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Pirate Party's North American Debut
adonoman writes "A 25-year-old Winnipeg businessman is the first Pirate Party of Canada candidate to run for federal election. At the same time, the US and UK pirate parties have put out an open letter to Anonymous requesting that they cease Operation Payback's DDOS attacks and focus on taking a legal route to fix intellectual property law."
pissing off one's oppressors is a good thing in itself.
How is that a good thing? If you mean oppressors in a figurative manner, making someone angry doesn't make you more right, and often it causes your side to lose support. If you mean literal oppressors, then pissing them off usually just ends up causing greater oppression. Anonymous and the Pirate Party are fighting a law. Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Legal means have been exhausted
Unless and until a dictatorship is in place, there is always a legal means: getting elected and changing the copyright laws.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That, right there, is the attitude of a WINNER.
If by "legal means" you are saying millions in campaign contributions then legal means have not been exhausted. Maybe if the RIAA/MPAA ceased donations they could stop claiming lost sales?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Here in America, we have politicians that tell us to grin and bear the gloved hand of tyranny up our metaphorical rectums. This past week has been a tumultuous time for our country with millions upon millions angry, demanding the end to the usurpation of our human rights. These calls have fallen on deaf ears.
Canada, the great untamed frontier, still seems to have politicians who put people over policy. What a topsy-turvy world we live in that we Americans finally look northward for leadership!
Maybe it's time we held our own Boxing Day.
And with attitudes like this (or, even worse, the Stallmaneque version, where trying to get paid for your work is somehow morally repugnant), it's no wonder that the vast majority of people will continue to ignore you.
Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
Of course they are.
Quite effectively, too.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I think what it means is that it makes you feel good.
It's simply playground logic that's being addresses here. So and so pissed you off, so you want to club him or rat to the teacher to get them to club him.
pissing off one's oppressors is a good thing in itself.
So if you're getting beat up by a cop with a nightstick, the best thing to do is scream at him "YOU CALL THAT A SWING? WHAT KIND OF PANSY ARE YOU?" ??
Canada isn't decided really. If anything even our conservative gov isn't anti-piracy. The libs would probably put something more concrete in place that was pro-piracy even.
Why do we need to allow Flash to read the letter? It's a letter ffs, it should be in text or html format.
Given the choice between that and "Please sir, may I have another?", yes.
Note that I'm referring to pissing off one's oppressors as a _moral_ good. As a practical matter, kneeling at the zipper is safer.
Anonymous and the Pirate Party are fighting a law. Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
Actually, in my view, the Pirate Party should not have so much as made mention of what Anon is doing. By writing the open letter, they might be taking a bit of a moral ground, but at the same time, they are associating themselves with that sort of behavior.
Do I think what Anon is doing is "right"? Nope.
Do I think that they should keep doing it? Absolutely.
I think at some point it is up to everyone to take a moral stand and make their view heard. If the person you are speaking to has their hands on their ears and is yelling "LA LA LA" sometimes, in my books, it is okay to give em a slap to the face to snap them out of it.
There is nothing wrong at all with fighting a fight on multiple fronts. Have one side of the fence, in this case the Pirate Party doing all it can through legal means. At the same time, another group, here it is Anon, goes on an all out offensive fighting a running battle of harassment and annoyances.
In this case, it seems that they both have a common enemy. They are both trying to fight a law. I don't think that taking the moral high ground while forgetting that the Enemy of your Enemy is your friend is a good plan - unless of course you know whatever you say won't be listened to anyhow, then it just becomes politics.
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Except the cats are the ones who are extra unruly, and possibly feral. Getting anonymous to collectively do anything is near impossible without actual results. You want them to stop? Get a law written with support from other politicians that fixes all of this. Then again, because that will literally never happen, you will never get them to stop their attacks. The heart of the problem is capitalism itself, and socialism still has a lot in common with capitalism. Even if this is all accomplished in Canada, it won't stop American anonymous, so I guess the only way to get them to do this is fix copyright law in Canada (fat chance) then use NAFTA and other trade agreements to somehow use Canada's IPs (do they have any) to get American law to change to something more reasonable (snowball's chance in hell) and then somehow make the RIAA and MPAA less bastardly (completely impossible).
There is no -1 Disagree.
If you want to reduce it to playground logic, "so and so" beats you up for your pocket change. The teachers take his side. He's been taking more and more of late. You have a chance to throw sand in his face. Do you take it? He'll still take your pocket change, so it won't improve your situation any.
Telling the teacher or clubbing him won't stop him from pissing you off either. what it does is make you feel good/better if not only for a short period of time.
Yea, it make you feel better when you are trapped and nothing you can do will change the situation so you do what little you can for payback. That's what I'm saying.
I think a better analogy would be:
If you see someone getting beat up by a cop with a nightstick, gather a fairly large group of people and make sure everyone deserves to be beaten up by that cop until he cannot provide anymore.
No, they're not stealing your property.
And no, pointing out the fact that copyright infringement isn't theft does not mean that I'm a pirate or that I endorse piracy.
And yes, that IS what you were going to claim.
O:P have replied to the Pirate Parties (link to pdf on their website), and basically told them to F off.
Unless and until a dictatorship is in place, there is always a legal means: getting elected and changing the copyright laws.
The thing is, can one or a handful of elected people make a change? In the States, Libertarian candidates actually get elected every once in a while, but I'm afraid nothing has changed.
But if one has quite a bit of money, it's amazing how the system just bends to your will.
The big corporate machines with all the cash will never allow anyone to change IP law.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
How am I oppressing you by holding title to software I write?
Only when you can get positive media coverage out of it. Public sympathy is important.
"...there is always a legal means: getting very wealthy and changing the copyright laws."
