I forgot, in the above to add emphasis mine. To this point I don't think I've removed (redacted) anything pertinent from the ruling and Arlotta's actions. To continue:
"On September 10, Johnson petitioned for a new HRO. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court issued an HRO on March 28, 2011, that would “remain in effect until March 28, 2062.” The HRO prohibits Arlotta from: (1) “[a]ny repeated, intrusive, or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that are intended to adversely affect [Johnson's] safety, security, or privacy”; (2) “[a]ny contact, direct or indirect, with [Johnson] in person, by telephone, by email or by other means or persons”; and (3) “[a]ny email or other electronic message contact with third-parties that contains any material concerning [Johnson] that affects or intends to adversely affect [her] safety, security, or privacy.” The HRO also directs Arlotta to remove his blog from the Internet
Ok, now let me explain why I'm of two minds here.
To begin with the statements of fact prior to the ruling indicate that Arolotta consented to the first HRO and then within 48 hours began to violate if not the letter if it then the spirit of his consensual agreement. Not only by starting his blog but but contracting others of Ms Johnson's circle and employer by email and using his blog as a reference. During this period he contacts Johnson's grandmother, among others, to accuse Ms Johnson of abusing her child. In his contact with her grandmother he uses language which can only mean the child has being or is being sexually abused.
(Statement: I am a survivor of sexual abuse by my father during my teens and legally still a child. This continued into my early 20s. So you bet alarm bells went ringing right then and there.)
Now I don't know what the law is in Minnesota but I do know that Criminal Code of Canada says that such a statement must be reported to police for investigation. Failing to do that could result on charges of aiding and abetting the crime or being an accessory to it.
I'd have reported her on the spot.
I'd have had to but I'd have done it anyway.
None of the facts found seem in dispute it's the court's order to delete the blog that's appealed under the US First Amendment.
In my mind he consented to the first restraining order them broke it's terms and conditions in just about any way possible excluding the blog but did used the blog to cite for additional evidence should someone want more information on Ms Johnson. To me that citation as well as well as his continuing to email people known to Ms Johnson in violation of that and the subsequent award and his contracting of her employers that really make his blog in my mind questionable as protected free speech.
Worse his comment to Ms Johnson's grandmother isn't an opinion it's an accusation of a criminal act.
While I know the blog is still available should I go look for it in various places I can see the court wanting him to take it down though, the rest of his stuff remains on line on Facebook and elsewhere.
My problem remains that he consented to the terms and conditions of the first order and ought to have known that the blog, plus the emails put him in violation of something he AGREED to and consented to. To me he didn't just violate a restraining order he broke an agreement, contract if you would, with the court that would include the blog as it related to his continuing harassment by Ms Johnson by other means up to and including a criminal act our society finds heinous.
To me that means the blog wasn't protected speech given the findings of fact in the judgement and that they weren't disputed.
I apologize for the delay between these two posts as a nasty thing called "real life" intervened before I could get back to finish this.
With luck the first post makes more sense now. Maybe not.
It's been that kinda day since I started this. ;-)
I'm of two minds here. Please note.
"On December 22, Arlotta consented to entry of a six-month HRO that prohibited him from (1) committing any acts “intended to adversely affect [Johnson's] safety, security, or privacy,” (2) having “any contact” with Johnson “in person, by work or home e-mail, by telephone, or by other means or persons,” and (3) visiting Johnson's Morgan Stanley “worksite.” By its terms, the HRO expired on June 22, 2010.
Two days after entry of the 2009 HRO, Arlotta created an Internet blog titled, “Help Ann Johnson.” The blog was written in the third-person and documented Arlotta's ongoing relationship issues with Johnson. ... Arlotta publicized and promoted the blog by sending electronic messages to Johnson's relatives, friends, and others, and posting links to the blog on other websites. He used fake Facebook identities (“Dana Russel” and “Pekin Ilanis”) to post the blog to other Facebook users. As “Dana Russel,” Arlotta contacted the father of Johnson's child nine times between December 28, 2009, and January 27, 2010. Arlotta asked him to “stop by” the blog, telling him, “this involves your child,” and claiming that “[c]hild & family services have been contacted.” Arlotta also contacted Johnson's grandmother telling her that Johnson “seems to have been abused,” and “was either molested or abused as a child or witnessed domestic violence.” ... As a result, Johnson was contacted by friends, family, and others who expressed concern over Arlotta's communications.
On August 22, 2010, Arlotta sent an e-mail to a Morgan Stanley employee asserting that Johnson was connected to “hardcore criminals” and that she “could be bad for business.” The e-mail included a link to the blog. The employee, believing the e-mail to be genuine, informed her supervisor, who met with Johnson to discuss the e-mail. No other action was taken by Johnson's employer.
That is only one side of the original deal. The other side was the furtherance of education.
"The trade is 'you give up the right to copy, and in return the people who make the content can afford to keep doing it and give you a constant stream of new movies, music, tv shows, and books'." But that being the case just how did people like Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton and host of others make money from their works in the pre-copyright days after the inexpensive movable type press spread in Europe. And most of them didn't have patrons. People created before and after the introduction of laws like copyright and patents laws. And humans, being human will continue to create should either disappear tomorrow.
