That's the dilemma. The very thing Joe claims is under attack is thriving if the profits of RIAA and MPAA companies are anything to judge by. Certainly Bollywood is thriving, even with ex-pats "pirating hither and yon" because they can't get the latest from Bollywood yet. Strangely they also flock to theatres to see them when the movies arrive and watch them on Punjabi TV channels. Movies are still a social event for the ex-pats something they've become less and less of in North America and the EU. The ex-pats also buy the DVDs and CDs when they arrive in the country they now live in in large numbers as well.
All of which changes nothing about the overboard and over the top enforcement of copyright laws contained in SOPA and PIPA for the profit of a few companies who are still, as it turns out, raking great gobs of money in despite their whinging.
So one small reminder to Joe, that if the international copyright system as set up under the Berne Convention then why is the Congress trying to fix something that isn't broken? It makes no sense.
As the DOJ would be notifying a foreign hosted web site that would then have to appear in an American court would by any stretch of the imagination seen as an attempt by the United States to apply the law extra-territorially which is, at best invalid under intentional law and certainly one, if the shoe was on the other foot, the Untied States would correctly object to and loudly.
If I'm factually wrong on one item I apologize but only by a little. There is no valid process serving on any civil law complaints anywhere internationally that I'm aware of and only rarely in criminal cases. So to that extent I stand on the statement of no notification (valid and legal notification if you prefer) but I stand on that statement. United States civil or criminal courts have no jurisdiction outside of the United States, it's territories and possessions. None. Zero.
As for the company the United States gets to keep in doing DNS filtering, well, you do get judged, rightly or wrongly by the company you keep. And it this case it's not good company for a country founded on and still insistent on freedom and liberty in a large number of those it's now keeping company with.
If you cant' see the disconnect, I can't help you.
I'd not take all that much comfort from these results. It's rather that you're reading into them what you want to see and interpret.
As I say below, the most impressive part of these results for either side is their universality across regions, ages, income and political groupings which even for an opt in poll are rarer than hen's teeth. I'm willing to guess if you looked at ethnic groupings the results would be similar.
In short, disastrous.
All that said I'm sure there are polls going on right now of a far more scientific nature from all sides.
Then of course, the trick is -- what are the questions, what order are they asked in and so on which can and do skew polling data.
That people aren't picketing, marching in the streets and occupying over this shouldn't surprise anyone.
And I do love your attempt to turn this into the good old "law and order" and visions of disorder and lawlessness. But that doesn't hold water either. It's been tried so often in these kinds of debates that it's just tiresome now and meaningless.
The issue is more cultural and one of simple human nature than one of law and order. It's about extending the length and breadth of copyright far beyond it's original intent. Certainly far beyond any cultural use it once had. (And that use has been significant.) It's about extending patents to ridiculous extremes and to items and concepts that are far, far beyond the original intent of patents far beyond their cultural and economic usefulness.
Seriously, patenting something as ethereal as a business process? Let's not even go into the horrid approval process of the USPTO. And the patent troll heaven of East Texas.
And no, I doubt most of us approve of increased speeding fines when limits are artificially held to 55mph long after the optimum gas saving speed is no longer 55 and on roads built and designed for faster speeds in order to function correctly.
For example I get far better mileage at 70 in my 2010 F150 than I do at 55. Even as astonished as I still am at the mileage that truck gets in comparison to what a F150 would have done even as recently as 15 years ago.
So what, other than inertia and increased speeding fine income is there for (a) increasing the fine and (b) keeping an outdated speed limit that no longer does what it was supposed to do which is save gas?
So while the concept that there should be a speed limit remains an agreed on facet of our North American culture neither the limit or increasing fines for exceeding it is a given as you seem to assume it is. We still agree that there's a cultural use for speed limits.
But where we don't agree is that there is a cultural use for the perversion and corruption that copyright and patent law has become in recent years. Or an economic one for that matter.
And where I certainly disagree is your notion that this is somehow a bad result for those opposed to SOPA/PIPA. It isn't, This was a poorly promoted poll so it didn't get tons of hardliners running towards it from either side.
I'm not saying it's accurate in it's numbers but I AM suggesting it's reflective and what it reflects is very poor support for SOPA/PIPA.
