Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Sues Irish Government For Piracy
bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."
ARE THESE GUYS CRAZY?
They're filthy rich and entitled and want to be more of both.
This is the case of using judicial mean to "force" changes to the law itself, which is in the legislative area.
music industry is using a failing business model and costing the Irish Government lots of money in lost taxes from the music industry not adapting to the current business environment.
I'm no friend of the tobacco lobby, but the two things are like chalk and cheese. The tobacco companies are suing because of legislation that limits freedoms. They feel they are being harmed unfairly. The music industry is suing because legislation that limits freedoms does not exist. They feel that everybody else are not being harmed unfairly enough!
Copyright is an artificial right that has been granted by the public to encourage the creation of works, with the understanding that those works will be contributed to the public domain in a reasonable amount of time. It is a bargain between creators and the general public.
We've lost the plot somewhere. 5-year copyright swelled to 7, 14, 28, 50, 75, 90, 120 years...
With each increase of copyright duration, the copyright lobbies have robbed the public of that much more creative works. We, the public, have fulfilled our end of the bargain, and we have granted a monopoly to the rights holders. They taken a tool we bought them, purchased with our tax dollars and our court system, and they have turned it into a weapon of control against us.
We have the power to take this weapon away from them any time we want--lobbyists and politicians be damned. Do not give these companies one cent. They are using what we gave them to exert ultimate control over us. Until they start giving back to the public domain, feel free to add "torrent" to any search for their creative works.
So they say file sharing is killing the music industry. Even if they're right (and that's by no means a given) ... so what? People can still record and distribute music without any music industry. With computers and the Internet it's easy and pretty cheap. But even if somehow all musicians decided to stop recording and distributing ... again, so what? We can live without recorded music. All the money people currently spend on CDs would be spent on other entertainment instead, such as live performances.
Copyright is a tool for the benefit of society, not a natural right of artists (or the parasites who trick them into lopsided contracts) to make money. As far as music goes, there's just no measurable benefit to society to justify any significant effort or expense on copyright enforcement.
I say the proper response to this demand is to declare music to be outside the scope of copyright. Entertainers, learn your place and watch your step.
Wait, I find this to be a bit of a mindfuck.
The Irish government creates laws. Judges are there to judge if things are done in compliance with the law. If there's no law against file sharing then the judge couldn't ever judge file sharing to be unlawful, could he? What do they expect from the judge other than him saying "you are right, there are indeed no laws against this. Now what?"
What baffles me the most is that "the music industry" is a supranational entity.
It's not "the US music industry association", or "the Irish music industry cartel", or something like that.
There is a supranational entity, named "the music industry", and it is both big and concrete enough to sue a country that doesn't play for 'its' interests.
That is a lost battle, that there is a cartel that, in our heads, represents the whole "music industry" of the world, and speaks for all the people related to music.
What they do with that power is also important, of course, but the fact that they detent it is an issue itself.
We had music be for we had the wheel; culture existed before copyright. Besides, we have more than enough PAST music that little new is being created. This protectionist system is not adding much benefit to society.
Nobody has a right to a job doing whatever they want to do. Industries must be allowed to die when their time has come! This isn't about car company bail outs, we still need cars. This is more like banning teleporters because it'll put the airlines out of business.
The greed mentality is what it is always about; take everything away from you as possible and make you pay somebody who controls it. We've gone so far as to privatize ownership of WATER, including the rain and make people pay for the water collecting naturally in their own backyard- literally. It has been done and that evil thinking continues to spread; as CRAZY as that sounds the issue will come to your area someday in the future unless trends change. Privatization has always been about handing power to the politically connected so they can leverage that power into profit and it never has anything to do about helping anybody. Copyright has NOTHING (today) to do with helping the "starving" artists and everything about control.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news