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Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.
Jamie found a Boing Boing story that will probably get your blood to at least a simmer. It says "The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to 'national security' concerns, has leaked. It's bad." You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it's hidden from public scrutiny for National Security.
Jamie found a Boing Boing story that will probably get your blood to at least a simmer.
Well maybe Jamie should read yesterday's Slashdot.
I would just like to point out that everyone is getting their information from a single point: Michael Geist's blog. Granted, he's rarely wrong but blogs are blogs. So where is this "leaked document" that the summary alludes to? Every source I find online points back to Geist. Even the articles Geist cites at the bottom of his blog point back to him. Even Wikipedia points back to him. I'm not saying that he's wrong nor am I trying to deflate the severity of this but Geist is even relying on other sources:
Sources say that the draft text, modeled on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, focuses on following five issues...
Then following that even he says:
If accurate ...
Doesn't leave me a whole lot of confidence that we're getting all the unadulterated facts here. I would seek information better than third or fourth hand accounts of something before I went around screaming about the sky falling (trust me, I speak from experience of being fooled by a single blog post).
Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.
So where is the leaked document so that I may judge for myself?
My work here is dung.
Who owns the copyright on this document?
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I still don't know why everyone acts so surprised that this administration has carried on with the exact same Intellectual property and "national security" policies of the previous one. Democrats are just as much in the pockets of Hollywood as conservatives are in the pockets of big business (meaning BOTH support oppressive IP legislation). And Obama loves his presidential power just as much as Cheney did. So why anyone ever expected things to somehow be different with this administration, I don't understand. Cheney may not have been right about many things, but he was pretty much dead on when he predicted that Obama would keep most of Bush's national security policies in place (the same ones he criticized during the campaign) once he got a taste of that power for himself.
It also doesn't surprise me that they're using a treaty to quietly push this crap through. They did the exact same thing with the DMCA. A lot of people don't realize that the DMCA was just the formal ratification of a WIPO treaty that had been debated and agreed to in secret. The powers that be know this shit would never stand the light of day with the electorate, so they quietly push it through with the kind of obscure international treaties that they know CNN, NBC, et. al. are never going to cover. By the time it actually makes it into Congress, it's already a fait accompli. The mainstream media only notices it when someone's already being prosecuted for violating it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The internet will never be the same...
You mean you no longer can download your copy of Photoshop from wares.
For the most part it is an attempt to curve software piracy globally. And it will basicly keep the internet running as it should just curve some deviant behavior.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The summary that is. Was it really too difficult to put a little information about what it is and why it's bad in the summary so I don't have to follow the links?
You all laughed at me
Yes...yes we did.
Are people (the decision makers) taking this seriously? It reads like something from The Onion...
Even if agreed upon as a treaty, will it hold up in any courts?
Above all, will it even work? So instead of a handful of very popular torrent sites (and video, picture, file, etc sharing) we get millions of small secret for-friends-only sites.... or we go back to CD/DVD trading
And you thought this administration would be different from all the others? Silly you.
Why is all of the responsibility coming down to the ISP? Why should they make sure none of their customers uploads illegal content to e.g. YouTube and why should they remove it if noticed?
Is Google in this case the "ISP" or do they actually mean to folks providing you with an internet connection?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
That Obama is just as bad as Bush. Should have voted for Nader folks.
Copyrights need to be done away with. Everyone else gets paid for the time they are actually working, so what makes writers, programmers, musicians, and movie stars any different.
A writer should only get paid for the time they are actually sitting down and typing stuff up. The same goes for programmers, or the companies they work for. These people should only get paid for the time they are producing new code. Musicians should only get paid for time they are actually performing, movie producers should only get paid for the time they are producing a movie.
Getting paid for copying stuff is not ethical. Anyone can copy stuff. This is silly. People need to get paid for actually doing something. If a person copies stuff, they should only get paid for the act of copying. Why should someone pay $25 for a copy of a movie they can copy themselves for $3?
Copyrights only slow down human advancement, limit freedom, and cater to the special interest of a small group of people, or corporations, who steal the work of the individual, and then use copyrights as an excuse to charge outrageous sums of money for a service that takes very little effort.
Because if they didn't sell the guns to murderers, they wouldn't be able to murder!
Please copy the document. Fast. Before "the powers that be" have it removed.
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Why trade CD/DVDs when media cards and flash drives can store much more information and are far easier to conceal?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
DRM violates the privacy act in Canada and the privacy act in Canada trumps. Canada can't sign it under current laws.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
oh god...
it's do or die netizens, if this law passes (or some form of it) say goodbye to your beloved internets. say goodbye to collegehumour, goodbye to newgrounds, to youtube, facebook, myspace, the chans, irc, deviantart and message boards everywhere.
say goodbye to thursday nights spent browsing the tubes,
say goodbye to waking up and watching a new youtube video parody
say goodbye to happy days
say goodbye to autonomous collectives
say goodbye to piracy
say goodbye to the lawless freedoms and guilty pleasures
say hello to Big Brother
needless to say, if this passes, it won't work due to the sheer number of people who will resist it
at least here. I don't know in the US, but here in Brazil (and I guess in most countries) it is simply impossible to have a "law" or treaty be secret and have any legal value. Of course, given enough money, these laws might be approved anyway, public scrutiny and all, and that is the sad part.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Whenever you hear that something is being withheld or denied for "National Security Interests", you can assume you are being screwed. Pretty much without regard to context. This was true in United States v. Reynolds, and it's true today.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
This isn't the end of the internet when passed. But it may be the end of the open wild west attitude on the net. I hope it doesn't come to pass where everyone is afraid of uploading videos because they may have a coca cola logo in it and whatnot. What it won't do is stop piracy. It will move to darkets, or people posting massive gb thumb drives around. A bit of a backwards step but pirates will find a way. Hell, it might even increase it as you'd be generating a community spirit for pirates. All this fuss over Lily Allen CD's isn't worth it. Musicians should move to live performances to make money and accept that they shouldn't be millionaires for 1 album. They should work for a living like the rest of us. DVD's should be released much later after a film's release, and so move people to get back into the cinema. Live performance is where you make the money. Backup and copies should be let go for free (ish).
There's nothing wrong with the intention of protecting copyright -- the problem is the means by which they're doing so.
For example, I could e-mail your ISP and tell them that you've illegaly copied a song I created. Now they're required to suspend your account. It doesn't matter whether you've actually done anything; you're going to have to go to court and prove you didn't in order to get your internet access back. Even if I'm lying and using a fake identity to make that report to your ISP, how many days do you think it will take to get your access back?
And then after you get your access back, if I really want to mess with you, I'll just do it again...
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I'm agreeing with most of the intent, and certainly all of the purpose. Supporting copyright is far more importantto me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former.
I'd gladly sacrifice you to protect fair use. And by sacrifice I mean put you up against a wall and shoot you.
So, what you're saying is that you really don't give a damn about the art and are simply doing it for the money? I mean really, saying that you don't want people to use your work for such things isn't really going to stop them once they have access to it. People want to take art that has been created, change it and make it their own. I mean, Shakespeare is one of the most celebrated playwrights, and most of his work is derivative. I understand that you need to live, and I can see why you would need the money, but taking money from kids is just pointless. Teaching them that they can't be creative, they can't use the tools that others have provided them with and things that they may even own a copy of by paying for it legally just seems wel, evil.
I partially understand what you want and at the same time do not understand you at all.
"I'm agreeing with most of the intent, and certainly all of the purpose. Supporting copyright is far more importantto me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former."
Sorry. You are a minority. A corporate drone without creativity and/or life. Please, move along. Don't let the door hit you.
And yes, I'm a corporate owner with intellectual property to protect. No, I do not support neither software patents (even though I hold some), nor this treaty. My software is sold as a service and as a product, I do lose some sales due to pirates (not much, really). But I would rather lose more sales than lose more freedoms.
(Posting Anonymously so my mod points don't disappear)
If this passes, then this is EXACTLY what needs to be done. Abuse the fuck out of these laws. Send email about every single person that you know, get every single account suspended. People will be so pissed off that these laws will have to be altered or thrown out entirely, and the people who wrote them booted out come next election season.
We should call this the War on MP3s. It will be about as effective as the War on Drugs.
There is a war going on for your mind.
for once.
From TFA: "That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material." ISPs will be fighting this one pretty hard. There's no way they want to invest their resources to trying to patrol the internet. It's not their job, it's likely illegal and it's expensive.
I do, in fact, think that copyright holders have every right to defend their legal rights but they absolutely must not step on the rights of others in so doing. Take-downs without due process, ISPs acting as police and blanket anti-DRM-violation rules are all measures that stomp on the rights and freedoms of the public. This treaty will infuriate everyone other than the content producers and I think will spark some lobbying from groups that haven't previously been seen on the side of openness.
The general public (that means a broader public than /.) must become aware of the issues here. Most people simply aren't concerned with IP law even if it should concern them. That said, a threat to YouTube or Facebook or Twitter will spark a response. Here's what I propose: start a group that issues indiscriminate take-down notices of all sorts of media. If there is no punishment for frivolous DMCA notices then there's no risk. Start pissing people off, the service providers that have to deal with the requests and the content producers. Piss people off until legislation to prevent such action comes in, then we've own.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Some would say that you're supporting software patents by holding some.
"The whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright"?
Looks like the worst that can happen is that the US-based Internet becomes a big, RIAA-patrolled LAN. I don't know how the Obama administration thinks this world works, but very few countries will sign treaties just because the American president says they have to. More likely, many countries won't sign it just to spite Obama.
It's an attitude thing.
There are people like yourself who feel you should be able to produce something and continue to profit off freely/easily replicated copies of that effectively meaning you can over time make a fair bit of money for relatively little work.
Then there are those who realise that strong copyright isn't needed, they are the ones who accept that people should work for a living, they're the ones who produce IP as a service- musicians who perform, programmers who write bespoke software and so on.
Really, this is what the copyright battle comes down to- those who want to do very little work for a decent payoff against those who think that's a rather lazy viewpoint and so work for a living, whilst copying material of those who are too lazy to do so.
Effectively if you want an easy life, don't be suprised if those who accept that nothing is free disagree with you and pirate your stuff. If you haven't done much work to produce your IP other than the original work involved to create it, why should anyone pay you?
Yes, there are plenty of people who have filed to run their business as a corporation. You arent a 'corporate owner', that phrase drips with sanctimonious self-importance. I certainly hope you hire a lawyer very quickly to handle your copyright, as you obviously have zero idea what copryright law actually is.
When 'your friends' create a mix from someone elses music, or use video clips for school work, they are NOT violating copyright. If your friends took someone elses creation, did nothing, and then made a million copies of it to sell for profit, THEN they are violating copyright.
Seriously, get a lawyer. If you proceed in your misinformed thoughts you are going to find yourself on the receiving end of whats called a 'declaratory judgment' from someone who your all-encompassing ego sent a threat of copyright litigation.
How do I know this? Well some self-important ass clown tried to send me a cease and desist letter claiming copyright infringement. So instead of backing down, I hit back harder and filed for a declaratory judgment against them. They obviously lost, as their understanding of copyright is about as accurate as yours. When you dont have any idea what the law is, you better not be making legal threats against people, or spending your time looking for people who you suspect of violating something based on your own inaccurate understanding of the subject.
If you ever crossed paths with me with that BS in public, I would hang you out to dry in the court system so fast, you wouldn't know what hit you.
Copyright treaty leaks YOU !
Yours In Gryazovets,
K. Trout
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Even if this did pass, and comcast was told they had to police their customers... so what? Comcast doesn't go out of their way to fix my service when I am paying for it. Why would they go out of their way to stop my service AND my payment? They would just end up putting together some bullshit task force that would expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
It is best kept secret, because that makes unenforceable (Ancient Roman and English law).
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I appreciate your candor, but my $DIETY the selfishness you just expressed has just jaded the rest of my day.
If I'm not particularly interesting in having them used in school work, I don't think they should be.
Then don't distribute your works. If you want complete control over what people do with things available to them, then move to a country with a dictator. I agree that copyright infingement is unlawful, but it obviously happens. You knew that when you started producing copywritten material. If you didn't, then you didn't research your business plan.
Assuming you have evidence of an infringement, you are welcome to sue the persons responsible. Until then, stop assuming that everyone is out to ruin your business by stealing all your IP.
Let's get into politics then!
Support your local Pirate Party and spread the word:
http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party#Other_Pirate_parties
Well, it is bad but it doesn't come a shock to me. But we have to look at the bigger picture here because this isn't a law you impose just because you feel like it. The media corporations have money and lots of it and I'm sure they invest quite a bit in networking, making sure current administrations work for you. What these companies don't (want to) realise is that the world is engulfed in an digital (and others but that is a different story) revolution. Companies that don't keep up with current trends usually don't last long and we will arrive at a point that their money will run out and then it will die out, slowly and painfully. They have to move with the changes and what the perfect answer is.. I don't know. But now that they still have money and power they have to make their move and they have to do it quickly. Personally I have absolutely no intention at all to ever pay for a record company again they are an insult to artists around the world.
Any other corporate owners around here to debate this from another perspective? Someone who actually has intellectual property to protect?