FFY
I dunno... it sounds.... haaaaard!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yea, sure, Anonymous is stealing your ebooks instead of pirating video games.
capitalism: if it can be done cheaper, it will be.
piracy: if it can be done free, it will be.
what's the major difference, really. "piracy" is just a consequence of having a worldwide near instant distribution network and the ability to make infinite perfect copies of a product.
technology has allowed this, and there's no way in hell it can be stopped. distributors need to come up with something that is just as if not more convenient than getting the product for free. until they drop their prices and up their quality, that's not going to happen.
disclaimer: i work for a major film distributor.
Do I think what Anon is doing is "right"? Nope.
Do I think that they should keep doing it? Absolutely.
Sounds like you don't actually understand what the words "wrong" and "right" mean. Either that or you're some sort of sociopath.
Given Mr. Coleman's limited budget, to save save money, he only used a single campaign sign and posted it on the web. It's an interesting take on IP rights, given that the used another sign to create his.
Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
Of course they are.
Quite effectively, too.
I actually have mod points at the moment, but instead of modding parent up, I want to reply in agreement.
I couldn't agree more. I'm sure Rosa Parks would as well.
I live in Britain and frankly, I feel disgusting at the way that ordinary people have been increasingly criminalised in recent years. Particularly since Blair, legislation has been more and more as a means of control. This is not a thought, it's a fact. Look at the statistics for the number of new pieces of legislation that came in under his tenure. I really don't like the way this country is going at the moment.
Now, I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of piracy, but I will say this one thing. The world is changing. Record companies still desperately cling onto the old models, and it make me laugh at their blinkeredness. When music copying is so mainstream that any kid with a PC can copy a CD, it starts to become clear to everyone bar the music companies and the governments they lobby that one way or another, things need to change. Just in case some of those people are reading, I will give you a few clues to get you started: how much is a track worth to a buyer? What percentage of that does the artist receive? How much of that SHOULD the artist receive? How much would the buyer pay if he/she felt the artist would receive FAIR royalties?
You made a lot of money for many years, give artists a fair deal, reduce your ridiculous profits and you MIGHT survive, record companies. Otherwise, I hope every single artist out there makes a website selling their MP3s and every single record company goes totally fucking bust.
Pirates create junk media for the honest people.
Wha?
If you disagree, please post your Credit Card and Bank numbers
with security codes.
Disagree with WHAT?
It is just electrons for all to see.
I knew you would not. Pirates are hypocrites.
WTF? Were you stoned when you wrote that comment?
Or the end justifies the means.
one should equate it to the masses in front of the guillotine back in 18th century. it is not wise, to keep ignoring their will, despite they having started to openly express it and become aggressive over it. last batch to do that, had their heads in a bucket.
Read radical news here
You went pee-pee in the washroom, and then you flushed, and your pee went into the water supply, and one of the H20 molecules in that pee eventually ended up inside a glass of water which I poured out of the tap. I'm sorry for taking something that you didn't give me. Who shall I make the cheque out to?
I think what it means is that it makes you feel good.
There is that but there is also the fact that if it makes your oppressors even more oppressive then they are likely to irritate even more people. This will improve your support and give your arguments even more weight.
An important step has already been taken in that direction in Canada: Access Canada, the body which licenses Universities to use copyrighted material, has raised its fees by almost a factor of three and also added additional, more restrictive terms. The result is that all the major Canadian universities have opted not to renew the licence. I now foresee a huge backlash amongst faculty and students as access to material will now either become far more restricted or expensive. Give it enough years and enough students should have been affected that there will be some change.
Nice description, it fits RIAA quite well...
let me see. i have qualified in first 500 out of 1.5 million youth who took the national university entrance exam in my country during my generation (a very hard exam that people prepare for 3 years, like tokyo u entrance exams), i have entered a university that is in the first in my nation, and have been sending graduates to teach in schools like MIT (yeah the one in usa) for a long time. (actually my professor was flying to mit to give lessons, and flying back, while teaching us), i have quit college, not wanting to go on with a career, and out of nowhere, with nothing, i have learned coding/programming/databases and established myself as a professional in the field for 5 years now, with clients from all over the world.
during this time, i havent engaged in any illegal activity. havent been involved with the underground world, hacks, cracks, phreaks, and all that goes about it, despite i had ample opportunities, like any tech-savvy i.t. person that lives today.
but rip my freedoms off that way, and you will push a lot of people like me, to underground, with a cause. and, i assure you, pushing that many smart people that way, is not a good thing.
just saying.
Read radical news here
I dislike the idea of pirating simply because it can potentially take away earnings from the developers and possibly even cost the studio to release feature-less games if they got hit hard the first time around. However, numbers show that loyal gamers (for example) will pay full-price for a game and making $350million on the first day of selling Black Ops, I can say that the studio got more in return just from day 1 alone, and they expect to break $500mil with ease with just this one game. When I buy games on my 360, PS3, or PC, I tend to get addicted to the online features that you get (mostly achievements) when available, and these are the kind of things that properly programmed games won't be able to offer for pirated copies unless there's a underground server hosting it. Currently there is no proof that in the gaming industry at the very least, that people who pirate would have purchased the game if pirating wouldn't be an option. Rather, they would probably in my assumption buy a used game at Gamestop which is about on par with pirating if you think about it. When you buy a used game, the developers don't get royalties, so pirating is roughly the same as buying a used game or borrowing a game from someone in those terms. However, the gaming industry is doing a killing and the A++ titles are often making more money than blockbuster movies now. I will cut my post short from talking about movies, music and stuff but I just want to say that if they want to fight against piracy, they should offer A) service for free like on hulu for those who don't want to pay and B) lowered price in DVD and Bluray titles like $2 for DVD $4 for HD. That would be a great start :)
Let's say you draw a circle inside a square. I look at your drawing, and then I draw a circle inside a square as well. You pretend I've taken your idea and it wasn't mine in the first place. I reply that you've taken my freedom to come up with this idea in the first place and this freedom wasn't yours. You called me a pirate, I call you a pirate too. You say that act was theft? I am saying you've thieved first.
Do you actually speak English, or are you just running this stuff through google translate?
FYI, "copyright" doesn't mean what you apparently think it means.
