p2pnet - rss feed: Anti-DRM Lawrence Lessig book — with DRM
p2pnet news view DRM | P2P:- DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) equals corporate consumer control.
It’s impossible to implement simply because it’s impossible to prevent anything which can be seen and/or heard from being copied.
Anlog or digital, it doesn’t matter. It can, and probably will, be copied by one means or another.
Same as it ever was.
The entertainment and software cartels figure whenever anybody spends good money on corporate ‘product,’ they’re not buying it, they’re renting it and they can only use it under very restrictive and limited conditions as defined by the cartels.
Lawrence Lessig is a professor of Law at Stanford Law School, founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society and the father of the Creative Commons licence meant to “provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators”.
In February, “Anti-DRM Advocate Lessig May Run for Congress,” said a PC Magazine headline.
Now, observes TorrentFreak, Free Culture (Kindle Edition) by Lessig is available through Amazon — but only under DRM.
Lessig isn’t, of course, responsible for what Amazon does, although it might be thought he’d have picked up on this and perhaps had a word.
Maybe not, though. 
The irony is certainly rich, but dig a little deeper and we find a story in The Register slugged Lessig blesses DRM.
Something along the lines of the Amazon incident, perhaps?
Nope. Lessig definitely gives DRM hearty pat on the back.
“If you arrive for work today and discover a grisly pool of brain tissue and bone fragments where a colleague used to sit, we may have the explanation right here,” writes Andrew Orlowski, continuing »»»
For in a move that risks causing Scanners-style head explosions across the land, Professor Lawrence Lessig has endorsed DRM.
Not just any old digital rights management, but Sun’s open source DRM initiative, the Open Media Commons.
“In a world where DRM has become ubiquitous, we need to ensure that the ecology for creativity is bolstered, not stifled, by technology,”. says Lessig - or somebody purporting to be Lessig.
“We applaud Sun’s efforts to rally the community around the development of open-source, royalty-free DRM standards that support ‘fair use’ and that don’t block the development of Creative Commons ideals,” says Lessig.
Stay tuned?
TorrentFreak - Lessig’s ‘Free Culture’ Now Available with DRM, September 28, 2008
The Register - Lessig blesses DRM, March 24, 2006
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September 29th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’m gobsmacked!
How much did the RIAA pay him to change his mind?
September 30th, 2008 at 1:02 am
The RIAA has nothing to do with this, and it’s amusing that you guys still don’t get it. The recording industry at its peak was a 16 billion business. Chickenfeed. APPLE Computer alone is bigger. And it’s down to 9b or so with filesharing. You think the government really cares? They couldn’t care less whether Don Henley gets his fair cut of the next Eagles release. And if this was digital birdcages being illegally copied, the government would be near frantic sorting out how to protect the birdcages. It’s about the network. ONLY. Not music. Not movies. Not books.
It’s about sussing out a way to do the least possible damage to free will/free speech and genuine privacy while absolutely-positively retaining the network as a viable business platform as their bottom line. THAT’s what this is about, and no RIAA exec has to bribe anybody because they know it’s not really about them in the first place. They just happen to be on the leading edge and taking the biggest hit, with movies next. SO WHAT?? The Republicans don’t get serious money from the entertainment industry. Why do you think this is unanimous and bipartisan? It’s too bad some of you guys can’t attend some of the meetings we take here in Manhattan with local and state government officials. You’d learn something.
The possibility that the internet as a future and secure business platform might actually be lost to piracy was never an acceptable outcome, and anyone who truly believes that privacy or free speech laws will trump property ownership and the inevitable development of the greatest tax base in human history needs a serious bucket of cold water in the face.
