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'Pirate' Website Owner Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison
Grumbleduke writes "Anton Vickerman, who owned SurfTheChannel.com, has been sentenced to 4 years in prison following his conviction last month for 'conspiracy to defraud.' This is the first successful prosecution of an individual in the UK for running a website merely linking to allegedly infringing content (several earlier cases collapsed or resulted in acquittals). Vickerman was prosecuted for the controversial offense of 'conspiracy to defraud' for 'facilitating copyright infringement,' rather than for copyright infringement itself, and it is worth noting that the relevant copyright offense carries a maximum prison sentence of only two years — half of what was given. FACT, the Hollywood-backed enforcement group who were heavily involved in the prosecution noted that the conviction 'should send a very strong message to those running similar sites that they can be found, arrested and end up in prison,' but it remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on pirate sites, or encourage development of the largely hopeless legal market for online film."
A snausages just for you, boy!! Who's a good U.S. lapdog? Yes, *you* are!!
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. -- Chou En Lai
So when can we expect "conspiracy to defraud" cases to be initiated against, e.g., the suits in charge of RBS leading up to the 2008 financial crisis?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was really hoping for more useful information at the "Largely Hopeless" hyperlink, I should have examined the url first.
Now you Brits know how we Americans feel when we wipe with our Constitution. Based on my read of BBC's coverage, looks like this guy was guilty until proven innocent.
While I'm a rather happy pirate and pirate supporter, I don't think you can quite count it as "merely linking" if you actively source pirated material to link to. The flimsy excuse the pirate bay has for instance is that it's "just an indexing site" and can just as happily be used for legal material... when you are going out and looking for pirated stuff to link to, "merely" leaves the table.
Also I might just be tired, but the summary makes it seem like he got four years out of a maximum of two possible - that's not the case. He got 4 years out of a maximum of TEN possible according to the articles I've seen about it.
And now I feel all dirty for having to take the wrong side in this argument. I wish people would understand that if we stopped using hyperbole and chest thumping tactics we'd win on default in the eyes of the public. With articles like this, misrepresenting facts, twisting words, transparent agendas... That's as low and useless as the *AA tactics we oppose.
I need a shower, proceed with the discussion without me.
Beginning your sentence with a fully capitalized FACT ensures that what follows is indeed a true, unbiased fact.
I guess he will be paroled in half that time, or 8 years.
You won't have anybody to change your bedpans in ten or twenty years. Then what? Well, I guess there's always immigration to fill in, and you get more people to lock up and make work for free.
The fraud didn't matter. That's a part of everyday business amongst the big boys. No, the problem here was he picked the wrong target.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Move your servers to a country ending in -stan that has real problems, where judges kick you out of their courtrooms for coming up with stuff like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, I suppose this means giving people jail time for minor civil infractions (while letting major crimes, such as international larceny and funding terrorism, go unpunished) is the new normal?
Looks like Vickerman's real crime was not being wealthy enough to buy his way out of trouble...
This world, she is fucked...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Funny how the former master becomes the slave.
Are you sure who is the master and who is the slave? Really? Argue semantics after the regime is ousted and we can find out, but while the regime runs unchecked you don't know any better than I who is the master.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"On the street", a person that knows where illegal activity is going on is called an informant and cops tend to like them.
In this case they're prosecuting the guy that knows where illegal activity is going on because he has the links. The first step to thought crimes.
Why don't the cops just follow his links and go after the real criminals? Why toss Huggy Bear in jail?
So when are youtube's owning stake in the UK being locked up for this one then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBn4RMTU9SU (the crow - full movie)
Corrupt government officials should be hung from lightposts. The prosecutors and those who passed this sentence should both face the hangman's noose for this perversion.
It's not illegal to say, "You can get crack at that house over there for $20.", unless you are a paid employee of the crack house, of course.
What about a guy standing on the corner who's saying the exact same thing but is holding a sign with McDonald's advertising, which he is being paid for?
What if it's the same guy, but he says, "C'mere. I have info -- pay me for it and I'll tell you."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
States are now puppets of the corporations. This is something I can't seem to make anarchist-capitalists understand. They don't comprehend that money == power. With a government the corporations may not exist, but the large companies and rich owners would still be in charge and writing the laws that make us all victims to their whims.
ALSO: How can a judge enact a punishment that is double that proscribed by law? This looks like a stupid decision just waiting to be overturned by an appeals court.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Brits should just abandon their government and go into full revolt at this point. Nothing I read about their legal system remotely sounds like justice.
Really, Prison? For copying files? Prison? No one on this planet can prove that they were deprived of life, liberty or property from what this guy did... and he gets prison. Insanity.
This is evil. This is on the level of evil that only a powerful system can cause. This is the same type of evil that puts people to jail for possessing plants or in fact possessing anything, and in fact this is exactly that kind of a situation - possession.
This is the kind of evil that people gloss over and don't think twice about, it's about 'them', not about 'you', right?
Copyrights and patents shouldn't even exist as government laws, just like laws about narcotics, prostitution laws, none of this should be authorised to the government control.
You can't handle the truth.
FIXED:
They don't comprehend that money == power. [ Without ] a government the corporations may not exist
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The problem is political parties - a lone politician isn't going to be able to take hundreds of millions in "party donations" without it looking suspicious, but it's the norm for parties, which have a lone politician at the head. It's time to start a worldwide campaign to vote for independant candidates, whatever your political persuasion.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
The area is dog shit city. I eternally damn them to fall in it face first.
The US Gov has mutated and is deep into international extortion and terrorism, even on a retail basis. Basically, governments all over the world need to tell them and their weaslely spying and extortion to get stuffed ans stay home. We taxpayers would appreciate it, too.
That last link in the summary purports to link to an article explaining why the legal online film market is hopeless. All it links to is a tweet saying that the legal online film market is hopeless, and in turn links to the BBC report about this conviction. There is no evidence presented to back up the claim that the legal online film market is "hopeless", whatever that means.
If anyone has a link to a better article backing up this claim, I'm all ears.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
He got four years probably because he was convicted of both charges. He will most likely will get 2 years with good behaviour. More to the point - there's a new sheriff in town.
States are now puppets of the corporations. This is something I can't seem to make anarchist-capitalists understand. They don't comprehend that money == power.
But this happens because the current standard of "doing politics" is money-based. There are alternative systems in which having money doesn't translate into having power (at least not automatically), such as those based on birth (monarchy/feudalism) or merit (the pre-modern Chinese bureaucracy), but they're mostly frown upon, and for good reasons. Then there are those in which money basically isn't permitted, but those also don't solve the issue, as in them you simply declare the de jure political rulers as being the de facto owners of 100% of the money, there not existing any distinction whatsoever anymore. The solution, if any, definitely isn't clear.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Corporations undeniably have considerable power and influence, but that's a far cry from being the state's puppet masters. The problem is: on difficult issues like IP, which most voters are soft on, politicians are open to be swayed either way. By their advisers, who are most likely lobbyists for corporations. That is the big advantage they have over the general populace: not control over politicians; in this case merely having their ear is enough. The politicians do not understand the issue and are happy to be "properly" informed, and most voters do not give a damn.
In the USA, the situation is slightly worse perhaps: you guys are a nation of lawyers, or at least it is them who are in control. With the president reiterating that IP is the key to the future of American economics, and lawyers having a vested interest in endless IP-related litigation, you can forget about patent or copyright laws ever being reformed. That is, unless politicians and lawmakers with a conscience, and with a decent understanding of the issue, take office. Fat chance of that.
In the Netherlands, national politics is utterly boned. The largest parties are either socialists who stick to their ideology but unfortunately have the wrong one, and the liberals (= moderate right wing) who have a good ideology but seem to have forgotten it completely. I think my vote might go to the Pirate Party this time.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
They have found a way to convict people who haven't committed any provable crime. If it was found guilty on Copyright Infringment, it would be one thing, (police and prosecutors typically tack on as many offenses as they can), but to NOT be convicted of Copyright Infringment and still be sent to prison is absolutely insane.
They can effectively charge anyone who has ever downloaded anything from the internet.
With a government the corporations may not exist, but the large companies and rich owners would still be in charge and writing the laws that make us all victims to their whims.
You clearly don't understand anarcho-capitalism. There would be only one law: Keep your hands off other people and their property without their permission.
Obviously, a definition of what counts as "people", "property" and "permission" need to go along with that single law but it's fairly intuitive. Anything capable of asserting itself as a person is one. You can claim unowned property by marking it as yours and taking an interest in it. No you can't claim the moon when you've never been there. No you can't claim an entire continent by planting a flag on a beach. Permission requires non-fraudulent consent. Knowing all that, how on earth do you get the idea that following these ideas can end up with the "rich" stuffing poor people into meat grinders for their amusement?
The only way anyone could get rich is by serving wants of the masses with lower priced higher quality goods and services than the competition. In a free market, if we all want Nike shoes and McDonald's hamburgers, Adidas and Wendy's are going broke and there's nothing they can do about it. The "poor" decide who becomes "rich". Consumers have the ultimate power, not producers. With services like Urbanspoon, Yelp, etc, you can't even claim much of an asymmetry of information. If your product sucks, a few people might experience it firsthand but word will spread quickly and you'll be out of business in no time. With government intervention, Wendy's could claim that McDonald's has a monopoly and get subsidized, etc, etc. Even though everyone wants McDonald's, Wendy's can play political favors to waste time and money giving us what we don't want.
If you want to then argue that popular taste sucks, you're just being a snob. We each are the judge of what we like best. If you think that because your opinion is a minority that you'll be left out in the cold, you're wrong again. It's the government that necessarily reduces variety with regulations and market intervention. In a free market, if you want something bad enough and willing to pay for it, you'll get it, even if it's raw milk or fish pedicures.
For more insight, I recommend that you read "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman.
link
"[W]hat Kim Dotcom ran is just a service that's like a post office. He was the post office it was being mailed to,"
"Why do you shut down the post office thinking that's where the problem is? It's not,"
AccountKiller
Actually I would combine something similar to the current system, read democracy, with a second house which can veto any parliament decision and is composed of people chosen at random from the population.
This second house should be composed of more people then your typical parliament to achieve a representative subset of the population.
I would make them serve an eight year term. Two years spent on education about laws, history, etc. Four Years serving as members of this house. Two more years time off to get back into their normal lives.
Of course this is expensive, but I think it would give the will of the people at least a fighting chance.
I will never rent again and I will not renew my HBO movie channels and that is the fact jack fuckem.
You clearly don't understand anarcho-capitalism. There would be only one law: Keep your hands off other people and their property without their permission.
When the entire city, including the roadways, police, education system is owned by a private corporation, how does one live a lawful life without selling oneself to the corporation?
Knowing all that, how on earth do you get the idea that following these ideas can end up with the "rich" stuffing poor people into meat grinders for their amusement?
The gilded age. There but for government regulations won by a strong labor movement go we.
The only way anyone could get rich is by serving wants of the masses with lower priced higher quality goods and services than the competition.
Yes, and because of economies of scale the rich can provide higher quality goods and services than the poor can. The consequence of this is wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. Money makes money faster than labor does. Without specific provisions(like say, government regulation) to stop this, inequality will rule until the poor rise up and slaughter everyone. Is that what you want?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The UK had a system like this, but have been dismantling it over the course of the last 100 years stripping power from the monarchy and the house of lords. Likely the only empire to ever commit suicide.
I'll vote for the pirate party or extreme left until this stops.
Sooner or later pirate parties and other opponents of intellectual property rights (or at least these rights getting more and more strict) will come to power in Europe, and actions of this criminal industry will come back at them like a boomerang.
They'll regret sentences like these when copyrights will be abolished. Looking forward to that day.
Lawyers opened the law database, pressed Ctrl+F and typed in "piracy". The only result was a chapter on "conspiracy to defraud". Close enough, let's sue!
U$A little bitch.
Wouldn't this extend to include IDK, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Huewai, and anyone else that creates OSs, Systems, network cards. Oh the ISPs should be held accountable too, they provide access. This is rediculous.
And more important, you need to define what can be "property". In various times and places, such definitions included people and ideas.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Could be required that funds for the campaing don't come from "donations" (i.e. mandated tv/media space for each candidate to ensure a fair exposition for each to voters, banning other ways to do campaing). Could be far more transparency that is now not just for president, but for all government, of their money (before, during, and after their mandate) and related positions, Wikileaks should not be a need for the citizens to audit what the people they elect actually do.
Yeah, because the extreme left never- oh, what's the point. Your mind is gone.
I don't live in a corporatist police state and I am serving just a shitload of torrents right now in addition to my large sneakernet operation and free offerings of pirate education. Does that make you mad? Come get me, fuckers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
People are property. Ideas are not. And before someone says "ZOMG SLAVERY". We each own ourselves. Insofar as I own something, I can do whatever I want with it. If I want to ink my body up, put holes in it, put drugs in it, sell parts of it, kidneys, blood, hair, etc, or all of it, even kill myself, it's my choice. Insofar as I can't do something with my body, I don't own it. If you say I can't get a tattoo or a piercing, my body is that much under someone's control/ownership. If I want to sell myself into slavery voluntarily, by my own choice, that's my right. Telling me what I can't do with my body is involuntary slavery, much worse. That being said, don't confuse what we should tolerate with what we should endorse. I will tolerate people doing heroin but I don't endorse it, the opposite, actually. I don't think anyone should ever do heroin. I don't think anyone should sell themselves into slavery. I also think anyone that would buy a slave is immoral and not a nice person. However, the idea of tolerating consenting acts between adults should apply inside the bedroom and out.
One reason: World War II.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
ALSO: How can a judge enact a punishment that is double that proscribed by law? This looks like a stupid decision just waiting to be overturned by an appeals court.
I had to re-read that one. I think the article is saying that 2 year maximum is for the copyright infringement offense, which he was not charged with. Conspiracy to defraud carries a longer setence.
So your "in the course of business" doesn't apply.
And more important, you need to define what can be "property". In various times and places, such definitions included people and ideas.
I think those issues have already been addressed. You can't stake a claim to another person because there is already an owner—that person. And as implied by the GP's brief definition, ownership is not fundamentally the right to exclude others from using or benefiting from something, though that often comes with it to some degree as a side-effect of scarcity, but rather the right to freedom from interference in your own use of the property. "Ownership" of an idea is thus meaningless—as an abstract concept, there is no way for others to interfere with your use, at least not without directly interfering with you, so there is no point in staking a claim.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Two reasons: World War III.
Captcha: Playtime. The time between WW2 and WW3.
im late to the party but this is getting out of hand, in australia at least i see people go through the court system everyday for things like physically assaulting others or armed robberies or worse drink driving causing harm and they get less time then a guy who posted some links to tv shows that caused a loss of a small, in the big picture, no doubt unknown/made up value of money, just the other day i saw a women who helped try to conceal a murder by cleaning blood and body bits out of a car get a wholey suspended sentence, because people were angry with her and had called her names urgh
Technically under UK law (and probably US law) it's not possible to own a human body - alive or dead, even your own.
Never what? I suggest you get over it, whatever it is you think the 'extreme left' are responsible for.
Probably no one's going to read this because I don't have an account, so I'm posting as AC, but this argument really confuses me.
One of the major reasons I'm an anarcho-capitalist is because I see how government (especially the US federal) is a puppet of the corporations. Clearly policies like drug prohibition, airport security theater, and undeclared wars with ambiguous goals aren't in our best interest. Yet people still believe that the government is "looking out for them", and no matter how much harm the governmnet does (how many people are imprisoned, groped, or killed), it's justified because we're supposed to believe unregulated coporate rule would be worse. I contend that what we have now is the worst possible state of affairs. The evil coproprations are writing regulations favoring themselves and negatvively impacting start-up competitors. Meanwhile, the public thinks these regulations must be in their best interest, because that's what the government does, right? I don't think any anarcho-capitalists are suggesting handing over control to coprorations and just sitting back and watching them run everything. People are going to have to be hold those corporations accountable. I think getting rid of the illusion that the governmnet is acting in the people's interest, and making it easier for non-evil corportations to take the place of the evil ones, would help.
As for who holds the power---the "99%" always does. The rich are powerless if everyone refuses to do their bidding. In the past monarchs convinced subjects of their legitimacy with religious propaganda (divine right). Things haven't changed much. Now we worship democracy. Every few years our rulers give us the illision of choice. Two people who write speeches designed to appeal to different crowds---but when elected they do more-or-less the same things. I'm suggesting shattering that illusion.
The message i got is the media companys are completely sociopathic and a huge liability to the human race.
And it's time they went away.
They are willing to destroy someones life over SOME MUSIC AND MOVIE FILES! How sociopathic is that!!!!
So now it's anything goes. They have sunk so low.... Anything is now better than they are.
Feel free to destroy their lives for any reason at all. M.A.D.
They might learn. If not. They can be gone.
Someone piss in their coffee at least.
The guy hired people to find illegal content, that was his mistake. So yes, their was a conspiracy to defraud and he actively facilitated this.
"Anton Vickerman, from Gateshead, had designed the service's pages, hiring others to source material and carry out other back-end functions."
And... "sent earnings to a bank account in Latvia" as they say... seems legit.
In other words, the links weren't crowd sourced. He actually had staff finding the stuff.
What you refer to as a 'private corporation' is one of the things that simply would not exist in a free market, so it obviously could not wind up owning a city.
You actually have it backwards. Gross inequities arise out of government regulation to begin with, and mechanics like regulatory capture effectively ensure that the more power the government has to 'regulate' the more that the government effectively re-enforces and entrenches those inequities. The stories you have been taught of the 'gilded age' will have many half truths and deceptions, probably the largest being the lack of mention that each and every 'robber baron' owed his success to lobbyists and friendly congressmen, not some mythical free market which didnt actually exist.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
And there were a few times when it was the House of Lords that stopped the House of Commons from abusing copyright including when it was introduced, it was the Lords who made the term 14+14 yrs and inserted the reasoning as "to advance learning" whereas the commons was right from the beginning willing to make it permanent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Technically it wasn't legal for women to vote at one point.
Based on the definition in the grandparent's post: Insofar as I can't do something with my body, I don't own it. If you say I can't get a tattoo or a piercing, my body is that much under someone's control/ownership., most women in the US (and much of the world for that matter) don't own themselves due to laws relating to birth control and abortion.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Yes, it sends a very strong message and I for one am outraged. I will re-double my efforts in fostering an environment which will make it safer for people to link and host infringing content for profit. I'm sure many people feel likewise.
Before you ask: No, they are not "content creators". That's the facade they are trying to hide behind. The artists receive only a small percentage of sales.
So what do these these very important people of untold wealth do when they suddenly find that their golden nipple dried up? Use some of left over cash to throw some poor schmucks in the pit, that's what!
It can go both ways. The Lords fought for years against the ban on fox-hunting with dogs, even though the overwhelming majority of the population supported the ban. Eventully the commons resorted to an obscure technicality that let them force it through regardless.
"We are so far above the law and so deep in government's pockets, that we can even have a sentence imposed that's double the legal maximum"
Message received, loud and clear.
I'm 52 now. I've lived from the "home taping is killing music" era of my first portable cassette player, until today - and yet I don't see any compelling evidence whatsoever of anything being killed.
I do hope I live long enough to see the ultimate demise of these "new, legal" organised crime bosses, when their business model finally implodes.
Gross inequities arise out of government regulation to begin with, and mechanics like regulatory capture effectively ensure that the more power the government has to 'regulate' the more that the government effectively re-enforces and entrenches those inequities. The stories you have been taught of the 'gilded age' will have many half truths and deceptions, probably the largest being the lack of mention that each and every 'robber baron' owed his success to lobbyists and friendly congressmen, not some mythical free market which didnt actually exist.
That's probably true in many cases, but there are also cases where corporations have become so large by themselves that they can manipulate the market and get rid of competition. For example, Microsoft.
The body needs stronger legal protection than property. For example, if you damage someone's property, the damage can be repaired with monetary compensation. Not so if you damage someone's body. Instead, we need punishments as deterrents for causing bodily harm and death.
The pro-life people could easily argue for their position from an ultra-libertarian standpoint. They could claim women are free to do as they wish with their bodies, as long as they don't hurt another human being, in this case, the fetus.
The pertinent question is whether the fetus counts as a full human being, and, to a lesser degree, if abortion should count as actively killing the fetus, or just as passively refusing it protection and nutrition so it dies by itself.
I think those issues have already been addressed. You can't stake a claim to another person because there is already an owner—that person. And as implied by the GP's brief definition, ownership is not fundamentally the right to exclude others from using or benefiting from something, though that often comes with it to some degree as a side-effect of scarcity, but rather the right to freedom from interference in your own use of the property. "Ownership" of an idea is thus meaningless—as an abstract concept, there is no way for others to interfere with your use, at least not without directly interfering with you, so there is no point in staking a claim.
I think quite a few people would object to that. For example, it would allow people to trespass anywhere as long as they didn't disturb anyone or anything. It would allow people to sell themselves as slaves. And there are ultra-libertarians who believe ownership is about protecting the fruits of their labour, so making use of someone's idea is like stealing from them (for example, if you sell copies of someone else's invention, and they sell fewer copies as a result).
The dream of a purely libertarian society is very far away from becoming reality, because people can't agree on what the fundamental libertarian principles are.
Sooner or later pirate parties and other opponents of intellectual property rights (or at least these rights getting more and more strict) will come to power in Europe, and actions of this criminal industry will come back at them like a boomerang.
They'll regret sentences like these when copyrights will be abolished. Looking forward to that day.
I think the CEOs and lawyers will laugh as they enjoy the money they've already earned and stashed away, and not care one bit about how wrong they were. The rich or powerful almost always find a way to get away.
even though the overwhelming majority of the population supported the ban.
citation, please.
I'm pretty sure the "overwhelming majority of the population" doesn't give a fuck one way or the other. The majority of eligible voters don't even bother to vote these days.
no taxation without representation!
It's still rather weird that you can get a longer sentence for helping someone with copyright infringement, than you can get for the infringment itself, no matter how large, though.
The Lords fought for years against the ban on fox-hunting with dogs, even though the overwhelming majority of the population supported the ban.
And the Lords were actually in the right!
Witness, what a pigs ear of unworkable legislation the fox/dogs hunting ban is. Regardless of any personal beliefs on the issue, only a fool would argue that the ban has worked or has been of use.
There is an advantage to an upper chamber that does not have to respond to popular opinion....... It can look at the facts without hysteria.
For example, one only has to witness the many deep concerns the Lords had when debating the recent appallingly bad "extreme" pr0n laws.
They are talking about Copyright INFRINGEMENT, not THEFT. Stealing copyright would entail the illegal transference of rights from the legitimate owner to the thief, and that's not the case here. How can an organization mainly composed of lawyers not know this?
Now, I expect them to prosecute Google next. Regardless of rankings, you can still find every bit of publicly accessible pirate content using Google's search engine, just a single click away. That must be a much, much worse violation and thus ripe for a massive trial because it just doesn't get any bigger than this. Oh, Google has almost bottomless pockets and a building full of lawyers while Anton Vickerman here does not. Big difference.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
"Obviously, a definition of what counts as "people", "property" and "permission" need to go along with that single law but it's fairly intuitive."
It's never simple.
In the UK we banned smoking in enclosed public places some years back, and now there is talk of strengthening the ban further. The argument by smokers has always been "But it's my body, I should have the right to do what I want" and this is the classic libertarian argument. What it completely and utterly ignores though is that people like me have to walk past smokers in the park and inhale as they smoke when they walk past us. What the fuck happened to my right to breathe fresh air free of carcinogens in public parklands and so forth? Whose right is more important? the smokers or the passer by's? If it's the smokers, do I also then have the freedom to walk around with a canister of harmful gas like chlorine and spray it at smokers when I pass them? if not, why not in this circumstance? Where do you draw the line and why? What makes your drawn line more important than anyone elses? How do we come to a conclusion on this?
The answer to the last one is rather simple, we decide via a form of governance, because there are many millions of these sorts of grey areas.
"Knowing all that, how on earth do you get the idea that following these ideas can end up with the "rich" stuffing poor people into meat grinders for their amusement?"
It's quite simple. The rich have the resources to claim more than anyone else, to the point where everyone else has to make use of the rich's resources to get/do what they want/need to do. How do you get to the hospital if you can't pass over the land of the rich guy who has bought up everything around your house? how do you get food and so on? Ultimately you have to bow down to the rich guy's whims, do whatever he wants, because otherwise you can simply no longer survive.
ALSO: How can a judge enact a punishment that is double that proscribed by law? This looks like a stupid decision just waiting to be overturned by an appeals court.
The judge didn't enact a punishment that is double that prescribed by law. That comment in the summary is alluding to the fact that the conviction was obtained on a charge of "conspiracy to defraud", not of "copyright infringement".
Presumably the prosecutors thought they had a better chance of conviction with that charge because merely linking to a site with copyright infringing material is not in itself infringing copyright (you haven't copied anything) whereas, they do have a fighting chance of proving that the copyright holder has been defrauded (lost revenue) and the defendant has conspired to make this possible.
Fraud is considered more serious than copyright infringement and so attracts a heavier punishment.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
With a government the corporations may not exist, but the large companies and rich owners would still be in charge and writing the laws that make us all victims to their whims.
You clearly don't understand anarcho-capitalism. There would be only one law: Keep your hands off other people and their property without their permission.
For this to work you either need a definition of "keep your hands off", "people" and "property" that is hugely expansive and complex, or you need a lot more laws. Let me give you a few examples:
-Everyone wants McDonalds hamburgers and Nike shoes, so Wendy's rebrands all its restaurants as McDonalds and copies their menu, and Adidas makes Nike-branded shoes. Do McD and Nike have any redress? (i.e. does "property" include intellectual property?)
-That's too much effort so Wendy's has a new plan: they put up billboards and run ads in newspapers purporting to be written by an independent testing group, claiming that brain matter was found in McDonalds hamburgers and that they could cause CJD. Does McDonalds have any redress?
-Things still aren't going well for Wendy's, so they start construction on a hundred new restaurants. The restaurants are all finished, signed off and the final payment is due - but Wendy's refuse to pay. Do the builders have any redress? (If they do you need a system of contract law)
-People still prefer McDonalds, even when there's a brand new Wendy's right next door! There's an easy fix for that: some large, directional speakers and a powerful smoke machine make the neighbouring restaurant unusable. Does McDonalds have any redress? (Currently this would fall under the law of nuisance)
Etc etc...
You probable could fold all these examples under the "one rule", but only by introducing such a complicated system of addenda and definitions that it would be just as complex and far-reaching as it is now, and that would leave plenty of room for lobbying and tactical redrafting. It's worth bearing in mind that the law is complicated for a reason - life and business are complicated.
ALSO: How can a judge enact a punishment that is double that proscribed by law? This looks like a stupid decision just waiting to be overturned by an appeals court.
They clearly can't, and the summary and article are both pretty clear. The sentence was for conspiracy to defraud, and was only half the maximum. There is a separate offence with a maximum sentence of 2 years.
There is an irony in calling something a "stupid decision" when the real problem is simply that you haven't taken the time to understand the summary or article.
The problem with communism, anarchishm AND capitalism, is that they anticipate all members to be either communists, anarchists or capitalists respectively.
For the anarcho-capitalism proposed here to work, you would require respect for property rights or laws. Granted you have respect for property rights/laws, you are back in our current system only with less government. Less government means you have even more have-mores and many have-lesses. Welcome the feudal system.
They are all theories that look fine on paper, but people is different. It's this difference we must cater to.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
It's not the USA and every adult is expected to register to vote and turn up so you've got it wrong:
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
Those numbers are still a bit low though even if they are vastly higher than US levels.
States are now puppets of the corporations.
Not being funny, but how does enforcing a law against facilitating copyright infringement make you a puppet of a corporation. No one forced this guy to do what he did. He provided the means and the intent to assist tens of thousands of people to take infringing content without paying for it. Why should this be legal? And why does enforcing someone's right to be paid if you take stuff they paid to create be frowned upon. There's only one reason. People want to download shit for free and will come up with any reason why this should be enshrined as some kind of god-given right. Except those same people expect to turn up to work the next day and be paid for they they do.
I know this isn't a popular opinion on slashdot, but fuck it. When did we reach a point where taking whatever you want, however you want became an action that should be protected. It's no less selfish than the supposed "greed" of the content owners.
They could claim women are free to do as they wish with their bodies, as long as they don't hurt another human being, in this case, the fetus.
Regardless of when life begins, we each have the right to decide who gets to live inside our bodies. Abortion is an eviction that currently causes the death of the fetus. Someday, that might change and there will be an artificial womb for fetuses to be implanted within.
Gross inequities arise out of government regulation to begin with
No, gross inequities arise out of basic math. Economic transactions form a scale free network, with the wealthy as hubs. The more connections on that network, the more opportunities to gain wealth. That's all there is to it, wealth concentrates by nature.
Money makes money faster than labor. That's just how economics works. Iterate that a few times and you get inequalitie. Without a means for redistributing that wealth (socialism), we are bound for instability.
You can assert that government is the cause of all inequality if you want, but I've just outlined a mechanism where inequality generates itself without any government influence at all. Where exactly am I wrong?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think what they really do not understand, or do not want to understand, is that corporations and governments are, de facto, not fundamentally different, and thus if you weaken the elected government all you do is make the private states more powerful, who will then exercise government like power over people.
Can a corporation not just own the website, and since you work for the corporation you can't be at fault for it's crimes right? I mean you were just following the corporations orders and corporation are people!
"Corporations undeniably have considerable power and influence"
You should go read a book sometime your ignorance of history is showing.
It may be a little last for this now, but today some more details have come out:
Firstly, the judge's sentencing remarks have been published here, in which he gives his reasons for imposing a four-year prison sentence.
Secondly, Anton Vickerman has (apparently against the advice of his lawyers) posted his account of what happened here. He makes some pretty serious accusations against pretty much all the parties involved.
It also confirms that the case is being appealed on twenty-four separate grounds.
In the UK we banned smoking in enclosed public places some years back, and now there is talk of strengthening the ban further.
There would be no such thing as public property. So your objection is moot. If you are on your property and me on mine, yet your smoke gets in my lungs you've violated my property rights. The same goes for chlorine gas.
How do you get to the hospital if you can't pass over the land of the rich guy who has bought up everything around your house?
You should read Walter Block's book The Privatization of Roads and Highways which is free at http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf
1. The rich guy doesn't own land all the way to the center of the earth or all the way into space. You can go under or over him. Whatever he wants to charge you can't be more than a helicopter ride.
2. As a home buyer, would you buy a house where such a thing was possible? No of course not. As home builder, would you build houses where such a thing was possible and therefore nobody would buy them? No of course not. As a land speculator, would you pay as much for land where such a thing was possible and therefore no home builder would ever buy it? No of course not. The chain of common sense reaches far enough back to
3. There would likely be a thing called access insurance. In the US, when you buy a house you get title insurance, to make sure that you're actually able to own the title to the property. If not, you get your money back. The same would work with access insurance. If you ever get stuck in a blockade, the insurance company would helicopter your ass out of there and give you a refund.
Your objections have been answered dozens of time over by people smarter than myself. Agree with the basic premise that all human interactions should be voluntary and start looking for solutions rather than defending the status quo.
Everyone wants McDonalds hamburgers and Nike shoes, so Wendy's rebrands all its restaurants as McDonalds and copies their menu, and Adidas makes Nike-branded shoes. Do McD and Nike have any redress?
If I sell you a can of Coca-Cola and tell you its Pepsi. That's fraud. You're the victim, not Coca-Cola or Pepsi.
That's too much effort so Wendy's has a new plan: they put up billboards and run ads in newspapers purporting to be written by an independent testing group, claiming that brain matter was found in McDonalds hamburgers and that they could cause CJD. Does McDonalds have any redress?
First of all, libel and slander are such an issue because it's illegal. If I say that you raped so-and-so then people are going to be more likely to believe me because, after all, if I were lying I could get into big trouble. However, make such things legal and people will eventually understand that anyone can say anything and therefore evidence is what matters.
Things still aren't going well for Wendy's, so they start construction on a hundred new restaurants. The restaurants are all finished, signed off and the final payment is due - but Wendy's refuse to pay. Do the builders have any redress? (If they do you need a system of contract law)
You're trying to make things complicated to prove a point. If a girl says you have permission to have sex with her on the condition that you wear a condom and you don't wear a condom, guess what, you don't have hear permission and therefore its rape. Contracts are just more formal but there's not some elaborate system that needs to be in place. Even if there were, it's still just a matter of the basic rule, an extension.
People still prefer McDonalds, even when there's a brand new Wendy's right next door! There's an easy fix for that: some large, directional speakers and a powerful smoke machine make the neighbouring restaurant unusable. Does McDonalds have any redress?
That's a violation of property rights. Under libertarian property theory you can homestead noise rights. If you move next to an airport, you can't sue them to stop making all that racket. However, if you were there first and and airport builds next to you, then you can stop them.
You probable could fold all these examples under the "one rule", but only by introducing such a complicated system of addenda and definitions that it would be just as complex and far-reaching as it is now, and that would leave plenty of room for lobbying and tactical redrafting. It's worth bearing in mind that the law is complicated for a reason - life and business are complicated.
Just as complex? No. Not even close. You're right that the basic law needs a bit of definition, but so it goes with any sentence. Who would you lobby? There would be no government enforcing these things. They would all be private companies with society enforcing regulations through boycotts and self-defense. Anyways, you're not even arguing a point that's critical to my beliefs. The complexity is irrelevant. The basic idea of keeping your mitts off other people and their property stands, regardless of any grey areas or complexities. If you disagree with that then you're little more than a thug.
If you want to start a hippie commune, anarcho-capitalism can support that. The real issue is when you want everyone to be part of your hippie commune.
Who said inequality was bad? If everyone has a mansion but one guy has 1,000 mansions, is that really an issue? Where you're wrong is how narrow you've made your scope, "inequality = bad". That's false. Inequality is irrelevant when the poorest person is wealthy.
We are the god damned lapdogs, the idiots who download all kinds of movies, sitcoms and what not, because we need to occupy our minds with crap. God forbid we read an extra book or get some exercise instead. I'm under the impression that this war broke out simply because it makes the products seem more valuable than they actually are.
You clearly don't understand anarcho-capitalism. There would be only one law: Keep your hands off other people and their property without their permission.
Tell __ME__ that! It has been the ONLY condition I ve looked for for the last 25 years each of the over 70 times it was NOT respected. We Humans live anarchies, most know what to do exactly by nature and upbringing, or our laws are actually game rules and instructions.
Where are you wrong? I see a few spots.
Scale free network? Speculative, may or may not apply, doesnt really matter if it does. You said 'inequities' (the same word I used) but then go on to equate it with 'inequalities' as if they were equivelant. They are not. If I am 5'10 and you are 5'11 that's an inequality, but it's not an inequity.
If I show up on time, do my job well, and you have the same job, usually show up late, and usually someone else has to fix your messes before the jobs close, and we both get the same pay; well that would not be an inequality, but it would be an inequity.
Inequality isnt a problem per se - it's when it occurs on such a scale as to effectively create different classes of citizens that it is objectionable. And that is something that a single person, without the sort of special privilege that only a state can provide, and working with a single human lifetime, needs talent, hard work, and tons of luck to even get close to - and he only gets to enjoy it a short time before he dies. There's nothing inequitable about that, since he could only achieve the result by providing people with goods or services they wanted, at a price they were happy to pay, rather than simply cultivating legislatures for the purpose of raising subsidies.
"Money makes money faster than labor. That's just how economics works." No, it's not. That's how a mixed (i.e. unfree, over-regulated) economy works, because the state has the power to tilt the playing field, which means that rent-seeking becomes obligatory - if you dont play the game and capture the regulators yourself, your competitors will and they will take your business as a result. Take away the ability of the state to choose winners and losers like that, restore a true free market, and money and labour like everything else would naturally seek a balance point based on supply and demand, without the state laying it's heavy finger on one side of the scale and privileging the wealthy and connected interests over the common good.
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Private corporation simply refers to money pooling. There's no way to stop 10 people who want to pool thier power putting their money together to joint own something. Sure, today they would incorporate and so forth, but cartels and gangs do the same thing today without signing a single document. Eliminate companies and you also have to eliminate sharing as well so that no social construct that is the same or similar can be created. That in itself is impossible.
Remember that everything in this civilization came from simpler times. How do you think the first kings were appointed? Short straws?
I have had this discussion many times, since it's a common anarcho-capitalist delusion. It's just not true. The issue is not money-pooling per se, the issues include the particular conditions which attach, to whom, and how.
This is true, but there is a huge difference. Cartels and gangs are dwarf governments, wannabe governments, that dont quite raise to the level of having a monopoly of force even in their own strongholds. They can do a tremendous amount of damage to lots of innocent people, I dont want to minimise that, but they are still on a lesser scale of danger - unless they, like the corps, engage in regulatory capture as well. Which is occasionally discovered and reported, and I am convinced must happen much more often than most suspect.
You cant eliminate companies in the broadest possible sense, and I was careful not to imply that. But there were all sorts of corporate forms in the sense of capital pooling long before the kings realised they could get rich by forming monopoly corporations, and it would be forms like that, not like what rules our economy today, which could exist in a free market.
The early kings were generally elected believe it or not. The king was also the high priest, and it was believed that as long as he performed that job properly then $deities would not visit any disasters on the people, but they would prosper. Because whenever anything really bad happened, something bad enough to affect the whole people, certainly the only possible cause could be angry $deity. So if there was a long drought, or a military disaster,, or possibly even just an eclipse, the kings throne could be a very hot seat.
Kings didnt have a set term like a modern governor, but they were subject to recall. And some were recalled. Often though not always this involved the demise of the deposed.
The catholic church actually exploited this fact quite effectively to bring scandinavia which had never been under roman rule into their domain. It was always the kings who converted, and then tried to force the people to convert. If the king failed he died and the clans elected a new one but the church would wait a few years and then send more monks and try again.
The reason the kings were suckers for this new religion that their neighbors were rarely enthused about? Their positions were notoriously insecure, they were as described, an elected high chief, and if they screwed up or just had some rotten luck they could be gone very quickly and a rival sitting on the throne and enjoying their perks. The 'divine right of kings' was tailor made to bring them in, and now I feel like Paul Harvey.
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