it may be true that our justice system committing these sorts of abuses less frequently than say the Iranians
Considering how many people we arrest each year, and how comparatively few the Iranians arrest (the US is the world leader in arrests and imprisonment), I am not even sure that is true.
If you don't read the damned thing, SOPA sounds like "let's reduce the rampant unchecked piracy online." Sure, that's great
That does not sound too great if you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about the situation. Let me make one think perfectly clear: most people never have and never will take copyrights seriously.
In life, there are laws which do not stem from the moral zeitgeist but which still affect everyone. I doubt that anyone seriously thinks it is morally questionable to park their car in the wrong place; it is illegal, sure, but not immoral. When people violate these sorts of laws, we write them a ticket and that is that -- because drawn out court proceedings over parking spaces not only sound absurd but are also a complete waste of judicial resources.
Unlike parking violations, copyright cases must be heard in court. A judge needs to decide if a particular use of a copyrighted work was illegal or protected by the fair use doctrine. This was once a perfectly reasonable way to handle things: only industrial operations could violate a copyright, and industrial operations can be expected to be rare enough and well funded enough to argue cases before a court. Lots of people have cars and therefore lots of people park illegally; before the mid seventies, very few people had copying equipment.
These days it is more common to own a computer, which can be turned into a rapid copying machine, than it is to own a car. The proper response would be to either change copyright law so that people receive tickets when the copy things illegally, or to throw copyrights out entirely and come up with a new system for promoting access to science and useful arts. For some reason, though, we are sitting here talking about how terrible it is that people are "stealing" movies.
Copyrights are not part of the moral zeitgeist and they never will be; whether or not a copyright is being violated is far too complex for it to ever be a moral issue (contrast with murder, which is usually easy to decide), and far to complex to expect people to think about in the course of living their day-to-day lives. The "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted; practically everyone in America has sang it many times, without paying royalties and without bothering to check to see if there is a copyright on it. People still view copyright as an area law that relates to businesses and industrial operations, which is why supporters of SOPA have pointed to businesses rather than community-run forums and torrent trackers.
My view is that copyrights are dead; it is impossible to prevent copyright infringement or even curtail it without violating our civil rights. Copyright in the 21st century is simply not compatible with democracy or human rights. Attempts to save copyright will inevitably lead to censorship, police states, and the end of the justice system that protects us from government abuses. Some may disagree, but I say that rather than save an old, dying industry from going the way of the stagecoach driving business, we should be working on new ways to promote science and art.
Which I would say is part of a general strategy to turn the Internet into a fancy cable TV system. Taking down websites because of disputes about copyrights? Sounds an awful lot like cable channels going off the air because of disputes about licensing rights.
Media companies like cable and satellite TV systems because they are easy to deal with -- industrial operations (which is what copyright was intended to deal with) with legal teams, shareholders, and investments to protect. Individual computer users are impossible for a media company's legal team to deal with, and there is no way that they are going to negotiate contracts. Yet the Internet allows individual users to use their computers to effectively broadcast copyrighted entertainment -- not good news for an industry that carefully developed strategies for cable TV networks.
All the SOPA/PIPA/etc. lobbying is about attacking the P2P philosophy of the Internet, which the media companies hate. They want computers to be like set top boxes, just passive consumption devices that herd users into consumption-only lifestyles. General purpose computers should be industrial equipment in their world, only used by businesses that negotiate contracts with each other and focus on turning profits. The idea that individuals can have computers and that they can connect their computers to others is antithetical to the world that the MPAA/etc. want.
...and almost none of them care, because they view copyright law as applying to industrial operations. That is what copyrights were about before tape recording and computer access became commonplace. Now suddenly we expect everyone to be thinking about copyrights all the time, because some old business models would be completely decimated by new technology if people just lived their lives.
Don't you think its a little bit abusive to not allow the original content creators and artists to determine themselves the terms of the trade?
They can determine the terms of the trade but why should they get to determine what I do with my property after I buy it from them? If I did not sign a contract that said I would not copy a CD, then why should I not copy the CD?
Although I guess some people would not consider subtitle information to be original content -- even though someone has to sit down and translate, enter timing information, positioning information, font information, cultural notes, etc. Or maybe creating work based on what other people have done is not original?
Dodd and the MPAA are not going to take this sort of thing sitting down. They will sue over every word that ever appeared in any movie or TV show. They will attack any technology that is used to distribute this entertainment. They will lobby for laws forbidding this sort of thing.
Before we had PCs and the Internet, most people never gave copyrights a moment's though, unless they were lawyers or were employed in an industry where copyrights matter. Back in those days, copyrights were a regulation on industry; people did not violate them because they did not have the industrial equipment needed to violate them.
