Can't Have Copyright Enforcement Without Destroying Privacy Protections
from the let's-face-facts dept
Last week, Tim Geigner wrote about the Spanish soccer league, La Liga, getting hit with a GDPR fine because its mobile software just happened to sneakily include a surreptitious surveillance feature, turning on users' microphones to try to capture who was watching/listening to unauthorized broadcasts of matches. I wanted to write a little more on this, inspired by a comment from Professor Annemarie Bridy, who pointed out that anti-piracy enforcement goes hand-in-hand with surveillance:
People underestimate the extent to which anti-piracy enforcement involves surveillance. https://t.co/uv9KRfYnnc
— Annemarie Bridy (@AnnemarieBridy) June 13, 2019
This is an important point that often gets overlooked. Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the original Pirate Party, has repeatedly explained why Pirate Parties often view copyright policy, encryption, and privacy as all parts of the same issue. Indeed, he's argued that copyright enforcement efforts, by definition, are anti-privacy efforts.
Enforcement of copyright is fundamentally, conceptually incompatible with privacy of correspondence. You can't have the sealed and private letter in existence at the same time as you enforce copyright, once communications have gone digital. This is the reason you see VPN companies and other privacy advocates fight copyright enforcement and copyright law: because society has to choose between privacy and copyright, and basic civil liberties are considered more important than one particular entertainment business model.
Of course, that's why it's so ridiculous that Hollywood and its various front groups are out front-and-center (and also, very much behind the scenes with their lobbyists whispering in policymakers' ears) bashing internet companies for not respecting users' privacy. You know, without a doubt, that if internet companies were truly pushing for stronger privacy and real end-to-end encryption for internet services that Hollywood and its friends would be first in line arguing that this would only be used for piracy and must be stopped.
Copyright and privacy can co-exist -- but aggressive copyright enforcement all too frequently relies on surveillance and invasive privacy-eradicating demands. At some point, people are going to need to decide if they really want privacy, it's going to mean that copyright enforcement will have to take a backseat.
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Filed Under: copyright, enforcement, privacy, surveillance
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Copytheft
Copyright steal your rights and hands them over to large corporations.
Seems pretty clear to me.
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Cory Doctorow has frequently noted that DRM is, by its nature, spyware, because it works by trying to determine how you're running a program, and whether you're running it in a prohibited way.
That's true of all DRM, even offline DRM. DRM with an online component is, of course, even more obviously a type of spyware.
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Copyright is this magical growing blob...
It gulped down the right to get paid well after the artist is dust, it gulped down the right to veto technology (something something Boston Strangler in every home!!), it gulped down the right to get a tax on things they imagine can be used for piracy, it gulped down the right to claim a song you wrote belongs to someone else, it gulped down the right to demand you give them 95% of your total profits...
For every gulp the "problem" remains the same, they can't seem to stop 'piracy' so they look for more things to gulp down to protect copyright & the rights of citizens mean nothing if they imagine it might cost them a dime in imagined income they are 'owed'.
We've sometimes dropped a little dry ice on the monster, showing that the world doesn't end if it doesn't get to grow. Now it wants the right to spy on everyone every waking moment just in case...
It's a pity that in gobbling up all of these things, they never gobbled up common sense or the idea that if you make the content easily available people will pay you.
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Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
why worry ONLY when the purpose is copyright? -- Because you hate copyright, period. Enabling piracy is always the key to any Techdirt piece on copyright.
But look at the recent biggie on "privacy":
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facebook-lawyer-no-expectation-of-privacy/
And this direct from the horse's ass says same thing only by lying too:
Did you note the escape clause Schmidt made? -- And in the rest of "things", go so far BEYOND as possible.
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Re: Copytheft
State which of your Rights have been handed over.
State what rights you have to/in someone else's work.
State ANY way in which you are harmed by someone else having an "intellectual property" Right. -- No, not getting their work for free isn't an actual harm.
I'll wait.
Copyright is stated to be an exclusive Right in the Constitution because the creations are due to specific source who's morally due the rewards for creating.
Copying is not a "natural" right because it cannot be done before someone else has created.
The body of "common law" -- as clearly defined in thousands of court decisions, for your view -- is that such work is to be protected from both individuals and large commercial thieves.
Of course that's not clear to pirates because you wish to STEAL the work-products.
