No, you might want to check on your figures. Remember, Apple is the most valuable and capitalized company on earth and Google, Microsoft and many other tech companies aren't far behind.
It's not like the tech industry doesn't hold a few shiploads of IP as well,so we know that eventually the situation will have top be worked out.
Come to it, the tech industry is holding no one capitve. That the "content industry" can't or won't adapt to reality is no reason to change reality to suit them.
It's a nice 360 to take. Not that their mission statement endorses piracy, it doesn't, it endorses not rolling over at the slightest sign of complaint from someone with a Hollywood address and law firm's name.
If they hold true to this then I wish them well. And may even look into moving a domain I have over to them in time.
Silicon Valley and its predecessors have always been a threat of some kind or another to the co-called content industry. At least seen that way. As more efficient distributors of content doesn't seem to have occurred to them or that, if it has, a threat to whatever cozy arrangements that have been made with the "networks" that support that given sector of the "content industry". It's not in their DNA, it appears, to see the advantages.
By the time they do, if they do, they've long since lost the market to those they once called pirates and worse. And if you look closely at the history of their objections you can easily see that it has been less about copyright, though that's what often gets paraded around like some wounded bird, it's about distribution and packaging. The battle over cable had less to do with minor details like picture quality and the like than it did with cozy exclusives MPAA members, for example, had negotiated with tv stations which were at the far edge of the capability of over the air antennas to pick up.
Radio changed how music was distributed and places like Tin Pan Alley objected though, over time, many songwriters from there became fabulously wealthy because more artists covered their work or they cold release it themselves.
Television was supposed to kill movie theatres and live productions though it did no such thing and often increased attendance at movies and some live locations.
On and on it goes.
It's not just the old rejecting the new, it's the old not being able to see the new and what it can do to make them more money than they are now.
Instead of adopting the new, they fight it and, when they do get ready for change they see the space they wanted to move into already occupied by those dirty pirates and freetards.
This is about holding onto the familiar, even if it is dated and rapidly becoming irrelevant, at the risk of their own future.
All the Web and the Internet are doing is accelerating that process.
Who will head up the future MPAA? One site has staked that claim, none other than Pirate Bay, and I can't see anything wrong with that claim.
And new scans set up to automatically detect infringing materials on or in your person. What do you mean that pacemaker isn't infringing in The Netherlands now get you ass behind that screen while our highly qualified paramedic Igor over there takes it out. Never mind the meat cleaver. It's a precision instrument in his hands!
Re: ACTA is in the hands of parliament in the EU... same is not true elsewhere
There seems to be a movement in Poland to reject ACTA which would, under EU rules, sink ACTA there. At least that's what ACTA opponents in Poland are saying. And Poland's legislature has to approve the treaty.
Just why anyone would want a treaty that leaves out South Africa, Brazil, India, China and Russia of this kind is beyond me. They'll continue to ignore all of it just as they do now :)
And just what this has to do with the subject at hand is also a question. Or what it has to do with such things as global warming.
(Unless of course all those coal fed power plants whose demand it eaten up by people using computers, gadgets and other such paraphernalia./s )
If you're talking about this young woman's right not be be harassed or Photoshopped onto a body that isn't hers complete with contact information in a situation she doesn't appreciate I'm more of the opinion that libel and slander law are more appropriate tools to use than adding (yet another) crime to the books. At worst this might be harassment and I have to say I don't know (or care) what the state of Georgia's laws say about that.
I do think the guy who posted it probably needs a couple of swift kicks to the crotch with pointed pumps, mind you, for sheer idiocy if nothing else.
There is a time and a place to stop reacting to darn near everything you don't like by criminalizing it. This, it strikes me, is one of those times and places.
As for the Internet becoming a game changer, just where have you been since the web debuted? It's already changed a whole list of games and will continue to change more. You don't react to change by criminalizing the changes.
In the case of cyber lockers and other forms of cloud computing the property may not be gone forever but it may be a long time before the people with legitimate files on Megaupload can access them again. Some may even, foolishly, used it for backup purposes.
So the analogy with physical storage lockers still holds true. The twerp next to me was growing weed and the cops closed the whole place down so I can't get to my perfectly legal stuff unless and until they release the lock they put on it. Most often after a trial.
