"Speech is above all a sensor, you don't disconnect your heat sensor on a thermonuclear facility because it shows you readings you don't like or would get you in trouble. You go down there and see why it is reaching those temperature levels and fix the problem."
I like this. I think it is one of the best practical arguments for free speech regardless of content that I have ever come across.
"Sometimes, it seems propaganda is the only thing coming at you, from all sides.
You get it from your classic fear-mongering politicians, your sensationalistic gossip press, and of course, your corporate-owned mainstream media."
Not to mention your empire-building political oligarchies, such as the one that plastered my children's UK school with posters deceitfully insinuating that their daily milk was a gift from the bounteous EU. Or the one that fastened deliberately misleading signs and logos on practically every bridge and road in Scotland implying that they were financed by the EU - when said EU had simply contributed a portion, taken out of the taxes they exact from the UK. There are plenty more examples like those.
Don't let contempt for the messenger blind you to the danger in the message. This propaganda paints the EU as your benefactor, when it is actually your master - as the ordinary, thrifty folk of Cyprus are about to discover. And they won't be the last.
Any attempt by the EU to 'educate' your children should be viewed with great concern.
Clear away the smokescreen of legal technicalities and what we have here is a simple case of the local Gang Boss ordering his 'lieutenants' to give someone a good kicking for not accepting his control of the streets, with the added purpose of discouraging others from doing the same.
The internet has brought to us all the most incredible ability to connect and share culture, and an organised gang of greedy corporations and politicians must not be allowed to turn it into a private, thuggishly controlled consumer TV channel. If the only way to kill off this gangster vermin is to abolish copyright altogether, then abolished it must be. Society will soon evolve a different way of doing things.
The current copyright thuggery is a cancer eating away at the very heart of human civilisation, and if it will not respond to treatment it must be ruthlessly cut out. If there are no legal ways to do this, then illegal ones must be found. The bonding together of all the disparate peoples of the world in shared culture and communication is so much more important than the profits of corrupt corporations and the backhanders of corrupt politicians that it seems rather redundant to even have to state the fact.
American law is so unfair, so unjust and so vengeful that it must surely be treated with contempt and ignored. Whatever you may think of the recent Amish nonsense, 15 years in jail for cutting off someone's beard? $220,000 for sticking a few crappy pop songs on the internet? Your business closed down and all your assets stolen because there is a possibility someone somewhere in the world might possibly use it to possibly deprive some American criminal gang of a few dollars? A young Englishman deported from his home under some terrorist legislation because he told some people where they could find some websites? 60 years in jail for another young man, who apparently has done enormous good for society, because he accessed some files that he apparently was legally allowed to access? And then he kills himself? Dear God preserve us all from such evil insanity. Intellectual property? What an oxymoron! Abolish it.
I do not believe anyone could be so naive as to not foresee the reaction of the MAFIAA and its pals to this. Neither do I believe that such an incendiary report could possibly have 'slipped out without proper inspection'. As someone suggested elsewhere (cannot remember where), I suspect this is a simple 'stalking horse' - throw out a radical idea that you think might get you lots of votes in the future, then cynically blame it on some upstart junior lackey so that you are not crucified if it flops; ensuring that said lackey is young, forward-looking, intelligent and well-educated, so that his well-reasoned opinions will carry weight with the voters. Then sit back and gauge the reaction - not from Big Media, but from the voters.
If the voters go for it then claim it was your idea all along and proceed to implement it. As many have said, people who vote have far more power ultimately than those who bribe; if you don't get the votes you won't get the bribes anyway. If enough voters clamour for this it could be the start of something enormously beneficial to the whole of mankind. This really could be big. All you American voters should shout very loudly and continuously in favour of this, as I am quite certain receptive ears will be listening in high places. If these politicians get enough votes they will not need bribes.
Dear God, what a pitiful attitude. It reeks of a half-witted street-corner gangster, so addled with greed, stupidity, and hatred for anyone who doesn't knuckle under to his mob, that he cannot add 2+2 and get 4. Future generations will scream with laughter at the ludicrous, flailing antics of this bunch of witless buffoons, on being presented with the most incredible marketing opportunity anyone could ever dream of.
