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Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates
IainB:
... 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...
-Tinman57 (January 12, 2013, 07:15 PM)
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Goodness! Do you really think so? Surely not?... ;D
/sarc off
IainB:
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...
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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]
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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."
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* "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."
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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.”
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The implication presumably being that the absolute last things the US needs might include "...civil activism, individual freedoms...". This is clearly true.
-IainB (January 19, 2013, 05:28 PM)
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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]
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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:
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.
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……….
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SeraphimLabs:
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:
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.
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