Things are different now. You do not need industrial equipment to copy things, everyone has all the equipment they need right in their own home. It is not that people have lost respect for copyrights, it is that people are now in a position where whether or not they respect copyrights matters -- and they never really cared about copyrights to begin with. There was never any reason to expect the majority of people to respect copyrights, and there is no way that copyrights could ever be enforced when the majority of people have the equipment needed to violate copyrights (there are far too many people for the justice system to actually determine if a particular violation of a copyright was fair use -- copyrights were designed to be handled by lawyers in courts).
We live in a post-copyright age, there is no sense in denying that. I use the example of bottled water. Everyone can drink their tap water, yet bottled water companies manage to turn a profit without regulations that forbid the drinking of tap water. Computers are nearly as common as faucets at this point, and copying things with computers is as easy as drinking tap water.
The most likely answer is this: too many people knew what was being planned. We can't have people knowing about the laws that attack their rights and freedoms, can we?
They will stand trial, and if the trial concludes with them being acquitted they can get their domains, servers, etc. back. The fact that they will lose so much business that they will wind up bankrupt is irrelevant to due process.
No, it is about people using their bandwidth/water in a particular way: copying/drinking. Nobody would be sued because they download Debian ISOs/use their tap water to do their laundry.
We pay for Internet service, and the RIAA/MPAA do not claim ownership over your bandwidth. We do not punish people for drinking their tap water, even though bottled water companies exist specifically to sell drinking water. Every fluid ounce of tap water that you drink is a fluid ounce you did not pay a bottled water company to drink.
The only difference is that right now, nobody has a concept of "drinkingrights" but we do have a concept of "copyrights."
Slashdot Mirror
it may be true that our justice system committing these sorts of abuses less frequently than say the Iranians
Considering how many people we arrest each year, and how comparatively few the Iranians arrest (the US is the world leader in arrests and imprisonment), I am not even sure that is true.
If you don't read the damned thing, SOPA sounds like "let's reduce the rampant unchecked piracy online." Sure, that's great
That does not sound too great if you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about the situation. Let me make one think perfectly clear: most people never have and never will take copyrights seriously.
In life, there are laws which do not stem from the moral zeitgeist but which still affect everyone. I doubt that anyone seriously thinks it is morally questionable to park their car in the wrong place; it is illegal, sure, but not immoral. When people violate these sorts of laws, we write them a ticket and that is that -- because drawn out court proceedings over parking spaces not only sound absurd but are also a complete waste of judicial resources.
Unlike parking violations, copyright cases must be heard in court. A judge needs to decide if a particular use of a copyrighted work was illegal or protected by the fair use doctrine. This was once a perfectly reasonable way to handle things: only industrial operations could violate a copyright, and industrial operations can be expected to be rare enough and well funded enough to argue cases before a court. Lots of people have cars and therefore lots of people park illegally; before the mid seventies, very few people had copying equipment.
These days it is more common to own a computer, which can be turned into a rapid copying machine, than it is to own a car. The proper response would be to either change copyright law so that people receive tickets when the copy things illegally, or to throw copyrights out entirely and come up with a new system for promoting access to science and useful arts. For some reason, though, we are sitting here talking about how terrible it is that people are "stealing" movies.
Copyrights are not part of the moral zeitgeist and they never will be; whether or not a copyright is being violated is far too complex for it to ever be a moral issue (contrast with murder, which is usually easy to decide), and far to complex to expect people to think about in the course of living their day-to-day lives. The "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted; practically everyone in America has sang it many times, without paying royalties and without bothering to check to see if there is a copyright on it. People still view copyright as an area law that relates to businesses and industrial operations, which is why supporters of SOPA have pointed to businesses rather than community-run forums and torrent trackers.
My view is that copyrights are dead; it is impossible to prevent copyright infringement or even curtail it without violating our civil rights. Copyright in the 21st century is simply not compatible with democracy or human rights. Attempts to save copyright will inevitably lead to censorship, police states, and the end of the justice system that protects us from government abuses. Some may disagree, but I say that rather than save an old, dying industry from going the way of the stagecoach driving business, we should be working on new ways to promote science and art.
Which I would say is part of a general strategy to turn the Internet into a fancy cable TV system. Taking down websites because of disputes about copyrights? Sounds an awful lot like cable channels going off the air because of disputes about licensing rights.
Media companies like cable and satellite TV systems because they are easy to deal with -- industrial operations (which is what copyright was intended to deal with) with legal teams, shareholders, and investments to protect. Individual computer users are impossible for a media company's legal team to deal with, and there is no way that they are going to negotiate contracts. Yet the Internet allows individual users to use their computers to effectively broadcast copyrighted entertainment -- not good news for an industry that carefully developed strategies for cable TV networks.
