We have some very, very good news for Europeans (which happens to include myself): we have the European Parliament on our sides when it comes to battling ACTA. If you may recall, ACTA is basically an attempt by the US to impose upon the rest of the world draconian measures like three strikes laws and the DMCA. All parties within the European Parliament have together put forth a resolution that would effectively tackle ACTA.
Thanks to the Lisboa Treaty, the European Parliament has gained a number of key authorities, with a consequence of that being that the ACTA would have to go through Parliament first before it would ever go into effect. The resolution reminds the European Commission of that fact.
The resolution demands a whole boatload of things, all of which are extremely beneficial to us as European consumers. First of all: transparency. All negotiations, up until now done in secret, behind closed doors, must be conducted in the open, and any results, whether past, present, or future, must be made accessible to both Parliament and the public. The resolution demands that this very point be brought to the table at the next round of ACTA talks in April, 2010, in New Zealand.
Failure to comply to these demands means Parliament will possibly take the case to court. “The European Parliament stresses that, unless the Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, Parliament reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives,” the resolution reads.
The resolution also goes into great detail, in stern words, about what ACTA may not be about. ACTA calls for the authority to search people’s laptops and other digital devices at the borders to check for copyright infringement; the resolution strictly prohibits any such activity. The resolution further forbids any form of three strikes laws.
“If there is to be an ACTA agreement, the parliament wants it to be about combating goods counterfeiting (i.e.: fake Rolexes and hand bags, fake Viagra on the net, fake cigarettes that are even more harmful that proper ones etc.),” writes Christian Engström, MEP for Piratpartiet, Sweden, “It should not be about restricting our fundamental civil liberties on the net.”
The resolution will go to vote tomorrow, so there’s still a chance it will be shot down, but seeing as all but one party already support it, things are looking up. It looks like the European Parliament is not as easily corrupted as the European Commission apparently is (seeing it entered into the secret ACTA talks in the first place), and I’m happy such an overwhelming majority helped draft this resolution.
Let’s hope we Europeans get to hold on to our civil liberties on the net – at least until the next backhanded attempt by the content industry to shove US law down our throats.
I’ve been following the news on ACTA on Slashdot for ages now and the more I’ve heard about it the worse it’s all sounding. Of course I am against piracy of all kinds, but freedom of personal rights is a lot more important and as such I am strongly against proposals like these that try to strip people of their rights just for the sake of protecting the cash flow of large corporations.
I truly dreaded that European Parliament might actually vote for ACTA and feared what it’d entail… Today, I can sigh of relief! As rare as it is, sometimes common sense prevails!
Agreed. I live in the U.S. with the DMCA. It’s great to see that a stand is finally being taken against ACTA.
Unfortunately the said political organization has a habit of leaning one way then shifting balance overnight when the spotlight is off them.
Where do we have that here? We don’t. This is a European concept that started with the French, I believe. We don’t have that here. There isn’t any law that states that.
Don’t blame us for your own problems please. You do a lot of things there that we consider to be bad. Should we mention those?
A lot of what we see happening in Europe is being excused as coming from the USA when it’s not. At times, that just an excuse for doing something distasteful that your governments want to do anyway.
Edited 2010-03-09 17:47 UTC
Uhm, this has nothing to do with that. The entire internet chapter of ACTA has been written solely by the US delegation. THAT is why we blame the US.
If they weren’t happy with the idea, they would never have accepted it.
The EU is VERY protective of what it thinks is its rights when it involves business, telling the US what it can do, while not allowing us to have the same advantage.
If they didn’t WANT that act, they would have rejected it.
Dude, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black. It goes both ways.
One good example is the U.S.’s fixation on Cuba, something we Europeans consider to be verging on hysteria. The US decided that the Cuban trade blockade should extended to the rest of the world, driving the Cuban people further into poverty, a policy that doesn’t actually help you guys get rid of Castro, by the way. You declare that any aircraft or ship that makes port in Cuba cannot make port in the US for at least six months. Upon hearing this, Europe decides it will not be pushed around and declares that for every aircraft or ship that is denied port on those terms, two US aircraft or ships will be denied port in Europe for at least one year. You should have seen how fast the US backed off on that policy.
In the end, it’s our right to defend ourself against the USs bullying tactics. I’m glad the EP has taken a stand, you guys try to abuse your power far too much and as we Europeans don’t have the military capacity to rattle out sabers, we are going to use what we do have that can hurt you, by far the larger of the two’s trading power.
That is a seriously warped world-view. The whole reason that most EU states get away with not having much of an army of their own is because the U.S. — they guys with the biggest military of any single nation on Earth — is guaranteeing their security from outside threats for them. Our military is a benefit for you, not a threat. The whole reason, for example, that Japan can be right next to China, with the history they have an tension between those states that exists, and not have a standing army is because the U.S. has kindly pledged our own military to their defence! Not to mention that it’s pretty much nothing short of ridiculous to try to claim that military competition enters into US/EU trade negotiations.
And I may point out, the original point is valid. The U.S. does not have Three Strikes laws. If ACTA is ratified, it’ll actually create a whole raft of onerous new requirements for U.S. citizens too — and the U.S. public is being kept just much in the dark as everyone else is. In my never-humble opinion, the ACTA is just as much an effort to sneak crazy new regulations past the U.S. legislature as it is to force anything onto the European Union; it’s an effort that’s being lead by some other interested group to co-opt both the U.S. and E.U.’s internet policies, not some diabolical plot by the U.S. government to force the E.U. to do things our way.
Edited 2010-03-09 20:51 UTC
You do know that two of the EU states are also Have Nuclear Weapons. Who are they?
Great Britain & France.
That is far more of a deterrent to the possible threats from the East of the EU than American power is.
The US has a habid of dithering when it comes to joining in an existing war. Vietnam did that. This is one of the major gripes that France has with the US.
Yes, I did know that. But, frankly, the point still stands. Why don’t you guys have huge armies? Because we do, and we’re your very good buddies; we’re such good buddies, that we’ll let you borrow ours, if you really need it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I also believe that the British and French nuclear arsenals are a tiny, tiny fraction of the US’s, aren’t they? I want to say the British have all of one nuclear submarine?
Not that huge nuclear arsenals are a good thing, mind! It’s just that – again, so far as I know, and I could be wrong – the French and British arsenals are more tokens than real and credible deterrents.
Europe does have HUGE armies, our totalled armed forces are similar in size to the US. We just spend 4 times less on it than the US (measure in percent of GDP). Remember it is not man-power that is expensive, the US is buying the latest and greatest and paying a huge premium for it. Think of it like this: The us buys the fastest 5GHz CPUs while Europe buys last years 4GHz CPUs four times cheapers.
And honestly who needs multiple nuclear submarines and silos when a handful of randomly delivered such bombs would precipitate the whole planet in a nuclear winter anyway.
I’m note sure, but I’m fairly confident that you’d need more than a “handful” of nuclear weapons to cause a global nuclear winter. Not that the effects of a handful of nuclear weapons are anything to scoff at… it’s just that “global nuclear winter” is a wild exaggeration.
Because Europe is made up of smaller countries as opposed to a single big one? If you add them all up it’s not entirely unimpressive though.
Oh, you mean like when you need everyone else’s help to take on Saddam’s ragtag gang of hoodlums?
First off, the cold war is a long time over. Secondly, you don’t seem to know much about European armies. On their own and compared to the US, individual European powers have small standing armies but together they form quite a formidable force. If you seriously think that the idea of a unified European armed forces does not make the US nervous then it is you, my friend, who has a seriously warped view of the world. To think that trade negotiations of any kind are done without keeping thoughts of military power in mind is very naive and completely flies in the face of history.
I agree that the original point stands, but that was not what I was talking about. I was talking about the fact that the US uses it’s military might in ways that are considered bullying by the rest of the world. The parent post was getting all huffy about Europe being protectionist. How can a US citizen claim protectionism by any other state or group of states and still keep a strait face? Just take a look at the WTO and the World Bank. It’s the definition of hypocrisy to claim that Europe is protectionist when coming from a US centric point of view.
I see. First, don’t under-estimate the social consequences of the Cold War. The U.S. is still very much the primary guarantor of the E.U.’s territorial integrity, even if there’s presently not any great external threat, and we don’t talk about it much anymore. And second, how exactly would the entire E.U. stack up against the U.S. as a combined force? I’m pretty sure you guys aren’t even second-place, and I think second place is also pretty distant, but I’d have to check to be sure.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that a combined E.U. military force doesn’t frighten the U.S., because the U.S. and the E.U. are close allies. The U.S. is not threatening the E.U. here, and the E.U. isn’t threatening the U.S. Nobody at the ACTA – or pretty much any EU/US trade discussion – is rattling sabers, I can all but guarantee you. You’re pretty much the only person I’ve ever heard try to claim that the US and EU are menacing each other with displays of military might, double plus that we’re doing it over a treaty about international copyright law.
The U.S. isn’t bullying Europe, nor is it engaging in protectionist practices. (I cannot wait to read your response to that.) The worst thing that we’ve done is dig our heals in and obstruct global climate legislation — which is a bad thing, but hardly “bullying” on a grand scale. We’re also an extremely open market. Like, to the point of shooting ourselves in the foot.
Honestly, you make it sound like the U.S. is actively threatening to annex mainland Europe — which is just ridiculous.
