I'm loving the imagined anti-Copyright rhetoric people think is coming from this article, even although Mike did not mention the word "Copyright" even once.
It's almost as if people are insecure.
If you think this is good, just wait until a big band like Radiohead starts experimenting with all the profits they can get from something like this (as they've already proven themselves with experimenting with other things and very nearly approaching what they wanted). I promise you, people will stop sounding so cocky.
Same goes with when somebody like Justin Bieber tries it. THAT will be hilarious to watch... millions of pledges, tens of millions of profits...
Re: This is AGAIN the use of RARE anomalies to attack...
Here we are not taking into account the huge number of deviant markets (and therefore expressions) that could have flourished if it was not for the Communist-like destruction of said markets by Copyright.
But we can if you like.
I don't think it's enough to say that these same expressions can be expressed by other means, without using the characters and stories that originated from the author - that just sounds like euphemism for "taking the sting out of a message". Portraying a character in a fashion of my choosing and altering a story to my choosing cannot exactly have the same symbolic power if I cannot use those characters and stories due to a wall of Copyright. I lose a lot of rhetorical, ironical and skeptical power that way. I'm sorry, but preventing the existence of deviant works is a denying of the right to expand on and criticise the original arcs.
Even in free expression debates that I regularly watch, sometimes those who support making hate speech a crime will throw a strawman and say "well there ARE limits to free expression, voice activated guns for example... or incitement to violence, or Libel... or Copyright..." The response is usually "if we were talking about those legitimate limits then they would have been the topics of discussion, but the real topic of discussion is whether opinions and ideas should be regulated - please stay on topic." But you have to notice: they say "Copyright" for a reason - Copyright is, like it or not, regarded by a lot of people as an "acceptable limit" to free expression, even by some on the same Political dimension as I am (Secular, Humanist, etc).
But it is no longer an acceptable limit because the free-rider problem that creators face is now solved by a practical application of ticket-based admission - crowdfunded incentives. And we have all the evidence that tickets and admission works well based on the existence of gigs, plays, etc. Therefore crowdfunding will naturally follow. So no: "it's either original markets or no markets whatsoever" is not an argument any more either. Both original creation and deviant creation markets can exist now because of crowdfunding, with no unnecessary censorship. Copyright only gives you original creation markets, and a whole lot of censorship.
"Censorship is at its best when noone admits it exists" said Nick Cohen. And I think it can be emphasised here. Not many people are even willing to stand up and say that deviant expressions are being stamped on because they think that stamping is justified due to Copyright. Can't make better Star Wars prequels than Lucas? All justified censorship! Can't animate "The Corporate Adventures of Mickey Mouse"? All justified censorship! Can't reprint articles by Noam Chomsky for political discussion purposes? All justified censorship! (It's happened..) Can't make Lord of the Rings movies that more accurately reflect J.R.R. Tolkien's vision? All justified censorship!
There are countless others that I cannot even mention. This is not an anecdotal argument.
VPNs might have a hard time here, as most strikes could very well be aimed at them.
There are many political movements around the world, especially in Asia and the Middle East, who absolutely need these kinds of anonymous masks.
It's not a laughing matter. These clueless idiots have no idea what they are trying to harm. If a VPN cannot exist due to this utter nonsense, it means war. Because people could seriously end up dying all over the world from less anonymity as a result of attacking VPNs.
They have no fucking moral high ground whatsoever. I'm sorry, but, whining hollers of "stealing" is what justifies all of this? When it's no different from borrowing DVDs from friends?
...And they say that DVD-borrowing-equivalents are "terrorists" to boot?
I am so fucking through with anyone who talks like this.
In the United Kingdom where I live, health care is made as fair as possible for everyone with the NHS, and it is the only moral perspective to really have. There are some situations where having a free market/capitalist perspective is useful and other situations where having a more socialist perspective is useful (so being on the extreme end of either these perspectives is a bad thing) - here, a socialist perspective is needed.
The question is simple: should a person's vital health be discriminated against based on his or her wealth? The answer has to be "no", because the desire for profits - and the growth of unaccountable corporatism due to the "consumer" not having much of a say in the matter, causing corporations to run away with whatever amount of profits they like - is always trumped by the moral need to give people a fair fighting chance against preventable illnesses.
The free market cannot solve everything, despite what we are often told. If the fire-truck refuses to arrive due to a company's incompetence rather than the government's incompetence, nobody can really be held to account. If the fire "company" can say "no deal" because of their right to refuse to trade, they cannot be in a position of power as such. The same has to apply with police forces for parallel moral reasons, as well as education - and the more you examine it, the more that health has to fall into this category too.
Contrary to how it must be perceived, not ALL health matters are socialised here in the U.K. Certain prescriptions still have to be paid for (the non-vital ones such as mild skin treatment, etc). So we are fairer than most would believe.
And we also do not restrict the existence of private health care if people wish to seek it. If they do even after paying NHS tax, you cannot and should not stop them - but they must pay their fair share initially to the NHS as a matter of moral principle.
There is nobody good enough to police free expression without falling into corruption, or have future generations fall into corruption. That is why the expression of ideas and opinions must not be policed, even if they are as offensive as Holocaust denial or uncomfortable as whistle-blowing.
But yet, copyright believers seem to think that they, above all civilisations who have tried to regulate free speech and failed, do have the ability to decide when and where free speech is permissible? If I want to tell a story about Twilight, in order to portray the main characters as corporate leeches by using certain symbolism for example, and express ideas of my own that symbolically present Twilight in a new and enlightened way, why am I not allowed to do that? Why is it that "parody" is the only thing allowed to get away with this? What if the deviation is not humourous? It is not just speech that has to be free, it is expression, and every time you restrict me from telling a derived story in a way I see fit you are denying me the right to delivery a certain metaphorical message that may necessarily entail the use of characters and plot lines.
Fan fiction is illegal, because it is published creativity using someone else's work. Fan ART also falls into this category, making deviantArt the biggest copyright infringing website on the web - even bigger than storage lockers like MegaUpload. Are we really to say that everybody participating in this mass infringement is in the wrong? The MPAA never will have the balls to see this through, because the resulting backlash would absolutely DWARF that of the backlash against SOPA (then again, the rationality of the MPAA is not always up to standard, so I can't guarantee that websites like deviantArt will be left alone). Now my follow up question is this: why should fan artists and fanfiction writers be allowed to write deviations, but not those who wish to open up a commercial market on that basis? What makes fan artists more significant? If you believe in copyright, you have to in this case either question the fundamentals of copyright or demand that deviantArt be shut down.
"Sure, you can express yourself... but only in ways that we approve of. So no expressing other people's expressions" is basically what copyright believers are saying, and the only reason why fan art is permissible is that its too big a phenomenon to dare challenge, even although these fan artists get tons of publicity and therefore secondary profits from other things they may be allowed to sell. Fuck that. I'm not letting the philosophy of copyright try to say it is competent enough to "know" when certain speech should not be permissible when it cannot face up to these other challenges.
And I don't think I need to explain the consequences of how well Open Source Software development can benefit from all of this. You always hear "Open Source is great and all, but it won't work because programmers won't work for free!". Crowdfunding is the final piece of the puzzle here. Crowdfund programmers to improve Open Source Software, and we have a huge, huge opportunity indeed.
I should also mention: we already have plenty of evidence that crowdfunding can replace copyright. Any form of entertainment that uses admission-based tickets - gigs, cinemas, plays etc - does not rely on copyright because tickets are the incentives, and are a form of crowdfunding if you think about it (refundable upon gig not going ahead, allows artists to know how much funds they are getting, equity is preserved because both the backers and creators are protected, etc...).
Everyone who pledges to Kickstarter is basically buying a refundable admission ticket.
No more free-rider problem, and no excuse for copyright anymore. Because everyone pays simultaneously, nobody is felt like they are being ripped off (which can get refunded if the project fails - if publishers pay this price under copyright anyway as a result of projects failing halfway through, they can offer to take the fall still when it comes to crowdfunding and refund everybody themselves). And for those who get it for free, well, how is that any different to borrowing a DVD from a friend and experiencing the creativity without paying anything? If copyright compensates for that by increasing prices, then crowdfunding can compensate for it too.
Here is one big change I would make to Kickstarter at the moment: if a project gets its initial funds, allow for funds to still be collected even after the deadline. This way people will very quickly realise that the more pledges, the higher quality stuff will come out as a result. Trailers, singles, concept art etc can encourage more pledges even after the initial receiving of funds.
There were similar scare stories about how Ebay would collapse as a result of scammers. But now we have user feedback systems, necessary proof of ID, etc. And soon enough you will see more companies offering to take the fall and refund crowdfunders if the project fails halway through for whatever reason.
Also, whether or not Kickstarter have realised it or not, they have taken the role of an advertiser by putting the most successful projects on the front page. This is no different from any music label hiding its failed investments in bands that didn't make it, and putting the best bands out there to be advertised the most. So Kickstarter is justified in doing this.
All of the critique against Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general, has been very weak in this regard, and cannot stand up to this rebuttals. But like it or not, it is the solution to the artists' free-rider problem that makes the need for copyright-based incentives obsolete.
In fact, there doesn't seem to be any other form of economics out there that has ever given a business the power to have more than one monopoly, let alone thousands. The closest thing I can think of is perhaps when Communist states have private possession of all property in the name of "redistribution".
People need to stop this. It is not correct to describe publishers and labels as having "a monopoly". It's not true at all. They have at least tens of thousands of monopolies, one monopoly for each copyright that they hold.
Look up any history whatsoever, and you will see that nobody is ever good enough to police free expression or even appoint somebody who can police free expression without falling into corruption.
Yet, copyright believers seem to think that they can? What good is the fair use doctrine - assuming people are aware of what it allows them to do - if people still suffer chilling effects due to being unsure of their protection from such a doctrine?
I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying about Antigua's true motives. I was pointing out that copyright laws can nonetheless allow people to profit from the unjustness of them such as corporations and pirates.
I'm ashamed to say that I'd find it interesting if it did happen.
And because I am that cynical, I can imagine the anti-war Left suddenly U-turning and justifying a strike against Antigua in the name of "stopping stealing". Or perhaps they will end up buying some other questionable cause being spewed out left right and centre. It can happen. The Left were quite silent when Bill Clinton unjustly rocketed the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, and quite a few portions of the Left supported the Vietnam war. According to the Left, calling Bill Clinton a war criminal was being an extremist, a crazy Right-winger or just not seeing the so-called "qualities" of Clinton.
On the post: Japanese Law Enforcement Uses New Copyright Law To Arrest 27 File Sharers
After all - borrowing a DVD from a friend is also experiencing creativity without paying.
On the post: Kickstarter-Funded Movie Wins Oscar For Best Documentary
It's almost as if people are insecure.
If you think this is good, just wait until a big band like Radiohead starts experimenting with all the profits they can get from something like this (as they've already proven themselves with experimenting with other things and very nearly approaching what they wanted). I promise you, people will stop sounding so cocky.
Same goes with when somebody like Justin Bieber tries it. THAT will be hilarious to watch... millions of pledges, tens of millions of profits...
On the post: Company Tries To Delete Recording Of Exec Cursing Analyst During Conference Call Via Copyright Claim
Re: This is AGAIN the use of RARE anomalies to attack...
But we can if you like.
I don't think it's enough to say that these same expressions can be expressed by other means, without using the characters and stories that originated from the author - that just sounds like euphemism for "taking the sting out of a message". Portraying a character in a fashion of my choosing and altering a story to my choosing cannot exactly have the same symbolic power if I cannot use those characters and stories due to a wall of Copyright. I lose a lot of rhetorical, ironical and skeptical power that way. I'm sorry, but preventing the existence of deviant works is a denying of the right to expand on and criticise the original arcs.