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Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
What a fucking mess of text and badly placed markdown, etc. Maybe if you learned a little bit about how markdown worked, your post wouldn't look so fucking stupid.
I see a poorly formatted blob of text like yours and my first instinct is to hit the "report" button... so have a click on me, free of charge
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Re: Re: Copytheft
Ummmm... WRONG!!!! There are no moral rights in US copyright law.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
I have new for you, for most of human history copying was the what creators wanted, because it was the only way that their works would survive. Without copying we would not have most of the historic works that enrich society.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
You lose your right of ownership, right to privacy. As we've discussed many times (even in the article above.)
You give up the right of ownership on that nifty printer you use because it used copyrighted ink. And your neighbors John Deer Tractor can't be repaired, because it's a Federal Crime to tamper with the copyrighted software.
Common Law - the body of court decisions - for freakin everyone - supports the legality of copyright.
However did you ever notice that the concept of Copyright is embedded in the body of the constitution? Can you tell me what happens when a constitutional amendment is passed? It supersedes the previous? So the First Amendment abolishes copyright. (Just saying!)
Again - Copyright law gives your rights to Corporations.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Specifically:
What ownership have you lost?
What privacy? -- As the references below show, that's more or less inherently lost on teh internets. -- And I want to know EXACTLY where your "right to privacy" is stated.
There's no such thing.
It's "Deere", and of course it can be repaired. You're complaining only about "sharp" business practice that limits repair parts, for which are good sound reasons: John Deere can't be expected to honor warranty when some hick tries to "soup up" his tractor by changing values in the software.
Now, you tried putting up a lot of text without actually answering my questions in bold. Try again.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Copyright is granted by the Feds. You love the Feds having authority over you, right?
Yawn Not going to pick at your nonsense phrases in bold, thanks.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
In most of human history life was "savage, brutal, and short". I don't want you cavemen hitting people over the head to steal all they have. We live in such a wonderful age because people began to respect The Law which is for the common good.
And all you have to do now to enjoy luxury and entertainments is pay a bit of easily gained money to those who create.
But instead you act like savages and STEAL their work.
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A quick search of TD articles shows this to be laughably false. But keep lying, you only hurt yourself.
See above response.
That literally means nothing and also doesn't mean he's right. That's like saying "it's only cheating if you get caught". Everyone has a certain amount of right to privacy no matter where they are or what they are doing. Now in some cases you may forfeit specific areas of that right by choosing to go out and do things in public, but that doesn't mean you don't have ANY right to privacy in those situations. And in the case of Facebook, users expect Facebook to guard their data, they share it with Facebook, they don't expect Facebook to sell it to anyone who comes asking. And Facebook more or less states that they won't. The fact that they did is why people are upset.
Where is the lie? I'm not seeing it. Also, what does this have to do with anything?
Words. In. People's. Mouths. You've never said you don't have intimate relations with goats so I'm going to assume you do. No different than what you are implying here.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Right. And I didn't state there were specific "moral rights" in US law (as in European), that's just a red herring you fling in to stink up the thread.
The Constitution guarantees "EXCLUSIVE RIGHT" to control copies. Period.
Now, NO, it doesn't guarantee income, but an EXCLUSIVE on trying to gain it, YES.
And NO, the system isn't perfect. It won't stop thieves, but if caught, fines / jail is punishment that civilized folk will inflict on those who can't follow the simple rule that IT'S NOT YOURS.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
Well, in the absence of Copyright, once a work is disclosed, ordinary 1st amendment rights would apply, permitting copying and distribution without restriction. By providing exclusivity to one person, you inherently restrict the rights of others.
Under existing copyright law, I still have fair use rights. Fair use states that I have the right to utilize works otherwise under copyright for the purposes of education, commentary and/or criticism, and parody, among others. The DMCA and modern copyright rhetoric ignore these rights. This is on top of the fact that copyright, as authorized in the Constitution, is a trade off, by which a creator publicly discloses their work in exchange for a series of statutorily established, time-limited exclusive rights. I therefore have a right to the access to that material after that time expires, a right abridged by copyright extensions.
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The right of free expression can be superseded by copyright (primarily though the DMCA). Whether your expression uses part of a copyrighted work under the principles of Fair Use doesn’t matter.
