"I have the right to stop all derivatives of my work because these are lost sales I am missing out on. My livelihood is at stake."
*said derivative actually increases sales for the original*
"I hereby give permission for this particular derivative to be put up. You see? Because copyright allows me to give permission where I want, those additional sales are actually because of copyright law working in my favour!"
This whole mentality is set up as what we might call an "unfalsifiable claim", a sign of weak rational thinking and intellectual dishonesty. If the test for lack of copyright enforcement is strung up so much that it can't be tested properly, the mentality isn't valid at all.
If you yell fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire, and people get injured trying to escape in panic, that's a safety issue regarding the building itself.
Yelling fire when there really is a fire can cause the same injuries in said burning crowded theatre, and I think injured people in this situation would be quite ready to blame the design of the building and lack of crowd control first and foremost, and not really be ready to entertain the possibility of shifting the blame had the yelling been false.
Point is, when you've got a powder keg, any random spark that sets it off is nowhere near as important or dangerous as the powder keg itself. Would we also ban fire drills on the basis that they too are falsely shouting fire using their sirens, and people get hurt leaving the building? No, you'd blame something else that deserves it.
What is it about copyright courts that just keep retrying and retrying until an infringement is found, and then stop there? That's always the impression I get.
I wonder... if a Computer Science student at university was ever given an exam on encryption for DRM uses, how that exam would go? Perhaps something like this:
"Alice wishes to send a message to Bob without Eve being able to intercept and read the message. Please write an algorithm that allows Bob to read the message whilst preventing Bob from reading the message."
Imagine having the absolute nerve to say speakers of a certain language in a certain country should be forbidden from watching a movie in its full. Or reading a book. Or any free expression. While others can do so. At the sole whim of a copyright holder. In any other situation this would be called discrimination, or in even worse cases than this, xenophobia and racism.
I mean, let me really, really get this straight: if the viewers of these movies decided not to get the fan translations and instead decided to learn how to speak English as a second language, then imported the raw movies to enjoy them in that second language, *it is the viewers who are in the moral wrong and the imports should be banned in order to appease the pathetic solipsism of the copyright holder who doesn't want his movie to even be translated within the privacy of the viewers' own minds?*
What is it that makes people think they're entitled to stop others pressing CTRL-C and CTRL-V within their own homes? These people do not understand the concept of boundaries, privacy, property rights, anything.
"Behold our new policy: the digital-analogue rights management pen hybrid! Now programmed to burn to a crisp its own ink supply upon detecting the writing of infringing poems, even if they're only a toe over the line of fair use! All of our newly government regulated pens connect to a server - yes, only ONE server! - with incredible UDP technology to download all hash signatures of any literature ever written or ever will be written! 100% legal and only $700 each! (A high-speed non-encrypted deep-packet inspection ISP is required, any server costs for the literature hash signatures is passed onto the consumer as agreed upon purchase). Warranties do not cover accidental infringement, deliberate hacking of pens or self-inflicted injury."
Take THAT, big-tech cyber-utopians! You see what YOU brought about, here!?"
Remember, the only thing stopping these scenarios is basic common sense and thankfully massive impracticalities. They would *if they could*.
"In the Deadline piece, however, Nigam alleges that hackers have previously reached out to pirate websites offering $200 to $5000 per day “depending on the size of the pirate website” to have the site infect users with malware. If true, that’s a serious situation and people who would ordinarily use ‘pirate’ sites would definitely appreciate the details. For example, to which sites did hackers make this offer and, crucially, which sites turned down the offer and which ones accepted?
It's important to remember that pirates are just another type of consumer and they would boycott sites in a heartbeat if they discovered they'd been paid to infect them with malware. But, as usual, the claims are extremely light in detail. Instead, there's simply a blanket warning to stay away from all unauthorized sites, which isn't particularly helpful."
I can't hear you over the sound of my Virtual Machine snapshots.
Yes. I'm saying the risk-seeking attitude that he's part of to get new material and less comic-book movies is now in this day and age leading to the opposite and the need to play safe.
