Re: Yes, Mike, we know the only parts of DMCA that you like is that which promotes symbiotic grifting.
Here you go again defending the very industry you claim to have no support for..the entertainment industry. Oh well, if it fits into your binary rule then I suppose hypocrisy is something you can live with.
No then, if you can point out a single industry, economic sector or what have you that has innovated any more than the tech industry has in the past 30-40 years please point them out.
Until you can, Mike's moniker is the correct one. Unless, of course, you believe that the tech industry with or without Google is a massive cesspool of piracy and copyright violation which we'd just love to know. I bet you think Open Source is just another dodge to pirate someone else's software, too.
And you DO realize that your sentence "Separate links sites and file hosts, both drawing eyeballs to advertising with stolen content while pretending they know nothin'." makes no grammatical or logical sense, right?
"Separate links sites and file hosts, both drawing eyeballs to advertising with stolen content while pretending they know nothin'" makes no grammatical or logical sense, don't you?
And you complain about others making ad homiem attacks on you while you feel free to do the same to Mike.
Re: Problem is that Melchoir Rietveldt got greedy!
In roughly the same way you've never demonstrated any real monetary loss to Big Media (or "those poooooooorrr artists) in your posts when you come out against piracy. Fair enough.
There IS a difference though between contract law and copyright law. Copyright is NOT a contract signed between two equal parties one of whom does something or performs a service for the other party for pay and both agree to abide to the terms of the contract. One use, one place is fairly easy to understand and doesn't include a single word about copyright. See?
The contract was violated by BREIN and/or one of its agents which everyone is agreed on. So the artist, as a signatory to a contract, is entitled to restitution under contract law. Nothing to do with copyright as there's no dispute over that. The artist, in this case, still holds the copyright and both sides agree on that. (They have to otherwise the bully routine wouldn't have been pulled to have him sign over his copyright in return for a small amount of restitution.)
So this has nothing at all to do with piracy or copyright is has everything to do with BRIEN, supposedly an antipiracy activist group, honouring a signed contract and performing their part within terms of that contract. Which they didn't.
The usual way restitution is made in contract law is the payment of a monetary award or settlement. Sorry you don't understand that. It does, however, open the door to my questioning your understanding of civil, common and criminal law whatsoever and coming to my own conclusions that you don't so your opinions on piracy are nothing but self serving, trolling, gibberish.
I'll leave it to DH to add the more colourful language that I'm straining not to use. I'll leave you with mange la merde, to quote Pierre Trudeau and let it go at that. DH can correct or translate if necessary.
But BRIEN deliberately broke a contract so it is involved. Whether they like it or not. They are a party to breach of contract, never denied. They can issue all the press releases they want but that's where they are. So they are involved in restitution, recompense or, probably more accurately, "making the plaintiff whole" which is an often used phrase when awarding breach of contract awards.
Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
OK I've hone after o_o_t_b about this not being an issue of copyright law but one of contract law so I'll do the same, briefly, with you. Copyright has nothing to do with this. From the conversation the artist never signed over his copyright so while he can go after them on that score he has a much more powerful set of arguments under contract law. Much more powerful.
I don't know about the artist but I'd be far more interested in suing them into non-existence over damages as the result of them deliberately breaking an in force contract and not notifying the other party to the contract that they were about to terminate it (as required by law). If money's all he wants there's much, much more in that. Even if he just wants to make an example of them I'd still sue them for all their worth and settle for less, because, at a guess, he has a clear case here of a deliberate breaking of an in force contract and that lovely phrase malice of forethought can get tossed about legally and accurately to describe it.
If there are copyright damages they can come later or as part of the restitution.
In any event, nothing strips away the "for the creator" argument about IP better than this does. For that reason I love it.
Applies to certain people in the US Congress. too.
Re: Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
Read the article again. The artist had a contract for one performance of a song/video at a film festival. One only. Clearly spelt out in the contract. With an anti-piracy group.
Who then turned around and broke the contract. The irony is delicious, even you have to admit that.
Requested restitution for a deliberate violation of a legal contract? Royalites and accounting. He then gets leaned on to back off.
The conversation gets out verbatim because it was reported. Leaner runs and hides after behaving less like someone interested in stopping piracy than a typical gatekeeper music company/recording company/movie company. "Yeah, we broke a contract, so shut up already and here's a few (worthless) euros to keep you quiet. Not that we haven't been doing this for years, you know. Now be a good boy and go away."
Nothing pro or anti piracy about it. Not a hint of it.
Still, if all you're left with is your ad homineum argument of "respect for the law" so let me ask, once again, how do you respect a law that allows this sort of activity and has for decades?
And please, no "what about the artists" arguments. We've just seen what use the recording industry and music publishers think of "the artists" out of their own mouths.
And how do you square this with your claimed dislike of the current copyright regime and the behaviour it allows gatekeepers to indulge in like this, not to mention, their seeming notion that they have a divine right to mega profits each quarter.
It's a question you seem unable to answer. I can't see one as it would require tying yourself into logical and moral gordian knots and then somehow getting out to type your response.
That said, there is no copyright issue here one way or another.
There is, however, the far more important question of contract law and the little detail that BRIEN clearly violated better than a thousand years of English and Dutch contract, civil and common law. Something they don't deny when Gerrits called the composer.
Instead Gerrits attempts to pressure the composer to give up one third of what he's owed, under contract, for them to make it right. At best it's a dodgy negotiation tactic at worst illegal, totally lacking in the principle of "good faith" in contract matters and utter hypocrisy of the highest order.
He wasn't, technically, robbed of anything as contract law isn't criminal law unless it gets elevated to that status by a judge or prosecutor it's civil and common law. That alone is enough for restitution which is demanded under contract law. Under civil (written) and common (unwritten, precedent) law both. And given that they are an anti-piracy group passing themselves off as working in the interests of artists the restitution ought to be substantial just in case a similar organization tries something similar in the future. You see, contract law does not just concern itself with real or potiential loss of income, though it may, what it would concern itself with in this case is the behaviour of BRIEN and the penalty that needs to be extracted based on the behaviour and clear and deliberate breaking of an in force contract.
Yes, he still owns the song, yes he still can make money from the song and likely will even if that does mean a change in lyrical content (and I bet it will!) so in that sense he's lost nothing and been robbed (theft a criminal offense) of nothing.
BREIN, on the other hand, particularly after the conversation repeated here could be found civilly guilty of breaking the contract deliberately and with malice of forethought (a phrase with particular meaning in contract law) which would increase the restitution the artist would receive as the wronged party in this case. That may, as I said, or may not include loss of income in the award. On balance of probability, how civil actions are judged, I'd say there's a very good chance of that.
So, to clarify, we're not talking copyright law here, we're talking contract law here, a far more important section of civil and common law that copyright ever has or will be as trade and commerce are dependent on signatories to contract to act in good faith towards on another and notify one another where possible of planned or accidental variances to the contract.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
Source of that $60M figure and independent replication of methodology and conclusion. I'm sure you'll find the former you may have greater difficulty with the latter.
I'm aware of that part of it. The statement was more for the o_o_t_b's of the world who don't get the point that just because something is written in law it doesn't deserve respect or obedience. I could just as easily faked going into the link from a US site and watched it, I do have the ability and the software to do it but it's tiresome, time wasting and just not worth the effort at the moment.
As it would take a matter of less than 90 seconds to load up, watch and unload the software I'm sure you can see one of the many reasons I don't do "piracy". It's annoying. Then again, I don't buy from the big media gatekeepers either so I suppose I'm no better than the pirates. Next bill up "An Act To Spread Culture" which will ensure that I have to buy at least 3 CDs or equivalent and 3 feature films or equivalent annually or face fines and imprisonment.
I just hope the equivalent is porn. Most of that's better made and scripted than Hollywood movies these days.
Re: You're cheering on piracy again. Not recognizing the problem.