Cheer all you want that some scumbag got busted here. Perhaps he is a scumbag and the people closest to him are but that doesn't take away that legitimate users of the locker (bit of the "cloud") cannot access legitimate files now. They aren't to blame for the guy running that place being a scumbag.
Unless, of course, you belong to the group that feels the only use of file lockers on line is for copyright infringement and only copyright infringement.
In essence people will do what they've always done. Take material, copyrighted or not, mix it and come up with something new or at least newish.
DJs in the 1950s spinning 78s and 45s at dance parties, doing the same after the introduction of the cassette tape for dance parties or for, heaven forbid!, long drives somewhere. Or just to avoid the screaming ads known as top 40 and screaming DJ's hosting the shows.
Taking copyrighted photographs out of magazines and newspapers and creating a craft fair standard known as scrapbooking. Still being done, Now just on the Internet.
And I seriously doubt one less magazine or CD or photograph was sold as a result. So why would it be now?
OK, so maybe there's a point to be made about movies though I suspect it's more about the atmosphere or lack of it in multiplexes that has ticket sales ever so slightly lower. Or just a string of bad, mindless movies that are really just rewarmed over television shows.
Thing is we aren't doing all THAT much that's different or that we are certain that we don't have a right to do (or at least ought to have a right to do) because we've been at it for years.
And copyright holders really haven't done all that badly because of it. In fact, they've done very well. (The creators are often another story but we all know that part.)
It's simple. Adapt or die. RIAA member companies and MPAA member companies don't want to adapt. Fine. It's not up to any government to save them from their own hubris or declare them "too big to fail" which is was SOPA and PIPA were really doing.
But an "unregulated" internet means that "we the people" may rise again to blow their carefully crafted, badly worded bills and bought and paid for politicians out of the water again.
Beware that when these bills reappear there will be language in them that will prevent another Web strike from ever occuring again. Not under the guise of censorship, of course, but as something less odorous and more salable like "national security".
No one who blacked out this past week "owned the platform". The content companies could have responded using the web as well and, perhaps, even defended the their position. Maybe. But they long ago surrendered the Web and the Internet to "we the people" and "we the nerds and geeks".
And now they complain. They surrendered the medium, never did learn how to use it, make money at it or figure out that the Web isn't the printed page so what works on the printed page doesn't work here.
They ignored the reality that it doesn't take all that much poking around to figure out who was funding who. All perfectly legally.
They didn't take the technical high ground, they mocked it. They didn't take the moral and cultural high ground because they gave those up decades ago.
And now they're surprised they lost.
Now they're worried that the day of "government of, for and by hollywood" is over. Darn good thing, too.
BTW, I refuse to call them the content industry as, at least on the web, they produce only a miniscule part of the content to be found and often the worst parts of it.
"We would hope a new tone can be set that does not pit the creativity and innovation of our directors, actors, performers, craftspeople, and technicians against those innovators in other industries."
Including both those you claim to represent and those you do not? Such as allowing full and open testimony should these bills or something like them appear again? Remember that you just said you do not stand for but against censorship.
"We hope a new tone can be set that does not include website attacks, blacklists, blackouts, and lies."
Just as we hope that a new tone can be set in terms of real accounting and not fantasy numbers tossed around by the employers of your memberships that you seem to want to take at face value. That would start to end the lies.
Mike didn't include this beauty in his post but I will.
"We will work with Chairmen Leahy and Smith to make both possible."
So you will continue to work with politically damaged goods to attain your goals? Why does that strike me as denial?
In many ways the mask was torn off of the normal goings on of the lobbyists and bag men so common in Washington (and other capital cities).
Chris Dodd's outrage at the number of legislators running as fast as they can from SOPA/PIPA in the lead up to and aftermath of Wednesday's go dark day basically telling us what we already knew but had no real direct evidence of. Lobbyists expect that one "bought" legislators will do exactly what they are told to do even if it costs them their seat.
Just to remind us that there are laws in place now that potentially circumvent things like due process and the right to confront your accuser Megaupload was squashed like a bug. And reminders that ACTA is very much alive and well. Still ugly and still too healthy by half.
What did happen was that these entities called the Internet and the World Wide Web flexed their muscles on an issue for the first time in the Western World to topple bills in the US Congress just as they had toppled dictatorships in North Africa and the Middle East and threaten them in Iran and China.