An assurance contract method of making a profit would mean if a brand new idea was thrown out to people, you can be safe in the knowledge that there's no harm done if people don't back it, because you won't be throwing money away. In other words, plenty of new material, but no "risk" in the same way. I'll admit though this is only if people want new material. If people want to stick to comic-book movies, well, it can't be helped if that's the market. But at least there's plenty of room to experiment freely with no pain, to throw out ideas and see if people will pledge towards them.
Why do lobbyists for Hollywood like to talk about creative risk-taking as if it's a good thing?
I don't find it a very attractive idea to force working-class creators into the role of entrepreneurial risk-takers against their will. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that when you don't have as much money as others and you are really struggling to make money in the creative world, gambling what time and earnings you have on something as creative "risk" doesn't seem to strike me as wise.
Because that's what copyright forces creators to do. If a creator invests tons of his own labour and money into a project, and then waits to know what the copyrighted benefits will be AFTER that investment, he can't exactly guarantee that recuperation unless it's a known brand of art with plenty of corporate backing or at a minimum selling your soul to a middleman for SOME prospect of return, which is unlikely for artists who are not the top 1%, and of course puts that corporation in the natural position of offsetting all the downsides of any risk onto anyone but themselves (by that I mean the hard-working creators). Just look at the way some musicians have been bankrupted because of this.
Whereas... if you revolve creative economies around assurance contracts, not copyright, look what happens: <i>you know what you're going to make from a project BEFORE you invest all that labour and money</i>. When a band does a gig, we know what the profit will be before the gig starts. When a magazine sells monthly, they know what they will make from their monthly subscriptions before they write their columns. When a crowdfunded piece of art is about to start, we already know how much is made before. When you take tons of time, effort and care into setting up an expensive nature shoot, it doesn't matter if a monkey pressed the shutter, you've still made the money you were going to make anyway because of the assurance contract system of gathering your customers' fees beforehand, and you don't end up down a road of despair and depressing lawsuits.
In each of these cases the creator doesn't gamble - he knows what his profit is going to be, and hence doesn't slave away for what could be nothing in the end.
In fact... if you were to take a job, any job, which was meant to support your daily life, your daily expenses, why on Earth would you sign an employment contract that said "we don't know how much we can pay you because we have no idea if your labour will succeed or not" unless you were anything but the most adventurous risk-taker who thinks it'll all be fine when it comes to pay the bills? No! You want to know what you're damn salary is going to be! Like anyone else!
Why is it that copyright folk want creators to be paid "just like anyone else who has a job" and not be made to work for free, but then immediately demand to be treated <i>differently</i> from any other employee with things such as not even having a basic guarantee of salary?
That's one reason why assurance contracts are superior to copyright, never mind the Monopoly Money connotation copyright has.
Assurance contracts are not callous enough to keep demanding that poor creators take risks all the time, with no guarantee of income.
There are several steps I'm visualising right now that could happen in the future:
- Canada claims actions taken in the U.S. break Canadian counterfeit laws.
- Canada then claims that even although the action happened outside Canada's borders, it is still permissible to prosecute Google because Google ARE within Canadian borders. I.e. even although Canada's democratic laws only hold within Canada, it still means anyone in Canada can be subject to them, hence you can still hold folk in Canada accountable to Canadian law without infringing the sovereignty of another country such as the U.S.
- So... the logical next step for Google is for them not to have any of their employees step foot in Canada. And use as many proxies as they need to keep business going there, such as shell companies and literal proxy servers.
- Canada still claims a Canadian law has been broken by Google, and the only method left to get anyone prosecuted is to send an extradition request to the U.S. to request they deport Google employees to Canada for prosecution.
- Now the issue falls to how both countries agree on extradition treaties (and treaties in general). If it signs a treaty with respect to counterfeit items, both democracies have consent, hence it is now morally acceptable on a treaty/extradition level. However the democratic consent of both nations is required. This is why we can quite rightly shun and laugh at requests from North Korea to send over all critics of the regime within the U.S.
- Though the U.S. would have to decide if the First Amendment survives its confrontation with what Canada and other countries demand in such treaties in cases of free expression, such as hate speech and prior restraint. As the U.S. is unlikely to compromise on the First Amendment we can assume it will be the standard.
