Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Counterfeiting Deal Aims For Global DMCA
An anonymous reader writes "Negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement continue on Wednesday as the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, and a handful of other countries secretly negotiate a copyright treaty that includes statutory damages, new search and seizure power, and anti-camcording rules. Now the substance of the Internet chapter has leaked, with information that the proposed chapter would create a 'Global DMCA' with anti-circumvention rules, liability for ISPs, and the possibility of three-strikes and you're out requirements."
This is your fault.
It's such a great idea for each country to give up it's sovereignty for copyright infringmement.
It's been nice knowing you.
GFY
Why is it that if I butcher a human being, it's possible to get out of prison in a few years if I show that it was done in a mad emotional state or attributable to some psychosis driving me to attack, but if I butcher a book for a page or a CD for a song in a mad emotional state or neurotic urge to share, I'm likely to be fined into bankruptcy, and potentially imprisoned for *longer* than if I'd attacked a person?
Oh. Money. That's why.
Silly me.
I think not...(*poof*)
wouldn't any signed treaty also have to be made law in each respective country?
I've never understood how countries can be bound by a treaty through ratification (Kyoto protocol?) without it going through a country's law-making body...
I can't be the only one who opines this.
Because perhaps the "laws" that are bringing an end to the lawless period only represent the views of a very small and select group and are almost entirely out of phase with the established but non-codified norms?
their complaints against filesharing eroding their bottom line basically amounts to a coverup for what is the real problem, a crappy business model.
The brainiacs that run the movie houses continually fork over huge amounts of cash to persons who had one hit that made money, and who continually bomb after that.
In what other business realm is failure so grandiosely rewarded? In what business school would they teach this sort of practice?
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
didn't 3-strikes get striked out in France or something (I just remember it was some country in Europe and it got a "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" tag here on slashdot).
I wonder how this will fair with Finland, where Internet access (1Mbit/s now, 100Mbit/s by 2015) is a legal right.
fuck these people
So, are you saying if I went to a library and copied text and images from a random assortment of books and made a book from it, and called it my own, I should get nailed with something like the DMCA? That is completely ridiculous. It IS my own creation, and there are ALREADY laws saying I can't claim the actual text/images themselves as my own. How is a web page any different?
I wonder how much the RIAA/MPAA and their international brethren had to pay to buy that many countries... I mean, seriously - not a single one of the delegates sitting at the tables is willing to speak up and point out how these concepts are not good for the populace of their country? You know, the people our politicians supposedly represent.
I am so utterly sick and tired of politicians turning their backs on the people they represent and bending low before corporate interests. It's even worse, as a Canadian, when I see my government bend over and take it for FOREIGN corporate interests. Were it at least for the betterment of Canadian corporations, I'd at least be able to justify it as "they're doing what they can to keep our businesses profitable" but when they sell out the people of my country so some corporation in another country can pad their bottom line, it simply infuriates me.
I keep holding out hope that somebody will eventually develop some morals and put a stop to this madness but I know that the money has spoken and thus change is coming.
If anything it only brings the Internet under the rule of law and in line with most other social mediums.
And, you know, this could alleviate a lot of the "bring iTunes/Amazon MP3/Hulu to the rest of the world" complaints we get so frequently on Slashdot. Hell, I'd like to see Spotify in the US myself. But all too often you see labels balk at foreign markets and a lot of time (though not always) they cite lack of copyright control and enforcement in these countries.
So, yeah, it's horrible that we're getting ACTA/DMCA the world over but at the end of the day, the countries participating in this may actually think that they are doing something good for their constituents as consumers. And you know, they might be right. For people living outside the United States, would you put up with stricter DMCA-like rules if it meant massively more purchasing options for you? I can't say I would opt for this (as I'm living in the US) but I imagine if I were living in Korea I would support this if it meant I could purchase Amazon MP3s instead of relying on less than reputable sites for acquiring music.
While this global system for enforcing copyright may be initially overly harsh, I think we have to recognize copyright law enforcement in other countries needs to be increased before publishers, labels and film studios become comfortable with digital mediums as an equal and fair distribution method the world over.
To reiterate, I don't agree with some of these laws they are discussing. I hope that's why they're holding the discussions. But do not overlook the benefits and fail to weigh them against the costs as you consider this discussion.
However, I still feel that 75 years is way too long of a copyright term.
Emphatically agreed. While I'm being overly optimistic, hopefully the global community can influence the US positively in this respect.
My work here is dung.
