If there is a depiction of sex under 18 it's found in the Song of Solomon or Song of Songs. A book often reinterpreted as a love song to the church/synagogue etc. Soft core porn is more like it, really.
Given that Hebrew/Jewish children of the period the book was written were married not much later than 14 and often well before then it's fair to say that book also depicts what we now consider as underage sex. Certainly both partners were beyond the age of puberty which is anything from 10-14, even back then.
"themes of rape, incest, bestiality and underage sexual content"
As we add up the potential victims let's not forget Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" as well as a number of his other plays and sonnets.
As well as, yes, works by established authors of historical fiction set in ancient or dark ages times. In fact, just about any time prior to the Victorian age.
Just who appointed Credit Card companies as the morality police? I seem to recall it being one of the side effects of the DCMA and part of the moral crusade of the first term Bush II presidency.
A well constructed assembly of verbiage amounting to just about nothing from Mr Sherman in response to a collection of slo-pitch questions.
It's not that I expected anything better (or worse) but, really, he said nothing of any consequence. Not all P2P activity on the Internet is "infringing" on music. Lots, if not most of it, is perfectly legal and legitimate between individuals, companies and individuals and between companies. (Not to mention government departments and all of that stuff.)
By the end I was starting to feel that I was in the spin-dry cycle of a washing machine.
And let's be clear here. There are numbers like 35% grabbed out of thing air, that established artists are doing worse than they used to be (couldn't be because of changes of taste or that some or most of these established artists are releasing crap these days) and, finally, for a moment, the acknowledgement that new and emerging artists can and do gain exposure and promotion from the Web and download sites that they couldn't get any other way. Particularly as RIAA companies stopped doing any real promotion work back in the days when "classic rock" got adopted.
Always someone else's fault not the RIAA's. But, then again, if like the RIAA and MPAA you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results you're insane.
Nice fella though. Wouldn't trust him near my wallet but I'd invite him to a BBQ. As long as he didn't say a word on this topic!
"What gives TPB or Dan Bull the right to support the illegal downloading of music that is offered at a reasonable price elsewhere on the internet?"
Listen/watch the video again and tell me just where Dan Bull says he wants to force musicians into a free download model? You can tell me the timing of where that occurs (just in case you don't get that part tell me in minutes and seconds into the video where Bull says that) cause I must have missed it.
What he's saying is that for all the money working musicians receive from the BPI they might just as well work for free because in effect they do. Amazingly similar to musicians who record for member companies of the RIAA or have ASCAP, BMI and others chasing license money for playing songs in barber shops.
I have another bit of news for you. iTunes thrives in this age of alleged unrestricted "piracy gone wild". It is well known, offers a reasonable price, is easy to access and use. It not only thrives it makes a bundle for Apple and the recording industry who get a cut of the sales. If you want shiny plastic disks then there's Amazon (for example).
Both make a ton of money. iTunes in particular not only competes with "free" but thrives and can out compete "free" because it's easier to find, easier to use and has the panache of a well known and respected brand name which leads many to believe that what they download from iTunes is more secure in that it won't contain malware which some "free" site downloads do.
As for your closing argument about someone forcing a paywall around Techdirt if you want to prove that go for it. I know you'll find it harder than you think to do. Not only because I'm certain it's on a well hardened server and on a well hardened web server (Apache not junk like IIS.) give what's discussed here and the reaction of a small percentage of those who disagree with the opinions expressed here, your good self excluded.
copyright as it is currently structured is an industrial age concept which, for all the fancy language around encouraging education and other good thins was basically put into place to stop multiple publishers from releasing the same book by the same author at the same time thereby causing everyone who counted, the publishers, to lose.
Put more simply, it wasn't, never has been and still isn't about the people who create (write) the book. People who write books or make music or perform other acts of creation don't NEED copyright in order to do that As Dan Bull expresses they'll do it anyway with or without copyright as an "incentive". Not that the current gatekeeper system pays the vast majority of them anyway.
The Web and its associated technologies allows writers to self publish at whatever price they wish using whatever license they wish. The same applies to musicians, photographers and every other creative art you can think of and this scares the gatekeepers to death.
There may be a place for copyright in the Web-Kid world or something like it but copyright as it's structured right now is an impediment to creation not an incentive.
What do I mean by that? Well, as one example Facebook demands that they get the copyright to any pictures I upload from me to them. Therefore I won't except for scuzzy snapshots. Places like Flickr get what I think are good photos because Flickr will respect my choice of licenses which is always a Creative Commons license. Not for one moment that I think of myself as an award winning photographer. Just that Flickr will respect MY choice whereas Facebook imposed a choice on me and would take MY creation for THEIR profit. That's fine if that's what they want to do. But it keeps things off my profile and other pages that would otherwise be there and makes the experience of my friends and others all the poorer as a result.
"cyber-crime" most definitely is trying to sound important and to know what you're talking about. "Rogue hactivist" is actually FBI code for Anonymous.