I happen to support the concept of copyright, though not for corporate welfare as very little that copyright protects goes back to the creator unless the creator is already a superstar retains their own copyright for book publishing. Hell, until the death of Micheal Jackson Paul McCartney and John Lennon's estate couldn't get their hands on Northern Songs copyright on their music, the stuff they wrote which, among other things meant that when MJ needed money he licensed Beatle's songs out for advertising until the advertiser suddenly discovered they weren't selling more by using it they were in fact selling less because of enraged Boomers and other Beatle's fans.
And you totally ignore that book publishers, and members of the RIAA and MPAA move heaven and earth and more to AVOID paying the creative parts of their industries with near or completely fraudulent accounting and a host of other "charges" to the creative part so they get to keep the profits themselves. None of this is new but you "for the artists" bleaters keep ignoring that well known fact.
And as the time things remain in copyright is, as noted, retroactively extended from time to time due the "we're broke" fibs from the above it seems that it may never end.
"one day they will fall into the public domain - which is packed with a few thousand years worth of content going back in man's history." Maybe, but not if Hollywood can find new and more inventive ways of retelling those stories in the public domain with minor changers, perhaps sanitizing the ending thereby removing any lesson told to keep it happy and then, as Disney has been known to do threaten to sue anyone coming up with an adaptation of a story they've already adapted because "Disney owns the copyright now on Snow White, dammit!!" Or some record company records a minor variation on Messiah or some well known Opera and attempts to say not only do they own the variation they recorded but the title itself as Disney does.
People will create because that's what people, and our species, does. Talented people will create by the shipload and find a way to get paid and supported for it as they did before copyright existed. Inventors will still invent as they did before patent law whose reason was to end things like trade secrets in exchange for a short monopoly on a thing not a lifetime pension for, say, the pharmaceutical industry or the creation of patent trolls a genus know as patent trolls who appear to have evolved in East Texas.
Note the use of the word SHORT. Not lifetime, not forever, not perpetual but SHORT.
It's hard to support either when the basic understanding of the idea has become so corrupted that the understanding is either no longer in place or one side has decided to ignore it's side of the deal.
As in most law. more often in common law than criminal law, the citizenry also has the right to say that "we've had enough of this crap and corruption so here and now we withdraw our support for this law as both the purpose and understanding when we agreed to copyright and patent are no longer observed unilaterally by those who sold us on the purpose and understanding. So SHOVE IT!."
I strongly suggest that that's what's happening now. Hollywood has overplayed its hand this time around and what was already there when Valente went on his Tour of Lies in the early day of VCRs has now become a chorus and that chorus of dissent and withdrawal on permission by the other side of the contract has become louder.
Oh, and indeed part of the original contract with copyright as with patents is that after a SHORT time, the works would move into the public domain as otherwise copyright would fail in it's prime goal of encouraging education. Points made in the preamble to the Statute of Queen Anne and the debates in Westminster as recorded in Hansard. That is the law that formed the genesis of American copyright law. So even then it was NOT intended as welfare for creators or those who feed on them such as publishers, recording companies and the motion picture industry.
What the United States Constitution says and, for the most part, the behaviour of the United States internationally until the end of the second world war is the role model. Indeed, I'd say until the passage of the Patriot Act the United States as an ideal, if not an entity was the role model.
The United States remains as an ideal and a role model for the rest of us if not exactly what it's become since Vietnam.
No the United States isn't bankrupt of ideas or ideals. On the former though it ought to be alarming that Japan, India, Brazil and China all saw more patent applications for the first time in history than the United States has in 2010. Not accepted, just each had more applications.
And none, with the possible and only possible exception of China are going to filter for real or imagined "infringing" web sites. Nor have any said they're going to join in American attempts to choke off real or imagined "piracy" which sorta just leaves the USA hanging out there alone.
So perhaps, but only perhaps you're right when you say no country looks to the States as it currently is as a role model. But the ideal and idea expressed in the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution are still ideals most countries strive for whether they say so or not.
While, simplistically you're right all infringement of the rights and liberties of a people start "innocently" enough but end up, first linearly, then exponentially extinguishing all other rights until none are left.
You might, as one has suggested, learn something from history.
The death of the Roman republic began with the megalomania of a fella named Julius Caesar. his son Octavian who because Augustus the emperor all the time promising a restoration of the republic to a nasty bit of goods named Tiberius who simply scared the people that counted into compliance, to Caligula who openly and publically killed anyone and every one he didn't like sometimes shortly after screwing them including his own sister, to Claudius who just gave up all pretense of restoring a republic a nice enough chap in himself but whose wife sometimes made Caligula look sane, to Nero at which point the Claudian line ended and the republic was dead even if there would still be a Senate for the next thousand years. No one really took it all that seriously.
Not to say that the United States will follow that path but the same thing applies. Rights were removed a little at a time. First by Julius Ceasar, then a bit more by Augustus, the accelerating with Tiberius, to completely gone with Caligula in the space of less than 4 years to the final madman of the Claudian line by which point it was all gone.
Begins incrementally the accelerates exponentially until nothing is left.
It's for that very reason that the founders of the United States left the message not to trust government. To resist and oppose it where necessary and to overthrow it when necessary, by electoral means of course. Though it seems Jefferson, if I remember correctly, thought otherwise at times.
