Big Content, which already owns the Obama administration, is at it again – I guess mandatory monitoring software to scan every computer’s content isn’t enough. A bi-partisan proposed bill would allow US federal courts to issue injunctions that would order domain registrars or registries to cease resolving the domain name of a copyright infringing website.
“In today’s global economy the internet has become the glue of international commerce – connecting consumers with a wide-array of products and services worldwide,” said Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) in a statement announcing the bill, “But it’s also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.”
Apart from this Utah senator – obviously not a very intelligent man since he doesn’t even know the difference between theft and IP infringement – is joined by “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), and committee members Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania), Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) [and] Senators Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio)”. Just so you know what anti-freedom and anti-consumer rights people you shouldn’t vote for next time around.
Anywho, Big Content is obviously pleased with this proposed bill. “These sites, whose content is hosted and whose operators are located throughout the world, take many forms. But they have in common the simple fact that they all materially contribute to, facilitate and/or induce the illegal distribution of copyrighted works, such as movies and television programs,” said the MPAA’s CEO, Bob Pisano.
“The trafficking of pirated American movies and music from rogue websites outside our borders is a big business,” said Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman, “This bill is a welcome first step toward cutting off the financial lifeline that sustains these illegal operations and threatens the livelihoods of countless members of the American music community.”
Of course, bill or no, people could still access sites via IP addresses, and it would be trivial to set up rings of alias domain names – US courts would never be able to keep this up. Also, not all domain registrars and registries are located in the US.
I was going to write something about unicorns, colons, and the act of shoving, but then I came across a very good comment over at Ars Technica by DNick which words my feelings about this proposed bill pretty darn well.
This is a wonderful idea that I’m surprised has not been implemented before now. I’m sure that the other countries of the world will more than welcome having Washington take over the nasty job of enforcing the wishes of the recording industry. Other soverign nations should be overjoyed that our government is not only willing to enforce the RIAA’s unbiased views on copyright, but even to make decisions and take action on behalf of the other governments around what is or is not a violation.I’m sure our government, which as we’ve all seen handles civil rights and personal freedoms in the most honest and open of ways, will appoint a purely objective and honest arbiter to decide what is legal and what is not. We can surely trust our government to keep this process free from polical or other inappropriate influence, and there’s no reason to worry about a lack of due process when our beloved justice department decides what sites to shut down.
People, a war is brewing. No bloodshed will come of it, but no less dirty it will be, Who’s side are you on?
British Lord Camden said it best when he warned for perpetual copyright back in the 18th century: “All our learning will be locked up in the hands of the Tonsons and the Lintots of the age. […] Knowledge and science are not things to be bound in such cobweb chains.”
.org is a US based registrar. I don’t see how this bill could affect .org.uk, or .cx, or the hundreds of other non-US registrars on the internet.
How about this:
“Dear Registrar,
if you dont comply you will be infringing article X of your Registrar License, thus it will be revoked AND any dns request orginating from your IP range will be banned, effectively shutting you out of the intertubes.
The ‘choice’ is yours.
Sincerely, We the Owners.”
Edit: furthermore, AFAIK, so much of the traffic passes at some point trough US based nodes that such a block has much wider effects
Edited 2010-09-20 23:04 UTC
for some odd reason, that word ‘Owner’ sound even more intimidating.
And some people actually wonder why we don’t want the U.S to control the important parts of DNS…
Other than sites hosted in the US, the only traffic that passes thru the US is to and from parts of Asia and South America.
However, the more isolationist the U.S becomes the more alternative routes there will be.
Edited 2010-09-21 05:01 UTC
So in your view such situation wouldn^A't have an impact because it would affect communications between “US + part of Asia + part of Latam” and the rest of the world only ??
Not that much no, since most Asia traffic is intra-asia and most european traffic is intra-europe. It would only affect traffic that crosses these borders, such as traffic some from europe to Asia, some traffic from south america to asia etc.
In fact, if you look at it from a certain perspective cutting down p2p traffic is a good thing. It leaves more bandwidth for stuff like youtube and other streaming services.
To paraphrase:
The internet views the United States as damage and routes around it.
That won’t really have much affect. The US Gov’t does not really control ICANN much if at all. Further, most DNS Servers are DNS Cache Servers – e.g. they mostly just forward requests to another DNS Server or resolve from their own cached data if they have it already. Your ISP really only does DNS caching. This just means it would take a bit longer to get to the DNS information.
