Personally I think the FPP post saying "This is comical in one sense, but to be read by a hosting company who does not know any better can be frightening," is considerably overstating the case.
The file is easily certifiable as non-infringing. (Pretty much) end of story.
Of course that's not to say that copyright infringement notices should not require judicial oversight, to prevent frivolously, harassing behaviour, like this case. But this instance is not new or significant. (I suspect a slow news day?)
As for the prohibition statement at the end of the e-mail: pure bolleaux.
"I dont see how the government is involved here. "
You don't see the symbiotic relationship between big business and government?
A good line from "The Best democracy Money Can Buy" is the title of one of the chapters: "Ya Dance with them that brung ya."
The allusion is to a dance, where if someone brings you to the dance, you owe it to them to dance with them. The campaign financers, that bring the politicians to office, get thanked in kind.
It's a lovely, mutually beneficial system, and it works.
The only problem being the pesky proles, who occasionally kick up a fuss, but they're generally easily placated by a bit of an income tax cut or something (slapping it on again in unfair taxation elsewhere, where the dumb mud-shovellers won't notice, is always good.)
I mean, why do you think this opressive law is being written in the first place? To benefit whom?
Re:Physical issues resulting from this?
on
Chimera Twins Story
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I know a girl similar to that - collars and cuffs don't match.
"Voting has never been about convenience, it's about doing your civic duty."
Well how about the politicians doing their duty and genuinely representing the electorate?
When we do vote, the politicians reneigh on their election promises, they reverse their previous positions on matters (opposed to what they once were for, for what they once were against) they lie, they cheat, they use resources that are supposed to serve the public, to lie to the public; they do as they please and throw a bone or two at any people who are snapping at their heels, if it seems to be causing a greater disenfranchisement in the larger electorate, and then they go back to doing what the hell they want: rubbing butts with the real people they wish to represent: with an electorate who simply grows more and more disenfranchised, and then stop voting: stop seeing the point of voting.
It's not vote or shut up, it's vote and get screwed.
As for voting poceedures, of just as much concern to me as the fraud hole in the electronic voting system, is the complete and utter lack of security in postal voting, which was a supposed 'great success' in the UK, recently.
In Italy, they were banning people from taking mobiles with cameras into voting booths, because organised crime wanted to validate that the leaned-on citizen was voting for the mafioso's corrupt politician-of-choice, but with postal votes, the process of political intimidation and vote fraud is so much more.... convenient.
It's widely trumpeted as a way of invigorating the political involvement of people, by the UK govt. but it's another, IMO, unacceptable means of voting (in addition to electronic means.)
Pen and paper, shove it in a box, and then really, and LEGALLY hold the politicians to account.
For starters, anyway.
I find myself in some agreement with you.
The same can't be said of people who pay to download such material, though, since they finance the abuse and drive the the supply.
Though, thinking of the "legit" porn business, isn't the reason they let so much of their copyright material freely wash around the net, that it creates and "excites" the demand, that they later recoup through their pay sites? It stimulates demand. As such, free paedophile material, though not immediately financing abuse, stimulates desire for the material, desensitises frequent users of the material to what is really going on in the photographs.
So it may very well be in the interests of children everywhere, that such material, paid-for or freely-downloaded is outlawed.
I have an idea of some sort of Bill gates silicone doll sitting on top of my pc, full of sensors, linked up to the USB port, so that when it crashes, it'll tell me it's responsible, I can torture it, and it'll scream, and reboot when the pain level reaches a certain level.
I feel this device would find a significant market.
Well, of course you don't need a license to use a computer. You don't need to pass a competency test to get your hands on a box connected to the net.
But then again, you can't wipe out several generations of a family by crashing your computer.
I think you're overstating the case. Nobody died. This guy's ignorance was only a danger to himself.
"...the implication being that since they argree with the abuse of copyright in the first place, they'll try to make copyright infringement sound as harful as possible."
You see the effect all this piracy has had on you, you're even beginning to talk like like a salty brigand, now.
It's a shame that Judge's rulings and punishments aren't also subject to compliance with "community standards:"
In 1994, underground cartoonist Mike Diana was thrown in jail for 4 days without bail on obscenity charges, for publishing, advertising, and selling his zine BOILED ANGEL. Mike was on probation for 3 years, terms of which included fines of $3000, no contact with children under 18 (or within 10 feet of a minor), 1280 hours of community service, maintain full time employment, and at his expense, see a psychiatrist and take journalism courses at his own expense; AND no drawing for his own personal use... his home was subject to unannounced searches by local police to make sure he was complying. Mike Diana is now serving another 2 years of probation, including $2000 in fines, and the same probationary terms.
On June 4, 1996, a ruling issued by Largo, Florida, Circuit Judge Douglas Baird declared Mike Diana's zines, Boiled Angel #7 and #ATE as obscene. The judge emphasized throughout Mike's ruling that he personally found Diana's comics "patently offensive." Referring to Diana as "the appellant," and stated, "The evident goal of the appellant's publication is to portray shocking and graphic pictures of sexual conduct so it will be noticed. If the message is about victimization and that horrible things are happening in our society, as the appellant alleges, the appellant SHOULD HAVE created a vehicle to send his message that was not obscene."
The judgement seems to me to be entirely obsecene. I mean, "AND no drawing for his own personal use... his home was subject to unannounced searches by local police to make sure he was complying."
Sounds more like something people experienced during the Chinese Revolution than SHOUL BE the case in modern America (or any civilized society.)
Re:It was only a matter of time...
on
HavenCo In Trouble?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
AC makes a very important point, I feel.
The whole edge that HavenCo has over it's mainland competitors, is it's different IP "laws." With the Sealand "Royal Family" outlawing the exploitation of the difference in IP law, HaveCo is surely doomed to failure.
I mean, what's HavenCo got to offer that's so special now?
Agreed, mothrathegreat. What's interesting is that hardly anyone seems to have mentioned this.
For once a mainstream media source is not trotting out the RIAA line "piracy has caused a loss of 10% in music sales over the last year," bullshit, but is actually reflecting what people have been saying for quite some time on slashdot and elsewhere: that there are many causes for the decline in sales, and the RIAA's output being down "25%" is harldy ignorable.
The BBC has trotted out the aforementioned RIAA propaganda many times, before (along with so many other news organisations) and I'd given up on seeing them avoid being mouthpieces for the music industry lies, as far as p2p and sales went.
So it's wonderful to see them challenging the RIAA's deceptions, and I hope the other news orgs follow.
(It was interesting to read a few weeks ago, the way Alistair Campbell (Tony Blair's press officer) 'worked' on the the BBC: if he wanted a story about the government dropped, he would first lean heavily on the Beeb, and then he would go to the newspapers and say to them, "see if there was any truth in it the BBC would be covering it!" and they'd more than likely drop the story too.
(So, long story short (too late I guess, actually) if the Beeb is saying this stuff, it would be likely other news sources will as well.)
People are used to getting music for free. It's called the radio. Theres just a shift in the ways and means of distributing that aspect of "our" culture.
Copyright is largely an artificial construct, unlike theft (which certain people like to erroneously and politically link it to.) It's never really existed in any significant portion of our evolution, so (I'd say) it's not really considered a real thing: it's an artificially imposed prohibition.
If the same principle was applied to food, or furniture, with everyone having their own little Star Trek replicators, people wouldn't respect it then, either.
Maybe it means: since everyone has their own printing-press, making a significant living from the prohibition of duplication of a work, is nolonger feasible or realistic? Like any number of other professions (starving (visual) artists languishing in obscurity and poverty, anyone?)
I don't think it's so much about price (though it's always a factor) as people's psychology: copyright doesn't really make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copyable; where the means of production and dissemination is in the hands of everyone.
Is that noise I hear the fingernails of the copyright cartels screeching down the cliff-face of a paradigm shift?
"Before it was students etc they were filing against and the claims were pretty justified..."
Hardly. The student who wrote a search engine; the hard-up students "cheekily" bootlegging some music, being hit for their lifesavings? Not what I'd call "justified."
Now say that about people "pirating for profit," and I might agree.
The claims the RIAA made for damages were and are, outrageous and unjust.
" Couldn't this be turned around by making false online identies? Tailoring it to garner the best prices?
I don't see how you could do that whilst retaining the same credit card.
More interestingly, is how are they going to deal with someone browsing a website anonymously, and then loggin into their account, and seeing a different price?
Dear whatever.com, I notice you're charging me over the odds. Since you don't value my custom, I shall make my purchase elsewhere. Sincerely.
I liked this passage from page 14: [empasis added]
"Piracy
In assessing the relationship between the availability of online content services and
broadband take-up an obvious question can be posed: if consumer broadband take-up
is limited when there is wide availability of free content, courtesy of, for example, file
sharing technologies, why should the introduction of technologies ushering in a new
internet age of controlled content access and use promote wider broadband use?
There are a number of equally obvious responses to this.[!] The first is that broadband
take up should not be advanced at the expense of content providers. The UK has long
enjoyed a position as one of the world's leading sources of content, a position which
should in no way be compromised to facilitate broadband expansion. Broadband is, after
all, a means to the end of enhancing the competitiveness of the UK in the Information
Society, not an end in itself.
Secondly, in the short to medium term, legitimate digital content services will, with the
right drivers, come to form an important part of integrated service offerings appealing
to the demographic with decision making power over broadband take up. File sharers
do not pay for the content they consume and nor, for the most part, do they pay for the
infrastructure they use."
I was unaware that broadband was all about enhancing the competitiveness of the UK in the Information Society. I thought it was all about freedom of speech, association, interaction, warez, tunez and pr0n. Oh... they weren't talking to me, they were buttering up the politicos. My error.
"File sharers
do not pay... for the most part... for the
infrastructure they use"
Apparently they also think that internet access is free, and p2p users don't pay for that as well as the content. Or maybe it's just an outright lie.
Still, I suppose the idiot politicians will lap this all up without and real scrutiny. It is coming from their financeers.
"The overriding justification for commercial digital content management however is that
whatever the growth rate of broadband, uncontrolled illicit content distribution has the
potential to destroy large parts of the cultural industries. Without the ongoing creative
output of these industries the broadband offering, for consumers, will be extremely
limited."
Because only corporate culture(TM) can possibly exist! Without it there will be woe and cultural destitution! I love the term "Cultural Industries." Doesn't that just throw your brain into a loop-de-loop.
They also add: "Traditional forms of piracy have been long treated as criminal
activities; the new forms of piracy should be treated in the same way, that is as
instances of computer crime which threaten to undermine the social and commercial
fabric of online activity."
"Beg the question, To. To take for granted or to assume the truth of the matter in question. The phrase is now commonly used to mean simply to raise the question, to invite the obvious question, as in: "Most people live in towns, which begs the question whether country life has the advantages claimed for it." - Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, Millennium Edition.
I've used the phrase that way since I was a child. I'm now 30-something. Move with the times grandpa.:)
"If the owner wasn't driving, he has to say who was, or pay himself.. it would be easy to say you weren't driving but not say who was and let the police prove who was driving the car.."
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Slashdot Mirror
The file is easily certifiable as non-infringing. (Pretty much) end of story.
Of course that's not to say that copyright infringement notices should not require judicial oversight, to prevent frivolously, harassing behaviour, like this case. But this instance is not new or significant. (I suspect a slow news day?)
As for the prohibition statement at the end of the e-mail: pure bolleaux.
You don't see the symbiotic relationship between big business and government?
A good line from "The Best democracy Money Can Buy" is the title of one of the chapters: "Ya Dance with them that brung ya."
The allusion is to a dance, where if someone brings you to the dance, you owe it to them to dance with them. The campaign financers, that bring the politicians to office, get thanked in kind.
It's a lovely, mutually beneficial system, and it works.
The only problem being the pesky proles, who occasionally kick up a fuss, but they're generally easily placated by a bit of an income tax cut or something (slapping it on again in unfair taxation elsewhere, where the dumb mud-shovellers won't notice, is always good.)
