BTW, the only way I've "used" the site is to read the letters from people saying that they have broken laws, and the responses telling them to fuck off.
Let's say a ten million SEK fine and five years prison - I'd hardly call that "the best thing".
Suggesting such a sentence suggests that you are not from Sweden. Five years in prison would be much more than for many violent criminals, and putting someone in jail for such a long time for such a petty crime as contributory copyright infringement might actually cause a public outcry. As for the fine, I seldom hear of fines/damages above a few hundred thousand SEK.
While the party had a lot of media attention during the campaigns, I think the voters took them for what they are, feminists, and din't vote for them.
It probably didn't help that the party had two pretty controversial women as party leaders. One of them had earlier said that Swedish men are like the Taliban, as well as seriously proposing a male tax, for the "collective responsibility of all men for the domestic violence against women". The other one said in a documentary on national television that "men are animals", as well as calling another FI party member a "gender traitor", because she sleeps with men. They both showed a clear hatred of men, and that took its toll on the voter support.
What he means is that copyrights, patents and other temporary immaterial monopolies are nothing like material property, and should not be mixed up. The popular term Intellectual Property is intentionally used to blur the lines between temporary immaterial monopolies and material property, by those that would like those monopolies to actually become real property.
20 out of 25 Slashdot users have no plans to make money by selling software?
Pretty few people actually make money by selling software. That does not mean that you cannot make money writing software. The point is that most software developers work on software projects internal to the company that employs them, and that are not meant to be released. Many companies successfully provide software-based services to other companies, instead of selling packaged software, although to the masses, packaged software is more visible.
this hippy stallman bullshit about information wanting to be free is infantile.
Everybody understands that information does not have any desires. The saying above is simply an observation that information is very hard to keep contained, and that once previously contained information leaks out, there is no way to reverse the leak and put the genie back into the bottle, so to speak.
They spread that bullshit about just asking nicely to make them seem like the good guys
Care to post a link? I never read anything like that from them. On the contrary, I have read that the only reason for them to remove a torrent is if the description is wrong.
this means that if 35% of people in a constituency vote for a party, that party will get 35% of the seats in the government.
Close, but no cigar. We have proportional representation in the parliament, but not in the government and not in the administration. When one or more parties can get more than 50% of the seats in the parliament, they can form an administration, which consists of the ministers and their politically appointed staff. The government, OTOH, is much larger than that, as it essentially encompasses all state, regional and local authorities, and it mostly consists of people employed like in any other workplace (i.e. not elected).
I'd consider it pretty impressive for a party that formed nine months before the election, and that has only three issues (privacy, copyright and patents) on their political agenda. Plenty of more people agree with their stances, but thought that other issues not treated by the Pirate Party were more pressing.
But it's true, that out of approximately 10 active political parties in sweden, they are one, and therefore top ten! that they're the smallest of the parties, and barely got any support
You seem to be trying to suggest that they are the smallest party in Sweden, and that every other party got more support. This is false, just as claiming that Sweden has only 10 parties is also false:
What do you mean by this? We don't have total surveillance yet, but there are several proposed bills in the pipeline that would each be giant steps in that direction.
It's like I said, it only affects file-sharers (illegal or not) on networks that have high incidences of piracy, only when they are sharing files, and only what they happen to be sharing at the time, possibly tied down to an IP address. What's more, those things are viewable from anyone, so there's very little expectation of privacy there.
You seem to be talking about copyright holders (or anyone else) monitoring file-sharing sites through publicly available means. This is not what I'm opposing at all. I'm only discussing the proposed bills that, if put into effect, would mean significant steps toward implementing a total surveillance solution.
That's very nice in theory, but not a very practical idea. You still need bucket loads of money and a helluva incentive to fork it over. Currently the entertainment industry has enough of neither.
Regardless of whether it is a practical idea or not (it isn't), that is what they are pushing for to protect their content. And they don't need to afford it, since current propositions suggest that monitoring should be paid for by ISPs and thus consumers themselves.
