You know, I cannot help but wonder that if Edward Snowden remained anonymous, and Glenn Greenwald said "I am revealing one leak after another, and I am not telling how many leaks there are nor who they are coming from", the U.S. government would be much, much more panicky.
The only way we will ever debate this topic clearly is by seeing it through the lens of investing in a creator's ability to create instead of the creations themselves.
A builder can get along fine by providing a service, and he does not necessarily need to have any physical property to provide this service. A land owner may have all the equipment and bricks he needs to make a house, but it is all ultimately useless if he does not know how to build a house. That is why he hires a builder to do it for him. This is what it means to trade off goods and services with one another.
The builder's skills may be classified as his "property" by an advocate of John Locke just as much as other tangible goods, and quite rightly. The way you steal this property is to enforce tyrannical laws that either forbid him from building in order to make a living or say that the property he uses belongs to the state and therefore cannot be messed with.
I hope it becomes clear that copyright law is therefore in direct conflict with John Locke's concept of property. Because what it does is deny the true prospering of artistic expression as an ability by forcing all monetisation to stay away from this ability and instead exist within a NON-tangible good.
And as a result, the true value of a creator's skills is distorted, he is forced to claim the entire world as being within his "fence" (universe in EMI's Beatles-Voyager case?) which is a delusional utopia that encourages a great deal of Luddism, it means the creator surrenders his freedom when he puts his trust in his audience not to break this copyright law - quite similar to placing trust in a government not to abuse a free-speech restriction, and to top it all off it denies the fruits of labour that John Locke quite rightly defended in relation to derivative artists - not just at their expense but at the expense of their audiences as well.
The main justification of copyright is usually that the "free-rider" problem that stems from someone being able to take something from the creator without giving anything in return must be resisted. It is usually followed up by a gentle reminder that this free-rider problem does not stop at the casual Bit Torrenter, but extends towards those who will make tons of money from selling pirated goods. This is a serious question but it can be answered.
First point out of two, it must be noted that if there is a "free-rider" problem that exists without copyright, that free-rider problem must also exist with the pirates just as much as it does with those selling official copies (this "official" distinction can still be made without the need for copyright with hardly any rights oppressed at all). Pirates would not be able to make anywhere near as much money as they could in a world with copyright, because since anybody is free to make copies of what they want there is not much incentive for them to make money from pirated goods. But the seller of official copies would always have the upper hand since by definition you cannot pirate and claim the new good is official. Everybody will end up being drawn towards selling these official copies in order to stay in business.
This is why the fashion industry works so well - everyone buys the brands and the knock-offs are put in their place: outside in tiny street markets where it is seen as foolish to throw away money on imitations of products instead of going to the high-street stores to get the real thing instead. The so-called piracy here is domesticated in a way that copyright law could never dream of: all it can do is push the piracy underground, causing Al-Capone-like, untaxed illegal monopolies resulting from LEGAL (intellectual) monopolies, which ironically eliminates the pirates' own personal free-rider problem since the pirated goods obtain a tainted value.
In fact, the only thing stopping most economists from saying why the fashion industry model of business can be adapted to the copyrighted creative industries as an alternative is that there is not enough incentives even from the branding. This leads me to my second point: assurance contracts. This is what fills in the gap. Tickets, pre-orders and others are proven ways of funding creators in a way that nobody can be cheated, and its pinnacle is being demonstrated in the crowdfunding revolution. Though this revolution is still young, it will be something to be feared once it matures. Because what you will have is an answer to the economists' challenge of missing incentives for this fashion-industry based model.
As communication proliferates, through mail services, phone calls, morse code, radio, cassette, TV, satellite and now the internet, it is no coincidence that the power of assurance contracts has increased since more people can put money into the "hat" at once. It is much easier to book tickets and preorders than before. This is why I call crowdfunding the "pinnacle" of assurance contracts because it is born out of the internet's beginnings. Crowdfunding would have been possible in, say, the 1940s and 1950s with the radios and phones, just not as obvious. (But before my critics take this as ammunition and say that crowdfunding would therefore only work in an interconnected, globalised world, they should bear in mind that pirating and plagiarism would have been unenforceable in these times as well since it would be hard to communicate and spot where it was happening.)
And the best thing about it is that the pledges are not limited to the consumers, but also the middlemen. Watch as YouTube via Google will start making high pledges worth tens of thousands of dollars or more in order to get revenue from the content being hosted on YouTube - multiply this with other middlemen who want rights to the official broadcasting: cable companies, maybe even ISPs to an extent, and you have your own "crowd" of corporations pledging and being part of the bigger crowd of consumers all making pledges to the creator.
And all the balance of power swings the creator's way.
Why? Because his skills are ultimately important, not his products. He can dictate what price he is worth through how popular he is. And if he doesn't get enough, nobody gets anything. That is how the deal should always be as a matter of principle: controlled and clear.
And... oh yeah. Derivative artists have their rights protected (we can use signatures and trademarks to distinguish originals from derivatives), fair-use/free expression issues simply do not become issues anymore, monopolistic powers are cut everywhere all the way from the MPAA to Kim Dotcom and the Chinese trade cheaters, DRM will be seen as what it is - a euphemism for malware, everyone's fruits of labour become free from repression in true Lockean style, no international issues about something being copyrighted in one country but not another (in fact the money should go up for the creator when he uses crowdfunding on an international scale since exporting becomes less of an issue), cultures become more free-flowing while at the same time monetised justly, international cultures will benefit - for example the numerous anime fans of the West would be more than ready to give the Japanese studios crowdfunded money and make them rich on a scale never seen before, file-sharing will not be repressed to the darker corners of the internet and instead embraced which will allow powerful out-sourcing of data that will greatly decentralise information away from powerful enemies and be a direct challenge to cloud computing, the open source software movement will grow in leaps and bounds as more of the programmers get their funding from crowdfunds.
I could go on.
Copyright does not yield that kind of power for a second. It is a status-quo conservative position that is, as I have said, prone to Luddite tendencies. Sure, you might get many creators naturally walking away with money as a result of copyright's monopolistic tendencies, but it is not a lesser evil I am afraid, not when it pushes people to oppose the development of communication technology as a whole. Never mind the crushing of derivative artists' potential fruits of labour that massively outnumber copyright-protected successes (so you could even say that copyright is ANTI "intellectual" property, NOT for it), the attacks on free speech, the danger of DRM opening doors ranging from criminal hackers to a PRISM-tending government, the attacks on facilities that are greatly used by revolutionary forces in the Middle East and Asia, the deliberate overruling of public-domains of other countries, the extradition of domestically-lawful websites like Richard O Dwyer's TV links website (the ISPs of the US were more to blame for allowing access to that site on US soil for fuck sake).
I hope I have made my point clear.
People who still dig their heads in the sand about this really invite historical disapproval. They will be compared with the Luddites who said that technology would somehow repress workers rights when it is copyright law that has done the most of this repressing.
Inb4 "OMFG THE LEECHING PIRATES WON AGAIN!!! THIEVES!!!!"
Also, I expect very gradual creeping-in of the DRM. Everything might be okay for now, but I strongly suspect the DRM software will be on the Xbox One just waiting.
And I have always had this suspicion with Sony.
And do I even have to mention iTunes? Or even Steam?
Any software that demands too much online connectivity I shall regard as suspect.
Re: Wrong animal. Pirates are RATS eating the seed corn.
It is COPYRIGHT that prevents people from getting their due rewards.
I resent your implication that the copyright infringers who upload such great art to deviantArt have to surrender their rights in the name of "protecting fruits of labour". Do you not know the definition of doublethink?
Forget copyright, push forward with assurance contracts, and stop being such a Luddite.
Everyone knows that implementing the six-strikes policy on citizens is the best way of preventing them from ever getting their hands on unauthorised material.
I mean for goodness sake. Does NOBODY know that installing DRM on everything is a proven method of stopping traitors, in this case NSA staff, from engaging in any kind of spying? Now do not get me wrong. It is not like you need to do tons of cross-referencing after you have built a giant database of copyrighted data or anything.
That would be silly. INSTEAD, you need to wait until a website like MegaUpload builds it up for you and steal that. It saves you a lot of legal hassle.
Just look at how well Xbox One is doing. All this media coverage, all this hate, and still NOBODY has been able to pirate a game yet! THAT is DRM in action, folks! Oh, I also heard that Microsoft have installed software on their Kinect systems to automatically blur out any other monitor in the room in case it is playing copyrighted material. See? Even MICROSOFT will not take the opportunity to pirate! That is how serious they are! The system can work! So take THAT, Gmail! Attachments promote piracy - never forget.
So there you go. I am now going to read Dragonball Z on my lovely JManga app. I just bought the whole series a few days ago for just £100! Fucking bargain! This app brings my childhood back to life. Almost as if the Dragonballs wished it back, eh? Aww... last episode was SO funny. Dendee had made the wish to transport everyone on the planet Namek to the planet Earth except for Goku and Frieza, and as everyone on Namek is teleporting, Vegeta who had just been brought back to life flies over to a startled Frieza who cannot believe Vegeta is alive. "You must be a ghost!", claims Frieza. And Vegeta replies,
"Can a ghost do THIS, FRIEZA?!"
But before he can charge his energy ball to attack Frieza, he JUST TELEPORTS AND DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR! LOL!
Re: Re: How are those doing in no-cost ebook form on The Pirate Bay?
Tell that to the Soviet dissidents of the 20th century who were forced to pirate the book in order to evade the secret police.
And the Iranians now who are forced to pirate copies of Animal Farm.
Not to mention a lot of the Chinese who need to smuggle goods underground in order to a) avoid the eyes of the secret police and b) get by the government's trade restrictions that are deliberately designed to take advantage of copyright law's existence.
I keep saying - to attack the Chinese government's cheating of free trade through monopoly of piracy, you need to get rid of the monopoly system that is causing it, which is copyright law.
Re: Guess same way Google both SPIES and "serves".
When the government starts using DRM to gather this data, you will probably come up with the most ridiculous amateur-psychoanalysis ever:
"Government tendencies to overreach their powers by using DRM through corporation backdoors, are NOT in fact due to a long history of states trying to exert their powers using whatever means necessary... but are instead down to, wait for it, pirates. Pirates who DARE to demonstrate that DRM is a utopian fantasy. Aren't I a genius?"
You should surely see how I, as a materialist, am perfectly entitled to treat this view in the same way I treat the Creationist view of the world?
Re: This is a hard one to counter because everyone needs to work together
There is also the "anti-propaganda's propaganda" effect.
"Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Most of the rational people making the case for taking out Saddam knew there was no WMD at the time, but that was not the end of the story. He was a genocidal, totalitarian, Big Brother - the sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands and we couldn't lift the sanctions/no-fly-zones in case he tried to kill the Kurds again or try to get Iran/Kuwait again. There was very little alternative from historical experience. If he didn't implode the country, Uday and Qusay certainly would have. If it were anyone else - the killers of Rwanda, Darfur, Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Burmese generals, Assad in Syria, the military of North Korea or fucking Joseph Kony - our need to take them out would be indisputable." "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD"
Rationality means neither having blind faith in leaders NOR doing the exact opposite of what your leaders say. It means looking at evidence, argument, being dialectical, avoiding cliche, not being a megaphone for anybody, coming up with your own unique rhetoric, being willing to stand in front of millions of people and tell them they've all bought into an ad populum fallacy without blinking, and this is most important of all: being willing to self-scrutinise and not being afraid to change your mind about something even after being incredibly committed to the other side. All of this. The only way one can claim to be rational with any credibility at all is if one accepts how fallible and prone to bias one is.
I think there are genuine threats that can be born out of the internet. I'm queasy about the 2nd amendment but I cannot help paraphrase the NRA's mantra and substitute one key word to demonstrate what I mean: "the internet doesn't free people, people free people."
It disturbs me when the Chinese government, for example, sets up fake opposition blog websites in order to lure dissenters and snares them unexpectedly when the time is right. It disturbs me when Islamic fascists will crowdsource protest videos in order to identify the protesters and murder them the next time they step outside their houses. It disturbs me when everything you potentially send on the internet cannot be undone since it is a huge recording machine, and future employers can find it easier than ever to hold one embarrassing moment against you at every turn. It disturbs me how, as someone who believes in separation of powers, power has accumulated very centrally in terms of cloud computing (personal data being stolen in one swoop in the Megaupload raid - because apparently the actions of a few people were excuse enough to shut down a whole company), Google being effectively the centre of the internet, and ISPs having too many bottle necks of the economy due to globalisation effects. It disturbs me how witch-hunt and mob mentalities can spring up easier than before, whether it is using Blackberries to start riots in England, falsely naming names in sex-predator hysteria, or Reddit turning vigilante over an innocent person. It disturbs me how conservative many media organisations are being about the utopian fantasy that is copyright law, and how they keep pushing forward anti-piracy laws with all kinds of slippery slopes while hiding behind copyright as a veto, against seemingly no real opposition in Parliaments.
When it comes to that last point, I hope the irony isn't lost on everyone. As long as you are willing to stand up for intellectual honesty when it comes to, say, copyright being extended infinitely and on no basis, you end up realising that the "cyber" war was declared on YOU, and not the other way around.