Bills whose sponsors had refused to listen to those affected or the public who they supposedly represented in favour of Hollywood's bag men. Chief of whom was formerly a member of the US Senate. A man who once stood for an open and free Internet.
Not only does he sell a highly restricted one of questionable legality but he's sold himself on it too. Thanks to Chris Dodd we know the level of corruption in Washington, DC now.
But, it seems, no amount of corruption can stand up to an enraged and engaged electorate. It also proves the Internet is much more than just a product that can be twisted and regulated at will. It's now part of the body politic can of who internet citizens are.
open source isn't a rejection of copyright. It's a rejection of certain forms of licensing. Every piece of open source software I know of has a copyright notice attached to it.
I'll assume you're talking desktops for laptops and desktop machines as one of the most polished and widely used OS's for smart phones is open source. Namely Andriod,
Or this platform which is run on open source code known as Wordpress.
Saying that ending copyright would somehow end all of the things you list off also belies the point that humans, by our very nature are a creative species and creation existed long before copyright did.
There never was a guarantee of selling niche software and never is. There's risk inherent in anything, even writing endless utilities to cover the weaknesses of Windows. But to say that copyright ALONE gives you a guarantee of selling niche software is ludicrous. Even if you do sell it with a closed source license.
Do you honestly think that the politicians and the upper reaches of the bureaucracy know whether or not government employees store material in file lockers or any other part of the "cloud"?
While it would be fascinating to find out just how many are given IT cutbacks lately I'm not sure that the result would catch the eye of anyone higher up. And certainly not the politicians because there's no dollar bills paper clipped to the reports.
On the post: State Of The Union Address Highlights The Dirty Trick Of Hiding More Draconian IP Rules In 'Trade Agreements'
Re: Re: Re:
The figures are accurate.
On the post: State Of The Union Address Highlights The Dirty Trick Of Hiding More Draconian IP Rules In 'Trade Agreements'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And what makes you think the Internet can't or won't step up to fill the hole left?
It could start to get real lonely in that closed, walled garden no one can get into or out of. So why produce content no one will ever see?
On the post: State Of The Union Address Highlights The Dirty Trick Of Hiding More Draconian IP Rules In 'Trade Agreements'
Re:
Come to it, the tech industry is holding no one capitve. That the "content industry" can't or won't adapt to reality is no reason to change reality to suit them.
On the post: New Righthaven To Offer 'Hosting With A Backbone'; Will Avoid Unnecessary Takedowns
If they hold true to this then I wish them well. And may even look into moving a domain I have over to them in time.
Good for them!
On the post: The Tech Industry Has Already Given Hollywood The Answer To Piracy; If Only It Would Listen
By the time they do, if they do, they've long since lost the market to those they once called pirates and worse. And if you look closely at the history of their objections you can easily see that it has been less about copyright, though that's what often gets paraded around like some wounded bird, it's about distribution and packaging. The battle over cable had less to do with minor details like picture quality and the like than it did with cozy exclusives MPAA members, for example, had negotiated with tv stations which were at the far edge of the capability of over the air antennas to pick up.
Radio changed how music was distributed and places like Tin Pan Alley objected though, over time, many songwriters from there became fabulously wealthy because more artists covered their work or they cold release it themselves.
Television was supposed to kill movie theatres and live productions though it did no such thing and often increased attendance at movies and some live locations.
On and on it goes.
It's not just the old rejecting the new, it's the old not being able to see the new and what it can do to make them more money than they are now.
Instead of adopting the new, they fight it and, when they do get ready for change they see the space they wanted to move into already occupied by those dirty pirates and freetards.
This is about holding onto the familiar, even if it is dated and rapidly becoming irrelevant, at the risk of their own future.
All the Web and the Internet are doing is accelerating that process.
Who will head up the future MPAA? One site has staked that claim, none other than Pirate Bay, and I can't see anything wrong with that claim.
On the post: Movie Theaters' Top Lobbyist Resorts To Making Up Facts Concerning SOPA/PIPA
Re: Re: Re: Hollyweird
That and the fact that there was and is no need for them.
As I recall, you're the one who said that the fix was in for SOPA and PIPA and that no amount of protest would derail them.
Well, guess what. It has.