The media has a deep invested interest in the preservation of copyright as most of their business models revolve around it, be it in print, TV, radio or online. It's not about left wing or right wing, they're pretty much all pro-copyright mouthpieces. I think trying to win sympathizers, that is non-participants that still sympathize will not get you anywhere. It's about recruiting participants and making them aware how many of the people around them do it too. Raise the "status" of being a file sharer to something you openly admit to the people around you. The potential is huge, in Sweden it's up to 20% of the population now and roughly 50% in males 16-25. 20% of 300 million Americans is 60 million.
To take one example - and I'm not comparing copyright to Gandhi's fight here - Gandhi broke the salt law simply by telling everyone to make salt. The British arrested over 60,000 people in one month. ONE month. Every jail they had ran full and yet they still kept doing it and trading it, there was no end and no victory in sight. That's how copyright will fall too, through the sheer mass of people, not a few demonstrators doing it as a provocation but many doing it for themselves. Granted they did get public sympathy, but that was not the force that led to victory. There's a whole different power in mass civil disobedience than in just civil disobedience.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're just semantically misguided. The fact is, if you have something that belongs to me and you didn't pay me for it then either I gave it to you for free or you stole it.
Woah - now YOU sound semantically misguided.
If someone steals from you and gives it to me - I did not steal from you.
Riiiiight. Unfortunately, the most likely truth of the matter is that practically no one has heard of you, and anyone who has downloaded your content because of curiosity is simply similar to someone cracking open your book inside a bookstore. And if you had a magic button which, when pressed, made your content unavailable except for pay, no one would pay you out of curiosity, they would find something else which seemed more interesting, instead.
And actually, you're being granted the right to rent our "property" back to us, society, for a limited (if currently ridiculously long) period. Because we understand you have to eat.
Post child porn or bank account numbers online and let us see capitalism in action. Instead, piracy is a legal & economic issue, not a technical one. It is not a geek issue.
The quality of movies will rise again when Pirate websites are shut down and website owners are sued and lose their homes. Movie theaters should post Pirate's personal financial information for the whole world to see. It's an eye for an eye.
Why is a Movie corporation's product NOT protected but a Pirate's personal product, bank info, IS protected?? The legal side is just slowly catching up.
Why do Pirates have copyright protection but a large Movie corporation has no protection??
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Let me guess.
The bully is giving the teacher a cut of the money he takes from you.
And seriously, the real world isn't much different from the playground. What starts out as bullies testing their muscles escalates to companies flexing their legal strength, and countries proving their military might.
The entire world is about power and who has the most of it. When people are "looking out for number one", power is the only thing that actually works.
Throwing sand in someone's face could quickly get you detention/trade sanctions, but if that's all you have, may as well use it if you're going to be raped anyway.
You don't own what you create. Nothing you've ever created was entirely novel to begin with, from the words to the structure. It all existed before you. Wanting to benefit from what you create is understandable, insofar as the capitalistic system forces you to derive personal benefit from monetization (restriction) of your creation for your own survival. That doesn't make it right.
just google it. i hate to break your love for canadian 'freedom' but, it ain't that free.
Finally, someone nails exactly why the status quo isn't going to change.
Not to mention that the big corporate machines get that cash in the first place by exploiting legal loopholes that already do exist.
Or the end justifies the means.
Bingo.
Often times you have to do what is wrong for the greater good. Please allow a simple example about war - something we can all pretty much say is "bad" and "wrong":
Is war okay?
What if that country is talking about attacking your country?
What if that other country attacked your country in the past?
What if the country happens to be developing a dangerous technology that it might or might not use against your country in the future?
What if the country is doing horrible things to it's own people that you disagree with?
What if groups within that country are attacking you?
Or how about if they support someone else who is attacking you?
What about when they invade you?
War is wrong and bad, but at some point in that list, most people will say it is okay, because at that point the end justified the means. The end often justifies the means. If you think otherwise you are either very young, naive or have rose colored glasses on most of the time.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Piracy is illegal. Period. Whether or not they actually condone such actions is wholly superfluous to the fact that by having that term in their name, they implicitly (and strongly) associate themselves with the advocation of illegal activities. Again, whether they mean to do this is quite irrelevant. They must change their name before they have even the slightest *hope* of being taken seriously in Canada. Otherwise it's just the rhino party all over again, as far as most people will be concerned.
If they want to get any real votes, let alone seats in parliament, then they need to change their name to something respectable. If they aren't willing to, it just ends up looking like they just want attention.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
lol they will never stop lol if the Pirate Party doesnt get the rules then we are all doomed.
3. We are Anonymous
4. Anonymous is legion
5. Anonymous never forgives
When you mix that with anon and legion doing most things for the lulz.....
Very disappointed in the Pirate Party. If they were winning seats in elections, successfully introducing legslation into parliaments, and making headway in making reforms relecting their policies, then I would understand their calls for Anon to stand down. However, I cannot see what platform upon which they have built their moral authority.
They can distance themselves from illegal actions, other than the illegal actions that *they* have decided should not be illegal, but maybe they should concentrate on changing the system from within in the way they wish rather than ordering the cessation of the civil disobedience actions of Anon. They know perfectly well Anon doesn't care what anybody else thinks and such pointless political grandstanding is a little unpleasant.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
capitalism: if it can be done cheaper, it will be.
piracy: if it can be done free, it will be.
what's the major difference, really. "piracy" is just a consequence of having a worldwide near instant distribution network and the ability to make infinite perfect copies of a product.
technology has allowed this, and there's no way in hell it can be stopped. distributors need to come up with something that is just as if not more convenient than getting the product for free. until they drop their prices and up their quality, that's not going to happen.
disclaimer: i work for a major film distributor.
Bullshit. I subscribe to "The Movie Network" with my cable provider and am also paying for my Netflix.ca account. I can download a lot of that stuff for free, but I am still choosing to pay; TMN gives me fairly recent movies that I can watch using the included On-Demand service and Netflix for a bunch of the older stuff (I just restarted watching the tv show Heroes from Season One). I don't have a full HDTV setup yet, so can't comment on the HD experience using those services.