Edited 2010-03-09 22:19 UTC
Wow. Just, wow! What is it that you don’t understand about what I’m saying? I’m not talking about Europe’s current military might and I already pointed out that it wouldn’t stack up to the US. What I’m talking about is a unified European military, including budget for R&D. It’s no secret that the US is extremely jealous of it’s current military dominance. Anything that could potentially knock them off of top spot in the future is worrying to anybody at the top of their game.
If you seriously think that just because we are close allies now that the situation couldn’t change in the future then you are seriously mistaken. Yes it seems unlikely but history has plenty to say about broken alliances.
If you re-read what I wrote, you’ll see I’ve yet to say anything about either side menacing each other militarily. What I was pointing out was that all countries negotiate on the basis of their strength. If you’re so naive that you think the US wouldn’t use it’s military superiority as leverage in economic dealings then I can’t help you. Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t have to be Europe we’re talking about. The amount of examples I could give you…
Furthermore, where did I mention that the US is using it’s military power to enforce ACTA? Do you need glasses by any chance or do you just like putting words in my mouth?
I’ve already given one example of US bullying tactics towards Europe. You know, the whole Cuban embargo policy? Where you not paying attention? Maybe you don’t know the following but the US did state that any ship or aircraft that had been band and repeatedly tried entry into US ports would be fired upon. If that doesn’t sound like bullying to you then I don’t know what possibly could.
No I’m not. That’s all in your head I’m afraid, probably brought on by your lack of comprehension.
… well then.
OK, then, just to go around again…
1) U.S. military might is not a factor ACTA negotiations. At all.
2) The U.S. is not systematically bullying Europe. At all. And I’m not sure I’d be willing to consider blockading Cuba “bullying Europe.” But that’s a whole ‘nother tangent.
3) The U.S. military is not worried about Europe. Because we are close allies, and will all but certainly remain so for the foreseeable future. A hell of a lot would have to change for the US and Europe to come into direct confrontation.
If the US was to be worried about Europe’s military strength it wouldn’t be because of the possibility of a direct confrontation, but because of being knocked out of the “alpha male” role.
Being perceived as the strongest military force surely has it’s benefits when trying to impose your decisions abroad.
No I’m not. That’s all in your head I’m afraid, probably brought on by your lack of comprehension. [/q]
But….. they did. There’s a law accepted under the Bush administration that grants America to invade (yes! invade!) the Netherlands if an American would ever stand trial before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Now, how many American citizens know about this???
…. huh. Is there, now. I find that very hard to believe. Care to point me at that statute?
That’s not entirely true. I agree with most of the rest of your comments, but both the US and Europe engage in protectionist practices when it suits them – I don’t agree with it, but to dismiss that it occurs is naive.
One recent example of this is the US’ Aerial Refueling Tanker program (aka KC-X), which had two primary bidders – Boeing (US) and a consortium made up of Northrop Grumman (US) / EADS (European).
2003: Boeing won the contract only to have the contract award revoked due to an ethics scandal related to the contract
2008: Northrop/EADS were awarded the contract – US senators in uproar that US tax dollars may go to European company
2008-2010: USAF change terms of contract to favor Boeing’s smaller aircraft, making Northrop/EADS’ position untenable
2010: Northrop/EADS officially withdraw their bid
However you look at the goings-on of that program, there definitely are protectionist practices occuring in the US at this very moment.
Fair enough — FWIW, that whole affair draws negative press over here, too.
How about this: protectionism right now is extremely low, and isn’t a major systemic problem?
I guess you mean “this time” (which is questionable anyway) because otherwise this is just incredibly naive.
This may be one of the dumbest statements made by you to date. Might want to think this one through for a moment, or pick up a book for once and educate yourself.
Care to qualify that statement? Or are you just trolling again?
If I recall correctly, it’s you who’s been consistently unable to come out with a valid statement in any of our discussions. In fact, I end up handing your ass to you every time due to your jumping to conclusions and general level of ignorance on most subjects you start spouting off about.
Seriously, you’re the last person on this forum that can start calling somebody else stupid. Whatever gave you the idea that not being able to understand copyright law somehow made you an expert on it? That’s like Bill O’Reilly saying evolution can’t be right because it’s to complicated for him to understand.
I will actually be kind here and give you a hint on where you need to start. One word: SACEUR. Read up on that, read up as to why this has been, is, and always will be an American. Good lord, f–king read up as to the damn politics behind this whole idiotic notion of an EU army and as to why it has gone nowhere.
Your little dream of an EU army is just that, a wet dream that could be splintered and broken in a day in any conflict.
FYI: I thought most of this is common knowledge, maybe you should spend less time pirating stuff and more time reading? Just a thought.
Edited 2010-03-10 02:02 UTC
LMFAO! ACT is commanded by a Frenchman, so what? Are you trying to say that NATO will survive for all eternity? Are you really that simple? And even if it does, why would that stop Europe creating a unified armed forces? You don’t have much upstairs, do ya?
Douchebag.
SACEUR is not ACT is it you twit? FYI, NATO’s 2003 transformation, not exactly meant to deal with a threat like the U.S. now is it? God you are like Lemur2, read a little wiki article without any comprehension what so ever. You still can not figure out why SACEUR=American? How about why SHAEF was dominated by the U.S.? Can figure that one out yet?
I really can not believe that someone can be so f–king dumb as to think that the EU can form a coherent military policy that can be implemented. You really are f–king clueless about everything from WWII to Kosovo, and the lessons that teaches about this very subject. Instead, you live in some fantasy island where the EU and it’s mighty army will not be knocked off the map the first day.
P.S. Care to also argue that you Euro trash are also going to have the political will to start giving up some of your beloved free services like health care, pensions, and higher education in order to afford a military that can’t be run over in a day by some Texas National Guard hicks in their pickups? Oh wait, you know everything right, so of course you already considered this little factoid right.
LMFAO! You really are a grade A asshole. Let me point something out to you, douchebag. Your opinion does not equate truth. If you’re unable to understand that then there is no point in having a discussion with you. Now run along and mouth off to your friends, we grown ups want to have a discussion.
You’re not innocent of name-calling or berating those who disagree with you yourself, I hope you realize. Although you’re not as bad about it, either.
Your absolutely right and I apologies for flying off the helm like that the other day.
In this case, I’m not berating him on his inability to be civil. I couldn’t care less what the guy has to say as I’ve had several “discussions” with him and he is so repetitive it’s funny. First off, he makes assumptions about people and their thoughts or situations without a shred of evidence. Secondly, he then uses his deluded ideas about those people to berate them as stupid without attempting to explain why. When he then gets called out about it, he presents his opinions as self evident fact. You see, the guy seems to live in a black or white world in which it’s his way or you’re stupid. The funniest bit about the whole thing is that he is so ignorant about the subjects he starts spouting off about, he ends up looking like a complete fool.
Basically, what I’m doing here is winding him up so I can see what he’ll do next. Entertainment the likes of ssa2204 should not never be passed up, in my experience. He’s already blown a gasket. With any luck, I can get him to rupture an artery while I’m at it.
1.) Fact: Nations act in their own self interest, something you seem to be clueless about.
2.) Fact: Never in history has it ever been shown that nations will sacrifice their own personal interests for some greater good.
3.) Fact: As history has shown us, even with a dominate power at the helm, coalitions are still extremely difficult to manage. De Gaulle himself not only put the strategic plan at risk developed by SHAEF, but even risked the entire destruction of Paris in the desire to achieve dominance in the resistance movement, and thus the postwar politics. Only months later did Eisenhower have to again confront the French threatening to essentially dismantle the only French division because they once again ignored the strategic in favor of their own self interest.
4.) Fact: Multiple times during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflict the NATO coalition was at risk of fracturing. Former SACEUR General Clark himself wrote that the most vital and important aspect of his command was not the military, but the political effort to maintain a unified front that was at constant risk of fracture. Every single moment he and the General Secretary had to contend with individual nations all seeking their own policy to be implemented….even nations whose contributions were nil. Even today politicians do not have the willpower to not only maintain, but increase troop levels in Afghanistan. Yet the heroin trade causes more death, more crime, and more corruption in Europe than anywhere else. And considering that Europe is right at the door of the Middle East, has no ability to assimilate populations, yet readily accepts refugees, not to easy to figure out that Afghanistan IS in every European nations interest.
5.) Fact: No European nation is going to allow a dominant Germany to lead this dream Euro army of yours. No European nation is going to want either the UK, or France for that matter. The rest, quite simply too insignificant to matter in this world. I guess we can also assume then that every nation in this little dream team will simply and magically share a common idea, purpose, or goal…ignoring everything from history to reality. And exactly how long will it take before some nations simply decide that it is in THEIR interests to walk out and join the other side? Do you realise how many nations do this? You think you can count on Poland or Romania in some conflict with Russia? Simply not how the world works, and that is why any “pact” with it’s weight will always require a dominant power at the helm.
6.) Fact: It is well known by just about everyone…except you it seems, that the U.S. has born the burden of defense expenditures, and that without this European nations would have to increase theirs. Doing so would require taxation, or social service cuts. I don’t think that I ever read a single book or article by knowledgeable persons that have stated otherwise. It is been pretty basic concept throughout the post war era.
