Slashdot Mirror
Pirate Party Releases Book of Pirate Politics
ktetch-pirate writes "If the SOPA/PIPA blackouts were a wakeup call to many people, then the U.S. Pirate Party has released a book that might help explain some of the issues. The book covers issues such as Corporate Personhood, the 4th Amendment, the history of copyright, and how DRM laws are made. There are even cartoons from Nina Paley throughout to add a bit of humor. DRM-free eBook versions are available to download from the book's site, or you can buy a paperback edition from Amazon for ten bucks."
The book is under the CC BY-NC-SA, and features essays from the likes of Lawrence Lessig and Rick Falkvinge.
True pirates only believe in a keg of rum and a fair splittin' o' the booty!
... are thoughts concerning the possible destruction of the universe were I to pirate the Pirate Party's book on Pirate Politics.
Hopefully we might one day move towards the revolutionary notion of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. Yes I know it's terribly problematic determining the parameters, but if the principle was accepted we'd be a lot further ahead.
I have been waiting for this. Blackouts and protests can raise awareness, but those interested yet lacking knowledge require a targeted repository of information on the issues at hand. The distribution of knowledge is the best way to prepare the masses for the lengthy and technical debates that are sure to arise regarding SOPA/PIPA in the following years.
Guess I'll have to pirate it since I can't get it from the site.
Enjoy http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.nosafeharbor.com/get&hl=en&strip=1
That's a license, not a copyright. The copyright is by default.
The value of a unit of work entirely depends upon the perceptions of the people who benefit from said work. As such, it varies with many variables, including location, culture, material availability, labor availability, alternative benefit availability, time, etc.
It is very easy to deem that someone else is overpaid because of the low value their output has to you personally, without taking into account the high value it may have to the people who are actually paying for it. The opposite is also true.
The matter is further complicated by the possibility of economic predation, where people can position themselves so as to be able to force the extraction of pay that is way beyond the value provided in anyone's perception. Though this is the most visible and most hated issue driving income inequality, the other variables contribute just as significantly to the imbalances (or the incorrect perception thereof).
This neat theory that corporate personhood was a badly phrased but highly meaningless concept vanished the instant the Supreme Court extended the protections of freedom of speech to corporations. Combined with money == speech, corporations have rights unmatched by any but the wealthiest Citizens.
But thank you for playing and here's your copy of the home game
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
It might be up on www.tuebl.com soon if the site remains down much longer.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Pretty much only in the United States of America. Why do corporations work perfectly well in the rest of the world without this strange legal shield of "personhood" that they neither earned nor deserve?
Why is it necessary for Joe Bloggs Ltd to be legally considered a person to protect Joe Bloggs? Why can Joe Bloggs not simply sue in his capacity as the owner of Joe Bloggs Ltd.?
The site to get the eBook is down. If only The Pirate party had access to some kind of distributed download system that could handle the traffic...
or else!
. . . on 'giving ebooks away for free' comes out.
If Slashdotted get it from the torrent...
http://bit.ly/x5gtHe
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
The primary goal is copyright reform, not abolishment.
Copyright isn't evil; it's just being abused heavily.
It's been slashdotted offline!!! There's download links on the twitter feed! https://twitter.com/#!/NoSafeHarbor
Can't download from a US internet connection. Has the site been slashdotted or is it censored in the states?
"That's either incredibly asinine or the most brilliant troll I've ever read. Not sure which." -Anonymous Coward
I read the first few essays and, though I agree with the sentiments therein, I found most of them rather poorly written - either unsure of their target (e.g., most non-computer-geek persons will not know what a "zombie botnet" is and how it relates to DNS, which is also not described) or incredibly dense in legality or just scattered (jumping from point-to-point with little connection). As a document, the whole thing would be unreadable by the normal man on the street. If you actually want a good example of what a publisher and the editorial services they should provide bring to the table, you need do little more than try to read this document. The distance between where this document is and where it should be to be effective (which should demonstrate the amount of work it would take to bridge the gap) is also a good indicator as to why these intermediaries deserve to be paid for these efforts.
If you want to kill copyright, you should put out a document showing that the services of those paid by copyright is no longer necessary. This document, though heartfelt, is crap.
That is all.
In order to do so, might one also need to make the quorum shareholders of a publically traded corp each plaintiffs for any lawsuit that a corp wants to file ?
Limited personhood perhaps makes sense, but I'd call it merely a 'legal entity' that is empowered to do certain things (financial and legal transactions) and not do other things (vote, unrestricted speech, etc). But that is more complicated than just calling them persons en toto.
So here's a thought:
1) write books.
2) hold your copyright for the length of time you think is appropriate. this could be zero years.
3) after that time passes, release your books into the public domain.
If you are right that your options 2 or 3 are superior to the existing system then you'll become more successful than the people using the existing system and therefore everyone will use your approach to copyright.
My guess is that you won't be successful.
blunt, condescending, oversimplified metaphors
When' you're combating heavily-armored paradoxes like "intellectual property", finesse and sharpness are poor tools. What's needed are maces, hammers, RPGs.
Once the shell is cracked, then you can be subtle.
If copyright isn't evil, why does it run around wearing a Snidely Whiplash mustache and tying people to railroad tracks? OK, they're mostly neckbeards and not maidens, but still...
That will probably be the reaction of many. Yes, it does. Unfortunately, there is no proportional representation so any vote in a state that was not cast in favor of the winner in that state, goes in the trash.
This has two effects:
* In states safely in hands of incumbents, it doesn't matter if you vote PP or not. You won't win. You don't get a voice.
