Comments on: Vive la France?

By: Henry Emrich

Henry Emrich — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:06:14 +0000

Sukasa:

“the pendulum is swinging the other way.”

Absolutely correct. The absurdly long copyright terms don’t help matters, either.

The ONLY choice left is either 1. accept DRASTIC revisions of so-called “intellectual property” law, or 2. LOSE the entire concept of “intellectual property” entirely. The way things are going, the notion of “intellectual property” is headed for the same dustbin of history where ‘miscegenation’ ended up. Laws against “miscegenation” strike the vast majority of people nowadays as inherently pernicious and dehumanizing, but they were at least tolerated a few generations ago. Outside of a relatively-few fringe ideologues (racists and such), the entire ‘debate’ is seen as self-evidently absurd.

Given the sheer scale of stuff like file-sharing, remixes, mashups, etc., it’s not hard to see that any attempts to “crack down” on it IN ANY WAY will just piss a lot of really smart, tech-savvy, tuned-in folks off in a lot of countries.

Lily Allen decided to yank her entire blog rather than deal with a shit-storm of her OWN CREATION.

By: Henry Emrich

Henry Emrich — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:57:54 +0000

Laverdad:

1. Go read Lawrence Lessig’s book “Free culture”. It’s available online for free, so you don’t even have that excuse.
2. Do a Google Video search on “Rick Falkvinge”. Pay VERY close attention to his presentation “Copyright Vs. civil liberties”.
3. Do some research on the history of copyright law. Pay PARTICULAR attention to the drastic expansion in copyright term over the last thirty years.
4. Study up on Jack Valenti’s attempts to get the “consumer” VCR banned. Pay particular attention to his assertion that — from the point of view of the corporate media industry — it was the equivalent of the Boston Strangler.

5. Go to www. questioncopyright.org, and explore around.

6. Go HERE: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

You’ll respond to this in one of several ways:

A. you’d simply dismiss the stuff above as “propaganda”, thus demonstrating that you *are* here to troll.
B. You’ll at least *glance* at the stuff I reccomended, and — hopefully — start changing your views on this issue.
C. You’ll simply fail to respond at all.

I REALLY understand where you’re coming from, because to be honest, everything you said is just about identical to the stuff *I* used to say. I changed my mind on these issues (and many others.)

Have fun with the resources. It should keep you busy, at any rate. (For one thing, I can’t even wrap my mind around most of the “against intellectual monopoly” stuff.

By: RIAA Hater

RIAA Hater — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:56:58 +0000

To LaVerdad.

Downloading a song or a film IS NOT STEALING!

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:22:55 +0000

@ Sukasa:

Stay tuned for another installment tomorrow.

This gets better and better, or worse and worse …

@ LaVerdad

Steal? Someone stole something? What? And from whom?

Cheers!

By: Sukasa

Sukasa — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:14:46 +0000

LaVerdad: try asking Renard. He runs vulpvibe.com, and a lot of his music ends up in the hands of people who haven’t paid for it- in fact, it’s part of part of his advertising scheme. The thing is, the companies have built their businesses on the naive assumption that people will bend over and take it in the ass from them for all eternity – and people just aren’t doing it anymore. Music is culture, and culture cannot be controlled forever.

The pendulum is swinging the other way, and no attempt to stop it, no matter how intense, will ever succeed.

By: LaVerdad

LaVerdad — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:30:19 +0000

So, anyone who creates content – a song, a film, a tv show, anything – is ok to just take and not pay for it ? How is this content supposed to get made in the future ? Not every song can be recorded at home and even when it is, you have any idea how much a good microphone or piece of gear costs ? This is all silly. Music should not be expensive but to think it should be free to just grab is not fair either. Whatever it is you do for a living, I am sure you would have problems if all of a sudden no one wanted to pay you for doing it any longer. Fairness must be found. This is not just about massive corporations and the common man. Music is more universal than just that. If you steal, you should be penalized in some way. It is a simple law of humanity.

By: Qix

Qix — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:58:38 +0000

These companies really are trying to push this kind of crap into law before the next generation makes it into government. The current generation in government (around the world not just here in the US) does not understand or even want the internet.In a generation or two it will become imposable to pass anything like this at all, so the entertainment cartels need these laws passed soon. Hopefully we make it that far.