My biggest problem with your statement regarding safe harbours and such is that an allegation of infringement is not proof in infringement.
And the mainstream users of the net, notice I didn't use quotation marks, attitude to file sharing isn't casual it's quite planned and deliberate even if the intent is not to rip off the artists who made the content. It is to remove the gatekeepers who are between the marketplace/fans and the artists.
A safe harbour allows for, at minimum, some level of proof which can be taken to court should an accusation come in that the use doesn't fall under fair use/fair dealing provisions of all copyright acts. If they do there's no "theft" or infringement under law.
It's called due process under the law which COPA/IP Protect attempt to short circuit by nominating the gatekeepers as vigilantes who can get away with anything, both in the virtual and real worlds without recourse or appeal which is a serious violation of people's civil and constitutional rights (see unreasonable search and seizure for one) in the name of protecting a failing industry.
As you insist you don't like the current copyright regime and you have even less use for the gatekeepers I'm left with the conclusion that what you're saying amounts to the "respect for the law" rubric which misses the point entirely.
Bad civil law deserves no respect, nor should it get any. In a free, democratic and open society that's a citizen's duty. Blind obedience is not our duty as citizens, in fact it's a renunciation of our duty as citizens.
It's even worse when the law comes into place to protect phantom losses of said failing industries in a desperate act of protectionism and hinders free commercial and political speech to boot. (The second point more to what the writers of the US Bill of Rights were trying to ensure was protected, the former point a sometimes unpleasant unintended consequence.)
You don't engender "respect for the law" by making bad laws worse. All you engender is "disrespect for the law" and the general and oft repeated statement that "the Law is an Ass."
It must be why Cleland, alone it seems among tech obsevers and companies, (last time I checked all privately owned and therefore of a capitalistic nature as tech is a capital intensive business) in supporting these bills.
It was an amusing read/rant, though. Pity some take that nonsense seriously.
Just a note on Justin Bieber and his discovery. I'd like to note that Bieber may never have seen/heard the song if the gatekeepers had their way because, very likely, like the Colbert Report link it doesn't work because it's not licensed for use by a Canadian linking from a Canadian server. Between two countries that supposedly have a free trade agreement which, among other things, was supposed to stop this sort of stupidity.
You can't he was mummifed (tm - Apple -- pending), placed in an iPad which was then placed in an iPhone and then in an iMac and then into an Apple II before burial all fitted to the rafters with RFID tags and GEO Location devices all of which will fail should SOPA pass and DNS servers can't find any of the darned things cause they must all encourage piracy. They must! They just must!!! They just have to!!! Cause I say the do!!!!
/exit stage right muttering darkly to no one in particular
Of course banana farmers should be paid! It's the BFAA who shouldn't be because they confiscate all potiential profit by having the banana farmer sign over all his bananas before s/he can sell even a single banana and don't return a penny without first going through various devious and sometimes illegal accounting tricks to avoid paying the banana farmer!
(BFAA= Banana Farmers Association of America. BFAA@riaa.com ;-0 )
Contrary to popular myth most so-called pirate sites aren't operated for profit. In fact, most of them are so low key that they're below the radar except to those most interested in what they might have.
This is in stark contrast with Warez sites which are high profile, often operated by criminals, are as dangerous as all get out and I wouldn't unzip a single file downloaded from then unless I could completely sandbox them first and, even then, only to get a peek at what they were trying to infect my machine with.
As for dealing with domain names registered to Vanatu and how they deal with servers in eastern Europe you do that the same way you do now. An TCP/IP Whois. That will tell you where the server is, who the ISP is that the server is connected to and a host of other information. A lot of it public, by design.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
You're welcome. I sort of guessed that but I didn't know so I replied as if replying to someone supporting such actions.
It's interesting, at times, to realize how little most people know about how deeply the Internet is entwined into our economy, trade. how we communicate with each other and live with each other these days and how damaging what seems like an "easy" solution like DNS blocking can be when the result is that it does something unexpected.
Nor are any of the proposed solutions you outlined workable in the short or long term tempting as they may be completely outside of what they'd do the the competitive position of the United States in relation to the rest of the world not to mention the security of the United States (and by extension my country -- Canada) would be seriously compromised.
In a perfect world everyone would respect copyright. It's not a perfect world. Nor, as I said, are there independent studies that show the content industry is really suffering the loss of actual sales simply from piracy.
The content industry had a collective hissy fit first at open reel audio tape being sold to consumers, then cassettes, then recordable CDs (and we Canadians DO pay a tax on blanks to "support the artists") then piracy and on it goes. Every time there's a decline in profits there is something, anything, that they blame other than themselves and the products they produce and offer to consumers.
A consumer revolt is the last thing they can see. But a constant diet of cultural gruel will cause that.
As a sideline, Boomers like me are getting older and aren't buying songs, CDs, DVDs in the gobs we used to. Part of that is aging, part of that is we have better things to do that waste time with yet another movie remake of a bad TV show (though I am waiting till Hollywood rediscovers Mr Ed and My Favorite Martian and remakes them on tv or as a movie). Things older people do like garden, age, shave and spend much more time with the doctor than either we or the doctor would like.
I did think I should add my technical and trade/professional background so that people would know that I'm simply not blowing steam out my ears. (Though there are times when steam does escape there when I read comments by IP purists who seem to have no legal, economics or technical background but do have rage.)
For my part, thanks for trying to promote discussion. I hope, in my small way, I've contributed to that.
Depending on the scope of the final bill it could easily be that, a ruling that payment processors who process payments made from outside the United States must process them. The International Trade Commission has no jurisdiction inside the United States beyond that stipulated in the treaty the United States signed to become part of that group as well as the GATT.
As for imports of actual counterfiets or products the United States has reason to believe will violate US copyright or patent laws once landed. the US has every right to tell US based payment processors not to do buisness with the selling web site, at least as far as phyiscal copies and coutnerfiets are concerned. With respect to electronic files that are perfectly legal in the country of origin I tend to feel that they're on shaky ground as that couunty could insist that the payment processors do honour the payment requests with appropriate penalties if they don't. Such orders from the United States are an attempt to impose their laws extraterrirorially which is a violation of soverienty someting most countries take very, very seriously. As does the United States.
Before someone picks up the issue of kiddie porn and things related to it no advanced country would have any difficulty with doing exactly that themselves so that wasn't much of a problem. Places like Thailand where such things are going on aren't about to scream about it because, one way or another, it would harm their tourist trade. Best to shut up your yap about such things at times.
with all that various uses of terms like police around here on this and related threads I felt the need for clarity on that.
I do understand the abstraction where you and I part company is he notion that increasing said policing will do any good.
As far as economic damage done by so-called piracy when there is a legitimate study that shows me that there is such damage beyond that bought and paid for by the folks you call Big Media and said evidence is easily replicated I'll buy into that. For now, I don't precisely because the second half of my sentence above has never happened. In fact the opposite has been the case. So while I'm open to the possibility the folks you call big media had had decades to come up with it and has, thus far failed.
As for increasing policing my biggest fear is that it will have precisely the opposite effect. In fact, I'm sure it will.
You can read my extended reply below if you want and rant and rave all you want but I need to know something.
If, as you keep insisting you see all that is wrong with the current copyright regime and how it's uses by those you call Big Media I'm very curious as to why you support legislation that basically amounts to an extended welfare project for the same Big Media and their desire to extent copyright until our sun finally explodes and fries up all their stuff.
I'd love to know how you make illegal dodging a broken DNS server (as in blocked) when that's what the Internet does by design. And just what, as I've asked, will enforce it? Criminalization in support of those you call Big Media?
While I'm glad to see the courts brought into the discussion about shutting down web sites found to be hosting gobs of 'infringing' files I also see that you want to insist that the country in which they are located shut them down. I have a small bulletin for you on that one. You have absolutely no idea how tired those of us outside of the United States are of the US Congress attempting to apply American laws extra-territorially. You have less than no right to do that and the rest of us are under no obligation to do anything at all about a court decision in the United States unless it is to use it as precedent in countries that share the legal system we all inherited from England. (And only US Supreme Court decision at that.)
