If you'd go back and read the article again about the life expectancy of a floppy disk and the lengths gone to by the likes of Lotus and others to make sure you couldn't make an archival backups perhaps you'd understand.
While, personally I'm more interested in the data the games and programming techniques of 30 years ago are interesting in their own right as are what they accomplished and set in motion.
Personally I don't give a damn about copyright. If I can find a way to read a floppy from the CP/M days or earlier and bitwise copy it to a directory on a CD or DVD I'm gonna do it just to archive it. If you're of a mind sue me. Ought to be fun standing up in court defending archival non commercial copies against an IP purist.
Please remind me of the last time The Beach Boys made or created any art, original or otherwise.
A few nice bouncy tunes before they decided to be the California Beatles and the drugs dragged them into a pit. (All of which happened before they learned to play a note on their "instruments".)
So a visual artist decides to make a series of paintings inspired by the release, finally, of Pet Sounds and Parks decides to land on him with a truckload of lawyers.
There's something just a bit wrong with this. There's a difference between being celebrated and being ripped off. Parks can't see that difference.
Ya know something. I'm not one little bit surprised.
The reality is that she was acting as a diplomat, the Ambassador of her country which had already decided to back ACTA. It's not an ambassador's job to make policy much less defy it.
What is so unusual is that she admits she signed it, as did so many others, on the instructions of her government without understanding what it contained. Or the ramifications of it. In that, I'm sure she's not the only Ambassador who did that. She seems to he the only one who has "manned up" and admitted it.
As with so much surrounding SOPA/PIPA what you're seeing here is a glimpse into a world we "mere citizens" rarely see which is how high level diplomacy works and the secrecy in which virtually all of it takes place.
Even in trade agreements which ACTA pretends to be.
These things are a danger to the most creative, productive and profitable thing humans have ever devised. The Internet. I'd have to check it again, but if memory serves while discussing the coming Facebook IPO one economist observed that the Internet was responsible for some $17 trillion in profits in 2011 along with the escalator for the sales that generated that profit. (He also noted, if memory serves again, that less that 5% of all of that had anything to do with what ACTA is supposed to stop and won't.)
She's not passing the buck. She's telling the truth. Had she refused to sign it Solvenia would have recalled her and sent a diplomat over who would sign it. That's how diplomacy works at that level.
Almost makes you feel as dirty as watching legislators past and present hang out the "For Sale" sign to interest groups with tons of money. Doesn't it?
Just how many people, in all honesty, do you think are watching the streamed "version" of the super bowl" rather than on NBC or whatever broadcaster is licensed to broadcast the game in countries outside the United States?
My bet is it's well below 1% or even a fraction of 1%.
So it's well beyond probable that the ad purchasers and networks got their monies worth, as will/did NBC.
The problem, as Mike has written, isn't so much that these sites may have been involved in something illegal as what happens later where due process of law is tossed out of the window.
In this case, as well, the concern that ICE is acting as a one department enforcement arm of the entertainment industry.
Never fear, the Super Bowl will be watched by billions, the ads will get to their audience and everyone will be happy. Including those few who will watch it streamed, as it will be.
There as no fear, uncertainty or doubt about what the article laid out as the permissions for discussing a motion picture protected by those terms and conditions (see below) with exactitude and precision.
One cannot be in doubt of the outcome should one in any way infringe on the copyright and it's attending terms and conditions in any way at all with the possible case of the final check box which appears to be an amalgam of French or Spanish or some dead language. However you are not excused in case you do not understand as ignorance of the law, whoops, terms and conditions is no excuse.
We do however wish to add that the nature of the warning about sexual fantasies omitted that any X or XXX rated fantasies become the property of these film makers complete with cast members listed so that we may produce that movies for our own enjoyment and profit.
Consider yourself warned.
We will not tolerate any infringement of our copyright or our terms and conditions and failure to do so will be harmful or perhaps fatal to certain areas of you gray matter.
There does come a time when ideas that may have worked in the past just don't anymore. This is a perfect example of one.
Throw your mind back to the nacient British Empire, you know, the one the sun never set on. Mostly it was built for trade and trading. The British and the Dutch hit on this idea that perhaps setting up monopoloy trading companies would, somehow, assist trade so firms such as the British East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company appeared mostly in competition with each other. Not at all in the territories the British, Dutch, French or whoever controlled or ruled but a sort of national competition. A rush to market to see who got the first tulips into Europe. And the cause of one of the first stock market bubbles.
