I could probably fill 4000 pages with questionable practises made by the Pirate Bay and the consequences they cause. Good on them for not holding back!
Total surveillance would affect everyone, not only those that heavily share copyrighted works without permission.
OK then, but this isn't total surveillance is it? 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.
If it had only affected them, it would be called targeted surveillance, but that can only be used after you have defined a suspect.
Yeah, a suspect being someone using a file-sharing that has been known to have copyrighted content on it. The copyright holder can, like anyone else, access the network and look at what's being shared. Once they identify a target network, they can then monitor it. There's no need to identify a subject by monitoring them, because the subject comes to them.
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.
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.
And you'd be paranoid not to. There's no reason to institute more surveillance if there's no piracy. Surveillance is expensive and total surveillance is horrendously so. It's not something that even a multi-billion dollar industry can afford to do, unless it got very significant results. If their profits aren't threatened, then they have no reason to pour their shareholder's capital into crazy schemes.
They would just use another reason to impose the surveillance, such as the infamous "fight against terrorism".
Who exactly is "they", the government or the entertainment industry, and can you even tell the difference? They're not tag-teaming in an effort to rid you of your privacy, much less your civil liberties. The entertainment industry can't afford it, and really, neither can the government, neither politically nor financially in any realistic budgeting.
If that is what abolishing copyrights would mean, then so be it. Our civil liberties are worth far more than their profits.
No, it's not your civil liberties, it's your privacy. 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. The only information that could be ascertained from the surveillance would be what music you decide to download off that website, and maybe your IP address.
If you want that to change, rather than scrapping the entire entertainment industry, who provide entertainment to a lot of people (understatement of the century here), you could start by finding and supporting networks that actively encourage legitimate media. Or you could stick to your guns and declare that one of them has to go. Which do you think will go, the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, with millions of customers, whose sudden abolishment would be political suicide, or the network you're on, with maybe ten thousand US citizens using it?
Yes, but if copyrights were to be respected, then such measures would no longer be necessary. The less piracy, the less surveillance. 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, which seems a complete reversal of blame to me.
Even if the entire entertainment industry insists on clinging desperately to 50-year-old ideas about copyright, despite the inevitable consequence of that doomed ideology
I don't think you understand the situation. This kind of technology doesn't threaten copyrights. Piracy threatens copyrights, and that's what the entertainment industry is "clinging onto". What this is is a more efficient method of producing movies (well, just the crowd scenes), which threatens them in a different, legitimate, competition-in-a-free-market way.
Can you see how it would hurt a fisherman for example?
A fisherman is not immune to culture. Statistically, he, or someone he knows, or someone he loves does like artworks produced by these people. Also, society doesn't tend to function at peak efficiency while people are not happy, and entertainment really helps that. Inefficient societies produce inefficient economies, which in turn produce lower standards of living, even for the fisherman. It's a shame you decided to pick apart my occasionally hyperbolic terminology when it actually happens to be quite apt.
..and hope that annoying pirating pest vanishes quietly into some marginal activist group so normal business can continue as usual?
Please don't be an asshole. You don't have to destroy copyright or copyright holders to find your utopia. You can have your little world without copyright, and there's no need to spoil ours. You can't possibly doing it for our benefit, because anyone who'd actually want your twisted existence would be living it already. Just know that you can be happy, and that everyone else can be happy too, without one side imposing on the other.
Exploiting masses' stupidity, greed, fears and fantasies and turn them into profit?
Exploiting human emotion? It's not exploitation, because people want to be entertained. Believe it or not, but entertainment isn't a political statement for most people. They want to be entertained, and companies representing artists step up to the plate. It's a mutual exchange of money for service. We are exploiting them just as much as they are exploiting us.
OK, have it your way. It's gang rape with date-rape drugs involved. The person is not present, at least mentally, and is only aware of the rape after it's been done, at which point they rightfully feel upset.
The analogy's not meant to be perfect, it's to demonstrate how bad the homosexuality analogy is.
