Louis Menand lost it in the last two paragraphs of his article. It's not creators vs. consumers; it's OWNERS, as in the MAFIAA ownership industrial-congressional complex, vs. everyone else. And citing the Authors Guild as representing creators leads to a whole new discussion about the money and hidden influence in the copyright debate, starting with the "better safe than sorry" copyright license fees the Authors Guild feeds on.
The OWNERS are working hard at not only maximizing the value of the stuff they own, but also their ability to acquire everyone else's stuff, which includes freelancers of all stripes. Sadly, the vast majority of individual creators don't have any awareness of this; they and the groups they belong to have no idea just how much MAFIAA bull-shinola they've swallowed.
Since everything online is so vulnerable, I favor carrying lots of cash. Even if I'm robbed, I'm comforted by the thought that my money is going into my local economy, not Uzbekistan's.
If you're going to be a victim, you might as well be a loca-victim.
Voter apathy? Record lows in approval ratings? These are only symptoms. The disease is the government itself and its willingness to present everything as the Worst Ever in order to erode rights, expand power and appropriate public funding.
IMO voter apathy is the very root of the disease. Fume all you want about our elected nit wits, but all problems with government stem from a citizenry that allows power to accumulate. Whether the exact cause is indifference, apathy, general stupidity, or susceptibility to the propaganda of selfish interests, if lying liars are lying to us, it becomes a matter of what we're willing to put up with. Maybe we still have some helpful homeostatic mechanisms like vestiges of a free press and some small portions of existing law that aren't yet totally obsolete and dysfunctional, but I'm a bit pessimistic, and feel the disease has progressed to the point where the systems needed to stop the rot are shutting down.
If you scoff at the idea of voter apathy being the root of all our ills, let me respond by saying that the ballot box is all we've got. Maybe you've heard this before. It's all that stands in the way of all the possible horrors that history shows humans can inflict on one another. This fashionable cynicism that voting doesn't matter is a deadly cancer Americans have been talked into not taking seriously.
All you can do is educate yourself to the best of your ability and then vote, or you can also educate and persuade others to vote with you. But that's it; it's either that, or the ugliness of direct resistance and rebellion. There is of course a third option, to just live small and accept whatever crumbs fall from the tables of the powerful. Lots of that throughout human history.
When I think of attempts by courts to make sense of copyright, I'm always reminded of this skit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. -- Witches Float. --
I'd prefer to have a dog represent Scalia; I doubt any Muppet could drool as comically or reproduce Scalia's patented expression of self-satisfied approval after having just sniffed his own balls.
Introducing Sandra Aistars at these conferences as simply the "Executive Director of the Copyright Alliance" doesn't cut it. Her title should include considerably more pedigree. When you know her past, having Sandra Aistars speak about copyright is like having a BP exec talk about environmental safety.
Her Bio / Intro should be more along these lines:
Sandra Aistars, formerly a lawyer and registered lobbyist at Wiel, Gotshal & Manges, where she represented legacy IP interests; former Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Time Warner Inc.; cleared advisor to the USTR on ACTA, while Time Warner VP; currently reigning Executive Director of the Copyright Alliance, a tumor on the backside of the Nickles Group LLC, a lobbying firm serving COMCAST, Intellectual Ventures, Koch Industries, and various other fossil fuel industry clients.
Aside from the clueless, if you go down a few levels you find the willful propagandists, who know the fear they're selling to the merely brainless is utter crap. I had some such asshat from the Graphic Artists Guild try to convince me back in 2008, I think, that if a lousy orphan works bill most arts organizations were opposing didn't pass, the legislation would just be oh so much worse the next time around. Really? Soft resistance works better in D.C. than a firm "HELL NO!"??? The eye contact said it all; she knew, that I knew, that she was full of Shinola. Then later I discovered just how tight the Graphic Artists Guild was with the Copyright Alliance, how that same talking point was being used by others associated with the Alliance, how much money GAG had thrown into lobbying alongside the Alliance on that orphan works debacle, and my full-of-Shinola judgement was confirmed. Some people. To quote Robert Shaw's character in Jaws- "You look into those black eyes, those lifeless eyes, like a doll's eyes, . . " --
Naturally, the #2 option of using modern up-the-wazoo surveillance capabilities to gather evidence over time and then make an arrest at some no-fuss-no-muss time and place would be unthinkable. I guess no matter how easy it gets to hack into all the intimate details of a citizen's life, playing SWAT Team is always gonna be much more fun than playing Geek squad.
I put the uninformed righteous anger of creators in the same category as rage against ACA "Death Panels." It's a similar combination of irrational fear and misinformation that in no small part is artificially induced by some less-than savory commercial interests.
