0
0

Copyright and Censorship


 invite response                
2009 Apr 9, 10:05am   1,771 views  10 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

Copyright is government censorship. Whatever the justification, it is undeniably true that there are certain things you are forbidden from "saying" electronically, because others own the rights to them. Forbidding speech is censorship, and therefore copyright law is censorship.

While authors should have rights over their work for a "limited time" as the Constitution puts it, corporations have extended that time to the point of absurdity. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

Copyright should be limited to a maximum of 17 years, just like patents. Copyright periods should definitely not be extended to protect Mickey Mouse every time it nearly gets into the public domain. The manipulation of our laws to protect Mickey Mouse is pure corruption, and makes a Mickey-mockery of democracy.

Unwittingly, copyright law also encourages a healthy subversive attitude on the part of the public. The first amendment to the Constitution is the most important one by far. If you are not allowed to speak about injustice, there is no hope of correcting it. Gag orders, National Security Letters, and other such blatant violations of the first amendment by the courts should be actively resisted by the people as tyranny.

All the techniques used to get around copyright enforcement are the exact same techniques that can be used to get around these directly evil kinds of government censorship, and are in fact used that way in North Korea, China, and Iran. Those who make it easy to copy and distribute music and video on the internet are actively helping install the infrastructure of freedom.

I think that's a good reason to support, install, and try out music and video piracy software. You should not pirate others' content, but you should most definitely have the ability to do so.

Comments 1 - 10 of 10        Search these comments

1   TechGromit   2009 Jun 12, 2:28am  

The problem I have with the Music / Movie / Software industry claims of the billion of dollars they lose to piracy is I beleive they wildly are over stating there losses. Take this example for instance, a 16 year old kid gets a pirated copy of Autodesk's AutoCad 2009 and proceeds to distrubute to 9 of his friends. Now Autocad is a $2,500, the Autodesk would claim they lost $25,000 due to piracy, but in reality none of these kids would ever be able to afford the program with there current income, so if there were never going to be any sales anyway. So in reality, Autodesk didn't lose any sales. Now if a Engineering firm purchased one copy of Autocad and copied it to 9 other computers, then I can agree that Autodesk lost money. But to claim to every illegal copy of software equals a lost in sales to the company is a stretch.

Let's take a less exterme example. Someone downloads and watches 50 movies over the course of the year that are still in the movie theatres. Did the movie companies lose money in this example? I would say yes, but not to the extreme they are claiming. Chances are this person doesn't normally go to out of the movies every weekend. Chances are they go to the movies maybe once every other month, once a month at the absolute most. So they see anywhere from 6 to 12 first run movies a year, but if they can pirate the movies and stay home and watch them, then yes the movie companies did lose money on those 6 to 12 lost sales, but not the 50 lost sales they are claiming, there never would have been this many sales in the first place.

So do they lose sales, Absolutely, but not the extent try are claiming, Software companies claim $50 billion dollars in loses a year. No frigging way, if they are lucky, it's a 10th of that ($5 billion), proably closer to 1/20th (2.5 Billion). Do people in America, China, Eastern europe, africa pirate this stuff? Absolutely, but most of these phantom sales would never have taken place, so no money lost.

2   frodo   2009 Jun 12, 4:20am  

I wholeheartedly agree, Patrick.

Remember, that copyright violation is just that, "copyright violation". - It is NOT 'stealing' in any form of the word.

I will willfully violate any and all copyright, because I believe the whole system is amoral and I will not participate in an amoral system.

I will not however, continue to listen for music I do not definitly plan on purchasing in some form or manner in the future (I include paying for concerts as my justification of my right to download an album.) (But I have difficulty with Classical Music in this regard, and just generally purchase the hell out of cheap classical music (like $1.99 CD's))

If I paid to see a Green Day Concert during the release of their latest album. . . I feel no obligation to pay for that album when I listen to it in the future, in any way form or manner. This includes playing on my home stereo, laptop, computer, and gPhone.

I pay for games I play to the finish. If I don't finish it, then I don't pay for it, within reason, as I paid for Assassins Creed, but I didn't finish it, because it's clear that some games are just un-finishable.

For example, I didn't pay for Spore, but I played it, for oh . . . maybe 2 hours. Same with Sims and a whole bunch of games.

As a professional Developer, I have no qualms with this mindset regarding my own programs. But If you genuinly use it, then you need to pay for it . . . which reminds me. . . I gotta donate to Patricks site. Hmm. . . .

3   TechGromit   2009 Jun 12, 4:51am  

And how about those E-books. You buy a ebook viewer for $250 to $300 so you can buy downloadable books and read them on the computer. There's no typesetting costs, no paper to buy to print the text on, no shipping charges, no storage charges, the publishers save all those cost. One would expect the publisher to pass at least some of those savings over to the consumer and sell it for less. FAT chance, take a look at ebooks.com, they are selling "Angels and Demons" for 8.99, This isn't a new release, I read this book several years ago and paid less for the paperback copy then this. The concept sounds good, but who in there right mind is going to buy a $200+ reader and pay More for books? It's a gadget, unless these bozos wise up, it's going to be a passing fad, like Beta recorders.