I mean, why do you think this opressive law is being written in the first place? To benefit whom?
I never realised she was a chimera!
But how do you ensure that the community audited, and declared-sound software, is actually what ends up on each machine?
*Corporate money, obviously.
Well how about the politicians doing their duty and genuinely representing the electorate?
When we do vote, the politicians reneigh on their election promises, they reverse their previous positions on matters (opposed to what they once were for, for what they once were against) they lie, they cheat, they use resources that are supposed to serve the public, to lie to the public; they do as they please and throw a bone or two at any people who are snapping at their heels, if it seems to be causing a greater disenfranchisement in the larger electorate, and then they go back to doing what the hell they want: rubbing butts with the real people they wish to represent: with an electorate who simply grows more and more disenfranchised, and then stop voting: stop seeing the point of voting.
It's not vote or shut up, it's vote and get screwed.
As for voting poceedures, of just as much concern to me as the fraud hole in the electronic voting system, is the complete and utter lack of security in postal voting, which was a supposed 'great success' in the UK, recently.
In Italy, they were banning people from taking mobiles with cameras into voting booths, because organised crime wanted to validate that the leaned-on citizen was voting for the mafioso's corrupt politician-of-choice, but with postal votes, the process of political intimidation and vote fraud is so much more.... convenient.
It's widely trumpeted as a way of invigorating the political involvement of people, by the UK govt. but it's another, IMO, unacceptable means of voting (in addition to electronic means.)
Pen and paper, shove it in a box, and then really, and LEGALLY hold the politicians to account.
For starters, anyway.
The same can't be said of people who pay to download such material, though, since they finance the abuse and drive the the supply.
Though, thinking of the "legit" porn business, isn't the reason they let so much of their copyright material freely wash around the net, that it creates and "excites" the demand, that they later recoup through their pay sites? It stimulates demand. As such, free paedophile material, though not immediately financing abuse, stimulates desire for the material, desensitises frequent users of the material to what is really going on in the photographs.
So it may very well be in the interests of children everywhere, that such material, paid-for or freely-downloaded is outlawed.
I feel this device would find a significant market.
Now I'm just looking for investors.
But then again, you can't wipe out several generations of a family by crashing your computer.
I think you're overstating the case. Nobody died.
This guy's ignorance was only a danger to himself.
You see the effect all this piracy has had on you, you're even beginning to talk like like a salty brigand, now.
Harrrful, it be, harrr, Jim lad. Harrrr.
We now live in the satire age - where life is a satire of itself.
Ok, which moderator-on-crack modded this as off-topic?
The judgement seems to me to be entirely obsecene. I mean, "AND no drawing for his own personal use... his home was subject to unannounced searches by local police to make sure he was complying."
Sounds more like something people experienced during the Chinese Revolution than SHOUL BE the case in modern America (or any civilized society.)
The whole edge that HavenCo has over it's mainland competitors, is it's different IP "laws." With the Sealand "Royal Family" outlawing the exploitation of the difference in IP law, HaveCo is surely doomed to failure.
I mean, what's HavenCo got to offer that's so special now?
But sales of singles have declined much more rapidly than album sales.
I think you need to elaborate somewhat, to be worthy of your (currently +4) Insightful moderation.
For once a mainstream media source is not trotting out the RIAA line "piracy has caused a loss of 10% in music sales over the last year," bullshit, but is actually reflecting what people have been saying for quite some time on slashdot and elsewhere: that there are many causes for the decline in sales, and the RIAA's output being down "25%" is harldy ignorable.
The BBC has trotted out the aforementioned RIAA propaganda many times, before (along with so many other news organisations) and I'd given up on seeing them avoid being mouthpieces for the music industry lies, as far as p2p and sales went.
So it's wonderful to see them challenging the RIAA's deceptions, and I hope the other news orgs follow.