Lessig remains one of the greatest thinkers in all of this and he’s right at the hub of this issue. He sees clearly what piracy is doing and will continue to do to legal commerce if left unchecked. He just wants to make sure we don’t create a police state while doing it, but neither he nor anybody else deeply involved in this actually believes piracy won’t be seriously curtailed through draconian punishment, if necessary. This latest IP protection law is just the wedge that pry’s the door wide open if it has to. Pirates will either get it that government is very fucking serious about keeping this platform democratic and as crime free as humanly possible, or the years to be paid for infringement will go through the roof and the courts will back it up. Why? Because you’ll spin your defense that it’s a cruel and unusual punishment for a few little MP3’s while the government and the courts and Lessig are focused on whether any business that works digitally should have to live with the tyranny of rampant, illegal, multiple copies that gut out their business model and cripple tax production.
Keep it up. The punishments just went up again in multiples and this is getting entertaining. And the longer you keep thinking this is about some small-potatoes recording industry and a few bad movies, the better this show will get.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
“RIAA” was the trigger word for you, wasn’t it, Sam? lol
September 30th, 2008 at 11:13 am
““RIAA” was the trigger word for you, wasn’t it, Sam? lol”
(laughing) Uh-huh. It’s funny and very revealing that your instinct is to simply assume corruption and bribery amongst those who disagree with you, FreeThinker, even where a fine guy like Lessig is concerned. And it’s YOU doing the stealing! LOL It’s all part of your collective, self-satisfied, certainty of mindset.
Online pirates have long believed (to their very real disadvantage, actually) that any individual or organization who disagrees with the basic concept of “taking a copy of something for sale but without paying for it” as somehow inherently involved with the recording industry. That’s just untrue no matter how you study it. Read the PEW stats or other demographic studies in other parts of the world. People who break the law have always been in extreme minority overall, (except perhaps the pirates off the coast of Somalia. LOL) Order always returns because it’s in our best collective interests and our nature. And almost all people know this.
Digital piracy is the rough moral and legal equivalent of material piracy and/or theft in the hearts, minds and legal agendas of cultures, societies and their governments the world over. Only those who benefit from taking without paying harp on hairsplitting distinctions. And more and more the laws are calling it all out for what it really is.
Run the numbers. In terms of sheer volume against population, Free Thinker, illegal downloading is one of those regrettable but temporary moral aberrations that simply goes to prove that when some people can improperly “take” something, they just will until they are stopped. That’s all.
What makes this debate fascinating is the extreme ethical gymnastics and creative justification–all utterly beside the point–(The Statute of Anne LOL) to which some folks will go, to try to justify a new form of selfish lawlessness. Also extremely interesting is the near random, venal hatred focused by your group who actually have little experience and virtually no understanding of creative IP on an industry well-loved for over half a century before they started suing everyone. The recording industry has become the dartboard, no question, but this has always fundamentally been about displacing wasteful anarchy and simply re-establishing a reasonable societal order online to replicate order in the real, modern world. That’s really all it is. And its inevitable, it’ll just take time. And perhaps a few serious prison sentences. LOL.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:14 am
That wasn’t an invitation to write another novel…
September 30th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Some of us work hard at this and create daily digital content, Free Thinker, and we have much to lose to piracy. We think deeply about this issue, “novel” or not. You can bet we act upon it, too.
Others just steal while they can and some get caught. Is that brief enough?
September 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Sam,
Now, THAT was a good post.
Unfortunately, despite the sheer length of your two posts, there was, arguably, not much actual content there.
First, you’ve repeatedly made your — mistaken — views clear on many other posts, and your newfound veneer of respect for “Free will/free speech” is bound to strike some of us as suspicious.
You stand a hell of a lot to gain from the RIAA/MPAA lobby-tots having bloated copyright into what it is. Not to mention that — despite your posturing and self-proclaimed ability to use the existing IP system to you/your lawyers’ advantage — you show zero interest in the historical roots of IP law, or the actual reasoning for the State allowing such monopolies in the first place.
If you think Lessig is a “great thinker”, then I’d think you’d understand what he actually said. The guy is NOT a copyright-crusader like you. He sees the biggest danger to creativity and innovation NOT in “piracy”, but rather, in ever more aggressive and intrusive laws.
