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Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

blog.wikimedia.org

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Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#121
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, they get threatened with loss of their seats. Which is accomplished by educating the population. It's a lot more gratifying to live in this conspiratorial world where a romanticized resistance against our corporate overlords is the only way, but it's not a useful mental model for actually succeeding at anything.

> Or, they get threatened with loss of their seats. They get seats by spending money on campaigns. Public is easily manipulated by political marketing. The only thing that could put them out of there seats would be more money spent for a smear campaign against them. > It's a lot more gratifying to live in this conspiratorial world where a romanticized resistance against our corporate overlords is the only way, but it…

>They get seats by spending money on campaigns. Public is easily manipulated by political marketing. The only thing that could put them out of there seats would be more money spent for a smear campaign against them.

This is overly simplistic. If it were exclusively about cash resources, the most cash-rich candidates would win every time. We know that doesn't happen. Yes, money does play an important role (because it costs money to run ads, print signage, get people to hang said signage, staff phone banks, etc. -- not because there's some reptilian overlord that has to be paid before he lets you become POTUS), but it's not the only role.

More important than money is to control a media outlet that the general public trusts. Pundits have more power than politicians because it's so easy for them to generate outrage. ABC, CBS, NBC, and the cable channels really hold the bulk of political sway in this country. They can frame not only the political discourse, but all significant social discourse, in the terms that they prefer. The internet is dampening and decentralizing their power a bit, which is why non-establishment candidates like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders were able to gain any traction at all, but their influence is still massive.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#122
post #61

That's barbaric. That's why civil disobedience is the only adequate answer to the current overreach of copyright in the united states. It's up to us, technologists, to create and disseminate tools to help out in the dismantlement of an absurd system that is obsolete in the digital age.

I agree. Copyright is irreversibly wedged. The only workable course is to ignore it. As most people do, in practice, when they can get away with it. So the job for technologists is to make that easier.

There's a lot of danger in leaving a generally-ignored law on the books. If you make enemies in law enforcement, it makes it easy for them to imprison you. The fact that copyright law is so widely ignored today is proof that it's not socially tenable in the face of new technologies.

Ideally, our law would be updated to match new technical innovations, but instead the scope is only getting extended so that it's easier to prosecute people who are using digital capabilities to do natural things.

We need to seriously analyze the role of intellectual property in our culture. Why are so many of the world's most massive companies people who are exploiting IP/copyright? The margins are pretty high when all you have to do is order new prints of a DVD, for example. Is this really a fair trade, or might we be giving too much away?

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#124

but if it entered public domain in NL who can uphold Copyright in US? How can US law overrule dutch if it is of dutch origin?

I think the origin of the book doesn't really matter. The copyright was owned by her father Otto Frank, who then transferred it to the Ann Frank foundation, which still owns the copyright and can enforce it worldwide.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#125
post #4

I am more distressed that a work by a German, at the time stateless in the Netherlands, that long ago, and given the global importance of such a work, that the U.S. even has the copyright. The explanation in Wikimedia I understand clearly, but I do not acept it.

Why should foreign stuff not be protected by copyright? Think about american movies or software written in america not being protected abroad. It's also not the US that owns the copyright but the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, which got the copyright from her father.

If I live in a country where copyright term is 1 day, and I publish online every Disney movie ever created, the US will enforce US copyright terms on me.

Why does the copyright of where the reader lives, not where the publishing person lives, matter?

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#126
post #103
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fairly self-evident that we can't get purely self-interested and sufficiently coordinated with anyone who could displace them from their positions (in the sense that they value keeping their own bribes over denying their opponents bribes) politicians to support any measure that would actually make them no longer receive bribes. If one of the two assumptions above fails: assuming we can legally define what exact…

The potential problem is that now you've created one of those loophole things. Now publically bribe the official n/105 of what you actually want, and it's totally legal!

> The potential problem is that now you've created one of those loophole things. Now publically bribe the official n/105 of what you actually want, and it's totally legal!

That would still reduce the influence by >95% because you have to pay 105x and the politician only gets 5x.

The actual problem is that if a politician is known for reporting bribes then they won't be offered any, so taking 1x every time is still more profitable than taking 5x once.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#127
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look into how much money Jeb Bush's Super PAC has spent in the primary season so far, to very little effect.

At the National level, it does appear lots of money won't necessarily translate into a win. However, those who do win, unless they are named Sanders, will be bound by said money. On a local level, money does matter more, and it's effects are meaningful.

On a local level a huge number of candidates run unopposed. Even for Congress there were 31 unopposed candidates in 2014.

Money isn't everything. Giving a damn matters too.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. :) But seriously. Starting idea: Build a website that does some well analytics and makes it clear when politicians chose profit and special interests over the good of the people. I know some sites do this, but I haven't seen any executed well enough to reach the right people.

Really 'good of the people' is a very dangerous concept. And what exactly is a special interest? People interested in copyright reform is a special interest just as people interested in copyright preservation is a special interest. Lenin was obstesibly starting a revolution for the 'good of the people.' Cuba did as well.. The good of the people there has resulted in an average monthly income of $20. Don't knock the s…

Special interests are definitely the problem, specifically when they're asymmetrical.

Disney owns more television stations and has more money than the EFF.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#129

That's barbaric. That's why civil disobedience is the only adequate answer to the current overreach of copyright in the united states. It's up to us, technologists, to create and disseminate tools to help out in the dismantlement of an absurd system that is obsolete in the digital age.

How about a server in a satellite, with a Tor feed of anything anybody wants to put up there? Out of reach of oversight etc.

Re: Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians don't get educated. They get bought. Do you have as much money as copyright industry? No? Then, no, you can't have your sensible laws. You'll have theirs. The only action you can take is to ignore those unenforcible.

Seems like this is the real problem we should use technology to solve. How can we make it more expensive to buy politicians?

> How can we make it more expensive to buy politicians?

You're thinking about it the wrong way. You make it more expensive and fewer people can afford to do it.

How do we make it cheaper to buy politicians, so that we can do it too?

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