Another good example is the car industry. When the US state bails out the car industry you can be sure that they take extra care that the deals they provide protect jobs in the US rather than in other countries where those companies operate. Sweden's two biggest car companies happened to be owned by GM and Ford so this behaviour was very clear.
Now I don't see any reason to call that racist. It's certainly nationalistic and protectionistic and it hurts free trade which is bad for all of us in the long run, but it's not that surprising.
There are different types of nationalism. Caring for the preserval of national traditions and the national language is one form. It doesn't necessarily exclude people based on where they were born as long as foreign people are welcomed to take part in these traditions and learn the language - and they are here.
Now, like most swedes I'm a very unnationalistic guy. I value traditions to a certain degree, but I don't see any point in linking it to the nation or tossing around silly nationalistic symbols.
"We're talking about Sweden discriminating against people withing it's own borders based on national origin."
There's no such discrimination in this area. If you are a Swedish citizen you can get a share of these susidies irrespectively of where you were born. The same goes for foreign citizens writing in the Swedish language. A big part of the money also goes to translators.
"And by the way, you should check out the amount of foreign aid the US provides to other countries. Sweden? Ha! What a joke. No wonder you think no country does."
That's hilarious. The one who needs to check it out is you. According to this Wikipedia-article Sweden's foreign aid is 5 times (!!) as large than that of the US expressed as a share of GNP. A bit south of Stockholm there is a small Swedish city that has received more Iraqi refugees than all of the US and Canada combined - and now we're talking absolute numbers. Surveys show that Sweden is one of the EU countries whose citizens are most positive about including Turkey in the European Union (just compare it to France and you'll realize that this says quite a lot about my people).
"Copyright laws in my country apply equally to everyone regardless of race, creed, religion, gender or national origin."
They do in my country to. The culture subsidies are something else and have nothing to do with copyright. They just happen to be based on lending statistics.
Really? So how many countries in the world have DMCA-style legislation then?
I live in Sweden which is often criticized for having lenient copyright laws. However, according to the laws in my country it's doubtful whether a service such as YouTube could've been developed and run from here. The reason is that the person responsible for a web page with user generated content is obliged to actively supervise the contents supplied by users. Passively responding to take-down notices is not necessarily enough. And then we don't have any concept of fair-use (except some very narrow exceptions regarding for example quoting). So in several ways our laws are stricter. Thankfully we have a much less litigatious culture than that in the US.
But that new system seems to be based on the libraries' buying, just like the old one, as opposed to the lending statistics which would be more reasonable (unless you think the libraries have better taste than the public).
"That sounds kind of racist to me. You must be so proud."
No it's not racist. It's nationalistic. I think it's quite common for small countries to susidize the people who write books and produce movies in the native language. Of course one may feel that this if unfair too, but remember that it's not a compensation but a national subsidy. Can you give any examples of where a state uses their tax money to subsidize other countries? The whole system of subsidies is of course both very nationalistic and protectionistic, and I think it is in your country too.
One can object to that on liberal grounds, but calling it racist seems like hyperbole to me.
"Edwards seems to be missing the fact that copyright is about ... copying."
I'm not sure how this works in the US, but at least in my country copyright law covers both copying, renting, and lending. Take for example the companies that let you rent videos. They need a special deal in order to do that, they cannot just go out in the store and buy a DVD and use that in their store.
The libraries have an explicit exemption from these rules.
Understanding the secondary market and the purpose of copyright
He also wrote: "As for the second-hand market, while it’s nice to know your book has a second life, there’s no financial return in it for the author."
Clearly he doesn't understand how removing possibility to resell a product would affect the price of the new product.
Here's another interesting respond by Brian Edwards to someone who didn't feel Edwards understood copyright: "You really are an arrogant bugger. Not only have I been involved in publishing for more than 40 years, I have written and lectured on the subject of copyright. I know what it is. And for all your high-minded rationalisations, the principal function of copyright is to vest in the originator of a work the sole right to reproduce (or perform) that work or to authorise others to do so. I already agreed that what public libraries do is not technically a breach of copyright. But the effect is the same as reproduction."