You do have a point that distributors need to come up with something fairly quickly - Netflix works well and you can use a PS3/Wii to watch on your TV.
Piracy did a great thing for the world: accelerate distribution times. For instance SWEp1:The Phantom Menace was released May 19 1999 in USA/Canada, but people in some major E.U. markets had to wait until late September-Mid October to go an see it. By time time SWEp3:RotS was released, this was back to within 2 weeks!
Pirate parties do great work to get "our" rights back, e.g. if I buy a CD, I want to be able to rip it, convert to mp3/aac/flac, and put that on my portable player. This is a right that people have had for a long time. Ouch. What can we do. I know! Let's invent some silly form of "copy protection" on the CD. And THEN we make it illegal to bypass that. Woohoo! Problem of allowed-copy solved by disallow-bypass.
Pirate parties can also do great work with the "settlement letters' racketeering scheme.
Copyright and privacy are two different things. I don't advocate piracy, but even I see a difference between wanting to share what has already been published from wanting to share something confidential.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
noone ignored the masses since french revolution. they always paid them attention. they rarely gave them what they wanted, but, they never ignored masses, for they knew that how it would end, if they did.
Read radical news here
An impossibility in itself, the media are the ones pushing for the laws, of course it will always be reported as a negative act.
Copyright is also confidential. It is limited access determined by the originator. Likewise Credit Card numbers are confidential.
Music songs and Credit Card numbers are both copyright protected. Credit Card numbers have legal force of law. Music should but does not.
Piracy has been around for 1000s of years. No problem, as long as worst offenders are controlled, such as, closing down music copy websites. The law is just taking time to catch up. When it does, the quality of music will be better instead of junk quality caused by current MP3 pirates.
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Anonymous’ spokesperson...
I'm sorry, who?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
You are confusing being a loser with being a pragmatist.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
one should equate it to the masses in front of the guillotine back in 18th century. it is not wise, to keep ignoring their will, despite they having started to openly express it and become aggressive over it. last batch to do that, had their heads in a bucket.
21% of peak Internet traffic in North America is a Netflix stream.
YouTube Video 10% Flash Video 6%. Everything BitTorrent, 10%. Video's Expanding Bandwidth, and What It Means for Internet Traffic [Nov 19]
Netflix reached those numbers with only a bare 2% of it's 15 million paying subscribers streaming video.
300,000.
That would put the number of prime time video pirates at less than 30,000.
Jamie Thomas took her case before three civil juries. Each one of which handed her head back to her on a plate.
It seems that nothing pisses off the masses quite like the geek's sense of entitlement.
I hate when people bring up Rosa Parks (and linking to her, no less.. as if you are bestowing upon us some fact nobody is in the slightest bit aware of) in regards to copyright laws.
Rosa was not breaking any law by refusing to give up her seat. In fact, the law was on her side, as recent case law had sided with others in her position. She was merely violating bus company rules. Not that her stance wasn't important, but please.. don't equate disobeying a bus driver with breaking federal law that can land you in federal prison.
Where the hell is bad analogy man when you need him?
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Laws being repealed are just the tip of the iceberg
Not to get all godwin or anything, but i'm sure Nazi's thought the ends justified the means as well. The problem is, very few people can honestly say that without being self-serving.
In most cases, there are better, and more legal ways to achieve the end. The end only justifies the means when there is absolutely no other way to achive "the greater good". And, in the case of Operation Payback, i do not believe for one second that there isn't any other way. Even the name is a very important clue as to the motivation... "Payback".. aka "Vengence". In other words, a very greedy, self-serving, and selfish way to deal with the problem.
Anonymous's major problem is that it feels it is justified in deciding what's right and wrong. They feel they can impose their beliefs on others. And they feel completely justified in doing illegal things to get their way. If this wasn't the only such incident, it might be chalked up to poor judgement, but it seems that "vengence" is the only thing Anonymous wants to do. Even the choice of "V for Vendetta" masks shows that they're more in love with the wrath bringing than solving the problem.
While I too think Scientology is a sham, i also don't believe it's my place to pass judgement over anyones religious beliefs. Doing so is a very slippery slope. Again, Nazi's though Judaism was some kind of cult and evil.. where do you draw the line? I am seriously expecting an Anonymous member to blow up someones car soon. I hope i'm wrong.
Violence begets more violence. And many people get a rush from doing the things they do (even been to an Anonymous rally? They're having a ton of fun at someone elses expense).
Radical behavior is a last resort. It's not like someone is imprisoning anyone for file sharing, but Anonymous seems to be acting like it's a life or death situation.
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If the end justifies the means, and the end is right, then the means are right.
If an action is "wrong" or "not right" that means you shouldn't do it. If it's "right" then that you are permitted to do it, or in some cases should do it. To say that some action is "not right" but that one "should keep doing it" is a contradiction.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The Nazis ends were evil as well as their means.
Every moral entity decides what's right and wrong. There's no way around it; if there is an objective morality, it's not directly accessible. You can delegate your decision making to some authority, and claim that following the dictates of authority is right while violating it is wrong, but that's making a moral choice as well.
People HAVE been imprisoned for violating the DMCA.
And that "last resort" became the only remaining one somewhere around the time of Eldred v. Ashcroft and Grokster.
Wow, you have a very narrow field of focus. I can think of many other possible ways something you consider to be yours came into my possesion without my having stolen it from you.
1) You dropped it, and I found it.
2) Someone else took it from you, and I found it.
3) I was awarded it as a judgement against you
etc.. etc.. etc..
There is a reason it's legally called "infringement" and not "theft". Copyright infringement is more akin to trespassing, in that as a land owner you have the right to say who can and can't use your property. But, just because i walked on your grass doesn't mean I stole your property from you.
Theft is depriving someone of property, which copyright infringement doesn't do. It violates your right to control who can make copies of the material, a right you can grant to someone else for a fee... just like You can charge someone rent to use your property, or to use it for hunting or whatever.
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Not to get all...
While I do agree with some of your points totally, I am less convinced by others. And this isn't having a go at you at all. You might even convince me :)
Anonymous's major problem is that it feels it is justified in deciding what's right and wrong. They feel they can impose their beliefs on others.
How is that different to **AA imposing their beliefs on others - and not only that, but buying enough lobbies to make it law? They now don't even have to fully impose their beliefs - the law system does it for them?
While I too think Scientology is a sham, i also don't believe it's my place to pass judgement over anyones religious beliefs. Doing so is a very slippery slope.
I too think it is all a sham, actually I think it is nothing more than a "networking religion" at best for the top few folks in there. But they don't try to impose their rules on me. I honestly wouldn't care if they told their members to run around in small circles until they passed out on a nightly basis - until they try to force me into it.
Radical behavior is a last resort. It's not like someone is imprisoning anyone for file sharing, but Anonymous seems to be acting like it's a life or death situation.
Try telling that to the cases where people have been fined/sued for upwards of a million dollars for sharing a few mp3s. Try spending a year in litigation and then paying the lawyers without calling it "life changing". I know that if I had a choice of handing over a million dollars I don't have, or spending a few nights in prison, I would choose a few nights in prison.
Violence begets more violence. And many people get a rush from doing the things they do...
You can look at it that way, but I think that Anon here is actually looking at it in that exact way - except they don't see themselves as being the instigators. They see it as "Payback" for all the crap that has been allowed to happen so far.
When I was little, I was always taught to stand up to bullies. Here, I see a lot of "big money" and "big corporation" as being the bully here - and I WILL stand up.
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For example, "Black" was pejorative. The accepted term at the time was "Negro", which has turned around and become a pejorative. Similarly, "queer" was also an insult, and it became the name of a movement.
If you unfairly treat X to the point where X has a higher moral claim then you do, then eventually X becomes a compliment.
When "pirates" were copying floppies and the industry was simply saying "don't do that", the industry seemed to have the moral high ground. In those days, I was on the side of the industry. When they started laying six figure judgements on students, they lost me. I'd be proud to call myself a pirate now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People have been *wrongly* held for violating the DMCA. Dmitry and Elcomsoft were Acquitted of any wrongdoing.
I don't like the DMCA either, but the blame for that situation was with the FBI, not the DMCA (although certainly it gave them a reason to wrongly hold him).
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If the end justifies the means, and the end is right, then the means are right..
In other words, to justify the draconian drug laws the CIA should supply illegal drugs to Americans. To insist on martial law on our southern borders, supplying the Mexican cartels with drugs, guns and money to hold Americans, in America, hostage to governmental fear tactics and false flag tactics doesn't justify anything. Machiavelli was wrong.
If an action is "wrong" or "not right" that means you shouldn't do it. If it's "right" then that you are permitted to do it, or in some cases should do it. To say that some action is "not right" but that one "should keep doing it" is a contradiction.
Greed is not right. Control is not right. Justifying the means by justifying the ends is a circular argument. The only right is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Anything else is just diversionary.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
The difference between Anonymous and The **AA's is that the **AA's (mostly) work within the framework of the law. Anonymous works almost entirely outside the law.
Yes, there have been times the **AA's have done something shady, but then they should be held liable for that in court. (and in most cases, they have been).
There's a difference between standing up to a bully in a legal manner, and doing illegal activities to get back at the bully.
What's more, the advice to stand up to bullies has lead to incidents such as Columbine. It's all too easy to feel that you are a victim and the only way out is to destroy everyone around you.
Also, the advice to stand up to bullies is based on the theory that bullies will go pick on someone else that is an easier target. The **AA's aren't going anywhere, and ther are no easier targets. They are also protecting their own rights, and therefore will dig in just as much as Anonymous will. It's a case of Mutually assurred destruction.
And yes, people have been sued for millions of dollars, but nobody is ever going to pay that.. In most cases, they will simply file bankruptcy and be done with it. It's *NOT* a life threatening situation.
Anonymous is a problem because it believes itself to be the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. It has no oversight, and there are no checks and balances. It can, and will, do whatever it wants.. and that is a recipe for terrorism.
At least terrorists have the excuse that they've been brainwashed. What's anonymous's excuse?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
No. I'm stoned _now_ and I can't make hide nor hair of it.
Advice to stand up to bullies might have resulted in Columbine (no idea about the specifics of that) - but I am sure that it has also resulted in a countless number of GOOD THINGS.
As for being sued for millions of dollars not being a life changing event? "Just declare bankruptcy?" Are you kidding? So, you lose your house, your car, your entertainment system, computers and anything else lying around the house that someone can sell for a few dollars to "recoup debts owed"? Seriously, how is that not life changing? Does it kill you directly, no, but I am sure that it would bring about depression, anxiety and certainly ostracize you from many friends.
Anonymous is a problem because it believes itself to be the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. It has no oversight, and there are no checks and balances. It can, and will, do whatever it wants.. and that is a recipe for terrorism.
That's not too different from the **AA's thinking they are Judge, Jury and Executioner now is it? It just has some money to spend on a lobby group.
Yes, terrorists are brain-washed. Anonymous seems to be fighting here to try to un-brainwash folks that think it is okay for companies/entities to get away with the sorts of behavior that they have been allowed to get away with.
I don't support their methods, but I also won't denounce what they are doing. Firefighters often have to start a small fire to put out a bigger one.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
but now you're in possession of stolen goods, which is illegal pretty much everywhere and has penalties associated with it
If the end justifies the means, and the end is right, then the means are right.
Really?
You have a choice to either do nothing, or do evil. But that evil will prevent a greater evil, are you then "right" or "wrong"? Imagine it's right before D-day and you have a captured Nazi officer that has detailed knowledge of the German troops and defenses. Breaking him will save many Allied and civilian lives and end the war sooner, but he's an ideological hardliner and won't talk willingly. Would it be right to torture him? I don't think there's any school of ethics that's ever considered torture to be "right". And for all the good it'll do for the war, that person will be far worse off tortured than in a friendly POW-camp so there's no win-win situation here.
