Who's taking publishers to court over bogus DMCA takedowns? I'm not aware of a single case. (Which isn't to say there haven't been any, but if there have, I haven't heard of them.)
Who's pushing to repeal the DMCA, the root of all digital evil? Even respected voices like Techdirt cling to it under the misguided notion that the DMCA takedown system (under the Orwellian-grade misnomer of "safe harbors") somehow protects the Internet we know and love, even while running story after story after story about how it failed to do so.
Who's trying to get better laws passed, to reduce copyright duration, to strengthen the rights of ordinary users, independent content creators, and file sharers, or to criminalize the use of DRM rather than legitimizing it?
No one at all, that I can see.
If you have any evidence to the contrary, any at all, I would love to be proved wrong. But when I look around, all I see is us on the defensive, saying "no, you aren't going any further," without actually making any organized effort to actually reclaim the rights and the cultural heritage which has been stolen from us.
No, but to point the correlation back in the other direction, it certainly does seem that a disproportionate number of evil people--and especially of evil people who get away with it--are rich.
"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation." -- Howard Scott
Yes, exactly. If he wants to prove that he's serious about creating competition, and not just all talk, a real good place to start would be to just go ahead and do what the law says the government is supposed to do to parasitic monopolies that abuse their market power and break up Comcast, Verizon, TWC, etc into multiple, competing (this is important: competing, not regional) companies.
Two years ago, I'd have followed a statement like that up with "not that that's ever likely to actually happen, of course," but then again two years ago I wouldn't have thought we'd ever make it this far, so... who knows? If we push for it, it looks like people are starting to listen.
Tell the FCC: break up telecom giants. We want real competition and we want it now!
From the earliest days at Apple, I realised that we thrived when we created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software we’d be out of business.
To be completely fair, that came pretty darn close to happening to them when Microsoft did just that.
However, this does not in any way excuse or justify their flagrant violation of the rights of pretty much everyone when they finally got a bit of market power of their own.
Precisely. At that scale, this is exactly what the article said: nothing more than a slap-on-the-wrist "punishment" for them. Now if it had been $7 billion, that might have gotten the message across that this sort of exploitation is unacceptable and if you do it anyway, you will truly get hurt for it. But alas, it was not to be...
Indeed, Karel De Gucht, the EU Commissioner with overall responsibility for TTIP, even went so far as to call the unprecedented 150,000 public responses an "outright attack" -- which is an interesting way to characterize democracy in action.
I see nothing wrong with it. That's exactly what it was: people finally seeing that they are threatened in a very real way by this, and attacking that threat. That is democracy in action; true democracy has always been a messy, argumentative process because people are different and diverse.
Precisely. As I've said before, these stories Techdirt and similar sites run so frequently about "DMCA abuses" are not abuses at all; they're the DMCA performing exactly as designed, when it was drafted by a bunch of copyright maximalists. The problem isn't people "using it wrong;" the problem is that the law itself is evil and needs to be repealed.
So when do we push back? When do We The People open our eyes and flip their tactics back on them? When do we start declaring them rogue businesses and using the legal system to harass them into unprofitability? When do we make a concerted push to repeal and reverse the DMCA and other toxic and unconstitutional laws that they've saddled us with? When do we finally realize that playing whack-a-mole with their constant efforts to make things worse isn't enough; that we need to actually actively make things better?
Until then, talking about stuff like this is just that: talk.
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...and elsewhere in the world, with significant help in certain parts from his Arab allies. He's gone now; they're still at it.
(Seriously, that's got to be one of the silliest invocations of Godwin's Law ever. Please learn something about history before you try to use it to back you up.)
Ethnicity has nothing to do with it; I'm supporting not letting yourself get invaded and murdered. Legitimate self-defense is legitimate self-defense, whether on a personal or a national scale.
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Whether or not they are trying to "kill every Palestinian," that's still something very different from genocide. A bunch of Arabs from Jordan packing up and moving to the country next door does not establish them as a distinct racial identity.
When you use really strong words like "genocide" in situations where they are not appropriate, they end up becoming meaningless. Just look at how the media, over the last couple decades, has turned the word "addiction"--meaning a condition in which loss of access to an addictive substance presents a medically significant danger to the addict--into a silly term for "thing that someone really likes doing."
Well yeah, everyone with a technical background looked at this and said it was going to be a disaster. Extrajudicial punishment for the breaking of laws, based on accusation alone, with zero due process? How did anyone think that's going to turn out?
The examples that Techdirt keeps posting on here about so-called "abuses of the DMCA process"? News flash: those aren't abuses at all. That's the DMCA working exactly as designed. You think the music and movie interests who drafted this didn't see the glaringly obvious?
I'm a bit surprised at the bit about the xenon. Xenon is a noble gas: except in highly extreme laboratory conditions that definitely don't exist within the body of a living mammal, it's chemically inert. It doesn't interact with living systems or mess around with chemical processes. So how exactly does it go about changing the way brain chemistry works?
Wow, it takes a really special kind of twisted to take words that oppose people whose stated goal is the outright extermination of an entire ethnic and religious identity and saying that that ideology has no legitimacy, and turn that into an accusation of supporting genocide!
