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Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA
boarder8925 writes "In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA: 'We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,' Obama said in his speech, 'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'"
... our jobs!
...at least he's not a Republican!
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Don't question the ingenuity of the Internet.
... I'm just asking:
What would we expect from any President? Pick anyone from the last batch, or even the next batch, of candidates. Do you think any one of them wouldn't back big business in this situation?
"Rampant" piracy? I suppose that's why they've pulled not just record profits pretty much every year but also almost always had a record breaking increase over the previous year's record breaking profits as well.
Their piracy figures, when they aren't just plain made up, are them saying "We expected this much of an increase over last year's profits and we actually got this slightly lower amount so since we didn't overshoot our initial prediction by 500% that 500% must have been lost due to piracy."
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Next up: The Texas schoolboard mandates that textbooks 'de-emphasise' the RECORDED HISTORICAL FACT that Hollywood was founded on industrialised copyright infringement.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Those up high have understood that the USA's commercial future is not in manufacturing (they left that to China or Germany). If it's not physical goods, then what else is America selling abroad? IP, that's what. That's where the USA's commercial future lies, and that's what it'll have to defend at all costs, trampling their people's and other nation's right to defend that.
It's that or become insolvent. (look up the USA's trade balance over the last few 20 years. Think it'll improve? Think again.)
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy, but those of us who are knowledgeable and have a strong opinion on this should contact the White House as well as your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know why we should not be supporting ACTA.
White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Congresspeople: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
The fact that this got rated "Insightful" is a woeful commentary on the state of rational debate and analysis in the geek world. I thought we were supposed, as a group, to be smart. Apparently not.
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed. Of course production is down right now because we're in a recession, but as a percentage of our economy, manufacturing production is pretty stable. What's down is manufacturing jobs, and that's because productivity is up. The better you are at doing something, the less work you have to do to do it.
In a perfect world, more production per unit of labor would mean that we would all have to work less to achieve the same level of prosperity. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current intellectual property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done. Rather than this new-found prosperity being spread across the whole population, it reaches only a relatively few peoples' pockets, and of course those people get quite rich.
So in fact draconian intellectual property laws are antithetical to prosperity. Obama's thesis here isn't just irrelevant to the average worker's prosperity. It's antithetical to the average worker's prosperity.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
OR
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
How terribly disappointing, Obama. At least the EU threw out this stupid treaty. Hopefully this won't be successful at all.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
"But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."
Wait, MPAA/RIAA? Since when do they deal with fake iPods? I hate them as much as the next guy, but I can't find a word in the article relating to copyrights that wasn't inserted by the author.
Obama's speech (as quoted by TFA) seems to relate only to patents and perhaps branded goods, even if ACTA extends to both. It would be interesting to know if this is indicative of an official focus with regard to ACTA.
In any reasonably free society, copying of digital content is impossible to prevent. In non-free societies, it does not matter as those in power can take the money of anybody anyways. So, trying to prevent copying of digital content is just a sure path to failure. Incidentially, protecting outdated business models holds a society back and is bad for eveybody.
Well, I guess it does not matter that much for the rest of the world, the US-centric century is certainly over, as its economic power is vanishing rapidly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
despite i have been a staunch supporter of him and quarreled with my conservative american friends for close to a year since his candidacy to his election and even beyond.
really, from this point on, i dont think i will be hypocritical to defend him in any regard. there are things that can be overlooked and forgiven, noone is perfect. but ransoming rights and liberties of the thought process to private individuals is nothing less than feudalism at its best. and someone who can justify this to himself cannot be defended in anything else.
Read radical news here
We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,
I can't wait until the US launches a pre-emptive military strike against <insert media vilified nation here> for a grave and gathering threat of...copyright infringement!
I find the Citation Needed Police annoying at times, but can you substantiate that claim?
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
Oh please, as if anyone could possibly be surprised Obama is a corporate whore. What do you think happens if you can't run for president unelss you can raise $60 million. Do you think his benefactors gave him that money expecting nothing in return?
I think we have to be careful though with separating unjust prosecution of piracy and piracy itself.
Obama is exactly right. IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy. There needs to be a means by which efforts of the mind are as recognized legally as efforts of the body.
We're becoming a nation where digging ditches and assembling parts is going to be taken over more and more by automation and cheap overseas labor and it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas that continues to pay our bills and put roofs over our heads going forward.
While the RIAA and the MPAA might RIGHT NOW control intellectual property and be the face of IP in the future it's going to be the individual creators who no longer need a large corporate overlord who are going to need the same protections. So we need to be careful that an inventor in Iowa can fight off the mega corporation trying to simply steal his idea and profit off of his innovation without giving him any reward.
The RIAA's laws protect the indie artist FROM the RIAA more so than it protects the RIAA itself. If there were toothless IP laws then Universal Music could just start burning copies of some new popular band and not send them a penny. They have the market and the distribution power. They would overnight become the main source of some new indie band's music without offering any creativity of their own.
You weaken IP and it's not the large corporations that will lose money it's the little guys who will get screwed by the large distributors who have all the money and resources.
'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'
TRANSLATION:
"Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and the creativity of the American Lawyer. As our education system collapses and laziness and ignorance steadily increase until the Constitution is entirely without meaning and it becomes impossible for our society to function without coercion -- we expect lawyers to bring home enough cash to sustain not just their coke habits but also our military... with a small amount of funds possibly left over for health care (but don't bet on it). We won't have the money in this century to bully anyone with our military capabilities, so we're counting on our lawyers to win the important battles."
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Obama seems to love giving token support to the more popular side of big issues like these without actually researching them first. If he's supposed to be a man of the people, how about supporting consumer rights such as the right to make legal backups of purchased media and the right to enjoy that media on devices of our choosing? Protecting IP is important but not at the expense of the people who make that IP valuable.
Its only fair, the RIAA and the MPAA have made a sizable investment in Obama and especially in Biden. It wouldn't be fair for them to have spent all that money and gotten nothing but a bunch of justice department positions in return. They've made a sizable purchase of politicians. They should be able to enjoy the fruits of ownership.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.
Look at the Free Culture/Software movement, Obama. There's people all over the place "stealing other people's ideas", except it isn't stealing. When you steal something, you take it from them without their permission. Should you need permission to make a program that does the same thing as another program? Should you need permission to cover, adapt, or remix something someone else did? It's not like you can just sue random people off the street for singing a song you "own" (Oh wait, that happened quite a few times already. Nevermind). None of these uses of our culture should ever be thought of as infringing; doing so practically removes our right to say as we please (then again, people over the years have stated that we have never had "free speech" anyways).
"Fair Use" has produced millions of dollars, and you dare imply that it didn't? By supporting the ACTA/RIAA/MPAA, you're supporting concentration of wealth (which just so happens to be concentrated towards the few companies that are trying to control our culture), which is never a good thing. "Intellectual Property" doesn't need to be "protected" in this matter at all, and these ideas are just getting more and more absurd. Things aren't going to get better if we have people like Obama supporting these crazy ideas.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Dear Mr. President and members of Congress and Senate,
Please, stop listening to the corporate un-citizens. I say un-citizens because all they care about is lining their pockets with money. Not to say that most Americans wouldn't love to line their pockets with money as well, but only Corporate citizens (which aren't even real citizens as they can't be called to fight for their country, aren't held accountable for their actions unless someone with more money than them can fight them) have the money to pay for you to listen to their needs. The luncheons, the corporate sponsored getaways, the private flights and perks are all their way of buying you, you the representatives of us, not corporations.
If you really want to protect the creators of ideas and artistic endevours, you must do away with tyranical organazitions like the RIAA and MPAA which prosecute little children as well as dead or dying citizens for a percieved (never proven) loss of a few pennies, all the while wholesale stealing from the very creators they cry woefully to protect.
I'm going to copy en masse an e-mail sent to me - please read it, please consider it, and please, when you are done, think about pushing corporate citizenship back where it belongs, to non citizenship - without rights, without needs to protect as you would the individuals who actually do the creating of everything you wish to protect.
Pretty interesting if one reads all the way to the end. Follow this by reading "Confessions of An Economic Hit Man", by John Perkins. We had a surplus in 2000 and no way does the banking industry and those who rule it want to see that again, even if it takes two wars.
EVERY U.S. CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
You mean, we should start to stock ARM netbooks?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You mean the astroturf group run by a political operative that worked for Barack Obama and Sen James Webb (D-VA)? She also just happened to be a Strategy Analyst for the NY Times.
The one that is organizing a "grassroots" get together in Chicago that isn't actually being lead by anyone FROM Chicago?
They aren't an independent group... they're just another special interest group like Obama for America. If you want to be a tool, by all means, do so, just admit to yourself that you are someone else's pawn.
He could just as well have said:
"We welcome low standards for patents and long timespans for copyrights because this will help our economy, and we will push these rules down the throat of other nations."
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
While I'm no particular fan of the MPAA, the RIAA or the ACTA, it deserves to be pointed out that the article is substantially misleading and inaccurate. Firstly, the speech to which they refer, in the section about IP protection, talks exclusively about protecting the licensing of technology and make no mention what so ever of the MPAA, the RIAA or music of video piracy. While these organisations happen to also support the ACTA, it is grossly misleading to say that the speech comes out in support of either of them. Secondly, the article says that "the European Parliament has already shot the ACTA agreement down". This is completely incorrect. The European Parliament have demanded that the European Commission make public the nature of its discussions in the ACTA negotiations, and the EU Privacy Commissioner has expressed concern that the treaty might be incompatible with existing EU law, but the parliament have not passed any resolutions regarding the content of the treaty itself (not least because it's secret, so they don't know what it says).
The process through which the ACTA has be created is highly suspect but it does its opponents no service if those who campaign against it can't present an accurate case.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
this is precisely capitalism, and precisely what you term as 'free market'.
in any environment in which you allow groups or individuals to become more powerful than others, eventually those who get to the top first subdue or eliminate others and a power hierarchy gets established. this is how precisely feudalism came to being in the first place.
this is the nature of social dynamics, and it will never change. unless there are rules and laws preventing anyone from becoming more powerful than others, there will always be a pyramid of power in the long run.
wealth is power.
put in layman's terms, your 'free market' can exist and be free only in the early times. like in the initial times of united states. later, when some groups get more wealth than others, they will get to the top and establish a hierarchy. so, this is the EXACT thing you should have expected to happen - groups who set up the pyramid first, ensuring that pyramid continues to be, and they stay on top of it.
enjoy your 'free' market capitalism. its much more hard to combat than aristocracy.
