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AFL-CIO and Big Content Advocate For SOPA
Weezul writes "Today's House Judiciary Committee meeting on the Stop Online Piracy Act excluded any witnesses who advocate for civil rights. Google's Katherine Oyama was the only witness to object to the bill in a meaningful way. In particular, the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida advocated for the internet blacklist, saying 'the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks.'"
Laying all that fibre, installing servers, manning phones at the offices of *AA attorneys, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The right to download a car.
I'm tired of trying to follow the law within reason. They don't want to play nice, neither will I. I'm off to the store to buy a couple of boxes of DVDs and blurays and I'm going to start giving them away to people I know and ask them to pass more forward. I'm going to pirate like there's no tomorrow because even when I try to play nice they want to screw up the internet. We gave them all the tools to do away with what they deemed inappropriate use of their works and now they want more. No more Mr nice guy. You asked for it. I hope you guys do the same. Pirate for people you know. Money is the only language these idiots understand(the *AAs, not your family).
It all depends on whom gets to define "steal".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
SOPA has nothing to do with theft. This is a completely flawed analogy.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Why should **AA be allowed to steal stuff from the public domain by means of so-called "copyright term extensions" ?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
There was also an op-ed by Rebecca MacKinnon in the NY Times: "Stop the Great Firewall of America". Unfortunately behind their paywall, but may be accessible through a Google search?
Here's a site to quickly push a complaint to those who need your votes:
American Censorship.org
Think we can Slashdot it?
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Exactly. Why should the record companies be allowed to steal art from the public domain by eternally extending copyright?
"'the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks'" .... by AFL-CIO members !!!
Yours In Ashgabat,
K. Trout
The AFL CIO leadership has show itself in the last few years to be little more than a group of high-priced whores.
I support the unions. But they suffer from the same leadership crisis our broader society labors under.
I keep hearing everyone say that your best bet is to vote against the worst candidate since third party does not have enough votes. As long as the media has enough people thinking this way, the duopoly wins. Why not vote for who you want rather than the lesser of two evils? If enough people start voting for who they want, you will start to see the top two parties lose percentage points to lesser known parties. Yes, this might not make a difference this election, but it has the potential to in the future.
It is up to you to be part of the solution to the duopoly. The more you vote for the "lesser of two evils" the more you are contributing to keeping our current system alive.
the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks
Yeah, true. But there are several points to consider that I feel make the quoted statement utterly fallacious. First, an accusation of theft isn't immediately punished; guilt has to be proven first. Second, theft of a physical object means that the original owner loses the object. In the case of a piece of digital property, the original holder hasn't lost possession of anything. The content-creation industry's obsession with immediate punishment before investigation doesn't make sense. It violates the due process rights of the accused for no legally-sound reason. It allows for corporate actions to replace proper review by the judicial system....and it's a short-sidedly, seemingly-logical extension of a content-holder's desire to maximize revenue.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
While I am knowingly replying to two trolls, it makes for a poignant comment.
The rest of the world isn't too worried about this I think. With actions like this, America is just making itself more and more of a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. The credibility of America has been in decline for decades and eventually it will write itself out of the world stage that it so desperately want to stay in.
I am not saying that everyone in the US is to be painted with the same broad brush, but the folks at the top certainly seem to have free reign to write their own legislation and rules. With that sort of playing field, it is only a matter of time before all the other teams stop turning up to matches.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The problem is in the assignment of the word "theft" to this phenomenon.
Say for a moment that I, personally, am responsible for domesticating wheat. I use this position to control the distribution of wheat and wheat based products, citing that my hard work in the domestication process is what justifies my monopolist behavior.
Now, let's say that some other person finds out that they can grow their own wheat. So, they do. They do this from a single wheat seed that they legally purchased from me.
They plant the wheat, and in a few years, have cultivated enough wheat seeds to start undercutting my monopoly. Let's say that they simply just give away the wheat seeds that they are now producing.
Which does this constitute?
A) stealing
Or,
B) competition
The person giving away the free wheat seeds is not stealing them from my grainary. I am not losing wheat by his actions. What I am losing is market power. I am losing the ability to solely dictate the unit price for wheat. Does this constitute theft? If so, how?
Exactly. The "Wasted Vote" argument can continue to be extrapolated reductio ad absurdum to say, "If you didn't vote for the winning candidate, you wasted your vote."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The "LOL! American Freedom!" comment is actually the most insightful and intelligent of the 40+ comments currently posted under this story.