Here in Canada we recently finished a national copyright consultation. I can't wait to see how our government fucks this one up.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to how the DMCA has been used in the U.S., rarely has it been used to stop actual theft, more used to control. You know those science fiction books and how they paint the future as being very dim, well that future is already happening and this would give it a real big push. Personally as a Canadian if the PC government signs this in anyway then good luck on them ever being re-elected again.
These meetings are held in secret. Now, one could understand countries meeting secretly for reasons of war, in case possible plans fell into enemy hands. But this isn't war against nations.
This is subjugation of the citizens. These meetings are secret simply so the populace don't find out what's being planned--for the same reason the American South made teaching slaves how to read illegal--the information is too much of a threat to let out. The whole myth of government for the people, by the people, is just that, a myth, a cultural fable told to instill flag-waving patriotism in the citizenry. Nothing shuts up dissent faster than "my country, love it or leave it" and the nationalistic fervor that accompanies it.
PEOPLE DO NOT REALLY CONTROL THEIR GOVERNMENTS, AND THE STRUCTURE OF LARGE-SCALE DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS NATURALLY LENDS ITSELF TO OLIGARCHY. Democracy is like communism--SUPPOSEDLY "good in theory" but it doesn't actually work. Whenever someone says "we just need more education!" or some other reform, they are trying to save democracy and insist it can run as planned just like the communists that claim that widespread communism can exist without degenerating into USSR-style totalitarianism. The only difference is is communism is generally someone else's myth and not your own, so you can't see it.
What works? Nothing works. You're on your own, buddy, you're gonna have boots stomping you no matter what. Such is life...
Good luck with that, I can't wait for the entire media industry to vanish.
three-strikes will need to have due process for it to work in the us and many other places.
I guess this means a return to sneakernet? That might improve local communities, not a bad thing in itself...
Every great new movement in any art (cinema, music, painting, etc.) is done by people who just do these things because they want to, not because they are looking for millions of dollars.
So the paid, restricted content will continue to suck donkey balls, as it has for years. And the next big thing will be given away or shared for free or for donations.
Sure, it will eventually be co-opted and sanitized by the corporate culture, but by then it will be time for the next new big thing.
So this is a good thing.
And, you know, this could alleviate a lot of the "bring iTunes/Amazon MP3/Hulu to the rest of the world ... hopefully the global community can influence the US positively in this respect.
That has to be the longest "I welcome our new robot overlords" speech I've ever read.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Kiss it goodbye.
But do not overlook the benefits and fail to weigh them against the costs as you consider this discussion.
You do realize that this essentially allows corporations to write law. This is some real scary shit, and I'm amazed that it finds cheerleaders among ordinary people.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Glad to see someone else has faith in not only the US's flawless criminal justice system, but the criminal justice systems of all nations.
So it does go through the legislature.
Best Slashdot Co
Imagine some malware which randomly downloads a dozen copyright mp3's - instantly making millions of unsuspecting users instant criminals - potentially with a 3-strikes liability. Insane.
that our elected officials would do something that isn't in the best interest of their citizens while handing over the keys to the castle to the corporations...
This is also why giving Presidents "fast-track" treaty negotiation votes is a Big Deal.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The problem is that all of the media industries concerns are being met, yet consumers are ill represented, which only guarantees we will not abide by their treaty. What about protections for fair use? Or protection against drm locking legitimate customers out? Or how about portability of our files between devices? We, the consumer, are far ahead of and laws they can legislate. We can break DRM, we can file-share, we can encrypt. They can try and stop us with these three strikes laws and whatnot, but I'll just run down to the library and read a nice book while I download the newest movie. I sure as hell can cover my tracks better than they can uncover. Respect is a two way street. If they want us to respect their IP, they need to respect us as their consumers.
Nothing prevents the next president from revoking\backing out of a treaty.
Noting prevents the next congressional session from re-writing\repealing\altering existing law.
Nothing prevents a SCOTUS member from being removed from their position via an impeachment. Their life time tenure is contingent on "good behavior" and as such any high crime should apply including Treason, Sedition, Perjury, etc.
Anyone could levy a charge that signing secret Treaties with foreign powers is Treason, but that is a long shot at best.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
And, you know, this could alleviate a lot of the "bring iTunes/Amazon MP3/Hulu to the rest of the world" complaints we get so frequently on Slashdot. But all too often you see labels balk at foreign markets and a lot of time (though not always) they cite lack of copyright control and enforcement in these countries.
