Do you mean that they removed specific copies when requested, but not other copies uploaded by different users?
Or are you saying they killed specific links but left the DCMA'd files accessible on the server somehow? If the latter, that's really interesting -- and not very bright on MegaUpload's part.
It's their stupid fault for filling up the tank and hooking it up to the water system without even getting a payment contract from the people with the faucets first.
Hey, I got an idea, lets break the water system so they don't have to change their now-stupid business model.
Everybody agrees that we need to battle online piracy of movies, books, TV shows and such. If piracy spreads, nobody will create anything because their work will be pirated as soon as it is finished.
That's rational and well-worded? I disagree. It's boldly irrational, arrogant, and false.
Movies, books, TV shows, and music all are still operating on a business model that depends wholly on copies being worth something. But copies of data inside computers AREN'T worth something. They are worth nothing, they have no intrinsic value at all.
Access to the work has value. The creation of the work has value. But copies no longer have value. So bascially we have whole industries that are trying to pay for valuable things by selling their customers something valueless. Econ 101: this is a stupid idea.
Don't get me wrong, it didn't used to be a stupid idea. It used to be a GREAT idea. But then computers got smart enough and connected enough to make copies of common media worthless, and as if by magic it became a stupid idea, almost overnight. It will remain a stupid idea until the computers aren't smart enough and aren't connected enough.
Shit like SOPA is not some sort of accident on the road to trying to prop up this broken business model; it's an inevitable side effect of trying to create a chimeric beast called "intellectual property". It's what happens when you try to force the limitations of physical copies onto a virtual object, inevitably fail to do so in a technical way, and are left with no recourse but draconian measures to prevent people from doing the obvious. It's what happens when you try to apply copright-as-written to computers: it breaks the computers.
Copyright needs to change. Business models need to change. If they don't, running arbitrary code will become a crime, and countries with digital freedom will leave the rest of us scrabbling in the dust.
This is what has me torn... she's one of, what, six senators that voted against the 2011 NDAA due to objections to indefinite detention? And is currently co-sponsoring a repeal of that section?
That gives incentive for pirates to kill successful artists.
Right. Because obviously there's a tidal wave of people ready to commit pre-meditated murder, but for their fear of prosecution for Copyright infringement.
Sooooo....isn't that the definition of an investment? Because you're expecting to get some profit?
You invest because you expect a profit. That does not mean that if you invest, you deserve a profit, because that implies that your expectation cannot be incorrect, which is stupid.
People should definitely be discouraged from expecting profits from investments in unprofitable things.
Your civil rights? Really, you have a civil right to enjoy someone else's works without paying them?
Yes. Absolutely.
The civil right to enjoy someone else's works without paying them existed BEFORE copyright. Copyright is the civil AGREEMENT that we made to partially abridge that civil RIGHT in the interest of promoting the production of creative works.
Don't sweat it though -- creators still enjoy the one perfect right to restrict access to their works that they always have, which is not to create, release, or perform the work until payment is made or a contractural agreement for payment is made.
Seriously: you've never heard a song performed by someone in public, never watched a DVD at a friend's house, heard a movie quote repeated by someone, never been inspired to create something new based on something you've seen, never even once purchased anything used, that had so much as a brand logo on it? Do you have ANY moral standing whatsoever to argue that the free exchange of ideas is ANYTHING BUT a civil right?
Ever since we developed the ability to make copies that have no intrinsic value -- an ability that has never before existed in the history of mankind, I should point out -- copyright, as originally conceived, has been on borrowed time.
Copyright has always been dependent[1] on the intrinsic value of copies, and digital copies have NO intrinsic value. No discussion of copyright, or "intellectual property", or the advance of sciences and useful arts, can be reasonably conducted without addressing this fundamental[2] issue.
1. I don't mean "dependent on" in the hyperbolic way most people do when they mean "the thing following this phrase is kind of important to thing preceding it", but rather in the full meaning of "absolutely cannot function without." 2....and I'm not using "fundamental" as hyperbole here, either -- this has really changed things in a way at least as deeply as the invention of the printing press, and hardly anybody seems to understand that.
Low quality plot too. Remember the eagles? Have them grab the ring and drop it into the volcano. Ta Da all done.
If by "all done" you mean "eagle's little bird mind is corrupted by the influence of the ring and it brings it directly to Sauron" then yeah, that'd be a pretty short tale.
...except, Facebook ISN'T an inanimate tool. An equivalent firearm would be one that constantly whispers at you to shoot things, occasionally aiming itself at targets of opportunity and helpfully taking up the trigger slack for you..
There was a guy on The Daily Show the other day who had the brilliant idea for getting at least some of the money out of politics: anonymize campaign contributions by having all donations go into a "black box" trust that doles out the money to the campaign in arbitrary increments. There are no records of who contributed, only the amount, and since the output is arbitrary, there's no way to know that someone who says they contributed to your campaign actually did. Additionally, there was even some mechanism for withdrawing your contribution prior to a certain point.
Apparently they tried this in a judiciary race somewhere, and it worked too well; nobody contributed anything to any of the candidates...
it was the the protester was advocating taking from the rich and giving it to people like him,
No, he wasn't.
but when someone took something from him (his mac) he had a problem with it.
Of course he did.
If he really thinks the "rich" should give their stuff to the "poor"
The "rich" should stop taking from the "poor". That's the message. That has always been the message. Stop pretending to be an idiot.
what was his issue with a (most likely) poorer person taking from him, a most likely richer person?
He doesn't like being taken from.
As you said, stealing is stealing,
Event when it's called a "bailout" or "leverage" or "credit default swap" or some other financial manipulation that siphons money while producing absolutely nothing of value.
Even when it's everyone getting paid less for more productive work, while the "job creators" pocket the difference.
and as the old saying goes, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"
Nothing that's happening now is good for the goose or the gander. When the 1% have ALL the money, who the fuck will their companies' customers be? Without customers, there is no revenue, and without revenue, there are no jobs. Period, full stop, end of fucking story. The economy sucks because they took all our money and left nothing in return for us to trade with, and it will continue to suck until something changes.
Trickle-down doesn't work, because of the associated surge-up.
The ows on the other hand, got all the media attention they wanted, because the media wanted to help them
'
whaaaaaat
OWS was all over the internet for like two weeks before there was a single MSM acknowledgement of them. Since then, they mostly did nothing but try to marginalize them by avoiding showing the sensible members and repeatedly claiming they had no consistent message.
Meanwhile, what, exactly, has the Tea Party done lately? This is a genuine question.
Slashdot Mirror
Reality has nothing to do with politics or ideology.
I have no doubt that your political ideology is completely divorced from reality. We agree on something!
Do you mean that they removed specific copies when requested, but not other copies uploaded by different users?
Or are you saying they killed specific links but left the DCMA'd files accessible on the server somehow? If the latter, that's really interesting -- and not very bright on MegaUpload's part.
Educated in re-education camps, no doubt.
Megaupload have no system in place to stop people uploading material they don't own. Simple as that.
There is no such system.
Simple as that.
It's their stupid fault for filling up the tank and hooking it up to the water system without even getting a payment contract from the people with the faucets first.
Hey, I got an idea, lets break the water system so they don't have to change their now-stupid business model.
Everybody agrees that we need to battle online piracy of movies, books, TV shows and such. If piracy spreads, nobody will create anything because their work will be pirated as soon as it is finished.
That's rational and well-worded? I disagree. It's boldly irrational, arrogant, and false.
Movies, books, TV shows, and music all are still operating on a business model that depends wholly on copies being worth something. But copies of data inside computers AREN'T worth something. They are worth nothing, they have no intrinsic value at all.
Access to the work has value. The creation of the work has value. But copies no longer have value. So bascially we have whole industries that are trying to pay for valuable things by selling their customers something valueless. Econ 101: this is a stupid idea.
Don't get me wrong, it didn't used to be a stupid idea. It used to be a GREAT idea. But then computers got smart enough and connected enough to make copies of common media worthless, and as if by magic it became a stupid idea, almost overnight. It will remain a stupid idea until the computers aren't smart enough and aren't connected enough.
Shit like SOPA is not some sort of accident on the road to trying to prop up this broken business model; it's an inevitable side effect of trying to create a chimeric beast called "intellectual property". It's what happens when you try to force the limitations of physical copies onto a virtual object, inevitably fail to do so in a technical way, and are left with no recourse but draconian measures to prevent people from doing the obvious. It's what happens when you try to apply copright-as-written to computers: it breaks the computers.
Copyright needs to change. Business models need to change. If they don't, running arbitrary code will become a crime, and countries with digital freedom will leave the rest of us scrabbling in the dust.
That's just what people who read a lot of Ayn Ron want you to believe.
If you're getting frisked, we're no longer talking about "law abiding citizens
*climbs back into chair*
*wipes eyes*
Thank you so much, I needed a good, near-crippling full-body guffaw today.
Well, yeah, that's why you spit it out after tasting.
Fifty is quite young in Congress.
What DNSSEC mainly prevents is the forging of DNS responses to redirect users to another server.
Which SOPA/ProtectIP, as written, would require.
Yes! Yes! The service providers should be forced to give us what we want, when we want it, for the price we want to pay.
Any company that can't give it's customers what they want, when they want it, for the price they want to pay, deserves to go out of business.
WTF else would they be, gas midgets?!
but we can get rid of Feinstein in 2012.
This is what has me torn... she's one of, what, six senators that voted against the 2011 NDAA due to objections to indefinite detention? And is currently co-sponsoring a repeal of that section?
