Ahh, a coy but quite diversionary response. Yes, other documents have been released, but you can substitute "US" for scientology or whatever other institution/organization you like. The fact is Wikileaks is a PR organization. It is trying to make people look bad in the public's eye. With that in mind, it should not be surprising that others would do the same. And because he is making up the rules as he goes along, it should not be a shock that others have unilaterally decided that the bar has been lowered for the dissemination of personal information as well.
He claims that private organizations do not get to decide what is private, so why would a private citizen get to make that claim? Because he says so? Because you say so? He opened Pandora's box and now we're all facing the consequences. No one should be surprised that things did not turn out exactly as planned...
You mean documents should not be released based on the whims of the individuals but should instead be based on a reasoned and sensible analysis of what's being released and the impact on the people(s) involved?
And of course unintended consequences are nothing to worry about because Assange knows what he's doing and has thought out all the implications and we can trust that no one else will follow his lead?
You're saying this is not a PR war between Assange and the US that has little or nothing to do with better govt?
It runs counter to natural economic laws (supply and demand) by generating scarcity through legislation.
So you're against trademarks and patents as well? What about contracts? Contracts are an artificial means of controlling what would otherwise degrade into a "state of nature" where people do what they want to get what they want.
Patents and copyright were not invented by Disney or the RIAA. The concept was developed by the Brits and written into the US constitution to encourage professional innovation. If you produce something valuable to a society, you are entitled to a limited period of time when you can control the distribution of that product. It has served us well for more than 200 years.
You are right that the advent of digital distribution has made the enforcement of these rules more difficult. But that does not invalidate them, and in the age of information they are more important than ever. If we are all going to make our living (in the US) from the creation and manipulation of information in one form or another, such protections are essential for the development of a robust and stable economy. And the notion that because its possible to steal things from one another thanks to technology that we should just abandon all property rights is, well...absurd.
you're wrong when you say that no modern company can exist without assets that are protected by IP laws. I know that because I own one.
I was referring to companies of a particular size, but even small companies must do their best to protect their IP. Does your company have a brand? Trademark. Does it produce a product? Licencing, patents, copyright. What does your company do exactly that it does not need any of these things? Are you working for the CIA or something? Or maybe you're business is too small - at the moment - for any of your IP assets to be at risk for infringement. Either way, my point is that no business that does let's say $5 million/yr in receipts can avoid IP issues.
And for the record, I work for a fortune 500 biz with a very well known brand name that produces software and media products. I'm also a recording musician.
First of all i would be interested in hearing your rationale for ignoring copyright. Probably a gem.
Second, if you don't understand why people whose livelihoods depend on control over the distribution of their work get upset when you make such claims, perhaps you should have a look at your own source of income.
If you work for a development house or are an in-house dev for a large company, some co-worker(s) are dedicated to ensuring that the intellectual property you are generating is protected from piracy and unauthorized use. You wouldn't be working there very long if they let people steal their product with impunity.
If you work on your own, I would imagine you would be fairly irate if IBM started selling your work as their own. Of course you have the right to let them do so (i.e., open-source), but it is your right, not theirs.
And if you think you don't work in a field that involves intellectual property, I would suggest that there is no such thing. No modern company can exist without assets that are protected by IP laws - including trademarks, patents, copyrights, etc.
Or maybe you just don't understand money and why people need it. Maybe you're independently wealthy from birth and have no idea how much a gallon of milk costs. Could be. Never know...
Not that I even like FB that much, but I think you are overestimating myspace a bit. There was no such thing as a "feed". There were no installable applications. There was no instant messaging. There was no updatable status message. And that's just the stuff I'm aware of as a casual user.
And even ignoring individual features, it is the overall success of the site that matters most. MySpace was not even the first of it's kind. Remember AOL Hometown? Geocities? There have been plenty of places for people to make their presence known on the web. But FB got it all right and then some, which created the critical mass of interest and activity necessary for "social networking" to become a household word.
If what I said is logically invalid, perhaps an example instead of childish sarcasm?
As for the constant revolution thing, Mao said that a long time ago. He thought you needed a good revolution every once in a while to keep the govt honest. (Which worked out really well for the tens of millions of people his revolutions ended up killing by violence and famine). To give Assange credit for that little gem is the either the height of arrogance or plain old ignorance.
Assange is not a prophet or a sage or even a particularly smart guy. He is just realized that information can be distributed on the internet with ease, and he was willing to take the heat for whistle blowers. On the face of it, I think it's a noble endeavor. Be he has taken it too far in the name of ego and fame. Even his own top people thought he had gone too far and quit to start over with the original concept.
Wikileaks is just a negative feedback loop against human power grabbing tendencies.
Representative governments are made of people who seek power. It's built into the system. A republic could not function without them. That much was learned before the US constitution was written. If you don't believe me go read the Federalist Papers, especially Madison's writing on the nature of competing interests and using them to avoid a monolithic power center.
In addition, the US constitution gives complete authority over foreign affairs to the POTUS - as I wrote earlier. A representative govt's executive branch therefore is made up of power seeking people who are tasked with negotiating with other power seeking people in order to get what's best for each side. There's not much more than that. It's not a conspiracy, it's simply how governments work. It's how they've always worked. And more and more govts have gotten consistently better at working for the interests of all of their people. Of course they are far from perfect, but I have been studying politics for 20 years and even in my experience things have most definitely gotten better. And all of this has happened without Assange!
Is there room for improvement? Of course. But is the best way to do that by sabotaging the international relations of the one large nation that has set a good example in such matters? Is it a good idea to release generally harmless documents that embarrass individuals but do not expose any of the "conspiracies" you assume to be taking place? Wouldn't that simply result in diplomats doing more to keep things secret? What about a backlash from people who do not share your extreme view of govt? Wouldn't it be better to look for actual crimes against the people a govt is supposed to be representing? Why is it a surprise that one govt attempts to manipulate another? If that's shocking for you I think you should get out a bit more.
I think Wikileaks was a good idea. I think it's important for whistle blowers to have a safe harbor. But when the "gotcha" mentality takes over, you end up with an egomaniac like Assange and no one benefits but him (and maybe some newspapers).
What exactly has Assange done to change anything? He has a lot of fanbois who like to think they're changing the world, but Facebook actually has changed the world. Every day 500 million people use Facebook to interact in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago.
Zuckerberg might be a douchbag, and an entire generation of people are going to spend the rest of their lives regretting things they posted online, but his work has definitely had more of an impact that Assange at this point.
Of course if Wikileaks ends up breaking some actual conspiracy rather than a bunch of gotchas that add up to nothing, then maybe he'll get it next year.
The president has sole power over foreign relations. the congress (the "people") is only there to advise and consent to proposed treaties (and only that because treaties are effectively the law of the land once ratified). Bilateral diplomacy is most often conducted by individuals because groups are more prone to leaks - not to mention the kind of "openness" that Assange espouses, and when negotiating with an ally, one does not want a common enemy to be privy.
The POTUS stands for office every 4 years. His/her performance in matters of national interest are judged by the outcomes. Of course outright illegality is undesirable and practically assumed. But as long as that illegality does not work against the national interest - including the erosion of the rights and privileges of the citizens for which the POTUS is acting, then it is understood with a wink and a nod that such behavior is justified as long as no one knows about it.
Any illegal activities noted in these dispatches are of course regrettable and should not be tolerated. The bigger question is how common these activities are and, in general, whether they can be satisfactorily justified as being in the national interest. (Again keeping in mind the mandate to maintain the rights and privileges of citizenship and human rights in general).
And if your reply is that no illegal activities can ever be tolerated, you are upholding an honorable tradition of principle in the face of a shockingly grim reality. Human beings do not behave with a common standard, regardless of the culture in which they live. And the leaders of a given nation are naturally going to be of a more ambitious and morally compromised mold. In general they would not be in charge if they were not willing to compromise principle for success. (Sometimes you get lucky with this or that leader, but they are decidedly a minority.)
I would like to say that I am in favor of something like Wikileaks for whistle blowers. I simply don't think Assange is doing what he says he is. I think he's operating with a particular anti-government slant. (not anti-US necessarily, but he definitely has his targets)
You realize that there have been thousands of practical inventions developed from pure military research, right? And more generally, many skills developed for military research are utilized by people who leave the military to work in the private sector. How many people at Boeing used to work for the govt?
Should we also de-fund NASA because they are sending expensive robots to Mars for no apparent reason? Should be we de-fund all scientific research that does not appear to have any immediate use? Sounds like a recipe for a stagnant scientific community.
I agree that there is a great deal of over-spending on projects with no real-world application, but for every osprey there are dozens of other more successful programs that you don't hear about because no one is complaining at the moment.
Since "terrorism" is generally defined as using extreme fear - most often of sudden violence - to achieve political aims, this most definitely does not fit the description.
But if you take out the extreme and violence part, you've pretty close. The more appropriate term here would fear-ism or threat-ism. The "attacks" are non-violent but since DoS is always used with "attack", the intent is clearly to attack infrastructure. And they are also saying that they will continue to attack anyone who they deem as an "enemy" of Wikileaks.
They are effectively forming a de-facto guerrilla force that is sworn to protect the symbol of their movement. We've digitized and virtualized plenty of other "real" things, so why not guerrilla wars?
So if you are a stockholder in a company engaged in sensitive negotiations regarding the price of an asset, would you suggest that that private correspondence between executives should be made available to the public in the interest of disclosure? Wouldn't that be damaging to the interests of the company and by extension yourself?
This notion that all communiques should be public because there is a chance that someone might have said something questionable is quite a dubious one indeed. And keep in mind that most of these communiques represent opinion rather than policy, so when someone says something questionable it does not necessarily reflect any real actions. That's one of the reasons these releases are so damaging. They make it less likely that diplomats will send brutally honest assessments.
I thought their stated goal was to provide a secure and anonymous means for secret data to be published, with the secondary aim of ensuring it is not only published but widely reported.
That may be the stated goal of Wikileaks itself, but that's not what Assange has said. Perhaps that's why so many of his top people have resigned over these leaks...
I guess one could call the embarrassment 'collateral damage', a necessary evil in exposing corruption.
You seem like a reasonable person. What corruption is being exposed here that justifies all the "collateral" damage that has been done? What has been gained and what has been lost? I think there should definitely be a place for whistle-blowers to go, but when that place has an agenda that goes beyond it's stated purpose, who exposes them?
Talking about 'war with the American people' and proudly calling these companies American is just using shallow feel-good nationalism in place of reasoned debate.
Mastercard is located in New York state (where i live) and employs thousands across the country. They may be a multinational, but they are incorporated in the US and operate (mostly) under american law. I am not making the case for Mastercard as a good citizen, I am simply making the case that they are a tax paying large employer that can and should expect the support of the American govt overseas. Should we make a list of "amoral" companies that the US State Dept should ignore? What happens when Mastercard decides that it is going to move to Ireland or Belgium or wherever because they no longer feel as though the US has their back? Amoral or not, it is most definitely in the interest of the American public to support Mastercard overseas.
you think they should self-censor, but on what impartial criteria do you suggest they do so?
I agree that it would be difficult to make those decisions, but how are they deciding what to release now? Why release the sensitive sites list? Because it would show the US that it still had to power to damage it's interests. Clearly they are deciding what to release based on the impact it will have. If they continue to have such a one-sided policy, they will quickly lose my support.
who gets to decide which interests should be protected
Probably shouldn't be a clandestine operation with no oversight or respect for the law.
Fair enough. But my point was that Mastercard is an American company that got help from the American govt to further American interests in a foreign nation's hopelessly corrupt and self-serving legislature. Why is it a surprise that when the US govt came calling for a favor that Mastercard came through.
And as for the interests of the rest of the world, just wait until cables from your foreign services are leaked and your nation suffers the consequences. Then we'll see how fast you ask the US to hunt Assange down.
Do you really believe that the US is willing to do worse things in those back room discussions than any other govt in the world? Really?
wow you appear to have missed my point entirely. But since you took the time to offer a response - however childish in tone it may be, I will attempt to explain myself a bit more.
The problem with torrents is due to exactly the fact that they are so scalable and efficient. They are a "free" source of just about anything you can upload to a server (and that people actually want). When a work becomes available on a torrent site such as those that were shut down, that source becomes the preferred source for a work, seeds increase in number, the download is faster and more people can get it easily. And when that happens the revenue of the creator (tends to) drop drastically. It is a simple matter of math. Every time a person downloads a "free" copy of a work, they are not paying the creator. Now there have been studies that suggest it is not a 1 to 1 ratio, especially for more popular works. But for smaller labels and independent artists, every dollar counts - not as profit but as revenue that is funneled back into their next project.
These sites are not altruistic. They are profit making enterprises (ad driven) that feel no compulsion to compensate the artists that are the lifeblood of their operations. They are street vendors selling bootleg CDs and DVDs. Nothing more.
Your personal attacks on individual artists, calling them crybabies and delusional is simply a rationalization that allows you to ignore the real damage being done. If they just suck and need a reason to complain, then you can ignore it. And for the rich rockstars who complain, you simply say that they have enough money already.
To address a couple of your "rebuttals" directly:
but I'm sure your failure as an artist can be fully explained by torrents ignoring the number of your peers who seem to have done fine despite them.
You don't know me. You don't even know my name. How do you anything about how successful i am as an artist? Do you even know what I consider success to be? No.
This not only makes you look like a true asshole, it also undermines your own argument. Whether i am successful or not, does that change my rights under the law? In the US legal system, I get equal protection regardless of my status. If you are so hell bent on protecting civil rights, why would you suggest that my rights are somehow less valid if I am not making millions? If I am a man, does that mean I cannot champion the cause of women's rights? If I am a barber, should i ignore people stealing from the grocer next door?
Yours is a classic ad hominum attack that does nothing to further your argument. All it does is make it easier to protect content pirates because you don't have to take the artists' interests into account because they are all just "cry babies".
By the very nature of torrents it scales exactly to demands.
no matter if you're really popular or virtually unknown it will be exactly as available on torrents.
Indeed. I am as much of a tech geek as anyone here, so I know how torrents work. As interest in a work increases, torrents become better and better seeded and become very effective content delivery systems. The problem is that as interest in the work rises, and download speeds scale up, revenue does not. That is the real issue. For (almost) every torrent download of a work, that's more revenue lost to the artist.
"If you look at the revenue curve for any work of art, it peaks at the point of highest interest. It is also at that point that you will find the most torrents for that work."
And your conclusion from this rather than being "then people get bored of it and become less interested" is that the torrents have destroyed everything.
wow.
talk about self delusion.
Torrents have not destroyed anything. I use torrents to download content all the time - Ubuntu releases, Java updates, etc. I even use torrents to share my own work with
This is not a free speech issue. This is a matter of national interest. I am an American citizen and am very much in favor of Wikileaks as a safe-haven for whistle-blowers. But many of the released documents are simply an attempt to embarrass the US and rattle it's relationships with allies. If Assange really believes that his goal is to help the American people deal with a govt that supposedly is no longer responsive to their needs, how does it help the American people to publish a list of sensitive infrastructure sites? How does it help to embarrass key allies? How does it help to threaten the
US State Department - the representatives of the American people to the world, staffed by dedicated career diplomats - with a full un-redacted dump?
I think the answer is that when they received these documents from the now imprisoned private, they saw an opportunity to go beyond their original - noble - intentions and poke the US in the eye. For whatever reason, he and his organization seem to think that when the State Department is embarrassed or undermined, that the US people are somehow insulated from the fallout. How many leaders around the world will be less likely to cooperate in the future - not because the US did anything "wrong", but simply because they are afraid of looking bad in the eyes of their own version of the radical christian right?
