How US Copyright Expansionism Created The Infrastructure That Now Stymies US Gov't In Stopping Wikileaks
from the cause-and-effect dept
Two of the bigger stories these days are the US government's copyright expansionist policies with domain name seizures and bills like COICA and (of course) the whole Wikileaks story. We've noted some similarities between large centralized systems reacting badly to distributed systems, but there's also a much more direct connection as well. Glyn Moody points us to a blog post by Brendan Scott that lays out the basic fact that the distributed distribution tools that Wikileaks now relies on were mainly developed in response to constant copyright expansionism at the behest of the US government (on behalf of the entertainment industry). As Scott notes, he wonders if the US government will recognize this. However, given that it's still pushing for even greater copyright expansionism (which will only make the "leaks" issue more difficult to control), it appears that very few in power actually understand this.
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Filed Under: copyright, distributed, file sharing, underground, wikileaks
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So...
(The common definition of irony, that is. Not the dictionary definition.)
; P
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Dear Gov't,
You are so dumb.
Love, Rabbit
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Re: So...
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They believe that, just because they define these things as illegal and clamp down on people them, most people will magically stop doing them, and the few who don't can be rounded up and imprisoned.
They do not believe they are dealing with an exponential curve.
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Dreams of further expansionism
This is a response truly worthy of shock and of our awe. It is raw power being put to work, largely extra-legally. The exercise of this power has been extremely effective, remarkably quick and unburdened by judicial oversight – it is the sort of response a copyright ideologue dreams of.
How can anyone take the copyright proposition seriously anymore? This is raw power, exercised by not just any old government, but by a very motivated Superpower – and one which is aided by other governments large and small who also have a joint interest is keeping diplomatic cables secret. If this raw power can’t contain this information how could copyright holders backed only by a Copyright Act possibly do so? How is it possible to argue for extensions to the Act other than on the basis of vengeance?
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Re: So...
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Remember there are plenty of legitimate uses for torr....or are we finally done with that argument and now just going to attribute all good P2P features to circumvention.
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I'll say this, who the hell is going to be surprised or bother raising a fuss when some torrent site is squashed after seeing the US go nuclear on Assange? They obviously don't care what anybody thinks.
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Re:
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Yeah...
The more you push for control, the less you had in the first place. Sage advice.
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Re: So...
Wait. I'll bet you define it along the lines of Poetic Justice, don't you?
Yeah, that's called "Poetic Justice". I imagine Poetic Justice is somewhat ironic for the perpetrator of a wrong who receives PJ. It's just not ironic to the onlooker or historian; it's satisfyingly expected.
CBMHB
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weak
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Re: weak
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Distributed Denial Of DDOS Counterattack
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Re: Re: So...
Dictionary definitions don't mean shit in the real world. They're just supposed to be a record of how people use them.
Words are defined by there usage, and not what's written in a book.
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Oregon FTW!
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Re: Re: Re: So...
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Re: Re: Re: So...
Then I realized that words are defined by their usage, and not what's written in a book...so you'd have nowhere to go to understand what I just said.
Shame really...
CBMHB
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