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ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

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Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#181

Post by Silhouette »

tkahn6 wrote: post #162
Silhouette wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is much commonality of purpose with many of the legal/governmental trends today, other than acting out of fear of some perceived bogeyman (though not necessarily the same one in each case) or in the interests of a powerful minority at the expense of the majority (ditto). Still, it doesn't matter to a black kid in London whether he's being excessively hassled because a senior officer made an active…

So the only difference between Western governments and the Nazis is a matter of scale and your evidence for this is that Western governments are abusing their power. All governments past and present abuse their power. Sometimes in large ways. Sometimes in small ways. That alone is not sufficient to warrant a comparison to Nazi Germany which carries more historical baggage than it's clear you realize. You are cheapeni…

You are reading things into my posts that are not there. I am commenting only on objective things like laws that are being passed and practical policies being adopted today. Those laws and policies have very serious consequences for a relatively small number of people today, but for now only much less serious consequences for the wider population. However, they could be exploited by an undesirable administration at some future point to have serious consequences much more widely.

Please notice that at no point in this discussion have I suggested that any current Western administration is behaving like the Nazi party of 1930s Germany, equated any current leader with Hitler, suggested that the motivation for these laws was genocide, or anything similar. I have criticised only specific measures already taken that pose a much wider threat to basic human rights and freedoms than has yet been realised, and I have been careful to acknowledge that I am considering only the end results and that the motivations for such measures are probably very different.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#182

Post by mbesto »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #76
mbesto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. I have to respectfully disagree. The amount of people (mainly Europeans) I meet who tell me they want to move to the US is still very substantial. In my experience, the perception of the American dream is still very real in a large portion of the world's eyes. As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's media outlets, people won't know wh…

You're American, I presume? I will also assume that, being on Hacker News, you're in the computer field? If that's the case, of course most Europeans you talk to want to move to the US. California (possibly New York) is kind of appealing like that. But as a non-American, I can tell you that very few people I meet believe America is where it's at, mainly because of social policies like this one.

Yes, I'm American and I live in Europe. The people I'm referring to are not in the software field. For example, the number of women I meet who say they want to move to NYC is astounding. These are generally women in all fields.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#183

Post by pjscott »

archgoon wrote: post #130
mbreese wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize how many people will find it offensive that you are using this quote to compare a treaty to the holocaust? There is a big difference between a treaty which may infringe on civil liberties and killing people based on their beliefs or ethnicity. It's okay to make slippery slope arguments, but let's not get into Godwin territory.

I think it would be sad if Niemoller's point, that one must speak up for the rights of others, or no one will speak up for yours, was decided to be inapplicable in all situations, since his experience involved Nazis.

There's always some excuse to avoid his point, especially when it most needs to be heard.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#184

Post by guard-of-terra »

eternalban wrote: post #126
lunarscape wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prove it Thanks to Wikileaks and other sources we do have evidence of long running pressure and threats by the US to influence or in some cases directly write other countries laws in respect to copyright. One recent example about piracy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/05/us-pressure...

Is it (remotely) possible that the Guardian has an agenda (gasp) to misdirect its global readers? Spain? What about the European powers? Does that mean UK (nuclear power), France (nuclear power), Germany (fine ~occupied, but still a major economic power), are broken democracies subject to "threats" from, and cowering before, United States of America? (Poodles, one and all?) America is the scape goat of the /Global/ o…

Why would global oligarchy protect entertainment at cost of everything else?

For every dollar lost by entertainment they probably got ten gained by telecoms, internet companies and consumer hardware.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#185

Post by batista »

derleth wrote: post #143
batista wrote: post #141

I find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical solutions (from hidden partitions, to encryption, to steganography, to dual booting, etc). Now, I understand that as "hackers" we are likely to go on about technical measures to avert this kind of search. But, that's not the point. The point is they should not violate your privacy in the first place. And that is a political problem. It would b…

> I find it amusing about how this comment thread turned all about technical solutions And people using 'fascism' as a general-purpose pejorative with no understanding of the history of the world. http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm

If you're talking about me regarding other comments in this thread, I'm not from parts of the world that need to be pointed to some online article for the history of fascism. On top of this, I have read extensively on the subject, from Adorno to Isaiah Berlin, including fringe cases like dr. Wilhelm Reich and his "Mass Psychology of Fascism".

I'm not using it as a "general-purpose pejorative" (as in: "oh, the cop hit me in the demonstration, fascism!", or "TSA cupped my privates, oh, the fascism!"). I'm making an exact analogy to the actual historical form fascism, which you may agree or disagree with.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#186

Post by batista »

brc wrote: post #176
CWuestefeld wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is/is becoming a corporate state You're being way too reductionist, buying the anti-capitalist propaganda. To be sure, there's plenty of bad things to be said about corporations. But it's tremendously naive to believe that it's corporations that are calling all the shots. Remember, the corporations looking for these perks are every bit as dependent on the power of government as the government is on corporate…

This is one of the better reasoned comments I've read in a while. There is an old Milton Friedman video floating around which dates back to the 1970s. At the time he was spending a lot of time trying to convince people that oversized governments weren't a good thing. One of the very salient points he makes to a detractor is that if you limit the size of the government, you - by nature - limit the power a corporation…

People still invoke Milton Friedman like some guru to be respected? They guy's theories were the cause of the worst economic fiascos in the history of fiascos (in general, not just economic ones).

