Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
It only seems 'clear' if you want to believe that the Constitution empowers congress to grant monopolies - despite the fact that it doesn't do so.
You evidently also want to believe the Framers thought granting monopolies was a good idea, though for some strange reason they didn't express this thought in the Constitution.
You can either take the Constitution literally, as an empowerment of Congress to secure an individual's natural exclusive right, OR you can ignore what it says, and simply believe that despite no clear statement, the Framers intended Congress to have the power to grant monopolies in literary works.
Why the latter approach is so popular I can only explain as evidence of how seductive monopolies are to those who would exploit them. People need to believe that their privileges have some greater sanction than simply commercial expedience and legislative concession, e.g. "If we can persuade ourselves the Framers thought monopolies were a good idea, well, they must be. It was good they were legislated, and we can carry on suing kids for file-sharing without losing any sleep over it".
I'll leave you with this snippet I've copied(!) from Wikipedia:
Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges:
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.
The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
You know, rights aren't like candy, much as people refer to them that way. People can give each other permission to do things that without it would violate their rights.
Thus I can permit you into my house to look at my etchings, where if you did so without my permission you'd be violating my right to privacy. However, I cannot grant you the right to violate my privacy since my privacy is inalienable and I cannot part with it (even by contract). Thus I can permit a TV crew into my home, but I cannot sell them the right to enter it. I can sell/vacate my home such that it is no longer my private residence, but then that's not granting any right.
Copyright is only perceived as a 'natural state of affairs' because people have become used to it (it was established in the 18th century). No doubt the children of plantation owners found slavery a natural state of affairs too.
What the Internet is revealing to more and more people every day is that copyright is not at all a natural state of affairs - but that the liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture is.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Perhaps you'd be so good as to demonstrate where in the Constitution it stipulates that congress may grant privileges/monopolies ?
I concede that MANY people believe that it's CLEAR that it does so, but none of these people tend to do more than cite the clause (that congress should have power to secure an individual's exclusive right).
There's a bit missing in the leap of interpretation from that clause to the inference that the Constitution empowers congress to grant monopolies in literary works.
I don't dispute that there are utilitarian arguments for granting monopolies in literary works, and those were no doubt used to persuade copyright's legislation, but the problem is inferring Constitutional sanction for it that doesn't actually exist.
Moral rights are derivatives of the natural right to truth (against impairment). The right to truth is a social right as well as an individual right. It is a matter of fact or veracity. It is not a privilege to be bought or sold. This is why natural rights are inalienable, and in the case of truth, inviolable.
Truth is also not a matter of control/power. You cannot have a privilege to decide who wrote something (without violating the natural right to truth). An author may be considered to be likely as the most concerned with the veracity of their authorship, but all those interested in someone's writing are also concerned not to be deceived as to a work's authorship.
Trademark is another kettle of fish (a registry for the purposes of disambiguating authorship), one we can go into another day.
I think we've agreed that copyright is a privilege. Copyright is fundamentally a violation of the individual's natural right to liberty since it derogates from the individual's liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture, to tell or sing the stories and songs they hear, and modify them. Copyright is so called because it suspends from the public their right to copy, to reserve this as a privilege for the exploitation of the press.
What remains is that you persist in supporting the received delusion that the Constitution granted the privileges of the monopolies of copyright and patent - instead of simply recognising the individual's natural exclusive right to their intellectual works and the need for this to be secured.
It is precisely due to copyright that 'right' has become known as a (contraction of) 'legally granted right', and that people have lost sight of its primary meaning as a natural right. Because of this, today, people have to qualify right with 'human' or 'natural'. Sadly many people now think human rights are granted as much as privileges such as copyright and can be undone by legislation.
I really don't know why you're so keen to continually assert that the privileges of patent and copyright are granted in the constitution. They are not. Even you recognise they are 'legal', so at least recognise that they are products of subsequent legislative acts. The Constitution makes no mention of them.
There is no 'should' about making privileges into rights, because a privilege is a product of man made law, whereas a right is a law of nature (to be protected by a government empowered by its people). One can make a privilege non-transferable as in droit de suite, but this doesn't make it a natural right.
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
The good thing about natural rights is that they are obvious/self-evident. So, obviously, one always naturally has a natural right to do anything one wants with one's own ideas, to keep them to oneself or disclose them - and as you observe, those with whom we share them have the same natural rights to an idea received as one created.
