in money or goats). The problem this continually runs into is that information is not scarce. It is infinitely replicable for only the cost of the medium that encodes it. The idea that a creator of patterns of information is somehow "owner" of that pattern is a modern contrivance. Sure, there should be a mechanism for voluntary compensation, but the assertion that a creator has some natural right to control the free flow of information through society is asinine.So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it?
No, it's because disobeying a bad law can still cost you money and time in jail.
So the law is just because they enforce it? Bwa? And because it sets a dangerous precedent. Who gets to decide which laws should be obeyed or disobeyed? If I don't like the drinking and driving law, can I disobey that one? Sure, but just wait and see how much sympathy you garner when you run down a blind child in a crosswalk! Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is viewed by a large portion of the population as a victimless crime. That is generally how laws come about--- by societal consensus. All reasonable people agree that behaving in a reckless manner that endangers others is a Bad Thing. Large numbers of reasonable people fall on both sides of the copyright debate, therefore the validity of the law is questionable.Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation?
I hope you're not seriously comparing the morality between segregation and free downloads.If you don't think there's a difference, and think that these two issues are at the same level on the "morality" scale, then we can just end the debate here, because I just don't have the capability or the desire to explain why that's wrong. Put the fucking strawman down, fool. I was offering the extreme example to get the OP to consider the possibility that civil disobedience is arguably a legitimate course of action for any unjust law, not just obviously unjust ones like segregation. If you think I was suggesting the two are equal, then yes, we can end the debate here, because your reading comprehension is obviously not up to the task of following reasoned discourse.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Because I've never heard of a tomato grow op being shut down.
I don't want to defend copyright and patents (especially patents!) as they are but your logic is flawed. Copyright is an extention of property rights which is based on the believe that a person should reap the reward of their labor.
The problem at the moment is that the law treats copyrighted IP as if there is always a license attached regardless of whether you can know about it. In my opinion it's morally completely acceptable if a company bases it's sale of instances of an IP on a contract that forbids the seller from sharing it. Please note that this is different then an EULA or (c) notice on the back. For one the buyer can't deny that he is aware of the limitation and the seller must keep the contract in their archive. This means that the burden of prove lies with the IP holder again.
In this scenario, the only one who could be charged in a civil suit would be who breached the contract in this specific instance.
Of course, in practice this would never work. It would cost to much to track down who actually breached the contract and IP owners would soon realize that the only value of IP is to draw visitors to your website. And then we would be back at a purely advertisment supported content as it has been with TV and radio for the last 50 years (at least!). What a nice day that'll be. The way it is know I fear we'll have to wait till the generation that won't let go of the idea that people will pay actually money for stuff they can get for free has died.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
You seem to be fixed in a paradigm of a couple of hundred years ago. Also you appear to be unaware of the shades of legal terminologies. Copyright is not a property, copyright as implied in the name is a "right". But if it were not for printing pressed and other copy media what purpose would it have. Would we still not need the bards and the scribes like for hundreds of years in the fast, they either made their living by performing, or actually copying documents themselves physically. In fact I believe the Jewish scrolls are still done this way.
So because someone else invented the printing press, or magnetic media, or whatever, then this gives content types some special rights, where they don't have to perform or work any more? So then the inventors of these devices should get a cut of all copies, because they made it possible. You say my logic about this is flawed, then explain how copy"RIGHTS" can be justified, because if I took any literary work, sentence by sentence, I could find a replicate sentence in some other work that would suggest plagiarism. The same could be said for any riff. It is all built on what went before, there is nothing new (original) under the sun except human folly.
Steal this MP3...
Don't forget that the media market has not been a level playing field for a very long time. Britney Spears didn't become popular because the marketplace heard her and said "hey, we like that, give us more." Britney became popular because a large corporation who with a few other large corporations completely control the non-internet marketplace, decided to hype Britney into popularity. This was done at the expense of many other talented artists who were never heard at all by the public. These corporations have essentially decided what music is "good for us."
Piracy is a means far more effective than boycott of undermining the control of the media corporations that are harming large numbers of independent artists by pushing them off of the shelves via their market tactics, some of which are specifically illegal (payola) but they get away with it because they have money and media access with which to attract government corruption. Under such a system, the musical talent "cream" does not rise to the top, only the marketing and market control talent "cream". Piracy is more effective than boycott as it doesn't require that one deprive themselves in the process, and makes the material more generally available, useful for those who don't otherwise know how to pirate it (or fear getting caught).
In quite a few areas (patents and copyrights is actually the most benign of them), it's clear that government is no longer working for the people, largely due to an ignorant or oblivious populace who have been convinced that their choice is between two corrupt pro-corporate parties, neither of which seem to be working for them. Piracy is one of the few powers that individuals have over the big corporations, and frankly, I can't blame people for seizing the opportunity and using it to the hilt.