Then Britian started to industrialize. Suddenly these companies seemed less and less useful. So that while Silk from the orient was nice, beaver pelts from Canada were always good (the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company) the entire idea of mercantilism as an economic good rapidly declined despite the best efforts of the mercantile companies to avoid that.
Oh, and there was this small issue of a rebellion in 13 colonies on the east coast of America who seemed to want to become industrial rather than stay attached to mercantilsim that was successful too.
Industrialization brought with it what we call capitalism and free enterprise which the British and Americans promptly decided meant the trade had to be free as well. Beaver pelts, silk and tulips weren't what people wanted any more. Raw materials, wood, coal, grains and a host of other commodities were far more important that the stuff the great Mercantile companies traded in and had monopolies over.
Along with industrialization came concepts such as copyright and patents, It only made sense, at the time, that there should be some pay for the people who came up with knew ideas, knowledge and such have a short period to make a few bucks on, after all.
Fast forward to today. Copyirght and patents have served a useful purpose over the years. Authors and inventors have become extremely wealthy as well as folk heros. (To the point where most people forget that Edison bullied his way into most of his patents and is suspected of simply stealing the rest of them. Hey, it worked, right?)
Now we're at the point where the original purpose of both copyright and patent are becoming lost in this recent development called "intellectual property". So the best way to "moneitize" your property is protect it forever.
In that sense the 3D printer is a warning about what can happen when the notion that ideas are property runs amock takes too deep a hold.
Charging too much rent to used a patent seems to me to slow wide spead adoption of the patent and what it contains. Whereas a lesser fee/rent may get more product out there faster meaning the smaller rend actually makes the patent holder more in the long run.
But no, in our spreadsheet dominated world, the returns have to come early and this means high rents.changes. Perhaps, ovr time to make more later because the dream is to keep the rent the same once the 3D printer market takes off.
In the meantime a development may be held up for years because of the cost of the rent on the patent. Either until it ends it's protected life (never if the SOPA/PIPA crowd had gotten their way) or until someone cleanrooms a way around it.
From what I've seen the uses of 3D printing are huge ranging from design or proof of concept in three dimensions to a different way of producing art.
Which brings me to this. As Mercantilism had the danger of slowing or halting the move to industrialism so, now, copyright and patents -- seen as property -- may slow the development of what's coming next. By weeks, months or years.
That being the case, they've lost the valuse and purpose they once had. In both cases, advancing the state of the art. As they're being postitioned to do just that, then then, I'm afraid, it's time for both concepts to join many others in history's dustbin when their time had past.
To paraphrase the bible money isnt the root of all evil; the love of money is. Copyright and patent purisists (as well as trolls) fall into the latter camp.
Actually, it's very germane to the conversation and not the first time the notion that data, be it books or music could be locked up behind some long forgotten file format either.
Before we hold the wake for the printed book let's remember that for most of us books are almost as temporary as iPods. Your great aunt gives you a paperback for Christmas. Maybe you read it, more likely you don't. It may get stuffed up on a bookshelf somewhere and then promptly forgotten.
I know many people, myself included, who still have the expensive books I bought for courses at college littering the bookshelf landscape. I might have read a tenth of them for classes the rest, it always struck me, were things the prof had us buy so we or he could look important.
I go back to very few of them. But there they sit, taking up space like some sort of icon which no one pays attention to anymore or believes in much. Books, have the added advantage of being fuel should the house ever catch fire!
Quite frankly going through my parent's and grandparent's attic was more a chore than a journey of discovery. Looking at papers I could hardly read, books I'd never heard of and never want to hear of again (see "penny dreadfuls") some photos of people I never met or knew of often in stiff, formal positions with smiles or glares pasted on their faces.
Some pictures from World War One and World War Two but nothing that hadn't been photographed to death and then some.
My folks stored old coffee table books in the attic. I have no idea whether it was the coffee stains or high quality bond that attracted at least two families of squirrels to rip them apart of make nests out of.
A book or record collection can, of course, be the journey of a person's life. What they liked, how their tastes changed and their political journeys. But unless you knew that person completely meaningless.
Oh yes, and the two or three generations of report cards no one ever wanted to see again.
What is important about a life if obvious, or ought to be, and none of it is the brick-a-brack we all collect through life. IBM punch cards, 5 1/4" disks which long lost their data, the PCJr stuffed in a corner which made another home for the attic squirrels.