I am very liberal in the manner in which my work is distributed. I've discovered that the community which values me will find non-specific ways in which to support me. I've been living this way for many years. --The trick is to trust this non-specific, non-linear system even when it doesn't make immediate rational sense. It's always there, but you can't see it, you can't tag and document it and you can't slap it down on a desk to prove its viability to others. It also won't make you a millionaire, but amazingly, if you ever need any kind of resource, bang, it's always there. --And if I ever genuinely needed to be a millionaire in order to fulfill some required service, then I'd be a millionaire. That opportunity has in fact come up a couple of times, but I got a bit freaked out by the responsibilities which would have been attached and backed off.
But this system requires a strong faith (there's a dirty word for the average Slashdotter!) in the mechanics of a conscious universe. If you don't have that, then sure, increasingly draconian attempts to control the natural behavior of reality are required to force the various flows of energy to conform to our highly limited human perception of reality. Think of it this way; if everybody is on some deep level, in unconscious communication with everybody else, even you and me right now, then we would be capable of setting up some astonishing coincidences, feeding each other's needs as required by mutual consent, all the while being mindful to not over-step the boundaries of our conscious awareness. --That is, we try not to break the illusion of being separate because that is where we learn the most basic human values. (Or that's my theory behind why my system apparently works so well).
I know this is waaaay beyond most people, and fear usually wins the day, but since you asked, this is indeed how I manage my life and it works very well. And interestingly, even Slashdotters are taking tentative steps toward recognizing the true nature of reality. But the terminology has to be wrapped up just right. Heck, there's a story in today's feed about the Placebo Effect. --Which is essentially recognizing the validity of "Mind over Matter", (to use a dippy phrase from the sixties), albeit in a very limited form. But that's a big step for a lot of people around here.
When they feel safe enough to recognize that the brain does indeed do most of its work on the quantum level, and then connects the placebo effect with the idea of "spooky communication" at a distance, then they'll be another couple of steps closer to where I am. But that's a bit much to ask at the moment. Doesn't change the way reality works, though.
I'll conclude with a silly phrase which I'm sure somebody else must have thought up before. . . "Freedom of thought? Not if THEY can prevent it!"
This is the real fight today. The fight for our own minds. It's time to pick sides.
-FL
This sounds tongue-in-cheek, but is really a serious question. On one hand, you have the notion of ignorance is no excuse although there are precedents now stating if you're famous, that's okay. There are precedents for secret treatises for national security, like the withdrawal of missiles from Turkey at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But how would the mechanics of enforcement work?
Will the FBI kick in your door, shoot your dog, and haul you off for breaking a secret law?
Would they need a secret warrant?
If you ever got your day in court, would that court be secret too, to protect that law?
----
Now for Canada: A judge last year tossed out a RIAA style copyright suit because the defendant had made CDs. As everyone knows, Canada has a special tax on blank media to reimburse the copyright holders for piracy that may or may not happen. Kind of like paying a partial speeding ticket before you get into your car each day. Since this implies guilt, the defendant was deemed to have been punished already, and was so exempt from being convicted again.
How would the secret treaty work in Canada? Change the laws secretly?
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
the other attitude pro-copyright people have is CONTROL. they want to CONTROL their work, even if they don't want money for it.
this is also an untenable position. there is no control of information once you've released it into the wild. you cannot call it back, people can not unhear your songs or unsee your art. they cannot unthink the ideas that your music or information inspired in them.
i think it is morally repugnant to sing a song and tell someone "i do not want you to share this song with anyone unless they pay me money". if you don't want people to share your music or be inspired by it to create more, then keep it to yourself. the world will not miss it and the world will not miss you.
I am under contract to give away my copyrights. They're my employer's, and his to do with as he pleases. He generally open-sources the works, and we're a reasonably prospering company. I have a clause in that same contract that leaves the copyright to my personal and out-of-domain work with me, not automatically with my employer (as is so often automatically the case). I fought hard for that, even passing up a very, very well paid job for it. We're both happy with the arrangement. This works because we have a business model to match, and we do what corporations are supposed to do: Bundle effort and make some money by giving back to society. Everybody gains.
I honestly have no objections to copyright, but I do have objections to the naked greed that makes copyright a commodity, makes large, deep-pocketed umbrella organizations sue their customers and potential customers, in lieu of innovating and adjusting business models to new opportunities. I have even more objections to those same deep-pocketed lobby groups succeeding in "cracking down on piracy" in a losing battle to stem the tide. They aren't doing what they are supposed to do and are abusing the power their deep pockets afford them.
Copyright was instituted to support creative work, not as a weapon for large corporations to wield against all use of copyrights, dammit. That's what fair use is for. You use some of my work in citing, as hommage, whatever, and it might even bring me some royalties in new sales. Baen books gives away CDs full of their books, and they keep on doing that because to them it's a "licence to print money" in follow-up sales. Creative works always had a rather indirect market model. Weighing in like a metric tonne gorrilla to, basically, levy private corporate taxes ohne ende and by international government fiat, on grounds of "IP" so nebulous that even the authors no longer know what is supposed to be intellectual about it is, I say, blatant abuse.
And to protect citizens from that sort of abuse was one of the reasons why we have governments. Exactly that is why ACTA being so riddled with secrecy is very, very ominous.
Copyright must go both ways to support creativity, but now the pendulum is threatening to swing entirely in the corporate favour. Meaning that long term the backlash will be most severe for the current abusers. They'll probably figure they'll be dead before that happens if they've realized it at all, but they'll taking large chunks of popular culture with them. Well, maybe the non-corporate people should go indie again, without the governments.
Sounds like you are one of the Treaty's intended beneficiaries. But in order for you to benefit, the whole way the internet works will be radically changed. Since ISP's are responsible to prevent any upload of copyrighted content, they will only be able to allow traffic and protocols they can police. Video cannot currently be content verified in a cost effective manner so it will be prohibited. And consider the problem of protocols. In other words, I hope you didn't need to use BitTorrent to transfer or receive critcal business files. It will be gone until ISP's adopt monitoring software. And of course this will give them an excuse to block any and all protocols that they "cannot adequately monitor". I suppose the impact to business of losing protocols and sites dependent on user content will be minimal except for the affected sites. And Content Owners have never really be comfortable with individuals being able to upload their own content. So if it happens at all it will now be highly regulated. All for a few Million a year for some rights holders. No wonder a Treaty is required to slam this down our throats!
"You mean we have to abide by the rules! Oh the humanity!" This isn't 2012 and they aren't adding anything other than enforcement. If you aren't breaking the rules you're fine. If abuse is threatening your ISP then blame the abusers. Signed Dead Messenger.
... and the people who wrote them booted out come next election season.
I'm not sure where you came to the erroneous conclusion that this is being written by anyone elected. This is being written by lobbyists and state department flacks.
I like that thought... but unless you can get a very large number of people to participate it will probably backfire. You will probably get sued for damages or prosecuted under some harassment law or something like that. Meanwhile large corporations who go after individual's legal content will have too many lawyers to worry about that kind of stuff.
I for one am eager to invite the government to judge and enforce net neutrality and look forward to the legislature giving bureaucrats the control needed to do so.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
With violating a treaty.. depending on the provision you broke.. your internet might just stop working, no one would tell you why, and no other ISP would accept you as a client. If there was a monetary penalty, you would get a bill from a lawyer for the penalty + legal fees, if you refused to pay they would simply take you to court to confiscate your property or attach your wages until the penalty, fees and interest were paid off.
Because you would be violating a ratified treaty, you would have no legal recourse and thus could not defend yourself. If the treaty is later deemed to be a "Bad" treaty, it would probably take 10-20 years of new negotiations to "fix" or replace it.
The problem with Presidents is that we can only count on them to have a clue on a few things, and we can only select them on a few issues. Obama may have a great foreign policy, admirable intent for health care, and some other nice things, but he's not clued on every potential issue. That said, I'm very disappointed at them dropping the ball on this. Not all legislation is bad, not all legislation is good, but if we're going to have some bad legislation, the least we can hope is that it's developed badly in the open. Of course, other nations that are negotiating this may be even worse off - I suspect that US-based businesses are the main forces writing ACTA.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Quick! Flood the white house with emails! Get this shit on the daily show or colbert. Get normal people talking about. I've seen too many things go unnoticed because we rant and rave about it between ourselves and no one outside of slashdot ever hears or cares about it. Facebook groups dont ever seem to do any good but any little bit helps.
We must stop ACTA. Not just post comments on Slashdot.
I'll wager that the lobbying industry working for Big Content are filled with the same dishonest, shady and corrupt characters that shilled for Big Tobacco decades ago when they tried to deny links between smoking and lung cancer for purely selfish business reasons; or the corrupt rightwing shills who effectively conned the US government in waging wars and terrorism against Latin American countries to "protect US interests" (e.g. United Fruit). The same morally bankrupt individuals who staff lobbying companies and populate rightwing think tanks that are blitzing the world with climate denialism.
Perhaps it's time for society to start asking who these people are, who they're working for and what they're getting paid. A public open database of paid lobbyists and shills might be useful. Perhaps these weasels might be less keen on trashing our liberties for profit if they know that light is being shone on their corrupt activities.
Chances are, there will be only several dozen key individuals, who if pressured enough, and "encouraged" to find a more legitimate and honest lines of work, would make a big difference in fighting the onward march of vested interests in eroding our rights for profit.
and that would be a good reason for me not to want to put myself under fair use. I don't want you to use my product either.
Incidentally, do you own a business? Or is your opinion worthless to me?
Odds are that the portions of the treaty that are considered sensative to national security deal with economic strategy or distribution of sensative products that are provided to the governments. ie: We'll sell you these chips that you use to monitor North Korea, but you're only able to use them for that purpose...no giving the chips to your manufacturers that compete directly with our own. These sections of the treaty are likely seperate or extensions of those that apply to normal commerce.M
It probably comes down to: We agree to respect IP laws but allow for the free use of purchased products (execept we don't want you using our classified tech that we're nice enough to give you to put our last chip makers out of business).
However, not seeing the original document, I couldn't tell you what it covers. It might be super horrible.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
A lot of what we have seen so far on this is second hand, conjecture, etc. The "leaked document" in this case doesn't seem to exist -- it looks like Michael Geist's blog entry is what is being referenced. I think it is reasonable to suppose that the blog entry may be accurate, but we don't really know that it is.
So what do we know? What conclusions can we draw from the information we have?
1. It is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The word "counterfeiting" in there seems like an important data point.
2. It has been quashed by citing national security. National security has certainly become an extraordinarily loose standard, but it still means something.
3. Lots of copyright bigwigs have signed the NDA.
4. Three Google representatives have signed the NDA. (not sure what that contributes to this post, but I think it is worth noting)
5. The Obama administration has appointed a number of high ranking RIAA lawyers to the DoJ. I think that they are prohibited from being involved in official court duties related to copyright issues for two years from leaving the industry.
Item 5 leads me to wonder what those lawyers would be up to if they can't participate in actual proceedings. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that they might be working on ACTA, and combined with item 3 above makes me tend to think that the conjecture that ACTA is related to copyright is true. Yet its title mentions "counterfeiting."
For years the government has referred to selling fake packaged copies of Windows 95 as counterfeit, which seems fair enough. They are an attempt to pass something off as the genuine article, to deceive the recipient into believing it is the real thing. This is a particularly dangerous thing with money, where the term "counterfeit" is most commonly used, because it devalues the currency. It is also a problem with things like software, in part because the person buying it cannot be confident that they are getting the real product.
In short, the reason "counterfeit" is worse than mere copyright infringement is because its misrepresentation as the genuine article has extra costs to society. It is on this basis that investigation and punishment of counterfeit products is a more serious issue than of copyright infringement alone.
So, that makes me wonder: Is the ACTA about what has traditionally been defined as counterfeit, or might it be about redefining all copyright infringement as counterfeiting? If so, it might make the national security issue make sense; counterfeiting is somewhat reasonably considered a national security issue. So if copyright infringement is redefined to be counterfeiting, then all copyright infringement would become, by a wave of a magic wand, a national security issue and would activate sections of the law created to deal with the more serious problem of traditional counterfeiting.
Heck, if you were sufficiently twisted, you could even think that because this will classify a whole new swath of people as counterfeiters, and because counterfeiting is a national security issue, that disclosing the reclassification of copyright infringement would "tip our hand" to the people who are soon to be defined as counterfeiters. And we wouldn't want to disrupt these enemies of the state before we get a chance to classify their actions as hostile to the state.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Sounds like a very complex (and rather peculiar) way of explaining off the phenomenon that people who like you are often nice to you.
I'm agreeing with most of the intent, and certainly all of the purpose. Supporting copyright is far more importantto me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former.
Do you even kno what the basis of Fair Use is? It's not something that you can sacrifice. Fair Use derives from diametrically opposed provisions of the US Constitution.
The First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..."
And the Copyright Clause:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The first gives me unlimited freedom to use speech even it's someone else's speech. And the second gives a limited time monopoly to a creator's speech. You cannot downplay nor get rid of one or the other. They have equal weight in determining the law.
Though the years,court cases and precedents, the US Courts crafted the Fair Use doctrine as a balance between the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause. And ultimately the Fair Use doctrine was written into law by the US Congress.