4   frodo   2009 Jun 12, 2:46pm  

<blockquote>
And how about those E-books. You buy a ebook viewer for $250 to $300 so you can buy downloadable books and read them on the computer. There’s no typesetting costs, no paper to buy to print the text on, no shipping charges, no storage charges, the publishers save all those cost. One would expect the publisher to pass at least some of those savings over to the consumer and sell it for less. FAT chance, take a look at ebooks.com, they are selling “Angels and Demons” for 8.99, This isn’t a new release, I read this book several years ago and paid less for the paperback copy then this. The concept sounds good, but who in there right mind is going to buy a $200+ reader and pay More for books? It’s a gadget, unless these bozos wise up, it’s going to be a passing fad, like Beta recorders.
</blockquote>

Abso-friggen-lutely. What the hell? I mean we put up with the same shit from the banks. Here you got capital investment they made on deploying ATM technology, which has payed back a hundredfold with the resultant increase in efficiency. Yet, we get charged up the ass. Heres a concept: pass savings on! Fudge, you think you gotta be so friggen rich you can't invest in your customers.

This king of crap torques me up, and the great thing about it? I don't have to participate. I don't use the atm's I get money back, and guess what? I'll stick with the library and some paperbacks instead of paying 200$ for something that is little more than a gadget.
Friggen idiots!

5   frodo   2009 Jun 12, 2:49pm  

PS: I'm gonna blow this site up, if this editor isn't fixed 8-) , It defaults in putting the wrong formatting 's and it Annoys the living daylights outta me.

6   elliemae   2009 Jun 12, 3:57pm  

mmmmm, I sell e-books. Actually, someone pays me and I email them my books. And if they buy one, they shouldn't send it around to everyone. I need the $ and spent a chunk of my life learning this stuff so I feel justified selling it for $12.95 each. But it's the honor system, because even tho I copyright it's nearly impossible to catch violations.
I do believe that musicians should make money off their music and the current label system makes money for the record companies, not the artists. Songs should be sold for a reasonable amount and walmart shouldn't be dictating content.

I'm amused by the google ads at the bottom of the page - and have no problem with Patrick recouping his monies by selling ads - because as I was answering with the above info, the ad at the bottom was for a self-publisher. Then, after I published the post, it changed to a first amendment attorney. Pretty funny.

7   Patrick   2009 Jun 13, 7:13am  

PS: I’m gonna blow this site up, if this editor isn’t fixed 8-) , It defaults in putting the wrong formatting ’s and it Annoys the living daylights outta me.

I don't see the problem. Your comment looks right to me in Firefox. What browser are you using?

8   TechGromit   2009 Jun 15, 1:53am  

mmmmm, I sell e-books. Actually, someone pays me and I email them my books. And if they buy one, they shouldn’t send it around to everyone. I need the $ and spent a chunk of my life learning this stuff so I feel justified selling it for $12.95 each. But it’s the honor system, because even tho I copyright it’s nearly impossible to catch violations.

Ebooks allows authors to sell books directly to there customers. Thereby allowing pretty much anyone to sell books directly to the customer. In that respect it's good. But to charge the same amount or more for the same product I could get in paper back form, isn't encourging me to take advantage of it. An attempt has been make to make Ebooks protected by an encyption method (EBX) to pervent prople from copying books, but this copy protection has already been hacked at least twice by two different programmers, the programs they wrote allow anyone to convert the books into a PDF format.

9   Patrick   2021 Jun 30, 7:40pm  

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-eu-hasnt-given-up-on-using-the-pretense-of-copyright-infringement-as-a-censorship-tool/


The EU hasn’t given up on using the pretense of “copyright infringement” as a censorship tool
"Earmark" is the new buzzword to watch out for.

It refers to giving rights holders the ability to “earmark” content, which could end up in platforms censoring it, including in cases of fair use. Content that according to the European Commission may be earmarked as economically viable is a new term in the realm of copyright enforcement, and there are fears that it may be little more than “a synonym for censorship.”
10   Patrick   2021 Jul 3, 4:31pm  

https://reclaimthenet.org/cops-play-copyrighted-music-to-prevent-videos-appearing-on-youtube/

After noticing he was being recorded, a police officer started playing Taylor Swift’s Blank Space in an attempt to prevent a video of the interaction making its way onto YouTube, knowing that YouTube’s overzealous copyright takedowns could get the recording removed.

This is not the first time a police officer has played a popular song after noticing they are being recorded and we’ve reported on the phenomenon in the past. The difference is this officer admitted to the motive behind playing the song.


Copyright is practice for censorship.

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions