EU To Sign ACTA Later This Month 168
rysiek writes "At a meeting of Polish Government officials with Polish NGOs and business representatives it was confirmed that the European Union is poised to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as soon as January 26th. But all is not lost. The Treaty still needs to be ratified by the Euro Parliament and member states individually. The ratification vote is important, as it is an either-or vote — if not ratified there, ACTA gets rejected in its entirety. The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being."
someone's pressing their agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
So who's bribed who to get this pushed through ?
DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This world we live in - and I am not only talking about the cyberworld, - is turning into a place where every-single-thing gonna be monopolized by somebody
We can blame the governments.
We can blame Washington D.C.
We can blame the greedy politicians.
But IMHO it has passed time to point fingers.
It's *US*, yes, You and Me, who is responsible for this mess.
You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.
The article talked about "all is not loss", WTF ??
What does it mean by "all is not loss" ??
We've given our politicians the blank check to pass all these bullshit bills, and still, we're saying "all is not loss" ??
Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.
The European politicians who are behind this sort of bullshit typically aren't elected in any meaningful sense. Indeed, quite a few EU Commissioners are very politically connected but basically unelectable in their own country; serial resigner Peter Mandelson was the UK's Commissioner for several years, for example.
There are also a few good ones, and I admit I'm a little surprised things have gotten this far with Neelie Kroes (who is normally well-informed and a voice of reason) currently serving as Commissioner for the Digital Agenda.
The only directly elected politicians in Europe are the MEPs. Let's hope they have a bit more spine than their colleagues. At least since the Lisbon Treaty one of the few significant improvements is that the MEPs do actually have real power, and seem to enjoy exercising it when it comes to getting in the way of the unelected Commissioners throwing their weight around.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be "new" here, but then ...
The European politicians who are behind this sort of bullshit typically aren't elected in any meaningful sense.
Well ...
Who puts them there ?
It might not be *US* who put them there directly but ultimately it's *US* who allow THE SYSTEM to put them there !!
In a democratic system - and I am talking about the *US* in democratic system - the SYSTEM ultimately falls under the control of the society - which is, the voters, like You, and Me, *US* !!
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Informative)
EU Commissioners are appointed by their home government based on arbitrary criteria. Here in the UK, for example, that means the only way to prevent such an appointment is to not elect the entire administration that makes the appointment anything up to five years earlier. Clearly no-one is really going to change their one vote for the national government to another political party just so that the wrong EU Commissioner doesn't get appointed 4.5 years later, so there is really no democratic mandate or accountability at all.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:4, Insightful)
EU Commissioners are appointed by their home government based on arbitrary criteria.
above emphasis mine
Well ... who are the "home governments" ?
Are those "home governments" elected government ?
Who elected the politicians who made up those "home governments" ?
As I said, ultimately the responsibility rest on *US* ----> You, and Me ----
We are the ones who have elected those politicians who supposed to represent us in the government.
We are the ones who are responsible for the mess.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only most of the electorate is not sufficiently well informed to make a voting decision, and would most likely vote differently if they were in full possession of the facts.
Often the only, or at least the loudest source of "information" for most people, is media which is controlled by people affiliated with the two major parties, who therefore have no incentive to rock the boat.
Those of us who do bother to do our research are in such a small minority that our votes count for nothing, and because we do not control big media we have no way of making or voice heard by anyone, even if people would agree once being in full possession of the facts. Those who do control the media benefit greatly from the current system and have no incentive to change anything,
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Those of us who do bother to do our research are in such a small minority that our votes count for nothing
Actually since so few people bother to vote in EU elections we have some influence there. The Greens, for example, are doing quite well in Europe. Since you did your research you will know that they are a progressive party and certainly not single-issue.
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"and would most likely vote differently if they were in full possession of the facts"
See this on human reasoning, the enlightenment was wrong about the human mind and telling people 'the facts':
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc [bit.ly]
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The problem the GP mentions is real but I agree with you that it is still our fault. We should demand better democracy with elected EU reps. Unfortunately we don't seem to be interested as the last time the UK was given an opportunity to become more democratic we rejected it by a large majority thanks to a massive outpouring of FUD.
Write to your MEPs. You can do it for free online via They Work For You [writetothem.com] in the UK, not sure about elsewhere.
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Or, as a famous European [thinkexist.com] once remarked, the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. And anyone who doubts this should just listen to American talk radio for, oh, about five minutes.
