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White House Holding Piracy Summit
DesScorp writes in to let us know about a White House piracy summit, which is going on this afternoon. Judging by the press accounts, the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders. "Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC, regardless of who is in power, with a White House summit on piracy to be attended by the top executives in Hollywood, as well as the music industry. Vice President Joe Biden will be leading the summit to discuss organized cooperation between the federal government and the entertainment industry on all matters of piracy. Also at the summit will be the Obama Administration's new Copyright Czar, Victoria Espinal. The summit comes after Congress has earmarked $30 million dollars of taxpayer funds for anti-piracy efforts." According to one attendee's tweet, the press was kicked out of the meeting around 20:45 GMT.
Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same, isn't it?
I can't wait to hear all of the partisans who rightfully complained about Dick Cheney's energy task force come out of the woodwork to tell us why this is "different".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I guess the EFF's and other consumer groups' invites must have gotten lost in the mail.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
yeah that organized crime commited by pirates is really bad for your nation.
It is if your nation makes billions of dollars developing movies and music. Anyone find it interesting that we routinely run massive trade deficits with China but stand mute while their Government tacitly condones piracy on an industrialized scale? As much as I despise the mafia there are real people working in these industries. It's a safe assumption they don't want to work for free. Can't we find some balance on this issue somewhere between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As much as I hate the idea that the Federal Government is in the interest of helping the RIAA, it seems that "intellectual property" is just about the only thing left that our country exports. I can understand thinking that it should be a national economic priority if you think in those terms. That doesn't address the reality of the "value" of said property, or its constitutional justification, however.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
As we said early on, and have continually been proven right, Information just wants to be free.
And no amount of trying to stop that will end up working in the end.
Restore copyright to 17 years renewable only by the author of the work, remove patent protection for software, and let's get back to creating and away from lining CEO's pockets.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC"
should be
"Washington DC once again demonstrates its close ties to Hollywood"
It's your political system that's broken - not Hollywood.
"are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders [for now]. "
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
" the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders"
The law won't discriminate. Neither will the lawyers.
If they write it, someone will sue.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
yeah that organized crime commited by pirates is really bad for your nation.
It is if your nation makes billions of dollars developing movies and music. Anyone find it interesting that we routinely run massive trade deficits with China but stand mute while their Government tacitly condones piracy on an industrialized scale? As much as I despise the mafia there are real people working in these industries. It's a safe assumption they don't want to work for free. Can't we find some balance on this issue somewhere between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"?
We will have that balance the moment our social and governmental attitude towards the media companies consists of: "adapt your business model to the 21st century and create an online product that people want to buy, or go bankrupt. Your choice." Until then we're trying to make sure that buggy whip manufacturers still have jobs after the advent of the automobile.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This isn't surprising in the least. Less than two weeks ago they had a workshop for Federal employees on openness in government and it was closed to the public.
Don't forget that Obama promised to have debates on healthcare on C-Span. (google cache)
I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table,” Obama said. “We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we’ll do is we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of drug companies or the insurance companies.
Then he goes on to have closed door meetings with drug companies and insurance companies. Not to mention that he promised to not support any health care bill that forced people to get healthcare.
You'll find very few people here who ever worshiped the Obamassiah. It's no secret that the Dems are just as much in the pocket of the media companies as the Republicans.
As a person who was continually modded down for saying there was (and will be) no difference between Obama and McCain before and during the election I find your statement very funny.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
where to drop a bomb to rid us of all of the MPAA Assholes in one shot. It gets the RIAA as well. Sweet.
if i remember the random story yesterday they are slated to break 30bn this year which puts them at 0.2% of the US GDP or better phrased 1/500th of the US GDP.
0.2 doesn't sound like much but 1 in 500 is.. think if they where to disappear 1 in 500 people wouldn't have a livelihood.
i'm not advocating for them - nor do i think the taxpayers should give them anything or pay for their troubles. BUT i think 1 in 500 is enough to justify a meeting at the white house.
while there are bigger companies and sectors - Hollywood isn't small
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
For the 88th Time:
Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Calling copyright infringement piracy makes light of murderous thugs, and makes infringement sound worse than it is. It doesn't even work as a metaphor. When we use their misnomer, they win. Then one of two things will happen. Either infringers will be demonized people sharing 1s and 0s or the word piracy will lose its gravity.
Cue the "langwijiz morf, get/it" crowd.
And yeah, get off my lawn, or whatever other dismissiveness you want to conjure. Disagree all you want, but try to do it without dismissing me as pedantic or a grammar nazi. Try some substance.
Language matters; word choice matters. All actions start as thoughts, thoughts happen in words. By calling a government a regime, we can make overthrowing it more palatable. By calling a person a kike, nigger, rag head, witch etc, we can make them not human, so killing them won't be murder. Hacker was a positive term. The "man" (media, law, etc) has corrupted the word hacker to refer to criminals. It's like calling Nazis German over and over until the word German means Nazi. When we blur the distinction between words we lose expressiveness and have to invent awkward ways to regain specificity that we threw away out of laziness and ignorance. Yeah languages change over time, but there is evolution and there is devolution and corruption. Change is not inherently good.
And stand up for yourselves.
Last time you guys modded this "redundant", let's see if you do better this time!
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The Republican party in the north, the party of Lincoln, was Fiscally Conservative, pro-business, Politically Moderate, and Socially Moderate. They were certainly liberal in the sense that they liberated the black slaves.
When Texas Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the voting rights act in 1964, he remarked that it was going to deliver the deep South to the Republican Party for a generation. He underestimated.
The deep South segregationists that now control the Republican Party are only Socially Conservative. They are Politically Liberal (intruding into people's personal decisions) and Fiscally Spendthrifts or corrupt. Newt Gingrich and his fellow 'Movement Republicans' are not actually conservative at all. And I would hold that they are hardly Republican.
Ron Paul is truly Politically Conservative, Fiscally Conservative and Socially Conservative. There are few others like him, but they exist. Joel Hefley of Colorado, perhaps Chuck Hegel of Nebraska. Governor 'Butch' Otter of Idaho. The vast majority of the Republican party are simply pro-business (or more accurately, pro-corporation) proto-fascists. Opportunists. Thieves. Corrupt.
The Democratic Party has evolved into an aimless, populist mob. They currently have no guiding principles. They seem to exist only in reaction to big business and the corrupting influence of money.
Getting back to the article; it seems that piracy has a lot to do with intellectual property similar to software programs. If a person creates a work, it would be better if that person could maintain control over its provenance. This encourages continued production of similar work. China, India and other Wild West type newly minted capitalistic systems care little for hypothetical rights such as intellectual property. With good reason, it's unenforceable.
Best regards.