- Some may say the U.S.'s First Amendment is actually infringing the sovereignty of <i>Canada</i> at this point as there's no way to enforce Canada's speech provisions. Not true. The other option left would be to get Canada's ISPs to "stop at the border" any unacceptable internet speech "traffic", hence each country correctly has dominion over their turf. No different to customs checks at the border, in fact. But there's a big problem.
- Anyone who's been at an airport knows how long customs checks can take, so try to visualise every packet, every decryption, every stenographic hiding, every coded message of any kind never mind plain message, <i>for every ISP that connects to anything outside of Canada, as even if you were to block all U.S. connections, you can use a third-country to proxy round it</i>. It would be like putting a huge border wall across all of Canada's internet cables as they leave Canadian territory. And every single solitary bit out of the petabytes that is "traded" every day across Canada would have to be vetted. By HUMANS, as we all know as even the most automated deep packet inspectors can't see encrypted traffic. Such a wall would have to make Trump's Mexican border wall look like a row of rice-grains.
- There is no way this is going to happen without THE most isolationist Canada-first approach that is willing to risk Canada's economy with the rest of the world just for the sake of enforcing its CAN (Canadian Area Network) and in turn becoming fully independent generating all its resources from within. Only then can you enforce your sub-section of your speech laws.
- So to conclude, it's interesting to remember how borderless our world is compared to centuries ago. The isolationists of the world such as Trump and Brexiteers still haven't seen how their world is quite gone yet.
- Copyright believers will of course still insist that a border wall can be enforced around every digital copy of their work across the planet. No sane person can possibly say copyright law deserves credit for any money an artist now makes in this age.
There's another word for changing the artistic meaning of something sacred that was used throughout history, I forget now... It made a lot of people angry and they wanted to stop it. What was it?
Oh yeah. "Blasphemy."
They did well to stop that from ever happening, didn't they?
Ownership of expression is not compatible with freedom of expression. And not possible.
Take for example the many ways religions have tried to claim ownership of who can express their holy books and in what way, even reproduction of holy books without "permission", yet the Reformation still happened. It's no good saying that people put lots of work into those stain-glass windows, cathedrals and paintings and therefore all appropriation (i.e. blasphemy) and piracy is off limits - in the end they all get copied, and quite rightly.
Can you imagine the ridiculousness of saying the King James Bible should never have come into existance because it was an infringement?
Or that famous works of literature should be banned from other countries' languages based entirely on the whims of the copyright holders? How much more anti-free-expression can it get than that? Denying the rights of people to read a book if they speak the wrong language. And insisting this power to do so should have a place in civilisation.
Freedom of expression isn't just about the right to speak your mind remember: it is also the right of everyone to read and listen.
"and there's no way to reconstruct the original order."
Except the hidden script that would record the order in memory. If this were an attempted magic trick shuffling cards, an audience would be quite right to assume something else is going on inside that CPU and it would be a lousy trick, because computers can't be trusted to really shuffle the cards.
With an empty tangible box that can be witnessed to be locked in that empty state beforehand, not even the most sophisticated trick-boxes in the world would be able to tell from hundreds of folded, concealed papers which order they went in.
People can see empty boxes, they can't see empty bits.
"...for decades: paper ballots hand counted locally reported"
Also, arguably the most crucial: shuffled. So that voter anonymity is protected.
When the votes are in that box, nobody knows who voted for who as they are all mixed up, not even the "shuffler". Not even a good magician can pull off any sneaky zarrow techniques in these circumstances. This way you can't tell who voted what by taking a note of the order voters walked into the booths.
Try making computers scramble the votes in the same way and you can't do it. Because since the votes have to be stored in memory at some point, it is possible to record the order in which they were stored. Doesn't matter if you entropy-shuffle it after: the damage of storing the order in the first place had already been done.
Digital voting is a utopia, even from a blockchain perspective. It doesn't work, and the paper ballot is superior for this reason of shuffling alone.
On the post: The Wonky Donkey: How Infringement Helped Create A Best Seller... Which Would Be Impossible Under Article 13
"I have the right to stop all derivatives of my work because these are lost sales I am missing out on. My livelihood is at stake."
*said derivative actually increases sales for the original*
"I hereby give permission for this particular derivative to be put up. You see? Because copyright allows me to give permission where I want, those additional sales are actually because of copyright law working in my favour!"
