Copyright, DRM, DMCA, UCITA, ACTA, SOPA http://drm.info/ Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is a technology that affects all users of computers, media players, mobile phones and other devices. DRM affects you. You may have seen it discussed as "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) or "Technological Protection Measures" (TPM). These terms suggest what DRM proponents believe to be the use and justification of Digital Restrictions Management, but hide what the technology must do to achieve this end: Imposing third-party restrictions on the users of a computer or other device, with or without the users consent. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://rudd-o.com/en/monopolies-of-the-mind Monopolies of the mind: front page Ideas were inexhaustible and free until people caged them in. It's time we opened the cage. http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ Courtney Love does the math http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/landmark-study-drm-truly-does-make-pirates-out-of-us-all.ars http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206901/Mandelson-launches-crackdown-file-sharing--just-days-meeting-record-producer.html?printingPage=true http://www.zgeek.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88474 Liberia - it's against the law. Quote:We've seen a few ridiculous cases whereby local governments claim copyright on a law, but it's still stunning to see what's going on in Liberia. Tom sends in the news that no one knows what the law covers in Liberia, because one man, leading a small group of lawyers, claims to hold the copyright on the laws of the country and won't share them unless people (or, rather, the government of Liberia) is willing to pay. Oh, and did we mention that the US government paid for some of this? The story is a bit convoluted, but apparently, Liberia hasn't really had a full copy of its laws, as they were mixed and matched in "incomplete sets" throughout different libraries. A professor at Cornell had begun a (free) project to compile the country's laws, but after he died, a group of lawyers in Liberia took over the project -- and were given $400,000 by the US Justice Department. The lawyers then "numbered, bound, and indexed" all of the recent laws, and claim that because of that, they now own the copyright on it. Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20091120/1429427030.shtml Oh yeah, and one other thing. This guy who claims (as a private citizen) to own all the laws? He is now serving as Liberia's Justice Minister! http://www.free-culture.cc/about/ http://readmill.com/books/free-culture About Free Culture Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, CODE and THE FUTURE OF IDEAS, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in FREE CULTURE, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation. All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the First Congress in 1790 was 14 years, renewable once. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten? Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom-freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine. http://www.thestar.com/business/article/735096--geist-record-industry-faces-liability-over-infringement Geist: Record industry faces liability over `infringement' 20110103 http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/pre1976 What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1954 Center for the Study of the Public Domain http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/ 20110910 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110908/15491315851/eu-officially-seizes-public-domain-retroactively-extends-copyright.shtml EU Officially Seizes The Public Domain, Retroactively Extends Copyright from the stealing-from-the-public dept As was unfortunately expected, despite no evidence that this made any economic sense at all, the member states of the EU have agreed to retroactively extend copyright another 20 years, at which point you can expect it to be extended again 20101108 http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/when-single-moms-are-fined-15m-its-ti When Single Moms Are Fined $1.5M, It's Time To Take A New Look At Copyright Protection In The Digital Age First of all, it infuriates me that the federal government is working as private cops for the RIAA. Think about how they pushed through the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and forced the music and computer industries to use copy protection. It also maddens me because the Founders only allowed ten year copyrights, after which the rights were turned over to the general public, to benefit from the work. It's time to come up with a saner version of digital copyright, because this is crazy and wrong: 20110325 http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/24/record-industry-limewire-could-owe-75-trillion-judge-absurd/#disqus_thread Record Industry: Limewire Could Owe $75 Trillion - Judge: "Absurd" 20110520 http://youtu.be/SNBMdDaYhZA Richard Stallman at UofC Richard Stallman lecturing about copyright at University of Calgary on 2009-02-03. Free/Libre formats can be found at: http://www.archive.org/details/20090203-Richard-Stallman-UofC-01 , as per Stallman's request. Many other Stallman videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/gordonmcdowell 20110219 http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/18/1952257/Goodbye-HD-Component-Video "Jim Willcox, the video expert at Consumer Reports, bids farewell to our ability to get high-definition video via the analog component-video connections on Blu-ray players. Thanks to Hollywood pirate-paranoia, potentially millions of law-abiding viewers will have their choices restricted. Quoting: 'Hollywood studios now have the right to insert an ICT "flag" into a Blu-ray movie; if it detects that a player is using an analog connection that doesn't support HDCP, it downconverts the video's 1080p (1920 by 1080) native resolution to 960 by 540 (540p): better than DVD quality but only about one-quarter of full HD quality. This ensures that high-def video is available only through the copy-protected HDMI outputs. 