Mike is merely stating the truth. I can tell you don't like it, as usual, but that's what will happen.
And if you haven't got it yet infringement isn't theft. It's infringement. The label hasn't lost the masters or any of that sort of thing that would make it theft and leave the song(s) in my and only my possession if I'm the one doing the infringement. You cannot steal what doesn't exist. And future anticipated sales don't exist. They're a promoter's fantasy at best. Before the money rolls in, should it ever, there's no theft. Label still has the song, I have the song and maybe a few others thanks to the infamous villain Google have the song. Oh, and TPB has the song. Cash is real. Anticipated cash is fantasy. Just ask anyone over their heads on credit card debt.
They, like you, dealt in fantasy. A fantasy that never came true and may never have.
Now take your fantasies to someone who might listen, please.
More inertia than ghosts even. Reforming anti-drug laws will take the same effort that it will take to stop the IP maximalists and drive them back into their hole under their rock.
Just look at all the groups who profit from the "war on drugs". Police agencies, anti-drug "research" centres, border agencies, Homeland Security in the United States and its equivalents elsewhere not to mention the infamous "middle men" the crime groups, local, national and international. The growers of organic based drugs certainly aren't making out like bandits on any of it.
In the end the "war on drugs" will be lost. No doubt at all of that. In the meantime, what with the "what about the terrorists" argument following 9/11 in western democracies each of us drifts closer to a police state.
ACTA, SOPA, the IP maximalists who seek to limit human freedom in the name of "the artist" who the IP maximalists do everything they can not to support is a symptom. It's all about control.
I'm suspecting that you've really never driven on some freeways when the traffic is light to medium. "anarchic free-for-all" pretty much sums it up.
The tread off a big rig might, just might, make it through the safety glass of a windshield though I doubt the tread of most passenger cars would, even at 100 mph. And we do slow down when we come across a traffic jam, if, for no other reason the traffic ahead of us is already slowing down.
I'm more concerned about emergency vehicles at any speed off on the side of the road for whatever reason or flaggers than I am about things like tire tread anyway. I don't want to hit THEM.
I'm also more concerned about the bad drivers who insist on traveling (well) under the flow of traffic around them in the passing lane(s) than a lot of other examples of poor driving I see out there.
From your attitude I'd not want to be on the same highway as you, particularly a winding mountain pass.
Plenty of people will support speed limits and enforcement in places where it's actually required. I happen to be one of them. But it makes less than no sense to have a highway engineered for speeds of 140 km/h or better to have a speed limit of 90 or 100. Most mountain pass highways DO need limits and enforcement if, for no other reason, to stop idiots from killing themselves and others.
Parking limits are reasonable in commercial areas though enforcement is often overly zealous. I've never supported metered parking or liked it but it's reality and it makes municipalities some money so it's not going anywhere.
ACTA isn't bad because it may affect Twitter or YouTube but because its reach is far beyond that and part of a thus far successful attempt to export American and EU IP law to other countries without the consent of the governed there.
It's attempting to enforce 18th Century solutions to 18th Century problems in the 21st Century. And before it rightly dies it will cause far more damage than it prevents.
Some distros are or have tried to be capital intensive for example SUSE. Mandriva and the Ubuntu's. Ubuntu may be the only one that may become a billion dollar business one day. SUSE and Mandriva may not survive in their current form.
You're right in that most distros are put together by small businesses or hobbyists. Many appear as forks, a number appear after a small or medium sized business has built their own implementation and decided to put it into the wild or just drop it on Distrowatch.
That's the beauty of Open Source. For all the copying and bittorrenting that goes on the movement is incredibly creative which allows for an entry point for small business in the sense that the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented each time around which allows small improvements in the software which, when they come together are distinct improvements. Projects like the Kernel itself, which Torvalds runs with an iron fist, are more incremental.
Others like KDE and GNOME can arrive looking completely different than they did before.
Both conservative and experimental and forward looking on the same platform.
According to some of our ACs and IP purists, that's not supposed to be possible. Yet it is. Vital, creative and inventive.
He has some valid points and he has a point when he says that Facebook and Google Plus toss obfuscated Javascript at your browser (closed source) which means that even if in other ways they contribute to open source projects they are not totally in and of themselves open source. (Google Summer of Code is one way Google gives back to the FOSS community even if not everything Google does is FOSS.) The less said about Facebook, in many ways, the better.
There's debate in the FOSS community about what does constitute FOSS and RedHat has, under more than one occasion be accused of not being FOSS. On the other side is the insistence by some, including Mr Kuhn, of referring to Linux as GNU/Linux something that Linus Torvalds, correctly, points out isn't true. It is NOT the GNU operating system which is still incomplete and will probably never see the light of day. It's a small quibble in many ways even if it is an attempt by the FSF to try to lay claim to Torvald's work. It's annoying as is Mr Kuhn's holier than thou attitude to some things but that's cool. These kinds of arguments and discussions is part of what makes FOSS so interesting and often so much fun. As well as the resulting software often being of far higher quality that most closed source software is.
The reality is that if you work for someone, even the MPAA, if you're speaking FOR them or could be construed as speaking for them as Brigner would have been at their CTO you tell their story as ludicrous as it may be. As their CTO he'd even be challenged to make sound both simple and reasonable. It made him sound a bit of an idiot but he did try from Mike's quote.
I don't like the idea of him working for ISOC if that means they're moving in his direction though there is no change in their mission statement or they're statements concerning Internet censorship and freedom.
I'd like to think Brigner is more aligned with what the ISOC stands for that he was allowed to say as the CTO of the MPAA. But the situation does bear watching.
Actually you can choose the OS, wipe out Windows and install Linux or FreeBSD and you're off. Or choose to dual boot between Linux and Windows which isn't hard to do as most Linux distros will do it for you.
Regardless you can also choose to encrypt what you consider to be private information because people DO lose or forget these things.
For all of that most people don't. It's just too much of a bother. So they have all their logins and passwords stored there, including for their bank accounts and goodness knows what else including the infamous p0rn!
We keep forgetting that most of the population isn't as technically adept as the vast majority of readers of Techdirt are.
I fully agree with your conclusions that as Sound Exchange is actually paying the artists and the labels (in this case yours) for indie work then blowing it up wouldn't be the best thing in the world.
I'd rather these Sirius and Sound Exchange actually got down and actually negotiated with one another rather then fling lawsuits at each other.
While it does seem simpler to have one on one dealings for you and the artists I'm still left to wonder what a "current market rate" would be that isn't settled by a monopoly who have no competitive rate to deal with.
I'd be interested in what Sound Exchange charges other digital customers and how those rates are settled, whether by open bidding or by the CRB, no matter how clueless they may be. Power is in the information and how all that's done needs to come out.
The PG rating works differently here than it apparently does in the "voluntary" MPAA system in the United States. The film classification board gave it that rating with the advisory "coarse language; theme of bullying". Anyone can see go to a theatre to see the movie, though, as there's no age restriction. Only a Restricted classification comes with that. That and I can't remember the last time the film classification board asked a movie maker to cut "offensive" content from a movie. It stopped playing censor here about 40 years ago.
As for the PTC, they just strike me as a collection of busy bodies who live back in the days when climax meant a steam train rushing wildly into a tunnel. For the life of me I can't see why they have any influence at all.
Gibson, it seems is determined not only to pierce the veil but to tear the whole thing down.
I can see Anderson's concern and agree that it may rebound on other LLCs from legitimate performing companies to the non-performing companies that populate west Texas for the sole purpose of patent trolling.
Righthaven was bizarre from the start, at least it's behaviour was so it's no surprise it's bizarre now even to the point of Gibson not caring about what affect he may have on others. It's a form of narcissism. Dangerous to others and, at some time to Gibson himself.
At some point, other than a troll, could someone please explain to me how a counterfeit handbag or suit have a thing to do with national security? Or for that matter a flood of cheap illegal DVDs or CDs of Hollywood products have anything to do with national security?
Counterfeit money, sure, that does. But the United States already has the secret service for that. Fake aircraft parts for the military does but one would rationally think the military has the where with all to check that themselves and call in the necessary civilian law enforcement agencies if needs must.
Perhaps a cracking (I will NOT misuse the word hacking the way a lot of others do any longer!) of government computer networks would qualify but most of that seems self inflicted rather than a deliberate act of an outside party to date. But there ARE agencies that predate the DHS that already do that and have for decades. Just ask the FBI! On second thought, maybe not.
As there's no penalty for the *AA's to be honest about infringement or to check before complaining having a DHS act for them is nothing short of ridiculous. And I still want to know what it has to do with security. Not a thing that I can see.
I love physical books. I adore them! I can take them into the bathroom with me to read should the need come up and I have to spend time there without short circuiting something.
I do love small book stores, like the one in the town I live in where the owner actually knows something about the books she sells and has a wonderful selection of good used books.
My option is up the road in the "big" city of Nanaimo where I get the doubtful joys of shopping in Chapters. The kids on the floor have no idea what they're selling, where it might be found or even appear interested in serving customers instead of gathering together to have a chat. Oh yes, and there's the ever present loyalty card. I do get a discount but still, these things are weighing down my damned wallet. The other customers, for the most part, seem to think they're in the aisles of a supermarket and aren't into interacting with any life form let alone other shoppers unless, of course, you run into them on the way into the ever present Starbucks. Even then it's only to exchange the opinion that Starbucks coffee is too expensive and that ditch water makes for better coffee.
If my alternative is on line shopping and becoming an anti-social hermit or vampire type then I'm all for it. As for seeing the sun for months on end you've obviously never spent a winter in this part of the world, have you?
I see my neighbours and interact with them daily and other folks round town too as well as in my church and in other activities I'm deeply involved in.
Of course, vampires have a decent involvement with humans in the night and a far better sex life than either of us have enjoyed anywhere but in our imaginations so if there's a way to become one it does sound tempting.
So, obviously, in your mind, any and all file lockers, cloud computing and other similar services exist only to host or link to or rip or rip off infringing material.
What the court says is that Rapidshare doesn't have to check all the files stored there but only the links to external sites. So it's hard to draw a comparison to a crack house try as you might. (The existence of which is routinely ignored by both neighbours and police until something like a shooting or murder occurs.)
This is similar to saying that, back in the days when they were common as dirt, that the telco was responsible for the number of drug deals, hooker meet ups and bootlegging done from a given pay station.
Everything is blatant if it's in your interest to see that activity in a location even if there's very little of it going on just as nothing is going on there if it's your interest to regard it that way. (Back to the crack house example again. A neighbour isn't going to report it if law enforcement isn't going to bust it totally and they almost never do. It would just be far too dangerous to report it.)
You want to see infringement/piracy/"theft" everywhere you look on the Internet so you see it. We're used to that from you by now.
If you'd just kindly weigh anchor and troll another site I think we'd all appreciate it!
I wouldn't think so because trademark is used to prevent confusion in the market. So, Tide is a trademark on clothes washing products while Tide can be used as the name of a restaurant as there's no confusion between the two.
(Unless you're the International Olympics Committee, of course.)
Though you're right, there are the controversy junkies out there like the two you name along with the same breed in politics, Newt Gingrich for example.
Though I'm still not sure that trademarking their son's name will avoid any of that.
(Adds the manditory "I could be wrong" qualifier.)
As I said, creators, like you, don't create to have what you did collect cobwebs in a basement. You create it to share it and THEN to collect the money it might bring in.
I'm more intrigued now than I as at first to see your movie. Time to go find a torrent seed!
