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3 Strikes — Denying Physics Won't Save the Video Stars
Philip K D writes "Award-winning SF author and BoingBoing co-editor Cory Doctorow has an editorial in today's Times of London. Doctorow elegantly eviscerates the basic injustice posed by the imminent Mandelson '3 Strikes' law in Britain. He makes the explicit observation: 'The internet is an integral part of our children's education; it's critical to our employment; it's how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It's how we engage with government. It's the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn't just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.' It is worth noting that Doctorow was influential in the creation of the Creative Commons. He has enjoyed considerable commercial success for his writings, owing in no small part on his insistence that his work be made available for unrestricted electronic distribution and copying."
In related news, the UK's second-largest ISP, TalkTalk, is now threatening legal action if Mandelson's plan goes through.
Cory, that's only encouraging them. Now you've told them that if you can arbitrarily cut off people's Internet access, you've got those people by the gonads and can make them do whatever you want without going through the annoying process of actually passing laws and obtaining convictions and such.
They should create a 3 strike law for dumb politician laws.
It is in fact, THE conduit for getting naughty movies. People who downplay the role of porn on the internet are in fantasyland.
howsabout 3 convictions in a court of law ?
In a way that requires proving that someone stole, rather than a simple accusation maybe?
How about not punishing people who presumably have not been found guilty of breaking the law? If they broke the law and were found guilty, they'd be subject to the ruling of the court. If they haven't been found guilty or for that matter given no trial then the whole thing is a violation of due process.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No kidding. 40 years of the "War on Drugs" has wasted thousands of lives in jail, and we're no closer to eliminating drugs. It will take at least 40 years of a war on copyright infringers before anyone starts seriously discussing legalization.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So if this isn't the answer, how do you propose that illegal software downloads, copyright infringing video clips on youtube, and illegal downloading of mp3 music *should* be handled ?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Your question presupposes that people accused of something are automatically guilty of it.
Take them to a court of law after doing due diligence to figure out if they were really the ones infringing. Subject them to due process. Don't play shenanigans in court or behave unethically in the proceedings. If found guilty, then charge them fair, not extortionist, penalties.
The problem is that the media companies don't like the idea of not being able to railroad everyday people into settlement, or not being able to threaten the public with ridiculous penalties. This is because they lose the FUD-factor, and the cost of throwing lawyers at the problem becomes prohibitive.
How do you solve this? I don't know. Its not my problem, and its not the duty of society to ensure that litigation is profitable. Its the duty of society to make sure that due process is followed and the justice system improves society. It's not my duty to ensure that the media companies stay in business.
Since when is drug legalization seriously discussed?
There are very few countries that have a slightly less restrictive stance on drugs and those countries are all being coerced by other countries into adapting stricter laws.
We're still far, far away from sane drug laws.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
who fucking cares? its just so much damage to route around
yes, they could make laws that would end filesharing... laws that would also essentially kill everything that makes the internet worthy our contribution and attention. that's not going to happen, unless media companies have more power than self-destructive military dictatorships
therefore, let them pass all of the half-assed measures that don't essentially kill the joy that is the internet all they want. let them joust with that technological hydra, and waste all their resources, a pool of cash and manpower that just keeps dwindling every day. obfuscation schemes, proxy schemes, encryption schemes, steganographic schemes, etc ... some college freshman in his dorm will handle all the complexities, for free, and make it as easy as point and click, and the program will spread like wildfire. and will of course get stamped out, just as the next moronic big media-sponsored law circumventing tool is spreading like wildfire. whack-a-mole is never a game you eternally prevail at
so let them buy as many legislators as they can, pass as many intrusive legal schemes as they want, waste as much of their dwindling reserves as they can
again, who fucking cares?
millions of media hungry, technologically savvy, and most importantly, POOR teenagers
versus a counple thousand lawyers basing their strategy on a philosophically flawed premise: that the internet can be controlled, that the distribution tollbooths that allowed media companies to thrive in the pre-internet age can be preserved
game over, douchebags
it doesn't reflect well on you when you are already defeated, and don't know it or won't admit it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Copyright infringement laws are difficult to enforce. That does not automatically justify making someone guilty upon accusation.
