Sometimes 'Piracy' And Freedom Look Remarkably Similar
from the and,-no,-that's-not-a-defense-of-piracy dept
I've complained in the past about The Pirate Party's name, which I think does the party a serious disservice. It may work in the short-term, but I have my doubts about its long-term efficacy. While the Pirate Party's leaders continue to defend the name, I still think it gets people focused on the issue of copyright much more than basic freedoms -- which really does seem to be the core of the Party's agenda. Still, there are times when I can see the reasoning, because all too often "piracy" looks quite a lot like "freedom." Take, for example, this nifty contrast highlighted by Casey Rae-Hunter, from the Future of Music Coalition (hardly a "piracy defender"), where he notes that two separate projects, the PirateBox and the FreedomBox appear remarkably similar.The "PirateBox" is an open source project to build self-contained file-sharing devices that people can set down, turn on and have a remote file sharing system, totally separate from those who might seek to control it.
The similarities between the two projects are pretty obvious as you dig into both. Take, for example, the descriptions:
PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile wireless communications and file sharing networks where users can anonymously chat and share images, video, audio, documents, and other digital content.And...
Freedom Box exists to provide people with privacy-respecting technology alternatives in normal times, and to offer ways to collaborate safely and securely with others in building social networks of protest, demonstration, and mobilization for political change in the not-so-normal times.It seems that there are times when "piracy" looks an awful lot like "freedom."
Freedom Box software is built to run on hardware that already exists, and will soon become much more widely available and much more inexpensive. "Plug servers" and other compact devices are going to become ubiquitous in the next few years, serving as "media centers," "communications centers," "wireless routers," and many other familiar and not-so-familiar roles in office and home.
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Filed Under: freedom, freedombox, piracy, piratebox
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Both of the boxes look remarkably like "contributory copyright violations" in the making.
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Uh, what? They're just hardware. How arey they contributing to copyright violations anymore than an, oh I don't know, existing wireless router?
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That makes it a box dedicated to infringement - and clubbing baby seals - and child pornography!
Are you all for clubbing baby seals with books full of pornographic pictures of children?
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I don't think these devices will go far.
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Your immature "BUT COPYRIGHT!!!11" arguments aside, you MUST be able to see that there's a parallel between the two devices, even though they were created with different motivations.
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I think the point of the article, if you read between the lines, is that the motivations are exactly the same. It's just most people call one kind of oppression "dictatorship" and another kind of oppression "copyright enforcement".
Either way, they're fighting oppression....
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Mike trying to put them together is trying to make you think pirate = freedom, when pirate = illegal and freedom = desirable
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The point made is that both boxes do effectively the same thing. When dictators and media conglomerates can be thwarted with, and would like to outlaw, the same tool, it says a lot about media conglomerates, doesn't it?
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Ultimately there is little difference between a dictator and an IP holder. Both of them are with-holding freedom in one form or another.
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You guys find new ways to jump the shark every day.
Though there is some solace knowing that back when he began this blog, this was not where Masnick thought piracy would end up.
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I'm sure you imagine software developers, games programmers, authors, movie grips, etc. are all "not real jobs either."
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Pop Music Dreck
> wouldn't find music worthy enough to rip off.
That's so funny you should take it on the road and become a stand up comedian.
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Actually, software development is my hobby. My "real" job is much more mundane.
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If you look behind you, you can see the shark you jumped.
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Maybe that'll be the same day you learn that we do not have choice or control over every aspect of what we do, particularly anything put out publicly, and that playing along with someones delusion that DRM and 95 year copyrights are necessary is something that'll always be detrimental to society.
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it's more like this:
piracy is a foregone conclusion. eventually hollywood will realize this and give up, but in the mean time, people have to be vigilant so that bad laws that threaten privacy and free speech don't get passed in the mean time.
cory doctorow says it a lot better here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow
and if hollywood somehow manages to succeed and turn the internet into a dictatorship, boxes like these are the exit strategy.
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My thoughts are that 2009 was probably peak piracy, and it's all downhill from there. There are fewer and fewer countries that will tolerate it, and they may end up finding themselves on the outside looking in, with no legal sources for material. Like it or not, countries like Spain could end up with most file sharing sites shut down because the content they will list won't be legally available in the country, which will no longer make it a simple copyright violation case.
Change is coming. I don't think many people on Techdirt are really ready for it.
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More copyright enforcement will inevitably break the camel's back, and that's where radical change will come from.
Pathetic IP lawyers like yourself will be out of a job. Bide your time.
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Oh, piracy has decreased since then, has it?