And of course, you could just by-pass the whole thing altogether and setup your own DNS server to look directly at the root servers, which are spread around the world. Sure, it’s a U.S. Organization that runs .com, .org, etc; but they have zero control or influence over any non-US TLD – e.g. .com.ca.
So all they have to do is change their TLD at most, if they aren’t already under another country code to start with (which if they are based outside the US is most likely).
not sure I like a foreign gov dictating what I can do in my own country… seems a bit.. imperialist
Now you understand what the US is about and next is the fall – like all Imperialists/empires before.
Alternative DNS systems in other countries can’t be built fast enough.
Alternate DNS can’t be built fast enough? LOL
If I’m correct to understand your understandment to be a misunderstandment….
He meant that we’d better start to day building an alternative DNS then tomorrow.
Every good thing – the internet being one of them – gets raped by the corporate world and then the government steps in and makes it even worse by regulating it.
I just love the fact that the MPAA/RIAA have bought so many U.S. politicians that they basically can do whatever they want.
I’m just sad that there basically isn’t anything we U.S. citizens can do about it.
Why? There is plenty of things U.S. citizens can do. The problem is the ruling attitude of our nation in regards to politics and government (not that the two should be treated equally, politics covers far, far much more than government) is that of apathy and cynicism, both of which we know have provided soooo well instead of providing or pushing an alternative. [Please note, I’m not trying to pick on you personally, just the overall mindset of our citizens that we are helpless]
If we don’t like what our government is doing, and do nothing to change it, we are at more fault than the government.
For U.S. citizens who are unhappy with the laws that have been passed or have been proposed, ask yourself these questions:
1. Have you written or expressed any kind of concern, displeasure, or rebuttal to any of your representatives?
2. Have you offered any constructive alternative, in a complete, full written form that can debated, standing next to what the current options are?
3. Have you seeked out any others with views the same as yours to file a petition, work with your representative, or raise public awareness?
Remember, politics is dirty. It’s conflict. It’s fighting tooth and nail for everything you believe in. But to not fight at all, to just ‘dismiss it’, you are as every bit guilty as the people you accuse.
I tell you what, you let me know how that works out.
I’ve been around a LONG time, and I can tell you, it won’t help.
1. Have you written or expressed any kind of concern, displeasure, or rebuttal to any of your representatives?
Yes, but trying to reason with a third party’s hired gun really doesn’t work.
Very well said.
Oh, there’s something we can do about it. Things just haven’t gotten bad enough to justify shooting corrupt politicians yet.
Well …… that would be quite the carnage if we started doing that …… between the democrats, republicans, and independents, we may have a dozen politicians left nation wide.
Oh, don’t beat up on yourself too much. If the rest of us followed that example, there might be a few dozen politicians left *world* wide….
To: US
From: World
Subject: Notice regarding proposed legislation dealing with IP infringement
————————————
Dear US,
Fcuk off.
Yours truly,
World
To: Thom
From: Adults
Dear Thom,
Isn’t it time you grew up and moved out of mommy and daddy’s home? I mean you have sincerely degraded this site to one step above a cheap WordPress blog. Your ignorance of politics, law, and the U.S. is understandable…to a degree. But since you seem to think you are the next Paul Krugman, maybe it would be wise to say get an education on the subject you wish to preach about?
Until then, when I need to see similarly ignorant ranting from clueless people I can just as easily tune to any Tea Party idiot. At least they are amusing.
Yours truly,
Adults
p.s. You truly have turned this site into a shithole. I use to sincerely enjoy coming here, but not anymore. This is no more a site about Operating Systems than it is the personal blog of a few ignorant children. A proper editorial, if you would bother to have learned this, should seek to understand issues that are complex. Here, it is mindless whining of silly little children who get outraged about topics to which they are clueless.
OSAlert, R.I.P.
Damn, yo!
I could not say it better. Thom has ruined the site. He does not understand complex concepts. Good bye OS news. After ten years I will remove you from my bookmarks.
It’s great that you say he’s ignorant. But at least back it up by enlighten us what exactly he isn’t understanding correctly.
Yet a european is outraged that US-icans *still* aren’t like europeans, because they believe they are the pinnacle of human kind.
Plus, the parent post shows more European arrogance in the form of a childish outburst of profanity.
C’mon, aren’t both sides (US and EU) being equally arrogant?
– The U.S. DoJ thinks they get carte blanche on foreign soil, including the EU, China and Japan.
– The EU considers itself the small village of Astrix and Obelix, standing up against the Romans.
– Hence, both parties have trouble understanding (and respecting) each other’s cultural and societal differences.
Or, you recognise a joke when you see one, Mr Grumpypants.
His “grumpiness” aside the man is right in a lot of what he says. Joke or no joke, if you have editors posting comments like that you can’t expect us to consider this site professional or reliable.
I makes jokes. Sue me.
Doing it “for the lulz”, hmm?
I refer you to the reply given in Arkell v. Pressdram (1971)
For those who dont know.. google :-p
Blocking the notion of an anonymous cloud just doesn’t seem to be doable. Also seems as one is taken down, 10 more pop up. So who really cares if legislation is passed to block or non resolve DNS requests. P2P on IP addresses seems like its unstoppable.
Registrars are about the opposite of anonymous. With few exceptions, TLDs are run by for-profit corporations and need to comply with the rules for such.
Edited 2010-09-21 00:22 UTC
Thats pretty stupid since any person can start their own DNS server. True, they can be shut down, but it will be like whack a mole. Not to mention, there are other ways of finding information besides DNS. How hard will it be for people who are pirates to add an extra well known IP address to their DNS list? You can basically add your own unofficial top level domain. .p2p anyone?
It’s odd that one would miss GW’s more sane stance on copyright….
Hi,
Ok, my strange thought goes a little like this…
You do a statistical analysis of Presidential speeches, and find a group the 500 most frequently used keywords (budget, tax, America, healthcare, whitehouse, pensioners, etc). From this list of keywords you generate a sentence for each possible permutation (inserting words like “a”, “an”, “the” where necessary); then filter out sentences that are already covered by other people’s copyrights, and maybe remove sentences that are too nonsensical.
You combine the remaining sentences into groups of 8 lines and call them poems (such that each sentence is more than 10% of the poem). Then you publish each poem (e.g. as a collection) and make one hardcopy, and send it to the Library of Congress.
Finally, you sit back and wait for the US Government to accidentally infringe on your copyright (possibly, while publishing more “poems”), and repeatedly nail their collective asses in court, until they’re too scared to say anything.
It’s a brute force attack on the copyright system.
– Brendan
No you don’t.
Unlike patents, copyright only covers actually copying other people’s work. Independently discovering/writing a text is never copyright infringement – even if the text is identical to an existing copyrighted text.
That’s theory.
If you make a text which is a word-perfect clone of a copyrighted text, you will have a hard time proving in court that it was written independently. In practice, I think proving this is impossible.
That‘s theory.
In almost all practical cases, and certainly in Brendan’s case above, it’s actually pretty obvious.
Edited 2010-09-22 06:50 UTC
If you make a text which is a word-perfect clone of a copyrighted text, I think it is a fair assumption that you copied it.
If you however make a text which is almost entirely different from a copyrighted text, but semantically it parses out to mean effectively the same thing, I think it is an even fairer assumption that you didn’t copy it, but rather that you just independently came up with the same ideas.
Edited 2010-09-22 07:29 UTC
Indeed, but Brendan’s idea, if I understood it well, was to put a copyright on random sequences of words which politicians often use and wait for some of those exact sequences of words to be pronounced by them.
Edited 2010-09-22 08:28 UTC
What I find interesting is the hypocracy of the MPAA and studios. In certain parts of the world they *compete against* piracy by releasing films early (and cheap too I’m sure) on DVD. These releases are not quite to the same standards as the official western release.
In the rest of the world they just try and rip us off ^Alb20 for a BluRay copy of a film we already own on DVD.
And films from the 1920’s are still not in the public domain even though everyone connected to the production is highly likely to be dead by now.
One thing about the negative comment “poorly written article”.
To make my comment I^aEURTMll refer to a older article.
I submitted an article some time ago about Google buying Zynga.
My article was edited to something totally different. Much more negative spin.
The comments “crappy games”,”advertisements all over the place” I did not make. Reason I did not was Googles advertisement is always low profile (Use gmail and you^aEURTMll know). Secondly advertisements pay, for the most part, your favourite magazines, sports shows, series ect.
Osnews has advertisement on it does^aEURTMnt it.
I also did not say “crappy” games. Google has deep pockets to improve these. Also game tastes is subjective.
What I^aEURTMm trying to say that Thom does write excellent articles. I think most of those who frequent osnews also think the same, but the articles can become a bit snotty (^aEURoerub two braincells together^aEUR.)
Also osnews miss a lot of other news. Maybe the extensive articles on other news is lowering quantitive output on other interesting stuff. Take Slashdot.org for example. Lots of news, but not a lot of analysis. I for one can make up my own mind on the interpretation of news.
Your article was scrapped and completely rewritten, since – no offence – your English was very bad and it was impossible for me to fix it (I didn’t even understand most of it). As such, I ended up rewriting the whole thing from scratch. I do see now that I accidentally attributed the whole thing to you while I should have just listed you as submitter (and not author). Sorry for that.
And yes, I’m sharp and direct, that’s just how people are where I live. The internet is big enough to avoid folks like me if you’re sensitive
.
This will just accelerate the movement that makes consumers creators and creators, consumers.
Gradually there will be an eschewment of the ‘canon’ of Hollywood-produced material, corporate-capitalist content, and works of artistic production that are driven by money-making Philistines.
Well done USA, you are helping us to evolve, in the same way that *that* meteorite helped small mammals overcome large dinosaurs.
There’s no way, ever, that the DoJ or any other organization from any government anywhere in the world will succeed in stopping software, movie, music, game or other pirates, or hackers in general. I wish the U.S. would stop wasting tax payer money on big business agendas and actually get to work for the people.
This is just more politically motivated FUD being spread by Thom. Do ANY of you really believe that the US would create statutes that attempt to enforce US laws in a foreign country? That would be like the US trying to issue speeding citations to German citizens on the autobahn. Somebody needs to go to a dictionary and look up the term “sovereignty”.
When Thom runs out of web links from Arstechnica, he stoops to twisting articles about American politics and posts them here on unsuspecting non-US readers to whip up his readership. Really sad Thom. You need to stay out of politics and stick to what you know best, whatever that is.
The US still has excessive control over the internet’s backbone infrastructure. As I have written before on this very website, on numerous occasions, so far, the US has done an absolutely amazing job at keeping the internet open and free – I have given ICANN props for that.
However, the new US administration led by Obama and Biden poses a very real danger to the openness and freeness of the web, because many of their direct advisors are former RIAA/MPAA/etc. lobbyists and/or employees (Biden especially). This means that the key to the internet is now very close to being in the hands of dangerous, anti-freedom and anti-consumer rights organisations like the RIAA – an organisation, mind you, which openly advocates mandated monitoring software on every computer and device sold.
Any true American cannot support this – as such, if you do support the RIAA/etc., you are nor a true American, nor a true Western democrat [the system, not the US political party].
Edited 2010-09-21 12:51 UTC
And who are you to make the determination as to who is a “true American”? You’re not even a US citizen. So now members of the EU determine who are “real” Americans? And in case you didn’t know it, America isn’t a democracy. It’s a republic.
As for excessive control over the internet, the US designed and built the internet. So if you’re unhappy with that, you need to lobby your own government to develop its own network for information exchange or stop whining about it. No one in the US twisted anyone’s arm and forced them to connect to the internet.
…which should indicate to you how little there is left of the original goals of the US’ founding fathers. You’re too close to the painting.
Read the comment again. You clearly did not the first time around.
Edited 2010-09-21 17:17 UTC
I read and understood Thom’s post quite well. I also read the legislation and it’s apparent that I’m probably one of two people posting here who has actually done so.
My comment about who determines “real Americans” also stands. And I’m not your son. I’ve fought in two wars on behalf of the US so I certainly don’t need Thom or you telling me what constitutes a “true” American.
Edited 2010-09-21 17:24 UTC
This is a serious problem Biden Biden Biden Biden. Obama was on the right track with Lawrence Lessig as his technical advisor. When Biden jointed the ticket it all went south from there. Biden brought all his RIAA/MPAA friends/goons along to fill the Justice department. Biden is Evil. Biden and his pro-RIAA/MPAA goons has ruined the Obama administration from the perspective of young people. Good luck getting young people to come out for this administration in droves this election or any other. They feel terribly betrayed. Anyone who was looking for Obama to reduce the influence in Washington of corporate lobbyists including that of the RIAA/MPAA rightfully feels betrayed and apathetic about this bullshit.