To say that some action is "not right" but that one "should keep doing it" is a contradiction.
Yes. The real world doesn't work on boolean logic so the results are as flawed as the model.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Civil disobedience is generally regarded as breaking the unjust law.
To fight the unjust laws supporting the RIAA etc, would require flagrant breaking of the copyright laws and hoping for support when unfairly punished.
A DDoS could be equated to a protest, but it could also be regarded as an act of aggression against a company.
As for Rosa Parks she refused to follow the rule that was not fair, she did not then go and block others from using the bus, or wasting the bus companies resources (both of which an effective DDoS do). It eventually lead to a bus boycott, not a bus denial of service.
Tree sitting tree huggers are causing a denial of service, but again it is public, it is open, and it is against an act, not a company.
I think the key difference is that civil disobedience involves acting in the open, to high-lite injustice and suffer the consequences to make a point (Rosa Parks didn't hid, Gandhi didn't hide, tree sitters don't hide, acknowledgement and recognition, and suffering the consequences are how they succeed, or hope to at least.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
you've completely missed my argument.
i'm saying that while the means exist to get free, high quality movies, and while the legal route is less convenient than the illegal route, then people will pirate movies.
it's that simple. morals aside, if something's free and easier than the paid route, and often better quality (and more transparent - you can tell what you're getting straight away), then people will use it. not everyone is a crusader, most people just go for convenience.
this has nothing to do with bank details (though when bank details get leaked online, people will download them for sure, and there's a flourishing industry of iTunes account theft in China). you've misunderstood.
my point is that technology has allowed the easy and free dissemination of a world of intellectual property. moaning about it will not "uninvent" the internet - the **AA's and associated groups must stop whining and accept that the world has changed. distribution is becoming digital, and their business models can not survive. they need to adapt. they can't blame the consumer for finding something more convenient, legal or not - it's there, it's easy, and it's not going away. the ball's in the distributor's court and rapidly heading for the baseline.
You are talking about issues of social unacceptability, I am talking about what is actually illegal. The term pirate isn't socially unacceptable (actually, it's arguably quite a trendy term these days, thanks in no small part to some recent Disney films), but it's still the term used to label someone who commits piracy, which is, no matter how cool or trendy pirates might appear in our culture, still against the law.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Movie Network, Netflix et. al. are USA only. there's a whole world out there.
of course things are changing - digital piracy has been around over 10 years, so it makes sense that distributors are getting on top of it. they just haven't moved at the speed of Moore's Law (though if they focused their operations outside the court system they'd have had plenty of time).
however, for the majority of people, viable alternatives to piracy are not available. just because you pay for a service doesn't mean the point is moot. i pay for all my stuff too. that does not negate that the illegal solutions have many advantages over legal ones.
i'm not arguing this because i want to steal movies and i want traditional distribution to die. my livelihood would vanish if that happened!
but it's a real problem that needs solving. the only solution (IMHO) is to make it easier to pay than to steal. simple. remove the reasons to torrent stuff (and there's lots).
Was there a Montgomery bus denial of service in history I am unaware of?
Because in the history I learned nobodies use of the bus was blocked by the protesters, and the bus companies resources weren't wasted by them.
There was public defiance of unjust rules, and then there was later a boycott of the buses, but again, history in school does tend to make stuff up, making it quite possible that actually the protesters tried to make it so others couldn't use the buses in reality. And maybe Rosa Parks was an alias, and actually someone else hiding their identity when breaking the unjust rule.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
make sense, damn you!
the mp3 = credit card number is a fallacy.
my bank details don't get played on the radio, or broadcast on TV in ads and popular crime dramas!
but i'm sure if i were to sing my details to a funky beat and promote the everloving crap out of it, it may get to number 1 on the charts, and then they'd be equivalent. the proceeds would go to my other account. with these proceeds i'd buy drugs. i would share the drugs with my monkey.
you seem to think that copying reduces quality. mp3s are not screen prints, and pirates are not Andy Warhol. for years, the pirated mp3s were much better quality than their iTunes equivalents. in fact, you could get flac or ape and cuesheets and make a perfect copy of the original CD if you wanted. itunes offer lossless now, so they're catching up, but the quality edge has always been with the pirates. indeed one could argue that LAME and x264 (the best implementations of their respective codecs available, commercial or not) came about because of piracy. the demand for good mp3s pre-dates the demand for mp3 players and online music stores.
i'm not making a personal moral judgment on these issues - just saying that you are wrong.
It eventually lead to a bus boycott, not a bus denial of service.
Except one cannot easily boycott the entertainment industry. True, you throw away your radio and your TV and seek out sources of free cultural works on the Internet. But you still have to buy food at a grocery store that plays non-free music over its speaker system, paying the producers of non-free music with part of what you spend on groceries. And the cable company still gives the lowest tier of TV service for no additional charge with Internet service.
Again and again, people on /. just don't get it. Collaborative governance (aka open source governance) is the only way we can realistically overcome political corruption: by simply obsoleting all the politicians.
You mention the Boston tea party of 1773. But as I understand it, that was long before the news media developed its conflict of interest with publishers of fiction. If the modern tea party movement wants to keep its cozy relationship with Fox News Channel, it can't adopt copyright reform policies that would hurt Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, which shares a corporate parent with Fox News Channel.
getting elected and changing the copyright laws.
Anyone who runs for the U.S. Congress on a copyright reform platform will get buried by the major U.S. TV news organizations, all of which share a corporate parent with a major movie studio.
How am I oppressing you by holding title to software I write?
Computer programs are not the only kind of work at issue here. It's easy to avoid reading (and therefore copying) a computer program because computer programs aren't performed publicly as background noise. But once I hear a song on the radio or on the grocery store's speaker system, I am forever barred from writing a song that uses a similar melody. Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music; Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton. So what should I do to make sure that any song I write hasn't been written before?
You refused to post your Credit Account number.
Authentication is much more like a trade secret than like a copyright. Please don't listen to people who claim that copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets should be treated equally just because they're all "intellectual property".
Who's culture and law? As far as I'm aware downloading music for personal use in Canada is perfectly legal and extremely popular in certain age groups. Those certain age groups by the way are going to be the ones running the country soon enough.
"...there is always a legal means: getting very wealthy and changing the copyright laws."
FFY
Or, you could approach the political system from the perspective of a hacker. 70% of people in my riding who aren't the least bit interested in anything remotely similar to "politics so far" is a pretty gaping exploit--give them half a chance to send a real message instead of just picking between talking heads, and they might just hand a regular human being root access to the legislative process.
Sincerely,
Jeff Coleman
Pirate Party of Canada candidate for Winnipeg North
1-204-800-0356
jeff at pirateparty dot ca
Official Twitter: http://twitter.com/PegNorthPirate
Official Facebook: http://fb.me/PegNorthPirate
Official Youtube: http://youtube.ca/PegNorthPirate
It's called the piracy party, not the selective copyright reform party.
The pirate party needs a few good U.S. candidates. And money. And loads of hot women.
Wikileaks Is Democracy
Wait, what? Operation Payback is still going on?
Wow, anon has more staying power than I thought.
Sent from my CR-48
Solving piracy is simple. Authors & owners just release junk copies of ebooks. Who will pirates complain to?? That is why collectivism fails, it has no integrity of content.
Piracy does not create infinite perfect copies. There are a lot of junk copies of media. Since ANYBODY can make a copy, pirate ebooks are corrupted. Where there is no integrity, there is no trust.
Junk copies of ebooks are released all the time. Pirates can never trust their copy is authentic. MD5 is useless. Books are made with altered versions, so the only person who knows the authentic version, is the owner / author or the honest buyer.
Piracy creates junk and wastes peoples time reading junk.
There is no free lunch. That line I read from an authentic book, so I know it is true. lol
If you read pirated ebooks, you cannot trust what is inside your head. Nothing is free.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
Given the choice between that and "Please sir, may I have another?", yes.
Note that I'm referring to pissing off one's oppressors as a _moral_ good. As a practical matter, kneeling at the zipper is safer.
Yeah or you could have just said "If you're getting beat up by a cop with a nightstick, you probably already pissed your oppressors off in which case it may not be in you're best interests to continue as planned."
Questioning authority is the very spirit of America. Otherwise we should never have had a revolution, and never left the British Empire. The revolution was very much illegal. Nor would we have advanced as far in technology and science. We took good ideas from Europe, and made them better. Didn't have to ask any European for permission. Also quite against the rules (their rules), and England did protest, not that it gained them anything.
You ought not to be so blindly obedient. Nor should you talk as if the law is immutable or monolithic. You can do all the copying you want, and, so far as I know, not be in any difficulty with Biblical law, or Sharia, or Roman law. You will not burn in hell for copying some Madonna song.
And, please, way to flog the false dichotomy. There is a whole lot of middle ground between obeying the law and going postal. Anonymous is in no way executing anyone, or terrorizing the public. Anonymous is not threatening to do that, and not claiming to have any such power to do so.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I would call the harassment that Anonymous conducts at physical scientology locations to border on terrorizing people. They taunt, annoy, and scare them, throwing things at them, scaring off potential members, etc.. That's a powerder keg waiting to errupt in something more violent.
My concern is that someone is going to take things too far. I liken Anonymous to the right to lifers that protest abortion clinics. Both think they're right, and that their opinion is the only correct one. But things have gone horribly violent with the latter group.
If you don't like that comparision.. think about it.. There is a lot of similarity.
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Please allow a simple example about war - something we can all pretty much say is "bad" and "wrong":
No, we can't. War isn't inherently wrong - if you start with the assumption that it is, then all your follow-up reasoning is completely irrelevant. As I said, I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "wrong".
Let the DDOSing resume!
DDos These Dirtbags!
Who the spammers are? a bunch of Americas, a bunch of hungarians, a few brits, and RACKSPACE.NET
These guys are causing Slow game creation, full games, screens full of spam!
[ Contacted ]
d2magic.com 76.64.159.117 -> peer1.net -> domains@peer1.net, Vancouver BC abuse@peer1.net ( Nice guys! )
d2qq.com 74.53.235.40 -> theplanet.com -> srsplus.com, Dallas TX
GoGodly.com ->Theplanet.com -> softlayer.com, Dallas TX abuse@softlayer.com
Mydiablo2.com ->theplanet.com "The Brits"
D2loot.com -> properhost.net -> As29550.net -> transfers-auth@names.co.uk, MaidenHead.UK
mulefactory.com 94.125.180.101 -> Comport.hu -> ginger.@tsplab.hu ( Hungary )
THE MAIN PERPS! "The Americans!"
d2papa.com 74.52.9.234 -> Bebop.digitalxero.com ->d2box.com ->wazzhost.org -> domain@wazzhost.com
d2cart.com 96.30.39.108 -> earth.wazzhost.org -> Applevalley, Ca, USA
ALSO:
d2goods.com, d2king.org, d2majors.com, d2trust.com, d2warehouse.com, diabloez.com, rpgstock.com, d2bigs.com, ggsupply.com,
Some contact @ wazup.ro bughy_b@yahoo.com
d2bigs.com -> admin@d2bigs.com
The Dirtbags! "RackSpace.net" Dallas Fort Worth, TX, USA
Wilweaton.net, on RackSpace.net 1-877-934-0409 Call Them
"Therefore, on behalf of the Internet,
I would like to invite all the spammers in the world
to kindly fuck themsleves."
d2site.com 72.32.155.142 ->Rackspace.net -> sebastiann711@yahoo.com
lewt.com -> rackspace.net
d2items.com 73.32.163.244 -> Rackspace.net -> Resolves to d2site.com
Spammers for Blizzard's Battle.net game Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.