You make the assumption that copyright laws are the same in the country you're referring to which would be right only if that country was a signatory of the Berne Convention.
(By the way the USA was a late comer to signing that one so in one way the USA was considered copyright "pirates" long before the Internet existed. Didn't hurt creators whose work was published in other countries all that much but it could explain why some people from the UK, Australia and places like that don't have a great deal of sympathy for American cries of "respect copyright!")
I doubt that the "bad" things (most of them near insane in you understand deeply how the Internet works) when you'd see industries and government agencies outside of Big Media line up to oppose such things.
At the risk of repeating myself there is no empirical evidence anywhere outside of claims made by your Big Media that piracy is a problem far less the massive problem they make it out to be from their bought and paid for researchers. Problem is, you see, that independent research can't duplicate the results of Big Media's bought and paid for reports. Cries of "It HAS to be" don't count. Evidence does and there is none. You can't lose what you don't have and you don't have a "potential" sale, it can't be put on a balance sheet or used to settle accounts or pay taxes so if it's "potential" it doesn't exist.
In any event the revolt is and always has been a consumer revolt against your Big Media and not a revolt against copyright except in the fevered minds of Big Media and their crys of "what about the artist?" as if they care. After all the artist has to sign over their copyright to Big Media and one day they may see a small royalty from that in the vast majority of cases. The consumers know that too.
OK, back to DNS blocking. If you don't understand that DNS servers are passive merely connecting one server to another server to another server, often another DNS server, then you don't understand the damage blocking can do.
An internet connection is not a nailed down point to point connection from your computer to the one at the distant end. That happens in rare cases such as HTTPS and FTPS but otherwise the route taken my my connection to Techdirt will change when I press Submit from the one I retrieved your post on after I pressed the last submit.
In the case of always on such as streaming audio, video and the bittorrent protocol the route can change every few seconds depending on traffic conditions somewhere out the on the Internet. Same thing happens with across the Internet phone calls.
In that sense SOPA and PROTECT IP silliness only affects the first server out the one you connect to from your ISP and you're routed from there. There's nothing on earth, however to prevent you from connecting to another one. And companies, people and telcos (and me) always have a secondary one loaded up in case the primary becomes sluggish or goes off line.
So if the idea of the bill is to control what ISP "first out" DNS servers can pass on to the next server should I type "www.copyrightinfringers.com" and head out there from my browsesr then what's being accompished? And at what REAL cost to users of misrouting and a host of other issues that always arise when this sort of thing gets done. And the United States has no jurisdiction over servers located in other countries no matter how much America may jump up and down and throw diplomatic hissy fits they don't.
Personally I don't really give a damn. It's easy enough to get around just type in the IP directly instead of the name and off you go bypassing most of the DNS structure altogether from the initial and ongoing connections. It's how the Internet works unless what you really want is a complete re-engineering of the beast :)
So DNS blocking is kinda pointless in that respect.
As I've said, if the goal is to get people to respect copyright laws then you need to get people to respect those who old the majority of copyrighted material out there. The disconnect with the "what about the creator" thing comes when people realize, as they so, that the creator has had to sign over their copyright to get published, have their song recorded or the get the movie they wrote, directed and produced made. And most people also realize that the folks you call Big Media don't have a stellar track record on paying those creators and didn't long before the Internet.
I have no more desire than you do to see copyright laws go into the dustbin of history and I too want them to be respected. I have a hard time, though, squaring the circle when, in the vast majority of cases, the only ones profiting are your Big Media, corrupt and unimaginative that they are.
And I do have an interest in seeing copyright continued in one form or another as I am a writer and do write for the web and elsewhere. Admittedly what I write about isn't light reading or what you'll find on Amazon as it's often rather esoteric aspects of things like theology, biblical criticism and history as applied to the previous two. While I don't get paid for it in the traditional sense I'm supported in actually getting it out there both on paper and on the net so I'm happy.
What I don't see happening is that respect for or the observance of copyright will be enhanced in any way by SOPA, in fact quite the opposite. I know enough history to know when governments have gone too far and with SOPA and it's companion legislation the US Congress has gone far to far.
Particularly when so-called piracy has nothing to do with copyright is has to do with a consumer rebellion against the major copyright holders, namely the MPAA and the RIAA for their annoying habit as a customer to foist crap on the consumer at ever increasing prices.
People do pay (support) creators directly when and where they can, otherwise there would be no independent bands and acts out there. No self published books. No attempts at do it yourself movie making. So people do respect the artists and creators.
The legistalative equivalent of a multi-warhead tactical nuclear weapon (SOPA) won't increase respect for copyright. Given that legislators are almost as popular and what I call Big Content and you call Big Media (right down there with the bubonic plague and hiking in an active sewer pipe. So if think these bills will stop piracy I submit that you're wrong on just about all the counts I can think of.
Particularly in English speaking counties. While most of us don't have the mythology of liberty and freedom the United States has we are just as intolerant of government getting too big for it's britches. And we are just as intolerant of government propping up failing industries in the name of something like copyright as Americans are. Maybe more so, speaking as a Canadian we have the habit of taking large majorities in our federal House of Commons and reducing 360 members to 2 following an election when they do that. We're ornery that way.
That tends to lessen, for a while, the tendency of government to drift into authoritarianism and remind them who the boss is.
In a free and democractic society laws such as copyright and patents exist at the consent of the governed. When those laws become a form of taxation without representation which extended patent and copyright have become the great unwashed, the governed have an annoying habit to power of withdrawing that consent particularly when it's done for the benefit of corrupt, failing businesses whether it's in the creative end of life or not. Up here in the Great White North we have an example of that that took place south of us around 1776.
With all respect I submit to you now that what is taking place is a consumer revolt against just that and has been taking place since ADSL and cable in the home became commonplace.
SOPA, should it pass, will only serve to increase that revolt and what respect is left for IP law, and it's not a lot, will start to vanish even more quickly than it already is. The governed will withdraw consent.
The tech industry, the industry most dependent on IP laws in the North American economy sees that and opposes things like SOPA and ProtectIP and other such legislation.
I'm amazed that others don't. Particularly when people such as you seem to agree on just about every point with the consumer revolt except that you want to clamp down harder and not let the marketplace function as it should and not let the citizenry make crystal clear that they are in the process of withdrawing consent for the laws as they are currently written and proposed to be written that affect on small sector of the economy at the expense of the rest of the economy.
I have to say, I'm amazed too. I apologize if being amazed is something you consider vulgar but I am.
My first response to the question is that someone really has to, independently, come up with a study that says that "widespead" infringement is causing losses of REAL income for member companies of the RIAA and MPAA as opposed to potential income which you can't lose anyway. Might just as well say that should I not by a song or not go to a movie I'm as guilty as the pirates, because, when you start talking about potential income loss, that's what you're really saying.
Oh, and while I'm at it the only thing that, as publicly traded companies member companies of the RIAA and MPAA can be legitimately interested in is their own and what they pass on to shareholders not this drivel about how concerned they are about artists. They aren't so let's just get that one out of the way.
As for what is too far?
(1) Breaking the Internet by messing with the DNS system. While it's tempting to think this would change something about "piracy" it won't. What it will do is interfere with the billions of dollars of legitimate business taking place across the internet and the ability of companies to continue using B to B software to keep their inventories up to date, to place orders and to actually make products which appear in the physical world. It would affect and. temporarily at least, mess up the telecommunications systems in place globally which make extensive use of the internet to route, connect and complete calls using either voice or data. That may not have occurred to the likes of o_o_t_b or to some/many members of the US congress but it would make an unholy mess of such things.
Now for the list.