You are confused. The reason streaming services aren't globally available has nada to do with lax copyright controls and everything to with licensing rights. The system was created decades ago when information flow across borders was 100% physical and thus cumbersome. The copyright cartels exploited that fact by partitioning each country into its own licensing region and then created a market to buy and sell international distribution rights. In many cases there were no buyers for distribution rights in certain countries for reasons like the asking price being too high. The only people who felt inconvenienced by this arrangement were aficionados of foreign culture and ex-pats, everybody else didn't even know what they were missing.
The internet changed the awareness of the people so that today a hell of a lot more people are aware of what they are missing. The copyright cartels have not kept up with the increased demand, instead resting on the easy money of their monopolies, and the market for international distribution rights has not significantly changed. Stronger copyright controls won't enable increased foreign distribution, if anything it will just reinforce the status quo.
In contrast, piracy has actually provoked studios into more rapid foreign distribution - it is now common place for official DVDs of Hollywood productions to be released in countries like Russia, India and China day and date with theatrical release in the west - one recent example is District 9.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The thing is, we're moving beyond a lot of the old ways of doing things where proprietors of information held tightly. We need loose enforcement of existing laws until we can get them repealed.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
This doesn't match up. In effect, the DMCA showed ISPs a clear path how to avoid liability. This is what makes services with rampant infringement possible (like Youtube).
... move to China.
No, it won't. Global draconian copyright laws will allow them to do MORE of that sort of thing, not less. Piracy is not the reason those things aren't available to the rest of the world (or at least Europe). They simply feel (probably accurately) that they can make more money by distributing separately in each region.
Furthermore, once a product is available online around the world, the owner is going to have a hard job explaining why those in the US and Europe have to pay 1000% more than those in China and Africa, while still locking the West out of these significantly cheaper markets.
This can be signed but until the U.S. Senate ratifies this it is not law. Also remember that no treaty can supercede our laws or Constitution. If the treaty is not in linewith our lsaws then it canot be placed in effect no matter how much the *iaa want's it to.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
People just get the "oh, you signed this, you're constrained by it" irregardless of if it's legal, enforceable, or logical.
Irregardless, I don't think that word means what you think it means....
People just get the "oh, you signed this, you're constrained by it" with regard to it's legal, enforceable, or logical.
-1 ungrammatical. Sorry, if that were what he meant, he would have said "its," not "it's."
"It's" (which he used correctly, but you didn't) is short for "it is". What he meant was: "you're constrained by it regardless of whether it's legal, enforceable, or logical."
I would completely give up the ability to consume non-public domain/CC/GPL content, both pirated and legitimate, if it meant getting rid of these laws. Now if we can get more people to take a stand for longer than the commercial breaks in American Idol, we might actually have a chance.
Fantastic news! In your face, terrorism! We just need a few more directives like this and the war on terror will be won!!!! (sarcasm-meter catches fire)
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
...would you put up with stricter DMCA-like rules if it meant massively more purchasing options for you?...I would support this if it meant I could purchase Amazon MP3s instead of relying on less than reputable sites for acquiring music.
That's a horrible attitude. "Give me convenience, or give me death", right? Let's do anything to assure that Disney might leave a few extra crumbs? Screw that.
To answer your question, no. Not just no, but HELL NO! We shouldn't do business with thieves for such brief, temporary gratification. Make it more permanent, and I'll reconsider
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Corporations do make laws. All shit you buy is connected to an agreement between you and the seller. That stuff is legal. And though you may not be the one who put it on the internet, the original owner broke an agreement between him and the seller of his cd/dvd/software/etcetera. Therefore he broke the law.
If you buy a PC and you agree that if it brakes down you can get it repaired for free, and they do not want to repair it for you, you'll be mad because they promised something else.
When you buy a cd/dvd you promise not to make a copy, it is part of the agreement. Than, when you do copy it, you brake that agreement and therefore are eligable for the damage. Like with the PC. Don't like it, don't buy it. Do not just pick out the part of the agreement you like and forget the rest. Companies cannot do that, so you cannot do that eighter.
>>>>However, I still feel that 75 years is way too long of a copyright term.
>>Emphatically agreed. While I'm being overly optimistic, hopefully the global community can influence the US positively in this respect.
Just like MPAA / TPB? or RIAA / AoMP3?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I really don't know why the Canadian government is involved in these negotiations at all as the treaty doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of being ratified. Mostly because it would require an admendment to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to become law as it will be kicked out of court on it's ear otherwise. Also, the Copyright Board of Canada would have to be disbanded in spite of having a Royal Charter. We're talking a great big messy Constitutional crisis over file sharing. Not a good idea at the best of times and for a minority Conservative government it is tantamount to political suicide. Should be fun to watch, though.