So he seems to think that the primary function of copyright is to... give authors copyright.
I wasn't arguing for or against this system. But assuming that there are extra subsidies like this I think my country's way of distributing the subsidies is better, i.e. basing it on the interest of the lenders rather than the interest of the libraries (as shown by how many books they buy).
If one ignores the obviously stupid parts of his text for a moment I think he has one good point: if there are to be any kind of payments through this Author's Fund then it's more reasonable to base the distribution on the number of times a book is lended rather than on how many books the libraries keep in store.
It doesn't mean that the total sum of money necessarily needs to grow or shrink with the lending, just that the available money is distributed according to the interest of the people lending the books. I mean, why compensate authors whose books nobody reads?
This is how the system works for example here in Sweden. Basically, authors get 11 cent for each copy lended - a system that only applies to Swedish authors (or if it's language dependant - I'm not sure which). The politicians are however very clear about this being a subsidy for the cultural sector and not a compensation per se.
"you and many others did engage in bullying. You can surround what was done with a raft of window dressing, but in the final analysis the object was little more than to hold the person up to ridicule."
If a person makes something that seems ridiculous and someone points that out and asks constructive questions about the inconsistencies that lead to that situation, how can that be called bullying?
"There are ways to ask questions in a thoughtful and considerate manner."
Which ones of mr Masnick's questions were not thoughtful and considerate? Care to give any examples?
"Assuming the worst and proceeding accordingly is certainly not calculated to elicit a thoughtful response."
Maybe you should apply that argument to the blocking of file-sharers without prior trial. How is that anything else than assuming the worst? How is that supposed to elicit a throughful response?
There are three judges (which I think does not include the lay judges of which there are probably two or one). Now one the defendants' lawyers has formally objected to two of the main judges (machine translated article): Ulrika Ihrfelt for being a former member of the Swedish Copyright Association and Kristina Boutz for currently being a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.
Considering that the judge in the previous TPB trial was a member of both these organizations and had a position on the board of the latter one, one has to wonder if this will lead to anything. So far I think the defendants have not formally objected to the lay judge mentioned in the blog post above. Maybe they have changed their minds about him now that they know more about him.
"When I read through the comments of her first infringing post, there are a lot of, "Stupid bitch," and, "Hypocritical cunt," kinds of posts. Some of the comments were very aggressive and sounded fairly threatening. And it wasn't just a few, but a pretty large volume. I don't imagine that volume went down with subsequent posts."
There was a remarkable difference between the comments to the first post and the comments to the follow-ups. Maybe this mirror the fact that the rude people may be less interested in staying around after they have dropped their insults whereas the people interested in the matters like to continue discussing.
@Ivanhoe Martin
You wrote: "It's with the 'c0pywrite suxxx LOL' brigade, who have a minimal understanding of the consequence of "wanting stuff for free" which, like it or not, is as significant a part of the debate as the search for new business models, etc."
If we ignore for a moment that this seems to be a strawman-argument (yes, there are impolite and idiotic comments but you seem to overemphasize the importance of these few loud-mouths), then I'd argue that the same goes for many of the pro-copyright people or copyright-maximalists.
The problem is that they don't see what the current copyright regime does to civil rights, fair trials, the right to privacy, proportional penalties, net neutrality and in the longer term the open net. What happens when you start to convict people to serious punishments (cutting off the net so that they can't perform daily duties, buy things, do their job, connect with friends, create public opinion for their issues in a democratic fashion etc) without the right to a prior trial? And what does it do to young people's views on laws and socity to find that they constantly break the law just by doing everyday tasks (eg. a high-school band recording and publishing an amateur cover version of a song they like)? What does it do to people's perception of politics when copyright laws seem to be designed to favour a few and not the interest of the public (or promote the progress of useful arts as the US constitution puts it)?