People in the States are seeing the slow erosion of what they consider rights and the US Constitution says are rights in the text itself, inherited from sources such as Magna Charta and rulings by the US Supreme Court since independence was gained.
Some see it starting and accelerating under the Patriot Act and interpretation of government powers contained in it and now with SOPA/PIPA adding to what they consider to be an alarming loss of the rights, freedoms and liberties so central to being an American.
I'd have some fear for the future, Joe, instead of a narrow reading of law to guide you but to look for trends that go beyond law itself and into what it means to be an American where they see the early linear part of the loss of liberty and fear the exponential loss that invariably happens as power assumes more and more rights to itself taking them away from "We, the People" to take on themselves.
The sad irony is that all this is happening while up here in the great White North we are moving in the opposite direction with our relatively new Constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms where the courts and the people are chipping more and more power FROM government.
At one time we had a draconian piece of legislation known as the War Measures Act. It's purpose was to control media and people during World War One and later for World War Two. It was reimposed on us in 1972 in response to a terrorist act inside Canada by a home grown lot who kidnapped and murdered two people in support of their aims. Pierre Trudeau, probably the greatest supporter and promoter of political, social and individual rights ever to hold the Prime Minister's Office, imposed the Act in an attempt to smoke out the terrorists which led to troops on the streets of Montreal, Ottawa and elsewhere including "sensitive" installations like the Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport both of which suddenly had soldiers guarding them. Unlike the Patriot Act once imposed the War Measures Act had 120 days to be passed through both houses of Parliament with a timeline to remove it included. The imposition of the Act actually lasted for far less time than that, if memory serves.
Once the Charter passed the first bit of law declared unconstitutional was the War Measures Act, again, going on memory.
SOPA/PIPA may not end up going to the extremes some here are afraid or terrified that it will. But there's not much comfort there as the Patriot Act keeps applying more and more broadly as the chances of another outside terrorist attack become less and less likely which is what it was passed to prevent.
Two long time friends, neighbours and allies moving in different directions. The northern one taking the first halting steps to kicking the slats out of government while the southern one seeming to move the other way.
With all due respect, Joe, narrow legalism allows the first while a vision of how we want Canada to be allows the second. As what we want is what America had pre-Patriot Act and without stuff like SOPA and PIPA.
Our war measures act was an over-reaction to war and,finally, "apprehended insurrection" before it got tossed into the chuck. The Patriot Act always struck me as an over-reaction and that, as you know is about the nicest thing I can say about SOPA/PIPA. The reality of either of the latter is they're just not needed and will totally and completely backfire, in my opinion, back up on not only law but as a lifetime passionate student of history.
By all means defend copyright, if you must. But not copyright as a long term, if not permanent should they get their way, welfare plan for profitable, if fading, industries.
Censorship is censorship regardless of the excuse for it. Narrow legalism and the lies and exaggerations of Hollywood don't excuse it.
And as the Great Firewall of China as a thousand leaks (see cut of a thousand cuts tales) the Chinese try desperately to stop it but fail.
Gee, my real name is Joe Chen. In a country of a billion people that means there must be at least 250 millon who share my name!
Just as, in my case, having a name like John Wilson means never having to get an unlisted phone number. Only the most determined or desperate will try to look that one up by hand or internet directory. ;-)
(Rhetorical question follows be advised that the question may not be suitable for all audiences particularly those with minds closed tighter than a rusty steel trap)
Tell me did you READ the link and understand what was said there? Or did you just engage the part of your brain that deals with ad homineum "insults" that have nothing whatever to do with reality?
Though retail store so include this on an accounting line (imaginary though definitely there) as a cost of doing business.
Some one, some time, is gonna walk out with a microwavable sandwich and two tic tacs to wash down the taste!
That's not condoning theft, which I don't do, but it is realistic and realism about how retail and all other points on the supply chain work.
I just want the corner cell on the top floor with southern exposure, wide windows, air conditioning and good circulation as well as a private bath and shower.
And a multi-line phone, one blackberry and one android cell, good internet connection and cable as well as a 50" led tv screen/computer monitor with a top of the line gaming machine so I can edit up a storm of video, audio and still pictures of my own making. Sorta like I do now.
That's fair, don't you think?
As I've pointed out large software companies, also IP intensive industries and fierce competitors, quietly deal with the problem in much the same fashion.
People pirate, say Photoshop, but don't buy it cause it's so damned expensive and while The GIMP does most of what Photoshop does there are some things it doesn't do nearly as well. (The gap is closing, mind.)
That's how I started off with the software and now I have Master Collection 5.5 and when 6 comes out I'll move on to that. All fully paid for. And well worth every penny.
People pirate MS Office because they think they need to. Some move on to OpenOffice or its fork LibreOffice but MS knows, as well as Adobe does that one day enough of them will buy the product to have made it all worthwhile.
Additionally the "pirates" often turn into late beta and release candidate testers because all that shows up on software "pirate" sites too and they unintentionally or intentionally feed back useful information to the publishers. Forums not "connected" directly to MS or Adobe are full of chatter about them before the company announcement is even finished. And don't think there aren't MS or Adobe employees watching those as well.