1) Make it illegal to link to infringing content. On many sites out there and on many servers it's already a violation of terms of service to do so. The tricky question, though, is what's infringing and what's fair use. The DCMA provided a route for that (I can't believe I'm defending the DCMA and its ilk but that's where things have gone.) which SOPA and Protect IP take away. (As does Canada's new copyright act survive the inevitable constitutional challenge which the betting line says it won't.)
2) Make it illegal to communicate the location of infringing... Again, the trick of what's fair use and what's infringement. One could (and many do) argue that it's immoral to do so but if by make illegal you mean criminalizing I have to respond that law enforcement agencies have much, much better things to do. Anyway, infringement is already illegal so use the laws already there unless you're as lazy or sloppy as the MPAA and RIAA.
3) Outlaw Onion Routers...Again, just who enforces this? And is the cost of enforcement worth what the results would be. Remember that we're dealing with an industry here that produces less than 0.1% of US GDP. An industry that moves heaven and earth to NOT pay creators as it is by means legal and otherwise.
4)Criminalizing. See above.
5) Deep packet inspection. An interesting solution. Maybe but if the United States makes deep packet inspection normative (and outlaws onion routers which are in widespread use by the US Military and security agencies) I guess the United States can't complain when China or Iran or the Seychelles use deep packet inspection on official US Government traffic across the internet. Fail for national and international security reasons alone there.
5) Mandatory server registration. In a sense, that already exists. At least in the sense of routing servers you have to know they're there before they can be used so having secret servers is self defeating. And in my experience setting up a secret server to indulge in criminal activity are soon discovered because somewhere on the line they have to identify themselves to someone to communicate even if only by IP address if not both name and IP address.
6) P2P ban. The vast majority of P2P activity is legal. It's used by business, the military, police, security agencies, search and rescue, controlling forest fires and a host of other legitimate and perfectly legal uses including the distribution of almost all Linux distributions out there. I'll get to registration shortly.
7) Mandatory government identification code for accessing the internet. I'm glad you trust big brother to be watching over your shoulder every second of the day and night. I'm sure not. And, again, you need to consider the costs and what it all will accomplish, if anything at all. I can say with certainty that it will not stop so-called piracy in the same way as little magnetic stripes and 4 character passwords have stopped credit card fraud. There's no return there.
8) Gov't mandated OS backdoors. Why,oh why, is it, that people who probably would find the level of government interference in private affairs suddenly go all ga-ga over it when they think they're hitching their wagons to "a good cause"? Has the fate of alcholol prohibition in the USA and the continued war on drugs not taught you anything? Both ended up costing far more than what they saved had they never gone into place at all. After all, neither had the desired effect of reducing demand for the products they made illegal and one had to be pulled back while the other plods along amidst gang wars, bloodshed and agony on so many levels.
9) Gov't mandates spyware. See above and are you nuts? That and there's enough people like me around who can get rid of it and whip up something that will make the gov't think they are still spying on me while I carry on and let them monitor the church down the road. Such things aren't impossible or particularly difficult to do.
10) Enforce TCM chips on all computing devices. OK, here we go again. Do you know what you're proposing here? Much as it sounds good the moment you add into the equation of computing devices things like smart power meters and smart appliances, many computers on the car you drive, the fact that modern shipping sees just about everything controlled by computational devices of one sort or another from rail, to ships to (particularly) navy ships not to mention warplanes, civilian aircraft and the list goes on and on. And guess what? They all use the Internet, incidentally. While I'm having fun imagining some super computers burning up and crashing under the load of vast mountains of meaningless data I'm forced to ask, again, to accomplish all of what?
11) Make software writing a licensed and regulated activity. If I was part of my county's security apparatus I'd be having a fit reading that which I'm sure the American ones would have if it was seriously proposed. And I can see where you're coming from but it comes from a mistaken notion that software creation is something like assembling a car or a padlock. It's not. It's a creative process. Sure, lots of software "creation" projects make the promise of cut and paste one routine here and another there and off you go it doesn't work that way.
Should the United States do what you're proposing and, say, India and Brazil or Finland and Vanatu not follow suit it would be a very very short time until the USA surrendered it's major lead in software and hardware design and implementation and lose it's major economic advantage in that area which would otherwise have led the wanted and needed recovery. I've already mentioned security so I'll let you ponder that happens when what you propose comes to pass and that lead vanishes in the blink of an electronic eye.
The major reason there is piracy out there is that the gatekeepers of the so-called content industry aren't producing product people actually want at a price they are willing to pay. It's not, and never has been, an attack on the actual people who create content, the attack has been on industries that have lost all imagination and creativity under which creators themselves chafe and produce endless rounds of junk.
What little of any quality escapes from that cesspool is overpriced and hard to find. Unless...unless...you go get it yourself. The reality is it's a consumer backlash is now and always has been. Most people also know that the same content industry is infamous for NOT paying those creators so the notion that they're hurting MyBandInLadysmith doesn't occur to them. I admit, perhaps it should but then the band may not sell anything the way things are anyway so to claim piracy causes them to lose money is based on a false assumption that if piracy ended they would.
No, it's not going too far to ask people to respect copyright and what it's intended to do. Fair enough. Too bad the content industry doesn't except to place culture into walled gardens protected by copyright from now to when the world ends.
What you propose and what o_o_t_b seems to support (despite is repeated protestations that he doesn't like the current copyright regime or the companies that profit from it), is going far to far.
You are asking that citizens of, say, the United States give up their freedom and liberty to protect and industry that contributes a microscopic amount to the American economy in the name of the "creators" when they don't profit from the current regime either.
Nor do you see the irony in the fact that an industry that does depend on copyright, almost totally, to continue to thrive is one of the loudest in opposition to SOPA and IP Protect. That's right, the very tech industry your proposals will cripple. And the tech industry relies on copyright to a far greater degree than does big content. Case in point SCO vs Linux. Where millions of lines of code were examined over a false accusation that Linux developers "pirated" copyrighted code belonging to SCO. (Turned out that it was the other way around, actually.)
What neither you or o_o_t_b seem to realize is how entrenched the Internet is in the way we communicate, do business, relate with each other, design, how nations speak with and to each other (the occasional threat included of course), and, in the end, how people who create, create. Including novelists who spend hours on the Net and Web researching items for their latest (hoped to be) blockbuster novel. We mess with it at our economic and social peril.
All to deal with a problem that, while it exists, has no empirical evidence, independently found, that causes the problems big content claims it does. And, in a dollar sense, contributes little to the broad economy.
What will kill copyright is using a multi-warhead nuclear weapon such as SOPA and ProtectIP and most of what you propse should the come to pass. All to protect one of the most corrupt industries in existence. And the general public gets that. As I noted above one of the major drivers to piracy has been that big content has refused to provide what their consumers want, so their consumers rebelled. Those same consumers will lose what little may be left of their respect for copyright, as well as other IP regimes such as patents, should the warhead be fired. That's the unintended collateral damage that will be caused.
When you basically declare a free people as a bunch of criminals for exercising their right to buy or not to buy in a supposedly capitalist system to support an industry as corrupt and creatively crippled entity as Hollywood those same people will withdraw their support for those laws.
If. through ignorance (willful being worse) you break the backbone of a struggling economy at that same time that withdrawl may be quite sudden and widespread which is what you, o_o_t_b, SOPA and PROTECT IP propose to do.
One of the particularly nasty things about things like freedom, liberty and democracy is that the consent to govern comes from below, not above, it comes from the broad citizenry, not from interest groups and certainly not corrupt interest groups who pass their corruption onto the legislature.
It comes from the great unwashed. Take their freedoms, liberties and choices away governments most often find that the consent they REALLY need to govern has been withdrawn.
PS I both write and create in other ways and use copyright and Creative Commons licensing for what I create so I suspect I have far greater interest in the issue of respect for the law that you do. By the same token, I cannot support what is happening now on moral and ethical grounds nor can I support it on technical grounds, and I know of what I speak there too having designed, built and established voice and data networks and transmission in the telecom industry for the better part of the past 35 years. From the days of electro-mechanical switching to the Internet.
