Government ready to drop copyright bomb

reply to post by Maxmars


Thanks for bringing the real issue behind this new for the benefit of corporate America law.

Like you said is not the government but the corporate power that rules our government.

When people are going to see and understand that America is not for the people anymore.

Look around to the laws that are passed in congress and sign by our for the people elected president, they are written by corporate American with the fattest checkbook to buy your state congressman.

Wake up American smell the corruption.

Originally posted by Maxmars

Originally posted by modusoperandi
Fact of the matter is, we don't have the ability to police ourselves in a matter as such. Say what you must about the issue but basically it seems that people are upset because their ability to steal is about to be compromised. What can you say to your elected officials? Please defend our right to intellectual theft? I don't imagine there are alot of musicians here that make their living off of the music that they painstakingly create. From a blue collar perspective, this is not unlike someone picking your pocket. Performance and mechanical royalties that go to the actual performers depend activities such as radio, shows, record SALES, etc. If a couple million of these slip through, then their pay is significantly reduced. I doubt Tivo and DVR would be affected here as that technology is more for personal viewing and if that was to be an issue with corporate america then it would have surfaced as one.

I disagree. This issue is about sovereignty. Whatever I acquire legally should NOT include with it an apron string to the owner so he can 'audit' my activities to determine whether I am a viable target for police action. The logical extension of this activity is once you hear or see someones creative work you should never be free to recall it. Because it's not yours.

This is about the middleman - NOT the artist. They want the artist to be a cash teat for them to suckle on forever. The artists were nearly extorted into letting this business model rule over them like a king. Enough defending the parasites, If you ARE an artist why create art? If you are a commercialism, then DON'T PUBLISH - only show it where you can control the content.

Instead of accepting that reality they want to change the nature of communications medium to support their avarice and protect their greed. It doesn't work that way, or at least it shouldn't.

If you don't want to be quoted, shut up. If you don't want people to see your work, don't show it. If you think every time I post a video of my kid dancing to a song I need to write the copyright holders, your being asinine.

And if this is limited to those who would profit from those stolen songs THEN THE LEGISLATION SHOULD SPECIFY SUCH - and leave the private citizen free from the tethers of this ridiculousness.

I'm not saying I agree with the process, but I am saying that if you want to post someone else's music in a video, and you want to put it up in youtube somewhere, then yes you could ultimately become a target for a lawsuit if they really wanted to act like jerks. By the way, none of this copyright law is new it goes back a long way, the legislation to enforce it is new because mp3 technology changed the face of the industry and ultimately that needed to adapt.

Also, to point out that no one should be able to make money off their sale of music is also asinine. Following this logic would have prevented Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Alicia Keys, etc. from having an impact on all of us. You can't get that exposure with some type of exploitation from corporations, no matter how evil they are, they provide a platform for great artists and the exposure. There is no way that theft of music is justified no matter how you paint it. Ultimately you hurt the artist more. How? Let's say a CD is 15 dollars. It only takes pennies for the corporation to make each one, and ultimately advances are easily recoupable as are production fees on a large artist, so only these royalties are truly benefitting the artist as opposed to the corporation.

Invasion of privacy is a diffferent ball of wax and I'm strongly against the use of these trade agreements to invade any home. Only those in a perfect world can get around the middle man and as you know, this ain't one.

reply to post by modusoperandi


I may have misspoken or you may have misunderstood. I did not intent to say that no one should make money off their OWN music. I meant no one other than the creator should. If they wish to portion off some of that profit for distribution services so be it. But to empower the distributors to initiate police action (not referring to lawsuits here - I'm referring to search and seizure) is downright twisted, considering if anyone should get the power it should be the artist, NOT the middleman.

reply to post by Maxmars


Gotcha. I most certainly misunderstood.

reply to post by modusoperandi


I wanted to add, I know you are right and it would be foolishly obtuse of me not to admit that the crux of this issue is the profit loss suffered by the industry due to the nature of the culture of the web.

I simply find it irksome that the authorities would presume to impose unwanted control on the culture rather than point out that the industry Must evolve past this notion of "what we sold them still belongs to us". It is simply unrealistic.

I remember receiving a gift of a DVD of the classic TV series "The Outer Limits". I found that three of the 6 discs would not play in ANY DVD player, mine, others, computer, nothing. I wrote to the production house - no reply, I wrote to MGM, no reply - If I were to state that I resorted to downloading the missing episodes from the internet - I AM A CRIMINAL NOW? Certainly the case could be made that I am not, but the legislation we are discussing opens me to become a target for those seeking to pursue the possibility - and leaves me with no defense as I am guilty by decree.

I fail to see how the government fits into the music/movie industry.

I dont think piracy is a very nice thing to do, but if someone want to record something they hear or see... why not? If they dont want us to record their stuff that's out there, then perhaps they should up their technology so we cant. I dont understand who has the right to tell me not to hit record on this new cool piece of technology that I just legaly bought.

Every CD I buy, I put on to my Xbox 360 (not able to share) because it keeps the CD's from getting warn out. I just find it sad that they feel that even after I go out and BUY the CD with my hard earned money that it is still illegal to copy it to either my mp3 player for use when I go running or snowboarding, or my xbox even though I OWN and paid for the CD.

they risk a lot with this legislation! we will see millions of geeks coming out of their caves to defend the freedom ! )

Originally posted by flice
Next thing you infringers are gonna demand is probably that making copies of art is to be legal too?

Well, the government is right now working on a Bill to make it harder for artists to claim copyright on their own material...How will that impact of the "starving artist" type who can't afford all of the copyright fees & some corp comes along to steal it out from under him? A thread about that is over here, as well as links to help you track the Bill through Congress. Is what you're complaining about any worse than an artist who can't even sell his own work without being sued by a corp?

Originally posted by Maxmars
They come from the industry - get into government - then make regulations and policy to make themselves richer.

...Or they give a lot of "lobbying money" for politicians to stick in their pockets...Either way, the result is the same. The government gains more power over the People for the corps to rip us off more efficiently. Geee, this situation sounds familiar in American History...Boston Tea Party, anyone?

Originally posted by modusoperandi
What can you say to your elected officials? Please defend our right to intellectual theft?

In the case of the other thread I've linked, it would be more like telling the government that if you don't want the People to commit "intellectual theft," then certainly don't let the corps commit it either.

Originally posted by marg6043
Thanks for bringing the real issue behind this new for the benefit of corporate America law.

Like you said is not the government but the corporate power that rules our government.

And this is what it's all really about...If you want to see how much the corporates have already stolen from the People by invoking the power of the government to back them up, try invoking your Constitutional Rights in a courtroom: The judge is likely to charge you with "contempt of court" if you don't instead invoke the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code)! There's a good thread about all of that kind of horse-puckey over here.

Well now I am a little concerned. I myself don't download music off of limewire anymore, but I know that my roommate and 13 year old son do. They download everything! Music, movies, books, you name it, they download it, if they like what they downloaded they go out and buy a hard copy of it. So since we have two lap tops in the house, am I going to go to jail because of what they do??

If the PTB really pursue this, how many of us will be in over crowded prisons? Our court system is already clogged up with frivalous lawsuits and actual criminal cases, how many more cases can they handle?

Does anyone have any statistics on the amount of people that illegally download something off the internet? That would give us a good estimate of just how many people will be in jail soon.

My Social Teacher was trying to explain this today, but he failed hard.

Does this record your IP or MAC address? The IP can be changed, but the MAC can't.

This whole legislation is BS. Considering that 3/4 computers in the world have limewire, that would mean that they're going to penalize 20 million Canadians? I think they're just going to penalize a select few, and scare the rest of us into using iTunes.

Easy loophole: Simply use a laptop, and your neighbours wifi! It's what I do whenever I'm pirating God-knows what.

Originally posted by modusoperandi
...Let's say a CD is 15 dollars. It only takes pennies for the corporation to make each one, and ultimately advances are easily recoupable as are production fees on a large artist, so only these royalties are truly benefitting the artist as opposed to the corporation. ...

Are you REALLY saying that the artists get the most money from the royalties?

Do a little research there bud. Artists get almost NO money from CD sales. Something like 2 or 3 cents (on average) per CD if I remember right. Do at least a LITTLE research before making claims like that.

well I get my music from napster, which is legitimate...not as cheap as other places, almost 1$ per song, but it's on the safe side as far as I'm concerned...however if they did that they would also have to shut down youtube

Originally posted by flice
Next thing you infringers are gonna demand is probably that making copies of art is to be legal too?

Why the hell not? Do you really not see a fundamental difference between art and business? If you don't, then I contend you don't really know what art is for, and you shouldn't even be arguing about this.

Beethoven was not a genius by popular demand, neither was he ever rich. Britney Spears is what you get from commercialism. She is both wealthy and a horrible musician. It's really something to be proud of, isn't it? Play them back to back with the same instrumentation and I wonder if you could even tell the difference between them.