And still this wouldn't work. It would be extremely costly, and deprive the entire population of essential freedoms, but not accomplish a thing unless the internet is completely dismantled. Any suggestion that dismantling the internet will not be necessary will have to deal with questions such as encryption and steganography (hiding information in other information).
Yes it is. I live in Sweden, and there are several proposed bills to that effect that are in the pipeline, and will be voted on soon:
There is a bill that gives copyright holders the right to demand and force an ISP to cut off an internet connection to someone that they suspect is distributing their works without permission. Considering that the internet is almost necessary to function in today's society, this would be a very serious measure.
There is a bill that says that copyright holders should be able to get subscriber information from the ISP without taking a detour through the legal system, since it would be too costly. The bill argues that this would enable copyright holders to contact the subscriber and say "Hey, stop that!", while everyone understands that filing lawsuits is what they really would want to do rather than calling the suspects to tell them to stop.
There is a bill that says that police should be able to wiretap anyone they want, without a targeted suspect, and without having to go to court to get the warrant to wiretap. Wiretaps are only allowed today for really serious crimes (I think that the minimum sentence must be two years in prison, which is the same as the requirement to get a search warrant, BTW).
There is a bill that says that police should be able to conduct secret searches against suspects of a crime.
I'd say that those are clear steps in that direction.
And you'd only be affected if you happen to be in the subset of people who use file-sharing networks with significant amounts of pirated media, and even then, your privacy would only be infringed while on that network.
This is just a rehash of the classic "why should you be afraid if you've got nothing to hide?", which has been shown time and again to be bullshit. Total surveillance would affect everyone, not only those that heavily share copyrighted works without permission. If it had only affected them, it would be called targeted surveillance, but that can only be used after you have defined a suspect.
The only information that could be ascertained from the surveillance would be what music you decide to download off that website
A wiretap of my internet connection would not only show what music I would download, it would show everything that I would do while using that connection. Impose total surveillance, and you can track what everyone does on the entire internet.
The GP argument is just a rehash of the old "DRM can work, just look at the success of encryption technologies" fallacy, which has been explained to death already. Unfortunately, those that would need this knowledge the most never seem to listen.
Not necessarily. If you break a DRM scheme in the confines of your own home, how is law enforcement going to find out unless you are under constant surveillance?
This means monitoring my mail, monitoring my holiday pictures, monitoring the video I took of my family during christmas. Unless you monitor ALL information, I will be able to transfer illegal information.
And you didn't even mention steganography, which would use legitimate content, such as your personal home videos, to hide copyrighted information that you are not allowed to share. An exchange of files would look like you and your friend is exchanging home videos, but it might really be copyrighted music tracks that is the real payload.
People that demand that we filter the internet for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works really have no idea what they are talking about. It cannot be done.
MUCH more hazardous then going fast on an open road designed for speed in a car designed for speed.
Sports cars are only designed for speed with regard to those parts that enable the car to go fast, like the engine, transmission and aerodynamic design. They are seldom if ever designed for safety at high speed. Crash in a sports car at high speed and you are dead. It's not like they have any extensive crumple zones or other stuff like that, which is partly due to the engine placement (usually centre-mounted).
Yes, but if copyrights were to be respected, then such measures would no longer be necessary. The less piracy, the less surveillance.
You would be stupid to actually believe that. They would just use another reason to impose the surveillance, such as the infamous "fight against terrorism".
What you seem to be saying is that because pirates can't keep their hands out of the entertainment industry's pockets, we should get rid of the industry itself
If that is what abolishing copyrights would mean, then so be it. Our civil liberties are worth far more than their profits.
who are we to think they shouldn't be in it? Who are we to decide they should work for free? Who are we to slap away the only weapon they got in this digital age
It's pretty simple. Since enforcement of your monopoly (copyright) would require the complete dismantling of all privacy, giving up all secrecy of correspondence and removing whistleblower protections, it becomes our business in a very serious manner. Compared to the rights that the rest of us would have to give up for your copyright to be effectively enforced, protection of your copyrights carry extremely little weight.
