Slashdot Mirror
Secret UK Plan To Appoint "Pirate Finder General"
mouthbeef writes "A source very close to the UK Labour government just called me to leak the fact that Secretary of State Lord Mandelson is trying to sneak a revision into the Digital Economy Bill that would give him and his successors the power to create future copyright law without debate. Mandelson goes on to explain that he wants this so he can create private copyright militias with investigatory and enforcement powers, and so he can create new copyright punishments as he sees fit (e.g., jail time, three strikes)."
We need a new Internet. Any ideas?
retarded.
Another great idea signed by UK's gov
Sith Lord Mandelson wants sweeping powers that any sensible person would consider grossly out of all proportion? Film at 11!
He can want all he likes: this shower of bastards, including Sith Lord Mandelson himself, is unlikely to be in a job by the summer of next year anyway. With Christmas and the General Election they wont have the time to enact much of any legislation anyway.
Oh, not those kind of Pirates.
They have over 5 million camera's with face recognition following their every move... Seriously, they just don't care. (And this is coming from a Dutchman where there are even more phonetaps and as of 2012 mandatory GPS in every car)
Who is this "source". Someone trying to create more hysteria ? An atmosphere where legislation can be rushed through while everyone is distracted by a false debate ?
Okay, this comes from BoingBoing so it may be nonsense, but what does the government think they're doing appointing Sith Lord Mandleson? He's an out-of-control power-crazed sociopath and should never have been allowed back into government.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
UK elections due May. Gives ~70 days of parliamentary time left before this 'government' and all its legislative programme is gone.
But this is exactly up Darth Mandelson's alley. He truly and passionately believes in the utter dominance of the State over the individual. Of course, he plans to be a most benign dictator.
For those not in the know, Lord Mandelson is the de facto ruler of the United Kingdom, and one of the chief architects of the European super state under the (also "benign") dictatorship of the unelected, unaccountable European Council of Ministers.
He is the #1 threat to individual rights and freedoms in the UK and possibly in the whole of Europe. Think Palpatine, only with fruitier ties.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is the same sort of moves that were made during prohibitions and during the war on drugs. They do not care about the consequences to the economy or about the UK citizen. He only cares about the people he really works for and thats the copyright cartel. This Mandelson works for the RIAA/MPAA. He is their man, not yours. If you want this to change then your man will have to be in that position.
"What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright"
Which means that it's undemocratic. If nobody can control this unelected official, what's to stop them from abusing their position? In my opinion, that's a bit too much power to be given to any individual.
Would the (supposedly democratic) government be so kind to please start representing the people again already?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Why does it have to be sneaked in?
Is there something that is undemocratic about it?
What is being hidden from debate?
This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.
I see. The entertainment industry is calling the shots.
For Queen, Country and the Entertainment Industry.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
But you need more than new politicians. You need "your" politicians. You need more influence, and it will only change when people who profit from peer to peer are financing campaigns and getting people elected. It will only change when the political atmosphere changes. The old timer curmudgeons rule the political arena and until you put new minds not just new faces into these positions it will not change. Keep in mind that bribery/quid pro quo is how things get done and corruption is how things work.
the law versus technological progress is a pretty heavily loaded contest
please study your history on the outcome of these contests
a lot of supposedly smart, but hopelessly old (not necessarily chronologically, just in terms of anyone set in their thinking) people just do NOT understand the full implications of the internet
again, for anyone who's missed it, even though hearing it for the 1,000th time isn't probably going to finally open your eyes:
the internet has effectively replaced pre-internet distribution models. copyright law consists of gentleman's agreements between major publishers from that era. you cannot extend those gentleman's agreements to random anonymous teenagers the world over. rather, random anonymous teenagers the world over will compel you to rewrite fundamental copyright law, simply because its completely unenforceable in a new technological reality
were you listening? do you get it yet? do you understand?
no?
well then onward with the fucking copyright secret police then brave soldier. whatever. fucking retarded. i guess we just need to wait for certain closed minds to just fucking die already like the ossified dinosaurs they are then. stubborn ignorant blind obstacles to progress
ten thousand lawyers, government paper pushers, and enforcement goons
versus
ten million media hungry, technologically savvy, and most importantly, POOR teenagers
figure it out
you lose, you fucking morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I thought piracy was the key to stopping global warming. Why are they trying to speed up global warming?
How do you SNEAK something into a law? Doesn't it have to go through a ton of revisions and get voted on and all that jazz?
If the system is set up in such a way that people can put in new constraints without anyone noticing it, I'd say thats pretty broken.
Lets accept that politicians are bribed robots programmed by moneyed masters.
The reason the RIAA/MPAA copyright cartel is making the rules in this instance is because they won over the moneyed masters who control the politicians. If you support limited copyright rather than unlimited then you are in the minority of the moneyed masters because in most cases unlimited copyright just like some of the scams on wallstreet is free money. The owner of the copyright doesn't have to work for it.