It's not the money so much as the work. I spend days and years building my tools. Yeah people want to take them and make them their own. But that's not fair to my hard work.
There are simple facilities to teach children. One would be to allow corporations to donate such property for a tax break. You have corporations donating real things -- lots of them -- with complete documentation and teaching tools. They'd be way more useful than the product you pull off a shelf.
But what you've said is exactly what I want to avoid. I don't want my plays stolen by another play-write. Certainly, put a date cap on it. 75 years is too long. 5 years is too short.
I'd never stop someone else from inventing the same thing -- I dislike the way a quarter of the patent system works. But stopping someone from actually taking my work directly and using it even for fun just isn't fair to me.
Incidentally, do you own a business? I'm really interested in hearing from people who do have something to protect. Obviously life is different for people clearly on one side of the line.
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I'd certainly say you're supporting software patents by holding some. The alternative is obviously to fight them having not protected yourself. But I'm no corporate drone, I own the corporations. They run my way.
I'm not worried about someone pirating my software -- that just won't happen. I'm worried about someone benefitting from my work, and to a lesser extent, my being liable for what they do with it.
If you don't want people to get the things you do, just don't do it. If content exists, it has the right to mine, and I wont pay you if I don't want to. We're not talking about hardware, we're talking about content, and if content exists, anyone has the right to get it.
If you we're competent on what you do, you would not need to worry about people getting your stuff for free.
Again, if you don't want people to get your stuff for free, just don't do anything. If it exists, it has the right to be everyone's, and you can fight this, but you won't win.
I actually think is great to see the effort companies and government do to protect copyrighted content - they always loose the war, loose money and loose respect. I love it. Is like watching roaches drinking poison by themselfs just to defy me. Keep wasting your money on this war, the people you are fighting are fighting for free, are a larger number, are on the right side and will laugh on your face after you loose - again - like we always did.
but it's already happening...
Some would be really fucking stupid.
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Well... for the treaty to actually be enforceable in Canada, they'd have to change our constitution. Specifically, section 1 of the Constitution, better known as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That's not likely to happen.
Section 8 of the Charter states that:
And section 11 of the Charter states that:
Note, that's not somebody paraphrasing the law, that's the actual text of the law. Reference.
Now... if our government *did* sign off on the treaty, all it would take would be another John Scopes to challenge it. They wouldn't even have to be previously convicted of the alleged "crime" at that, either... the day it gets signed into law, they could turn around and file a challenge in the Supreme Court and have it struck down. I know of a few lawyers in this country who would be champing at the bit for a chance to do something like that.
(other interesting reading in that law... section 13, I'm pretty sure, was written with the US 5th Ammendment in mind, and section 15 is always fun.)
That's easily solved the other way. You allow it to happen, and you penalize the the guy who does it.
What you've described is effectively exactly the same as a citizen's arrest. As in you, joe shmoe, can walk up to someone on the street and arrest them. They go to jail -- because you said so.
The reason you don't do it is because if it turns out that you are wrong, then you get charged with all sorts of things from false imprisonment to something akin to kidnapping.
It's important to have -- you should be able to arrest someone when you watch them do something terrible -- it also gives you the right to "stop that man!" You just can't do it frivilously.
You've said the right thing but meant the wrong thing. I'm of the mind that I need to keep working to better my product because it's never finished. But I'm of the understanding that starting a project and getting it to the workable point is the most difficult part. I've spent years in engineering to get my product to pass safety tests and to actually stand up. Now I have to add the features that make it sellable. That's the easy part. Anyone could do that.
To have someone take my product from me now, they'd be able to do it just as easily -- and they haven't wasted two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they actually have the advantage.
You've got to give me the chance to finish my work, or I'll never be willing to start it. I'm not asking for 75 years. I am asking for 5.
What is it that you have to protect?
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How's that "hope and change" working out for you?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
"I'd certainly say you're supporting software patents by holding some. The alternative is obviously to fight them having not protected yourself."
That's the theory. But in practice having a defensive patent helps. I'd happily burn my patent when/if software patents become invalid. I also won't use it offensively.
"I'm worried about someone benefitting from my work, and to a lesser extent, my being liable for what they do with it."
??? I'm writing software with the sole purpose that its users will benefit from it.
Do you mean 'benefit without paying me $$$$$$'?
Well, that doesn't concern me. Fair use rights are fair. I'm not worried that some professors might distribute my software to their students. I might lose a sale or two that way, but my children won't need to live in the Stallman's 'Right to Read' world.
I think the national security issue will be the riots on our streets when they realise what they are up to...no wonder they wanted to keep it quiet.
this shit isnt about copyright, or counterfeiting. these are all side perks and excuses.
its about preparing the grounds for mechanisms that would enable control of the internet. once mechanisms to prevent 'copyright abuses' are in place, the same mechanisms can also easily be used to prevent any 'undesirable' sources of opinion, information or activity. once gates and controls are in place, no upstart will be coming up politically or business wise and upsetting the power balance that is already established. or challenge it. internet will be much more easier to shape into a cable tv network.
they banked on copyright, because child porn thing and anti net neutrality stuff didnt fly. many countries in europe was too liberal for porn to be used as an excuse, and net neutrality was the de facto and logical reality in anywhere in the world BUT usa. and europeans were rather too conscious with the statistics that their governments couldnt push the nonexistent minority of child porn abuse as something to hamper internet for.
but copyright excuse seems to be working. however, some countries in europe are already treating internet access as a citizens' right, some are legislating it (like finland) and many are pushing government functions and services to the internet because its much more efficient and less costly to conduct these over the internet. it can only be stupid, way too insolent american corporate lobbyists' naivete to expect the '3 strikes' shit to work in other places. one lawsuit in european human rights court, and their 3 strikes and their ban gets shoved up their asses.
but i have one thing to say to you americans ; you have to wake up from that 'let corporations be' shit, and start regulating your business so that corporations wont BUY laws from your parliament. you have been tolerant of this shit for SO long that it has come to this point :
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-14-2009/rape-nuts
Read radical news here
Wow, you're a little nuts aren't you. I've said not what is, but what I'd want to be. I don't want my friends to take my songs and mix them. I'm fully aware that it's legal today. I don't want it to be.
And when say "corporate owner" I don't mean that I've filed some government form. I mean I pay that government crap-loads of money on a very frequent basis. I mean I employ that government's citizens and pay not only for their families but their taxes as well. I mean I cover them medically too. I feed them. I transport them. I re-assure them. And I'm forced to continue to do so for term.
I don't want you to take my product for your own fun. Would you let me take your dog for my own fun? Not to sell. Just to play with.
Government regulation is ALWAYS the answer to EVERYTHING.
Don't forget that when your initial reaction to this news is revulsion.
Big Brother ALWAYS does the right thing. You have zero room to complain, because this is exactly what you believe in.
You are mistaken. I don't have to move to a country with a dictator. The nice part about living in a democracy is that I can influence that democracy.
I can change the current laws to suit my needs. Not often single-handedly (although sometimes), but it can be done.
Maybe you should move to a country with a dictator, so you'll know that the laws stay the same.
Incidentally, I was asking to hear from business owners. What sort of property do you have to protect?
If any of this could happen without individual citizens not losing rights, then I bet there would be less opposition.
Unfortunately, that's not the way it is working. Corporate entities (which may be made up of groups of individual citizens, but are not - and should not be - the same as individual citizens) should not be treated the same under law as citizens.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Supporting copyright is far more importantto me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former.
And that is exactly why such an insanely huge percentage of the population no longer cares about your copyright and IP, and pirating is seen as hurting no one that doesn't deserve it.
Tell me, as a citizen, why exactly should the people give you any protection at all what so ever?
What do we get in return?
Once you publish something, you no longer own it. The public is the only owner. This is in copyright law today. All you get as an author is limited time but exclusive rights over distribution, but of OUR property.
Until YOU follow the law, there is no reason for us to follow it either.
I certainly agree with the pendulum comment. But I think it's for an obvious reason. When was the last time you saw a normal person invent something that needs protecting? You now live in an age where practically all inventions are done by corporations -- because it requires that much time and money in the first place.
If you don't want corporations to hold power, you're going to have to stop buying name-brand stuff -- and you'll have to get everyone else to do so as well.
In such matters, we vote with dollars. If 300 million iPods have been sold (none to me) then that's more than most political elections get in terms of votes. They've said that Apple deserves the power. How many patents does apple have?
And what property do you have to protect?
Your trolling sucks, dude.
1 cents over 20 bucks goes to distribution companies, artists get ZIT, distribution companies dont employ any noticeable portion of workforce or supply any noticeable side industries, buuuuuut, you come up here saying 'so many lives ruined'.
excuse me, but are you stupid ? are you SO completely naive ? how the hell are you even able to muster the cognitive power to use internet ? read the below so you can get some sense in your head :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1430956&cid=29979454
Read radical news here
I create intellectual property as well. Every day. Furthermore, I work in a small enough company that copyright is a critical issue. And you know what we found? We can't afford to pay every single idiot who thinks that what they created is so special and unique it cannot be put into the public for 75 years after they die. What do we do? We use stuff licensed under BSD, GPL or CC terms. And we're able to create far more stuff than if we'd have to pay someone like you because it just so happens that what we create might be close to what you created.
What you're doing is nothing more than locking up existing content and ideas. Because if you think that what you create is unique - you're deluding yourself.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Umm, no I don't use bittorrent for business. More importantly, in the business world, there are alternatives and backups for everything. You can destroy any ten protocols without affecting my business.
Oh yeah, and I am an ISP for my clients for exactly that reason -- to ensure that my product keeps running independent of others.
I have dual internet connections from my home, over two ISPs, to ensure that if something needs to be done, even when I'm at home, my clients don't get screwed. I have as many backup systems as the star ship enterprise.
And every supplier has a back-up too -- as in I double my suppliers, and test each back-up semi-annually.
Yes, this bill may reward me for my efforts.
And what business do you have to protect?
Massive Backlash.
Boredom is bliss.
Again, I'm looking for business owners here. Are you one?
a) you can change both
b) you can add exceptions for products, as opposed to speech
c) you can remove both, welcome to ammendments
d) not everyone lives in the US, this is an international effort.
Person A's car crashed into Person B's car by accident, B's car being parked on the side of the road and neither A nor B being you. Since B's car is now on your lawn, you are liable.
Or even: Person A buys a DVD at your store, and you are the cashier. Person A, unbeknownst to you, copies the DVD to give a copy to Person B. Since you sold A's DVD, you are liable.
None of these make sense. What the fuck are these ACTA guys smoking? An ISP just sends packets to and fro, maintaining the infrastructure to do so in good shape so most packets can go through.
And how on Earth are ISPs going to police everything and still offer low prices to their customers? In addition, the small independent providers are going to have an even higher barrier of entry in the Internet due to this requirement, giving the major telcos even less competition.
If this happens and Canada is in on this, (disclaimer: I'm Canadian) Scientology ain't seen nothing yet.
Your wants are no more important than other people's wants. Especially when your wants are short-sighted, selfish, and lead to a stalled society.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
My message is clear ...
Time to guard and stand up for our own art or loose it forever! .. it's alarming!
Rights are diminishing by the minute
Do something or all this will be controlled by only a few on this planet, making up your menu which you will hear, see, buy and smell!
--- 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..
I'm getting really sick of these ludicrous propositions becoming law.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I mean the liability that comes from someone using my product improperly. My product undergoes many safety tests. Someone who steals it winds up bypassing some of my advice. I'm still liable for it exploding in their face.
Fair use rights extend quite far -- because they exist by accident.
And defensive patents are exactly that. But since not having them would put you in the position to fight for your work, and having them puts others in the position of not being able to fight for theirs, you most certainly are supporting the patents. You're stopping other people from doing similar work.
Hahahahahaha Hahahahahahaha. This is a joke right?
Id gladly make a genetic clone of my dog and give you the copy to do whatever you want to do with it.
Thats YOUR freedom... get it?
Incidentally, do you own a business? Or is your opinion worthless to me?
See? That's the sort of attitude right there that makes me even more certain that putting you up against a wall and shooting you would be a pleasure.
I must side with small artists, software developers, and musicians who are trying to make a living without the umbrella of the music and computer mafia. They are the ones who really suffer when people decide that they don't need to pay for that content, that it should be free. Slashdotters routinely find themselves polarized either for or against FOSS. I feel like people think that arts, music, and computer code should be free and open sourced as well. As a professional software developer who also contributes GPL code, I feel that it is my right to tell you when my creations are free and whey they aren't. It is not for you to make that decision for me.
1) There is NO SUCH THING as "intellectual property". There is copyright, trademark, and patent law. Its hard to work with someone who persists in making shit up out of thin air.
2) Copyright only exists at all because of the balance with fair-use. Otherwise - you'll have the same total absence of alcohol you got with Prohibition -- the public will tell you to fuck off.
3) EVERYTHING you create sits on the shoulders of other works. How dare you claim some special god-like powers of creation out of nothing.
4) Homework assignment: read up on the Creative Commons and Public Domain. Copyright is a special permission to make some money on something you uttered for a few years - period.
5) Information is to property like a corporation is to a person -- it isn't and its a terrible mistake to equate them.