Actually, for an opt in poll, and they ARE notoriously inaccurate, if I was a SOPA supporter I'd start to get seriously worried. They have tried, half heartedly, to get public support but i sure isn't showing there. Opposition is.
And it's across age, political and regional lines which ought to be very worrisome to those supporting the bills. That's rarer than hen's teeth even for an opt in poll.
It's not the numbers as much as the near universality of them that would be troublesome to me if I was in charge of a campaign to whip up support for these bills. I'd be asking what's taken them so long to do at least SOME PR work on it by anyone BUT Hollywood. Spread the word about fake drug sites and all that. The RIAA and the MPAA are probably the weakest link in any PR so shove them deep into the background for PR work because I'm sure that outside of parts of California that would backfire big time. They just aren't credible.
And there's the PR problem. Like it or not Hollywood just isn't credible. They've cried wolf for decades and continued to rake in money while trying to plead poverty while claiming to be in it all for the creators. No one's bought that since the 20s when United Artists was born and blew the lid off that scam. (And later joined in the scamming.)
29% is still only 3 on 10 and even if they show up to support supporters of the bill in November in, say, 40% numbers if those opposed do the same they're still outvoted 7-3, which is a substantial majority.
I suspect opponents are more motivated to show up to the polls on this issue than supporters are, as well. Taking your point into account they were certainly more motivated to opt into the poll than supporters were.
What's important from a polling standpoint is the breadth and width of the opposition to SOPA/PIPA. It's clearly not a case of one of these "mile wide and inch deep" opposition/support to an issue cases. It's deep and likely to remain so.
My guess is that in a more scientific poll the split would be something like 60-40 or 65-35 against. And just as wide and universal. So not good for SOPA supporters in Congress at all.
No, it's not a reason to loathe the United States. It's reason to feel sad and apprehensive. When the country most responsible for our current notions of what democracy, freedom, liberty and free speech start to legislate to remove or reduce those values it won't be long before we all lose it or worse.
No, this isn't America's first foray into real or probable censorship it is, outside of wartime, the first time it's been supported by the highest offices in the States. Before it was just publisher and motion pictures and recordings that had to dance around certain things and discussions or a temporary aberration like the 1950's witch hunts. (I do miss the train going into the tunnel at full steam at the climax of love scenes though! )
No, it's a time for sadness and a time to express support for Americans opposed to this kind of erosion. Particularly when the other side of the discussion is carried by people acting on behalf of private commercial gain instead of the public good or by spreading needless fear and anxiety as what is happening now with the Patriot Act.
You don't defend liberty by taking it away. No matter the excuse for doing so.
Agreed. Censorship is not a function of due process. Due process denied can and often does lead to such nasty things as censorship.
When a private person can complain something is "infringing" without notice and notification and a web site is sjhut down and its funding cut off IS a denial of due process whether or not it's dubiously legal because it's in SOPA/PIPA.
And no, I'm not comparing the States to China or North Korea but you've fixated on that. The point of that comparison is to show you, and others, the fine, upstanding select company the United States will be in when it starts DNS filtering should these bills pass and become law.
It doesn't undermine the problems of real censorship. Denial that something could lead to that result undermines it, mind you. Recent history illustrates that well enough (and to me recent is the last 300 years. say, from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the present).
And I'm glad I was able to help you on your way to your nap. At least it got a cogent response from you even if I strongly disagree on every point you raise.
This is starting to feel like old home week from the SCO vs Novell, IBM, Linux as a whole, and the rest of the planet where Ou, like Cleland, had awarded SCO a victory long before it died, well, just because what SCO said HAD to be true.
Technically Ou was as out to lunch there than he is in this this article. Ou, like those he accuses of being wrong is acting as much on faith as he does on technical reality.
Kinda like a loosely worded paragraph offered up an an amendment, for example, will have any practical value where DNSSEC is concerned. We know how well that works when we encounter the subspecies of bureaucrat called East Texas patent court judges. Keeping in mind that a bureaucracy's only goal is to grow and expand itself.
Ou's taking to task the very people who wrote DNS and DNSSEC would be amusing except that someone will actually take him seriously. FINALLY, they'll say, a techie that agrees with us! Except that Ou's opinions are for sale to the highest bidder if his track record is any indication.
Oh, and most people landing on at least some of these sites are "victims" is nice turn of events in all of this. Except, except that SOPA won't slow the sales of counterfeit drugs any more than it will slow "infringement" of Hollywood's mostly questionable products. And I say that more with sadness than any sort of smug happiness. Until drug prices come down to earth people will go looking for the best deal they can find and, if desperate enough, even unbelievable deals. What was fairly open will go underground, complete with code words and phrases and the whack a mole game will really start in earnest. Desperate people will still find those drugs, and desperate people will continue to die or be crippled by the effects of those fakes. But it's not gonna stop it.
Just what part of that reality do you and other supporters of SOPA/PIPA not understand?
Oh, that now welfare case in a chronic care bed till s/he dies because s/he deserves it cause their a criminal?
That Hollywood will be back in a year of two wanting more, like any good addict, of a their legislation drug cause their earnings still don't match what they THINK the earnings should be? (All while they continue to move heaven and earth NOT to pay the creative people they constantly say they're representing?)
If you can discover a period anywhere in human history when a law, once enacted, is restricted to the "few" some politican claimed it was aimed at let me know. As far as I know no historian has found such a thing.
Once bureaucrats get their hands on a shiny new law they immediately go to work expanding its scope. Preferable to infinity. That applies the both genus of bureaucrat -- ones allegedly working for the people (government) and ones working in the private sector (large to too-big-to-fail) private sector ones.
A bureaucracy, as a parasite, has one goal only. To expand until it swallows its host. Often morphing along the way to resemble the host so much that very few notice the change.
SOPA anyone?
Nothing particulary rhetorical or nonsensical about it. DNS filtering based on a complaint only without due process IS censorship.
Kinda like when Boston banned Lady Chatterly's Lover because it might, just might, mind you, offend someone. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, shits like a duck and drops feathers everywhere like a duck it must then be a duck no matter what else you want to call it.
Add to that the notion that not too many get around the filters, as we found from the demonstrations in Iran recently it doesn't take many to get through or to get the message out or other ones in. Just because it's not often does doesn't mean that it isn't done.
If it isn't done, say, in China, then a large number of people in Shanghai must be psychic because they know far top much about things The Great Firewall of Chine filters out to be otherwise. Things business people in Shanghai need to know to do business but that bureaucrats in Beijing think might undermine the regime but the business people consider vital for their business. As long as they don't act on that knowledge politically everyone is happy, particularly if they make tons of money which makes other bureaucrats in Beijing very, very happy.
(Before you ask yes, I'm suggesting that in China you buy bureaucrats to keep you and your business "safe" rather than the western model of buying influential politicians. It all comes out the same in the end.)
I hope you're enjoying your time off from law school, AJ, and I definitely hope you write papers with better arguments in them than your posts here.
You know, I've always wondered what "traditional [country] values are" that politicians and interest groups are so quick to fall back on when they have noting else to back up their argument.
Even more when you discover that "traditional" is what they decide it is, such as, Gingrich does.
Which, by the same reasoning, means geriatric true believers who swallow Hollywood's endless claims about "piracy", such as yourself, aren't of interest to anyone. Walking around talking to yourself or not.
Then I need to note that your repeated, meaningless, dreary and meandering posts in response to posts about SOPA strike me more like the nutty old homeless man than Mike ever has.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Mike's wrong and you're right. There be pirates out there! You've seen them under the bed at night!
They surely have found themselves in great company in East Texas in the company of other IP intensive industries such as SCO. It's all a local development model, you see. Bring in the trolls, let 'em sue for whatever and pave the new road!
I was about to say that each of these, from the titles alone, have the distinct scent of prior art to them.
I'd guess 40 years way back to tape drives and the earliest hard drives attached to mainframes and early Unix machines. Just what are people like this doing working at patent offices?
Oh, I get it, they're positioning themselves for elected office!
The pirates of the last three decades? Nice try but widespread adoption of high speed cable and ADSL at home barely is decade along, 15 years at best.
Thirty years ago even big business was living with such advanced and speedy stuff like 8 and 16bps modems outside of their heavy iron rooms. (Mainframes, as I know you're not much of a geek, well not any kind.)
I know, I was there. Working in the folks that provided that kind of service back then called Telcos. Hell, to afford 43bps you paid for the nose and unless you were government, the military or, curiously enough, the film and recording industries you didn't even think of your very own T-1.
So let's drop 20 years off your claim of piracy.
That's the astonishing thing about the RIAA/MPAA is that they can't even get their time lines right.
If it's cassette recordings and video home recordings you're going after for "piracy" need I remind you that sales of recordings and box office receipts soared as the boomers (me among them) continued to buy records and see movies at an increasing rate.
Cassettes were nice but only until the jammed or unraveled in a useless mess of magnetic tape in the car player or home recorder. VHS tapes have a really bad shelf life and the picture quality is akin to an old Kodak Brownie, worse if you did a tape to tape copy.
In short, didn't hurt a bit for the RIAA or MPAA in spite of all their whinging and public hand wringing about it.
And as for copyright it's purpose was never to provide mulch-generational income for the creator, more likely the corporate entity that wouldn't publish, record or film their work till said copyright was signed over the said corporate entities. Particularly if you were an unknown.
Look back at the Statue of Ann, the first copyright legislation in the English speaking world. Right up there near the top of the preamble. It was to encourage "education". And what's education consist of, in large part? Sharing knowledge. SHARING. Not hiding it. The same, incidentally applies to patents.
We humans SHARE things, we share knowledge, swap stories, share books, videos, now mp3s and wmv's. That's what we do. And at the end of the day it mostly works in favour of the creator who people otherwise might never heard of. So they sell another book, another CD or another movie DVD or whatever. Like magnetic tape, stuff stored on a hard drive or even in the cloud is transient. You can't hold it in your hand. And that's something else we humans like, is to hold things in our hands. One very good reason that I continue to think the death of printed books is grossly exaggerated. A Kindle's nice on a plane but it's hell to lay down by a fire and try to share the book with the person you love most in your life compared to a book.
So no. Because I privately share a file now and then doesn't make me a hooligan. It makes me human. (By the way the few I've shared whether on file lockers in the cloud or as email attachments all of it has resulted in sales for the creator I "filched" it from.
The ONLY hooligans in this discussion are those who want to place American (and the world's) culture(s) behind the doors of walled gardens and make what belongs to us all something we have to beg for by way of inflated rents (pricing) using and extending copyright far, far beyond its original purpose as clearly stated in the first ever copyright act. (And the American adaptation of it.)
And no, SOPA won't work if it depends on DNS filtering exclusively. Not when the rest of the world isn't going along with it. The chances of that happening are about the same as a snowball's chance in hell. Maybe less.
Even if it does pass and is held constitutional.
What it will accomplish, though, is the darkening of the light that was once the most admired country in the world, one seen as adopting and living by the very principles and doctrines it's founders intentioned and wrote into it's constitution. One that took those principles to the rest of the world and convinced them to adopt a number of them themselves including the state they rebelled against.
Now the state that has imprisonment without trial in what's widely seen around the world as a glorified concentration camp (Gitmo), that imprisons per capita more of it's people than any other developed country, one that executes more of them per capita that the rest of the developed world combined and one that, at the end of a gun, tries to export the very ideals it once persuaded us to adopt. Ironically, in some cases, even that exporting has brought about more open countries that that country than that country itself is becoming.
If you hadn't guessed that's the United States of America. A country I live next door to, visit frequently and whose people I still find as some of the best this planet has to offer. A country I still admire and whose political freedoms, particularly till now, free speech, I've envied even though Canada's comes the closest to it than anywhere else on the planet.
Now comes SOPA and PIPA.
I guess I'm supposed to be the silent neighbour who allows horrible things to happen across the fence cause it's "none of my business".
Can't do that. What happens to freedom and liberty, due process and the rule of law in the United States will quickly happen to the rest of the planet as we watch some of you betray everything your founders stood for.
So that's why this neighbour is so interested in what's happening south of the 49th. First because I can't stand to see that light dim and start to go out and secondly because it is my business to protest in what small way I can a bill that I see doing that.
The hooligans, Joe, are the supporters of these bills. Not the opponents. They're the congress critters who won't listen to any other point of view than the one with the biggest donations. In short, the one who'll pay the most for their vote.
Actually I take full responsibility for my own actions. And statements and what I write. Pity you don't do the same.
