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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.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
All governments become more aristocratic over time. They serve the needs of a smaller and smaller elite few, to the detriment of the greater and greater majority.
Then the people rebel, and the cycle starts over again.
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.'
How many companies who currently violate the GPL and LGPL can these new laws be used against?
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
is that copyright infringement cures cancer. And the common cold. And male pattern baldness. Also, it can be used to make any car run on water. Clearly, it's a cover-up.
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
From the ordinance (note the use of the terms "improperly labelled" and "sell"):
Then again, maybe my reading of it is incorrect. That's not to say laws don't have a funny way of being interpreted and reinterpreted, or used opportunistically by law enforcement. Worst case scenario? Instead of having your car impounded when you find yourself driving down Sunset Boulevard late one Saturday evening looking for blackjack and hookers and meeting up with an undercover officer, you get your car impounded for what's playing on your iPod.
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
You're only looking at this from the consumer end, which is hardly surprising given that this is /.
/. is that the "if" clause above is nonsense, and that it's intuitively obvious that online distribution of music and movies for free has no effect whatsoever on the sales for real money of that music and those movies.
But in Los Angeles, as someone else noted, you have the center of the movie industry, and one of the centers of the music industry. If it is correct that the fact that millions of people are distributing tunes and movies for free is depriving the folks in LA County who make music and movies of their income, then, yeah, I'd say there is a big impact on the LA economy. If movie companies and recording companies start hemorrhaging money, then they stop not only paying fat salaries to studio heads, but also start laying off janitors and secretaries, and, since those CEOs will be forgoing their bonuses, the number of Lexuses and plasma TVs sold will also go down, and a bunch of car and Best Buy salesmen are going to lose their jobs or take pay cuts.
Of course, the conventional wisdom here on
That is okay. Los Angeles is "detrimental to public health [and] safety". This is just another reason to avoid that noxious cesspool.
It is too bad the PRO-IP act is not confined to a similarly avoidable geographical expanse.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
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.
"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?
Those of us who find offensive and stupid stuff tedious, and enjoy listening to serious and intellectual discussion, may be tempted to disagree with you.
Let's put things into perspective then....
The reason you have such a big uproar and draconian "IP" legislation being presented in the first place is because it is the only thing the US has left of its industry. Everything from steal to food production has been outsourced to the maximum extent possible. The dregs that are left behind are the service industries like McDonalds. The only thing in the US bigger than government grant of monopoly is government contracting which is another form of monopoly I won't go into here.
That's why you see term extensions on the monopoly grant. That's why you see legislation proposing criminal prosecution instead of civil.
A little off topic but related was the BRAC Commission hearings. I never saw so many congress critters crawl out of the woodwork as I did when they were proposing the closure of military bases. Again, it comes down to the US not having any real industry. Close the bases and watch whole towns dry up. It's the same with "IP".
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Until you stop voting in lawyers into office, you will see no changes. Lawyers are going to first take care of lawyers. In order to see any changes in the future, we have to vote in people who will support the people. So the way to start this is to vote in anybody who is not a lawyer.
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 ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.