Well, I don’t have a big problem with them trying to shut down sites like Pirate Bay, because unlike you, I do not condone wholesale piracy. Granted, I think it’s dumb how they’re going about it and ultimately fruitless, since it will probably never be stopped, but I can’t blame them for trying.
Note: I have a BIG problem with them trying to lock down devices/file formats and such, but when they’re busy trying to shut down sites who’s only purpose is to allow mouth breathers to download content that they never paid for, they’re not going to hear a peep from me.
But imagine if those sites were shut down? I guess if Joe Sixpack is no longer able to illegally download the latest Snoop Dogg album, the freedom of the internet is in jeopardy. Oh no!!!
Read my comment more carefully. You’ll notice I was also talking about the mandatory monitoring software.
Just on that … how exactly does anyone imagine the US government would be able to force citizens of other nations to run “mandatory” software of any kind.
They can’t even get everyone to run Windows.
Who is talking about the entire world?
I surely wasn’t.
Thom, I generally like your writings, and I assume you don’t mean to offend, but you’ll have to excuse me for not taking cues from a European on what a “true American” might or might not support.
A few more points:
Most of President Obama’s personal assets he obtained by way of royalties from his two books, the sales of which took off in 2007 (though one of them had been written many years earlier, in the 1990’s). So most of his assets he obtained by way of being a “content creator”. I’m not surprised that he would take a dim view on wanton piracy. (Not that I assume he is pushing this bill.)
Second, the US produces lots of IP, and I’d guess that a substantial percentage of pirated IP is produced by the US. Is it so surprising that the US govt might want to protect the rights of the creators of that IP?
Note that I made no comment as to the proposed legislation (I know nothing about it beyond the one-sided description of it here; but I assume that it won’t work anyway), nor do I make any assumptions as to how much support the legislation has in Congress or in the Administration. Just because a bill has bi-partisanship sponsorship doesn’t mean that it has majority support in the government.
P.S.
There are some lunatic right-wingers running around the US questioning whether the president is American or not, literally; your suggestion that the president might not be a “true American” is particularly offensive in that light.
Edited 2010-09-23 08:37 UTC
Just to clarify: My point about President Obama getting most of his personal assets by way of being a content creator himself is that he might favor anti-piracy measures because he is naturally by sympathetic to content creators rather than because he is “owned by Big Content”.
(Again, I make no assumptions as to the amount of support this particular bill has in either congress or the administration.)
This is why I HATE the MPAA! I Want to pay for movies, I used to use netflix like a champ and what happened? They started making it so that you had to wait 30 days for new releases to come to netflix??
So I started using redbox and then they did the same thing to redbox!!
So F it I started downloading, their loss.
All this does again as always is affect people who don’t do this stuff anyway (Like DRM does) Those of us tech enough will get around all that crap as we always do.
Might be better to go all IP address anyway. Then they wont see my DNS requests will have to track what IP’s I go to. LOL!
Doesn’t ICANN control ALL top-level domain name spaces DNS root zones, and the root nameservers for the whole internet?
Isn’t ICANN controled by the US government (Even though its supposed to be a seperate org?)
So in reality they could pull the plug on anything they wanted to that was in the internets root DNS servers?
I am assuming though that unless blocked you could use 3rd party DNS servers that pointed directly to machines.
No, they do not directly control the ccTLD’s.
Technically you can create your own root servers for whatever TLD’s you want and there are actually alternative roots. The problem is getting people and organisations to use them.
Then if you say created your own DNS servers and domains etc, could the US governemt then just block parts of the subnets for those DNS servers and the servers maybe set up for the bittorrenting etc?
Sure ,they could (theoretically) block those IP’s in and out of the US but your servers would still work within the region you are located and probably partially from other (non-US) regions.
Blocking in,out and transit traffic in US on tier 1 level might not be as easy as one might think. Carriers in, for example, Asia has contracts with US carriers for transit traffic and if the US carrier started blocking stuff that could be a contract violation. It also requires quite a bit of co-ordination between carriers and the government in order to keep the list of IP addresses updated.
You’ll find even more problem if you start digging a bit.
Thank god its worlwide and not worldwide. Other wise us europeans would be screwed!
Just want to say I vote in every election. The problem is I have to choose between one corrupt politician or another. My letters mean nothing compaired to the millions paid to politicians by big business. A revolution once in a while can be a good thing. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. “Government for the people” my @ss. It is government bought by the big businesses.
South Park once made an excellent comparison in this respect: http://www.southpark.nl/episodes/808/
Truthfully, the issue of having to choose for who is your “LEAST un-favourable” extends to many other countries, including Thom’s home country of the Netherlands.
The two dominant parties have actively created a cartel on power, gerrymandering districts so that only one of their duopoly can win.
Better to have districting out of the hands of the very politicians it affects (like in Iowa IIRC) or introduce some NON-first-past-the-post element, like partial PR or alternative votes.
Blame your system. The problem with the US system is that there’s not really any diversity in the political space. You only really have two parties and they’re both to the right. In most of the european countries, for example, the political space goes all the way from the communist left to the fascist right. While the two extremes are usually nutcases the fact that there’s a wide diversity in between makes for a healthier political climate in the long run.
So I blame the system…nothing changes.
The blame game solves nothing…
Then the rest of the world will wake the fcuk up. I hope.
+1. If such nonsense is voted *and* enforced, maybe the Internet could finally become a decentralized, US-independent, and truly anonymous (unless you explicitly introduced yourself) network.
Yes, I know, I should stop dreaming about such a terrorist-friendly world and go back at dreaming of foldable OLED screens and touchscreens with real haptic feedback. After all, terrorism (and especially its new spawn, piracy) is by far the #1 cause of non-natural death in most countries of the world, isn’t it ? And going after it instead of building and maintaining schools is a proven efficient way of stopping it, right ?
Edited 2010-09-21 16:16 UTC
If al-qaeda were in change we’d really be in trouble.
Because the only options available to us is the US and the Al-Queda.
You know its funny how the U.S. Government always backs the RIAA and the MPAA when it comes to piracy. In fact going out of its way to enforce ridiculous legislation that these two groups put forth. However another perfectly legal, 10 Billion/yr industry. The adult industry gets no love from their government even though they are probably the most affected and pilfered out of them all. All because the government is against it.
I always knew Bill Gates had total power over the Internet.
With wars on two fronts, a tanking economy due to over-reliance on credit (which the current regime has a head in the sand policy over) a failing education system and a health care ‘reform’ that has nothing to do with actually reforming health care and everything to do with socializing INSURANCE (using the Commiewealth of Taxachussetts model of “people can’t afford insurance, let’s force them to pay for it from the government…” — yeah, health care reform, that’s what that is.)
What pressing issues are the US congress addressing? Fighting Internet piracy with techniques that WON’T WORK (ever heard of a hosts file?), National “drive safely” day (because we can’t possibly drive safely every day), dicking around with the ecology of Long Island sound, and passing a NIMBY on the fishing industry… Oop, don’t forget tacking a bunch of pork barrel extras on a oceanographic grant to line their own pockets and proposing another pay raise for themselves.
… and of course shelving for five weeks straight the budget for the next years military spending — the ONLY thing to come before them in the past month that has ANYTHING to do with any of the real problems the nation is facing.
Better get yourself back down to Congress, Mr. Adams. Gettin^aEURTM ready to vote, and they said they couldn^aEURTMt settle such an important question without Massachusetts bein^aEURTM there.
I can just imagine. Alright, what burning issue are we voting on this time?
On whether or not to grant General Washington^aEURTMs request that all members of the Rhode Island militia be required to wear matching uniforms.
Oh, good God!
I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress! And, by God, I have had this Congress!
Edited 2010-09-22 12:17 UTC
TROLL.
Edited 2010-09-22 12:51 UTC
Sadly, it is not so.
Just look at the actions of the Obama administration regarding IP and copyright, as well as him appointing several pro-RIAA individuals at the very top positions of the DoJ (at least the #2 and #3). Take a look at the Obama administration trying to push ACTA onto the world. Just look at the Obama administration’s stance on IP protection and copyright. Just look at Biden’s pro-Big Content voting record.
As I’ve said before – Obama has tried (Congress screwed it up though*) to do some great things to finally bring America (kicking and screaming) into the modern world, but on the IP/copyright front, he’s simply fighting for the wrong side in this the war.
* http://action.change-congress.org/page/share/yearone
No, it is so.
You can make any sort of implication you want, but you can’t state it as fact. No administration is “owned”, and injecting that opinion as fact is nothing more than flamebait. Sorry.
I think the point is not that they “own” them in sense of some financial purchase, but that they own them in the philosophical camp – the Obama administration has repeatly come down on the side of the Big Content providers. Trying to push the ACTA treaty world-wide is an example of this. Perhaps these wheels were already set in motion by the previous adminiistration, bit his is certainly doing nothing to slow it down.
Obviously Thom is not suggesting the administration was owned like a possession, but I object to the implication that my president bends to the will of any industry. Obviously – and unfortunately – the administration has sided with them. But some people feel it’s a good thing. I’m not one of them, but it’s certainly not the first time a politician has sided with a business. It certainly doesn’t mean he’s in their pocket.
For someone who believes it treasonous to throw trash at his queen, it’s pretty reckless to dismiss someone else’s government as “owned” by any industry with a pejorative tone, especially in the midst of reporting facts.
I don’t see why you should get so upset over this. I’m not saying he’s a bad president – in fact, I think he’s a great guy and he’s trying all his damn best to make America a better place for its citizens. After eight years of Bush, that’s a massive relief not just for you, but also for the rest of the world.
However, no matter how much I may like someone, it doesn’t shield them from my disapproval. In this matter, it’s quite clear that he’s in cahoots with Big Content – owned, if you will – and that’s a very bad thing. I think me pointing that out is not something you should take offense over.
As for the queen thing – this is entirely not comparable. I’m not upset about a guy throwing a glass candleholder to queen Beatrix during Prinsjesdag – I’m upset because someone just insulted the very embodiment of my country. It’d be like me burning an American flag while standing in the crowd during a 4th of July parade. It’d be like me throwing a rock towards Obama while he’s holding the State of the Union.
I could care less who is our monarch. I care about what he or she represents.
Ironically, I don’t care about burning the flag.
I’m not upset about you insulting the President, that’s a right I’d fight to protect. I care about you irresponsibly reporting it the way you did. It’s not a fact, and it’s not something we agree on, so it’s a silly, poorly-written intro to a legitimate article. If there were anywhere but here, I’d click away.
It’s a bit like me saying “Sarah Palin, who is poorly educated, gets way too much attention.” It’s simply not a material fact, though it may be supported by lots of examples. It has no place in any sort of responsible reporting, because it’s not only not objective, it’s actively injecting your viewpoint and spinning the story, and that always makes me sick.
Thom, you seem to have been drinking too much of Stallman’s kool-aid lately.
Would be a great day in history when piracy websites get shutdown.
Fantastic article & all content seems interesting in terms of “preliminaries”. I am one who also believes the Internet needs government regulation in America (very serious government action in France with new anti-piracy law called HADOPI starting to be officially applied for example). Eric F. Vermote illegally used P2P in Maryland during 2003-2004 (bootlegs & audio files for his car). This man with a IT degree works for NASA & the University of Maryland but went to jail for automobile theft in Florida… he is definitely not at all scrupulous with music too obviously and filed a defamation legal suit in France against me in July 2009 stipulating he never got involved in on-line piracy because he is a manipulative liar & because the case involved never got officially substantiated or couldn’t ever be substantiated; my point is that if the Internet had been better regulated by the US government Eric F. Vermote would not have had the opportunity to lie against me and pretend what I accused him of (on-line piracy) is frivolous. On-line piracy cases almost absolutely never get substantiated unfortunately! Damien Bizeau – Classical Music, France.
Piracy means lost revenue, and therefore it is theft.
Personally, I welcome this move against piracy, and I wish it is extended to other countries as well.
Edited 2010-09-23 11:33 UTC
Your ears mean me losing 2309573495873496745290257735025702957097509475039475039745027502750275 092475094750349750937503760376039476 Euros.
Please pay me.
Did I just copy your ears? then I certainly should pay you.
Dont expect much from some kenyan worthless lieing ***** puppet.
These need to make countless laws for transferring 1s and 0s, I suggest deport idiot politicians back to Liberia where they have to kill for food and water.
Edited 2010-09-25 12:47 UTC