Slashdot Mirror
A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars
bonch writes "As an experiment, composer Jason Robert Brown logged onto a site illegally offering his sheet music for download and contacted hundreds of users, politely asking them to stop listing the material. Most complied, some were confused, and a few fought back. Brown chronicles a lengthy exchange he had with a teenage girl named Brenna, which provides an interesting insight into the artists' perspective of the copyright debate. He also responds to several points raised in comments to the article and says, 'I don't wish to be the enemy; I'm just a guy trying to make a living.'"
Ooops... Sorry for that smell guys. I dropped an Obama in my pants!
There are two types of people in the world: people who think there are two types of people in the world and people who don’t. I’m among the first type and I think the world is divided into people who recognize the Jewish problem and people who don’t.
In other words, the world is divided into smart people and dumb people. If you’ve got an IQ of 80, have difficulty operating a can-opener, and recognize the Jewish problem, you’re smart. If you’ve got an IQ of 180, have already won a couple of Nobel Prizes, and don’t recognize the Jewish problem, you’re dumb.
I’ve been dumb for most of my life: it took me a long time to recognize the Jewish problem. I didn’t think for myself, I just accepted the propaganda and conformed to the consensus. Jews are good people. Only bad people criticize Jews. Jews good. Anti-Semites bad. But then, very slowly, I started to see the light.
Recognizing Jewish hypocrisy was the first big step. I was reading an article by someone called Rabbi Julia Neuberger, a prominent British liberal. I didn’t like liberals then, so I didn’t like her for that (and because her voice and manner had always grated on me), but her Jewishness wasn’t something I particularly noticed. But as I read the article I came across something that didn’t strike me as very liberal: she expressed concern about Jews marrying Gentiles, because this threatened the survival of the Jewish people.
That made me sit up and think. Hold on, I thought, I know this woman sits on all sorts of “multi-cultural” committees and is constantly being invited onto TV and radio to yap about the joys of diversity and the evils of racism. She’s all in favor of mass immigration and there’s no way she’s worried about Whites marrying non-Whites, because “Race is Just a Social Construct” and “We’re All the Same Under the Skin”. She’s a liberal and she thinks that race-mixing is good and healthy and Holy. Yet this same woman is worried about Jews marrying Gentiles. Small contradiction there, n'est ce-pas?
Well, no. Big contradiction. She obviously didn’t apply the same rules to everyone else as she applied to her own people, the Jews. She was, in short, a hypocrite. But not just that – she was a Jewish hypocrite. And that’s a big step for a brainwashed White to take: not just thinking in a negative way about a Jew, but thinking in a negative way about a Jew because of her Jewishness.
After that, I slowly started to see the world in a different way. Or to be more precise: I started to see the world. I started to see what had always been there: the massive over-representation of Jews in politics and the media. And I started to notice that a lot of those Jews – like Rabbi Julia Neuberger, in fact – gave me the creeps. There was something slimy and oily and flesh-crawling about them. And it wasn’t just me, either: other Gentiles seemed to feel it too.
Politicians often attract nicknames based on some outstanding aspect of their character or behavior. Margaret Thatcher was “The Iron Lady”. Ronald Reagan was “Teflon Ron”. Bill Clinton was “Slick Willy”. But these are Gentile politicians and their nicknames are at least half-affectionate. Jewish politicians seem to attract a different kind of nickname. In Britain, Gerald Kaufman, bald, homosexual Member of Parliament for Manchester Gorton, is nicknamed “Hannibal Lecter”. Peter Mandelson, now Britain’s Euro-Commissioner and Tony Blair’s suspected former lover, is “The Prince of Darkness”. Michael Howard (né Hecht), the leader of the British Conservative Party, is “Dracula”.
When I noticed this kind of thing, I started to ask questions. What was going on here? Why did Jews attract nicknames like that? And why had Gentiles reacted to them like that not just now, but a long way into the past? Shakesp
Not really.
July the 4th
In the year that has passed, I haven’t seen cause to change my mind about anything I said last year. I’m still not proud to be an American.
I am a secessionist. I want to “opt out” of the alien society surrounding me.
Here are a few reasons why:
1.) Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States.
2.) Eric Holder is Attorney General.
3.) Sonia Sotomayor, the “Wise Latina,” now disgraces the Supreme Court.
4.) Elena Kagan, a lesbian Jewess from New York, will soon be appointed to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor and Kagan will join the ridiculous Ruth Bader Ginsberg in having the authority to “interpret” the Constitution.
5.) The Obama administration refuses to secure our borders and protect the states from invasion.
6.) The Obama administration is suing Arizona for having the audacity to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
7.) The ACLU is suing Fremont, Nebraska to block the anti-illegal immigration ordinance that was recently adopted there.
