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Last post Author Topic: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates  (Read 214258 times)

IainB

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"Don't you dare download those illegal BitTorrent files!" - **AA
« Reply #200 on: December 25, 2012, 08:07 PM »
The **AA would seem to be Hell-bent on constraining our Freedoms for their financial gain.
This is an amusingly ironic news post on torrentfreak: Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent

That's arguably exactly the sort of useful investigative reporting that you don't get from the Establishment/MSM (mainstream media), and probably a good example of why the arthritic MSM model is already commercially failing as it desperately hides it's information for even fewer people to read, behind paywalls.

Renegade

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^^ Nice find Iain! It was an entertaining read! :)
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

IainB

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^^ - It continues with TorrentFreak exposing more pirates here: Exposed: BitTorrent Pirates at the DOJ, Parliaments, Record Labels and More

These organisations would seem to be making a complete mockery of themselves and the supposed "piracy" charges that have already been brought bu the **AA via the courts - including Dotcom's, I notice.
Evidently, it is OK for movie corporations and the justice and other government authorities to pirate material, but not the proles.
What a hoot!

Renegade

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Evidently, it is OK for movie corporations and the justice and other government authorities to pirate material, but not the proles.
What a hoot!

More of a snort as some animals are more equal than others. :(
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

TaoPhoenix

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More of a snort as some animals are more equal than others. :(

Once upon a time, there were two people who made a torrent of George Orwell's Animal Farm. One was fined $150,000 for copyright infringement. The other worked for a publishing company and got a Christmas card from Orwell's estate as a thank you when Christmas sales of the book went up.

IainB

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Well, it might be a hoot or a snort as well, but this report from arstechnica is interesting anyway: France’s second-largest ISP deploys ad blocking via firmware update

Reading the report I asked myself "What the heck has happened to ARS?". I'm getting a bit fed up with the way their bias has to enter into everything they report nowadays. Why they can't just stick to the facts beats me. If they keep it up, they'll run the risk of overtaking the Grauniad or the Biased Broadcasting Corporation before too long. I object to being told how and what to think.
ARS are increasingly looking less and less like part of the solution, and more and more like part of the problem regarding Internet freedoms being restrained. Are they owned by a newspaper? That could explain it, I suppose.

Renegade

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^^ It's not like ads really serve anyone except the advertisers. I think it was Tinman that pointed out that there is no truth in advertising. I don't particularly have all that much sympathy for purely ad supported businesses. If the product were that good, people would simply pay for it. There are other ways to make money without ads. Maybe they should stop whining and start trying to think about their business.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

TaoPhoenix

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^^ It's not like ads really serve anyone except the advertisers. I think it was Tinman that pointed out that there is no truth in advertising. I don't particularly have all that much sympathy for purely ad supported businesses. If the product were that good, people would simply pay for it. There are other ways to make money without ads. Maybe they should stop whining and start trying to think about their business.

Naw, the world is too complicated for just paying for stuff anymore, because modern internet culture is based on a huge base of everyone casually using tons of offerings. Using people's time is a different metric than using people's money. For example the "experts" can use adblock etc, but otherwise they're not out $10 every month for each of 1000 different things. (Ever notice how Pre-2005ish "shareware" used to be really high like $29.99 to register each silly little utility?) Then there are tons of other concerns about the structure of making payments, "hidden fees" and more. Blecch.

I'll point to the abysmal quality of some of the iPhone apps in the free vs paid versions.

So, it's just a big messy topic with no easy answers.

SeraphimLabs

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^^ It's not like ads really serve anyone except the advertisers. I think it was Tinman that pointed out that there is no truth in advertising. I don't particularly have all that much sympathy for purely ad supported businesses. If the product were that good, people would simply pay for it. There are other ways to make money without ads. Maybe they should stop whining and start trying to think about their business.
When selling web hosting from my servers, I find consistently that I actually make more money by putting advertising on a free client's website than I would make selling them the same quota of resources on my servers.

The benefits of ads to companies advertising to promote their products may be sketchy, but I very clearly make money from them. An entire sector of the web hosting industry is built around the ad-powered free hosting model, as it can be highly cost effective to operate.