Neither MS or Adobe condone piracy but they seem to feel it's giving them enough in the way of feedback and sales to tone down their formerly nasty statements about it and to join with the tech industry in opposing SOPA through CCIA and other organizations which says volumes.
By the way, Creative Commons does not mean copyright isn't there. It means the licensing allows for a great many freedoms that IP purists find abominable while retaining the central copyright. Very roughly similar to what a GPL, Apache, BSD or other open source licenses do for software. Copyright is still there but the licensing allows for freedoms not found in traditional licensing for copyright.
To an IP purist, of course, this just doesn't compute. How can you make money with Creative Commons or Open Source licensing?? Except people and companies DO. RedHat commes to mind very quickly.
To give OOTB and Average Joe their due, they don't object to any of this nor do they seem to have an issue with it. They do know the trick of the tale is licensing not the actual presence of copyright. While they seem like trolls sometimes they aren't. Sometimes infuriating but they're not trolls. Just as some of us infuriate them. Or, in my case, provide a nice sleeping aide for Average Joe. :-)
He's got great stuff on his own site on on Flickr as well. I've used it on my church's web site and in publications giving him full and complete credit for his work.
The EU bureaucracy and some of it's tamed politicians has been out of control for decades.
Remember, this is the bright lot that decided to legislate the curvature of bananas.
That such a curvature can only be attained by genetic modification (fast way) instead of breeding (that form of geneitic modification takes YEARS and we just can't wait!!!) doesn't seem to have occured to a bunch that is death on GMO foods but now all the bananas in Europe are genetically modifified.
That this is a classic example of circular thinking leading to a circular outcome, well at least curved one, is just too ironic to contemplate. ;-)
(To be honest I don't know if that curvature thing went through but knowing Eurocrats it did.)
Go look up the original copyright laws, the length and purposes of them. Current laws and the regime SOPA wants to go to are not only well beyond those purposes but twist them beyond recognition.
"Actually, all SOPA does is basically force companies to respect the existing copyright laws, and take away the back door that they have been driving their business models through for 10 years"
Ahh, the shibboleth again. On the minor point of length of copyright that's already been done and it keeps getting longer. So no, SOPA does not extent it, in that narrow sense.
As for "respect" for the laws. It may, just MAY, have an effect that way in the United States. But the bills and what law may be created from them ONLY applies to the United States.
OK, so you filter out the offending site on U.S. controlled DNS servers. No one else seems willing to follow suit on the globe so it makes a teeny-tiny dint in the "offending" company's business. And the site is still there by directly typing in the IP address.
If the domain name is registered with a registrar located in the United States is seized (with or without due process as in this instance it doesn't matter) you still get there by typing in that IP address octet. If the registrar is located outside of the United States the U.S. can't even do that. Extraterritorial application of U.S. laws, you see, and the U.S. can't do that and well knows that.
You cut off funding. As if, at some point, there won't be retaliation in the form of complaints from other countries about extraterritorial application of U.S. law and directly against the companies in question by simply telling them that "in our country you damned well will process these payments" while other funding avenues open up beyond American control.
So at best, at BEST, you cut off some "piracy" in the United States. I say "some" because all you accomplish is to push it underground. It'll still be there and more tempting do some to do as a way to "stick it to da man!" so it could very well increase. (My betting is that it will.)
And when it becomes a "stick it to da man" thing where's the respect for the law? Huh?
It ain't there. Even less than is there now.
It's the combination of bills like SOPA/PIPA and the corruption of the intent and purpose of laws like copyright and patents by extending scope and length of "protection" that has caused and will cause even less respect for and support of copyright and patents. (In this case, patents become collateral damage as if they're not damaged enough as it is.)
And it's the combination I'm talking about. So sorry it wasn't clear to you, although it would be crystal clear to a 5 year old.
Now then, just answer this direct question: How do SOPA/PIPA increase respect for copyright one iota?
(By the way, I DO support the concept and original intent of copyright and I would be very sad to see it go completely though it seems that it's becoming easier to say that it's time this concept was died and dumped off the nearest cliff.)
That would be a biased poll, there's no doubt. And what does that prove? Techdirt didn't run this poll AT&T did. Nominally counted as a SOPA supporter or at least neutral on the issue.
And you can't say the questions were leading ones so you go after the fact it's an opt-in poll and the utterly amazing (secret?) fact that they're notoriously inaccurate. At least we agree on that. And I agree that it's not representative because it's not a scientific poll. See? We agree again!!
What it is though is REFLECTIVE. I'd say highly reflective. That, once again, it's clear that the results show that across geographical lines, income, party, age and gender lines with every category you can think of opposed is rare. Like I've said, rarer than hen's teeth.
(Though chickens are counted as the closest living relative of T-Rex which certainly DID have teeth and nasty ones at that.)
What I'm gonna guess is that ANY poll that shows widespread opposition to SOPA you'll attack as biased in some way or another and obviously too many Techdirt readers were contacted as it couldn't happen any other way. Oh yeah, too many of the ignorant techies and tech companies too.
Haven't you stopped to consider that it's possible that the majority of Americans might just be opposed to this?
Nahhh, your tunnel vision prevents that as does your true believer support for the bills which doesn't allow for that.