Oh, that's easily fixed. All you need is a series of signal repeaters to the printers. There will be far too many for wall-mounting, but they could easily be incorporated into a long, thin, flexible sheath of rubber that could be attached to both the computer and the printer. Each repeater will need power, so perhaps a power chord could be incorporated into the design. In fact, you could have several of these rubber sheaths attached to different wireless devices, attached to a computer's, say, USB port.
Ever had an argument with a religious person? As the saying goes, if this is to be a battle of wits I'm not fighting an unarmed man.
Well, consider yourself lucky (unlucky?) that I have no such scruples in intellectual debates.
Twisted moral outpourings about artists rights by people who have never and could not exhibit creativity if their life depended upon it.
There's a fantastic example of an indefensible argument. How do you personally define creativity? I have no idea. If I did, then I (or someone else) might be able to point out one of the many artworks made under copyright that would fit that description. But since I don't, I'll have to be content with saying that "creativity", "quality", etc, are all subjective. The meaning differs from person to person, and it would be undeniably selfish to jettison anything that you don't personally like. I know it was just a passing mention of that concept, but you may have no idea just how much the average anti-copyright argument relies on it.
I'd also like to ask why you consider the morality twisted? The artist spends time and effort to make something popular, and morally and practically, they deserve some reward for it. Nothing twisted at all.
ever notice how everyone thinks they know something about the pseudo-scientific quackery known as economics?
What, because you don't understand economics, it shouldn't be part of the debate? Go learn something, and come back when you have the knowledge to actually argue.
People will go enormous lengths to confirm their own beliefs, erect a veil of denial that avoids cognitive dissonance with the bad ideas they have already absorbed.
Pretty rich from someone who contrived that last statement.
It is the the apparent paradox that intellectual property is simultaneously anti-capitalistic and anti-socialistic, it cuts across orthodox political divides because it goes against our most fundamental human nature. Intellectual property damages culture and social structure, so it offends conservatives and progressives alike. Patent wars are strangling industry and holding back essential progress now.
So your fabled killer argument is that IP is unorthodox? Wow, and to think I was worried for a second.
We need to revise... the entire system.
Actually, most would agree with you there. It's a stretch to take that to "abolish".
As said in the interview the proponents of IP really do not have any other argument that stands up, only "We want our money", "We are the self appointed gatekeepers of knowledge and culture and you will pay us or...or.... we'll shout about it even louder!!"
Well, apart from just halting production, but that would hurt them and everyone else, or just keep suing (which is what they're doing), so yes, essentially they are powerless to do anything. Pirates are not, and they are currently abusing their position of power. Actually, copyright holders are trying to do something else, which is strip them (and as collateral damage, everyone else too) of their power and rights. But naturally, that isn't the fault of the pirates at all. No, the copyright holders should have just bent over and taken it up the ass.
Don't forget also that they are not the "self-appointed gatekeepers". The people who appointed them are their huge customer bases and the artists who sign up to get in on the action. If they weren't so damn good at their job, they wouldn't have so much influence. Damn capitalism, and its promotion of effective practices...
OK that's enough taking apart your argument piece by piece. Time to hit back with my own.
I have my own argument that never fails to not only inspire a flicker of doubt, but also is never matched with a direct rebuttal, only a change in subject, and that is: Copyright is voluntary. It can peacefully coexist with any oth
Would it be possible to leave our copyrighted music alone, and just go see your favourite bands live? We can coexist perfectly well. You can look for uncopyrighted music, and I'll stick with my movies, my electronic music (the tastful, art kind, not the doof-doof house stuff), my scientific papers, and all the other works that would be neglected while ushering in your "solution" to copyright. I don't force you to make do with my taste in music, surely you can extend me the same courtesy.
No, the GPL uses copyright exactly what it's for, which is to give the programmer a say on how his software is distributed. It doesn't work around the system. The system needs no workarounds, because it's completely voluntary. It uses the system to ensure that the work will continue to be enriched.