Well good luck with European Parliament, you corporate assholes! We don't care if your precious IP goes through our ISP's or if you think that our government has no better business than disconnect citizens' homes from the internet. Too bad this is leaked and we are all about to write a letter to out parliament members. We will make you stick the DMCA into your ass (back where it came from anyway).
Does this mean our government will stop counterfeiting 'money'?
You are confusing contract law with contracts. And you are forgetting that just because it's in a contract doesn't make it legal or enforceable. And, finally, corporations didn't invent contract law.
Oh, and your spelling sucks.
*Finally* some common sense has gotten into the rest of the world to counter illegal counterfeiting activities.
Therefore he broke the law.
You appear to be in favor of the death penalty for jaywalkers, after all - they broke the law.
But wait, three strikes and you are off the internet doesn't even involve the police, much less a court.
How do you even know he broke "the law?" -- should we forget about that judge and just kill that jaywalker ourselves by running him down in the street? Seems like you would be in favor of that, breaker nine-niner!!
You do realize that this essentially allows corporations to write law. This is some real scary shit, and I'm amazed that it finds cheerleaders among ordinary people.
I'm sorry, I must have missed that. I re-read the Geist piece and I'm still not seeing it. I read the agenda and I don't see that on the list. Could you cite where you're getting this information besides "the usual lobbyists are doing their usual thing?" If you don't think corporations influence law in every single country across the world already, you're misinformed.
This is some real scary shit ...
Or it's business as usual. Scary why? Because you said so? Oh no, EU ISPs are going to be liable for customers doing illegal shit on their networks? That's really scary. Even Geist didn't make this sound as apocalyptic as you did.
... and I'm amazed that it finds cheerleaders among ordinary people.
So your argument with no citation relies on name calling. "Cheerleaders among ordinary people?" Saying, "To reiterate, I don't agree with some of these laws they are discussing" makes me a cheerleader? A call to acknowledgment of small benefits makes me a cheerleader? Hoping that these talks result in relaxing some of these laws makes me a cheerleader? To anyone reading these posts, be wary of the people who call you names when you embark on rational level headed analysis of any situation.
Really, curious I may be but a cheerleader I am not. I'm amazed you received so many positive moderations for a post so devoid of any real content or meaningful counterpoints against the points I raised.
My work here is dung.
You know, maybe it's time to publicize the issue as much as possible. The easiest way is to do it by calling it stuff like "the anti-iPod law". (Let's not get pedantic with law/treaty/etc crap - it serves to divert attention).
There's a lot of things that ACTA makes illegal that common people do daily, so a big publicity campaign can cause people to get agitated. Stuff like singing in the shower (not too farfetched) or humming a tune. Recording a TV show to watch later. Ripping a CD for your iPod.
First we should call it something catchy. "The Anti-iPod Law" is pretty good since practically everyone knows what an iPod is and what it does. Then alert them to everyday activities that would be banned, or they can be sued for doing. Public doesn't care about RIAA suing filesharers. They do care if the RIAA starts suing people for ripping CDs to their iPods, though. Or if the MPAA sues people for recording that movie off of TV onto their VCR/DVR. Or singing in the workplace (sure it happend in the UK, but it isn't a big stretch in the UK). How about having your iPod searched at the border? They keep saying they won't force iPods to be searched, but there's no guarantee.
Start campaigning on how it will impact the common people. Pro-ACTA will have to campaign how it will benefit people, but that can be turned around quite easily ("poor starving hollywood actors need more money to pay for their gold faucets" and the like).
Heck, I've seen newspapers publish about the "Is your iPod illegal?" law.
It's more the fault of the people for believing that their rights can be protected solely by the voting process.
It is more the fact that the first-past-the-post election method is severely broken.
As an example that I am more familiar with, in the last Canadian federal election: the Conservative Party got 38% of the popular vote but 46% of the seats in Parliament; the Bloc Québécois got 10% of the popular vote, but 16% of the seats; while the Green Party got 7% of the popular vote and a big fat zero seats.
With one and a half times the popular vote, the Bloc Québécois got infinitely more seats than the Green Party. And I personally know a lot of people who followed the typical American voter reasoning and didn't vote for the Greens because they couldn't win.
>>>Personally as a Canadian if the PC government signs this in anyway then good luck on them ever being re-elected again
That implies that there's even the remotest chance that the majority of voters will both notice this, and care enough to have it sway their vote.
