Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
Google and EFF are both in GNI. They work hand in glove on campaigns like this. If EFF has sued some element of Google on some minor point, so what? The point is all of these people are in a cabal most certainly and they all use their wealth to influence public opinion. That's their right, but let's not pretend this is a grassroots thing, it's not, it's the platform owners using the enormous power of their platforms to propagandize users and get them to virally spread their marching orders.
All of this is alarming because it undermines representative democracy. Nobody elected Google or its minions to represent them except a few million of their geeky followers.
You don't represent the rest of the country, and when you do things like fight SOPA, you will see the backlash in the form of a Republican president.
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
If you thing Big Content is so lame, do stop downloading those Youtube videos with songs you like and stop torrenting your Lost episodes mkaY? Because it's all so lame and all.
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
Of course they're astro-turfs! They are funded by wealthy former software coders and sellers like Mitch Kapor who made their fortunes from proprietary code and then got religion about open source after they could afford to do so. That's all it is. If these organizations and their paid networks didn't exist and normal debates could be held on the merits without the enormously amplified mindshare they have through the laptog tech press, it might be a fair fight. It's not.
There wasn't "ignorance about how the Internet works". There was just outrageous obfuscation and propagandizing.
Geeks can block malware sites without screeching that "the Internets are broken oh noess1111" -- so they can just as handily block piracy if they get over their ideological allergies.
Geeks tell us content can't be encrypted because of inevitable hacks and spoofs -- and yet they screamed that "the Intenrets will be broken oh noesss1111" over the fact that DNS would be blocked and they wanted to put in some new DNS encryption scheme. Fail. Lame. Lies.
Google spent much more this year, and it was due to "net neutrality" and SOPA/PIPA. And Google doesn't literally have to spend a time when there is an organized and concerted force of Silicon Valley "thought leaders" like Joi Ito or Mitch Kapor in the tank with Google who promote this line.
It's also especially ridiculous to pretend "the Internet rises up". You know full well that's not at all how it works. A few laptop tech media sites and blogs like yourselves whip up the frenzy, all in tune with the copyleftist agenda and California Business Model of Google (free service, let people upload content without questions, make IP owners chase later with DMCA takedowns).
By peddling alarmist blog posts and scary YouTubes that made it seem like every teenager's Tumblr blog was going to be shut down or all of Facebook or all of Youtube (!!!) over some one piece of infringing content (fake and false, nothing like that was in the bill) -- you were able to whiplash the masses. So what? People are gullible.
And hey, Mr. Internet Freedom Fighter, we missed you on the day after SOPA was defeated without even a fair vote, when your big friends Twitter and Google immediately set about doing REAL censorship (unlike the fake censorship they hysterically claimed was coming with SOPA), when they agreed to help authoritarian governments censor their citizens' tweets or blogs. Disgusting hypocrisy and you are a key facilitator of it.
You are mixing up two kinds of cases here -- the cases of people taking screenshots, i.e. of textures or skins, as part of a process of copying them illegally, versus people who take screenshots of scenes, like street scenes, and whether that is permitted or not. It is permitted by default on the Mainland. On private islands, the owner can set permissions as he sees fit. EFF got the interpretation of the TOS on machinima absolutely wrong from the get-go and continues to tendentiously misrepresent it.
You don't cite any court documents or links to prove your point that there are "pursued cases". So I'm not buying it.
That's what Mike and his fellow propagandists are hoping to do by hyping this case so mercilessly. It's obvious.
But the case actually shows why we need SOPA to restore the rule of law in this area and prevent the adjudication of cases one by one on a variety of principles like this so that technicalities stall them.
that's one of those lame arguments copyleftists always trot out as if they've discovered America.
It's a ridiculous notion because digital content doesn't come in the form of discrete commodities, but are obviously copyable online due to the analogue hole and the properties of the Internet.
But it is still theft because it *deprives the artist of livelihood* he would otherwise have if people PAID to download the tune instead of viewing it FOR FREE. Duh.
