http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

... and you thought SOPA or Bill C-12 (canada) was bad

hopefully what he's predicting will not happen, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least...


PS: the last half is questions, so don't worry about the length

The video is 54 minutes long, please summarize

Summary: Governments will try to legislate special functions off of computers, like the ability to (break DRM) | ('steal' copyrighted music) | (do things fundamentalists don't like) etc etc and try to make computers into narrow-scope appliances

Take, for example, SOPA... though that's attacking the internet itself, it's that sort of idea; and the DMCA, with it's DRM restrictions; etc

Also, the last half is comments, so watch it anyway

do what? rut roh, i'd better hide my assembler books.

I'm reading this from Tor, nyah nyah

;p

Definitely worth the hour it took to watch it... bits of it went over my head, but I never pretended to be a technocrat.

I don't think there's quite the binary end-game that much of the video seems to allude to, though. There will be no "winning" or "losing" except where specific points become moot. Internet (or technology) freedom will always be a pendulum moving back and forth. And that's probably a good thing, as an end situation at either extreme would mitigate part of the usefulness of the technology involved as a whole.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I agree everyone should listen to it, even the Q/A part is worth your time.

also regulation tends to destroy advancement of the human race, we don't need feudal lords to tell us what is right or wrong, that is why we have fluffing morals, all the energy wasted on regulation should be focused in strengthening our moral sense of right and wrong (as a culture and as human beings).

Instead of telling people they shouldn't get everything for free, we should be teaching our children that everything that takes effort should be rewarded, if you have money to pay for it, then fluffing do it, if you like a band support it!!!

Piracy is so strong because our culural sense of morals is WEAK!!!

I am a pirate, and I pay for almost nothing, but I know that I have to give the people that give me my *insert whatever here* something back, either with advertisement (telling my friends about their product, or by directly buying their product).

It all boils down to a meritocracy. Those who can will and those who cannot will be victims. We see it a lot already, even in countries where there are extremely tight regulations - the Pangs and QZ's are not heavily affected.

Study math in school kids, the winners and losers are going to be determined in the classroom - not on a battlefield.

But the point, Chaos, is that even if you did pay for music, the money wouldn't really go to the people who made it - that's the real galling thing about the whole industry; plus the fact that they push so far and are so aggressive about it. Also they overvalue their product.

Culture has always been relatively free, until the last (few hundred | hundred) years; now they expect every human being to spend most of their disposable income on it.

I read a survey (referenced on slashdot i think) of iPod capacity and amount filled; the average iPod is 2/3 full; if 2/3 of all the capacity of all the iPods every sold was actually purchased from iTunes it'd be something like the GDP of the US -- i think culture is valuable, but i don't think music is worth *that* much =/

if i pay my internet and cable bills, and i download television to watch when i desire, i don't consider this illegal or stealing. they get the money, the cable company, i have a right to watch the shows i pay for. nobody ever said i couldn't do it on my own time. if you want to argue crime, the person who made it available to me broke the law, i paid for my internet and i paid for my cable. i copied nothing and gave nothing. (save the few kbs i can't help but upload)

that isn't weak morals, that is weak time management.

Meritocracy is governance by those with merit, which (in this context) we clearly don't have (see copyright laws).

What we have is a system in which merit affords those who have it a certain level of freedom not enjoyed by others. I don't know what word describes that system, but it's not any form of -ocracy because it's a separate issue from governance.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

The price is another thing that needs to be addressed:

The Digital Information era made sure that mass producing digital goods is costless (besides maybe time invested) as such ALL digital material should cost almost nothing, that in turn will probably create more revenue because a TON more people will be willing to spend 1 cent per song, even if they don't listen to all that fluff.

Music labels, distribution of the media and all that ancient horse fluff needs to go, we don't need a middle man, if authors got that 1 cent directly they wouldn't complain about it, the system is simple a dinosaur that needs to die and let the future of digital distribution take over its rightful place.

Agreed chaos.

Remember the war on drugs? Laws about "designer drugs" and all that crap?

The war on piracy will be even more futile.

They can't stop people overtly bootlegging cd's on the streets. Just because you come up with more things to charge people with doesn't mean you are going to accomplish anything.
All you accomplish by going this route is to funnel more money into organized crime. At least with the status quo people don't need to pay money to the "mysterious street vender".

The concept of copyright ect really only came into serious force in the 20th century and has slowly gotten out of hand imo.
You've read Shakespeare? Most of those stories were COPIED (and maybe editted a bit) from other people. but that was normal at that time. Everyone knew and no one cared that much.

First off, let me say that I'm definitely an advocate for free stuff. I had pirated many things in my day, and bought physical copies of many pirated movies/albums/etc after doing so, if no other reason than to support something that was well-enjoyed.


I've always felt that one of the issues with piracy, or rather, anti-piracy, is in their incomprehensibly high fines they pass out to those they choose to catch. fluff like them finding some unemployed student in a dorm room, and try to slap him with what amounts to millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines. To pretty much anyone, these numbers are just so unrealistic that they just don't care.

I was very closely involved with Napster when it was first produced, and helped as I could throughout the whole legal trouble. At one point, if I recall correctly, the RIAA tried suing the company for the equivalent of somewhere around a trillion dollars in fines. Who the fluff would even bat an eye when they're told that's their fine? Not me- it's completely unrealistic.

What I would suggest to the various companies "losing out" due to piracy, is to drop their fines. We catch you stealing an album? $15. An HD movie? $30. Et cetera.

If people started getting bills in the mail for $200 because they got caught torrenting a discography, they may actually reconsider their actions.

I think copyright should be shortened to 14 years for one...

but for music/movies, mainstays of culture, if you charge an unrealistic amount for them (like, $1/song seems reasonable until you realize many people have 20k songs); I would support something like a $50/year subscription for all-you-can-listen music service; they'd get infinitely more money from me anyway.... likewise movies... netflix is a good idea of course, and will certainly diminish piracy, assuming they ever open their catalog up in places like here in Canada.....

don't forget the shipping/handling fees. have to pay just to be connected to the inet. if i pay $60 a month and only buy 1 song that month, that song cost $61. should take into account what percent it was of my inet usage, but most of that would probably be advertising.

my view is why should I pay to see advertising? It seems rather counter intuitive to me.

People pay for cable and thats full of commercials :p, but I do agree with you.

I think the most important thing to walk away from this video with is the evolution of these laws. Cory Doctorow basically says that the future of controlling a turing machine (computer) will be root-kits and spyware. Both of these have already begun to proliferate your devices straight from the factory (pre-loaded on the firmware). If you have an android phone in the USA, chances are that your keystrokes are being recorded and simulcasted CarrierIQ or your provider.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/...2/carrier-iq-privacy.html

Good talk. Definitely been noticing an up-tick in BS legislative efforts against free use of technology lately.

Yea; plus this from Canada now:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6225/125/
TPP is even worse than the ACTA stuff from the looks of it =/