Adblocking on the other hand hurts my bottom line. I do make a point of asking people on the sites I host to not block the ads, although it is ultimately their choice if they want to block them or not.

Yes I can make money from clients that pay me directly for a fixed quota, but in what amounts to a financial paradox of sorts I actually make more money by giving away my services than I do selling them. Assuming that the resources I give away are used to capture regular traffic, which drives the ad conversions into profit.

But all that aside, since it is a valid business technique, the sharp drop in internet usage that imposing any regulations as strict as they are suggesting would be a financial doomsday for thousands of small businesses that are able to make a fair profit out there. People would just plain stop using the internet if they could no longer do so without having to be afraid of accidentally breaking the law.

IainB

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In the UK in 1912 there was a then deemed necessary censoring instrument introduced called a "D-Notice". It still exists in much the same form today, renamed as a "DA-Notice": Wikipedia DA-Notice has some interesting background to this.
"DA"  stands for "Defence Advisory" and relates to what is regarded as advisedly being "unpublishable" or unmentionable by news agencies, though not actually prohibited per se.
The news agencies would generally always comply with a DA-Notice. It is thus a deliberate and covert form of censorship, and to say that you are not reporting on an unmentionable subject because of a DA-Notice is to mention it, so you cannot say that.

Strictly speaking, DA-Notices should relate to potential Defence issues, but I dimly recall reading somewhere (I think it might have been in back issues of Private Eye magazine) that they have been used in efforts to censor the British press reporting on what were otherwise open secrets - something like the sordid details of the apparently excessive lifestyle of the UK's Princess Margaret with her boyfriend(s) in some upmarket resort (or whatever), or in the case of the UK '70s Prime Minister Harold Wilson's alleged affair with his secretary in the Scillies Islands (I they said that she was later put on the Honours List and became "Lady Forkbender" in Private Eye's amusing nomenclature). Anyway, the Brit. press apparently could be thus gagged, but the foreign press weren't, so you could have read about such unmentionable open secrets as these in rags like Le Figaro or Le Monde, etc.

So, what has this to do with restriction of Internet Freedoms?
Well, though presumably DA-Notices can and would apply (and probably have been applied) to online blogs controlled by UK legal persons reporting the news, we wouldn't necessarily know whether that was the case (QED).
However, I realised something else today, after reading a post on Guido's blog (Leveson Effect: Can You See What It Is Yet?) - i.e., that there seems to be a newly-mutated form of Internet censorship that has quietly evolved in the UK, but this time apparently operated/sanctioned by the judiciary rather than overtly driven by the State.
Guido talks about this new, surreptitious and judicial or pseudo-judicial form of censorship that has affected MSM media news agency reporting and his blog. He calls it "the Leveson effect" for good reason, and lawyers are apparently using it as an explicit threat, causing the news media to clam up on what would otherwise be open secrets through fear of retribution. This apparently relates to reporting the open secrets that Max Clifford, Jim Davidson and now Rolf Harris have been questioned under caution by police from Operation Yewtree (investigation into the Sa Vile scandal).

The Guido post is copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images:
Spoiler
Leveson Effect: Can You See What It Is Yet?
Over the last few weeks the police Operation Yewtree has questioned a number of celebrities over allegations of sex crimes. Each time the papers have known the names of those arrested or questioned, each time the first the public knew about it was when this blog broke the story.

We scooped the press on the arrests of Max Clifford and Jim Davidson. Today we can report that Rolf Harris has also been questioned under caution by police from Operation Yewtree. This has been an open secret in media circles for weeks, journalists and newspaper editors alike have known about the story – yet none has published the news. Why?

No judge has ordered reporting restrictions in relation to Rolf Harris, no super-injunctions prevent the reporting of news concerning him, instead his lawyers Harbottle and Lewis are citing the Leveson Inquiry’s report in letters to editors of newspapers – cowing them into silence. The Leveson effect is real and curtailing the freedom of the press through fear.

In the case of Max Clifford a popular media commentator was our source, with Jim Davidson an ex-copper tipped us off and a local journalist gave us confirmation. This blog is nimble and prepared to take risks, so we are beating all the other news organisations who post-Leveson prefer to await for official police confirmation. This blog is in the news business, we want to beat the competition, we want to be first, we’re proud of breaking stories. We want our readers to be the first to know what is going on.