I'm not against copyright but I'm against using copyright infringement as a political weapon.
Doesn't the UK have a house of Lords? Wasn't the house of Lords unelected officials?
Fill m in on UK politics if I'm wrong but this seems to be how they always operate.
Will Major Major Major report to him?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You know your government is truly in the gutter when an American begins to criticize its brazen corruption and abject stupidity. How the hell are you guys still stuck with Mandelson?
Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament.
So that's what you consider secret? I mean, it sounds bad but I probably wouldn't flip out until it's actually introduced and added to the bill. I guess I'm not an expert on UK law ... by saying "planning to introduce" do you mean it's already law? If not, I would expect parliament to be highly suspect of the introduction of something designed to give the Secretary of State such power ... when it's introduced by the Secretary of State.
This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks.
So, it's worse than ACTA (which affects the entire world)?
It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.
Are you aware what "declaration of war" and "captured" mean? How about swapping that out with "threat of control" and "purchased"? I mean, if it's a declaration of war then the populace should just capture their parliament as prisoners of war, right?
This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.
That's it. You had a really informative post going there but that last part is a level of fear mongering I haven't seen since the United States invaded Iraq.
I heavily suspect you are being played as an unwitting rube by the party opposite of those planning to introduce this. If you had kept your post informative I'd have gobbled it up but at this point I'm dubious that another propaganda tool isn't at work somewhere along this channel.
My work here is dung.
Palin might make you read the bible and believe in creationism, but other than that, her government wouldn't be involved in this sort of stuff.
This is my sig.
Well, look at how many hundreds of years, wars and world wars it took for the printing press to trump governments and it still doesn't do that in most of the non-western world. The only technology that usually always wins is guns, and that is why we have a 2nd amendment.
This is my sig.
Yeah - perhaps they could could better worry about the analogue pirates off the Horn of Africa.
But unfortunately, not the media companies.
You cannot eliminate copyright infringement. It's too late, forget it.
The only way to lower the number of copyright infringements is to offer your media at sane prices. Apple had it right when it forced the media companies to sell tunes at 99 cents. Unfortunately, next thing you know, Apple asks for DRM removal so the media companies ask for tiered pricing with hits at $1.29.
And TV shows episodes are priced from $1.99 to $2.49... are the media companies fucking insane? Only a few will pay those amounts for TV shows. TV shows are "watch it and forget it" media, it's not like music which can be used as a background media (listening to music while coding, for example).
Put TV ads in it and give them for free (no DRM, no godamn Windows media format, we're not all Microsoft zombies) or sell the episodes for a decent price that almost nobody would even bother to get them illegally (say, $0.25 per episode).
Please don't put dumb replies such as "there's no way they can finance a TV show by selling episodes for $0.25 each", because that logic doesn't work. Just because you get 100 people to pay $1.99 doesn't mean you'll still only get 100 people at $0.25. And it's going to be a lot more than 800 too.
Shouldn't that be an Admiral? Much better for chasing Johnny Depp around the Caribbean.
Have gnu, will travel.
What the subject says...
He is the #1 threat to individual rights and freedoms in the UK
And that's with some pretty damn stiff competition for the title from Jack "Boots" Straw and Blunkett, too. I'd tip my hat to him, if I wore one, and didn't despise pretty-much everything he stands for.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Mandelson - Palin Cage Fight
I guess you must have put that pairing together because Palin is the natural enemy of this kind of liberal fascism - Palin is a small government Libertarian, not some maniacal power-seeking despot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is ensuring he has a new Mercedes S600 every year, a decent yacht, a few homes, unlimited access to private jets, and access to the best schools for his children.
it helped destroyed the feudal code and the social stratification that came with that
"The only technology that usually always wins is guns, and that is why we have a 2nd amendment."
i don't know where this fantasy cam from that yahoos in the backwoods are somehow protecting us from fascism. if anything, if our democracy is destroyed by fascism, it will be yahoos in the backwoods with guns who are the shock troops of that fascism
just study what these rabid teabaggers think about the need to "protect" the "real" america from (modern urban existence) and how they intend to do that: with a gun. this is the soil in which fascism grows, not a bulwark against it
the second amendment is about native americans, british and french running around in the backwoods. which isn't a reality anymore. the second amendment is a quaint historical anachronism, that has been reinterpretted and repurposed by vaguely paranoid schizophrenic rural folk to put them in a starring role as heroes and saviors in the valiant struggle against modern urban politics
problem is, demographically, the united states is majority urban nowdays. meaning rural folk will have to give up their guns at some point, since the country will only accelerate towards urbanization. reverence of the second amendment as if it were the word of god is a rural thing, not an urban thing. it is inevitable, but gun control will only tick up in this country, as it should
in urban environments, guns are not tools of the valiant struggle against fascist scoundrels (cue ride of the valkyries and slip dirty harry into the dvd player and dream about boy scout wish-fulfillment fantastic scenarios), but simply the tools of moronic thugs to unleash senseless tragedy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Very well... It should greatly improve UK's chances of apprehending Somali pirates and preventing any further boardings and hijackings! I just don't understand why it's filed under "Your Rights Online" section?