8.) The Obama administration ignored the Nashville Flood.
9.) The Obama administration is allowing the Gulf Oil Spill to destroy coastal Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
10.) Barack Hussein Obama and House and Senate Democrats denounced Arizona in solidarity with Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico.
Any of those reasons could be cited as causes that justify secession from the United States. A few trivial taxes on tea and stamps sparked the American Revolution. If you are not convinced your state should secede by now, allow me to entertain you further, dear reader
11.) American culture is filthy, rotten, and degenerate. The virtues and vices have traded places; vicious behavior is rewarded and lauded in the media, virtuous behavior is denounced as nativism, racism, xenophobia, heterocentricity, sexism and so forth.
12.) America is ideologically bankrupt: we are promised “freedom,” but we don’t have the “freedom” to create exclusive businesses and associations; we are promised “equality,” but we face discrimination in employment and public accomodations because we are White; we are promised “tolerance,” but are the subject of ritual denigration by public officials; we are promised democracy, but when we pass laws unelected judges strike them down.
13.) In America, Whites are denied a positive racial identity. We are discriminated against for daring to defend our interests. In contrasts, Jews, Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians get massive subsidies from government and corporations to promote racial and ethnic chauvinism.
14.) Whites are demonized by our cultural elites in every conceivable way. Non-Whites are romanticized and glorified.
15.) Whites have to put up with outrageous levels of violent crime that our ancestors would never have tolerated.
16.) Whites are forced to participate in integration and multiracialism. Every business is integrated by law. There isn’t a single public place in all of America reserved exclusively to us.
17.) Whites are forced to hire incompetent non-Whites.
18.) The wealth of Whites is transferred and redistributed to non-Whites through various government programs.
19.) White children are forced to subsidize and attend government schools with the “progressive” social engineering that comes along with that.
20.) Whites are sent to their death to fight in foreign wars for a regime that despises us and yearns to displace us in our own country.
Did I mention that the only reason that we are “Americans” in the first place is because the Confederacy was conquered by the U.S. Army? The South has been a vassal province of the United States for 145 years.
What does America have to offer us? Nothing at all. In America, we are a degraded and stigmatized for daring to defend our interests and entertain a positive identity,
"There is a difference between morality and legality. Learn it."
The difference being, it's the legality that counts.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Explain in detail how copyright is immoral, including references and examples.
Otherwise, your post is irrelevant.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I never said it wasn't. Just that it's an absurd price and that I don't feel sorry for a person charging 50+ times the actual value of the product if people pirate it instead.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Let's say the record producer asks your son if he likes the idea of making some money by selling the CD to his friends. Sure, it beats running a lemonade stand. The producer asks your son to give back $2 for every copy he sells, but he can sell it at any price he wants (the producer suggests $5). So your son starts making some money. And then one day, he notices that his friend is giving free copies to other friends, and your son stops making any more money. Knowing your son is the only person allowed to sell copies around the neighborhood, wouldn't you and your son get upset at that friend?
Human greed is only obvious when you turn it around against you.
I once had a signature.
How in the world can you make that claim?
that's how!
Jackson Browne?
Thank you for snipping out a context-breaking fragment, instead of understanding the full sentence. Classy.
All rights are just ideals, opinions, and moral stances. Only when either the government or unwavering social pressure enforces them can these ideals regulate society.
You are not the one who makes the decision how a creator of a work should distribute that work, unless YOU created that work. Take GPL-ed software. That's IP, if you want it or not. Why? Because that's what the law says.
If I take a GPL-ed piece of software and embed it in my proprietary piece of software and sell it, slashdot and the rest of the open source world would be up in arms, like they have been in the past. That's exactly the same thing as what this composer did.
I.o.w.: it's exactly the same as with the GPL: a work created by a person has distribution rights, and the owner of the work decides which ones, no-one else. Don't like it? Don't use the work. It's that simple. Same with GPL-ed software.
Furthermore, this isn't about some RIAA douchebag bullying some teen. This is about some composer who rightfully wants freeloaders to pay for his work, the same as what a software engineer who wrote a piece of GPL licensed code wants: s/he licensed it as gpl-ed code so users of it in other pieces of code have to follow the rules: it's not their code, they have to follow the rules what the OWNER of the code has stated.
The 'brenna' person is really not that bright. The claim that people can't afford expensive sheet music and really need it because they otherwise will never have a chance in the profession they've chosen is utterly lame. Not only does the composer show that the sheetmusic costs 4$ (which is on par with a starbucks latte in some cities) but what does this brenna person tell the cashier at the local grocery store? "Please give me this food for free, I can't otherwise make a living in this tough profession"? I don't think so.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.