Authors still labour over their works. Getting the right word here, the right phrase there and the odd swear word. Whether or not the publication medium is print, an ebook or an illuminated manuscript some monk spent half his life working on. None of that will change.
When the typewriter came along there was much worry that books and stories would lose "something" because the writer wasn't scratching away long hand on cheap paper. I'd argue that never happened.
And I bet when funny figures on papyrus started to get churned out by those Egyptian types the people of Mesopotamian shook their heads darkly and said that would never last. Cuneiform on clay tablets was the ONLY way to go! It had a different feel, It had weight and the small danger you'd drop it and shatter it into a billion pieces.
The printing press itself caused worry. Would people work as hard on their books then they could be duplicated in their thousands? Just write for the masses not the aristocracy. All the masses wanted was sex, drugs and rock'n'roll anyway.
The world we know is coming to an end and this MUST, somehow be stopped!!! Burn the ebooks! All this is too important! What will I find in Granny's attic after she dies?
Probably much the same. Some pictures of her as a pretty young woman, perhaps a love email or two she printed off for some reason, your parent's report cards and perhaps your own. That damned PCJr is still in the same corner because no one wants to expend the energy to even throw it out. A printed book or two. Ebooks that haven't seen a new battery in decades. A collection of favourite recipes. Boxes of Christmas ornaments,mostly broken. Perhaps a two century old Christmas Cake so filled with rum that there's no green stuff growing out of it.
And, oh my god, who'd have ever thought that bent over, granny who never, ever smiled that you can remember was all that beautiful and had such a wonderful smile and mane of light brown hair!
One world comes to an end, a new one begins.
Funny how granny's attic still has all the same stuff in it, Isn't it?
Regardless of the distasteful stuff in ACTA (and TPP) the biggest problem with them both has been the secrecy surrounding them. And once it all starts to leak out, it looks bad though not all that much different than the US DCMA. (And believe me, that one is bad enough.) TPP will seek to do similar things all in the name of protecting copyright and to save people from dubious claims of counterfeit goods. No one has died from a conterfeit handbag, some have from fake drugs but no one has been killed by copyright infringement.
Notably, as Ars hints, ACTA, and TPP, are attempts to impose western based intellectual property values on countries that dont' share them. The Third World and, perhaps more important, the BRIC countries. Far be it from me to suggest imperialism but.....
The other side of that equation is that when laws are passed that the general population neither respects nor follows results in "experiments" such as the prohibition of alcohol in the Anted States in the 1920s and the continued prohibition of what are called recreational drugs to this day.
Probably government's greatest gift to organized crime in the history of civilization.
Try going back a century or so. The entertainment industry had a major hissy fit over player piano rolls in the pre WW1 era before such things became butts of jokes. None of this is new behaviour. The MO of this industry is to panic first and think about them a decade or two later.
Actually expect us makes it more appropriate as with any other spoiled child if they don't get it the first through one millionth time of demanding it they'll come back for try one million and one!
For such a deep and dispassionate analysis of what's going on with such secret deals as TPP which, like ACTA, promise not only to change our view of common culture but lock items into copyright and patent law which have no business being there.
Too often politicians play off their party allegiances and lose the audience and electorate along the way. This post avoids all that and goes straight to the dangers of over emphasizing "intellectual property" over culture and the growth of cultures.
What affects the citizenry must be discussed in the open with all the players known. And what attempts to put barriers up in front of knowledge or so called content as well as invention.
The other thing Senator Wyden does well is identify the problem(s). Until we can do that, there is nothing much we can do to prevent the feared/expected outcome.
And remind us that what we did around SOPA/PIPA did prove the power of an organized and committed citizenry to stop even the best paying lobbyists from getting what they want no matter how damaging it would be to an economy, culture or freedoms and liberties.
At least with Senator Wyden helping identify the issues and problems the citizenry won the day.
That's the part the entertainment industry just doesn't get. It wasn't Google, it was the citizenry.
The point being missed here is that Hollywood IS the parasite here on the Web.
The point being missed here by various AC's is that the Web gives people the tools to create its own content just as the Internet did before the Web existed.
Sure, some, perhaps even most, of the tools are still new and crude but that's a situation that won't last long. Already publishing to the Web has moved to and beyond the level of print.