There was significant concern about Hitler and National Socialism (Nazi) well before he effectively seized power. The fact that he spent time in prison before he did ought to tell you something.
You forget that the political and social climate in Germany was completely different than it is today and so was the electoral system.
On the post: Universal Music Claims Piracy Justifies Monopoly, Wants The Power To Control Digital Music Services
Re:
And if you haven't got it yet infringement isn't theft. It's infringement. The label hasn't lost the masters or any of that sort of thing that would make it theft and leave the song(s) in my and only my possession if I'm the one doing the infringement. You cannot steal what doesn't exist. And future anticipated sales don't exist. They're a promoter's fantasy at best. Before the money rolls in, should it ever, there's no theft. Label still has the song, I have the song and maybe a few others thanks to the infamous villain Google have the song. Oh, and TPB has the song. Cash is real. Anticipated cash is fantasy. Just ask anyone over their heads on credit card debt.
They, like you, dealt in fantasy. A fantasy that never came true and may never have.
Now take your fantasies to someone who might listen, please.
On the post: If ACTA Is So Great, Where Are All The Supporters Extolling Its Virtues?
Re:
On the post: If ACTA Is So Great, Where Are All The Supporters Extolling Its Virtues?
Re:
Just look at all the groups who profit from the "war on drugs". Police agencies, anti-drug "research" centres, border agencies, Homeland Security in the United States and its equivalents elsewhere not to mention the infamous "middle men" the crime groups, local, national and international. The growers of organic based drugs certainly aren't making out like bandits on any of it.
In the end the "war on drugs" will be lost. No doubt at all of that. In the meantime, what with the "what about the terrorists" argument following 9/11 in western democracies each of us drifts closer to a police state.
ACTA, SOPA, the IP maximalists who seek to limit human freedom in the name of "the artist" who the IP maximalists do everything they can not to support is a symptom. It's all about control.
On the post: If ACTA Is So Great, Where Are All The Supporters Extolling Its Virtues?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Quantum Schrodinger
The tread off a big rig might, just might, make it through the safety glass of a windshield though I doubt the tread of most passenger cars would, even at 100 mph. And we do slow down when we come across a traffic jam, if, for no other reason the traffic ahead of us is already slowing down.
I'm more concerned about emergency vehicles at any speed off on the side of the road for whatever reason or flaggers than I am about things like tire tread anyway. I don't want to hit THEM.
I'm also more concerned about the bad drivers who insist on traveling (well) under the flow of traffic around them in the passing lane(s) than a lot of other examples of poor driving I see out there.
From your attitude I'd not want to be on the same highway as you, particularly a winding mountain pass.
On the post: If ACTA Is So Great, Where Are All The Supporters Extolling Its Virtues?
Re:
Plenty of people will support speed limits and enforcement in places where it's actually required. I happen to be one of them. But it makes less than no sense to have a highway engineered for speeds of 140 km/h or better to have a speed limit of 90 or 100. Most mountain pass highways DO need limits and enforcement if, for no other reason, to stop idiots from killing themselves and others.
Parking limits are reasonable in commercial areas though enforcement is often overly zealous. I've never supported metered parking or liked it but it's reality and it makes municipalities some money so it's not going anywhere.
ACTA isn't bad because it may affect Twitter or YouTube but because its reach is far beyond that and part of a thus far successful attempt to export American and EU IP law to other countries without the consent of the governed there.
It's attempting to enforce 18th Century solutions to 18th Century problems in the 21st Century. And before it rightly dies it will cause far more damage than it prevents.
On the post: Is It Really Fair To Say That Red Hat Is The First Billion Dollar Open Source Company?
Re: It’s Probably Also The Last
You're right in that most distros are put together by small businesses or hobbyists. Many appear as forks, a number appear after a small or medium sized business has built their own implementation and decided to put it into the wild or just drop it on Distrowatch.
That's the beauty of Open Source. For all the copying and bittorrenting that goes on the movement is incredibly creative which allows for an entry point for small business in the sense that the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented each time around which allows small improvements in the software which, when they come together are distinct improvements. Projects like the Kernel itself, which Torvalds runs with an iron fist, are more incremental.
Others like KDE and GNOME can arrive looking completely different than they did before.
Both conservative and experimental and forward looking on the same platform.
According to some of our ACs and IP purists, that's not supposed to be possible. Yet it is. Vital, creative and inventive.
On the post: Is It Really Fair To Say That Red Hat Is The First Billion Dollar Open Source Company?
Re:
There's debate in the FOSS community about what does constitute FOSS and RedHat has, under more than one occasion be accused of not being FOSS. On the other side is the insistence by some, including Mr Kuhn, of referring to Linux as GNU/Linux something that Linus Torvalds, correctly, points out isn't true. It is NOT the GNU operating system which is still incomplete and will probably never see the light of day. It's a small quibble in many ways even if it is an attempt by the FSF to try to lay claim to Torvald's work. It's annoying as is Mr Kuhn's holier than thou attitude to some things but that's cool. These kinds of arguments and discussions is part of what makes FOSS so interesting and often so much fun. As well as the resulting software often being of far higher quality that most closed source software is.
On the post: MPAA CTO Jumps Ship To Internet Society, An Opponent Of Greater Online Copyright Enforcement
Re: Reality Strikes
I don't like the idea of him working for ISOC if that means they're moving in his direction though there is no change in their mission statement or they're statements concerning Internet censorship and freedom.
I'd like to think Brigner is more aligned with what the ISOC stands for that he was allowed to say as the CTO of the MPAA. But the situation does bear watching.
On the post: Court Suggests Politically Motivated Border Searches May Be Unconstitutional
Re:
Regardless you can also choose to encrypt what you consider to be private information because people DO lose or forget these things.
For all of that most people don't. It's just too much of a bother. So they have all their logins and passwords stored there, including for their bank accounts and goodness knows what else including the infamous p0rn!
We keep forgetting that most of the population isn't as technically adept as the vast majority of readers of Techdirt are.
On the post: SoundExchange & A2IM Sued For Antitrust Violations By Sirius
Re: A reaction from the trenches
I'd rather these Sirius and Sound Exchange actually got down and actually negotiated with one another rather then fling lawsuits at each other.
While it does seem simpler to have one on one dealings for you and the artists I'm still left to wonder what a "current market rate" would be that isn't settled by a monopoly who have no competitive rate to deal with.
I'd be interested in what Sound Exchange charges other digital customers and how those rates are settled, whether by open bidding or by the CRB, no matter how clueless they may be. Power is in the information and how all that's done needs to come out.
On the post: AMC Defies MPAA Bullies: Will Show Unrated Documentary To Kids With Permission Slips
Bully gets PG rating in British Columbia
As for the PTC, they just strike me as a collection of busy bodies who live back in the days when climax meant a steam train rushing wildly into a tunnel. For the life of me I can't see why they have any influence at all.
On the post: AMC Defies MPAA Bullies: Will Show Unrated Documentary To Kids With Permission Slips
Re: So, if I'm reading this right...
Exactly. Nice succinct summation. ;-)
On the post: Righthaven Case Gets Even More Bizarre: CEO Files Statement About How Righthaven's Own Lawyer Won't Respond To Him
Re: A few pointers
I can see Anderson's concern and agree that it may rebound on other LLCs from legitimate performing companies to the non-performing companies that populate west Texas for the sole purpose of patent trolling.
Righthaven was bizarre from the start, at least it's behaviour was so it's no surprise it's bizarre now even to the point of Gibson not caring about what affect he may have on others. It's a form of narcissism. Dangerous to others and, at some time to Gibson himself.
On the post: New Bill Seeks To Let DHS Agents Coordinate More With Private Companies In Seizing Property (Like Domains)
Counterfeit money, sure, that does. But the United States already has the secret service for that. Fake aircraft parts for the military does but one would rationally think the military has the where with all to check that themselves and call in the necessary civilian law enforcement agencies if needs must.