PS: (sarcasm) I've just put my "creation" in this post... you're not allowed to make a copy in your brain without giving me money :P
I don't want my friends to take my songs and mix them. I'm fully aware that it's legal today.
Look, that makes you a jackass. Worse, you're a profiteering jackass. You care that your friends remix your songs? Some friend you are... Honestly, I'm surprised you have any. With that attitude, I'd be ashamed to know you.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I don't blame you for feeling that way. I would ask this though.. using your example, if someone used your work in their schoolwork. I don't doubt that it would be an annoyance, maybe even an insult to you if you found out. How much ill would you wish on the kid in return though? Would you want him branded ineligible to use the internet for it? Would you want him (or his parents) fined the life crippling sums of money as the RIAA has been doing over a handful of songs? Would you want him thrown in prison? You sound like a reasonable person, I would guess you would not want these things.
How much harm would it really do to you? Is it likely all his classmates are going to keep copies of his homework? If they do will it really stop them from buying your CD? Is it likely they were all going to buy it anyway? How many might hear the song in his presentation for the first time, like it, ask him who it is and then go out and buy it?
While I understand that you own the original design and the right to distribute your work, anyone who buys it did actually pay to own something themselves. What rights would you expect that person to have? Do they really just own that one copy on that one piece of media? if they bought the song on CD should they not be allowed to listen on their iPod? If the original is damaged do they not have the right to keep a backup copy? Is it only allowable to play music when alone, or when solely in the company of others whom have also paid for the same music? How about that farmer in the UK who was sued for playing music to the cows? Should cows be buying CDs now? While you certainly own something which you made the effort to produce we all have some kind of ownership when we pay our hard earned cash for it do we not?
My point above is that copyright is currently broken. That doesn't say it couldn't be fixed and then supported. The future of copyright and patents however I believe is much darker than this. So much talk is about data. Music, such as your situation, Video and Software. It's easy to see why, technology has made copying such things trivial. How about actual tangible objects? How about things you can hold in your hand?
Already we have the DMCA being used to limit people's freedoms with electronic devices they have purchased. Look at TI suing people for talking about how to change the software on their calculators. They aren't copying the physical device, TI still gets their money. They are just using it in a way TI never intended. Most companies haven't actually tried to use the DMCA in this way yet but many hardware vendors are putting limits on how customers can use the devices they have purchased. Just look at the iPhone, or any cellphone for that matter. These are physical devices people paid for. How can one argue that the user is not also the owner?
The Internet was Pandora's box for copyright of intangible things like music. It's not going to end there. The day is coming where one will be able to take the design of a physical object, in digital form and produce said object at home. It may not be entirely free like copying music as raw materials will be necessary but it will be close enough to destroy the business models of most industries. Take a look at RepRap, CupCake CNC, etc... sure, they are fairly limited in what they can make now and not ready for grandma to use yet but look at the progress they have made in just a few years. How long will it be before pirated designs wind up on the internet? Even if ACTA and similar laws could prevent this, how long before they are passed hand to hand by USB stick or similar methods? Remember how popular mix tapes were before Napster?
Right or wrong, things are going to change. I hope you and all good people who currently rely on copyright for your livelihoods find a way to adapt and prosper. I also hope that not too many people are broken on either side in the fight to stop the inevitable.
The nice part about living in a democracy is that I can influence that democracy.
No, you live in a corporatist republic, which is not the same thing. Here, money talks. If you have it, you can buy influence. If you don't, you are nobody.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I can change the current laws to suit my needs. Not often single-handedly (although sometimes), but it can be done.
I'm not against the changing of laws, but I am against laws that unbalance the power of its citizens.
Since copyrights are already protected, what you're asking for is nothing more than complete control of something owned by another person. The customer own the copies they buy from you.
Incidentally, I was asking to hear from business owners. What sort of property do you have to protect?
Actually, you said,
Any other corporate owners around here to debate this from another perspective? Someone who actually has intellectual property to protect?
I do own stock, and I write software. So I believe I qualify to respond to your question.
Supporting copyright is far more important to me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former.
I'm not a corporate owner, but I am a musician, and I have to disagree with you on your view.
Here's why: most musicians don't make their money from CD sales. Paul McCartney might, but for every Paul McCartney there are thousands of good musicians who make their money from performing, and use recordings primarily as a way to get recognition and more gigs. So in the case of recorded music at least, musicians have a very viable alternative to a strong copyright system. The Grateful Dead in particular did quite well for themselves despite actively encouraging their audience to tape their shows, while hip-hop artists are regularly taking small snippets of each others' work to make something completely new.
Musical composers who aren't also performers also frequently make far more by teaching, commissions, and awards than they ever earn via royalties. And most also do quite a bit of performing as well. I'll put it this way: my grandfather was a fairly prolific and successful composer in his day, with several hundred works still under copyright and performed every once in a while, and as a result my family gets about $25 a year of royalty payments.
I am officially gone from
Sorry. You are a minority. A corporate drone without creativity and/or life. Please, move along. Don't let the door hit you.....I do not support neither software patents (even though I hold some)
Oh come off it, you're full of it. If you don't support the idea, then perhaps you can explain why you hold the software patents at all?
You people with your condescending, borderline ecclesiastical defense of this "everything must be free" mentality are completely bereft of any rational perspective. I'd wager that your oh_so_much_more_evolved_than_the_rest_of_you attitude would change dramatically if the "software" you sell were subject to much more piracy, and if you were to find your ability to provide for yourself as a result.
Guys like you spout off on this tip that you'd "rather lose more sales than lose more freedoms" as though it were that cut and dried. All of you would sing a different tune if you lost all or most of your sales, and were suddenly trying to pay your bills.
Mod me down if you want, I don't care. I just get tired of this idea that anyone who creates anything should be demonized for wanting to protect it from being stolen and from wanting to be able to recoup some of his/her expenses associated with the creation.
I mean I cover them medically too. I feed them. I transport them. I re-assure them. And I'm forced to continue to do so for term.
Wow forced to take care of your employees? You poor thing. So what are the names of these corporations you run? I'm sure everyone here is dying to help support them.
"I mean the liability that comes from someone using my product improperly. My product undergoes many safety tests. Someone who steals it winds up bypassing some of my advice. I'm still liable for it exploding in their face."
That's fair. However, I don't think that you are not liable in that case even now.
"Fair use rights extend quite far -- because they exist by accident."
Uhm. No, you're wrong. Copyright exists by accident. In fact, not long ago copyright was quite limited.
"And defensive patents are exactly that. But since not having them would put you in the position to fight for your work, and having them puts others in the position of not being able to fight for theirs, you most certainly are supporting the patents. You're stopping other people from doing similar work."
I know for a fact that there are works that infringe my patent. Hell, I have direct competitors with the similar functionality. So no, my patent doesn't stop anyone. Almost no one does patent searches before starting the work.
Maybe this will be the point at which people will take interest in Freenet( http://freenetproject.org/ ). It might be awfully slow, but could be our only hope... I have been waiting fearfully the moment when I will start hating my internet connection's speed to be even slower than it already is because I'm forced to use something like it.
It's good that someone who actually has some so-called "intellectual property" (I hate that term) is weighing in on the side of fair use.
Supporting copyright is very important to me too. That's why I ignore it altogether.
How does that make sense? I'll tell you.
What we have is no longer copyright. It's consumer control. Copyright is about innovation. It's about promoting the public domain, so that useful works can get into the hands of those who have the ability to build upon them to make more useful works. Sacrifices have to be made in order to get those works created, so copyright was invented (yes, invented. It is not and never has been an inherent right) to give creators temporary control over their works in order to try to earn a little money off of them, thereby encouraging the creators to create those works in the first place.
However, when the sacrifices become so big that the net result goes contrary to the original intent of copyright, such as by extending copyright lengths to the end of the universe minus one day, or legally enforcing technical limitations on copying something even after it officially becomes public domain, then the law is wrong.
Since I believe in the goal of copyright, I believe it's my responsibility not to uphold the laws that go against that goal. Anarchy, in this case, is a better state than the regulations that we have right now. It's gotten to the point where I actually feel guilty about paying for music, movies, or games instead of downloading them for free.
Let there be no mistake: this is not my choice. I would rather have a world where copyright lasts only long enough for content creators to make a little money off of their works instead of resting on their laurels for 75 years, where books that are out of print for a while automatically become public domain, where money goes to musicians and authors rather than labels and publishers, where restrictions on copying something that I legally purchased are outlawed, where innovators can wade through a massive public domain to find something worth building upon. But the law opposes such a world, and therefore, the fault lies clearly upon the law itself.
We don't have such a world, so the best I can do is to work around the pointless restrictions and promote such a world despite the law.
The law has declared war upon those who believe in the original goal of copyright. My response? I accept.
And yes, I too am a content creator. I have written some books and released them under a Creative Commons license, so I am, in fact, putting my money where my mouth is.
Posted anonymously because I admitted to copyright infringement.
How can you be convicted of breaking a secret law? With incompetence.
Think of all the trouble people faced at the air port.
And believe me, just putting you in the system (lawsuit, court dates, etc) would have achieved what **AA wants.
If you have two identically skilled artists who each devote an equal amount of time towards creating a piece of art so that they have relatively equal values, and one releases their art into the public domain while the other lobbies the governments of the world to invent new crimes in order to force people to pay before experiencing his art, then who do you think has added value to society, and who do you think has shown themselves to be a leech upon society? It may seem extremely 'fair' for you to create an entire new class of criminals in order to support what you feel is a valid business model, but I think you fail to realize that your job shouldn't really be a job to begin with. What exactly is it that you do anyways that requires such draconian copyright laws?
If you create music, then you should stop relying on artificial scarcity to generate revenue. Even without copyright, a musical artist has many ways to make money. If you're big enough that mass copying is actually threatening you, then certainly you're big enough to make a killing off of official swag and large concerts (which is where most musicians money tends to come from anyways). If you're still a small, local artist, then fans copying your work is only going to help bring in the cash when you do start charging for concerts. Hell, even people with your albums downloaded for free onto the iPods in their pockets will pay for a signed or 'limited edition' CD.
If you create video, then what part of your business is threatened by people receiving copies for free? I could kind of understand if you owned a large Hollywood production company that blew millions upon millions of dollars getting an explosion to look just right, but even then you'd have a hard time convincing me that such an amazing waste of resources is necessary and that people should have to pay to see it on video just because it was expensive to make.
If it's not an artistic sort of video you make, then perhaps you generate stock footage on demand or something of the sort. I think it's already cheaper for producers to pay a token fee to access the vast libraries of stock footage already available than to pay for something new to be generated, so the people giving you money now already obviously want something from you that they couldn't get for cheaper (including free). If what you produce is actually valuable, then you should be able to charge for the production and be unaffected by any copying thereafter.
If you're one of the people maintaining those vast libraries of stock footage, then how can you feel accomplished when you just sit on other peoples work, denying the rest of society any benefit until they pay your fee? I just really can't see many ways in which copyright actually benefits us.
It saddens me to know that you think you have to 'protect' your intellectual property.
We live in a world where you can create nearly infinite joy with the stroke of a brush or the pluck of a string and distribute it worldwide in a matter of minutes, but for some reason people like you just can't handle that. Why must everything have a price?
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Sounds like a very complex (and rather peculiar) way of explaining off the phenomenon that people who like you are often nice to you.
In a nutshell, yes. But I find the added complexity, (and from your perspective, the peculiarity), is required to explain many of the non-linear aspects of reality I regularly see in action. There are an endless number of examples I've lived through, but one of my favorites was how my girlfriend lost ten bucks one day.
It fell out of her pocket when she was going for the car keys, and she felt an instinctive imperative to leave it on the ground. She loves her money, and so it was very difficult. She said she sat in the car seat staring at the bill on the ground for a whole minute before finally deciding to listen to instinct and close the car door. Then upon pulling out of the parking lot, she realized she needed gas and didn't have her bank card, and that she'd just left her last ten bucks in a parking lot. So she had to turn around and drive home to get more money instead of finishing her morning errands which would have put her on the highway.
As a result, when the car's frame failed ten minutes later, and the car ceased to be a car and turned instead into a lump of sparking metal with no steering or power flying at 80 Km/hour, it did so on a quiet stretch of empty country road rather than on a rush hour freeway. The car ground harmlessly to a halt directly in front of a house from which a woman emerged in alarm at the sound. She ran out and collected my shuddering girlfriend from the corpse of our car. As it happened, the woman was the wife of a used car dealer, and she proceeded to give my girlfriend an excellent replacement vehicle at their cost. --So within mere hours after our last car died, she drove away in a really good fresh new car for several thousand dollars less than we would have paid for it had we been customers walking into the dealership. It was about $900 total after transfer taxes and such. --Which just happened to be the same amount as an unexpected bonus check she'd received a couple of days earlier. She didn't ask me to pay anything for my half of the car since she'd always driven the other one more often and had done a fair bit of damage to it, having bounced it through farmer's fields and over parking lot dividers and such. I gave her a couple hundred for my share anyway.
So yes, as you say, people who like you will be often be nice to you, but there is also very often a non-linear quantity in evidence which general kindness alone cannot account for.
