no, it is not the fault of the developer. it is, as it says there, mostly the fault of the vendor, the one who puts the steering wheel in the hands of the user. when cars are made, they undergo rigorous tests, because vendors have liability for bad products. software vendors, especially those who shell out shit to end users explicitly deny responsibility for faults of their products. the developer is rarely a vendor, and IMHO those developers who are also vendors are usually taking better care of their users than vendors who employ developers.
as computers have become more powerful and versatile and the software more complex, the average user has a choice -- either become a nerd who follows all news, and spends large portion of their time learning about new technologies, how they are integrated, what risks are there, etc.; or ignore the problems, _trust the vendors_ to mostly do the right thing, learn the part of the interface they care about and react if they get hit. it is just not realistic to expect a user to know a lot about computers, as it is unrealistic to expect that a sick person can successfully self-medicate themselves to health.
so, while the problem is between the chair and the keyboard, it is between the chair and the keyboard of the people who create the software, and not the people who use it. mostly.
I wonder what is their business -- they have been bribing legislators into extending copyrights, engaging in egregious copyright abuse -- RIAA-style and otherwise, price fixing, racket, swindling artists of their money; likely more than once their agents have supplied those said artists with banned substances, resulting in, among other harm, loss of creative output from the said artists, to the detriment of us all. they fail to see that it is easy to fling shit, and their shit is likely stinkier than mere copying of a CD.
what is amusing is how short-sighted the MAFIAA-like institutions are to continue their crusade against the public domain in the dumbest way possible -- by accusing larger and larger groups of the said society of doing the things it has always done.
hey, MAFIAA guys, i have news for you. it may be called copyright, but it ain't a right -- it is a license to a monopoly. it may go as it has come -- if you press too much, the backlash against copyright-like monopoly may come sooner and with more power than you can possibly imagine;)
you most likely break your warranty, so yeah, the update turning the phone into a brick is probably legal, and you were warned about it at various stages of the purchase, unpacking and using the crack. whether that is good PR... well, that remains to be seen. real apple fanbois won't be cracking their phones, and apple won't probably care about the semi-fanbois that do crack them.
also, I am sure most of the people who bought an iphone realize there is this exclusive contract with the relevant carrier, and that both apple and the carrier will do their best not to let people off the hook via some free hack. so, if you bought an iphone to crack... you knew what it means;)
actually, there is gnuradio, which is a project (including available hardware) that lets people experiment with software radio. there are quite a few interesting things the folks from the project have done.
you are right, the funds the government has available should be as limited as possible, so that it doesn't waste them on unnecessary or outright dangeroups stuff.
but there are two prerequisites for you to be able to do that -- the right to be informed on what the government is up to, and the right to influence decisions of the government -- which basically means no censorship and free elections.
extra surveillance can easily mean the incumbent government will collect enough information on everyone to effectively enforce censorship (and prevent people from gathering or disseminating information) and limit participation in free elections in any capacity. this process may even look like freedom on the surface.
that is why you should not dismiss the big brother outright.
it will be interesting to see how long will this "loophole" stay on, and will some arms be twisted in canada before it is "closed". the international copyright "protection" organizations seem to cry a lot about some "rights" being abused and laws being violated. at the same time they keep using mafia-like tactics on a large (twisting the arms of the Russian government to close mp3.com early and the Swedish government to raid the pirate bay) and small (frivolously suing left and right in the US) scale. i for one won't be surprised at all if we see a lot of both if really downloads are recognized as legal in canada.
mod the parent up. i always wanted to build my own scope, i just didn't know it was so easy (in addition to being fun, and a great educational experience). i can also wholehartedly recommend the ATM list -- it is one of the best online forums I have had the pleasure to participate. definitely an option you should consider.
and not about the consumer, or the "development of teh internets".
when a company charges consumers different prices for the same thing (bandwidth) based on usage patterns (and not some characteristics of the service), that strongly implies the company is using (in)elasticity of demand to extract larger profits than a competitive market would allow them to. that implies monopoly-like power and, while is good for the company, it is bad for everyone else.
the real question is why then would the government propose laws that will encourage monopoly and enhance profits of the few large players in the game. what is the deal -- more control over internet usage? easier access to information about users of the internets? both? more?
novell officially owns the copyrights on Unix and whatnot, who's to stop somestar capital from offering to pay them to restart something similar against other linux vendors? it isn't like they aren't already in bed with microsoft blah blah blah
(donning my triple-layered gold-plated tinfoil hat... and let the conspiracy theories begin)
Heh, I also enjoy the occasional Eric Frank Russel or Tom Clancy fiction, but it is called _fiction_ for a reason. Terrorists have as much a chance of building a nuke as they do of 'wearing out' the Western world, and these chances are nil.
Building nukes is a complex engineering task, which requires a lot of finely made stuff in large quantities, and a lot of smart people working together. Both ingredients require enormous amount of money to maintain, and a large industrial base and significant military to guard it. You can't hide all that in a hut in a village in Lebanon, nor can you steal all the parts from retired East Germans... not without a government behind you.
As for the 'wearing out'... well, 'wearing out' the Western world may happen only in the same way 'wearing out' the Communist world happened. The biggest ingredient in the communist 'wear out' were the economic inefficiencies built into the system. They alone guaranteed that the system would collapse in time, and so it did. Even the simple fact that the collapse came unexpected by all economic, military and intelligence experts should strongly suggest to you that it was unplanned. So, unless the terrorists can manage to install such inefficiencies in the Western world (say, for example, by scaring people into voting for a government that will put the economy of the West on Marxist footing) I don't see the West collapsing very soon.
Yawn... FoSS isn't about denial of private property, nor is it about distribution of wealth. It is about distributing certain source code under a certain license.
This isn't a blow for RIAA in any way. This is a win for a fairer usage of legal system to punish copyright offenders.
The issue in question is the abuse of the discovery process by the MAFIAA -- they use subpoenas to get identities without the people involved knowing about it; they then then proceed to racket the people directly by offering them a 'cheap' settlement without giving the people a chance to mount defense.
The ruling only says that MAFIAA has to work out a process with the university to allow people to contest the subpoenas before their identities are revealed. This seems only fair, and it is not a blow, but a remedy instead.
If someone is caught violating the law, defend themselves, lose and are found guilty -- or decide to settle out -- things still work as intended, only they get a chance to be informed and contest charges.
Of course and as usual, the MAFIAA has the audacity to say informing people about the subpoenas is doing 'irreparable harm' to them. Yep, sure it does, since it would require them pony up some proof instead of racket.
To which the judge notes that RIAA will not suffer 'irreparable harm' because of that, since if they can produce proof they can still sue for damages and collect.
well, dunno about the censorship part, but at first sight the localization seems to suck somewhat. the damned thing seems to switch locales by looking up your IP address; and seems to ignore the locale headers sent by the browser, so now I am blessed with a US flag in the right top corner, and Japanese text interspersed all over the page. switching to the japan version removes most of the English labels though.
i think my anecdotal example (assuming, of course, that my observation is correct) points out the exact opposite -- that fear of potential patent litigation will stiffle innovation until such time the businesses deem the risks from the patents cold dead. and this seems to be the only good point about them.
in the past, as near as maybe 20-30 years ago, privacy was not a huge issue, because it wasn't so easy and cheap to amass data. of course, files on people have always existed, but they were specialized and compartmentalized, and not easy to correlate and analyse. nevertheless, some governments (mostly associated with ex-communist countries) are known to have excelled at collection, storage and retrieval of files on people, even if they only used paper. these files were very successfully used to make people behave in certain ways.
now, when there is the technology to collect, store and correlate all kinds of data about very many people by just about any entity with a minor budget, and there are no clear rules about what is okay and what is not, it is easy for the individual to be a target of abuse by a more powerful group (be that government, a large company, or some foundation), and it is almost impossible for the individual to counter-balance such groups, as data collection seems, in the absense of rules, quite legal, and, depending on the profile, the person may not be in a position to make a strong stand. so, it is pretty obvious that some levelling of the playing field is in order, and that it should be made a law, so that it has teeth.
to me the reasonable minimum would be the ability of a person to see the information an entity has amassed on them, and to be able to remove parts of their profile or (that being un-possible for some reason) the whole profile at any time, at least from a private organization. exceptions from that rule should be considered carefully, and introduced on a demonstrated need basis.
this will probably kill a few tabloid publications, and decrease the availability of movie star pictures on the internet though:(
I ain't sure about them phones, and I am just a casual observer, but I can't help but notice that about 20-30 companies released "electronic cash" systems in Japan in the past two years or so. There has been talk about using e-cash in Japan for a decade, and the technology has been there... only we didn't have much in terms of actual implementation.