BSD, on the other hand, pretty much works around other systems, such as the patent system, or the overly litigious courts system, but still not the copyright system.
You really think so? There are some criteria for ability to create certain artistic works. You need to be relatively rich* (which cuts out most of the world's population), you need to have plenty of spare time (which cuts out many of the rich folk, since they mostly have demanding jobs), and you often need some level of creativity (cuts down numbers by about half again). Some works cost more than others. For example, the creation a full-length movie costs many, many times more than the creation of a painting does. How many freely distributed, entertainment-related (i.e. no low-budget documentaries) movies do you know of?
On the other hand, all you need for paid distribution is some initial capital, some business sense, and some creativity. None of those are particularly uncommon, and even then, you can eliminate most of the initial capital and the business sense by doing your work through a publisher, studio, or label. I'd say your statement works far better in vice-versa.
* rich enough to have money to burn on potentially expensive equipment and distribution
You're perfectly right. Like I said in a previous post, it sounds like a witch-hunt. If you have a view that's a bit weird, you must be a witch^H^H^H^H^H shill, and you^H^H^H your karma must burn at the stake.
What's even worse is that it shows deep insecurity, that people don't seem confident that they can competently argue against an astroturfer. If the opinion is corporate bullshit, then you should be able to argue against it without having to prematurely halt the argument. If you can't argue against them, then perhaps you should be listening to them, rather than just burning burning them.
That's a good point, and currently there is far too much content being produced for people to take it all in. However, all content is not the same, and neither are people's tastes. Some people will only like 1/20th of the content produced today, and really like maybe 1/200th. Everyone's tastes are different, and copyright helps people have a generous choice of art, even if their tastes are limited. If the works are indeed superfluous, then they die, because no-one is interested in them. It's a win-win situation. The only person to lose is the artist who creates a bad work, and who would probably better spend their time doing something else for a living.
Copyright also doesn't discriminate between certain types of works. If sharing were allowed, then (as many have pointed out), live music will become much more lucrative than, for example, electronic music. Hard-cover, beautifully printed books would become more lucrative than a textbook or a scientific paper, which no-one actually needs in book for. Visual arts would be essentially left out in the cold, because copying prints is ludicrously cheap and easy to do if you have access to the proper machinery. Major movies would be nigh impossible.
Finally, I'd also like to point out that anyone wants their works to be shared out freely may release their work under a permissive license, or even into the public domain. In fact, any artist who wanted that has already done that, so if you want an impression of what life without copyright would be like, why not limit yourself to works that are in the public domain? It'll give you a taste of what our culture will be like about 10 years past copyright.
You're right. But unfortunately, you've fallen into the same trap. Just because I support copyright, doesn't mean I support the RIAA. I hate both the pirate movement and the RIAA, their immoral actions, and their constant attempts to spoil copyright. The difference is that the RIAA to date has been more successful.
That's not to say they don't each have their uses. The RIAA is great for lowering barrier of entry into commercial artistry. The pirate movement is also great for encouraging free exchanges of ideas among public domain, or freely-licensed works. It's just when one invades another's territory, they start becoming very dangerous.
So that's my view. Call it simplistic if you will, but at least I'm not branding you "the enemy".
Oh, and the guy's a hypocrite because even though he says he's for freedom of expression and privacy, he performs actions (piracy) that will completely undermine those goals, via the inevitable copyright holder backlash.
You do however seem to exemplify the "no intellectual capital" quote.
Wrong again! This guy never once in the entire interview distinguished between copyright, artists, and publishers/labels. He called them all (repeatedly) "the enemy", and compared himself to Ghandi.
Rather than take up a single point from the interview
I did. As I said, his view of the matter is far too simplistic to be taken seriously.
you invent some of your own, and then "argue" against them.
Name one argument that I invented.
I put "argue" in quotes because you don't actually argue against the points you invented, you just dismiss them.