These listed above are simple basic facts of life, taken for granted and readily acknowledge by most, aside from you. If you think for a moment that any EU army is a ‘threat’ to anyone in this world, you are seriously deluded as any threatening nation could split in a day. There is a reason this never going to become THE defense posture, because the people in charge do not live in the same fantasy island you do. They at least have the common sense that this is nothing more than a unified peacekeeping force..nothing more, nothing less.
Please define the difference between need and want.
Probably not at the scale of sacrifice but I think there have been historical events when common good was put before separate interests, e.g. formation of the United States of America.
Sure, this included a nasty civil war, but each coaltion already united several states, each with own interests but obviously also shared goals.
This is definitely true, but yet it is also fact that given increasing cooperation and integration, coaltions can become a union, e.g. United States of America.
I don’t think so.
Recent history has seen levels of integration that wouldn’t have been even thinkable couple of decades ago. Best example is creation of a shared currency.
There are political issues around control of bodies such as the European Central Bank but they got resolved eventually.
Total transformation of several national militaries into a single shared one is probably still far of, deeper cooperation or permanently joint operations are probably not.
Well, reality already shows that these nations have indeed common ideas and goals, thus the desire to cooperate more than they used to.
As for history, this is surely something to overcome, but recent history is a good indication that this can be done.
Not very likely since too much is at stake.
Similar to Physics or Chemistry, breaking of bonds requires energy and the amount required depends on how strong the bonding is.
No, any examples? E.g. examples of nations leaving the Euro zone, the EU or its predecessors?
Or NATO if we need something in context of military?
The world has a lot of ways it works or are you telling us that the USA is only able to do whatever it does because something dominant, California perhaps, is as the helm?
That might be true to some extend, but usually pooling resources results in better overall performance, reduction of unnecessary duplication, etc.
I think it is also worth considering that most European nations have their military for defence not for waging war somewhere else, thus greatly reducing the overall costs.
A joint military force could probably cost the same as the joint expenses today and still bomb civilian targets.
Not that doing that should be a goal of any nation, despite being being done so called “super powers” on an almost regular basis.
I think that was extremely motivated by personal interests. The states only joined together in the first place because they didn’t think any of them were strong enough to stand up to international pressure on their own. The central government had virtually no domestic power to begin with, it was completely about presenting a unified face to foreign countries.
And in the civil war, 1 group of states broke away to continue their way of life and the other group attacked because if any state could split off at any time then the union would be weakened. It was in their best interests, long term, to keep the united states as a uniform whole rather than a bunch of states loosely aligned with each other.
I’m not going to say this is impossible, it may well happen eventually. But I think history has shown that these types of things tend to work well in the good times, and then collapse when real pressure is put on them and they need to perform. As close as Europe is right now economically, look at what happened when the economy collapsed. Each country started looking out for itself, and people/politicians in each started complaining loudly about all the money they were sending to other EU countries that were even worse off. Now imagine if the economy hadn’t stabilized, that it was still in free fall, if Germany or France was facing bankruptcy, and what would happen. Yes, that’s kind of a nightmare scenario which may be unlikely, but those kinds of nightmare scenarios are exactly what a military would have to plan for if you can’t rely on outside help coming to your aid. And if I were Poland and the Russians told me to submit or else, I wouldn’t feel very confident that the French and Germans would back me up 100% when the going got tough.
Edit: really, i guess what it comes down to is how close Europe really is. In the US, people used to say they were a citizen of a state, until the civil war. Since then, nobody cares what state you are from, you’re just an american. I don’t think Europe is anywhere close to that level of unity yet, there’s way to much culture and history associated with each country and people still associate themselves with their country rather than an amorphous “Europe”. I suppose that could change, though.
Edited 2010-03-11 01:20 UTC
Exactly.
Which is why European nations got from the point of a mere agreement to trade certain resources (coal, steel, etc.) to a Union encompassing a lot more.
Standard rethorics to shift attention away from each nation’s individual failures.
Basically one of the facts missing in the posting I replied to: if you are uncapable or unwilling to address internal problems, point to problems elsewhere, create some if necessary.
It is convenient to blame “the EU” in a way that makes it look like you are not part of it and thus part of the problem.
Being G7 nations, this would have ment the whole world economy going down for good. These nations are way to deep into economy dependecies with each other to make anyone survive this.
Forgetting for a moment that joint military forces would not mean somebody aiding anyone but part of the joint territory being defended, the situation you describe is the one Poland is in right now.
As NATO members they have to rely on their partner members sticking to the agreement.
Separate forces will never be as effective as a single joint force, something that is well tested.
Using a different example than the USA, several of Europe’s nations are in fact unions of states as themselves.
So a “Euro army” would be an improvement for everyone involved, a lot better than the current reliance on other nations will to follow the letter of treaties, let alone their spriti.
Dude, are you sure you’re replying to the same thread,. or have you gotten lost? LOL! You’re jumping to conclusions again, aren’t you? I thought I taught you the dangers of that last time. Obviously you don’t have the brains to figure out even that simple lesson.
Son, why is it every time you open your mouth you end up looking like a complete retard? You do realize that deluding yourself is not the same as educating yourself, right?
Seriously, you sound like a wino pulling imaginary insults out of thin air and blaming random passers by. Have you ever considered professional help?
Name calling makes for such a convincing argument.
Btw, I heard your mighty military force did great in ‘Nam.
*facepalms hard*
Did I… miss something here? Is that not true? Are we not military allies with Japan? I’m guessing you’re annoyed because you think I don’t know that the reason Japan has no military is that we forced them to disarm after World War II? I am not ignorant of the fact.
The reason that they’ve been able to get away with continued national pacifism is very much that they’re our close buddies. (I honestly don’t know if there’s an explicit guarantee of defense in place or not; I’m presuming from your reaction that there isn’t?)
(Er, I think I was thinking more of North Korea than China, buy the way; it’s my understanding that many Japanese consider North Korea to be a major external threat, and that it’s something of a political issue over there if they can really count on the U.S. to defend them, or if they need an army of their own. I think. Correct me if I’m wrong.)
You… just don’t know sh*t about history or geopolitics.
Japan has one of the best armies in the world; they rearmed with your consent and support.
The U.S. never kindly pledged anything; they imposed their american bases. The japs never had any choice to begin with. People like Allende or Lumumba were assasinated for less than that.
Edited 2010-03-09 23:00 UTC
Did I… miss something? I recall hearing a story on NPR about a recent controversy in Japanese politics over their constitution guaranteeing national pacifism (i.e. pledging them to no military action), and the concern that the actions of… I can’t remember if it was North Korea or Iran made them call that commitment into question? I was under the impression that them not having a military to speak of at the time was a major concern?
Edit: yeah, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the Japanese military numbers 239,430 all-told, and until very recently where restricted to operating withing Japanese territory. Japan’s constitution explicitly renounces the right to declare war or “use military forces to settle disputes.” Japans servicemen are considered civilians and are governed by civilian law, and the Ministry of Defense is a civilian agency. Japan’s military expenditures total $49 billion, while the U.S.’s total $669 billion.
Yeah! I’m neither retarded, nor going crazy!
Edit Edit: for comparison, the U.S. military numbers 1,473,900 people, with about that many again as reservists.
Edited 2010-03-09 23:13 UTC
Might also want to consider who supplies Japan as well with most armaments. Ditto for most European states as well.
I believe the Chinese military’s actually bigger, in terms of troops.
I thought the reason Japan was right next to china was more to do with plate tectonics, vulcanism and sea levels?
To be fair though – in this case Japan’s existence vs China’s slight expansionist tendencies probably is far more complex than “the US has lots of guns”… besides the historical separation, it traces back to before WWII (Japan occupied big chunks of china for quite a while there), and also involves the USSR (when it existed), as well as the insane amount of money the US poured (directly or indirectly) into post-war Japan.
Whilst the US’s military might certainly has a massive impact on global politics, it’s simplistic and wrong when people argue along the lines that the US is the primary protector of the “free world”.
Thank you for a more direct and reasonable response.
Simplistic, but maybe not completely wrong. I’m not trying to demand that the rest of the Free World pay up, because the U.S. army is all that stands between them and Eternal Night at the hands of the USSR, Communist China and Allah. At all. What I’m trying to do is point out to O’reilly (if I remember his name right) that the US and EU are not competing militarily, and that we are, in fact, close allies and economic partners.
Perhaps not you but this is exactly the view that America as whole projects, consciously or not, and this is why many find Americans so grating.
Look, we’re all thankful for your support and all but there’s a point where pride in your accomplishments become arrogant boasting. Most people are really f–king tired of hearing America claim itself the bastion of freedom and the light of the free world.
Perhaps you should go back and read how this whole discussion got started again. **HINT** It wasn’t someone claiming how awesome America was.
How about i repost it for reference:
I wasn’t boasting. Frankly, I saw the my homeland getting blamed for something we weren’t actually doing, and I tried to correct that. I’m sure anyone would probably have the same.
One the flip side, I’m getting a little tired of people depicting the U.S. as a corrupt, anarcho-capitolist-theocratic hell. Some people make it sound like the U.S. has worse government than Afghanistan, and greater territorial ambitions than Nazi Germany. (There you go, I’ve ran afoul of Goodwin’s law.) We’re not perfect, but we’re not pure evil goddamned monsters, either, and we haven’t single-handedly caused all the world’s ills.
My apologies if I’ve ticked you all off, that was not my intention.
