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Infringement 'Detrimental To the Public Health, Safety'
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has declared that copyright infringement 'substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses and its visitors.' You might laugh, but that means they can close up a property for up to one year for violations of the anti-infringement ordinance [PDF] and the owner can be fined $1,000 for each infringing work produced on site. Not to mention the penalties in the PRO-IP Act, which just sailed through the House."
I imagine all but a few of the candidates are squarely in the camp of the MPAA/RIAA if they are aware of copyright issues at all.
But more Americans use filesharing than will vote in the election - or at least I know that more shared files in 2003, when I found the figures, than voted for George Bush in 2000.
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I was just about to say that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 'substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses and its visitors.'
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
Since when were laws ever enforced against corporations?
Given that most of the victims of copyright infringement are based in Los Angeles County and have contributed greatly to the county's economy, why wouldn't the board of supervisors denounce it?
Now, whether Los Angeles County should dictate public policy to the rest of the country, which isn't as dependent on copyright, is another issue entirely.
The real question I would pose is: After "copyright reform" (which as best as I can tell is "make file-sharing legal"), what prevents people/companies from violating the GPL. After all you gave them a copy of the code, why can't they share with others under terms they see fit.
I would like to note that the Submitter is "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property". If that's the case, Mr. Submitter, then the GPL should be thrown out too.
Burn Hollywood Burn
While your statement makes for a nice soundbite, it's vastly far from true. There are plenty of countries, including the US, that have extended political power to formerly disenfranchised groups.
You forget that people get more and more lazy over time... what if next time they'll be too lazy to rebel?
Copyright infrigement is only detrimental to the health and safety of those who abuse copyright in the first place. The common people do not suffer when their neighbor burns a DVD. The local economy is not negatively affected by the "lost sale", because the money not spent on copyrighted materials is more likely to be spent locally on other goods or services, instead of being funneled to out-of-state gluttons.
As much as I want artists to be fairly compensated, I strongly disagree with the application of copyright law. Litigation never solved anything in this world, it only creates more hatred for one another. It goes against the very purpose of law by promoting and supporting inequality, which is directly detrimental to the health and safety of everyone.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The GPL is a license that enforces "copyright" for the explicit purpose of fitting in to the current legal system. Were copyright to be greatly reformed or abolished completely, you're completely right that the GPL would immediately become as worthless as every other license, BUT it also wouldn't be necessary anymore.
True, the landscape would look very different, and the real "forced openness" that the GPL gives would be gone as well (unless that was framed in the new copyright laws, but I can NEVER imagine that happening!), but don't for a moment think that GPL advocates actually like copyright. The GPL exists in the realm of copyright because it has to in order to be legally enforceable, NOT because anyone thinks it really belongs there.
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The constitution is supposed to allow us to fix the government without it coming to that, but it doesn't seem to be working. So what changes do we need to make to the constitution to make it work? Not that the congress will allow us a convention to fix it.
We have a president who doesn't care what the constitution says at all. We have 2 out of 3 presidential candidates who voted to cede the decision to declare war from the congress to the president. How that isn't even an issue still boggles my mind. Even if you thought going into Iraq was a good idea you shouldn't have voted for that bill. But I digress. We're likely going to hand over the presidency to someone who has already proven they can't uphold the constitution.
That's what's so insidious about the current copyright reign of terror. It's not about AC/DC, it's about freedom of press and without that you and I will never learn of those other serious abuses you are talking about. Real families have already been thrown out of their homes and stripped of their life savings on the flimsiest of evidence about sharing RIAA crap that both of us can agree is trivial. If it's so trivial, why submit to such massive punishment? Don't be fooled, though, this is all about control of public knowledge, opinion and culture. It includes control of entertainment but it's also about domestic spying and neutralization of political opposition such as yourself.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It scares that there maybe those who actually believe these things they say about "copyright infringement". As if (US) American prisons aren't full enough, I predict the government building new ones for to hold the dam pirates. Colonial attacks against real pirates only barely succeeded, and being a sea fearing pirate takes energy. Copyright infringement takes much less energy.
And on a side note, could you guys "pirating" via cameras in theatres just stop it? At least out of respect for art in general. There is currently no good way to duplicate a movie via cam, the quality is terrible. If people can't wait for it to come out dvd let them buy a ticket to the nearest theatre.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Mind if I ask where you've been the last 25 years or so?
The only time a politician listens to anybody these days is when that somebody is handing them a nice fat check for their campaign warchest. The 'citizens' they listen to are the corporations that fund them getting back into office again. Have you looked at some of the hairbrained laws coming out of Washington these days? Pro-IP was written by RIAA itself, not just a legal terrorist organisation, but a PAC (Political Action Committee for the uninformed), a high powered lobby. Lobbyists are campaign contributors through their PACs. While the telco bill getting telcos out of a jackpot for illegally handing over data to the government might or might not have been written by the telcos themselves, it sure as hell benefits them, and they contribute heavily to both sides of the aisle.