Sure, the activities are illegal. And some believe they are illegal with good reason (something about causing economic harm). Be that as it may, it is still not okay to presume someone is guilty just because he has been accused too many times.
Any idiot can accuse, even if there is no guilt. Innocent people must be protected against false accusations. Allowing guilt to be presumed upon accusation is a far greater crime than copyright infringement.
So it doesn't matter how else the situation should be handled. It doesn't matter if there is *no other way* to inforce copyright law. Guilty-upon-accusation is outright unacceptable under any circumstance.
What bearing does physics have on this?
No copyright and freedom of the individual are not the same thing, but the issue is here that you are asking a loaded question.
You are asking, if hanging escaped slaves isn't the answer, then how should they be handled. Making it obvious that in your mind, that you already made up your mind that there should be punishment.
Others would argue that you might ask whether the very concept of copyright might not need to be changed. Once again.
Copyright has NOT been in existence for the vast majority of human history. Thousands of years, humanity has progressed and produced art that has endured across the ages, with absolutely no copyright.
This changed, and NOT as you might think to protect the creators of content, but the publishers of content. Copyright is not for nothing called COPY right. It was created to protect music PUBLISHERS, printed music sheets, who bought the music from artist for a small sum and then printed money. Obviously, they wanted to be only ones to be allowed to do that, and so copyright was started in its modern form.
The current system is a dreadful beast. The same Disney that has lobbied to have it extended published Pinocchio on the day after the copyright on it expired. Yet if you dare to use their work, you will be hounded by their lawyers, even with works of parody.
No, you ask how the slave should be punished, when every right thinking person ask, should slavery be allowed.
Copyright needs to change, it has no longer got anything to do with giving a creator a change to make a living of his work and everything with enormous business interests seeking to bleed every last penny from content others produced. When a music publishers seeks money a dozen times from the same person for the same song, the beast needs to be killed. 1 payment for the audio sample. Another for the tune on your iPod, then next for the home stereo, another fee to embed it in your birthday video, another if you play it a party, more money still for your ringtone, buy it again if you buy another MP3-player.
ENOUGH
Copyright has to change. Computer games that cost ever more for shorter and shorter games with tiny addons costing 10 bucks or more is nickle and diming the industry to death. People bought games when you could simply swap them on a floppy because the price was right. 70+ euro's for a PS3 games is just not on. Especially since the PC version costs 30-40 euro's LESS. The Collectors Edition of Dragon Age for the PC costs the same as the regular edition for the consoles. Greed gone out of control.
For music the same goes. Apple lovers, turn away, this is going to hurt. The costs of an iTune song is the purest greed displayed, until the BBC named its pricing plans for the iPlayer. 1 dollar/euro for a song, that does not have to be pressed on a CD, put in a box with a printed sleeve, stocked and shipped, all with the risk of producing to few or to many, is JUST TO FUCKING MUCH. What happened to the CAPITALIST idea of cost savings reducing prices? The BBC even thought to charge 10 dollar per episode. God help the Eastenders fan. Or worse, neighbors.
The prices got nothing more to do with demand and supply but with "We supply therefor we demand."
Movies make record profits, yet the movie industry is being killed by downloading. How can this be? Because some MPAA accountant has told movie moguls that their are 6 billion people in this world and so their movie should at 10 dollars per ticket earn them 60 billion. When it doesn't, piracy is to blame.
Pension funds in Holland invest in MUSIC rights for the future as their analysts who are boring men who think gold is unstable because it evaporates at a rate of few atoms every 1 million years, have determined it is a reliable investment. A safe buy that pays for itself in 10 years and is then a steady source of income at virtually no cost.
Yet the music industry is supposedly at an edge.
No, it is no wonder you posted as an AC. You are arguing a lost cause, people
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
both of our enemies are the thugs. so you fight your short term war, i'll fight my long term war, and we will both prevail (in the long term ;-)
I'm just saying -- you should care about this law, and we should not let them pass any law they want.
Well okay, but "who fucking cares" and "let them pass any law they want" makes it sound like you aren't fighting any kind of war, and are just waiting for the inevitable outcome. Taken that as just a turn of speech not implying an actual lack of caring, then sure, our views are complementary.