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DRM (initialism for “Digital Rights Management”) — noun — closed-source black box code that acts as the digital equivalent of an ankle bracelet tracking device for paying customers that does nothing to prevent copyright infringement carried out by non-paying customers; a stupid fucking idea
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
False. The Federal Gov't didn't even exist when the Copyright Clause was written. It's an individual Right that the Gov't is to try and protect from thieves, which is simply the practical WAY to promote Arts and Sciences.
I do meaning when protect my life, work, freedoms, and property from thieves of all kinds.
Fine. They stand as true, and regardless whether do.
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People enjoy entertainments all the time without having to pay money. They borrow books and movies from friends, for example. Where do you draw the line between “legal” and “illegal” in that regard?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
The only savage here is you, who attacks everyone who does not agree with you, and supports lawyers running extortion schemes.
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Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
You try to drag in complexities just to muddy the thread.. "Superseded" is not "handed over" which was the phrase "Gary" made, not me. -- In any case, you're not entirely "free" to use someone else's work. Just because a work is published doesn't mean it's then FREE as in beer.
Fair Use is not a right, it's a defense AFTER you've used someone else's work.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
The original copyright law of the US wasn't bad at all. It's just that it is now. Sorry, but libraries and people lending each other stuff far, far predate copyright enforcement regimes of today.
Is mass infringement of readily-available works ethical or fair? No. But that hardly means that you get to examine everyone's personal life to maybe find a possible infringer somewhere.
Never mind the fact that infringement rather tends to be a huge avenue for actual sales - sales which never would have occurred if people were not exposed to works via infringement. So the "loss" factor isn't an argument.
Now, copyright extends to a lot more than some creative person's works. It extends to stuff (like code) arbitrarily shoved into unnecessary places so that no one may improve or fix items they bought with their own hard-earned cash. (Even while some of these things invade privacy and create wombo attack surfaces and wave them around in the ether.)
Copyright in the Constitution was far more limited in a time period where one could not possibly hope to reach as many buyers in a lifetime (let alone the copyright period) as creators or the corporations they sold out to can reach in a single day today. The longer copyright does nothing to promote the exchange of ideas or information, and the enforcement schemes allowed, as well as the illicit ones, today, do nothing to fulfill the contract in the Constitution. In fact, they are in direct opposition, keeping works locked away from the public domain for ridiculous periods.
Copyright maximalists are beyond disingenuous in appealing to the Constitution. They at least should appeal to the corporate-sponsored laws which come closer to what they claim the law says, and be honest about it.
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FYI: The Copyright Clause gives the federal government the right to establish and enforce copyright. For copyright to exist, the government had to establish it first. Ergo, copyright is a government-granted right.
Also: For someone who rants and raves about corporations not having rights, you sure don’t seem too upset when corporations enforce copyright.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Fine. We agree that you look to the Federal Government to take away your rights, and enjoy that Corporations can steal your right to free speech.
I can live with that.
Free speech - that is a "Right" in your "unwritten laws" isn't it?
Careful how you toss around the stealing accusation. If I copy a song, I've made more! (Not theft.) When Corporations take your right of speech, you've lost it and that is actual theft.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
The copyright clause is part of the document that forms the government. It only has power insomuch as there exists a federal government to enforce it, and only with the consent of all 3 branches of federal government. You only have protection for copyright because of the laws passed by congress (legislative), You can't get relief from infringement without a grant of copyright from the copyright office (Executive), and require the power of the judiciary to enforce your copyright.
Copyright is not granted by the constitution, it is authorized by the constitution, but granted by the government, by statute enacted by the government. if the copyright act were repealed, copyright would not exist in the US.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
The Constitution guarantees "EXCLUSIVE RIGHT" to control copies. Period.
You might want to give back your constitutional law degree.
The Constitution makes no such guarantee. It solely gives Congress the right to grant such exclusive rights for a limited time IF (and only if) those monopolies "promote the progress of science" (by which they meant "learning").
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The Constitution does no such thing. Here is the text of the copyright clause:
The clause does not enact copyright law. It gives Congress the power to enact (and therefore change or repeal) copyright laws.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
You can contradict and divert endlessly, "Timmy", clearly just dodge. You CANNOT answer specifics, meaning you've no basis in Law.