It is privileges that interfere with our rights. Patent interferes with our natural right to implement any design we may think of.
AGAIN: the Constitution grants no rights.
Copyright and patent are legislative acts occuring several years after the Constitution, that by dint of power congress assumed (unconstitutionally) grant privileges to EXCLUDE others from reproducing a literary work or a design.
It's not too difficult to get from a 'privilege to exclude' to a 'legal right to exclude' to a legally granted 'exclusive right', and consequently to pretend that the 'exclusive right' just legislated is the same exclusive right recognised by the constitution (because the words match). And even to come up with a disgracefully flaky conjecture that the Framers must have been thinking of an 'exclusive right yet to be granted' rather than the exclusive right individuals are imbued with by nature. Because, obviously, a monopoly is far more lucrative to those hoping for the best possible interpretation and the Framers were big fans of monopolies - as everyone knows [sarcasm].
Yes, it's disappointing how many people think copyright is about preventing copying qua plagiarism rather than copying qua reproduction.
Yes, I tried to explain in a comment to Timothy Phillips at http://mimuspolyglottos.blogspot.com/2010/04/justice-stevens.html that congress had no power to grant privileges (or 'legal rights'), only to secure the natural exclusive right already in existence, but he chose not to publish my comment. :-p
Some people are highly wedded to the idea that copyright is recognised as a natural right by the constitution, rather than simply being the privilege of a monopoly, subsequently granted (unconstitutionally).
Moral rights mostly concern the natural right to truth (against its impairment), so I have far less of a problem with them, but they still get corrupted by proprietary notions induced by copyright.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
I have some ideas (of my own) and I own them because you cannot take them from me, you cannot have them unless I choose to give them to you, and I may require something from you in exchange.
If you read Jefferson's explanation again you might notice a difference between 'ownership' and 'property'.
You say "Once I read the idea", however, there are vital steps between me writing my idea down and you reading the paper. I have a natural exclusive right to the paper and the idea written upon it. It's remains my property until I decide to sell or give it to you. You can neither read it, copy it, nor use it until that point.
There is an effective business model for protection, it's called the natural right to privacy and the liberty to exchange one's labour in a free market.
No-one can take your intellectual work from you unless you part with it voluntarily, and in terms of business, in exchange for whatever the market will bear - which if you have a lot of fans can be a considerable sum.
Firstly, the Constitution represents the power provided by the people to congress. It's not helpful to talk in terms of the Constitution giving anyone any rights, because it doesn't and cannot. It can only recognise the rights that people already have.
Ideas may well not be property, but they can be owned by those who have them (you cannot have my idea unless I give it to you). Intellectual works (fixed in a physical medium) are property however, and individuals have a natural exclusive right to their intellectual work, their intellectual property. What they don't naturally have is the power to prevent competitors purchasing their work and then producing further copies - people do not naturally have reproduction monopolies such as copyright or patent.
So, yes, I do disagree with copyright, as with any other state granted monopoly. I am a copyright abolitionist.
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Not so simple. I can write my idea down. It still belongs to me alone. I can copy that writing. I still have a natural exclusive right to the copy and the original. It is only when I give you a copy that the intellectual work belongs to you as well as me, but it is still exclusive to both of us.
Copyright is all about me having the power to prohibit you from making further copies of the copy I've given you - a monopoly. However, the constitution said nothing about this monopoly, only about the individual's natural exclusive right.
Sage, the US Constitution could not recognise privileges enacted by legislation in other countries. By definition, it started from a clean slate (of nature, natural law, and natural rights).
In any case, the Constitution made no reference to British legislation.
It is only today that 'right' is more familiar to people as an abbreviation of 'legally granted right' (privilege), than 'natural right' as was the meaning used by framers of the Constitution in the 18th century.
So, 'exclusive right' refers to a natural right of the individual, not one granted by legislation (the constitution gave no power to congress to grant privileges).
"To promote progress" was a consequential aspiration of the Constitution's empowerment of congress to secure the individual's (pre-existing, natural) exclusive right.
The legislation of the monopolies of copyright and patent that occurred several years later were nothing to do with this and entirely about enriching mass producers of copies of literary works and useful devices.
The Constitution did not set up copyright.
It should be considered strange that so many people keep on trying to assert that it did, as if recognising that it is not at all clear.