The enemies of Democracy are
Civilization existed several thousand years ago, but I don't particularly want to return to the stone age...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I never claiemd that it was ok, I did say that the punishment if any should be up to the court trying the civil case. Personally, I think copyright law has become a liability for society. It's nigh unenforceable for small acts of infringement and is becoming a very major reason why corporations are lobbying governments to crack down in such a way to protect corporate interests. To me, the whole system looks a lot like the drug war; just as unwinnable and is also harmful to those who can not put up the legal fight that larger corporations can.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"No kidding. 40 years of the "War on Drugs" has wasted thousands of lives in jail, and we're no closer to eliminating drugs. It will take at least 40 years of a war on copyright infringers before anyone starts seriously discussing legalization."
We've had science, medical research, doctors, and hospitals for a century now. We still haven't eliminated disease or death. We fund police departments. We still haven't eliminated crime. We fund fire departments. Yet, we still haven't eliminated fires.
I think it's time we all just gave up.
of the things being pirated. The RIAA and MPAA should offer the lowest possible prices that still allow them to earn a profit and then sell at more reasonable prices. That would put big cuts in piracy of materials. Sell in quantities at lower prices, rather than sell less at higher prices and force poor people who cannot afford the materials into piracy.
Most piracy happens because the person is too poor to afford the materials, but they can afford a computer and Internet connection and then get a free P2P file sharing program and get as many materials as they want for free.
Hulu was a good idea, free TV shows and movies but with commercials. The RIAA and MPAA need to make a free access Hulu like site for videos, movies, TV shows, songs, music videos, etc and offer commercials in-between them for making money. Paid members can have the commercials removed and then buy the media for a low cost to download it to their computer or media playing device. The Internet is really based on a free content model of business, people don't want to pay access for a web site, but they do want to pay low prices to download media.
If the RIAA and MPAA did a Hulu like site, then there wouldn't be any need for media piracy as you could watch all you wanted for free, and then pay a small fee to download the media file you watched to your computer or media playing device. Commercials will pay for such free sites, and paying members can skip the commercials.
But I doubt the RIAA or MPAA would do that, as it makes too much common sense, and they are more of suing people for downloading content and are in fact suing their fans and customers. That makes a bad business model and gives bad PR.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Drugs don't ruin lives, cops/government ruin lives. If all drugs were legal there would be no drug related crimes.
That's not true, stop thinking in terms of extremes and absolute. There would be a great drop in drug related crimes, but you'd still get people driving high on meth or fucking up their lives with heroin, even if the problem would be attenuated.
You can't take the sky from me...
"No kidding. 40 years of the "War on Drugs" has wasted thousands of lives in jail, and we're no closer to eliminating drugs. It will take at least 40 years of a war on copyright infringers before anyone starts seriously discussing legalization."
We've had science, medical research, doctors, and hospitals for a century now. We still haven't eliminated disease or death. We fund police departments. We still haven't eliminated crime. We fund fire departments. Yet, we still haven't eliminated fires.
I think it's time we all just gave up.
Maybe if you'd let the doctors deal with drugs instead of insisting to have the police take care of it, you'd see more progress.
You can't take the sky from me...
It occurs to me that taking away peoples' internet for what they may view as a perfectly reasonable use of their access (Or even worse, through no fault of their own) is going to KILL PEOPLE. I wish I were joking. I wish this was a joke. But if some kid murders his parents because they took away his Xbox for playing too much Halo, or someone commits suicide because their WoW account was hacked... What's going to happen when people have their right to use the internet revoked?
I have no qualms about saying that I cannot function without the internet. If I need to know something, I look it up on the internet. If I want to know what's going on, I check news sites. If I want to buy something, I buy it online. I do business online. And quite frankly, the number of people that I consider to be 'close friends' and 'colleagues' on the other side of my monitor far exceeds the number of people I know offline, by at least 20-to-1.
Nevermind the whole ridiculousness of it all anyway. Piracy is not theft. Nothing is stolen. There are copies made. And there's only two kinds of people who want copies of stuff: The ones who never would have paid money for it to begin with, and the ones who will end up actually buying it anyway. You can apply that to literally anything.
People are going to die because the entertainment industry doesn't want them getting something for free that they wouldn't have bought anyway.