If they want war with the American people, then don't expect to have the rights and privileges they enjoy - in this case, their banking system.
I like Wikileaks in principle, but Assange is an egomaniacal narcissist that has corrupted it at it's inception.
It's not a matter of when the torrent is uploaded, it's when it starts becoming the primary means of distribution that matters. When a work starts to get a little attention - at whatever point in the release process - people start to look for it on torrent sites first. If they find it they grab it. If they can't find it or it's not of sufficient quality, they might go on to pay for it or just wait until a better seed comes along. It is at that point that the damage starts to really be done. If you look at the revenue curve for any work of art, it peaks at the point of highest interest. It is also at that point that you will find the most torrents for that work. How can you claim that this does not directly impact revenue? Even if you are one of those people who say, "well you'll just have to go out on tour and charge a lot for tickets", how does that apply to movies or ebooks? And what if you're unable to tour enough to make your money back? Remember that art takes time. And good art takes a lot of time - not necessarily for the final product but from the process of getting there. If you have a day job or children, how can you leave and go on tour for three months? Again, I'm not talking about mansion or private jet money. I'm talking about enough money to keep making your art.
I know plenty of talented people who simply don't have the resources to continue their work at the level they feel capable of because they cannot get the backing of any investors (labels, grants, etc), because there is very little chance of a reasonable ROI right now. No one will back an expensive PR campaign because they have no faith that music or independent film is a profitable enterprise at the moment.
Of course bad artists like to convince themselves that in fact they're fantastic and the only reason they're not making millions is piracy
First of all, that's one of the most self-serving snobbish things I've read in a long time - not to mention outright wrong. Most artists have very reasonable expectations about the level of success they can achieve. The problem not that artists are deluding themselves about why their record didn't go gold. The problem is that as interest in their work increases - even slightly, they see that work appear on torrent sites and directly undercut thier effort to profit from their labor. Even the most inexperienced user is aware of this "free" distribution system that allows them to enjoy the fruits of the artists' labor without having to pay. Why pay for something you are not sure about when you can grab it on a torrent/p2p site for free?
Of course it's argued that if they like what they hear/see/read they will of course go for the "real" thing because of some need for better quality or even a moral compulsion to reward the artist. But the fact is mp3 players already sound like crap, and are specifically designed to overcome the limitations of a poor sample rate. As a result, people are unable to even tell the difference between a good and bad rip, and they are therefore very unlikely to say, "hmm, this probably doesn't sound quite as good as it would with a paid copy, so I'm gonna cough up the money for the real deal". Fantasy. Rationalization. Excuse. Even if some people do that, it is a very small portion of the total and does not come close to making up for the overall damage.
the only thing threatened is profit margins.
First of all, the profit margin for music sales is minuscule. Unless you produce a break out hit that gets you onto the MTV awards, you are lucky if you make enough to produce your next work. And more generally, who do you work for? Do you even have a job? Are you aware of the fact that people's salaries are paid out of revenue? When revenue drops, people get dropped. I understand that there is the perception that the music business is hedonistic and corrupt - which is not untrue at
I'll gladly accept an internet where simply nobody has the absolute power to stop anyone from communicating and swapping information even if piracy is common as a result...at the cost that by necessity anyone with the power to stamp down on someone sharing one kind of information also has the capability to stamp down on someone sharing other kinds
So why doesn't it bother you that the police can arrest you for theft? Wouldn't it require the same logical leap to assume that they can arrest you for political speech? I am of course aware of the principle of the "slippery slope", but the distance between the enforcement of copyright law and the oppression of political speech is so great as to not even be within sight of one another. Diligence is indeed required to maintain a free society, but so is fairness and, in the case of a capitalist economy, property rights.
So let me turn this around for a second. What would you do about the problem of web piracy? Do you feel as though torrent sights have hurt musicians - and now writers and movie makers? Before you answer, imagine spending a year of your life putting an album worth of music together, promoting it, visiting labels (i.e., groveling), and travelling the country in a van playing shows. You start to see a bit of interest on itunes turn into a steady flow, until all of a sudden your revenue starts to decline just as people start posting the album on the various torrent sites. All you really want is enough money to produce another album, but that is now highly unlikely. Your only choice is to keep playing shows in the hope that you're getting a bit more exposure from the fact that your work is now effectively being given away.
Would you still be willing to trade your dreams for some theoretical protection against a takeover of the US govt by christian fundementalists or whatever it is you're worried about?
They don't make the copies, they don't sell them, they just tell you they're there. It's like standing on your street corner next to a pile of DVDs, with a sign saying "this is a pile of copied DVDs". I'd like to see someone do that and resulting prosecution fail.
You realize you've described a conspiracy to commit fraud, right? The person who points or "links" to pirated material (which is effectively stolen goods), is just as guilty in the eyes of the law as the person who made the copies. I suppose that kind of misguided understanding of the law is what makes people think these torrent sites are somehow legal.
It's a matter of freedom of speech. Should a site be taken down for speaking freely about what is going on in the world?
You're kidding right? Freedom of speech? So if I tell you where to acquire a stolen car, I am engaged in free speech? No. What I am doing is aiding in the distribution of stolen goods. Again, this is formally defined as conspiracy.
You can try to call that "facilitation", but of what exactly? They're not forcing people to download stuff. Whether they are, by their existence, encouraging or making "popular" the copying of material? That's tough to prove.
I cannot offer a directory of drug dealers. I cannot provide a directory of hit-men. A pawn shop cannot traffic in stolen goods even if they didn't steal them. I may be able to provide a directory of "adult services", but that's more a matter of ambiguous offerings - i.e., the prostitute posting the ad can theoretically show that she was only offering "companionship" and was not actually engaged in an exchange of money for sex.
There is no question that posting a torrent of a copyrighted work is a crime. If you facilitate a crime, you are complicit in the crime. And though they don't necessarily make money from the downloads, they are profiting from their existence. And more importantly they are making the illegal activity possible by providing the essential connection between the provider and the consumer of the stolen goods.
The machinations people are willing to go through to defend this stuff is amazing. Invoking rights to free speech to defend the theft of copyrighted materials is not only foolish in that it undermines other more important issues of expression, but it's also quite insulting to the people who are directly effected by it. And for the record, that would include myself.
You're basically arguing a variant on the old favorite that the government only goes after bad people so we shouldn't worry about any power we give it or how much it abuses that power.
With a bonus of implying that advocates for civil rights and personal privacy are just "people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior"
Actually, you're the one using an old chestnut. By your logic, the govt should not have the right to enforce the law because there is a chance that someone will be falsely imprisoned. There is always going to be abuse of power. There are always going to be cases of mistaken identity. These facts are too often used to make the argument that no government is good government, and that a law that can conceivably be abused is a bad law.
It is assumed that there are going to be abuses and mistakes and there are always appeals processes in place. Granted there have been some troubling decisions made regarding terrorism, but that in no way reflects the overall trend towards greater rights and freedoms across the board.
With a bonus of implying that advocates for civil rights and personal privacy are just "people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior"
Fair enough. I did not mean to imply that everyone looking out for people's rights are behaving in their own interests. What I meant was that, in my experience, the most vocal critics of attempts to crack down on piracy are the people who directly benefit from it. Your objections are aimed at things like the Patriot Act and such. The people I am talking about are those who complain about the enforcement of copyright because of the commercial consequences. If they have to pay for music, they scream that their rights are being violated - ignoring the rights of the creators of the material they steal.