Read radical news here
An IP Based Society is great for every other nation on earth, for in 20 to 30 years all the world has to do to destroy America is simply start ignoring her laws.
Do we then start sending troops into nation X for downloading Disney movies? How about when they all decide to stop paying royalties?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
We sure know how to pick 'em.
Ummm.... I see you ignore the fact that major portions of our manufacturing capability have been moved offshore. When was the last time you bought a TV made in the US? When was the last time you bought a major household appliance that was manufactured entirely in the US? How about a car? How long has it been since the majority of steel used in the US was made here?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
He made some un-controversial statements about protecting U.S industry from commercial copying: "But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."
I don't think anyone would mind that, and that is what a legitimate anti-counterfeiting treaty would prevent.
Alas, the commentator leaps out from beneath his bridge and shouts "the RIAA wants that too, and they're evil, so Obama is evil". That's then picked up by a page headed "Obama Care - Stop Him", and retitled "Obama Sides with RIAA, MPAA; Backs ACTA" and referenced here as "Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA".
Do you begin to see a pattern here? This is a classic "guilt by association" scam, in which you say "X", and are promptly tarred and feathered by a commentator who says "but the <insert your choice of evil group here> is in favor of X, therfore you're a member/supporter/fellow-traveler of <evil group>.
One should attack Mr. Obama for what he said, not for something Mr. Sandoval said on his behalf...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
The so-called Coffee Party is actually just another astroturf wing of the Obama campaign machine.
When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
Why do idiots like you exist in such large quantities in the US, and only in the US? I'm starting to think that there was some self-selection sample bias in terms of the genetic and/or psychological predispositions of the early American settlers.
That's true as far as it goes, but take it another step. If those fat cats can't make their money in America any more, they move to other countries where they can. That means our best and brightest (and often luckiest) will not BE in America any more. Now their success doesn't help America -at all-.
Those laws, as much as we hate them, keep those fat cats from taking their fat loot elsewhere.
Are they too much right now? Absolutely. Should they be abolished? Hell no.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It is really not a defense of these policies to note that we are moving to an economy where copyrights and patents are our chief export; it is just a description of the broader problem that nobody wants to manufacture their goods in America anymore. The solution is not to try to push other countries to accept our versions of copyright and patent law, it is to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Sadly, the major parties seem to have no interest in the seemingly obvious solution...
Palm trees and 8
is stuff like the latest Britney spears cd(i know it's kind of a exaggeration but it's closer to the truth then you realize) draconion laws such as these are needed to a degree.
but if an individual cannot distinguish the importance of freedoms over 'right of ownership' over thought processes, and comes up defending the private interests that seek to monopolize thought, there is nothing to defend about him.
acta is evil. it is the most evil thing since spanish inquisition. the very fact that whole thing proceeds by CIRCUMVENTING democratical procedures is itself appalling from the start, leave aside all the 'measures' that seek to cramp down freedoms for some parties' interests.
it wouldnt be radical to say that anyone who sides with evil, for WHATEVER reason, is the enemy, for, by siding with such kind of evil, they have become dangerous to our freedoms themselves.
Read radical news here
Meanwhile, those indie artists who actually WANT free distribution get screwed by the general assumption that all songs/movies are controlled by the RIAA/MPAA.
If an artist ever had a contract with a big label, that label will try to control their songs, permanently. It's happened before, and it will happen again. It doesn't matter what the details of the contract were. Somebody's going to make a poor design choice (possibly but deniably with intent), and say "For all these billion songs we published, start sending DMCA notices to Youtube users," and their automated system will do it. It doesn't matter that since that original (non-exclusive) contract, the song is now freely available. If they get caught, they say "Oops, sorry!" and pay no fine, and make no effort to prevent it from happening again. If they don't get caught, then it's another person who might pay them a $2000 settlement for music they don't own.
It's not even likely that tougher laws will prevent the recording labels from trampling your rights anyway. According to OSNews, each label has a list of songs they used without permission, such as for compilation albums and such. They say they're making an effort to track down the artists on that list, and that's good enough for them. They can claim that with such a huge number of songs to deal with, and so many contracts, such things fall through the cracks. They'll get sympathy from courts, and go on their merry way.
The system, especially when designed by big groups, screws over normal people.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed.
To quote Peter Schiff : 'If we're becoming so much more productive where are the goods we're producing and why can't I see it in the balance of trade ? If we're so productive where are the exports ?"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy.
IP is just various monopoly rights. See the former Soviet union on how well monopolies work. Monopolies are antithetical to an effective economy and thus will not be a foundation, but a burden.
it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas
Please. IP is mainly good for extracting resources out of an economy, it has nothing to do with 'exporting'. Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy, and most of the time (certainly in the case of the US), the monopoly rights will be held by foreign corporations.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again. Repealing at the very least copyright and patents would be a good start towards reestablishing a highly competitive free market and lowering the burden on western labour (thus reducing their price).