Google recently settled with ASMP, the Graphic Artists Guild and others in the lawsuit over images captured by Google's book scanning. Having met several of the plaintiffs in person, I can vouch that they are the same frothing-at-the-mouth types whose overblown sense of entitlement only serves to harm creators and assist the jerks at RIAA, MPAA, and the US Chamber of Commerce in distorting copyright law.
I particularly enjoyed the last two sentences of the Bloomberg piece:
IV is expected to unveil a number of new ventures in the coming weeks as proof that it’s expanding these parts of its business. If IV does become a startup factory, it’ll make it a bit tougher for the folks in Silicon Valley to loathe the company.
It made my day to read that pathetic plea, for all you investors to just wait a little longer in the pumpkin patch. The Great Pumpkin's coming; You'll see!
Don't forget the NSA is actively helping commercial interests. We have spies in cahoots with patent, copyright, and international trade lawyers; a perfect storm of unscrupulousness, if you ask me.
One of the perpetual cycles of history is people thinking they're not like those "other guys" who do / did bad things. I recall a passage in Band of Brothers (book) where the US paratroopers noted that of all the people around Europe they met during the war, the Germans seemed to be the most like Americans in how they organized their homes and daily lives.
So sure! Let's give all this power to some trusted fellow American, and have ourselves another spin on the merry-go-round. --
The History Channel's not-so historical programming actually stands as evidence pointing to the U.S.'s demise. But a show on how aliens crashed Wall St. might be fun. (I had nothing to do with that; I swear.)
Well, this discussion has run its course. B4RN is doing just fine (1)(2) so reality proves your theory on its business model to be utter nonsense. In addition, not only is B4RN a mostly ordinary community non-profit, it's just one of a multitude of local entities that have been setup within the BDUK program (3) according to its established standards and guidelines, in which community-based providers are an essential feature.(4)(5)
In light of this, your sales pitch using B4RN as an example of municipal broadband being something harmful or "unfair" becomes an amazing display of either complete ignorance or willful disregard for how the British system is organized.
Lobbyists and salespeople in general all seem to share the psychopathic quality of having little capacity to feel shame, embarrassment, or remorse, so I don't expect you'll care much about being so ridiculously wrong in public, or in having presented yourself as such a magnificent exhibit 'A' for showing what's wrong with the U.S. broadband industry. Here, telecoms use armies of lobbyists to sell the your same pitch, act through ALEC to kill municipal broadband, sue the FCC, and fight net neutrality in order to build out their monopoly powers. What are they doing in the UK? Treating next generation broadband as a vital utility and building it out to as many citizens as they can reach. -------
Whatever; you should quit while you're behind. The example of B4RN clearly demonstrates the limits of what can be delivered by private corporations pursuing profits, and where local communities and governments can step in to fill critical unmet needs. It shows how the British government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is putting in motion a robust, organized effort to bring next generation broadband to the majority of its citizens, something shamefully lacking in the U.S. It shows that good things happen when broadband is widely acknowledged to be a vital utility.
But OK, let's unpack some of your stuff just for laughs.
". . their business plan, . . something that is rarely workable."
There's nothing particularly unique about B4RN's plan, so you need to provide details to support that statement. Nonprofit development corporations come in all shapes and sizes; they do stuff ranging from infrastructure improvements, to building industrial parks and ball fields. In this instance, it's fiberoptic to homes. Government grants, tax breaks, providing services in leu of cash reimbursements, enlisting volunteers from the community, are all not new things.
". . what would be interesting is if land owners gave right of way for a larger, shared pipe to be installed for free so that all potential providers could use it."
Fascinating. But please show me where private corporations are doing this. Perhaps I've been misinformed, and Verizon, COMCAST, and other service providers are competing with one another by simply using the big pipes laid by whoever was first to a locality. If that's not happening, then it was a nice try at moving the goal posts for B4RN.
"The whole story points out why (in the UK at least) it's hard for commercial companies to make a true impact in getting higher speed internet into place."
A nonsensical statement, in light of what the BDUK is doing, how its partnerships with major telecoms are rapidly building out broadband. The story does point out that laying fiberoptic to rural communities faces all the usual problems related to distance and density. Since private corporations see no profit potential, and therefore have no plans to service B4RN's rural communities any time soon, there are no issues concerning competition; so I hope you didn't mean to suggest that B4RN is in any way preventing for-profit corporations from laying broadband in places they have no intention of servicing anyhow, because that would be kinda stupid.
"If muni broadband works only because major concessions are made, then it's perhaps time instead to look at fixing the problem, instead of creating an unfair competitive situation."
Concessions are not the only means by which munis can succeed, not by a long shot; but you are so right that there's a big problem fueling the appeal and financial viability of munis; namely the crappy service provided by the major U.S. telecoms. Yeah, we oughta fix that.
