British ISPs Fail To Defeat Digital Economy Act 184
judgecorp writes "ISPs objecting to the British government's Digital Economy Act have lost a court challenge which argued the Act breaches fundamental rights. There's still room to appeal, but it looks like alleged file sharers will be getting warning letters next year."
British DMCA? (Score:2)
I admit, I've been living under a rock, but what is this Digital Economy Act?
Re:British DMCA? (Score:4, Funny)
It's something that returns a bunch of results when you type it into a search engine. You should try it.
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The Digital Economy Act was a piece of legislation rushed through at the end of the last parliament just before the election. It's common to do a sort of tidy-up before an election usually this is with the less controversial bills.
The act requires ISPs to send warning letters to infringers and may be used to force ISPs to disconnect the
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The act requires ISPs to send warning letters to infringers and may be used to force ISPs to disconnect the service for repeat infringers. This is seen as placing too heavy a burdn on the ISPs and somewhat draconian against accused file sharers, especially because they may not actually be guilty of any wrongdoing.
It should be pointed out also that ISPs don't send these warning letters and disconnect people on the behest of a court decision, they are required to do these acts simply on the say-so of a copyright holder who is alleging (without proving) that a customer of the ISP is infringing their copyright. There also appears to be no process for the affected customer to appeal the decision.
I'm all for enforcing the law, but doing so without involving the courts is unacceptable - this is similar to someone being lo
Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
And as the world flattened, and the West lost its historical advantages over the rest of the world, one hope remained. The Internet. Anglophone, agile, it offered a future where the talent and skills of Europe and America could earn their keep in a world starving for digital products. Sure, export all your industrial capacity to Asia. But they'll be importing their digital services from the West. Win-win.
Except it didn't happen like that. Patents and copyright, originally designed to protect the rights of a few, spread like cancer in the new digital economy. The "rights holders" and their lawyers wielded disproportionate influence over politicians. The newer digital businesses, though larger, didn't focus exclusively on control, lobbying, political influence, and protectionism.
One by one, the startups failed. The cost and risk of doing business was just too high. The Internet, once a lawyer-free zone, became the hunting ground for a new breed of legal parasite that used Google to search its prey. Society itself, which in the 21st century found itself heavily digitised, became captive to the "rights owners" and their lawyers.
One by one the digital businesses forced themselves to become involved in politics. It was only in 2024 in Europe, and a full decade later in the USA that the first pro-digital political parties took control of major power blocks. In the 21st century, there was no left, no right. There was only forwards, and backwards.
Re:Race to the bottom (Score:4, Insightful)
Note: I really do believe that copyright is as bad as patents. Yes, I release all my software under the GPLv3, which depends entirely on copyright law, but it's a hack. In the ideal digital world, sharing of culture would not be optional. Areas of industry without copyright-like protection - like fashion - are hugely successful. Copyright is a 15th century concept designed to stop the free sharing of information. Copyright originated as censorship.
To those who will argue, inevitably, that without patent and copyright, people will not produce, kindly either look at history, or the real world. Competing through production is not an option. It takes a Soviet-style destruction of private property to dissuade us to produce. In every study, the more law tries to encourage "innovation" by privatising our culture, the less we produce. This would be obvious to the advocates for such privatisation if they actually produced anything of value, ever, in their own lives.
Culture and ideas and technology and works of art are "private property" only in the warped mindset of an intellectual property lawyer. I challenge that advocate to invent his own alphabet and language, build his own Internet and browser, and come back when his ability to speak nonsense is not entirely dependent on the culture freely shared by others.
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I disagree, not because people will not produce, but because without copyright, there will be nothing to produce that has any inherent value other than food. Everything else can always be made by somebody else cheaper, and to some extent, even food can....
The problem is not that patents and copyright are inherently bad. The problem is that copyright should be 14 years with the option to extend for another 14. After you've created something, you should be able to make money on it for a limited period of t
Re:Race to the bottom (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that copyright should be 14 years with the option to extend for another 14. After you've created something, you should be able to make money on it for a limited period of time, and then it should go into the public domain while people still care about it enough to preserve it. And patent duration should depend on the field. For slow-moving fields, it might be twenty years. For high-tech fields, it should be more like three. And for individual inventors working independently, the duration should be longer than for patents-for-hire.
You are essentially arguing that we should be stifling innovation, just more slowly. That is nonsense and doesn't fly. Copyright is an outdated mechanism. A new one is needed that compensates the creator without allowing the creator control or limitation. In the simplest instance you should be able to "sue for your cut". Even that has it's problems but it's a better compromise than limiting usage of a creation.