I'm a canadian, and I've already come to the conclusion that no matter what party we vote in, it'll screw us over harder than last year. Personally, I vote 'green party', purely for the sake that we will at least get screwed over slightly DIFFERENTLY than in the past. Gotta spice up life by letting someone who hasn't had a chance to rape us yet see how painfully they can do it.
as the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, and a handful of other countries
Can you spot, which one that could be?
Protip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Seriously... such an epic failure right in the very article that supposedly is against the very problems that are caused by globalization (That there is no other place left to run to, in case your country treats you like crap)?!?
Seems somebody already got infected!
Kill it with fire! From orbit! It's the only way to be sure!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You think this is scary? The CIA got one of their own (GHW Bush) as President, fercrissakes. In France, the country's leader of the gendarmes (think national militia) got elected as President (Sarkozy). I fear the merger of media and government more than corporations and government, though they're both BAD.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
/. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the
Signed
The Pirate Bay Crew – Now until needed.
Blatantly pirated from thepiratebay
Can you lose your driver's license without due process?
Seems like internet access is almost as important as being able to drive.
*sigh* back to work...
That's a picture of your anus, you might want to turn towards the camera next time.
Just make everyone a criminal, search everyones houses on demand. We don't need any personal freedom or rights anyway do we? Some stupid *media company* is more important, right?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm sorry, I must have missed that. I re-read the Geist piece and I'm still not seeing it.
Well the simplest point is that, by making reverse-engineering, stripping of DRM, and other circumvention measures illegal without precise technical definitions of the terms, you allow the accuser to define it as anything they see fit. Those 'double ROT-13' jokes? A little less funny now.
Honestly, just because you choose to be ill-informed about the topic is no reason for a snotty post. I'm certainly not going to write out a FAQ every time I comment. This isn't Wikipedia, and there is no real onus on me for [citation needed] ((translation: did you at least google the keywords?))
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP.
If they cant afford to buy the laws, we the people get them back.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
According to the article, fair use would be eliminated because circumvention devices would be illegal. If you are allowed to make a copy, but the program to do it cannot be traded/sold/distributed, you essentially are barred from doing so. It's a nice loophole in the law that the media companies are quite happy with.
Exactly. The region codes had nothing to do with piracy. That's just revisionist history. The region codes were put in because different regions of the world operate at different financial scales. This allows the media giants to set a lower price in countries where the median wage is much lower without worrying about cannibalizing profits in countries where the median wage is higher. The theory was that without region codes, DVDs sold in countries with a low wage level would get bought and reimported into the U.S. and sold at a significant profit, and they would still undercut the price of DVDs sold in the U.S. Because of the huge difference in those economic tiers, it would not be practical to eliminate this in any other way. Raising the cost in impoverished countries would kill sales there, and lowering the cost in the U.S. to levels where reimporting isn't feasible would kill profits here.
Instead, in practice, DVDs sold in countries with a low median wage get copied, stripped of their region codes, and sold in the U.S. The result is that the studios make even less profit than they would if region codes weren't around, but at least they can get criminal prosecution in some cases. In short, region codes were pretty much a failed attempt at curbing reimporting, and as a result, there are far fewer regions in Blu-Ray, and most Blu-Ray discs aren't region coded at all. If they thought it would curb piracy in any significant way, every Blu-Ray disc would have region codes. It's pretty clear that few, if any, industry leaders actually believe that.... :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Two words: "notwithstanding clause".
With the Secret Copyright Treaty the whole Idea is to never allow citizens to know or vote about the contents. The Treaty does get an approval vote but otherwise it is like a Royal Decree, not a law. Thank Obama for this special Treaty. Guaranteed to make Corporations Rich and Jail 1000's.
The 'lawless' period worked better for consumers generally. I'd much prefer to leave it that way.
I don't understand! In America Corporations write law every day. First they buy the right politicians, then they have their lobbyists hand their bill over to the lapdogs who then sponsor their "patrons" bill. Who do you think wrote the recent "Healthcare Reform" bill anyway? The US needs to admit that we have a "Corporate" form of government and stop trying to export our non-existent "Democracy".
Many people have a cellphone nowadays.
Many cellphones are bluetooth enabled.
Some bluetooth profiles allow file sharing.
Cities with heavy public transport (subways, streetcar, buses, etc) bring a lot of people in close contact to one another.
With the right software or setup, it could be possible to share file between commuters via the cell's bluetooth.
Sure there are some points to consider:
* security: no one should be able to delete your files
* pull technology: your phone asks around if there is something around to download instead of pushing your files around
* file selection: not unlike current p2p, you specify the file type you are interested in (mp3, aac, mpg, whatever).
* maybe for music, have some sort of genre preferences, so your cell asks "anyone has some Classical music around?"