-FL
"Oh come off it, you're full of it. If you don't support the idea, then perhaps you can explain why you hold the software patents at all?"
Because it's a business requirement in my area. People without patents are sued out of existence. I don't like it, but that's life.
"Guys like you spout off on this tip that you'd "rather lose more sales than lose more freedoms" as though it were that cut and dried. All of you would sing a different tune if you lost all or most of your sales, and were suddenly trying to pay your bills."
That has happened to me once - my company produced a plugin for a Big Proprietary System which one day made my plugin obsolete by providing the same functionality natively. We had to retarget our efforts in a short time.
Now my business is diversified, so it shouldn't happen again.
Get off my lawn, okay?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm gonna go ahead and throw my weight behind this 'jackass' comment. The OP doesn't like sharing, end of story. He has no problem with this because he is entitled. He is your 'corporate owner', and he does not care about you, only what is 'his'.
And you know what? It will always be this way. He'll always have the support of those in power, because they are entitled as well. 'Senator', 'President', 'Judge'; these people are more important than us. They do not care about us, only what is 'theirs'.
The point people seem to forget is THIS WILL ONLY APPLY TO WORKS COVERED BY COPYRIGHT OR PATENT! It amazes me that people are so easily duped sometimes! Piss you off a little and all objectivity leaks from between your ears in rage. When you were a kid, and trying to figure out what friends you wanted to hang out with, one of the ways you determined this was by how high a price to your person and reputation you would have to pay for the association. Some groups required rites of passage, others that you participate in group-think, mob-action, tribute, or sacrifice. The only way to avoid paying any of these was to deny them all.
The same concept applies here. In order to avoid paying for crap, download and consume works from people not trying to extort you for every view, game or listen. Purchase such goods only if YOU feel the artist produced something worthy of the ask-price. ie. DON'T PLAY WITH THE KIDS WHO WANT TO ASS-RAPE YOU FOR NOT PAYING THEM EVERY TIME YOU COPY, WATCH, OR LISTEN TO THEIR WORKS!!! =PROBLEM SOLVED.
Put your products out on the web. Price them fairly, make a quality product, and you won't have to worry too much about piracy.
-Oz
None of your comment has anything to do with copyright, and the parent poster made no mention of patents. Don't change the subject.
Would you let me take your dog for my own fun? Not to sell. Just to play with.
If I could give you an identical copy of my dog for any length of time, with no harm to my own dog? Of course.
"But as a consumer, you don't do much to influence anything. I've got real dollars behind my side of hte fight. You'll lose eventually. I've got the time to fight it out. And the purpose."
You want a fucking crown too, great lord and master of everything I take for granted?
Just think, this is the same government that some people want regulating traffic on the internet under the guise of "net neutrality." There's a backlash against this administration growing quickly anyway, as evidenced by the Republican victories in yesterday's elections. Democrats, if you keep up what you're doing, the pendulum will swing back against you very shortly.
you website go poopoo on me screen,,, get new server
I do, in fact, think that copyright holders have every right to defend their legal rights but they absolutely must not step on the rights of others in so doing.
I do, in fact, think that copyright holders have every right to defend their legal rights but they absolutely must not create new legal rights for themselves in so doing.
Fixed that for you.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
How do you expect to whip significant numbers of people into an indignant frenzy?
The answer is: tits.
Put as many as you can with your message, and people *will* follow.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
No "secret treaty" will kill the internet.
Congress obviously can kill it if they want. That is not news.
Do you expect china (which has more internet users than USA has people) to shut down internet if USA Congress tells it to?
Majority of internet is outside USA (look at amount of users, servers, content, infrastructure, broadband penetration, ISPs any standard you can think of and that statement still holds true). Congress actually has very limited control over it. It can (to some extent) control what USA based companies are allowed to put online but outside that it's hands are tied.
If all the governments in the world decided to shut down internet and were very efficient and determined in this and had the support of the people (more than one would need to change the constitution first and some countries actually honour those) they could probably kill internet eventually... In one meaning of the word. There is no way that internet would be just shut down - too many lobbyist corporations depend on it - but there could be a bit more restrictions on some things... I guess?
It's unfortunate, but semi-secret laws are the norm. Read through the US Government's Code of Federal Regulations. Just about any technical area will tell you to abide behind some document that is behind a paywall. ANSI/IEEE/ASME and some industry organizations all charge (often exorbitant) fees to read a copy of what has been made 'law'. The government looking to industry to self-govern is an EXCELLENT idea... but it often puts people at risk because (outside of companies) they can't afford to purchase every spec they are legally obliged to follow. Hell, people have 'broken the law' by using an old/outdated version of a paywalled specification. (Yes this is called 'code' and now 'law', but it still leads to fines and jailtime).
http://holophrastic.net/
Im not suggesting that it is owned by the publisher of these remarks, more digging would obviously be required before any boycott or other action was taken against this (possibly) innocent company.
It can't be secret in Canada if it's going to be a law. The federal government will have to ratify it (and maybe the provinces too, if the substance of the bill encroaches on provincial powers).
Of course, being "not secret" in Canada means being published in the Canada Gazette. Most Canadians haven't even heard of the Canada Gazette.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
I hold two registered 25 year old copyrights and am all for copyright protection, but damn it, art is like technology -- everything new is built on something old. Copyrights last way too long and are way too restrictive.
Imagine how slowly technology would progress if patents lasted as long as copyright.
This journal is either infringing a thirty five year old copyright, or is fair use. Either way, the work would not be as good without the "infringement" which in no way could possibly cause Pink Floyd to lose any album slaes; in fact, it could possibly enhanse them. But I'd bet if their record label found it I'd be slapped with a lawsuit and slashdot would be given a takedown notice.
The copyrights I hold certainly have code in them that was used by someone else, and I was fine with that even when they were new, so long as they don't try to sell my whole programs. If you wanted to give copies away, no problem. It would just generate sales later on, just as file sharing of music creates sales for the artist. They do give it away on the radio, now don't they?
If you want to read one of Cory Doctorow's best selling books, they're on his website for free perusal. Nobody ever lost money from noncommercial copyright infringement, or fair use, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
How is having high school kids remix your work going to cost you anything? Sorry, but you and your ilk are greedy idiots who don't realise the value of getting your work in front of the public. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Nobody is going to buy your stuff if they're pissed off at you, or if they think you're an evil greedhead.
Free Martian Whores!
Ok, here are some practical questions: /.)
- Which countries are in line to sign this ?
- How can we really fight this ? (Besides bitching on
The USA have been trying to push DMCA-like stuff on the whole world for a few years now, mostly unsuccessfully (except for England, maybe?). How scared should we be ?
I don't know, but I really can't see a lot of countries signing this.
morcego
This treaty shows that the USA still has the best lawyers, legislators, and corporations in the world. Everyone else needs to jump on the USA bandwagon and support this treaty. You all should be thankful that the USA, MPAA, RIAA, Sony, Disney, and the other sponsors of this treaty are looking out for you. Large corporations need to protect their rightful customary income streams so that everyone can enjoy all the benefits of corporate oversight of your lives. So quit whining.
Ah, I see. So you're in a position where you don't actually have any skin in the game. No wonder you don't care about protecting "your" work, it's not you that's going to potentially lose any revenue, it's the company you work for. Got it.
Things are a little different for the "little guy". Regardless of whether one's entire livelihood depends upon the work in question, I see no reason why it should be so frowned upon that one should resist being compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way, including for their own profit. I understand the argument for not wanting to allow people to artificially inflate the value of their product(s), but to exhort that any form of protection is equal to greed is a false comparison indeed.
I don't care about the reasons for keeping this from us, nor whether the current administration is the same as the old, or more (or less) truthful than the old one.
I care about how to prevent this. What can I do? Are senators and representatives in on this? How can I make an argument about this, over the phone to some staffer, which doesn't make me sounds like a lunatic, or someone who's only upset that they can't torrent the latest movies? What concerns can I highlight which will motivate OTHER people to contact their representatives? How can I pitch this in such a way that my representative will be inclined to listen to my reasoning?
I don't mind calling my reps, I just have no idea what the hell to say.
If national security depends on so called copyright...
What does that say?
Everybody knows that especially the US, but most other governments are bought by the (C) cartels.
But what security does it imply?
There's a distinction in the English system between "mala prohibita" and "mala in se". The first is laws like 'smoking a joint is wrong'. The second is 'killing your neighbor is wrong'. The second were the laws that made Common Law.
When the phrase "ignorance of the law is no defence" was coined it referred to "in se" crime, and I can't find the original quote at the moment (somebody give me a link here), but it went on to explain that nobody could possibly be expected to know all of the prohibita law (which is several orders of magnitude more difficult today).
Of course, criminalizing everyone is a very useful tool for the tyrant, which may be the real appeal of this treaty.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
But I'm an Internet developer -- I want it controlled too. I'm not interested in having those freedoms of which you speak. I want my corporation to have the freedoms that it deservers. and currently, I'm getting that. I'll get more soon.
and it doesnt matter whether you are american or not. you are thinking like an american
you dont want 'those' freedoms. you think that when a something like up, it remains to be about 'other people's' freedoms.
control is not a limited machine. once something is controllable, it works to any extent.
you can get fired by your corporation tomorrow despite being right, get disgraced and discredited, and may not have the right to clean your reputation, or expose any wrongdoing that is done to you by your so beloved corporation. you may be owning your own corporation, and you may get wronged by a more powerful one, cramped to pieces under their postal.
thats the way control mechanisms work. they never work for small people. they never work for people who are placed in medium levels in society. they dont even work for people who are placed higher up in the society.
they only work for people on the very top. and thats no more than a few thousand in our modern times.
therefore, just because you think like any other normal german back in 1930s -> nazis are out to get jews. nothing will happen to you. its about 'other' people's freedoms.
yea. you are indeed stupid.
Read radical news here
Here is some supplemental info straight from one of the horses' mouths:
Anti-counterfeiting
It's a bit heavy on the misleading term "intellectual property".
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
You use the word "intellectual property" like you think the phrase is more than an oxymoron. Sorry, but you can't own insubstantial things. Any law that seeks to give you that right is bankrupt and immoral and void in the mind of any honest and realistic thinker.
The most misunderstood concept of copyright by copyright holders is that without strong fair-use rights, there is no market for your work and would therefore be worthless or significantly reduced in value to society at large.
It is a fine balance - one which must be upheld or we all lose.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
ACTA Proposal (2007) was leaked by Wikileaks more than a year ago. Granted, this was a rough draft of a rough draft, but the principles are still the same.
Check out Gilmore v Gonzales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilmore_v._Gonzales
John Gilmore sued then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales in 2005, complaining (among other things) that when airport security refused to let him on a flight without showing ID, that no one would tell him which law made that a requirement. Because that law was a Secret.
He lost. As best I can tell, he lost without him or his lawyers ever getting to see the text of the law he was theoretically violating.
IANAL, nor a Constitutional scholar, but "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding" appears on its face to refer to State constitutions and laws, not to the US Constitution. The law citations I've seen on various sites support this view. According to the Supreme Court in Reid v. Covert, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_v._Covert), "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty".
Sooo: No, Virginia, treaties cannot serve as an end-run around the Constitution. If I understand the citations correctly, a treaty has status coequal with Federal laws passed by Congress, so a treaty could, for example, supersede a Federal law such as the DMCA; however, it could not do anything (within the US) that Congress couldn't do by legislative means, like overruling an Amendment to the Constitution.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
So far, Obama has kept his promises pretty well. I can see why many voters would be happy with him.
Slashdot might not represent the opinions of the majority.
... or they'd just increase everyone's bill to cover the new expenses.
but in a real way, I'm glad I'm not younger, as the next 40 years (if we even have that) are really gonna suck. I really used to enjoy following the progress of high tech in our lives, never realizing it was all being done just to build more effective tools of oppression. Soon, the most unobtainable treasure will be true privacy.
I could copy my dog and still retain my dog for my own personal use then yes you may have multiple copies of my dog and they may all play happily together.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I think more to the point, mixing music like this usually ruins it, as the chord sequences and rhymths are meant for the piece it was originally written for.
Sigh, people's tastes these days...
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
You sold me the dog (or just gave it to me, doesn't matter either way). Now presume to have the right to tell me I can't breed it with one of my other dogs.
Just out of interest, would you mind people mixing your stuff is they did a *really* good job (rather than a crappy one), and gave you at least half the credit? 90% of the time, the original is best, but occasionally, you do get stuff which is at least different.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The writing is on the wall, it says " Work Harder!" "Napoleon is always right!"
"Ah, I see. So you're in a position where you don't actually have any skin in the game. No wonder you don't care about protecting "your" work, it's not you that's going to potentially lose any revenue, it's the company you work for. Got it."
I own more than 50% of shares of the company I work in.
"Regardless of whether one's entire livelihood depends upon the work in question, I see no reason why it should be so frowned upon that one should resist being compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way, including for their own profit."
You are not 'compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way'. You can simply stop selling your works, so no one can use it in any way.
And selling a copy of your work is no different than selling a hammer. You customer might use it for any purpose, including building a masterpiece which then will be sold for $10000000.
Of course, unauthorized commercial redistribution (aka piracy) should be forbidden. As it is forbidden under the current copyright law.