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed.
I'd have guessed that greater than 95% of the products I purchase and use on a regular basis are manufactured outside of the U.S. Would you mind providing more information as to what sectors are producing 'at an all-time high'? I'm not trolling or even necessarily disagreeing with you, but there appears to be a distinct disconnect here.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior ...
Why would you think that? Do you consider every lawyer or politician in love with their blackberry to be tech savvy? Every politician on twitter to be tech savvy? Obama is extremely intelligent but his training and experience is as a lawyer. We have had past presidents who were honest-to-god engineers. Carter was one of the first naval officers trained to operate nuclear power plants. Hoover was a mining engineer that developed various processes to improve yields. He wrote a popular university textbook for engineering and translated a classic medieval mining text. He was also an advocate and user of the new tech of his day, radio and aviation. I'm sure there were other presidents who were pretty tech savvy in their day but this is all I can think of offhand.
In a perfect world, more production per unit of labor would mean that we would all have to work less to achieve the same level of prosperity. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current intellectual property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done.
Not just IP laws. The fact that a lot of industrial manufacturing is capital intensive combined with the relatively small segment of social networks that access to capital flows in. Or, as Marx might have said, most workers don't own the means of production under a capitalist system. Go back in time and reduce patent and copyright protections circa 1910 or even 1810 (where the benefits were more limited) and story of how the gains in the system play out for labor is pretty much going to be the same.
It's not that copyright and patent laws don't represent another barrier to entry: they sometimes do. But most of the time, they pretty much protect industrial competitors from other would-be industrial competitors.
We software geeks tend to see things a bit differently because for the last 20-30 years, we're one of the few groups lucky enough to be in an industry where we do more or less own the means of production (got a computer? And a compiler? Or interpreter for a capable language? Congratulations! You have production capacity!) because it's relatively affordable. So our barriers to entry are less about capital and more about other things like product awareness, network effects... and cost of compliance with the law, including copyright & patent law.
Maybe this will become more important in the future if it turns out that more industrial capacity becomes available for ownership down at the household level, and that's reason enough to make sure copyright and patent law are a balance bargain rather than a giveaway to lawyers and other people whose sense of entitlement is so great that they really, genuinely view ideas as genuine property, and so I think fighting against ACTA and its ilk are worthwhile... but let's not kid ourselves, copyrights and patents haven't really been the main tool of abuse in the relationship between capital and labor.
Tweet, tweet.
In theory, yes.
But the cost of fighting any of these mega-corps is so immense that, in effect, unless you're fighting somebody near your own weight class (in terms of available resources) you will lose, and likely never even get to see the verdict. Look at what Monsanto's done to agriculture in the last decade. If you don't pay to plant Monsanto's seed, they sue you into bankruptcy where you have to sell the farm to a Monsanto friend. It is defacto illegal to harvest seed from crops now, because though there is no law against it the people who used to make a living running the seed-collecting machines were sued for contributory infringement against Monsanto's genetic patents. It just costs too much for a person to defend against that. Especially since most corperations structure themselves in such a way that they don't own anything and use cashflow for everything, and the laws are written to that effect. Farmers have little cashflow and millions of dollars in assets (land, property) and therefore repeatedly get destroyed if they don't lay down and give a large cut of profits to Monsanto.
Your argument about the RIAA stealing an indie band's music and selling it on their own is crap. The laws that protect the RIAA don't cover that, and the indie bands can't afford the cost to use a DMCA-approved content protection system to trigger DMCA violations. Having music IP laws that allow for statuatory payments per performance and such is fine, but the erosion of fair use (though, historically, fair use as a legal concept has re-emerged more recently than not, and is being beat back down) is soley the RIAA powed by friends in Washington DC.
Other IPs vary, but more often than not it's the Monsantos that the laws are written for to protect, not the individual inventor.
I am become
I thought cartels were generally considered illegal. By supporting these entities he is essentially supporting the notion of legal cartels. I think the USA is going to become more and more isolated in its point of views.
I had great hope for some real change when Obama came in, but he standing shows that there isn't really much separating the Democrats and the Republicans. For me, it really goes to show the whole notion of democracy in the states is more about changing the logo of the party in charge, rather than anything else. Which ever party is in charge, it is still the corporations which hold them by the balls. What it will take to institute a government which is by the people for the people, rather than by the people for the corporations.
I have nothing against copyright, rather I disagree with copyrights going beyond a reasonable amount of time.
One question I do have, is what will the reaction of the open source community be in 70 years when the first copyrights of Linux become public domain? This is not a indication of support for long copyrights, but trying to understand the reaction of the community when the shoe is on the other foot.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made by a US company. The "interesting" software in new Internet-connected TVs (Netflix, VUDU, Cinemanow, Pandora, Youtube) is all made by US companies. And not coincidentally, all of those companies focus on distribution of the higher-margin content that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to protect.
The economic (and military) successes of the United States have almost always been based on technological innovation and entrepreneurship - and those innovations DO need to be protected.
The MPAA/RIAA's methods of "enforcing" their IP are despicable. But without any protection, one of the current major assets of the US - media and entertainment - will be in serious jeopardy. Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different. That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online. Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
you have to read well.
EU passed a resolution that banned any form of 3strikes anywhere in europe. Held the regulations and rules it put out before over anything proposed in acta. this means no isp liability of policing their networks for private parties' copyrights. it mandates that cutting an individual's internet access cannot happen unless through a court. it demanded full disclosure of the acta text to all members of the parliament, as mandated by eu laws. eu laws also mandate that parliament share anything with eu public, so anything that is disclosed to eu parliament has to be disclosed to entire european public.
european commission has to abide by it. there is no other route that they can take. commission already said that they are going to push the other acta negotiating parties for full disclosure. if they dont, commission wont be able to stay on the table any more, for they are not allowed to negotiate and sign anything before eu parliament knows it.
and if the text is disclosed, that means shit will hit the fan.
so yea, eu parliament seems to really have shot acta down. and probably not only for europe, for entire world.
Read radical news here
ACTA will only work when every (first world) country is implementing it, but the EU-Parliament is already against it, because the discussion on ACTA and all documents are kept undisclosed. You could say: Who cares what this parliament is thinking? Well Obama should care, because if the parliament is not involved and the documents are not public, then the EU will not implement ACTA which means almost 500 mio people will not be threatened by ACTA. Third world countries will not adopt to ACTA either when the EU is not doing so.
Even though, some information leaked and it looks like that ACTA would not be legal in Germany as the constitutions defines certain rights. For example the state is not allowed to transfer information on Internet-traffic to private organizations without reasonable suspicion and a letter from a judge. Also the three-strikes-law-idea is against the rules in the EU, and obviously it is against the French constitution. And I am absolutely sure if they would try it in Germany it will fail too. As cutting you of from the Internet violates your right to be informed. And this right is very important in a democracy. It is definitely not an allowed sanction by any European constitution or agreement. So ACTA may be a dead horse and Obama is riding it. It would be better when he would tell all these US-Americans that general health care is good and that securing the existential basis of any person in a country is a necessary thing.
Do something about it and join the Coffee Party [coffeepartyusa.com]?
I love your solution to disagreeing with behavior by the Obama Administration: Join an organization started by members of Obama's Presidential campaign. You are worried about the tea party being taken over by special interests, so you suggest joining an organization that is basically just a subsidiary of the Democratic Party (which you seem to believe, likely correctly, is run by special interests).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea ...
Ideas cannot be stolen. It is a physical impossibility. The copyright & patent industry love to blur the lines of the law and pretend that using IP without authorization is as heinous as breaking into someone's house and stealing their physical goods. But it is a complete lie. It's bad enough that the various industries that benefit from these get away with blatant misleading and deception of the general public about it, but having the *president* endorse that lie is very disappointing.
For every Vespasian, there's a Nero AND a Caligula.
The MPAA/RIAA's methods of "enforcing" their IP are despicable. But without any protection, one of the current major assets of the US - media and entertainment - will be in serious jeopardy. Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different. That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online. Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
The problem here is that for all his apparent "good will" he either doesn't get it, or he is banking on the voters not to get it and push something through.
It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.
You can't put a copyright on an idea that someone else in a third world country won't just copy WITH CHEAPER INPUTS AND LABOR. You can copyright a song, a movie that sort of thing yes - but unless he wants the US to simply be the entertainment supplier of the world, he is chasing the wrong fish here.
If you come up with an idea to say, make cheap energy through some form of funky technology (insert some form of wind, wave, whatever) and think that the chaps down the road in China, India and a bunch of other countries won't make knock off versions of it WITH FULL SUPPORT OF THEIR GOVERNMENTS then you are totally kidding yourself.
Just the same as if one of those countries jumped in with the exact same technology, I can assure you that the US government would be totally backing US to manufacture the same idea but in their own backyard rather than just buying tons and tons of the stuff from overseas.
While I agree with protecting your own IP, this whole process is dominated by protecting one small part of the overall industry and not the industry as a whole. That's why I think Obama in this is either being kidded or is hoping that his speech will float above the bullshit filters of most voters.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made by a US company.
I wish that was the case, but unfortunately, it's not. With a few discrete exceptions (Motorola and TI still provide a lot of the digital processing chips, for example), most of it is made overseas as well. This certainly includes the user interface processors, memory, A/D conversion, and most of the "glue" chips, which are made by NEC, Hitachi, Samsung, et. al.
Don't take my word for it, open up that box and look at the chips for yourself.
Not that I agree with draconian IP laws, and I'm no fan of the RIAA/MPAA, either. And I certainly believe that software patents go beyond dumb and descend into insanity.
There's a world of difference between protecting genuine innovation, and just granting "unlimited gouge rights" to the first guy who races to the Patent Office with something obvious (think: One Click Shopping, "Look And Feel" with a "Help" button to the right, etc., etc.).
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
It's quite convenient for the Motion Picture and Music industries to claim their interests are as important if not more-so than the actual protection of IP that matters, technology, medicine, engineering, etc...