However - the arguments about liberty, privacy, and freedom remain the same. The internet has done little to change them. Some change, yes, but not much. The metaphor I use to describe the internet's role in politics and a lot of other things is that it is a "catalyst" - it doesn't change the chemical reaction, but it speeds it up and gives it more life. This is true for the good and the bad.
"But the only great principle they're defending is that they're too cheap and lazy to do their own work."
The principle is that derivative artists have rights to their fruits of labour.
Telling different versions of Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings, or The Lion King IS "doing your own work". And copyright deprives artists of the right to do that.
What do you think websites like deviantArt and fanfiction.net have been doing for so long? Unless you want to really be consistent and say that these websites should be shut down, you're going to have to step back and see how copyright is AGAINST the principles of John Locke, not for them.
Crowdfunding, whether its through the many tried and tested examples of collecting tickets for gigs, or through Kickstarter, or pre-ordered copies of DVDs, is superior to copyright in every way because both original and derivative artists have their fruits of labour protected. It makes copyright discreditable from every angle.
You are not entitled to say how you are best defending the "rights of artists". So many markets have been wiped out as a result of the communist-tendencies of copyright and the life, liberty and property has been sucked out of derivative artists for too long. Crowdfunding gives us no excuse for it.
There. And I didn't have to mention how you've exculpated the accountability of corporations for what they do through using pirates as scapegoats. "Since the pirates are running riot, why should be do anything about privacy invasions?" I think there are even many principled copyright maximalists who could call you out for this nonsense. It is a matter of principle. The Patriot Act is to be opposed unequivocally, and I say this as somebody who supports the fight against Islamic fascism. It's the same thing.
What he means is "pirated copies of 1984 and Animal Farm circulating under the Soviet Union's radar" helped to win the cold war. The Soviets would have used any excuse to stop material like that from spreading. And that would have included copyright.
Always remember, every time a government censors an opinion they are in effect making an "intellectual property" claim on that opinion. You cannot say that because that idea belongs to us and noone else. Only we get to decide if that should be said. You must first ask us for permission. It is the same idea.
The Chinese population are highly lacking in internet, and when they DO have internet it is under high surveillance and restrictions. ITunes is heavily blocked. Indeed, it is hard to access any site from outside China while within China because it is so bad. So yeah, think SOPA but a hundred times worse. And what is the world piracy rate of the country? 80% That is what happens WITHOUT BitTorrent. The copyright advocates are deluding themselves when they say copyright needs "more protection". It's a blatant utopian delusion.
Nowadays, we can only pass around pirated copies of Animal Farm within Iran. Even Christopher Hitchens played a part in distributing the pirated copies when he visited the country in secret. He said of the Iranian mullahs (paraphrasing) "I love how they keep trying to show footage of themselves smashing the satellite dishes in order to prove a point. They aren't fooling anyone. It'll never work. Most Iranians know how to make international phone calls. Many server work-arounds are made to counter every move these thugs make. The more attempts at oppression, the more humourous it gets. We're going to see great things from Iran."
But of course, all of this has to be stopped in the name of a utopian idea that claims to stop theft when it cannot even do anything about pre-owned sales. Insufferable. Plain, insufferable.
No, ladies and gentlemen, copyright is not "anti-communism" it is PRO communism. You have to get this bit right. Especially when free speech is crushed, governments subsidise the destruction of markets, artists end up being locked out from their own works by parties that took no part in the creative process, technological innovation is repressed bitterly, and the fruits of labour of derivative artists are flat out disposable. Sounds like communism to me.
On the post: IRS Targeted Open Source Groups Seeking Non-Profit Status
On the post: US Officials Realizing That Snowden May Have Copied Info On Almost Everything The NSA Does
That's the way I would have done it, personally.
On the post: SOPA Didn't Die, It Just Emigrated
On the post: Prometheus, Meet Thomas Jefferson: On Fire, Stealing And Sharing
A builder can get along fine by providing a service, and he does not necessarily need to have any physical property to provide this service. A land owner may have all the equipment and bricks he needs to make a house, but it is all ultimately useless if he does not know how to build a house. That is why he hires a builder to do it for him. This is what it means to trade off goods and services with one another.
The builder's skills may be classified as his "property" by an advocate of John Locke just as much as other tangible goods, and quite rightly. The way you steal this property is to enforce tyrannical laws that either forbid him from building in order to make a living or say that the property he uses belongs to the state and therefore cannot be messed with.