Even in free expression debates that I regularly watch, sometimes those who support making hate speech a crime will throw a strawman and say "well there ARE limits to free expression, voice activated guns for example... or incitement to violence, or Libel... or Copyright..." The response is usually "if we were talking about those legitimate limits then they would have been the topics of discussion, but the real topic of discussion is whether opinions and ideas should be regulated - please stay on topic." But you have to notice: they say "Copyright" for a reason - Copyright is, like it or not, regarded by a lot of people as an "acceptable limit" to free expression, even by some on the same Political dimension as I am (Secular, Humanist, etc).
But it is no longer an acceptable limit because the free-rider problem that creators face is now solved by a practical application of ticket-based admission - crowdfunded incentives. And we have all the evidence that tickets and admission works well based on the existence of gigs, plays, etc. Therefore crowdfunding will naturally follow. So no: "it's either original markets or no markets whatsoever" is not an argument any more either. Both original creation and deviant creation markets can exist now because of crowdfunding, with no unnecessary censorship. Copyright only gives you original creation markets, and a whole lot of censorship.
"Censorship is at its best when noone admits it exists" said Nick Cohen. And I think it can be emphasised here. Not many people are even willing to stand up and say that deviant expressions are being stamped on because they think that stamping is justified due to Copyright. Can't make better Star Wars prequels than Lucas? All justified censorship! Can't animate "The Corporate Adventures of Mickey Mouse"? All justified censorship! Can't reprint articles by Noam Chomsky for political discussion purposes? All justified censorship! (It's happened..) Can't make Lord of the Rings movies that more accurately reflect J.R.R. Tolkien's vision? All justified censorship!
There are countless others that I cannot even mention. This is not an anecdotal argument.
On the post: Six Strikes Officially Begins On Monday
There are many political movements around the world, especially in Asia and the Middle East, who absolutely need these kinds of anonymous masks.
It's not a laughing matter. These clueless idiots have no idea what they are trying to harm. If a VPN cannot exist due to this utter nonsense, it means war. Because people could seriously end up dying all over the world from less anonymity as a result of attacking VPNs.
They have no fucking moral high ground whatsoever. I'm sorry, but, whining hollers of "stealing" is what justifies all of this? When it's no different from borrowing DVDs from friends?
...And they say that DVD-borrowing-equivalents are "terrorists" to boot?
I am so fucking through with anyone who talks like this.
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
The question is simple: should a person's vital health be discriminated against based on his or her wealth? The answer has to be "no", because the desire for profits - and the growth of unaccountable corporatism due to the "consumer" not having much of a say in the matter, causing corporations to run away with whatever amount of profits they like - is always trumped by the moral need to give people a fair fighting chance against preventable illnesses.
The free market cannot solve everything, despite what we are often told. If the fire-truck refuses to arrive due to a company's incompetence rather than the government's incompetence, nobody can really be held to account. If the fire "company" can say "no deal" because of their right to refuse to trade, they cannot be in a position of power as such. The same has to apply with police forces for parallel moral reasons, as well as education - and the more you examine it, the more that health has to fall into this category too.
Contrary to how it must be perceived, not ALL health matters are socialised here in the U.K. Certain prescriptions still have to be paid for (the non-vital ones such as mild skin treatment, etc). So we are fairer than most would believe.
And we also do not restrict the existence of private health care if people wish to seek it. If they do even after paying NHS tax, you cannot and should not stop them - but they must pay their fair share initially to the NHS as a matter of moral principle.
On the post: To Argue That 'Copyright And The First Amendment Coexisted For 200 Years' Is To Ignore Reality
But yet, copyright believers seem to think that they, above all civilisations who have tried to regulate free speech and failed, do have the ability to decide when and where free speech is permissible? If I want to tell a story about Twilight, in order to portray the main characters as corporate leeches by using certain symbolism for example, and express ideas of my own that symbolically present Twilight in a new and enlightened way, why am I not allowed to do that? Why is it that "parody" is the only thing allowed to get away with this? What if the deviation is not humourous? It is not just speech that has to be free, it is expression, and every time you restrict me from telling a derived story in a way I see fit you are denying me the right to delivery a certain metaphorical message that may necessarily entail the use of characters and plot lines.