And I have no doubt that you don't work for the RIAA. Maybe Righthaven but not the RIAA who had Sonny Bono in Congress to do their bidding. Anyway, at least when Hollywood flat out lies there's usually a face and person to attach to those lies. Even IF the best they can do is Scott Cleland.
You are symptomatic of far too much ingestion of the Kool-Aid (tm) that the RIAA and MPAA have been serving out all these years and the malnutrition that comes from that.
The major difference is that makers of Anime animations and comics didn't go charging off screaming "pirate" anywhere at all the "pirated" video tapes and poorly put together photocopied and stapled together comics the adapted and took the gray/black market over completely.
I just don't see Hollywood doing that or even having the opportunity to now. Consumers have gone elsewhere, iTunes, Amazon, gray/black/pirate market(s) it's very, very unlikely they're coming back.
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All of which changes nothing about the overboard and over the top enforcement of copyright laws contained in SOPA and PIPA for the profit of a few companies who are still, as it turns out, raking great gobs of money in despite their whinging.
So one small reminder to Joe, that if the international copyright system as set up under the Berne Convention then why is the Congress trying to fix something that isn't broken? It makes no sense.
On the post: The List Of Internet Censoring Countries The MPAA Thinks Provide A Good Example For The US
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If I'm factually wrong on one item I apologize but only by a little. There is no valid process serving on any civil law complaints anywhere internationally that I'm aware of and only rarely in criminal cases. So to that extent I stand on the statement of no notification (valid and legal notification if you prefer) but I stand on that statement. United States civil or criminal courts have no jurisdiction outside of the United States, it's territories and possessions. None. Zero.
As for the company the United States gets to keep in doing DNS filtering, well, you do get judged, rightly or wrongly by the company you keep. And it this case it's not good company for a country founded on and still insistent on freedom and liberty in a large number of those it's now keeping company with.
If you cant' see the disconnect, I can't help you.
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
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As I say below, the most impressive part of these results for either side is their universality across regions, ages, income and political groupings which even for an opt in poll are rarer than hen's teeth. I'm willing to guess if you looked at ethnic groupings the results would be similar.
In short, disastrous.
All that said I'm sure there are polls going on right now of a far more scientific nature from all sides.
Then of course, the trick is -- what are the questions, what order are they asked in and so on which can and do skew polling data.
That people aren't picketing, marching in the streets and occupying over this shouldn't surprise anyone.
And I do love your attempt to turn this into the good old "law and order" and visions of disorder and lawlessness. But that doesn't hold water either. It's been tried so often in these kinds of debates that it's just tiresome now and meaningless.
The issue is more cultural and one of simple human nature than one of law and order. It's about extending the length and breadth of copyright far beyond it's original intent. Certainly far beyond any cultural use it once had. (And that use has been significant.) It's about extending patents to ridiculous extremes and to items and concepts that are far, far beyond the original intent of patents far beyond their cultural and economic usefulness.
Seriously, patenting something as ethereal as a business process? Let's not even go into the horrid approval process of the USPTO. And the patent troll heaven of East Texas.
And no, I doubt most of us approve of increased speeding fines when limits are artificially held to 55mph long after the optimum gas saving speed is no longer 55 and on roads built and designed for faster speeds in order to function correctly.
For example I get far better mileage at 70 in my 2010 F150 than I do at 55. Even as astonished as I still am at the mileage that truck gets in comparison to what a F150 would have done even as recently as 15 years ago.
So what, other than inertia and increased speeding fine income is there for (a) increasing the fine and (b) keeping an outdated speed limit that no longer does what it was supposed to do which is save gas?
So while the concept that there should be a speed limit remains an agreed on facet of our North American culture neither the limit or increasing fines for exceeding it is a given as you seem to assume it is. We still agree that there's a cultural use for speed limits.
But where we don't agree is that there is a cultural use for the perversion and corruption that copyright and patent law has become in recent years. Or an economic one for that matter.
And where I certainly disagree is your notion that this is somehow a bad result for those opposed to SOPA/PIPA. It isn't, This was a poorly promoted poll so it didn't get tons of hardliners running towards it from either side.
I'm not saying it's accurate in it's numbers but I AM suggesting it's reflective and what it reflects is very poor support for SOPA/PIPA.
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
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And it's across age, political and regional lines which ought to be very worrisome to those supporting the bills. That's rarer than hen's teeth even for an opt in poll.