The domain name company likely has a TOS about not breaking the law and uploading infringing content. Even if it didn't, you can't yammer on about your right to a warehouse where you are holding stolen property to distract from your theft.
The thuggish dishonest and lying is what is always the worst about Mike Myasnik's articles and the comment section.
If you upload lots of youtubes that are pirated and then create a giant links site with hundreds of links to lead people to that stolen property, of course you are complicit in piracy yourself.
Or -- let's see -- you're going to try to pretend this is about First Amendment freedoms lol. The First Amendment doesn't extend to posting the address of a house with the door open and the people gone on a bulletin board urging people to steal.
Because I don't buy the story. I sense there's a lot more to the story here. I don't think AT ALL it's about the government suddenly saying "oh, we goofed, awful, let's let it go." I think lawyers merely scarified them.
Say, if the lawyers REAAAAAALY think their client was so innocent and a victim of lack of due process, they should go the full monte and SUE FOR DAMAGES. Why aren't they doing that in this awful, awful heinous violation of due process THE HORROR!!!!
In fact, the government should go hurry and get the Wayback copies because knowing Google, and their sentiments, they may destroy the evidence.
But that's the open question to me. Here Mike has written about this AWFUL AWFUL THE HORROR THING of people impounded an ENTIRE YEAR but their lawyers aren't suing for damages over that grave injustice. Why?
Again, herr, derr, I "got it" that the story here is being tendentiously played, with a very cunning and manipulative copyleftist agenda, to make us all gasp in horror at the lack of due process.
We got all that.
AND it's a pirate site where lots of content was obviously uploaded. And now that fact has been drowned out in a sea of tendentious crap about due process that really is beside the point, as when the feds went for this site, it was OBVIOUS what it was. But then -- as I already said -- either they didn't do their paperwork right or something else happened or there was some shady backroom deal with lawyers or they were threatened by the race card or SOMETHING, and they let it go. So what? It's not like they arrested a person and put them on death row and Mike Myasnick came up with a DNA test to prove the suspect innocent.
What it's about is a pirate site that got legitimately closed down, and then with a lot of lawyering, got opened back up.
This is why we need SOPA. To have the rule of law, so that individual adjudications like this don't take so long, and don't wind up the prey of predatory lawyers with agendas, but are resolved by judges.
I'm not going to keep whining about lack of due process. There are plenty of people whining about that artificially-amplified aspect of this hugely tendentious case. Sure, due process is a great thing and it was violated here. And? And you've also distracted from the fact that it was indeed a pirate site and the feds had more than probable cause to close it down. That they couldn't make their case later is mysteriously and we don't have enough information about their possible botching of paperwork or filings, or about backroom deals with aggressive lawyers maybe playing the race card, or playing whatever cards they have to play.
We do not have transparency on this case. As another reader asked, where are the court papers, eh?
Um, it's not racist to point out when other people are playing the race card, BIG TIME, by insisting that this site is an innocent little site helping black kids break into hip hop big time by enabling them to put up their work for free.
Of course I understood the site, and I went and looked at it, and I see it shows youtubes that have copyright on them, and people even writing things like "I hope this doesn't get removed". Derr. My God, this is obvious, just go and look.
I don't see that the government "didn't have enough evidence to proceed". I don't buy that at all, having looked at the site in past years now. I think that the government found it might have difficult in making its case because aggressive lawyers were going to play the race card on them. That would be my estimation of the situation.
That's great if Kanye West and Puffy use this site. Are they happy to have their material stolen and endlessly copied without any revenue?
No, of course it matters. Because if the feds could easily establish that it had loads of infringing copyright on it, it was justified to shut it down, because it was a piracy site. Due process is a great thing, and of course it must be upheld. But all that's happening here with this story is outrageous and tendentious manipulation and propagandizing around this facet of it -- the violation of due process ostensibly involved -- without any honest portrayal of what the nature of the site was.