His book “Free Culture” details how the motion picture industry, broadcast radio, even Walt Disney himself — could only do business by engaging in practices which today’s aggressive copyright laws declare to be illegal. Since you — ostensibly — claim to regard him as a “great thinker”, then I fail to understand how you can so completely misunderstand his actual, stated views.
“Lessig remains one of the greatest thinkers in all of this and he’s right at the hub of this issue. He sees clearly what piracy is doing and will continue to do to legal commerce if left unchecked”
Uh, how exactly do you figure that?
He lauds the development of Napster, gleefully recounts his joy at finnally being able to find and hear songs he’d all but forgotten about due to their being “out of print”. Further, he distinguishies between different motivations among p2p users as to why they’d use the programs and technologies. He also — unlike RIAA dupes such as yourself — draws a distinction between “piracy” — for-profit duplication and sale of CD’s/tapes etc., and the “sharing” going on via p2p networks.
He WAS an aggressive advocate of the “public domain” and the fact that Copyrights/patents MUST be allowed to expire, and thus “free up” the things they supposedly “protect”.
This is why advocacy of DRM from the guy is so jarring: DRM-advocates want to have it both ways: they want to “distribute” content — and charge people for it’s use, but they also want that content “hobbled” such that they can stipulate which devices it’s permitted to be loaded onto, how many times it’s permitted to be copied, etc.
The threat behind DRM — ALL forms of DRM — is essentially the same as that posed by “data extinction”: the data may still exist, but if it’s in a proprietary, closed format, for all intents and purposes it’s inaccessible and may as well not exist at all.
THAT’S why people who “bought” DRM’ed files from Yahoo are having problems, and THAT’s why the anti-circumvention laws are so evil: DRM isn’t a “purchase”, and it’s not quite a “rental” either: DRM is somewhere between the two, with all the disadvantages of rental, and none of the advantages of ownership.
Lessig’s a brilliant and extremely thorough academic. Unfortunately, he’s also a “raging moderate”: he saw all of the problems with the current copyright regime clearly, but instead of taking a firm stand on the issue, he merely promoted a series of “permissive licenses”. Worse yet, he reacted with GLEE when the courts stated that CC licenses would be considered binding. That doesn’t address the obscene lengths of copyright terms, the all-but-complete gutting of the public domain, or — more importantly — the notion cherished by folks like you, that “exclusive control for a significant time” is your prerogative.
Lessig’s advocacy of DRM is, at base, just another in a long series of capitulations and failures stemming from the fact that he can’t seem to take a firm stand.
Look into the real issues, Sam.
But hey, I’ll give ya one thing: this time, you were able to write the equivalent of a halfway decent RIAA press release. You’re getting better.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
You just don’t get it, do you sam?
September 30th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I disagree with some things that Larry Lessig has defended in the past, Henry, but one does not have to agree with him to appreciate his writings and gratefully acknowledge that he is a fine thinker on this issue. If you were any kind of thinker I’d acknowledge that, too.
http://lessig.org/blog/
September 30th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
“Sam”:
With all do respect (which, as you can probably guess, isn’t a hell of a lot), in order for me to qualify as what you’d call a “thinker”, I’d have to do the following:
1. Demonstrate complete disinterest in the history and original purpose of IP law (which, according to you, is “meaningless history” and/or “totally beside the point.”
2. Regard the “public domain” as an atrocity, and the expiration of copyright as a form of “taking”. (Because as we all know, all-but-perpetual monopoly enforced via government jackbooting is a wonderful thing.)
3. Demonstrate a complete inability to actually formulate arguments, instead relying on the time-honored RIAA strategy of misinformation, disinformation, personal attacks, and whining.
4. Engage in pompous bloviating about how the current system is just peachy keen because “some of us work hard producing digital content” and such “hard work” obviously requires the completely destruction of privacy law, and perpetual monopoly power unto the tenth generation.
