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The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:38 AM
from the I'll-take-the-environment-alex dept.
from the I'll-take-the-environment-alex dept.
zumaya100k writes "In recent months, Slashdot has covered the rise of
the Pirate Party and the battles in Europe over iPod
interoperability. Canada's Hill Times has an insightful
column from Michael Geist
that links these developments as the growing importance of copyright as
a political issue. He argues that copyright is now tracking the
environment as a mainstream political issue." (Geist is talking about Canada here, but much the same can be said about the U.S. and other places.)
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This about sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Complexity is anathema to politics in most countries.
Re:This about sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
To me it seems people will only notice things are becoming a police state when its a bit to late. Most
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As long as I don't do anything wrong why should I worry?
I agree with your basic premise (although I don't think we are anywhere near a police state as the phrase is normally used), but one thing we do need is a cleary stated and consice answer to the abov
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Re:This about sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Change "making the threat seem real enough"
to "making the threat seem personal enough"
The quickest and easiest way to do that is to ask [Whoever] personal questions you know they aren't going to answer.
When [Whoever] refuses, ask them "As long as you didn't do anything wrong, why shouldn't you answer?"
The answer they give you is the same answer to the question "As long as I don't do anything wrong why should I worry?"
Once you change the way those people look at the issue, you can change the way they feel about it. To do that, you have to go after their fundamental assumption that Bad Guys != Their Community.
Re:This about sums it up for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the old days, the speed limit on the NYST was 55mph, like other limited-access highways. But NOBODY went 55mph, and in fact it was quite common to drive past police cars at 70mph, assuming they weren't driving right beside you at that speed, or faster.
In essence, EVERYONE was breaking the law. That also meant that had they wanted to, or if they had to fill a quota of some sort, they could stop ANYONE for at least a speeding ticket. Beyond that, they could probably add reckless endangerment, etc. But the reality is, since everyone was breaking the law, they could adopt alternate criteria for stopping you, say they don't like your looks, or your car's looks.
To be honest, I don't know that the system was ever abused in this way. I never heard of any abuse, that that doesn't mean that there was or wasn't any.
But the possiblity was there.
Now to bring it home to your wife...
Do you KNOW that you're not breaking any laws? When was the last time you sat down and read ALL the laws, to sort out which ones are applicable to you? How about Blue Laws? I've heard that some places have laws on the books that the Missionary Position is the only legal method for sexual intercourse. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I do remember some time in the past few years, a high court ruling that upheld a law against sex toys in your own bedroom. There was recently a rider forbidding mail-order purchase prescription drugs from Canada, and it was tacked onto a completely unrelated bill. It turns out that sometimes these riders are added late in the process, too late to be in the version of the bill given to legislators for review. Things can sail right under the radar, leaving room for "selective enforcement."
In these days, I'd mostly fear not knowing enough about who I'm doing business with. In a completely innocent fashion, it's possible to "make material contributions to terrorist organizations," by simply buying something from the wrong people.
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In the twentieth century alone, 100,000,
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"Security state" or "militarized state" more acc
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Ask her if it's ok for the police to come into your home at any time and look through all your drawers and everything else at any time they like, and will jail you for telling them to go away or not letting them in.
what is her resp
Re:This about sums it up for me (Score:4, Insightful)
You still overestimate the average person. They will say that the police would only do it to criminals, so they have no reason to fear the police having that authority. Seriously, I've tried to use this exact explanation. Somewhere along the line, people stopped believing that they themselves were the fundamental source of authority, and have come to believe that governments have inherent power. They believe that the government is always looking out for them, and beyond criticism. Somehow, they just don't get the fact the government is just a big group of people who are lazy, stupid, and power hungry as everybody else. Often, more so.
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To some extent, the freedoms that most Western countries (at least the U.S.--I have limited experience in other Western countries) have enjoyed for so long have become our own worst enemy, in a sense.
Because most of us in the U.S. have not ha
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And of course the answer to that we should all remember is: "Do you trust the govenment enough to not screw up. So you trust government enough to keep absolutely clean databa
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Read "Atlas Shrugged", and memorize the speech (is it Dagny Taggart's?) about how the government has no hold over law-abiding citizens, which is why the government passes so many laws covering so
Most People Want A Police State (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's look at the history of humanity. For most of human civilisation, and even before that, humans lived in societies without rights, equality, freedoms or justice. The powerful ruled, and if you objected, you would either be brutally beaten or killed outright. Not only that, your extended family could also be expected to suffer as well.