Now, using this kind of "e-cash" is extremely convenient -- you can use it on teh train, in teh shop, etc. etc. There are some kinds that have your name on it, there are some that are (nearly) anonymous. Pretty neat, really. But, we didn't have it until like yesterday. So, why did this boom come _now_?
It seems that most of the e-cash/e-money/e-payment patents taken out by a few small and innovative companies in the late 80s (which innovative companies AFAIK have traditionally requested egregious licensing fees) expired just around the time the e-cash boom started. So now we have the implementations built on those ideas popping up, as it is finally feasible, sans the patent fees.
Since the implementations and the features are now largely non-exlusive, companies have to compete hard on the service; and since there are no licensing fees and no risks now from using _that_ technology, people concentrate resources on the solution instead on risk avoidance and litigation.
Finally, I can't see how the patent holders have profited from the patent-- noone licensed them then, noone's paying fees now. So, the patents in this case seem to have stopped inovative product development that benefits the society for what -- a decade?
I bet enough research into the way patents are used will show it results only in preventing competition and raising the price of the service, countering the intent of the patent in the first place.
you're right to an extent, but still, if you are a site owner, and if your site is making money for you (or if you are a site user, and are delivering benefits from the said site) little would you care if you're co-hosted or not. the days when putting up a site meant l33t skillz and buying a server seem long gone. the fact that sites are hosted on one server (and it may be a big server) doesn't make the problem smaller to the owners and the users.
and, incidentally, imho software companies should be liable for trouble created by their software as the hosting companies are.
yes, reforms of the system are the way forward. there are two issues then. the strategy -- what are the reforms that are needed, and the tactics -- how to get these reforms executed.
the legal and political system is defined by the body of law in general, and by the laws that governs copyrights in this particular case. so you can't talk reform without talking about the problems with copyrights (and related rights) as well. to me, the strategic issue is the peddling of "intellectual property", the extension of the copyright/patent/trademark monopoly, and the risks such lobbying brings to society (including authors of creative works, see for example this insightful article by an author i like on the issue. http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1 .html). corporations (and gubbermints they have on pay) having excessive power over ideas is bad for everyone except the said corporations. so, IMHO the strategic goal is to keep a perspective on why the legal monopoly on ideas exist -- to foster innovation -- and make sure the legal frameworks upheld this goal.
then, there is the tactical issue. the public is facing a determined, smart and well-funded lobby, which goal is to extend their monopoly. they are not creative people, they are in the business of making profits from art. if they have a sure-fire money maker, they won't invest in new art. that's why they need monopoly -- it saves them from hard work.
they are going about promoting their interests in a large, concerted, international campaign that includes bribery (aka lobbying), smear, intimidation, outright racket, frivolous legal procescution, and even armed raids. when dealing with such a force, the issues have to be clearly defined so that the general public can understand them, understand the risks, and made up their mind. it is an uphill battle, and one in which information is the key -- and it is what the "enemy" wants to control;)
the state of monopoly over culture is definitely bad. the state of no copyrights is arguably not ideal (although standard economic theory would suggest otherwise if one ignores transaction costs). there is balance to be struck somewhere, but it is not where we are now, and definitely not where we're going to.
whether someone has uploaded a film for sharing or not isn't my problem. i am not a party to the violation; i haven't linked to the site because i won't be driving hits to a jerk like that. what i find ridiculous is that people make money off michael moore while pouring dirt onto him. it shirley shows class.
of course, if you think such behaviour is okay, then fine, it is up to you; i think most people regardless of which part of the world would not like it though.
you misunderstand, or mis-represent what i say. i am not talking about _revoking_ copyright. i am talking about stopping attempts to _sell_ copyright (and related rights) as "intellectual property" -- that is extending copyright terms beyond anything reasonable, practically forever. that is the gravest threat that comes from WIPO and the likes.
currently, copyright laws are changed all the time so copyrights have practically stopped expiring. attempts to do the same with patents are ongoing. this happens because of "IP" lobbying, not because this is the public interest.
the motives for such extensions are obvious: if the companies that are IFPI/WIPO/MAFIAA/BSA can hoard up "IP", they don't need to do more innovation or creative work, they can enjoy their monopoly and live off exploiting what they already have. i can't easily see benefits from this.
also, punishment to copyright violations are being made tougher and tougher, to the point where it is less risky to commit murder, than to copy an obscure work of art or software, or try to _circumvent_ copyright protection measures. this is also ridiculous, and enforces hoarding and not creativity. there are also the various chilling effects on all sorts of artistic and scientific fields, limits on what consumer hardware can do, etc. etc. i don't see the benefits to society from that either.
to sum it up, the red herring you are waving -- _revoking_ copyrights -- is pointless and stupid. what i am talking about -- _limiting_ copyright terms, making sure they stay limited, and burying the ridiculous concept of 'intellectual property' and draconian punishments is justified and necessary.
as for the rest of your post, i don't quite understand it. i don't see how copyright laws are equivalent to corporate charters, or how are they relevant to the topic.
The biggest abuse of IFPI, which makes them unleash the other abuses you're talking about is the abuse of the copyright system. When the copyright contract between the society and the artist was established, about after the invention of the printing press, the rationale for copyright was to grant a _limited_ monopoly (granted by the society) that allows profit (and it was even then profit to the -- presumably rich -- publisher, rather than the author), in exchange for the _purported_ increase in creative work due to these profits, and also in exchange for the right of the society to use the work for free when the monopoly expires. This contract is now being subverted by the likes of IFPI (and their likes) -- mostly by bribing or pressuring governments into the establishment of an "intellectual property" -- a thing unheard of before WIPO, IFPI and the MAFIAAs started to promote it in the late 70s.
As laws become more complex (and more insane), the risks associated with doing artistic (and creative) work _outside_ the WIPO-MAFIAA-WHAT-YOU-NOT umbrella are growing. Thus the MAFIAA (and the governments it bribes) are given an undue influence over the culture, and the quality and variety of art works diminishes.
Such attempts to violate the said contract, perpetuate copyright and promote the nefairous concept of "intellectual property" are therefore acts of highway robbery with respect to human culture. This act is even more audiacious, because the current Hollywood riches were made on what is now referred to as "copyright theft" -- which happened a lot in the US before Hollyword became a proponent of "intellectual property".
Slashdot Mirror
no, it is not the fault of the developer. it is, as it says there, mostly the fault of the vendor, the one who puts the steering wheel in the hands of the user. when cars are made, they undergo rigorous tests, because vendors have liability for bad products. software vendors, especially those who shell out shit to end users explicitly deny responsibility for faults of their products. the developer is rarely a vendor, and IMHO those developers who are also vendors are usually taking better care of their users than vendors who employ developers.
lemme guess, you're dating that virtual 3D porn star at 0x8142d38?
as computers have become more powerful and versatile and the software more complex, the average user has a choice -- either become a nerd who follows all news, and spends large portion of their time learning about new technologies, how they are integrated, what risks are there, etc.; or ignore the problems, _trust the vendors_ to mostly do the right thing, learn the part of the interface they care about and react if they get hit. it is just not realistic to expect a user to know a lot about computers, as it is unrealistic to expect that a sick person can successfully self-medicate themselves to health.
so, while the problem is between the chair and the keyboard, it is between the chair and the keyboard of the people who create the software, and not the people who use it. mostly.
I wonder what is their business -- they have been bribing legislators into extending copyrights, engaging in egregious copyright abuse -- RIAA-style and otherwise, price fixing, racket, swindling artists of their money; likely more than once their agents have supplied those said artists with banned substances, resulting in, among other harm, loss of creative output from the said artists, to the detriment of us all. they fail to see that it is easy to fling shit, and their shit is likely stinkier than mere copying of a CD. what is amusing is how short-sighted the MAFIAA-like institutions are to continue their crusade against the public domain in the dumbest way possible -- by accusing larger and larger groups of the said society of doing the things it has always done. hey, MAFIAA guys, i have news for you. it may be called copyright, but it ain't a right -- it is a license to a monopoly. it may go as it has come -- if you press too much, the backlash against copyright-like monopoly may come sooner and with more power than you can possibly imagine ;)
you most likely break your warranty, so yeah, the update turning the phone into a brick is probably legal, and you were warned about it at various stages of the purchase, unpacking and using the crack. whether that is good PR ... well, that remains to be seen. real apple fanbois won't be cracking their phones, and apple won't probably care about the semi-fanbois that do crack them.
also, I am sure most of the people who bought an iphone realize there is this exclusive contract with the relevant carrier, and that both apple and the carrier will do their best not to let people off the hook via some free hack. so, if you bought an iphone to crack ... you knew what it means ;)
actually, there is gnuradio, which is a project (including available hardware) that lets people experiment with software radio. there are quite a few interesting things the folks from the project have done.