You should ask yourself this: if copyright is a legal privilege legislated after the Constitution, how could the Constitution stipulate the securing of a privilege that hadn't yet been legislated?
The Constitution cannot grant any rights, since charters cannot grant rights, and it certainly can't empower congress to grant rights (and didn't).
An author's exclusive right to their writings is a natural right and can thus be recognised by the constitution.
Copyright is a commercial privilege granted later, for the benefit of the press, and has no constitutional sanction (though someone did once suggest adding monopolies in literary works as an amendment).
Hephaestus, both you and I may recognise legitimate uses of encryption, but we're dealing with SUSPICION here. My question was a rhetorical parody of the clueless politician's inability to construe encryption as anything except an attempt to evade proper scrutiny by authorised agents (to ensure no infringement was occurring).
As I suggested, domestic accounts will not be permitted encryption (at least not at significant bandwidth). That would be something permitted only to more expensive accounts.
Routing around damage involves routing around a very few ISPs being leant on by the state to do its dirty work (an initial phase of breaking windows and burning premises down, followed by a 'salvation' period in which they extract protection money on behalf of the cartel).
The theory that the Internet is not subject to cartel/state control is fine, but the practice needs work.
Remember that the Internet is supposed to be public, so the notion of securing access to the Internet via your wifi is a bit silly (unless you're worried about losing bandwidth/download allowance - which can be addressed).
The whole point of securing wifi access points was to discourage access to corporate INTRAnets, not the public Internet.
Securing your computers/LAN is a completely different matter to permitting public access to the Internet via your wifi router.
Hephaestus, you appear to be operating on the assumption that technical measures require EVIDENCE of infringement.
What's the point of encryption unless as a means to avoid revealing evidence of infringement?
If you only need to be SUSPECTED of infringement (and encryption just as easily arouses suspicion - of terrorism let alone infringement), then VPN becomes an application available only on payment of a high premium by business users.
Remember, the DEAct only requires an accumulation of allegations, e.g. if a woman is accused of being a witch by at least two people she is 'guilty upon suspicion' and should be burned at the stake. Britain is well used to such injustice. Don't forget that copyright itself is an 18th century instrument of injustice (ask Thomas Paine).
The DEAct is simply legislation that hands effective ownership of the Internet to the publishing corporations. After all, property is any object/area that people can be excluded/ejected from without reason by the property holder. This is what is happening. It's not about preventing unauthorised copies, but transferring control over the interactive entertainment channel (we call the Internet) to the publishing cartels.
Anyone can be ejected. If you're not paying protection money, you can find another country who'll have you...
A boycott that involved ceasing to fund the cultural monopolists would be fine, but only if it wasn't so silly as to uphold the validity of that monopoly by suggesting people engage in cultural denial rather than watch a DVD lent to them, or listening to a CD copied for them. You'll get further with "Share, don't buy", than "Don't buy, don't watch, don't listen". Obviously, people should still pay artists directly (assuming they have a policy of not persecuting their fans for sharing).
An adjunct to a boycott would be to popularise FREE mesh networking before it's made illegal. You can prevent the Internet becoming privately (cartel) owned if you assure that it is public and freely available, e.g. get some kit from the likes of these guys https://www.open-mesh.com/store/ and provide it to your local community free of charge. With enough mesh nodes it'll become pointless for the law to pick off individual households for being SUSPECTED of infringing copyright.
The first step is to encourage EVERYONE to ensure their wifi access points are OPEN ('unsecured' as the corporate control freak term puts it). People can always have two wifi access points, one bandwidth capped for passers-by and one uncapped for themselves.
If you were an industry based on charging artists 99% commission to reproduce, distribute, and retail copies of their work then you'd be keen to lobby for laws that effectively prohibited the use of an instantaneous diffusion device that did it at no cost.
The Digital Economy Act is to PRESERVE the traditional (18th century) printer's economy (which it can't do), against the interest of self-publishing artists (who haven't yet figured out they should be selling their art instead of copies of it).
Unfortunately, when the DEAct fails* (as it will), the effect will be to prompt the offering of alternative Internet access at a premium on an 'infringement exempt' basis, i.e. effectively a compulsory license fee or Internet tax.
* It is possible that this is precisely the expectation, that it is simply a draconian stick to convince the populace that a tax would be so much fairer and kinder (conveniently skipping over the lack of justification for an 18th century privilege in the first place, let alone compensation for its ineffectiveness in the face of the Internet).
http://contingencymarket.com is such a solution. It enables artists to sell their work directly to their fans - no copies are sold, so no copyright is needed - the fans make their own copies and sell or share them as they see fit.
E.g. Artist sells a song to 1,000 fans for $1 each.
Before: Artist has talent and fans, wants more of fans' money. Fans have disposable income, but want another song from their favourite artist.
Deal: Artist offers to produce & publish song for $1,000. 1,000 fans offer $1 each.
After: Artist has $1,000 and a song. Fans have a song and are down $1 each.
Flattr is not a microtransaction, more a microdonation. There is no exchange, simply a fractional disbursement of a 'charity budget'.
For transactions you need an exchange, e.g. "If you give me (write and publish) another song I'll pay you $5"/"If my fans offer me enough money I'll write and publish another song a little sooner"
You certainly don't need copyright - because you're not selling copies any more (even at hundredths of a cent), you're selling your art directly to your fans.
I wouldn't advise anyone to try selling something that the prospect prefers making themselves. That would be like selling bread to bakers. But the publishing corporations may well have such a low IQ that they will persist in their insanity of doing anything that might enable them to carry on selling copies to people who prefer to make their own.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
You evidently also want to believe the Framers thought granting monopolies was a good idea, though for some strange reason they didn't express this thought in the Constitution.
You can either take the Constitution literally, as an empowerment of Congress to secure an individual's natural exclusive right, OR you can ignore what it says, and simply believe that despite no clear statement, the Framers intended Congress to have the power to grant monopolies in literary works.
Why the latter approach is so popular I can only explain as evidence of how seductive monopolies are to those who would exploit them. People need to believe that their privileges have some greater sanction than simply commercial expedience and legislative concession, e.g. "If we can persuade ourselves the Framers thought monopolies were a good idea, well, they must be. It was good they were legislated, and we can carry on suing kids for file-sharing without losing any sleep over it".
I'll leave you with this snippet I've copied(!) from Wikipedia:
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Thus I can permit you into my house to look at my etchings, where if you did so without my permission you'd be violating my right to privacy. However, I cannot grant you the right to violate my privacy since my privacy is inalienable and I cannot part with it (even by contract). Thus I can permit a TV crew into my home, but I cannot sell them the right to enter it. I can sell/vacate my home such that it is no longer my private residence, but then that's not granting any right.
Copyright is only perceived as a 'natural state of affairs' because people have become used to it (it was established in the 18th century). No doubt the children of plantation owners found slavery a natural state of affairs too.
What the Internet is revealing to more and more people every day is that copyright is not at all a natural state of affairs - but that the liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture is.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
I concede that MANY people believe that it's CLEAR that it does so, but none of these people tend to do more than cite the clause (that congress should have power to secure an individual's exclusive right).
There's a bit missing in the leap of interpretation from that clause to the inference that the Constitution empowers congress to grant monopolies in literary works.
I don't dispute that there are utilitarian arguments for granting monopolies in literary works, and those were no doubt used to persuade copyright's legislation, but the problem is inferring Constitutional sanction for it that doesn't actually exist.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Rights
Truth is also not a matter of control/power. You cannot have a privilege to decide who wrote something (without violating the natural right to truth). An author may be considered to be likely as the most concerned with the veracity of their authorship, but all those interested in someone's writing are also concerned not to be deceived as to a work's authorship.
Trademark is another kettle of fish (a registry for the purposes of disambiguating authorship), one we can go into another day.
I think we've agreed that copyright is a privilege. Copyright is fundamentally a violation of the individual's natural right to liberty since it derogates from the individual's liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture, to tell or sing the stories and songs they hear, and modify them. Copyright is so called because it suspends from the public their right to copy, to reserve this as a privilege for the exploitation of the press.
What remains is that you persist in supporting the received delusion that the Constitution granted the privileges of the monopolies of copyright and patent - instead of simply recognising the individual's natural exclusive right to their intellectual works and the need for this to be secured.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Rights
I really don't know why you're so keen to continually assert that the privileges of patent and copyright are granted in the constitution. They are not. Even you recognise they are 'legal', so at least recognise that they are products of subsequent legislative acts. The Constitution makes no mention of them.
There is no 'should' about making privileges into rights, because a privilege is a product of man made law, whereas a right is a law of nature (to be protected by a government empowered by its people). One can make a privilege non-transferable as in droit de suite, but this doesn't make it a natural right.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
It is privileges that interfere with our rights. Patent interferes with our natural right to implement any design we may think of.
AGAIN: the Constitution grants no rights.
Copyright and patent are legislative acts occuring several years after the Constitution, that by dint of power congress assumed (unconstitutionally) grant privileges to EXCLUDE others from reproducing a literary work or a design.
It's not too difficult to get from a 'privilege to exclude' to a 'legal right to exclude' to a legally granted 'exclusive right', and consequently to pretend that the 'exclusive right' just legislated is the same exclusive right recognised by the constitution (because the words match). And even to come up with a disgracefully flaky conjecture that the Framers must have been thinking of an 'exclusive right yet to be granted' rather than the exclusive right individuals are imbued with by nature. Because, obviously, a monopoly is far more lucrative to those hoping for the best possible interpretation and the Framers were big fans of monopolies - as everyone knows [sarcasm].
Yes, it's disappointing how many people think copyright is about preventing copying qua plagiarism rather than copying qua reproduction.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Some people are highly wedded to the idea that copyright is recognised as a natural right by the constitution, rather than simply being the privilege of a monopoly, subsequently granted (unconstitutionally).
Moral rights mostly concern the natural right to truth (against its impairment), so I have far less of a problem with them, but they still get corrupted by proprietary notions induced by copyright.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
If you read Jefferson's explanation again you might notice a difference between 'ownership' and 'property'.
You say "Once I read the idea", however, there are vital steps between me writing my idea down and you reading the paper. I have a natural exclusive right to the paper and the idea written upon it. It's remains my property until I decide to sell or give it to you. You can neither read it, copy it, nor use it until that point.
On the post: The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model -- Not In Technology
Re: Comment on business model
No-one can take your intellectual work from you unless you part with it voluntarily, and in terms of business, in exchange for whatever the market will bear - which if you have a lot of fans can be a considerable sum.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Ideas may well not be property, but they can be owned by those who have them (you cannot have my idea unless I give it to you). Intellectual works (fixed in a physical medium) are property however, and individuals have a natural exclusive right to their intellectual work, their intellectual property. What they don't naturally have is the power to prevent competitors purchasing their work and then producing further copies - people do not naturally have reproduction monopolies such as copyright or patent.
So, yes, I do disagree with copyright, as with any other state granted monopoly. I am a copyright abolitionist.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
Copyright is all about me having the power to prohibit you from making further copies of the copy I've given you - a monopoly. However, the constitution said nothing about this monopoly, only about the individual's natural exclusive right.
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
Re: Re: What is clear about the Constitution
In any case, the Constitution made no reference to British legislation.
It is only today that 'right' is more familiar to people as an abbreviation of 'legally granted right' (privilege), than 'natural right' as was the meaning used by framers of the Constitution in the 18th century.
So, 'exclusive right' refers to a natural right of the individual, not one granted by legislation (the constitution gave no power to congress to grant privileges).
On the post: Rather Than Considering Information 'Property,' What About Looking At Productive vs. Destructive Uses?
What is clear about the Constitution
The legislation of the monopolies of copyright and patent that occurred several years later were nothing to do with this and entirely about enriching mass producers of copies of literary works and useful devices.
The Constitution did not set up copyright.
It should be considered strange that so many people keep on trying to assert that it did, as if recognising that it is not at all clear.
You should ask yourself this: if copyright is a legal privilege legislated after the Constitution, how could the Constitution stipulate the securing of a privilege that hadn't yet been legislated?
The Constitution cannot grant any rights, since charters cannot grant rights, and it certainly can't empower congress to grant rights (and didn't).
An author's exclusive right to their writings is a natural right and can thus be recognised by the constitution.
Copyright is a commercial privilege granted later, for the benefit of the press, and has no constitutional sanction (though someone did once suggest adding monopolies in literary works as an amendment).
On the post: UK Comedy Writer Takes The Digital Economy Bill Seriously... As A Threat To His Livelihood
Re: Re: Re: Re: Bailing out the privileged
As I suggested, domestic accounts will not be permitted encryption (at least not at significant bandwidth). That would be something permitted only to more expensive accounts.