Grrrrrrr. I hate situations like this.
Right. Because obviously there's a tidal wave of people ready to commit pre-meditated murder, but for their fear of prosecution for Copyright infringement.
No, silly, not people.
Corporations.
Sooooo....isn't that the definition of an investment? Because you're expecting to get some profit?
You invest because you expect a profit. That does not mean that if you invest, you deserve a profit, because that implies that your expectation cannot be incorrect, which is stupid.
People should definitely be discouraged from expecting profits from investments in unprofitable things.
Your civil rights? Really, you have a civil right to enjoy someone else's works without paying them?
Yes. Absolutely.
The civil right to enjoy someone else's works without paying them existed BEFORE copyright. Copyright is the civil AGREEMENT that we made to partially abridge that civil RIGHT in the interest of promoting the production of creative works.
Don't sweat it though -- creators still enjoy the one perfect right to restrict access to their works that they always have, which is not to create, release, or perform the work until payment is made or a contractural agreement for payment is made.
Seriously: you've never heard a song performed by someone in public, never watched a DVD at a friend's house, heard a movie quote repeated by someone, never been inspired to create something new based on something you've seen, never even once purchased anything used, that had so much as a brand logo on it? Do you have ANY moral standing whatsoever to argue that the free exchange of ideas is ANYTHING BUT a civil right?
Ever since we developed the ability to make copies that have no intrinsic value -- an ability that has never before existed in the history of mankind, I should point out -- copyright, as originally conceived, has been on borrowed time.
Copyright has always been dependent[1] on the intrinsic value of copies, and digital copies have NO intrinsic value. No discussion of copyright, or "intellectual property", or the advance of sciences and useful arts, can be reasonably conducted without addressing this fundamental[2] issue.
1. I don't mean "dependent on" in the hyperbolic way most people do when they mean "the thing following this phrase is kind of important to thing preceding it", but rather in the full meaning of "absolutely cannot function without." ...and I'm not using "fundamental" as hyperbole here, either -- this has really changed things in a way at least as deeply as the invention of the printing press, and hardly anybody seems to understand that.
2.
This. This right here... will never happen in the United States. How would you get the law passed?
I think Neo in The Matrix had the quote of the day on this one.
Low quality plot too. Remember the eagles? Have them grab the ring and drop it into the volcano. Ta Da all done.
If by "all done" you mean "eagle's little bird mind is corrupted by the influence of the ring and it brings it directly to Sauron" then yeah, that'd be a pretty short tale.
After all, it's only the most desirable thing in the universe...
...except, Facebook ISN'T an inanimate tool. An equivalent firearm would be one that constantly whispers at you to shoot things, occasionally aiming itself at targets of opportunity and helpfully taking up the trigger slack for you..
There was a guy on The Daily Show the other day who had the brilliant idea for getting at least some of the money out of politics: anonymize campaign contributions by having all donations go into a "black box" trust that doles out the money to the campaign in arbitrary increments. There are no records of who contributed, only the amount, and since the output is arbitrary, there's no way to know that someone who says they contributed to your campaign actually did. Additionally, there was even some mechanism for withdrawing your contribution prior to a certain point.
Apparently they tried this in a judiciary race somewhere, and it worked too well; nobody contributed anything to any of the candidates...
Their members aren't.
Their funders are.
He wasn't "approving" of the stealing,
Yes, he was.
it was the the protester was advocating taking from the rich and giving it to people like him,
No, he wasn't.
but when someone took something from him (his mac) he had a problem with it.
Of course he did.
If he really thinks the "rich" should give their stuff to the "poor"
The "rich" should stop taking from the "poor". That's the message. That has always been the message. Stop pretending to be an idiot.
what was his issue with a (most likely) poorer person taking from him, a most likely richer person?
He doesn't like being taken from.
As you said, stealing is stealing,
Event when it's called a "bailout" or "leverage" or "credit default swap" or some other financial manipulation that siphons money while producing absolutely nothing of value.
Even when it's everyone getting paid less for more productive work, while the "job creators" pocket the difference.
and as the old saying goes, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"
Nothing that's happening now is good for the goose or the gander. When the 1% have ALL the money, who the fuck will their companies' customers be? Without customers, there is no revenue, and without revenue, there are no jobs. Period, full stop, end of fucking story. The economy sucks because they took all our money and left nothing in return for us to trade with, and it will continue to suck until something changes.
Trickle-down doesn't work, because of the associated surge-up.
The ows on the other hand, got all the media attention they wanted, because the media wanted to help them
'
whaaaaaat
OWS was all over the internet for like two weeks before there was a single MSM acknowledgement of them. Since then, they mostly did nothing but try to marginalize them by avoiding showing the sensible members and repeatedly claiming they had no consistent message.
Meanwhile, what, exactly, has the Tea Party done lately? This is a genuine question.