"It's just a libertarian dodge to kick the problem down the road and continue the status quo"
What???? It's not socialist? Isn't that the usual response when someone mentions international agencies? No "one world government" conspiracy theories to add to the deadweight of your argument?
Seems you missed the opportunity to make a point, o_o_t_b, young fella, me lad.
As for the meat of the matter, which is what matters, is the proposal to allow the ITC to do it's job where counterfeits and, in many cases, infringement do their job is reasonable and rational as this does involve important trade issues.
Well, at least it does every time a rep from the MPAA arrives in Canada to lecture us that Canadian Content rules on television and radio violate those rules in spite of their having lost there.
Do TRY, at least, to make sense, will you please?
And since when did police get involved in civil/commmon law issues. Infringement is NOT a criminal offense. Should SOPA succeed it may become one but at this stage it isn't. Not that police don't have more than enough to do in addition to keeping order which is their primary job after all. (Not protecting failing content industries whose contribution to the GDP of the USA is something less than 0.1%.)
But really, libertarian? Could that be because one of the few politicans in Washington to see the dangers is Ron Paul?
Do you have the faintest idea what libertarianism is all about?
An entirely rhetorical question as it's more than apparent that you don't.
On the post: As We Complain About SOPA & PIPA, Don't Forget The DMCA Already Has Significant Problems
Re: Yes, Mike, we know the only parts of DMCA that you like is that which promotes symbiotic grifting.
No then, if you can point out a single industry, economic sector or what have you that has innovated any more than the tech industry has in the past 30-40 years please point them out.
Until you can, Mike's moniker is the correct one. Unless, of course, you believe that the tech industry with or without Google is a massive cesspool of piracy and copyright violation which we'd just love to know. I bet you think Open Source is just another dodge to pirate someone else's software, too.
And you DO realize that your sentence "Separate links sites and file hosts, both drawing eyeballs to advertising with stolen content while pretending they know nothin'." makes no grammatical or logical sense, right?
"Separate links sites and file hosts, both drawing eyeballs to advertising with stolen content while pretending they know nothin'" makes no grammatical or logical sense, don't you?
And you complain about others making ad homiem attacks on you while you feel free to do the same to Mike.
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re: Problem is that Melchoir Rietveldt got greedy!
There IS a difference though between contract law and copyright law. Copyright is NOT a contract signed between two equal parties one of whom does something or performs a service for the other party for pay and both agree to abide to the terms of the contract. One use, one place is fairly easy to understand and doesn't include a single word about copyright. See?
The contract was violated by BREIN and/or one of its agents which everyone is agreed on. So the artist, as a signatory to a contract, is entitled to restitution under contract law. Nothing to do with copyright as there's no dispute over that. The artist, in this case, still holds the copyright and both sides agree on that. (They have to otherwise the bully routine wouldn't have been pulled to have him sign over his copyright in return for a small amount of restitution.)
So this has nothing at all to do with piracy or copyright is has everything to do with BRIEN, supposedly an antipiracy activist group, honouring a signed contract and performing their part within terms of that contract. Which they didn't.
The usual way restitution is made in contract law is the payment of a monetary award or settlement. Sorry you don't understand that. It does, however, open the door to my questioning your understanding of civil, common and criminal law whatsoever and coming to my own conclusions that you don't so your opinions on piracy are nothing but self serving, trolling, gibberish.
I'll leave it to DH to add the more colourful language that I'm straining not to use. I'll leave you with mange la merde, to quote Pierre Trudeau and let it go at that. DH can correct or translate if necessary.
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re:
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
I don't know about the artist but I'd be far more interested in suing them into non-existence over damages as the result of them deliberately breaking an in force contract and not notifying the other party to the contract that they were about to terminate it (as required by law). If money's all he wants there's much, much more in that. Even if he just wants to make an example of them I'd still sue them for all their worth and settle for less, because, at a guess, he has a clear case here of a deliberate breaking of an in force contract and that lovely phrase malice of forethought can get tossed about legally and accurately to describe it.
If there are copyright damages they can come later or as part of the restitution.
In any event, nothing strips away the "for the creator" argument about IP better than this does. For that reason I love it.
Applies to certain people in the US Congress. too.
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re: Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
Who then turned around and broke the contract. The irony is delicious, even you have to admit that.
Requested restitution for a deliberate violation of a legal contract? Royalites and accounting. He then gets leaned on to back off.
The conversation gets out verbatim because it was reported. Leaner runs and hides after behaving less like someone interested in stopping piracy than a typical gatekeeper music company/recording company/movie company. "Yeah, we broke a contract, so shut up already and here's a few (worthless) euros to keep you quiet. Not that we haven't been doing this for years, you know. Now be a good boy and go away."
Nothing pro or anti piracy about it. Not a hint of it.
Still, if all you're left with is your ad homineum argument of "respect for the law" so let me ask, once again, how do you respect a law that allows this sort of activity and has for decades?
And please, no "what about the artists" arguments. We've just seen what use the recording industry and music publishers think of "the artists" out of their own mouths.
And how do you square this with your claimed dislike of the current copyright regime and the behaviour it allows gatekeepers to indulge in like this, not to mention, their seeming notion that they have a divine right to mega profits each quarter.
It's a question you seem unable to answer. I can't see one as it would require tying yourself into logical and moral gordian knots and then somehow getting out to type your response.
That said, there is no copyright issue here one way or another.
There is, however, the far more important question of contract law and the little detail that BRIEN clearly violated better than a thousand years of English and Dutch contract, civil and common law. Something they don't deny when Gerrits called the composer.
Instead Gerrits attempts to pressure the composer to give up one third of what he's owed, under contract, for them to make it right. At best it's a dodgy negotiation tactic at worst illegal, totally lacking in the principle of "good faith" in contract matters and utter hypocrisy of the highest order.
He wasn't, technically, robbed of anything as contract law isn't criminal law unless it gets elevated to that status by a judge or prosecutor it's civil and common law. That alone is enough for restitution which is demanded under contract law. Under civil (written) and common (unwritten, precedent) law both. And given that they are an anti-piracy group passing themselves off as working in the interests of artists the restitution ought to be substantial just in case a similar organization tries something similar in the future. You see, contract law does not just concern itself with real or potiential loss of income, though it may, what it would concern itself with in this case is the behaviour of BRIEN and the penalty that needs to be extracted based on the behaviour and clear and deliberate breaking of an in force contract.
Yes, he still owns the song, yes he still can make money from the song and likely will even if that does mean a change in lyrical content (and I bet it will!) so in that sense he's lost nothing and been robbed (theft a criminal offense) of nothing.
BREIN, on the other hand, particularly after the conversation repeated here could be found civilly guilty of breaking the contract deliberately and with malice of forethought (a phrase with particular meaning in contract law) which would increase the restitution the artist would receive as the wronged party in this case. That may, as I said, or may not include loss of income in the award. On balance of probability, how civil actions are judged, I'd say there's a very good chance of that.
So, to clarify, we're not talking copyright law here, we're talking contract law here, a far more important section of civil and common law that copyright ever has or will be as trade and commerce are dependent on signatories to contract to act in good faith towards on another and notify one another where possible of planned or accidental variances to the contract.
Piracy doesn't enter into it.
On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, the hypocrisy is pro-pirates gleefully ruling out "free"!
Thank you.
On the post: Colbert Takes On SOPA
Re: Re: Justin Bieber
As it would take a matter of less than 90 seconds to load up, watch and unload the software I'm sure you can see one of the many reasons I don't do "piracy". It's annoying. Then again, I don't buy from the big media gatekeepers either so I suppose I'm no better than the pirates. Next bill up "An Act To Spread Culture" which will ensure that I have to buy at least 3 CDs or equivalent and 3 feature films or equivalent annually or face fines and imprisonment.
I just hope the equivalent is porn. Most of that's better made and scripted than Hollywood movies these days.
On the post: Colbert Takes On SOPA
Re: You're cheering on piracy again. Not recognizing the problem.
And the mainstream users of the net, notice I didn't use quotation marks, attitude to file sharing isn't casual it's quite planned and deliberate even if the intent is not to rip off the artists who made the content. It is to remove the gatekeepers who are between the marketplace/fans and the artists.
A safe harbour allows for, at minimum, some level of proof which can be taken to court should an accusation come in that the use doesn't fall under fair use/fair dealing provisions of all copyright acts. If they do there's no "theft" or infringement under law.
It's called due process under the law which COPA/IP Protect attempt to short circuit by nominating the gatekeepers as vigilantes who can get away with anything, both in the virtual and real worlds without recourse or appeal which is a serious violation of people's civil and constitutional rights (see unreasonable search and seizure for one) in the name of protecting a failing industry.
As you insist you don't like the current copyright regime and you have even less use for the gatekeepers I'm left with the conclusion that what you're saying amounts to the "respect for the law" rubric which misses the point entirely.
Bad civil law deserves no respect, nor should it get any. In a free, democratic and open society that's a citizen's duty. Blind obedience is not our duty as citizens, in fact it's a renunciation of our duty as citizens.
It's even worse when the law comes into place to protect phantom losses of said failing industries in a desperate act of protectionism and hinders free commercial and political speech to boot. (The second point more to what the writers of the US Bill of Rights were trying to ensure was protected, the former point a sometimes unpleasant unintended consequence.)
You don't engender "respect for the law" by making bad laws worse. All you engender is "disrespect for the law" and the general and oft repeated statement that "the Law is an Ass."
On the post: Colbert Takes On SOPA
Re: Re:
It must be why Cleland, alone it seems among tech obsevers and companies, (last time I checked all privately owned and therefore of a capitalistic nature as tech is a capital intensive business) in supporting these bills.
It was an amusing read/rant, though. Pity some take that nonsense seriously.
On the post: Colbert Takes On SOPA
Justin Bieber
That said, it's a valid point.
On the post: Lamar Smith Tries To Defend SOPA; Suggests That Infringement Is The Equivalent Of Child Porn
Re: Re:
/exit stage right muttering darkly to no one in particular
On the post: Lamar Smith Tries To Defend SOPA; Suggests That Infringement Is The Equivalent Of Child Porn
Re: Re: Re: Re:
(BFAA= Banana Farmers Association of America. BFAA@riaa.com ;-0 )
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re:
This is in stark contrast with Warez sites which are high profile, often operated by criminals, are as dangerous as all get out and I wouldn't unzip a single file downloaded from then unless I could completely sandbox them first and, even then, only to get a peek at what they were trying to infect my machine with.
As for dealing with domain names registered to Vanatu and how they deal with servers in eastern Europe you do that the same way you do now. An TCP/IP Whois. That will tell you where the server is, who the ISP is that the server is connected to and a host of other information. A lot of it public, by design.
Next question?
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
It's interesting, at times, to realize how little most people know about how deeply the Internet is entwined into our economy, trade. how we communicate with each other and live with each other these days and how damaging what seems like an "easy" solution like DNS blocking can be when the result is that it does something unexpected.
Nor are any of the proposed solutions you outlined workable in the short or long term tempting as they may be completely outside of what they'd do the the competitive position of the United States in relation to the rest of the world not to mention the security of the United States (and by extension my country -- Canada) would be seriously compromised.
In a perfect world everyone would respect copyright. It's not a perfect world. Nor, as I said, are there independent studies that show the content industry is really suffering the loss of actual sales simply from piracy.
The content industry had a collective hissy fit first at open reel audio tape being sold to consumers, then cassettes, then recordable CDs (and we Canadians DO pay a tax on blanks to "support the artists") then piracy and on it goes. Every time there's a decline in profits there is something, anything, that they blame other than themselves and the products they produce and offer to consumers.
A consumer revolt is the last thing they can see. But a constant diet of cultural gruel will cause that.
As a sideline, Boomers like me are getting older and aren't buying songs, CDs, DVDs in the gobs we used to. Part of that is aging, part of that is we have better things to do that waste time with yet another movie remake of a bad TV show (though I am waiting till Hollywood rediscovers Mr Ed and My Favorite Martian and remakes them on tv or as a movie). Things older people do like garden, age, shave and spend much more time with the doctor than either we or the doctor would like.
I did think I should add my technical and trade/professional background so that people would know that I'm simply not blowing steam out my ears. (Though there are times when steam does escape there when I read comments by IP purists who seem to have no legal, economics or technical background but do have rage.)
For my part, thanks for trying to promote discussion. I hope, in my small way, I've contributed to that.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Thoughts and questions
As for imports of actual counterfiets or products the United States has reason to believe will violate US copyright or patent laws once landed. the US has every right to tell US based payment processors not to do buisness with the selling web site, at least as far as phyiscal copies and coutnerfiets are concerned. With respect to electronic files that are perfectly legal in the country of origin I tend to feel that they're on shaky ground as that couunty could insist that the payment processors do honour the payment requests with appropriate penalties if they don't. Such orders from the United States are an attempt to impose their laws extraterrirorially which is a violation of soverienty someting most countries take very, very seriously. As does the United States.
Before someone picks up the issue of kiddie porn and things related to it no advanced country would have any difficulty with doing exactly that themselves so that wasn't much of a problem. Places like Thailand where such things are going on aren't about to scream about it because, one way or another, it would harm their tourist trade. Best to shut up your yap about such things at times.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
I do understand the abstraction where you and I part company is he notion that increasing said policing will do any good.
As far as economic damage done by so-called piracy when there is a legitimate study that shows me that there is such damage beyond that bought and paid for by the folks you call Big Media and said evidence is easily replicated I'll buy into that. For now, I don't precisely because the second half of my sentence above has never happened. In fact the opposite has been the case. So while I'm open to the possibility the folks you call big media had had decades to come up with it and has, thus far failed.
As for increasing policing my biggest fear is that it will have precisely the opposite effect. In fact, I'm sure it will.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
If, as you keep insisting you see all that is wrong with the current copyright regime and how it's uses by those you call Big Media I'm very curious as to why you support legislation that basically amounts to an extended welfare project for the same Big Media and their desire to extent copyright until our sun finally explodes and fries up all their stuff.
I'd love to know how you make illegal dodging a broken DNS server (as in blocked) when that's what the Internet does by design. And just what, as I've asked, will enforce it? Criminalization in support of those you call Big Media?
While I'm glad to see the courts brought into the discussion about shutting down web sites found to be hosting gobs of 'infringing' files I also see that you want to insist that the country in which they are located shut them down. I have a small bulletin for you on that one. You have absolutely no idea how tired those of us outside of the United States are of the US Congress attempting to apply American laws extra-territorially. You have less than no right to do that and the rest of us are under no obligation to do anything at all about a court decision in the United States unless it is to use it as precedent in countries that share the legal system we all inherited from England. (And only US Supreme Court decision at that.)
You make the assumption that copyright laws are the same in the country you're referring to which would be right only if that country was a signatory of the Berne Convention.
(By the way the USA was a late comer to signing that one so in one way the USA was considered copyright "pirates" long before the Internet existed. Didn't hurt creators whose work was published in other countries all that much but it could explain why some people from the UK, Australia and places like that don't have a great deal of sympathy for American cries of "respect copyright!")
I doubt that the "bad" things (most of them near insane in you understand deeply how the Internet works) when you'd see industries and government agencies outside of Big Media line up to oppose such things.