I hope it becomes clear that copyright law is therefore in direct conflict with John Locke's concept of property. Because what it does is deny the true prospering of artistic expression as an ability by forcing all monetisation to stay away from this ability and instead exist within a NON-tangible good.
And as a result, the true value of a creator's skills is distorted, he is forced to claim the entire world as being within his "fence" (universe in EMI's Beatles-Voyager case?) which is a delusional utopia that encourages a great deal of Luddism, it means the creator surrenders his freedom when he puts his trust in his audience not to break this copyright law - quite similar to placing trust in a government not to abuse a free-speech restriction, and to top it all off it denies the fruits of labour that John Locke quite rightly defended in relation to derivative artists - not just at their expense but at the expense of their audiences as well.
The main justification of copyright is usually that the "free-rider" problem that stems from someone being able to take something from the creator without giving anything in return must be resisted. It is usually followed up by a gentle reminder that this free-rider problem does not stop at the casual Bit Torrenter, but extends towards those who will make tons of money from selling pirated goods. This is a serious question but it can be answered.
First point out of two, it must be noted that if there is a "free-rider" problem that exists without copyright, that free-rider problem must also exist with the pirates just as much as it does with those selling official copies (this "official" distinction can still be made without the need for copyright with hardly any rights oppressed at all). Pirates would not be able to make anywhere near as much money as they could in a world with copyright, because since anybody is free to make copies of what they want there is not much incentive for them to make money from pirated goods. But the seller of official copies would always have the upper hand since by definition you cannot pirate and claim the new good is official. Everybody will end up being drawn towards selling these official copies in order to stay in business.
This is why the fashion industry works so well - everyone buys the brands and the knock-offs are put in their place: outside in tiny street markets where it is seen as foolish to throw away money on imitations of products instead of going to the high-street stores to get the real thing instead. The so-called piracy here is domesticated in a way that copyright law could never dream of: all it can do is push the piracy underground, causing Al-Capone-like, untaxed illegal monopolies resulting from LEGAL (intellectual) monopolies, which ironically eliminates the pirates' own personal free-rider problem since the pirated goods obtain a tainted value.
In fact, the only thing stopping most economists from saying why the fashion industry model of business can be adapted to the copyrighted creative industries as an alternative is that there is not enough incentives even from the branding. This leads me to my second point: assurance contracts. This is what fills in the gap. Tickets, pre-orders and others are proven ways of funding creators in a way that nobody can be cheated, and its pinnacle is being demonstrated in the crowdfunding revolution. Though this revolution is still young, it will be something to be feared once it matures. Because what you will have is an answer to the economists' challenge of missing incentives for this fashion-industry based model.
As communication proliferates, through mail services, phone calls, morse code, radio, cassette, TV, satellite and now the internet, it is no coincidence that the power of assurance contracts has increased since more people can put money into the "hat" at once. It is much easier to book tickets and preorders than before. This is why I call crowdfunding the "pinnacle" of assurance contracts because it is born out of the internet's beginnings. Crowdfunding would have been possible in, say, the 1940s and 1950s with the radios and phones, just not as obvious. (But before my critics take this as ammunition and say that crowdfunding would therefore only work in an interconnected, globalised world, they should bear in mind that pirating and plagiarism would have been unenforceable in these times as well since it would be hard to communicate and spot where it was happening.)
And the best thing about it is that the pledges are not limited to the consumers, but also the middlemen. Watch as YouTube via Google will start making high pledges worth tens of thousands of dollars or more in order to get revenue from the content being hosted on YouTube - multiply this with other middlemen who want rights to the official broadcasting: cable companies, maybe even ISPs to an extent, and you have your own "crowd" of corporations pledging and being part of the bigger crowd of consumers all making pledges to the creator.
And all the balance of power swings the creator's way.
Why? Because his skills are ultimately important, not his products. He can dictate what price he is worth through how popular he is. And if he doesn't get enough, nobody gets anything. That is how the deal should always be as a matter of principle: controlled and clear.