Fan fiction is illegal, because it is published creativity using someone else's work. Fan ART also falls into this category, making deviantArt the biggest copyright infringing website on the web - even bigger than storage lockers like MegaUpload. Are we really to say that everybody participating in this mass infringement is in the wrong? The MPAA never will have the balls to see this through, because the resulting backlash would absolutely DWARF that of the backlash against SOPA (then again, the rationality of the MPAA is not always up to standard, so I can't guarantee that websites like deviantArt will be left alone). Now my follow up question is this: why should fan artists and fanfiction writers be allowed to write deviations, but not those who wish to open up a commercial market on that basis? What makes fan artists more significant? If you believe in copyright, you have to in this case either question the fundamentals of copyright or demand that deviantArt be shut down.
"Sure, you can express yourself... but only in ways that we approve of. So no expressing other people's expressions" is basically what copyright believers are saying, and the only reason why fan art is permissible is that its too big a phenomenon to dare challenge, even although these fan artists get tons of publicity and therefore secondary profits from other things they may be allowed to sell. Fuck that. I'm not letting the philosophy of copyright try to say it is competent enough to "know" when certain speech should not be permissible when it cannot face up to these other challenges.
On the post: RIAA: Google Isn't Trying Hard Enough To Make Piracy Disappear From The Internet
On the post: Crowd Funding: Also A Method For Proving Marketability To Investors
Re:
On the post: Crowd Funding: Also A Method For Proving Marketability To Investors
Everyone who pledges to Kickstarter is basically buying a refundable admission ticket.
On the post: Crowd Funding: Also A Method For Proving Marketability To Investors
Here is one big change I would make to Kickstarter at the moment: if a project gets its initial funds, allow for funds to still be collected even after the deadline. This way people will very quickly realise that the more pledges, the higher quality stuff will come out as a result. Trailers, singles, concept art etc can encourage more pledges even after the initial receiving of funds.
On the post: Fake Kickstarter Game Raises Worries About The Platform, But Should It?
Also, whether or not Kickstarter have realised it or not, they have taken the role of an advertiser by putting the most successful projects on the front page. This is no different from any music label hiding its failed investments in bands that didn't make it, and putting the best bands out there to be advertised the most. So Kickstarter is justified in doing this.
All of the critique against Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general, has been very weak in this regard, and cannot stand up to this rebuttals. But like it or not, it is the solution to the artists' free-rider problem that makes the need for copyright-based incentives obsolete.
On the post: New Research: Extending Copyright Massively Increases Prices, Limits Dissemination Of Knowledge
Re: Plural.
On the post: New Research: Extending Copyright Massively Increases Prices, Limits Dissemination Of Knowledge
Plural.
Please describe the situation correctly.
On the post: Music Publishers: We Need Strong Copyright Laws Because We Don't Like The Consumer Electronics Association
Or in other words:
"Infinity minus one."
On the post: Two Famous Journalism Institutions Shame Themselves By Not Standing Up For Basic Fair Use
Yet, copyright believers seem to think that they can? What good is the fair use doctrine - assuming people are aware of what it allows them to do - if people still suffer chilling effects due to being unsure of their protection from such a doctrine?
On the post: Collateral Censorship: Oxford Union Replaces Assange Speech Backdrop, Citing 'Copyright' Concerns
On the post: Truly Stupid Ideas: Adding DRM To HTML5
On the post: US Still 'Warning' Antigua That It Better Not Set Up Piracy Hub, Even As WTO Gives Approval
Re: Re:
On the post: US Still 'Warning' Antigua That It Better Not Set Up Piracy Hub, Even As WTO Gives Approval
Re: US democracy
On the post: US Still 'Warning' Antigua That It Better Not Set Up Piracy Hub, Even As WTO Gives Approval
Re:
And because I am that cynical, I can imagine the anti-war Left suddenly U-turning and justifying a strike against Antigua in the name of "stopping stealing". Or perhaps they will end up buying some other questionable cause being spewed out left right and centre. It can happen. The Left were quite silent when Bill Clinton unjustly rocketed the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, and quite a few portions of the Left supported the Vietnam war. According to the Left, calling Bill Clinton a war criminal was being an extremist, a crazy Right-winger or just not seeing the so-called "qualities" of Clinton.
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