The ACLU files briefs on behalf of neo-nazis because they are operating on principle. They serve an essential service and I would support their efforts under any circumstance. But when the pirate party starts yelling about the right to distribute copyrighted material in the name of "freedom" or "rights", I would suggest that a line has been crossed and principle has been co-opted in the name of self-interest. If I create and copyright something, I own the right to copy it and will defend that right vehemently. Since I cannot expect to sue everyone with access to the internet and a bittorrent client, I have to rely on federal copyright enforcement. So when I suggest that the govt taking down sites entirely devoted to piracy is perfectly legit, I am not saying that the govt has the right to take down sites dedicated to unpalatable political speech. It's the self-interested who tend to make that connection in the hope that others with more noble motivations such as yourself will join their cause.
what does fair punishment have to do with rights? Are you referring to the 4th amendment prohibition of cruel/unusual punishment?
I agree that the number of incarcerated people in the US is too large, but I don't think anyone would say that people's rights are violated. That said, my original point - which has apparently been lost - is that the claim that the US is somehow in the business of controlling people's lives is not only patently false as a general proposition, but states something like the opposite of the current state of affairs.
US citizens have granted one another unprecedented rights and freedoms. The fact that it's laws take away the freedom of too many people engaged in criminal behavior is more an issue of law enforcement than rights. The past century has seen criminal and "rights" policy move closer and closer to a system in which you can do whatever you like as long as it does not directly or indirectly infringe upon on the rights of others. Sodomy is no longer illegal. Interracial marriage is no longer illegal. The definition of obscenity would be unrecognizable to people from the 19th century. There are no longer any voting restrictions (in the broadest sense). And the list goes on. You can of course cite individual examples of small constituencies and even states who have attempted to turn the tide, but they are almost always seen as "backward" and are most often reversed at some level - either by federal mandate or by local political forces.
None of this really has anything to do with my point that shutting down copyright violating websites does not equate to a police state, but if you want to go down this road I'm happy to go along for the ride.
I must add you added your own strawman quite nicely. Well done.
Thanks to the patriot act...The right to a laywer(if you received a NSL you literally could not talk to your laywer about it), the right to a fair hearing and trial by a jury of my peers, the (implied)right to privacy,freedom of association etc etc
The constitution grants these rights, and 99.99% of the people of the US will never have to worry about them being suspended. For the other 0.01%, I would imagine that a good percentage of them are worthy of the letter, which means a small percentage of a tiny fraction of the general population have been adversely and unduly effected by the changes you're talking about.
And even so, while I agree that the non-disclosure rules are dubious, so did various federal judges. They have in fact demanded revisions to the original wording clarifying who can and cannot contact a third party. Ditto the right to due-process for NSL recipients, gitmo inmates and many others.
The state of affairs for a given right cannot always be cited as the state of affairs for the govt or society that altered them. The previous US administration was chided by all sides regarding it's abuses of due-process, and the current administration (while far from perfect), has gone a long way to reverse those decisions. It is important to look at the overall trend toward greater freedoms and rights rather than focusing on a particular violation of a particular right. People make bad decisions. Especially during war. I was talking about the overall tendencies of the American political culture.
My original point was that there is a tendency for people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior to come up with extreme and often totally implausible examples of the "logical conclusion" argument. The example i cited was the gay marriage=bestiality claim. Another would be the association of a few NSL letters sent to high-risk people (yes, there are always mistakes and abuses) with the rights of pirate websites to distribute copyrighted material.
Can you not have an address in the USA and still remain within the law?
there is no law I know of that says you have to have an address. The only restriction is on vagrancy, and that's a local issue (i.e., town-by-town). If you want to wander the country without an address, you can do that with impunity. And even when vagrancy is the crime, homeless people are almost never arrested. They are told to either leave town, brought to a shelter or committed to an institution if such a move is warranted. If you're a reasonably sane person with enough money to avoid sleeping on someone else's property - i.e., someone's lawn or the public sidewalk, you should face no legal issues. That said, as a practical matter, I don't think anyone out there wants to be homeless and is out to fight the system. Then again...
Rights are not new. Rights have always existed; it is just up to the governed to decide which rights can be conferred on their government.
I agree wholeheartedly. The issue is what particular rights are recognized, and I would argue that current US law recognizes as many individual rights as any society in history. The sites in question, however, have no right (recognized or otherwise) to distribute other people's copyrighted work, because to do so would be to infringe upon the rights of the creator of the work. Copyright is, after all, a way of saying "the right to copy". That was my only point regarding rights.
How long before they start to censor sites with political views not approved by the government, or blocking sites deemed 'risks to national security'
That's the kind of thinking that leads to statements like "If we let gay people get married, what's next - marrying your dog?" Please stop the Bush/Obama=Hilter madness. If you're going to make the case for hypothetical future govt abuses, at least come up with something remotely based on reality.
Similarly, selling bootleg DVDs on the street is illegal and those who do so are shut down and arrested/fined. This has not in any way led to the shutdown of legit video stores that sell "objectionable" content. To make that link is to create a classic straw-man.
tired of my country trying to police and control everything
By any measurable standard, the average American citizen has more freedom of movement and behavior than anyone in human history. And the trend continues. Gay/inter-racial marriage, hardcore porn, sodomy, public nudity, medical marijuana, etc, etc, etc. There has been an explosion of new rights and freedoms in the 20th century. What freedoms do you feel you have lost?
If you're concerned about your right to steal music/movies/books/etc by getting them from torrent sites, then you are claiming that your "right" to steal trumps the creator's (intellectual) property rights. Not exactly what you had in mind I don't think, but that's what you're complaining about in the current context.
It seems that the overarching theme of all the supporters of this particular leak is that the US should somehow be held to a higher standard than it's adversaries. One one level i tend to agree, in that doing it "right" should be the goal of any nation that sees itself as a shining city on a hill. But that only goes so far. What i don't agree with is the notion that US interests should be held hostage to some theoretical standard of ethics that none of its adversaries follows.
As for the "general public" knowing about this stuff, here's a bit of news: they don't know and wouldn't care if they did. In general people are comfortable with the president doing whatever he thinks is necessary for the safeguarding of the national interests. If you don't believe me have a look at what Bush was able to get away with. Two wars, Gitmo, rendition, etc. He didn't lose support because of that stuff, he lost support because he couldn't turn those things into an advantage. Iran is more of a threat than ever, China is still on the rise, Afghanistan is still a mess. Most of his negatives in the minds of the "general public" had to do with these failures, not the failure to follow international treaties on prisoner transfers.
The gotcha mentality is pervasive among Wikileaks people. That needs to stop if it and its supporters are to be taken seriously.
What "lie" has been exposed by these leaks? Name one. There are plenty of examples of playing down things like just how bad the corruption is in Afghanistan or how little is actually known about North Korea, but these are easy to figure out just by reading the NY Times on a regular basis.
Secretary of State is engaging in blatantly illegal acts
If you're talking about Clinton asking diplomats to collect personal data about their opposites, I agree that it is not something I would support on the face of it, but if that's the worst thing the US govt is up to at the moment, you'll have a hard time convincing the American people that it's govt is out of control. I for one want as much leverage as possible when dealing with allies and adversaries alike.
Now if the releases showed that Clinton was collecting data on US citizens living in the states or was ordering the assassination of some foreign leader, I would be willing to reconsider. But given the rather tepid nature of the "blatantly illegal acts" you refer to, I'm not about to get worked up about it.
Ambassadors are doing under-the-table favors for corporate bigwigs
You're kidding right?!? First of all, such things are an every day part of every nation's foreign staff. There is nothing wrong with or even strange about a diplomat doing what he/she can to further the interests of their home nation whether that interest is public or private. They work for everyone in the country, not just those with a particular policy aim. Of course if you could show some evidence that a US diplomat was doing something for a foreign entity whose interests were in conflict with the US, I would be first in line to charge them with treason. But the fact that you call me naive and then say you're shocked that the US State Dept is acting on behalf of American corporations frankly makes me laugh.
There is not a single "smoking gun" in any of these releases. There is the possibility that if US staff was asked to illegally spy at the UN, there would have to be repercussions. If for no other reason because we want other nations to follow the rules as well - which they most definitely do not. Again, don't call me naive and think that the US should be some shining example of ideological purity while it's adversaries are playing every dirty trick in the book.
The list goes on...
Really? I dare you to find anyone in power anywhere in the free world (meaning not Russian, China, Iran, etc) that is calling for anyone's head but Assange. Not even US Republicans are saying that anyone did anything wrong. That should tell you something.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, a coy but quite diversionary response. Yes, other documents have been released, but you can substitute "US" for scientology or whatever other institution/organization you like. The fact is Wikileaks is a PR organization. It is trying to make people look bad in the public's eye. With that in mind, it should not be surprising that others would do the same. And because he is making up the rules as he goes along, it should not be a shock that others have unilaterally decided that the bar has been lowered for the dissemination of personal information as well.
He claims that private organizations do not get to decide what is private, so why would a private citizen get to make that claim? Because he says so? Because you say so? He opened Pandora's box and now we're all facing the consequences. No one should be surprised that things did not turn out exactly as planned...
You mean documents should not be released based on the whims of the individuals but should instead be based on a reasoned and sensible analysis of what's being released and the impact on the people(s) involved?
And of course unintended consequences are nothing to worry about because Assange knows what he's doing and has thought out all the implications and we can trust that no one else will follow his lead?
You're saying this is not a PR war between Assange and the US that has little or nothing to do with better govt?
I guess I must have been mistaken after all.
It runs counter to natural economic laws (supply and demand) by generating scarcity through legislation.
So you're against trademarks and patents as well? What about contracts? Contracts are an artificial means of controlling what would otherwise degrade into a "state of nature" where people do what they want to get what they want.
Patents and copyright were not invented by Disney or the RIAA. The concept was developed by the Brits and written into the US constitution to encourage professional innovation. If you produce something valuable to a society, you are entitled to a limited period of time when you can control the distribution of that product. It has served us well for more than 200 years.
You are right that the advent of digital distribution has made the enforcement of these rules more difficult. But that does not invalidate them, and in the age of information they are more important than ever. If we are all going to make our living (in the US) from the creation and manipulation of information in one form or another, such protections are essential for the development of a robust and stable economy. And the notion that because its possible to steal things from one another thanks to technology that we should just abandon all property rights is, well...absurd.
you're wrong when you say that no modern company can exist without assets that are protected by IP laws. I know that because I own one.
I was referring to companies of a particular size, but even small companies must do their best to protect their IP. Does your company have a brand? Trademark. Does it produce a product? Licencing, patents, copyright. What does your company do exactly that it does not need any of these things? Are you working for the CIA or something? Or maybe you're business is too small - at the moment - for any of your IP assets to be at risk for infringement. Either way, my point is that no business that does let's say $5 million/yr in receipts can avoid IP issues.
And for the record, I work for a fortune 500 biz with a very well known brand name that produces software and media products. I'm also a recording musician.
First of all i would be interested in hearing your rationale for ignoring copyright. Probably a gem.
Second, if you don't understand why people whose livelihoods depend on control over the distribution of their work get upset when you make such claims, perhaps you should have a look at your own source of income.
If you work for a development house or are an in-house dev for a large company, some co-worker(s) are dedicated to ensuring that the intellectual property you are generating is protected from piracy and unauthorized use. You wouldn't be working there very long if they let people steal their product with impunity.
If you work on your own, I would imagine you would be fairly irate if IBM started selling your work as their own. Of course you have the right to let them do so (i.e., open-source), but it is your right, not theirs.
And if you think you don't work in a field that involves intellectual property, I would suggest that there is no such thing. No modern company can exist without assets that are protected by IP laws - including trademarks, patents, copyrights, etc.
Or maybe you just don't understand money and why people need it. Maybe you're independently wealthy from birth and have no idea how much a gallon of milk costs. Could be. Never know...
Not that I even like FB that much, but I think you are overestimating myspace a bit. There was no such thing as a "feed". There were no installable applications. There was no instant messaging. There was no updatable status message. And that's just the stuff I'm aware of as a casual user.
And even ignoring individual features, it is the overall success of the site that matters most. MySpace was not even the first of it's kind. Remember AOL Hometown? Geocities? There have been plenty of places for people to make their presence known on the web. But FB got it all right and then some, which created the critical mass of interest and activity necessary for "social networking" to become a household word.
The douchebag deserves it.
If what I said is logically invalid, perhaps an example instead of childish sarcasm?
As for the constant revolution thing, Mao said that a long time ago. He thought you needed a good revolution every once in a while to keep the govt honest. (Which worked out really well for the tens of millions of people his revolutions ended up killing by violence and famine). To give Assange credit for that little gem is the either the height of arrogance or plain old ignorance.
Assange is not a prophet or a sage or even a particularly smart guy. He is just realized that information can be distributed on the internet with ease, and he was willing to take the heat for whistle blowers. On the face of it, I think it's a noble endeavor. Be he has taken it too far in the name of ego and fame. Even his own top people thought he had gone too far and quit to start over with the original concept.
Wikileaks is just a negative feedback loop against human power grabbing tendencies.
Representative governments are made of people who seek power. It's built into the system. A republic could not function without them. That much was learned before the US constitution was written. If you don't believe me go read the Federalist Papers, especially Madison's writing on the nature of competing interests and using them to avoid a monolithic power center.
In addition, the US constitution gives complete authority over foreign affairs to the POTUS - as I wrote earlier. A representative govt's executive branch therefore is made up of power seeking people who are tasked with negotiating with other power seeking people in order to get what's best for each side. There's not much more than that. It's not a conspiracy, it's simply how governments work. It's how they've always worked. And more and more govts have gotten consistently better at working for the interests of all of their people. Of course they are far from perfect, but I have been studying politics for 20 years and even in my experience things have most definitely gotten better. And all of this has happened without Assange!
Is there room for improvement? Of course. But is the best way to do that by sabotaging the international relations of the one large nation that has set a good example in such matters? Is it a good idea to release generally harmless documents that embarrass individuals but do not expose any of the "conspiracies" you assume to be taking place? Wouldn't that simply result in diplomats doing more to keep things secret? What about a backlash from people who do not share your extreme view of govt? Wouldn't it be better to look for actual crimes against the people a govt is supposed to be representing? Why is it a surprise that one govt attempts to manipulate another? If that's shocking for you I think you should get out a bit more.
I think Wikileaks was a good idea. I think it's important for whistle blowers to have a safe harbor. But when the "gotcha" mentality takes over, you end up with an egomaniac like Assange and no one benefits but him (and maybe some newspapers).
I disagree.
What exactly has Assange done to change anything? He has a lot of fanbois who like to think they're changing the world, but Facebook actually has changed the world. Every day 500 million people use Facebook to interact in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago.
Zuckerberg might be a douchbag, and an entire generation of people are going to spend the rest of their lives regretting things they posted online, but his work has definitely had more of an impact that Assange at this point.
Of course if Wikileaks ends up breaking some actual conspiracy rather than a bunch of gotchas that add up to nothing, then maybe he'll get it next year.
Some points
And if your reply is that no illegal activities can ever be tolerated, you are upholding an honorable tradition of principle in the face of a shockingly grim reality. Human beings do not behave with a common standard, regardless of the culture in which they live. And the leaders of a given nation are naturally going to be of a more ambitious and morally compromised mold. In general they would not be in charge if they were not willing to compromise principle for success. (Sometimes you get lucky with this or that leader, but they are decidedly a minority.)
I would like to say that I am in favor of something like Wikileaks for whistle blowers. I simply don't think Assange is doing what he says he is. I think he's operating with a particular anti-government slant. (not anti-US necessarily, but he definitely has his targets)
You realize that there have been thousands of practical inventions developed from pure military research, right? And more generally, many skills developed for military research are utilized by people who leave the military to work in the private sector. How many people at Boeing used to work for the govt?