At the risk of repeating myself there is no empirical evidence anywhere outside of claims made by your Big Media that piracy is a problem far less the massive problem they make it out to be from their bought and paid for researchers. Problem is, you see, that independent research can't duplicate the results of Big Media's bought and paid for reports. Cries of "It HAS to be" don't count. Evidence does and there is none. You can't lose what you don't have and you don't have a "potential" sale, it can't be put on a balance sheet or used to settle accounts or pay taxes so if it's "potential" it doesn't exist.
In any event the revolt is and always has been a consumer revolt against your Big Media and not a revolt against copyright except in the fevered minds of Big Media and their crys of "what about the artist?" as if they care. After all the artist has to sign over their copyright to Big Media and one day they may see a small royalty from that in the vast majority of cases. The consumers know that too.
OK, back to DNS blocking. If you don't understand that DNS servers are passive merely connecting one server to another server to another server, often another DNS server, then you don't understand the damage blocking can do.
An internet connection is not a nailed down point to point connection from your computer to the one at the distant end. That happens in rare cases such as HTTPS and FTPS but otherwise the route taken my my connection to Techdirt will change when I press Submit from the one I retrieved your post on after I pressed the last submit.
In the case of always on such as streaming audio, video and the bittorrent protocol the route can change every few seconds depending on traffic conditions somewhere out the on the Internet. Same thing happens with across the Internet phone calls.
In that sense SOPA and PROTECT IP silliness only affects the first server out the one you connect to from your ISP and you're routed from there. There's nothing on earth, however to prevent you from connecting to another one. And companies, people and telcos (and me) always have a secondary one loaded up in case the primary becomes sluggish or goes off line.
So if the idea of the bill is to control what ISP "first out" DNS servers can pass on to the next server should I type "www.copyrightinfringers.com" and head out there from my browsesr then what's being accompished? And at what REAL cost to users of misrouting and a host of other issues that always arise when this sort of thing gets done. And the United States has no jurisdiction over servers located in other countries no matter how much America may jump up and down and throw diplomatic hissy fits they don't.
Personally I don't really give a damn. It's easy enough to get around just type in the IP directly instead of the name and off you go bypassing most of the DNS structure altogether from the initial and ongoing connections. It's how the Internet works unless what you really want is a complete re-engineering of the beast :)
So DNS blocking is kinda pointless in that respect.
As I've said, if the goal is to get people to respect copyright laws then you need to get people to respect those who old the majority of copyrighted material out there. The disconnect with the "what about the creator" thing comes when people realize, as they so, that the creator has had to sign over their copyright to get published, have their song recorded or the get the movie they wrote, directed and produced made. And most people also realize that the folks you call Big Media don't have a stellar track record on paying those creators and didn't long before the Internet.
I have no more desire than you do to see copyright laws go into the dustbin of history and I too want them to be respected. I have a hard time, though, squaring the circle when, in the vast majority of cases, the only ones profiting are your Big Media, corrupt and unimaginative that they are.
And I do have an interest in seeing copyright continued in one form or another as I am a writer and do write for the web and elsewhere. Admittedly what I write about isn't light reading or what you'll find on Amazon as it's often rather esoteric aspects of things like theology, biblical criticism and history as applied to the previous two. While I don't get paid for it in the traditional sense I'm supported in actually getting it out there both on paper and on the net so I'm happy.
What I don't see happening is that respect for or the observance of copyright will be enhanced in any way by SOPA, in fact quite the opposite. I know enough history to know when governments have gone too far and with SOPA and it's companion legislation the US Congress has gone far to far.
Particularly when so-called piracy has nothing to do with copyright is has to do with a consumer rebellion against the major copyright holders, namely the MPAA and the RIAA for their annoying habit as a customer to foist crap on the consumer at ever increasing prices.
People do pay (support) creators directly when and where they can, otherwise there would be no independent bands and acts out there. No self published books. No attempts at do it yourself movie making. So people do respect the artists and creators.
The legistalative equivalent of a multi-warhead tactical nuclear weapon (SOPA) won't increase respect for copyright. Given that legislators are almost as popular and what I call Big Content and you call Big Media (right down there with the bubonic plague and hiking in an active sewer pipe. So if think these bills will stop piracy I submit that you're wrong on just about all the counts I can think of.
Particularly in English speaking counties. While most of us don't have the mythology of liberty and freedom the United States has we are just as intolerant of government getting too big for it's britches. And we are just as intolerant of government propping up failing industries in the name of something like copyright as Americans are. Maybe more so, speaking as a Canadian we have the habit of taking large majorities in our federal House of Commons and reducing 360 members to 2 following an election when they do that. We're ornery that way.
That tends to lessen, for a while, the tendency of government to drift into authoritarianism and remind them who the boss is.
In a free and democractic society laws such as copyright and patents exist at the consent of the governed. When those laws become a form of taxation without representation which extended patent and copyright have become the great unwashed, the governed have an annoying habit to power of withdrawing that consent particularly when it's done for the benefit of corrupt, failing businesses whether it's in the creative end of life or not. Up here in the Great White North we have an example of that that took place south of us around 1776.
With all respect I submit to you now that what is taking place is a consumer revolt against just that and has been taking place since ADSL and cable in the home became commonplace.
SOPA, should it pass, will only serve to increase that revolt and what respect is left for IP law, and it's not a lot, will start to vanish even more quickly than it already is. The governed will withdraw consent.
The tech industry, the industry most dependent on IP laws in the North American economy sees that and opposes things like SOPA and ProtectIP and other such legislation.
I'm amazed that others don't. Particularly when people such as you seem to agree on just about every point with the consumer revolt except that you want to clamp down harder and not let the marketplace function as it should and not let the citizenry make crystal clear that they are in the process of withdrawing consent for the laws as they are currently written and proposed to be written that affect on small sector of the economy at the expense of the rest of the economy.
I have to say, I'm amazed too. I apologize if being amazed is something you consider vulgar but I am.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
Oh, and while I'm at it the only thing that, as publicly traded companies member companies of the RIAA and MPAA can be legitimately interested in is their own and what they pass on to shareholders not this drivel about how concerned they are about artists. They aren't so let's just get that one out of the way.
As for what is too far?
(1) Breaking the Internet by messing with the DNS system. While it's tempting to think this would change something about "piracy" it won't. What it will do is interfere with the billions of dollars of legitimate business taking place across the internet and the ability of companies to continue using B to B software to keep their inventories up to date, to place orders and to actually make products which appear in the physical world. It would affect and. temporarily at least, mess up the telecommunications systems in place globally which make extensive use of the internet to route, connect and complete calls using either voice or data. That may not have occurred to the likes of o_o_t_b or to some/many members of the US congress but it would make an unholy mess of such things.
Now for the list.
1) Make it illegal to link to infringing content. On many sites out there and on many servers it's already a violation of terms of service to do so. The tricky question, though, is what's infringing and what's fair use. The DCMA provided a route for that (I can't believe I'm defending the DCMA and its ilk but that's where things have gone.) which SOPA and Protect IP take away. (As does Canada's new copyright act survive the inevitable constitutional challenge which the betting line says it won't.)
2) Make it illegal to communicate the location of infringing... Again, the trick of what's fair use and what's infringement. One could (and many do) argue that it's immoral to do so but if by make illegal you mean criminalizing I have to respond that law enforcement agencies have much, much better things to do. Anyway, infringement is already illegal so use the laws already there unless you're as lazy or sloppy as the MPAA and RIAA.
3) Outlaw Onion Routers...Again, just who enforces this? And is the cost of enforcement worth what the results would be. Remember that we're dealing with an industry here that produces less than 0.1% of US GDP. An industry that moves heaven and earth to NOT pay creators as it is by means legal and otherwise.
4)Criminalizing. See above.
5) Deep packet inspection. An interesting solution. Maybe but if the United States makes deep packet inspection normative (and outlaws onion routers which are in widespread use by the US Military and security agencies) I guess the United States can't complain when China or Iran or the Seychelles use deep packet inspection on official US Government traffic across the internet. Fail for national and international security reasons alone there.