That said, I've lived in a country with 310,000,000 people and I've lived in a country with 69,000 people. Both were republics, but only the second one, while still far from perfect, was an environment where political decision makers couldn't insulate themselves from the people on w
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Informative)
The EU Parliamant is a rather toothless, feeble thing due to the EU member countries not wanting to sign over sovereign rights. There are a couple of treaties for signing EU stuff into national law but most countries simply drag their feet. The process how this EU law-making process works is also not quite ideal...
The EU Commission is elected by gorvernments who themselves are elected. That's barely legitimate when it comes to democracy.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Interesting)
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euparl is not toothless. any law/treaty needs to get ratified by them.
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The EU Commission is elected by gorvernments who themselves are elected. That's barely legitimate when it comes to democracy.
In the US, that's how we used to elect our Senators. We changed that in 1913. It's amusing that you say it's "barely legitimate" as some people here want to roll back the amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution [wikipedia.org]
Sovereignty is paramount for independence (Score:2)
Sovereignty of a nation is paramount for independence of an individual, because it allows more direct control of the government system.
The other truth is of-course that the same [slashdot.org] answer [slashdot.org] applies [slashdot.org] to the topic of this discussion - copyrights and patents must be abolished.
No business must be in a position to get a subsidy or any other type of preferential treatment from a government (for the people, of the people, by the people, yes?)
Individuals, citizens, consumers - they are supposed to be the constituents of
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Apology for having to reply to your message twice
...so there is really no democratic mandate or accountability at all
What do you mean by "no democratic mandate" ??
Aren't we, the voters, the one who put in those politicians in the first place ?
Without us, those politicians are not that much different from a garbage collector.
Why should we, the voters, resign to this "no democratic mandate" feeling when we are the one holding the ultimate key?
I mean, are we talking on the page regarding DEMOCRACY ?
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Aren't we, the voters, the one who put in those politicians in the first place ?
Well, no.
Here in the UK, I get to vote for my MP, on a "first past the post" (aka winner takes all) system. My constituency really does float so my vote means something under this system. Many other people's votes do not.
If we were only electing local MPs, that wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately the government will normally be formed by the party (or coalition) with the most MPs. Their leader becomes Prime Minister, determined by an average-of-averages, which did not necessarily win (or even close to win
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That might be because most of the ACTA stuff has apparently been handled by the EU fishery department.
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That might be because most of the ACTA stuff has apparently been handled by the EU fishery department.
Please don't parrot the lies printed by the Daily Mail et. al. I also recommend this handy video [youtube.com], you will find it a bit of an eye opener.
Is this the same Kroes who failed so bad in her ow (Score:2)
Is this the same Kroes who failed so bad in her own country? Minister of transport thanks to whose brilliant leadership competition on the rail network meant giving one company a tiny bit of rail (Amsterdam Zandvoort) and the new high speed link straight to the NS because you know, that encourages competition? Thanks to whose contracts that same NS can ignore some lines in its performance report and cancelled trains don't count towards the number of trains not driving on time?
Yeah, real competent.
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As I said before, a lot of people who go to be EU Commissioners are politically connected but no longer electable back home. Maybe she started out that way too.
That said, during her time as Competition Commissioner, she went after Microsoft seriously. She also notably stepped aside in cases where the role gave a conflict of interests because she had previously worked in the industries concerned.
More recently, she has had the Digital Agenda portfolio, and she has several surprisingly-sensible-for-a-politicia
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Sensible? I previously thought so, but she wanted the cheater, lier and enemy of freedom of speach on the internet Guttenberg as an adviser on promoting internet freedom.
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>>>The European politicians who are behind this sort of bullshit typically aren't elected in any meaningful sense
>>>
One of my friends 'unfriended' me for saying the same thing. Some just don't want to hear the truth that EU (and US) laws are made by unelected technocrats. And sometimes even run the country (see the states of Italy and Greece).
re: ACTA, megaupload, million-dollar lawsuits
Since the music/movie industry is booming right now, higher than ever, it is silly for RIAA/MPAA to
Re:DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really sick and tired of this "blame the victim" mentality. The voting public has been under-educated, manipulated, and deceived by those who are either in or wanting power. Most voters don't even realize that it's happening, or, if they do, they feel powerless to change it (thanks, again, to those in/wanting power).
Stop trying to shift blame from where it really belongs: the people actually trying to enact these treaties and laws against the public's -- and human civilization's -- best interests!
