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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.
You all laughed at me
Yes...yes we did.
It will supposedly mandate 3-strike disconnection laws in all signatory countries without any reasonable standard of evidence because any ISP who *fails* to disconnect you will become legally liable for anything you may have done.
I call that a bad thing.
And you thought this administration would be different from all the others? Silly you.
If this looks like it should pass then we should push for uniformity in the laws. Make telephone companies liable for anything illegal done using their lines and the post office liable for anything it carries and all manufacturers responsible for how their product is used. Send someone a letter bomb? The post office becomes an accessory to murder. Sing happy birthday into a telephone? The phone company is liable for copyright infringement. Kill someone with a gun or a kitchen knife? Murder charges for the gun or kitchen equipment makers too.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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To link a poster from the geniuses at Despair Inc: http://www.despair.com/government.html
Priceless.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
So by simply claiming someone has violated my copyright I can remove any IP address (or the machine/person behind it) from the internet for a while.
Thats never going to be abused is it.
83.138.172.210 www.bpi.co.uk
76.74.24.200 www.riaa.com
You could alter elections or worse you could shutoff the porn.
Hmm I wonder if this law will let me disconnect a router from the internet... or a Root name server.
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).
The thing with US Federal law though is that treaties override constitutional laws. Laws Constitution Treaties. So any major unconstitutional idea that Has To Be Passed For Your Safety will be written and signed as a treaty with another country if it is too controversial for the public to accept.
Orwell was an optimist.
"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.
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?
It's cheaper for the entertainment industry than doing it themselves.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
They want the ISP's (the ones that are giving us the Internet connections) to block the content that we should not be seeing (whether it's for copyright or puritan reasons). Right now the liability lies with the content provider but the problem is that most of the content is hosted outside the jurisdiction of any of the lobbyist companies.
That's why it's such a bad treaty, because it would basically create an international agreement for copyright infringements and censorship with the RIAA, MPAA and it's friends (or whoever is the highest payer to the ruling class on either side of the pond) as the police, judge and jury. It's even worse than the DMCA because it doesn't allow for exemptions, it would allow surveillance, arrest and extradition for whoever goes against any copyright and 'intellectual' property law in any country signed to the treaty. It would also allow them to block you totally from the Internet if you infringe on their perceived property in any locale.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
So *you're* the guy who did that! :)
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.
What you call "property" was nothing of the sort a couple of short centuries ago.
It was typically a sort of monopoly granted by the King.
If anything "intellectual property" is the exact opposite of what Enlightenment sorts thing of as property such as personal posessions and real property.
Real property never "expires" and is subject to seizure due to abandonment.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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?
Ratified treaties are the highest form of governance second only to the Constitution itself. In other words, if a treaty provisions don't violate the Constitution, we are stuck with them. The treaties can't be undone. The Congress and President are force to pass legislation to enable the terms of the treaty.
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
*I* voted for Osama bin Laden. Sure, he would put me to the sword, but at least he wouldn't raise my taxes!
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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.
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
No, this is the same people / same industry lobbyists / same secretive, greed-crazed financial companies who control our health insurance *already*.
If we had a system of publically accountable, transparent entities running health insurance (as we do with health *care*, thank you very much the hospitals are mostly fine,) then it would be crazy to propose a federal takeover. But the groups presently running the insurance scam in this country are the same financial institutions responsible for all the worst excesses of the commerce department.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I voted for Nader.
In 2000.
In Florida.
My bad.
I drank what? -- Socrates
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.
but it's already happening...
I voted for Kodos.
.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
The thing with US Federal law though is that treaties override constitutional laws.
Well, then it's a good thing the OP was talking about Canada. Here in Canada, treaties are not law, and domestic law must be amended to fall in line with treaties. (citation). As such, in Canada, treaties have no legal force until domestic laws are implemented, and those laws are subject to the usual restrictions imposed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Foo?
-- SouNerd.com
Even if agreed upon as a treaty, will it hold up in any courts?
The United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 2: "...all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby..."
So, Yeah. If the President and two thirds of the Senate pass the treaty, than it is the Law of the Land.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
"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.
No, this is the same people / same industry lobbyists / same secretive, greed-crazed financial companies who control our health insurance *already*. If we had a system of publically accountable, transparent entities running health insurance (as we do with health *care*, thank you very much the hospitals are mostly fine,) then it would be crazy to propose a federal takeover. But the groups presently running the insurance scam in this country are the same financial institutions responsible for all the worst excesses of the commerce department.
The same could be said for any aspect of government or big business.
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Abraham Lincoln.
Sadly that has long since perished and is now a rotted corpse.