And if the backlash was driven by lies they were certainly of more of the white lie variety than the MPAA or RIAA were pushing.
As for "Won't be allowed to happen again, trust me" I think I'll wait. After all. You did say nothing but nothing would stop these now dead bills.
On the post: What Is ACTA And Why Is It A Problem?
Re:
On the post: What Is ACTA And Why Is It A Problem?
Re: ACTA is in the hands of parliament in the EU... same is not true elsewhere
Just why anyone would want a treaty that leaves out South Africa, Brazil, India, China and Russia of this kind is beyond me. They'll continue to ignore all of it just as they do now :)
On the post: Georgia Lawmaker Looking To Make Photoshopping Heads On Naked Bodies Illegal
Re: How far will it go?
(Unless of course all those coal fed power plants whose demand it eaten up by people using computers, gadgets and other such paraphernalia./s )
If you're talking about this young woman's right not be be harassed or Photoshopped onto a body that isn't hers complete with contact information in a situation she doesn't appreciate I'm more of the opinion that libel and slander law are more appropriate tools to use than adding (yet another) crime to the books. At worst this might be harassment and I have to say I don't know (or care) what the state of Georgia's laws say about that.
I do think the guy who posted it probably needs a couple of swift kicks to the crotch with pointed pumps, mind you, for sheer idiocy if nothing else.
There is a time and a place to stop reacting to darn near everything you don't like by criminalizing it. This, it strikes me, is one of those times and places.
As for the Internet becoming a game changer, just where have you been since the web debuted? It's already changed a whole list of games and will continue to change more. You don't react to change by criminalizing the changes.
On the post: Jonathan Coulton Destroys The Rationale Behind The Megaupload Seizure With A Single Tweet; Follows Up With Epic Blog Post
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So the analogy with physical storage lockers still holds true. The twerp next to me was growing weed and the cops closed the whole place down so I can't get to my perfectly legal stuff unless and until they release the lock they put on it. Most often after a trial.
Cheer all you want that some scumbag got busted here. Perhaps he is a scumbag and the people closest to him are but that doesn't take away that legitimate users of the locker (bit of the "cloud") cannot access legitimate files now. They aren't to blame for the guy running that place being a scumbag.
Unless, of course, you belong to the group that feels the only use of file lockers on line is for copyright infringement and only copyright infringement.
On the post: Jonathan Coulton Destroys The Rationale Behind The Megaupload Seizure With A Single Tweet; Follows Up With Epic Blog Post
DJs in the 1950s spinning 78s and 45s at dance parties, doing the same after the introduction of the cassette tape for dance parties or for, heaven forbid!, long drives somewhere. Or just to avoid the screaming ads known as top 40 and screaming DJ's hosting the shows.
Taking copyrighted photographs out of magazines and newspapers and creating a craft fair standard known as scrapbooking. Still being done, Now just on the Internet.
And I seriously doubt one less magazine or CD or photograph was sold as a result. So why would it be now?
OK, so maybe there's a point to be made about movies though I suspect it's more about the atmosphere or lack of it in multiplexes that has ticket sales ever so slightly lower. Or just a string of bad, mindless movies that are really just rewarmed over television shows.
Thing is we aren't doing all THAT much that's different or that we are certain that we don't have a right to do (or at least ought to have a right to do) because we've been at it for years.
And copyright holders really haven't done all that badly because of it. In fact, they've done very well. (The creators are often another story but we all know that part.)
It's simple. Adapt or die. RIAA member companies and MPAA member companies don't want to adapt. Fine. It's not up to any government to save them from their own hubris or declare them "too big to fail" which is was SOPA and PIPA were really doing.
On the post: Major Media Owning SOPA/PIPA Supporters Whine That They Had No Way To Have Their Message Heard
Re: Re: Re:
But an "unregulated" internet means that "we the people" may rise again to blow their carefully crafted, badly worded bills and bought and paid for politicians out of the water again.
Beware that when these bills reappear there will be language in them that will prevent another Web strike from ever occuring again. Not under the guise of censorship, of course, but as something less odorous and more salable like "national security".
No one who blacked out this past week "owned the platform". The content companies could have responded using the web as well and, perhaps, even defended the their position. Maybe. But they long ago surrendered the Web and the Internet to "we the people" and "we the nerds and geeks".
