I am just waiting for corporations to turn irrational enough to go after a website like deviantArt for "unauthorised usage of copyrighted works".
Let us see how fucking well that will go. The internet will more or less declare total war on copyright after that, and the rebellion will absolutely DWARF that of the rebellion against SOPA.
I can't wait... I know that sounds bad, wanting a brilliant website to come under attack like that.. but a sinister side of me would adore the backlash..
Well copyright is what causes the destruction of many markets that would have existed without it. And the government backs this destruction, while corporations are the leaders who redistribute content by force in a way that is supposedly fair for everyone. Sounds pretty Communistic to me. And all under the baseless accusation that artists would not get incentives otherwise.
I just find it fascinating because someone in my position is the one who often gets accused of being a Communist, while Copyright is clear much more Communistic with its market destruction. The free market has a great potential to show methods of artist incentive collection without the need for Copyright, which is making this market less and less free at every turn.
The internet is of course revolutionary, but beware...
These oppressive governments do not seem to understand the concept of proxies, do they?
Every computer connected to the internet can effectively act as a proxy. Even if you blocked all the proxies in the world, somebody could just ask a friend living outside the country to reroute the traffic through the friend's PC (it would not take much work to set up).
Then you would have to have ISPs check every packet that goes via their exits - good luck doing that in the face of encryption.
There are three things about the internet that are inevitably going to be standard throughout the world: the "piss in the swimming pool" principle, encryption and anonymity. Countries like China are going to learn this eventually. The Great Firewall can only temporarily prolong the inevitable.
The only real way for the government to "manage" the internet is to crush it completely. That is why you see Libya and Syria panic by shutting off their ISPs in tense moments. North Korea took the smart move of never connecting to the internet - they instinctively knew that mass inter-connectivity was a bad thing for them right from the start.
And do you know what North Korea's internet piracy rate is? 0%. China's rate is 80%. Therefore we know that a) no internet whatsoever is how you get your low level of piracy and b) there is a rough correlation between government control of the internet and high piracy rates as well as low rates which is contradictory yet somewhat explainable... and in China's case that is amplified by its free trade restrictions that cut off people buying media legitimately (just like as we all know it is invariably a bad thing to limit YouTube content by country - the piracy skyrockets).
However, it must be remembered that cyber utopians do not learn from history. Otherwise they would not be utopians. The internet is not going to solve all of humanity's problems. Governments still have clever ways of being able to use the internet to its advantages such as crowd-sourcing the identities of dissidents using their own fascist supporters amongst the population. China for example can give the illusion to most of its citizens that it is not oppressive by allowing some criticism of its policies to go ahead if it is safe for them (this is the difference between total control and effective control), therefore taming and calming any revolutionary backlash.
Equally, it is possible for the Chinese government to set up traps by making supposedly anti-government websites of their own, encouraging revolution, organising when and where opposition meetings are going to take place, then having the secret police bust them all unexpectedly (we all know O'Brien and the Inner Party had set up the Brotherhood themselves in 1984 as bait for dissidents - O'Brien just rubbed it in even more by not admitting it and encouraging us to come to our own conclusions).
Also, the internet can encourage a sense of "armchair liberalism" where steam is let off on blogs but nothing is actually done in the real world. Oppressive governments may indeed have nothing to fear from angry bloggers if they still have the monopoly of guns and violence.
We also cannot forget that it would be a slow and painful death for an Iraqi family if they were caught with a satellite dish under Saddam Hussein's totalitarian and genocidal rule. It just goes to show that there are situations where technological advances cannot stop fascism. We cannot ignore this.
This RSA Animate video is also a very good indicator of the sort of thing I mean:
In short, the internet will only be as good as the politics of the people who use it. It (sometimes) does not matter how much internet access you give to people... if you cannot give them morality and rationality, we are still going to be a stupid and overrated species.
Copyright law, for instance, is positively harmful as it gives lobbyists a dangerous degree of power to pressure democratic governments into giving up liberty for security... which as we all know gives you neither. This has to be resisted, otherwise we will have to learn the hard way. SOPA, always remember, would have given corporations the ability to crush any website on a whim without a trial. The fact that it has got to this stage is terrifying. This is what a culture that is too faithful in copyright can do. It must be abolished in order to show that artists can prosper without it and to make it very unlucky for society to go back to the way things were. Crowdfunding websites are the real revolutionaries here.
The 80% piracy rate in China is what happens when tons of people get around the Great Firewall, and it just goes to show that the people of the country hate internet restrictions just as much as those who protest against SOPA laws. Trying to stop piracy, or any communication freedom, increases piracy and drives communication underground.
My theory is that as long as proxies exist, national Firewalls are useless. The Chinese no doubt know how to route around the Great Firewall with international proxies, and not even the Chinese government can constantly track down everything. There's TOR, VPNs, simple under-the-radar exchanging of USBs, BitTorrents, the list goes on. There may even be hope for an emerging underground resistance in North Korea because of this stuff.
However, in theory... if every government in the world were to have a Great Firewall, proxies and VPNs would lose a great deal of power (one of them has to eventually access the site...).
Considering this, SOPA was extremely, inexcusably dangerous. The copyright lobbyists are a very serious threat indeed, as well as copyright law itself.
If it were up to some IP maximalists, the internet and 3D printers would have never been invented at all. And the other, more hypocritical IP maximalists will use them to gain profit while also claiming they are the enemy.
And they would also have it so that they get first-sale on everything, making it illegal to sell second hand multimedia. Defend the rights of ReDigi until the very end.
I would defend Apple against anyone who tried to patent troll them. I would also do the same defending Samsung against patent trolls.
I would also defend the MPAA and RIAA against copyright litigation.
Indeed, I would attack Kickstarter if it attempted to obtain the IP of other people's projects for abusive ends. Instagram and Facebook have recently tried this, and ended up getting the backlash they deserve.
You always look at the action itself, not the people involved with that action. That is what we call "matter of principle". Always take the side of the victim.
I mean, paywalls on newspapers.. how dumb do you have to be? What next? Billboards at train stations saying "If you leave your paper behind on the train you are littering... littering the world with your Commie ideas about letting other people taking those papers and not paying for them that is! That makes you no different than thieving internet pirates! And terrorists!"
And... a typical article has 30Kb. A piece of data so ridiculously disposable and easy to copy.. I mean.. fucking .txt files for fucking fucks sake. We know what we need now, don't we? DRM for .txt files. DRM... for fucking .txt files.
There comes a point where it satirises itself and you are wasting your time talking about it.
Speaking of paywalls, today I was on a website by a journalist I follow, and on his blog I clicked a link to a review of a book he wrote that was on The Sunday Times website. Only the first few lines were shown with the last couple fading away as if just to rub it in even more. It said that if I wanted the rest I would have to pay for a subscription.
Raging, I started thinking of all the ways I could get around it - asking around to see if someone with a subscription could just hit copy/paste for me, modding the JavaScript, modding the link, proxies, etc...
...and then I went back to the author's site itself and found that the huge blocks of text that I scrolled down to find the "link to the full article on TST" was actually a copy of the article itself.
Considering the amount of success Kickstarter has had since its beginning, chances are that the success will continue once crowdfunding goes mainstream. If I were Radiohead, my next experiment would be to make an album, gather the profits I think I deserve from Kickstarter and release it into the public domain while walking away with the appropriate profit.
If Kickstarter was going to eat itself it would have done so by now. "Eating itself" is not a new criticism - they said the same thing about Ebay with the horror stories in regards to scams there. Now they have consumer feedback, and an overall sense that people can trust the service and the legal protection if they fall victim of fraud. Crowdfunding will go the same way.
Even if that were true, I am willing to bet anything that "greedy pirates" give more money to artists than those who believe in Copyright law do.
It is possible for me to buy a CD from ebay, play it on my stereo whenever I want, get all the experience out of listening to it, then sell it again to get my money back and repeat as necessary... without breaking a single copyright law. This is no doubt a secret hypocritical fetish that copyright believers will probably have.
And on the other hand you have tons of scientific evidence that suggest both a) that the internet has dramatically increased the sales of media and b) that those who file-share are likely to give more money to artists than those who do not.
Don't claim a moral high horse that you cannot mount.
Playing the game does get rather boring when your opponent has 90% of the board flooded with hotels... you just have to keep on rolling the dice until you eventually lose.
On the post: Music Company Asks For Permission To Pursue Its Delayed Civil Suit Against Megaupload; States Extradition 'May Never Occur'
Let us see how fucking well that will go. The internet will more or less declare total war on copyright after that, and the rebellion will absolutely DWARF that of the rebellion against SOPA.
I can't wait... I know that sounds bad, wanting a brilliant website to come under attack like that.. but a sinister side of me would adore the backlash..
On the post: It's Time For A New, Copyright-Free Happy Birthday Song, So Help Write One
Fucking leeches on the economy.
On the post: How The Supreme Court Helped Stomp Out The Public Domain
Re: Re:
I just find it fascinating because someone in my position is the one who often gets accused of being a Communist, while Copyright is clear much more Communistic with its market destruction. The free market has a great potential to show methods of artist incentive collection without the need for Copyright, which is making this market less and less free at every turn.
On the post: Pakistan Briefly Raises Youtube Banhammer; Reinstates It Three Minutes Later
The internet is of course revolutionary, but beware...
Every computer connected to the internet can effectively act as a proxy. Even if you blocked all the proxies in the world, somebody could just ask a friend living outside the country to reroute the traffic through the friend's PC (it would not take much work to set up).
Then you would have to have ISPs check every packet that goes via their exits - good luck doing that in the face of encryption.
There are three things about the internet that are inevitably going to be standard throughout the world: the "piss in the swimming pool" principle, encryption and anonymity. Countries like China are going to learn this eventually. The Great Firewall can only temporarily prolong the inevitable.
The only real way for the government to "manage" the internet is to crush it completely. That is why you see Libya and Syria panic by shutting off their ISPs in tense moments. North Korea took the smart move of never connecting to the internet - they instinctively knew that mass inter-connectivity was a bad thing for them right from the start.
And do you know what North Korea's internet piracy rate is? 0%. China's rate is 80%. Therefore we know that a) no internet whatsoever is how you get your low level of piracy and b) there is a rough correlation between government control of the internet and high piracy rates as well as low rates which is contradictory yet somewhat explainable... and in China's case that is amplified by its free trade restrictions that cut off people buying media legitimately (just like as we all know it is invariably a bad thing to limit YouTube content by country - the piracy skyrockets).
However, it must be remembered that cyber utopians do not learn from history. Otherwise they would not be utopians. The internet is not going to solve all of humanity's problems. Governments still have clever ways of being able to use the internet to its advantages such as crowd-sourcing the identities of dissidents using their own fascist supporters amongst the population. China for example can give the illusion to most of its citizens that it is not oppressive by allowing some criticism of its policies to go ahead if it is safe for them (this is the difference between total control and effective control), therefore taming and calming any revolutionary backlash.
Equally, it is possible for the Chinese government to set up traps by making supposedly anti-government websites of their own, encouraging revolution, organising when and where opposition meetings are going to take place, then having the secret police bust them all unexpectedly (we all know O'Brien and the Inner Party had set up the Brotherhood themselves in 1984 as bait for dissidents - O'Brien just rubbed it in even more by not admitting it and encouraging us to come to our own conclusions).
Also, the internet can encourage a sense of "armchair liberalism" where steam is let off on blogs but nothing is actually done in the real world. Oppressive governments may indeed have nothing to fear from angry bloggers if they still have the monopoly of guns and violence.
We also cannot forget that it would be a slow and painful death for an Iraqi family if they were caught with a satellite dish under Saddam Hussein's totalitarian and genocidal rule. It just goes to show that there are situations where technological advances cannot stop fascism. We cannot ignore this.
This RSA Animate video is also a very good indicator of the sort of thing I mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU
In short, the internet will only be as good as the politics of the people who use it. It (sometimes) does not matter how much internet access you give to people... if you cannot give them morality and rationality, we are still going to be a stupid and overrated species.
Copyright law, for instance, is positively harmful as it gives lobbyists a dangerous degree of power to pressure democratic governments into giving up liberty for security... which as we all know gives you neither. This has to be resisted, otherwise we will have to learn the hard way. SOPA, always remember, would have given corporations the ability to crush any website on a whim without a trial. The fact that it has got to this stage is terrifying. This is what a culture that is too faithful in copyright can do. It must be abolished in order to show that artists can prosper without it and to make it very unlucky for society to go back to the way things were. Crowdfunding websites are the real revolutionaries here.
On the post: How The Supreme Court Helped Stomp Out The Public Domain
On the post: Philippine Government Ignores Public Concerns, Continues To Push Extreme 'Cybercrime' Law
...oh yeah... provide freedom of communication.
On the post: To Avoid Controversy, 'Realtime' Microblogging In China Now Delayed By 7 Days
My theory is that as long as proxies exist, national Firewalls are useless. The Chinese no doubt know how to route around the Great Firewall with international proxies, and not even the Chinese government can constantly track down everything. There's TOR, VPNs, simple under-the-radar exchanging of USBs, BitTorrents, the list goes on. There may even be hope for an emerging underground resistance in North Korea because of this stuff.
However, in theory... if every government in the world were to have a Great Firewall, proxies and VPNs would lose a great deal of power (one of them has to eventually access the site...).
Considering this, SOPA was extremely, inexcusably dangerous. The copyright lobbyists are a very serious threat indeed, as well as copyright law itself.
On the post: Copyfraud: Copyright Claims On CDs Say It's Infringement To Loan Your CD To A Friend
Well there you have it. Hijacking basic physical property rights in broad daylight.
I've had it with people who make excuses for this nonsense.
On the post: Will The RIAA Need To Start Worrying About 3D Printed Records Next?
And they would also have it so that they get first-sale on everything, making it illegal to sell second hand multimedia. Defend the rights of ReDigi until the very end.
On the post: You Only Live Once, So Why Not Demand Payment For The YOLO Acronym You Didn't Invent?
Re: OH, NOW you distance yourself!
I would also defend the MPAA and RIAA against copyright litigation.
Indeed, I would attack Kickstarter if it attempted to obtain the IP of other people's projects for abusive ends. Instagram and Facebook have recently tried this, and ended up getting the backlash they deserve.
You always look at the action itself, not the people involved with that action. That is what we call "matter of principle". Always take the side of the victim.
On the post: You Only Live Once, So Why Not Demand Payment For The YOLO Acronym You Didn't Invent?
Always a sign of a conservative, status-quo mantra that is grinding against reality and has been going on for too long.
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
Re:
And... a typical article has 30Kb. A piece of data so ridiculously disposable and easy to copy.. I mean.. fucking .txt files for fucking fucks sake. We know what we need now, don't we? DRM for .txt files. DRM... for fucking .txt files.
There comes a point where it satirises itself and you are wasting your time talking about it.
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
Raging, I started thinking of all the ways I could get around it - asking around to see if someone with a subscription could just hit copy/paste for me, modding the JavaScript, modding the link, proxies, etc...
...and then I went back to the author's site itself and found that the huge blocks of text that I scrolled down to find the "link to the full article on TST" was actually a copy of the article itself.
God I felt stupid.
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
Re:
If Kickstarter was going to eat itself it would have done so by now. "Eating itself" is not a new criticism - they said the same thing about Ebay with the horror stories in regards to scams there. Now they have consumer feedback, and an overall sense that people can trust the service and the legal protection if they fall victim of fraud. Crowdfunding will go the same way.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re:
It is possible for me to buy a CD from ebay, play it on my stereo whenever I want, get all the experience out of listening to it, then sell it again to get my money back and repeat as necessary... without breaking a single copyright law. This is no doubt a secret hypocritical fetish that copyright believers will probably have.
And on the other hand you have tons of scientific evidence that suggest both a) that the internet has dramatically increased the sales of media and b) that those who file-share are likely to give more money to artists than those who do not.
Don't claim a moral high horse that you cannot mount.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re:
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