And... oh yeah. Derivative artists have their rights protected (we can use signatures and trademarks to distinguish originals from derivatives), fair-use/free expression issues simply do not become issues anymore, monopolistic powers are cut everywhere all the way from the MPAA to Kim Dotcom and the Chinese trade cheaters, DRM will be seen as what it is - a euphemism for malware, everyone's fruits of labour become free from repression in true Lockean style, no international issues about something being copyrighted in one country but not another (in fact the money should go up for the creator when he uses crowdfunding on an international scale since exporting becomes less of an issue), cultures become more free-flowing while at the same time monetised justly, international cultures will benefit - for example the numerous anime fans of the West would be more than ready to give the Japanese studios crowdfunded money and make them rich on a scale never seen before, file-sharing will not be repressed to the darker corners of the internet and instead embraced which will allow powerful out-sourcing of data that will greatly decentralise information away from powerful enemies and be a direct challenge to cloud computing, the open source software movement will grow in leaps and bounds as more of the programmers get their funding from crowdfunds.
I could go on.
Copyright does not yield that kind of power for a second. It is a status-quo conservative position that is, as I have said, prone to Luddite tendencies. Sure, you might get many creators naturally walking away with money as a result of copyright's monopolistic tendencies, but it is not a lesser evil I am afraid, not when it pushes people to oppose the development of communication technology as a whole. Never mind the crushing of derivative artists' potential fruits of labour that massively outnumber copyright-protected successes (so you could even say that copyright is ANTI "intellectual" property, NOT for it), the attacks on free speech, the danger of DRM opening doors ranging from criminal hackers to a PRISM-tending government, the attacks on facilities that are greatly used by revolutionary forces in the Middle East and Asia, the deliberate overruling of public-domains of other countries, the extradition of domestically-lawful websites like Richard O Dwyer's TV links website (the ISPs of the US were more to blame for allowing access to that site on US soil for fuck sake).
I hope I have made my point clear.
People who still dig their heads in the sand about this really invite historical disapproval. They will be compared with the Luddites who said that technology would somehow repress workers rights when it is copyright law that has done the most of this repressing.
On the post: Latest Stupid DRM Idea: Ebooks With Corrupted Texts That Vary By Customer
Apparently.
False reductionism is so transparent.
On the post: Microsoft Capitulates, Removes Online DRM From Xbox One
Also, I expect very gradual creeping-in of the DRM. Everything might be okay for now, but I strongly suspect the DRM software will be on the Xbox One just waiting.
And I have always had this suspicion with Sony.
And do I even have to mention iTunes? Or even Steam?
Any software that demands too much online connectivity I shall regard as suspect.
On the post: Philippine Record Labels Get Government To Play Whac-A-Mole With Kickass Torrents
Re: Wrong animal. Pirates are RATS eating the seed corn.
I resent your implication that the copyright infringers who upload such great art to deviantArt have to surrender their rights in the name of "protecting fruits of labour". Do you not know the definition of doublethink?
Forget copyright, push forward with assurance contracts, and stop being such a Luddite.
On the post: Dick Cheney's Crystal Ball Says That NSA Surveillance Could Have Stopped 9/11
Re:
On the post: Dick Cheney's Crystal Ball Says That NSA Surveillance Could Have Stopped 9/11
There was a crystal ball, you stupid fuck.
On the post: Congressional Staffers Told To Pretend NSA Leak Docs Don't Exist; So How Are They Supposed To Respond?
Stupid dumbasses.
Everyone knows that implementing the six-strikes policy on citizens is the best way of preventing them from ever getting their hands on unauthorised material.
I mean for goodness sake. Does NOBODY know that installing DRM on everything is a proven method of stopping traitors, in this case NSA staff, from engaging in any kind of spying? Now do not get me wrong. It is not like you need to do tons of cross-referencing after you have built a giant database of copyrighted data or anything.
That would be silly. INSTEAD, you need to wait until a website like MegaUpload builds it up for you and steal that. It saves you a lot of legal hassle.
Just look at how well Xbox One is doing. All this media coverage, all this hate, and still NOBODY has been able to pirate a game yet! THAT is DRM in action, folks! Oh, I also heard that Microsoft have installed software on their Kinect systems to automatically blur out any other monitor in the room in case it is playing copyrighted material. See? Even MICROSOFT will not take the opportunity to pirate! That is how serious they are! The system can work! So take THAT, Gmail! Attachments promote piracy - never forget.
So there you go. I am now going to read Dragonball Z on my lovely JManga app. I just bought the whole series a few days ago for just £100! Fucking bargain! This app brings my childhood back to life. Almost as if the Dragonballs wished it back, eh? Aww... last episode was SO funny. Dendee had made the wish to transport everyone on the planet Namek to the planet Earth except for Goku and Frieza, and as everyone on Namek is teleporting, Vegeta who had just been brought back to life flies over to a startled Frieza who cannot believe Vegeta is alive. "You must be a ghost!", claims Frieza. And Vegeta replies,
"Can a ghost do THIS, FRIEZA?!"