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You are essentially arguing that we should be stifling innovation, just more slowly. That is nonsense and doesn't fly.
No, he clearly argues that a shorter copyright is better than both what we have now and nothing at all. You misstated his argument.
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Morons on slashdot constantly make that assertion but never actually say why or how things would work without it. And even worse, the stupidity of such statements completely destroys massive segments of the world economy and brings a halt to innovation in the technology communities.
Starting your argument with an ad-hominem attack, and then moving to unfounded claims of disaster don't really convince. You use a faith-based argument, which is predictable since copyright is basically medieval economic voodoo.
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The problem with relying on patronage is that it just doesn't make enough to pay for high budget TV shows. Stargate Universe is around $2,000,000 an episode, and getting someone to invest that kind of money in a show relies on the guarantee of returns from TV advertising and DVD sales. Would anyone invest if the only income was from fans donating? It seems unlikely, so either shows would have to get a lot cheaper (meaning less sci-fi which is always pricey) or not get made.
Technology is improving the situat
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Starting your argument with an ad-hominem attack, and then moving to unfounded claims of disaster don't really convince. You use a faith-based argument, which is predictable since copyright is basically medieval economic voodoo. Create barriers and friction, and magically you will create wealth! Bzzzt... wrong. Remove barriers and friction, and you will, scientifically, create wealth. Except it won't be in the hands of a powerful minority, won't be as visible, and won't make the politicians leap with joy because there won't be cushy jobs afterwards.
I think if you try arguing copyright has always been wrong, you will need better arguments than calling it "medieval economic voodoo". Copyright used to take power away from powerful middlemen with printing presses who controlled production and distribution and into the hands of creators. Up until a few decades ago there wasn't really any other choice, the common man had no means of doing anything. Then difference between then and now is that computers (production = copying) and Internet (distribution) mean
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Rolling eyes is literally impossible. As for the unfounded, sorry, but that's the facts.
You've been watching too many anti-piracy trailers and wouldn't know a fact if it bit you hard on the rear.
Its the pro-pirates who want to displace the current economic status quo.
The current status quo is drivel. Idiot "artists" overpaid for mediocre fast food junk books, songs and movies.
Accordingly, its completely on your shoulders to prove conventional wisdom and hundreds of years of economic theory is completely wrong.
Easy: Britney Spears.
So glad to know you consider the world economy to be "voodoo." That really showed me. Ouch.
Ugh...and the stupidity of the China comment - they've literally grown (by graft and theft) on the shoulders of everyone who does have a copyright system.
I wonder how much "Made in China" stuff you're using to broadcast that stupid disrespectful comment.
Any other stupidity to offer.
Seriously, its so annoying to have such completely stupid and factually wrong arguments offered up as the pro-pirate debate.
You're the one who brought up the pro-pirate debate. Your favourite word seems to be stupid. Stupid is as stupid does.
Honestly I've grown bored refuting your gibberish so I'
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And you have justified nothing about your argument.
You claim it would destroy the world economy yet you offer no argument.
you only have faith that copyright an other IP laws are the only way.
I'm guessing that you yourself make your income from the current system and think we're bad people for arguing against you.
But imagine.
Imagine a world where cooking wasn't covered by IP law you'd never be able to set up your own restaurant!
Why would a chef ever come up with a new recipe?
Surely if he came up with a good
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McDonalds would, assuming they could make it for under a dollar in a production line in the back of a fast food restaurant with three or four people in the back. For anything that is more complex than that or costs more than that, they wouldn't. And that's why people are willing to pay more for good food. It requires time and ef
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Copyright pre-dates the time when the things it covered were free to copy: printing presses, typsetters etc were a major investment, a far larger investment than the actual writing of the book in question.
so by your own argument the whole idea of copyright was utterly without merit until some time in the 1970's.
Music still takes significant skill and effort to perform. it is not free to perform in person.
but for some inexplicable reason you have to pay royalties for playing a copyrighted piece by hand on an
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That works to a very limited degree for music. On the other hand, what about all those people who might have bought a CD after the show, but won't now because they can download it for free? That translates to less money even for the people at the very bott
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Copyright is an outdated mechanism.
Morons on slashdot constantly make that assertion but never actually say why or how things would work without it.