Hundreds of people die every day in the industrialized world because they can't afford healthcare...and now we have the entertainment industry killing people because they think they lost a CD sale?
Here's a novel idea: Instead of trying to sell a CD with only one or two good songs on it for THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS and giving the artist (You know, those people who did all the work and that the consumer actually gives a shit about?) fuck-all, how about you get with the program and actually try to leverage the goddamn internet to sell things-- ACTUAL PRODUCTS PEOPLE WANT --in a manner that MAKES SENSE for a REASONABLE PRICE.
And people wonder why I don't want to participate in society.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
There's a general principle at work here. Harm caused by drugs is increased by prohibition. We saw it with alcohol, we see it with marijuana, and we're about to see it in action with nicotine. The same principle applies to cocaine, amphetamines, and opiates. If you're concerned about harm reduction, which is really the only sane policy approach to drugs, you're going to end up advocating for at least the decriminalization of these drugs.
Here's why. Drug prohibition doesn't stop anyone from taking drugs. Check the facts, alcohol use was higher under alcohol prohibition, and countries that decriminalize see a decrease in drug use (see Portugal). Why does this happen? Well instead of thinking of the difference as legal vs illegal, think of it as unregulated vs regulated. You can't regulate a black market. So illegal drugs get sold to teenagers, while legal drugs get sold to adults. Who do you think is more likely to get addicted?
So with decriminalization you're going to have fewer addicts, but it's also less harmful to be an addict. You get cleaner drugs, with measured doses, so you're less likely to have an overdose or adverse reaction. If you do have an adverse reaction or side effect, you can get treated for it without the fear of going to jail.
On top of having fewer addicts, and reducing the harm on those we do have, decriminalization helps reduce the negative societal effects of drug use. Cheaper legal drugs are easier to support an addiction to without resorting to crime. With the criminal stigma lifted, it will be easier to get and keep a job without employers caring about what's in your urine. So addicts can continue to contribute to the economy to the best of their ability. The profits from the huge US drug market would no longer go towards criminal organizations, and the associated crime wouldn't happen anymore.
From every way I look at it, decriminalization of all drugs is going to cause less harm than prohibition. If that makes me an idiot, I'd like to know where I'm wrong. But I think it's you who's afraid and not really thinking. I understand why, stimulants and opiates are quite dangerous and change is scary. I do agree that we should focus on Cannabis first, though. It isn't as dangerous and will serve to illustrate the general principle.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Alcohol doesn't ruin lives, cops/government ruin lives. If all alcohol were legal there would be no alcohol related crimes.
Your argument is ridiculous. If drugs were not illegal then those people who become destitute may never even have run into those problems in the first place. If we looked at ALL drugs as a health issue and not a criminal one then we would probably make much greater headway in reform and keeping people off of drugs in the first place.
It is unfortunate but there is always going to be a percentage of the population addicted to drugs. Whether they are legal or not. I would much rather my tax dollars go to helping someone with a health problem get better, than to see them go to imprison someone with a health problem. You see, either way they are getting your tax dollars. Why not use them to research harm reduction instead of building prisons?
All points of time and space are connected.
i'm not american, but even i know 20th century american history better than you.
neither communism nor socialism were dirty words in america until the 1950s with all the scare propaganda about the Red Menace.
right up until then, there was an active, large, and popular socialist movement in america. it wasn't likely to hold government in its own right but was strong enough to provide a moderating influence on the growing corporate control of american government.
after mccarthy, socialism became a thought-crime in america and corporate control had no effective opposition.
i'm constantly astounded by the mindless american hostility to the idea of government - it's like children denying reality. the fact is that government is inevitable and unavoidable, you can't deny its existence or power by just subscribing to some moronic "rugged individualist" mythology. so, if government is inevitable, then only sane thing for citizens do is to ensure that it works for THEM....because if it doesn't work for the citizens, it will be controlled by the rich and powerful for their own benefit. which is *exactly* what you've got. as a whole, the people of america have abdicated and the power vacuum has been filled by corporate interests, which is precisely why there is so much corporate-sponsored propaganda brainwashing citizens into believing that socialist principles like universal health care are bad for them.