As a musician who has "IP" out there, and reserves the right to protect it, it is laughable to think my musical creation, or ANY creative work that is for pure entertainment, is somehow is in the same league or group as the non-entertainment IP mentioned latter.
Music and movies are a social commentary, and have attributes to the cultural arts. You can't physically cure diseases, purify water, or put a man on the moon with a movie or a song. To suggest that entertainment IP is detrimental to the survival of the US and world economies is heinous and utterly absurd. It is exactly this type of IP legislation, and selfishness by the multimedia arts industry, that is preventing real world solutions from being distributed to those who need it most.
Ex. Can't distribute cheap malaria vaccines to those is Africa or 3 world countries since the patent holders prefer to keep supply at deflated levels while maintaining inflationary profit margins.
Like most things in life, this is about money. Pure and simple.
Next time you go see a movie, or buy that new Blu-Ray or DVD, or purchase a song online, take into consideration that you are feeding the very machine that is willing to stifle every expression of liberty, purely to maintain their market. Congratulate yourself in knowing you play your part.
They're trade representatives of their respective industries. No shit that Obama's going to back them.
As much as we like to shit on the MPAA and RIAA, they make IP. subsequently, and often foolishly, they try to protect their IP. Which is their right.
I can't get riled up over IP violation law anymore. There's just so much more to life than ripping DVDs to put on my PSP, Phone or for backup purposes. I'm not saying that the cause is lost, just, not worth burning calories on on slashdot.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Sounds better in the media then ' we bilked you people out of lots of money last year.. and we want more this year"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So in fact draconian intellectual property laws are antithetical to prosperity.
Isn't any draconian law antithetical to prosperity?
I think the interesting question in this case is where the line is between "draconian" and "impotent". You'd think there would be a huge area in between, but we don't seem to be able to find it: a few people are getting penalised absurdly for relatively minor infractions, while millions of people continue to break the law at the expense of legal rightsholders and get away with it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I have to agree with this. Living in Raleigh, NC, a fairly large but new city, I simply don't see hardly ANY factories ANYWHERE. As far as the eye can see, everything is suburbs and retail (grocery stores and Home Depots on every block). We seem to be a completely consumption-based economy. There some high-tech (i.e. IBM, who's quickly offshoring jobs to China) and some bio-pharmaceutical. But I don't see much work for the 'average joe' that you used to have in this country when industry was king.
It's downright scary thinking what might happen if World War 3 were to ever break out. The only reason we won WWII was because our factories produced weapons faster than the Axis countries (who's factories were being bombed). Virtually ALL of our industry was used for the war effort in order to accomplish this. But we'd never be able to win a conventional drawn-out war anymore. We simply don't have the industry anymore. And who does? China. And who's side are they likely to be on in WW3? Not ours. So it's virtually guaranteed that WW3 is going to be nuclear, since that's the only way we'd 'win' the war.
"Isn't any draconian law antithetical to prosperity?"
No, not really. You could pretty easily make a draconian law to that effect, but you can't possibly say that a law which (for example) allows suspected drunk drivers to be executed on the side of the road (extremely draconian) would realistically prevent everyone from being prosperous.
"I think the interesting question in this case is where the line is between "draconian" and "impotent". You'd think there would be a huge area in between, but we don't seem to be able to find it: a few people are getting penalised absurdly for relatively minor infractions, while millions of people continue to break the law at the expense of legal rightsholders and get away with it."
There is, and we used to have it, but people complained about the costs (which is ironic, because the solution is so very much more expensive in the long run) and "unfairness" (to be fair, there was a lot of it, but since there still is, so perhaps the flaw lies elsewhere...): we actually used to empower fairly low-level government officials and bureaucrats to use their god-given brains and make decisions. The upside was that rather than having one official with the ability to half-make decisions and 200 lackeys who serve to shuffle around paperwork in triplicate, we could have 3 or 4 officials with 1 or 2 secretaries each and spend a fraction as much (though far more per person... decision makers are expensive) to get far more done. The downside was that these people had huge amounts of discretionary power to abuse, and did so, blatantly. So now we pay a whole bunch more, have a lot more people involved, are less able to actually get anything done, and still have massive iniquities and waste. Go us.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Makes sense that our politicians on both sides would sick up for our successful industries. Don't hear about those two needing bailouts...
The USA doesn't EXPORT much of anything anymore:
Military and related products
Movies & Music & TV(?)
IP lawsuits
MSonopoly software
Gambling (aka Banking "products")
It makes sense these "industries" are largely untouchable; even when they screw over their own country.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Anybody who expects the democrats to be on the right side of the issue on patent and copyright issues is fooling themselves. I wish it weren't so, but progressives haven't yet figured out that maximal patent and copyright is a really bad thing. OTOH, the Republicans aren't any better. So at least until one or the other party gets a clue, this isn't an issue upon which we can really base our voting choices. If you care, the place to work this out is in the primary races--run against the incumbent yourself, and make copyright/patent balance your issue. You won't win, but you might raise some consciousnesses.
