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Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

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Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of the DMCA that lets sites and ISPs host/transmit user uploads without being sued on a daily basis is pretty nice.

Except that it does not require you to own the copyright in order to send a take-down notice. It does not even require you to have a reasonable belief that you own the copyright. All it requires is a "good faith belief".

Your first claim is untrue - you must be the owner or their authorized representative. The good faith part only applies to your claim that the copy is unauthorized – you still have to describe the work precisely, and a responsibility to be accurate.

Here's a good intro:

https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a...

The law is far from ideal but a large part of the problem is the penalties for false claims are rarely enforced so there's been little corrective force against the companies which robo-spam claims. Additionally, companies like YouTube have invented additional processes which are often Kafkaesque and, since they're just arbitrary business processes, aren't subject to the normal legal process.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Withdrawing consent is withdrawing from the system to which you no longer consent. You haven't actually defined "withdrawing consent" there, you've just repeated the phrase "withdrawing consent". > Pretending you can reap the rights of participation in society without shouldering your share of the responsibilities concomitant to those rights is spectacularly delusional. Nice feigned outrage + strawman.

So tell me what would constitute "withdrawing consent" that doesn't mean "itistoday2 gets to participate in modern society without having to play by its rules", because AFAICT, those are the choices: play the game everyone else agrees to play and reap the benefits, or play your own game and forfeit them. EDIT: verbiage.

I'll copy a reply I wrote to a similar question elsewhere.

This is a reply that was written in response to a comment on this post: https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/lunatics-terrorists-and-the-th...

And is copied from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/40uevh/lunatics_t...

> The system is forced onto Canadian Citizens, there is no way to opt out.

This is not entirely accurate, you can certainly opt-out by leaving Canada.

Canada is a group that has chosen to play by these rules.

So long as the rules reflect the interests of the group members, there is no problem.

The problem occurs when a substantial portion of the group membership feels no longer represented by the rules and wants to play by a different set of rules (and mass-migration is not an option).

It is not about making taxes voluntary per se, but about allowing new groups to form. If a portion of Canadians wish to form a new group, separate from Canada, then they should be allowed to. They can opt-out of paying Canadian taxes, but they will lose all of the benefits that you refer to, and I'm sure they will miss them and therefore decide to implement their own taxation system that they feel represents their interests.

Does that address your question?

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#43

Feels like the best approach is to encourage farmers to boycot at least one of the major tractor providers until these restrictions are removed. No new laws or lawsuits needed -- just some collective action.

Which provider do you propose we boycott, and which one do we use in the mean time? JohnDeere, CASE, New Holland etc dominate the industry, and no farmer is going to (let alone can afford to) stop using their current equipment, and spend millions of dollars (it would easily cost us this much) buying different brand machinery. Let alone dealing with the hassles that come with swapping from one stream of ag software to…

Perhaps delay purchases for a year? I didn't realize switching manufacturers wasn't possible.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall ISPs being sued [and found liable] before the DMCA. That seems akin to the phone company being sued for someone singing happy birthday over their lines. IMHO being thankful for "safe harbor" seems more like a post-rationalization than anything else. If poor definitions meant common carriers weren't actually exempt, then that could have been resolved with straightforward clarification instead of an unne…

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users.

> Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users.

...in much the same way as Grokster and Napster, DMCA notwithstanding.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#45
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me what would constitute "withdrawing consent" that doesn't mean "itistoday2 gets to participate in modern society without having to play by its rules", because AFAICT, those are the choices: play the game everyone else agrees to play and reap the benefits, or play your own game and forfeit them. EDIT: verbiage.

I'll copy a reply I wrote to a similar question elsewhere. This is a reply that was written in response to a comment on this post: https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/lunatics-terrorists-and-the-th... And is copied from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/40uevh/lunatics_t... > The system is forced onto Canadian Citizens, there is no way to opt out. This is not entirely accurate, you can certainly opt-out by l…

Quoting from within your self-quoted reply:

Does that address your question?

Perfectly, thank you. It seems we're rather in agreement: play along, or don't — where "don't" isn't just a matter of not paying taxes, but still using the roads, or whatever. I'm, personally, not interested in going back and forth on the notion or merits of internal secession, or "home rule" or any of that; that's orthogonal to the point I was trying to make, and with which you appear to concur.

EDIT: But, for the record, I agree that it should, in principle, be possible. In practice, I think it's a far bigger deal than pretty much anyone who'd want to undertake it is probably prepared for, and that's likely part of why it's not allowed. Vanishingly few people have the resources to start their own wholly self-sufficient society.

Further, I submit that many, if not most, of the people who would want to would be doing so in order to perpetuate some prejudice or other. Witness the neo-Nazi group that tried to take over a town in North Dakota as an existence proof of the phenomenon. That's the kind of thing you'd explicitly have to allow, if you pursue the concept to fruition.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#46
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.

Is the argument that copyright law was a stupid idea, or that 18th century lawmakers were stupid not to consider the law's impact on the internet?

200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose.

Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#47
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) The DMCA had a _lot_ of good parts about it. The alternatives were a lot worse. That some parts were bad doesn't invalidate the good parts - be careful of hating the whole thing 2) You talk of something entering the public domain...The US doesn't do that anymore (tragic smiley)

I'd love to hear more about #1. I don't know the history of the DMCA, and as a non-American I never heard about it before I saw it in action on Youtube. What were the (subjectively worse) alternatives being talked about at the time, and what do you think the best way out of this mess from today moving forward would be? You seem to hold a unique perspective on copyright issues I haven't hear before!

During the debate of the DMCA the media lobby was bribing congress to insanity to make sharing copyright material online a felony, and that any site enabling it be liable as an accomplice and enabler.

We might not be in great shape in terms of intellectual freedom, but things could have gone much worse if big media got their way.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#48
post #31

Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could. I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old…

The old have lots of money and political influence, and a money making supermachine (look at Disney's copyright lobby, and then look at their box office revenue this year, and then consider they own pretty much a huge portion of all entertainment period) to fund perpetual bribery of politicians to maintain or further enact their will (see: TPP).

This is not something that will organically happen in our lifetimes. If it happens in the next fifty years, it will be a divisive war, not a slow decline. And at this moment there are four camps - the ultrarich perpetuating the system for profit, the apathetic masses that make up 99% of the population who do not care, do not know, or do not give a damn, the portion who defend the old guard on false pretenses that because this is the way it is this must be the only way that works and thus the best way, and lastly, in a tiny fraction of a fraction of people, who do not have the power or influence to push reality onto the rest, are those who fight against draconian IP policy.

It will take a lot more involvement and effort to actually reverse the tide. If any of the new age free thought IP out there ever became a tangible threat to the established media empire, it would be swallowed up instantly for the time being. And those in power are not unaware - there is a reason these companies are spending a large portion of their war chests buying patents and IP themselves, to produce an endless morass of bullshit ownership of ideas to drown anyone who threatens them in.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#49
post #31

Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could. I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old…

VHS didn't win because of pornography, it won because it was cheaper and was actually a superior format in certain respects.

Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died.

AC kicked DC because the latter was financially non-viable.

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