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H.R. 4279 Would Establish Federal IP Cops
MrSnivvel writes "H.R. 4279, Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, is gaining momentum in Congress. It passed the House a few days back. It would allow the Feds to seize hardware that has even one file coming from 'dubious origins,' e.g. downloaded from P2P. If passed into law, the bill would establish an Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General. Rep. John Conyers says the goal is to 'prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government.'"
"Specifically, federal civil law would be amended to: (1) provide a safe harbor for copyright registrations that contain inaccurate information so such technical errors would not prevent a judgment for infringement;" Excuse me? So if you lie when registering for copyright, the registration is still valid? Or does this imply that an inaccurate registration would not prevent a judgment for infringement that could have taken place if copyright was not explicitly registered at all (something that would already be the case, unless I am mistaken). The amendments to section 410 do not make it clear exactly how this will be any different.
for fscks sakes, ideas are not property!
if you steal property, the original owner loses something.
if you steal an idea, the original owner loses nothing.
someone, please, get these asswipes out of office. either the ballot box or ammo box will do.
-I only code in BASIC.-
I want people to know how bad copyright really is and the only way to get it through their thick heads is for the law to be enforced to the letter.
Sooner or later the US will wake the fuck up.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sure, but it'll cost you. No representation without compensation.
The knock-on effect on the rest of the first world cannot be denied. When the U.S. comes up with a ding-bat solution to IP like this, then we are all doomed together because it will filter down through international treaties and trade agreements.
Freeing up IP is essential for making health, education and the energy market cheaper and more universal. In the last 5 to 10 years, first world governments have been 'pulling up the ladder' in this regard rather than opening up to the people. It's almost as though they are anticipating something.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
"The USA is a nation of laws, poorly written and randomly enforced" - Frank Zappa
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Like most people, you are confusing mercantilism with capitalism. The two are antithetical.
Mercantilism uses government power to the benefit of a few select corporations that influence and/or control governmental representatives.
Capitalism requires all businesses, small, large, and in-between, to survive or fail on their own merits, with no government benefits for any of them.
Gun control: The belief that a woman, raped and strangled with her panties, is morally superior to a dead rapist.
The problem is that any sufficiently capitalist system short of anarcho-capitalism turns into what you call mercantilism. What happens is that a corporation, through legitimate means or less so, becomes large enough to influence politics. At that point it rigs the game in its favor, or tries to do so, and from there on you have rent-seeking galore.
Anarcho-capitalism just postpones this: a corporation or group thereof becomes large enough to collude (if it's a group) or to become a de facto state (in either case). If the new state is capitalist, see the first point above. Otherwise, it'll probably still be oligarchical.
What they've failed to demonstrate (IMHO) is that the IP problems they're fighting (P2P networks) make a demonstratable difference to profits.
See, that's where they're lying. It isn't really about them being afraid of file sharers causing all that much damage to profits. It's about *control of the distribution mechanisms of entertainment, software, and information*.
First, it scares the crap out of the media distribution and proprietary software cartels that individual artists and software creators are increasingly able to bypass them pretty much altogether and create and distribute their creations themselves without the cartels getting the lions' share.
Second, it scares the crap out of the government that information and data can be so easily distributed quickly, widely, and at nominal cost, with no practical way for government to censor or control it, with the added kicker of it becoming harder and harder to pierce the anonymity the internet provides, especially with the rise of open-source free hard-encryption and anonymizing tools. Things like Wikileaks are giving them fits.
The "IP" issue is really nothing more than a means to an end, and a distraction from the real goal of taking the ability away from individuals to distribute information, software, and entertainment themselves to keep the movie/music/proprietary software cartels' gravy-train rolling, and creating a means for the government to control the spread of information and leaks about the more sordid actions of the powerful and rich to increase their power and wealth at our expense while remaining above the law.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Technology like this renders matter a mere commodity ; manufacturing services will cease to be valuable, the only thing of value will be the programs it runs.
The prospect of such a device running an open OS, and accepting production templates which are themselves open, must terrify certain entities.
Of course, this mild attack of paranoia presumes that these creatures are actually organized enough to think of this. In actuality, their greed over existing IP is probably enough to explain their behavior, without recourse to long-term planning for a future when you can print your own food/clothes/car/plane/house/computer/pharmaceuticals.
