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Crookes, RIAA, MPAA, ICE — 'Linking Is Publishing'
newtley writes "What do Canada's Wayne Crookes, the Big 4's RIAA, Hollywood's MPAA and brand new ICE agent Andrew Reynolds have in common? They all claim linking is the same as publishing. Crookes is using it to demand Canada's Supreme Court effectively shut down the net in Canada. With the RIAA and MPAA providing the 'initiative,' the Obama government is using Andrews [read ICE — US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to try to shut down innocent sites for, and on behalf of, Hollywood and Big Music. The sites are 'accused of contributing to online piracy, and it was essential for the domain names to be seized without a trial and without giving the sites a chance to respond. Why? Such sites are 'destroying the US economy.' Forget about legally appointed courts, proof or due process. Hollywood and Big Music rule."
Every time measures to stop piracy are stepped up to an even more draconian extent, the pirates feel a little bit less guilty.
I know a lot of pirates. Some of them have now moved on from "I want free stuff" to "I want to collapse the media empire before it enslaves mankind."
Also, First!
Companies which at least attempt to adapt to the changing market seem to be doing ok...
Sorry, but linking is not the same is publishing.
Linking is the equivalent to pointing and shouting "Oh look, a deer!" in the real world.
Now, if I were to do that, I am not putting the deer there. I am simply mentioning that I see one and pointing it out to people. Now, if you mis-use the information if you happen to be within earshot and hear me and you poach that deer, it's not my fault nor my responsibility you did so - even if you are holding a shotgun when I point it out.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If a link is publishing, then is a link to a link publishing the link which published the original? Does any website that link to google, or to a website that links to google, in effect publish the entire internet?
Interesting.
I guess that means that every single time the US Government has mentioned Wikileaks at press conferences they have themselves published all the documents available at Wikileaks?
I mean - mentioning the name of a website while talking, that's pretty much the same as linking in writing.
I guess Wikileaks is off the hook for publishing the documents then ...
Linking can't be publishing. If linking is publishing, then Google, Bing, and Yahoo are breaking the law, right now. Guess we'll have to to shut them down.
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What does it take to get a government of the people, for the people, and by the people in today's world?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
dont be mistaken - these wordage only give the impression that there are a lot of people involved in these occurrences. there arent. there are a few influential shareholders among the 10-20 biggest shareholders of these companies. and they think that it should be that way. and, they put people who will do their bidding at the helm of the corporations.
and these use the vast resources of those corporations to place who support them in power, or pressurize those who are already in power.
and you end up with this situation.
had those shareholders died out, as they should have, of old age, and different people came in place of them, everything would change. at the whim of a dozen individuals. best you would expect them would be to die out fast, just like how the people in middle ages hoped for their oppressive kings or lords to die. there is nothing democratic about a corporation. its private aristocracy. aristocracy privatized. however you put it.
this is the eventual result of capitalism. the one with the gold makes the rule. you are politically free. but because exercise of any freedom is tied to money privately, those who have the money have all the freedoms, and even can restrict the freedoms of those who dont have as much money as them.
economy and politics cannot be separate from each other. never. you cant expect to make one democratic and the other undemocratic and expect it to work. one will affect the other, eventually.
there you have it. 10-20 individuals are set on limiting freedoms of people, even at the cost of hampering a MAJOR new technology that is making the civilization to have a great step forward, and there is nothing you can do about it. the appalling part is, all what is happening are acceptable and legal, in terms of capitalism and its illusion storefront of political freedom.
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It may be the governments that Barak Obama and Steven Harper lead, but is it fair to say that the "X administration" or the "Y government" is party to this scheme?
The RIAA has been trying to change Canadian law since long before Steven Harper was even in parliament, and has worked with all the intervening governments to try to push their position.
If I were to say the "Harper administration" was part of this policy effort, it would suggest that they dreamed up the policy, and were themselves evil. That's not just an insult, it's unfair.
I'd rather insult Mr Harper fairly, by calling him "Steve" and his party the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance" party, or CCRAP*.
--dave
* Yes, that was the party's name at one point. They changed it.
davecb@spamcop.net
I can't wait for Obama to be inaugurated!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
All newspapers are guilty of robbery, murder, rape or any other of the crimes they report in their pages, at least according to this logic.
According to the RIAA:
That gives us a 2008 estimate of 12 billion dollars in revenue for retail sale of music. Presumably for the RIAA, who "create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States". So a total of about $14.2 billion in revenue.
Now, obviously we also need to take the MPAA into consideration. Again, using 2008 numbers:
Ticket sales grossed about $10 billion. And since quite a lot of people seem to claim (and no, I have no source handy) that home video sales is about the same as ticket sales, then we're looking at around $20 billion in 2008.
Apple's revenue for 2008 in the Americas was $14.5 billion. Granted, that's a larger geographical area than RIAA's numbers, but then again Apple is a relatively small company in the IT landscape.
How about some of the bigger fish?
IBM reported revenue of $103.6 billion, and pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion.
So, the movie and music industry combined gets up to around $35 billion in 2008 in the US.
IBM (world wide) - $103 billion
Apple (Americas) - $14.5 billion
Google (world wide) - $21.8 billion
Microsoft (world wide?) - $60.4 billion
Oracle (world wide?) - 22.4 billion
Dell (world wide?) - 61 billion
Seriously - why the fuck are the IT giants just turning their back on the complete and utter gang rape on things like the Internet, when most of their products would die off the moment it stops working the way it should.
Just buy out the fuckers, boot the executives, lawyers, assistants etc. from their penthouse offices (literally boot them out over the balcony) and just kill off these massively debilitating parasites.
Your local library card index just became a massive piracy enterprise. Best shut down libraries because they are collapsing the economy.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
I used to wonder if something would ever bind people of the world together. It sounds idealistic but I think I've found it. My friends here in the states, my colleagues in England, Turkey, and Canada, and my family in Spain and Mexico all rightfully complain about being taken advantage of by the media cartels. I'd like to thank them for finding a way to pull the various nationalities of the world together, and as an American citizen feel that I should apologize on behalf of my compatriots for letting this get so out of hand with our voter apathy and general disregard for y'know ethics and stuff.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin