Without patent protection, you'd have a free rider problem. Epistemologically impossible. Companies must by definition have the money to invest in drug research before they know whether the research will produce a viable drug or not. There must also by definition be a consumer market that will purchase the drug if it ends up viable. Thus the incentive for drug research exists *independently* of patent protection. Solution: those who need a drug themselves invest their money in finding a cure that can be copied by all who need it.
By definition of drug company profits it would be *cheaper* for those who need a drug medication to cut out the patent protected pharmaceutical company, as drug company profits would be turned into non-profit R&D medication cost SAVINGS! There would be no free rider "problem" as those who needed a medication by definition profited from realizing the development of a medication.
Imagine them trying to compete against a la carte, on demand "cable" piped to a set-top box, delivered via internet... think AppleTV or X-Box with more content and lower prices. Lower prices and overall less bandwidth used, as most of Comcast's cable television channels are using up tons of unwanted fiber optic cable bandwidth delivering 24/7 content on cable channels broadcasting complete crap people could care less about, and then there are the duplicate HD version channels broadcasting complete crap people could care less about 24/7.
The content industry has people paying for $hit. Comca$t pa$$e$ the$e co$t$ along to you. The bill increases yearly, and the content gets worse and more infested with annoying commercials.
Wow, you guys are way off base. There wouldn't be talk of "universal health care", "single payer health care" in that case. You're talking far left socialism. The people who go to journalism school to "change the world" are leftists, well within the top 10-20% percentiles of hardcore left wingers. And those people dominate newspapers and every television network except FOX. Yes, they are muzzled somewhat by corporate ownership. Academia is far left wing.
If the media were right of center, we'd be talking about abolishing the Federal Income Tax, abolishing the Federal Reserve, abolishing Medicare and Medicaid, abolishing Social Security, etc. The Progressives won in the 20th Century, paving the way for the 21st Century Fascists to finish the totalitarianism job. You gave the government the money for war, you gave government the power to pander to corporate bribery, and both political parties are more similar than dissimilar. That's why libertarian thought is dominating and influencing the internet. Conservative dominance is in talk radio and FOX. Leftists dominance is in print newspapers and CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, which people pay less and less attention out of their own free market decisions and loss of credibility of these networks (and FOX has lost a ton of credibility due to Ron Paul as well).
Liberal leftists are the same brand of intolerant violence wielding people as right wing Christian Fundamentalists. They both want to use government interference to force people to do things they are not voluntarily willing to do, whether it's taking people's money or sending people's children to Iraq. They are both of the same cloth. Neither respect freedom and liberty. Both *cause* economic poverty with their interference in the free market. Who paved the way for Big Brother draconian government spying and recording of information? Leftist Progressives who forced the registration of information with the government whenever you start a new job, so the government can rob the paychecks.
If anyone could control who copies a Hollywood blockbuster, they could also control who copies other information that makes the government look bad. Like a video of police brutality or any violation of human rights. They are already actively doing this as much and whenever they can. Lawyers send takedown notices and cease and desist letters with claims that such information is itself copyrighted. MSNBC reruns a presidential debate removing responses from Ron Paul and then tries to get youtube videos showing Ron Paul's public domain debate words silenced by using claims of copyright.
Make no mistake, we are the middle of a historical epic war over the flow of and use of digital information.
Why not just everyone send copyrighted legal settlement notices with claims of copyright on them. If you show them to anyone, including any defense attorney you might hire, you are by definition distributing copyrighted material, proving guilt if you even submit such letters as evidence in a Court, to deny charges. We are literally at the edge of such absurdity and mockery of free speech and freedom itself.
People are starving solely *because* of intellectual property. Monsanto wishes to develop seeds that kill off natural food crops, and only grow with their intellectual property fertilizer, and only grow for one season. It's like charging people for breathing air, resulting in caused poverty as labor is required to produce something where to fore there was no labor previously required for the same output. Governments and Corporations like Monsanto wish to become a middleman between nature and mankind, enslaving by eliminating competition through the Law. This is enabled purely through government enforce copyright and patent.
If the argument that incentives for the production of music wouldn't exist without imaginary property interference were true (which they aren't), then musicians would find it more profitable to become farmers, increasing the supply of food, decreasing the price of food, and leading to less starving people.
The government ethanol subsidies are a perfect example of interference in the free market that mimics the effect of copyright and patent. Shortages of other productions result in higher prices for other things. People devote scarce resources to producing things the free and voluntary actions of consumers and producers show are less worthwhile production activities as evidenced by economic supply and demand.
So we have a flood of people trying to make a living as artists, producing crap, copying the hell out of each other's ideas anyway, and sitting on their asses collecting government interference subsidized welfare.
But how much are consumers paying for ESPN content that uses X GB/month? About $3-$5 per month? How much bandwidth does the ESPN channel which is delivered 24/7 use in a month? Since generic internet content is not premium sports content shouldn't the price for the same X GB/month ESPN uses be FAR CHEAPER?
How much monthly bandwidth do Comcast cable television subscribers receive for the Comcast cable tv channels? It's gotta just be incredibly lopsided versus the amount of money billed for internet on a data size/unit time analysis basis. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission needs to examine whether internet monthly price is gouging at a stratospheric percentage basis.
Internet and cable tv are sent on the exact same fiber optic cable are they not? Say the average Comcast subscriber bill is %50/%50 cable tv/internet. What is Comcast charging per GB of commercial infested spam on the cable tv side? Compared to that, the profit margin on internet service must be absolutely GINORMOUS. And the profit margin on their VoIP phone service must be even more ASTRONOMICAL.
Now think about the US laws passed making digital signals mandatory. You've completely further subsidized a price gouging monopoly for the delivery of content. Eliminating analog eliminates cheap spectrum competition. Public domain airwaves will be completely eliminated.
And these telecommunication companies are not paying market rates for spectrum. All spectrum must be limited to 5 or 10 year LEASE periods, with renewable competitive bids.
Networks need to be privatized at individual and community levels, with corporations SERVICING, not selling bandwidth. Only such a system will ensure market competition for the highest quality at the lowest price.
The solution may be forced divestiture of companies selling both bandwidth and content. We could forcibly break off the internet bandwidth service from Comcast and force them to sell a certain percentage of the cable at a comparable rate to their cable television data size per unit time.
Somebody get me some hard numbers on how much data space cable television channels use.
How much did it cost the MAFIAA to pay the lawyers who brought the suit? How much money will the MAFIAA receive in their bank accounts when the dust clears?
Let's say it cost them around $2 million. So just 4,999 more of these lawsuits for them to blow through $10 billion.
1.) Spend millions to win nothing! 2.) Repeat #1. 3.) ??? 4.) Bankruptcy tax benefits!!!
Except that every single word and every single image on every single webpage is copyrighted by whoever originally created that material.
This post I just wrote right now is *exactly* as copyrighted as any Hollywood movie or RIAA song. There's absolutely no difference linking to posts or webpages versus linking to copyrighted movie files. Therefore, Google links are exactly as infringing as any torrent links. I think a lot of people might be very interested in suing for the vast sums the MPAA and RIAA are suing for on an individual basis.
On the basis of this ruling, Google could be bankrupted from a small percentage of the population copying the MPAA lawsuit formula.
Actual damages are immaterial, as statutory damages are set at $150,000 maximum per violation.
How nice of Google to be doing all that work and making all that money so that they can pay the little man content creators.
Get your lawsuit in early, cause it's not likely Google will have enough money to go around to pay more than a couple percent of everybody for linking to their copyrighted content.
But not any single person would need to "make a living" doing anything as physical scarcity would cease to exist with such duplicators. This would be good, not bad. Food and shelter would cease to be a problem. Nobody would need to go to work for 30 years to pay off a mortgage. Just like it's good we don't need to hire people to manually pump plants for oxygen in the air. Everyone is wealthier because it saves labor.
And people will still contribute, as the economy would evolve almost completely to ideas and fame. All you need look at for evidence is the trillions of exponentially growing free posts made all over the place on the internet. Some of those posts would be ideas for car designs. Some of those posts would be improvements on nanotechnology software for efficiently rendering car design copies. All those things could be spread through message boards and video posts.
This is the Utopia humanity is striving for, and we can be 50% of the way there today by eliminating copyrights and patents that result in artificial scarcity and stifled innovation. The other 50% is simply nano-tech physical duplicators.
And everybody already does duplicate the things and inventions of others: look at all the houses that have doors and windows, look at those cars with wheels, look at people wearing shirts, shoes, and pants.
Why the hell should people be making music or software games in the first place when people are starving due to food shortages? Or houses are too expensive due to supply problems? Maybe the world would be a better place if musicians became ditch diggers and construction workers. They're still free to make music whistling while they work. And if you don't like to be copied, remain silent, and stop copying others. Nobody alive has any reason to complain about copying because they wouldn't remotely be able to do what they do today if they weren't by definition copying others.
This will only lead to the members of the RIAA buying stronger laws which either allow a suit for weaker evidence, or allow seizure of computer equipment in order to gather evidence of copyright infringement. Good, let 'em try and do that as it will only lead to a total legal systemic meltdown, playing right into the hands of total copyright abolitionists. Governments have computers connected to the internet too. So too do businesses like the RIAA.
Remember, absolutely everything creative is copyrighted, and it would be extremely easy to open a floodgate of tens of millions of copyright trolls. This is why Congress will see the light sooner than later, because the RIAA business model mass adopted could and would literally shut down commerce in the US. Politicians will be exposed to the same liability as consumers.
The RIAA is *losing* because the laws are being fought with laws. And it's utter business suicide to be playing with $150,000 per violation statutory fines against 200,000,000 people who hate your guts.
You know how fucked the RIAA is going to be if they ever mistakenly copy somebody's critical commentary file and attempt to sue for that file? Or it will happen if one of their artists like Bob Dylan plagiarizes lyrics from a novel about the yakuza. All their computers are going to be seized and examined in countersuits. I'm surprised there isn't already a 20 year backlog on examination of RIAA computers from one defense to another. Hell, just routinely make countersuit motion for the seizure and examination of all computers used in the original gathering of evidence. Defense has a right to examine the programs for mistaken identity. And speedy trial requirement will eliminated 90% of the cases due to discovery backlogs on RIAA computer equipment. Governments copying the data of travelers entering the USA are going to have their computers seized for copyright infringement discovery purposes as well. Are you willing to let the US Government copy your files at $150,000 per file copied compensation?
Constitutional immunity for government agencies and businesses like the RIAA will be impossible. Congress will wise up and realize the more they attack the privacy of individual citizens the more they will be attacking their own privacy as well. And people like that have a helluva lot more dirty secrets and a helluva lot more assets to pay fines without declaring bankruptcy.
This is a matter of Civil Law which is already well beyond unconstitutional. Further strengthening unconstitutional law will just hasten the inevitable end, especially when every citizen can privately track isp addresses and embarrass politicians by exposing their children's downloading and internet surfing activities. At that time, such RIAA investigative practices will be shut down faster than you can say how to catch a pedofile.
The internet is a giant P2P program. Nothing can be seen, heard, tracked, or logged without by definition mass copying the entire internet. Allowing suits on weaker evidence will just open trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of legal liability. The only way the RIAA could win is if the internet was shut down. And that's not going to happen when the GDP of business interests not the content industries dwarfs dying businesses like the RIAA.
Yeah, it caps damages at $2 million. $150,000 per ISP forged packet reset might incur damages of $2 million PER MINUTE PER USER.
(b) Criminal Penalties- (1)(A) Any United States business that willfully violates, or willfully attempts to violate, section 202(a) shall be fined not more than $2,000,000.
That's a fine equal to copyright infringing less than 14 $0.99.mp3 songs, in other words equivalent to the fine of downloading a typical cd containing 14 tracks.
Clearly, something is out of balance, something does not belong in the category called Justice.
If the Ten Commandments were a "living document", the "Thou shalt not violate copyrights" would've been found in it by now... Actually, the appropriate biblical passage regarding copying would be Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, Copyrights result in artificial scarcity, cause poverty. Copying reduces artificial scarcity, multiplies wealth.
If everything could be multiplied and copied as easy as ideas, we would live in Utopian Paradise where rich and poor alike would be equal and have anything they wanted whenever they wanted. It would literally be Heaven on Earth (or multiple EarthZ for that matter). Only the Selfish and the Evil would cause his neighbor to go hungry because he prohibited him from copying his loaf of bread even though his own loaf of bread would not be diminished in the slightest. In terms of Biblical mythology, copyrights would have been the work of Satan.
But thank you for bringing this up. I would very much like to Unite the Religious Right and Churches into the cause of banishing artificial scarcity caused by copyright and patent.
Your University needs to bill the RIAA for your time (actually have the RIAA pay for another full time/part time subpoena processing position), otherwise the RIAA is siphoning off educational resources for non-University purposes. Give me the name of your University so I can report this illegal use of taxpayer subsidized funding for inappropriate non-educational purposes. Your University is complicit with the RIAA, and you may as well be using taxpayer dollars to purchase illegal vacations in the Bahamas for University Staff.
Judge we found these file names at this IP address owned by ISP provider inc, we believe that this is probable cause to warrant further investigation of the type of information being transfered through this IP address by looking at individual packets. I see no reason why a judge would not grant such a petition. Sure, as long as the Judge stipulates that any files downloaded from the individual under investigation that turn out to not be copyright violations owned by the corporations requesting the warrant are fined at the maximum $150,000 per violation copyright infringement penalty. So if that loveU2.mp3 file is "examined" (by definition copied and "consumed") and turns out to be a homemade (by definition copyrighted by not the corporation) song poem, then $150,000 is credited to the account of the examined (or rightful copyright holder). And since there is huge potential liability from mistakes, the corporation seeking a warrant should be forced to make an 8 figure escrow deposit in case of violations, depending upon how many files they wish to "examine" (read copy by download and "inspect" by looking/listening without permission from the copyright holder).
The RIAA is LIABLE (and criminally GUILTY for many RICO predicates) for running proprietary P2P applications on computers that do not belong to them without permission or knowledge from those having their files examined. The RIAA is doing exactly the same thing they accuse "pirates" of doing. They are downloading files from others and looking/listening to those files. Nobody can be 100% sure if any files contain copyright violations without first looking and listening to the contents of the files, whether they are the RIAA or Joe and Jane P2PPirate. This makes the RIAA the single biggest bandwidth hogging P2P "pirate" in the world.
The RIAA has also colluded with and enlisted second hand parties (notice the close resemblance between the words 'parties' and 'pirates') in it's illegal copyright infringing inspection software programs to the extent it has sold software to Universities that does the exact same thing any P2P program does, download and inspect files. And every single University tape back up of the files on their network likely nets trillions of dollars of liability for copyright infringement. So subpoena every network administration backup shop in the world and sue for a trillion dollars for "copyright infringement". $150,000 per every email you ever sent, $150,000 per every file saved on the network, that ends up "examined" by unauthorized parties.
This "software" is *exactly* the same thing as a P2P program like Kazaa with files downloaded and uploaded in a shared directory and "examined" to determine whether they are copyright violations. The RIAA software programs do the exact same thing they accuse "pirates" of doing. There's absolutely no difference between automatically discerning content with their $76,000 program and manually listening to a.mp3 file in real time.
I smell mega trillions of dollars of liability for institutions promoting and running these programs, or if they are "legal", then all P2P activity whatsoever is "legal" as well, because every P2P "pirate" is merely using software to "inspect" files. And those files may be copyright violations of every individual citizen's work. Can't tell 100% for sure, until you download and look/listen.
"Deep packet inspection" is spying. Deep packet inspection is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! You are basically looking at, reading, and logging copyrighted e-mails and copyrighted files, no matter what extensions those files end with, including.mp3. Fight fire with fire. These programs may also be violating the Patriot Act by "inspecting" sensitive or classified information.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Students reduce your tuition costs to ZERO! Get a free house paid for by your university when you graduate! Sue them for $150,000 per copyright infringement. Your emails, your papers, your.mp3 discussions on topics including your musings on pop_song.mp3 are copyrighted, including fair use excerpts in those files.
The thing is, if these "deep packet inspection" programs are legal, then they are legal for EVERYONE! And P2P programs are nothing more than "deep packet inspection" programs. Downloading and listening to files to determine whether they are copyright violations is LEGAL activity. I'm sure the NSA, CIA, DOJ will be thrilled to know that we as citizens can infiltrate their networks with "deep packet inspection" programs. Such progress will avoid future embarrassments such as the White House losing its emails as it's perfectly ok for private entities to inspect, log, and back up that information, in order to discern that the Government and RIAA are not violating your copyrighted material, including email writings,/. posts, etc.
So everybody, fire up those P2P applications and download/upload EVERYTHING, and then look at those files to make sure these entities like the RIAA are not violating your copyrights. Uploading is legal because you are merely enlisting assistance from your fellow citizens for the purpose of "deep packet inspection", which is LEGAL! "Deep packet inspection" programs are nothing more than wholesale uploading of files which do not belong to you, which may or may not be copyright violations. We can't be 100% sure until we download and look and listen. And our peers need to download and look and listen too, just in case we missed something.
The War will be won if the RIAA is forced to download/upload to gather evidence, and really there is no evidence whatsoever from file titles; that could reasonably be personal commentary or a fair use parody. The defendant should not be *presumed* guilty, the RIAA should *prove* infringement. File titles are 0% evidence, not even 1% "circumstantial". We don't really know, since no song has ever been played in any Court (and that alone will be worth millions in PR for the cause).
Keep a sharp eye on those RIAA IP addresses.
Screenshots of white powder is 0% evidence of cocaine. Writing $100 is 0% evidence of counterfeiting a one hundred dollar bill. And britneyspearstoxic.mp3 is 0% evidence of copyright infringement.
And imo, those paid settlements are RICO violations for precisely the reason that the RIAA has been on a 0% evidence extortion witch hunt.
Well said. The only thing I would add is even those who are currently ostensibly benefiting from government interference caused artificial scarcity of knowledge are themselves poorer in strict economic wealth terms than they otherwise would be in the absence of copyrights and patents. Those old music industry executives are going to literally die premature deaths because of the choke hold they have imposed on the spread and advance of knowledge. By definition of artificial scarcity of knowledge, no matter how trivial, no matter what form, people are more stupid than they otherwise would be. And that's going to effect, and is effecting, the quality and price of their health care.
And their copyright claims are doubly egregious because they make claims upon and insert public domain ideas into their claims. Can I take a public domain work like "Tom Sawyer" and get a copyright claim upon it? How about if I add a chapter or a few lines to the original, can I then take a public domain work like "Tom Sawyer" and get a copyright claim upon it in an addended circumscribed containing manner? Well, that's exactly what 99.9% of contemporary copyrighted works are doing, including public domain creations into their government interference enforced "imaginary property" claims. It's as if these fools who believe in copyright believe painting their neighbor's house with their artistic talent transfers ownership of their neighbor's house to themselves.
All claims of copyright are nothing more than real trespasses on the real private property of others. They restrict the shaping of the property of others. That's why I say all these claims are even on their face invalid whenever they contain any piece of public domain knowledge within their claim. They are literally trying to tell you that you owe them money for the air you breath. All copyrighted books with any public domain words and all copyrighted music with any public domain musical notes are simply ripping off the public, *infringing* in their word of choice, on public domain property. And it's high time those claiming copyrights were kicked out, and fined in the meantime, $150,000 for every public domain word infringed, $150,000 for every public domain musical note infringed in all invalid and illegal claims of copyright which contain elements of public domain "property" within the claims.
It won't effect these writers and musicians, as they claim they are true original artists. They don't want people copying them, so let's give them what they want, and see them produce art that doesn't copy.
Now we can clearly see that copyright is nothing less than an assault on knowledge and free speech. It's solely a childish tyrannical attempt to silence competition. If these people have children, and one child is parroting every word another child says, do they bring their child down to the police station for "stealing"? Guess they aren't as upstanding and moral as they pretend to be.
And remember, every artist gets exactly what they deserve when someone copies "their" 'work'. Really, we should even stop calling them "artists" and start calling them by the more epistemologically accurate term, plagiarists. And now you know why the skill most developed in liberals arts education is the art of bullshitting, pretending to say something new "in your own words".
Even in cases where piracy is legitimately happening, the fine is often far higher than it should realistically be, given the transgression. The fine amounts are unconstitutionally excessive, and therefore illegal. And these conspirators have also bribed politicians to pass an unconstitutional length of term for copyrights. This creates more artificial scarcity for a longer time. This makes the public domain poorer, and artists themselves are also members of the public domain. They broke the original 14 year bargain. And given the pace at which information spreads today, even 14 years is now too excessive. This stuff is less important and less valuable than patents, and the laws need to reflect that reality. And lets not pretend either that artists don't wholsesale copy the ideas of others in their pretend "original" work.
Copyright is exactly as silly as me claiming I own the oxygen in the air on planet Earth and attempting to enforce payment for everyone's "infringing" breathing of my air. And every artist who uses ideas which were created by others in his copyright claims (including the inclusion of public domain language words) is attempting to claim ownership of "air". The economic fact is copyright makes society net poorer and net less artistically advanced. Copyright is completely unnecessary to promoting the advancement of the arts and sciences, and only ends up hindering that advancement. And artists can continue to make a very viable living by seeking voluntary compensation in the free market without any need for copyright.
The only thing which has changed is there is absolutely no profit to be made in the distribution business in the age of the internet, and prices need to reflect the reality that the cost of distribution for music is basically ZERO. It's economically inefficient and environmentally wasteful to try to deliver content on physical media. The record companies are trying to force everyone to pay the price of a first class stamp for every email message and internet post made. That's absurd, and that's why their stock prices are tanking.
Not only that, they have now confessed to possessing child pornography!!
Take that, Audible Magic! That's the sort of information that will get industry executives and politicians well hung from the most dangerous criminal element correctional facilities.
That's precisely why no company will ever dare implement such a filtering program. Because every single individual and business work that is blocked from such file name filtering can sue for big damages. It would be practically impossible to not cause massive harm to innocent third parties. Such a filtering program becomes nothing more than a giant DDoS attack on the entire internet. And tens of millions of copyright trolls will intentionally name their files with non-infringing content such that they are blocked by the filter and just sit on Go collecting their infinite moneys from idiot copyright trade groups and ISPs, until both are bankrupt.
Even if they started thoroughly examining contents of files, the processing power and bandwidth costs would escalate beyond what is currently paid in total by all internet customers. You would literally be trying to flush absolutely everything which exists on the internet bit by bit through some filtering program EVERY SINGLE DAY. And you thought P2P pirates were bandwidth hogs!
Excellent point! Put a clause in the contract that makes the RIAA + software vendor indemnify all ISP and all ISP customers from legal liability by assuming the legal damages. Hahaha. I wonder what market rate any insurance company would charge for such a policy? It would probably exceed the rates charged for million dollars homes on Florida beaches PER ISP CUSTOMER USER! Well out of Geico's league.
Further proof copyright is already de facto dead.
LISTEN UP ISP COMPANIES!
Insist on the Microsoft-Novell copyright-patent indemnity model paid by the RIAA, along with all extra associated costs, including price of software, maintenance, and bandwith loss of running the program. That would (theoretically) more than double your broadband monthly revenue. Too bad the RIAA simply can't afford it. If the RIAA aren't willing to accept that contract then they are by definition admitting their software is total vaporware.
All the tracking software will do is add *more* bandwith loss than is already caused by "illegal" file sharing. The cost isn't anywhere near limited to the cost of the trafficking software. That software will just multiply the size of files, multiply the number of human man hours to continuously update the filters, and open huge legal liability for errors and degradation of service to all related profit and non-profit business on the internet. The cost of filtering and tracking is impossibly too large to be undertaken at any level of remote efficiency. It would be cheaper to predict with 100% accuracy the exact contents of every future post ever made by every single person combined on the internet on sites like/., and just as accurate !
Anybody who thinks filtering and monitoring can work, let alone the incorporated costs be recovered from consumer revenue, is a complete fool, who needs to go back to astrology & horoscope "school".
Slashdot Mirror
By definition of drug company profits it would be *cheaper* for those who need a drug medication to cut out the patent protected pharmaceutical company, as drug company profits would be turned into non-profit R&D medication cost SAVINGS! There would be no free rider "problem" as those who needed a medication by definition profited from realizing the development of a medication.
The content industry has people paying for $hit. Comca$t pa$$e$ the$e co$t$ along to you. The bill increases yearly, and the content gets worse and more infested with annoying commercials.
Wow, you guys are way off base. There wouldn't be talk of "universal health care", "single payer health care" in that case. You're talking far left socialism. The people who go to journalism school to "change the world" are leftists, well within the top 10-20% percentiles of hardcore left wingers. And those people dominate newspapers and every television network except FOX. Yes, they are muzzled somewhat by corporate ownership. Academia is far left wing.
If the media were right of center, we'd be talking about abolishing the Federal Income Tax, abolishing the Federal Reserve, abolishing Medicare and Medicaid, abolishing Social Security, etc. The Progressives won in the 20th Century, paving the way for the 21st Century Fascists to finish the totalitarianism job. You gave the government the money for war, you gave government the power to pander to corporate bribery, and both political parties are more similar than dissimilar. That's why libertarian thought is dominating and influencing the internet. Conservative dominance is in talk radio and FOX. Leftists dominance is in print newspapers and CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, which people pay less and less attention out of their own free market decisions and loss of credibility of these networks (and FOX has lost a ton of credibility due to Ron Paul as well).
Liberal leftists are the same brand of intolerant violence wielding people as right wing Christian Fundamentalists. They both want to use government interference to force people to do things they are not voluntarily willing to do, whether it's taking people's money or sending people's children to Iraq. They are both of the same cloth. Neither respect freedom and liberty. Both *cause* economic poverty with their interference in the free market. Who paved the way for Big Brother draconian government spying and recording of information? Leftist Progressives who forced the registration of information with the government whenever you start a new job, so the government can rob the paychecks.
Make no mistake, we are the middle of a historical epic war over the flow of and use of digital information.
Why not just everyone send copyrighted legal settlement notices with claims of copyright on them. If you show them to anyone, including any defense attorney you might hire, you are by definition distributing copyrighted material, proving guilt if you even submit such letters as evidence in a Court, to deny charges. We are literally at the edge of such absurdity and mockery of free speech and freedom itself.
People are starving solely *because* of intellectual property. Monsanto wishes to develop seeds that kill off natural food crops, and only grow with their intellectual property fertilizer, and only grow for one season. It's like charging people for breathing air, resulting in caused poverty as labor is required to produce something where to fore there was no labor previously required for the same output. Governments and Corporations like Monsanto wish to become a middleman between nature and mankind, enslaving by eliminating competition through the Law. This is enabled purely through government enforce copyright and patent.
If the argument that incentives for the production of music wouldn't exist without imaginary property interference were true (which they aren't), then musicians would find it more profitable to become farmers, increasing the supply of food, decreasing the price of food, and leading to less starving people.
The government ethanol subsidies are a perfect example of interference in the free market that mimics the effect of copyright and patent. Shortages of other productions result in higher prices for other things. People devote scarce resources to producing things the free and voluntary actions of consumers and producers show are less worthwhile production activities as evidenced by economic supply and demand.
So we have a flood of people trying to make a living as artists, producing crap, copying the hell out of each other's ideas anyway, and sitting on their asses collecting government interference subsidized welfare.
The broken window fallacy applies perfectly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
But how much are consumers paying for ESPN content that uses X GB/month? About $3-$5 per month? How much bandwidth does the ESPN channel which is delivered 24/7 use in a month? Since generic internet content is not premium sports content shouldn't the price for the same X GB/month ESPN uses be FAR CHEAPER?
How much monthly bandwidth do Comcast cable television subscribers receive for the Comcast cable tv channels? It's gotta just be incredibly lopsided versus the amount of money billed for internet on a data size/unit time analysis basis. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission needs to examine whether internet monthly price is gouging at a stratospheric percentage basis.
Internet and cable tv are sent on the exact same fiber optic cable are they not? Say the average Comcast subscriber bill is %50/%50 cable tv/internet. What is Comcast charging per GB of commercial infested spam on the cable tv side? Compared to that, the profit margin on internet service must be absolutely GINORMOUS. And the profit margin on their VoIP phone service must be even more ASTRONOMICAL.
Now think about the US laws passed making digital signals mandatory. You've completely further subsidized a price gouging monopoly for the delivery of content. Eliminating analog eliminates cheap spectrum competition. Public domain airwaves will be completely eliminated.
And these telecommunication companies are not paying market rates for spectrum. All spectrum must be limited to 5 or 10 year LEASE periods, with renewable competitive bids.
Networks need to be privatized at individual and community levels, with corporations SERVICING, not selling bandwidth. Only such a system will ensure market competition for the highest quality at the lowest price.
The solution may be forced divestiture of companies selling both bandwidth and content. We could forcibly break off the internet bandwidth service from Comcast and force them to sell a certain percentage of the cable at a comparable rate to their cable television data size per unit time.
Somebody get me some hard numbers on how much data space cable television channels use.
How much did it cost the MAFIAA to pay the lawyers who brought the suit? How much money will the MAFIAA receive in their bank accounts when the dust clears?
Let's say it cost them around $2 million. So just 4,999 more of these lawsuits for them to blow through $10 billion.
1.) Spend millions to win nothing!
2.) Repeat #1.
3.) ???
4.) Bankruptcy tax benefits!!!
Except that every single word and every single image on every single webpage is copyrighted by whoever originally created that material.
This post I just wrote right now is *exactly* as copyrighted as any Hollywood movie or RIAA song. There's absolutely no difference linking to posts or webpages versus linking to copyrighted movie files. Therefore, Google links are exactly as infringing as any torrent links. I think a lot of people might be very interested in suing for the vast sums the MPAA and RIAA are suing for on an individual basis.
On the basis of this ruling, Google could be bankrupted from a small percentage of the population copying the MPAA lawsuit formula.
Actual damages are immaterial, as statutory damages are set at $150,000 maximum per violation.
How nice of Google to be doing all that work and making all that money so that they can pay the little man content creators.
Get your lawsuit in early, cause it's not likely Google will have enough money to go around to pay more than a couple percent of everybody for linking to their copyrighted content.
But not any single person would need to "make a living" doing anything as physical scarcity would cease to exist with such duplicators. This would be good, not bad. Food and shelter would cease to be a problem. Nobody would need to go to work for 30 years to pay off a mortgage. Just like it's good we don't need to hire people to manually pump plants for oxygen in the air. Everyone is wealthier because it saves labor.
And people will still contribute, as the economy would evolve almost completely to ideas and fame. All you need look at for evidence is the trillions of exponentially growing free posts made all over the place on the internet. Some of those posts would be ideas for car designs. Some of those posts would be improvements on nanotechnology software for efficiently rendering car design copies. All those things could be spread through message boards and video posts.
This is the Utopia humanity is striving for, and we can be 50% of the way there today by eliminating copyrights and patents that result in artificial scarcity and stifled innovation. The other 50% is simply nano-tech physical duplicators.
And everybody already does duplicate the things and inventions of others: look at all the houses that have doors and windows, look at those cars with wheels, look at people wearing shirts, shoes, and pants.
Why the hell should people be making music or software games in the first place when people are starving due to food shortages? Or houses are too expensive due to supply problems? Maybe the world would be a better place if musicians became ditch diggers and construction workers. They're still free to make music whistling while they work. And if you don't like to be copied, remain silent, and stop copying others. Nobody alive has any reason to complain about copying because they wouldn't remotely be able to do what they do today if they weren't by definition copying others.
Remember, absolutely everything creative is copyrighted, and it would be extremely easy to open a floodgate of tens of millions of copyright trolls. This is why Congress will see the light sooner than later, because the RIAA business model mass adopted could and would literally shut down commerce in the US. Politicians will be exposed to the same liability as consumers.
The RIAA is *losing* because the laws are being fought with laws. And it's utter business suicide to be playing with $150,000 per violation statutory fines against 200,000,000 people who hate your guts.
You know how fucked the RIAA is going to be if they ever mistakenly copy somebody's critical commentary file and attempt to sue for that file? Or it will happen if one of their artists like Bob Dylan plagiarizes lyrics from a novel about the yakuza. All their computers are going to be seized and examined in countersuits. I'm surprised there isn't already a 20 year backlog on examination of RIAA computers from one defense to another. Hell, just routinely make countersuit motion for the seizure and examination of all computers used in the original gathering of evidence. Defense has a right to examine the programs for mistaken identity. And speedy trial requirement will eliminated 90% of the cases due to discovery backlogs on RIAA computer equipment. Governments copying the data of travelers entering the USA are going to have their computers seized for copyright infringement discovery purposes as well. Are you willing to let the US Government copy your files at $150,000 per file copied compensation?
Constitutional immunity for government agencies and businesses like the RIAA will be impossible. Congress will wise up and realize the more they attack the privacy of individual citizens the more they will be attacking their own privacy as well. And people like that have a helluva lot more dirty secrets and a helluva lot more assets to pay fines without declaring bankruptcy.
This is a matter of Civil Law which is already well beyond unconstitutional. Further strengthening unconstitutional law will just hasten the inevitable end, especially when every citizen can privately track isp addresses and embarrass politicians by exposing their children's downloading and internet surfing activities. At that time, such RIAA investigative practices will be shut down faster than you can say how to catch a pedofile.
The internet is a giant P2P program. Nothing can be seen, heard, tracked, or logged without by definition mass copying the entire internet. Allowing suits on weaker evidence will just open trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of legal liability. The only way the RIAA could win is if the internet was shut down. And that's not going to happen when the GDP of business interests not the content industries dwarfs dying businesses like the RIAA.
Clearly, something is out of balance, something does not belong in the category called Justice.
If everything could be multiplied and copied as easy as ideas, we would live in Utopian Paradise where rich and poor alike would be equal and have anything they wanted whenever they wanted. It would literally be Heaven on Earth (or multiple EarthZ for that matter). Only the Selfish and the Evil would cause his neighbor to go hungry because he prohibited him from copying his loaf of bread even though his own loaf of bread would not be diminished in the slightest. In terms of Biblical mythology, copyrights would have been the work of Satan.
But thank you for bringing this up. I would very much like to Unite the Religious Right and Churches into the cause of banishing artificial scarcity caused by copyright and patent.
$150,000 per violation.
Your University needs to bill the RIAA for your time (actually have the RIAA pay for another full time/part time subpoena processing position), otherwise the RIAA is siphoning off educational resources for non-University purposes. Give me the name of your University so I can report this illegal use of taxpayer subsidized funding for inappropriate non-educational purposes. Your University is complicit with the RIAA, and you may as well be using taxpayer dollars to purchase illegal vacations in the Bahamas for University Staff.
The RIAA is LIABLE (and criminally GUILTY for many RICO predicates) for running proprietary P2P applications on computers that do not belong to them without permission or knowledge from those having their files examined. The RIAA is doing exactly the same thing they accuse "pirates" of doing. They are downloading files from others and looking/listening to those files. Nobody can be 100% sure if any files contain copyright violations without first looking and listening to the contents of the files, whether they are the RIAA or Joe and Jane P2PPirate. This makes the RIAA the single biggest bandwidth hogging P2P "pirate" in the world.
The RIAA has also colluded with and enlisted second hand parties (notice the close resemblance between the words 'parties' and 'pirates') in it's illegal copyright infringing inspection software programs to the extent it has sold software to Universities that does the exact same thing any P2P program does, download and inspect files. And every single University tape back up of the files on their network likely nets trillions of dollars of liability for copyright infringement. So subpoena every network administration backup shop in the world and sue for a trillion dollars for "copyright infringement". $150,000 per every email you ever sent, $150,000 per every file saved on the network, that ends up "examined" by unauthorized parties.
This "software" is *exactly* the same thing as a P2P program like Kazaa with files downloaded and uploaded in a shared directory and "examined" to determine whether they are copyright violations. The RIAA software programs do the exact same thing they accuse "pirates" of doing. There's absolutely no difference between automatically discerning content with their $76,000 program and manually listening to a .mp3 file in real time.
I smell mega trillions of dollars of liability for institutions promoting and running these programs, or if they are "legal", then all P2P activity whatsoever is "legal" as well, because every P2P "pirate" is merely using software to "inspect" files. And those files may be copyright violations of every individual citizen's work. Can't tell 100% for sure, until you download and look/listen.
GAME OVER!
"Deep packet inspection" is spying. Deep packet inspection is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! You are basically looking at, reading, and logging copyrighted e-mails and copyrighted files, no matter what extensions those files end with, including .mp3. Fight fire with fire. These programs may also be violating the Patriot Act by "inspecting" sensitive or classified information.
.mp3 discussions on topics including your musings on pop_song.mp3 are copyrighted, including fair use excerpts in those files.
/. posts, etc.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Students reduce your tuition costs to ZERO! Get a free house paid for by your university when you graduate! Sue them for $150,000 per copyright infringement. Your emails, your papers, your
The thing is, if these "deep packet inspection" programs are legal, then they are legal for EVERYONE! And P2P programs are nothing more than "deep packet inspection" programs. Downloading and listening to files to determine whether they are copyright violations is LEGAL activity. I'm sure the NSA, CIA, DOJ will be thrilled to know that we as citizens can infiltrate their networks with "deep packet inspection" programs. Such progress will avoid future embarrassments such as the White House losing its emails as it's perfectly ok for private entities to inspect, log, and back up that information, in order to discern that the Government and RIAA are not violating your copyrighted material, including email writings,
So everybody, fire up those P2P applications and download/upload EVERYTHING, and then look at those files to make sure these entities like the RIAA are not violating your copyrights. Uploading is legal because you are merely enlisting assistance from your fellow citizens for the purpose of "deep packet inspection", which is LEGAL! "Deep packet inspection" programs are nothing more than wholesale uploading of files which do not belong to you, which may or may not be copyright violations. We can't be 100% sure until we download and look and listen. And our peers need to download and look and listen too, just in case we missed something.
The War will be won if the RIAA is forced to download/upload to gather evidence, and really there is no evidence whatsoever from file titles; that could reasonably be personal commentary or a fair use parody. The defendant should not be *presumed* guilty, the RIAA should *prove* infringement. File titles are 0% evidence, not even 1% "circumstantial". We don't really know, since no song has ever been played in any Court (and that alone will be worth millions in PR for the cause).
Keep a sharp eye on those RIAA IP addresses.
Screenshots of white powder is 0% evidence of cocaine. Writing $100 is 0% evidence of counterfeiting a one hundred dollar bill. And britneyspearstoxic.mp3 is 0% evidence of copyright infringement.
And imo, those paid settlements are RICO violations for precisely the reason that the RIAA has been on a 0% evidence extortion witch hunt.
Well said. The only thing I would add is even those who are currently ostensibly benefiting from government interference caused artificial scarcity of knowledge are themselves poorer in strict economic wealth terms than they otherwise would be in the absence of copyrights and patents. Those old music industry executives are going to literally die premature deaths because of the choke hold they have imposed on the spread and advance of knowledge. By definition of artificial scarcity of knowledge, no matter how trivial, no matter what form, people are more stupid than they otherwise would be. And that's going to effect, and is effecting, the quality and price of their health care.
And their copyright claims are doubly egregious because they make claims upon and insert public domain ideas into their claims. Can I take a public domain work like "Tom Sawyer" and get a copyright claim upon it? How about if I add a chapter or a few lines to the original, can I then take a public domain work like "Tom Sawyer" and get a copyright claim upon it in an addended circumscribed containing manner? Well, that's exactly what 99.9% of contemporary copyrighted works are doing, including public domain creations into their government interference enforced "imaginary property" claims. It's as if these fools who believe in copyright believe painting their neighbor's house with their artistic talent transfers ownership of their neighbor's house to themselves.
All claims of copyright are nothing more than real trespasses on the real private property of others. They restrict the shaping of the property of others. That's why I say all these claims are even on their face invalid whenever they contain any piece of public domain knowledge within their claim. They are literally trying to tell you that you owe them money for the air you breath. All copyrighted books with any public domain words and all copyrighted music with any public domain musical notes are simply ripping off the public, *infringing* in their word of choice, on public domain property. And it's high time those claiming copyrights were kicked out, and fined in the meantime, $150,000 for every public domain word infringed, $150,000 for every public domain musical note infringed in all invalid and illegal claims of copyright which contain elements of public domain "property" within the claims.
It won't effect these writers and musicians, as they claim they are true original artists. They don't want people copying them, so let's give them what they want, and see them produce art that doesn't copy.
Now we can clearly see that copyright is nothing less than an assault on knowledge and free speech. It's solely a childish tyrannical attempt to silence competition. If these people have children, and one child is parroting every word another child says, do they bring their child down to the police station for "stealing"? Guess they aren't as upstanding and moral as they pretend to be.
And remember, every artist gets exactly what they deserve when someone copies "their" 'work'. Really, we should even stop calling them "artists" and start calling them by the more epistemologically accurate term, plagiarists. And now you know why the skill most developed in liberals arts education is the art of bullshitting, pretending to say something new "in your own words".
Copyright is exactly as silly as me claiming I own the oxygen in the air on planet Earth and attempting to enforce payment for everyone's "infringing" breathing of my air. And every artist who uses ideas which were created by others in his copyright claims (including the inclusion of public domain language words) is attempting to claim ownership of "air". The economic fact is copyright makes society net poorer and net less artistically advanced. Copyright is completely unnecessary to promoting the advancement of the arts and sciences, and only ends up hindering that advancement. And artists can continue to make a very viable living by seeking voluntary compensation in the free market without any need for copyright.
The only thing which has changed is there is absolutely no profit to be made in the distribution business in the age of the internet, and prices need to reflect the reality that the cost of distribution for music is basically ZERO. It's economically inefficient and environmentally wasteful to try to deliver content on physical media. The record companies are trying to force everyone to pay the price of a first class stamp for every email message and internet post made. That's absurd, and that's why their stock prices are tanking.
Take that, Audible Magic! That's the sort of information that will get industry executives and politicians well hung from the most dangerous criminal element correctional facilities.
That's precisely why no company will ever dare implement such a filtering program. Because every single individual and business work that is blocked from such file name filtering can sue for big damages. It would be practically impossible to not cause massive harm to innocent third parties. Such a filtering program becomes nothing more than a giant DDoS attack on the entire internet. And tens of millions of copyright trolls will intentionally name their files with non-infringing content such that they are blocked by the filter and just sit on Go collecting their infinite moneys from idiot copyright trade groups and ISPs, until both are bankrupt.
Even if they started thoroughly examining contents of files, the processing power and bandwidth costs would escalate beyond what is currently paid in total by all internet customers. You would literally be trying to flush absolutely everything which exists on the internet bit by bit through some filtering program EVERY SINGLE DAY. And you thought P2P pirates were bandwidth hogs!
Excellent point! Put a clause in the contract that makes the RIAA + software vendor indemnify all ISP and all ISP customers from legal liability by assuming the legal damages. Hahaha. I wonder what market rate any insurance company would charge for such a policy? It would probably exceed the rates charged for million dollars homes on Florida beaches PER ISP CUSTOMER USER! Well out of Geico's league.
Further proof copyright is already de facto dead.
LISTEN UP ISP COMPANIES!
Insist on the Microsoft-Novell copyright-patent indemnity model paid by the RIAA, along with all extra associated costs, including price of software, maintenance, and bandwith loss of running the program. That would (theoretically) more than double your broadband monthly revenue. Too bad the RIAA simply can't afford it. If the RIAA aren't willing to accept that contract then they are by definition admitting their software is total vaporware.
All the tracking software will do is add *more* bandwith loss than is already caused by "illegal" file sharing. The cost isn't anywhere near limited to the cost of the trafficking software. That software will just multiply the size of files, multiply the number of human man hours to continuously update the filters, and open huge legal liability for errors and degradation of service to all related profit and non-profit business on the internet. The cost of filtering and tracking is impossibly too large to be undertaken at any level of remote efficiency. It would be cheaper to predict with 100% accuracy the exact contents of every future post ever made by every single person combined on the internet on sites like /., and just as accurate !
Anybody who thinks filtering and monitoring can work, let alone the incorporated costs be recovered from consumer revenue, is a complete fool, who needs to go back to astrology & horoscope "school".