Using just three words, the author managed to make the following points:
1) That American citizens and organizations claim to hold freedom in high regard, but then hypocritically practice the complete opposite.
2) That the American government claims to hold freedom in high regard, but then hypocritically practices the complete opposite.
3) That most Americans are oblivious to the sad state of "freedom" in their nation.
4) That most Americans are oblivious to being oblivious to the sad state of "freedom" in their nation.
5) That the rest of the world does not respect America, and finds American attitudes regarding freedom to be laughable.
It's too bad that it's at -1. It's the best comment posted here yet.
Remember the proposed legislation mandating DRM TCPA chips on all computers years ago? Someone on slashdot linked the senate's website and contact info. It died. :-)
So instead of whinning let your senators know how you feel?
Their website is here for the American Slashdot readers. Don't know who your senators are? There is a list here including an email link.
Calling your senator is effective as well.
When contacting your senator do not mention you want to dowload illegal material or that you are just angry and think it is unfair. Mention you work in the I.T. field and are worried about negative implications and liabilitiy risks for non copyrighted or infringement uses that this bill could be abused. Mention it would harm Google's youtube service costing American jobs as they would move overseas. This bill would be costly and could cost American innovation and jobs. Mention we already have existing copyright laws in force and sites like youtube already remove copyrighted or infrindged material in a timely manner and this is nothing but a power grab.
If your senator is a democrats mention your worried about the power grab by the media companies will harm competition. If your senator is a republican mention this would increase government intervention and regulation as it would cost well into the billions of dollars of tax payer money to fund this etc. You all can be creative.
Someone mod this up for the links. I just made it easier for everyone to spend 5 minutes telling your representative how you feel. Remember if you do not pick your voice the RIAA/MPAA will. If all they hear is the RIAA/MPAA then they will vote for the bill as it shows we don't care and like being fucked over. Do your duty.
the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida advocated for the internet blacklist, saying 'the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks'
He's quite right. It has fuck all to do with SOPA and its associated discussions, but he's right.
That's Chewbacca defense, right? (it's actually offence, but you get the gist).
The rest of the world is worried about the extent that this will spread outside your borders. The US is a very imperialist nation and will try very hard to press other nations into similar situations. They have to, because if they're the only draconian nation they're at an economic disadvantage, to say the least.
So yes, we're worried about NAFTA, ACTA (and PATRIOT as it relates to cloud services). Beyond that, we couldn't care less. You're deluding yourself if you think the US has any credibility left. We're just looking for a bigger stick.
I'm just gonna throw this one out there... mostly because it's obnoxious.
http://www.reverserobocall.com/
Politicians robocall you. Now you can robocall them.
Welcome to the Robocall Revolution. We believe that voters should have access to the same technology political groups use to get their message across; so we built a simple web-based robocall tool to literally give citizens back their voice in the political discourse. What better way to exercise your rights to to speech, than to actually speak truth to power?
ReverseRobocall.com provides voters an easy way to communicate with one or hundreds of politicians or political groups using the same technology politicians use, the robocall or automated phone call.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
That's part of the ploy. You call your offense a defense to further confuse your opponent.
You're aware that this is already legal, right?
That's how the police can confiscate a drug-dealer's stuff and keep it without any inconvenience like warrants, trials, verdicts, that sort of thing.
And if the police take your stuff under those laws, you have to bring suit against them to recover the stuff, after PROVING that you are not, in fact, a criminal....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's known as the Spoiler Effect and it got both Clinton, via Perot and Bush, via Nader elected. Somehow, it got stirred up into anger at the "third party" candidate, when the real problem is that the US uses a simple plurality voting system that is extremely biased towards a two party system since voting any other way risks throwing your vote away on a spoiler. The fundamental problem is that simple plurality is the best functional system for choosing between exactly two options. For all numbers other than two, it's the worst functional system (there are other, worse, systems, but I wouldn't consider them functional). All of the known single pass systems have paradoxes, but the one that the US actually uses has the worst paradox in the Spoiler Effect.