Re:DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really sick and tired of this "blame the victim" mentality.
I ain't blaming the "victim" per se.
The case I am trying to make is this --- Ultimately this mess will come to haunt us and our children, and their children's children in the future --- and what are we doing now?
Blaming the politicians, blaming the system, blaming every-single-thing but ourselves for giving the system/politician/whatever the blank check to do whatever pleases them !!
The voting public has been under-educated, manipulated, and deceived by those who are either in or wanting power
If the voting public been under-educated, who is to blame but those dumb-fucked and under-educated voters?
It does sound like I am playing the same-old fiddle, but it's the fact ---- It all comes back to us.
What are WE going do about this?
Or are we going to depend on/blaming others?
Take responsibility, people !!!
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Here's the thing: until humanity formally recognizes that human organizations - be they governments or businesses - cannot successfully scale indefinitely, and in fact have rather limited bounds wherein each functions optimally, we will continue to have tyrannies. The old "poster child" for this is communism - it may work at the commune level but tends to train-wreck at anything higher. The new one is corporatism, which I suspect starts to derail at the county level, and is certainly a disaster happening ri
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I don't care how much effort you put into trying to absolve the public but being ignorant, ill-educated and gullible is not a defence for the things we've ignored or allowed to happen in our
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I'm now at a point where I think voting for people who 55% of the time agree with me is pretty useless.
I starting to think I would rather vote on issues.
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To an extent, I already do. I tend not to vote _for_ an issue, but I will vote against one.
E.g. the Lib Dems failed to get a vote from me at one election only because they'd have handed over more sovereignty to the EU. Thank fuck they didn't win that election or we'd currently be suffering the Euro shitstorm from the inside.
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It's *US*, yes, You and Me, who is responsible for this mess. You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.
Nope, MY representative is a good guy. I wrote to the previous guy to see what his position was on this shit, and he told me it smelled like flowers, so I helped someone else get the seat.
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This world we live in - and I am not only talking about the cyberworld, - is turning into a place where every-single-thing gonna be monopolized by somebody
Yep.. Just my luck.. The people who do not agree with me will probably have a monopoly on the /. Mod Points!!
Oh!! The Horror!!
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So who's bribed who to get this pushed through ?
I assume this is a rhetorical question, but in the extremely unlikely event that it isn't:
Bribers: big media and related corporate interests.
Bribed: the politicians.
(duhhh...)
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I think those can all be safely called "bribery".
Re:someone's pressing their agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
They may not need to bribe (directly anyway)- don't be surprised if many people just look at the title see stuff like "anti counterfeiting", "stop online piracy", "protect intellectual property", and then think yeah good idea.
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...and who chose Poland as the place to do it?
I can see the meeting now:
"Which country will be the easiest to bribe our way into?"
"It's close, between Spain and Poland ... but we think Polish politicians drink the most over dinner. We'd go with them."
Joking aside...this is how it's done.
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Do you need to be bribed to help your friends? The aristocrats, even if they fight for power amongst themselves, still side by each other against the peons.
Democracy is long dead. It's far past time to stop deluding ourselves and concentrate all efforts to develop various ways to circumvent control while it's still imperfect. Not just software, mind you, but hardware too - the current structure of the Internet makes it too easy to cut individuals or whole reg
Blackout? (Score:5, Interesting)
No?
Damn, we're screwed.
Picketing the EU Parliament won't work because most representatives don't show up anyway
:(
Re:Blackout? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they won't. People blew their wad on SOPA. They didn't give a fuck about the initial ACTA. They didn't give a fuck about NDAA. Hell, they didn't give a fuck about the PATRIOT Act. The flurry of activity against SOPA was an aberration.
Re:aberration (Score:2)
We enjoyed the rest from having to protest, for some twenty years, when life got back to being about pizza, drinks, and games.
Now we're in this really scary race to a frenzy that looks like the political oppression of other countries. And by race I mean drag car speed, not running.
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The flurry of activity against SOPA was an aberration.
Certainly it was a break from the historical trend, but it remains to be seen whether it was a one-time thing or the start of a new trend.
Recall that the reason this garbage has historically been passed is that the old media companies use their media platforms to influence the voters to favor the candidates who do their bidding. On Wednesday we learned that the new media companies can do the same thing. And the new media companies have a lot more money to pile on top of their influence.
