Oh, come now. The Russian government already filters, sock-puppets, and spies on its own people with SORM, etc. it doesn't need anything special.
And SOPA specifically said within the text of the law that it did not mandate massive pre-filtering by ISPs. That's just hysteria on your part and you know it.
There's no moral or legal equivalence whatsoever and you're just trying to gin one up.
Russia is hardly likely to crack down on piracy, they get too much out of it.
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.
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.
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?
Re:
You're right. The text of the law in fact says the opposite. Glyn is just panic-mongering.
Oh, come now
Oh, come now. The Russian government already filters, sock-puppets, and spies on its own people with SORM, etc. it doesn't need anything special.
And SOPA specifically said within the text of the law that it did not mandate massive pre-filtering by ISPs. That's just hysteria on your part and you know it.
There's no moral or legal equivalence whatsoever and you're just trying to gin one up.
Russia is hardly likely to crack down on piracy, they get too much out of it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Google and Techdirt
Could you point to a critical article Mike has written about Google?
Re: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
Er, only 7 million signed a petition, but I bet if we scrutinized it we'd find a lot of alts and copies.
Re: Re: Google and Techdirt
There doesn't have to be a payment. It's about being in an old boys' network together with a likeminded ideology so that one hand washes the other.
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: Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
It was first pumped on YouTube in a series of geeky youtube videos with the lawyers or geeks in the Google/EFF tank. Google owns Youtube.
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.
Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....
yes, it was EFF and its networks, and those are whipsawed by Google. And all roads lead to Joi Ito and Mitch Kapor.
Selective Geek Religious Doctrines
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.
No, That's Agitprop
No, "people" didn't realize anything of the sort. It's Google's line, and you're peddling it. Shame on you.
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.
Re:
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.
Re: Great News
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.
Re: Re: just gotta expect it ...
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.
Re: Re: just gotta expect it ...
You mean like Google? That owns Youtube?
They don't pay their taxes.
They launder their money through Ireland to avoid taxes in this country.
You mean like that?
Re: Re: Go straight to second base
Yeah, they have that in Russia, a civil law country. This is no longer practiced in common law countries.
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
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.
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
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?
Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr
Hey, that's great that you concede that after five minutes, anyone would have to agree this is a pirate site!
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 : )