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Japan: Police Arrest Journalists For Selling DVD-Backup Tools
Modellismo writes "Last week four journalists from Sansai Books were arrested for selling, through the company website, a copy of a magazine published last year (with a free cover mounted disc) focused on how to backup/rip DVDs. They violated Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Law that recently has been revised to make illegal the sale of any DRM circumvention device or software. It's interesting to note that Japanese cyber police could arrest the Amazon Japan CEO, too, as the online giant is selling a lot of magazines, books and software packages for DVD copy and ripping: exactly what put Sansai Books' staff in trouble."
wonder how many enbedded devices produced in japan have this little piece of code in them...
The only country who bows lower to corporations than the US of A.
Two warnings were issued to Sansai Books by three industry organizations, including the Japan Video Software Association, protesting the sale of the guidebook, but the publisher continued to offer the product.
There are ways to dispute a law you disagree with. Disobeying it is usually not a good way.
It's a wonder that the publishing company (Sansai Books) weren't issued some kind of ceast and desist letter first, considering the company did not break the law when the magazine was published *last year* (presumably well before the law was ammended). It sounds like they were probably selling back issues and may not have fully appreciated the situation.
Unfair Competition Prevention Law
Most people would think that this law is designed to prevent unfair competition. What it really means is it's an unfair law to prevent competition.
Also, getting governments to step on other people for you is apparently NOT unfair competition...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They are.
There are ways to dispute a law you disagree with. Disobeying it is usually not a good way.
The bus driver said to Rosa Parks.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Free speech needs to have some limits. Bomb threats and yelling FIRE in a theatre are the most popular counter-examples. Slander, exposure of trade secrets, and insider-trading are just a handful of other arguable candidates.
It IS possible for someone to clearly violate someone else's obvious rights under the guise of "freedom of speech". It can't just blindly be labeled "tyranny".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
in the USA, government is an extension of Corporations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it doesn't mean anything. i've come to the conclusion the only people who like that word are, themselves, idiots
society has problems. do you want to fix it? or just go "it's all stupid" and walk away thinking you've said something valuable and important?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are various forms of corruption. There is the obvious south European method where every action requires a financial payment. This is obvious and the reason those countries are in such trouble from Greece to Mexico. But right in that same area, you got another kind. The corruption of the Catholic church that until quite recently claimed the Mafia was an invention of the communist to discredit the government. That was not just about rather generous kickbacks, it was a corruption of spirit. The Catholic church found that the accumulation of wealth by individuals at all costs was more wholesome then sharing the wealth, just like Christ teaches... oops oh wait.
You have to remember that being a politician is not a position of logic but of faith. Politicians believe, doesn't matter what their religion is, communism, socialism or capitalism, they all believe and any doubt cast on their faith is treated in much the same way as most religious believers deal with it. Heretic, unbeliever!
Japan is still ruled by very old men and they are old men that believe that their policies work. They did work, Japan had a huge economic miracle. Then the world changed and the old men didn't. They couldn't because their ideas and policies were not based on reality but on their fate in a system.
The real problem with ruling a nation is that what is required at anyone time might change and even contradict itself. You would need to adopt to the facts rather then attempt to force you ideology on facts that don't listen. Take patents, they are both desperately needed and something that needs to be abolished. You can't rule this with absolutes, you need to compromise, go to extremes and then re-balance. ALL THE FUCKING TIME!
The job market goes in direction X, balance it out with Y then re-balance with Z and do a bit of W just to test a theory out. Sometimes you need strong unions, sometimes you need them to give in and that can happen on the same day.
But you can't run a party election system with that. How can you run a campaign with "I will do whatever the country requires at a particular point even if it hurts a group that can hurt me bad".
So... we get politicians that grew up in a system, got their world view decades ago from teachers who couldn't do and making promises they can't keep.
Luckily for Japan, the people are sheep.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There are simply too many examples of people going from nothing to something and becoming rich to make your view remotely valid. Some people's capacity isn't much more then working for someone else and some people's desire doesn't extend past that. There is where you are making your first mistake.
The raw truth of the matter is that people mess their lives up well before they can get a job. This is especially true in poorer areas where parents tend to lack parenting skills or even parents and the child gets trapped into gangs, drugs, violence, crimes, and so on. This also happens in more affluent communities too, but not to the same degree.
The republicans, as well as the democrats have no way of controlling that and your disdain for one is only a symptom of ignorance. The republicans have always been pro education, they just do not think the way the democrats seem to want to do things work. Take the NCLBA for instance. It said we are going to end the days of skipping over children's education and that teachers and schools, the very same people who claim to be able to get kids to learn and take jobs doing so, will have to find ways to teach kids or find new jobs. It was met with fierce opposition "how dare you expect teachers to teach every student under their charge". They specifically despised the alternative school provisions "how dare you give students of failing schools the ability to go to better performing schools so they can receive a quality education".
Yet Obama came to power and repackaged the same old shit and called it a gem while speaking kindly of it.
To blame any of you just said you thought was wrong on one party is only asking for more. Of course then again, ignorance is sometimes comforting. I guess you can always get satisfaction by getting more mad at republicans when democrat policies do the same.
A smart kid will become a great person in spite of being poor. That happens quite often. There are literally hundreds of thousands of scholarships looking for the one smart poor kid just to say their organization was part of making that great person. That is of course unless he ruins his chances first by joining a gang or by committing some offensive crime or wasting his education opportunities.
If you think the Arab Spring is coming to the US, the outcome will not be as you want. In the US, we are allowed to keep guns. Most people who do so are of the libertarian/republican mindset that think the federal government is limited in it's powers. The people who think like you tend to hide from guns and weapons and will be vastly outnumbered.
Fairness has little to do with it either. Life simply is not fair. But we have this ability to make the best of the situations we find ourselves in.