To be honest, I’m glad you don’t regard me as any kind of “thinker”, Sam: if you did, I’d feel genuinely unclean.
Somebody else PLEASE take this pompous little troll to task.
And “Sam”, one more tip:
Actually answer the points I raised — or (if that’s too difficult for you), put forth a cogent defense of your position.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Sam,
Don’t bother pointing me to Lessig in an attempt to bolster your position, it won’t work.
From the guy’s blog:
“But shouldn’t,” one could well argue, “you not support DRM technologies at all?” That’s a valid position taken by many I respect. My view, however, is that one supports the campaign to avoid debilitating DRM by making culture freely available. New technologies will try all sorts of new deals to make things competitive. So long as free, open format versions are available to compete with that, I am not concerned about the DRM’d version existing as well.”
Now (aside from the fact that he’s getting his “congressional doublespeak” freak on really early — which is troubling in itself), his claim is that the existence of DRM’ed versions isn’t a problem PROVIDED that “open and freely-available” versions DO exist.
Unfortunately — and this is yet another instance where Lessig demonstrates a lamentable shortsightedness — he’s assuming a level of goodness rarely (if ever?) exhibited by those who really DO advocate DRM.
The whole point of how DRM is used — what it’s actually for — is to prevent stuff from being “open and freely available”.
The ultimate RIAA wet-dream scenario is one where the content is ONLY available in a DRM’ed format and, instead of today’s pretense that you’re “buying a CD” (which might lead you to mistakenly believe that you actually OWN the fuckin’ thing), instead you’ll “rent” a license, and if that license expires/the server goes dead/the company wants to make it go “out of print”, then suddenly “your” file no longer plays.
The whole POINT to DRM is that there NOT be “open and freely available” versions.
In other words (and to put it as bluntly as I can possibly manage):
Without an “open” version, DRM is an atrocity and a total scam.
WITH an “open” version available, DRM is totally irrelevant.
DRM is about restriction and control, and the most dangerous subspecies of such things is what’s called “Dead-hand control”. That’s why copyrights expire, Sam, and that’s why “Free culture” is such a critical issue.
More than that, it goes beyond the handwaving and capitulations Lessig’s been engaged in for a few years now. Ultimately, it’s not ABOUTwhether the copyright-holder even WANTS “their” stuff open, or derivative works made of it in the future.
If it WAS about that, then fair use becomes an atrocity — because somebody might, say, quote ‘your’ work in an unflattering fashion).
www.questioncopyright.org has some really good stuff to say in regard to derivative works which were created WITHOUT explicit permission.
I’d suggest that you go read it, but that would take time away from whacking off over the DMCA, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?
Sam, you’ve demonstrated yourself to be a petty, pseudo-intellectual, narcissistic, small-minded RIAA-apologist of the lowest order, and (no suprise here), have managed to have every single thing you said easily and completely refuted.
Honestly, why do you even try?
If it’s all such a foregone conclusion, and all of the concerns raised among p2pers, Free-culture advocates and advocates for IP reform are irrelevant — then why waste your time here, puking up gallon after gallon of Mitch Bainwold’s semen like the little RIAA apologist whore you are?
I mean, hey — why not go off and “work hard creating digital content for sale” (no doubt offered in the shittiest, DRM’ed formats you can find, at the highest prices you can manage to gouge, so you can squeeze every available cent out of it before the evil horrible “Public domain” reaper comes and “takes” it all from your daughter.)
One last thing (just for the Lulz): TWO LIQUIDY SHITS.
(I know how much you LOVE it when I use that phrase!)
September 30th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
“work hard creating digital content for sale” (no doubt offered in the shittiest, DRM’ed formats you can find, at the highest prices you can manage to gouge, so you can squeeze every available cent out of it before the evil horrible “Public domain” reaper comes and “takes” it all…”
Yes. Thank you.