Oh....
The UK just had the Queen's speech, which was widely regarded as full of things that will never come to pass, as this government most likely has only a few months to live. Even the Queen seemed dubious.
Can someone who is actually plugged into UK politics tell us the likelihood that this would be passed by the current lame-duck government ?
Politicians are offered incentives to fuck over human beings, but face no consequences for doing so. Now, I'm not normally one to consider people as pure incentive-following machines - but politicians aren't people in the strictest sense. They are psychopaths.
Look at Tony Blair. He lied to start an illegal war which killed probably hundreds of thousands of people. He left office when he chose to, and is now living comfortably, despite what he did. Why wouldn't a British politician simply do as they will? They know they are fucking untouchable.
I'm trying to think of sane and enlightened ways the people can deal with this situation, but the only thing running through my mind is sic semper tyrannis. They need, somehow, to fear the consequences of their actions.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
and, much like early earnest well-meaning idealistic communists would probably recoil in horror at what communism really meant: authoritarian terror, those who originally intended copyright law as a way to protect authors would recoil in horror that the legal framework is nothing more than a tool of DISTRIBUTORS to line their pockets by taxing our culture
if you think copyright law is about protecting creators, then thanks for the laugh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Innappropriate appropriation of materials, i.e., copyright infringement or piracy is a pretty significant threat these days. It is easy to take down a company simply by redistributing their products for free. The number of people that will pay when the same product is available for free is shrinking. Really now, why would someone pay when in the bin right next to the one they are looking at is the same thing for free?
The threat of loss of most, if not all, revenue is very real in the software world. It has come home to the music business in China such that recorded music is simply not produced any longer. It will come to the US and Western Europe. Movies are probably not far behind - why pay $20 to visit a noisy theater when you can have equivalent sound and picture in your home for free?
With this firmly in mind, why wouldn't the copyright holders be pushing for all the legal enforcement they can get? Since the government's position is pretty much that this is (a) a violation of the law and (b) loss of tax revenues so they are likely to be on the side of the copyright holder, not the citizen violators in every case. So of course there are going to be draconian laws that have little or no effect because, like speeding laws, they catch 1% of the people violating the law and can't ever do better than that.
You might consider this the last gasp of copyright enforcement, but it is likely to last a very long time. In the US it is generally known that almost everyone speeds and have for 80 years or so. Law enforcement has been "cracking down" and imposing draconian penalties on speeders since the beginning of the automobile era. So don't expect copyright enforcement to just fade away anytime soon.
Straw and Blunkett were amateur blunderers. They made the mistake of going through the motions of doing consultations and producing detailed legislative plans, which really hampered them.
Mandelson has spotted that instead of bothering with this tiresome "laws" nonsense, he can just churn out two or three absolutely bonkers dictats per week. The sheer volume of administrative evil makes it hard to oppose him; by the time you've mounted a defence to any of his plots, he's busy announcing the next one.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
you can make life miserable for a few unlucky enough to be caught, but you can't change reality. and the reality of the situation is, the rich goons aren't rich enough to alter the fundamental rules of the internet
the rest of your comment reeks of defeatism and capitulation to force. unless you live in tehran, i suggest you think about what your cowardice means in the real world. the rich goons win partly by depending upon people who think like you to do nothing. every authoritarian regime exists partly because of the resignation of the defeated masses, which is the essence of the content of your thoughts: you think like a sheep
via your ridiculous levels of fear and negativity, you are part of the problem, you aid the rich goons. now i'm not asking to man the barricades and throw molotov cocktails, all i'm asking you to do is simply say something positive and supportive, or to shut up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Pirate Smeller Pursuivant?
Now they just need to appoint a new witchfinder.
He is the #1 threat to individual rights and freedoms in the UK and possibly in the whole of Europe. Think Palpatine, only with fruitier ties.
It's too bad you folks in the UK let them take your guns away, or you might have other options available to you. (At the very least, the UK government might fear the people instead of the other way around)
Being slowly shredded by the irked fingernails of a million disgruntled voters is far more appropriate than just a plain bullet. With shooting, it's over too quickly and far too impersonal ;)
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
...kill two birds with one stone.
the Police!
It's too bad you folks in the UK let them take your guns away, or you might have other options available to you. (At the very least, the UK government might fear the people instead of the other way around)
They always have throwing knives and bombs.
I didn't think finding Pirates was difficult.
Buy a boat, sail past somalia, and THEY'LL COME TO YOU!