But before he can charge his energy ball to attack Frieza, he JUST TELEPORTS AND DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR! LOL!
I love irony.
On the post: Amid NSA Scandal, Orwell Books Rocket Up The Sellers Lists
Re: Re: How are those doing in no-cost ebook form on The Pirate Bay?
And the Iranians now who are forced to pirate copies of Animal Farm.
Not to mention a lot of the Chinese who need to smuggle goods underground in order to a) avoid the eyes of the secret police and b) get by the government's trade restrictions that are deliberately designed to take advantage of copyright law's existence.
I keep saying - to attack the Chinese government's cheating of free trade through monopoly of piracy, you need to get rid of the monopoly system that is causing it, which is copyright law.
On the post: How Can NSA Surveillance Leaks Both Be No Big Deal And Put Us All In Danger?
Re: Guess same way Google both SPIES and "serves".
"Government tendencies to overreach their powers by using DRM through corporation backdoors, are NOT in fact due to a long history of states trying to exert their powers using whatever means necessary... but are instead down to, wait for it, pirates. Pirates who DARE to demonstrate that DRM is a utopian fantasy. Aren't I a genius?"
You should surely see how I, as a materialist, am perfectly entitled to treat this view in the same way I treat the Creationist view of the world?
On the post: Fear Mongering Report Suggests 'IP Theft From China' One Of The Biggest Problems America Faces
Re: Should be IP Theft BY China, NOT from.
I'm sorry, but fuck you.
On the post: Fear Mongering Report Suggests 'IP Theft From China' One Of The Biggest Problems America Faces
Re:
Again, secret sympathy.
On the post: Fear Mongering Report Suggests 'IP Theft From China' One Of The Biggest Problems America Faces
Reducing copyright terms.
Al Capone had a secret sympathy with the prohibition amendment, and we all know it.
On the post: In Defense Of Digital Freedom: It's Time To Get Beyond 'Cyber' Hyperbole
Re: This is a hard one to counter because everyone needs to work together
"Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Most of the rational people making the case for taking out Saddam knew there was no WMD at the time, but that was not the end of the story. He was a genocidal, totalitarian, Big Brother - the sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands and we couldn't lift the sanctions/no-fly-zones in case he tried to kill the Kurds again or try to get Iran/Kuwait again. There was very little alternative from historical experience. If he didn't implode the country, Uday and Qusay certainly would have. If it were anyone else - the killers of Rwanda, Darfur, Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Burmese generals, Assad in Syria, the military of North Korea or fucking Joseph Kony - our need to take them out would be indisputable." "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD" "Saddam had no WMD"
Rationality means neither having blind faith in leaders NOR doing the exact opposite of what your leaders say. It means looking at evidence, argument, being dialectical, avoiding cliche, not being a megaphone for anybody, coming up with your own unique rhetoric, being willing to stand in front of millions of people and tell them they've all bought into an ad populum fallacy without blinking, and this is most important of all: being willing to self-scrutinise and not being afraid to change your mind about something even after being incredibly committed to the other side. All of this. The only way one can claim to be rational with any credibility at all is if one accepts how fallible and prone to bias one is.
I think there are genuine threats that can be born out of the internet. I'm queasy about the 2nd amendment but I cannot help paraphrase the NRA's mantra and substitute one key word to demonstrate what I mean: "the internet doesn't free people, people free people."
It disturbs me when the Chinese government, for example, sets up fake opposition blog websites in order to lure dissenters and snares them unexpectedly when the time is right. It disturbs me when Islamic fascists will crowdsource protest videos in order to identify the protesters and murder them the next time they step outside their houses. It disturbs me when everything you potentially send on the internet cannot be undone since it is a huge recording machine, and future employers can find it easier than ever to hold one embarrassing moment against you at every turn. It disturbs me how, as someone who believes in separation of powers, power has accumulated very centrally in terms of cloud computing (personal data being stolen in one swoop in the Megaupload raid - because apparently the actions of a few people were excuse enough to shut down a whole company), Google being effectively the centre of the internet, and ISPs having too many bottle necks of the economy due to globalisation effects. It disturbs me how witch-hunt and mob mentalities can spring up easier than before, whether it is using Blackberries to start riots in England, falsely naming names in sex-predator hysteria, or Reddit turning vigilante over an innocent person. It disturbs me how conservative many media organisations are being about the utopian fantasy that is copyright law, and how they keep pushing forward anti-piracy laws with all kinds of slippery slopes while hiding behind copyright as a veto, against seemingly no real opposition in Parliaments.