It’s called “capitalism” Henry, it’s the system that runs the world. Even leading Socialist lights like Sweden (the worlds largest per-capital arms dealer) and France (government subsidized industry to effectively compete) leverage capitalism exactly as you just described it—exactly— in breathtakingly brilliant ways; in global aerospace, in pharmaceuticals, in automotive, military hardware, medicine, digital tech, apparel, entertainment, even wine. It’s called capitalism, Henry, and it’s a direct reflection of our evolved human nature.
You’ll either have to mature into this or go have your worthless, empty, academic arguments with a mirror, while others who can actually deal with reality contribute with pride to quality product, excellent service and a reliable tax base for the general welfare of us all. For profit, Henry, every available cent.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
what the hell is up with these ranting RIAA suck-ups invading p2pnet recently? “It’s about sussing out a way to do the least possible damage to free will/free speech and genuine privacy while absolutely-positively retaining the network as a viable business platform as their bottom line.”
You call mindlessly suing people without evidence, bandwidth limiting, frequently ignoring “Cease and Desist” letters from State Police, as actions that are “Viable Business Platforms”.
No, you (Sam I Am) are nothing more than moronic lobbyist, who believes the crap that RIAA says. RIAA and MPAA have been constantly violating the law, and bribing politicians to create laws to force people to repurchase the same crap over and over again (called DRM).
October 1st, 2008 at 8:50 am
I’ve never been in the RIAA’s camp, Arse, I’ve only ever expressed a knowledge of what it feels like to have our IP stolen and misused. But that’s all the recording industry and I ever had in common, except the occasional negotiation over using one of their recordings in the shows we write, license and produce. I’ve never supported all their tactics, although I fully appreciate why they feel entitled.
I’m not simply “trolling’ either, at least I don’t think so. But I am trying to compel a reasonable dialog here on Jon’s site that accepts reality in all ways. There will always be some degree of lawlessness. We realize this and piracy will never fully go away. I think the industries being ransacked are beginning to accept this. Audio recordings are just the canary in the coal mine and the canary is sick, true, but in the bigger picture the government is only determined to save the mine itself and keep it as free of fraud, piracy and harassment as possible, just as government is charged to do in our material world. That’s the far greater issue at stake and that’s what you seem to be missing.
Industry, the legislature and the courts are slowly getting up to speed on this issue–and people are genuinely going to jail– and it’s getting time for pirates and the websites that support them to accept this. A shift in course and strategy is in order, because an argument with reality that you demand some “right to take without paying” can only end badly. And as time passes, increasingly badly. Everyone can see that now.
Rekrul asked a good question a few days ago about knocking off a designer dress and I answered him thoughtfully, and with respect because it was a very reasonable question and it’s likely that many of you have little or no real experience or understanding in the entertainment, artistic and/or design world, or how registered IP spurs innovation and makes it possible for businesses like mine to even exist in the first place. You can read that brief answer here:
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17142#comments
Or, you can be like Henry Ermich and pretend you know anything pertinent about this and cloak yourself in self-righteous, malicious bleating…….“I’m a victim in life and so I’m going to stick my lower lip out and be civil disobedient and write about Mitch Bainwols semen” ……….and just marginalize yourself as part of the problem. And take a pointless, stupid pride in all that. And maybe someday get caught and go to jail instead of working hard (and not incidentally, legally) and creating something of lasting value in your life. And maybe go buy a new European, two-seater sportscar or something.
October 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Sam:
So lemme get this straight — I honestly want to learn because you’re ever so much smarter than me.
“Capitalism” consists of:
1. Agressively lobbying for coercive monopoly power in order to prevent “legal” competition. 11 years vs. “life plus 70″.
2. Lobbying to have entire tefchnologies banned because they pose a “threat” to your particular business-model. I bet we’re all glad the horse-breeders and carriage makers didn’t think of this, or there’d be no automobiles.