When the Leveson Inquiry began Guido upset the judge by publishing Alistair Campbell’s evidence before he gave it. Leveson responded by placing a restriction order on this blog. Neatly illustrating by example that the Leveson Inquiry could bring in an era of judicial censorship. It is more subtle than that currently, the chilling effect is that editors fear the prospect of a law rather than any actual new law.

This blog likes being the first to report the news, we would also like to win in a fair fight. The press has its hands tied. A free press ensures that the police do not go about their business in secret. A secret police is a dangerous thing, reporting the arrest of suspects is an important safeguard in a free society – for them and us. We are in danger of losing that safeguard.

See also: Post Leveson British Press Won’t Publish Naked Harry Pictures.


By way of illustration of the use/potential of the Leveson Effect, he has a link in there: Post Leveson British Press Won’t Publish Naked Harry Pictures, suggesting a more-than-accidental connection to censorship, and that the Leveson Effect may be effectively gagging unmentonable reporting about the Royal Family.

If this sort of thing is a spreading outwards, or a replacement, of the DA-Notice, or if is otherwise being used to prevent the publication of details that could be moral or criminal embarrassments to either the Royal Family, or people with a high public profile employed by the BBC being questioned about (say) some paedophile ring they may have had knowledge of or involvement in, then the British public has a right to know. It is the public that allows the continuation of the monarchy and funds the monarchy via taxation and through the Civil List and other means (e.g., tax relief), and it is the public that funds the BBC via general taxation and/or another tax in the form of compulsory licence fees.
Covering such matters up through State/judicial direct/indirect censorship is the thin end of a wedge which could potentially crack open the freedom of the Internet, attacking/eroding it as it goes. This could potentially be a loss of Internet freedoms for us all.

TaoPhoenix

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This is not precisely on the legislative side but it's all smashed up in what those laws enabled.

Verizon’s “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Measures Unveiled
http://torrentfreak....res-unveiled-130111/
Slashdot's copy:
How Verizon's 'Six Strikes' Plan Works
http://yro.slashdot....x-strikes-plan-works

It's pretty evil. The DMCA was passed in 1998 but it really kicked in about 2005.

Renegade

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From the comments at SlashDot:

>> Well then sorry, you deserve to have your Internet shut off.
>> God forbid we pay money for things which have value

If it has ads and/or drm, it doesn't have value. The value was added by the pirates, who went to the trouble of removing those things. I'd be willing to pay them.

Hahahaah~! :D
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

IainB

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^^ <-- Very good point. Humorous too.

Meanwhile, in the Faraway land of Godzone... (via slashdot, with my emphasis):
New Zealand Three-Strikes Law To Be Tested
Dangerous_Minds writes "Next month, tribunals will begin for the first people receiving their third strikes in the New Zealand 'Three Strikes Law.' In all, 11 people will have their cases heard, including one who said that her connection was used without her knowledge. Freezenet notes that there has been a long history of controversy for the law from the Internet blackout protests of 2008 to the cablegate leak which revealed that the law was financed and pushed by the United States."

IainB

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Well, well, well, what a surprise! (NOT)    :o
Now I wonder who could have put Nokia up to this naughty thing with their handset browsers, and how many other phones have the same "security" feature?
Hmm, tricky. Probably a criminal gang, or something?    :tellme:

Some people (not me you understand) might suggest that at least we now have an indication that there is potentially a high probability that all phones are thusly deliberately made insecure, so it could be prudent to remember that for the next time you do your "secure telephone-banking" - which is now apparently the latest new oxymoron in the Lexicon of Telecomms and the Internet.
And they might go on to advise that we steer a wide berth around Nokia as well - that's a boycott - but I couldn't possibly comment on what these people might suggest or advise.

Post from falkvinge.net, copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images:
Death Twitches: Nokia Caught Wiretapping Encrypted Traffic From Its Handsets

Nokia, the cellphone manufacturer, has been listening in to all encrypted communications from its handset’s browser. Every connection advertised as secure – banking, social networks, dating, corporate secrets – has been covertly wiretapped by Nokia themselves and decrypted for analysis.

Security researcher Gaurang Pandya posted an article in December about some unexpected behavior with their Nokia handset. It would appear that the browser traffic from the handset would get diverted through Nokia’s servers.

Then, a followup article on January 9 dropped the bomb, and the article goes into quite technical detail: It wasn’t enough that Nokia diverted all traffic from its handsets through its own servers, it also decrypted the encrypted traffic, re-encrypting it before passing it on, issuing HTTPS certificates on the fly that the Nokia phone has been instructed to trust as secure.

This means that Nokia has deliberately been wiretapping all traffic that has been advertised as encrypted on these Nokia handsets – including but not limited to banking, dating, credit card numbers, and corporate secrets – and looking at your secrets in cleartext.

This means that Nokia puts itself between your bank and you, and presents itself as YourBank, Inc. to your phone. This wouldn’t normally be possible, if it weren’t for the fact that the phone had been specifically designed for this deceptive behavior, by installing a Nokia signing certificate on the phone.

Nokia has confirmed this behavior in correspondence with TechWeek Europe (my highlights):

    “The compression that occurs within the Nokia Xpress Browser means that users can get faster web browsing and more value [...blahblah...] when temporary decryption of HTTPS connections is required on our proxy servers, to transform and deliver users’ content, it is done in a secure manner”, a Nokia spokesperson told TechWeek Europe.

The issue affects at least the Nokia handsets with Nokia’s own browser, the Nokia Xpress Browser mentioned above.

So why is this a big deal?

It is a big deal because banks rely on having a secure connection all the way to you. As do corporate networks. As do news outlets’ protection of sources. Anybody listening in to the conversation in the middle breaks the whole concept of secrecy – and the phone was specifically designed by Nokia to allow Nokia to listen in without telling you.

My, my. Secure connections are presenting themselves as secure end-to-end, and a handset manufacturer breaches this most basic of trusts? We’d have a very hard time trusting a company that says “yes, we’re listening to all of your encrypted communications, yes, bank passwords and dating habits and all of it, but we’re not doing anything bad with it. No, really.”

If Nokia was in trouble over its handset sales already, this complete breach of trustworthiness has to be a death twitch.

UPDATE 1: [obsolete with Update 2]

UPDATE 2: Well, that was fast. Pandya has updated his original article where he discovered this so-called Man-in-the-Middle attack, stating that Nokia has pushed out a new version of their browser which removes the Man-in-the-Middle attack – the wiretapping of encrypted communications – from the browser’s behavior. Apparently, it took being caught with the hand in the cookie jar to stop this behavior in just hours.

You still have to remind yourself, though – if they can turn this wiretapping off with a simple browser update after having been discovered doing it, there’s not much stopping Nokia from turning it on just as silently again at some point in the future, is there?
« Last Edit: January 12, 2013, 06:55 PM by IainB »

Tinman57

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Well, well, well, what a surprise! (NOT)    :o
Now I wonder who could have put Nokia up to this naughty thing with their handset browsers, and how many other phones have the same "security" feature?
Hmm, tricky. Probably a criminal gang, or something?    :tellme:

  I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out the gov't was behind it all, paying them for the service.  DHS has no bounderies...

IainB

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...  I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out the gov't was behind it all, paying them for the service.  DHS has no bounderies...
Goodness! Do you really think so? Surely not?...  ;D

/sarc off
« Last Edit: January 12, 2013, 07:28 PM by IainB, Reason: Added [b]/sarc off[/b] switch, for clarification. »

IainB

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Fight for the Future seem to have drawn a very clear parellell between, and moving from, the specific of Internet Freedom, to the general Freedom, per this classic bit of news posted at Mashable.com:
'I Have a Dream' Posted in Defiance of Copyright for Internet Freedom Day
Alex Fitzpatrick
2013-01-18 16:06:00 UTC

As Friday is one year since the Internet blackout against the Stop Online Piracy Act, some Internet activists are marking the date by declaring "Internet Freedom Day."

How does one celebrate Internet Freedom Day? Fight for the Future, an advocacy group that played a key role in SOPA's defeat, is commemorating the date by uploading and sharing footage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Why is that a radical move? Footage of the speech is copyrighted by EMI, which has issued takedown notices several times after the speech has been uploaded to services such as YouTube.