It is simply not worth removing all those fundamental rights to enable effective enforcement of copyrights, regardless of the effect this would have on the copyright industry.
In practice, they would only need 4%. This is because the right and left blocs are almost equal in voter support, with a difference of only a few percent. A party with 4% of the votes can thus be the difference between forming an administration or become the opposition. The bloc that manages to negotiate a deal with such a party gets to take the offices, but the price is to implement their demands. There is a Swedish word for this, "vågmästare" (direct translation "master of the scale"), but it is also sometimes referred to as "tungan på vågen" (direct translation "the tongue on the scale").
Is it right for us as a society to protect the work of someone for a period of time so that person can derive an income for said work? Yes, but that protection should last a shorter time, not longer. Maybe something around 5 years would be appropriate.
Which, for commercial copyrights, is exactly what the Pirate Party argues for.
Slashdot Mirror
Those letters are really great entertainment. :)
Suggesting such a sentence suggests that you are not from Sweden. Five years in prison would be much more than for many violent criminals, and putting someone in jail for such a long time for such a petty crime as contributory copyright infringement might actually cause a public outcry. As for the fine, I seldom hear of fines/damages above a few hundred thousand SEK.
It probably didn't help that the party had two pretty controversial women as party leaders. One of them had earlier said that Swedish men are like the Taliban, as well as seriously proposing a male tax, for the "collective responsibility of all men for the domestic violence against women". The other one said in a documentary on national television that "men are animals", as well as calling another FI party member a "gender traitor", because she sleeps with men. They both showed a clear hatred of men, and that took its toll on the voter support.
So that's what all those empty spaces between posts are. I thought that the Slashdot crew had messed up. :)
FYI: The ban was lifted after a decision in the riksdag during 2006.
What he means is that copyrights, patents and other temporary immaterial monopolies are nothing like material property, and should not be mixed up. The popular term Intellectual Property is intentionally used to blur the lines between temporary immaterial monopolies and material property, by those that would like those monopolies to actually become real property.
Pretty few people actually make money by selling software. That does not mean that you cannot make money writing software. The point is that most software developers work on software projects internal to the company that employs them, and that are not meant to be released. Many companies successfully provide software-based services to other companies, instead of selling packaged software, although to the masses, packaged software is more visible.
Everybody understands that information does not have any desires. The saying above is simply an observation that information is very hard to keep contained, and that once previously contained information leaks out, there is no way to reverse the leak and put the genie back into the bottle, so to speak.
Care to post a link? I never read anything like that from them. On the contrary, I have read that the only reason for them to remove a torrent is if the description is wrong.
If you want to blame The Pirate Bay staff, blame their policy of not policing content. They don't put up any torrents, their users do.
Close, but no cigar. We have proportional representation in the parliament, but not in the government and not in the administration. When one or more parties can get more than 50% of the seats in the parliament, they can form an administration, which consists of the ministers and their politically appointed staff. The government, OTOH, is much larger than that, as it essentially encompasses all state, regional and local authorities, and it mostly consists of people employed like in any other workplace (i.e. not elected).
Pirates probably use Microsoft Office.
I'd consider it pretty impressive for a party that formed nine months before the election, and that has only three issues (privacy, copyright and patents) on their political agenda. Plenty of more people agree with their stances, but thought that other issues not treated by the Pirate Party were more pressing.
You seem to be trying to suggest that they are the smallest party in Sweden, and that every other party got more support. This is false, just as claiming that Sweden has only 10 parties is also false:
List of political parties in Sweden.
What do you mean by this? We don't have total surveillance yet, but there are several proposed bills in the pipeline that would each be giant steps in that direction.