When it comes to that last point, I hope the irony isn't lost on everyone. As long as you are willing to stand up for intellectual honesty when it comes to, say, copyright being extended infinitely and on no basis, you end up realising that the "cyber" war was declared on YOU, and not the other way around.
However - the arguments about liberty, privacy, and freedom remain the same. The internet has done little to change them. Some change, yes, but not much. The metaphor I use to describe the internet's role in politics and a lot of other things is that it is a "catalyst" - it doesn't change the chemical reaction, but it speeds it up and gives it more life. This is true for the good and the bad.
On the post: Filmmaker Behind The Pirate Bay Documentary Says Bogus DMCA Takedowns Take Away His Free Speech
Re: What a whiney baby
So nope.
On the post: More Details Emerge On Key Legal Fight Over DMCA Abuse
Re: Why am I not surprised?
The principle is that derivative artists have rights to their fruits of labour.
Telling different versions of Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings, or The Lion King IS "doing your own work". And copyright deprives artists of the right to do that.
What do you think websites like deviantArt and fanfiction.net have been doing for so long? Unless you want to really be consistent and say that these websites should be shut down, you're going to have to step back and see how copyright is AGAINST the principles of John Locke, not for them.
Crowdfunding, whether its through the many tried and tested examples of collecting tickets for gigs, or through Kickstarter, or pre-ordered copies of DVDs, is superior to copyright in every way because both original and derivative artists have their fruits of labour protected. It makes copyright discreditable from every angle.
You are not entitled to say how you are best defending the "rights of artists". So many markets have been wiped out as a result of the communist-tendencies of copyright and the life, liberty and property has been sucked out of derivative artists for too long. Crowdfunding gives us no excuse for it.
There. And I didn't have to mention how you've exculpated the accountability of corporations for what they do through using pirates as scapegoats. "Since the pirates are running riot, why should be do anything about privacy invasions?" I think there are even many principled copyright maximalists who could call you out for this nonsense. It is a matter of principle. The Patriot Act is to be opposed unequivocally, and I say this as somebody who supports the fight against Islamic fascism. It's the same thing.
On the post: A Framework For Copyright Reform
LOL
What he means is "pirated copies of 1984 and Animal Farm circulating under the Soviet Union's radar" helped to win the cold war. The Soviets would have used any excuse to stop material like that from spreading. And that would have included copyright.
Always remember, every time a government censors an opinion they are in effect making an "intellectual property" claim on that opinion. You cannot say that because that idea belongs to us and noone else. Only we get to decide if that should be said. You must first ask us for permission. It is the same idea.
The Chinese population are highly lacking in internet, and when they DO have internet it is under high surveillance and restrictions. ITunes is heavily blocked. Indeed, it is hard to access any site from outside China while within China because it is so bad. So yeah, think SOPA but a hundred times worse. And what is the world piracy rate of the country? 80% That is what happens WITHOUT BitTorrent. The copyright advocates are deluding themselves when they say copyright needs "more protection". It's a blatant utopian delusion.
Nowadays, we can only pass around pirated copies of Animal Farm within Iran. Even Christopher Hitchens played a part in distributing the pirated copies when he visited the country in secret. He said of the Iranian mullahs (paraphrasing) "I love how they keep trying to show footage of themselves smashing the satellite dishes in order to prove a point. They aren't fooling anyone. It'll never work. Most Iranians know how to make international phone calls. Many server work-arounds are made to counter every move these thugs make. The more attempts at oppression, the more humourous it gets. We're going to see great things from Iran."
But of course, all of this has to be stopped in the name of a utopian idea that claims to stop theft when it cannot even do anything about pre-owned sales. Insufferable. Plain, insufferable.
No, ladies and gentlemen, copyright is not "anti-communism" it is PRO communism. You have to get this bit right. Especially when free speech is crushed, governments subsidise the destruction of markets, artists end up being locked out from their own works by parties that took no part in the creative process, technological innovation is repressed bitterly, and the fruits of labour of derivative artists are flat out disposable. Sounds like communism to me.
Don't buy into this mentality for a second.
On the post: Eric Holder Claims Terrorists Are Involved In 'IP Theft'
Re:
You haven't heard of Russell's Teapot, have you?
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