‘What happened to liberty?’
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Earlier today, “The, business of companies that want to sell mass market goods to consumers is not suing those consumers,” said p2pnet, quoting Bill Patry, who went on, The business of the RIAA may be doing that because it has to justify its own existence, but the business of business is business, not litigation.
However, Patry says he`s an, enormous fan of the copyright industries and a, very steady source of income to it, stating »»»
I buy about 300 books a year. I take my kids to see every kids` movie, buy the DVD when it comes out, and also buy two copies of the same product as a Nintendo DS game (which can be $30-$35 times two); I have bought maybe a hundred DVDs of Nickelodeon TV show DVDs, I buy dozens of CDs and would buy a lot more if the industry had supported the SACD format. I take my kids to live musical events. As a musician (clarinet) I buy lots of sheet music. I buy four hard copy newspapers a day and subscribe to ten monthly magazines a month. I have not bought any of these because they were copyrighted; indeed most of the sheet music is in the public domain but I am still happy to pay good money for a nice edition.
The most respect that we can pay to copyright industries is to think only about buying such products and not copyright. The music industry forgot this.
Says Crosbie Fitch in a Reader’s Write, “I posted a comment on William`s blog this morning (the 3rd comment of mine on his new blog – he no longer publishes my comments, so they are effectively personal correspondence – assuming no spam filter) that pointed out he was barking up the wrong tree if he was waiting for the monkeys to drop down a new business model for the producers and customers of intellectual work,” continuing »»»
That devoted expectation is properly recognised as cargo-cultism.
How can an industry that is based upon the idea of selling copies be expected to come up with a business model that is based upon the idea of selling intellectual work instead?
The last thing the copyright industries will come up with is the idea that people should be free to make and sell their own copies, to enjoy their natural cultural liberty. The corporation will not surrender their monopoly, because they have nothing to lose by keeping it, no conscience to pang them, no humanity to gain.
But then, if the lawyers are loonies for expecting salvation to come from monopolists, what the heck are we doing expecting enlightenment to come from lawyers?
Lawyers are mentally handicapped. They have had their instinctive sense of ethics surgically removed at law school: As lawyers you are not to determine who is right or wrong, good or bad, nor what the law should be, but what the law IS, and how to exploit your knowledge of the law in the interests of your client – whether state, corporation, or individual.
So here we have the sorry sight of a bunch of copyright lawyers looking in satisfaction at the scales of justice, whilst having the niggling suspicion that perhaps something isn`t quite right.
In one pan there is the commercial interest of the immortal publishing corporation: their precious privilege of copyright (oh, and a large ingot of plutonium). In the other pan there is the cultural interest of the mortal individual in sharing music with their fellow man (whether Jammie Thomas, Brittany Kruger, or Joel Tenenbaum): their liberty to do so suspended from an arm of the balance by an invisible thread.
Not only has the publisher`s pan broken its chain, but it has smashed a hole through the table and is currently melting a crater in the floor on its way to China.
And what are the lawyers wondering?
Not whether justice has been done – it plainly has been done in their warped minds, but whether the prosecution of copyright infringers was a wise strategy.
Oh, right. Copyright is fine. It`s just that some publishers might have been ill advised to rub their customers up the wrong way by prosecuting and bankrupting a few who disrespected their monopoly, as a lesson to the rest of them.
The lawyers` collective blindness to the corruption that has just occurred before their very eyes is staggering.
It`s like a bunch of Guantanamo doctors wondering whether the repeated drowning and resuscitation of people plucked at random from Afghanistan, whilst a justifiable information retrieval technique, is conducive to the dissuasion of terrorism and the encouragement of greater respect for US corporations` trading infrastructure.
Guys? Haven`t you forgotten something?
What happened to the natural rights of the individual?
What happened to liberty? What happened to the land of the free?
“There is something wrong with the picture of `justice` before you,” Fitch says, adding:
“Mend the scales, remove the plutonium, clean up the mess and abolish the unethical privilege of copyright. Restore all individuals` liberty to share and build upon mankind`s cultural commonwealth.”
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
p2pnet – Copyright as a `primary weapon`, August 12, 2009
Bill Patry – My Reply to Ben, August 1, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
“What happened to the land of the free?”