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it's not based in the idea that nothing will be done. piracy is a foregone conclusion regardless of what is done.
hollywood can capitulate to piracy in order to cut its losses, or it can go full-orwell and bring everyone who is concerned about basic freedoms into the fight. either way, piracy wins.
except that the war on piracy is a war of attrition.
hollywood's weapons are all based on money: lawyers, lobbying, lawsuits, digital right management technology, coin-operated legislation, even law enforcement. it all costs money, which is finite.
piracy's weapons are all based on time and talent: reverse engineering, freely distributed tools, collaboration, encryption, etc. they're all the products of talented people and invested time, which are both infinite.
hollywood has fallen victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: never expend finite resources to fight someone whose resources are infinite.
My thoughts are that 2009 was probably peak piracy, and it's all downhill from there.
and my thoughts are that pirates are just getting started. groups like the Free Software Foundation didn't care about piracy when piracy was just about getting free music.
the more this sort of thing starts to resemble a battle for basic freedom, the more time and talent becomes available for the fight.
There are fewer and fewer countries that will tolerate it, and they may end up finding themselves on the outside looking in, with no legal sources for material. Like it or not, countries like Spain could end up with most file sharing sites shut down because the content they will list won't be legally available in the country, which will no longer make it a simple copyright violation case.
i hope that does happen. one of two things will result:
1) spain becomes the "haven for piracy" that hollywood would have us believe that china (and canada lol) is. how do you combat piracy then? invade spain?
2) spain becomes the new bollywood and a wealth of new, non-hollywood material hits the net, legal or otherwise. what do you do then? compete with spain?
either way, hollywood overplays its hand and only hurts itself.
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Right!?
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Bring your evidence to court and follow due process and no one gets hurt.
Keep running your mouth/industry like a dictator in Africa and there WILL be a revolution that you and your ilk will be none to happy about.
There is no need to invent boogey men when there are plenty of them out there already including yourself.
/Troll feeding
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By that logic, shouldn't the RIAA be attacking The Fraunhofer Institut in Germany, since that is who holds the patent on the MP3. Or maybe CERN should be sued for creating the www. Or maybe the IP Nazis should wake up and realize the digital age happened while they were counting their pennies.
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Stop making stupid analogies and stop assuming that someone's right to enforce universal copyright of their own work is greater than someone else's right to free speech.
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Your right to free speech doesn't including infringing on the rights of others.
How hard is that to understand?
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How hard is that to understand?
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If you're not an American, your confusion is understandable. If you are, then your confusion is unforgivable.
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You have the right to your own speech, you do not have any inalienable right to the speech of others. If you an American and are confused, that is understandable. The 1st Amendment stuff is usually taught without the asterix that explain these things.
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Media Moguls like to distort the law.
> speech, you do not have any
> inalienable right to the speech
> of others.
Sure I do. It's called the public domain.
I also have the right to talk about things that still might be under copyright and to make reasonable references to them.
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Your right to free speech ends when you start to infringe on the rights of others. It's basic.
Your right to free speech doesn't including infringing on the rights of others.
How hard is that to understand?
Then:
Mike, you may wish it to be that way, but it is only true if copyright specifically violates the 1st amendment.
So you admit, in a convoluted way, that you were wrong, and that free speech outweighs copyright. Then you attempt to derail the entire argument by asserting that copyright doesn't violate free speech.
I hope you see why you recieve such a poor reception on this site. Such poorly thought out arguments will not sway any but the most emotional ninnys.
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Your right to free speech doesn't including infringing on the rights of others.
How hard is that to understand?
You've got that backwards.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
My right to free speech is protected in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Current copyright law is a law passed by Congress.
The Constitution trumps a law passed by Congress. IANAL, but I don't think we've had any recent Supreme Court cases where free speech over copyright have been the overriding factors, have we?
Your copyright ends when it is in opposition to my rights of free speech.
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Perhaps it made sense in the past.
Perhaps we did not have enough data to make correct decisions back then, and Geocentrism seemed plausible enough to become the standard.
But, Perhaps, at some point, overwhelming proof on the contrary, forced changes to happen. And, perhaps, just like copyright, some well entrenched "believers" denied Heliocentrism and prosecuted those that believed in it, blocking scientific progress for centuries.
Perhaps it is time to look back and learn from past mistakes?
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Media Moguls like to distort the law.
I don't think you would get Payne to buy into that.
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Re: Media Moguls like to distort the law.
Guess what? Progress happens.
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Re: Re: Media Moguls like to distort the law.
That's what everyone keeps trying to explain to you, but you seem to prefer to manufacture ways to impede its progress. To recap, it will happen either way. The question is how long will you continue to fight it rather than use it to your advantage?
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Amazing. Just... amazing! Physician heal thyself...
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You have the right under the 1st amendment to do so. However, there are laws that apply that will get you locked up, especially if someone gets injured.
Free speech isn't an absolute, it isn't a trump card over everything, no matter how much you would like it to be.
Plus, honestly, can you explain how all these laws exist in the face of the 1st amendment? It would appear that any law that restricts your actions, speech, or activities in any way would be a first amendment violation.
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UNLESS OF COURSE THERE'S AN ACTUAL FIRE!!!
Then you should yell rape.
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That example is endangering someone's life.
Life is one of those inalienable rights. In that case, life trumps speech.
Just because speech is not an absolute does not mean that copyright is one of the exceptions to it.
As other commenters have noted, copyright was originally much shorter. 14 years if the work was registered (with a possible 2nd 14 year term if the author was still alive). Comparing that to automatic life+70 years is absurd.
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If "it's always been that way" is your only defense for keeping a law on the books, you're in trouble.
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Your right to free speech doesn't including infringing on the rights of others.
Er, sorry, what does that have to do with wireless server hardware?
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The twisted logic.
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Re: They should all call themselves the Pirate Party
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Pump 19, Going Postal.
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Next we'll be shutting down all search engines because they might be used to search for links to sites that might be used for copyright infringement
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....Limewire...
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1) A skull and cross bones on its cover
2) A red LED, possibly blinking
3) Is full of wires and electronics
4) Has protruding antenna
$10 says the 1st person to carry this through an airport gets a free body cavity exam...
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Everyone gets one of those now - unless you are a senator.
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i flew home from defcon 16 with my badge: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=831&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&a mp;q=defcon+16+badge&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
plus my neighborcon badge (which looks like a box cutter):
http://www.radiantmachines.com/2009/07/neighborcon-2-badge/
and defcon 17:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=831&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&s a=1&q=defcon+17+badge&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
and defcon 18:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=831&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&s a=1&q=defcon+18+badge&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
and so far nothing.
i also routinely fly with a power squid and a 20' extension cord and haven't had an issue yet.
funny story, my last trip to defcon my wife forgot a small multi-tool in her carry on which was confiscated, while i, dressed all in black with my phreaknic "i watch you" t-shirt (http://www.cafepress.com.au/toddlyles/663254) and 20 feet of wire made it through the TSA just fine.
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the war on freedom
Which is precisely why our government can shape draconian copyright laws to fight freedom. Deep packet inspection, huge penalties for "infringement" that is likely fair use, and an MPAA run by a former legislator. Do the math: free speech is dying here, and fast.
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Freedom and "bad uses" go hand in hand. If we want to be free from censorship we must accept some people will use that freedom for purposes we might not approve of. That's the point of freedom of speech (and communication). I think the US's founding fathers saw that perfectly clear. Once the tools of censorship are in place, once it is accepted for some speech to be censored, those tools can be subverted for all kinds of different purposes - from protecting a corrupt government from dissension, to protecting economic interests (from things like copying and sharing content).
We must decide what's more important: protecting freedom or protecting certain jobs and business models.
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The 'Tea Party' was almost a real movement--and then it was quietly and efficiently co-opted, and now it's just another bullshit political party. In other words, it was neutered long before it had the chance to breed.
There will be no revolution in America until total spontaneous violent civil uprising breaks out--and I'd lay odds on that being 30 to 150 years away.
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Part of that is that fact that our government grows by inches here and there (boiling a frog, etc), unlike smash-and-grab dictators in other countries.
The US government is like mold; it's disgusting, it's all-consuming, and it inexorably spreads outwards . . . just very, very slowly.
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Media Moguls like to distort the law.
Let's conflate halting or rolling back of the constant distortion of our laws in favor of corporations to the detriment of individuals as some sort of "Mad Max" nightmare scenario.
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It's all in the name.
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Re: It's all in the name.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721744279/push-the-freedombox-foundation-from-0-to-6 0-in-30
I guess people care about freedom a lot, even if some may decry it as piracy...
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Thanks for the link!
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who hired you people
My question is who hired you, and how can i get this job? I want to comment against normal people for those corp giants and I want to get paid for it.
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Gov't will always be technologically behind because it is constantly stuck in a backwaards mindset. MI5 opposed the DEAct in the UK, because they anticipated the increase in encrypted traffic would make it far harder to distinguish 'petty criminals' from terrorists and other MI5 targets and more work would have to be done to crack more encrypted lines of communication.
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Same Tactics
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prirate +guns
guns don't kill people; it's the owners.
free speech is NOT IP violation.
clear on this now?
oh, and pot does NOT create heroin addicts.
packrat
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http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=554
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