Music tools have improved immensely the past three or four years to such an extent that someone with a mid-range desktop, some inexpensive tools and know how can set up a decent studio which is partly an explanation of the explosion of independent music the past half decade or so.
Non linear editors, video cameras and the spread of knowledge about how to do it has made independent film making more available and affordable to "the masses" far beyond the realm of LOL cats. (Nothing wrong with LOL cats though.)
This is what Hollywood doesn't understand. Or won't understand. The Web is about creation as much or more than it is about consumption of content.
Which explains, to a large extent, the "so what" attitude of Hollywood's "we provide the high quality content" attitude when the Web just as capable, or soon will be, without the "ownership" attitude and desire to build walled gardens, release schedules, geographic restrictions and on and on as Hollywood traditionally has.
And it's the Web that went dark. Not Google. The Web.
SOPA and PIPA weren't just threats to free speech and a danger to the Internet itself, they were threats to what the Web is. It's a medium of creation and consumption at the same time. It does both, unlike radio, television and the phonograph which are one way passive mediums.
The Web is a two way, active medium. No one controls it. No one owns it.
Well, blaming Microsoft has become so old hat regardless of their blatant disregard of laws that no one blames them anymore. No point. We know they're just barely this side of evil. :)
Anyway, they sold out to Hollywood years ago.
So, it just has to be Google. The other baddie would be open source but but how do you demonize that to congress or anyone else?
I feel the need to shake my head. They control me by giving me other people's content????? Oh, please. Source, I want.
And which Blogger accounts that give away music illegally? Oh, you mean the ones independent artists blog on and upload their stuff too? I guess it must be illegal to be an independent artist these days, too.
As for ignoring DCMA takedown notices once again, source please.
Now I know you don't have a source but I thought I'd ask.
But, you see , that's the problem. The Hollywood execs think the internet is a series of old mail tubes that span the globe, controlled by Google, made use of my billions of pirates and this all MUST, just HAS to stop!
To get them to the point where they can realize it's a digital network run mostly using open source software (which just has to be the height of piracy cause no one pays for anything yet somehow makes money so it has to be from Google and its ads) rather than good old closed source and that it's really a commuinications medium not for entertainment alone...well, I could go on but it gets both complex and ridiculous.
The answer, of course, it to have these fat cats talk to their preteen grandchildren who understand it just fine, thank you, and will explain it. All except for the piracy part cause they, too, are freetards!
On the post: Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture
Re:
While, personally I'm more interested in the data the games and programming techniques of 30 years ago are interesting in their own right as are what they accomplished and set in motion.
Personally I don't give a damn about copyright. If I can find a way to read a floppy from the CP/M days or earlier and bitwise copy it to a directory on a CD or DVD I'm gonna do it just to archive it. If you're of a mind sue me. Ought to be fun standing up in court defending archival non commercial copies against an IP purist.
On the post: Beach Boys Lyricist Goes After Artist Who Dared To Paint Works Inspired By Beach Boy Songs
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
A few nice bouncy tunes before they decided to be the California Beatles and the drugs dragged them into a pit. (All of which happened before they learned to play a note on their "instruments".)
So a visual artist decides to make a series of paintings inspired by the release, finally, of Pet Sounds and Parks decides to land on him with a truckload of lawyers.
There's something just a bit wrong with this. There's a difference between being celebrated and being ripped off. Parks can't see that difference.
Ya know something. I'm not one little bit surprised.
On the post: Documentary Filmmaker Arrested At Congressional Hearing For Filming With A Different Opinion
And if he wanted to avoid giving opponents of fracking another set of reasons to continuing to oppose it he just found it.
Hell, even the security guy looked embarassed.
Rep Harris meet Streisand effect. Streisand effect meet Rep Harris. I see a long and intimate relationship ahead for you both. :)
On the post: Full Text Of Slovenian Ambassador's Apology For Signing ACTA
Re:
Not that I'm happy about it but that's what happened.
On the post: Full Text Of Slovenian Ambassador's Apology For Signing ACTA
Re:
What is so unusual is that she admits she signed it, as did so many others, on the instructions of her government without understanding what it contained. Or the ramifications of it. In that, I'm sure she's not the only Ambassador who did that. She seems to he the only one who has "manned up" and admitted it.
As with so much surrounding SOPA/PIPA what you're seeing here is a glimpse into a world we "mere citizens" rarely see which is how high level diplomacy works and the secrecy in which virtually all of it takes place.