I see you've read how to make friend and influence people. If you bothered to both READ and COMPREHEND what i had said without throwing around childish abuse, you might have actually come across my assertion that compensating the artist should not be tied to allowing them to control the work. I suggested that the creator should be allowed to sue (or perhaps claim would be a better word) if someone uses their work.
And even worse, the stupidity of such statements completely destroys massive segments of the world economy and brings a halt to innovation in the technology communities.
So please, explain in detail how destroying the world economy and creating massive unemployment is an excellent idea.
That is called a straw man, since I did not assert that we should destroy the economy or any ot
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So instead of the lawyers getting rich on copyrights and patents, as happens now, you want the lawyers to get rich on things that aren't copyrighted and patented?
If you allow the creator to sue (or perhaps claim would be a better word), then you're going to make his lawyer rich. And the defendant's lawyer.
And if you don't think lawyers will be involved on both sides (yes, there's mon
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Hope you enjoy paying a few tens of millions of dollars for that laptop. Because if people can't continue making money off of designing them, that's what it is going to cost you to hire engineers to design and build one for you. The only reason you can afford any consumer goods is that the designer was able to distribute the staggering R&D over millions of consumers. Without that, stagnation is the least of your worries.
Re:Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be claiming that copyright is the basis for a successful economy. You also seem to believe that society has an obligation to feed its artists, musicians, computer programmers, and actors. Lastly, and most amusingly, you seem to claim that the copyright system currently reward these groups, rather than, for example, executives, lawyers, marketing directors, and CEOs.
Firstly, economies work (or fail) on the basis of specialization and trade. This is a basic mechanism, like natural and sexual selection are basic mechanisms for evolution. Economies depend on people dividing up larger problems into smaller ones, and trading solutions. You make bread, I'll make beer, we'll trade. Money of course allows abstraction of this trade, and consequent scaling. Copyright plays no roles in this system except to limit its efficiency, and create friction. There is no benefit to society in individuals or groups owning any part of the culture needed. It is in fact the opposite.
Second, and I'm a computer programmer, but nonetheless: society has no obligation to feed any particular sector except those who cannot look after themselves. Artists, musicians, programmers, writers, and those who would fashion bushes into amusing topiary choose their professions, and do not merit special treatment. The Netherlands tried this. It did, and still does, pay registered artists to produce works. The result is wharehouses filled with junk art. The fact here is that not only do creative people merit no special treatment, but they actually only create valuable works when they are hungry and fairly desperate.
Third, there is no evidence that copyright law helps these people you care about, just as patent law doesn't help "inventors". All forms of privatised culture benefit only those with lawyers and muscle. This also should be obvious, either from studying history (who actually lobbied to create these laws, starting in the 15th century), or by deduction (any law is only tested in the courts, and since these are civil laws, contested between parties, which party will always win? Indeed, it's the one with more and better lawyers and more taste for lawsuits).
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Many creative works have a unique expense profile of being high capital but low margin.
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It would also be pretty rough for musicians, because now they would have to live on revenue from live shows. That's great for acts that bring in a lot of people. It means that the people at the bottom, though—the singer-songwriters and small garage bands of the world—would not be able to use recordings to supplement the pittance that they get from club owners.
You obviously don't know much about how that part of the music industry works.
Most bands, especially the small ones, do not make any significant profits on recordings. They only make any real money by playing in clubs, and for most of them that's just covering costs. Merchandise (t-shirts etc) also brings money. Recordings are promotion, sold at the concert at reasonable prices (i.e. less than half the typical retail shop price for a major-label artist), hopefully to be lent by the concert goer to friends,
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Hah. You mean most signed bands don't make any significant profits on recordings. However, if there are no record labels, there won't be any signed bands, which makes that an irrelevant point.
Most unsigned bands pay out of their own pockets to rent a studio, pay out of their own pockets to sell CDs, and then sell the CDs at their shows at a price designed to make them some profit. It may not be a huge profit, but th
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14 years is too long. 5 years should be long enough. The 14 year limit centuries ago was more fitting than now.
Let's say that you sold a book to a publisher 200+ years ago. They decide to print a small run, and ship it all around the country. What could be done today in a matter of 2 months (maybe less) would have taken almost a year to print, distribute, advertise, get good reviews and word of mouth, sell out and then receive orders for additional copies if a work was unexpectedly popular. Then, you would
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On the flip side, most of the movies I buy are over five years old. I don't buy first-run movies; I wait for the price drop after a few years until they're in the $4.99 bin. In effect, that means that I would never spend money for entertainment. That means that five years is too short.