3. Using misinformation, disinformation, and disingenuous comparisons to the “Boston Strangler”.
Suuure, “Sam”. “Capitalism” — as described here — DOES “run the world”. Unfortunately you forgot to preface it with the word “crony”. The PRO-IP Bill is just another “bailout” of a not-particularly-sickly corporate behemoth.
Just like the Banking shit.
And as far as the backhanded crack about “maturing into” your frame of mind: I’d put two into the back of my head before I EVER bacame something like you.
You’re probably not even a person. Your stuff reads more like that automated blog-spam for generic Viagra, than actual, well-reasoned argument.
I WOULD have asked you “reasonable questions” if your first response hadn’t been snotty. You’ve done nothing but attempt — vainly — to antagonize me. Personally, I think you’re fun: half-witted “I don’t work for the RIAA, just believe in everything they stand for and wholeheartedly support everything they do” type of stuff is REALLY entertaining.
Unfortunately, you’ve never ONCE bothered to resond to my questions — statute of anne, first-sale doctrine, why expiration of copyright is supposedly “taking” from your daughter, etc.
And until you do, you’ll still look like tha half-literate troll you really are.
The only people who are “working hard” at the RIAA are their lobbyists, spin-doctors, and propaganda department.
I suppose you believe the proposed massive bailout of the banking system to be a great idea, too?
This guy really pisses me off.
Now be a good little troll, and go “work hard” knocking off designer dresses” or whatever the hell it is you actually do.
October 1st, 2008 at 1:33 pm
“You’ve done nothing but attempt — vainly — to antagonize me. ”
“This guy really pisses me off.”
Make up your mind, Henry. You can’t even think straight anymore.
October 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Okay, “Sam”, I’ll play it your way:
“Scum I Am shrilledThe recording industry has become the dartboard, no question, but this has always fundamentally been about displacing wasteful anarchy and simply re-establishing a reasonable societal order online to replicate order in the real, modern world. That’s really all it is. And its inevitable, it’ll just take time. And perhaps a few serious prison sentences. LOL.:”
Sure, sam, Life-plus-70 years is a “reasonable societal order”. Uh huh. How p2p can be considered “wasteful” is beyond me — no CD’s pressed, no trucks driving around spewing pollution into the air, no “bricks and mortar” retail space taken up etc.
As for your assertion that this is “anarchy” — yet again you take the idiot’s tactic of “call ‘em commies”. Many of us have admitted that we don’t have “experience” in wrangling the red-tape beast your brothers-in-spirit over at the RIAA have created. That’s the only “creativity” they exhibit.
Valenti was a dishonest scumbag, and I think that quote about the “Boston Strangler” should’ve gone on his gravestone as testament to what a dishonest fuck he really was. There is NO rational justification for life plus 70, and the Copyright office is finally waking up to that fact.
The only “regrettable but temporary moral aberration” is the RIAA’s lobby-bots and their all-but-perpetual copyright terms. p2p, at base, is people reasserting the “public domain” BY TECHNOLOGICAL MEANS.
“Illegal downloading” is one of those rubber-band terms which can be stretched to mean just about anything.
p2p networks obviously apply in most cases — but ONLY because — AS YOU”VE ADMITTED — they’ve been able to preserve their “copyright” monopoly by lobbying for ever longer terms. They’ll probably do it again, and thanks to shit like the Eldred decision, we’re left with leagal “reasoning” which states that anything short of infinity counts as a “limited time”.
You’ve admitted this, “Sam”: “Quite right Henry” — you finally conceded EVERY POINT I made via those three simple words, but you persist in defending these vermin, and attempting to cast p2p users in an unfavorable light.
The fact that the vast majority of the stuff on p2p networks WOULD have entered the public domain years ago, and that the RIAA Lobbybots were the ONLY reason it didn’t, is more than enough evidence against anything else you might have to say on this subject.
Total — WILLFUL — ignorance of the historical roots of the very law you pimp so aggressively is also pretty goddamn telling in and of itself, doncha think?