Then, of course, the Democrats and Republicans, realizing they have a duopoly, work together to ensure it stays that way. For example, the so-called "presidential debates" are a purely Democrat/Republican media affair. There's no invitations for other parties to participate and no established mechanism for other parties or independents to join. Real presidential debates would last about a month and be either arranged tournament style like an actual debate competition, or in some format that allowed every candidate to debate every other candidate. Instead, there's just a polished media event between members of the traditional duopoly arranged by power brokers. I'm not going to say that voting in the US is a sham per se, but I would like people to think about how many US elections have been decided based on a difference in votes that was actually smaller than the margin of error in the voting system (which the debacle in Florida a while back that was sorted out in part by the brother of one of the candidates makes abundantly clear).
As I understand it, I need only send a "take-down" notice indicating a site is infringing on my trademark. The DNS must then be blocked and the site owner must be notified of the blockage. The site owner may then send a counter-notice claiming it should remain unblocked. If the site owner sends a counter-notice the site is unblocked and the matter is referred to the courts. If the site owner does not respond with a counter-notice the site remains blocked.
If I am correct, what is stopping me from drafting a "take-down" notice stating that I own the trademark for MPAA.org? RIAA.org? whitehouse.gov?
Would this not automatically force the specific site off-line until they produce a counter-notice?
This is the problem with intellectual properties in general.
You cannot prevent people from using your ideas. If its a good idea, people will use it.
Patent and copyright laws are intended to COMPROMISE between necessary competitive agents, and incentivisation of creators.
It *ONLY* works, when the public at large defacto agrees on the compromise.
The AFL-CIO has never represented the workers. It has always represented the union bosses. When one of the AFL-CIO unions negotiate with a company there are two ways it can go. Management slips a "little something" to the union bosses and the workers get screwed. Or Management stands its ground and both the company and the workers get screwed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
What you are missing is that it doesn't matter all that much that you're right and you didn't actually steal. With enough money and competent lawyers, you can tie someone up in court for so long that they just fold. At that point, theft is indeed defined by who has more lawyers. It is bullshit, it is no laughing matter, and there is nothing you can do about it, short of reforming the current legal system. Furthermore, quite a few people do equate competition with stealing.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
We currently have no bills where we can merely accuse a random person of stealing an auto which point no service station would be allowed to sell them gasoline.
The problems with SOPA aren't with piracy but rather that the burden of piracy prevention falls onto third parties, and the lack of needing proof of wrong doing before penalties are applied.
Even if you accepted the "copyright infringement is theft" analogy, SOPA is not about the Internet equivalent of "stealing goods off a truck." Copyright infringement is already illegal and there are already provisions to handle it. You notice your copyright is being infringed, you send a DMCA notice to the website, they take down the infringing material (or open themselves to a lawsuit), and then the uploader gets to respond (to get the stuff put back up). If you want to take down an entire site for copyright infringement, however, you need to first prove your case to a judge.
SOPA takes that pesky judge out of the equation. Suppose that there are 10,000 sellers on SomeAuctionSite.com. Of these, 9,999 are legit. They sell items that nobody would have any problem with. One seller, however, is selling copyright infringing material. (For example, copies of DVDs.) Instead of the DMCA notices, the MPAA could contact the payment processors and ad sites that SomeAuctionSite.com uses to get their operating money. With their access to money cut off, SomeAuctionSite.com closes down. 9,999 legit sellers are taken down to get rid of 1 pirated DVD seller. It's using a bazooka to kill a fly, but the RIAA/MPAA doesn't care because they just want the fly dead and don't care about the collateral damage.
In fact, it's even worse than that example. Suppose that the 1 seller on SomeAuctionSite.com didn't sell pirated DVDs but instead sold photos he took. Now let's say someone looked at one and thought it looked like a photo they had taken. They start to believe that this seller is selling other people's copyrighted photos and send SOPA notices to the payment/ad companies SomeAuctionSite.com uses. Nothing is proven in court, but still funding is cut off and SomeAuctionSite.com closes. Even if that seller is innocent of any infringement. SomeAuctionSite.com isn't even given any notice until their funds are cut off. By that point, their business will be bleeding money until they can clear things up. (Imagine if your business couldn't take any money in for some reason. How long would it last before it closed shop?)
SOPA is a MPAA/RIAA wet dream and a Freddy Krueger for the rest of us.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
ACTA is virtually toothless compared to TPPA. Look it up sometime.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
...and then the thing I said would happen, did. The Whigs and the Republicans merged. Lincoln was a Whig before he was a Republican. The fact that most of the former Whigs joined the Republicans rather than the other way around doesn't really change anything. You can't get a stable third party with a first past the post voting system. The incentives for the two most similar parties to merge are too overwhelming.