Also, there's no real incentive to buy or rent a movie or watch it in a theater if you know that just five years of delayed gratification will get you a legal download copy for free.
I'm not saying 28 years isn't too long, m
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It was actually 14+14. But that was in the past where it could take literally years to distribute to all possible customers. Yet copyright terms have been going up rather than down as communications improved.
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Re:Race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the job of the legal system to feed artists, nor inventors, nor entrepreneurs. We all live or die off our ability to create value for others.
As for "all culture should be free" being nonsense and fantasy, realize that the vast majority of culture is free, and always has been. As I wrote in my previous post, your very ability to argue that owning culture is somehow a good thing depends on the massive free sharing by others of their work.
Reasonable middle grounds are fine. But the problem here is that there is no safe dividing line. It's just as with software patents. There is no objective line to be drawn between "good" and "bad". Once you allow some, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope, any defined line will move inexorably. It's obvious, really. If you accept the (and this really is the fantasy) argument that privatised culture is more valuable than shared culture, you will always accept a little more. If one patent is good, two is better and a million even better. If 14 years' copyright is good, 15 is better, and 100 is even better.
It is rather like smallpox. There's no reasonable middle ground. Eradication, abolition of privatized culture (and technology and ideas) is the only sustainable long term situation, and though it's far from an inevitable outcome, it's one worth fighting for.
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Don't know about smallpox, but if you're too poor to find a dollar to pay for a song to support an artist you like, you're probably not making much of a contribution to society anyway. Copyright has problems, but overall it's a reasonable way to ensure that those who enjoy the works give a little contribution back to the creators. And those who don't like it, don't have to give anything.
No, the reasonable way to ensure that CREATORS are supported is education. We should learn from our parents that we should support those CREATORS whom make works that we enjoy. I will support them whether there is a law forcing me to do it or not, because that is how I am educated.
I emphasize the word "creators" because current copyright laws are not made to ensure that we contribute back to creators, they are made so parasites can take those contributions away from the creators so they can profit indefini
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No, the reasonable way to ensure that CREATORS are supported is education. We should learn from our parents that we should support those CREATORS whom make works that we enjoy.
Apparently education doesn't work too well at that, given the high rates of copyright violation that takes place in Universities. Maybe you'd like to expand on what kind of education you have in mind that will help people be as generous as you?
This is how the music industry works, and it is the one behind this laws, and so I don't buy anything but independent music for the time being.
If the musicians decide to give up a large portion of their earnings in exchange for publicity, that is their decision, not mine. It is up to them, whether I think it is a stupid decision or not.
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Don't know about smallpox, but if you're too poor to find a dollar to pay for a song to support an artist you like, you're probably not making much of a contribution to society anyway.
Perhaps your supposed societal non-contributor is also a suffering artist who isn't paid? If people are worthless to society if they are not getting paid and artists are not getting paid -> artists are worthless to society.
With a statement like yours, you must really hate artists. What did they ever do to you?
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i've met some people who were fully into volunteer work and charity. even so that they didn't have anything left for themselves.
i'm somehow thinking that they might have been more useful to the society than somebody who is buying a right to listen to music.
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why should everybody be bent on paying on an artificial monopoly, introduced to motivate people to create more artistic works, and initially limited to way shorter term than has happened to be today ?
you make it sound like people should be better begging for money to guarantee income for another group of people, who... frankly speaking, are not useful to the society. there, i said - society as a whole would be better off with those people doing more productive work, as art and entertainment would be produce
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If you don't like the music or art, you have a choice, don't pay for it. If you enjoy it without giving back to the creator, you're a scumbag, you leach.
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"The simple fact is you dont seem to respect artists' right to profit from their work because you think society as a whole would do better. Is that correct? Fine. You have no basis for that comparision and no way to even measure it, but fine. And again historically, we know that artists have struggled under such conditions. So the evidence is against you. Do you apply this to all professions? No one should profit, all should share everything? It's not an un-heard-of position to hold. But let's be clear, if
My argument for shorter copyright terms. (Score:2)
Note: I really do believe that copyright is as bad as patents.
Copyright doesn't prevent you from doing anything that you'd be able to do if there was no copyright.
On a practical level, yes it does. The problem is that when you create a work (a film for instance) there's an added cost involved in "clearing" any copyrighted material that may be included in the work. One could respond by saying "so don't include anyone else's copyrighted material in your work" but that work is everywhere. It pervades our culture. From that perspective I would say that copyright is too powerful.
Would big budget movies get made at all without copyright? Would we see as many songs if songwriters couldn't support themselves through writing songs?
Personally my problem with copyright is the extent of its power, not the nature of it. 10
"The better ones"? (Score:2)
They're not substantially. Nor are they preventing them from doing so. It does allow the better ones to spend more time writing songs once they are established though.
Not necessarily the better ones... A lot of it is a matter of exposure, rather than actual merit. I think shorter copyright terms (and hence lower stakes overall) could mean greater opportunities for artists in general: lower reward for someone who achieves huge success, but on the other hand, since the stakes are lower, the major players (record labels, etc.) won't throw as much money around trying to influence who becomes popular, which will make the business of making music more accessible.
So goes the
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The point is not that startups are infringers. The point is that startups don't have lawyers and even the threat of a lawsuit can break them.
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You should totally talk to John Titor then. He 's always looking for spare parts at garage sales all around the country, you can't miss him!
Collapse of British music industry next year! (Score:2)
Coffee Shop (Score:2, Interesting)
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(*That is, unless you consider the movie itself to be a crime against the book)
Only as much as the book is a crime against the radio show. Douglas Adams wrote them all, after all.
The only crime would be a "book of the film".
Activate Libel Retort? (Score:2)
Britain also horrendous libel laws.
Given that warning letters without significant supporting evidence can be considered damaging to the reputation of an individual, it would seem appropriate that if you are on the receiving end of a warning letter, you should sue the sender for libel.
If this happens enough, then it might results in changes to one of the DEA laws or libel laws, so it would be a win win type deal.
The good from this.... (Score:2)
The tech improvements to hide yourself from the watchers will start accelerating. The technology war has just begun.
Honestly, this will be interesting to watch.
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISPs won't pay for this. The costs will be passed on to their users as always. And since it's a level playing field, one ISP won't gain an advantage over others.
What is likely to happen however is that important people will find that their kids activities lead to getting such letters and then maybe the older generation, which really doesn't understand the situation, will start to feel the copyright noose they placed around their own necks tighten.
That is likely to lead to change, but not before.
GrpA.
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISPs won't pay for this. The costs will be passed on to their users as always. And since it's a level playing field, one ISP won't gain an advantage over others.
Incorrect. This only applies to ISPs with over ~400,000 users. More ISPs would of supported this, but there aren't many with a lot of users. This act promotes heavy users to migrate to less popular ISPs.
Pedantic grammar trolls vs. illiterate fools (Score:2)
I think illiterate posters make reading the site kind of painful sometimes, too. I think AC was kind of a jerk about it but I don't think it's wrong to expect that people learn to word things correctly.
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It is a myth that you need to have infringed copyright to get a threatening letter. Plenty of innocent people get them too. This issue has been thoroughly investigated by Which? and the BBC's Watchdog programme, with the victim's PC being checked by an independent expert and their wifi connection verified to be secure.
The simple fact of the matter is that the investigation methods are flawed and there is little come-back for those making false accusations. That is the problem with this law; anyone can make
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I have a friend who works for a mid-sized ISP in the States. Last year they fired someone in their TOS Violations group because they'd been using a stale database in their IP research for DMCA takedowns and Subpoenas. It was out of synch with the actual database by a matter of 3 or 4 days, the end result being about a half dozen cases where they had given the police or courts the wrong subscriber.
In one case in particular, it was a pedophile. They gave some innocent sucker's name to the cops, and he was tri
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Check this blog post out: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/software_as_evi.html [schneier.com]
Software seems to be considered a perfect witness, never making mistakes. An IP address is little more use than a post code, i.e. it identified a general area where something might possibly have happened but it also trivially easy to fake (just write the wrong one down), is often wrong due to poor record keeping and doesn't identify any particular individual anyway.
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All they really want is to deprecate the value of having illicitly copied material to make you paranoid enough to pay for everything you watch. Sending out those letters is just a way to make some people destroy their Juarez collection.
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Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
its not fair for companies to have to defend themselves against millions of criminals.
If a company has to defend itself against *millions* of criminals, then common logic holds that whatever these millions of people are doing it is not, or should not be, a crime.
GrpA
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If a company has to defend itself against *millions* of criminals, then common logic holds that whatever these millions of people are doing it is not, or should not be, a crime.
Interesting rationale. So if a major supermarket chain has to defend itself against millions of people who would shoplift if they thought they would get away with it, you think they should just abandon security and give everything away?