And now they complain. They surrendered the medium, never did learn how to use it, make money at it or figure out that the Web isn't the printed page so what works on the printed page doesn't work here.
They ignored the reality that it doesn't take all that much poking around to figure out who was funding who. All perfectly legally.
They didn't take the technical high ground, they mocked it. They didn't take the moral and cultural high ground because they gave those up decades ago.
And now they're surprised they lost.
Now they're worried that the day of "government of, for and by hollywood" is over. Darn good thing, too.
BTW, I refuse to call them the content industry as, at least on the web, they produce only a miniscule part of the content to be found and often the worst parts of it.
On the post: Hollywood Unions: Now That You Lying Hacking Thieves Have Won, Can We Set A New Conciliatory Tone?
"We would hope a new tone can be set that does not pit the creativity and innovation of our directors, actors, performers, craftspeople, and technicians against those innovators in other industries."
Including both those you claim to represent and those you do not? Such as allowing full and open testimony should these bills or something like them appear again? Remember that you just said you do not stand for but against censorship.
"We hope a new tone can be set that does not include website attacks, blacklists, blackouts, and lies."
Just as we hope that a new tone can be set in terms of real accounting and not fantasy numbers tossed around by the employers of your memberships that you seem to want to take at face value. That would start to end the lies.
Mike didn't include this beauty in his post but I will.
"We will work with Chairmen Leahy and Smith to make both possible."
So you will continue to work with politically damaged goods to attain your goals? Why does that strike me as denial?
On the post: DH's Love Child's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
In many ways the mask was torn off of the normal goings on of the lobbyists and bag men so common in Washington (and other capital cities).
Chris Dodd's outrage at the number of legislators running as fast as they can from SOPA/PIPA in the lead up to and aftermath of Wednesday's go dark day basically telling us what we already knew but had no real direct evidence of. Lobbyists expect that one "bought" legislators will do exactly what they are told to do even if it costs them their seat.
Just to remind us that there are laws in place now that potentially circumvent things like due process and the right to confront your accuser Megaupload was squashed like a bug. And reminders that ACTA is very much alive and well. Still ugly and still too healthy by half.
What did happen was that these entities called the Internet and the World Wide Web flexed their muscles on an issue for the first time in the Western World to topple bills in the US Congress just as they had toppled dictatorships in North Africa and the Middle East and threaten them in Iran and China.
Bills whose sponsors had refused to listen to those affected or the public who they supposedly represented in favour of Hollywood's bag men. Chief of whom was formerly a member of the US Senate. A man who once stood for an open and free Internet.
Not only does he sell a highly restricted one of questionable legality but he's sold himself on it too. Thanks to Chris Dodd we know the level of corruption in Washington, DC now.
But, it seems, no amount of corruption can stand up to an enraged and engaged electorate. It also proves the Internet is much more than just a product that can be twisted and regulated at will. It's now part of the body politic can of who internet citizens are.
On the post: Patrick Leahy Still Doesn't Get It; Says Stopping PIPA Is A Victory For Thieves
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Megaupload Details Raise Significant Concerns About What DOJ Considers Evidence Of Criminal Behavior
Re: Re:
I'll assume you're talking desktops for laptops and desktop machines as one of the most polished and widely used OS's for smart phones is open source. Namely Andriod,
Or this platform which is run on open source code known as Wordpress.
Saying that ending copyright would somehow end all of the things you list off also belies the point that humans, by our very nature are a creative species and creation existed long before copyright did.
There never was a guarantee of selling niche software and never is. There's risk inherent in anything, even writing endless utilities to cover the weaknesses of Windows. But to say that copyright ALONE gives you a guarantee of selling niche software is ludicrous. Even if you do sell it with a closed source license.
On the post: Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload, Says Record Labels Are The Real Criminals
Re:
On the post: Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload, Says Record Labels Are The Real Criminals
Re: Re:
On the post: Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload, Says Record Labels Are The Real Criminals
Re: Re:
While it would be fascinating to find out just how many are given IT cutbacks lately I'm not sure that the result would catch the eye of anyone higher up. And certainly not the politicians because there's no dollar bills paper clipped to the reports.
On the post: Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload, Says Record Labels Are The Real Criminals
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Of course you have to take up the premise of the tweets with the guys that made them rather than do it here. I'd take their opinion over yours.
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