(It was interesting to read a few weeks ago, the way Alistair Campbell (Tony Blair's press officer) 'worked' on the the BBC: if he wanted a story about the government dropped, he would first lean heavily on the Beeb, and then he would go to the newspapers and say to them, "see if there was any truth in it the BBC would be covering it!" and they'd more than likely drop the story too.
(So, long story short (too late I guess, actually) if the Beeb is saying this stuff, it would be likely other news sources will as well.)
Well, it might.
Copyright is largely an artificial construct, unlike theft (which certain people like to erroneously and politically link it to.) It's never really existed in any significant portion of our evolution, so (I'd say) it's not really considered a real thing: it's an artificially imposed prohibition.
If the same principle was applied to food, or furniture, with everyone having their own little Star Trek replicators, people wouldn't respect it then, either.
Maybe it means: since everyone has their own printing-press, making a significant living from the prohibition of duplication of a work, is nolonger feasible or realistic? Like any number of other professions (starving (visual) artists languishing in obscurity and poverty, anyone?)
I don't think it's so much about price (though it's always a factor) as people's psychology: copyright doesn't really make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copyable; where the means of production and dissemination is in the hands of everyone.
Is that noise I hear the fingernails of the copyright cartels screeching down the cliff-face of a paradigm shift?
How can someone with nothing but a CD player/radio in their car, listen to their iPod on their car stereo, except by using the iTrip?
Hardly. The student who wrote a search engine; the hard-up students "cheekily" bootlegging some music, being hit for their lifesavings?
Not what I'd call "justified."
Now say that about people "pirating for profit," and I might agree.
The claims the RIAA made for damages were and are, outrageous and unjust.
I don't see how you could do that whilst retaining the same credit card.
More interestingly, is how are they going to deal with someone browsing a website anonymously, and then loggin into their account, and seeing a different price?
Dear whatever.com, I notice you're charging me over the odds. Since you don't value my custom, I shall make my purchase elsewhere.
Sincerely.
Heh.
"Piracy
In assessing the relationship between the availability of online content services and broadband take-up an obvious question can be posed: if consumer broadband take-up is limited when there is wide availability of free content, courtesy of, for example, file sharing technologies, why should the introduction of technologies ushering in a new internet age of controlled content access and use promote wider broadband use?
There are a number of equally obvious responses to this. [!] The first is that broadband take up should not be advanced at the expense of content providers. The UK has long enjoyed a position as one of the world's leading sources of content, a position which should in no way be compromised to facilitate broadband expansion. Broadband is, after all, a means to the end of enhancing the competitiveness of the UK in the Information Society, not an end in itself.
Secondly, in the short to medium term, legitimate digital content services will, with the right drivers, come to form an important part of integrated service offerings appealing to the demographic with decision making power over broadband take up. File sharers do not pay for the content they consume and nor, for the most part, do they pay for the infrastructure they use."
I was unaware that broadband was all about enhancing the competitiveness of the UK in the Information Society. I thought it was all about freedom of speech, association, interaction, warez, tunez and pr0n.
Oh... they weren't talking to me, they were buttering up the politicos. My error.
"File sharers do not pay... for the most part... for the infrastructure they use"
Apparently they also think that internet access is free, and p2p users don't pay for that as well as the content. Or maybe it's just an outright lie.
Still, I suppose the idiot politicians will lap this all up without and real scrutiny. It is coming from their financeers.
"The overriding justification for commercial digital content management however is that whatever the growth rate of broadband, uncontrolled illicit content distribution has the potential to destroy large parts of the cultural industries. Without the ongoing creative output of these industries the broadband offering, for consumers, will be extremely limited."
Because only corporate culture(TM) can possibly exist! Without it there will be woe and cultural destitution!
I love the term "Cultural Industries." Doesn't that just throw your brain into a loop-de-loop.
They also add: "Traditional forms of piracy have been long treated as criminal activities; the new forms of piracy should be treated in the same way, that is as instances of computer crime which threaten to undermine the social and commercial fabric of online activity."
I propose a cultural industrial revolution.
I've used the phrase that way since I was a child. I'm now 30-something. Move with the times grandpa. :)
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?