I have argued against so many like minded people in the past on Slashdot. In the past couple of month, I've had about ten full-scale copyright debates, and I've essentially said the same kind of thing. Why bother doing it all over again, when I can just point out that this guy shows little evidence of even understanding the issues at hand?
I've gotta say, I'm getting very sick of the Shill accusations. It's like you stupid, narrow-minded people can't wrap your head around the fact that there are people who disagree with you. Burn me if you will mods, but this whole astroturfer witch-hunt is extremely offensive to me.
To set the record straight, NO I AM NOT A SHILL! I hate the RIAA too! I encourage you, if you are offended by them, to boycott them completely! Show the fuckers what we do with companies who sue 10-year-olds, and who don't just try to erode our freedoms, but try to blast them apart one chunk at a time. However, don't confuse that (like the man being interviewed does) with copyright. Copyright is a great method for keeping our culture commercially viable. The RIAA only uses copyright to make money. It's not copyright that's proposing laws, that's threatening to sue you, it's the RIAA, and don't forget it, even in this age of madness.
... supposed to respect a man with such a simplistic view of the situation on hand? He can't seem to properly distinguish between the music labels and copyright, or music and politics. His philosophy just takes and takes and takes from artists, and when they complain, they're basically just told to deal with it. His philosophy abuses anonymity, and then whinges loudly when there are pushes to take that anonymity away. I'm sorry to everyone who liked this interview, but this guy's a complete hypocrite.
Non-patriotism is also dangerous, like when a US citizen is so unpatriotic, they feel they have to plan or commit acts of terrorism. Actually, come to think of it, pretty much any belief is dangerous without moderation, and it's only the extremely patriotic and the extremely unpatriotic that are at all dangerous.
For all the philosophical rambling, none of them, absolutely none of them, escape this simple indisputable fact:
All religious teachings are provided to us by humans.
For all the philosophical rambling, no science, absolutely none of them, escape this simple indisputable fact:
All science is based on fallible human observation.
It's a philosophical school called empiricism, and that's basically what their basis is. It doesn't mean we can't study science, and use it to predict the outcomes of similar events, it just means we may be wrong about anything and everything. Similarly with religion, just because its teachings are provided by people, doesn't mean they're bogus.
It's not a thought crime. He performed an action of which the consequences can only be unlawful. There's no persecution of thought here, just of the actions taken, and the damage indirectly done.
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I could probably fill 4000 pages with questionable practises made by the Pirate Bay and the consequences they cause. Good on them for not holding back!
I had about a 98% accuracy rating with the included microphone and no sound card.
Oh wait. Not that kind of lingerie model, obviously.
If you want that to change, rather than scrapping the entire entertainment industry, who provide entertainment to a lot of people (understatement of the century here), you could start by finding and supporting networks that actively encourage legitimate media. Or you could stick to your guns and declare that one of them has to go. Which do you think will go, the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, with millions of customers, whose sudden abolishment would be political suicide, or the network you're on, with maybe ten thousand US citizens using it?
Yes, but if copyrights were to be respected, then such measures would no longer be necessary. The less piracy, the less surveillance. 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, which seems a complete reversal of blame to me.
It needs a warrant, and helps with the search. What's wrong with that?
OK, have it your way. It's gang rape with date-rape drugs involved. The person is not present, at least mentally, and is only aware of the rape after it's been done, at which point they rightfully feel upset.
The analogy's not meant to be perfect, it's to demonstrate how bad the homosexuality analogy is.
Oh, that's easily fixed. All you need is a series of signal repeaters to the printers. There will be far too many for wall-mounting, but they could easily be incorporated into a long, thin, flexible sheath of rubber that could be attached to both the computer and the printer. Each repeater will need power, so perhaps a power chord could be incorporated into the design. In fact, you could have several of these rubber sheaths attached to different wireless devices, attached to a computer's, say, USB port.
Well, consider yourself lucky (unlucky?) that I have no such scruples in intellectual debates.