I can't help but wonder what Tim Geigner thinks about this. A couple weeks ago, when I had the audacity to point out that in many cases where minorities raise the spectre of racism to explain away their problems, it's a purely cynical act of people who know (and want) the benefits of being perceived as a victim, he emphatically denied that that happens and accused me of being racist for saying something so horribly P.I. and insensitive.
And now we see someone blatantly doing exactly that. Hmm...
On the post: Austrian ISPs Sued For Actually Wanting A Court Order Rather Than Just Blocking Websites Based On Entertainment Industry's Requests
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Who's taking publishers to court over bogus DMCA takedowns? I'm not aware of a single case. (Which isn't to say there haven't been any, but if there have, I haven't heard of them.)
Who's pushing to repeal the DMCA, the root of all digital evil? Even respected voices like Techdirt cling to it under the misguided notion that the DMCA takedown system (under the Orwellian-grade misnomer of "safe harbors") somehow protects the Internet we know and love, even while running story after story after story about how it failed to do so.
Who's trying to get better laws passed, to reduce copyright duration, to strengthen the rights of ordinary users, independent content creators, and file sharers, or to criminalize the use of DRM rather than legitimizing it?
No one at all, that I can see.
If you have any evidence to the contrary, any at all, I would love to be proved wrong. But when I look around, all I see is us on the defensive, saying "no, you aren't going any further," without actually making any organized effort to actually reclaim the rights and the cultural heritage which has been stolen from us.
On the post: FCC Issues Largest Ever Fine To Verizon For Hiding Ability To 'Opt-Out' Of Selling Customer Info To Marketers
Re: Re: Rich people don't use Verizon?
"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation."
-- Howard Scott
On the post: FCC's Tom Wheeler Admits There Isn't Really Broadband Competition
Re: The problem is systemic
Two years ago, I'd have followed a statement like that up with "not that that's ever likely to actually happen, of course," but then again two years ago I wouldn't have thought we'd ever make it this far, so... who knows? If we push for it, it looks like people are starting to listen.
Tell the FCC: break up telecom giants. We want real competition and we want it now!
On the post: Australian Movie Studio Says Piracy Is Equivalent Of Pedophilia & Terrorism
Pedophilia: ruins the lives of innocent children.
Terrorism: destroys the lives of innocent civilians.
Piracy: Slightly reduces the profit margins of sleazy, parasitic mega-corporations that harm almost everyone they come into contact with.
Yup. Looks exactly the same to me! Break out the pitchforks and torches!
On the post: Australian Movie Studio Says Piracy Is Equivalent Of Pedophilia & Terrorism
To be completely fair, that came pretty darn close to happening to them when Microsoft did just that.
However, this does not in any way excuse or justify their flagrant violation of the rights of pretty much everyone when they finally got a bit of market power of their own.
On the post: FCC Issues Largest Ever Fine To Verizon For Hiding Ability To 'Opt-Out' Of Selling Customer Info To Marketers
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On the post: Corporate Sovereignty Debate Heats Up In Australia
I see nothing wrong with it. That's exactly what it was: people finally seeing that they are threatened in a very real way by this, and attacking that threat. That is democracy in action; true democracy has always been a messy, argumentative process because people are different and diverse.
On the post: Record Labels Issue Takedown To Take Kim Dotcom's Album Down From His Own Site
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On the post: Austrian ISPs Sued For Actually Wanting A Court Order Rather Than Just Blocking Websites Based On Entertainment Industry's Requests
Until then, talking about stuff like this is just that: talk.
On the post: Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?
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(Seriously, that's got to be one of the silliest invocations of Godwin's Law ever. Please learn something about history before you try to use it to back you up.)
On the post: Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?
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On the post: Judge Says Los Angeles Law Enforcement Doesn't Need To Turn Over License Plate Reader Data
On the post: Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?
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When you use really strong words like "genocide" in situations where they are not appropriate, they end up becoming meaningless. Just look at how the media, over the last couple decades, has turned the word "addiction"--meaning a condition in which loss of access to an addictive substance presents a medically significant danger to the addict--into a silly term for "thing that someone really likes doing."
On the post: Blunders By Convicted 'Fast And Furious 6' Cammer Made It Easy To Track Him Down
Re: Re: 33 months is pretty harsh...
On the post: Ares Rights, Notorious DMCA Abusers For The Ecuadorian Gov't, Now Sending DMCA Notices On Stories About Ares Rights
Re:
The examples that Techdirt keeps posting on here about so-called "abuses of the DMCA process"? News flash: those aren't abuses at all. That's the DMCA working exactly as designed. You think the music and movie interests who drafted this didn't see the glaringly obvious?
On the post: DailyDirt: How To Forget (When You Want To)
On the post: Google Bans Disconnect.me App From Play Store Based On Vague Guidelines
Re:
On the post: Blunders By Convicted 'Fast And Furious 6' Cammer Made It Easy To Track Him Down
You mean they're still making those?
On the post: Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?
Re: Re: Re: He's right about one thing
Wow, it takes a really special kind of twisted to take words that oppose people whose stated goal is the outright extermination of an entire ethnic and religious identity and saying that that ideology has no legitimacy, and turn that into an accusation of supporting genocide!
What are you, some kind of nutcase?
On the post: Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?
Re: He's right about one thing
And now we see someone blatantly doing exactly that. Hmm...
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