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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.'"
And even if your country doesn't have a DMCA (and they WILL soon, if not already), don't think for a second that the U.S. can't extradite you here for punishment anyway, or that your government won't fall to its knees like a trained lapdog when the FBI snaps their fingers and says "Put him on a plane."
The sooner you people accept that the U.S. is large and in-fucking-charge, the easier it will go for all of us.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I know that this is normally a forum to bash **AA, but the fact still remains that Kim Dotcom made his fortune by providing a service that was used to circumvent paying for content. Never did he even attempt to stop this illegal activity, and at times, promoted it. People like to talk about how the rich make there fortune off the backs of the working class... this guy is your poster child.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I'm sorry, but do USA copyrigth laws cover every country on the planet? No, they do not, so people need to learn to deal with the fact that some countries take a different approach to promoting the distribution of science and art.
Oh, what, you were hoping to turn music into a form of property? That's cute.
Palm trees and 8
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.
You seem to be treating legality in the area of copyright as a natural law of physics and carved on tablets of stone. Well it's neither, and everything is in a state of flux..
The law in this area was never subject to public approval in any country, and it runs totally contrary to how the VAST majority of people seem to feel about it when asked. Instead it was developed through intense lobbying of politicians by content creators in a completely one-sided manner. What's more, much of it was developed out of the public eye and turned into law through a process of direct bribery, particularly in the US where bribery is legal and called "campaign contributions".
So while you're factually correct in calling it "illegal" by US law, it's only "illegal" because this totally corrupt and non-democratic system has defined "illegal" to suit itself. It may be illegal in your country, but it's not illegal everywhere, and it's regarded as "wrong" by only a small percentage of the world's population.
Things aren't as clearcut as you make out.
People have a problem with the USA when we start applying our laws in other countries, and rightly so. New Zealand has a legitimate, democratic government that creates its laws, so what business do we have trying to extradite NZ citizens for violations of US law that did not occur in the US?
Yeah, blah blah blah, he registered a US domain name. If we start using the Internet as a vehicle for applying our out-of-control legal code in other countries, we are just going to make more enemies.
Palm trees and 8
Funnily enough, NZ people don't have to look at the warships (or at least they didn't 10 years ago; this might have changed). NZ at some point declared themselves a "nuclear-free" zone, meaning not only no warheads but no vessels running on nuclear power are welcome there. And since that means the US Navy has to skirt waaaay around NZ to get to their Australian naval bases, it's actually been a major source of diplomatic tension between the two countries. But it also shows that the Kiwis have no qualms about giving America the middle finger, so don't expect them to cooperate with this copyright stuff all too quickly.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Show me SOMETHING that is made inthe USA.
Ford? Nope China parts, Assembled in canada and mexico.
GM? as china as you can get.
Honda? Yes they are more american than any american car brand, but parts are still China
Computer? China
Beer? China... for the cans. Your all american Budwiser is in a China made aluminum.
China, china, china. NOTHING you buy in a supermarket or big box store is made inthe USA.
Want USA made? local small artisan or maker. is your only choice. What that does is makes my Coffee Cup go from $3.95 to $16.99. Any my glass drinking glasses, I cant get the $1.99 each china junk. I have to pay a glass artist $22.50 each for them.
I am fine with it, but all the "BUY AMERICAN" morons dont walk the walk but they shoot off their mouths.
BUY AMERICAN means you never set foot in ANY big box store. You buy your clothing from a local tailor. You ready to pay $35.00 for a t-shirt that a seamstress will make custom for you? Want new Silverware? $15.00 a piece from your local Metal Artist.
The biggest problem is these BUY AMERICAN loudmouths also ride Harley Davidson bikes, which are mostly China parts. The Loudmouths wont do what they say. It's why Harley's are all china parts and soon to be BUILT in china. It's why Indian went out of business. Because these LOUDMOUTHS dont do what they say others should do.
They wont pay the cost if buying all american.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They say NZ's nuclear-free law extends only to their territorial waters--12 nautical miles from shore--not even out to the the 200 nautical mile "exclusive economic zone"; 12 NM hardly qualifies as a "long way" around NZ, particularly for a nuclear powered warship, which would typically not come that close to shore unless the ship was already going to port.
So, like most blahblah-free zones, it's basically just a feel-good measure. It's almost certianly more of an negative economic cost to business in NZ than anything else, since even diesel-powered US warships won't be able to visit NZ ports for provisions or other economic purposes, as the US Navy will refuse to confirm or deny that they have nuclear weapons on board any particular ship. Also, in the event of a natural disaster, the people of NZ might be in for even more hurt. The US Navy, more than any other force on the globe, is a massive resource for quickly sending out a great deal of logistical support for disaster relief. I wonder if they would suspend that policy in the event of a disaster, even though I hope that need never arises.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Wow does this sort of behavior by my government get me riled up.
The whole system we have set up here where the Govt passes legislature helping out lobbyists (in this case is so broken it's not even funny. I wouldn't go so far to say we are the sole enemy, but we definitely are not helping the situation.
I am 25, and the majority of my friends are way too busy trying to wiggle out from debt or job hunting in a stagnant environment to make their voices be heard (unless wikipedia shuts down). Seeing as it costs time and money to make sure you actually get a seat at the table, it seems to me that a huge number of our generation is grossly misrepresented.
Is there someone/something out there that is working to involve our young adults in foreign and domestic politics... as opposed to telling them what to do/not to do? I cannot put it as eloquently as Jon Stewart did, but our problems are only going to expand if we let people who refer to our type as "nerds" run the country.
We need to either a. Set up a strong lobby group to oppose heavy handed corporate driven legislature or b. change the system in it's entirety.
You know something? The more I read about Kim Dotcom, the more I get the idea "shady character" doesn't really fit him neatly. He reminds me much more of some of the "old school" computer geeks I knew from back in the mid 1980's and still run into occasionally. Many of them have a burning desire to make something of their lives ... to do something memorable, within the realm of what their talents are. They're a little eccentric or "off beat" by mainstream society's standards, sure. And maybe some of them are a bit guilty of being a little too materialistic. (But some of that simply comes with the territory of being interested in technology, IMO. If you spend much of your time working with computers and tech. - you develop an appreciation for all of those physical gadgets and devices that other people may not really have. It extends out towards all manner of complex machines and devices, too. Lots of I.T. hardware guys I know also get very interested in sports cars, for example. Even though they're not "gear heads" in the sense of putting in thousands of hours in someone's garage taking apart engines and transmissions? They appreciate the work that goes into building such a machine, and desire one of their own -- the same way they want the fastest PC out there, even if they don't really have a NEED for one that performs quite that well.)
Dotcom strikes me as all of the above, with a need to be recognized.... to be a "celebrity" of sorts, within his own circle of fellow geeks at least. (The fact he'd change his last name to Dotcom, alone, tells you how much he wants to be noticed as a "guru" in his field of interest.)
He was recently seen in photos hanging out with Steve Wozniak ... with Woz having nothing but good things to say about him. That's not quite what I'd expect if the guy was just your run of the mill online scammer, trying to make his fortune at everyone else's expense.
It's govt. and big media wanting you to think of this guy as something like a foreign leader of a drug cartel ....