So with that in mind, lets consider the human "liberty loving" gene, the one that bristles when your rights are infringed upon. Do you think that is now a common gene? Do you think most human beings have retained a strong expression in genes like that one. Or do you think that rather, it is those humans who expressed more "quiet sheep" genes that proliferated throughout most of history.
Most people are descended from a long, long line of quiet, contented serfs. Ergo, most people will naturally act and behave like quiet, contented serfs. You are surrounded by them daily, choked by their suffocating apathy. They are individual only in the individual ways that they acquiesce to other humans who exude the "master" pheromone. Ultimately, democracy collapses under the dead weight of their inborn complacency
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Main stream only now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Average people giving a crap, finally. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you hit the nail on the head: copyright has been a political issue for a while, but it's only recently that it's started to affect normal people. Thus they care, where they didn't give a damn before.
Most people don't care about things in the political realm, outside of the small sphere which they perceive as actually having a direct effect on their lives.
E.g., one of the reasons the gun lobby is so big in the U.S., is that there are a lot of people who own guns, and realize that changes in gun laws could directly affect their lives, and thus take an interest in it, one way or the other.
If you had as many bittorrent users as there are gun owners, and if those bittorrent users found their bittorrenting to be as important to them as gun owners find their gun ownership and its associated activities, then there's no reason why the "BitTorrent Lobby" wouldn't be equally powerful.
It's all about making average people care.
Civil rights...not environment... (Score:5, Insightful)
And similarily, landmark court decisions and not legislation will probably determine the direction that copyright will take us...back to the slave owning days, or to a future of equal opportunity.
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Both deal with the obligations of an individual to respect the interests (if not legally the rights) of the rest of the world. Intellectual property is essenti
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Since "the rest of the world" includes the individual, group, or organization that created and produced the work in the first pl
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The GPL is only around because of information i
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Do you not see the irony in suggesting that as the tm/c/patent producers want them it's not li
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Culture is the United States' biggest export. It's not necessarily through breakthrough innovation, but rather, through the embrace and extend
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I notice that you do not dispute my claims about science and technology. Briefly, Americans inv
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Everybody is a producer of copyright material -- everything you write, everything you draw or build, everything you say is subject to cop
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Also, I neglected to mention in my original post that in
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Ummm... (Score:2)
In the US: Earth Day began in 1970, the Clean Air Act was passed in 1963, what is now called the Clean Water Act was pass
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Maybe it's your memory that's a little fuzzy (Score:2)
I hope not (Score:2)
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I doubt it becomes as much an issue (Score:4, Informative)
To make matters worse, to be concerned over copyright, you first of all have to have access to copyrightable material. If you don't then, well, the stuff doesn't really matter to you. So you have to be one of those that actually either produce or consume content. Now, producers of copyrightable material will hardly argue that there is too little restriction for the user, and people who're the proverbial "lazy consumer" will hardly stand up and become political movers.
Let's also not forget that the environment and peace movement was also driven by songwriters, poets and other "content creators", and only a handful of them were actually concerned with the issue, the rest saw a huge market to milk. Now, which artist out for money would sing against copyright?
Generally, I'm a little pessimistic that copyright becomes the "green" movement of the 2010s. I'd love to see it, and I'll support it with everything I can, but my hopes are not too high.
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Environmental dangers cause loss of life. This induces a survival-in
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There are some. NOFX, for one; I also think System of a Down and The Offspring; I'm sure there are others.
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I'd have to agree, if simply because in all the casual conversatio
US Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that for this to work, the rest of the world has to adopt USA IP laws, and most countries know it goes against their best interest, so they are not very enthusiastic about it.
And in another tie-in (Score:4, Interesting)
I.e. getting rid of copyrights (or bringing them back to 14+14 years) would help the environment.
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Copyright Act of 1790 (Score:2)
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A little off-topic (Score:2)
("H" is Mr. Hanna, the reporter, and "I" is Ivor, the candidate)
H: Quite. Now; Ivor Biggun, no votes at all for the Standing-At-The
I find some IP/Copyright Arguments Confusing (Score:3, Insightful)
Without copyright, maybe even Microsoft might come up with a protection scheme that works.
the gospel of the FSM says it is so (Score:2)
it has long been known that piracy is directly linked to global warming.
http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/ [venganza.org]
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