Think Palpatine, only with fruitier ties.
with love and respect John, "think Palpatine, only fruitier" is more appropriate.
I wasn't suggesting that anyone be assassinated. It sets a bad prescedent for when your guy is in power and the other side disagrees with his position. I meant to imply that it's far easier to suppress a people that have no means to easily rise up in response. At what point do a governed people turn on that government and establish a new one? It clearly can not be done through the election process with the current system.
I think it's great that the UK is going to dedicate a whole branch of government to fight something as important as piracy off the coast of Somalia...
Oh wait, what?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...er I mean "privateers".
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's too bad you folks in the UK let them take your guns away, or you might have other options available to you.
Which explains why the US was led by George W. Bush for such a short period: you have guns available, so as your nation gave up even the pretense of due process and respect for your own Constitution in the name of wars on abstract nouns, watched your economy crumble and the ongoing rise of the mighty corporations, and introduced infringements of privacy and civil liberties at least as draconian as many of those going on elsewhere in the world, you... elected the guy a second time, let him serve a full second term, and then let him retire quietly to a life of riches with no apparent remorse for the mess he made during his time in office. Yeah, guns are definitely the answer to people like this. Right. Absolutely.
In the real world, violence rarely helps anything. At best, it provides a temporary respite or a catalyst for change that already had a solid basis. You have to be in a pretty extreme position, effectively civil war and changing your entire system of government forcibly, before violence really gains you anything, and even then it's only good for creating an opportunity to change and not much use if the change isn't a good one in its own right. If the only way you can make your point is through violence then the chances are that once you stop beating it into people you'll lose the debate again anyway. This is true of anything from police abusing their authority to waging war to physical abuse of public officials.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's the thing the politicans don't understand.
We celebrate Bonfire night not because he failed to blow up parliament but because he had the idea.
We're all just waiting for the next guy to come along and pull it off
Yeah yeah - every damn time something on the UK comes up, some nutter attributes it to our lack of firearms.
Tell you what - try actually doing something against your own Governments anti-liberty antics with your oh-so-precious guns before coming back and suggesting we lament the loss of ours*.
*Not that we ever actually had them - please remember the UK and its Government pre-dates guns.
Whenever I think the US has finally turned full "Big Brother", all I have to do is look at the UK and I can fool myself for another year.
Yeah, 'cause you Yanks can sure show 'em a thing or two with your handguns against squads of armored SWAT teams with grenades and automatic weapons, helicopter support, and the latest in anti-riot gear. Worked well at WACO. Good luck with that.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The UK is taking the express bus to becoming a third world nation.
The totalitarian government is securely in place. Innocent people are shot and killed in the Underground by police, and innocent bystanders are attacked and killed by police on the streets during protests. Everyone is watched continuously by the ever-present "security" cameras.
Poor immigration policies have let in too many third world scum. Roving gangs of youth, many who are refugees and immigrants from existing third world nations, continually bother and attack UK-born citizens. Of course, the police are too busy watching the natives to actually deal with these criminal yobs and chavs.
Now they're cracking down on the Internet, because it is one of the last bastions of freedom left.
The UK is now a mere shell of its former self. There is no longer anything to be proud of there.
I completely disagree with the parent post. I am one of the backwoods yahoos that he talks about. But, what this guy wrote is not flamebait.
This is my sig.
Mandelson goes on to explain that he wants this so he can create private copyright militias
Ah, Privateers!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Give the harper neocons enough time and they shall change this, too, to a totally pro-corporate bias.
For the life of me I can't understand why Canadians would be willing to vote for the one party that works solely for corporate interests and couldn't give a monkey's bum about the rights and interests and future of the country's citizens.
What I said was meant as a joke... but surely if you say Brits should never have let th egov take their guns away... surely you're advocating shooting someone with them? Or is the mere fact that that populace have guns meant to deter the government from running roughshod over the voters?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I guess I should have wrote a book to explain my statement more clearly, and I would encourage you to read my response to another poster in this same thread. Quote from Thomas Jefferson: "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
My statement was intended to convey that it's harder to refresh that tree of liberty when the general poulace has limited means to do so. The UK and Australia seem to have incrementally reduced the liberties of their citizens. (The US is probably on the same path, but just lagging) I doubt that either are at the breaking point yet, but at what point do the people say enough, and how do they then effect that change? Pitchforks will likely not stand up well against the homeland security forces. If you believe it's in the voting booth, then you have more faith in the current system than I do. (at least in the US)
I'll try to make my future postings more clear.
Osama bin laden says "hahahaha! Those stupid western infidels are more worried about catching 14yo Billy Johnson than they are of catching me or my 18 virgins! I knew that buying stock in the world wide movie industry would pay off.. now, you, child of allah, did you get my copy of the movie 2012 from Mandelson???"