This whole mentality is set up as what we might call an "unfalsifiable claim", a sign of weak rational thinking and intellectual dishonesty. If the test for lack of copyright enforcement is strung up so much that it can't be tested properly, the mentality isn't valid at all.
On the post: The Satanic Temple Apparently Believes In Copyright And Is Suing Netflix For $50 Million It Will Not Get
...oh wait, you pretty much do see that every day.
On the post: Court Dismisses Bogus Charges Brought Against Nevada Man Who Pissed Off Local Cops By Using The Crosswalk
Yelling fire when there really is a fire can cause the same injuries in said burning crowded theatre, and I think injured people in this situation would be quite ready to blame the design of the building and lack of crowd control first and foremost, and not really be ready to entertain the possibility of shifting the blame had the yelling been false.
Point is, when you've got a powder keg, any random spark that sets it off is nowhere near as important or dangerous as the powder keg itself. Would we also ban fire drills on the basis that they too are falsely shouting fire using their sirens, and people get hurt leaving the building? No, you'd blame something else that deserves it.
On the post: 9th Circuit Never Misses A Chance To Mess Up Copyright Law: Reopens Led Zeppelin 'Stairway To Heaven' Case
On the post: Free Speech Pro-Tip: You Can Yell Fire In A Crowded Theatre
Re:
Dumb fire drills. Always putting lives in danger.
On the post: Monkey Selfie Photographer Says He's Now Going To Sue Wikipedia
Re:
On the post: Multiple Titles Using Denuvo Cracked On Release Day As Other Titles Planning To Use It Bail On It Completely
"Alice wishes to send a message to Bob without Eve being able to intercept and read the message. Please write an algorithm that allows Bob to read the message whilst preventing Bob from reading the message."
On the post: With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
I mean, let me really, really get this straight: if the viewers of these movies decided not to get the fan translations and instead decided to learn how to speak English as a second language, then imported the raw movies to enjoy them in that second language, *it is the viewers who are in the moral wrong and the imports should be banned in order to appease the pathetic solipsism of the copyright holder who doesn't want his movie to even be translated within the privacy of the viewers' own minds?*
Because there is no difference there.
On the post: With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
Re: Re: Med domstolsregleringen, Fläktens undertexter Officiellt upphovsrättsintrång i Sverige
On the post: Music Industry Is Painting A Target On YouTube Ripping Sites, Despite Their Many Non-Infringing Uses
"Behold our new policy: the digital-analogue rights management pen hybrid! Now programmed to burn to a crisp its own ink supply upon detecting the writing of infringing poems, even if they're only a toe over the line of fair use! All of our newly government regulated pens connect to a server - yes, only ONE server! - with incredible UDP technology to download all hash signatures of any literature ever written or ever will be written! 100% legal and only $700 each! (A high-speed non-encrypted deep-packet inspection ISP is required, any server costs for the literature hash signatures is passed onto the consumer as agreed upon purchase). Warranties do not cover accidental infringement, deliberate hacking of pens or self-inflicted injury."
Take THAT, big-tech cyber-utopians! You see what YOU brought about, here!?"
Remember, the only thing stopping these scenarios is basic common sense and thankfully massive impracticalities. They would *if they could*.
On the post: The MPAA Narrative About Piracy Flips To Danger From Pirate Sites Now That It Has Lost The Moral Argument
It's important to remember that pirates are just another type of consumer and they would boycott sites in a heartbeat if they discovered they'd been paid to infect them with malware. But, as usual, the claims are extremely light in detail. Instead, there's simply a blanket warning to stay away from all unauthorized sites, which isn't particularly helpful."
I can't hear you over the sound of my Virtual Machine snapshots.
On the post: Film Director's Op-Ed Ignores Reality To Push Hollywood Lobbying Talking Points
An assurance contract method of making a profit would mean if a brand new idea was thrown out to people, you can be safe in the knowledge that there's no harm done if people don't back it, because you won't be throwing money away. In other words, plenty of new material, but no "risk" in the same way. I'll admit though this is only if people want new material. If people want to stick to comic-book movies, well, it can't be helped if that's the market. But at least there's plenty of room to experiment freely with no pain, to throw out ideas and see if people will pledge towards them.