5) Mandatory server registration. In a sense, that already exists. At least in the sense of routing servers you have to know they're there before they can be used so having secret servers is self defeating. And in my experience setting up a secret server to indulge in criminal activity are soon discovered because somewhere on the line they have to identify themselves to someone to communicate even if only by IP address if not both name and IP address.
6) P2P ban. The vast majority of P2P activity is legal. It's used by business, the military, police, security agencies, search and rescue, controlling forest fires and a host of other legitimate and perfectly legal uses including the distribution of almost all Linux distributions out there. I'll get to registration shortly.
7) Mandatory government identification code for accessing the internet. I'm glad you trust big brother to be watching over your shoulder every second of the day and night. I'm sure not. And, again, you need to consider the costs and what it all will accomplish, if anything at all. I can say with certainty that it will not stop so-called piracy in the same way as little magnetic stripes and 4 character passwords have stopped credit card fraud. There's no return there.
8) Gov't mandated OS backdoors. Why,oh why, is it, that people who probably would find the level of government interference in private affairs suddenly go all ga-ga over it when they think they're hitching their wagons to "a good cause"? Has the fate of alcholol prohibition in the USA and the continued war on drugs not taught you anything? Both ended up costing far more than what they saved had they never gone into place at all. After all, neither had the desired effect of reducing demand for the products they made illegal and one had to be pulled back while the other plods along amidst gang wars, bloodshed and agony on so many levels.
9) Gov't mandates spyware. See above and are you nuts? That and there's enough people like me around who can get rid of it and whip up something that will make the gov't think they are still spying on me while I carry on and let them monitor the church down the road. Such things aren't impossible or particularly difficult to do.
10) Enforce TCM chips on all computing devices. OK, here we go again. Do you know what you're proposing here? Much as it sounds good the moment you add into the equation of computing devices things like smart power meters and smart appliances, many computers on the car you drive, the fact that modern shipping sees just about everything controlled by computational devices of one sort or another from rail, to ships to (particularly) navy ships not to mention warplanes, civilian aircraft and the list goes on and on. And guess what? They all use the Internet, incidentally. While I'm having fun imagining some super computers burning up and crashing under the load of vast mountains of meaningless data I'm forced to ask, again, to accomplish all of what?
11) Make software writing a licensed and regulated activity. If I was part of my county's security apparatus I'd be having a fit reading that which I'm sure the American ones would have if it was seriously proposed. And I can see where you're coming from but it comes from a mistaken notion that software creation is something like assembling a car or a padlock. It's not. It's a creative process. Sure, lots of software "creation" projects make the promise of cut and paste one routine here and another there and off you go it doesn't work that way.
Should the United States do what you're proposing and, say, India and Brazil or Finland and Vanatu not follow suit it would be a very very short time until the USA surrendered it's major lead in software and hardware design and implementation and lose it's major economic advantage in that area which would otherwise have led the wanted and needed recovery. I've already mentioned security so I'll let you ponder that happens when what you propose comes to pass and that lead vanishes in the blink of an electronic eye.
The major reason there is piracy out there is that the gatekeepers of the so-called content industry aren't producing product people actually want at a price they are willing to pay. It's not, and never has been, an attack on the actual people who create content, the attack has been on industries that have lost all imagination and creativity under which creators themselves chafe and produce endless rounds of junk.
What little of any quality escapes from that cesspool is overpriced and hard to find. Unless...unless...you go get it yourself. The reality is it's a consumer backlash is now and always has been. Most people also know that the same content industry is infamous for NOT paying those creators so the notion that they're hurting MyBandInLadysmith doesn't occur to them. I admit, perhaps it should but then the band may not sell anything the way things are anyway so to claim piracy causes them to lose money is based on a false assumption that if piracy ended they would.
No, it's not going too far to ask people to respect copyright and what it's intended to do. Fair enough. Too bad the content industry doesn't except to place culture into walled gardens protected by copyright from now to when the world ends.
What you propose and what o_o_t_b seems to support (despite is repeated protestations that he doesn't like the current copyright regime or the companies that profit from it), is going far to far.
You are asking that citizens of, say, the United States give up their freedom and liberty to protect and industry that contributes a microscopic amount to the American economy in the name of the "creators" when they don't profit from the current regime either.
Nor do you see the irony in the fact that an industry that does depend on copyright, almost totally, to continue to thrive is one of the loudest in opposition to SOPA and IP Protect. That's right, the very tech industry your proposals will cripple. And the tech industry relies on copyright to a far greater degree than does big content. Case in point SCO vs Linux. Where millions of lines of code were examined over a false accusation that Linux developers "pirated" copyrighted code belonging to SCO. (Turned out that it was the other way around, actually.)
What neither you or o_o_t_b seem to realize is how entrenched the Internet is in the way we communicate, do business, relate with each other, design, how nations speak with and to each other (the occasional threat included of course), and, in the end, how people who create, create. Including novelists who spend hours on the Net and Web researching items for their latest (hoped to be) blockbuster novel. We mess with it at our economic and social peril.
All to deal with a problem that, while it exists, has no empirical evidence, independently found, that causes the problems big content claims it does. And, in a dollar sense, contributes little to the broad economy.
What will kill copyright is using a multi-warhead nuclear weapon such as SOPA and ProtectIP and most of what you propse should the come to pass. All to protect one of the most corrupt industries in existence. And the general public gets that. As I noted above one of the major drivers to piracy has been that big content has refused to provide what their consumers want, so their consumers rebelled. Those same consumers will lose what little may be left of their respect for copyright, as well as other IP regimes such as patents, should the warhead be fired. That's the unintended collateral damage that will be caused.
When you basically declare a free people as a bunch of criminals for exercising their right to buy or not to buy in a supposedly capitalist system to support an industry as corrupt and creatively crippled entity as Hollywood those same people will withdraw their support for those laws.
If. through ignorance (willful being worse) you break the backbone of a struggling economy at that same time that withdrawl may be quite sudden and widespread which is what you, o_o_t_b, SOPA and PROTECT IP propose to do.
One of the particularly nasty things about things like freedom, liberty and democracy is that the consent to govern comes from below, not above, it comes from the broad citizenry, not from interest groups and certainly not corrupt interest groups who pass their corruption onto the legislature.
It comes from the great unwashed. Take their freedoms, liberties and choices away governments most often find that the consent they REALLY need to govern has been withdrawn.
PS I both write and create in other ways and use copyright and Creative Commons licensing for what I create so I suspect I have far greater interest in the issue of respect for the law that you do. By the same token, I cannot support what is happening now on moral and ethical grounds nor can I support it on technical grounds, and I know of what I speak there too having designed, built and established voice and data networks and transmission in the telecom industry for the better part of the past 35 years. From the days of electro-mechanical switching to the Internet.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
What???? It's not socialist? Isn't that the usual response when someone mentions international agencies? No "one world government" conspiracy theories to add to the deadweight of your argument?
Seems you missed the opportunity to make a point, o_o_t_b, young fella, me lad.
As for the meat of the matter, which is what matters, is the proposal to allow the ITC to do it's job where counterfeits and, in many cases, infringement do their job is reasonable and rational as this does involve important trade issues.
Well, at least it does every time a rep from the MPAA arrives in Canada to lecture us that Canadian Content rules on television and radio violate those rules in spite of their having lost there.
Do TRY, at least, to make sense, will you please?
And since when did police get involved in civil/commmon law issues. Infringement is NOT a criminal offense. Should SOPA succeed it may become one but at this stage it isn't. Not that police don't have more than enough to do in addition to keeping order which is their primary job after all. (Not protecting failing content industries whose contribution to the GDP of the USA is something less than 0.1%.)
But really, libertarian? Could that be because one of the few politicans in Washington to see the dangers is Ron Paul?
Do you have the faintest idea what libertarianism is all about?
An entirely rhetorical question as it's more than apparent that you don't.
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