It's not the numbers as much as the near universality of them that would be troublesome to me if I was in charge of a campaign to whip up support for these bills. I'd be asking what's taken them so long to do at least SOME PR work on it by anyone BUT Hollywood. Spread the word about fake drug sites and all that. The RIAA and the MPAA are probably the weakest link in any PR so shove them deep into the background for PR work because I'm sure that outside of parts of California that would backfire big time. They just aren't credible.
And there's the PR problem. Like it or not Hollywood just isn't credible. They've cried wolf for decades and continued to rake in money while trying to plead poverty while claiming to be in it all for the creators. No one's bought that since the 20s when United Artists was born and blew the lid off that scam. (And later joined in the scamming.)
29% is still only 3 on 10 and even if they show up to support supporters of the bill in November in, say, 40% numbers if those opposed do the same they're still outvoted 7-3, which is a substantial majority.
I suspect opponents are more motivated to show up to the polls on this issue than supporters are, as well. Taking your point into account they were certainly more motivated to opt into the poll than supporters were.
What's important from a polling standpoint is the breadth and width of the opposition to SOPA/PIPA. It's clearly not a case of one of these "mile wide and inch deep" opposition/support to an issue cases. It's deep and likely to remain so.
My guess is that in a more scientific poll the split would be something like 60-40 or 65-35 against. And just as wide and universal. So not good for SOPA supporters in Congress at all.
On the post: Poll Suggests Americans Of All Ages, Political Positions, Locations... All Hate SOPA
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On the post: The List Of Internet Censoring Countries The MPAA Thinks Provide A Good Example For The US
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No, this isn't America's first foray into real or probable censorship it is, outside of wartime, the first time it's been supported by the highest offices in the States. Before it was just publisher and motion pictures and recordings that had to dance around certain things and discussions or a temporary aberration like the 1950's witch hunts. (I do miss the train going into the tunnel at full steam at the climax of love scenes though! )
No, it's a time for sadness and a time to express support for Americans opposed to this kind of erosion. Particularly when the other side of the discussion is carried by people acting on behalf of private commercial gain instead of the public good or by spreading needless fear and anxiety as what is happening now with the Patriot Act.
You don't defend liberty by taking it away. No matter the excuse for doing so.
On the post: The List Of Internet Censoring Countries The MPAA Thinks Provide A Good Example For The US
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When a private person can complain something is "infringing" without notice and notification and a web site is sjhut down and its funding cut off IS a denial of due process whether or not it's dubiously legal because it's in SOPA/PIPA.
And no, I'm not comparing the States to China or North Korea but you've fixated on that. The point of that comparison is to show you, and others, the fine, upstanding select company the United States will be in when it starts DNS filtering should these bills pass and become law.
It doesn't undermine the problems of real censorship. Denial that something could lead to that result undermines it, mind you. Recent history illustrates that well enough (and to me recent is the last 300 years. say, from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the present).
And I'm glad I was able to help you on your way to your nap. At least it got a cogent response from you even if I strongly disagree on every point you raise.
Now, at least we can have a discussion.
On the post: The List Of Internet Censoring Countries The MPAA Thinks Provide A Good Example For The US
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This is starting to feel like old home week from the SCO vs Novell, IBM, Linux as a whole, and the rest of the planet where Ou, like Cleland, had awarded SCO a victory long before it died, well, just because what SCO said HAD to be true.
Technically Ou was as out to lunch there than he is in this this article. Ou, like those he accuses of being wrong is acting as much on faith as he does on technical reality.
Kinda like a loosely worded paragraph offered up an an amendment, for example, will have any practical value where DNSSEC is concerned. We know how well that works when we encounter the subspecies of bureaucrat called East Texas patent court judges. Keeping in mind that a bureaucracy's only goal is to grow and expand itself.
Ou's taking to task the very people who wrote DNS and DNSSEC would be amusing except that someone will actually take him seriously. FINALLY, they'll say, a techie that agrees with us! Except that Ou's opinions are for sale to the highest bidder if his track record is any indication.