But, personally, piracy is not my cup of tea. If it is yours, more power to you. For a variety of reasons though, I chose to go another route to fight the system. I do in fact, enjoy quite a bit of media, but I do it all legally (to the best of my knowledge anyway, IANAL). I buy things used, I sell things used, I check them out at libraries, I trade them with friends. I also refuse to buy any sort of digital download because there can be no legal second-hand market for it. I also download a lot of free music on the internet as there is a lot of it out there though it can take a little digging to find stuff you may actually want to listen to.
I also make some of my own musical compositions available, completely free-- I'm on several of the music sites out there but never utilize any access restrictions on content (fortunately I have a day job). Even given a level playing field it's doubtful that I'd rise up far enough to stay afloat, but the idea that the majors are somehow doing us a favor by screening out crappy music that we wouldn't want to listen to anyway is totally laughable-- most of what I've found most interesting to listen to in the last several decades has been unsigned bands and other independents, and I'm not adverse to paying list price for that sort of thing when I can get it directly from the band itself.
And as I am attempting to do here, I counter the bogus moralistic anti-piracy arguments cited by shills and the ignorant or brainwashed. My methodology may not be quite as effective a weapon as piracy, but I feel it is better than just rolling over and suckling at the corporate teat.
And to those of you who have made their living in music and are now complaining that you can't make that living anymore-- I have only one thing to say-- GET A JOB LIKE THE REST OF US, BUM!
This might be depending on a broken crutch. How long do you think it will be before computers are doing creative work on their own. Already a lot of models / designs come out of computers. Soon to be literature and music. So will computers then have patent and copy rights?
When planning the future you got to look down the road a little bit here. Ability and performance is what is going to protect the US economy, not some hypothetical rights that they are trying to foist on the rest of the world, but won't be able to, China is already too much of a powerhouse to be bullied into that disadvantageous position.
Stewie Griffin said it best: "Victory is mine!"
The fact that a lot of people like me depend on downloads to get programming that is not in our country never entered your mind. did it? No, I guess not. And since the only thing you can see are the RIAA's and MIAA's $$$$ as they cross your greasy little palm makes it ok to make sure I and other people like me can't get our news or shows because they aren't licensed in our countries yet. There are dozens of movies, videos and TV programs that will never be shown in the country I currently live in and may never be shown unless the government and its representatives get tossed. Is it right to deprive me or others of the enjoyment that the many fat, lazy Americans get from watching these programs?
We're talking about Canada. It's always winter.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
That's like saying a program isn't novel because a bit sequence happens to appear in an other program. Obviously that is not true. There are orginal ideas (there must be otherwise there can't be any ideas) and there are novel recombination of ideas. Content creators do work, sometimes a great deal i.e. in movie production. Following your logic everything would be free for the taking because physical property is also mostly a recombination of things that have existed before. I actually agree with your sentiment but attacking copyright in proxy of attacking property rights will not get you anywhere.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
That would be the three-fourths of the world's fresh water that lives in Canada.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Following the logic to its natural conclusion, every effect is preceded by a cause. This premise is supported by Science, Reason and Mathematics. And most natural phenomena can be represented by a Mathematical expression.
So then it would be natural to conclude that there is a backwards string of cause and effect, both in time and in process, right back to a "First Cause" which itself has no cause, but contains all possibilities.
So then how can creativity from concepts that always already existed belong to an individual, any more than the mathematical formula for the shape of a leaf, or the outline of a galaxy? If I never left my living room, and widen my understanding, I might conclude that the TV programs were actually created by the television set, instead of knowing that the TV is only the instrument through which I become aware of them.
That's an interesting point. I'll bet if you replaced airbags with spikes, people would pay a whole lot more attention to the road...
The television will not be revolutionized.
If the government truly respected the wished of the majority of its citizens (in the US anyway), Christianity would be the state religion, homosexuals would be rounded up and "re-educated", and all sorts of other horrible things. Unfortunately, the majority of people are stupid.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
If there is one cause without cause why can't there be many (i.e. fresh ideas). Sure, the universe provides the potential for everything yet it isn't certain the theory of relativity would exist if Einstein had never lived. So ideas are connected to those that think them up and they are also qualitatively different from the shape of a leaf. The difference is the involvement of the human brain which unarguably belongs to the human. Therefor it's not a stretch to assert that any output of it's processes can be treated as also belonging to that human.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
I've never heard of an electrical fire save for cases where people have been prevented from hiring professional electricians by draconian laws.