After a commuting trip, you check what you harvested and discard the junk or duplicates you are bound to get.
I said almost anonymous since you can't know who gave you a file except if there is only one other dude in your subway car. Since you don't push, it's not considered illegal in some jurisdictions (Canada I am looking at you).
Any suggestions to improve the concept?
AC
You know those science fiction books and how they paint the future as being very dim, well that future is already happening and this would give it a real big push.
Current trends point towards a grim future indeed, but even a more transformative view is likely to arrive only after one of several possible dark futures. (Those are just a couple of my favorites that seem plausible starting from where we are and what we know of human nature. Perhaps some combination. There's so much money to be made exploiting space that it's unthinkable that it won't happen, and soon, which is why I like Hardwired even if the hovercraft idea is silly.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
would you put up with stricter DMCA-like rules if it meant massively more purchasing options for you?
Stricter protection of monopolies always lead to fewer options, not more, just as it leads to higher prices. Piracy is essentially the only thing that acts as competition in this market, and the last few years piracy has already shifted, for example, TV shows from being broadcast two or three years after the US broadcast, to virtually synchronized release (because otherwise everyone's seen it already).
The best way to ensure rapid evolution of alternatives would be to simply discard copyright law altogether, then we'd get any number of easy and cheap delivery forms.
My message is clear ...
Time to guard and stand up for our own art or loose it forever!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
In the United States, in order to ratify a treaty it must be approved by 2/3rds of the Senate. We're not bound by treaties which we have not ratified.
Wikipedia:
In the US, treaty ratification must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds majority in the Senate. While the United States House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the requirement for Senate advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult in the US than in other democracies to rally enough political support for international treaties.
Of course, the President can sign a treaty, and follow it through government policies and executive order, without the treaty being ratified, but that gives it no inherent weight in law.
The treaty which ended World War I was hotly debated in the senate, and in fact we did not ratify the treaty as presented.
So they get to bypass the house, which is also the most representative and populist part of our legislature.
The US constitution obviously has a massive hole in it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I heard you like parties...
And his cookbook probably shows a chocolate factory instead of a banana split...
Who'd have thunk it?
You fucking worthless entertainment industry, copyright was created as an incentive for artists to create works that would enter the public domain (i.e. the culture) after a while. You know, as opposed to doing useful work like the rest of us.
You have perverted this into an abomination, its purpose to artificially boost your business model.
You are just leeches who practice price-fixing, have what are in effect cartels, and get away with it because the part of your income that isn't spent on cocaine is spent on lobbying politicians or outright buying them. If companies in ANY other industry practiced what you do they would be fined, and those responsible sent to jail.
You produce focus group-based industry entertainment products, 90 % of which will be forgotten long before the insane copyrights eventually expire. You produce shit that no one really needs and trick consumers into giving you money instead of spending it on something worthwhile. And then you attack your very customers with shit like "oh it's not a product so you really ought not to resell it or rip it onto your music player without paying us extra, but for these tax purposes it is a product though".
How many poor and elderly are helped by J-lo wriggling her butt on a video? How many roads get built by Amy Winehouse's endless chain of rehabs?
Get a fucking job, asshats. And leave culture to the cultured.
Corporate shill detected.
Seriously, how much are they paying you, asshole?
The parties negotiating this, with the exception of Canada, already have xeroxed copies of the US DMCA on their books.
How does this change anything?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Except that by making photocopies instead of doing actual writing what you're doing is creating a derivative work. Depending on how small of a sample you took out of each though you might be covered by fair use.
Doesn't change the fact that the DMCA is still a sack of bullshit though.
It's still a big load of crap using "national security" as an excuse to classify it.
Something that nefarious only means that someone's up to no good.
This is beyond run of the mill political corruption with politicians getting bought off.
For them to stoop so low as to invoke state secrets is downright scary, and is damn close to the sort of thing they do in China and the old USSR.
Yes what was Australasia is now Oceania.
But neither of those two words describe the Australian continent, which is called Australia.
The word Oceania describes a region of the Southern Pacific ocean
It's so simple.
Also When you say "our continent" what do you mean ?
The people who would call Australia "our continent" would be usually be Australians.
This is NOT a signature.
The corporations pushing this crap won't give a shit if their agenda murders the political career of the PC gov. They're already quite happy to screw over the consumer...what makes you think they'd show any loyalty to their political puppets once they have what they want?