A politician wants back into office to play statesman again? You better believe he'll throw as much bias towards his contributors as he thinks he can get away with, just about to the point of flat out stupidity. Hey, who cares, there's an election coming, and those checks can just as easily go to the other guy...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
He claimed that governments ONLY got more elitist. Of course there are some policies that appear to benefit a small group; it doesn't take a genius to see that. But that's a far cry from saying that government ONLY exists to serve a small group and ONLY gets more interested in that group.
Claiming that government just serves some arbitrary elite makes for great teenage "down with the man!" soundbites, but it doesn't account for the fact that there are movements in both directions. Nor does it account for the fact that a lot of it is a matter of perception: It's easy to view a silent majority that you disagree with as a special interest; it's vastly easier than admitting that democracy works both ways.
I'm sorry, but there was a time in US history when only white men who owned more than 40 acres of land could vote. It is utterly unrealistic to claim that nothing good has come of expanding the vote to include people of every race, gender, and income group.
Voting is an illusion of choice.
Couldn't agree more. I've been saying that for years, though not quite as elegantly.
I believe that in this society, the only effective way to vote is with ones wallet.
Vote wisely.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The entertainment industry is based on copyright, and LA is dependent on the entertainment industry. It's not really a surprise.
Just because someone can vote doesn't mean the government serves them.
Back then, only landed white men got the vote for a government that served the interests of those landed white men.
Then it all changed: women and minorities also got to vote for a government that served the interests of the landed white men.
Viva la Revolucion!
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Good post. Universal suffrage is worth little as soon as you realize all that "power to the masses" is reduced to, at the very best, a word shorter than three letters through your life! All democracies evolve to bipartidism, so all you can speak every 3-6 years is a single bit. Even with 6 bit plain Latin characters, all you can speak with your bit-every-4-years is a very short word. How could you possibly call that power?
Indeed, we live in plutocracies, and the USA is the most blatant example of one, where not just extremely rich and influential people decide, but the whole state is ran by corporations like Monsanto or the mafiaa, world-renowned for their disrespect for human life and well-being and their lack of morality and honesty.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
"It's only for going after terrorists, pedophiles and drug dealers. Common people have nothing to fear. Trust us." Seriously people, why do you keep gobbling on this bullshit?
We need to follow the constitution, to start. Changing it won't help when we just ignore the thing anyway.
Not a sentence!
"Give me a break. They killed a bunch of people, tore down some buildings with high symbolic value...and that's pretty much it."
Which had huge, world-changing consequences such as a recession that followed it, all sorts of military actions that are still being played out at vast cost to all of those involved in them, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
"Yeah, they shocked the world, but if it hadn't been for the mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear that followed we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation we're in right now."
What precisely is there about mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear leading to new laws that place new restrictions on the rights of every individual in many countries, make life for travellers far more miserable than was the case beforehand, and causes wars that have cost many thousands of lives which fails to meet your definition of a huge world-changing event that was precipitated by a handful of people (i.e. 19 of them)?
"Everything that followed was not caused by them, they were merely a convenient excuse."
Read the quote I was replying to, because it didn't mention causes. The phrase used was "something completely unexpected happening to show that a handful of individuals can make a huge difference in a world-changing way." The attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were unexpected by at least the vast majority of people; they were perpetrated by 19 individuals; and they did make a huge difference in a world-changing way, because the world post-911 is vastly different from the one that existed before it in many ways.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Up to 2008 no president has been black. They were all white and well off. And none were women either. Beside the right equality (which is sometimes more a theory than something practiced) can you point anyway to any recent issue where women/non white people being able to vote for one democrate white guy and one republican white guy would change ANYTHING ?
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Intellectual property = information.
It does not matter how much anyone would like it to be a physical property, be it you or me or the RIAA / MPAA. If it can be represented in a digital form, it is information.
The purpose of a computer is to copy and transform information.
The purpose of the Internet is to copy and transform information on a global scale.
Like it or not, the biggest change in civilization the last 20 years have been about moving digital information. Computers does not differ between types of information, they just move (copy) a huge number of ones and zeros from one place to another. The Internet is basically a colossal copyright infringement machine.
I worry a lot about "Intellectual Property". I can understand their worried and justified claims on the content industry, but no matter how you twist and turn this it boils down to "controlling information".
There is no difference between different kinds of information. If intellectual property could be controlled, all information could be controlled. This includes any information any government would declare "illegal".
If anyone could control who copies a Hollywood blockbuster, they could also control who copies other information that makes the government look bad. Like a video of police brutality or any violation of human rights.
Controlling information
I lost my sig.
At this point, NPR is pretty far to the right as well. Just how far was driven home to me the other day when they were talking about Berry Goldwater, and the comment was made that his views were "pretty consistently liberal by todays standards." There was a round of hearty agreement from the panel and no one seemed to recognize the significance of what they were saying.
If Barry Goldwater looks like a leftist to you, you have passed the rumble strips and are now driving off the shoulder to the right.
--MarkusQ
P.S. And I'd have to agree with some of the posters on adjacent threads: there is no "left" in American politics at present, and apart from a few blogs and a couple of low power AM radio stations, very little "left" left in the media.