It's the hope of Myasnick and the propagandists and the attorneys hired by copyleftists of course to be able to distract everyone with the due process issue, and make these people out to be horrible victims of injustice! the horror! and distract everyone from seeing that indeed they are pirates.
Trying to cast around to analogies like car impounding is beside the case. It's clear from a simple look at the nature of the site that they had loads of infringing content. The feds felt justified in shutting them down. Who knows why they dragged it on or sealed something? Maybe they didn't fill out all the proper paperwork or do everything by the book and didn't want to lose their obvious case over the kind of technicalities that lawyers can and do pounce on to get a case thrown out even of someone obviously guilty. Whatever. That shouldn't distract from the fact that ICE is doing its job by and large to pursue piracy, and that's a good thing. If they botch some cases, hey, let the lawyers due for damages *shrugs*. This is America.
There *are* too many to prosecute in this fashion, and that's why a good universal law like SOPA needs to be established and precedents built up and practices established so we can move through these cases more quickly and more effectively.
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Re: Google and Techdirt
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
All of this is alarming because it undermines representative democracy. Nobody elected Google or its minions to represent them except a few million of their geeky followers.
You don't represent the rest of the country, and when you do things like fight SOPA, you will see the backlash in the form of a Republican president.
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
Selective Geek Religious Doctrines
Geeks can block malware sites without screeching that "the Internets are broken oh noess1111" -- so they can just as handily block piracy if they get over their ideological allergies.
Geeks tell us content can't be encrypted because of inevitable hacks and spoofs -- and yet they screamed that "the Intenrets will be broken oh noesss1111" over the fact that DNS would be blocked and they wanted to put in some new DNS encryption scheme. Fail. Lame. Lies.
On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA
No, That's Agitprop
For an alternative view that challenges this agitprop, see these pieces:
http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/02/01/google-lobby-tab-highest-ever/
http://ww w.ppcassociates.com/blog/experience/lobbyists-1-internet-0-an-alternative-take-on-sopa/
Google spent much more this year, and it was due to "net neutrality" and SOPA/PIPA. And Google doesn't literally have to spend a time when there is an organized and concerted force of Silicon Valley "thought leaders" like Joi Ito or Mitch Kapor in the tank with Google who promote this line.
It's also especially ridiculous to pretend "the Internet rises up". You know full well that's not at all how it works. A few laptop tech media sites and blogs like yourselves whip up the frenzy, all in tune with the copyleftist agenda and California Business Model of Google (free service, let people upload content without questions, make IP owners chase later with DMCA takedowns).
By peddling alarmist blog posts and scary YouTubes that made it seem like every teenager's Tumblr blog was going to be shut down or all of Facebook or all of Youtube (!!!) over some one piece of infringing content (fake and false, nothing like that was in the bill) -- you were able to whiplash the masses. So what? People are gullible.
And hey, Mr. Internet Freedom Fighter, we missed you on the day after SOPA was defeated without even a fair vote, when your big friends Twitter and Google immediately set about doing REAL censorship (unlike the fake censorship they hysterically claimed was coming with SOPA), when they agreed to help authoritarian governments censor their citizens' tweets or blogs. Disgusting hypocrisy and you are a key facilitator of it.
On the post: EFF Agrees That Copyright In Second Life Is A Mess
Re:
You don't cite any court documents or links to prove your point that there are "pursued cases". So I'm not buying it.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Great News
But the case actually shows why we need SOPA to restore the rule of law in this area and prevent the adjudication of cases one by one on a variety of principles like this so that technicalities stall them.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: just gotta expect it ...
It's a ridiculous notion because digital content doesn't come in the form of discrete commodities, but are obviously copyable online due to the analogue hole and the properties of the Internet.
But it is still theft because it *deprives the artist of livelihood* he would otherwise have if people PAID to download the tune instead of viewing it FOR FREE. Duh.