Even in trade agreements which ACTA pretends to be.
These things are a danger to the most creative, productive and profitable thing humans have ever devised. The Internet. I'd have to check it again, but if memory serves while discussing the coming Facebook IPO one economist observed that the Internet was responsible for some $17 trillion in profits in 2011 along with the escalator for the sales that generated that profit. (He also noted, if memory serves again, that less that 5% of all of that had anything to do with what ACTA is supposed to stop and won't.)
She's not passing the buck. She's telling the truth. Had she refused to sign it Solvenia would have recalled her and sent a diplomat over who would sign it. That's how diplomacy works at that level.
Almost makes you feel as dirty as watching legislators past and present hang out the "For Sale" sign to interest groups with tons of money. Doesn't it?
On the post: ICE Seizes 300 More Sites; Can't Have People Watching Super Bowl Ads Without Permission
Re:
My bet is it's well below 1% or even a fraction of 1%.
So it's well beyond probable that the ad purchasers and networks got their monies worth, as will/did NBC.
The problem, as Mike has written, isn't so much that these sites may have been involved in something illegal as what happens later where due process of law is tossed out of the window.
In this case, as well, the concern that ICE is acting as a one department enforcement arm of the entertainment industry.
Never fear, the Super Bowl will be watched by billions, the ads will get to their audience and everyone will be happy. Including those few who will watch it streamed, as it will be.
On the post: Do Not Discuss The Movie You Just Saw
Re: FUD
One cannot be in doubt of the outcome should one in any way infringe on the copyright and it's attending terms and conditions in any way at all with the possible case of the final check box which appears to be an amalgam of French or Spanish or some dead language. However you are not excused in case you do not understand as ignorance of the law, whoops, terms and conditions is no excuse.
We do however wish to add that the nature of the warning about sexual fantasies omitted that any X or XXX rated fantasies become the property of these film makers complete with cast members listed so that we may produce that movies for our own enjoyment and profit.
Consider yourself warned.
We will not tolerate any infringement of our copyright or our terms and conditions and failure to do so will be harmful or perhaps fatal to certain areas of you gray matter.
On the post: How Patents Have Held Back 3D Printing
Throw your mind back to the nacient British Empire, you know, the one the sun never set on. Mostly it was built for trade and trading. The British and the Dutch hit on this idea that perhaps setting up monopoloy trading companies would, somehow, assist trade so firms such as the British East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company appeared mostly in competition with each other. Not at all in the territories the British, Dutch, French or whoever controlled or ruled but a sort of national competition. A rush to market to see who got the first tulips into Europe. And the cause of one of the first stock market bubbles.
Then Britian started to industrialize. Suddenly these companies seemed less and less useful. So that while Silk from the orient was nice, beaver pelts from Canada were always good (the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company) the entire idea of mercantilism as an economic good rapidly declined despite the best efforts of the mercantile companies to avoid that.
Oh, and there was this small issue of a rebellion in 13 colonies on the east coast of America who seemed to want to become industrial rather than stay attached to mercantilsim that was successful too.
Industrialization brought with it what we call capitalism and free enterprise which the British and Americans promptly decided meant the trade had to be free as well. Beaver pelts, silk and tulips weren't what people wanted any more. Raw materials, wood, coal, grains and a host of other commodities were far more important that the stuff the great Mercantile companies traded in and had monopolies over.
Along with industrialization came concepts such as copyright and patents, It only made sense, at the time, that there should be some pay for the people who came up with knew ideas, knowledge and such have a short period to make a few bucks on, after all.
Fast forward to today. Copyirght and patents have served a useful purpose over the years. Authors and inventors have become extremely wealthy as well as folk heros. (To the point where most people forget that Edison bullied his way into most of his patents and is suspected of simply stealing the rest of them. Hey, it worked, right?)
Now we're at the point where the original purpose of both copyright and patent are becoming lost in this recent development called "intellectual property". So the best way to "moneitize" your property is protect it forever.
In that sense the 3D printer is a warning about what can happen when the notion that ideas are property runs amock takes too deep a hold.
Charging too much rent to used a patent seems to me to slow wide spead adoption of the patent and what it contains. Whereas a lesser fee/rent may get more product out there faster meaning the smaller rend actually makes the patent holder more in the long run.