Now, AGAIN, that browser session which made several posts quit working, so I conclude, reasonably, that Techdirt poisoned it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
SO? All your truisms add up to an individual Right that the gov't is to enforce. As I state. So thanks for confirming? Or do you intend that to contradict?
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Or maybe your browser sucks. Have you tried upgrading from IE6?
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Re: "Stone", answer the actual question, not divert.
You can all dodge and divert and endlessly contradict, you are EXPERTS at that, but won't answer what I asked.
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Correction: They add up to an individual right that the government can choose to enforce. The copyright clause gives Congress the right to enact copyright laws. It doesn’t say Congress must do so.
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You asked which rights are handed over to copyright. I answered. That you don’t like the answer doesn’t make it any less of one.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
We don't live in that time. Copyrighted products are FAR more valuable, you're right, therefore need FAR more protection, especially since gadgets make THEFTS easier than ever.
Thanks for your support!
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Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
lol we know what they say about privacy, and have done, for years. are you insinuating that everyone uses fb or google? just whatevs so you have an "argument", yeah?
i don't think everyone hates the entire idea of copyright, but you and your idols, keep it up, and no one will give a damn about nuances, just like you clowns.
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Re: Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
Thanks!
And even more thanks for sheerly diverting based on your esthetic notions, showing that you've no substance.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
meaning you've no basis in Law
As pointed out by like 5 different people just now, your law arguments are nonsense so I really can't answer them.
Copyright is a power of the government to restrict your speech to the benefit of corporations. Accepting copyright means accepting that corporations have authority over you. Enjoy your submission.
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Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
Don't SEE the lie? You blockquoted my clarification!
By stating "policy about a lot of things" Schmidt appears to be specific, but in fact opens up a whole areas about which he doesn't state that Google does not go too far. It's a semantic TRICK much favored by the dishonest -- and works on the unwary, evidently YOU.
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Quick question, champ: When a corporation DMCAs a video off the Internet, how is that not corporate censorship?
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Re:
That you don’t like the answer doesn’t make it any less of one, NOR does dodging give you any substance.
You (all) are down to simply diverting and ad hom attacks. Big deal. Any ankle-biter can do better, yapping its fool head and pretending it COULD bite, but just drools on your shoes. It's funny. -- So, thanks for the hoots, "Stone"!
I'm out, no further point. "Hide" and ad hom all you want.
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Then why is everyone still running rhetorical rings around you, Blue? 😁
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
You claimed the power isn't granted by the government, because the copyright clause comes from the document that forms the government.
My point was that without all parts of the government working in concert, copyright doesn't exist. The copyright clause doesn't grant copyright. It grants the authority to establish the laws governing copyright to congress. Copyright is a grant from the government.
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Re:
Then why is everyone still running rhetorical rings around you, Blue?
I believe the answer to that is he really doesn't understand the arguments he is making. He runs over to Reason or InfoWars, sees something that looks neat like "Cabbage Law" or "A1 Racist" and runs back over here to make a half assed declaration.
Like when Burkhardt above pointed out that everything he just said was wrong and he declares All your truisms add up to an individual Right that the gov't is to enforce. Or how he looks askance at the actual dictionary definition of Common Law as wrong somehow.
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No no, he understands his arguments.
The problem, then, is that his logic is understandable only to him.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
I agree, but only to the extent that there is not really an ethical aspect to copyright at all. If there is one though, surely it’s more ethical to freely share works meant for some degree of public consumption than it is to prevent it so as to make money. (Works not intended for the public shouldn’t be copyrightable at all; they don’t merit it)
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GDPR vs. Article 17
This is likely to be a key point from Poland and other countries before the EUCJ: Enforcement Provisions in Article 13/17 conflict with privacy and consent requirements in the GDPR.
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Filters
Hey if all your email and posts have to be scanned before they are allowed, that seems like a pretty big assault on your right to privacy.
But if Copyright means the right of corporations to do that, then I'm sure it was what the founders hand in mind, right? /s
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
"(Works not intended for the public shouldn’t be copyrightable at all; they don’t merit it)"
Maybe that should be not for sale.
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Re: Re: Privacy? What privacy? -- And since you have none now,
You mean the "escape clause" you invented that he didn't actually say? That? Yeah, your clarification is pathetic and not viable evidence of a lie. Not saying something doesn't mean you are lying. In order to lie you have to say something. What he DID say was not, as far as I am aware, a lie.