On the post: New Anti-SOPA Song & Crowdsourced Video From Dan Bull
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On the post: New Anti-SOPA Song & Crowdsourced Video From Dan Bull
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Now all he has to do to collect it is make us believe him.
On the post: New Anti-SOPA Song & Crowdsourced Video From Dan Bull
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"Against stupidity the Gods Themselves contend in vain."
On the post: Court Orders Blog Taken Completely Offline For 'Harassing' Posts
Re: OOPS
"On September 10, Johnson petitioned for a new HRO. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court issued an HRO on March 28, 2011, that would “remain in effect until March 28, 2062.” The HRO prohibits Arlotta from: (1) “[a]ny repeated, intrusive, or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that are intended to adversely affect [Johnson's] safety, security, or privacy”; (2) “[a]ny contact, direct or indirect, with [Johnson] in person, by telephone, by email or by other means or persons”; and (3) “[a]ny email or other electronic message contact with third-parties that contains any material concerning [Johnson] that affects or intends to adversely affect [her] safety, security, or privacy.” The HRO also directs Arlotta to remove his blog from the Internet
Ok, now let me explain why I'm of two minds here.
To begin with the statements of fact prior to the ruling indicate that Arolotta consented to the first HRO and then within 48 hours began to violate if not the letter if it then the spirit of his consensual agreement. Not only by starting his blog but but contracting others of Ms Johnson's circle and employer by email and using his blog as a reference. During this period he contacts Johnson's grandmother, among others, to accuse Ms Johnson of abusing her child. In his contact with her grandmother he uses language which can only mean the child has being or is being sexually abused.
(Statement: I am a survivor of sexual abuse by my father during my teens and legally still a child. This continued into my early 20s. So you bet alarm bells went ringing right then and there.)
Now I don't know what the law is in Minnesota but I do know that Criminal Code of Canada says that such a statement must be reported to police for investigation. Failing to do that could result on charges of aiding and abetting the crime or being an accessory to it.
I'd have reported her on the spot.
I'd have had to but I'd have done it anyway.
None of the facts found seem in dispute it's the court's order to delete the blog that's appealed under the US First Amendment.
In my mind he consented to the first restraining order them broke it's terms and conditions in just about any way possible excluding the blog but did used the blog to cite for additional evidence should someone want more information on Ms Johnson. To me that citation as well as well as his continuing to email people known to Ms Johnson in violation of that and the subsequent award and his contracting of her employers that really make his blog in my mind questionable as protected free speech.
Worse his comment to Ms Johnson's grandmother isn't an opinion it's an accusation of a criminal act.
While I know the blog is still available should I go look for it in various places I can see the court wanting him to take it down though, the rest of his stuff remains on line on Facebook and elsewhere.
My problem remains that he consented to the terms and conditions of the first order and ought to have known that the blog, plus the emails put him in violation of something he AGREED to and consented to. To me he didn't just violate a restraining order he broke an agreement, contract if you would, with the court that would include the blog as it related to his continuing harassment by Ms Johnson by other means up to and including a criminal act our society finds heinous.
To me that means the blog wasn't protected speech given the findings of fact in the judgement and that they weren't disputed.
I apologize for the delay between these two posts as a nasty thing called "real life" intervened before I could get back to finish this.
With luck the first post makes more sense now. Maybe not.
It's been that kinda day since I started this. ;-)
On the post: Court Orders Blog Taken Completely Offline For 'Harassing' Posts
"On December 22, Arlotta consented to entry of a six-month HRO that prohibited him from (1) committing any acts “intended to adversely affect [Johnson's] safety, security, or privacy,” (2) having “any contact” with Johnson “in person, by work or home e-mail, by telephone, or by other means or persons,” and (3) visiting Johnson's Morgan Stanley “worksite.” By its terms, the HRO expired on June 22, 2010.
Two days after entry of the 2009 HRO, Arlotta created an Internet blog titled, “Help Ann Johnson.” The blog was written in the third-person and documented Arlotta's ongoing relationship issues with Johnson. ... Arlotta publicized and promoted the blog by sending electronic messages to Johnson's relatives, friends, and others, and posting links to the blog on other websites. He used fake Facebook identities (“Dana Russel” and “Pekin Ilanis”) to post the blog to other Facebook users. As “Dana Russel,” Arlotta contacted the father of Johnson's child nine times between December 28, 2009, and January 27, 2010. Arlotta asked him to “stop by” the blog, telling him, “this involves your child,” and claiming that “[c]hild & family services have been contacted.” Arlotta also contacted Johnson's grandmother telling her that Johnson “seems to have been abused,” and “was either molested or abused as a child or witnessed domestic violence.” ... As a result, Johnson was contacted by friends, family, and others who expressed concern over Arlotta's communications.
On August 22, 2010, Arlotta sent an e-mail to a Morgan Stanley employee asserting that Johnson was connected to “hardcore criminals” and that she “could be bad for business.” The e-mail included a link to the blog. The employee, believing the e-mail to be genuine, informed her supervisor, who met with Johnson to discuss the e-mail. No other action was taken by Johnson's employer.