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Certain behaviour is self regulating up to a certain point. If people can get a service they consider important for a price they deem reasonable they will pay for it, not doing so will make the service disappear and in the case of basic needs like food etc that would be a problem, the majority of the people still gets that basic idea.
But trying to enforce unreasonable prices or unreasonable restrictions upon people will lead to them going to a competitor offering better deals, or if you are the sole supplie
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Certain behaviour is self regulating up to a certain point. If people can get a service they consider important for a price they deem reasonable they will pay for it, not doing so will make the service disappear and in the case of basic needs like food etc that would be a problem, the majority of the people still gets that basic idea.
You have a charmingly innocent view of human nature. Yes, the majority will get the idea, but if they see everybody else helping themselves then they'll take what they want too: "If I don't clear the store out then somebody else will."
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So if a major supermarket chain has to defend itself against millions of people who would shoplift if they thought they would get away with it, you think they should just abandon security and give everything away?
No, they employ security guards against shoplifting directly, in-store. They don't lobby the government to force the landlord of the shopping centre (mall) to employ them at no cost to the retail company.
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Re:Who pays? (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall similar arguments when people tried to outlaw slavery. Anyway, it's for the market to decide who counts as a free human!
Any other idiocy you want to share?
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Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm applying reductio to dismiss GooberToo's absurd argument. If the mere existence of "countless chunks of the world economy, including businesses of all sizes, ranging from one man shops to multi-billion dollar corporations" is moral justification for an underlying principle on which the countless chunks rely... then we can justify slavery.
Of course, hoarding information is not equivalent to owning a whole human being, but it is a constituent part of human ownership. If you control how a human may express himself then you own some part of him. Copyright and patents are, in practice, enforced assertions of control over other people's actions, even while those people are neither causing you harm nor threatening to do so.
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Are you suggesting that hoarding information is morally equivalent to owning a human being?
Not equivalent, but I think it's certainly comparable.
The fact that one can own a word or an idea enslaves a little piece of us all.
It's a very whimsical way of putting it, of course, and I don't want to trivialize slavery, but maybe there's some truth to the analogy: that instead of taking away all of one person's rights and liberty, you've taken a smaller amount of these from a larger number of people.
But I'd like to address some of the other points as well:
For instance, one point brought up was "if so ma
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Copyright is a tool used to try to monetize other people's actions. If a person has the talent to produce music that you want to listen to, is it unreasonable for that person to wants to be compensated for his or her time? Or do you feel that you are some sort of monarch, who deserves to be serenaded for free? If a group of people put together a piece of software that entertains you (like a game), or that makes you more productive (like an application), do they not deserve to be compensated for their tim
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If a person has the talent to produce music that you want to listen to, is it unreasonable for that person to wants to be compensated for his or her time? Or do you feel that you are some sort of monarch, who deserves to be serenaded for free?
What strawman is this? No-one is forcing you to produce music that I want to listen to. The force only appears when you try to stop me, having listened to your production, from using what I have heard as I please.
If we lived in a morally just society where people treated each other fairly
OK: I will not stop you from expressing any ideas by voice, pen or keyboard, even when I may have the physical or financial strength to do so, and even when your ideas may be scary to me. Are you going to treat me fairly by allowing me to do the same?
People think that because they can easily copy it from one place to another, it should be nearly free.
Not per se - after all, I can easily steal candy
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I would go further than that. Information is by definition a foundation of our conscious processes and all decision making. Subsequently, as any tyrant would tell you, controlling information is the surest path to controlling people.
And it gets worse: fundamentally, the intertwined ideas of "civilization" and "scientific progress" also depend on unrestricted sharing of information. Without that unrestricted flow, scientific progress grinds to a crawl. Knowledge becomes a privilege and soon the privileged b
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When I'm willing to cooperate? You're the uncooperative one who apparently believes that you do not need to compensate people for their time. I notice how you conveniently left out of your reply any mention to all of the people who make a living producing music, and their entitlement to be compensated for their time.
You're selfish, and I'll even go so far as to say that you're a prick. You claim "The force only appears when you try to stop me, having listened to your production, from using what I have he
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And look at all those chain makers and shackle providers, specialized shipping companies and auction houses who would go bust if slavery was abolished! They are entitled to be compensated for t
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You're an idiot too. Slavery? Right. Being expected to pay for music makes you a slave. Seriously? Pull your head out of your ass. You're as big of a troll as the other idiot. How are recording studios, engineers and everyone else involved in the PRODUCTION of music, akin to those supporting slavery? Your analogy sucks. What rights are being stripped from you by expecting you to pay 99 cents to listen to some music, as many times as you want? On the other hand, when you steal music, you're stripp
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When I'm willing to cooperate? You're the uncooperative one who apparently believes that you do not need to compensate people for their time.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding. I'm nowhere stating that I should be able to force you to take up your time doing a list of things I specify.