“The land of the free” will be the “land of the free” again once we send all of these music and movie recording parasites to Gitmo.
We are working on this so that Gitmo will finally hold some real terrorists!
They will be no need for torture because these morons already did the political propaganda for us.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
it disappeared when the 2 worst words ever was officially accepted, politically correct!
it is how it is when money rules, the lawmakers, the courts and etc is letting private companies aka kartels run amok and be above the law, letting them set their own rules and systems on how things are. if the courts just had asked the kartels if they had filed complaints with police according to laws and the judges just followed the lawbooks they are supposed to the kartels would not have had the same results. it has become a society of “guilty til proven innocent, but at least we know we have smeared your name and ruined your credit”
second thing is when we the people became consumers instead of customers, that further distanced the companies executives from the people who are supposed to buy their products. i am still a customer who like to consume things, but if i buy something as a gift i am not a consumer, i am a customer… but whatever, i am still just a blimp on the radar for their surveys and polls.
just look at the average age of our politicians, they are still in the 8 track mode.
the president is technically savvy but when he goes up against a house and a senate that is being paid by lobby group that are bigger than some nations he can’t stand up and fight. noone can, this is why this place is running fast toward a collapse.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
There’s no call to incite violence.
The whole point is to stop violence by the state against the individual, to remove the corporation’s ability to punish individuals, irrespective of their choice of punishment, whether physical, mental or financial.
William Patry is is effectively saying “How can we get people to respect publishers’ copyright so us lawyers don’t have to punish them?”
He will never see that question answered. It is the wrong question, asked by someone who cannot conceive of the possibility that copyright itself is wrong, and its abolition the answer to a different question – how to avoid publishers and their lawyers being vindictive and cruel to individuals.
The question is not how to FORCE people with threat of punishment to pay publishers for copies rather than make their own, but how to LET people pay producers for their work. How to LET audiences pay artists for their art. Like all exchanges, the exchange of art for money is supposed to be voluntary.
It’s not that much of a mental leap is it?
August 12th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
” Thereâs no call to incite violence. ”
Just ignore him Crosbie.
This same poster makes veiled threats in about 70% of the threads here.
I’m pretty sure that’s what prompted that attack on Jon about a week ago.
I’m also pretty sure that’s the result the poster was after.
No matter how many good ideas, peaceful suggestions, or mentions of mending the fences we make,
the post that the enemy will grab onto and hold up on a signpost is the one thing they think they
can use to destroy or discredit us.
No one here takes him seriously.
You shouldn’t either.
August 13th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Well Dreddsnik, it’s one thing to take an anonymous poster seriously, but another to point out that a comment is over the top.
Perhaps those who deliberately hope to evince or foment less peaceful sentiment will begin to achieve their ends unless countered?
August 13th, 2009 at 10:23 am
” Perhaps those who deliberately hope to evince or foment less peaceful sentiment will begin to achieve their ends unless countered? ”
True, but it’s hard to find where to draw the line.
On the one hand, pointing out that no one take the poster seriously is a good thing,
on the other hand, responding to the ridiculous post at all encourage the beginnings
of a flame war, which is sometimes also what the poster may want.
Both achieve similar goals.
Disruption of the site.
One result gets the site accused of inciting violence ( that’s already begun ), the other
creates major disruption and even more posts to point to as threatening.
Even trying to counter their ends sometimes helps achieve their ends. Thats pretty screwed up.
August 14th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
What we need is a mass scale consumer wide boycott of MPAA and RIAA associated products — hit em where it hurts don’t buy their wares or pirate them. Keep whatever you have already but don’t be pirating or buying new stuff that comes out.
I still use DVDs as my preferred medium and am buying even less of them recently. I refuse to use Blu Ray because of its DRM and pricing. I refuse to pay for the same thing again and again.
The RIAA and MPAA cartels aren’t the only monopolists consumers need to worry about. Exclusivity between cellular phones and cellular phone carriers needs to end. Why shouldn’t consumers be able to use any phone with any network other than the ridiculous excuses by the carriers defending the practice.
Telecom and cable company monopolies have to be broken also. Support digital liberty by supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org