Don't blame me for redundant posts. I can't type very fast. Hence the user ID.
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.
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.
Well I for one am extremely happy with the actions of Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
Their ever-increasingly central control via government of private citizens' lives, homes, and communications will make it MUCH easier for me. I and my brownshirts will be able to sweep-in to the Congress, declare emergency powers, turn-off the communication networks, and consolidate power with ease. Thank you Bill, George and Barak.
Signed,
Napoleon the X
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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?
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.
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.
The document doesn't appear to have ever been posted. All we have is word-of-mouth from people who have apparently seen the documents.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Above all, will it even work?
May be it will work out fine. Suppose that the treaty will pass and that the law enforcement and the courts will start enforcing these laws in earnest. I suspect that it will make all proprietary material simply too expensive to handle. Copying digital data is very, very cheap. If the laws become effective, copying proprietary content will become risky, and therefore expensive. But copying properly licensed content (e.g. CC-SA) will not be risky or expensive. Guess what will happen next.
Again: imagine that you are in a world where joining an illegal torrent will likely result in you being banned from the Internet, fined, or thrown in jail. The most obvious prediction I can make about art is that CC-SA content will be all over the Internet, while the proprietary content will become a tiny niche. Since the "goodness" of art is subjective, this transition is painless for us as a society.
The picture is even better in the commodity software department. We all know that that running proprietary software brings about licensing problems. But, even more importantly, people begin to recognize that non-free software is utterly untrustworthy, i.e. no one knows what it really does. There is only one way left to prop up the proprietary commodity software, and that is to outlaw free-as-in-freedom computing. But that will not happen, since copyleft is already entrenched in the industry which is orders of magnitude bigger (read: has more cash) than the content industry. Jokes aside, we all know this is the year of GNU/Linux on desktop, folks. If you disagree, I suggest you start short-selling Dell asap.
The government is actually pretty slick, if you think about it. They are taking the lobbyists' cash and making copyright stronger, just as they are transitioning away from the proprietary software.
That is how Article VI of the Constitution is [mis]interpreted. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article6
Orwell was an optimist.
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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!
Interesting that you're voted Offtopic while the post that went offtopic was your parent. You are spreading misinformation, but it ought to be corrected instead of simply modded down.
The NPR program This American Life recently had two episodes (391 and 392, found here) on the health care system, and the problems with it are just not as simple as the Democrats or the Republicans are making them out to be.
For one thing, the hospitals are most certainly *not* fine. 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. The hospitals want that customer base, so rather than standing firm at a reasonably profitable price, they lower prices for the big insurance company and jack up prices for the same procedures when dealing with smaller companies. The example given in the show was of one hospital in CA which charged one company $1600 for a procedure, and charged another $11,000.
There's a lot more where that came from in the shows. I highly recommend them to everyone who wants to open his mouth to talk about health care. Everyone knows it's broken, but too many people are looking solely at the broken parts their party claims will fix the whole thing.
Your brain is not a computer.
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.
The media loved Palin too.
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.
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.
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."
Well, once upon a time, a certain republican candidate was voted against even though his opponent had NO pulse whatsoever... :-)
...
Great. We must hold our governments to this intent.
I don't like that "possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers" idea. They pass along bits from A to B. Nowadays in Europe you can get a court order to divulge recent traffic information, it seems. As other people have put it, should telephone operators be sued for their "possible role and responsibilities in deterring (threats and slander) over the (telephone)"?
:-).
The whole "Summary of Key Elements Under Discussion" document seems to focus on "better international enforcement of intellectual property rights". There is no place where the rights of the actual citizens of the countries are mentioned.
At the moment, without further information, I'd guess ACTA builds on the TRIPS agreement (countries must do what the USA tells them to do / harmonize their intellectual properties laws together) rather than on the South-American Operacion Condor approach to countries giving each other "technical assistance in improved enforcement"
But it's probably good to be vigilant.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
"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.
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 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".
When copyright laws are used to prop up profits, it stifles creativity.
Things are going to have to get much worse before they get better. Eventually anti-democratic copyright treaties will have to blow up in everyone's face, but it may take a generation of lost art before it happens.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What you call "property" was nothing of the sort a couple of short centuries ago.
It was typically a sort of monopoly granted by the King.
Well, this applied to some kinds of real property too in feudalism: the fief isn't yours, you only get to use it subject to the license agreement with the vassal, which typically requires you to provide certain services in return. Break the license agreement, and you no longer have any rights to the fief.
In reality, all property is a product of the society. There's no concept of ownership in nature, apart from "yours is everything you can obtain by any means, and defend against others".
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.
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
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.
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.