Oh, and most people landing on at least some of these sites are "victims" is nice turn of events in all of this. Except, except that SOPA won't slow the sales of counterfeit drugs any more than it will slow "infringement" of Hollywood's mostly questionable products. And I say that more with sadness than any sort of smug happiness. Until drug prices come down to earth people will go looking for the best deal they can find and, if desperate enough, even unbelievable deals. What was fairly open will go underground, complete with code words and phrases and the whack a mole game will really start in earnest. Desperate people will still find those drugs, and desperate people will continue to die or be crippled by the effects of those fakes. But it's not gonna stop it.
Just what part of that reality do you and other supporters of SOPA/PIPA not understand?
Oh, that now welfare case in a chronic care bed till s/he dies because s/he deserves it cause their a criminal?
That Hollywood will be back in a year of two wanting more, like any good addict, of a their legislation drug cause their earnings still don't match what they THINK the earnings should be? (All while they continue to move heaven and earth NOT to pay the creative people they constantly say they're representing?)
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Once bureaucrats get their hands on a shiny new law they immediately go to work expanding its scope. Preferable to infinity. That applies the both genus of bureaucrat -- ones allegedly working for the people (government) and ones working in the private sector (large to too-big-to-fail) private sector ones.
A bureaucracy, as a parasite, has one goal only. To expand until it swallows its host. Often morphing along the way to resemble the host so much that very few notice the change.
SOPA anyone?
On the post: The List Of Internet Censoring Countries The MPAA Thinks Provide A Good Example For The US
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Kinda like when Boston banned Lady Chatterly's Lover because it might, just might, mind you, offend someone. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, shits like a duck and drops feathers everywhere like a duck it must then be a duck no matter what else you want to call it.
Add to that the notion that not too many get around the filters, as we found from the demonstrations in Iran recently it doesn't take many to get through or to get the message out or other ones in. Just because it's not often does doesn't mean that it isn't done.
If it isn't done, say, in China, then a large number of people in Shanghai must be psychic because they know far top much about things The Great Firewall of Chine filters out to be otherwise. Things business people in Shanghai need to know to do business but that bureaucrats in Beijing think might undermine the regime but the business people consider vital for their business. As long as they don't act on that knowledge politically everyone is happy, particularly if they make tons of money which makes other bureaucrats in Beijing very, very happy.
(Before you ask yes, I'm suggesting that in China you buy bureaucrats to keep you and your business "safe" rather than the western model of buying influential politicians. It all comes out the same in the end.)
I hope you're enjoying your time off from law school, AJ, and I definitely hope you write papers with better arguments in them than your posts here.
On the post: Does Congress Even Realize That The Courts Appear To Think That SOPA Is Already In Force?
Re: Re: Gingrich Will Save Us
Even more when you discover that "traditional" is what they decide it is, such as, Gingrich does.
On the post: Does Congress Even Realize That The Courts Appear To Think That SOPA Is Already In Force?
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On the post: Does Congress Even Realize That The Courts Appear To Think That SOPA Is Already In Force?
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Oh, sorry, I forgot. Mike's wrong and you're right. There be pirates out there! You've seen them under the bed at night!
On the post: Ex-Morpheus & Kazaa Execs Team Up To Become Patent Trolls
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On the post: Ex-Morpheus & Kazaa Execs Team Up To Become Patent Trolls
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I'd guess 40 years way back to tape drives and the earliest hard drives attached to mainframes and early Unix machines. Just what are people like this doing working at patent offices?
Oh, I get it, they're positioning themselves for elected office!
On the post: How SOPA Will Be (Ab)Used
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Thirty years ago even big business was living with such advanced and speedy stuff like 8 and 16bps modems outside of their heavy iron rooms. (Mainframes, as I know you're not much of a geek, well not any kind.)
I know, I was there. Working in the folks that provided that kind of service back then called Telcos. Hell, to afford 43bps you paid for the nose and unless you were government, the military or, curiously enough, the film and recording industries you didn't even think of your very own T-1.
So let's drop 20 years off your claim of piracy.
That's the astonishing thing about the RIAA/MPAA is that they can't even get their time lines right.
If it's cassette recordings and video home recordings you're going after for "piracy" need I remind you that sales of recordings and box office receipts soared as the boomers (me among them) continued to buy records and see movies at an increasing rate.
Cassettes were nice but only until the jammed or unraveled in a useless mess of magnetic tape in the car player or home recorder. VHS tapes have a really bad shelf life and the picture quality is akin to an old Kodak Brownie, worse if you did a tape to tape copy.