A young musician who creates a piece of music today will enjoy a protection that lasts until his 150's birthday, i.e. it ends about the time his grandchild's grandchild's child is born. One of my favourite authors was born in 1858 and her works are still not in the public domain. What does it do to our cultural heritage to lock up works like that and how does it affect the creative possibilities for artists of today?
Those who defend the current system often like to discuss the immorality of unauthorized copying, but are not at all interested in discussing the collateral damage of their proposed anti-file-sharing measures. Why is that?
Ownership of a domain name doesn't say anything about who's responsible for the contents of the web site with that domain name.
For example, one of the Pirate Bay guys stood as the contact person for the domain name of a web site where a pedophile gave his view on things (only written thoughts, no illegal images or such), and people tried to use that to smear down the TPB guy's image, although it probably was common practice at the web host he worked at to do this in order to protect the personal data of customers.
Anyway, it seems strange choice to put your domain name in the hands of someone else like EMI though. I mean, what if she decides to stop working with them in the future?
>> First of all, they didn't know that this lay judge was going to be assigned to the case.
>>
>Nah, it was just a "coincidence", huh?
Well, I thought you might be going here, but I figured you might just as well show how conspiratoric you are yourself.
Yes, the assignment was a coincidence.
The courts use random selection all the time. Just imagine the PR damage it would do to IFPI if it came out that they had tried to influence the selection of judges. I don't believe they would take that risk (it wouldn't be worth it), and if they tried I don't think they would be successful.
I'm not naïve. I know of cases here in Sweden where the record company representatives have tried to twist the law. I just don't find your theory very likely in this case.
And if they had chosen the lay judge, why choose someone who stood out as one of the brightest students during his years at KTH (the Royal Academcy of Science in Stockholm) and is known to thousands of people thanks to his success in international programming contests? Why not choose a more low-profile colorless person? His connections with Spotify were bound to be highlighted.
Btw. I've seen multiple blog comments here and there saying things like "oh, this guy. Yeah I know him from my time at KTH".
With Spotify having licensing deals for streaming with and being partly owned by the major record companies, could there be some licensing trouble for Apple if it wants to enter the streaming market?
"Yeah, in an attempt to minimize their damages after they realized they weren't going to get away with it."
That's a nice conspiracy theory, but I don't think there's anything to it. First of all, they didn't know that this lay judge was going to be assigned to the case. And secondly, he's a very free-thinking and independant person with lots of job opportunities so I highly doubt that they would be successful exercising influence on him.
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: Re: Re:
Now I don't see any reason to call that racist. It's certainly nationalistic and protectionistic and it hurts free trade which is bad for all of us in the long run, but it's not that surprising.
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Now, like most swedes I'm a very unnationalistic guy. I value traditions to a certain degree, but I don't see any point in linking it to the nation or tossing around silly nationalistic symbols.
"We're talking about Sweden discriminating against people withing it's own borders based on national origin."
There's no such discrimination in this area. If you are a Swedish citizen you can get a share of these susidies irrespectively of where you were born. The same goes for foreign citizens writing in the Swedish language. A big part of the money also goes to translators.
"And by the way, you should check out the amount of foreign aid the US provides to other countries. Sweden? Ha! What a joke. No wonder you think no country does."
That's hilarious. The one who needs to check it out is you. According to this Wikipedia-article Sweden's foreign aid is 5 times (!!) as large than that of the US expressed as a share of GNP. A bit south of Stockholm there is a small Swedish city that has received more Iraqi refugees than all of the US and Canada combined - and now we're talking absolute numbers. Surveys show that Sweden is one of the EU countries whose citizens are most positive about including Turkey in the European Union (just compare it to France and you'll realize that this says quite a lot about my people).
"Copyright laws in my country apply equally to everyone regardless of race, creed, religion, gender or national origin."