On the post: Reuters Media Columnist Explains That SOPA/PIPA Are A 'Cure Worse Than The Disease'
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"The trade is 'you give up the right to copy, and in return the people who make the content can afford to keep doing it and give you a constant stream of new movies, music, tv shows, and books'." But that being the case just how did people like Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton and host of others make money from their works in the pre-copyright days after the inexpensive movable type press spread in Europe. And most of them didn't have patrons. People created before and after the introduction of laws like copyright and patents laws. And humans, being human will continue to create should either disappear tomorrow.
I happen to support the concept of copyright, though not for corporate welfare as very little that copyright protects goes back to the creator unless the creator is already a superstar retains their own copyright for book publishing. Hell, until the death of Micheal Jackson Paul McCartney and John Lennon's estate couldn't get their hands on Northern Songs copyright on their music, the stuff they wrote which, among other things meant that when MJ needed money he licensed Beatle's songs out for advertising until the advertiser suddenly discovered they weren't selling more by using it they were in fact selling less because of enraged Boomers and other Beatle's fans.
And you totally ignore that book publishers, and members of the RIAA and MPAA move heaven and earth and more to AVOID paying the creative parts of their industries with near or completely fraudulent accounting and a host of other "charges" to the creative part so they get to keep the profits themselves. None of this is new but you "for the artists" bleaters keep ignoring that well known fact.
And as the time things remain in copyright is, as noted, retroactively extended from time to time due the "we're broke" fibs from the above it seems that it may never end.
"one day they will fall into the public domain - which is packed with a few thousand years worth of content going back in man's history." Maybe, but not if Hollywood can find new and more inventive ways of retelling those stories in the public domain with minor changers, perhaps sanitizing the ending thereby removing any lesson told to keep it happy and then, as Disney has been known to do threaten to sue anyone coming up with an adaptation of a story they've already adapted because "Disney owns the copyright now on Snow White, dammit!!" Or some record company records a minor variation on Messiah or some well known Opera and attempts to say not only do they own the variation they recorded but the title itself as Disney does.
People will create because that's what people, and our species, does. Talented people will create by the shipload and find a way to get paid and supported for it as they did before copyright existed. Inventors will still invent as they did before patent law whose reason was to end things like trade secrets in exchange for a short monopoly on a thing not a lifetime pension for, say, the pharmaceutical industry or the creation of patent trolls a genus know as patent trolls who appear to have evolved in East Texas.
Note the use of the word SHORT. Not lifetime, not forever, not perpetual but SHORT.
It's hard to support either when the basic understanding of the idea has become so corrupted that the understanding is either no longer in place or one side has decided to ignore it's side of the deal.
As in most law. more often in common law than criminal law, the citizenry also has the right to say that "we've had enough of this crap and corruption so here and now we withdraw our support for this law as both the purpose and understanding when we agreed to copyright and patent are no longer observed unilaterally by those who sold us on the purpose and understanding. So SHOVE IT!."
I strongly suggest that that's what's happening now. Hollywood has overplayed its hand this time around and what was already there when Valente went on his Tour of Lies in the early day of VCRs has now become a chorus and that chorus of dissent and withdrawal on permission by the other side of the contract has become louder.
Oh, and indeed part of the original contract with copyright as with patents is that after a SHORT time, the works would move into the public domain as otherwise copyright would fail in it's prime goal of encouraging education. Points made in the preamble to the Statute of Queen Anne and the debates in Westminster as recorded in Hansard. That is the law that formed the genesis of American copyright law. So even then it was NOT intended as welfare for creators or those who feed on them such as publishers, recording companies and the motion picture industry.
You fail, AC. And really really badly.
On the post: China Ramps Up Online Censorship Efforts As US Congress Gives Them Perfect Cover
Re: US is no rolemodel
The United States remains as an ideal and a role model for the rest of us if not exactly what it's become since Vietnam.
No the United States isn't bankrupt of ideas or ideals. On the former though it ought to be alarming that Japan, India, Brazil and China all saw more patent applications for the first time in history than the United States has in 2010. Not accepted, just each had more applications.
And none, with the possible and only possible exception of China are going to filter for real or imagined "infringing" web sites. Nor have any said they're going to join in American attempts to choke off real or imagined "piracy" which sorta just leaves the USA hanging out there alone.
So perhaps, but only perhaps you're right when you say no country looks to the States as it currently is as a role model. But the ideal and idea expressed in the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution are still ideals most countries strive for whether they say so or not.
On the post: China Ramps Up Online Censorship Efforts As US Congress Gives Them Perfect Cover
Re:
You might, as one has suggested, learn something from history.
The death of the Roman republic began with the megalomania of a fella named Julius Caesar. his son Octavian who because Augustus the emperor all the time promising a restoration of the republic to a nasty bit of goods named Tiberius who simply scared the people that counted into compliance, to Caligula who openly and publically killed anyone and every one he didn't like sometimes shortly after screwing them including his own sister, to Claudius who just gave up all pretense of restoring a republic a nice enough chap in himself but whose wife sometimes made Caligula look sane, to Nero at which point the Claudian line ended and the republic was dead even if there would still be a Senate for the next thousand years. No one really took it all that seriously.