It's like I said, it only affects file-sharers (illegal or not) on networks that have high incidences of piracy, only when they are sharing files, and only what they happen to be sharing at the time, possibly tied down to an IP address. What's more, those things are viewable from anyone, so there's very little expectation of privacy there.You seem to be talking about copyright holders (or anyone else) monitoring file-sharing sites through publicly available means. This is not what I'm opposing at all. I'm only discussing the proposed bills that, if put into effect, would mean significant steps toward implementing a total surveillance solution.
That's very nice in theory, but not a very practical idea. You still need bucket loads of money and a helluva incentive to fork it over. Currently the entertainment industry has enough of neither.Regardless of whether it is a practical idea or not (it isn't), that is what they are pushing for to protect their content. And they don't need to afford it, since current propositions suggest that monitoring should be paid for by ISPs and thus consumers themselves.
And still this wouldn't work. It would be extremely costly, and deprive the entire population of essential freedoms, but not accomplish a thing unless the internet is completely dismantled. Any suggestion that dismantling the internet will not be necessary will have to deal with questions such as encryption and steganography (hiding information in other information).
Yes it is. I live in Sweden, and there are several proposed bills to that effect that are in the pipeline, and will be voted on soon:
I'd say that those are clear steps in that direction.
This is just a rehash of the classic "why should you be afraid if you've got nothing to hide?", which has been shown time and again to be bullshit. Total surveillance would affect everyone, not only those that heavily share copyrighted works without permission. If it had only affected them, it would be called targeted surveillance, but that can only be used after you have defined a suspect.
The only information that could be ascertained from the surveillance would be what music you decide to download off that websiteA wiretap of my internet connection would not only show what music I would download, it would show everything that I would do while using that connection. Impose total surveillance, and you can track what everyone does on the entire internet.
The GP argument is just a rehash of the old "DRM can work, just look at the success of encryption technologies" fallacy, which has been explained to death already. Unfortunately, those that would need this knowledge the most never seem to listen.
Not necessarily. If you break a DRM scheme in the confines of your own home, how is law enforcement going to find out unless you are under constant surveillance?
And you didn't even mention steganography, which would use legitimate content, such as your personal home videos, to hide copyrighted information that you are not allowed to share. An exchange of files would look like you and your friend is exchanging home videos, but it might really be copyrighted music tracks that is the real payload.
People that demand that we filter the internet for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works really have no idea what they are talking about. It cannot be done.
Sports cars are only designed for speed with regard to those parts that enable the car to go fast, like the engine, transmission and aerodynamic design. They are seldom if ever designed for safety at high speed. Crash in a sports car at high speed and you are dead. It's not like they have any extensive crumple zones or other stuff like that, which is partly due to the engine placement (usually centre-mounted).
You would be stupid to actually believe that. They would just use another reason to impose the surveillance, such as the infamous "fight against terrorism".
What you seem to be saying is that because pirates can't keep their hands out of the entertainment industry's pockets, we should get rid of the industry itselfIf that is what abolishing copyrights would mean, then so be it. Our civil liberties are worth far more than their profits.
It's pretty simple. Since enforcement of your monopoly (copyright) would require the complete dismantling of all privacy, giving up all secrecy of correspondence and removing whistleblower protections, it becomes our business in a very serious manner. Compared to the rights that the rest of us would have to give up for your copyright to be effectively enforced, protection of your copyrights carry extremely little weight.
It is simply not worth removing all those fundamental rights to enable effective enforcement of copyrights, regardless of the effect this would have on the copyright industry.
In practice, they would only need 4%. This is because the right and left blocs are almost equal in voter support, with a difference of only a few percent. A party with 4% of the votes can thus be the difference between forming an administration or become the opposition. The bloc that manages to negotiate a deal with such a party gets to take the offices, but the price is to implement their demands. There is a Swedish word for this, "vågmästare" (direct translation "master of the scale"), but it is also sometimes referred to as "tungan på vågen" (direct translation "the tongue on the scale").
Which, for commercial copyrights, is exactly what the Pirate Party argues for.