On the post: Film Director's Op-Ed Ignores Reality To Push Hollywood Lobbying Talking Points
I don't find it a very attractive idea to force working-class creators into the role of entrepreneurial risk-takers against their will. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that when you don't have as much money as others and you are really struggling to make money in the creative world, gambling what time and earnings you have on something as creative "risk" doesn't seem to strike me as wise.
Because that's what copyright forces creators to do. If a creator invests tons of his own labour and money into a project, and then waits to know what the copyrighted benefits will be AFTER that investment, he can't exactly guarantee that recuperation unless it's a known brand of art with plenty of corporate backing or at a minimum selling your soul to a middleman for SOME prospect of return, which is unlikely for artists who are not the top 1%, and of course puts that corporation in the natural position of offsetting all the downsides of any risk onto anyone but themselves (by that I mean the hard-working creators). Just look at the way some musicians have been bankrupted because of this.
Whereas... if you revolve creative economies around assurance contracts, not copyright, look what happens: <i>you know what you're going to make from a project BEFORE you invest all that labour and money</i>. When a band does a gig, we know what the profit will be before the gig starts. When a magazine sells monthly, they know what they will make from their monthly subscriptions before they write their columns. When a crowdfunded piece of art is about to start, we already know how much is made before. When you take tons of time, effort and care into setting up an expensive nature shoot, it doesn't matter if a monkey pressed the shutter, you've still made the money you were going to make anyway because of the assurance contract system of gathering your customers' fees beforehand, and you don't end up down a road of despair and depressing lawsuits.
In each of these cases the creator doesn't gamble - he knows what his profit is going to be, and hence doesn't slave away for what could be nothing in the end.
In fact... if you were to take a job, any job, which was meant to support your daily life, your daily expenses, why on Earth would you sign an employment contract that said "we don't know how much we can pay you because we have no idea if your labour will succeed or not" unless you were anything but the most adventurous risk-taker who thinks it'll all be fine when it comes to pay the bills? No! You want to know what you're damn salary is going to be! Like anyone else!
Why is it that copyright folk want creators to be paid "just like anyone else who has a job" and not be made to work for free, but then immediately demand to be treated <i>differently</i> from any other employee with things such as not even having a basic guarantee of salary?
That's one reason why assurance contracts are superior to copyright, never mind the Monopoly Money connotation copyright has.
Assurance contracts are not callous enough to keep demanding that poor creators take risks all the time, with no guarantee of income.
On the post: Google Asks US Court To Block Terrible Canadian Supreme Court Ruling On Global Censorship
- Canada claims actions taken in the U.S. break Canadian counterfeit laws.
- Canada then claims that even although the action happened outside Canada's borders, it is still permissible to prosecute Google because Google ARE within Canadian borders. I.e. even although Canada's democratic laws only hold within Canada, it still means anyone in Canada can be subject to them, hence you can still hold folk in Canada accountable to Canadian law without infringing the sovereignty of another country such as the U.S.
- So... the logical next step for Google is for them not to have any of their employees step foot in Canada. And use as many proxies as they need to keep business going there, such as shell companies and literal proxy servers.
- Canada still claims a Canadian law has been broken by Google, and the only method left to get anyone prosecuted is to send an extradition request to the U.S. to request they deport Google employees to Canada for prosecution.
- Now the issue falls to how both countries agree on extradition treaties (and treaties in general). If it signs a treaty with respect to counterfeit items, both democracies have consent, hence it is now morally acceptable on a treaty/extradition level. However the democratic consent of both nations is required. This is why we can quite rightly shun and laugh at requests from North Korea to send over all critics of the regime within the U.S.
- Though the U.S. would have to decide if the First Amendment survives its confrontation with what Canada and other countries demand in such treaties in cases of free expression, such as hate speech and prior restraint. As the U.S. is unlikely to compromise on the First Amendment we can assume it will be the standard.
- Some may say the U.S.'s First Amendment is actually infringing the sovereignty of <i>Canada</i> at this point as there's no way to enforce Canada's speech provisions. Not true. The other option left would be to get Canada's ISPs to "stop at the border" any unacceptable internet speech "traffic", hence each country correctly has dominion over their turf. No different to customs checks at the border, in fact. But there's a big problem.