"I understand the argument for not wanting to allow people to artificially inflate the value of their product(s), but to exhort that any form of protection is equal to greed is a false comparison indeed."
Remember, that you enjoy a government-mandated monopoly on your works not because you are entitled to large profits but to stimulate useful arts.
Yup - for starters just look at the National Electric Code. EVERYBODY is required to follow it, and yet it must be purchased from a private entity.
IMHO any document referenced in legislation should automatically enter the public domain. People shouldn't have to pay to read the laws they are subject to.
...trying to actually carry out what he promised to do, paid for that with his life.
Remember him tomorrow (5th of November).
Would you let me take your dog for my own fun? Not to sell. Just to play with.
If I could do so by near-instantaneously cloning it for essentially zero cost to create an exact copy so we could both do so at the same time, then yes. Why not?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This is among the best comments I've read one this site. Nice to see somebody gets it.
The ACTA will fuck us all, just you wait. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
The problem that I think a lot of people are missing is quite simple. Distribution of copyright materials - books, movies, music, software, everything - became a source of revenue before 1900 in US and Europe. The "publisher model" where the publisher fronts all the costs and takes the lion's share of the revenue became quite common. This model allowed for considerable growth of book and music publishing over more than 100 years.
Today, for the people on one side of the Digital Divide, the publisher doesn't seem to be all that necessary. There may be smaller role in the area of promotion, but the driver of the promotion was the big revenue that was possible from the combination of mass distribution and mass promotion, usually at significant cost. One problem with the idea of the publisher being obsolete is the people on the "other" side of the Digital Divide. Without publishers, and without broadband Internet, they are going to be left out of all media in the future.
But even without publishers, creative people that are producing copyright materials deserve something for their efforts. Sure, hundreds of years ago their compensation was in the form of patronage. They produced works that their patrons wanted and got a living from it. This produced a particularly stilted kind of works for quite a while. It would be a shame to think that only the likely jaded tastes of the rich and powerful would be represented by future creative works under a reincarnation of a patronage system.
But how else are creative works going to be produced? It is apparent from where I sit that people that grew up with the Internet simply will not pay. If free materials of their liking aren't available, pirated works will be and they will be used. User-generated and most free content has shown it to be worth precisely what is being charged for it. While some is good, most isn't. As are most things that the owner is willing to part with for free.
The answer for the masses isn't going to be that everything is free, because this will leave the masses without much new materials. The "oldies" will always be with us - e.g., 1970s music and Project Gutenberg - but to get new works of "value" something has to be exchanged. And most people find it difficult to live off fame and reputation.
So how do creative people replace the revenue that controlling the distribution of their work gave them? It doesn't matter if this distribution was direct or through a publisher, there was some revenue there. The answer isn't that this revenue just disappears, because if it does just evaporate some (probably large) fraction of these creative people will end up doing something else that does pay. Failing to come up with a real answer for this leaves the whole system in limbo, as it is today - everything is free to the Internet generation leaving the oldsters to pay. This arrangement isn't going to last forever, and may not last very much longer.
So what is a reasonable answer?
The reason you don't do it is because if it turns out that you are wrong, then you get charged with all sorts of things from false imprisonment to something akin to kidnapping.
That's because when you perform a citizen's arrest, it's easy to track you down in the event that you were wrong.
If I go through a Korean proxy, set up a free e-mail account somewhere, and send an official-looking notice that cites legal documents from that address, are you sure your ISP is going to verify that that e-mail address is traceable to a real person before they shut down your account? I can even put some fake address at the bottom of the e-mail to make it look like I have a real office somewhere.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
There is no indication so far that this balance exists, that there are any requirements for meaningful penalties for false accusations written into ACTA. At least, not that I'm aware of. The fact that it's all being done in secret means we *have* to assume the worst.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
You are asking to increase copyright. Copyright is an entirely artificial right. If you're going to rely on democracy, you have to remember that copyright exists entirely because the people have effectively volunteered to give up certain capabilities to encourage you, the copyright holder, to enrich their lives and the content of the Public Domain.
You are making the argument that the copyright regime, already vastly expanded to the detriment of the Public Domain, is not sufficient, because it doesn't restrict everyone else's behaviour enough. This strikes me as utterly greedy and ungrateful. Is there a reason I should not react that way?
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
I would expect the RIAA and MPAA to provide payments to every ISP and telecom company in the world to offset the labor and administrative cost of this requirement.
It would be the right thing to do.
vi? Who's that?
I am a business owner, although I honestly can't see why that matters.
a) Good luck with that. Seriously. If you can get the Constitution changed on the basis that current copyright enforcement is insufficient, then it's probably overdue being ripped up and thrown away.
b) How do you define "products"? If I'm a professional speechwriter, is something I write protected as speech, or unprotected as a product? How about a news report? How about source code?
c) see a)
d) Yes.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
I'm a graphic design student. I'm in a drawing class. This is one of the first years, but we are no longer allowed to use copyrighted material in our drawings.
This is ridiculous. We can no longer work off of another's work? Imitate another's style to learn how to become better artists? Or even use a piece of a photograph in a 20+ photo collage? I understand that its important to give credit where its due lest someone have their hard work stolen from them, but I don't think a pencil sketch of a cropping of a 45 year old photograph found for free in my university library from a 25+ year old book is going to hurt the sales of that book. But apparently its against school policy and an abhorrent procedure that can cause us to lose our jobs in the future.
I can't wait until so much is copyrighted that there's only a handful of artists left who can still legally do their work. "Your drawing looks just like my photo! Lawsuit!"
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
And what property do you have to protect?
Oh, for fuck's sake. Would you stop asking that same damned question in every response, you self-important prick?
If you don't think that copyright law is already draconian enough, why don't you just go pull a John Galt in protest? I'm sure nobody would even notice.
...the wars (US involvement anyway) would be *over*, and the troops home.
Those ripoff investment banks would have been forced to eat their own capitalist dogfood and would have been allowed to go bankrupt,(no multi trillion dollar bailouts required) and the financial industry would have realized (like warren buffet has said out loud) that 95% of the derivatives market is pure snakeoil crap, they are "weapons of mass financial destruction". As in who cares if they want to play those games, but they should be allowed to fail when they get too greedy and too stupid. That's *real* capitalism, not this "socialism for billionaires, privatize the profits and socialize the risks and failures" nonsense they keep pushing now.
GM and Chrysler would have gone through normal bankruptcy, as they deserved, and there would be a ton of fresh blood and new ideas running those various factories by now and it would have also nailed Unions with a wakeup call that they need to get real on their economic demands and expectations, along with the stockholders. Something about mules and a club to get their attention comes to mind there.
We would have gotten a major shakeup with the Fed and their insane never ending boom and bust cycle whacko junk science currency theories, along with a vastly streamlined and more fair IRS federal tax structure, both seriously needed, as anyone who cares to look can plainly see they are "epic fail" right now.
And he would have repeatedly vetoed Congress's usual bloated, overly complex, pork laden and mostly out to lunch legislation that couldn't be paid for at all, even theoretically, or wasn't legal under the Constitution, stuff that the Federal government is not supposed to have control over. My guess is he would have outright closed down a lot of agencies as well, as not needed and not legal, and turned those aspects back over to the States where they belong.
And a lot of so ons there, whatever is legally possible at the executive branch level.
Certainly better than what we have received under both the Bush admin and now the Obama admin. Sure there would have been a rough transition period, to be expected when you are lancing boils and cutting away decades of pure rot and corruption.
Ron Paul is the one guy in both houses who *really* understands the Constitution, and that if it was REALLY followed, not just mumbled lip service but truly followed for the well thought out document and plan it was and is, things would be a lot better, as in "all your rights, all the time, and no fed gov tax and control freak big brother BS".
You're right, of course. Corporate entities should be treated better than individual citizens. They represent multiple citizens, psend more many, grow the country, and support the citizens directly.
You would put the citizen a the top of the list? With nothing deserving any more than the individual?
You get, in return, my next invention. And that's true even before my first invention. Otherwise, there's no point in my inventing it in hte first place. Why would I spend my time and my money just to have it stolen from me and for me to starve?
It's called rewarding the person who did the work. It's an interesting concept.
No one who wants to leave the socioethical confines of a small town should ever be allowed to leave it.
Isn't that how we got Bush II in the first place, because we allowed him to leave that "smothering" small town in Texas? He did nothing but raise hell after that... college, military, politics. We shoulda made him stay put and get a job in the feed store. Hopefully the constant gaze of the other townfolk woulda kept him in line. Obama's a different animal....
The media loves Obama and once loved Palin the same way -- they love the celebrity of the candidate, and not the actual substance of the person or their policies. Modern news organizations, especially cable news, are far more interested in a salable narrative than a dry recitation of facts. They like controversy over truth and flash over substance. After all, that's what the people tune in for, and it's what takes the least effort to produce.
The real bias in the media isn't liberal or conservative -- it's laziness.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
ah condragon c twa?!...
enculeeeee!....
va sucer la bite a sarkozy!
batard!
Why do you assume you know what the intentions are?
What we believe we know about this treaty is that it places a lot of responsibility on the ISPs, and that lots of it is written with quite vaguely defined terms, that have many definitions which are defensible. We also know that it removes due process by coercing ISPs into cutting off customers in accusation, with no appeal possible, and no evidence required.
If you are defending that... well, I wouldn't accuse anyone I saw killing you. And I wouldn't identify them if asked. I feel a bit more strongly, but that's as strongly as I care to put it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The media loved Palin too.
No, the media loves Obama. So much that everyone from Saturday Night Live to Obama himself jokes about it ("A few nights ago, I was up tossing and turning trying to figure out exactly what to say. Finally, when I couldn't get back to sleep, I rolled over and asked Brian Williams what he thought.")
They don't love Palin. Palin makes headlines, but that doesn't mean they love her. Quite the opposite, especially in contrast to Barack Obama.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
s/iPod/OS X
s/patent/copyright
There, it works better (although the number is way off, I suspect.)
Once upon a time there was a copyright registration requirement, and it was good.
Before you could enforce your copyright you had to register it.
It would be WAY TOO SIMPLE for there to be a digital registration archive and a wee little bottleneck where each ISP could query its national registry with >.
Nope, this is the time raining down upon us of the RIAA default judgment, and it is way bad.
I'm going to send you a notice, and you'd better do what I say, and don't tell me I am lying because I pay off I mean contribute more than you and forget I said anything because it's a secret.
Except now you're going to have to hire thousands of people to monitor *ALL* traffic on your network. Even if you're a very, very small ISP.
At the VERY least, six people per user. And that's assuming two people at any given time can monitor all of a user's traffic.
I predict, if this goes through, we'll go to more of a "store and forward" internet - like FidoNet - you upload content to the ISP, then it's manually approved to be sent onto the network.
The government, when it conducts things like this, is divided from the people. Sometimes this is necessary to protect the country, especially in matters relating to war.
This is not war. The government has no 'good' reason to make this treaty secret. Many inquiring minds want to know what's going on, so we know what to say to our senators, to approve or disapprove, to agree or disagree. That leaves us with only one option, which is malice. This is being done with malice. A lot of money is changing hands, a lot of hands are being shaken, and thus a new era is launched, the government and the corporations.
The corporations are the new citizens. The old citizens will merely be discounted in all but the most obvious of democratic process. Hired thugs will kick in doors to seize 'counterfeit' music and 'counterfeiting' (aka devices or computers used in counterfeiting' machines.
So, this could be the straw that broke the camel's back. We've known that the government has been in various pockets over the years, but now this? What can anyone do once the controllers of resources and energy are set against them?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If it wasn't bad, why would it be secret?
You people with your condescending, borderline ecclesiastical defense of this "everything must be free" mentality are completely bereft of any rational perspective.
Well, I'm not one of the "everything must be free guys", and I'm broadly pro-copyright (though in favor of term reduction). However, I am disgusted by GGP's post as well. His key premise is this:
"Supporting copyright is far more importantto me than supporting fair-use, and I'd certainly sacrifice the latter entirely in order to improve the former."
He then goes on to say that the sole reason for his position is because it is more beneficial for him personally; in other words, sheer egotistical greed. I have very little sympathy for people like that. Society as a whole has interests too, and it takes a carefully tuned balance of those versus individual interests to make things tick. GGP is one of the people who deliberately upset those balance because they want as much as they can grab, and they want it here and now, and screw everyone else who gets in the way.
Obama is nothing like Bush. This is a transparent government that doesn't hide anything or plan on passing any bills that would take away rights and freedoms like Net Neutrality or a Secret Copyright Treaty that would screw over consumers and competitors.
We would hope for change that BushObama, er ah George W. Obama, er ah Barrack W. Bush, er ah President Obama is not becoming a Black Bush and finish off George W. Bush's third term as a Closet Republican Neocon in a Liberal Democrat suit. :)
Health Care will be universal, and we can ignore that 30% hidden tax in the bill to pay for it, as your employer would get a 30% tax on your salary as well, as that would never happen in the USA as it did in Sweden. Oh now Obama is going to do it with Congress for free, with more TARP and stimulus money for banks, GM, and other organizations that lobbied money to Congress and his administration, but ignore that, as it is the cost of Free Health Care, just Free as in Speech not as in Beer. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The law is only a secret before it becomes a law. It won't be a secret after then. They just don't want anyone talking about it and telling their senator to vote against it. Democracy must not be allowed to happen.
I'm not asking for 75 years. 10 is more than enough.
You're always welcome to give away your property and open it up to the public if you so choose. No one will ever stop you from doing that.
What I've done is unique -- I spent two years trying to find it for sale before my client forced me into inventing it myself.
If you can find it better elsewhere, go ahead and get it elsewhere. If you need to get it from me, then mine is unique to you.
I'm not interested in stopping you from creating something from scratch. I'm interested in stopping your from taking mine and labelling it yours.
But I don't need your vote.
And I didn't ask if you created any IP. I asked if you own any IP. Doesn't sound like you do. Sounds like you get paid to create it and give it away.
So congratulations. You sell all of your IP every day. You get paid for it. I would have thought it'd be worth something to you.
But don't worry. You don't have to by concerned that you'll get what you want. Because if you actually did, your employer wouldn't so much be interested in paying your for your IP -- since you've devalued it.
My wants are indeed more important than other people's wants. a) my wants represent more than a single individual of myself -- I represent many. and more importantly b) I put more money, time, effort, and influence behind my wants than most people do. and finally c) those making the laws and doing so without a referendum seem to be agreeing with me.
If you're clearly on one side of a line, where you get everything for one result and nothing for the other, and your opinion is for the former, then your opinion is totally biased and therefore worthless -- in the real world we call it a conflict of interest. Try straddling the line, then form an opinion.
Nope, I want your dog. Because if someone takes my product and sells it without having the debt and lost income that I have from the invention process, then I won't be able to compete and so I will have nothing to sell.
I want your dog. You can always buy another one, and start over again. But I get your dog, to do with as I please. Even if what I want to do will wind up destroying it. Even if I want to take your dog, and take it to China for, ehem, reverse-engineering.
My creation doesn't sit on the shoulders of other works -- I paid for each and every one of those other works. You pay me the licence to do the same, and you can build off of my work. But my shoulders will be burden-free with your money.
Evidentally, you will be mistaken. IP will exist, and copyright will exist outside of fair-use.
And, once again, it would seem that you don't own a business. I'm looking for people with something to gain from each side of the line. Not those with the typical conflict of interest which renders their opinion quite biased.
So yes, as you say, people who like you will be often be nice to you, but there is also very often a non-linear quantity in evidence which general kindness alone cannot account for.
On the contrary, that was merely an example of general kindness. The wife of the used car dealer was being generally kind. She wasn't being all that kind, since she recovered all of her costs. To be only mildly cynical, I'll go so far as to say she probably sold you a car at a profit to the dealership, albeit possibly a small one. She IS the wife of a used car dealer, after all. You were told it was "at their cost" but you didn't see their books, so you don't know. If you believed it, well, I've got this fine used car to sell you, it's a great deal, I'll even let you have it at cost...
I'd have to say that grinding to a halt in front of a used car dealer's house actually wasn't that unlikely, since evidently your girlfriend travels that road quite frequently, and the dealer has likely lived there for some years. Was it convenient? Yes. Was it sufficiently convenient to get mystical about it? No.
Congrats on getting rid of the disposa-car, anyway.
You know, you really frame it well. Well enough for me to actually answer responsively.
I'm not caring about my loss. Because you're right, in all of these situations, I haven't directly lost anything -- welcome to abstract notions of property.
I'm caring about someone else profitting from my hard work -- because it diminishes my hard work. And as anyone who puts in this kind of effort knows, it's the motivation and dedication that's the most difficult part. And knowing that someone's going to take it for free, or that someone did, really kills the ability to do it again.
So in the case of the student, no I don't want them imprisonned or anything like that. I just don't want them to prosper from it. I want them to fail the assignment. As in, get a flat zero percent. That way there's no reason for them to do it in the first place, nor to do it again. Plagiarism would have them fail the course in higher grades. So the line between passing off someone else's ideas as your own, or using someone else's ideas without their permission is I guess my spectrum here.
The music thing is the same game. If the cows are pets, play the music. If you sell those cows, and the music lets you earn more profit, then damn it pay for that profit. It's a business decision. If profit is greater than expense, you pay the expense. If not, you don't take the profit. You can record your own music, or hire a student musician for pennies, or the homeless guy on the corner, or a monkey with a banjo.
And as for tangeable objects, 3D printers get terribly close to turning tangible objects into digital text files. So If I spend years working out the shape of something amazing, it's a 10K file. In fact, one of my current products is a whopping 18MB of Solidworks files. Anyone with access to a metal fabricator can take those plans and have it built same as I do. Except I spent 200'000 dollars inventing those files.
Yeah the current systems are broken. They don't properly navigate the line between effort and reward. And if you aren't rewarding someone who actually completes a successful project, you're certainly not rewarding the guy who had to fail six times before hitting on something successful. And that's modern business -- and music too.
My product would be much better if I didn't have to spend the time to protect it in weird stupid legal ways. If I didn't have to hide it from untrustworthy people. Instead, part of my money and effort goes into not-the-product. And I still risk losing it all every time I talk to someone about it.
You already get absurdly excessive rewards for your work! If that's not enough, then we don't NEED the work of greedy, totalitarian assholes like you!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The purpose of the ACTA treaty is actually to attack user-generated user-shared content, Youtube, Flickr, et al. Users, ISPs and content hosters will all shy away from such activity should such a treaty be ratified. The rise of crowd-sourced or independent content is the single biggest threat to the bottom line of Big Content, over and above any piracy or counterfeiting.
Time I spend on youtube not watching TV is time they can't make money out of. This scares them.
Witness the death of the Internet as we know it. Observe the demostrable impact of Koreas change in copyright law following the free trade agreement with the U.S. some years back. Increasingly draconian laws saw a down turn in user content generation, and providers shying away from serving koreans due to the liability and cost.
I'm disturbed that big corporates can do a end run around our (surposedly) democratic legislative systems. Note the plural. Remember a international treaty dictates law in the signing countries, overiding democratic soverenity.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Moreover, there's no reason why your family should get that $25/year anyway -- it was your grandfather did that work (and has long since been paid for it), not you!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They can mix it all they want. I don't want them selling those mixes in competition with my original.
Can you imagine, you put all of your hard work into a song for three years, put it out there. It starts to sell. Then someone takes your song, adds a techno beat to the background, and sells it too.
It's the same, but different enough that you know what, most people like the mix version a little better. So your original doesn't sell at all.
The mix guy spent ten minutes adding a looping background beat. And you get nothing.
But really, I remain horribly confused. Everyone here replying to me -- and wow too many to count -- seem to feel that the original artist/inventor/author deserves no actual reward for all of the work. I can't imagine that you or your cohorts have every spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars from your pocket to invent something out of nothing. This isn't some hundred-hour piece of programming that rounds floating point numbers. This is tens of thousands of hours of work. I've paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to suppliers and vendors, and advisors. During a recession I've paid people family income. You'd have me not even earn that money back?
We aren't talking about profitting. We're talking about making back the money spent first. You won't even give me that!
Now, if you said, "hey, sure, you get 33% of derivative works until you make back your inital costs, and then you get to fend for yourself" then I'd say hey, that's a pretty even attitude. I can see that, and even get behind it as something which would benefit societies in a very socialist manner.
But you're having me take a huge loss for having invested every dollar I have.
calm down calm down la
Only if you own that software. If you write it for someone else, then they are actually paying you for that copyright. That means you are selling your intellectual property every day. Unless you earn minimum wage. But let's say you earn $30/hour, and minimum wage in your area is $10/hour. That extra $20/hour goes to cover what you can do that any random human can't do. Chances are, it's something intellectual (unless you arm-wrestle for a living, in which case it's probably danger-pay.).
The stock you aren't at any risk of losing.
The customer own the right to use it, not to distribute it. Otherwise the whole economy falls apart. They themselves get to use it, plus or minus family and friends in private proximity.
But look at the other side. If what you buy from a business is yours, think about what a business buys from you. We've already had many examples of consumer's photographs being used by businesses on billboards, because they business owns that photograph when the consumer uploads it to FaceSpace.
You're so quick to take property, you've forgotten how much of it you're giving away.
I'm not asking for anything from you until you want my product. And then, I'm only asking that you pay me for my product in accordance with what it's worth to you. It's worth more to you if you're selling it for profit.
In the end, what would you have me do? I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, two years, thousands of hours, and every friend I can take advantage of, a little bit of blood, a lot of sweat, and quite a few tears. If it's sellable at all -- and nothing's saying it will be -- you'd have me lose it all to someone who rips me off? You won't even make that guy pay me back my expenses? You won't make him share his profits with me until I break even?
Why would I invent anything ever again? The most difficult part is the motivation and dedication and you're sucking that away.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to look at a problem and say "yes, I want to solve it" and then see a two-year requirement and $200'000.00 needed to do it, and then say "yes, I still want to do it" and then actually do it?
In the end, it's not even the profit that I value most. I don't want to see my product everywhere under someone else's name. That's like your child changing their last name and disowning you as their parent.
Wholly shit, I worked really hard, and you'd give me nothing! Not even a fighting chance! The guy who does sell it doesn't have two years of debt; of course he's going to sell it better than I can, and faster, and cheaper.
First off, posting anonymously still erases all your mods, it just doesn't warn you that you're going to do it (LOL SLASHDOT). On the bright side, it does allow you to keep modding after you've posted.
Secondly, the law will almost certainly be written so that the "little people" can't use the law themselves, after all, someone might use it against an Important Corporation (like an RIAA member) when they infringe copyrights yet again.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As I click on this story there are 666 comments... PS, 667'th post!
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
I'm a business owner, and my company offers various web applications.
I'd kind of like to keep the web working, thank you very much. Having my competitors able to shut me down by claiming that I'm serving up Disney classics over my encrypted web application is a strong deterrent against me inventing more. You may feel that opening Pandora's Box is what will convince you to "invent" more, but it will do far more damage to everyone else than good to you.
By the way, that last tune you made? Sounds an awful lot like Under Pressure. I think I better report it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Crowd source death threats
Agreed. I, like yourself, am an advocate of reasonable copyright laws, and think that there is a "happy medium". As an artist myself (though not my primary means of income...I do have a straight job), I tend to bristle at folks who seem to be anti-copyright with blatant disregard to the time and effort that goes into creating artistic works. So, in the event I came off as someone who thinks that there is no room at all for copyright reform, I digress and say that I believe that there should be copyright, though it should be a more fair arrangement than what we currently have.
You JUST said you wanted it not to sell it one thread up. Now you say you want to sell it? Sorry, I dont make transactions with someone who changes the terms in the middle of the deal.
I choose not to deal with you, our needs are not satisfied by this transaction and I will deal with someone who will.
Isnt the free market great?
Ok, let's apply this logic to the real world on a bigger level.
Some would say the US supports thermonuclear war because it has missiles. The obvious way to show support for world peace would be to get rid of our nukes, right? ...So why aren't they drawing down?
When you understand that, you will understand why OIN, Redhat, and others have large patent portfolios and actively purchase them even though they have no intention of ever enforcing them against the average schmuck.
Thus, it's entirely correct to divide dollars of debt by the number of American households to give a debt per household figure.
Shazbot! I agree with your reasoning, but what can we do?
Perhaps we everyone in the US started multiplying like rabbits, we could become a source of cheap labor and other countries would relocate their labor-intensive tasks here. The extra trade income and the number of people would reduce the amount of debt per person.
(Of course, I write this with tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, someone will probably suggest this to Congress and it will be enacted.)
On other hand, if we find a way to divide the debt across the truly *American* households as opposed only the households in the *United States*, we might have a solution, a-la Madoff style.
A big part of the insurance problem is that companies who serve a large area population use that influence to negotiate really low service rates with hospitals in their area.
This sounds like a resounding victory for Capitalism. Unfortunately the negotiated prices also apply to those without insurance.
I have seen a relative's cancer treatment bills amount to almost $500k, but the insurance company only had to pay $200k (and negotiated away the rest). What would have happened if the person didn't have insurance? Most of the extended family would have sell their own home and go homeless just to pay the bill.
Of course, what I show is an extreme case. Divide the amounts by a factor of 10 or 20 for something a bit more minor (injury from accident, heart attack, etc), and the conclusion is the same.
There are two main problems that I see:
1) Doctors & Hospitals only have to cater to insurance companies. The common man (without insurance) can no longer afford them.
2) Insurance companies cannot even put enough pressure on the doctors & hospitals because of the greed of the pharmacutical (sp.) industry. How can 1cc of anything be worth USD $10,000 ?! (only patents and other protections make this possible)
It is almost enough to make me feel sorry for the greedy insurance companies. They may make profits, but only by wrestling them from the even greedier doctors, hospitals, and drug companies.
The 19th century medicine was more civilized in some respects. People could go to their local doctor easily. They may have been drinking flavored rum as medicine, but at least it gave them hope with a cost that was expensive, but not prohibitive.
I suppose that the treaty is only secret while its being negotiated, since if people knew about there would be a tremendous opposition developed. When the treaty is finalized, it will be made public, well after its too late to change, and contains too many other things to refuse entirely. This is how unsavory deals are made. There is no "national security" involved.