Frankly, the sooner this odious, corrupt rabble of thugs is consigned to the pit of history the better for all mankind. And for all their vicious sueing, bankrupting and imprisoning of potential customers and unpaid marketeers it is quite clear they have no hope of surviving even one more generation. Why on earth would any artist sign away life and first-born child to these repulsive, incompetent criminals when the internet beckons? Dinner with the wolf or manna from heaven? Even a chicken could figure that one out.
And their behaviour is so abhorrent that they fail even to win the hearts and minds of those who aren't their enemies. Ask a guerilla war expert what the chances are of winning with that attitude. And this is a guerilla war. And the MAFIAA has already lost it. With every vicious attack on the people's basic freedoms and culture these fools make their enemy bigger and stronger.
We are witnessing the thrashing death throes of a creature stupid enough to stand in the way of an army of fire ants.
I think this is the best, beautifully concise analysis of the current copyright mess I have ever seen anywhere. It should be tattooed on the forehead of everyone in the media industry:
".. an artificial marketplace convenience founded on suspending everyone else's natural rights. ... a slight immorality that we all tolerate so long as copyright results in a net benefit to society"
http://www.bestnettech.com/articles/20120908/13441520319/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week-Best Net Techshtml#c49
All the indications are that it is not a "net benefit to society", and it is time for society to stop tolerating it.
I think Amazon knows exactly what it is doing. It is a web-based supermarket that is open all hours, stocks virtually everything you need, has excellent customer service, low prices, highly organised delivery to your door, easy parking and now a cheap gadget enabling you to access it all with considerable convenience from anywhere. How could it not be successful, and deserve to be?
As long as it maintains keen prices it will trump free because of convenience, safety, reliability and customer service. And I think it has more irons in the fire than Apple, whose repressive, closed system could look increasingly unattractive when other hardware becomes as good as its own. Which is nearly now.
This is standard EU technique. Never make the mistake of laughing at the reams of babbling bureaucratic inanity that endlessly spew forth from the EU. These things are carefully crafted down to the last comma, and serve the same purpose as the smokescreens laid down by wartime destroyers so the enemy could not see they were firing torpedoes.
If a destroyer hides like that, you know it is trying to sink you. If the EU does so, you know it is trying to enslave you. How anyone can keep a straight face while writing democracy and EU in the same sentence is beyond me.
Well, there clearly is "some indication that this action is wanted on that level". According to MAFIAA research only 95% of British people disapprove of the extradition, although doubtless if it continues with its current hysterical campaign of misinformation and outright threatening lies I expect that will soon reach close to 100%. So there is their 'local voice' and what could be more local than the boy's countrymen who are disgusted with the behaviour of their government, which in this situation is unquestionably a puppet, with or without socks.
Public opinion can be a very dangerous enemy if you really anger it, as in poking a sleepy bear with a stick when you have no escape route. I think the MAFIAA is too much of an arrogant pea-brained street thug to fully understand this, and with any luck that will cause its destruction.
Even those addled halfwits admit that 95% of the British public are against this, and also, by a reasonable inference, them. If 95% of the bear I just poked with a stick was against me I hope I would have the sense to be very afraid.
When the politicians reach the point of fearing the people more than the MAFIAA then the people will win. We saw a hint of this with ACTA and the European Parliament: those MEPs threw it out because the people threatened to throw them out if they didn't. Hopefully the same message will register on Theresa May; if it doesn't I think she will be looking for a new job.
Whatever the technical, legal aspects of this may be, it is so blatantly an abuse of elementary human rights by greedy corporate thugs who think the world exists solely for their benefit that it will hopefully turn the stomachs of even the most lethargic public.
And if that public could be persuaded to stop buying the MAFIAA's products then perhaps we will have the pleasure of watching a particularly satisfying example of the 'Ratner Effect'. Total receipts for the next Hollywood Blockbuster Opening Night = $0 (without even Hollywood accounting). That might make them sit up and take notice.
This is rapidly turning into a guerilla war between the MAFIAA and the people, and the No1 Golden Rule of guerilla war is to win the hearts and minds of the people. The MAFIAA and its political henchmen have failed catastrophically to do this, and they will suffer catastrophically for it. How anyone could be so imbecilic as to imagine such behaviour being helpful to them is quite beyond comprehension.
Yes. It is ludicrous to claim that movies do not affect people - ask any advertising agency. It should be equally obvious that while an endless barrage of gratuitous violence might only irritate normal folk, it could very easily cause an unbalanced person to behave the way this one did. So of course the movie makers had a part in it; they make money by cynically pandering to people's fascination with extreme violence, ignoring the effect they know it could have on some inadequates; including ones who undoubtedly act it out far from the public gaze, or simply become generally desensitized to the horror of it. The society in which it happened has to decide whether this particular game is worth the candle.
I think it is quite interesting what is happening already. I think the public has given up trying to fight against impenetrable, deliberately obfuscated legal jargon that they have no hope of understanding, and have taken to railing against any legislation pushed by anyone they do not trust, regardless of what may be in it. I am quite sure the vast majority of protests against ACTA came from people who actually had no idea what it said, but could nonetheless clearly detect emanating from it the stench of the MAFIAA and its political bagmen.
This trend is bound to continue, as it is the only recourse left to ordinary people against the ever-increasing destruction of their intrinsic freedoms by corporate and criminal controlled gangs. These gangsters (and there is no other name for them) must be taught that any sign of them trying to enslave the people will be spotted by someone somewhere on the internet and the whole world will be alerted. And long gone are the days when the public is prepared to listen to their convoluted, legally deceitful lies. Anything that stinks of the world-wide MAFIAA conspiracy against the people will be slung out or ignored, quite automatically. And even the MAFIAA's political toadies cannot imprison everyone in the world for listening to a crappy pop song.
Quite simply, if copyright can only be 'protected' by turning the whole world into a totalitarian state controlled by the criminal MAFIAA, then copyright must go. And the only thing that will get rid of it is worldwide public contempt. Then natural evolution can replace it with something a whole lot better able to deal fairly with this rapidly changing world.
BestNetTech has not posted any stories submitted by sleepyjohn.
Re: "Speech is above all a sensor"
"Speech is above all a sensor, you don't disconnect your heat sensor on a thermonuclear facility because it shows you readings you don't like or would get you in trouble. You go down there and see why it is reaching those temperature levels and fix the problem."
I like this. I think it is one of the best practical arguments for free speech regardless of content that I have ever come across.
Re: Yeah, but, whose propaganda?
"Sometimes, it seems propaganda is the only thing coming at you, from all sides.
You get it from your classic fear-mongering politicians, your sensationalistic gossip press, and of course, your corporate-owned mainstream media."
Not to mention your empire-building political oligarchies, such as the one that plastered my children's UK school with posters deceitfully insinuating that their daily milk was a gift from the bounteous EU. Or the one that fastened deliberately misleading signs and logos on practically every bridge and road in Scotland implying that they were financed by the EU - when said EU had simply contributed a portion, taken out of the taxes they exact from the UK. There are plenty more examples like those.
Don't let contempt for the messenger blind you to the danger in the message. This propaganda paints the EU as your benefactor, when it is actually your master - as the ordinary, thrifty folk of Cyprus are about to discover. And they won't be the last.
Any attempt by the EU to 'educate' your children should be viewed with great concern.
Was the Amish beard the MAFIAA's copyright?
Clear away the smokescreen of legal technicalities and what we have here is a simple case of the local Gang Boss ordering his 'lieutenants' to give someone a good kicking for not accepting his control of the streets, with the added purpose of discouraging others from doing the same.
The internet has brought to us all the most incredible ability to connect and share culture, and an organised gang of greedy corporations and politicians must not be allowed to turn it into a private, thuggishly controlled consumer TV channel. If the only way to kill off this gangster vermin is to abolish copyright altogether, then abolished it must be. Society will soon evolve a different way of doing things.
The current copyright thuggery is a cancer eating away at the very heart of human civilisation, and if it will not respond to treatment it must be ruthlessly cut out. If there are no legal ways to do this, then illegal ones must be found. The bonding together of all the disparate peoples of the world in shared culture and communication is so much more important than the profits of corrupt corporations and the backhanders of corrupt politicians that it seems rather redundant to even have to state the fact.
American law is so unfair, so unjust and so vengeful that it must surely be treated with contempt and ignored. Whatever you may think of the recent Amish nonsense, 15 years in jail for cutting off someone's beard? $220,000 for sticking a few crappy pop songs on the internet? Your business closed down and all your assets stolen because there is a possibility someone somewhere in the world might possibly use it to possibly deprive some American criminal gang of a few dollars? A young Englishman deported from his home under some terrorist legislation because he told some people where they could find some websites? 60 years in jail for another young man, who apparently has done enormous good for society, because he accessed some files that he apparently was legally allowed to access? And then he kills himself? Dear God preserve us all from such evil insanity. Intellectual property? What an oxymoron! Abolish it.
I suspect this is a 'stalking horse'
I do not believe anyone could be so naive as to not foresee the reaction of the MAFIAA and its pals to this. Neither do I believe that such an incendiary report could possibly have 'slipped out without proper inspection'. As someone suggested elsewhere (cannot remember where), I suspect this is a simple 'stalking horse' - throw out a radical idea that you think might get you lots of votes in the future, then cynically blame it on some upstart junior lackey so that you are not crucified if it flops; ensuring that said lackey is young, forward-looking, intelligent and well-educated, so that his well-reasoned opinions will carry weight with the voters. Then sit back and gauge the reaction - not from Big Media, but from the voters.
If the voters go for it then claim it was your idea all along and proceed to implement it. As many have said, people who vote have far more power ultimately than those who bribe; if you don't get the votes you won't get the bribes anyway. If enough voters clamour for this it could be the start of something enormously beneficial to the whole of mankind. This really could be big. All you American voters should shout very loudly and continuously in favour of this, as I am quite certain receptive ears will be listening in high places. If these politicians get enough votes they will not need bribes.
Dear God, please no!
"it may end up being smart artists who save the incumbents"
"someone, somewhere is taking advantage of you."
Dear God, what a pitiful attitude. It reeks of a half-witted street-corner gangster, so addled with greed, stupidity, and hatred for anyone who doesn't knuckle under to his mob, that he cannot add 2+2 and get 4. Future generations will scream with laughter at the ludicrous, flailing antics of this bunch of witless buffoons, on being presented with the most incredible marketing opportunity anyone could ever dream of.
Frankly, the sooner this odious, corrupt rabble of thugs is consigned to the pit of history the better for all mankind. And for all their vicious sueing, bankrupting and imprisoning of potential customers and unpaid marketeers it is quite clear they have no hope of surviving even one more generation. Why on earth would any artist sign away life and first-born child to these repulsive, incompetent criminals when the internet beckons? Dinner with the wolf or manna from heaven? Even a chicken could figure that one out.
Re: "Decided to cave"
Or perhaps: "has decided that Nutella is such a bunch of arseholes that he will no longer use or endorse its products."
Re: Re: "Grab 'em by the balls ..."
Only Rambo and the MAFIAA could be stupid enough to believe that they will not tear you to pieces the moment you slacken your grip.
Re: hearts and minds
And their behaviour is so abhorrent that they fail even to win the hearts and minds of those who aren't their enemies. Ask a guerilla war expert what the chances are of winning with that attitude. And this is a guerilla war. And the MAFIAA has already lost it. With every vicious attack on the people's basic freedoms and culture these fools make their enemy bigger and stronger.
We are witnessing the thrashing death throes of a creature stupid enough to stand in the way of an army of fire ants.
Bautiful, concise analysis of the current copyright mess
I think this is the best, beautifully concise analysis of the current copyright mess I have ever seen anywhere. It should be tattooed on the forehead of everyone in the media industry:
".. an artificial marketplace convenience founded on suspending everyone else's natural rights. ... a slight immorality that we all tolerate so long as copyright results in a net benefit to society"
http://www.bestnettech.com/articles/20120908/13441520319/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week-Best Net Techshtml#c49
All the indications are that it is not a "net benefit to society", and it is time for society to stop tolerating it.
Amazon is a highly efficient, web-based supermarket
I think Amazon knows exactly what it is doing. It is a web-based supermarket that is open all hours, stocks virtually everything you need, has excellent customer service, low prices, highly organised delivery to your door, easy parking and now a cheap gadget enabling you to access it all with considerable convenience from anywhere. How could it not be successful, and deserve to be?
As long as it maintains keen prices it will trump free because of convenience, safety, reliability and customer service. And I think it has more irons in the fire than Apple, whose repressive, closed system could look increasingly unattractive when other hardware becomes as good as its own. Which is nearly now.
A carefully crafted smokescreen, typical of the EU
This is standard EU technique. Never make the mistake of laughing at the reams of babbling bureaucratic inanity that endlessly spew forth from the EU. These things are carefully crafted down to the last comma, and serve the same purpose as the smokescreens laid down by wartime destroyers so the enemy could not see they were firing torpedoes.
If a destroyer hides like that, you know it is trying to sink you. If the EU does so, you know it is trying to enslave you. How anyone can keep a straight face while writing democracy and EU in the same sentence is beyond me.
Revenge is a dog that bites its master,
and should be left to those too stupid to understand why.
They do have a 'local voice'
Well, there clearly is "some indication that this action is wanted on that level". According to MAFIAA research only 95% of British people disapprove of the extradition, although doubtless if it continues with its current hysterical campaign of misinformation and outright threatening lies I expect that will soon reach close to 100%. So there is their 'local voice' and what could be more local than the boy's countrymen who are disgusted with the behaviour of their government, which in this situation is unquestionably a puppet, with or without socks.
Worldwide public contempt will kill the MAFIAA
Public opinion can be a very dangerous enemy if you really anger it, as in poking a sleepy bear with a stick when you have no escape route. I think the MAFIAA is too much of an arrogant pea-brained street thug to fully understand this, and with any luck that will cause its destruction.
Even those addled halfwits admit that 95% of the British public are against this, and also, by a reasonable inference, them. If 95% of the bear I just poked with a stick was against me I hope I would have the sense to be very afraid.
When the politicians reach the point of fearing the people more than the MAFIAA then the people will win. We saw a hint of this with ACTA and the European Parliament: those MEPs threw it out because the people threatened to throw them out if they didn't. Hopefully the same message will register on Theresa May; if it doesn't I think she will be looking for a new job.
Whatever the technical, legal aspects of this may be, it is so blatantly an abuse of elementary human rights by greedy corporate thugs who think the world exists solely for their benefit that it will hopefully turn the stomachs of even the most lethargic public.
And if that public could be persuaded to stop buying the MAFIAA's products then perhaps we will have the pleasure of watching a particularly satisfying example of the 'Ratner Effect'. Total receipts for the next Hollywood Blockbuster Opening Night = $0 (without even Hollywood accounting). That might make them sit up and take notice.
This is rapidly turning into a guerilla war between the MAFIAA and the people, and the No1 Golden Rule of guerilla war is to win the hearts and minds of the people. The MAFIAA and its political henchmen have failed catastrophically to do this, and they will suffer catastrophically for it. How anyone could be so imbecilic as to imagine such behaviour being helpful to them is quite beyond comprehension.
Re: I disagree (Is the game worth the candle?)
Yes. It is ludicrous to claim that movies do not affect people - ask any advertising agency. It should be equally obvious that while an endless barrage of gratuitous violence might only irritate normal folk, it could very easily cause an unbalanced person to behave the way this one did. So of course the movie makers had a part in it; they make money by cynically pandering to people's fascination with extreme violence, ignoring the effect they know it could have on some inadequates; including ones who undoubtedly act it out far from the public gaze, or simply become generally desensitized to the horror of it. The society in which it happened has to decide whether this particular game is worth the candle.
Worldwide public contempt will kill the MAFIAA
I think it is quite interesting what is happening already. I think the public has given up trying to fight against impenetrable, deliberately obfuscated legal jargon that they have no hope of understanding, and have taken to railing against any legislation pushed by anyone they do not trust, regardless of what may be in it. I am quite sure the vast majority of protests against ACTA came from people who actually had no idea what it said, but could nonetheless clearly detect emanating from it the stench of the MAFIAA and its political bagmen.
This trend is bound to continue, as it is the only recourse left to ordinary people against the ever-increasing destruction of their intrinsic freedoms by corporate and criminal controlled gangs. These gangsters (and there is no other name for them) must be taught that any sign of them trying to enslave the people will be spotted by someone somewhere on the internet and the whole world will be alerted. And long gone are the days when the public is prepared to listen to their convoluted, legally deceitful lies. Anything that stinks of the world-wide MAFIAA conspiracy against the people will be slung out or ignored, quite automatically. And even the MAFIAA's political toadies cannot imprison everyone in the world for listening to a crappy pop song.
Quite simply, if copyright can only be 'protected' by turning the whole world into a totalitarian state controlled by the criminal MAFIAA, then copyright must go. And the only thing that will get rid of it is worldwide public contempt. Then natural evolution can replace it with something a whole lot better able to deal fairly with this rapidly changing world.