All the SOPA/PIPA/etc. lobbying is about attacking the P2P philosophy of the Internet, which the media companies hate. They want computers to be like set top boxes, just passive consumption devices that herd users into consumption-only lifestyles. General purpose computers should be industrial equipment in their world, only used by businesses that negotiate contracts with each other and focus on turning profits. The idea that individuals can have computers and that they can connect their computers to others is antithetical to the world that the MPAA/etc. want.
Almost everyone knows about copyright laws
Don't you think its a little bit abusive to not allow the original content creators and artists to determine themselves the terms of the trade?
They can determine the terms of the trade but why should they get to determine what I do with my property after I buy it from them? If I did not sign a contract that said I would not copy a CD, then why should I not copy the CD?
I have never heard of anyone getting sued for copyright infringement by making original content.
http://dominic-von-riedemann.suite101.com/fansubs-2--the-empires-strike-back-a6755
Although I guess some people would not consider subtitle information to be original content -- even though someone has to sit down and translate, enter timing information, positioning information, font information, cultural notes, etc. Or maybe creating work based on what other people have done is not original?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_based_on_novels
A store that distributes stolen goods would be a better one.
No, such a store would be charged with crimes related to theft:
http://www.redding.com/news/2011/jan/21/redding-motorcycle-owner-arrested-chop-shop-charge/
Garyâ(TM)s Motorcycle Services Center owner Gary William Kenerson, 61, was arrested Thursday on drug- and theft-related charges.
On the other hand, Megaupload was charged with:
As anyone who bothered to read the actual indictment would have known:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment
Dodd and the MPAA are not going to take this sort of thing sitting down. They will sue over every word that ever appeared in any movie or TV show. They will attack any technology that is used to distribute this entertainment. They will lobby for laws forbidding this sort of thing.
So, how can we help fight them?
Before we had PCs and the Internet, most people never gave copyrights a moment's though, unless they were lawyers or were employed in an industry where copyrights matter. Back in those days, copyrights were a regulation on industry; people did not violate them because they did not have the industrial equipment needed to violate them.
Things are different now. You do not need industrial equipment to copy things, everyone has all the equipment they need right in their own home. It is not that people have lost respect for copyrights, it is that people are now in a position where whether or not they respect copyrights matters -- and they never really cared about copyrights to begin with. There was never any reason to expect the majority of people to respect copyrights, and there is no way that copyrights could ever be enforced when the majority of people have the equipment needed to violate copyrights (there are far too many people for the justice system to actually determine if a particular violation of a copyright was fair use -- copyrights were designed to be handled by lawyers in courts).
We live in a post-copyright age, there is no sense in denying that. I use the example of bottled water. Everyone can drink their tap water, yet bottled water companies manage to turn a profit without regulations that forbid the drinking of tap water. Computers are nearly as common as faucets at this point, and copying things with computers is as easy as drinking tap water.
The DMCA is performing exactly as expected. You cannot even post a link to a foreign website that provides decss.
Yes and we all know what a travesty it is that US laws do not apply everywhere in the entire world.
The most likely answer is this: too many people knew what was being planned. We can't have people knowing about the laws that attack their rights and freedoms, can we?
those folks really should have chosen a service that encrypts the copies on the server.
Right, because you can trust them not to decrypt everything for the government:
http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/11/09/hushmail-opens-emails-to-us-dea/
They will stand trial, and if the trial concludes with them being acquitted they can get their domains, servers, etc. back. The fact that they will lose so much business that they will wind up bankrupt is irrelevant to due process.
DVI supports HDCP, so I doubt that is the reason.
To make you buy new things. Oh, your monitor supports DVI, but that new gamma-ray-disc-player doesn't? Buy a new monitor!
In my neighborhood there is this: "Fuck You Wireless Thief."
No, the drinking of the water is analogous to copyrighted media.
...and the fact that you pay for tap water does not mean you can drink it.
You are not stealing "water," you are drinking it out of the tap instead of a prepackaged bottle!
Internet service is not free either...
The bottled water companies didn't invent water
Nor did the RIAA or MPAA invent the Internet.
When you use tap water, you are getting that water from an authorized source
Just like my Internet service is from an authorized source.
The fact that a bottling company exists is immaterial - you are not taking their water
Was someone using the RIAA's Internet service without permission?
If you tapped into your neighbors pipes you would probably consider that an 'alternate source',
Sounds like using an open wifi network.
No, it is about people using their bandwidth/water in a particular way: copying/drinking. Nobody would be sued because they download Debian ISOs/use their tap water to do their laundry.
We pay for Internet service, and the RIAA/MPAA do not claim ownership over your bandwidth. We do not punish people for drinking their tap water, even though bottled water companies exist specifically to sell drinking water. Every fluid ounce of tap water that you drink is a fluid ounce you did not pay a bottled water company to drink.
The only difference is that right now, nobody has a concept of "drinkingrights" but we do have a concept of "copyrights."