Perhaps a cracking (I will NOT misuse the word hacking the way a lot of others do any longer!) of government computer networks would qualify but most of that seems self inflicted rather than a deliberate act of an outside party to date. But there ARE agencies that predate the DHS that already do that and have for decades. Just ask the FBI! On second thought, maybe not.
As there's no penalty for the *AA's to be honest about infringement or to check before complaining having a DHS act for them is nothing short of ridiculous. And I still want to know what it has to do with security. Not a thing that I can see.
On the post: Our Gift To The Author's Guild: An Ad For Brick & Mortar Book Stores
Re:
I do love small book stores, like the one in the town I live in where the owner actually knows something about the books she sells and has a wonderful selection of good used books.
My option is up the road in the "big" city of Nanaimo where I get the doubtful joys of shopping in Chapters. The kids on the floor have no idea what they're selling, where it might be found or even appear interested in serving customers instead of gathering together to have a chat. Oh yes, and there's the ever present loyalty card. I do get a discount but still, these things are weighing down my damned wallet. The other customers, for the most part, seem to think they're in the aisles of a supermarket and aren't into interacting with any life form let alone other shoppers unless, of course, you run into them on the way into the ever present Starbucks. Even then it's only to exchange the opinion that Starbucks coffee is too expensive and that ditch water makes for better coffee.
If my alternative is on line shopping and becoming an anti-social hermit or vampire type then I'm all for it. As for seeing the sun for months on end you've obviously never spent a winter in this part of the world, have you?
I see my neighbours and interact with them daily and other folks round town too as well as in my church and in other activities I'm deeply involved in.
Of course, vampires have a decent involvement with humans in the night and a far better sex life than either of us have enjoyed anywhere but in our imaginations so if there's a way to become one it does sound tempting.
On the post: Rapidshare Declared Legal (Again) In Germany, But With A Bizarre Requirement To Monitor Other Sites
Re: Re: Re:
What the court says is that Rapidshare doesn't have to check all the files stored there but only the links to external sites. So it's hard to draw a comparison to a crack house try as you might. (The existence of which is routinely ignored by both neighbours and police until something like a shooting or murder occurs.)
This is similar to saying that, back in the days when they were common as dirt, that the telco was responsible for the number of drug deals, hooker meet ups and bootlegging done from a given pay station.
Everything is blatant if it's in your interest to see that activity in a location even if there's very little of it going on just as nothing is going on there if it's your interest to regard it that way. (Back to the crack house example again. A neighbour isn't going to report it if law enforcement isn't going to bust it totally and they almost never do. It would just be far too dangerous to report it.)
You want to see infringement/piracy/"theft" everywhere you look on the Internet so you see it. We're used to that from you by now.
If you'd just kindly weigh anchor and troll another site I think we'd all appreciate it!
On the post: Rapidshare Declared Legal (Again) In Germany, But With A Bizarre Requirement To Monitor Other Sites
Re: Re: C-Balls.
mmmmmmmm :-D
On the post: The Trademarking Of Trayvon Martin: A Sad Statement Of Our Times
Re: Re:
(Unless you're the International Olympics Committee, of course.)
Though you're right, there are the controversy junkies out there like the two you name along with the same breed in politics, Newt Gingrich for example.
Though I'm still not sure that trademarking their son's name will avoid any of that.
(Adds the manditory "I could be wrong" qualifier.)
I could be wrong, of course.
On the post: Distributor Neglects Indie Filmmaker's Movie, So He Asks Fans To Pirate It
Re:
I'm more intrigued now than I as at first to see your movie. Time to go find a torrent seed!
On the post: German Pirate Party Scores Another Electoral Victory: Gets 4 Seats In State Parliament
Re:
You forget that the political and social climate in Germany was completely different than it is today and so was the electoral system.
-199/10
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