Should we also de-fund NASA because they are sending expensive robots to Mars for no apparent reason? Should be we de-fund all scientific research that does not appear to have any immediate use? Sounds like a recipe for a stagnant scientific community.
I agree that there is a great deal of over-spending on projects with no real-world application, but for every osprey there are dozens of other more successful programs that you don't hear about because no one is complaining at the moment.
Since "terrorism" is generally defined as using extreme fear - most often of sudden violence - to achieve political aims, this most definitely does not fit the description.
But if you take out the extreme and violence part, you've pretty close. The more appropriate term here would fear-ism or threat-ism. The "attacks" are non-violent but since DoS is always used with "attack", the intent is clearly to attack infrastructure. And they are also saying that they will continue to attack anyone who they deem as an "enemy" of Wikileaks.
They are effectively forming a de-facto guerrilla force that is sworn to protect the symbol of their movement. We've digitized and virtualized plenty of other "real" things, so why not guerrilla wars?
So if you are a stockholder in a company engaged in sensitive negotiations regarding the price of an asset, would you suggest that that private correspondence between executives should be made available to the public in the interest of disclosure? Wouldn't that be damaging to the interests of the company and by extension yourself?
This notion that all communiques should be public because there is a chance that someone might have said something questionable is quite a dubious one indeed. And keep in mind that most of these communiques represent opinion rather than policy, so when someone says something questionable it does not necessarily reflect any real actions. That's one of the reasons these releases are so damaging. They make it less likely that diplomats will send brutally honest assessments.
I thought their stated goal was to provide a secure and anonymous means for secret data to be published, with the secondary aim of ensuring it is not only published but widely reported.
That may be the stated goal of Wikileaks itself, but that's not what Assange has said. Perhaps that's why so many of his top people have resigned over these leaks...
I guess one could call the embarrassment 'collateral damage', a necessary evil in exposing corruption.
You seem like a reasonable person. What corruption is being exposed here that justifies all the "collateral" damage that has been done? What has been gained and what has been lost? I think there should definitely be a place for whistle-blowers to go, but when that place has an agenda that goes beyond it's stated purpose, who exposes them?
Talking about 'war with the American people' and proudly calling these companies American is just using shallow feel-good nationalism in place of reasoned debate.
Mastercard is located in New York state (where i live) and employs thousands across the country. They may be a multinational, but they are incorporated in the US and operate (mostly) under american law. I am not making the case for Mastercard as a good citizen, I am simply making the case that they are a tax paying large employer that can and should expect the support of the American govt overseas. Should we make a list of "amoral" companies that the US State Dept should ignore? What happens when Mastercard decides that it is going to move to Ireland or Belgium or wherever because they no longer feel as though the US has their back? Amoral or not, it is most definitely in the interest of the American public to support Mastercard overseas.
you think they should self-censor, but on what impartial criteria do you suggest they do so?
I agree that it would be difficult to make those decisions, but how are they deciding what to release now? Why release the sensitive sites list? Because it would show the US that it still had to power to damage it's interests. Clearly they are deciding what to release based on the impact it will have. If they continue to have such a one-sided policy, they will quickly lose my support.
who gets to decide which interests should be protected
Probably shouldn't be a clandestine operation with no oversight or respect for the law.
Fair enough. But my point was that Mastercard is an American company that got help from the American govt to further American interests in a foreign nation's hopelessly corrupt and self-serving legislature. Why is it a surprise that when the US govt came calling for a favor that Mastercard came through.
And as for the interests of the rest of the world, just wait until cables from your foreign services are leaked and your nation suffers the consequences. Then we'll see how fast you ask the US to hunt Assange down.
Do you really believe that the US is willing to do worse things in those back room discussions than any other govt in the world? Really?
wow you appear to have missed my point entirely. But since you took the time to offer a response - however childish in tone it may be, I will attempt to explain myself a bit more.
The problem with torrents is due to exactly the fact that they are so scalable and efficient. They are a "free" source of just about anything you can upload to a server (and that people actually want). When a work becomes available on a torrent site such as those that were shut down, that source becomes the preferred source for a work, seeds increase in number, the download is faster and more people can get it easily. And when that happens the revenue of the creator (tends to) drop drastically. It is a simple matter of math. Every time a person downloads a "free" copy of a work, they are not paying the creator. Now there have been studies that suggest it is not a 1 to 1 ratio, especially for more popular works. But for smaller labels and independent artists, every dollar counts - not as profit but as revenue that is funneled back into their next project.
These sites are not altruistic. They are profit making enterprises (ad driven) that feel no compulsion to compensate the artists that are the lifeblood of their operations. They are street vendors selling bootleg CDs and DVDs. Nothing more.
Your personal attacks on individual artists, calling them crybabies and delusional is simply a rationalization that allows you to ignore the real damage being done. If they just suck and need a reason to complain, then you can ignore it. And for the rich rockstars who complain, you simply say that they have enough money already.
To address a couple of your "rebuttals" directly:
but I'm sure your failure as an artist can be fully explained by torrents ignoring the number of your peers who seem to have done fine despite them.
You don't know me. You don't even know my name. How do you anything about how successful i am as an artist? Do you even know what I consider success to be? No.
This not only makes you look like a true asshole, it also undermines your own argument. Whether i am successful or not, does that change my rights under the law? In the US legal system, I get equal protection regardless of my status. If you are so hell bent on protecting civil rights, why would you suggest that my rights are somehow less valid if I am not making millions? If I am a man, does that mean I cannot champion the cause of women's rights? If I am a barber, should i ignore people stealing from the grocer next door?
Yours is a classic ad hominum attack that does nothing to further your argument. All it does is make it easier to protect content pirates because you don't have to take the artists' interests into account because they are all just "cry babies".
By the very nature of torrents it scales exactly to demands. no matter if you're really popular or virtually unknown it will be exactly as available on torrents.
Indeed. I am as much of a tech geek as anyone here, so I know how torrents work. As interest in a work increases, torrents become better and better seeded and become very effective content delivery systems. The problem is that as interest in the work rises, and download speeds scale up, revenue does not. That is the real issue. For (almost) every torrent download of a work, that's more revenue lost to the artist.
"If you look at the revenue curve for any work of art, it peaks at the point of highest interest. It is also at that point that you will find the most torrents for that work."
And your conclusion from this rather than being "then people get bored of it and become less interested" is that the torrents have destroyed everything. wow. talk about self delusion.
Torrents have not destroyed anything. I use torrents to download content all the time - Ubuntu releases, Java updates, etc. I even use torrents to share my own work with
This is not a free speech issue. This is a matter of national interest. I am an American citizen and am very much in favor of Wikileaks as a safe-haven for whistle-blowers. But many of the released documents are simply an attempt to embarrass the US and rattle it's relationships with allies. If Assange really believes that his goal is to help the American people deal with a govt that supposedly is no longer responsive to their needs, how does it help the American people to publish a list of sensitive infrastructure sites? How does it help to embarrass key allies? How does it help to threaten the US State Department - the representatives of the American people to the world, staffed by dedicated career diplomats - with a full un-redacted dump?
I think the answer is that when they received these documents from the now imprisoned private, they saw an opportunity to go beyond their original - noble - intentions and poke the US in the eye. For whatever reason, he and his organization seem to think that when the State Department is embarrassed or undermined, that the US people are somehow insulated from the fallout. How many leaders around the world will be less likely to cooperate in the future - not because the US did anything "wrong", but simply because they are afraid of looking bad in the eyes of their own version of the radical christian right?
If they want war with the American people, then don't expect to have the rights and privileges they enjoy - in this case, their banking system.