Its all those poor little rich musicans crying like that arent rich enough.They live a nice life while some poor people cant afford their music.

reply to post by bsbray11


Exactly... there is no difference between the two. To whine about the artists making millions is soooo based in jealousy. You're / people are the ones paying for the music.
So, if you're not happy with someone making a whole lot more money then you, where do you wanna put the limit? How much money do you think other deserve to earn? It's a grayzone because there is no answer to that... therefor the most logical move is to ban what is already illegal: the stealing of property.
You can't go out and say, "ok, I can hand off 500 free copies, and still make enough money to get through the day", because what are you gonna say to #501 and 502? So here we are again, the artist trying to do some good, he might even have cut out the middle guy and did this on the net.
But now because some whining mother#ers who weren't amongst the lucky ones to get a free copy, they are gonna steal the music off the web and down on their comps. The artist already had a calculation but that kinda broke now, so he's left hanging with a sale too low making him short on money for his daily life.

Look at oil campanies. They make heaps of money... are you out stealing gas, because "hey... they make enough"?
Look at big supermarket chains. They make heaps of money... do you steal their groceries, because "Hey, they won't notice"?
And we could go on....

But no, you probably don't steal from those guys, why not? Why steal from artists then... because it is easily accessible, easy to get away with and you just want to justify your ill manners.

FYI, like said just above me. Most artists don't make that much money from cd sales, new artists don't make squat... literally. I know that since some friends of mine just broke the top 10 in London.

Having said that... I do think the way Radiohead handled their Rainbow sale was a good idea. Cut out those damn companies or at least reduce their influence a great deal.
But by all means use that copyright law anyways. Once you cut out the middle man you'll be stealing from the funds that the artist needs to pay for arrangements of concerts, production of cds, fan art etc etc.
And then we can talk about your need to download their music illegally and your following justification of it.

By the way, it's funny ain't it. Here we sit complaining or listening to complaints about the "right" to download music on a whim, while somewhere down near equator some kid is worrying about what is gonna happen when he steals that chicken so he can get through the day... pathetic.

reply to post by flice


I upload music that i make to my site all the time. How will internet bandwith wrecking affect my chances of being heard anymore? If the companies are trying to shut off the internet then of course they want to shut off the competition. This amounts to a power grab to take over the internet by force, then criminalize behavior that has become normal and thus scaring the public into "commercial" channels. They are schizophrenic capitalists if they believe this will fly with the public. A mp3 does not have the same qualities as a wav. They are playing semantics games tyring to make people feel guilty for not buying their uninspired unimaginative music or movies. 75% of films and music basically suck, so now the solution appears to be to force people to pay for something they don't want. I buy things I agree with and I learn about them on the internet, so i guess my music purchases will start to dry up if I can't hear new music.

Now that ISP's will limit bandwith then of course that will block people from downloading my music instead of some schizophrenic corporate music that will partner with the ISP. Now will be the time when we network and create another internet free of these restrictions, free of these ISP's that are trying to destroy communication by lying about bandwith availability.

This will also effect news reporting. Shutting out views that the mainstream find unpreferable. Why download that new conspiracy video if the ISP will charge me $5 for it, let alone the person also wants to charge me for the item as well. That sounds like a toll road system on a road already paid for by the public through taxes.

Run for the hills the terrorists and child porn are everywhere on the internet, the boogeyman will get you if you use a communications network. They always have used that to scare people away from the internet. Just blatent scaremongering. Now they plan to charge you for downloading my songs that I worked hard on to give to you because you won't buy the latest piece of garbage they offer.

These people can't compete, so they are taking the football and going home. WE'll just create another internet free of this garbage. They being a bunch of sore losers want the rest of us to be like them.

Resentment against achievement. That maybe would be the best title for this bill.

Free speech apparently means something that tyrants can use to claim people are too free. When did government decide to go to war against freedom? We know the corporations are fascists and oligarchs, but now the legislature wants to screw the poor by censoring society and the free press itself.

reply to post by Cowgirlstraitup7


The way they ended slavery was by juries. You can goto the Fully Informed Jury Association. If anyone on these forums ever serves on a jury do the "right" thing and support the internet, that would be the higher calling. We live in a electronic nervous system, while the political systems are like viruses trying to kill off the brain, by this legislation. They are attacking the brain, they have become facsist and even Britian has started to turn into a dictatorship. People have forgotten the past. There are diseases(government) not representative anymore trying to kill off the host body (people) and brain (Internet communications networks). Maybe this could be an overreaction, but these signals are schizophrenic that are being projected by the government. Bush might be inpeached! We are at $4 gas. Maybe going into Iran. Order might be falling apart as we type! Rule of law might perish. These are historic times, very serious stuff might be going down, this maybe Nixonesque. We are in for a rocky ride, hang on people.