if anyone's interested, more here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring-gnuradio.html
and a bunch of links on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnuradio
you are right, the funds the government has available should be as limited as possible, so that it doesn't waste them on unnecessary or outright dangeroups stuff.
but there are two prerequisites for you to be able to do that -- the right to be informed on what the government is up to, and the right to influence decisions of the government -- which basically means no censorship and free elections.
extra surveillance can easily mean the incumbent government will collect enough information on everyone to effectively enforce censorship (and prevent people from gathering or disseminating information) and limit participation in free elections in any capacity. this process may even look like freedom on the surface.
that is why you should not dismiss the big brother outright.
it will be interesting to see how long will this "loophole" stay on, and will some arms be twisted in canada before it is "closed". the international copyright "protection" organizations seem to cry a lot about some "rights" being abused and laws being violated. at the same time they keep using mafia-like tactics on a large (twisting the arms of the Russian government to close mp3.com early and the Swedish government to raid the pirate bay) and small (frivolously suing left and right in the US) scale. i for one won't be surprised at all if we see a lot of both if really downloads are recognized as legal in canada.
mod the parent up. i always wanted to build my own scope, i just didn't know it was so easy (in addition to being fun, and a great educational experience). i can also wholehartedly recommend the ATM list -- it is one of the best online forums I have had the pleasure to participate. definitely an option you should consider.
;)
you can find a lot of helpful links on the atm site
http://www.atmsite.org/
good luck and clear skies
and not about the consumer, or the "development of teh internets".
when a company charges consumers different prices for the same thing (bandwidth) based on usage patterns (and not some characteristics of the service), that strongly implies the company is using (in)elasticity of demand to extract larger profits than a competitive market would allow them to. that implies monopoly-like power and, while is good for the company, it is bad for everyone else.
the real question is why then would the government propose laws that will encourage monopoly and enhance profits of the few large players in the game. what is the deal -- more control over internet usage? easier access to information about users of the internets? both? more?
novell officially owns the copyrights on Unix and whatnot, who's to stop somestar capital from offering to pay them to restart something similar against other linux vendors? it isn't like they aren't already in bed with microsoft blah blah blah (donning my triple-layered gold-plated tinfoil hat ... and let the conspiracy theories begin)
Heh, I also enjoy the occasional Eric Frank Russel or Tom Clancy fiction, but it is called _fiction_ for a reason. Terrorists have as much a chance of building a nuke as they do of 'wearing out' the Western world, and these chances are nil.
... not without a government behind you.
... well, 'wearing out' the Western world may happen only in the same way 'wearing out' the Communist world happened. The biggest ingredient in the communist 'wear out' were the economic inefficiencies built into the system. They alone guaranteed that the system would collapse in time, and so it did. Even the simple fact that the collapse came unexpected by all economic, military and intelligence experts should strongly suggest to you that it was unplanned. So, unless the terrorists can manage to install such inefficiencies in the Western world (say, for example, by scaring people into voting for a government that will put the economy of the West on Marxist footing) I don't see the West collapsing very soon.
Building nukes is a complex engineering task, which requires a lot of finely made stuff in large quantities, and a lot of smart people working together. Both ingredients require enormous amount of money to maintain, and a large industrial base and significant military to guard it. You can't hide all that in a hut in a village in Lebanon, nor can you steal all the parts from retired East Germans
As for the 'wearing out'
Yawn ... FoSS isn't about denial of private property, nor is it about distribution of wealth. It is about distributing certain source code under a certain license.
This isn't a blow for RIAA in any way. This is a win for a fairer usage of legal system to punish copyright offenders.
The issue in question is the abuse of the discovery process by the MAFIAA -- they use subpoenas to get identities without the people involved knowing about it; they then then proceed to racket the people directly by offering them a 'cheap' settlement without giving the people a chance to mount defense.
The ruling only says that MAFIAA has to work out a process with the university to allow people to contest the subpoenas before their identities are revealed. This seems only fair, and it is not a blow, but a remedy instead.
If someone is caught violating the law, defend themselves, lose and are found guilty -- or decide to settle out -- things still work as intended, only they get a chance to be informed and contest charges.
Of course and as usual, the MAFIAA has the audacity to say informing people about the subpoenas is doing 'irreparable harm' to them. Yep, sure it does, since it would require them pony up some proof instead of racket.
To which the judge notes that RIAA will not suffer 'irreparable harm' because of that, since if they can produce proof they can still sue for damages and collect.
So, i don't see any victims in this ruling.
how bout software bugs? the same kind that put the brakes on the F22 as discussed here: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/203 8217
well, dunno about the censorship part, but at first sight the localization seems to suck somewhat. the damned thing seems to switch locales by looking up your IP address; and seems to ignore the locale headers sent by the browser, so now I am blessed with a US flag in the right top corner, and Japanese text interspersed all over the page. switching to the japan version removes most of the English labels though.
i think my anecdotal example (assuming, of course, that my observation is correct) points out the exact opposite -- that fear of potential patent litigation will stiffle innovation until such time the businesses deem the risks from the patents cold dead. and this seems to be the only good point about them.
we'll see. i for one won't hold my breath, but will plan to watch it from a safe distance just in case ;)
in the past, as near as maybe 20-30 years ago, privacy was not a huge issue, because it wasn't so easy and cheap to amass data. of course, files on people have always existed, but they were specialized and compartmentalized, and not easy to correlate and analyse. nevertheless, some governments (mostly associated with ex-communist countries) are known to have excelled at collection, storage and retrieval of files on people, even if they only used paper. these files were very successfully used to make people behave in certain ways.
:(
now, when there is the technology to collect, store and correlate all kinds of data about very many people by just about any entity with a minor budget, and there are no clear rules about what is okay and what is not, it is easy for the individual to be a target of abuse by a more powerful group (be that government, a large company, or some foundation), and it is almost impossible for the individual to counter-balance such groups, as data collection seems, in the absense of rules, quite legal, and, depending on the profile, the person may not be in a position to make a strong stand. so, it is pretty obvious that some levelling of the playing field is in order, and that it should be made a law, so that it has teeth.
to me the reasonable minimum would be the ability of a person to see the information an entity has amassed on them, and to be able to remove parts of their profile or (that being un-possible for some reason) the whole profile at any time, at least from a private organization. exceptions from that rule should be considered carefully, and introduced on a demonstrated need basis.
this will probably kill a few tabloid publications, and decrease the availability of movie star pictures on the internet though
I ain't sure about them phones, and I am just a casual observer, but I can't help but notice that about 20-30 companies released "electronic cash" systems in Japan in the past two years or so. There has been talk about using e-cash in Japan for a decade, and the technology has been there ... only we didn't have much in terms of actual implementation.
Now, using this kind of "e-cash" is extremely convenient -- you can use it on teh train, in teh shop, etc. etc. There are some kinds that have your name on it, there are some that are (nearly) anonymous. Pretty neat, really. But, we didn't have it until like yesterday. So, why did this boom come _now_?
It seems that most of the e-cash/e-money/e-payment patents taken out by a few small and innovative companies in the late 80s (which innovative companies AFAIK have traditionally requested egregious licensing fees) expired just around the time the e-cash boom started. So now we have the implementations built on those ideas popping up, as it is finally feasible, sans the patent fees.
Since the implementations and the features are now largely non-exlusive, companies have to compete hard on the service; and since there are no licensing fees and no risks now from using _that_ technology, people concentrate resources on the solution instead on risk avoidance and litigation.
Finally, I can't see how the patent holders have profited from the patent-- noone licensed them then, noone's paying fees now. So, the patents in this case seem to have stopped inovative product development that benefits the society for what -- a decade?
I bet enough research into the way patents are used will show it results only in preventing competition and raising the price of the service, countering the intent of the patent in the first place.
you're right to an extent, but still, if you are a site owner, and if your site is making money for you (or if you are a site user, and are delivering benefits from the said site) little would you care if you're co-hosted or not. the days when putting up a site meant l33t skillz and buying a server seem long gone. the fact that sites are hosted on one server (and it may be a big server) doesn't make the problem smaller to the owners and the users.
and, incidentally, imho software companies should be liable for trouble created by their software as the hosting companies are.
yes, reforms of the system are the way forward. there are two issues then. the strategy -- what are the reforms that are needed, and the tactics -- how to get these reforms executed.
1 .html). corporations (and gubbermints they have on pay) having excessive power over ideas is bad for everyone except the said corporations. so, IMHO the strategic goal is to keep a perspective on why the legal monopoly on ideas exist -- to foster innovation -- and make sure the legal frameworks upheld this goal.
;)
the legal and political system is defined by the body of law in general, and by the laws that governs copyrights in this particular case. so you can't talk reform without talking about the problems with copyrights (and related rights) as well. to me, the strategic issue is the peddling of "intellectual property", the extension of the copyright/patent/trademark monopoly, and the risks such lobbying brings to society (including authors of creative works, see for example this insightful article by an author i like on the issue. http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-
then, there is the tactical issue. the public is facing a determined, smart and well-funded lobby, which goal is to extend their monopoly. they are not creative people, they are in the business of making profits from art. if they have a sure-fire money maker, they won't invest in new art. that's why they need monopoly -- it saves them from hard work.
they are going about promoting their interests in a large, concerted, international campaign that includes bribery (aka lobbying), smear, intimidation, outright racket, frivolous legal procescution, and even armed raids. when dealing with such a force, the issues have to be clearly defined so that the general public can understand them, understand the risks, and made up their mind. it is an uphill battle, and one in which information is the key -- and it is what the "enemy" wants to control
the state of monopoly over culture is definitely bad. the state of no copyrights is arguably not ideal (although standard economic theory would suggest otherwise if one ignores transaction costs). there is balance to be struck somewhere, but it is not where we are now, and definitely not where we're going to.
whether someone has uploaded a film for sharing or not isn't my problem. i am not a party to the violation; i haven't linked to the site because i won't be driving hits to a jerk like that. what i find ridiculous is that people make money off michael moore while pouring dirt onto him. it shirley shows class.
of course, if you think such behaviour is okay, then fine, it is up to you; i think most people regardless of which part of the world would not like it though.
cheers,
you misunderstand, or mis-represent what i say. i am not talking about _revoking_ copyright. i am talking about stopping attempts to _sell_ copyright (and related rights) as "intellectual property" -- that is extending copyright terms beyond anything reasonable, practically forever. that is the gravest threat that comes from WIPO and the likes.
currently, copyright laws are changed all the time so copyrights have practically stopped expiring. attempts to do the same with patents are ongoing. this happens because of "IP" lobbying, not because this is the public interest.
the motives for such extensions are obvious: if the companies that are IFPI/WIPO/MAFIAA/BSA can hoard up "IP", they don't need to do more innovation or creative work, they can enjoy their monopoly and live off exploiting what they already have. i can't easily see benefits from this.
also, punishment to copyright violations are being made tougher and tougher, to the point where it is less risky to commit murder, than to copy an obscure work of art or software, or try to _circumvent_ copyright protection measures. this is also ridiculous, and enforces hoarding and not creativity. there are also the various chilling effects on all sorts of artistic and scientific fields, limits on what consumer hardware can do, etc. etc. i don't see the benefits to society from that either.
to sum it up, the red herring you are waving -- _revoking_ copyrights -- is pointless and stupid. what i am talking about -- _limiting_ copyright terms, making sure they stay limited, and burying the ridiculous concept of 'intellectual property' and draconian punishments is justified and necessary.
as for the rest of your post, i don't quite understand it. i don't see how copyright laws are equivalent to corporate charters, or how are they relevant to the topic.
The biggest abuse of IFPI, which makes them unleash the other abuses you're talking about is the abuse of the copyright system. When the copyright contract between the society and the artist was established, about after the invention of the printing press, the rationale for copyright was to grant a _limited_ monopoly (granted by the society) that allows profit (and it was even then profit to the -- presumably rich -- publisher, rather than the author), in exchange for the _purported_ increase in creative work due to these profits, and also in exchange for the right of the society to use the work for free when the monopoly expires. This contract is now being subverted by the likes of IFPI (and their likes) -- mostly by bribing or pressuring governments into the establishment of an "intellectual property" -- a thing unheard of before WIPO, IFPI and the MAFIAAs started to promote it in the late 70s.
As laws become more complex (and more insane), the risks associated with doing artistic (and creative) work _outside_ the WIPO-MAFIAA-WHAT-YOU-NOT umbrella are growing. Thus the MAFIAA (and the governments it bribes) are given an undue influence over the culture, and the quality and variety of art works diminishes.
Such attempts to violate the said contract, perpetuate copyright and promote the nefairous concept of "intellectual property" are therefore acts of highway robbery with respect to human culture. This act is even more audiacious, because the current Hollywood riches were made on what is now referred to as "copyright theft" -- which happened a lot in the US before Hollyword became a proponent of "intellectual property".