The internet has made access to information and media much more open. Just because someone doesn’t know how good of a lock they need to protect thier property doesn’t mean you’re welcome to free use!

It’s a beautiful ideal to live in a society where every member of the team gets equal recognition at dinner time. Should the waterboy get as well paid as the quarterback? They couldn’t have done it without a waterboy.
Unfortunately society is made up of waterboys. Dime a dozen mean anything here? Fact is it’s the quarterback that makes the decisions that get it done! That’s why he makes the big bucks.

We all decide how we want to use the life we’re given. Some people decide to shoot for financial comfort. Many of these people decide to do things so valuable that they’re unique like the quarterback. Granted there are people who just take the money, but most are paid by the society that values them accordingly.

What would happen if you and I each bought adjoining, equal plots of land for a thousand bucks. Say you dug one shovel load of dirt that had 100 one million dollar diamonds and I planted corn. At the end of the year each yaer you sell a diamond and I sell my corn. Should I make the same amount of money as you? Or how about you only make as much as me!!! If we were paid based on our investment I would clearly get paid more. I would have plante , tended, and harvested. You just dug a scoop of dirt. The reality is that you’ld have made the wiser decision to harvest something more valued for your effort than I. People in society are using each of our products every day until the products used up or no longer valued. We’ve been paid for that use. How ’bout I quit farming corn and open a hotel. Should I quit charging for the rooms as soon as my investment is paid off? No, each user needs to pay for each use. That’s called profit! Profit is why I quit farming and built the hotel! If I die, shouldn’t my heirs be able to enjoy the profit of my efforts as much as the house I leave them or the wisdom they’ve gleand from me?

If I write a book, record a song, invent a machine, write useful code, or design and build the edifice that moves us from the cave it is mine. It’s mine to share as I see fit. If I want to charge for its use it is mine to do so, in perpetuety if I want.

No person is made up of only the thing you know them for. It’s your error to assume a wealthy rockstar is wealthy enough and should therefore give the music away for free. The reality is that most of the money donated to socially concious causes comes from the wealthiest 9% of our society. These people are wise enough to make thier living doing what they do and give away for free what they can, where they can, when they can. Often this is done anonymously.

If you want something in this life, earn it, build it , or buy it. If you steal it, you’re a thief. Have a concience and respect others property and they might respect yours. It’s the old universal rule. Do unto others …..

Elio Crivello, Welcome , Upper Clarence Road, St Leonards on sea, TN37 6PG . UK

Elio Crivello- United Kingdom

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/05/uk_intellectual_property_rights_review/

NOTE to self: keep watch on this!

If the premise is true (and it is) then why do a trickle of artists back RIAA?

The same reason a trickle of songwrites make appearances to backup RIAA, their music publishers and the performace righs collecting agencies that allegedly work for the songwriters.

The reason is PAYOLA (paid money or favors) and FEAR of loosing the income they get and just plain IGNORANCE of how the accounting is carried out by music publishers and the and record companies. Anyway, the trickle is the CHOSEN FEW that may actually be paid something because they are the ARGUMENT that songwriters and performers are paid.

My personal experience is that RIAA record companies have sold millions of records with songs that belong to my family and not a single cent in composer royalty money has been paid to us since my father (the songwriter) died 12 years ago. Just one record produced by RIAA member Sony has sold over 5 million copies (a confirmed fact) and the royalty money is worth about $1,000,000 at current value. Surely if Sony steals the author’s royalties, why expect them to be honest with singers and bands. Our infringement (the songs were used by Sony without a license) lawsuit against Sony, filed in 2001, five years ago and stalled (ask the judge), are here:

Venegas v. Sony Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/venegas_v_sony_lawsuit.htm

A glaring fact is that songwriters and recording artists have never joined forces to fight the accounting schemes of record companies and the music publishers, the cartels. Theese cartels have been very clever. They have created allegedly songwriter associations that only accept songwriters because the association was set up to only collect the performnce income that is only paid to songwriters (and ironically, not the oerformers themselves). The scheme to create a division among songwriters and artists is pefect and has worked for many pre-Internet years. It is time these anti-artists, anti-songwriter systems be destroyed by the artists and the songwriters.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

The bands put up with this crap because they have to get on the charts and get airplay if they expect to make it to the big time concert circuit. This was even true back in the hey-day of “Lounge Act” singers like the rat Pack. They’d make more during a two week run in a Las Vegas Showroom than they did off of any album they cut. However, they do their penance in the studio in order to get new material out to their fans who would then be eager them to come back and see them the next time around.

Eventually Big Music is going to make attempting to their (pathetic) offerings so cumbersome with non-sensical restrictions and boo-boos likes XCP, that their customers will just get disgusted, give up and learn to play the bassoon, or whatever instrument strikes their fancy. In fact, there are many “make and mix your own tracks” software packages available now that require only the most rudimentary knowledge of music to create something sufficiently good enough to inspire further learning and experimentation.

Imagine the possibilities!

–TurboGeek

Political partys, Religion, **AA all one same thing really LIERS!

We need to change that — the power of people-to-people (P2P) is here..

Canada is currently involved in a federal election — how many of the Canadians on this site (Or foreigners with friends in Canada) will be using this time to try to educate each other on copyright and related issues, including election candidates?

We have started to see some posts to the riding-specific areas on the Digital-copyright.ca site. If you want to track posts, go to http://www.digital-copyright.ca/tracker

If you have information about your area, please sign up and post it!