The problem arises when you believe that I should compensate you just because you expressed yourself and I heard what you said.
I don't owe you some financial sum any more than I owe Euler's heirs for his mathematics, the good weather today for inspiring me to work, my neighbour for giving me a friendly "good morning" instead of (say) playing loud music, or the uni
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On the other hand, when you steal music, you're stripping the artist, composer, sound engineer, et al of their right to make a living from their labor.
According to capitalists, people have a right to trade, which means that I don't have the right to take something away from you unless you agree to it.
According to communists, people have a right to what they need, which means people have a right to live comfortably but also a responsibility to contribute what they can.
But there's not a reasonable political or social philosophy which says that someone has a right to some form of compensation as a consequence of putting effort into anything. No-one has the "
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Quite so, I am afraid. Your "precondition" for these vaunted "creative activities" of yours is that we submit to strict controls of what we can say, sing or write down. The term for it is: slavery. The fact that our would be master also lets us physically roam about does not change this in any way.
Put in another way, if the precondition of your "contributing" to our society is that everyone else has to do what you tell them, i.e.
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No, you're an idiot. ;) (Okay, now that we have that out of the way)
You make some good points about hearing copyrighted music. If you hear music on the radio, whether you want to or not, it has already been paid for. The radio station has to pay to play that music for you. They recoup their costs through advertising and other means.
I think I can sum up where I'm coming from with a few sentences. I study martial arts. My sifu once told me, "David, the art is free. You're just paying sifu for his time.
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This is very insightful.
For some time now I felt that there is an intrinsic link between the "intellectual property" scam and attempts at a new kinds of enslavement and that is the very reason why great many people, including myself, have such an instinctively negative reaction to the idea. I have presented many arguments in
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In the capitalist system a person has a right to recoup their investment. Lets take the example of a record company. This addresses your right to trade. The sound engineer agrees to trade his time, and access to his studio and equipment for money. The artist agrees to trade his talent and time in exchange for money. Everything from the recording process, to purchasing the music in a store, or downloading it from iTunes involves trading money for a good or a service.
People do not need the convenience of
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I like being able to listen to it whenever I want. That is worth paying for.
And you're welcome to choose to pay for it.
I don't know about where you live, but there's a vague (and in some places fairly well regulated) practice of busking in this country - i.e. live street performance. Everyone's welcome to watch and everyone's welcome to contribute money, but equally anyone can watch without paying a penny. The best performers stationed in the right places earn a good wage. I see no reason why an artist can't similarly ask nicely for a contribution toward work which is primarily enj
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No contract with the station, writer, producer or record label when I wander through the airwaves, find a tune I like and hit Record.
No contract with similar when I buy an obscure LP from a charity shop, digitise it and upload the work to my friends.
No contract with the tree outside my window to compensate it after admiring its beauty, taking a cutting, splicing with a good root stock and growing another stronger tree.
A few words on the sleve of something I am buying do not cause an implied contract. (Not e
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You can communicate whatever you want to communicate. What you cannot do is reproduce someone else's work. You can make your own semi-conductor, but you cannot make a Xeon X5560. That belongs to Intel. They developed it and they patented it. You can sign whatever song you want to sing, but you cannot perform Nirvana's greatest hits. Yet copyright law does not stop the hundreds of cover bands that play in bars every weekend.
Copyright is a commercial tool. Nobody is going to come beat you over the head
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You're done being wrong. You won't own up to the fact that you're just trying to justify theft. You talk about the good of civilization, but you won't allow a person to make a living by providing music or "human needs" that enrich the lives of those who experience them. You're full of shit, and I'm glad you're done trying to come up with flimsy justifications for your anti-social, twisted logic that does not belong in a productive, just society.
The only reason that tune is on the radio for you to hit rec
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I finally realized that you are here to offer us the titillating game of trying to count how many self-contradictions you can cram into your posts!
So here we go: self-contradiction #1 above: reproducing for others is a form communication! Therefore if I can "communicate whatever I want to communicate" I can also communicate my reproductions, no?
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Interesting)
By your logic I am also contributing to the destruction of the "world economy" because I don't watch films or TV programmes. I don't deliberately listen to music.
I don't buy such media and I don't "pirate" it.