Not to say that the United States will follow that path but the same thing applies. Rights were removed a little at a time. First by Julius Ceasar, then a bit more by Augustus, the accelerating with Tiberius, to completely gone with Caligula in the space of less than 4 years to the final madman of the Claudian line by which point it was all gone.
Begins incrementally the accelerates exponentially until nothing is left.
It's for that very reason that the founders of the United States left the message not to trust government. To resist and oppose it where necessary and to overthrow it when necessary, by electoral means of course. Though it seems Jefferson, if I remember correctly, thought otherwise at times.
People in the States are seeing the slow erosion of what they consider rights and the US Constitution says are rights in the text itself, inherited from sources such as Magna Charta and rulings by the US Supreme Court since independence was gained.
Some see it starting and accelerating under the Patriot Act and interpretation of government powers contained in it and now with SOPA/PIPA adding to what they consider to be an alarming loss of the rights, freedoms and liberties so central to being an American.
I'd have some fear for the future, Joe, instead of a narrow reading of law to guide you but to look for trends that go beyond law itself and into what it means to be an American where they see the early linear part of the loss of liberty and fear the exponential loss that invariably happens as power assumes more and more rights to itself taking them away from "We, the People" to take on themselves.
The sad irony is that all this is happening while up here in the great White North we are moving in the opposite direction with our relatively new Constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms where the courts and the people are chipping more and more power FROM government.
At one time we had a draconian piece of legislation known as the War Measures Act. It's purpose was to control media and people during World War One and later for World War Two. It was reimposed on us in 1972 in response to a terrorist act inside Canada by a home grown lot who kidnapped and murdered two people in support of their aims. Pierre Trudeau, probably the greatest supporter and promoter of political, social and individual rights ever to hold the Prime Minister's Office, imposed the Act in an attempt to smoke out the terrorists which led to troops on the streets of Montreal, Ottawa and elsewhere including "sensitive" installations like the Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport both of which suddenly had soldiers guarding them. Unlike the Patriot Act once imposed the War Measures Act had 120 days to be passed through both houses of Parliament with a timeline to remove it included. The imposition of the Act actually lasted for far less time than that, if memory serves.
Once the Charter passed the first bit of law declared unconstitutional was the War Measures Act, again, going on memory.
SOPA/PIPA may not end up going to the extremes some here are afraid or terrified that it will. But there's not much comfort there as the Patriot Act keeps applying more and more broadly as the chances of another outside terrorist attack become less and less likely which is what it was passed to prevent.
Two long time friends, neighbours and allies moving in different directions. The northern one taking the first halting steps to kicking the slats out of government while the southern one seeming to move the other way.
With all due respect, Joe, narrow legalism allows the first while a vision of how we want Canada to be allows the second. As what we want is what America had pre-Patriot Act and without stuff like SOPA and PIPA.
Our war measures act was an over-reaction to war and,finally, "apprehended insurrection" before it got tossed into the chuck. The Patriot Act always struck me as an over-reaction and that, as you know is about the nicest thing I can say about SOPA/PIPA. The reality of either of the latter is they're just not needed and will totally and completely backfire, in my opinion, back up on not only law but as a lifetime passionate student of history.
By all means defend copyright, if you must. But not copyright as a long term, if not permanent should they get their way, welfare plan for profitable, if fading, industries.
Censorship is censorship regardless of the excuse for it. Narrow legalism and the lies and exaggerations of Hollywood don't excuse it.
Particularly as it cannot and will not work.
On the post: China Ramps Up Online Censorship Efforts As US Congress Gives Them Perfect Cover
Re:
Gee, my real name is Joe Chen. In a country of a billion people that means there must be at least 250 millon who share my name!
Just as, in my case, having a name like John Wilson means never having to get an unlisted phone number. Only the most determined or desperate will try to look that one up by hand or internet directory. ;-)
On the post: Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
Re:
Tell me did you READ the link and understand what was said there? Or did you just engage the part of your brain that deals with ad homineum "insults" that have nothing whatever to do with reality?
On the post: Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
Re: Re:
Some one, some time, is gonna walk out with a microwavable sandwich and two tic tacs to wash down the taste!
That's not condoning theft, which I don't do, but it is realistic and realism about how retail and all other points on the supply chain work.
On the post: Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
Re: Re:
And a multi-line phone, one blackberry and one android cell, good internet connection and cable as well as a 50" led tv screen/computer monitor with a top of the line gaming machine so I can edit up a storm of video, audio and still pictures of my own making. Sorta like I do now.
That's fair, don't you think?
On the post: Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
People pirate, say Photoshop, but don't buy it cause it's so damned expensive and while The GIMP does most of what Photoshop does there are some things it doesn't do nearly as well. (The gap is closing, mind.)
That's how I started off with the software and now I have Master Collection 5.5 and when 6 comes out I'll move on to that. All fully paid for. And well worth every penny.
People pirate MS Office because they think they need to. Some move on to OpenOffice or its fork LibreOffice but MS knows, as well as Adobe does that one day enough of them will buy the product to have made it all worthwhile.
Additionally the "pirates" often turn into late beta and release candidate testers because all that shows up on software "pirate" sites too and they unintentionally or intentionally feed back useful information to the publishers. Forums not "connected" directly to MS or Adobe are full of chatter about them before the company announcement is even finished. And don't think there aren't MS or Adobe employees watching those as well.