No, "a lot of things" is in no way being specific. He is intentionally generalizing likely because A) he doesn't know what all the policies are off the top of his head, and B) they would be there for days if he did actually try to list them all. There are a lot of times where I say stuff about a lot of things because to actually be specific would take too long and would be unnecessary to my point I am trying to convey.
This is the definition of projection and seeing conspiracies under every rock and bush. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that he was dissembling to keep from stating all the areas where Google goes too far.
Pfft. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! That is rich coming from you considering you employ it in EVERY FRICKING COMMENT you post. You know what else is a semantic trick much favored by the dishonest? Putting words in people's mouths, twisting what they said into something they didn't say, and last but NOT least, claiming that because they didn't say something, that's proof of something that they didn't say.
ROFL!!! Show me the evidence then of him admitting to DELIBERATELY dissembling. I'll wait.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
That's... optimistic. The wording takes the promotion of progress as a given, and I don't recall any court saying Congress had to review things to make sure it's actually happening.
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Re:
"Privilege", not right. Rights belong to people.
Again, not a right.
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Re: Re:
Copyright isn't a right? I think you might want to re-think that claim.
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Re:
Besides word games you are both saying the same thing.
Anything that gives any power to Congress about anything will be abused to the betterment of the elitists who run the country.
(Recall that 9 of 9 US Supreme Court Judges went to Harvard or Yale.)
Elitist for elitist, common folks be damn, with copyright law being just more of the same crap.
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But GDPR is horrible, right Mike?
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Re: Better luck next time bro
You almost had a point.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
If you have an out of warranty Deere that has a broken engine which you swap out for a used but working one, it will not start unless you have a Deere-technician authorize the software to recognize the engine.
So, you can repair it but you can't use it afterwards unless Deere gives their blessing. In other words, Deere has through copyright a de-facto monopoly on repairs - even on machines out of warranty, which is why many farmers use pirated versions of software so they can actually repair their machines themselves.
Further, the hick is you because you have no clue what's going on. Most farmers has no inclination to "soup up" their machines. They are far more interested in getting the most out of a very expensive piece of machinery, because the margin for the average farmer is extremely slim even with the staggering amount of money poured into farming subsidies.
Anyone thinking this is sharp business practice has no morals and no forward thinking, because when a company gets the reputation of being money-grubbing assholes potential customers will go to the competing brand that's not money-grubbing assholes to the same degree.
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Copyright vs Privacy
And you thought Endgame was the battle of the century. Grab the popcorn.
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Re:
But GDPR is horrible, right Mike?
Yes, because it doesn't do much to actually protect privacy, but does a lot to guarantee dominant platforms.
Your point?
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This was pretty much the endgoal from Day 1. There hasn't been a single fucking copyright case that didn't boil down to "our shitty IP address generator made this number, PLEASE let us nuke this grandmother from orbit or shake her down for several thousand dollars, but if you question us and our evidence we'll run like hell". Which is why the RIAA, Richard Bennett, out_of_the_blue and John Smith are so obsessed with encryption weakening.
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Re:
Copyright is this magical growing blob
I misread that as Copyright is this magical blow job
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
No, I mean works that are not intended for publication, public performance or public display.
Someone’s private journal doesn’t merit copyright because the incentive of copyright still won’t get it published, and copyright is meant, in part to increase the number of works created and published. But a publicly displayed painting that isn’t for sale would be fine.
Of course I would also suggest imposing some limits on what copyright prohibits as well.
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Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Now, copyright extends to a lot more than some creative person's works. It extends to stuff (like code) arbitrarily shoved into unnecessary places so that no one may improve or fix items they bought with their own hard-earned cash. (Even while some of these things invade privacy and create wombo attack surfaces and wave them around in the ether.)I'm a software engineer and I keep finding myself going back to the question of whether code has any reason to be considered art or science and therefore be copyrightable. I want to jump past Google v Oracle and talk about code in general.
What is code/programming... it is a bunch of instructions for a computation machine to get it to do some specific behavior. You can choose your language, you can choose your variable names, but the concepts all overlap and if you are writing intelligent code, your variables and method names are going to be formed by the context of the behavior and be very similar (if not the same) to any others writing code for similar behaviors. We have an entire programming lingo based around these commonalities... and it'd be difficult to have an industry if we didn't.