The domain name company likely has a TOS about not breaking the law and uploading infringing content. Even if it didn't, you can't yammer on about your right to a warehouse where you are holding stolen property to distract from your theft.
The thuggish dishonest and lying is what is always the worst about Mike Myasnik's articles and the comment section.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: just gotta expect it ...
They don't pay their taxes.
They launder their money through Ireland to avoid taxes in this country.
You mean like that?
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: Go straight to second base
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
Or -- let's see -- you're going to try to pretend this is about First Amendment freedoms lol. The First Amendment doesn't extend to posting the address of a house with the door open and the people gone on a bulletin board urging people to steal.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
Say, if the lawyers REAAAAAALY think their client was so innocent and a victim of lack of due process, they should go the full monte and SUE FOR DAMAGES. Why aren't they doing that in this awful, awful heinous violation of due process THE HORROR!!!!
In fact, the government should go hurry and get the Wayback copies because knowing Google, and their sentiments, they may destroy the evidence.
But that's the open question to me. Here Mike has written about this AWFUL AWFUL THE HORROR THING of people impounded an ENTIRE YEAR but their lawyers aren't suing for damages over that grave injustice. Why?
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
The government obviously saw the same thing and felt perfectly justified in closing it down. They felt that due process was merely an add-on.
That's wrong, and we get all that.
This became a highly lawyered-up cause celebre, and now we've all been distracted from seeing that this was an infringing site.
Thanks for putting the focus back on that fact : )
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
We got all that.
AND it's a pirate site where lots of content was obviously uploaded. And now that fact has been drowned out in a sea of tendentious crap about due process that really is beside the point, as when the feds went for this site, it was OBVIOUS what it was. But then -- as I already said -- either they didn't do their paperwork right or something else happened or there was some shady backroom deal with lawyers or they were threatened by the race card or SOMETHING, and they let it go. So what? It's not like they arrested a person and put them on death row and Mike Myasnick came up with a DNA test to prove the suspect innocent.
What it's about is a pirate site that got legitimately closed down, and then with a lot of lawyering, got opened back up.
This is why we need SOPA. To have the rule of law, so that individual adjudications like this don't take so long, and don't wind up the prey of predatory lawyers with agendas, but are resolved by judges.
Thanks for helping to make that obvious point!
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
We do not have transparency on this case. As another reader asked, where are the court papers, eh?
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
Of course I understood the site, and I went and looked at it, and I see it shows youtubes that have copyright on them, and people even writing things like "I hope this doesn't get removed". Derr. My God, this is obvious, just go and look.
I don't see that the government "didn't have enough evidence to proceed". I don't buy that at all, having looked at the site in past years now. I think that the government found it might have difficult in making its case because aggressive lawyers were going to play the race card on them. That would be my estimation of the situation.
That's great if Kanye West and Puffy use this site. Are they happy to have their material stolen and endlessly copied without any revenue?
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
It's the hope of Myasnick and the propagandists and the attorneys hired by copyleftists of course to be able to distract everyone with the due process issue, and make these people out to be horrible victims of injustice! the horror! and distract everyone from seeing that indeed they are pirates.
Trying to cast around to analogies like car impounding is beside the case. It's clear from a simple look at the nature of the site that they had loads of infringing content. The feds felt justified in shutting them down. Who knows why they dragged it on or sealed something? Maybe they didn't fill out all the proper paperwork or do everything by the book and didn't want to lose their obvious case over the kind of technicalities that lawyers can and do pounce on to get a case thrown out even of someone obviously guilty. Whatever. That shouldn't distract from the fact that ICE is doing its job by and large to pursue piracy, and that's a good thing. If they botch some cases, hey, let the lawyers due for damages *shrugs*. This is America.
There *are* too many to prosecute in this fashion, and that's why a good universal law like SOPA needs to be established and precedents built up and practices established so we can move through these cases more quickly and more effectively.