- Anyone who's been at an airport knows how long customs checks can take, so try to visualise every packet, every decryption, every stenographic hiding, every coded message of any kind never mind plain message, <i>for every ISP that connects to anything outside of Canada, as even if you were to block all U.S. connections, you can use a third-country to proxy round it</i>. It would be like putting a huge border wall across all of Canada's internet cables as they leave Canadian territory. And every single solitary bit out of the petabytes that is "traded" every day across Canada would have to be vetted. By HUMANS, as we all know as even the most automated deep packet inspectors can't see encrypted traffic. Such a wall would have to make Trump's Mexican border wall look like a row of rice-grains.
- There is no way this is going to happen without THE most isolationist Canada-first approach that is willing to risk Canada's economy with the rest of the world just for the sake of enforcing its CAN (Canadian Area Network) and in turn becoming fully independent generating all its resources from within. Only then can you enforce your sub-section of your speech laws.
- So to conclude, it's interesting to remember how borderless our world is compared to centuries ago. The isolationists of the world such as Trump and Brexiteers still haven't seen how their world is quite gone yet.
- Copyright believers will of course still insist that a border wall can be enforced around every digital copy of their work across the planet. No sane person can possibly say copyright law deserves credit for any money an artist now makes in this age.
On the post: Dutch Court Rules That Freely Given Fan-Subtitles Are Copyright Infringement
On the post: No, The Wall St. Bull Sculptor Doesn't 'Have A Point'
Oh yeah. "Blasphemy."
They did well to stop that from ever happening, didn't they?
On the post: Copyright Has A Real & Serious Free Speech Problem
Take for example the many ways religions have tried to claim ownership of who can express their holy books and in what way, even reproduction of holy books without "permission", yet the Reformation still happened. It's no good saying that people put lots of work into those stain-glass windows, cathedrals and paintings and therefore all appropriation (i.e. blasphemy) and piracy is off limits - in the end they all get copied, and quite rightly.
Can you imagine the ridiculousness of saying the King James Bible should never have come into existance because it was an infringement?
Or that famous works of literature should be banned from other countries' languages based entirely on the whims of the copyright holders? How much more anti-free-expression can it get than that? Denying the rights of people to read a book if they speak the wrong language. And insisting this power to do so should have a place in civilisation.
Freedom of expression isn't just about the right to speak your mind remember: it is also the right of everyone to read and listen.
On the post: Ex-MI6 Boss: When It Comes To Voting, Pencil And Paper Are 'Much More Secure' Than Electronic Systems
Re: Re: Re: been bitching about voting systems...
Except the hidden script that would record the order in memory. If this were an attempted magic trick shuffling cards, an audience would be quite right to assume something else is going on inside that CPU and it would be a lousy trick, because computers can't be trusted to really shuffle the cards.
With an empty tangible box that can be witnessed to be locked in that empty state beforehand, not even the most sophisticated trick-boxes in the world would be able to tell from hundreds of folded, concealed papers which order they went in.
People can see empty boxes, they can't see empty bits.
On the post: Ex-MI6 Boss: When It Comes To Voting, Pencil And Paper Are 'Much More Secure' Than Electronic Systems
Re: been bitching about voting systems...
paper ballots
hand counted
locally reported"
Also, arguably the most crucial: shuffled. So that voter anonymity is protected.
When the votes are in that box, nobody knows who voted for who as they are all mixed up, not even the "shuffler". Not even a good magician can pull off any sneaky zarrow techniques in these circumstances. This way you can't tell who voted what by taking a note of the order voters walked into the booths.
Try making computers scramble the votes in the same way and you can't do it. Because since the votes have to be stored in memory at some point, it is possible to record the order in which they were stored. Doesn't matter if you entropy-shuffle it after: the damage of storing the order in the first place had already been done.
Digital voting is a utopia, even from a blockchain perspective. It doesn't work, and the paper ballot is superior for this reason of shuffling alone.
On the post: How Pirates Shaped The Internet As We Know It
Re: Re: Re:
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