Yes, that’s why I said “perhaps not you”.
Well, I dunno. Either they’re doing it or they’re pretty happy about doing errands for the content distributors.
That might be going a bit far.
You do have a tendency to put your nose pretty much damn everywhere where it’s not your business though.
Yeah, but I think I’m getting a lot of the flack for it here. I and my (I think) reasonable opinion are being mauled out of anger at the sins of an abstract/collective demonized America. It’s a little annoying. But maybe that’s just whining on my part.
Well, like I say, I believe I recall from previous Ars Technica coverage that the content distributors themselves have an independent delegation at the ACTA. If they do, I’d expect they’re the people who are driving the draconian piracy policies, not the U.S. representative. And the RIAA is not an element of the federal government or a representative of the U.S. citizenry. Let’s place blame where it belongs: this isn’t an instance of Europe standing up to a bully America, it’s an instance of Europe standing up to a deep-pocketed bully Content Distribution Industry.
Edited 2010-03-10 17:31 UTC
Actually I think this is more an instance of the European Parliament standing up to other levels of government, as a reminder that they have been elected direclty by the people of Europe while others are merely appointed.
This has unfortunately become uncommon on national level where the elected bodies let appointed administrations go unchecked way to often.
Sometimes we can’t help but wonder though.
And the funny thing is that we all should be happy about this, Americans as well as Europeans. Well, with the exception of nt_jerkface.
Yes! And the vote passed today!
”
That is a seriously warped world-view. The whole reason that most EU states get away with not having much of an army of their own is because the U.S. — they guys with the biggest military of any single nation on Earth — is guaranteeing their security from outside threats for them. Our military is a benefit for you, not a threat. The whole reason, for example, that Japan can be right next to China, with the history they have an tension between those states that exists, and not have a standing army is because the U.S. has kindly pledged our own military to their defence! Not to mention that it’s pretty much nothing short of ridiculous to try to claim that military competition enters into US/EU trade negotiations. ”
Europe can defend itself without America and even against America if that will be the case. We got our own nukes, aircraft carriers and the rest of toys, so we don’t need America to defend us. We don’t need NATO. Many of us don’t approve what US stooges like Blair have done: invading Irak and Afganistan for N O T H I N G.
You are crying on the wrong shoulders.
Edited 2010-03-10 02:17 UTC
1). I’m not crying on anyone’s shoulders.
2). This was the pertinent part of that post:
Seriously. Really. You have your own military. I know. The U.S. is not competing with Europe, militarily. The U.S. is not using it’s military to threaten Europe into accepting the ACTA. That was my point. The U.S. aren’t the bad guys at the ACTA. The RIAA et. al. are. And they are not the U.S. government, or a representative body of its citizenry.
Edited 2010-03-10 16:42 UTC
Most EU states does not have any outside threats to be protected from. And seriously, the reason for the heavy US military presence in Europe is mostly a left-over from the cold war.
Uhm, aren’t we talking about Europe?
Wow, yeah. Kindly. The Japanese constitution (which has the no armed forces clause) was imposed by the U.S after WW2. Kind has very little to do with it.
yes, but that doesn’t make cramming it down the throat of everyone else less bad.
So much america bashing going on, it’s sad.
It’s true western europe doesn’t have anything to worry about, but eastern europe still very much fears Russia. Especially after their invasion of Georgia. A lot of former client states feel like they could be next.
I may disagree with a lot of american policies, but there are some good ones too and that shouldn’t be ignored. What do you think would happen to South Korea if our troops withdrew?
And as far as america fearing other countries building up their militaries, it’s been kind of the opposite actually. We’ve been practically begging Europe and Japan to increase their armed forces, under the assumption that if they did so more troops would go to NATO peacekeeping missions, which is something our own military hates to do (and therefore sucks at). You could also supply more ships to the naval patrols off Somalia stopping the pirate attacks, something the US would really love and which is less controversial than some other tasks. I do think we fear China’s military buildup, but Europe seriously is not even on the radar. We wish it was…
Anyway, every country on earth tries to bargain and get it’s own way when dealing with others, and you’re naive if you think any differently. Even countries within the EU negotiate and try to outmaneuver others they are supposedly so close with, for the good of their own citizens over their neighbors. Does america’s military play a part in that for the US – sure. But looking at the big picture, I’d say it’s played a far lesser role than our dominance in the economic arena has. I think that’s a credit to the us, because a lot of other countries in the same position probably wouldn’t be able to say the same thing.
Edited 2010-03-10 05:22 UTC
Anyway, back to what i think the original point was:
Yes, DMCA is american, being pushed by America, and sucks.
But it’s hardly the only sucky law. The much critisized 3 strikes laws would never fly here in america. Instead, they’re being pushed mostly by european countries. And with that italian court decision, you can even see that the DMCA has some benefits that europe doesn’t have.
So complaining about how the US is behind some gigantic plot to fool the rest of the world is just stupid. It’s the content providers and their whole industry that is driving this forward, and that includes plenty of Europeans.
Is that why you’re sneakily trying to push it in the ACTA?
Perhaps. However, the ACTA is not a European initiative, it is a U.S initiative. Why is the U.S government doing the content providers bidding? At least the European governments aren’t being total pushovers in this case.
The much criticized 3 strikes laws would never fly here in america.
Well, I’m not trying to push it. I guess you mean “you” as in the RIAA, MPAA, and others in the industry who drafted this stuff up.
And yes, I do think that’s why they’re trying to stick it in ACTA, so they don’t have to get Congress to give a straight vote on something they think they’d lose.
I’ll quote wikipedia, which states my argument for me:
It’s the content providers and their whole industry that is driving this forward, and that includes plenty of Europeans.
Just curious, but is the US actually pushing ACTA any more than the European Commission is? I don’t see any information that supports that, but then i didn’t look to hard either. From what i can tell, the US, European Commission, and a whole bunch of others all have hard-ons for ACTA, not just a single country.
Umm, because they have lots of money to throw at the politicians? I’ve yet to see a government anywhere that didn’t bow down before people waving cash. Sad but true.
Edited 2010-03-10 10:24 UTC
Good question, I dunno. At the end of the day though, it is a U.S initiative so it’s pretty safe to assume that the U.S would be the one pushing the commission.
True, but your system do make it easier to do it “legally”.
Thank you, that’s pretty much the point I was trying to make initially. Americans are not pushing ridiculous, draconian laws on the rest of the world, but rather content distributors are pushing ridiculous rules on everyone, Americans and Europeans alike. It might be good to remember, content distributors have been given a seat at the table at the ACTA; I’d suspect their malign influences much more than I’d suspect malicious American imperialism.
You do a lot of things there that we consider to be bad. Should we mention those?
Yes, please. It is very rare to hear about the “dark side” of Europe from an external viewpoint (except when it is about anti-trust regulation). I for one am genuinely interested how the EU is viewed outside of its borders.
For one thing, in Europe, freedom of the press is considered to be secondary to “privacy” whatever that means. In the US, Google would never have been convicted for that video having been put up, even though Google removed it as soon as they were told about it.
That concerns us here, where we believe that freedom of the press is of paramount importance, though we do consider privacy to be important as well.
I can asure you that for a lot of EU citizens it is a serious issue too. However, we take into account that this took place in Italy 😉
But serious: how is it that this issue concerns you (and you’re right!), but the whole DMCA/ACTA stuff not?
You have got to be kidding me!
I’ve just watched eight years of media harassment by your last presidential administration. I’ve personally spoken to recording artists, an industry I am much involved in, who have repeatedly stated that they where at the time scared to speak out about Bush and his criminal cronies in case they would come under sever scrutiny. There are countless tales of the same thing happening with the press as well. That would never fly in Europe without there being one hell of a sh*t storm.
As for privacy, you say you care about it but in actual fact you have none and have done nothing to stop the above mentioned criminals from taking it away from you. How else do you explain the Patriot Act? Again, something like the Patriot Act would not fly over here without serious consequences.
I rest my case.
Sounds like a good thing to me. Our so-called freedom of the press has gotten to the point where privacy doesn’t exist anymore, and many of these slimeball reporters will gladly watch people die, or get blown apart, or undergo the worst trauma of their lives just so they can get their precious story. The press could do with a bit less freedom where privacy is concerned, especially when the person they’re going after tells them to back the **** off and they don’t.
Stop talking before you make a total ass of yourself.
a) there’s no “Europe”. Every country have their own laws, regulations and courts.
b) Many countries in Europe are more free than the U.S and protect their citizens privacy better. Some are less so.
Really? You do? You had me fooled.
There is definitely a movement growing against all this stupidity. Even bloggers for the BBC have called for a change: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8544935.stm .
Things have gotten so stupid these days that it’s no longer about wanted your artists to earn from their work and more about the aging industries wanting to control the market by force instead of lead the market with the best products.
The same could be said for many of the patent battles going on too.
And what boils my blood the most is that innocent consumers are the ones that suffer because in the fscked eyes of the DMCA, we’re guilty until proven innocent.
I could rant on, but I have a train to catch…..
Exactly right.
Heh, that is the general problem, of which many OS News stories are but facets. What was originally intended to be a way to encourage innovation (amusingly) has been twisted into a way to extort a continuous revenue stream out of entire market segments. And because it’s immensely profitable to do so, some very wealthy, very entrenched interests have taken to defending the practice through manipulation of the legal system. And they get away with it because the day-to-day affairs of regular citizens aren’t affected (in a way they can feel) by the messed-up system, and so don’t demand a fix for it — i.e. “patent reform” doesn’t make it into most people’s Top 20 List of Problems the Government Should Fix.
Draconian:
rigorous; unusually severe or cruel: Draconian forms of punishment.
How is three strikes Draconian? You’re given two warnings before losing internet access. Is enforcing the law Draconian?
What exactly do you want Thom? Legalized piracy? Put millions of geeks out of work so consumers can spend more money on junk food?
It has been said before that geeks are the worst when it comes to undermining their own industry. Thom would put people who read this site out of work or into other industries just so he can feel better about torrenting movies.
It’s not just about legalized piracy.
I’ve got a linux box. I play a DVD. Therefore, under US laws, I’m a pirate, because I pass through some content protection (and this ways avoid unskippable ads and multiple piracy warnings on a DVD that I have paid). Is that normal ?
I buy DRMized music on my computer. The company gets out of business, and I lose access to my music because my media player cannot connect to their down web server. Under US laws, this is legally f–king up customers, they can do nothing about it…
If there is a way to avoid piracy, it’s not AACS, legal spywares (like in french Hadopi/Loppsi laws), and DRMs/Activations. Every system like that includes security holes at a fundamental level and may be bypassed. People who pirate things don’t get them. So it’s just about ruining the life of legit customers and convince some of them that piracy is actually the way to better content quality.
Edited 2010-03-09 20:01 UTC
Just to be an ass, I’ll point out, if the company went under, there’d be nobody to file suit against you if you did crack your old media. Not that it should ever be a problem in the first place…
Most digital music is DRM free. I’m not even aware of any company that still tries to tie music to a player. Your DVD legal issues can be resolved by buying a $50 dvd player at Wal-mart. But if it makes you feel any better I think the patent time for media codecs should be shortened unless there is a clause for non-commercial use. However Thom’s solution of legalizing piracy would kill off the R&D that funds innovative technologies like the MPEG codec. Allowing piracy eviscerates software economic models and replaces them with nothing. Most software that is developed depends on intellectual property protection laws. Software companies can’t compete if it is legal to download a clone of their product. It isn’t like other markets since the reproduction cost is $0 which is why we have laws that ensure the producers are compensated. Intellectual property laws make sense and the vast majority of economists support them.
Piracy is not a fixed rate. More people will pirate if they it is tacitly legal or culturally acceptable. We’ve already seen this in Asia where certain types of software can not be sold due to piracy making local markets untenable.
Though it can seem like some copyright laws are a burden the same can be said for many types of laws. Laws are not created for the sake of convenience. Following the law is often more difficult than breaking it.
This problem could easily be solved if software companies understood that what’s a reasonable price in the U.S is not a reasonable price in, for example, Vietnam.
True, but would you have been happy living in the cold-war soviet union or east germany?
The rights of the people are more important than the right for companies to make money.
Only if I have a TV to hook it up to. I don’t. I’ve no use for a TV, the shows are crap and the few that aren’t I can watch on Hulu. What I do have is a DVD drive already in my Ubuntu machine and a nice collection of perfectly legal DVDs that I purchased, and I’ll be damned if some corporation is going to say I can’t play them in whatever device I want to. I bought them, it’s my right to use them as I see fit so long as I don’t breach copyright, and playing them sure as hell doesn’t qualify. We call that fair use, and the DMCA can go suck off.
Now, does that qualify as piracy to you? Wanting rights is *not* the same as wanting to be able to pirate. Sometimes I wonder just who you work for, you seem to be so pro-corporate at the expense of the consumer that I wonder if you don’t have a personal stake in all this. You have a seriously warped reality if you think the current situation benefits anyone except the very few at the top of the CEO chain.
No, I want laws to treat people fairly.
Copyright law in The Netherlands is exactly as it should be. Uploading is illegal, while downloading is not, giving law enforcement the handle to fight what I call professional piracy – you know, the kind of piracy that actually hurts the industry, as opposed to grandmother downloading a few songs off the internet.
But I guess you prefer the three strikes system, which means that all internet activity must be monitored by private organisations. I guess you prefer a system where private, non-government organisations have the same kind of power judges have, allowing them to punish people without due trial.
I guess you prefer a world in which the equipment you buy is not yours, and where using said in equipment can lead to jail time simply because the company selling you said equipment disapproves of it.
If that’s a world you want to live in, then bugger off to the US, which is currently the paradise you seem to seek, where justice favours the large, rich companies, instead of ordinary individuals.
That amounts to legalized piracy. Even if it is enforced people from outside the country will provide the files.
Letting people download copyright material without permission from the owners is theft. You’re letting people steal the work of others without compensation.
Private companies don’t have the same power the judges have. All ISPs can do is stop providing their own service.
Private companies refuse service for illegal activities all the time. It’s a packet delivery service, you don’t have a right to using it for illegal activity anymore than you do with other private delivery services.
You’re clearly for laws that favor pirates over content producers. What you call “fair” amounts to letting people download all the copyrighted material they want. Just be intellectually honest at least and say you favor pirates over researchers, programmers, artists and musicians.
I think you should re-investigate what copyright means. I don’t think it means what you think it does.
Copyright is a state-granted monopoly on distribution. This means that only the copyright holder may distribute that which he holds copyright over. Downloading is not distributing. Downloading is acquiring. Copyright does not concern itself with acquiring, hence why downloading is legal here, while uploading is not.
I can already predict your next retort (since I’ve had this discussion with the uninformed a dozen times over): isn’t downloading akin to buying goods you know were stolen?
That argument would hold up if it wasn’t for the fact that breach of copyright (the uploading) is not theft; hence, obtaining such materials cannot be considered the obtaining of stolen goods.
It’s pretty simple, really.
You are for allowing people to take the work of others without compensation.
You think it should be legal for someone to download a game that some indy company made without paying for it.
Spin it all you want but at the end of the day the company doesn’t care if you stole the game in the store or downloaded it without paying them. You’re taking their work without paying for it, that’s theft.
You don’t think people should be required to compensate the people that make digital products. You support piracy, at least be honest about it.
Will you please stop slandering me? I profess the strict letter of Dutch law, and in doing so, I am being perfectly honest and legal. The act of downloading is not illegal in the jurisdiction I live in and have lived in all my life. You are accusing me of criminal activity (namely, piracy, the act of illegally distributing copyrighted content), even though I have done no such thing, and even though I am not promoting any such activity.
If I were to live in the US, you’d have a point. However, since I do not, will you please respect the law of other countries?
I don’t take kindly for being branded a criminal, especially not by someone as clueless about copyright such as yourself. Beach of copyright might be considered “theft” in the US, but the US is not the world, and it most certainly isn’t The Netherlands.
You deserve to be slandered because you clearly support pirates over producers.
I could care less about Dutch law, your position is unprincipled regardless of what is legal in your country. People should be compensated for their work and that is a universal ethic.
You don’t think someone who downloads a copyrighted game from a p2p network should face any type of punishment, even after being warned from a previous case. That’s being supportive of piracy.
You think governments should just look the other way when it comes to intellectual property.
People that support alternative operating systems should actually be the most supportive of intellectual property laws. Linux and OpenOffice would have far greater support if they didn’t have to compete with $0 copies of Windows and Office.
No, he doesn’t.
I think you meant “I couldn’t care less” but whatever floats your boat. His position is not unprincipled. As long as he stays in his country, downloading copyrighted material without explicit permission from the copyright holders is legal, whether you like it or not. If he moves to the USA, for example, he would be breaking the law of course.
Why is that? Consumers can’t be sued for purchasing counterfeit goods, why they should be liable for content they aren’t distributing in the first place?
I give you the point on P2P, because that actually involves redistributing content you don’t actually own.
Are you forgetting that both Windows and Office are chock-full of software patents covering them? Isn’t that considered IP too? So, in certain cases duplicating IP should be punished and in others shouldn’t? I hate software patents just as many others, but you’re contradicting yourself here.
So don’t you think that copyright law needs reform to take into account the new age of digital distribution?
The core of the matter is you benefiting from others work without any form of compensation going to them. Don’t you think that’s wrong?
Obviously, the way of the future is home entertainment computers, and it is just a matter of time before they are in everyone’s home. At that point, if we were all living under netherlands copyright law, what would be the point of anyone making TV shows or movies anymore, when you realistically couldn’t expect to even make your costs back?
Uhm…No. We did not need to change copyright laws when tapedecks came around and we don’t need it now. Distributing content without the permission of the copyright holder was a clear infringement then and and it still is one now.
What needs to move with the times is not the copyright law, but the large behemoth organizations that are trying to modify it for their own purpose.
Edited 2010-03-10 15:54 UTC
You should read some larry lessig. Copyright law needs to adapt to market paradigm shifts, and should always strive to strike a balance between protecting the creators, and the public good. You are right that things are weighted on the side of the creators in the states, but what Thom was talking is just outdated.
That’s a very good point.
I think copyright should be designed in such a way that it promotes the arts – not in a way that it promotes making money, something which has NEVER been the intent of the concept of copyright.
Considering how content providers are abusing copyright – yes, I’d rather see it reduced greatly, just to make sure we kill off the big content providers, and then rebuild the whole concept from the ground-up.
We live in a capitalist society, and in such a society, business models should be able to die. The old-world, pre-internet business model of the content providers has failed, and we should not use laws to try and keep them erect.
When we discovered a massive natural gas reserve in The Netherlands in the ’60s (one of the biggest in the world), we allowed the coal mines in the south to die. The changing market had rendered the coal mining model obsolete, and as such, it died out. It’s harsh, but that’d how mankind progresses. The content providers’ old business model – like the coal mines – should simply die out. It has no life in it any more, and abusing legislation to uphold a failing business model is something I’d expect from a communist country – not from the west.
Ok, so I get where you are coming from. Unfortunately, creating art for the sake of creating art will mean that all that exists is low budget artsy type things. Which have their place, but personally, I want my BSG.
My problem is for something with production values to exist, you need some way to make money. Once the rest of the world have caught up to the geeks in terms of technology usage, in the style of copyright you are describing, that would mean all revenue coming from product placement style advertising, where an ad is inseparable from the content, or the content itself becomes an ad.
Personally, I would rather have 20 second commercial breaks every half hour from a hulu style site then that. In fact, the only single thing I hate about hulu is that it is not available outside the states.
Now, maybe I can’t just think up an innovative enough model for high quality TV and movies to exist. But the money needs to come from somewhere.
\begin{rambling}
Not necessarily. I don’t think content producers have any reasonable expectation to be compensated every single time someone views their work, on into eternity. I also don’t think it’s the government’s job to guarantee by law the profitability of a certain segment of industry.
It’s the job of a copyright regime to ensure that content production is profitable enough that people will want to produce content, not that it’s profitable to the highest degree possible. It’s actually quite important that content producers stop deriving income from their product as quickly as possible, so that they have an incentive to keep producing more, new material, instead of sitting atop their existing IP and collecting licensing fees on unto the heat-death of the universe.
So… no. People don’t have an inherent right to make money from their creative product, or to control its distribution. We, the people of free democracies with copyright regimes, are nice enough to put in place a legal regime that allows content producers to make enough money that it’ll be profitable to produce media. That’s it. We certainly do not owe them money every time we consume that media, anywhere, forever.
\end{rambling}
Edited 2010-03-10 17:09 UTC
Except that it is not. In recent times it has always been legal in The Netherlands to, say, borrow a CD in the library (or books for that matter), and making a copy for your own enjoyment. As long as it is for personal non-profit use. To compensate artists, there is a levy on blank media, such as CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. A minister of justice has decided that the situation for downloading is the same. Citizens have already paid for this fair-use right via levies.
Even if you do not have a levy system, downloading should be no criminal offense. Copying is not theft, since there no physical object is being stolen. Making a copy is nearly free. Additionally, research in our country has shown that frequent music downloaders are also people who buy music more frequently.
Why the system as it is set up in many countries is wrong can be shown easily. Suppose that I can spend only 50 Euros of my monthly income in music, and I do so. Now, suppose that I also download 500 Euros worth of material monthly. Is 500 Euros the real damage? No, if I stuck to the law, I’d still have spent the same amount of money on music. If I do not obey the law, downloading 500 Euros worth of music does not cost the industry anything. The 50 + 500 situation is clearly more beneficial for society, and should be aimed for.
The entertainment system is broken and old, and kept in tact by draconian laws. It is time to shoot down those laws (including the DMCA, EUCD, and ACTA), and leverage the real potential of the internet – infrastructure that can bring an enormous of culture to every citizen, and gives artists (and not the industry) the opportunity to earn money.
Sure, pirates and artists. Not big media. They should reinvent themselves, or disappear with other archaic 20th century business models and technology. The world is far better of without them.
Edited 2010-03-09 22:43 UTC
Theft is not defined by whether or not something physical was stolen. It’s taking something that is not yours without permission. There are plenty of services that can be stolen without a physical object ever taken.
That is why copyright laws exist. For certain types of work all the cost is in the production while the duplication costs nothing. Intellectual property laws recognize this and create a market for these products.
That type of study could only be done by polling the pirates, which makes the whole thing incredibly stupid.
Maybe CEOs should be polled and asked if they are greedy or not. I would also bet 10:1 that this so-called study was performed by a social scientist, or soft scientist as my friend calls them.
People pirate because they don’t want to pay. You can’t get around that basic fact. If piracy is socially acceptable and there is no strong legal threat then the majority will do it.
Artists are already free to sell their music in any way they see fit. You would just be robbing them of options by eliminating copyright. If fact you would rob the incomes of hundreds of thousands of small artists that make their money by selling their music on itunes and other digital music providers. Providers like Apple would just sell their music as part of a monthly service without compensating them.
Well, except that nothing is really taken. It is just duplicated. And if someone couldn’t afford it anyway, there is also no loss of income.
Most services can not be copied without cost.
Of course. If a study does not agree with you, it must be stupid or wrong. Have you considered the possibility that it may actually be true?
Total nonsense. According to your definition I pirate (except that downloading is legal in our country, and I am not looting ships). I spend a substantial amount of my income on copyrighted material. E.g., last month I bought:
– Aperture 3 (upgrade, 100 Euro)
– ~25 Euro worth of movie rentals
– At least 40 Euro on Blu-Ray disks
– Books
No new music this month. I download, because I cannot spend more than 200 Euro per month on copyrighted material. This applies to many people I know as well, they download where the budget is not enough.
Of course, there are also a lot of people who do not spend much on copyrighted material. But there are also hell of a lot of people who do not have any money at all to spend. Do you want to keep them away from culture>
Except that some of my favorite artists (hi NoMeansNo and Fugazi!) do not mind or encourage downloading. The end result: a lot of people end up liking their material, want to support it, and buy the albums anyway.
You’re taking someone’s work without paying for it. If a company goes bankrupt from everyone taking their work without paying it doesn’t matter if it was digital or stolen from a factory.
If I invent a cure to a disease and some company takes my work by duplicating it without my permission, was there no loss because nothing physical was taken?
A service has a cost, hence the fact people charge for them. Or do you think that skipping out on a cab bill is not a form of theft since nothing material was taken?
The study was likely performed by people that have an agenda, which is common in the social sciences. Even if people had their music purchases tracked (highly unlikely) they would still have to be told that they are being tracked which would compromise the results. The only way to effectively perform such a study would be to spy on people.
That’s called anecdotal evidence. Piracy is nothing new and the main reason people do it is because the pirated copy costs nothing.
The world of goo was only $20, had no DRM and yet still had a 90% piracy rate.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-g…
If piracy was tacitly legal everywhere as it is in China that rate would be closer to 99%.
There’s a clear correlation between high piracy rates and low enforcement levels. Your case has no bearing on that correlation.
I expect that there’s also at least a weak correlation between poverty and piracy. I’m very skeptical that Tough on Piracy laws are really having much of an impact on piracy rates, at least in the States, due mainly to their highly selective application; only a tiny minority of the people who pirate media ever get sued – so few that most pirates aren’t really worried about being caught and prosecuted.
Oh hey, that’s just like most of the information and “facts” we get from RIAA, MPAA etc with regards to how badly they’re hurt by piracy.
Actually, that’s exactly how theft is legally defined, no matter how much some lobbyists would want to make you think otherwise. Copyright infringement is not theft and copyright deals with *distribution* of content. Downloading is not distribution, uploading is.
No, professional pirates pirate because they want to make money. Or to paraphrase Peter Jackson: I dont care if you copy your neighbors DVD, I care if you make a profit from copying my movies.
You are confusing your, and your friends, opinion with facts.
oh, and I hope you never made a tape copy of any of your friends LP or CD when you was a kid. That’s piracy you know and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Also, tapes killed the recording industry as we all know.
Edited 2010-03-10 15:17 UTC
How is three strikes Draconian? You’re given two warnings before losing internet access. Is enforcing the law Draconian?
First of all, it’d mean ISPs were forced to monitor all data going in or out and maintain insanely huge lists of illegal material; that is really freaking costly and as such would bar any start-ups from ever becoming successful.
Secondly, it’s pretty easy to spoof things and make it seem like someone is downloading illegal stuff and thus cause the said person to lose Internet access. A private person has no way of proving his or her innocence in such a case. And how about if you have friends over or something, and someone accidentally or intentionally downloads something and it happens to be illegal material? Yes, you’d get the blame.
Thirdly, Internet access is nowadays a must. There’s so many things you just can’t do anymore in any reasonable way without having access to Internet and, for whatever the reason, if you lost access to it you’d instantly become an outcast and would lose out on a large part of modern society.
Fourth, obtaining such material shouldn’t be punishable. You don’t get jailtime or fines for buying bootleg DVDs or CDs either, why should digital wares be different? It’s the one selling that stuff or putting it up who’s committing the illegal act. Also circumventing protections on material should be allowed so that you can use the material you’ve bought; there’s many alternative OSes and applications out there available completely for free of charge and as such the developer(s) can’t buy licenses for stuff, also in many cases DRM causes the material to be non-working or non-accessible after a certain time due to authentication servers going down permanently, bad coding, or one of the other billion reasons and in such cases you’ll be locked out of your legally obtained material.
It has been said before that geeks are the worst when it comes to undermining their own industry. Thom would put people who read this site out of work or into other industries just so he can feel better about torrenting movies.
If you really believe this is just about people wanting to continue torrenting movies then you’re so far away from the track that I’d need a warp drive and a year of time to be able to reach you.
EDIT: Fixed typo.
Edited 2010-03-09 20:51 UTC
No it would be quite easy. Repeat offenders would be reported to ISPs and they would lose service after being warned. It’s that simple.
IP spoofing is not easy if you are targeting a specific range. Packets can be traced and network logs will show if a 7 GB movie actually went through your local hub or not.
A three-strikes law would involve a warning system which means a strike could be appealed and this type of a scenario could be handled properly.
It isn’t a right and there’s always the public library. The only people that would have a problem with this are the ones who pirate media.
Because tacitly allowing digital piracy is harmful to the industries that create the digital products that people enjoy. Laws need to exist that encourage people to buy media from the people that made it. That doesn’t need to involve jailtime.
IP spoofing? It’s far more simple than that: wireless routers.
They are such a plague over here that you could easily get 20Mb from a bunch of neighbors’ connections combined and they wouldn’t even notice the speed drop. And almost all of them have default admin passwords, just in case you need to configure NAT.
No it would be quite easy. Repeat offenders would be reported to ISPs and they would lose service after being warned. It’s that simple.
Who would do the reporting? ISPs? Some private companies? Police?
No private companies should have the right to monitor everyone’s activities and data on the Internet, that’d be a serious breach of privacy and rights.
ISPs? Well, I already explained why that’d be a very bad idea.
Police? They’re already busy with other stuff, and besides, only ISPs have access to every part of their network and only ISPs can log everything needed. A random entity on the Internet can only log what _appears_ to be a certain IP or MAC address, they can’t know for certain if it is actually it.
Besides, who’d maintain what is legal and what isn’t? What is illegal in one country isn’t that in another and as such all countries would have to change their criminal laws.
IP spoofing is not easy if you are targeting a specific range. Packets can be traced and network logs will show if a 7 GB movie actually went through your local hub or not.
IP spoofing isn’t easy? Gee, go ask any network administrator about that. And while at it, ask how easy it is to spoof MAC addresses too.
And about the local hub: well gee, only ISPs can monitor and log all of their hubs..
It isn’t a right and there’s always the public library. The only people that would have a problem with this are the ones who pirate media.
Actually incorrect. Here in Finland atleast Internet access IS a legal right. I don’t know if it is in other countries though. And no, people who value general rights and privacy also have a problem with this; someone constantly sniffing out what you’re doing just happens to be a privacy intrusion and as easy as it is to spoof things on the Internet only ISPs have all the needed requirements to be able to fully monitor what is going on.
Because tacitly allowing digital piracy is harmful to the industries that create the digital products that people enjoy. Laws need to exist that encourage people to buy media from the people that made it. That doesn’t need to involve jailtime.
Piracy is harmful to any kind of industry, not just digital industry. And sure, if such laws could be made I’d be for them, but ONLY as long as they wouldn’t breach one’s privacy or personal rights. Unfortunately, ACTA doesn’t qualify.
What about child porn? Should you have total privacy there as well?
There is no right to illegal activity, especially when using a private service.
There are already treaties on copyright laws between Western nations.
There’s a huge difference between using a fake IP and faking someone’s IP to make it look like they torrented a bunch of movies.
If someone downloads 20gb in movies your ISP can tell if 20gb of torrent packets actually went through to you during that period. IP spoofing can be used to make it look like you visited certain websites but for p2p transfer there is still data that needs to be accounted for.
People lose legal rights when they break the law. Internet access should be the same way.
No enforcement has the same effect as having no laws.
A balance between privacy and support for content producers needs to be found or else you are allowing piracy to exist. Pirates will not come forward on their own and report themselves. Copyright laws will be widely ignored if the populace knows that the government won’t enforce them. We’ve already seen this happen in parts of Asia.
Holy crap – since when is downloading copyrighted content akin to child pornography? Does the RIAA have an army of grown men raping a little girl every time I download a song?
Dear lord, you are delusional. There should be a Godwin’s law equivalent for this one.
I’m out.
Oh so you don’t believe in a total right to privacy on the internet. You just want privacy when people are downloading copyrighted material. Got it.
I’m guessing you support undermining copyright laws out of spite towards the entertainment industries.
You can hate Hollywood and record companies without supporting widespread piracy which undermines indy producers as well. In fact Hollywood and the large record companies are in a better position to withstand the elimination of copyright laws than small producers.
There will always be box office and controlled release sales for Hollywood and music companies can always tour their big hits. You would be destroying the itunes revenue of the overweight jazz artist who can only make money by depending on copyright. Programmers can’t go on tour either which means you would put millions of geeks out of work if you just allowed everyone to download whatever they wanted.
Erm, you still don’t get it, do you?
I live in a country where downloading is NOT illegal. As such, it makes no sense to violate people’s privacy to counter something that IS NOT ILLEGAL. Child pornography IS illegal, and as such, it makes total sense to combat it.
You might not care about Dutch law, but I personally kinda do, since I, uhm, live here. When I go to the US, I will respect your laws as well. I will not download anything when I’m in the US, because I know it’s against US law.
I would like you to apologise for repeatedly branding me a criminal, without any form of proof or whatsoever. I’m not the first person you’ve repeatedly branded a criminal on the OSNews boards, and as the admin here, I cannot stand idly by. I’m giving you the opportunity to apologise to me; if you refuse, I’ll have to take further action.
It is your prerogative to profess your opinion, but it is not your prerogative to brand me a criminal without proof. What you are doing is defamation, and that’s against the law.
No I will not respect a law that I find to be highly unprincipled. If I visited a country I would follow the laws but that does not mean that I have to accept them as a valid rationalization for the behavior that they allow.
Allowing people to download cloned content without any incentive to purchase it from the people who created that content is an acceptance of piracy. Call it what you want but the results are the same.
If you implemented such a system worldwide you would destroy millions of paychecks that go to the technically minded who were miserable in high school but can now make a living by doing something they love. The two guys a few blocks from me that make a very average living by selling a niche Mac utility would see their business destroyed if people could download a clone instead of paying them.
As for an apology there is no proof that you torrent movies and though that comment was made in jest I take it back none the less.
Though my nick is “nt_jerkface” it is really an inside joke from another blog and should probably be changed. I think it might too often give the impression that I have some attachment to the NT kernel, which is false. I actually spend a lot more time reading about Unix kernels.
So if you want to kill my account then that’s fine because my nick is a poor representation in the first place. I’d rather not have my ip banned but that is of course up to you.
Who said anything about software piracy? There’s a special clause in Dutch copyright law which excludes software from the downloading-is-okay rule.
As for the rest of your comment – the Dutch system is effectively already in effect worldwide. Downloading is barely acted upon, making it de-facto legal. Everybody does it, and yet there’s no meltdown, disproving your theory.
Edited 2010-03-10 02:10 UTC
You know, there is a middle-ground between “invasive enforcement and penalties completely disproportionate to the offense” and “ZOMG ABOLISH COPYRIGHT.” Just because you think the DMCA’s anticircumvention clause is a bad thing doesn’t mean you’re a Damned Commie.
Here we go again. Humans do bad stuff. Let’s call in brain police!
There is a difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. Philosophy 101.
Right. Do you lose the legal right not to get tortured, to get food, shelter, etc.? No you don’t, at least not in the civilized part of the world.
1. Piracy is people looting ships.
2. Currently, the entertainment industry is more harmful to society than any ‘pirate’. And in the end, we get to make the laws, not the entertainment industry.
A lot of hatred towards intellectual property laws seems to be misplaced. If you eliminated copyright you would eliminate the paychecks of millions that have nothing to do with the entertainment industry.
I believe that Hollywood has an unhealthy influence on the world overall but I don’t see that as a reason to support piracy. Hollywood will always make movies and allowing piracy just makes them free to watch. People would probably watch fewer Hollywood movies if they weren’t so easy to pirate.
The answer to reducing the influence of Hollywood is in enabling indy and foreign video producers. That includes having a system where there is an incentive to compensate indy producers for their work. If you eliminated copyright Hollywood would just keep their movies in the theaters longer. Theaters ignore most indy movies which means that indy producers that currently rely on media sales would be destroyed.
Yes, because as we all know, before copyright, there absolutely was no music literature or anything else in terms of media. It all sprang into life as a consequence of enacting copyright law. No-sir!
Strawman. Not one person here so far as I have read “supports” piracy. They do however state that the countermeasures used to stop it end up hurting consumers rather then hardened pirates.
That would be great except for the fact that unless you are contracted to an existing media cartel member, getting enough exposure through various mediums such as radio and television is all but impossible (doubly so in the US by all accounts). The internet did shift the balance, but the media giants lobbying of various governments have reduced this rebalancing by getting laws passed regarding content that leave them as gatekeepers.
As someone who does produce content, I’ll tell you now, the very last thing I want is an RIAA alike dictating the terms by which I can distribute and collect royalties.
It is a nonsense that can be seen for what it is quite clearly in the case of the BPI’s insistence that it collects royalties on all music and then (less a substantial fee) redistributes those royalties to producers – regardless of whether or not the producers of this content have agreed to this representation.
Indy producers of content if they’ve any sense build their fanbase via the internet and follow it up with plenty of touring (in the case of music). In many ways the situation for them is not unlike the travelling musicians of old. You sank or swam on talent alone, the internet simply provides you with a bigger audience to begin with. They tour, they sell merchandise and often give away lower quality copys of their product for free in downloadable form. Those who like it have the option of purchasing a physical disk/book etc.
If you treat your customers like criminals, they will repay your contempt with like. Treat them like customers and you may be surprised.
What about child porn? Should you have total privacy there as well?
There is no right to illegal activity, especially when using a private service.
First of all, trying to turn this discussion to child porn is not only misleading it’s also downright stupid. Child porn hurts real people whereas digital piracy hurts only someone’s wallet, and even then it hurts that person’s wallet if the person downloading unauthorized material would buy it if it wasn’t accessible; if the person wouldn’t buy it anyway even if it wasn’t accessible in an unauthorized form then it doesn’t hurt anyone’s pocket at all. So, child porn and digital piracy are two VERY different things.
Now secondly, I still think no private corporation should be allowed to monitor one’s traffic, even if it was about child porn. Only the service provider (ie. in the case of child porn it’d be the company hosting those files), ISP or police should have the right to do that, no one else, and even then they should not be allowed to monitor all kinds of traffic.
There’s a huge difference between using a fake IP and faking someone’s IP to make it look like they torrented a bunch of movies.
How exactly? Do you suppose that when you fake an IP address it just somehow magically appears in a log without any data going back and forth? I don’t know enough to spoof things myself but it doesn’t mean it ain’t possible.
If someone downloads 20gb in movies your ISP can tell if 20gb of torrent packets actually went through to you during that period.
Oo, and AGAIN we circulate to ISPs having to log all traffic. And AGAIN you choose to ignore that whole thing.
People lose legal rights when they break the law. Internet access should be the same way.
They lose only a very small subset of them and only temporarily. For example electricity is a basic right; even if you do illegal electricity work at your home and get disconnected from a certain provider you are still free to make a contract with another one. The same applies to Internet: it is a basic right and if you do something illegal you may get disconnected from that provider but you are free to make another contract.
A balance between privacy and support for content producers needs to be found or else you are allowing piracy to exist. Pirates will not come forward on their own and report themselves. Copyright laws will be widely ignored if the populace knows that the government won’t enforce them. We’ve already seen this happen in parts of Asia.
Indeed. Then come up with a law that doesn’t trample on people’s rights and I’ll support it. I still won’t accept ACTA.
I’m making a point that no one is for a 100% private internet.
It destroys real paychecks and you don’t seem to care about that. You support busting people who download child porn which I agree with but you don’t support busting even the worst piracy offenders because you seem to believe that digital thieves are for some reason special enough for protection.
That doesn’t make sense. Why shouldn’t a private entity be allowed to do it? Would you shut down a corporation that busts hundreds of child pornographers a year through IP tracing? Would it be ok if they were a non-profit?
That type of traffic is already logged. You can fake an IP address but you can’t fake an established torrent connection that routes 20 gb of torrent traffic through your local hub.
In fact a good compromise here might be to limit the bandwidth of repeat offenders and use software to disrupt their torrent and p2p connections. It would certainly be a better solution than yours which amounts to doing nothing (allowing piracy).
That doesn’t make sense. Why shouldn’t a private entity be allowed to do it? Would you shut down a corporation that busts hundreds of child pornographers a year through IP tracing? Would it be ok if they were a non-profit?
Non-profit, for-profit, a large corporation or a single home users, it doesn’t make any difference! No random entity should be allowed to sniff freely around other people’s traffic, including IMs, e-mails, anything private going. They’re not allowed to do that for phone conversations either and that’s exactly how it should be!
You are actually trying to tie people who consider hard-line anti piracy measures that strip a person of legitimate and vital legal protections (trial by jury, innocence until proven guilty) to child abusers?
There is a clear difference between those who infringe copyright in a private manner and who make no profit and professional pirates. Punishment must fit the crime and fools like you trying to somehow tie child abuse with downloading Britney Spears latest single do not help matters.
Congratulations, you’ve just performed the copyright equivalent of Godwins Law.
You can stop posting now as you have just lost the argument.
That includes defamation sunbeam.
TOR.
Likewise copyright as it exists in the US and UK is a nonsense. If your laws are viewed by the general populous as being a joke or ridiculous, they are far less likely to obey.
Um… repeat *offenders*, or those who are repeatedly alleged to be offenders? I’m in Australia, and thanks to the recent IINet court decision here, noone need care anymore about a mere allegation here – obviously if the police or a court is involved one must pay attention however.
(Given the tendencies of our current Information Minister, however, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before legislation changes on that point)
I feel sorry for countries where the mere *suggestion* of unauthorized use of copyrighted materials (I’m not going to use “theft”
) is enough to deny or withdraw service.
The problem is that the accuser and not the accused is assumed to be right. The burden of proof should be on the party making the allegation, not the end-user.
I love this argument.
“We should search everyone’s home monthly. The only people who have a problem with this would be the ones doing things wrong!”. Yeah. No thanks.
Edited 2010-03-09 23:05 UTC
Well, in our country most are connecting through PPPoE (FTTB) so, if I hack someone’s box to get his username & password, I can actually conect to the net like him, download something naugthy and see him banned from the Internet.
Don’t exaggerate, now. In most cases, the penalties for file sharing dramatically exceed the actual damages done to content producers and distributors — and, never forget, a pirated song does not necessarily equal a lost sale, and therefore does not imply harm to the distributor. If we had short, reasonable copyright terms — like, say, five or ten years, long enough to recoup production costs and make a tidy profit — and if the penalties for content piracy where much more in line with the actual harms (i.e. maybe $100 per song, at the outside), then I think most people would be O.K. with things. It’s the abuse and corruption of IP law, and its flight to extremes that I think most people have a problem with. Nobody’s demanding the abolition of private property — well, most of us aren’t.
tldr; can you say “strawman”?
How about this: if the electricity company detects ‘illegal activity’ by snooping around in your house, you will be cut of electricity for the rest of your life.
Internet has become a basic service required to survive in the 21st century Western world. No one’s packets should be inspected, and no one should be deprived of something that is fundamental for living.
People that don’t pirate won’t lose their internet. Those that do after being warned can get internet at a public station or use a modem or cell service. There are friends, relatives, and other options.
Looking the other way when it comes to packets amounts to allowing piracy. You can’t expect pirates to turn themselves in and focusing on uploaders just moves the contents out of the jurisdiction.
The way to do it is to only bust the major leechers as a way of encouraging the majority to follow the law. Don’t expect to stamp out piracy 100% but don’t allow it to be a national past-time either.
It isn’t as if you would have to sniff all packets. They would get suspected IP addresses from torrent and p2p networks.
Are you seriously condoning the idea of a search without a warrant? The government has no business snooping unless it has grounds to investigate, and then to investigate by rules. I’m not giving anyone a carte blanche to search for ‘potential’ pirates.
Problem is – who going to monitor that traffic?
I sure hope this will be official body like the police or something, because I won’t accept some corporate police. That would be illegal.
As a side note… By your standards everybody using p2p is suspect (because you don’t know where the packets are coming from before you investigate – so you have to investigate EVERYBODY).
For your information – I make my music myself. If I use samples they are free from rights or CC. I only use free and open software. I never pirate a game. Still under your definition I am a pirate for looking at my legally bought DVD by not using the Microsoft(tm)(c) player but libdvdcss2.
En that – dear corporate-slave – stinks!!!!
Also – laws here in the Netherlands permit downloading. You can rant and spitting fire as much as you like, but even if I ever should downloaded a song I am NOT a pirate, simply because the law say I am not a pirate. You can argue about the morality of things, but at the end it is the law that counts!
Again – downloading is perfectly legal here in the Netherlands. Now – you don’t want to be a lawbreaker by accusing innocent people and unlawfully sniffing their traffic don’t you? Because if you (or a non-police private company) are sniffing my traffic without a search-warrant you are breaking a LOT of laws concerning privacy. You can even facing jail time for that!
Think about it.
Sigh. I can’t tell whether you’re trolling again or simply massively clueless. Probably just the later.
Did you know there is a conspiracy that allows people to share copyrighted works in massive quantities? Worse yet, it is worldwide. Do you know what this ‘evil institution’ is? A library. By your own very narrow interpretation of ‘piracy’ you fail to see that the benefits to society are so great that some sharing should be allows (that is, fair use). Personally I believe in paying for copyrighted works. However I see how society can benefit if there are rules that allow non-paid for use in some circumstances.
Besides any of these arguments you were totally out of line claiming Thom supports piracy in your title. As an earlier poster has said you really are a ‘tool’, once again. Looking at your blog it is obviously you are not entirely skill-less, just a closed minded dickhead yet again. Within your little north-western US blinkered vision you simply lack the imagination to properly follow the points of others, or see the blind spots in your reasoning.
Don’t be such a gigantic tool.
Good to see that the Europeans have some good sense. I’m glad that not all the world is completely mad.
Come on guys and girls, I engaged in this same debate when Napster was shut down. Now it just feels boring. The same things over and over and over again.
If USA is “protecting” us, I would like it not to protect us anymore, I would like to see NATO treaties revoked and, instead, EU making it’s own army. If EU can have it’s own Government, it’s own Parliament and it’s own Court of Justice, why not an army of itself? In fact Lisabona Treaty is a Constitution and EU is beginning to act like a Federal State more than a union of states.
http://votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=456&lang=en