Of course, there is t
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Think again. [wikipedia.org]
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Bringing Europe to a standstill for a day would seem like a reasonable response to this.
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Would anybody notice? I won't, because I will be torrenting porn and Top Gear.
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Picketing the EU Parliament won't do anything anyway. An email from my MEP in December:
Dear constituent,
Last week, EU government ministers agreed to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The agreement can now be signed by the Council Presidency on behalf of the EU. I strongly criticise this decision as concerns persist about the legality of the deal and the implications for fundamental rights.
Plaid Cymru's group in the European Parliament will continue to push for an assessment of the ACTA deal by the European Court of Justice.
Best wishes over the festive season,
Jill
Jill Evans MEP
Plaid Cymru
She's not the only one, but the Parliament can't do anything if the council of ministers decides to ignore it.
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But essentially she says we are all doomed. The only consolation is that we are not the only ones who will be able to proudly wear what essentially is a badge of shit. Every turd has its silver lining, as the saying goes. Don't ask me to search for it.
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Will Wikipedia, Google and TotalBiscuit black out for us? No? Damn, we're screwed.
In related news, Dodd (MPAA) wants to meet with Silicon Valley [nytimes.com] behind closed doors, at the White House (the President also needs to be put back in his place?). Yes, it's the New York Times, but you better believe it. Also in the Hollywood Reporter [hollywoodreporter.com].
The thing is, the Entertainment Industry controls the mainstream media (MSM), or: mass-consumption media, because they are part of the Industry. What the blackout did, was unprecented. Why the Media Moguls were so mad: Silicon Valley (the concerted effort of many
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Explain this to an American programmer (Score:4, Interesting)
These types of EU processes seem very convoluted to an outsider, as lawmaking processes often do. Can somebody give me a flow chart or a UML diagram? Or even pseudocode is fine.
A flowchart would just hide the facts (Score:3)
In the EU, it has to be approved by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
I'm not sure if there's any diagram that would make things clearer. Diagrams present formalities that mask the political reality of the decision making process.
Remember when software patents were put on the agenda of the fisheries committee? Procedures include flexibility...
Blocking ACTA isn't about spotting something on a map, it's about talking to our representatives and saying "We don't want this". (Council of Mini
Re:Explain this to an American programmer (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go:
http://ec.europa.eu/codecision/stepbystep/diagram_en.htm [europa.eu]
Technically, we are about to complete step 1.
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And European lawmakers.
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Re:Explain this to an American programmer (Score:5, Funny)
I thought women were covered under the "programmers" moniker, considering the first one was one.
That is to say, If you follow history: Ada Lovelace, the first programmer, was a woman; If you follow the bible: Eve, the first woman, was a programmer (of Adam)... It's told she used an Apple.
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If Eve was made from Adam's rib then genetically she's male. So yes, probably an Apple user.
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Female XX vs. Male XY.
I guess your feminine side is on her morning coffee break, yes?
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If a joke goes whoosh in a vacuum, does anyone notice?
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"And from the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
Sounds like cloning to me, and no mention of modifying chromosomes.
Perhaps you're the one who needs the caffeine. That or a course in reading comprehension.
The "rib" is the chromosome. The word in Hebrew is Tzela, which is used for anything bar-like: ribs, the sides of a triangle, braces on a bracket. In the original language, much of Genesis actually coincides nicely with the things that we have learned only in the past few centuries and decades. Not all of it, but much more than even Asimov probably suspected when he wrote "How it happened".
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That only makes sense if Adam was made from Eve, since the Y chromosome is essentially a degenerate X with the SRY (sexual selection) gene and a handful of others. Over time the mammalian Y tends to shrink, so that eventually it only holds the SRY - witness the kangaroo.
Even genetically male humans are physiologically female during the first weeks of development.
Anyway, does ancient Hebrew even have another word that just means "rib?" If not, then you're just interpolating.
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SOPA (Score:2)
So SOPA was a diversion?
Re:SOPA (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, not a diversion, the politicians expected the same Blase mood that let them pass every other evil bill. It would have been a counterpart piece as a matched set for ACTA (one domestic, one foreign).
We did manage to scare them *just a little* but there's just so far to go still. The current score is something like Lobbies 97 People 3.
Re:SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
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ACTA bad, Piracy good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuff like ACTA is bad, because piracy is inevitable. I don't think we should be trying to prevent piracy at all, as piracy is actually a good thing.
