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US "the Enemy" Says Dotcom Judge
First time accepted submitter Flere Imsaho writes "During the NetHui Internet conference last week, the NZ judge to hear the Dotcom extradition case was speaking on the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and how the U.S. entertainment industry is pushing to make region code hacking illegal, when he said 'Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited ... if you do you will be a criminal — that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalized. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.'"
This interview by Cambell paints a different picture about what Kim Dotcom actually does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF48PjCtW4k
-- Walt Kelly
I heard "we met the enemy, and he is us" a million times before I bothered checking out the full quote, and I think it's kind of a shame to truncate it like that.
(and yes, I know this is off-topic, I don't care :D)
In the UK we have this thing called the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, which among other things prohibits misdescription of goods. A DVD-video must by definition comply with the DVD-video standard (Part 3, Book B and DVD Video Recording Book) or it CANNOT be referred to as a DVD video.
Now, people do still have choice over whether or not to purchase a barcode for a particular title. If one does purchase a DVD video, then he has a statutory expectation that that is what he is getting. There is NOTHING in the standards to cover region locking, CSS encoding, or any other restrictive mechanism. ANY DVD that employs any of these mechanisms CANNOT claim to be a DVD-video.
Having made the choice to purchase a barcode with the DVD-Video logo, if one then finds out that one cannot play that DVD in a standard, open-region player (lots of Chinese players are not region locked hence will play ANY otherwise compliant disc), then IMO there would be a case under 1968 (c. 29).
My boggle with the region coding thing is the fact that unless specified on the box that a player is region-free*, there is no indication whatsoever on the hardware or the packaging (or the manual!) that the player is region locked and to what region. This is clearly a violation of 1968 (c.29)?
*Since DVD-video units hit mainstream in around 1997, I've been aware of the region coding and studiously avoided region locked players, unless there was a clear-cut and simple way of jailbreaking them. The only player I ever had to jailbreak was a Meridian 586 (bought near the end of 1997 and cost a bloody fortune).
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
> Is Google more responsive to takedown notices than megaupload?
Google have been sued many times on this issue, and are definitely have state of the art capability in this area.
No, but if someone buys a DVD while abroad, and brings it home only to find out that they're not allowed to watch it (since the American copyright groups are pushing to have breaking the region encoding declared a criminal act) then they're expected to sit there with a dud DVD and not play it.
This isn't about getting the content without paying for them. This is about taking a good you bought, and using it where you live.
Breaking the region encoding just allows you to play a product you legally purchased, and legally brought home without waiting for the same product to be re-released where you live.
America is basically trying to export laws which strip the right of first sale and other fair use rights they already enjoy.
There's a huge difference between that and what you describe.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
" the fact still remains that Kim Dotcom made his fortune by providing a service that was used to circumvent paying for content."
Calling your opinion a fact , does not a fact make.
The fact would be that Kim Dotcom provided a service for file sharing, hosting and distribution. The files the clients of said service chose to share , host and distribute happened to contain content that they were not licensed to do so with. The clients are the criminals, not the provider of the service. This is the the technical and legal fact.
Since they can't prosecute a million people and possibly maintain their political office at the same time, the US (politicians and agencies) chose to go for the easiest and softest target in this case - namely , Kim Dotcom.
Why is he a soft target? He is a single identifiable individual, who is obese and rich from doing something that is borderline legal. The psychological impact of seeing a fat , pompous and rich man , who got that way doing something the common man is repeatedly told is a very very bad thing is rather irritating.
If you think there is even a shred of legality in the behavior of the US you are fooling yourself. Even if Kim Dotcom turned out to have facilitated crimes (which is debatable but may be alleged), the US did not stay within the law either. That just brings it down to a case of Might is Right. This is why this case should be an indicator to the US public that their system is going to the dogs.
"All murderers are punished unless they work in large numbers or to the sound of trumpets" - Voltaire. He said it best.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
If you buy music produced in the US you buy it under the terms of the license.
No. If I buy music (from any country) in Spain I buy it under Spanish laws. Anything else, feel free to shove up your ass, license included.
US oil is harder to refine and will choke refinery that is not designed for it. That being said it is used in pretty much every purpose that middle east oil is used for, it is just refined in the US and used here. The US uses more gas then diesel so we also have refineries that crack down more of the diesel into gas (which is an inefficient process because diesel is more energy efficient to start out with).
I'm sorry, but just because the plastic containers aren't made in the US, that doesn't mean that the dairy processor in my city is outsourcing its work, or that the farmers they get milk from are outside the US.
We live in a global economy, and I would hate to have to revert back to only a local economy.
I love that I can get fresh produce year-round, and that I can wash it down with Scotch whisky.