Um, Raleigh and the whole RTP area is about research and education, not manufacturing. Hell, there are three major universities and a bunch of smaller universities in the area. It's not set up for manufacturing. That's just how the US. Manufacturing is done is some places, and research in others. The two usually don't overlap. Or perhaps you would expect a smelting plant next to Princeton University? Or a car manufacturing plant on 5th Avenue in NYC?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I don't know what specifically the GP was referring to, but if you check out this graph, you will see that US exports aren't really as bad as you would think listening to some of the scaremongers. Most of the exports are industrial items, not cheap consumer goods that you purchase and use on a regular basis, which is why you feel a disconnect. But as you can see, anyone who says, "America doesn't manufacture anything" is making it up and hasn't actually looked at the numbers.
Qxe4
Not to raise a "tu quoque" argument here, but of course the Tea Party is precisely the same thing, just a part of a different political machine (the same one that brought Sarah Palin into the limelight).
Which brings me to Rule #1 of understanding any political organization: follow the money.
I am officially gone from
I have the clean conscience of being able to say I didn't vote Democrat in the election that put the sock puppet in Oval Orifice.
'n' "I told you so!"
nya, nya...
"Won't Get Fooled Again" eh boys?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Really, I ignored his "facts"? Manufacturing, as a percentage of the US economy, has decreased for 50 years. In 2006 manufacturing accounted for only 12% of the economy. In 1993 it was 15.9% of the economy. In 1953 it was 28% of the economy.
That's more than a 50% decline in percentage of the economy. So, tell me again just how healthy the manufacturing sector of the economy is....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Sides with the RIAA.
Wants DNA collected with all arrests.
Shuts Down Federal ACORN Probe into Corruption & Voter Registration Fraud.
Kills further moon projects.
Raise gas prices to $7.00 a gallon to "protect the environment".
He is either evil or stupid.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
So at least until one or the other party gets a clue, this isn't an issue upon which we can really base our voting choices.
Still, it's funny looking back on Slashdot comments from 2008 and realizing how Obama's supporters had bamboozled themselves into thinking he was going to be "different" about this issue...
*blinks* You voted for the guy from Chicago who only managed to get elected to the lower offices by DQing his opponents and getting his buddies to release confidential court records of his opposition opponent as the not total sell out? What color is an orange in your universe?
We do still produce a lot of that kind of stuff domestically; manufacturing of consumer products has been offshored much faster than manufacturing of expensive industrial goods has. For example, the domestic car industry has declined, but the U.S. is still by a good margin the largest exporter of tractors. Manufacturing of military hardware has moved the least of all.
I'd probably be worried about commodities as a bigger issue. The most glaring one is that we used to produce a lot of oil, and now import most of it. Straddling the commodity/manufacturing line somewhat, the decline in U.S. steel production is probably a significant military issue, although our production actually is still reasonably high (steel-industry employment has been decimated, but number of tons of steel produced was roughly steady from 1980 through 2007 or so, dipping only in the recent recession).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not sure why you think that since you can't see factories from your area that they aren't any around. First, you live in the RTP. Research generally means white collar, learning type of work and not manufacturing. Second, drive about 4 hours to Greenville and visit the BMW plant sometime. Drive a couple more hours to the Honda plant that's also in SC. There is plenty of manufacturing around even if you can't see it from your porch.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea
that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the
public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged
with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing
circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is
supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or
individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock
of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
No sig today...
That's why.
Spotty, to be honest, but I wasn't actually expecting the Second Coming. The World is more willing to work with the US now. The war spendings are now in the budget, and I don't think we're torturing people anymore. We're not being scared like children every other day by orange alert levels. The health care reform - warts and all - seems to have a chance. The rich are no longer getting tax cuts that insult our intelligence. The economy is bad, but not as bad as it could easily have been. Compared to early 2009, it's certainly looking more like we can look up at the sky instead of down into the abyss.
Could he have done more? Sure, but I knew I was voting for a center-left pragmatist.
Question: Now that all the manufacturing jobs are all but a memory, what exactly are you going to do with those millions of out of work Americans who don't have the creative ability to "make IP" huh? There are literally millions of them, can't speak for the rest of the country but the south is quickly becoming nothing but dead towns with boarded up homes.
You gonna pay them to sit at home and consume IP? No money for IP working at Mickey D, hell most places you'll be lucky to keep a roof over your head. So what are you gonna do with them? Kinda pointless to try educating them, as we have seen in the tech sector they'll ship the white collar jobs off shore just as quick. So what exactly do you do with these teaming masses in your magical IP economy, which stuff all the money in a few pockets at the top, while the rest can go get fucked?
Better think quick, as all these oath takers and other bunches gathering guns ain't doing it because they are happy little campers you know. All it is gonna take is another Stalin or Hitler, that is a good speaker and can rally the masses to say "see those rich bastards? Why the hell should we be living like dirt while those blood sucking leeches live like kings? let's just kill those pigs and take it back!" to have everything in your IP economy turn into a shit storm. Don't forget multinational corporations have NO loyalty to you, this country, or anyone but themselves.
You got millions out of work, millions of poor, pissed off individuals, many of whom have pretty much become completely disgusted by the greed and corporation kissing like we see in TFA. Frankly I don't think it would take much to light the powderkeg ATM. Wish it wasn't so, but that is what happens when your leaders develop a "let them eat cake" mentality. And we saw how well it turned out for the last ones that had that attitude, didn't we? Don't think it can't happen again, because when you are bankrupt, with no job and no hope, and your life is nothing but shit, what have you got to lose?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is completely misleading. These numbers include goods produced by nominally American corporations even if all the work is done by employees based outside of the US. This particular scam has been debunked multiple times by the business press.
BTW, the US GDP numbers also include goods produced outside the USA by non-American labor.
If you strip out the work/products made by non-US employees of US corporations, you'll see that both the US GDP and exports have been in steep decline for the past decade.
Magnus.
It is not a prevarication with statistics. It's a number showing the lessening of the importance of manufacturing in our economy. That manufacturing is a much smaller slice of the pie now than it used to be means that manufacturing growth, if it can be called as such, has been at a much slower pace than the rest of the economy. The fact that the entire pie has grown shows just how far manufacturing has fallen when the slice of the pie is now less than half of what it used to be. If manufacturing had grown at the same pace as the rest of the economy for the last 50 years its slice of the pie would be at least close to the same percentage of the economy it was 50 years ago. It's not.
The above fact is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said, but it seems the obvious is often denied.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Ryan and his wife agreed to make their divorce records public. On April 2, 2004, Barack Obama formally established his position about the Ryans' soon-to-be-released divorce records, and called on Democrats not to inject them into the campaign.
I don't care where he copied it from, it's Insightful as all hell. Looking at the North Carolina primaries vs. Clinton, the lowest number I found for blacks was 87% for Obama (Blacks age 30-44). Overall it's 90-96% of blacks in favor of Obama.
The worst was where they asked if "race is important to you." Whether you said "yes" or "no" didn't affect the outcome, meaning the racial voting patterns were entirely subconscious.
Sure, blacks were perfectly entitled to vote for Obama in the general election. McCain+old+crazy+Palin+crazy = terrible campaign. But the OP is right, in the primary versus Clinton, only 40-70% of whites voted for Clinton. 95% of blacks voted for Obama.
Clinton ran an incredible campaign, too. She took the "Hope" that Obama talked about and made it real. But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
To be realistic - and fair - we are never going to see an American president coming out clearly and strongly against the interests of major industries; at least not until American society and its constitution are fundamentally altered - as in a violent revolution. I can't quite see how that is going to happen, but of course, you never know.
Much as I like Obama for his intelligence and what still looks a lot like sincerity, idealism and honesty, when I heard him talk about changing things, I could see that he had set himself up for a major challenge. Like it or not, America is not governed "by the people, for the people", and the president only has the power allowed him by the noble classes that everybody in America assures me don't exist (the fact that you can enter "nobility" in America by becoming immensely rich is not an argument against this - that has always been the way throughout history). Change will only occur as and when they want it.
But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the Obama election is that it brought the crazies and the racists out in the open.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Don't forget the military!
If all you have is imaginary intellectual property, the only way you can really protect it is by force. Well, and trade sanctions, but those won't mean much soon...
Too true, and too tragic considering the birth of the USA as a nation if they should dictate taxes for others to pay and force military action if they refuse.
Though I'm not sure how easy it is to be the #1 military power when more and more manufacturing capability is outsourced.
I lost my sig.
I'm wondering why after 8 years of a baffoon and coming up to two years of The (disappointing) Second Coming, nobody's realised that there are more options than Blue and Red.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made for a US owned company by workers in a foreign country...
There. Fixed that for you.
I haven't seen an Intel processor that was actually manufactured in the U.S. in what, 15 years? 20?
As for your argument that RIAA and MPAA are "losing billions" to Chinese piracy, please... First of all, that argument doesn't fly here in the U.S. (no, not every pirated copy is a lost sale), so why should it be any different in a country where the average citizen has even less disposable income than here? More to the point, suggesting that music and movies will solve our trade deficit is, well, stupid, even if those industries' bullshit "lost sales" figures were based on reality.
First: kudos for the Godwin. I guess this thread just wouldn't be complete without Hitler.
Second: this thread had nothing to do with (not) protecting manufacturing jobs, it had to do with protecting American technology and media. Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?
Third: it really had nothing to do with Americans "consuming IP", it had to do with other countries paying for the IP they already consume.
But to bite on your tangeant... it is ironic that the people complaining the most and voting against large tax increases tend to be those who could use their benefits the most, not those who would pay the bulk of it. Honestly, how do we fix the problem that a growing segment of the population does not have the knowledge or skills to justify the standard of living that they would like to have? (and that's no slight on any "blue collar" worker, just a statement of fact that one can't expect to be paid a huge premium over Chinese workers in the same field and yet shop almost exclusively at Walmart to save a few bucks).
Europe has already tried dealing with some of these issues - and their solution was "social democracy". But in the US we wouldn't dare even think of something with the name "social" in it, because the Republicans have done such a good job convincing the people most in need of it that it's somehow inherently evil and "un-American"...