Routing around damage involves routing around a very few ISPs being leant on by the state to do its dirty work (an initial phase of breaking windows and burning premises down, followed by a 'salvation' period in which they extract protection money on behalf of the cartel).
The theory that the Internet is not subject to cartel/state control is fine, but the practice needs work.
On the post: UK Comedy Writer Takes The Digital Economy Bill Seriously... As A Threat To His Livelihood
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Increasingly concerned...
The whole point of securing wifi access points was to discourage access to corporate INTRAnets, not the public Internet.
Securing your computers/LAN is a completely different matter to permitting public access to the Internet via your wifi router.
On the post: UK Comedy Writer Takes The Digital Economy Bill Seriously... As A Threat To His Livelihood
Re: Re: Bailing out the privileged
What's the point of encryption unless as a means to avoid revealing evidence of infringement?
If you only need to be SUSPECTED of infringement (and encryption just as easily arouses suspicion - of terrorism let alone infringement), then VPN becomes an application available only on payment of a high premium by business users.
Remember, the DEAct only requires an accumulation of allegations, e.g. if a woman is accused of being a witch by at least two people she is 'guilty upon suspicion' and should be burned at the stake. Britain is well used to such injustice. Don't forget that copyright itself is an 18th century instrument of injustice (ask Thomas Paine).
The DEAct is simply legislation that hands effective ownership of the Internet to the publishing corporations. After all, property is any object/area that people can be excluded/ejected from without reason by the property holder. This is what is happening. It's not about preventing unauthorised copies, but transferring control over the interactive entertainment channel (we call the Internet) to the publishing cartels.
Anyone can be ejected. If you're not paying protection money, you can find another country who'll have you...
On the post: UK Comedy Writer Takes The Digital Economy Bill Seriously... As A Threat To His Livelihood
Re: Re: Re: Increasingly concerned...
An adjunct to a boycott would be to popularise FREE mesh networking before it's made illegal. You can prevent the Internet becoming privately (cartel) owned if you assure that it is public and freely available, e.g. get some kit from the likes of these guys https://www.open-mesh.com/store/ and provide it to your local community free of charge. With enough mesh nodes it'll become pointless for the law to pick off individual households for being SUSPECTED of infringing copyright.
The first step is to encourage EVERYONE to ensure their wifi access points are OPEN ('unsecured' as the corporate control freak term puts it). People can always have two wifi access points, one bandwidth capped for passers-by and one uncapped for themselves.
On the post: UK Comedy Writer Takes The Digital Economy Bill Seriously... As A Threat To His Livelihood
Bailing out the privileged
The Digital Economy Act is to PRESERVE the traditional (18th century) printer's economy (which it can't do), against the interest of self-publishing artists (who haven't yet figured out they should be selling their art instead of copies of it).
Unfortunately, when the DEAct fails* (as it will), the effect will be to prompt the offering of alternative Internet access at a premium on an 'infringement exempt' basis, i.e. effectively a compulsory license fee or Internet tax.
* It is possible that this is precisely the expectation, that it is simply a draconian stick to convince the populace that a tax would be so much fairer and kinder (conveniently skipping over the lack of justification for an 18th century privilege in the first place, let alone compensation for its ineffectiveness in the face of the Internet).
On the post: The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model -- Not In Technology
Re: Maas = New Gatekeepers
E.g. Artist sells a song to 1,000 fans for $1 each.
Before: Artist has talent and fans, wants more of fans' money. Fans have disposable income, but want another song from their favourite artist.
Deal: Artist offers to produce & publish song for $1,000. 1,000 fans offer $1 each.
After: Artist has $1,000 and a song. Fans have a song and are down $1 each.
On the post: The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model -- Not In Technology
Re: your comments (above)
For transactions you need an exchange, e.g. "If you give me (write and publish) another song I'll pay you $5"/"If my fans offer me enough money I'll write and publish another song a little sooner"
You certainly don't need copyright - because you're not selling copies any more (even at hundredths of a cent), you're selling your art directly to your fans.
I wouldn't advise anyone to try selling something that the prospect prefers making themselves. That would be like selling bread to bakers. But the publishing corporations may well have such a low IQ that they will persist in their insanity of doing anything that might enable them to carry on selling copies to people who prefer to make their own.
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