Neither MS or Adobe condone piracy but they seem to feel it's giving them enough in the way of feedback and sales to tone down their formerly nasty statements about it and to join with the tech industry in opposing SOPA through CCIA and other organizations which says volumes.
By the way, Creative Commons does not mean copyright isn't there. It means the licensing allows for a great many freedoms that IP purists find abominable while retaining the central copyright. Very roughly similar to what a GPL, Apache, BSD or other open source licenses do for software. Copyright is still there but the licensing allows for freedoms not found in traditional licensing for copyright.
To an IP purist, of course, this just doesn't compute. How can you make money with Creative Commons or Open Source licensing?? Except people and companies DO. RedHat commes to mind very quickly.
To give OOTB and Average Joe their due, they don't object to any of this nor do they seem to have an issue with it. They do know the trick of the tale is licensing not the actual presence of copyright. While they seem like trolls sometimes they aren't. Sometimes infuriating but they're not trolls. Just as some of us infuriate them. Or, in my case, provide a nice sleeping aide for Average Joe. :-)
On the post: Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
Re: Off to buy umm, something!
On the post: EU Council Quietly Adopts ACTA, By Hiding It In An Agriculture And Fisheries Meeting
Remember, this is the bright lot that decided to legislate the curvature of bananas.
That such a curvature can only be attained by genetic modification (fast way) instead of breeding (that form of geneitic modification takes YEARS and we just can't wait!!!) doesn't seem to have occured to a bunch that is death on GMO foods but now all the bananas in Europe are genetically modifified.
That this is a classic example of circular thinking leading to a circular outcome, well at least curved one, is just too ironic to contemplate. ;-)
(To be honest I don't know if that curvature thing went through but knowing Eurocrats it did.)
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
Re: Re: Re:
What's scary is willful ignorance. And we have you as a clear example of that.
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Actually, all SOPA does is basically force companies to respect the existing copyright laws, and take away the back door that they have been driving their business models through for 10 years"
Ahh, the shibboleth again. On the minor point of length of copyright that's already been done and it keeps getting longer. So no, SOPA does not extent it, in that narrow sense.
As for "respect" for the laws. It may, just MAY, have an effect that way in the United States. But the bills and what law may be created from them ONLY applies to the United States.
OK, so you filter out the offending site on U.S. controlled DNS servers. No one else seems willing to follow suit on the globe so it makes a teeny-tiny dint in the "offending" company's business. And the site is still there by directly typing in the IP address.
If the domain name is registered with a registrar located in the United States is seized (with or without due process as in this instance it doesn't matter) you still get there by typing in that IP address octet. If the registrar is located outside of the United States the U.S. can't even do that. Extraterritorial application of U.S. laws, you see, and the U.S. can't do that and well knows that.
You cut off funding. As if, at some point, there won't be retaliation in the form of complaints from other countries about extraterritorial application of U.S. law and directly against the companies in question by simply telling them that "in our country you damned well will process these payments" while other funding avenues open up beyond American control.
So at best, at BEST, you cut off some "piracy" in the United States. I say "some" because all you accomplish is to push it underground. It'll still be there and more tempting do some to do as a way to "stick it to da man!" so it could very well increase. (My betting is that it will.)
And when it becomes a "stick it to da man" thing where's the respect for the law? Huh?
It ain't there. Even less than is there now.
It's the combination of bills like SOPA/PIPA and the corruption of the intent and purpose of laws like copyright and patents by extending scope and length of "protection" that has caused and will cause even less respect for and support of copyright and patents. (In this case, patents become collateral damage as if they're not damaged enough as it is.)
And it's the combination I'm talking about. So sorry it wasn't clear to you, although it would be crystal clear to a 5 year old.
Now then, just answer this direct question: How do SOPA/PIPA increase respect for copyright one iota?
(By the way, I DO support the concept and original intent of copyright and I would be very sad to see it go completely though it seems that it's becoming easier to say that it's time this concept was died and dumped off the nearest cliff.)
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
Re: Are you insane?
After all we just can't have things like non-violent resistance and opposition can we? How do you demonize that??
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
Re: Re: Re:
And you can't say the questions were leading ones so you go after the fact it's an opt-in poll and the utterly amazing (secret?) fact that they're notoriously inaccurate. At least we agree on that. And I agree that it's not representative because it's not a scientific poll. See? We agree again!!
What it is though is REFLECTIVE. I'd say highly reflective. That, once again, it's clear that the results show that across geographical lines, income, party, age and gender lines with every category you can think of opposed is rare. Like I've said, rarer than hen's teeth.
(Though chickens are counted as the closest living relative of T-Rex which certainly DID have teeth and nasty ones at that.)
What I'm gonna guess is that ANY poll that shows widespread opposition to SOPA you'll attack as biased in some way or another and obviously too many Techdirt readers were contacted as it couldn't happen any other way. Oh yeah, too many of the ignorant techies and tech companies too.
Haven't you stopped to consider that it's possible that the majority of Americans might just be opposed to this?
Nahhh, your tunnel vision prevents that as does your true believer support for the bills which doesn't allow for that.
On the post: How SOPA Will Be (Ab)Used
Re: Re: Re: Re:
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