But no, in our spreadsheet dominated world, the returns have to come early and this means high rents.changes. Perhaps, ovr time to make more later because the dream is to keep the rent the same once the 3D printer market takes off.
In the meantime a development may be held up for years because of the cost of the rent on the patent. Either until it ends it's protected life (never if the SOPA/PIPA crowd had gotten their way) or until someone cleanrooms a way around it.
From what I've seen the uses of 3D printing are huge ranging from design or proof of concept in three dimensions to a different way of producing art.
Which brings me to this. As Mercantilism had the danger of slowing or halting the move to industrialism so, now, copyright and patents -- seen as property -- may slow the development of what's coming next. By weeks, months or years.
That being the case, they've lost the valuse and purpose they once had. In both cases, advancing the state of the art. As they're being postitioned to do just that, then then, I'm afraid, it's time for both concepts to join many others in history's dustbin when their time had past.
To paraphrase the bible money isnt the root of all evil; the love of money is. Copyright and patent purisists (as well as trolls) fall into the latter camp.
On the post: Author Jonathan Franzen Thinks That Ebooks Mean The World Will No Longer Work
Cute, but will anything REALLY change?
Before we hold the wake for the printed book let's remember that for most of us books are almost as temporary as iPods. Your great aunt gives you a paperback for Christmas. Maybe you read it, more likely you don't. It may get stuffed up on a bookshelf somewhere and then promptly forgotten.
I know many people, myself included, who still have the expensive books I bought for courses at college littering the bookshelf landscape. I might have read a tenth of them for classes the rest, it always struck me, were things the prof had us buy so we or he could look important.
I go back to very few of them. But there they sit, taking up space like some sort of icon which no one pays attention to anymore or believes in much. Books, have the added advantage of being fuel should the house ever catch fire!
Quite frankly going through my parent's and grandparent's attic was more a chore than a journey of discovery. Looking at papers I could hardly read, books I'd never heard of and never want to hear of again (see "penny dreadfuls") some photos of people I never met or knew of often in stiff, formal positions with smiles or glares pasted on their faces.
Some pictures from World War One and World War Two but nothing that hadn't been photographed to death and then some.
My folks stored old coffee table books in the attic. I have no idea whether it was the coffee stains or high quality bond that attracted at least two families of squirrels to rip them apart of make nests out of.
A book or record collection can, of course, be the journey of a person's life. What they liked, how their tastes changed and their political journeys. But unless you knew that person completely meaningless.
Oh yes, and the two or three generations of report cards no one ever wanted to see again.
What is important about a life if obvious, or ought to be, and none of it is the brick-a-brack we all collect through life. IBM punch cards, 5 1/4" disks which long lost their data, the PCJr stuffed in a corner which made another home for the attic squirrels.
Authors still labour over their works. Getting the right word here, the right phrase there and the odd swear word. Whether or not the publication medium is print, an ebook or an illuminated manuscript some monk spent half his life working on. None of that will change.
When the typewriter came along there was much worry that books and stories would lose "something" because the writer wasn't scratching away long hand on cheap paper. I'd argue that never happened.
And I bet when funny figures on papyrus started to get churned out by those Egyptian types the people of Mesopotamian shook their heads darkly and said that would never last. Cuneiform on clay tablets was the ONLY way to go! It had a different feel, It had weight and the small danger you'd drop it and shatter it into a billion pieces.
The printing press itself caused worry. Would people work as hard on their books then they could be duplicated in their thousands? Just write for the masses not the aristocracy. All the masses wanted was sex, drugs and rock'n'roll anyway.
The world we know is coming to an end and this MUST, somehow be stopped!!! Burn the ebooks! All this is too important! What will I find in Granny's attic after she dies?
Probably much the same. Some pictures of her as a pretty young woman, perhaps a love email or two she printed off for some reason, your parent's report cards and perhaps your own. That damned PCJr is still in the same corner because no one wants to expend the energy to even throw it out. A printed book or two. Ebooks that haven't seen a new battery in decades. A collection of favourite recipes. Boxes of Christmas ornaments,mostly broken. Perhaps a two century old Christmas Cake so filled with rum that there's no green stuff growing out of it.
And, oh my god, who'd have ever thought that bent over, granny who never, ever smiled that you can remember was all that beautiful and had such a wonderful smile and mane of light brown hair!
One world comes to an end, a new one begins.
Funny how granny's attic still has all the same stuff in it, Isn't it?