Who owns culture? That's what this is all about. The five global entertainment companies claim that they do. They own all the recordings. They own all the video, all the film, all the books, all the comic books, all the whatever. Sooner or later, they are going to claim to own the ideas and stories behind the 'product'. Then they will claim to own things like the C#minor chord or the plot device of a simple hero driven to vengence by a dastardly crime.
So their lawyers tell them. And their lawyers will have no trouble buying politicians to pass laws supporting these fantasies. Especially in countries that are totally corrupt and owned by corporations, like the USA.
But owning culture is like owning air. The ability to enforce ownership is dependent on the ability to use violence to force people to give you their money. Sooner or later, everyone will realize that all copyright is nothing but extortion. And they will realize that they have done nothing to morally justify the extremely harsh verdicts imposed upon them for so-called copyright crimes.
Historically in situations like this, people fight back. Someone gets a notice that they 'owe' $100000000 for being overheard humming a copyrighted tune in the park by a secret microphone. They track down the person who sent the notice, pay a fee to get background on this person and his family, and kidnap one or all of this bozo's children. Ransom being equal to the amount 'owed' for humming a tune in the park.
All you end up with is a lot of dead children and lawyers who aren't worried any more about making child support payments. What? You assumed that an entertainment industry lawyer had the ability to actually love somebody, like a family? No way.
All copyright is stupid with the technology available to us in the 21st century. Accept it. Don't let these assholes steal your money. Don't give them any of your money. And don't kidnap and kill their children because it's bad for your karma.
Stupidity passes in time: evil remains. Don't let entertainment lawyers trick you into transforming yourself into an evil person. I keep telling myself this over and over.
Hope that it works.
Question: If America's copyright rules are so much more favorable to the corporations, why don't they bring more foreign works over here?
If I had mod points you'd get them. Almost all election law is so written that you can't mount a credible third party without the infrastructure of the big two. Only Ross Perot had a shot, he was painfully rich, and the big two deferred hardball a few times as not to look bad. Try to run a new third party for any other seat, and you'd better have a squad of election lawyers, and even then it's iffy.
I havent seen any mention of this; since copyright is limited by time, media companies will increasingly be competing with their former selves.
Works from the 60s are starting to enter public domain, and as time passes it will add up to more media than anyone can possibly consume in a lifetime.
Step one: Convert a minor crime that virtually everyone does at some point into a major one...Step 2: Globalize the practice...Step 3: Probable cause for all police forces, reason to monitor everyone. Personally, I would rather see the end of all commercial content producers than to see this happen.
Chopping up your neighbor has little effect on Disney's profit.
Cracking they "precious IP" could.
Since most of the population of Canada doesn't know what the DMCA is and, for that matter, almost none of the people who are likely to vote Conservative know what file sharing is, I think this will have zero affect on the vote in Canada.
Top of the page:
No Christmas for Hollywood.
General Boycott of all goods produced by companies represented by either the MPAA or the RIAA during the month of December 2009.
#Why?
----------------------
I know there are some brilliant writers here. I want to write list of reasons why a person should participate in a one month boycott of **AA. Please reply to this thread with your own, without concern over whether it's original or unique. If 10 people articulate the same idea there will likely be an obvious 'best' one.
What I have so far:
1)They need to know that they need us more than we need them.
2)They practically own Congress and they are right now drafting Global Legislation --in secret-- that will impact your rights and privacy, and may cause your taxes to be raised to pay for the criminalization of copyright law. (to pay for enforcement officers and jail space)
3)By sending this message to Hollywood we are also sending a message to our elected officials that openly accept their bribes.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
but I'll just run down to the library and read a nice book while I download the newest movie
Libraries? Those all closed down in 2020.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I would love to see a system where the 'distribution' of movies, games, music etc is completely detached from the actual funding of it. Right now, the cycle depends on people paying for the stuff by proxy via physical distribution. This is the reason they industry is squirming and whining hysterically, because they dont credit the viewers with enough intelligence to be able to work with them in other ways. What really needs to happen is people funding the development of art directly, by their own personal choice. Then piracy becomes a non issue, because the artists still get their money. We would hopefully also by definition have a lot more choice on the trash they make. For example petitions to ressurect shows that have been axed (eg firefly, futurama) would have actually had more meaning, because the petitioners could have put their money where their mouth is.
Dead simple, and WAY faster than sitting around waiting for Rapishare to stop its 90 second countdown...
Also, the songs come RECOMMENDED by friends whose tastes I think have merit.
Losing the ability to DL music will just make LAN parties and meshnets more common.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think Hollywood is lieing.
I don't believe that online downloads are hurting their sales in a measurable way. And it will take a very detailed and thorough investigation to prove it to me.