Consider this "very salient point": "if you limit the size of the government, you - by nature - limit the power a corporation can obtain. If the government has limited powers, so it goes that a corporation can gain limited powers - it should be impossible for a corporation to gain more power than a government".

This point is BS. There are places where corporations (or even one corporation) have more power than the government everywhere around the world, especially in Africa and Asia. There are entire countries where the government is just paid lackeys and a front for some mega-corporation. There is even a term for those, they are called "banana republics".

The limiting of the argument to "one corporation" is especially BS, since even if a single corporation cannot get "bigger than the government" in a place like the US, the "corporate interests" can and do get bigger than the government.

Despite fighting in the market (and that, only if they are serving the same market, which, say, Google, Exxon and GE do not), corporations also agree on a lot of things. For example media companies agree on SOPA and PIPA and a thousand other things (drm everywhere, destroy cinematographers unions, etc). And all corporate interest's also converge on a lot of things, like tax deductions, being able to fire any employee at will, lower minimum wages, unpaid overtime, etc.

Consider a country where there is no public health coverage. What will happen will not be "competing health services for the benefit of the customer" but an emergence of a health industry cartel and the total dependence of the people in it. Things that need big scale and resources, like building, buying equipment, and running a hospital or a bank or an insurance company, have been seen time and again to build cartels with "competitors" and kill competition to maximize profits.

(See also: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27512/ , but one can also see it from experience, if one follows the political/social history of more than one country --something easy to do in Europe).

People talking about the limiting of the power of government always have in mind the equation "government = some politicians who abuse their power", and never "government = the only power body that is elected and somewhat controlled by the general public".

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#187

Post by wazoox »

tkahn6 wrote: post #138
Silhouette wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise this is always a sensitive area, but please consider that there are in fact laws on the books and government policies in many Western countries today that are every bit as evil as the kind of thing that was going on in Germany at that time. We have detention without trial for extended periods, or indefinitely if you mutter the magic word "terrorism". We have outright torture of detainees, and people dying i…

pwg's point is that the road to any sort of catastrophic illiberal state-sponsored action is paved slowly and incrementally. Not that we are living in mini 1930s Germany. The situations in their substance or scale are not comparable. Saying that "government policies in many Western countries today that are every bit as evil as the kind of thing that was going on in Germany at that time" is very ignorant. Who are our…

> Who are our Jews and Gypsies? Where is our Kristallnacht? Where is our Triumph of the Will? Where is our 'Der Ewige Jew'? Where are our massive crowds doing what is our sieg heil?

Fortunately the situation nowadays still is different in many points. However consider that several hundred thousands Iraqis have died for no good reason at all. That two countries are under military occupation.

The main contrast, as you mentioned, is people utter apathy. Instead of rabid nazis, we're seeing only paralysed sheep; instead of angry people wanting revenge from the entire world (read about the treaty of Versailles), we have frightened people afraid of losing their material comfort.

That doesn't make ACTA and other similar laws any better, unfortunately. Now more than ever westerners look like Elois under the control of Morlocks.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#188

Post by batista »

derleth wrote: post #140
batista wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the same thing. All society is turning to "organized corporations" controlled by the state. That's why in my comment above, I did not only talk about corporations as such ("Microsoft", "Google", "Apple", "GE", etc), but also about lobbies in general. All those (actual companies, and aggregate lobbying entities like the health lobby, the christian lobby, the gay lobby, the gun lobby, the press lobby) etc are…

> Actually, the same thing. No. Look up the definitions. > All society is turning to "organized corporations" controlled by the state. Again, only in your mind. There is no evidence of this outside your head.

Sure.

1) You go to 2 wars with the dumbest of excuses by the dumbest of presidents in order for some mega-corps in the industrial-military complex to profit.

-- said president probably got elected due to electoral fraud in the first place, anyway--

2) You have para-police security personnel do naked scans of you and cup your genitals in airpots.

3) You have laws that invalidate due process, like the Patriot Act.

4) You have mass electronic surveillance, security agencies installing backdoors in public platforms, etc.

5) You give ~ 1 trillion dollar bailout to mass financial companies that brought the economy to a halt through deregulation and greed.

6) They try to pass 2-3 laws (PIPA, SOPA, ACTA) to control the internet, including censoring whole websites.

and "there is no evidence of this". Except in my head. Right.

How is this head-in-the-sand thing working for you?

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#189

Post by wazoox »

gasull wrote: post #166
derleth wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Fascism the Government is owned by (some of) the corporations. No, in Fascism the government owns the corporations and uses them to control society.

Not according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism#General_c... > "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

This eerily reminds me of recent events about private banks and public debts.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#190

Post by derleth »

batista wrote: post #188
derleth wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, the same thing. No. Look up the definitions. > All society is turning to "organized corporations" controlled by the state. Again, only in your mind. There is no evidence of this outside your head.

Sure. 1) You go to 2 wars with the dumbest of excuses by the dumbest of presidents in order for some mega-corps in the industrial-military complex to profit. -- said president probably got elected due to electoral fraud in the first place, anyway-- 2) You have para-police security personnel do naked scans of you and cup your genitals in airpots. 3) You have laws that invalidate due process, like the Patriot Act. 4) Y…

> How is this head-in-the-sand thing working for you?

And so you resort to ad-hominem and downvoting instead of argument.

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