On the post: Please Keep The ACTA Debate Fact-Based
Notably, as Ars hints, ACTA, and TPP, are attempts to impose western based intellectual property values on countries that dont' share them. The Third World and, perhaps more important, the BRIC countries. Far be it from me to suggest imperialism but.....
On the post: Please Keep The ACTA Debate Fact-Based
Re: Re: Re: Fact based? Hah
Probably government's greatest gift to organized crime in the history of civilization.
On the post: Entertainment Industy Back To Demanding That Search Engines Censor The Web... Through 'Voluntary' Measures
Re: Re:
On the post: Entertainment Industy Back To Demanding That Search Engines Censor The Web... Through 'Voluntary' Measures
Re: Re: Re: Everybody!!!
On the post: Senator Ron Wyden's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Thanks again, Senator Wyden
Too often politicians play off their party allegiances and lose the audience and electorate along the way. This post avoids all that and goes straight to the dangers of over emphasizing "intellectual property" over culture and the growth of cultures.
What affects the citizenry must be discussed in the open with all the players known. And what attempts to put barriers up in front of knowledge or so called content as well as invention.
The other thing Senator Wyden does well is identify the problem(s). Until we can do that, there is nothing much we can do to prevent the feared/expected outcome.
And remind us that what we did around SOPA/PIPA did prove the power of an organized and committed citizenry to stop even the best paying lobbyists from getting what they want no matter how damaging it would be to an economy, culture or freedoms and liberties.
At least with Senator Wyden helping identify the issues and problems the citizenry won the day.
That's the part the entertainment industry just doesn't get. It wasn't Google, it was the citizenry.
On the post: MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
Re: Re:
The point being missed here by various AC's is that the Web gives people the tools to create its own content just as the Internet did before the Web existed.
Sure, some, perhaps even most, of the tools are still new and crude but that's a situation that won't last long. Already publishing to the Web has moved to and beyond the level of print.
Music tools have improved immensely the past three or four years to such an extent that someone with a mid-range desktop, some inexpensive tools and know how can set up a decent studio which is partly an explanation of the explosion of independent music the past half decade or so.
Non linear editors, video cameras and the spread of knowledge about how to do it has made independent film making more available and affordable to "the masses" far beyond the realm of LOL cats. (Nothing wrong with LOL cats though.)
This is what Hollywood doesn't understand. Or won't understand. The Web is about creation as much or more than it is about consumption of content.
Which explains, to a large extent, the "so what" attitude of Hollywood's "we provide the high quality content" attitude when the Web just as capable, or soon will be, without the "ownership" attitude and desire to build walled gardens, release schedules, geographic restrictions and on and on as Hollywood traditionally has.
And it's the Web that went dark. Not Google. The Web.
SOPA and PIPA weren't just threats to free speech and a danger to the Internet itself, they were threats to what the Web is. It's a medium of creation and consumption at the same time. It does both, unlike radio, television and the phonograph which are one way passive mediums.
The Web is a two way, active medium. No one controls it. No one owns it.
That's the power of the Web and the Internet.
On the post: MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
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Anyway, they sold out to Hollywood years ago.
So, it just has to be Google. The other baddie would be open source but but how do you demonize that to congress or anyone else?
Open WHAT???? ;-)
On the post: MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
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And which Blogger accounts that give away music illegally? Oh, you mean the ones independent artists blog on and upload their stuff too? I guess it must be illegal to be an independent artist these days, too.
As for ignoring DCMA takedown notices once again, source please.
Now I know you don't have a source but I thought I'd ask.
On the post: MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
Re: Re: The Internet 101 and it's children
To get them to the point where they can realize it's a digital network run mostly using open source software (which just has to be the height of piracy cause no one pays for anything yet somehow makes money so it has to be from Google and its ads) rather than good old closed source and that it's really a commuinications medium not for entertainment alone...well, I could go on but it gets both complex and ridiculous.
The answer, of course, it to have these fat cats talk to their preteen grandchildren who understand it just fine, thank you, and will explain it. All except for the piracy part cause they, too, are freetards!
On the post: Universal Music Claims Copyright Over Song That It Didn't License, Just Because One Of Its Artists Rapped To It On A Leaked Track
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On the post: State Of The Union Address Highlights The Dirty Trick Of Hiding More Draconian IP Rules In 'Trade Agreements'
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Just askin'
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