Where's the art? If your code contains Zaphod_Beeblebrox or the Heart_of_Gold, then you better be rewriting the Hitchhiker's text game or your code is going to be terrible and a real pain for the guy replacing you to piece together. There really isn't much art in the code side. People sometimes build really complicated algorithms when something simpler would do the trick, but does Rube-Goldberg-ing something make it that much more art?
And as for the science and learning... programmers can learn from looking at other programmers code (just like chefs can learn by looking at other people's recipes), but that's not the purpose of it. It was written to do a job and cause an action or inaction. The code Donald Knuth wrote for The Art of Computer Programming is different than production code in that it was written to teach, where as mine is written to get a job done.
So why do programs get copyright other than corporations want another way to make sure they get paid? I'm not sure it does anymore.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Those owning the copyright for the contents of Anne Frank's "edited" diary beg to differ. /s
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Re:
But it IS common sense for everyone in the industry.
It is just that their common sense clashes with good sense.
Note: common sense is often mistaken for good sense yet a majority of the time they are completely separate entities.
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You Can't Have Copyright Protection (fixed that for you)
You can't. They've never successfully stopped copyright piracy. Ever. And they won't. Because society attacks the folks that can defeat the piracy. Johnny Football gets to be a senator and have an easy life. Not Irwin ComputerClass. So the smartest of us are under no motivation to pay for things the privileged classes have to pay for. Let them pay for seasons of shows with the Apple TV they all own. I know about USENET. USENET can't be stopped. So I win.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
Sorry, I couldn't get passed you ignoring both basic sense and what the law says when you incorrectly used the word "steal". There is also of course your laughable remaking of history into the exact opposite of what actually got us where we are today.
Copyright is an infringement upon the natural right and power of everyone to create whatever the crap they want using their own time and materials. It has absolutely zero to do with protecting anyone's property because it's not dealing with property. Copyright doesn't say I can't take something that belongs to you. It says I can't create the EXACT SAME THING YOU DID. It's a selfish, greedy and prideful idea that has held society back more than any other idea I can think of right now. Preventing others from building on the ideas of those who came before them is the very definition of preventing progress.
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Re: Re: Re:
Putting "right" into the name of something does not make it an actual right. Copyright is neither natural nor a right, even under the law.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
Oh dear. Here we go again. Might have known this item would spark you-know-who off with his/her/its brainless ramblings.
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Weren't you leaving and never coming back? How many times does that make that you have come back now?
Well this is true since copyright piracy is not a thing.
No, it's because there will always be someone out there who will find a way to get around the protections and steal something. Why haven't we completely stopped physical theft? Or murder? Pretty sure society doesn't attack the folks that can stop murder, that don't actually exist.
Let me make sure I've got this straight, what you're saying is that everyone who has something is dumb, stupid, and privileged, while the truly smart, kind, hard working people can't figure out how to get ahead in life? Tell that to every under-privileged person who worked hard and got ahead in life.
Goody for you? So do I.
That has to be the dumbest statement ever. USENET is really no different from the world wide web. In fact USENET runs on top of the internet so really, if you stop the internet, you stop USENET. Which would admittedly be extremely hard to do but it would be EXTREMELY easy to disrupt specific nodes and groups. Happens all the time with a fiber cut or DDoS.
The only thing you win is possibly an award for blatant stupidity.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copytheft
As a software engineer, you probably couldn't understand where the art in code lies, but a structural engineer might find it difficult to appreciate an architect's job as well. You may have never felt the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, but there is art, and it comes from creativity to create different works that change our prejudices about subjects (for the good, enlightenment; or bad, propaganda).
Now, I agree that copyright shouldn't by-default apply to code, but I also think it shouldn't by-default apply to any work. Instead, keep the spirit of the idea, and make one register for it--perhaps even paying a tax for it--and then only be able to keep it for 20 years. In the case of software specifically (or any written logic program) the technology churns so much faster, so only 1-2 years I would feel appropriate.
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Yes, badly written laws are bad even if they serve a noble purpose. See also: the horrific crap you support here, not realising that you demand your rights to be stripped to protect some corporation's profits.
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Re: Re: Copytheft
State which of your Rights have been handed over.
Right to repair
Right to sing
Right to play radio to my horse
Happy Birthday to you
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