"What is missing in any of these discussions is a clear image of what the world looks like AFTER the proposed revolution. Where will content come from? Don't tell me "from everyone"... that is a pure cop out. Where will your TV shows come from, where will your news come from, where will your music come from? "
It's in the nature of social revolutions brought about by technological progress or not that you don't KNOW what the world will look like AFTER the revolution is completed.
No one had the slightest idea what would happen when the Industrial Revolution was over. It isn't yet but we gave a fairly good idea both good and bad now. What we do know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that successful companies that didn't adapt, old ways of doing business (see East India Company, Hudson's Bay Company and mercantilism) failed and to a very large degree so did the dominant methods of agriculture fail in that they couldn't feed the exploding cities and so that changed too.
The printing press destroyed the ways that documents were created and distributed that had been in place since the dawn of western civilization. And did that very quickly. It also quickened the pace of the Industrial Revolution by making the distribution of information on new methods of manufacturing, maintenance and business information far cheaper and faster than it had ever been before.
So now we have another way to communicate (note I left out telegraph, telephone, radio and television and did so on purpose) called the Internet and the part most of us interact with called The World Wide Web. Most importantly a new way to make and distribute "content" as well as to store it.
Who will create the content? Cop out or not, creative people will. We forget that in the age before television and radio (and to a lesser extent motion pictures) we weren't drowning in what some call "content". As if content comes only from Hollywood or Bollywood or large publishers. It never has and never will. Those business have made the creation of cheap content an art from all themselves. Cheap content is otherwise known as popular content. Nothing wrong with that BUT, as we're finding out, popular content cannibalizes itself. Just look at the large number of "reality" shows out there. The number of copycats "Mythbusters" has created. And how strikingly similar to each other movies tend to be before fall and the time the "good" ones come out to vie for Academy Awards. There are late winter, spring movies depressingly similar to each other, summer movies aimed at two audiences teen aged boys and teen aged girls. Slasher and horror films with lots of skin are boys movies, Romances and relationship movies with less skin aimed at girls. After Labour Day come the "serious" flicks.
That and other "content" will continue to be made we just don't know who will do it or exactly how. Ditto for music. I suspect the biggest fear of the so-called "content" industry is that we humans will return to the days of creating our own content in the Web version of the living rooms and concert houses that are already appearing. Will the "quality" be the same as what the "content industry" cranks out now? Not at first. But then again, one can hardly apply the word quality to "Cash Cab", right?
The answer to the question of who will create the content, the same question asked with a lot more fear after the movable type press appeared, is a combination of "the same people", new entrants more familiar and comfortable with what the Web offers that those they'll succeed are, "everyone" which covers the deep cultural effect and affect of the Web and, quite frankly, "we don't know". Nor should we care.
If the technical and web revolution take out the MPAA and RIAA I'm not going to shed any tears for them. They've had a good and obscenely profitable run over the past century. Someone or something will, make no mistake about that.
Our species are story-tellers, music makers so that will continue. In order to learn we are also copiers and that will continue as well. If the latter means changes to copyright and patents that makes what will come out the other end unrecognizable from out perspective. We're just starting down that path. But we have no business resisting it for the benefit of a few who have fed on the same way of doing things for more than a century now. If they go, they go. Creative destruction and all of that, you know. Nor do we have any business putting road blocks in the way the early experiments in "content creation" happening now or trying to force it down the same path as the "content industry" would like. I doubt that it will anyway but we have no business standing in the way of the evolution/revolution and making the replacement for current models and mega-companies harder than it already will be.
But one more time -- content will be created. Right now we just don't know by whom (likely not the same players or most of them) nor is it any of our business. But content will be created. A digital appropriate kind of copyright will eventually appear just because it has to. It might look like Creative Commons, the LGPL or the Document GPL or none of them. We'll know that when we get there too.
I find that to be exciting and filled with promise. Some seem to find it horrifing and meet it with fear and arguments that try to fit the digital revolution into an Industrial Revoltion model. But it won't and can't be fit into that model.
For what it's worth the best advice is to stand back and watch it happen, the same thing that happened with the Industrial Revoution. In the meantime fear alone isn't helpful and got us ACTA, almost spawned PIPA and SOPA which won't change a thing. For a while yet uncertainty and doubt are the order of the say as this revolution progresses.
What will it look like when it "matures", as opposed to ending which it likely never will; I don't know and I don't care. Content will be created and be spread across the web. By whom and how, I don't know and I don't care. "Content" will still be there.
So rather than denigrate Apple for it why not congratulate them for turning various computing devices into exactly what the industry has been shooting for since the first micro-computers came on the market in the 70s. And that's appliances.
There is no NEED to know how the device works unless you're geek or is one of those folks who call up to say "my such-and-such doesn't work" and forget to add even the smallest of details. When I was at work it was those folks I served, those sort of trouble calls I was sent out on often only to find that the such-and-such was either unplugged or the battery had drained. Incidentally, that kind of call and result never, ever came from The Web Kids. Just boomers afraid of that box in front of them.
No one should have to care HOW it works, all the vast majority of people need to know is what it does, how to use it to do what you want to do. (or accomplish goals, if we want to keep using consultant speak!)
Apple caters to the group that wants appliances, does it extremely well (for a price) and is almost always immune to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death Microsoft is so (in)famous for. I'll also add externally well designed, attractive and internally extremely well designed. There's nothing wrong with that.
Try as you might, you can't ignore the reality that the tech and Web industry as a whole have been working their butts off to make it a "who care's" decision about whether your data is stored locally or remotely. Essentially it ought not to matter. The data is as safe as possible locally or remotely,
Though. for a while yet, we're still stuck with a situation where the vast majority of windows boxes out there where grabbing the data on local drives is remarkably easy. I agree that any poorly configured machine connected to the Net has that problem but it still amazes me how many people who get a device with the latest in Windows software still don't spend the 5 or 10 minutes it takes to do the basics of locking it down. Therefore, regarding safety from prying eyes to my our your data, I suspect that, for now it's a saw off.
Commentary, while it may not be hard news is a valid form of journalism.
Just look at the editorial pages of a big city paper, what's left of them these days, or columnists all of that is commentary often based on stories that didn't originate in the paper itself or in the chain it belongs to.
Your statement makes a considerable amount of the content in big city papers into leaches as well. Though by being silent on the opinion sections of papers you're saying that for newspapers it's alright but not for Techdirt.
Perhaps you should learn something about journalism before making idiotic remarks.
Finally, Techdirt, itself, isn't trying to replace newspapers. There are sites like HuffPo which are and doing very well at it, whether or not you agree with their editorial stand or slant.
In a way you're right. Though many of the "older generation" have also become part of the digital machine without knowing or appreciating it. Also while mightily resisting it.
Torn between the analog and the digital the "older generation" becomes responsible for outrages such as SOPA and PIPA and ACTA without really understanding the effects on either or both.
Analog scrap-booking always involved wholesale copyright infringement because it largely involved cutting up such things as high gloss magazines and pasting them into scrapbooks which they would then show around proudly to friends and associates crammed full of pictures from LIFE, National Geographic, maybe People, whatever took their fancy. Well done scrapbooks are works of art all in themselves but this was in the days before, well before, the rise of copyright extremists.
Do it on the Web and the copyright extremists go nuts. For now do it cutting and pasting into a scrapbook passes them by. Until, I guess, one of them that is truly a work of art is sold at a church fundraiser.
Damned religious pirates!
Piracy exists, no doubt about it. We've discussed the reasons why till we're collectively blue in the face so we know why. Except for those in terminal denial.
Thing is, you can't legislate against it in the digital world and NOT affect things in the analog world.
I am one of the "older generation" who worked in and saw the change in the telecom industry from analog telephone companies to the digital behemoths they've become today. I knew by the early 1980s that it was either jump into digital or lose my ability to do my job well and efficiently or at all. Hence my jump into first a TRS-80 CoCo to the small collection of machines I have now, one way or another.
Thing is though that we, The NotWeb Kids, if you like are part of the both the analog and digital aspects of The Machine whether or not we want to be. As the movie Modern Times showed we didn't understand the analog machine particularly well even as we became part of it so that we wouldn't understand the digital one as it surrounds us and takes us in doesn't surprise me.
And no, the digital revolution wasn't televised, wasn't covered in newspapers or magazines, radio ignored it and very few of us talked about it in bars or coffee shops other than that newfangled email thing and perhaps chats programs.
Unlike the WebKids we became part of the digital machine reluctantly or we didn't know we were. We were and are strangers is a very strange land, most of us. Even big content.
Big Content didn't televise the digital revolution not simply out of spite but because reporters and journalists are educated as arts students and know next to nothing about science or technology. They missed it completely. And by the time they noticed it, as this thing they call "piracy", the jig was up, the revolution had happened and nothing they can do will roll it back.
The Big Content of its day reacted against the printing press too and the changes it brought. Back then it was with war and blood. I pray that as a species we've grown up some since then.
It might help if everyone knew how everything worked in a modern car or light duty truck. But good luck to that. This isn't the 50s or 60s where you did your repairs and tune ups in the back yard then dumped the used oil into the sewer.
Modern vehicles are chock a block with sensors and computers and a master computer "that rules them all" and the manufacturers guard the diagnostic software like it's the Holy Grail. (None of which means it hasn't been hacked/cracked and otherwise broken into so people can load them onto laptops as do the work in their own independent garage.)
Given your attitude here I'm shocked you'd help those "morons" to get their wipers to work or explain the mysteries of cruise control to them and all the good deeds you seem to do. Glad to hear it.
A significant number of the kids written about in the manifesto know how the internet works, how DNS, works and how to get things like Apache off the ground so you can actually have yourself a web site. But none of that is contrary to what is being said there.
They use the Internet the same way people have used libraries, coffee shops, and many things my bunch are used to to learn, debate, establish and end relationships including close, intimate ones, to trade photos (before the copyright purists got their knickers in a knot it was called scrapbooking and no one cared), swap tales, recommend e-books, print books, movies and to shake their heads at the total ignorance and stupidity of their elders at just what they do there which, as the manifesto says, they live there.
Much as we boomers lived in sports fields, bars, basements blasting out the latest LP and doing just about everything these people are doing. And they do a lot of it instead of the hour long phone calls our parents railed at us about. Instead it's the Web. That and I'll bet the Web Kids do, actually, find time to meet face to face too as that's a critical part of human society that the Internet can't replace -- yet.
The Web kids aren't computer illiterate, far from it. Thier literacy is expressed in ways far different from those of us who had to rip the innards out of our Apple II, Trash-80s and IBM PCs to make them work sometimes.
For them, their computers be they smart phones, laptops, desktops, iPads or whatever are an extention of themselves much in the way the land line telephone was and is for the pre-Web kids. That thing they pick up to communicate with their peers when their friends aren't around for everything from meeting up to planning protests around things like ACTA.
I find it amusing when the "what are those kids coming to these days" question is fired off by people who don't even know them or who have only experienced them on the surface or news reports.
It reminds me so much of what was said in the 1950s, 60s and 70s about Boomers.
And we Boomers are left being in the uncomfortable position of being the power elite we used to protest against. This time it's us.
And, to judge from silliness like ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and many other attempts to regulate the Web for the advantage of a wealthy, privileged few at the expense of the many we deserve it. We're just upset cause we see ourselves as the ones angry with those same entrenched groups and get our knickers in a knot when a mirror is held up to us proving that we became what we loudly said we opposed.
We've become a part of the machine. And we can't even see it.
Of course the reality is that before copyright people created quality content and they will continue to do so if and when the concept and laws around copyright cease to exist.
High prices are more a factor for likes of publishers and recording and motion picture studios than they are for the creation of content itself. Yes, I know that the technologies needed to produce books, sound recordings and motion pictures (including television shows) were and, to a degree still are very expensive. But that's a technical issue not an issue of creation itself.
I agree that it was a great post and any number of issues and stories could have dominated the week. And I agree that the "We, the Web Kids" is one of the most insightful and profound pieces I read in a long time. As I've posted it's not just age specific but what people are doing with the Web and the greater Internet that the author writes on so clearly and passionately. Largely kids, yeah, but also people well into their 80s and older as well.
It covers why the rest of what we read and comment on here is often so important and vital from a cultural and societal perspective. And the profound change the Web has made and is still making.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Response to: DanMitchell on Mar 2nd, 2012 @ 8:00pm
I have to say that I gave up, almost completely, on big city, big circulation newspapers years ago. Outside of the "if it bleeds it leads" sort of story and sports it seems very little is the kind of local content you talk about.
Sure, important things like municipal and metro halls are covered. Perhaps over covered at times but covered, complete with carefully cultivated contacts where the contact benefits the reporter/paper and the contact themselves. But the day of the beat reporter has largely gone the way of the beat cop. Too expensive and too labour intensive. The vast majority of big city reporters work scheduled hours these days, outside of the "if it bleeds it leads" sort of story.
Even then the papers almost beg for people to send in pictures and stories of events which the paper then assumes the copyright of for what amounts to a few minutes of rewrite and phone calls. Big city radio and TV stations do the same.
Like so many other things these days journalism is undergoing a sea change. It's not EVER going back to the way it was. For where Web savvy people go for their information these days I'd suggest you go read this little manifesto again: http://pastebin.com/0xXV8k7k
Not all those people are under 30s or young at all. One of the most web savvy people I know is an elderly lady in her 80s who rides around on a motorized wheelchair thing that she drives like a F1 race car, is constantly checking her blackberry and looking around for interesting places on the Web, then taking part in the discussions. I mentioned once that she might want to slow down because of RSI that might develop in her wrists and thumb, she grinned, giggled and told me her hands were very arthritic so she didn't care and added that it was well worth a little more pain to be exposed to people, places and a world she barely knew existed.
Not that she's not plugged in locally. She still picks up the local small town paper and reads what interests her and the want ads. She's part of the town Seniors Group and gets them the newest Wii and xBox games.
What leaves big city papers unread is the mere fact that most of them these days is unedited wire service copy cut and pasted using computers and printed by computer as well. Even local copy is often credited to the likes of AP, CP (Canadian Press) and Reuters which says volumes about who does a large percentage of "local" reporting.
What will we see in the near and distant future in newspapers or whatever replaces them? I have no idea. Except to say it won't be what those of us who grew up with papers grew up with. Probably nothing near it.
He's doing no such thing but you need to play your justification card again with mistruths about torrents and exaggerations about file lockers.
Even if you are correct then please explain why the gatekeepers who are pushing this nonsense continue to make record profits. When you can explain this then we might just listen to you. Until then, happy trolling!
If only De Gucht was the only incompetent politician or bureaucrat who deals with attempting to regulate the Internet and the Web I think this would be notable. If he was the only one who was lying about the criminalization of currently legal activities he would be notable.
Sadly, he isn't as we have experienced with SOPA/PIPA and new IP acts in other countries. The gatekeepers and their hired guns will continue their FUD campaign in spite of evidence that infringement actually increases sales and a good, easily found Web presence does demonstrate that music, movies and so on will be purchased instead of "pirated". Amazon and iTunes are great examples of this.
What is truly sad is the complete unwillingness of those in positions of power and influence to understand that in many ways the Web is changing everything much in the same way the printing press did only much, much faster.
ACTA may be or is in serious trouble in Europe which would spell the end of this abomination but that the lies and deliberate misreading of what's happening will continue.
On the post: Paypal Pressured To Play Morality Cop And Forces Smashwords To Censor Authors
Re: Re: Re:
Given that Hebrew/Jewish children of the period the book was written were married not much later than 14 and often well before then it's fair to say that book also depicts what we now consider as underage sex. Certainly both partners were beyond the age of puberty which is anything from 10-14, even back then.
On the post: Paypal Pressured To Play Morality Cop And Forces Smashwords To Censor Authors
Re: Re: Re:
As we add up the potential victims let's not forget Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" as well as a number of his other plays and sonnets.
As well as, yes, works by established authors of historical fiction set in ancient or dark ages times. In fact, just about any time prior to the Victorian age.
Just who appointed Credit Card companies as the morality police? I seem to recall it being one of the side effects of the DCMA and part of the moral crusade of the first term Bush II presidency.
Such fun.
On the post: RIAA's Cary Sherman: We Really Just Want To Give Consumers What We, Er, They Want
It's not that I expected anything better (or worse) but, really, he said nothing of any consequence. Not all P2P activity on the Internet is "infringing" on music. Lots, if not most of it, is perfectly legal and legitimate between individuals, companies and individuals and between companies. (Not to mention government departments and all of that stuff.)
By the end I was starting to feel that I was in the spin-dry cycle of a washing machine.
And let's be clear here. There are numbers like 35% grabbed out of thing air, that established artists are doing worse than they used to be (couldn't be because of changes of taste or that some or most of these established artists are releasing crap these days) and, finally, for a moment, the acknowledgement that new and emerging artists can and do gain exposure and promotion from the Web and download sites that they couldn't get any other way. Particularly as RIAA companies stopped doing any real promotion work back in the days when "classic rock" got adopted.
Always someone else's fault not the RIAA's. But, then again, if like the RIAA and MPAA you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results you're insane.
Nice fella though. Wouldn't trust him near my wallet but I'd invite him to a BBQ. As long as he didn't say a word on this topic!
On the post: As BPI Tries To Block The Pirate Bay From The UK, Dan Bull Explains Why Musicians Should Block BPI
Re: Dan Bull Sh*t
Listen/watch the video again and tell me just where Dan Bull says he wants to force musicians into a free download model? You can tell me the timing of where that occurs (just in case you don't get that part tell me in minutes and seconds into the video where Bull says that) cause I must have missed it.
What he's saying is that for all the money working musicians receive from the BPI they might just as well work for free because in effect they do. Amazingly similar to musicians who record for member companies of the RIAA or have ASCAP, BMI and others chasing license money for playing songs in barber shops.
I have another bit of news for you. iTunes thrives in this age of alleged unrestricted "piracy gone wild". It is well known, offers a reasonable price, is easy to access and use. It not only thrives it makes a bundle for Apple and the recording industry who get a cut of the sales. If you want shiny plastic disks then there's Amazon (for example).
Both make a ton of money. iTunes in particular not only competes with "free" but thrives and can out compete "free" because it's easier to find, easier to use and has the panache of a well known and respected brand name which leads many to believe that what they download from iTunes is more secure in that it won't contain malware which some "free" site downloads do.
As for your closing argument about someone forcing a paywall around Techdirt if you want to prove that go for it. I know you'll find it harder than you think to do. Not only because I'm certain it's on a well hardened server and on a well hardened web server (Apache not junk like IIS.) give what's discussed here and the reaction of a small percentage of those who disagree with the opinions expressed here, your good self excluded.
On the post: As BPI Tries To Block The Pirate Bay From The UK, Dan Bull Explains Why Musicians Should Block BPI
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: As BPI Tries To Block The Pirate Bay From The UK, Dan Bull Explains Why Musicians Should Block BPI
Re: Property analogies
Put more simply, it wasn't, never has been and still isn't about the people who create (write) the book. People who write books or make music or perform other acts of creation don't NEED copyright in order to do that As Dan Bull expresses they'll do it anyway with or without copyright as an "incentive". Not that the current gatekeeper system pays the vast majority of them anyway.
The Web and its associated technologies allows writers to self publish at whatever price they wish using whatever license they wish. The same applies to musicians, photographers and every other creative art you can think of and this scares the gatekeepers to death.
There may be a place for copyright in the Web-Kid world or something like it but copyright as it's structured right now is an impediment to creation not an incentive.
What do I mean by that? Well, as one example Facebook demands that they get the copyright to any pictures I upload from me to them. Therefore I won't except for scuzzy snapshots. Places like Flickr get what I think are good photos because Flickr will respect my choice of licenses which is always a Creative Commons license. Not for one moment that I think of myself as an award winning photographer. Just that Flickr will respect MY choice whereas Facebook imposed a choice on me and would take MY creation for THEIR profit. That's fine if that's what they want to do. But it keeps things off my profile and other pages that would otherwise be there and makes the experience of my friends and others all the poorer as a result.
On the post: FBI Preaches Dangers Of 'Cybercrime' To The Choir
Re: Next!
As for protecting jobs. The middle class might have a small and nasty comment to make about that.
On the post: FBI Preaches Dangers Of 'Cybercrime' To The Choir
Re:
On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re:
It's in the nature of social revolutions brought about by technological progress or not that you don't KNOW what the world will look like AFTER the revolution is completed.
No one had the slightest idea what would happen when the Industrial Revolution was over. It isn't yet but we gave a fairly good idea both good and bad now. What we do know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that successful companies that didn't adapt, old ways of doing business (see East India Company, Hudson's Bay Company and mercantilism) failed and to a very large degree so did the dominant methods of agriculture fail in that they couldn't feed the exploding cities and so that changed too.
The printing press destroyed the ways that documents were created and distributed that had been in place since the dawn of western civilization. And did that very quickly. It also quickened the pace of the Industrial Revolution by making the distribution of information on new methods of manufacturing, maintenance and business information far cheaper and faster than it had ever been before.
So now we have another way to communicate (note I left out telegraph, telephone, radio and television and did so on purpose) called the Internet and the part most of us interact with called The World Wide Web. Most importantly a new way to make and distribute "content" as well as to store it.
Who will create the content? Cop out or not, creative people will. We forget that in the age before television and radio (and to a lesser extent motion pictures) we weren't drowning in what some call "content". As if content comes only from Hollywood or Bollywood or large publishers. It never has and never will. Those business have made the creation of cheap content an art from all themselves. Cheap content is otherwise known as popular content. Nothing wrong with that BUT, as we're finding out, popular content cannibalizes itself. Just look at the large number of "reality" shows out there. The number of copycats "Mythbusters" has created. And how strikingly similar to each other movies tend to be before fall and the time the "good" ones come out to vie for Academy Awards. There are late winter, spring movies depressingly similar to each other, summer movies aimed at two audiences teen aged boys and teen aged girls. Slasher and horror films with lots of skin are boys movies, Romances and relationship movies with less skin aimed at girls. After Labour Day come the "serious" flicks.
That and other "content" will continue to be made we just don't know who will do it or exactly how. Ditto for music. I suspect the biggest fear of the so-called "content" industry is that we humans will return to the days of creating our own content in the Web version of the living rooms and concert houses that are already appearing. Will the "quality" be the same as what the "content industry" cranks out now? Not at first. But then again, one can hardly apply the word quality to "Cash Cab", right?
The answer to the question of who will create the content, the same question asked with a lot more fear after the movable type press appeared, is a combination of "the same people", new entrants more familiar and comfortable with what the Web offers that those they'll succeed are, "everyone" which covers the deep cultural effect and affect of the Web and, quite frankly, "we don't know". Nor should we care.
If the technical and web revolution take out the MPAA and RIAA I'm not going to shed any tears for them. They've had a good and obscenely profitable run over the past century. Someone or something will, make no mistake about that.
Our species are story-tellers, music makers so that will continue. In order to learn we are also copiers and that will continue as well. If the latter means changes to copyright and patents that makes what will come out the other end unrecognizable from out perspective. We're just starting down that path. But we have no business resisting it for the benefit of a few who have fed on the same way of doing things for more than a century now. If they go, they go. Creative destruction and all of that, you know. Nor do we have any business putting road blocks in the way the early experiments in "content creation" happening now or trying to force it down the same path as the "content industry" would like. I doubt that it will anyway but we have no business standing in the way of the evolution/revolution and making the replacement for current models and mega-companies harder than it already will be.
But one more time -- content will be created. Right now we just don't know by whom (likely not the same players or most of them) nor is it any of our business. But content will be created. A digital appropriate kind of copyright will eventually appear just because it has to. It might look like Creative Commons, the LGPL or the Document GPL or none of them. We'll know that when we get there too.
I find that to be exciting and filled with promise. Some seem to find it horrifing and meet it with fear and arguments that try to fit the digital revolution into an Industrial Revoltion model. But it won't and can't be fit into that model.
For what it's worth the best advice is to stand back and watch it happen, the same thing that happened with the Industrial Revoution. In the meantime fear alone isn't helpful and got us ACTA, almost spawned PIPA and SOPA which won't change a thing. For a while yet uncertainty and doubt are the order of the say as this revolution progresses.
What will it look like when it "matures", as opposed to ending which it likely never will; I don't know and I don't care. Content will be created and be spread across the web. By whom and how, I don't know and I don't care. "Content" will still be there.
On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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There is no NEED to know how the device works unless you're geek or is one of those folks who call up to say "my such-and-such doesn't work" and forget to add even the smallest of details. When I was at work it was those folks I served, those sort of trouble calls I was sent out on often only to find that the such-and-such was either unplugged or the battery had drained. Incidentally, that kind of call and result never, ever came from The Web Kids. Just boomers afraid of that box in front of them.
No one should have to care HOW it works, all the vast majority of people need to know is what it does, how to use it to do what you want to do. (or accomplish goals, if we want to keep using consultant speak!)
Apple caters to the group that wants appliances, does it extremely well (for a price) and is almost always immune to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death Microsoft is so (in)famous for. I'll also add externally well designed, attractive and internally extremely well designed. There's nothing wrong with that.
Try as you might, you can't ignore the reality that the tech and Web industry as a whole have been working their butts off to make it a "who care's" decision about whether your data is stored locally or remotely. Essentially it ought not to matter. The data is as safe as possible locally or remotely,
Though. for a while yet, we're still stuck with a situation where the vast majority of windows boxes out there where grabbing the data on local drives is remarkably easy. I agree that any poorly configured machine connected to the Net has that problem but it still amazes me how many people who get a device with the latest in Windows software still don't spend the 5 or 10 minutes it takes to do the basics of locking it down. Therefore, regarding safety from prying eyes to my our your data, I suspect that, for now it's a saw off.
On the post: Dear Big Newspapers: Keep Putting Up Silly Paywalls And Clear The Internet Field For Us 'Newcomers'
Re: Idiot
Just look at the editorial pages of a big city paper, what's left of them these days, or columnists all of that is commentary often based on stories that didn't originate in the paper itself or in the chain it belongs to.
Your statement makes a considerable amount of the content in big city papers into leaches as well. Though by being silent on the opinion sections of papers you're saying that for newspapers it's alright but not for Techdirt.
Perhaps you should learn something about journalism before making idiotic remarks.
Finally, Techdirt, itself, isn't trying to replace newspapers. There are sites like HuffPo which are and doing very well at it, whether or not you agree with their editorial stand or slant.
On the post: Hacktivist Judo: Musician Exploits New Spanish Law To Overwhelm System With Legitimate Infringement Complaints
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I suspect assuming as you offer no evidence of that or anything close to it. So, if all else fails it's smear time, right?
On the post: Dear Big Newspapers: Keep Putting Up Silly Paywalls And Clear The Internet Field For Us 'Newcomers'
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On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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Torn between the analog and the digital the "older generation" becomes responsible for outrages such as SOPA and PIPA and ACTA without really understanding the effects on either or both.
Analog scrap-booking always involved wholesale copyright infringement because it largely involved cutting up such things as high gloss magazines and pasting them into scrapbooks which they would then show around proudly to friends and associates crammed full of pictures from LIFE, National Geographic, maybe People, whatever took their fancy. Well done scrapbooks are works of art all in themselves but this was in the days before, well before, the rise of copyright extremists.
Do it on the Web and the copyright extremists go nuts. For now do it cutting and pasting into a scrapbook passes them by. Until, I guess, one of them that is truly a work of art is sold at a church fundraiser.
Damned religious pirates!
Piracy exists, no doubt about it. We've discussed the reasons why till we're collectively blue in the face so we know why. Except for those in terminal denial.
Thing is, you can't legislate against it in the digital world and NOT affect things in the analog world.
I am one of the "older generation" who worked in and saw the change in the telecom industry from analog telephone companies to the digital behemoths they've become today. I knew by the early 1980s that it was either jump into digital or lose my ability to do my job well and efficiently or at all. Hence my jump into first a TRS-80 CoCo to the small collection of machines I have now, one way or another.
Thing is though that we, The NotWeb Kids, if you like are part of the both the analog and digital aspects of The Machine whether or not we want to be. As the movie Modern Times showed we didn't understand the analog machine particularly well even as we became part of it so that we wouldn't understand the digital one as it surrounds us and takes us in doesn't surprise me.
And no, the digital revolution wasn't televised, wasn't covered in newspapers or magazines, radio ignored it and very few of us talked about it in bars or coffee shops other than that newfangled email thing and perhaps chats programs.
Unlike the WebKids we became part of the digital machine reluctantly or we didn't know we were. We were and are strangers is a very strange land, most of us. Even big content.
Big Content didn't televise the digital revolution not simply out of spite but because reporters and journalists are educated as arts students and know next to nothing about science or technology. They missed it completely. And by the time they noticed it, as this thing they call "piracy", the jig was up, the revolution had happened and nothing they can do will roll it back.
The Big Content of its day reacted against the printing press too and the changes it brought. Back then it was with war and blood. I pray that as a species we've grown up some since then.
On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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Modern vehicles are chock a block with sensors and computers and a master computer "that rules them all" and the manufacturers guard the diagnostic software like it's the Holy Grail. (None of which means it hasn't been hacked/cracked and otherwise broken into so people can load them onto laptops as do the work in their own independent garage.)
Given your attitude here I'm shocked you'd help those "morons" to get their wipers to work or explain the mysteries of cruise control to them and all the good deeds you seem to do. Glad to hear it.
A significant number of the kids written about in the manifesto know how the internet works, how DNS, works and how to get things like Apache off the ground so you can actually have yourself a web site. But none of that is contrary to what is being said there.
They use the Internet the same way people have used libraries, coffee shops, and many things my bunch are used to to learn, debate, establish and end relationships including close, intimate ones, to trade photos (before the copyright purists got their knickers in a knot it was called scrapbooking and no one cared), swap tales, recommend e-books, print books, movies and to shake their heads at the total ignorance and stupidity of their elders at just what they do there which, as the manifesto says, they live there.
Much as we boomers lived in sports fields, bars, basements blasting out the latest LP and doing just about everything these people are doing. And they do a lot of it instead of the hour long phone calls our parents railed at us about. Instead it's the Web. That and I'll bet the Web Kids do, actually, find time to meet face to face too as that's a critical part of human society that the Internet can't replace -- yet.
The Web kids aren't computer illiterate, far from it. Thier literacy is expressed in ways far different from those of us who had to rip the innards out of our Apple II, Trash-80s and IBM PCs to make them work sometimes.
For them, their computers be they smart phones, laptops, desktops, iPads or whatever are an extention of themselves much in the way the land line telephone was and is for the pre-Web kids. That thing they pick up to communicate with their peers when their friends aren't around for everything from meeting up to planning protests around things like ACTA.
I find it amusing when the "what are those kids coming to these days" question is fired off by people who don't even know them or who have only experienced them on the surface or news reports.
It reminds me so much of what was said in the 1950s, 60s and 70s about Boomers.
And we Boomers are left being in the uncomfortable position of being the power elite we used to protest against. This time it's us.
And, to judge from silliness like ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and many other attempts to regulate the Web for the advantage of a wealthy, privileged few at the expense of the many we deserve it. We're just upset cause we see ourselves as the ones angry with those same entrenched groups and get our knickers in a knot when a mirror is held up to us proving that we became what we loudly said we opposed.
We've become a part of the machine. And we can't even see it.
On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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High prices are more a factor for likes of publishers and recording and motion picture studios than they are for the creation of content itself. Yes, I know that the technologies needed to produce books, sound recordings and motion pictures (including television shows) were and, to a degree still are very expensive. But that's a technical issue not an issue of creation itself.
On the post: Josef Anvil's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
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It covers why the rest of what we read and comment on here is often so important and vital from a cultural and societal perspective. And the profound change the Web has made and is still making.
On the post: Dear Big Newspapers: Keep Putting Up Silly Paywalls And Clear The Internet Field For Us 'Newcomers'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Response to: DanMitchell on Mar 2nd, 2012 @ 8:00pm
Sure, important things like municipal and metro halls are covered. Perhaps over covered at times but covered, complete with carefully cultivated contacts where the contact benefits the reporter/paper and the contact themselves. But the day of the beat reporter has largely gone the way of the beat cop. Too expensive and too labour intensive. The vast majority of big city reporters work scheduled hours these days, outside of the "if it bleeds it leads" sort of story.
Even then the papers almost beg for people to send in pictures and stories of events which the paper then assumes the copyright of for what amounts to a few minutes of rewrite and phone calls. Big city radio and TV stations do the same.
Like so many other things these days journalism is undergoing a sea change. It's not EVER going back to the way it was. For where Web savvy people go for their information these days I'd suggest you go read this little manifesto again: http://pastebin.com/0xXV8k7k
Not all those people are under 30s or young at all. One of the most web savvy people I know is an elderly lady in her 80s who rides around on a motorized wheelchair thing that she drives like a F1 race car, is constantly checking her blackberry and looking around for interesting places on the Web, then taking part in the discussions. I mentioned once that she might want to slow down because of RSI that might develop in her wrists and thumb, she grinned, giggled and told me her hands were very arthritic so she didn't care and added that it was well worth a little more pain to be exposed to people, places and a world she barely knew existed.
Not that she's not plugged in locally. She still picks up the local small town paper and reads what interests her and the want ads. She's part of the town Seniors Group and gets them the newest Wii and xBox games.
What leaves big city papers unread is the mere fact that most of them these days is unedited wire service copy cut and pasted using computers and printed by computer as well. Even local copy is often credited to the likes of AP, CP (Canadian Press) and Reuters which says volumes about who does a large percentage of "local" reporting.
What will we see in the near and distant future in newspapers or whatever replaces them? I have no idea. Except to say it won't be what those of us who grew up with papers grew up with. Probably nothing near it.
And that's a good thing.
On the post: Time To Go: Why EU Commissioner De Gucht Has Disqualified Himself From Handling ACTA
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Even if you are correct then please explain why the gatekeepers who are pushing this nonsense continue to make record profits. When you can explain this then we might just listen to you. Until then, happy trolling!
On the post: Time To Go: Why EU Commissioner De Gucht Has Disqualified Himself From Handling ACTA
Sadly, he isn't as we have experienced with SOPA/PIPA and new IP acts in other countries. The gatekeepers and their hired guns will continue their FUD campaign in spite of evidence that infringement actually increases sales and a good, easily found Web presence does demonstrate that music, movies and so on will be purchased instead of "pirated". Amazon and iTunes are great examples of this.
What is truly sad is the complete unwillingness of those in positions of power and influence to understand that in many ways the Web is changing everything much in the same way the printing press did only much, much faster.
ACTA may be or is in serious trouble in Europe which would spell the end of this abomination but that the lies and deliberate misreading of what's happening will continue.
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