* In states that are heavily contested (swing states), even PP supporters are tempted to vote R or D, just to make sure "the other guy" doesn't win, depending which side of the fence they are on.
This book will hopefully draw a lot of attention to the USPP; being able to get the message out might prove to be just as effective.
Any product that can be deliniated in a computer file can be 'held hostage' until the ransom is paid to the creator [who charges enough up front s/he doesn't care about any subsequent piracy and lost revenue] by those interested in paying part of the ransom. Once the ransom is paid, the file is distributed. The creator got paid. The buyers got what they wanted -- everybody wins. Otherwise NO MONEY CHANGES HANDS.
See Kickstarter
http://www.kickstarter.com/
One Kickstarter project I saw got completely funded for the mid-4 figures in THE FIRST 24 HOURS of the 30-day campaign!
There were enough supporters willing to support this particular project.
CAPTCHA: retail [kickstarter + sane pricing + co-operation = the antidote for the retail model of sales which is fraught with expensive 'overhead' which is passed on to the people who buy the stuff at the end of the line.]
"Copyright isn't evil; it's just being abused heavily."
It's more then just abused heavily corporations have outright stolen the public domain, any attempt at reform will be blocked and consistently attacked again until it's back where it started. I really hate how ignorant some slashdotters are about copyright history.
Do you really think the people and companies behind the following will not attack and overturn reform at the first chance they get?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
You know the author of that piece isn't American, right? He's actually Swedish. There's an 'about the authors' section at the end.
I was hoping to find a Pirate Party response to Richard Stallman's essay on how the Swedish Pirate Party's proposed short term of copyright creates a needlessly unequal opportunity between copylefted free software and proprietary software upon entry into the public domain. In the same essay Stallman proposes a fix that resolves the unequal opportunity.
It's the unequal results upon entering the PD that is unfair: Proprietors don't release source code so upon entry into the public domain their works would be redistributed as binaries without users being free to inspect or modify the work. By contrast users would be free to incorporate the formerly copyleft free software program. As Stallman points out, "the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years". As he mentions, proprietary programs that timebomb themselves might remain useless even to users who merely want to run the program. Stallman wrote, "I could support a law that would make GPL-covered software's source code available in the public domain after 5 years, provided it has the same effect on proprietary software's source code. After all, copyleft is a means to an end (users' freedom), not an end in itself. And I'd rather not be an advocate for a stronger copyright.".
We should strive for equal opportunity for use upon entry into the PD but the Pirate Party's recommended copyright policy would allow proprietors to exempt themselves from the freeing effect of entry into the PD. Stallman's idea of requiring proprietary software escrow when the binaries are released seems eminently sensible to me. Then users would be on equal footing with formerly copylefted free software source and formerly proprietary software source entering the public domain.
If anyone can point me to a good response to Stallman's essay on this written by a Pirate Party representative I'd appreciate it. I've read the /. thread on Stallman's article and I didn't come across such a pointer.
Digital Citizen
I wish they'd release a new movie!
(that was a joke)
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
> The primary goal is copyright reform, not abolishment.
Just so you know: Nina Paley (who'd mentioned in the summary as creating cartoons for the book) believes in the total abolition of copyright. She thinks everyone should be able to to anything with other people's copyright - including sell it. In the past, she has attacked people who believe in the legalization of filesharing but think commercial copyright should still exist.
Except that the right overlapping rights of corporations were traditionally held as the right to contract as a person. Speech is a creative right, one that had been traditionally been withheld as germane only to a person; One can ask a person what his opinion is, a question that doesn't even make sense in the light of a corporation - one cannot ask a corporation anything, only the duly authorized representative of a corporation.
In regard to a contract, swearing in a duly authorized representative makes sense, whether the representative of a person or a corporation. In regard to political speech? It's a question that falls under "That's not right . . . that's not even wrong . . .".
And then conflating this already badly extended metaphor to the additional illogical thinking that donating money is a right equivalent to speech? You think that several 'moderately wealthy' citizens should band together to match a singular corporation?
By any sane definition of moderately wealthy that doesn't even make sense mathematically. The average income in the United Stated is ~$(30,000 to 40,000) The Presidents Salary is $400,000, or about equivalent to 10-13 average people. 30 corporations that pais no income tax paid . . . over $475,000,000. 15 Million Dollars, each. If you consider $400,000/year 'moderately' wealthy, it would only require 37 people, donating their entire income to the cause, to match one corporate budget.
People read your post. It's completely disconnected from reality.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
That seems fundamentally wrong to put a -nc there.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The primary goal is copyright reform, not abolishment. Copyright isn't evil; it's just being abused heavily.
I don't think so. The anti-copyright argument on slashdot (and I assume for the pirate people) is s that digitally copying something costs nothing so therefore why should anyone ever pay for a copy? That certainly involves scrapping the idea of copyright entirely.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you read the book I'm sure it will confirm all your slashdot group-think ideas about the evils of copyright,
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What is truly amazing is that people read his books for free on the websiteand then still go and buy them in paper format despite being warned.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
blunt, condescending, oversimplified metaphors
When' you're combating heavily-armored paradoxes like "intellectual property", finesse and sharpness are poor tools. What's needed are maces, hammers, RPGs.
Once the shell is cracked, then you can be subtle.
Christ, you're an idiot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Actually, they did mention that. You just missed it, because you're an idiot.
You also missed the part where it says that it doesn't matter who you are or what you've done, or what the authorities claim you've done, the same rights still apply to you as to everyone else.
Presumably you missed this for the same reason.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Canadian laws are all online, too. Same with Ontario. Don't know about all the other provinces, but at least some of them are.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......