Advocating that the State waste more prison-space, tax money, time, and resources on PROSECUTING people for violating an all-but-perpetual monopoly is also a touch suspicious.
Your repeated claim to the effect that you’re “not in the RIAA’s camp” also ring hollow when ALL you ever do here is recycle their misinformation campaign and advocate ever harsher measures up to and including the complete gutting of privacy law.
LOL.
This quote from Thomas Jefferson pretty much sums up what’s at stake. Although, according to your line of ‘thinking’, his views on the subject should be disregarded since he’s never ‘negotiated rights clearances’ under the current system:
* “It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs….That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property…Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea…generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society.”
In other words, “Sam”: you’re a lying, disingenuous troll, an RIAA shill, and you contribute NOTHING to the discussion. But rest assured — if any of us have questions bout the best way to wrangle ourselves a perpetual monopoly and trample REAL fundamental rights in the process, we’ll be sure to ask your RIAA buddies.
Now go back to sucking Mitch Bainwol’s dick, M’kaaaaay?
October 1st, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea”
To quote “Sam”: “Statute of Anne LOL.
“You can’t even think straight anymore”.
Of course “Sam”: regurgitating every single bit of misinformation on the subject of IP while simultaneously claiming it’s historical roots and stated purpose are “beside the point” is “thinking straight”.
Suuuure.
October 1st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
“I’m not simply “trolling’ either, at least I don’t think so. But I am trying to compel a reasonable dialog here on Jon’s site that accepts reality in all ways.
Then why your self-proclaimed antipathy to an inquiry into the historical roots of the IP laws you so vigorously (and uncritically) defend?
“Reality in all ways”: Like, say, lobbyists having been able to gut the public domain? Corporate spokes-vermin comparing the VCR to the Boston Strangler?
That kinda thing?
Lemme put this simply enough so that even something like YOU can understand:
“Reasonable dialog” involves answering questions — not dodging them, and not starting out with the view that your opponents’ points are motivated by moral bankruptcy. Also, YOU opened the door to the pot-shits, Li’l buddy.
I’ve successfully trumped you at every turn, and it pisses you off. You’ve back-pedaled and changed your story at least six times now.
I brought up the “statute of Anne”, and you threw a hissy-fit, declaring it to be “useless history” and merely a rationalization for “fanbois”.
I brought up the FACT that — barring the RIAA lobbybots, the copyright on the vast majority of “content” on p2p networks would have lapsed YEARS ago, and the stuff would thus, no longer be considered as ANYONE’s “property”. That is, after all, what patents, copyrights, and “intellectual property” is SUPPOSED TO DO.
You proceeded to ADMIT that fact in one post, and then blissfully continue to bloviate about the innate “sacredness” of IP/wonderfulness of the current system. THEN you took time to insult us all by claiming that since we’d never negotiated the bureaucratic nightmare of today’s IP law (YOUR assumption, “Sam”, not neccesarily true), we had “zero understanding” of the issues.
In short, yes: despite all of your idiotic whinging to the contrary, you ARE nothing but a chronically-ignorant, willfully confrontational litlle RIAA cocksucker, who by his OWN admission, thinks the type of “crony capitalism” infesting the world nowadays is a great thing — “how the world works”.
So no, “Sam”: do us all a favor and answer the goddamn questions, or look like the stupid little troll you so obviously are.
A high-powered, college-educated, hard-working “creator of digital products for sale” can surely manage THAT, right?
Answer the questions put to you:
No sermonizing
No personalistic jabs at me
No accusation of p2pers’ “moral compass”
And — above all — no preciousness/whimpering about terms like “two liquidy shits” (which, not coincidentally, is all your “contributions” to these debates ever manage to be worth so far.)
So pony up, schmuck.
First sale doctrine?
Fair-use exemptions?
Expiration of copyright terms?
(It’s pretty easy to detect your views on these subjects — they’re implicit in everything you’ve posted so far, but it’d be nice if you’d at least come out and actually ADMIT what you really believe.)