They are definitely not hurting their cinema based revenue - e.g. movies like "The Dark Knight" and Transformers are still making a huge killing at the box office.
This year the cinema industry in Australia is predicting to record its best gross and net return to date. So the cinema based business model *IS* continuing to work - and I believe it always will.
If rampant piracy is killing the industry, why are movies making record profits?
Why are sales at the box office still going up?
Lets imagine, for a moment, that a popular download of a movie, such as The Dark Knight, reached 10,000 downloads via bittorrent. On the shelf, that is $40. Total loss? $400,000. For a movie that grosses in excess of $1bn, the loss there is noise. To become significant, the number of downloads would need to be 250,000 downloads (1% of $1bn).
How many movie torrents reach the point where they can have a 1% impact on the gross total?
I suspect that what Hollywood is really worried about is China. There's 1.3bn people there that don't have much respect for copyright and "copies" of movies are rampant there, despite crackdowns. But this treaty between the aforementioned western countries will do nothing to fix that problem.
Something is not right here.
Maybe this treaty is intended to be the "copyright protection" that DRM failed to be.
I believe that, insidiously enough, the US constitution more or less says that signed treaties trump it's own provisions so international treaties are an effective way to get around the constitution.
That's the last I researched. Any lawyers are welcome to contradict me.
Are there any leaked documents around on this? I appreciate Mr. Geist's work, but this is still just a blog post citing unnamed "sources" at this point.
GROUPAMA (a French insurer) was caught in a software PIRACY case of $200 million.
GROUPAMA argued that BANK SECRECY entitled it to limit the scope of Police investigations to a building that was not the place of the infraction.
The surprise is that the General Prosecutor of PARIS (the highest magistrate before the Minister) ruled that GROUPAMA was right to do so:
http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf
...if it meant I could purchase Amazon MP3s instead of relying on less than reputable sites for acquiring music.
To me, at least, Demonoid is more reputable than Amazon. My friends have recommended it, the interface is clean, and it doesn't ask me to trust it with my credit card number.
And after the Sony debacle (and others, undetected?), both websites come from industries which are malware risks.
Just about every last sector of the economy, with the exception of "resource extraction" (ie. mining and oil, not the most popular on slashdot either), has lost lots of jobs. Total joblosses in the US, bad as they are, are very mild compared to the rest of the world.
There was exactly one sector that increased in size in the last years world-wide. You guessed it ... the entertainment sector. Movies. Music. Obviously they've gained in power and politicians are asking them how they can hire even more people to reduce unemployment.
Their answer seems to be, worldwide, copyright enforcement.
Since the EU member states have stopped being democracies yesterday with the signing of the treaty of lissabon, that gives the only law-giving power in the EU to non-elected officials (the "comission"), I doubt you can count on the EU to go against this. If the comission accepts this (and it does, and will do so in the future) there is no option, no recourse for any EU member citizen, and no "local" parliament has the power to oppose this.
People have the power to boycott. When businesses behave badly, boycott until they relent or go extinct. Anything else is wishful thinking.
Maybe main problem is with copyright itself?
If you ( music/film industry ) do not want people to copy your products, protect it form copying.
You can not do it or it will cost too much?
It is your ( music/film industry ) problem
( and your business model )
CD's films etc will cost many times as now?
so what? is there no free music? no free films?
There will be no new films?
Personally I can imagine living with it.
(Sorry for my English(?))
three-strikes will need to have due process for it to work in the us and many other places.
You can lose your property have it seized before your day in court by the DEA. Having this property seized hinders your ability to pay for legal counsel. Due process has been violated in this instance and others as well.
Here, we have local elections coming up Real Soon Now, and elections for bigger regions isn't that far off.
I had toyed with the idea of supporting the Pirate Party (mainly because it's there and I'd love to see the Old Guard rattled by their radical perspective), but this ... just made the choice so much easier.
True, it might not be all-important right now (they might not have the best mind on child/health care), but we need them to be established by the time we *really* need them.
Go Pirates!
<your entire post, basically>
AC, go read Eastern Standard Tribe. Go on, I'll wait.
http://craphound.com/est/Cory_Doctorow_-_Eastern_Standard_Tribe.txt
Done? Good. Nice read, isn't it? Anyway, note how your post is exactly what they did 'at the pike'. And yet, Big Media was still involved. Like nature, I'm afraid capitalism "will always find a way" (hoping I won't get sued by Spielberg for that).
"Good news, everyone!"
Honestly, just because you choose to be ill-informed about the topic is no reason for a snotty post.
Really? Because it's never stopped you. Bitch ass trick.