I find your post amusing cuz you seem to be a person that simply takes a stab at religon whenever you can. After all the article was about Copyrights and patents, not religion.

Being Atheist makes it easy to see all the other reason people fight. I just like to be fair and neutral rather than discriminate against others. Christians have they’re problems, I’ll be the first to admit. However, your simple bias excludes acknowledgement of worse kinds of evil. Such as, oil hungry politicians are the reason for our current war. I think this comes under pursuit of profit or maybe just pursuit of power. what do you think.

I find your post amusing cuz you seem to be a person that simply takes a stab at religon whenever you can. After all the article was about Copyrights and patents, not religion.

Being Atheist makes it easy to see all the other reason people fight. I just like to be fair and neutral rather than discriminate against others. Christians have they’re problems, I’ll be the first to admit. However, your simple bias excludes acknowledgement of worse kinds of evil. Such as, oil hungry politicians are the reason for our current war. I think this comes under pursuit of profit or maybe just pursuit of power. what do you think.

I find your post amusing cuz you seem to be a person that simply takes a stab at religon whenever you can. After all the article was about Copyrights and patents, not religion.

Being Atheist makes it easy to see all the other reason people fight. I just like to be fair and neutral rather than discriminate against others. Christians have they’re problems, I’ll be the first to admit. However, your simple bias excludes acknowledgement of worse kinds of evil. Such as, oil hungry politicians are the reason for our current war. I think this comes under pursuit of profit or maybe just pursuit of power. what do you think.

Nina, http://www.portoalegre2002.org

Hitler also gave the German people’s live “purpose”. And they followed Hitler down to their death and destruction, with much help from the religious sect based in the Vatican. See the truth in the movie Amen.

God was a great idea, INVENTED to control the minds and purse of the followers.

Well, that’s why religious folks are to this very day referred to as flocks of sheep. It comes down to the social behaviours that are hard wired into most of us and is why it’s human nature to want to be ruled over, and is also why the religious have always been easy to manipulate whether for good or bad intentions. You know the old saying, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The bible is quite simply a tool for those that wish to control others whom don’t want to think for themselves, so I have to agree with your statements. Especially seeing as it’s really hard to say with any certainty whether the bible and religion in general has done more good for mankind than bad through out all of history. This is subject to opinion, but I would definitely say the amount of good has come at a heavy price and is overshadowed by the dark times historically.

Back to the bible, it’s just a collection of stories really like any other, and some of them are simply common sense for the most part (common sense, now there is an oxymoron). I have no doubt that a few of these stories are perhaps a somewhat accurate historical recordings of the past, but I definitely don’t believe that everything in there is accurate or even true since I’m not the type that likes to be told what to believe on nothing more than blind faith. See, I know it’s also human nature to make things up and embellish. I guess that’s the real problem, faith is completely blind and has to be, otherwise it would all fall apart for them. It’s a religious persons only real defence against having to think for themselves when their faith is questioned and I’ve always found that rather funny. It’s their warm cozy security blanket that they love to hide in, and it doesn’t require independant thought nor any real effort. They say we unbelievers just don’t get it, I say it’s just the easy way out and that this so called “faith” is really just the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. I should know, my wife is a devout Christian lol. Thankfully we get along because we are able to accept each other for what we are, something we have no control over at all. That would be the product of our parents and families heh. Now that is something a lot harder to change (if not impossible), and likely not even worth trying. Change yourself if you want, but don’t try to change others. Sadly people like to ignore that bit of wisdom more than any other, so it’s no wonder nobody gets along.

While the internet makes it much more highly visiable, the idea is still the same, the intent is identical, and for p2p (just like everyday lawyers who get a copy of evidence regardless of copyright issues or not for the judge) there is no money passing hands to justify the statutory fines now being used against everyday p2p users. Statutory fines were not put in place for traders making no money on it, it was put in place to discourage those that were selling items not their own. The key here is that the money finalizing the transaction is missing. The other key is that the proclaimed “theft” doesn’t take place as with physical items that our laws have been based on through historical usage.

Now in a quick slight of hand, corporations are wanting IP elevated to physical status for damage relief. Simply it is a way to collect on something that should have never been ranked as high as it is. Trading or giving an idea to someone else doesn’t make you poorer nor does it deny you possession of that idea afterwards. In much the same way, neither does trading files. P2p is rapidly becoming a culture thing, not a mass piracy manufacturing ring as the cartels would have you believe.

Most of the industrial nations are finding that local and national laws are jacking up the cost of making physical things. As much as possible they are looking at cashing in on the difference in costs between cheap labor and manufacturing costs by using third world countries where they don’t have to meet the minimum labor costs associated with their own countries. Those costs have risen to the point that it is prohibitive to do so within country.

The answer to this in their minds is to sell something that doesn’t cost so much to manufacture. Say software, things that are protected by copyright and patent. Only if they can get and keep the idea that an idea is worth big money can they pull this off. So far the laws are bending over backwards to meet these ideas but the reality and the intangable are having a hard time seeing eye to eye.

I don’t call 1’s and 0’s tangible property. Get a power surge, a virus, or a simple deletion that removes those items and show me where that physical is. There is no way in my mind that 1’s and 0’s have the value of physical property. Especially when considering that the programmer is paid once for the job yet the copyright holder expects to be paid each and every time as if you had purchased something tangible. I see nothing that tells me I bought a product under these terms. The world of legal has yet to apply common sense to laws to reflect this lack of value, still being stuck in the manufacturing era.