Hmm. If I lived in the States I'd think about going "thin" client. Have all data on a remote server somewhere in Sweden; the local machine is a client with nothing but a barebones OS and an obscene amount of RAM/volatile storage (something on the order of 16-32 GiB). The local machine connects to the server, downloads everything you currently want to work with onto a ramdisk and then does everything from there. Should the police seize the machine they won't find anything but the OS. Use an OS that supports encrypted RAM for additional ease of mind.
Yes, it's ridiculous, but I wouldn't put meningful data on a machine that sits in the USA. The country simply isn't trustworthy enough.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Our politics are simple - the US is a theocracy, and the reigning god is mammon. The golden rule is "he who has the gold, rules". Our temple of worship is called a "bank" and Satan's leash, AKA "the necktie", is to us what the cross is to Christians.
We have the best legislators money can buy.
No rich powerful man ever goes to prison unless a richer, more powerful man wants him there.
The corporations run both major parties and the media, so all US media is in effect state-run.
Our national prayer goes like this:
Our money, who art in the stock market and commodity futures, hallowed be thy name
My kingdom come, my will be done on the entire world.
Give us this day our daily bread, mansions, jewels, fast cars, yachts, and all the trappings of success.
Forgive nobody, as nobody will forgive us.
Lead us not into poverty, but deliver us from taxes
For money is the power and the glory forever.
let's eat.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The real point about the obsessive, anal-retentive, security obsessed, tabloid influenced, illiberal and incompetent New Labour government is that it makes loud noises because it is rapidly losing influence, not because it is establishing a Stalinist state.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
We have found that more power remains with the people by choosing democracy over the one-party state
But unfortunately we have become a one party state, as there is precious little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, both of whom say "how high?" when their corporate campaign donors say "jump".
Corporations don't do as we want, but they do listen when we hit their wallet.
This only works in a national economy, which we no longer have. The corporations are multinational, and have six billion prospective customers. Your purchase is meaningless and there is no way possible to hit them in their wallet. They have no reason to care if you buy or not, there are a lot more suckers where you came from.
For instance, there has been an organized boycott against the RIAA record labels for years. The RIAA doesn't even notice it! Sony rooted millions of computers with trojaned CDs, do they care if I or the other million victims never buy another Sony product again? No, there are six billion other suckers for Sony to sell their rootkit infested computers and TVs and DVD players to.
My purchase, or refusal to purchase, is nothing to them.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This one is easy. A quick look at John Conyers' political contributions shows the movie/music industry is the second largest political contributor to his campaign. Check out this link: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2006&cid=N00004029 Who loves the MPAA/RIAA nowadays? Only the sellouts.
(ranged by freedom)
(I mean here socialism as practiced in most european countries between 1950-2000, if you mean the EU's overwhelming philosophy, then perhaps yes, you're right that it's closer to communism than fascism) In many ways the Socialist Europeans are much more free than the average American. Since education is often free to the individual (and you even get a small stipend by the government to go to school) people get to study for the career they really want, rather than being burdened by massive student loans. The state gets paid back through the higher taxes from the greater income, and the individual gets to pursue the career they really want rather than the one that they can afford to pay for (in terms of education).
In terms of medical care the Europeans are also much freer, since they get free medical care. Therefore Europeans are not screwed by getting sick when they can't afford health insurance, have had prior diseases like cancer, or their insurance company decides to screw them somehow.
The much-touted "freedom" of America is more for large corporations and the few people that can write a check for their college tuition. In fact, this article is about large corporations getting their own police force. Do you think this means greater or lesser freedom for the average individual? (Hint: you may soon have federal police knocking on your door for sharing the wrong file) We still haven't even gotten to drug use (legalized in Holland) or sex and nudity (much freer laws in Europe). Sure, they pay alot in taxes, but when you count the cost of health care and education, the tax burden comes out similarly. Americans just get to pay for hugely expensive ($500 billion+) annual defense budgets or hugely expensive ($750 billion+) unnecessary wars or the hugely expensive "War on Drugs" rather than things they actually can use in daily life.