They do in my country to. The culture subsidies are something else and have nothing to do with copyright. They just happen to be based on lending statistics.
On the post: Once Again, Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Via Int'l Treaties
Re: Re:
I live in Sweden which is often criticized for having lenient copyright laws. However, according to the laws in my country it's doubtful whether a service such as YouTube could've been developed and run from here. The reason is that the person responsible for a web page with user generated content is obliged to actively supervise the contents supplied by users. Passively responding to take-down notices is not necessarily enough. And then we don't have any concept of fair-use (except some very narrow exceptions regarding for example quoting). So in several ways our laws are stricter. Thankfully we have a much less litigatious culture than that in the US.
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: NZ Public Lending Right
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: Re:
No it's not racist. It's nationalistic. I think it's quite common for small countries to susidize the people who write books and produce movies in the native language. Of course one may feel that this if unfair too, but remember that it's not a compensation but a national subsidy. Can you give any examples of where a state uses their tax money to subsidize other countries? The whole system of subsidies is of course both very nationalistic and protectionistic, and I think it is in your country too.
One can object to that on liberal grounds, but calling it racist seems like hyperbole to me.
On the post: Once Again, Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Via Int'l Treaties
Re: Commentors of Tech Dirt...Unite!
Here you are: http://keionline.org/blogs/2009/03/13/who-are-cleared-advisors
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: Bad Comparison
I'm not sure how this works in the US, but at least in my country copyright law covers both copying, renting, and lending. Take for example the companies that let you rent videos. They need a special deal in order to do that, they cannot just go out in the store and buy a DVD and use that in their store.
The libraries have an explicit exemption from these rules.
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Understanding the secondary market and the purpose of copyright
Clearly he doesn't understand how removing possibility to resell a product would affect the price of the new product.
Here's another interesting respond by Brian Edwards to someone who didn't feel Edwards understood copyright:
"You really are an arrogant bugger. Not only have I been involved in publishing for more than 40 years, I have written and lectured on the subject of copyright. I know what it is. And for all your high-minded rationalisations, the principal function of copyright is to vest in the originator of a work the sole right to reproduce (or perform) that work or to authorise others to do so. I already agreed that what public libraries do is not technically a breach of copyright. But the effect is the same as reproduction."
So he seems to think that the primary function of copyright is to... give authors copyright.
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re: Re:
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
Re:
"There is no intellectual property in a chainsaw, unless someone is going to steal the design or patent"
On the post: New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books
It doesn't mean that the total sum of money necessarily needs to grow or shrink with the lending, just that the available money is distributed according to the interest of the people lending the books. I mean, why compensate authors whose books nobody reads?
This is how the system works for example here in Sweden. Basically, authors get 11 cent for each copy lended - a system that only applies to Swedish authors (or if it's language dependant - I'm not sure which). The politicians are however very clear about this being a subsidy for the cultural sector and not a compensation per se.
On the post: A Teaching Moment For Lily Allen [Update: And *Poof* Goes Her Blog]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If a person makes something that seems ridiculous and someone points that out and asks constructive questions about the inconsistencies that lead to that situation, how can that be called bullying?
"There are ways to ask questions in a thoughtful and considerate manner."
Which ones of mr Masnick's questions were not thoughtful and considerate? Care to give any examples?
"Assuming the worst and proceeding accordingly is certainly not calculated to elicit a thoughtful response."
Maybe you should apply that argument to the blocking of file-sharers without prior trial. How is that anything else than assuming the worst? How is that supposed to elicit a throughful response?
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Update: More bias accusations in the TPB case
Considering that the judge in the previous TPB trial was a member of both these organizations and had a position on the board of the latter one, one has to wonder if this will lead to anything. So far I think the defendants have not formally objected to the lay judge mentioned in the blog post above. Maybe they have changed their minds about him now that they know more about him.
On the post: A Teaching Moment For Lily Allen [Update: And *Poof* Goes Her Blog]
Re: I'd call it abuse...