A Rackspace.net address. ( i.e. ingame message bots )
Wilweaton.net, on RackSpace.net "Therefore, on behalf of the Internet,
I would like to invite all the spammers in the world to kindly f*ck themsleves"
d2gamesmall.com -> enom.com -> Demandmedia.com
To make my point:
Please add the following text to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 as28278.com
127.0.0.1 as29550.net
127.0.0.1 as41075.com
127.0.0.1 d2bigs.com
127.0.0.1 d2cart.com
127.0.0.1 d2magic.com
127.0.0.1 d2qq.com
127.0.0.1 mulefactory.com
127.0.0.1 d2papa.com
127.0.0.1 d2goods.com
127.0.0.1 d2king.org
127.0.0.1 d2majors.com
127.0.0.1 d2trust.com
127.0.0.1 d2warehouse.com
127.0.0.1 d2site.com
127.0.0.1 d2items.com
127.0.0.1 diabloez.com
127.0.0.1 digitalxero.com
127.0.0.1 ggsupply.com
127.0.0.1 machineword.com
127.0.0.1 rpgstock.com
127.0.0.1 wazzhost.org
This cuts of all access to the spammers!
It sounds nice, but where do you get the party machine from? This is an issue the Dutch PVV has (Geert Wilders). As a small party with a very low income (it has no members because of how it is organized. By comparison, the Socialist Party has millions in income from members) and can't properly vet its people. Since these people haven't been roasted on the traditional decades of party membership, some real whacko's come up and are then exposed.
So you NEED the large party machine and "us knows us" to filter your politicians to have people that do not have to resign the moment they are elected and investigated.
But by needing that large party machine, you become part of the whole ivory tower. Any person thoroughly tested in the political arena becomes a part of it. You then loose the ability to think as a new independent party.
The idea that an indepent can come from outside and get elected is present, but this person will then either have to work with the system or spend all his time fighting it as a loner. If he actually gets more then 1 seat, how is he going to fill this with reliable candidates without falling back on close friends (nepotism) or relative strangers who might be hiding all sorts of things from their past?
Just see the well established parties and their members who suddenly get exposed as tax dodgers or boy lovers (democrats and republicans respectively).
And the press eats these scandals up, because they can't just use their normal "bash left on even days and right on uneven days" on an outsider.
Just getting elected and just changing the law. Not outside a hollywood movie.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If everyone knows Rosa Parks, why are there still people claiming that you can't repeal laws by breaking them?
Okay. You're not necessarily a pirate. You're just semantically misguided.
UK case law rests on his side, not yours. It's not just semantics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_v_Moss
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Whatever happened to the reply from Ask the leader of the British Pirate party questions thread on Slashdot, was there ever and answer?
Puzzle Daze is now my job
Maybe it's time for "V" Link Vigilante to come out of hiding and right the wrongs
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
National Pirate Parties acknowledge that their name is hyperbole. According to the web sites of a couple national Pirate Parties, they have "adopted the very term employed by associations and copyright maximalists, intended to demonise and promote further and more strict criminalisation of file sharing and free culture distribution, and used it to identify ourselves as a means of drawing attention to the fallacious nature of the label." Compare the "Democratic Party" back when "democrat" was a pejorative term for supporters of mob rule. Web sites of national Pirate Parties make it clear that the platform is one of reform.
geeks ? masses ?
do you think that there are millions of geeks in america ? hehehehe.
and do you think the jury had acted along with the will of masses ? hahahaha.
Read radical news here
You oppress me when you convince a government to make use of your software mandatory. For example, Microsoft has convinced some governments to make their tax return software require its Windows operating system.
You oppress me when publishing my own work requires the same device that can be used to break copy controls on works to which you hold titles. Nintendo has attacked makers of devices that run "homebrew", or software developed by individuals for Nintendo platforms, in court systems around the world.
I doubt if dramatic chipmunk, annoying orange, llama song, badger badger, they've taken the hobbits to Isengard, or any similar video has been made popular by the major TV networks.
Works that have become "Internet popular" aren't necessarily known to the electorate. I see people who haven't heard of any of the "Internet popular" videos you mentioned, yet they still vote. They don't see the point of spending $600 for a PC+monitor and $600 per year for home Internet access and learning how to use them when they're satisfied getting their news from newspapers and traditional television. Howard Dean in 2004 and Ron Paul in 2008 tried to run as the so-called Internet candidate, yet their campaigns crashed and burned.
The Movie Network and Netflix are USA-only?
Wikipedia says iTunes has Apple Lossless since version 4.5, so I wouldn't call that "catching up" since that was six years ago.
Or are you saying that something in the iTunes Store is being sold in lossless?
And current copyrights are stealing us of your work. Your works are supposed to be protected for a limited amount of time and then go in the public domain.
For decades, the spirit of copyrights has been abused by corporations all over the world. So now people are abusing copyrights without any moral afterthought.
The legal notion of "stealing" isn't "getting something you didn't pay for" but "depriving someone of physical property". If you are an author, and someone copies your book, you still have your book. Get some of that sand out of your vagina - it's making you cranky.
Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
Of course they are.
Quite effectively, too.
Civil disobedience involves deliberately breaking the law you believe is unjust, no more, no less. Given those parameters, I believe the text you quoted is correct. For example, if you believe current copyright law is unjust and want to exercise civil disobedience you should break copyright law not DDOS a website.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Piracy isn't downloading music for personal use, it's another term for copyright infringement, which is quite definitely illegal in Canada.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Laws are not repealed by going out and breaking more laws.
Of course they are.
Quite effectively, too.
Civil disobedience works for criminal cases, not civil ones.
And an important part of any act of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences.
It's a lot easier to operate within the framework of the law when you built that framework.
Yeah, "simply" file bankruptcy. That is, they'll simply have to lose everything they have and have their credit ruined for 10 years. No reason anyone should object to that, after all, it probably won't kill them.