I like Wikileaks in principle, but Assange is an egomaniacal narcissist that has corrupted it at it's inception.
things turn up on the torrent sites immediately
It's not a matter of when the torrent is uploaded, it's when it starts becoming the primary means of distribution that matters. When a work starts to get a little attention - at whatever point in the release process - people start to look for it on torrent sites first. If they find it they grab it. If they can't find it or it's not of sufficient quality, they might go on to pay for it or just wait until a better seed comes along. It is at that point that the damage starts to really be done. If you look at the revenue curve for any work of art, it peaks at the point of highest interest. It is also at that point that you will find the most torrents for that work. How can you claim that this does not directly impact revenue? Even if you are one of those people who say, "well you'll just have to go out on tour and charge a lot for tickets", how does that apply to movies or ebooks? And what if you're unable to tour enough to make your money back? Remember that art takes time. And good art takes a lot of time - not necessarily for the final product but from the process of getting there. If you have a day job or children, how can you leave and go on tour for three months? Again, I'm not talking about mansion or private jet money. I'm talking about enough money to keep making your art.
I know plenty of talented people who simply don't have the resources to continue their work at the level they feel capable of because they cannot get the backing of any investors (labels, grants, etc), because there is very little chance of a reasonable ROI right now. No one will back an expensive PR campaign because they have no faith that music or independent film is a profitable enterprise at the moment.
Of course bad artists like to convince themselves that in fact they're fantastic and the only reason they're not making millions is piracy
First of all, that's one of the most self-serving snobbish things I've read in a long time - not to mention outright wrong. Most artists have very reasonable expectations about the level of success they can achieve. The problem not that artists are deluding themselves about why their record didn't go gold. The problem is that as interest in their work increases - even slightly, they see that work appear on torrent sites and directly undercut thier effort to profit from their labor. Even the most inexperienced user is aware of this "free" distribution system that allows them to enjoy the fruits of the artists' labor without having to pay. Why pay for something you are not sure about when you can grab it on a torrent/p2p site for free?
Of course it's argued that if they like what they hear/see/read they will of course go for the "real" thing because of some need for better quality or even a moral compulsion to reward the artist. But the fact is mp3 players already sound like crap, and are specifically designed to overcome the limitations of a poor sample rate. As a result, people are unable to even tell the difference between a good and bad rip, and they are therefore very unlikely to say, "hmm, this probably doesn't sound quite as good as it would with a paid copy, so I'm gonna cough up the money for the real deal". Fantasy. Rationalization. Excuse. Even if some people do that, it is a very small portion of the total and does not come close to making up for the overall damage.
the only thing threatened is profit margins.
First of all, the profit margin for music sales is minuscule. Unless you produce a break out hit that gets you onto the MTV awards, you are lucky if you make enough to produce your next work. And more generally, who do you work for? Do you even have a job? Are you aware of the fact that people's salaries are paid out of revenue? When revenue drops, people get dropped. I understand that there is the perception that the music business is hedonistic and corrupt - which is not untrue at
I'll gladly accept an internet where simply nobody has the absolute power to stop anyone from communicating and swapping information even if piracy is common as a result...at the cost that by necessity anyone with the power to stamp down on someone sharing one kind of information also has the capability to stamp down on someone sharing other kinds
So why doesn't it bother you that the police can arrest you for theft? Wouldn't it require the same logical leap to assume that they can arrest you for political speech? I am of course aware of the principle of the "slippery slope", but the distance between the enforcement of copyright law and the oppression of political speech is so great as to not even be within sight of one another. Diligence is indeed required to maintain a free society, but so is fairness and, in the case of a capitalist economy, property rights.
So let me turn this around for a second. What would you do about the problem of web piracy? Do you feel as though torrent sights have hurt musicians - and now writers and movie makers? Before you answer, imagine spending a year of your life putting an album worth of music together, promoting it, visiting labels (i.e., groveling), and travelling the country in a van playing shows. You start to see a bit of interest on itunes turn into a steady flow, until all of a sudden your revenue starts to decline just as people start posting the album on the various torrent sites. All you really want is enough money to produce another album, but that is now highly unlikely. Your only choice is to keep playing shows in the hope that you're getting a bit more exposure from the fact that your work is now effectively being given away.
Would you still be willing to trade your dreams for some theoretical protection against a takeover of the US govt by christian fundementalists or whatever it is you're worried about?
They don't make the copies, they don't sell them, they just tell you they're there. It's like standing on your street corner next to a pile of DVDs, with a sign saying "this is a pile of copied DVDs". I'd like to see someone do that and resulting prosecution fail.
You realize you've described a conspiracy to commit fraud, right? The person who points or "links" to pirated material (which is effectively stolen goods), is just as guilty in the eyes of the law as the person who made the copies. I suppose that kind of misguided understanding of the law is what makes people think these torrent sites are somehow legal.
It's a matter of freedom of speech. Should a site be taken down for speaking freely about what is going on in the world?
You're kidding right? Freedom of speech? So if I tell you where to acquire a stolen car, I am engaged in free speech? No. What I am doing is aiding in the distribution of stolen goods. Again, this is formally defined as conspiracy.
You can try to call that "facilitation", but of what exactly? They're not forcing people to download stuff. Whether they are, by their existence, encouraging or making "popular" the copying of material? That's tough to prove.
I cannot offer a directory of drug dealers. I cannot provide a directory of hit-men. A pawn shop cannot traffic in stolen goods even if they didn't steal them. I may be able to provide a directory of "adult services", but that's more a matter of ambiguous offerings - i.e., the prostitute posting the ad can theoretically show that she was only offering "companionship" and was not actually engaged in an exchange of money for sex.
There is no question that posting a torrent of a copyrighted work is a crime. If you facilitate a crime, you are complicit in the crime. And though they don't necessarily make money from the downloads, they are profiting from their existence. And more importantly they are making the illegal activity possible by providing the essential connection between the provider and the consumer of the stolen goods.
The machinations people are willing to go through to defend this stuff is amazing. Invoking rights to free speech to defend the theft of copyrighted materials is not only foolish in that it undermines other more important issues of expression, but it's also quite insulting to the people who are directly effected by it. And for the record, that would include myself.
You're basically arguing a variant on the old favorite that the government only goes after bad people so we shouldn't worry about any power we give it or how much it abuses that power. With a bonus of implying that advocates for civil rights and personal privacy are just "people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior"
Actually, you're the one using an old chestnut. By your logic, the govt should not have the right to enforce the law because there is a chance that someone will be falsely imprisoned. There is always going to be abuse of power. There are always going to be cases of mistaken identity. These facts are too often used to make the argument that no government is good government, and that a law that can conceivably be abused is a bad law.
It is assumed that there are going to be abuses and mistakes and there are always appeals processes in place. Granted there have been some troubling decisions made regarding terrorism, but that in no way reflects the overall trend towards greater rights and freedoms across the board.
With a bonus of implying that advocates for civil rights and personal privacy are just "people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior"
Fair enough. I did not mean to imply that everyone looking out for people's rights are behaving in their own interests. What I meant was that, in my experience, the most vocal critics of attempts to crack down on piracy are the people who directly benefit from it. Your objections are aimed at things like the Patriot Act and such. The people I am talking about are those who complain about the enforcement of copyright because of the commercial consequences. If they have to pay for music, they scream that their rights are being violated - ignoring the rights of the creators of the material they steal.
The ACLU files briefs on behalf of neo-nazis because they are operating on principle. They serve an essential service and I would support their efforts under any circumstance. But when the pirate party starts yelling about the right to distribute copyrighted material in the name of "freedom" or "rights", I would suggest that a line has been crossed and principle has been co-opted in the name of self-interest. If I create and copyright something, I own the right to copy it and will defend that right vehemently. Since I cannot expect to sue everyone with access to the internet and a bittorrent client, I have to rely on federal copyright enforcement. So when I suggest that the govt taking down sites entirely devoted to piracy is perfectly legit, I am not saying that the govt has the right to take down sites dedicated to unpalatable political speech. It's the self-interested who tend to make that connection in the hope that others with more noble motivations such as yourself will join their cause.
How about a fair punishment, for starters?
what does fair punishment have to do with rights? Are you referring to the 4th amendment prohibition of cruel/unusual punishment?