There was a remarkable difference between the comments to the first post and the comments to the follow-ups. Maybe this mirror the fact that the rude people may be less interested in staying around after they have dropped their insults whereas the people interested in the matters like to continue discussing.
On the post: A Teaching Moment For Lily Allen [Update: And *Poof* Goes Her Blog]
You wrote: "It's with the 'c0pywrite suxxx LOL' brigade, who have a minimal understanding of the consequence of "wanting stuff for free" which, like it or not, is as significant a part of the debate as the search for new business models, etc."
If we ignore for a moment that this seems to be a strawman-argument (yes, there are impolite and idiotic comments but you seem to overemphasize the importance of these few loud-mouths), then I'd argue that the same goes for many of the pro-copyright people or copyright-maximalists.
The problem is that they don't see what the current copyright regime does to civil rights, fair trials, the right to privacy, proportional penalties, net neutrality and in the longer term the open net. What happens when you start to convict people to serious punishments (cutting off the net so that they can't perform daily duties, buy things, do their job, connect with friends, create public opinion for their issues in a democratic fashion etc) without the right to a prior trial? And what does it do to young people's views on laws and socity to find that they constantly break the law just by doing everyday tasks (eg. a high-school band recording and publishing an amateur cover version of a song they like)? What does it do to people's perception of politics when copyright laws seem to be designed to favour a few and not the interest of the public (or promote the progress of useful arts as the US constitution puts it)?
A young musician who creates a piece of music today will enjoy a protection that lasts until his 150's birthday, i.e. it ends about the time his grandchild's grandchild's child is born. One of my favourite authors was born in 1858 and her works are still not in the public domain. What does it do to our cultural heritage to lock up works like that and how does it affect the creative possibilities for artists of today?
Those who defend the current system often like to discuss the immorality of unauthorized copying, but are not at all interested in discussing the collateral damage of their proposed anti-file-sharing measures. Why is that?
On the post: Lily Allen Distributing Tons Of Copyrighted Music; Blows Way Past Three Strikes
Re: Subject = NULL
For example, one of the Pirate Bay guys stood as the contact person for the domain name of a web site where a pedophile gave his view on things (only written thoughts, no illegal images or such), and people tried to use that to smear down the TPB guy's image, although it probably was common practice at the web host he worked at to do this in order to protect the personal data of customers.
Anyway, it seems strange choice to put your domain name in the hands of someone else like EMI though. I mean, what if she decides to stop working with them in the future?
On the post: Lily Allen Distributing Tons Of Copyrighted Music; Blows Way Past Three Strikes
Re: The danger here...
Namecalling isn't very interesting really.
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow
>>
>Nah, it was just a "coincidence", huh?
Well, I thought you might be going here, but I figured you might just as well show how conspiratoric you are yourself.
Yes, the assignment was a coincidence.
The courts use random selection all the time. Just imagine the PR damage it would do to IFPI if it came out that they had tried to influence the selection of judges. I don't believe they would take that risk (it wouldn't be worth it), and if they tried I don't think they would be successful.
I'm not naïve. I know of cases here in Sweden where the record company representatives have tried to twist the law. I just don't find your theory very likely in this case.
And if they had chosen the lay judge, why choose someone who stood out as one of the brightest students during his years at KTH (the Royal Academcy of Science in Stockholm) and is known to thousands of people thanks to his success in international programming contests? Why not choose a more low-profile colorless person? His connections with Spotify were bound to be highlighted.
Btw. I've seen multiple blog comments here and there saying things like "oh, this guy. Yeah I know him from my time at KTH".
On the post: Why Did Apple Approve Spotify?
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Re: Re: Re: Wow
That's a nice conspiracy theory, but I don't think there's anything to it. First of all, they didn't know that this lay judge was going to be assigned to the case. And secondly, he's a very free-thinking and independant person with lots of job opportunities so I highly doubt that they would be successful exercising influence on him.
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