Firstly, it is copying. It isn't stealing. If it was just stealing the term piracy would not need to have been invented as distinct from stealing. Keep in mind that the word Piracy has existed for about 500 years, and only in the last decade or so has come to be taken as stealing.
Why is Piracy good?
Keep in mind piracy is legal in many countries, for good reason. This is an important point for people who rely on the piracy is stealing argument. Those countries tend to be smarter about such matters than the US and western Europe.
Piracy is not going away. Piracy is inevitable. Why waste so many resources on what is arguably a good thing?
Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good. (Score:4, Insightful)
When did the ruling elites ever give a fuck about the common good?
Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Never. But then again, Cicero figured that out 2000ish years ago. I always figured that the classics should be required reading if you're going to be a politician.
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Piracy originally meant theft in international water, which was very much theft. I don't know when it first became used as a term for copyright infringement, or by whome.
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If that was really your issue then you wouldn't be suggesting piracy as a solution. If someone can't afford a few dollars a month for Netflix/Spotify etc or to buy a couple of CDs/DVDs then how exactly are they affording the PC/Internet etc to pirate. You'd be better off giving them more money to spend.
About the only Pirates I have any respect for are the ones that are willing admit they
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Literally? Really?
In any case, would you do your job on that basis? No, so you have no right at all to tell others that they should.
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Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good. (Score:5, Insightful)
"In any case, would you do your job on that basis? No, so you have no right at all to tell others that they should."
Not sure about the AC, but I know I do. I turn up to work each day, write code, and get paid for being at work to write code. What happens to that code when it's left my desk and gone to clients I really don't care about, it could be copied and reused as many times as they want it to, the point is I've been paid whilst I've been actually working, not continued to be paid long after I've stopped working. This is the case with public performances too.
See the point is the vast majority of the world's working population (like on the order of 99.99% of it or maybe even more) already work around the "public performances" type concept - they get paid for actually turning up and doing something. The problem musicians have is they're too lazy, they don't want to work the hours people in almost every other profession do, they just want to do a few hours every few weeks, with the option to take a few years out, and still make millions.
They complain if it's not profitable for them to do this, but so fucking what? It's not profitable for me to sit playing CoD online all day every day, but it doesn't mean I still have the right to do it and make millions in the process - life isn't like that, if you can't provide something the market wants then you need to retrain to do something you can, the world doesn't owe you employment doing your preferred task, in your preferred way.
So excuse me if I have zero sympathy for the whining artists, it's not my fucking fault they're lazy layabouts who refuse to do what most of the rest of the working population has to. So assuming the GP has a job like nearly everyone else in the working population has, then yes he fucking does have the right to tell others how to work - he has the right because it'd mean he's working his way through life, providing something the world wants and is willing to pay for and shouldn't have to subsidise lazy bum artists who feel the world owes them through all sorts of legislation set up to support their lazy lifestyles through lobbying and corruption.
I similarly have the right to tell artists to turn up and actually do some work for a living if they want money, because I provide something the world is willing to pay for and I do so day in, day out. The should also expect only money proportional to the work they do - i.e. if they only want to a few hours work every few weeks or months, then only expect a few hours pay every few weeks or months. The current system despite piracy, already provides them plenty more than that, if they don't like it they can change professions like anyone else would have to, this is why they don't have a leg to stand on whatsoever when they cry about piracy - because they're no more fucking special than anyone else, despite their belief that they are.
I'll start to have sympathy for the profession when there's no more new music in the world. I'll be waiting forever though, because people have always made music, even when there's no money in it, simply because to many, they do it as a recreational thing, rather than an expectation of something to live off.
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"protip; most artists work long hours, or part-time hours _after_ their full-time job, and spends years or decades in the trenches, before they get any success"
But it's their choice, if they enjoy it it's effectively their hobby.
As in my previous example, I spend long hours after my full time job playing CoD, providing an opponent for many thousands of players to play against across all the games I've played, however I've yet to make any profit it from it.
You can't absolve the artists of blame because in s
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Labels, like movie studios, tend to fiddle the numbers on that though. They'll pay a huge promotion cost to another division within the company and use such tricks to
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It appears to boost...
There's also evidence to suggest that piracy can really help the little guy :
Piracy trumps obscurity [lazaruscorporation.co.uk] .. so it's not all black and white. These were all picked off the first page of a search for "piracy boosts sales", so your Google-fu is indeed weak.. or your heart just isn't in it
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair US novelist & socialist politician (1878 - 1968)
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It's more like fraud. And fraud is a criminal offence with substantial penalties in many places, because it is damaging to the victims,
You may be the first I have seen who compares piracy to being more like fraud than stealing. I don't understand your reasoning, could you elaborate?
is unfair to those who conduct their financial business legally, and can have severe economic consequences if done on a large scale.
How is it unfair to people who do their business legally? How is it unfair in a legal sense where piracy is legal? How are there severe economic consequences when piracy has been shown to have positive effects for the economy?
Well, the first recorded usage of the term in the sense we're talking about is given in the early 1700s by most etymological dictionaries, so you're only off by three centuries [etymonline.com]. Hey, at least you were close.
Wiki says [wikipedia.org] at least since 1603, so at the most I was off by a century.
Well, given that Slashdot readership is obviously neutral on this issue, I'm sure that's a representative sample of the literature.
I'm also struggling to find all those studies, but I suppose it's just that my Google-fu is weak. Maybe you could help me out by citing some of them?
The slashdot readership is irrelevant, as they had no influence on th
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You may be the first I have seen who compares piracy to being more like fraud than stealing. I don't understand your reasoning, could you elaborate?
Copyright is basically an economic tool. It creates a rule under which various economic effects result. Infringing copyright breaks those effects. While it's true that the money lost was "never really there", and therefore copyright infringement is not really the same as theft, the money should have been there according to the economics mandated by law.
Compare this with the situation of, say, a mis-sold financial product. A fraudster advises you to invest your pension in his poorly performing fund, which ge
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In any case, you seem to be equating a potentially lost sale with a lost sale, which is fallacious. Lets say someone pirates software that they honestly could not afford under any circumstances. If they never would have paid for the software, it can not be considered a lost sale.
While that is a common argument, I think it is fundamentally flawed. The entire point of money as a replacement for barter is that those who create more value one way or another will receive more money, which they can then use to pay for things that they in turn value. It is one huge incentive scheme. As soon as you say someone without money wouldn't have bought something they valued anyway, even if they had no other means of acquiring it and had to go without, you have completely ignored the incentive that
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Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of abundant high-quality work created by people who have rent to pay.
OK, let's take this argument, because I keep hearing it and I don't understand it.
Yes, obviously if 100% of people who listen to music pirate it and 0% ever go to a live show etc. then there will be no financial incentive to create new music. But those numbers are preposterous and totally counter to reality.
So let's ignore the preposterous 100% piracy rate, let's consider the actual rate of piracy that occurs today. And it really doesn't matter what the exact percentage is, because the question we need to b
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I'm not going to get into strawman debates about 100% piracy rates. You brought that up, not me.
The money argument is simple. Suppose an artist releases a work that ten people enjoy, and the artist makes $100 because 5 of those people paid the $20 asking price and the other 5 ripped it. Let's also suppose that all ten people actually value the work, and ignore any further copying by anyone who really was only sampling.
First, let's also suppose that $100 is a viable return, so the artist themselves isn't los
Could be good? (Score:2)
I am out of touch with each countries individual stance on ACTA. Could this be a good thing if enough countries are against it. A wait could afford more time to bring holdouts in line?
Re:Could be good? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also possible, especially in countries close to election, that politicians will want to show some backbone against Brussel on such an easy to hate agreement.
Time will tell, as a European, I don't hold my breath. Those agreements take an awful lot of effort to be rejected - look at what it took for the SOPA thing in the US - and they come back slightly changed over and over again. They will pass, it is just a matter of time, unfortunately.
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We only notice the EU whenever we pay with Euro coins from exotic countries, some money seems to be missing in some Euro countries, there are new member states or there is some huge scandal within the EU Comission which will promptly be reported on page 5 of your newspaper. Somewhere in the Male/Male/Nutella classified ads.
No wonder that nobody will notice this. And it is an issue that is perciev
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Have you ever personally been voting for EU Parliament? Have you ever cared about voting for it?
I have, and that's why we have Pirates in the EU Parliament who are actively fighting to get information about ACTA out in the open.
http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/acta-is-borderline-on-fundamental-rights-at-best/ [wordpress.com]
prime minister bit is about poland only (Score:4, Informative)
The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being.
This bit, the last sentence, is about Poland only, one of the 27 EU member states.
There are no ministers in the EU government, I think the closest would the comissioners in the EU Comission (EU government/executive branch) whose head is the president. And there are several vice-presidents among the comissioners.
Though there is the Council of the EU aka Council of Ministers. This council consists of one minister from each member states depending on the topic of discussion. Agriculture ministers when discussing agriculture etc.
Well, this one is kind of lost... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the "rich cocksuckers" (just citing Carlin) are influential, and have been projecting their influence all around the world. An EU politician isn't any better than any US politician - in both cases, corporate psychopaths tend to percolate up the chain of power, and therefore, have no quibbles being bribed and acting in their own interest vs. the interest of everyone.
This *could* be stopped if there were a concerted action like the one resisting SOPA/PIPA, but there isn't. There is no time even to mount a half-buttocked campaign, at this point.
I would love to be proven wrong.
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It also happens that lobbyists have their agents in key secondary positions of government. Secretaries, for example, and those that take care of the protocols in meetings, etc. So sometimes, they can manage to ge
EDRi has launched: What's Wrong with ACTA Week (Score:5, Informative)
European Digital Rights has launched http://www.edri.org/ACTA_Week [edri.org] with 5 one page briefings that you can send to your National and Euro member of parliaments. Please do so, it will not take you long.
Sharing is not distribution (Score:2)
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How about you do some real sharing and express a little humanity by donating some cash/time to a charity that helps feed starving children? What, no? You'd rather pretend that being a tight ass and downloading a film does that... get a sense of perspective.
Yes you are. People want to get movies and music free. They'd rather keep
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http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2629992&cid=38758986 [slashdot.org]
why wont you shut up about supporting people who are too lazy to work like all the rest of us ? below dude explained very well what is wrong about the art and music world :
"In any case, would you do your job on that basis? No, so you have no right at all to tell others that they should."
Not sure about the AC, but I know I do. I turn up to work each day, write code, and get paid for being at work to write code. What happens to that code when it's left my desk and gone to clients I really don't care about, it could be copied and reused as many times as they want it to, the point is I've been paid whilst I've been actually working, not continued to be paid long after I've stopped working. This is the case with public performances too.
See the point is the vast majority of the world's working population (like on the order of 99.99% of it or maybe even more) already work around the "public performances" type concept - they get paid for actually turning up and doing something. The problem musicians have is they're too lazy, they don't want to work the hours people in almost every other profession do, they just want to do a few hours every few weeks, with the option to take a few years out, and still make millions.
They complain if it's not profitable for them to do this, but so fucking what? It's not profitable for me to sit playing CoD online all day every day, but it doesn't mean I still have the right to do it and make millions in the process - life isn't like that, if you can't provide something the market wants then you need to retrain to do something you can, the world doesn't owe you employment doing your preferred task, in your preferred way.
So excuse me if I have zero sympathy for the whining artists, it's not my fucking fault they're lazy layabouts who refuse to do what most of the rest of the working population has to. So assuming the GP has a job like nearly everyone else in the working population has, then yes he fucking does have the right to tell others how to work - he has the right because it'd mean he's working his way through life, providing something the world wants and is willing to pay for and shouldn't have to subsidise lazy bum artists who feel the world owes them through all sorts of legislation set up to support their lazy lifestyles through lobbying and corruption.
I similarly have the right to tell artists to turn up and actually do some work for a living if they want money, because I provide something the world is willing to pay for and I do so day in, day out. The should also expect only money proportional to the work they do - i.e. if they only want to a few hours work every few weeks or months, then only expect a few hours pay every few weeks or months. The current system despite piracy, already provides them plenty more than that, if they don't like it they can change professions like anyone else would have to, this is why they don't have a leg to stand on whatsoever when they cry about piracy - because they're no more fucking special than anyone else, despite their belief that they are.
I'll start to have sympathy for the profession when there's no more new music in the world. I'll be waiting forever though, because people have always made music, even when there's no money in it, simply because to many, they do it as a recreational thing, rather than an expectation of something to live off.
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
I think the parent is pretty good but misses the HUGE point that the artists make only a minority of the profit from their work; most of it goes to the business middle men and related corporations who produce NOTHING. The business model for them is pretty much DEAD and unnecessary so not only should most of them go find other similar work but the ones who are left will have to settle for making less money and possibly a more fair portion of the wealth the artists generate.
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All the other countries are just little bitches for the USA now.
While all the other countries are little bitches for the USA, USA is a little bitch for the Hollywood moguls
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