No, I don't want to eliminate copyright. Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works. Sure, copyright could be shorter. I see no problem with that. It could be altered in various ways. But, I see a copyrightless world as one dominated by a lot of cheap work (and I mean "cheap" in both senses of the word). And, no, it wouldn't cause the world to advance "hundreds of years" (as the other commenter suggests).
Yeah, I remember that time that a company got $100 million dollars by using a Kickstarter campaign.
Did you know that no videogame has ever reached $100,000 on kickstarter? The most-funded videogame project I could find on Kickstarter (called "Grandroids") topped out at $56,000. Why, that'd get you a software developer and an artist for a whole six months! http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/video%20games/most-funded
Who do you think paid that money up front? Honest gamers? Nope. Investors.
First of all, I have doubts that Blizzard needs to go to investors. I'm sure they've got enough money in the bank from World of Warcraft to self-fund themselves. I know a few things about self-funded ventures because I've created software which was funded *SOLELY* by my own savings. Did that stop pirates from pirating it? Of course it didn't. Pirates still feel entitled to free entertainment.
Second, do you think that investors would invest money in producing a game if the public wasn't going to pay money so that they could actually get a return on their money? That's not an investment, that's a money-pit. The investors wouldn't invest if copyright didn't exist.
These investors will try to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and sue anyone who stands in their way.
Please. They aren't "suing anyone who stands in their way". At worst, Blizzard has sued pirates who unfairly demand free entertainment at Blizzard's expense.
The only work they do is lobby the government for laws that keep their unfair money making scheme running.
Name some gaming companies that have lobbied the government for the "unfair money making scheme". Game companies don't give a shit about 100 year copyrights. And if you're going to attack the very idea of copyright (and I mean all forms of copyright - afterall "getting paid multiple times for the same work" is an attack on ALL forms of copyright) then make an attack on it. Saying that lobbying is twisting the copyright law (which gaming companies aren't do anyway) is merely an attack on some version of copyright. Unless you're going to argue that copyright itself is the "unfair money making scheme", then you're just playing games.
> "Copyright is government granted monopoly designed to _prevent_ competition, your arguments dont hold water."
What are you talking about? When I create new software, copyright is used to prevent filesharing (i.e. my users doing an end-run around paying for it and getting a free copy) and it prevents commercial piracy (i.e. someone going and selling my software without my permission and pocketing all the money for themselves).
> You can charge a subscription
You mean like online newspapers?
you can charge for live performances
Yes, I should've thought about performing software and movies sooner.
you can charge for merchandise
We're going to fund my next romantic comedy movie by selling action figures!
you can rely on people paying because it's the right thing to do (a la that one radiohead album).
You mean that one stunt that they said they're never going to repeat again? http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9932361-7.html
Or you can do something like a patronage system, or work as a commercial artist.
Please mister, will you fund the next big videogame / movie? It'll cost millions of dollars, but you'll be providing society with free entertainment. Surely you don't have anything better to do with that money.
> The primary goal is copyright reform, not abolishment.
Just so you know: Nina Paley (who'd mentioned in the summary as creating cartoons for the book) believes in the total abolition of copyright. She thinks everyone should be able to to anything with other people's copyright - including sell it. In the past, she has attacked people who believe in the legalization of filesharing but think commercial copyright should still exist.
> "The Pirate Party opposes the present understanding of copyright, but it does not oppose the moral right of the author to be credited.
One of the oft-cited excuses for piracy is that "you can't stop us / copyright is incompatible with computers because they are designed to copy bits!" The fact of the matter is that the Pirate Party can't stop anyone from deleting the attribution. So, using the same excuses that they use to legitimize piracy, other people can justify removing attribution. If the Pirate Party is going to fall back on "be nice with our IP", well, they're not in a very good position to say that.
> "Doing something once and getting paid a hundred million times for it is a loophole in our system and it desperately needs to be fixed."
The problem with the "copyright means that creators get paid over and over for doing something once" argument is that prices reflect that. A movie that costs $400 million dollars to create can be yours for $10. Software that costs a billion dollars to create get paid-off by a huge number of small payments by individual people. There's nothing wrong with getting paid in small increments over and over so that you can pay down your one big debt of creating the content to begin with. It might *sound* wrong, but that's because you're thinking about it wrong. Over time, the prices tend to equalize around a point where (cost of production) = (average revenue from a single purchase)*(number of purchases). Why is this the case? Because of competition. If I can work for a year and make a million dollars, then that's a signal to other people that they can do the same thing - which causes them to compete with me, and the tools of competition include: selling their product for less money than I'm selling my product for, or spending more money to create a better product than I'm making (i.e. spending more money on creation).
The fact that we as individuals make small payments and companies can use that to pay-off their big debt is what enables the creation of products like movies and games. There would be no games like Starcraft 2 if it wasn't for this fact, because nobody's going to pay $100 million dollars (that's the reported cost) for a single copy of Starcraft 2 - instead, we all pay a little money and Blizzard ends up paying off the massive debts they accumulated by creating the product in the first place.
The US is the biggest terrorist in the world you don't kill hundred of thousands of Japanese even after they tried to surrender and call your self the army of rightness.
When did that happen? As I recall, after ther first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the emperor of Japan brought together his cabinet to decide whether to continue fighting or surrender. The result was a 3 to 3 split. And this was AFTER the first atomic bomb. Once the emperor of Japan decided to surrender, several members of his cabinet seriously considered a coup so that they could continue fighting. At least if you're going to attack the US, get your facts straight. It's awfully hard not to be the bad guy when you are operating on fictional versions of history.
... and they attacked us because Bin Laden was completely pissed off that US troops were used to kick Iraq out of Kuwait in 1990. He had approached the Saudis and offered to have the Mudjahdin kick Iraq out of Kuwait like the way they kicked the USSR out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Saudis opted for the US' offer, and Bin Laden was seriously insulted by that - the Saudis had chosen the infidels over the Islamic Holy Warriors. In his eyes, it was an insult to Islam.
There's also some interesting emails that leaked years ago where Bin Laden is complaining about the UN. He hated the list of human rights because it treated all religions as equal - this was insulting because he 'knew' that Islam was the one true religion and it required a status superior to all other religions.
April 11, 2001
From: Osama bin Laden
To: Mullah Omar
I pray to God—after having granted you success in destroying the dead, deaf, and mute false gods [meaning the statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001] —that He will grant you success in destroying the living false gods, the ones that talk and listen. God knows that those [gods] pose more danger to Islam and monotheism than the dead false gods. Among the most important such false gods in our time is the United Nations, which has become a new religion that is worshipped to the exclusion of God. The prophets of this religion are present in the UN General Assembly The UN imposes all sorts of penalties on all those who contradict its religion. It issues documents and statements that openly contradict Islamic belief, such as the International Declaration for Human Rights, considering all religions are equal, and considering that the destruction of the statues constitutes a crime http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/inside-al-qaeda-rsquo-s-hard-drive/3428/
I haven't posted much in the way of anti-piracy comments on Reddit, so maybe I'll have to pay closer attention, but it seemed (on only casual inspection) that voting tended to mean "I agree" or "I disagree".
It sort of depends. I occasionally get anti-piracy comments modded up on Slashdot. They get modded down on Reddit. I think what might be going on is that Reddit has so many voters that if 60% disagree with you and 40% agree with you, you end up with a cummulative score of all the people who see your comment (+40 - 60 = -20) so your comment on Reddit gets voted down. On Slashdot, only a select number of people have moderator points. Because there are fewer votes going around, you end up with a lot more noise in the signal, which means you can get voted up more often even though it goes against majority opinion.
To say this in more mathematical terms:
If you have a coin that's biased towards landing on heads 60% of the time, and you flip that coin 100 times, you're going to end up with around 60 heads (-60), 40 tails (+40). Added up, that equals -20. Even with randomness, it's very unlikely that you'll end up with a positive value (i.e. more tails than heads).
But, if you flip that coin only three times, you might get three tails (for a total of +3 upvotes) some fraction of the time (40%*40%*40% = 6.4%). And one head and two tails (for a total of +1 upvotes) some of the time - about 29% of the time in this example.
The Slashdot moderation system is like the one with fewer coin flips, which creates more noise in the whole upvote/downvote system. I'm not saying that Slashdot's moderation is great or that there aren't problems with it; I sometimes get annoyed by it, too. I'm just doubtful that Reddit's system is actually better.
> "It also shouldn't persist past the death of the copyright holder."
I disagree with that. If an author writes a book and dies, I fully support that money going to the widow or family of that author. (Although, not for decades and decades past the author's death.) Afterall, imagine a guy spending years writing a book in an effort to support his family, then just before it is published, he dies. Now his family gets none of the revenue from that book?
The RIAA does not have it both ways. They lose a lot of money on bands who didn't make it successful. Do you really think they go after bands who didn't earn-back the money they advanced?
"It's covered by the RICO act (and other laws), and is known as extortion. It's basically summarized as, "I threaten to take legal action against you, if you don't pay me money."" How would that be extortion if the person has legal standing? It seems to me that a settlement is exactly this situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_(litigation)
No, not if you have some legal standing. Walking up to a random person and saying "I'll sue you if you don't give me $20" is extortion. Telling someone "I'll call the police and you'll end up in court unless you get out of my house immediately" is not - because the person is obviously trespassing if they ignore your demand that they leave your house. Don't pay attention to JWSmythe's post. He doesn't make any distinction.
I have to admit that I'm not terribly concerned by al-Awlaki's assassination. Although I agree with Nursie - one of the things that struck me in all this talk is how US citizens are supposed to have certain rights to trial, while we're not concerned with other people in the world having that right. Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern. It's obvious that if al-Awlaki had been Canadian or French or Egyptian or Pakistani, we wouldn't bat an eyelash. I just think it's a weird contradiction for people to get on their soapbox simply because he was American.
> "it is only dictators who kill their own citizens under the pretense of "war""
Somehow, I don't believe that. It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States. I'd bet money that Americans were also killed by Americans in World War 2 - afterall, there were some German-Americans who went and fought on the side of the Nazis to "defend the homeland".
If the US ambassador wrote to the Spanish government and said "If you don't make your country's laws mirror the US drug laws, we're not trading with you any more," would it be any different?
Yes, I think that would be different. In the case of copyright, the US is concerned about people in Spain using material produced by US creators without paying them - hence, Spain's laws affect US creators - it's a trade issue. It's hard to come up with ways that liberal Spanish drug laws affect people in the US (with the possible exception that if a lot of drugs are going through Spain and into the US, then it makes law enforcement of drug laws in the US more difficult). But, other than that case, if the Spanish had fully legalized drugs, that's an issue that affects the Spanish. Copyright is more of a trade issue. (I recall an issue a few years ago, where a piece of hardware would allow the Nintendo DS to use pirated cartridges, and Nintendo saw their game sales cut in half in Spain - so this isn't a theoretical issue - http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004190412.html ) If, on the other hand, Spain said that Spanish citizens are allowed to pirate everything they want from Spanish creators - that would be an internal affair.
And, it makes sense that smaller countries would benefit from eliminating copyright: being small, they aren't producing much, but because the big producers are outside their territory, they get other people's work for free without needing to send dollars overseas. The best possible situation is to declare yourself a sovereign nation, then you can pirate everything and you can still have other people (outside "your territory") obey copyright law because it's in effect where they live. Of course, I think the whole piracy thing is selfish and unfair to creators. This ultimately cuts to the heart of laws and fairness. Things aren't fair or unfair because the law says so. Pirates are apt to point out that "just because there's a law (copyright) doesn't mean it's a just law that we should follow". Of course, the whole issue comes back to haunt them because it also means the converse: "just because something is legalized in your country doesn't mean it's fair or right".
It's easy to fall back on "they should be allowed to do create whatever laws they want in their country", but I don't actually believe that's true as a general principle. For example, I hate when Saudi Arabia gives a woman 80 lashes for being in a car with a man, makes it illegal for women to drive, or Afghanistan or Pakistan have laws that prescribe the death penalty for converting away from Islam. But, I'm digressing away from issues of copyright and piracy. Or, to use another example, a few years ago, some people discovered a Disney World in China - but it had no affiliation with the actual Disney company. (http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/05/02/disneyland-in-china/) Some Chinese just copied the whole thing. Is this right? Is this wrong? Are the Chinese allowed to do whatever they want in their own country? What if a country allowed for-profit piracy? I don't agree with that either, and some pirates would also disagree with countries allowing "for profit piracy", but if were going to talk about national sovereignty, then I don't see how anybody can complain - it's just a country doing what it's allowed to do by it's own laws, and it the national laws allow for "for profit" piracy, then nobody has a right to complain?
I don't agree with Spain needing a SOPA law, but Spain has been pretty liberal with copyright/piracy in the past (Spain has previously said that non-commercial piracy is legal), so it's not surprising that the US would put pressure on them for that issue. I think a lot of people here are starting with how they feel about copyright and piracy and then arriving at a conclusion - as in: "I think piracy should be legal, therefore, the US should stop meddling in Spain's internal affairs." Perhaps an appropriate
Out of curiosity, aren't all trade conflicts categorized as "coercion" and "extortion"? For example, the US and Brazil had problems a few years back where the US was subsidizing US farmers, which caused low crop prices, which lead to difficulty for Brazilian farmers. Brazil started putting all kinds of tariffs on a variety of US products (I think I remember US computer equipment being part of the tariff). By your definitions, isn't that also an example of coercion and extortion on the part of Brazil against the US?
I'm not actually coming down on Brazil, by the way. I understand why they did what they did when they imposed or threatened to impose tariffs. I'm just saying that if we're going to be consistent, we can't go around calling US actions "coercion" and then look the other way when the same tools are used by everyone else in trade disputes. Afterall, this is standard procedure.
But, how much bandwidth would they need (especially considering all the bandwidth torrents consume) and how much bandwidth could one satellite provide? It sounds like they'd need a whole fleet of expensive satellites. Sounds to me like it's either a pipe-dream or a bluff.
"Babylon was a cultural leader in astronomy, mathematics, literature and medicine. It's also interesting to note the somewhat recent Slashdot article linking the common ancestry of languages to this area."
From the other article:
The relationship that emerges suggests the actual point of origin is in central or southern Africa, and that all modern languages do, indeed, have a common root."
Dear Slashdot editors: Do you know where Babylon and Central/Southern Africa are?
I'd also bet money that the timeline is also completely wrong. Babylon existed a few thousand years ago. The origin of language is much, much older.
My question was not "What's bad about SOPA?" or "What if US corporations can buy laws in the US?" My question is: "How does the SOPA situation (where corporations are pushing for US laws) allow anyone to conclude that software created by US companies is evil, will sabotage you, and under the complete control of the US government?"
I am referring to the fact that the SOPA debate has shown that US legislators won't hesitate for a moment to mutilate global technical resources if they can be used as leverage to project US trade interests, intensely disregarding the fact that severeign nations elsewhere have other sets of laws.
Let's dispense with the argument that this is US legislators fighting for "US trade interests". This is about particular US companies pushing US legislators to fight back against a stubborn foe: global piracy. (Also, by framing it as "US trade interests" you're intentionally suggest a wider attack on foreign trade. If you set it up more accurately, it would be "unfair competition" because piracy is an illegitimate form of trade competition. Of course, if you talk about piracy as a form of unfair competition, you can't scare people because if you said "the US legislators won't hesitate to fight unfair competition" you'd lose the moral highground.)
The US is able to unilaterally cut websites (both foreign and domestic) off the internet because they are doing something that many people find wrong, but other countries have semi-legalized. But, wait, what did you write in the article again: "[US] policymakers are not the slightest afraid of legislatively ordering American-run corporations to sabotage their customers in order to further United States foreign policy". What in the world does kicking websites off the internet have to do with forcing US corporations to sabotage their customers? What are you alleging here? Where is the sabotage? How does this "advance US foreign policy"? It sounds to me like SOPA is US corporations telling the US government what to do, and you're here telling us that the US government is telling the US corporations what to do. So which is it? Who is telling who what to do because it seems to me that SOPA is doing the exact opposite of what you're claiming in your article. I can see absolutely nothing to support your claims of "sabotage" in order to "advance US foreign policy". Since you brought up Apple and Microsoft specifically, could you please explain how and why these companies are going to sabotage you at the behest of the US government, why no US company can be trusted, and what this has to do with SOPA?
Specifically, the seizure of Internet domains is a precursory example.
A precursory example? You mean that nothing in SOPA supports your claims, but you fully expect that sometime in the future things will start happening differently to support your view of the world?
Since the legislators have shown both a willingness and a capacity to regard anything happening on US soil as something that can be legislated into political leverage, at the expense of the customers and the US supplier
First, define "political leverage" because I can't figure out how it makes sense in this context.
Second, how is "kicking piracy websites off the internet" creating political leverage at the expense of the customers and US supplier?
we must assume that cloud services and closed software can and will also be thus regarded.
What in the world are you talking about? What, specifically are you alleging? Are you saying that the US government passing SOPA at the behest of corporations indicates that the US government is going to force corporations to... what? Steal your state secrets? That's quite a stretch from "US corporations want the US government to pass laws to allow a crackdown on piracy websites" into a complete reversal "the US government is dictating to US corporations to sabotage customers and steal information from foreign nations".
This, in turn, means that any nation serious about its sovereignty can't let its critical administrative processes b
I read the article, and I can't figure out what he's talking about. Can anyone make sense of the article? Is he talking about some aspect of SOPA (stop online piracy act) that I am not aware of? The aspects of SOPA that I'm familiar with is the fact that the US will be able to disconnect domains based on reports of piracy on websites. Here's some examples of what I'm talking about:
"[US] policymakers are not the slightest afraid of legislatively ordering American-run corporations to sabotage their customers in order to further United States foreign policy... Worded differently, the American legislature has taken itself the right to sabotage American products, boobytrapping them to enforce American laws and economic interests outside of its borders by directly sabotaging the administration of other countries."
In what way does SOPA order American-run corporations to sabotage their customers to further American policy? It sounds to me like he's arguing that the US government is forcing Microsoft and Google to harm their customers - perhaps through destroying foreign documents or secretly sending state-secrets to the United States government. Is this some part of SOPA that I'm not aware of?
Or this:
In the debate around the American Stop Online Piracy Act, American legislators have demonstrated a clear capability and willingness to interfere with the technical operations of American products, when doing so furthers American political interests regardless of the policy situation in the customer’s country.
In what way does SOPA interfere with the technical operations of American products?
These quotes reflect pretty much the tone of the entire article, and I can't figure out what he's talking about. Earlier he talks about how everyone runs software from Microsoft or Apple. In what way does "taking websites off the internet" interfere with the "technical operations of American products [such as the construction of software by Microsoft and Apple]"?
Quite frankly, when I read the article, I'm completely confused by what he's alleging is going on. It's all very vague and conspiratorial. I can't figure out if Falkvinge wrote the article half asleep, whether he's going off the deep end and falling prey to strange conspiracy theories, or if there's some aspect of SOPA that nobody's talked about (which seems unlikely, given the amount of press I've seen about SOPA).
Slashdot Mirror
No, I don't want to eliminate copyright. Eliminating copyright will largely eliminate most of the time and money investment that goes into creating works. Sure, copyright could be shorter. I see no problem with that. It could be altered in various ways. But, I see a copyrightless world as one dominated by a lot of cheap work (and I mean "cheap" in both senses of the word). And, no, it wouldn't cause the world to advance "hundreds of years" (as the other commenter suggests).
Yeah, I remember that time that a company got $100 million dollars by using a Kickstarter campaign.
Did you know that no videogame has ever reached $100,000 on kickstarter? The most-funded videogame project I could find on Kickstarter (called "Grandroids") topped out at $56,000. Why, that'd get you a software developer and an artist for a whole six months!
http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/video%20games/most-funded
Who do you think paid that money up front? Honest gamers? Nope. Investors.
First of all, I have doubts that Blizzard needs to go to investors. I'm sure they've got enough money in the bank from World of Warcraft to self-fund themselves. I know a few things about self-funded ventures because I've created software which was funded *SOLELY* by my own savings. Did that stop pirates from pirating it? Of course it didn't. Pirates still feel entitled to free entertainment.
Second, do you think that investors would invest money in producing a game if the public wasn't going to pay money so that they could actually get a return on their money? That's not an investment, that's a money-pit. The investors wouldn't invest if copyright didn't exist.
These investors will try to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and sue anyone who stands in their way.
Please. They aren't "suing anyone who stands in their way". At worst, Blizzard has sued pirates who unfairly demand free entertainment at Blizzard's expense.
The only work they do is lobby the government for laws that keep their unfair money making scheme running.
Name some gaming companies that have lobbied the government for the "unfair money making scheme". Game companies don't give a shit about 100 year copyrights. And if you're going to attack the very idea of copyright (and I mean all forms of copyright - afterall "getting paid multiple times for the same work" is an attack on ALL forms of copyright) then make an attack on it. Saying that lobbying is twisting the copyright law (which gaming companies aren't do anyway) is merely an attack on some version of copyright. Unless you're going to argue that copyright itself is the "unfair money making scheme", then you're just playing games.
> "Copyright is government granted monopoly designed to _prevent_ competition, your arguments dont hold water."
What are you talking about? When I create new software, copyright is used to prevent filesharing (i.e. my users doing an end-run around paying for it and getting a free copy) and it prevents commercial piracy (i.e. someone going and selling my software without my permission and pocketing all the money for themselves).
> You can charge a subscription
You mean like online newspapers?
you can charge for live performances
Yes, I should've thought about performing software and movies sooner.
you can charge for merchandise
We're going to fund my next romantic comedy movie by selling action figures!
you can rely on people paying because it's the right thing to do (a la that one radiohead album).
You mean that one stunt that they said they're never going to repeat again? http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9932361-7.html
Or you can do something like a patronage system, or work as a commercial artist.
Please mister, will you fund the next big videogame / movie? It'll cost millions of dollars, but you'll be providing society with free entertainment. Surely you don't have anything better to do with that money.
> The primary goal is copyright reform, not abolishment.
Just so you know: Nina Paley (who'd mentioned in the summary as creating cartoons for the book) believes in the total abolition of copyright. She thinks everyone should be able to to anything with other people's copyright - including sell it. In the past, she has attacked people who believe in the legalization of filesharing but think commercial copyright should still exist.
> "The Pirate Party opposes the present understanding of copyright, but it does not oppose the moral right of the author to be credited.
One of the oft-cited excuses for piracy is that "you can't stop us / copyright is incompatible with computers because they are designed to copy bits!" The fact of the matter is that the Pirate Party can't stop anyone from deleting the attribution. So, using the same excuses that they use to legitimize piracy, other people can justify removing attribution. If the Pirate Party is going to fall back on "be nice with our IP", well, they're not in a very good position to say that.
> "Doing something once and getting paid a hundred million times for it is a loophole in our system and it desperately needs to be fixed."
The problem with the "copyright means that creators get paid over and over for doing something once" argument is that prices reflect that. A movie that costs $400 million dollars to create can be yours for $10. Software that costs a billion dollars to create get paid-off by a huge number of small payments by individual people. There's nothing wrong with getting paid in small increments over and over so that you can pay down your one big debt of creating the content to begin with. It might *sound* wrong, but that's because you're thinking about it wrong. Over time, the prices tend to equalize around a point where (cost of production) = (average revenue from a single purchase)*(number of purchases). Why is this the case? Because of competition. If I can work for a year and make a million dollars, then that's a signal to other people that they can do the same thing - which causes them to compete with me, and the tools of competition include: selling their product for less money than I'm selling my product for, or spending more money to create a better product than I'm making (i.e. spending more money on creation).
The fact that we as individuals make small payments and companies can use that to pay-off their big debt is what enables the creation of products like movies and games. There would be no games like Starcraft 2 if it wasn't for this fact, because nobody's going to pay $100 million dollars (that's the reported cost) for a single copy of Starcraft 2 - instead, we all pay a little money and Blizzard ends up paying off the massive debts they accumulated by creating the product in the first place.
The US is the biggest terrorist in the world you don't kill hundred of thousands of Japanese even after they tried to surrender and call your self the army of rightness.
When did that happen? As I recall, after ther first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the emperor of Japan brought together his cabinet to decide whether to continue fighting or surrender. The result was a 3 to 3 split. And this was AFTER the first atomic bomb. Once the emperor of Japan decided to surrender, several members of his cabinet seriously considered a coup so that they could continue fighting. At least if you're going to attack the US, get your facts straight. It's awfully hard not to be the bad guy when you are operating on fictional versions of history.
There's also some interesting emails that leaked years ago where Bin Laden is complaining about the UN. He hated the list of human rights because it treated all religions as equal - this was insulting because he 'knew' that Islam was the one true religion and it required a status superior to all other religions.
April 11, 2001
From: Osama bin Laden
To: Mullah Omar
I haven't posted much in the way of anti-piracy comments on Reddit, so maybe I'll have to pay closer attention, but it seemed (on only casual inspection) that voting tended to mean "I agree" or "I disagree".
It sort of depends. I occasionally get anti-piracy comments modded up on Slashdot. They get modded down on Reddit. I think what might be going on is that Reddit has so many voters that if 60% disagree with you and 40% agree with you, you end up with a cummulative score of all the people who see your comment (+40 - 60 = -20) so your comment on Reddit gets voted down. On Slashdot, only a select number of people have moderator points. Because there are fewer votes going around, you end up with a lot more noise in the signal, which means you can get voted up more often even though it goes against majority opinion.
To say this in more mathematical terms:
If you have a coin that's biased towards landing on heads 60% of the time, and you flip that coin 100 times, you're going to end up with around 60 heads (-60), 40 tails (+40). Added up, that equals -20. Even with randomness, it's very unlikely that you'll end up with a positive value (i.e. more tails than heads).
But, if you flip that coin only three times, you might get three tails (for a total of +3 upvotes) some fraction of the time (40%*40%*40% = 6.4%). And one head and two tails (for a total of +1 upvotes) some of the time - about 29% of the time in this example.
The Slashdot moderation system is like the one with fewer coin flips, which creates more noise in the whole upvote/downvote system. I'm not saying that Slashdot's moderation is great or that there aren't problems with it; I sometimes get annoyed by it, too. I'm just doubtful that Reddit's system is actually better.
> "It also shouldn't persist past the death of the copyright holder."
I disagree with that. If an author writes a book and dies, I fully support that money going to the widow or family of that author. (Although, not for decades and decades past the author's death.) Afterall, imagine a guy spending years writing a book in an effort to support his family, then just before it is published, he dies. Now his family gets none of the revenue from that book?
The RIAA does not have it both ways. They lose a lot of money on bands who didn't make it successful. Do you really think they go after bands who didn't earn-back the money they advanced?
"It's covered by the RICO act (and other laws), and is known as extortion. It's basically summarized as, "I threaten to take legal action against you, if you don't pay me money."" How would that be extortion if the person has legal standing? It seems to me that a settlement is exactly this situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_(litigation)
No, not if you have some legal standing. Walking up to a random person and saying "I'll sue you if you don't give me $20" is extortion. Telling someone "I'll call the police and you'll end up in court unless you get out of my house immediately" is not - because the person is obviously trespassing if they ignore your demand that they leave your house. Don't pay attention to JWSmythe's post. He doesn't make any distinction.
I have to admit that I'm not terribly concerned by al-Awlaki's assassination. Although I agree with Nursie - one of the things that struck me in all this talk is how US citizens are supposed to have certain rights to trial, while we're not concerned with other people in the world having that right. Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern. It's obvious that if al-Awlaki had been Canadian or French or Egyptian or Pakistani, we wouldn't bat an eyelash. I just think it's a weird contradiction for people to get on their soapbox simply because he was American.
> "it is only dictators who kill their own citizens under the pretense of "war""
Somehow, I don't believe that. It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States. I'd bet money that Americans were also killed by Americans in World War 2 - afterall, there were some German-Americans who went and fought on the side of the Nazis to "defend the homeland".
If the US ambassador wrote to the Spanish government and said "If you don't make your country's laws mirror the US drug laws, we're not trading with you any more," would it be any different?
Yes, I think that would be different. In the case of copyright, the US is concerned about people in Spain using material produced by US creators without paying them - hence, Spain's laws affect US creators - it's a trade issue. It's hard to come up with ways that liberal Spanish drug laws affect people in the US (with the possible exception that if a lot of drugs are going through Spain and into the US, then it makes law enforcement of drug laws in the US more difficult). But, other than that case, if the Spanish had fully legalized drugs, that's an issue that affects the Spanish. Copyright is more of a trade issue. (I recall an issue a few years ago, where a piece of hardware would allow the Nintendo DS to use pirated cartridges, and Nintendo saw their game sales cut in half in Spain - so this isn't a theoretical issue - http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004190412.html ) If, on the other hand, Spain said that Spanish citizens are allowed to pirate everything they want from Spanish creators - that would be an internal affair.
And, it makes sense that smaller countries would benefit from eliminating copyright: being small, they aren't producing much, but because the big producers are outside their territory, they get other people's work for free without needing to send dollars overseas. The best possible situation is to declare yourself a sovereign nation, then you can pirate everything and you can still have other people (outside "your territory") obey copyright law because it's in effect where they live. Of course, I think the whole piracy thing is selfish and unfair to creators. This ultimately cuts to the heart of laws and fairness. Things aren't fair or unfair because the law says so. Pirates are apt to point out that "just because there's a law (copyright) doesn't mean it's a just law that we should follow". Of course, the whole issue comes back to haunt them because it also means the converse: "just because something is legalized in your country doesn't mean it's fair or right".
It's easy to fall back on "they should be allowed to do create whatever laws they want in their country", but I don't actually believe that's true as a general principle. For example, I hate when Saudi Arabia gives a woman 80 lashes for being in a car with a man, makes it illegal for women to drive, or Afghanistan or Pakistan have laws that prescribe the death penalty for converting away from Islam. But, I'm digressing away from issues of copyright and piracy. Or, to use another example, a few years ago, some people discovered a Disney World in China - but it had no affiliation with the actual Disney company. (http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/05/02/disneyland-in-china/) Some Chinese just copied the whole thing. Is this right? Is this wrong? Are the Chinese allowed to do whatever they want in their own country? What if a country allowed for-profit piracy? I don't agree with that either, and some pirates would also disagree with countries allowing "for profit piracy", but if were going to talk about national sovereignty, then I don't see how anybody can complain - it's just a country doing what it's allowed to do by it's own laws, and it the national laws allow for "for profit" piracy, then nobody has a right to complain?
I don't agree with Spain needing a SOPA law, but Spain has been pretty liberal with copyright/piracy in the past (Spain has previously said that non-commercial piracy is legal), so it's not surprising that the US would put pressure on them for that issue. I think a lot of people here are starting with how they feel about copyright and piracy and then arriving at a conclusion - as in: "I think piracy should be legal, therefore, the US should stop meddling in Spain's internal affairs." Perhaps an appropriate
Out of curiosity, aren't all trade conflicts categorized as "coercion" and "extortion"? For example, the US and Brazil had problems a few years back where the US was subsidizing US farmers, which caused low crop prices, which lead to difficulty for Brazilian farmers. Brazil started putting all kinds of tariffs on a variety of US products (I think I remember US computer equipment being part of the tariff). By your definitions, isn't that also an example of coercion and extortion on the part of Brazil against the US?
