10-15-2008, 07:25 AM | #16 | |
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Typical of Empire?
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Another good one on US hegemony vs some semblance of international law can be found here: U.S.: 'Hague Invasion Act' Becomes Law - White House "Stops at Nothing" in Campaign Against War Crimes Court Since 2001 the US government (as opposed to most American people) has taken the view that the international community is basically irrelevant, unless it can be used to support a US position. But this in fact is not a new turn of events. It's always nice to remember the non-history of Nicaragua and the ICJ ruling condemning US agression and US-sponsored terrorism there in the 1980s. This was flatly ignored by the US government and barely reported in the US media (hence non-history). Of course, one can claim most states behave this way, except that the US has the ability to project power almost anywhere in the world, at will. A dangerous recipe for catastrophe. Last edited by orwell2k; 10-16-2008 at 05:37 AM. |
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10-17-2008, 07:04 AM | #17 |
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10-18-2008, 07:12 AM | #18 |
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This is a perfect example of where your politicians (for our U.S. readers) loyalties lay. Conveniently omitted from many of the news stories was that this bill was passed thru the House with a whopping 410 to 11 aye to nay ratio. When will people wake up and realize neither the D's nor the R's are our friends? One side is just better skilled at lieing to certain groups of people then the other.
To find out who voted which way (and to doublecheck my memory on the counts, sorry but the site was down when I wrote this) go to http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h4279/show and you can see who all voted for this travesty. -MJ P.S. Are we at the point where my punishment will be less severe by stealing CD's from a store or by breaking into someone's home then if I were to torrent a Spice Girls album? |
10-18-2008, 07:18 AM | #19 | |
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Seriously, though, don't you think that the charge should be more serious? Stealing a CD from a store or someone's home results in the loss of one CD; a torrent upload could result in the loss of goodness only knows how many thousands of sales. |
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10-18-2008, 08:13 AM | #20 | |
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10-18-2008, 08:31 AM | #21 |
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When Napster was first released and started getting widespread usage, sales of music went up 6% because of people being able to find new music to enjoy or music from arrtists they liked but didn't know was out there. So this led to a try before you buy and it worked. The RIAA stepped in and ruined things. They didn't see that this was working. Then because the RIAA thought that they were losing sales due to piracy, they decided tor raise prices. Now all this has done is led to more piracy. In trying to stop what wasn't a problem, the RIAA made it into a problem.
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10-18-2008, 09:45 AM | #22 |
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So, under this new law, Mr. Fanning could have had his house seized under RICO Statutes?
Are we going to the see the U.S. Government enacting puppet death squads seeking the members of Pirate Bay like we did down Columbia way with Mr. Escobar? The United States governmental cabal has all ways created bogeymen, and taken extra-legal and ethical means to destroy enemies, both real and imagined. The truly scary thing is that they finally have turned their sights to its own people. Over the purported loss of revenue from a giant industry conglomerate. Will admit that copying a file that represents another's intellectual property has become ridiculously easy, and that such sharing, given the nature of the digital age, yields an exponential growth in the number of said shared files, but nobody ever died over a stolen Britney Spears song. The stock market did not tank because MI:2 was downloaded. |
10-18-2008, 09:47 AM | #23 | |
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I'll give you a few examples. First a personal one. (And kudos to JSWolf) During the days before I first started using Napster (and Usenet groups for mp3s) I, on average, purchased 2 CD's a week. When the mp3 format and sharing of said files became popular I downloaded probably 10-20 CD's per week (Not saying if they were public domain or not ) . I still purchased about 2 CD's a week at that time. How many album sales did the industry lose during my evil streak? Not one. One of the false assumptions is that every song (or book, or program) that is pirated would have otherwise been legally purchased. While sometimes this is the case, mostly it isn't. And fans are loyal enough to purchase legit merchandise when they can. I will submit that the oft cried 'It exposes new fans to the material' is generally a cop out as they generally know precisely what they are downloading. But that doesn't mean artists or the industry is losing sales. Just -look- at the markets. While all this horrendous piracy goes on they wind up with record sales. A second example I would like to point out is software based. I think you would be hard pressed to find an individual working professionally today in the graphics design and/or image manipulation industry that didn't make their bones using pirated software. I would bet good money that Adobe Photoshop wouldn't have a third of their user base had all the designers tending the developement of the WWW not illegally copied it. And while making a Mel C (Going for the SG trifecta) background for his desktop might not seem like it would benefit the industry you would again not being looking into the issue deep enough. The pirates created filters, shortcuts, tips and tricks which professionals use to this day. They aided in turning it into a powerhouse which everyone uses. Not just the select GD's working in studios that bought the software during the early 90s. And those same pirates turned into web developers, graphic designers, digital artists and what-not. This is the case with many products in the software arena from graphics design to programming to CAD/CAM to professional audio suites. And the current trend to treat these pirates as one would a plane hi-jacker is driving todays equivilent youth into open-source freeware solutions. So that in the years to come all of that development that advanced the commercial products will no longer be there, but in the packages and ports databases of OS's such as Linux and FreeBSD. I have pretty much worked in the IT industry my entire adult life. I no longer do except for consultation work. DRM and similar IP issues just became to much of a headache. Spending three times longer prepping a network for users to use a legally licensed program just to make MS feel secure was one of straws that did it for me. That and convoluted laws and EULA's on everything that pretty much left me (as the Admin) as the fallguy if the company stepped out of bounds for five minutes and got into trouble with the BSA. Having read your posts on the subject, I doubt I'll change your mind on the issue but I really hope you'll consider the possibility that this is a newly emerging distribution model that we are actually quite a ways away from fully understanding and should err on the side of our citizens rights as apposed to nuking them orbit just to be sure. -MJ BTW Harry, a scenario you should consider is what if down the road someone notices a post on the forum or an eBook that mobileread's users/staff made a mistake believing to be out of copyright and the law was written and interpretted in such a way that Alexander was accountable for $30,000 for each time it was downloaded? (We'll ignore country bounderies for sake of this discussion, since that is another goal they are going for) Remember, ignorance is not a plausible defense in any of these cases. |
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10-18-2008, 09:58 AM | #24 |
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I forgot to mention I haven't bought another CD since that original shutdown of Napster. Considering its been about 7 years, at 52 weeks per year and 2 CD's a week we could say they have lost 700+ sales with me based on my prior purchasing history. Now of course that is completely made up, since I have had alot of times where I couldn't afford to buy them (like now) but hey, if they can completely make up numbers and sales losses why can't I?
I should also note I don't listen to that much music anymore, I got sick of the industry after that and wound up listening alot less altogether. I don't download mp3's at all anymore except for some audiobooks. All my music now is on vinyl or CD's I've picked up secondhand at the fleamarket. -MJ |
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