There's a fantastic example of an indefensible argument. How do you personally define creativity? I have no idea. If I did, then I (or someone else) might be able to point out one of the many artworks made under copyright that would fit that description. But since I don't, I'll have to be content with saying that "creativity", "quality", etc, are all subjective. The meaning differs from person to person, and it would be undeniably selfish to jettison anything that you don't personally like. I know it was just a passing mention of that concept, but you may have no idea just how much the average anti-copyright argument relies on it.
I'd also like to ask why you consider the morality twisted? The artist spends time and effort to make something popular, and morally and practically, they deserve some reward for it. Nothing twisted at all.
What, because you don't understand economics, it shouldn't be part of the debate? Go learn something, and come back when you have the knowledge to actually argue.
Pretty rich from someone who contrived that last statement.
So your fabled killer argument is that IP is unorthodox? Wow, and to think I was worried for a second.
Actually, most would agree with you there. It's a stretch to take that to "abolish".
Well, apart from just halting production, but that would hurt them and everyone else, or just keep suing (which is what they're doing), so yes, essentially they are powerless to do anything. Pirates are not, and they are currently abusing their position of power. Actually, copyright holders are trying to do something else, which is strip them (and as collateral damage, everyone else too) of their power and rights. But naturally, that isn't the fault of the pirates at all. No, the copyright holders should have just bent over and taken it up the ass.
Don't forget also that they are not the "self-appointed gatekeepers". The people who appointed them are their huge customer bases and the artists who sign up to get in on the action. If they weren't so damn good at their job, they wouldn't have so much influence. Damn capitalism, and its promotion of effective practices...
OK that's enough taking apart your argument piece by piece. Time to hit back with my own.
I have my own argument that never fails to not only inspire a flicker of doubt, but also is never matched with a direct rebuttal, only a change in subject, and that is: Copyright is voluntary. It can peacefully coexist with any oth
Would it be possible to leave our copyrighted music alone, and just go see your favourite bands live? We can coexist perfectly well. You can look for uncopyrighted music, and I'll stick with my movies, my electronic music (the tastful, art kind, not the doof-doof house stuff), my scientific papers, and all the other works that would be neglected while ushering in your "solution" to copyright. I don't force you to make do with my taste in music, surely you can extend me the same courtesy.
No, the GPL uses copyright exactly what it's for, which is to give the programmer a say on how his software is distributed. It doesn't work around the system. The system needs no workarounds, because it's completely voluntary. It uses the system to ensure that the work will continue to be enriched.
BSD, on the other hand, pretty much works around other systems, such as the patent system, or the overly litigious courts system, but still not the copyright system.
You really think so? There are some criteria for ability to create certain artistic works. You need to be relatively rich* (which cuts out most of the world's population), you need to have plenty of spare time (which cuts out many of the rich folk, since they mostly have demanding jobs), and you often need some level of creativity (cuts down numbers by about half again). Some works cost more than others. For example, the creation a full-length movie costs many, many times more than the creation of a painting does. How many freely distributed, entertainment-related (i.e. no low-budget documentaries) movies do you know of?
On the other hand, all you need for paid distribution is some initial capital, some business sense, and some creativity. None of those are particularly uncommon, and even then, you can eliminate most of the initial capital and the business sense by doing your work through a publisher, studio, or label. I'd say your statement works far better in vice-versa.
* rich enough to have money to burn on potentially expensive equipment and distribution
You're perfectly right. Like I said in a previous post, it sounds like a witch-hunt. If you have a view that's a bit weird, you must be a witch^H^H^H^H^H shill, and you^H^H^H your karma must burn at the stake.
What's even worse is that it shows deep insecurity, that people don't seem confident that they can competently argue against an astroturfer. If the opinion is corporate bullshit, then you should be able to argue against it without having to prematurely halt the argument. If you can't argue against them, then perhaps you should be listening to them, rather than just burning burning them.
That's a good point, and currently there is far too much content being produced for people to take it all in. However, all content is not the same, and neither are people's tastes. Some people will only like 1/20th of the content produced today, and really like maybe 1/200th. Everyone's tastes are different, and copyright helps people have a generous choice of art, even if their tastes are limited. If the works are indeed superfluous, then they die, because no-one is interested in them. It's a win-win situation. The only person to lose is the artist who creates a bad work, and who would probably better spend their time doing something else for a living.
Copyright also doesn't discriminate between certain types of works. If sharing were allowed, then (as many have pointed out), live music will become much more lucrative than, for example, electronic music. Hard-cover, beautifully printed books would become more lucrative than a textbook or a scientific paper, which no-one actually needs in book for. Visual arts would be essentially left out in the cold, because copying prints is ludicrously cheap and easy to do if you have access to the proper machinery. Major movies would be nigh impossible.
Finally, I'd also like to point out that anyone wants their works to be shared out freely may release their work under a permissive license, or even into the public domain. In fact, any artist who wanted that has already done that, so if you want an impression of what life without copyright would be like, why not limit yourself to works that are in the public domain? It'll give you a taste of what our culture will be like about 10 years past copyright.
You're right. But unfortunately, you've fallen into the same trap. Just because I support copyright, doesn't mean I support the RIAA. I hate both the pirate movement and the RIAA, their immoral actions, and their constant attempts to spoil copyright. The difference is that the RIAA to date has been more successful.
That's not to say they don't each have their uses. The RIAA is great for lowering barrier of entry into commercial artistry. The pirate movement is also great for encouraging free exchanges of ideas among public domain, or freely-licensed works. It's just when one invades another's territory, they start becoming very dangerous.
So that's my view. Call it simplistic if you will, but at least I'm not branding you "the enemy".
Oh, and the guy's a hypocrite because even though he says he's for freedom of expression and privacy, he performs actions (piracy) that will completely undermine those goals, via the inevitable copyright holder backlash.
I've gotta say, I'm getting very sick of the Shill accusations. It's like you stupid, narrow-minded people can't wrap your head around the fact that there are people who disagree with you. Burn me if you will mods, but this whole astroturfer witch-hunt is extremely offensive to me.
To set the record straight, NO I AM NOT A SHILL! I hate the RIAA too! I encourage you, if you are offended by them, to boycott them completely! Show the fuckers what we do with companies who sue 10-year-olds, and who don't just try to erode our freedoms, but try to blast them apart one chunk at a time. However, don't confuse that (like the man being interviewed does) with copyright. Copyright is a great method for keeping our culture commercially viable. The RIAA only uses copyright to make money. It's not copyright that's proposing laws, that's threatening to sue you, it's the RIAA, and don't forget it, even in this age of madness.
... supposed to respect a man with such a simplistic view of the situation on hand? He can't seem to properly distinguish between the music labels and copyright, or music and politics. His philosophy just takes and takes and takes from artists, and when they complain, they're basically just told to deal with it. His philosophy abuses anonymity, and then whinges loudly when there are pushes to take that anonymity away. I'm sorry to everyone who liked this interview, but this guy's a complete hypocrite.
Non-patriotism is also dangerous, like when a US citizen is so unpatriotic, they feel they have to plan or commit acts of terrorism. Actually, come to think of it, pretty much any belief is dangerous without moderation, and it's only the extremely patriotic and the extremely unpatriotic that are at all dangerous.
All science is based on fallible human observation.
It's a philosophical school called empiricism, and that's basically what their basis is. It doesn't mean we can't study science, and use it to predict the outcomes of similar events, it just means we may be wrong about anything and everything. Similarly with religion, just because its teachings are provided by people, doesn't mean they're bogus.
And no, before you ask, I'm not religious.
... and only post?
WTF is going on here? Where are all the comments?
I guess this is the ultimate statement that BluRay is irrelevant.
It's not a thought crime. He performed an action of which the consequences can only be unlawful. There's no persecution of thought here, just of the actions taken, and the damage indirectly done.