I'm not actually coming down on Brazil, by the way. I understand why they did what they did when they imposed or threatened to impose tariffs. I'm just saying that if we're going to be consistent, we can't go around calling US actions "coercion" and then look the other way when the same tools are used by everyone else in trade disputes. Afterall, this is standard procedure.
But, how much bandwidth would they need (especially considering all the bandwidth torrents consume) and how much bandwidth could one satellite provide? It sounds like they'd need a whole fleet of expensive satellites. Sounds to me like it's either a pipe-dream or a bluff.
From the other article:
Dear Slashdot editors: Do you know where Babylon and Central/Southern Africa are?
I'd also bet money that the timeline is also completely wrong. Babylon existed a few thousand years ago. The origin of language is much, much older.
You didn't answer my questions, either.
My question was not "What's bad about SOPA?" or "What if US corporations can buy laws in the US?" My question is: "How does the SOPA situation (where corporations are pushing for US laws) allow anyone to conclude that software created by US companies is evil, will sabotage you, and under the complete control of the US government?"
Let's take your claims and dissect them.
Let's dispense with the argument that this is US legislators fighting for "US trade interests". This is about particular US companies pushing US legislators to fight back against a stubborn foe: global piracy. (Also, by framing it as "US trade interests" you're intentionally suggest a wider attack on foreign trade. If you set it up more accurately, it would be "unfair competition" because piracy is an illegitimate form of trade competition. Of course, if you talk about piracy as a form of unfair competition, you can't scare people because if you said "the US legislators won't hesitate to fight unfair competition" you'd lose the moral highground.)
The US is able to unilaterally cut websites (both foreign and domestic) off the internet because they are doing something that many people find wrong, but other countries have semi-legalized. But, wait, what did you write in the article again: "[US] policymakers are not the slightest afraid of legislatively ordering American-run corporations to sabotage their customers in order to further United States foreign policy". What in the world does kicking websites off the internet have to do with forcing US corporations to sabotage their customers? What are you alleging here? Where is the sabotage? How does this "advance US foreign policy"? It sounds to me like SOPA is US corporations telling the US government what to do, and you're here telling us that the US government is telling the US corporations what to do. So which is it? Who is telling who what to do because it seems to me that SOPA is doing the exact opposite of what you're claiming in your article. I can see absolutely nothing to support your claims of "sabotage" in order to "advance US foreign policy". Since you brought up Apple and Microsoft specifically, could you please explain how and why these companies are going to sabotage you at the behest of the US government, why no US company can be trusted, and what this has to do with SOPA?
A precursory example? You mean that nothing in SOPA supports your claims, but you fully expect that sometime in the future things will start happening differently to support your view of the world?
First, define "political leverage" because I can't figure out how it makes sense in this context.
Second, how is "kicking piracy websites off the internet" creating political leverage at the expense of the customers and US supplier?
What in the world are you talking about? What, specifically are you alleging? Are you saying that the US government passing SOPA at the behest of corporations indicates that the US government is going to force corporations to ... what? Steal your state secrets? That's quite a stretch from "US corporations want the US government to pass laws to allow a crackdown on piracy websites" into a complete reversal "the US government is dictating to US corporations to sabotage customers and steal information from foreign nations".
In what way does SOPA order American-run corporations to sabotage their customers to further American policy? It sounds to me like he's arguing that the US government is forcing Microsoft and Google to harm their customers - perhaps through destroying foreign documents or secretly sending state-secrets to the United States government. Is this some part of SOPA that I'm not aware of?
Or this:
In what way does SOPA interfere with the technical operations of American products?
These quotes reflect pretty much the tone of the entire article, and I can't figure out what he's talking about. Earlier he talks about how everyone runs software from Microsoft or Apple. In what way does "taking websites off the internet" interfere with the "technical operations of American products [such as the construction of software by Microsoft and Apple]"?
Quite frankly, when I read the article, I'm completely confused by what he's alleging is going on. It's all very vague and conspiratorial. I can't figure out if Falkvinge wrote the article half asleep, whether he's going off the deep end and falling prey to strange conspiracy theories, or if there's some aspect of SOPA that nobody's talked about (which seems unlikely, given the amount of press I've seen about SOPA).
Nope, Richard Stallman is paranoid and still wrong. I shake my head at his wrongheadedness ever time I see that link come up on Slashdot.