I have neither interest in nor plans for fixing the segment of the economy injured through my inaction.
So, am I as bad as a "pirate" or does your argument fail at this point?
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If you believe copyright law is a good enough justification for that then you are 'anti-pirate' if you don't you are 'pro-pirate'.
Tell me how you'll enforce copyright once everyone switches to out of country VPNs without effectively snooping on absolutely everything that anyone does and I'll reconsider my 'pro-pirate stupidity'.
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No-one in this thread was pro-pirate. It was about how we might go about policing piracy over the Internet, and who pays for it. So with respect, GooberToo, what the fuck does that have to do with it? And where are YOUR answers?
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That's a great quote.
I'd repeat it if you showed where it came from. As it is, I'd have to say it was from "some guy on the Net."
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Before the Digital Economy Act, that's exactly how it did work.
Copyright holders have always been able to enforce their copyrights legally in the UK, it's just that it would require sniffing out infringers themselves (easy enough - join a few torrents, get a list of all the IP addresses sharing with you then filter that list so all you're left with is IP addresses in the UK) then subpoenaing the ISPs to get the associated names and addresses.
Obviously there are huge holes - not least of which is that ISPs h
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The infamous 'ACS Law' who sent tens of thousands of letters demanding 'settlement' payments of about £500 from people it accused of illegal downloading were accused of breaching the solicitors code of conduct. [guardian.co.uk]
The Judge said that ACS Law was "amateurish and slipshod" and said it had "brought the legal profession into disre
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What happens in situations where, for example, completely hypothetically, no truth to it AT ALL, but let's just say that someone in the States has a VPS in the U.K. that they only use for torrentflux.
How and to whom are the British going to mail the letter?
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
In exactly the same way car manufacturers are currently benefiting from illegal behaviour (getaway cars, etc.). Oooo.. Look, the Government pays for the locations that muggers use! They're supporting crime!
Please stop putting forth silly quotes that aren't actually even arguments.
The real story behind this is that Lord 'Mandy' Mandelson (who had twice been fired from the Labour government for misconduct and corruption that he only escaped being locked up for because he was a prominent politician. Both times he was quietly brought back in by the government of the time when the public outcry faded away.
Now Lord Mandy went away for a nice little holiday with a friend of his, that just incidentally happened to be in the entertainment industry. When he came back, he put this act on a fast track, basically avoiding most of the debate that would normally be associated with something this intrusive. There are so many things wrong with it on so many levels, an it'll ramp up the cost of internet provision hugely.
Ok, so I assume you're going to say "Well, it protects the artists".. This would be the artists that did just fine several hundred years ago with a copyright span of just 12 years? Oh, that small limit killed art because nobody would do it with such meagre protection, would they?
Well, it didn't kill art. It made a rich public domain that everyone could engage in legally.
Now, however, it's a case that if you've got loads of money (read: entertainment industry), you can hire a lawyer to say that technically, copyright terms are extendible to just shy of an infinite duration (because it's termed to be 'a limited time'. This of course deprives everyone of the public domain. Which is essentially theft. Except you've just used a lot of money to make sure it's got a stamp on it by a judge, making it legal. So, you have the unethical, immoral behaviour practiced by the entertainment industry to deprive people of what used to be a right, but spending a shed load of money (that your average person couldn't even begin to fight against) to make it legal. Then you put more laws in place to protect what you've forced through against ethics.
This has been shown (several studies) to be socially destructive, yet it's perfectly legal, and they keep on tightening the screws.
If you think that an arbitrary law is always just and should dictate what the world does, rather than saying "what works, and what is just is what the law should be", then you're rapidly going to be supporting the building of a massive dystopia.
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This has been shown (several studies) to be socially destructive, yet it's perfectly legal, and they keep on tightening the screws.
I will argue that it is socially destructive to steal the labor of everyone involved in producing a recording. The 99 cents that people pay for a song covers a lot more than the time the artist spends singing into a microphone. Does the artist have a band? They need to be paid. Does the band have instruments? Those cost money. Did the rent them? Money there too. How about
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> They need to fit immobilisers and alarm systems. Something that offers no direct benefit to the customer but increases costs.
That does offer benefit to the customer, as it makes it less likely to have his very expensive lump of metal stolen. It is also something the customer pays for, not the manufacturer.
> Registration plates are used primarily for preventing illegal activity and that's a cost to the car manufacturer.
Excuse me? I don't know where you live, but here in Belgium we pay for our own dam
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Depends where you live.