Not really, I'd say. That other group, the artists, don't come into play again after they have given (or sold) a copy to some generous person, unless you start considering copyright law.
Copyright law is not really about getting something for nothing. Rather it's about whether or not you can give and receive some (copyrighted) information.
There's loads of advanced arguments against copyright, but that's not something average Joe knows or cares about today. Still he obviously doesn't think it hurts someone enough to share music with his friends to stop. That's how it's the will of the people.
It's a brilliant remark you made about humans wanting something for free. You just haven't taken it to it's logical conclusion.
Why shouldn't it be free? I dare you to really offer free laptops on the street in real life. You won't, because laptops are expensive (since you can't copy them). However, mp3s are cheap, extremely cheap. You can offer free mp3s, no problem, just create a few copies! So why shouldn't you be allowed to?
The popularity of sites like Lokitorrent are an expression of the will of the people.
It is, and they want mp3s to be free. So what if it's an ancient human desire? Doesn't that just make it more justifiable? We can make mp3s free, we just for some reason won't. That's what his post was about.
Instead of locking articles preventing edits there should be a fact-checked version, and a "raw" version. People in need of high credibility (ppl citing something) should use the fact-checked version. One should be able to surf in fact-checked mode, and it should be easy to change mode.
How the fact-checking and signing is handled is a matter of trust, abuse must be avoided. Several models could be used, but there's no doubt such a system could be useful.
Due to the way Mixnets such as Tor work the overall performance of BT or anything else will be greatly reduced. Namely reduced to 1/(av_nbr_of_proxies+1). E.g. 2 proxies = 1/3 speed. This is pretty obvious seeing how every packet now consumes 3 times the bandwidth (and of course no bandwidth will be magically created). That's not to say it won't be usable though. (E.g. look at ed2k which is often slow, yet people use it anyway.) The largest problem ought to be massive increase in traffic this would result in if it caught on among the masses.
Well, now we're trying to fix #2 before #1 comes around so if (continuing current IP Enforcement, when) we need to fix #1 we have the tools to do it. Lacking these it's kind of hard.
Well, that'd be a damn small darknet, running on one computer, eh? Seriously though, the data will leave your computer at which point it can be tracked.
What they can do is link two people communicating. E.g. they can set up a decoy with something illegal, find out who they're communicating with, and voila, a suspect. Even if this doesn't hold as legal evidence they've you're discovered, after which they just need to collect evidence, arrest you, harass you, send a hitman etc.
FreeNet: Can't shut down a "site" (document) without shutting down the network. Plausable deniability. Yet, it's not anonymous in that anyone downloading a piece of data is infinitely more likely to be the initiator than one who isn't. You're still among the suspects, it's just that there are some more of them.
Onion Routing: Can't find a site without shutting down the network (well yes you can, see end to end traffic analysis on the Tor site). Can't find who's communicating what with whom. I.e. "true" anonymity. You're still among the suspects, but so is the whole network. (Depending on the number of proxies you use.)
Too bad then that speed and anonymity doesn't go hand in hand.
I've yet to see an anonymity system (mind you, that's untracability, not plausible deniability) not based on mixes, i.e. where data is forwarded between several peers.
E.g. two extra hops per packet obviously means at least 1/3 (global) effective bandwidth. (Each packet consumes 3x bandwidth.)
I'd say one of the biggest problem with decentralizing BT is creating a well connected network.
You see, the tracker knows all peer in the mini-per-file-network, and can easily select a random subset of them, when recieveing a peer request. This way the network avoids being partitioned, and pieces progate quickly through the whole network, without bottlenecks between sparsely connected parts of the network.
In a decentralized system, it is much harder (and expensive) to select a random subset of (all) peers, instead of the peers that happens to be readily available.
Well, guess what, Freenet doesn't really aim for anonymity the way you might think of it. (I.e. meaning untrackable sender, receiver and releationships.) Heck, they even admits as much in their FAQ.
For "true" anonymity, look at onion routing (whose speed of course is inversely proportional to the number of hops each message does). E.g. MixMinion, Tor, I2P...
If it is unclear, that means that they must get NR_OF_MEPS/2+1 votes, period. I.e. that number is unrelated to the number of MEPs actually present during the vote.
Yes of course. Luckily for people with little resources patents are dead cheap to get and support. NOT.
Please, read up a bit about software patents and it's effects before posting. The ONLY ones to benefits are the very largest companies and patent lawyers.
"Harmonizing" EU law to allow softwarepatents is like harmonizing american law to allow death penalty. It isn't preserving the status quo, because there is no status quo.
The draft, now even broader, is based on the praxis of the European Patent Office. This differs from the praxis of other countries. (Or there'd be no need for a harmonization, would there?)
The problem isn't that software industry will die, because it wont. The problem is that large companies get a "go to jail without passing GO"-card, for use against small innovative competitors.
It should be obvious, but that is not good for economy and society, and particularly bad for Europe when 70% of those 30,000 cards are non-european.
The difficulty in software is not coming up with the idea (15min) but implementing it (6 months). Ever wondered why software is protected by copyright?
A software patent that doesn't cover "basic ideas of commerce or advancements in technology as a whole" is considered a bad (useless) patent. Patents are used as a weapon of legal war. Sticks won't do.
Well, I'm not too sure about that. There's no doubt that "pirating" and "stealing" was meant from the beginning to bias the discussion. Of course it's not highsea robbery or deprivation of property. It's copyright infringement.
To keep people from instantly assuming it is wrong because stealing (in the material world) is wrong one either has to explain all that, or one could turn the word around and make it positive.
I've found the first alternative to be tiring, and Piratbyrån chose the second one. Hopefully it makes people start thinking when they try to argue. (After all, that physical property should be abolished is a very controversial point of view.) Yes, I know that it isn't always working, and that lot's of people are starting discussions armed with frustration and anger. But since they were not really serious anyway, it doesn't really matter. (To discuss you must listen.)
Well, I guess I can't defend someone behaving like that, except asking for proof. (Of course these are not really Piratbyrån but rather ppl attracted there.)
Still, once/. calms down you're welcome to return, I guess. We've a shortage of ppl not agreeing with us.
I do hope you're not being hypocritical and had some good arguments yourself, but it's a little hard for me to tell right now.:)
Re:Why I don't take this organization seriously...
on
Swedish Pirate Demo
·
· Score: 1
1970: Massive protests for civil rights.
2004: Protest for the right to communicate freely.
2032: Protest for the right to write a book.
2051: Protest for the right to hold a protest.
Why would we be spoiled?
Well, gee, thanks for sharing your frustration with Piratbyrån. Next time you can't win an argument over there try to think it over again before posting.
There are 14 year olds there, there are even 14 year olds without much intelligent to say. Those were not the guys you lost against. Better luck next time.
Piratbyrån is against copyright. This is an informed decision after much contemplation, unlike the one of most coming to argue against us.
(Anticopyright statement:) For starters I can mention that Piratbyrån [The piracy bureau, as opposed to the anti-piracy bureau, Swedish BSA] is serious about anti-copyright. We welcome (serious) debates and has yet to loose one. If you like e.g. copyright and GPL please consider why it's called copy-left (GPL is a hack, remember?). Creativity does not start with money nor stop without. Copyright is a detrimental restriction on the free market. Abolision of copyright does not meant it can't be replaced. Attribution for those wishing it can be handled with digital signatures. Copyright does not provide livelihood for most artists today; that problem already exist. Finally: why, now that we finally can spread all information to all of humanity, for free, should we choose not to?
Translation:
"Piratbyrån held a demonstration in three cities
Added: 2004-05-02 00:49
In three cities supporters of Piratbyrån held a demonstration with the watchwords "the welfare state starts at 100Mbit" and "Abolish copyright". In Stockholm nearly 200 people participated, in Umeå some 100 and in Malmö half a dozen brave champions.
The Participants shouted recently formed watchwords such as "Use the Force - Open Source" and "We want six, we want six, we want 600Mbit"[note: 6 and sex are homonyms in Swedish], and carried homemade banderoles with a pirate or file sharing theme. In Stockholm the first Copyswap in history was carried through, where those with homemade discs with movies or music shared them with their newly found friends. In Umeå there was a price for the best pirate costume, a real harddrive.
In both Stockholm and Umeå the speaches focused on the newly completed campaign "Stoppa Fluktarna" ["Stop the Peepers"], meant to put pressure on the ISPs not to accept the mafia methods of industry organisations when they, among other things, are spying on internet users to be able to report them to their suppliers.
In Umeå the protesters walked by three large ISPs with offices in town, and in Stockholm the final destination was Datainspektionen [data authority (of inspection or something)] where 23,000 signatures where handed in - on a burned CD. Datainspektionen considered themselves too busy to deal with Piraybyrån, so the list was put in their postbox.
Piratbyrån wants to thank all participants to the demo today. We showed that we are for real, and not a force to be ignored. Until the next arrangement - continue piracing!"
This is also a good read if you can actually locate it.
Difficult to locate? 5th hit in Google is not what I'd call difficult to locate. (That's how it was a month ago anyway.)
Oh, and yes, it's a great book/short story (medium story?). If you're the least interested in AI, god, conciousness, MMORPG, programming, computers or any combination thereof this is a must read.
The reason for the close-down is not making a political statement, it's bringing attention to a political issue affecting the site. (And thus the visitors, and in this case the visitors themselves anyway.) And it'd be pretty stupid not making a statement and trying to pretend to remain neutral, would it not?
This isn't arrogant. This is called not being stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, I'd say. That other group, the artists, don't come into play again after they have given (or sold) a copy to some generous person, unless you start considering copyright law.
Copyright law is not really about getting something for nothing. Rather it's about whether or not you can give and receive some (copyrighted) information.
There's loads of advanced arguments against copyright, but that's not something average Joe knows or cares about today. Still he obviously doesn't think it hurts someone enough to share music with his friends to stop. That's how it's the will of the people.
It's a brilliant remark you made about humans wanting something for free. You just haven't taken it to it's logical conclusion.
Why shouldn't it be free? I dare you to really offer free laptops on the street in real life. You won't, because laptops are expensive (since you can't copy them). However, mp3s are cheap, extremely cheap. You can offer free mp3s, no problem, just create a few copies! So why shouldn't you be allowed to?
The popularity of sites like Lokitorrent are an expression of the will of the people.
It is, and they want mp3s to be free. So what if it's an ancient human desire? Doesn't that just make it more justifiable? We can make mp3s free, we just for some reason won't. That's what his post was about.
See it why it was insightful now?
Instead of locking articles preventing edits there should be a fact-checked version, and a "raw" version. People in need of high credibility (ppl citing something) should use the fact-checked version. One should be able to surf in fact-checked mode, and it should be easy to change mode.
How the fact-checking and signing is handled is a matter of trust, abuse must be avoided. Several models could be used, but there's no doubt such a system could be useful.
Due to the way Mixnets such as Tor work the overall performance of BT or anything else will be greatly reduced. Namely reduced to 1/(av_nbr_of_proxies+1). E.g. 2 proxies = 1/3 speed. This is pretty obvious seeing how every packet now consumes 3 times the bandwidth (and of course no bandwidth will be magically created). That's not to say it won't be usable though. (E.g. look at ed2k which is often slow, yet people use it anyway.) The largest problem ought to be massive increase in traffic this would result in if it caught on among the masses.
Well, now we're trying to fix #2 before #1 comes around so if (continuing current IP Enforcement, when) we need to fix #1 we have the tools to do it. Lacking these it's kind of hard.
Well, that'd be a damn small darknet, running on one computer, eh? Seriously though, the data will leave your computer at which point it can be tracked.
What they can do is link two people communicating. E.g. they can set up a decoy with something illegal, find out who they're communicating with, and voila, a suspect. Even if this doesn't hold as legal evidence they've you're discovered, after which they just need to collect evidence, arrest you, harass you, send a hitman etc.
And unlike FreeNet onion routing is anonymous.
FreeNet: Can't shut down a "site" (document) without shutting down the network. Plausable deniability. Yet, it's not anonymous in that anyone downloading a piece of data is infinitely more likely to be the initiator than one who isn't. You're still among the suspects, it's just that there are some more of them.
Onion Routing: Can't find a site without shutting down the network (well yes you can, see end to end traffic analysis on the Tor site). Can't find who's communicating what with whom. I.e. "true" anonymity. You're still among the suspects, but so is the whole network. (Depending on the number of proxies you use.)
Too bad then that speed and anonymity doesn't go hand in hand. I've yet to see an anonymity system (mind you, that's untracability, not plausible deniability) not based on mixes, i.e. where data is forwarded between several peers. E.g. two extra hops per packet obviously means at least 1/3 (global) effective bandwidth. (Each packet consumes 3x bandwidth.)
I'd say one of the biggest problem with decentralizing BT is creating a well connected network.
You see, the tracker knows all peer in the mini-per-file-network, and can easily select a random subset of them, when recieveing a peer request. This way the network avoids being partitioned, and pieces progate quickly through the whole network, without bottlenecks between sparsely connected parts of the network.
In a decentralized system, it is much harder (and expensive) to select a random subset of (all) peers, instead of the peers that happens to be readily available.
Well, guess what, Freenet doesn't really aim for anonymity the way you might think of it. (I.e. meaning untrackable sender, receiver and releationships.) Heck, they even admits as much in their FAQ.
For "true" anonymity, look at onion routing (whose speed of course is inversely proportional to the number of hops each message does). E.g. MixMinion, Tor, I2P...
Tried The mailinglist?
If it is unclear, that means that they must get NR_OF_MEPS/2+1 votes, period. I.e. that number is unrelated to the number of MEPs actually present during the vote.
Well, except that software still isn't patentable in Europe (according to the law).
Parliament gets to speak next. It must pass both EP and Council when it's co-decision. This was not such a surprising result.
Well, so let's think about it. Where do we draw the line?
The problem with software isn't coming up with the idea, but coming up with the implementation (and writing it down). That's what copyright protects.
Yes of course. Luckily for people with little resources patents are dead cheap to get and support. NOT.
Please, read up a bit about software patents and it's effects before posting. The ONLY ones to benefits are the very largest companies and patent lawyers.
"Harmonizing" EU law to allow softwarepatents is like harmonizing american law to allow death penalty. It isn't preserving the status quo, because there is no status quo.
The draft, now even broader, is based on the praxis of the European Patent Office. This differs from the praxis of other countries. (Or there'd be no need for a harmonization, would there?)
(The non-EPO praxis is based on the following quote actually meaning that programs for computers not shall be regarded as inventions. "The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions [...] programs for computers;")
The problem isn't that software industry will die, because it wont. The problem is that large companies get a "go to jail without passing GO"-card, for use against small innovative competitors.
It should be obvious, but that is not good for economy and society, and particularly bad for Europe when 70% of those 30,000 cards are non-european.
The difficulty in software is not coming up with the idea (15min) but implementing it (6 months). Ever wondered why software is protected by copyright?
A software patent that doesn't cover "basic ideas of commerce or advancements in technology as a whole" is considered a bad (useless) patent. Patents are used as a weapon of legal war. Sticks won't do.
Believing they protect research is naive.
US: Companies invest in patent lawyers to stop competition.
EU: Companies must compete to stop competition.
US: software sector declines, patent lawyer sector blooms
EU: software sector blooms
So how, again, does Europe gain from legalizing 30.000 patents, 70% of which are not owned by Europeans?
Well, I'm not too sure about that. There's no doubt that "pirating" and "stealing" was meant from the beginning to bias the discussion. Of course it's not highsea robbery or deprivation of property. It's copyright infringement.
To keep people from instantly assuming it is wrong because stealing (in the material world) is wrong one either has to explain all that, or one could turn the word around and make it positive.
I've found the first alternative to be tiring, and Piratbyrån chose the second one. Hopefully it makes people start thinking when they try to argue. (After all, that physical property should be abolished is a very controversial point of view.) Yes, I know that it isn't always working, and that lot's of people are starting discussions armed with frustration and anger. But since they were not really serious anyway, it doesn't really matter. (To discuss you must listen.)
Well, I guess I can't defend someone behaving like that, except asking for proof. (Of course these are not really Piratbyrån but rather ppl attracted there.)
/. calms down you're welcome to return, I guess. We've a shortage of ppl not agreeing with us.
:)
Still, once
I do hope you're not being hypocritical and had some good arguments yourself, but it's a little hard for me to tell right now.
1970: Massive protests for civil rights. 2004: Protest for the right to communicate freely. 2032: Protest for the right to write a book. 2051: Protest for the right to hold a protest. Why would we be spoiled?
Well, gee, thanks for sharing your frustration with Piratbyrån. Next time you can't win an argument over there try to think it over again before posting.
There are 14 year olds there, there are even 14 year olds without much intelligent to say. Those were not the guys you lost against. Better luck next time.
Piratbyrån is against copyright. This is an informed decision after much contemplation, unlike the one of most coming to argue against us.
Luckily I've got the key :)
(Anticopyright statement:) For starters I can mention that Piratbyrån [The piracy bureau, as opposed to the anti-piracy bureau, Swedish BSA] is serious about anti-copyright. We welcome (serious) debates and has yet to loose one. If you like e.g. copyright and GPL please consider why it's called copy-left (GPL is a hack, remember?). Creativity does not start with money nor stop without. Copyright is a detrimental restriction on the free market. Abolision of copyright does not meant it can't be replaced. Attribution for those wishing it can be handled with digital signatures. Copyright does not provide livelihood for most artists today; that problem already exist. Finally: why, now that we finally can spread all information to all of humanity, for free, should we choose not to?
Translation:
"Piratbyrån held a demonstration in three cities
Added: 2004-05-02 00:49
In three cities supporters of Piratbyrån held a demonstration with the watchwords "the welfare state starts at 100Mbit" and "Abolish copyright". In Stockholm nearly 200 people participated, in Umeå some 100 and in Malmö half a dozen brave champions.
The Participants shouted recently formed watchwords such as "Use the Force - Open Source" and "We want six, we want six, we want 600Mbit"[note: 6 and sex are homonyms in Swedish], and carried homemade banderoles with a pirate or file sharing theme. In Stockholm the first Copyswap in history was carried through, where those with homemade discs with movies or music shared them with their newly found friends. In Umeå there was a price for the best pirate costume, a real harddrive.
In both Stockholm and Umeå the speaches focused on the newly completed campaign "Stoppa Fluktarna" ["Stop the Peepers"], meant to put pressure on the ISPs not to accept the mafia methods of industry organisations when they, among other things, are spying on internet users to be able to report them to their suppliers.
In Umeå the protesters walked by three large ISPs with offices in town, and in Stockholm the final destination was Datainspektionen [data authority (of inspection or something)] where 23,000 signatures where handed in - on a burned CD. Datainspektionen considered themselves too busy to deal with Piraybyrån, so the list was put in their postbox.
Piratbyrån wants to thank all participants to the demo today. We showed that we are for real, and not a force to be ignored. Until the next arrangement - continue piracing!"
True Names
This is also a good read if you can actually locate it.
Difficult to locate? 5th hit in Google is not what I'd call difficult to locate. (That's how it was a month ago anyway.)
Oh, and yes, it's a great book/short story (medium story?). If you're the least interested in AI, god, conciousness, MMORPG, programming, computers or any combination thereof this is a must read.
The reason for the close-down is not making a political statement, it's bringing attention to a political issue affecting the site. (And thus the visitors, and in this case the visitors themselves anyway.) And it'd be pretty stupid not making a statement and trying to pretend to remain neutral, would it not?
This isn't arrogant. This is called not being stupid.