I agree that the number of incarcerated people in the US is too large, but I don't think anyone would say that people's rights are violated. That said, my original point - which has apparently been lost - is that the claim that the US is somehow in the business of controlling people's lives is not only patently false as a general proposition, but states something like the opposite of the current state of affairs.
US citizens have granted one another unprecedented rights and freedoms. The fact that it's laws take away the freedom of too many people engaged in criminal behavior is more an issue of law enforcement than rights. The past century has seen criminal and "rights" policy move closer and closer to a system in which you can do whatever you like as long as it does not directly or indirectly infringe upon on the rights of others. Sodomy is no longer illegal. Interracial marriage is no longer illegal. The definition of obscenity would be unrecognizable to people from the 19th century. There are no longer any voting restrictions (in the broadest sense). And the list goes on. You can of course cite individual examples of small constituencies and even states who have attempted to turn the tide, but they are almost always seen as "backward" and are most often reversed at some level - either by federal mandate or by local political forces.
None of this really has anything to do with my point that shutting down copyright violating websites does not equate to a police state, but if you want to go down this road I'm happy to go along for the ride.
I must add you added your own strawman quite nicely. Well done.
Huh? To what are you referring?
Thanks to the patriot act...The right to a laywer(if you received a NSL you literally could not talk to your laywer about it), the right to a fair hearing and trial by a jury of my peers, the (implied)right to privacy,freedom of association etc etc
The constitution grants these rights, and 99.99% of the people of the US will never have to worry about them being suspended. For the other 0.01%, I would imagine that a good percentage of them are worthy of the letter, which means a small percentage of a tiny fraction of the general population have been adversely and unduly effected by the changes you're talking about.
And even so, while I agree that the non-disclosure rules are dubious, so did various federal judges. They have in fact demanded revisions to the original wording clarifying who can and cannot contact a third party. Ditto the right to due-process for NSL recipients, gitmo inmates and many others.
The state of affairs for a given right cannot always be cited as the state of affairs for the govt or society that altered them. The previous US administration was chided by all sides regarding it's abuses of due-process, and the current administration (while far from perfect), has gone a long way to reverse those decisions. It is important to look at the overall trend toward greater freedoms and rights rather than focusing on a particular violation of a particular right. People make bad decisions. Especially during war. I was talking about the overall tendencies of the American political culture.
My original point was that there is a tendency for people who don't like a particular restriction on their bad behavior to come up with extreme and often totally implausible examples of the "logical conclusion" argument. The example i cited was the gay marriage=bestiality claim. Another would be the association of a few NSL letters sent to high-risk people (yes, there are always mistakes and abuses) with the rights of pirate websites to distribute copyrighted material.
Can you not have an address in the USA and still remain within the law?
there is no law I know of that says you have to have an address. The only restriction is on vagrancy, and that's a local issue (i.e., town-by-town). If you want to wander the country without an address, you can do that with impunity. And even when vagrancy is the crime, homeless people are almost never arrested. They are told to either leave town, brought to a shelter or committed to an institution if such a move is warranted. If you're a reasonably sane person with enough money to avoid sleeping on someone else's property - i.e., someone's lawn or the public sidewalk, you should face no legal issues. That said, as a practical matter, I don't think anyone out there wants to be homeless and is out to fight the system. Then again...
Rights are not new. Rights have always existed; it is just up to the governed to decide which rights can be conferred on their government.
I agree wholeheartedly. The issue is what particular rights are recognized, and I would argue that current US law recognizes as many individual rights as any society in history. The sites in question, however, have no right (recognized or otherwise) to distribute other people's copyrighted work, because to do so would be to infringe upon the rights of the creator of the work. Copyright is, after all, a way of saying "the right to copy". That was my only point regarding rights.
How long before they start to censor sites with political views not approved by the government, or blocking sites deemed 'risks to national security'
That's the kind of thinking that leads to statements like "If we let gay people get married, what's next - marrying your dog?" Please stop the Bush/Obama=Hilter madness. If you're going to make the case for hypothetical future govt abuses, at least come up with something remotely based on reality.
Similarly, selling bootleg DVDs on the street is illegal and those who do so are shut down and arrested/fined. This has not in any way led to the shutdown of legit video stores that sell "objectionable" content. To make that link is to create a classic straw-man.
tired of my country trying to police and control everything
By any measurable standard, the average American citizen has more freedom of movement and behavior than anyone in human history. And the trend continues. Gay/inter-racial marriage, hardcore porn, sodomy, public nudity, medical marijuana, etc, etc, etc. There has been an explosion of new rights and freedoms in the 20th century. What freedoms do you feel you have lost?
If you're concerned about your right to steal music/movies/books/etc by getting them from torrent sites, then you are claiming that your "right" to steal trumps the creator's (intellectual) property rights. Not exactly what you had in mind I don't think, but that's what you're complaining about in the current context.
It seems that the overarching theme of all the supporters of this particular leak is that the US should somehow be held to a higher standard than it's adversaries. One one level i tend to agree, in that doing it "right" should be the goal of any nation that sees itself as a shining city on a hill. But that only goes so far. What i don't agree with is the notion that US interests should be held hostage to some theoretical standard of ethics that none of its adversaries follows.
As for the "general public" knowing about this stuff, here's a bit of news: they don't know and wouldn't care if they did. In general people are comfortable with the president doing whatever he thinks is necessary for the safeguarding of the national interests. If you don't believe me have a look at what Bush was able to get away with. Two wars, Gitmo, rendition, etc. He didn't lose support because of that stuff, he lost support because he couldn't turn those things into an advantage. Iran is more of a threat than ever, China is still on the rise, Afghanistan is still a mess. Most of his negatives in the minds of the "general public" had to do with these failures, not the failure to follow international treaties on prisoner transfers.
The gotcha mentality is pervasive among Wikileaks people. That needs to stop if it and its supporters are to be taken seriously.
regularly lie to them about foreign policy
What "lie" has been exposed by these leaks? Name one. There are plenty of examples of playing down things like just how bad the corruption is in Afghanistan or how little is actually known about North Korea, but these are easy to figure out just by reading the NY Times on a regular basis.
Secretary of State is engaging in blatantly illegal acts
If you're talking about Clinton asking diplomats to collect personal data about their opposites, I agree that it is not something I would support on the face of it, but if that's the worst thing the US govt is up to at the moment, you'll have a hard time convincing the American people that it's govt is out of control. I for one want as much leverage as possible when dealing with allies and adversaries alike.
Now if the releases showed that Clinton was collecting data on US citizens living in the states or was ordering the assassination of some foreign leader, I would be willing to reconsider. But given the rather tepid nature of the "blatantly illegal acts" you refer to, I'm not about to get worked up about it.
Ambassadors are doing under-the-table favors for corporate bigwigs
You're kidding right?!? First of all, such things are an every day part of every nation's foreign staff. There is nothing wrong with or even strange about a diplomat doing what he/she can to further the interests of their home nation whether that interest is public or private. They work for everyone in the country, not just those with a particular policy aim. Of course if you could show some evidence that a US diplomat was doing something for a foreign entity whose interests were in conflict with the US, I would be first in line to charge them with treason. But the fact that you call me naive and then say you're shocked that the US State Dept is acting on behalf of American corporations frankly makes me laugh.
There is not a single "smoking gun" in any of these releases. There is the possibility that if US staff was asked to illegally spy at the UN, there would have to be repercussions. If for no other reason because we want other nations to follow the rules as well - which they most definitely do not. Again, don't call me naive and think that the US should be some shining example of ideological purity while it's adversaries are playing every dirty trick in the book.
The list goes on...
Really? I dare you to find anyone in power anywhere in the free world (meaning not Russian, China, Iran, etc) that is calling for anyone's head but Assange. Not even US Republicans are saying that anyone did anything wrong. That should tell you something.