In short, didn't hurt a bit for the RIAA or MPAA in spite of all their whinging and public hand wringing about it.
And as for copyright it's purpose was never to provide mulch-generational income for the creator, more likely the corporate entity that wouldn't publish, record or film their work till said copyright was signed over the said corporate entities. Particularly if you were an unknown.
Look back at the Statue of Ann, the first copyright legislation in the English speaking world. Right up there near the top of the preamble. It was to encourage "education". And what's education consist of, in large part? Sharing knowledge. SHARING. Not hiding it. The same, incidentally applies to patents.
We humans SHARE things, we share knowledge, swap stories, share books, videos, now mp3s and wmv's. That's what we do. And at the end of the day it mostly works in favour of the creator who people otherwise might never heard of. So they sell another book, another CD or another movie DVD or whatever. Like magnetic tape, stuff stored on a hard drive or even in the cloud is transient. You can't hold it in your hand. And that's something else we humans like, is to hold things in our hands. One very good reason that I continue to think the death of printed books is grossly exaggerated. A Kindle's nice on a plane but it's hell to lay down by a fire and try to share the book with the person you love most in your life compared to a book.
So no. Because I privately share a file now and then doesn't make me a hooligan. It makes me human. (By the way the few I've shared whether on file lockers in the cloud or as email attachments all of it has resulted in sales for the creator I "filched" it from.
The ONLY hooligans in this discussion are those who want to place American (and the world's) culture(s) behind the doors of walled gardens and make what belongs to us all something we have to beg for by way of inflated rents (pricing) using and extending copyright far, far beyond its original purpose as clearly stated in the first ever copyright act. (And the American adaptation of it.)
And no, SOPA won't work if it depends on DNS filtering exclusively. Not when the rest of the world isn't going along with it. The chances of that happening are about the same as a snowball's chance in hell. Maybe less.
Even if it does pass and is held constitutional.
What it will accomplish, though, is the darkening of the light that was once the most admired country in the world, one seen as adopting and living by the very principles and doctrines it's founders intentioned and wrote into it's constitution. One that took those principles to the rest of the world and convinced them to adopt a number of them themselves including the state they rebelled against.
Now the state that has imprisonment without trial in what's widely seen around the world as a glorified concentration camp (Gitmo), that imprisons per capita more of it's people than any other developed country, one that executes more of them per capita that the rest of the developed world combined and one that, at the end of a gun, tries to export the very ideals it once persuaded us to adopt. Ironically, in some cases, even that exporting has brought about more open countries that that country than that country itself is becoming.
If you hadn't guessed that's the United States of America. A country I live next door to, visit frequently and whose people I still find as some of the best this planet has to offer. A country I still admire and whose political freedoms, particularly till now, free speech, I've envied even though Canada's comes the closest to it than anywhere else on the planet.
Now comes SOPA and PIPA.
I guess I'm supposed to be the silent neighbour who allows horrible things to happen across the fence cause it's "none of my business".
Can't do that. What happens to freedom and liberty, due process and the rule of law in the United States will quickly happen to the rest of the planet as we watch some of you betray everything your founders stood for.
So that's why this neighbour is so interested in what's happening south of the 49th. First because I can't stand to see that light dim and start to go out and secondly because it is my business to protest in what small way I can a bill that I see doing that.
The hooligans, Joe, are the supporters of these bills. Not the opponents. They're the congress critters who won't listen to any other point of view than the one with the biggest donations. In short, the one who'll pay the most for their vote.
And you.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
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On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
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And I have no doubt that you don't work for the RIAA. Maybe Righthaven but not the RIAA who had Sonny Bono in Congress to do their bidding. Anyway, at least when Hollywood flat out lies there's usually a face and person to attach to those lies. Even IF the best they can do is Scott Cleland.
You are symptomatic of far too much ingestion of the Kool-Aid (tm) that the RIAA and MPAA have been serving out all these years and the malnutrition that comes from that.
On the post: TtfnJohn's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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I just don't see Hollywood doing that or even having the opportunity to now. Consumers have gone elsewhere, iTunes, Amazon, gray/black/pirate market(s) it's very, very unlikely they're coming back.
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