But refuse is precisely what we must do. Write to your congressman (via snail mail), and tell them to refuse the provisions this treaty. And tell them to get public input on the treaty terms, rather than hiding behind false claims of "national security". They aren't negotiating a nuclear agreement, they are negotiating OUR rights, and we have a right to have a say in that.
Sometimes these things can be turned into a positive. Sometimes they can't. But we absolutely have to know about them to have any fair, democratic input.
Send a written, signed letter to your congressman, to your senator, and to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Send a copy of the letter to the LPF at
League for Programming Freedom
60 Thoreau Street #299
Concord MA 01742-2411
Dean Anderson
President
League for Programming Freedom
Grandparent never said anything that even begins to imply any of those things. And you know it.
Your straw man arguments accomplish nothing save to prove beyond all possible doubt that you are a filthy liar.
Hate to break it to you, but claiming that you don't support software patents, and that you own a few in the same sentence is kinda funny. Yes, you support software patents. You own a few. If you didn't support it, you wouldn't hold any.
Congrats, you do software, and you have the option to sell it as a service. I'm an artist and musician, I don't have that option. And spare me the diatribe about freedoms, especially in regard to freedoms you don't have. You are not free to do as you please with someone else's property, nor should you. All this talk about violating freedom never takes into account the freedoms and rights of the content providers and copyright holders.
Maybe you don't care much about people copying your work without your permission, and that's your prerogative. I, however, do, and that's my prerogative. A copyright treaty does not stop you from not enforcing your copyrights, or not using permissive licenses for your work, or from enjoying the works of others who release their work under similar terms, it only makes it harder to use the works of people who don't want you using their work without their permission.
The only people who lose here, are the pirates.
You are missing the point that the laws will be published when effective. When an agreement regarding ACTA has been reached, however, it will be to late for debate, and politicians all over the world will be passing laws simply to comply with the signed international treaty, that has not undergone public discussion and scrutiny.
Thus (non-secret) laws will be mandatory in order to be a part of the international community, and we will have legislation that has only nominally gone through the democratic process. In actuality the decisions were made before the public had even seen the ideas.
Laws against sending false DMCA complaints with serious consequences are needed. They also must be enforced. In fact, I would imagine there are already laws against sending such fraudulent documents, but apparently the FBI just says, "they are just making money, so they aren't doing anything wrong." Just like many idiots on slashdot.
Car jackers are just doing it to make money, does this mean they aren't doing anything wrong? All right! I just found the perfect excuse to tell the judge! "I wasn't doing anything wrong standing outside Natalie Portman's shower with some hot grits. It was all part of a scheme to make money!"
Apparently, you haven't been paying attention. This has been happening frequently since the DMCA passed. It would certainly appear multiple companies are just using bots to send take down notices. If a filename on your server matches one of their products, they send a notice.
Do we really need to dig out all those old slashdot stories? OpenOffice being "mistaken" for MS Office. The professor who made his own music, but had a similar name to some singer.
Then there were also the stories where some company / religious org / person wanted to silence someone, so they used the DMCA. etc...
Maybe you should read up on slashdot history. This is nothing new. You should've seen the deal with the SSSCA. Luckily, quite a few computer companies smacked it down. Will the entertainment "industry" succeed in screwing us this time? Who knows.
Haha. What a clown.
No, you're just short sighted and stuck on one rather small minded view of how to do business.
You miss the point that there are other products like yours that deal with this day in day out- there isn't one single company in the world that sells cabinets, there are tons of cabinet makers and they stay in business by making a better cabinet.
They do not have the advantage by copying you because you understand the product better, you know what's needed to improve it, you can sell a better product. Furthermore, they have to reverse engineer it and get their version to pass safety tests to which means you get a massive amount of extra time to build a brand ahead of their product going to market. You can have 10,000 units out there on sale before they're even ready for production.
If you provide a good product, with good service, and can make sure your product is ahead of the competition using your innate superior knowledge of the product then you can easily outperform the competition.
But what you're saying is you don't want to do this, you don't want competition, you want a monopoly on your product, you don't care about the consumer getting a good deal, you don't care about good service, because you want your product to be the only one on the market that if people need it they have to come to you no matter how crap a deal you give them and no matter how stagnant you leave the product, refusing to improve it because there's no need- there's no competition. Most importantly, the trademark system is valid in the eyes of even the most anti-copyright protestors so your brand will be protected- if people have the choice of Coca-Cola or Ultra-budget Cokeo they'll take the Coca-cola, because they recognise, trust and are faithful to the brand.
You want to be lazy and expect people to subsidise that, it's that simple. You again miss the fundamental point that no one is going to work their arse off simply so that you don't have to.
You ask what business I have to protect like you keep asking everyone, this is a loaded and idiotic question because our point is that like you we make money, but unlike you we do it using a method where there is no need to protection because we realise protection is a weak and flawed business model. I am a software developer, I do not write software which I then try to sell copies of because that's stupid, I write software and keep writing software for my employers, I get paid to actually do work and don't need to worry about people copying my work because they'll always be behind the curve, I'll keep creating, and keep getting paid.
Wow, you're a little nuts aren't you. I've said not what is, but what I'd want to be. I don't want my friends to take my songs and mix them. I'm fully aware that it's legal today. I don't want it to be.
It's not, assuming a simple constraint: You're not allowed to publish them. The moment you publish things you're putting them into the brains of people, making part of their value that they're part of the culture and people know them - which means that naturally, your rights change, as other people are providing part of the value. You're allowed to keep from this situation - then you won't get the benefits of it, of course, but you also won't get the drawbacks (e.g, people are allowed to remix.)
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
What does you making a poor BE choice have to do with anything?
Double taxation is your penalty for selecting a shitty BE. There are pass through BEs that don't suffer from double taxation, still limit liability, and possessing durability.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I meant to imply that people other than big media/advertising need to send false DMCA take-downs for legitimate content posted by big media. Not the other way around. I don't mean a few targeted attempts to support a particular personal agenda, I mean en mass indiscriminate take-downs.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Seeing as how this is speculation anyway, I'll have to step into his shoes and say if it was me, I'd use the veto pen and the bully pulpit. Every time they tried to be sneaky about stuff, or unreasonable, I'd just get on the toob and explain what is going on and name names and why the veto pen is coming out. I'd keep hammering home the point that you as an individual/family/business have to balance your books and just relying on credit forever is the surest way to bankruptcy and total collapse. I'd explain that it is impossible to printing press your way to wealth, no matter how many iterations of IOUs they tried to obfuscate and hide that fact, and trying to do it that way just will lead to nasty stuff like stagflation or hyperinflation. I'd tell the people they have been lied to, been manipulated for years and years, and that true government openness and honesty and reform is actually doable, but they had to do their part as well and lean on their congress people to adopt more reasonable and fiscally responsible and true Constiutional behavior.
In this economy, I think this would be an easy sell and any Congress people who didn't go along with it would get to the point they couldn't even go out in public wihout being surrounded by angry constituents. They'd get the hint after awhile.
This is a lie. You are a liar. You specifically said you want to control what other people are allowed to do with your product after they've bought it. This means you want to knowingly deny them full use of something they've paid for. That, in turn, means you want to literally steal their money.
You really think that will work? They probably pay hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per month for hosting. They also have armies of lawyers Assuming they aren't running their own servers, their hosting provider will laugh at those takedowns. They probably laugh at legitimate DMCA takedowns.
At most you will annoy them with a flood of requests. They will probably then try to sue anyone who sent the requests. Even if they didn't win, they would probably bankrupt your associates with lawyer fees. In fact, they'd probably have you and your associates charged with a crime.
The rules are different for large companies. They made it that way. Why do you think the US economy is becoming so centralized on them?
Really, quite a few of the big players are parasites on society. They provide the smallest amount of service for the highest price they can manipulate. You can't win playing their game.
The only way to "win" is to cut them out of your life by not using or buying their products (as much as possible), and try to keep them from getting laws passed where you are required to give them money.
You really think that will work?
No, not really. But the idea isn't to fight a war against Big Content, it's to raise public interest. The companies involved should look out only for their best interests. Who in those companies has the job of considering the public benefit? The board of directors? The CEO/CFO? Their jobs are to make buckets of money.
It's the elected officials who must be held responsible for balancing the rights of individuals against the interests of Big Content. What I was getting at (in a hyperbolic fashion) was to raise the issues into the sight of the general public. These issues just don't get coverage in mainstream media because people don't care. We need to make it clear what's at stake.
No one who is issuing false DMCA requests would win against teams of lawyers, the goal would be to piss off the public. Take down large numbers of popular YouTube videos for no reason; they'll be put back up soon enough but a few people will notice. Target videos that have nothing to do with Big Content to make the point that frivolous requests are possible under the current system. Simply make it clear that the current system fosters abuse.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
How would the secret treaty work in Canada? Change the laws secretly?
It'll be just like the WIPO Copyright Treaty -- we'll sign it, and then we'll argue for the next 10-20 years about whether or not we've ratified it and whether or not we need to institute draconian laws to ratify it. The first step, however is to not sign the damn treaty in the first place, because once we do the conservatives and liberals will use it as an excuse to create the law (because clearly large US media conglomerates matter a lot more than the voice of the canadian people).
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It means I will get more idiots sending me takedown notices to stop distributing my own music that I own the rights to... and then they can boot me from my ISP
If a person falsely accuses me of violating a copyright, and the ISP shuts me down, could I claim damages from the ISP AND the person making the accusation? That could be a way to discourage ISPs from cutting someone off.
Wow, I'm not even sure where to begin. You don't understand the creative process, you don't understand what I do and what I create, you don't understand the theory, the facts or the goals of copyright law, you don't even understand the difference between product and service, and yet you think you're uniquely qualified to rule on how copyright should function?
All you have is a borderless arrogance whose only root seems to be the ownership of a business.
Yes, it's a flame. Go suck on it. Some people can't handle a rational discussion. You're one of them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Ah..... now it makes sense. You see yourself as the equivalent of the old aristocrats: better than those muddling masses around you, better than those poor bastards who can't dress as well as you, smarter and more important than those below you and therefore deserving to make decisions for others.
Democracy must really suck for you, doesn't it?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
On the contrary, that was merely an example of general kindness. The wife of the used car dealer was being generally kind. She wasn't being all that kind, since she recovered all of her costs. To be only mildly cynical, I'll go so far as to say she probably sold you a car at a profit to the dealership, albeit possibly a small one. She IS the wife of a used car dealer, after all. You were told it was "at their cost" but you didn't see their books, so you don't know. If you believed it, well, I've got this fine used car to sell you, it's a great deal, I'll even let you have it at cost...
You're making assumptions. Questions are better. Like, "How do you know the car was sold at cost?"
To be fair, I don't know because we didn't actually discuss it. I was generalizing for the sake of simplicity. Having bought a used car only two years earlier, (the one which died), and having done the research and lots of looking under hoods and kicking of tires, and even having spent time considering buying and selling cars myself as a side project with my girlfriend who was a bit of a horse trader, (we never did), I was as a result very well informed at the time as to the going prices. They could have sold that same model and year for approximately $4000 at the time. If there was any profiteering going on, it was poorly done because the used car market at that time was quite hot, with everybody trading in their big cars for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. And in any case, I wouldn't have wanted the couple to lose money, and I sincerely hope they were not hurt in their dealing with us. Being kind and sharing energy when done right needn't cause undue hardship. Those with excess share, and when it is your turn, you share as well. I only hope I have done my part as well as they did theirs when it counted.
As for being scammed. . . Sure, it's always possible, but it seems unlikely that this was the case. --I've got a fairly good bullshit detector built in, and while it isn't perfect, I've already learned for instance that you're the sort of person who makes false assumptions and leans toward irrational cynicism which is probably based on a fear of being exploited, which is generally linked to other character flaws which suggest that you are in fact wide to unwitting observation as well as numerous types of exploitation you would miss by default. --Not that I'd do that to you, but it is something to be aware of. Opportunists are a dime a dozen and they give themselves away through a host of unconscious cues. Where it gets difficult is when you're dealing with psychopathic individuals. They are capable of fabricating false cues at the conscious level, so it takes a more demanding kind of observation to suss them out. But using instinct and plugging yourself into the subconscious non-linear information system offers a great leg up on the predators.
Anyway. . , that route my GF drove along was certainly one she's used before, but having never met the couple before and not knowing that they were used car dealers, (the car dealership itself was back in town; her car died in front of an average-looking house), I would say that it was not conscious knowledge. --Though, the subconscious is certainly capable of recording data in amazing albeit non-mystical ways. --If you happen to see a name and address on a piece of paper, then that information goes in and is stored somewhere whether you were paying conscious attention or not. The subconscious is capable of working with that kind of data. I should mention that I consider "mystical" to be entirely relative. I believe that there are forces at work which conform to rules, but that we simply have not yet documented all of those systems in a precise manner. Just because we haven't labeled a thing does not mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be shunned and feared.
-FL
(Late on the thread, I know)
I absolutely agree with you. My point is that the copyright is essentially useless to the actual musicians of the world, and that any idea that the reason for strong copyright is to protect musicians is simply bogus.
I am officially gone from