Update: The video has been taken down from Vimeo. Fight for the Future is trying to learn more and is working to upload it elsewhere.

Update II: The video is back, now on YouTube:
- MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is copyrighted. Share it anyway.

Uploading the speech in acknowledged defiance of the copyright simultaneously celebrates Internet freedom and the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who advocated for civil disobedience as a means to effect change. Martin Luther King, Jr. day is Monday, Jan. 21.
Continue reading...

I don't think I had heard this speech in its entirety before, and I was pleased to be able to download this video and view it with my daughter Lily (who, I am happy to report, is a fervent advocate for freedom and liberty).

What was notable for Lily and I was that this speech comes from Martin Luther King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's plan for a united march in Washington on August 28 in 1963, per Wikipedia: Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.[1]

So here was a Christian representative of a very large group of people - what he describes as a subjugated negro minority - talking about his "dream" where he is advocating civil rights and freedoms for the individuals in that minority, and he points out that it applies to the white people ("brothers") too.

Amazingly, this was only 49 years ago.
And interestingly, what he had to stay applies to other civil rights/freedoms - e.g., in the context of Internet freedoms restrained, from the post:
  • "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," he famously wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. "Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
  • "It's untenable to have a world where young people can't easily hear and watch Dr. King's message of racial justice because it is censored by broken copyright laws," said Tiffiniy Cheng, one of Fight for the Future's co-directors, in a statement. "We're asking everyone on the internet to honor Dr. King's legacy and take part in a small act of civil disobedience by sharing the full video of his speech today."

But what seems to be apparent from MLK's speech is that he is one of those pesky civil rights and freedom activists that I quite coincidentally mentioned in a separate post:
...I'm not sure, but I think this may be another example (my emphasis):
West Point Think Tank: "Far Right" Groups Threaten America
West Point Think Tank: "Far Right" Groups Threaten America
January 18, 2013

A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”
The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”
The implication presumably being that the absolute last things the US needs might include "...civil activism, individual freedoms...". This is clearly true.

One wonders whether that was sufficient justification for someone to feel, 5 years after his speech, that MLK had to be assassinated (in 1968) - per Wikipedia:
The King family and others believe that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy involving the US government, as alleged by Loyd Jowers in 1993, and that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. This conclusion was affirmed by a jury in a 1999 civil trial.[3]

If it was, then presumably those of us who advocate the unfettering of restraints on, and an increase in Internet freedoms, might also fall into the same life-shortening, labelled bucket as MLK. Of course, killing lots of people is out, but if you can make life a living hell for them, then they just might oblige by killing themselves. But that surely couldn't happen, could it?

Oh, but wait...it just has: US justice system ‘overreach’ blamed in suicide of Internet-freedom activist

IainB

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Thought-provoking post from TorrentFreak:
Record Labels “Correct” Dotcom: Only Way to Stop Piracy is Suing File-Sharers
enigmax, January 18, 2013
Last week Kim Dotcom posted a few lines on Twitter detailing his guidelines on how the piracy conundrum might be solved. The Megaupload founder said that offering a great product at a fair price, with the same release date worldwide should do the trick, as long as it’s playable on any device. In response today, the Kiwi version of the RIAA said that they’ve done all that and sadly, since people continue to pirate, the only solution is to sue them.

It was a single (re)Tweet on January 7 echoing the words of dozens of other digital observers this century. The advice from Dotcom was viewed by many as the key to solving a decade-long entertainment industry battle that began with an effort to force pirates offline and back into bricks-and-mortar stores.

But of course, that was their first big error.

When the downloading ‘problem’ first appeared people didn’t want to go back into the stores, they wanted access to media online in the most convenient form possible. Sick of being ripped off by two-track wonder albums padded out with junk at an inflated price, they wanted tomorrow’s world today. If the corporates weren’t going to provide it, they would make their own reality instead.

As soon as it became clear that people weren’t going to shelve their new-found freedoms, the record labels’ initial response wasn’t a creative one. Instead of coming up with a decent offering to tempt consumers back they chose to sue thousands of Americans instead. That campaign is still reviled today and did little to end the problem or win the hearts of consumers.

Of course, what they should’ve done – a full 10 years ago – is outlined in Dotcom’s Tweet.

Dotcom - tweet advice to stop piracy.png

Although it’s safe to assume that Dotcom’s comments were largely directed at Hollywood (who still have difficulty with DRM free, day and date releases, and making their product easy to buy), today a rather unexpected party has jumped in on the debate.

RIANZ, the New Zealand version of the RIAA representing the big recording labels, says “the music industry has delivered on all five points suggested by Dotcom.”

On “Create great stuff” RIANZ points out that while “great is obviously subjective” there are tens of millions of tracks now available for legal download. Twenty digital services available in New Zealand makes their product “easy to buy”, which includes the majority of music releases which are “available simultaneously worldwide.”

On the issue of price RIANZ says that “music has never been cheaper to buy or access” which may indeed be true. However, it is often argued that the price of music before the download revolution is hardly a realistic reference point – inflated prices due to restrictive market practices were another thing file-sharing turned upside down.

The final point – “works on any device” – is a reference to DRM and to their credit the recording industry did eventually respond to this big issue. A large proportion of downloaded music these days does tend to be playable on any device.

Nevertheless, while the music industry has finally come round to the needs of consumers with legal digital take-up coming on in leaps and bounds, the piracy bogeyman still exists.

“Despite [addressing all of the points outlined by Dotcom] music piracy continues unabated in New Zealand at one of the highest per capita rates in the western world. It has also grown every year since 2006 which is when iTunes opened for business in New Zealand,” RIANZ told NZHerald.

“Unfortunately it seems the only way to beat piracy is to take legal action against those who deliberately choose to deny songwriters and recording artists their basic human right to make a living from their creativity,” they conclude.

Here we go again……….

SeraphimLabs

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Okay, I'll give them their inch. They have the right to make money from their work.

But they DO NOT have the right to invade my privacy, control what I do, or deny me the right to express myself just because I might use portions of their works as part of mine provided I give proper credit.

Not only that, but a lot of content I have bought I only did so because I heard samples of it from other sources, and would not have been able to identify it well enough to purchase it if there hadn't been samplings online to match up to what I was looking for.

And honestly, isn't burglary still a problem too? Pretty sure that the best they can get is bringing piracy down to a rate on par with real world crime rates, because there will always be people who aren't going to respect the rules.

IainB

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Good post at TechDirt: One Year Later, SOPA/PIPA Supporters Still Completely Ignore The Public

The conclusion?
All in all, these comments show a consistent pattern. SOPA and PIPA might not come back as new legislation... but the issues are still very much with us. Those in power still don't understand the core issues, believing it's a commercial dispute between two mis-defined industries, while the focus on "voluntary" solutions seems to be attacking individual rights without people noticing.

Renegade

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^^ Reminds me of the film "The Corporation" where corporations are characterized as psychopathic.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

cmpm

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Tinman57

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They are making a move-

http://phys.org/news...s-online-piracy.html

  What people should really be pissed about is the ISP's and Hollywood openly spying on your internet traffic!!!   >:(

TaoPhoenix

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Update on this one that's not exactly an Acronym, but clearly in the whole squabble:

(Slashdot's version)
WTO Approves Suspension of US Copyright in Antigua
http://yro.slashdot....copyright-in-antigua

""On Thursday TorrentFreak broke the story (verified by BBC) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny island nation on the Caribbean, was planning to launch a legal 'pirate' website selling movies, music and software without paying a penny to U.S. copyright holders.

Now, the World Trade Organization has given its final approval for the Antigua government to launch the website. The decision follows from long-running trade dispute between the countries, related to online gambling, which was ruled in Antigua's favor in 2005.

After the United States refused to compensate, the WTO granted Antigua the right to 'suspend' U.S. copyrights for up to $21 million annually." From the article: "The Antiguan government further reiterated today that the term 'piracy' doesn’t apply in this situation, as they are fully authorized to suspend U.S. copyrights. It is a legal remedy that was approved by all WTO members, including the United States.""

<---- Waiting for the "Pound them into the sand" US response...

cmpm

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Antigua, Good Coffee from that place!