Actually, I'd say it was surprisingly effective at Waco. 50 men held off 100's of trained law enforcement officers for 51 days. The initial raid by 75 ATF agents was repelled, killing 4 and wounding 16 agents. The defenders had 6 killed and 3 wounded. Sure, all the branch davidians died in the end, but the results are still impressive for such a small group of people. (no matter which side you side with) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Siege/
I am the very model of a Pirate Finder General
I've information that makes me extrem-ely tyrranical
For studios and patent trolls I infringe upon the people's rights
And make sure that these practices will never really come to light.
Creative use of copyrights and patents and all trademark laws
Ensures that all will pay to watch another re-release of Jaws.
To plug all analog holes is the highest honor I can reach
So stop whistling that music in Phil Glass's Einstein on the Beach.
[I'm done for the moment, but feel free to add your own verses]
I am officially gone from
Deterent.
That's really the problem though, isn't it. A government isn't usually oppressive enough to rise up against when their taking your guns away. (I'm thinking about UK, Austrialia, Canda) By the time it comes to revolution, you're basically screwed - or at least starting off at a severe disadvantage. I've had this conversation with several of my friends. What would we do if the government came for our guns? I'd like to think that we'd at least hide them. But what happens when that becomes a class 1 felony punishable by 60 years? Is it worth the risk, or do you just give them up and hope for the best? I just think it's sad that several countries have let it come to that. That's not to suggest that the US won't follow that same path.
I'd tip my hat to him, if I wore one
He does wear one occasionally, when he feels like concealing his horns.
Reply to That ||
My fault. I realized you were discussing your own hat-wearing habits, not those of Darth Madelson.
Reply to That ||
Come 2012 the world (as we know it) will end... Because we'll be so fed up with governmental BS we rise up and kill the bastards, leading to a golden age of ?anarchy? WTF? My brain just reset, damnit.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
Excuse me? Us yanks can buy assault rifles, and everything we need to make them automatic, as well as armor piercing rounds. So, those swat teams with their crappy kevlar armor are no use against an AK-47 shooting armor piercing rounds... and as far as helicopters go... we have .50 BMG rounds for a reason. At waco there wasn't much of a gunfight, and they were a bunch of woman and children with some men, and they were getting busted for having automatic weapons illegally, so you can assume handguns weren't much of a factor..
i believe that if guns are outlawed, rural folk would die at the hands of outlaws as a consequence of that law
however, i can't feel sorry for all 12 of them, seeing as hundreds of urban folk every year die in american cities for the sake of a law that serves only rural yokels
in reality, you are not given a choice between a universal good and a universal evil, you are given a choice between two negative situations, and you must decide which situation is least negative. so its: 1. free access to guns, lots of urban dead at the hands of moronic thugs, or: 2. severely curtailed guns, a few rural dead due to predation by random outlaws
difficulty factor: the majority of the usa is now and is increasingly urban
extrapolate to the political future
tick tock, tick tock
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, our Sith Lord Cheney can beat your Sith Lord Mandleson any day of the week! :P
If the government wants to oppress the people to the point where they'd fight back, the armed forces would get involved. Either the armed forces will be on the side of the government, in which case the people are fucked regardless of how many guns they have, or they're on the side of the people, in which case the peoples' guns are not needed. They might split down the middle, but then the guns in private ownership will be like a fly trying to take sides in a fight between two bull elephants. Guns in private hands don't do anything but make people targets. No overweight accountant on his roof with a rifle is going to cause problems for an apache attack helicopter, or a tank, or even a humvee with some soldiers in it. I'm sure guns make people feel safer, but they won't help. Explosives, on the other hand, would make a difference. And anyone anywhere can make those. IEDs are what cause issues for people forcefully oppressing a populace, not shooters. It's easy to identify someone with a gun, kill them, and remove the gun from circulation. It's impossible to stop people from making explosives. I know it's tempting to think that as soon as the balloon goes up, everyone will scarper into the forest and go all John Rambo, but that's a dream. In reality the crack-down would be brutal, and those with guns who made a stand would die very quickly, very violently, while causing very little collateral damage to the oppressors. The sensible folks will keep their heads down, appear to cooperate, but in secret create, distribute, and use explosives against well-chosen targets.
you cant oppose him cause you dont have the right to bear arms (against tyranny!)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
> all the branch davidians died in the end
Like I said.
If the goal is to win "points" as tough guys, home-made militia can get a song written about them.
If the goal is to overthrow a fascist ruling class this fails.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Mandelson is gay but for years wouldn't admit it and used his media contacts to ensure that it wasn't reported. In fact he is (more or less) Rupert Murdoch's mole in the Labour Party, and he is probably proposing this in a last-ditch attempt to get the Sun back on side. Claims that he has also sold his soul to the Devil are categorically untrue. When asked for confirmation, all Satan would say was "we do have standards down here, dear boy."
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I am not interested in conspiracy theories, I just want to know the UK is freaken draconian when it comes to copyright. This despite the fact that there is lots of evidence that the increased terms for copyright and increased stringencies ae actually harmful. Also don't they also realize that they are potentially criminalizing a whole generation? It seems that they keep on wanting to extend copyright forever and would be quite happy if people were still paying copyright fees for the beetles in the 22nd century. Seriously I don't get it!
Guns in private hands obviously don't protect you against the military: they protect you against Brownshirts. Unofficial or somewhat official government bullies who pull people out of thier homes and kill them on the spot or "disappear" them. When they come for your family, or the neighbor's family, will you fight? It only takes the will and a weapon.
Very few people are willing to act as brownshirts. Perhaps more people are willing to fight and perhaps die, one by one, to protect their loved ones from immmediate threat - but they need a weapon to do so.
Much evil can be committed by Brownshirts, that the government would never do officially, and so can't use the army, or even the police, to attack the people in this way. Defense against such evil is no small thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The way this government brings in unpleasant legislation follows certain patterns, and I would bet that this plan by Vold^WMandelson is going to fit the model.
What they do is come up with what the goals they want to achieve in private. They know what they come up with, no matter how "good" or "bad", it will come under attack from groups with vested interests and political opposition, and what they want will inevitably get scaled back.
So they come up with their plan, and come up with a version 3 times worse than they want. They leak the extra bad idea to the press (or to a blog this time), and the press and internet go nuts in reaction to the plan. But the politicians can hide behind the fact it was leaked and deny that is their plan at all.
The vitriol generated tells them which parts of the plan will not fly, and which they can deal with with some spin. They announce their revised plan (now at 2x what they want), roll things back a bit (to 1 times) as a token lip service to democracy, and then go on to implement what they wanted in the first place.
We've seen it before, and we'll see it again: this system works for getting unpopular legislation on the books.
Car analogies break down.
As far as the pseudo-example you cite is concerned, you are either ill-informed or being disingenuous. People that went beyond the headlines know that the harper neocons have an enormous private war-chest stuffed with dollars from the ultra-rich and corporations via "private" donations. The $7 was a mere pittance for them that they could easily forgo, but the other parties are cashed-strapped and very much needed it. The whole thing, like almost all harper gambits was just another cynically calculated plot, in this case designed to try to make them look virtuous to naive voters. Apparently some out there bought the pitch.
You still believe what harper promises?
OK, what happened to the platform of government transparency on which they ran? Many political scholars and many in the press have cited the fact that this is the least transparent government in the country's history. Secrecy, secrecy, secrecy is the harper mantra. What's harper up to most of the time? No-one knows, except when there is a photo-op. He avoids all efforts at getting disclosure and the press like the plague.
What about their election promise of fiscal responsibility? Remember that? What happened? They took a record budget surplus into a record deficit (and did that pre- financial-crisis!) Thanks for harper, your children and grandchildren will have a huge tax burden. I guess they don't matter to you very much.
I don't remember whom to credit for the following, but a US political commentator during the first term of the US bush disaster observed about neocons a truth that I have found infallible in predicting their behaviour:
"Whatever neocons say they are strongly for, they are in fact strongly opposed to. Whatever they say it is their intent is to do, they will in effect do the opposite."
Applying that simple rule made the bush neocons utterly predictable and has done the same for the harper neocons.
Last week, Canada was cited as the most obstructionist member of the G20 to efforts to address global warming. Look your children in the eyes and tell why you support the only party that doesn't care about their future in any meaningful way.
Canadians cannot afford to be naive. harper is bad for the country, period.
Say, have you heard that our armed forces have been accused by our own representatives of handing Afghan citizens (civilians, not Taliban), who committed no greater crime than being in the wrong place in their own country at the wrong time, over to the Afghan authorities with the full knowledge that they would be tortured? Did you know that the federal government has been warned about this repeatedly (17 times?) over the last 2 years and people like peter mckay have been trying to suppress it? D'ya think his boss harper heard about it? If you saw the Canadian news yesterday you would.
I have been for decades a proud Canadian. But these days I am ashamed and disgusted at what we have allowed those that pretend to be our "leaders" represent. Canada is much better than this, damn it!
You know what's funny was that was the exact same sentiment held by the Brits before the Revolutionary War.
"The colonists? What threat could they pose? We have the entire British Army and Navy with mounted cavalry and well armed and supplied troops. The colonists have a few hunting rifles and tomahawks..."
Not saying we are going to start another war or anything, but never underestimate American inventiveness. Our society may be inflated with a lot of cruft, laziness, and uselessness now, but put our backs against the wall and quite a few of us yanks still know how to bring the raucous.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Direct SSH tunnels between groups of mates and a file encryption system whereby an encrypted file contains both the real downloaded file, and non-copyrighted spoof file. The decrypted payload which can be shown to 'enforcement officers' depends on the password entered into the decryption program.
Easy.
The Nazis didn't have to go to war with England to turn it into a fascist state. All they had to do was sit back patiently and wait for England to make the change all by itself. Somewhere in hell, Hitler's nodding and smiling.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Do you seriously believe the public would take up arms against this? Seriously?
The vast majority of the population won't care at all, let alone enough to pick up a gun and go up against armed police officers (or the army, if things really got that bad).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Who will hopefully be out of office before he can do much more damage
Not *that* impressive. The failure of the initial assault was a result of the ATF team being ordered in despite the element of surprise having been lost. The 51 days were a combination of Koresh's negotiation stalling, including not holding up his end of the bargain when concessions were made, to prolong his moment in the sun as long as possible.
If, back in the context of this particular thread, a military-style police force were ordered to suppress what amounted to (in the state's eyes) armed insurrectionists, you can bet it won't last very long. Those government tanks would be put to very different uses than driving around and around the building blasting music. All the Davidians would be dead within a day.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
It's too bad you folks in the UK let them take your guns away, or you might have other options available to you. (At the very least, the UK government might fear the people instead of the other way around)
If a revolution ever comes, you can keep the guns, I'll have IEDs. far more effective and I'm less of a target (therefore less likely to end up dead).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
This feels very much like McCarthyism and witch hunting. Soon I will be able to accuse anyone of not paying for media without proof and they will be burnt at the stake.
Do we learn nothing from history?
Well heck, there's your problem -- stop waiting, and set to it already!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I think that you are wrong sir.
Even if the entire army were to side with the government they would be of limited use within 30 days. They'd run out of fuel, ammunition, and food with no civilian populace aiding them in resupply. The Army also isn't big enough to be everywhere putting down every threat in the country.
Also it's entirely possible for one man to be a threat to an Apache helicopter with a rifle. It just takes the right man and the right rifle.
Of course if those Apache's can never leave the ground because they don't have fuel, spare parts, or pilots then so much the better.
One thing that makes this scenario VERY different from Iraq / Afghanistan is that this is HOME. This is where the food, spare parts, fuel, and ammunition come from. It's where the pilots and other personnel sleep when they're not on duty.
There's no "safe" place to go back to when your own home is in flames.
Damn straight. There is no John Rambo.
WOLVERINES!!!!!!
You seem to forget the fact that there are over 80 million gun-owners in the US, many of which are proficient in using them. Keep in mind that if you follow constitutional law, as opposed to most of our current gun regulations, any small arms that the army has, private citizens are allowed to have too.
Trust me, the army in the US would not be able to effect a mass-takeover of the populace even with 100% compliance inside the army.
They have learned from the stasi. You just dont allow small groups to form.
You dont allow media capture in open areas.
Film near a gov building, terrorist until you can prove otherwise.
Film near a road, park, school, pedophile until you can prove otherwise.
Meet in a group, Public Order Act can start to be useful.
The use of Forward Intelligence Teams to keep tabs on any opposition.
Once known, infiltration or turning of a member.
The problem for the UK is the internet, yourtube can give one photogenic, articulate protester BBC like coverage.
Small changes to laws like this will not stop people, but sets the legal framework to find them.
Does the UK gov care about p2p? They do care a lot about connecting an IP to a real person.
They also care a lot about looking back over your net usage.
Minitel a French telco "internet' was used to spread news about nation wide protests, that was a warning.
This new net tracking seems to be more about a protest to protester finder.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Greedy, evil, deceiving, corrupted people in power; secret copyright treaties and laws; internet and other media censorship; entertainment and temporary satisfaction obsessed society; inevitably increasing reliance on technology; evil corporations bullying the helpless; power, money and resources being slowly but forcefully (and inexorably) stolen from the majority into the greedy minority... If you ask me, there are dark days ahead for this world.
Maybe they got the idea from the TV program Monkey Dust and their Paedofinder General?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCywGhHQMEw
Brownshirts aren't required when a population becomes comfortable, complacent and easily frightened. So pretty much any modern western democracy. In that case dave420 nailed it.
"No overweight accountant on his roof with a rifle is going to cause problems for an apache attack helicopter, or a tank, or even a humvee with some soldiers in it."
That is 100% dependent on who's roof he's on.
You seem to forget the fact that there are over 80 million gun-owners in the US
They are not all in one place
They do not have: machine guns; tanks; artillery; aircraft; cruisers and aircraft carriers; missiles; weapons of mass destruction ... the BIG stuff.
They do not have a leader (aka organisation)
The armed forces have all the above.
The 80 million gun owners might just be suspicious enough of each other to start their own civil war, without the military stepping in.
Have a look what happened when a superior force of armed peasants rose up against the King of England (Wat Tyler - look up Wikipedia) - they were outsmarted - not outgunned.
The people are stupid, at least they are stupider than the people at the top. And if the armed people did win, things could well be worse.
I am anarch of all I survey.
The usual point made about armed resistance to government is not that people with civilian-legal arms will actually beat the armed forces, but that they'll make it impossible to control subjugated areas short of actual military occupation--which, in too many places, becomes prohibitively expensive (imagine trying to fight the Iraq war over the entire US, against people who are not insurgents, but native citizens). In the face of actual military occupation, it's true that IEDs are the most effective resistance.
Copyright monopoloies were given to the press owners in return for censorship of what was printed by Queen Anne.
It was an attempt by the state to stamp on the Guternberg press before pamfleteering got the people riled up.
Now Mandelson is the King and he bargains to control bloggers so the truth can be presented to us by Murdoch the Kingmaker.
Imagine what the world would be without this network or any implementation of Fidonet.
Knowledge was hard to get, took a while to travel, urban myths went unchallenged for decades.
That is what Mandy wants, the chattel to do what they are bloody told - Manufacture Consent.
He is the enemy of any future for humanity for without the universality of knowledge we will not get into space.
The truth is governments achieve very little of consequence, they take credit for things people do and embezzle money.
And they should be replaced with open source lawmaking.
The civil service runs the country.
Pirate Party FTW
Whoever modded the parent post up is utterly clueless, since the statement is totally bogus. See both replies for an explanation.
It scares me to think that some of you are allowed to vote.
The poor Brit's are really taking it these days. Stiff upper lip boys and girls - fight the power.
I really pity the fools that think that constitutionless country can exist without any negative side-effects. Brits, get a constitution in ASAP. So that idiots like this guy, who is also a Business Secretary, don't think they can just push through anything past the parliament.
Constitution basically defines a country, while your parliament is basically uncontrolled.
I know somebody that worked in TFL, they didn't have enough disk space to hold all the data from CCTV and the machine holding it was not redundant and was rarely backed up.
The wet dreams of the authoritarians will be fooled by their own incompetence and the monumental complexity of the task at hand (i.e universal surveillance).
Yeah, I'm gonna say this is a non-story.
Well, let's look at the bill itself that was published today: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.13-19.html#j164
Yeah, I'm gonna say BoingBoing were right.
Also see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/the_digital_economy_bill.html , http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39893271,00.htm .
Yes, obviously no stupid laws are ever passed in the US. Everyone knows that the US Government lives in fear of the citizens, and they don't dare pass any stupid laws.
Yeah, it's good to know that if such plans were proposed in the US, you would descend into civil war to prevent it.
I mean, that's what happened when the DMCA was proposed wasn't it? Thank heavens for the right to bear arms, it's so great that the DMCA was dropped, and that Mickey Mouse is now finally in the public domain.
"They do not have: machine guns; tanks; artillery; aircraft; cruisers and aircraft carriers; missiles; weapons of mass destruction ... the BIG stuff"
The people have more than you realize. Class 3 weapons are not *that* hard to get, just expensive. There are plenty of people with machine guns.
There are *lots* of military aircraft in the hands of civilians. Add to that fact that early Learjets were designed to be attack aircraft, and Cessna Citations have been militarized as attack aircraft in eastern Europe. Heck, in my line of work, I know exactly who to call to have a few MiGs delivered to any point in the US within 24 hours. It just takes some money.
Who needs missiles when we have UAVs? Think back to the V2. Basically a pulse-jet engine with wings and explosives. A cruise missile today isn't that hard to build. We can build much more advanced weaponry today with COTS parts using inertial guidance.
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers performed "air raids" on targets by dropping grenades and other explosives from a small piston-single airplane. At just a few thousand feet, small arms fire would be ineffective against such an attack.
Civilians also have an advantage in chemical warfare. Last I checked, the military didn't run the chemical plants all over the country. Chlorine, ammonia, or various petrochemicals could wreak havoc against a great number of people.
The thing with the US is that our civilian population has a *massive* number of retired military. There are easily equal or greater numbers of retired military in the ranks of the civilian populace. Outsmart that.
I Want My Public Domain.
Shh.
Civilians don't have the infrastructure. It's that simple. Take a soldier out of the army, and he's just a man with a gun. Take a military plane out of the air force, and it's just a plane.
And you were thinking of the V1, not the V2. As for military planes in civilian hands, so what? Do the owners have armourers with regular supplies of weapons? Competent mechanics with abundant spare parts? ATC? Fuel? A backup plane ready to be used when that one is out of commission? If the answer to any of those is 'no', then there's an issue with your claim.
Civilians have an advantage in chemical warfare? Sure, they have access to the chemicals, but the 'warfare' part of that is severely lacking. I'm sure you're aware that modern armed forces have masses of chemical weapons, right?
I don't know what your point about the Tamil Tigers is. They were pretty much wiped out in May of this year, anyway.