Thanks for the link, I found the B4RN / Broadband for Rural North Ltd. business plan very worth my time to read. It describes an effort being made to bring fiberoptic broadband to some of the most rural, hardest to wire residents in the UK. It also provides some background on the wider campaign of making next-generation broadband universal throughout the UK.
So actually, what this document screams very loudly is just how much of a contrast there is between what's happening in the UK, where they are in effect treating broadband as a utility, and the suckiness of broadband here in the US. Regarding B4RN's model of community-based non-profits having an unfair advantage in right-of-way access, that's a standard argument used by supporters of ALEC-sponsored state legislation to inhibit municipal broadband, and enshrine the profits of the major telecoms. As I'm not a believer in the holiness of the free market, might I suggest that if for-profit telecoms can't serve people better than municipalities, they should get the fuck out of the way.
But by all means, post more links to material like this; people around here might start to think you're a nice guy.
On the post: When Even The New Yorker Is Doing Long Features On The Ridiculous State Of Copyright Law...
Over the Cliff Like Wiley Coyote
The OWNERS are working hard at not only maximizing the value of the stuff they own, but also their ability to acquire everyone else's stuff, which includes freelancers of all stripes. Sadly, the vast majority of individual creators don't have any awareness of this; they and the groups they belong to have no idea just how much MAFIAA bull-shinola they've swallowed.
On the post: Payment Wars: How Merchants And Carriers Are Trying To Block Payment Systems They Can't Track
CASH IS KING
If you're going to be a victim, you might as well be a loca-victim.
--
On the post: Payment Wars: How Merchants And Carriers Are Trying To Block Payment Systems They Can't Track
Re:
LALALALALALALALALALAAA!!!!
On the post: America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies'
Re: Re: Re: America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies'
On the post: America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies'
Diagnosis
IMO voter apathy is the very root of the disease. Fume all you want about our elected nit wits, but all problems with government stem from a citizenry that allows power to accumulate. Whether the exact cause is indifference, apathy, general stupidity, or susceptibility to the propaganda of selfish interests, if lying liars are lying to us, it becomes a matter of what we're willing to put up with. Maybe we still have some helpful homeostatic mechanisms like vestiges of a free press and some small portions of existing law that aren't yet totally obsolete and dysfunctional, but I'm a bit pessimistic, and feel the disease has progressed to the point where the systems needed to stop the rot are shutting down.
If you scoff at the idea of voter apathy being the root of all our ills, let me respond by saying that the ballot box is all we've got. Maybe you've heard this before. It's all that stands in the way of all the possible horrors that history shows humans can inflict on one another. This fashionable cynicism that voting doesn't matter is a deadly cancer Americans have been talked into not taking seriously.
All you can do is educate yourself to the best of your ability and then vote, or you can also educate and persuade others to vote with you. But that's it; it's either that, or the ugliness of direct resistance and rebellion. There is of course a third option, to just live small and accept whatever crumbs fall from the tables of the powerful. Lots of that throughout human history.
On the post: Copyright Law Stifling Free Speech And Artistic Criticism
Law and Reason
--
Witches Float.
--
On the post: John Oliver Has The Solution To The Supreme Court's Refusal To Videotape Supreme Court Hearings: Dogs
Re: Should have just used Muppets
On the post: Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Insist 'Criminal Elements' Are A Part Of The Copyright Reform Effort [Updated]
Aistars' Intro
Her Bio / Intro should be more along these lines:
Sandra Aistars, formerly a lawyer and registered lobbyist at Wiel, Gotshal & Manges, where she represented legacy IP interests; former Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Time Warner Inc.; cleared advisor to the USTR on ACTA, while Time Warner VP; currently reigning Executive Director of the Copyright Alliance, a tumor on the backside of the Nickles Group LLC, a lobbying firm serving COMCAST, Intellectual Ventures, Koch Industries, and various other fossil fuel industry clients.
On the post: Photographer (And Founder Of Copyright Enforcement Service) Angry That Online Service Won't Simply Hand Over User Info When He Demands It
Re: Re: Clueless
--
On the post: SWAT Team Raids House And Kills Homeowner Because Criminal Who Burglarized The House Told Them To
Re:
On the post: Photographer (And Founder Of Copyright Enforcement Service) Angry That Online Service Won't Simply Hand Over User Info When He Demands It
Clueless
Google recently settled with ASMP, the Graphic Artists Guild and others in the lawsuit over images captured by Google's book scanning. Having met several of the plaintiffs in person, I can vouch that they are the same frothing-at-the-mouth types whose overblown sense of entitlement only serves to harm creators and assist the jerks at RIAA, MPAA, and the US Chamber of Commerce in distorting copyright law.
On the post: Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Claims Its Layoffs Are Because It's Invented A New Way To Buy Patents
Re: Re: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Everything is fine at ENRON,
WORLDCOM couldn't be peachier,
Lehman Brothers is doing great, . .
--
On the post: Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Claims Its Layoffs Are Because It's Invented A New Way To Buy Patents
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
It made my day to read that pathetic plea, for all you investors to just wait a little longer in the pumpkin patch. The Great Pumpkin's coming; You'll see!
On the post: Money And Power: The Real Reason For The NSA Spying On Everyone
Re:
On the post: Money And Power: The Real Reason For The NSA Spying On Everyone
Weeee, . .
So sure! Let's give all this power to some trusted fellow American, and have ourselves another spin on the merry-go-round.
--
On the post: Adam Carolla Settles With Podcasting Patent Troll: Even With A Strong Case And $500k In The Bank, It's Too Expensive To Fight
Re: Re:
On the post: NY Times Says FCC Should Reclassify Broadband Under Title II
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
In light of this, your sales pitch using B4RN as an example of municipal broadband being something harmful or "unfair" becomes an amazing display of either complete ignorance or willful disregard for how the British system is organized.
Lobbyists and salespeople in general all seem to share the psychopathic quality of having little capacity to feel shame, embarrassment, or remorse, so I don't expect you'll care much about being so ridiculously wrong in public, or in having presented yourself as such a magnificent exhibit 'A' for showing what's wrong with the U.S. broadband industry. Here, telecoms use armies of lobbyists to sell the your same pitch, act through ALEC to kill municipal broadband, sue the FCC, and fight net neutrality in order to build out their monopoly powers. What are they doing in the UK? Treating next generation broadband as a vital utility and building it out to as many citizens as they can reach.
-------
(1) Broadband for the Rural North website: b4rn.org.uk
(2) SuperfastLancashire.com (Broadband district in which B4RN resides)
(3) gov.uk website: Guidance-Broadband Delivery UK- Details of the plan to achieve a transformation in broadband in the UK by 2015.
(4) Factsheet-Organisational & Legal Structures
for setting up Community Broadband Organisations (PDF) Document from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
(5) Broadband Delivery Programme: Delivery Model (PDF) Document from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
---
On the post: NY Times Says FCC Should Reclassify Broadband Under Title II
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
But OK, let's unpack some of your stuff just for laughs.
". . their business plan, . . something that is rarely workable."
There's nothing particularly unique about B4RN's plan, so you need to provide details to support that statement. Nonprofit development corporations come in all shapes and sizes; they do stuff ranging from infrastructure improvements, to building industrial parks and ball fields. In this instance, it's fiberoptic to homes. Government grants, tax breaks, providing services in leu of cash reimbursements, enlisting volunteers from the community, are all not new things.
". . what would be interesting is if land owners gave right of way for a larger, shared pipe to be installed for free so that all potential providers could use it."
Fascinating. But please show me where private corporations are doing this. Perhaps I've been misinformed, and Verizon, COMCAST, and other service providers are competing with one another by simply using the big pipes laid by whoever was first to a locality. If that's not happening, then it was a nice try at moving the goal posts for B4RN.
"The whole story points out why (in the UK at least) it's hard for commercial companies to make a true impact in getting higher speed internet into place."
A nonsensical statement, in light of what the BDUK is doing, how its partnerships with major telecoms are rapidly building out broadband. The story does point out that laying fiberoptic to rural communities faces all the usual problems related to distance and density. Since private corporations see no profit potential, and therefore have no plans to service B4RN's rural communities any time soon, there are no issues concerning competition; so I hope you didn't mean to suggest that B4RN is in any way preventing for-profit corporations from laying broadband in places they have no intention of servicing anyhow, because that would be kinda stupid.
"If muni broadband works only because major concessions are made, then it's perhaps time instead to look at fixing the problem, instead of creating an unfair competitive situation."
Concessions are not the only means by which munis can succeed, not by a long shot; but you are so right that there's a big problem fueling the appeal and financial viability of munis; namely the crappy service provided by the major U.S. telecoms. Yeah, we oughta fix that.
---
On the post: NY Times Says FCC Should Reclassify Broadband Under Title II
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So actually, what this document screams very loudly is just how much of a contrast there is between what's happening in the UK, where they are in effect treating broadband as a utility, and the suckiness of broadband here in the US. Regarding B4RN's model of community-based non-profits having an unfair advantage in right-of-way access, that's a standard argument used by supporters of ALEC-sponsored state legislation to inhibit municipal broadband, and enshrine the profits of the major telecoms. As I'm not a believer in the holiness of the free market, might I suggest that if for-profit telecoms can't serve people better than municipalities, they should get the fuck out of the way.
But by all means, post more links to material like this; people around here might start to think you're a nice guy.
---
On the post: Data Analysis Of FCC Comments Reveals Almost No Anti-Net Neutrality Comments
Huh.
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