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South Korea Joins the "Three Strikes" Ranks
Glyn Moody writes "For years, the content industries having been trying to get laws passed that would stop people sharing files. For years they failed. Then they came up with the 'three strikes and you're out' idea — and it is starting to be put into law around the world. First we had France, followed by countries like Italy, Ireland — and now South Korea: 'On March 3, 2009, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting & Communications (CCSTB&C) passed a bill to revise the Copyright Law. The bill includes the so called, "three strikes out" or "graduated response" provision.' Why has the 'three strikes' idea caught on where others have failed? And what is the best way to stop it spreading further?"
An obvious solution to the "I want" problem. You see, I would really like the world to work the way you think it should. I should be paid, by someone, so that I don't have to charge people for software. Making people pay is like, you know, oppressing them and we shouldn't have to oppress people.
The problem is, I have people oppressing me all around me. The mortgage on the house, the grocery store, the gas station, and endlessly on and on. This is so wrong. A cowardly solution is to say that when people stop oppressing me that I will stop oppressing others. It would be nice to be able to free myself from all this oppression and just live in a nice park somewhere and have people give me food. I have tried to convince my employees of this unilateral solution but they remain unconvinced.
This brings us back to the real problem. People like you want stuff and they do not have infinite amounts of money to pay off people that want to oppress them. One solution is to just take things and sidestep the oppression. This works well for digital things, but less so with food, clothes and other material items. In fact, it works so well fomr digital items that today I can't imagine anyone paying for digital music - it is all there for the taking. For free. And we have been steadily convincing people since around 1980 that if you can take it that there is nothing wrong with just taking it. Most of the people I meet under 30 have been convinced.
So what happens when people don't pay for digital goods? Well, until someone can tell me how to pay employees without getting any money, I am going to keep oppressing ... er, I mean charging, people. It would be nice if the government would just give everyone enough money so they didn't need to do anything except consume, smoke pot and drink beer. Mr. Obama is certainly pushing things in that direction and I salute him for it.
I hope that when Mom ventured and was greeted with "Look mum, I'm watching Lord of The Rings in ASCII art!", she could recognize that as the ultimate geek cry for help. I hope her next impulse would be to run to the phone and call the producers for Queer Eye for the FUCKING HOPELESS!