20111121 http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/copyright-isnt-working-says-european-commission-10024835/ 20120119 http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/scotus-re-copyright-decision/ Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright Public Domain Works 20120120 http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204616504577171060611948408-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwOTExNDkyWj.html FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy Authorities claim Megaupload Ltd., based in Hong Kong, and its sister sites generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and caused more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners. Police on Thursday arrested four employees of the company in Auckland, New Zealand, charging them with conspiracy to commit racketeering and criminal copyright infringement. 20120120 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 What Colour are your bits? Thursday 10 June 2004 at 11:54 am. by mskala Used tags: colour, copyright, philosophy 20120123 http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/osj8f/til_that_google_offers_free_legal_download_of/ TIL That google offers free legal download of music in China, in a partnership with the largest record labels in the world (since 2009). All of this while they sue children for illegally sharing music in the western world. http://www.google.cn/music/ 20120125 https://torrentfreak.com/australia-us-copyright-colony-or-just-a-good-friend-120121/ iiNet just got another salvo of legal ammo delivered to them by Wikileaks. The Canberra Wikileaks cables revealed the US Embassy sanctioned a conspiracy by Hollywood studios to target Australian communications company iiNet through the local court-system, with the aim of establishing a binding common-law precedent which would make ISPs responsible for the unauthorised file-sharing of their customers. Both the location, Australia, and the target, iiNet, were carefully selected. A precedent set in Australia would be influential in countries with comparable legal systems such as Canada, India, New Zealand and Great Britain. Australian telecommunications giant Telstra was judged too large for the purposes of the attack. Owing to its smaller size and more limited resources, iiNet was gauged the perfect candidate. Fuck you America, eat a dick and die in a (nucular) fire. 20120131 http://i.imgur.com/cilLg.jpg How Hollywood could kill movie piracy (if they wanted to) http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/p3cmp/how_hollywood_could_kill_movie_piracy_if_they/ 20120210 http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this I have a bad feeling about this 20120430 http://torrentfreak.com/the-net-vs-the-power-of-narratives-120429/ The Net vs. The Power of Narratives Rick Falkvinge April 29, 2012 The net changes the world's power structures in a much more fundamental way than changing the way a few groups of entrepreneurs are able to make money. The net is the greatest equalizer that humankind has ever invented. It is either the greatest invention since the printing press, or the greatest invention since written language. The battles we see are not a result of loss of money; they are caused by a loss of the power of narratives. ACTA ------ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/ The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together Tuesday November 03, 2009 http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/144240/Secret-Copyright-Treaty-Leaks-Its-Bad-Very-Bad http://www.efa.org.au/2009/11/04/acta-copyright-negotiations-underway-still-secret-still-worrying Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. Nov 05, 2009 - 5:33 PM Sorry for the Boing Boing source, but it's the most concise summary I've found so far: The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [currently being ratified here in Seoul -Zan], a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel. That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright. Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM) http://torrentfreak.com/secret-anti-piracy-treaty-turns-isps-into-pirates-091104/ 20091119 http://bytestyle.tv/content/acta-internet-users-guilty-until-proven-innocent ACTA: Internet Users Guilty Until Proven Innocent http://torrentfreak.com/uks-terrifying-anti-piracy-plans-leak-091119/ UK's Terrifying Anti-Piracy Plans Leak Written by Ernesto on November 19, 2009 Tomorrow morning Lord Mandelson will present the Digital Economy Bill to the public, which among other things is aimed at reducing illicit file-sharing. According to parts of the bill that leaked today, the legislation could lead to jail terms for file-sharers and unprecedented power for the entertainment industries. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/19/breaking-leaked-uk-g.html BREAKING: Leaked UK government plan to create "Pirate Finder General" with power to appoint militias, create laws (More Lord Peter Mandelson bastardry) http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/britains-new-interne.html Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse. Internet Shut Down - anti-ACTA petition http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/211652 http://www.petitiononline.com/stopatca/ http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/14/1441252/Secret-Copyright-Treaty-Timeline-Shows-Global-DMCA Secret Copyright Treaty Timeline Shows Global DMCA "Michael Geist, a leading critic of the ACTA secret copyright treaty, has produced a new interactive timeline that traces its development. The timeline includes links to leaked documents, videos, and public interest group letters that should generate increasing concern with a deal that could lead to a global three-strikes and you're out policy." http://www.dipity.com/michaelgeist/personal The timeline. Stupid flash shit, can't 'save as'. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ Main blog, incl article that links to the timeline. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4611/125/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/actas-shameful-secret.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss Adding up the explanations for ACTA's "shameful secret" By Nate Anderson | Last updated January 15 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow Digital Economy Act: This means war Baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/15/big-contents-dystopi.html Big Content's dystopian wish-list for the US gov't: spyware, censorship, physical searches and SWAT teams The MPAA and RIAA have submitted their master plan for enforcing copyright to the new Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Richard Esguerra points out, it's a startlingly distopian work of science fiction. The entertainment industry calls for: * spyware on your computer that detects and deletes infringing materials; * mandatory censorware on all Internet connections to interdict transfers of infringing material; * border searches of personal media players, laptops and thumb-drives; * international bullying to force other countries to implement the same policies; * and free copyright enforcement provided by Fed cops and agencies (including the Department of Homeland Security!). WRH: I guess finding Osama bin Laden just isn't a priority any more! Frankly, after having one laptop destroyed by TSA and spending 90 minutes on the phone with Micro$oft to get around a bug that prevented my legally owned software from running on my legally owned computer thi8s last week, I am ready to live a life free of personal electronic devices. I don't plan to pull an Alex Jones and torture an iPad (I don't own one and don't plan to buy one), but I have already weaned myself from the practice of walking around all day with mp3 music blasting into my ears and recommend it highly as a means to reconnect with the real world. I might even go back to using a cell phone that does nothing at all except make phone calls. And screw it, if I cannot be assured that my laptop will arrive at a business destination with me so that I can do my job, then I will quit the business I am in and go on welfare. The government has gone out of its way to make it impossible to work in this country, and they have finally succeeded. 20100417 http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=29962 ACTA Treaty: Can Seize, Destroy Your PC, Electronics http://blog.die-linke.de/digitalelinke/wp-content/uploads/ACTA-6437-10.pdf 20100804 http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=31635 ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization by Gennady Stolyarov II, The Mises Institute 20110314 http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/12/america-fields-son-o.html America fields "Son of ACTA" -- a new, sinister, secret copyright treaty Cory Doctorow at 8:03 AM Saturday, Mar 12, 2011 20120126 http://thenextweb.com/eu/2012/01/26/the-eu-and-22-member-states-sign-the-controversial-acta-internet-censorship-treaty/ 20120127 http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=38155 European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA 20120129 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/27/acta_protests_in_poland/print.html --------- Megaupload_takedown 20120120 http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204616504577171060611948408-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwOTExNDkyWj.html FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy Authorities claim Megaupload Ltd., based in Hong Kong, and its sister sites generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and caused more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners. Police on Thursday arrested four employees of the company in Auckland, New Zealand, charging them with conspiracy to commit racketeering and criminal copyright infringement. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars 20120121 http://torrentfreak.com/feds-please-return-my-personal-files-megaupload-120120/ http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/ 20120122 http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/megaupload-takedown-real-meaning 20120124 https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq Why was MegaUpload really shut down? "UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings," MegaUpload founder Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz told Torrentfreak Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free. "We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free," Dotcom outlined. "Yes that's right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works." 20120127 http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-users-plan-to-sue-the-fbi-over-lost-files-120126/ MegaUpload Users Plan to Sue the FBI over Lost Files 20120130 http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-user-data-soon-to-be-destroyed-120130/ 20120202 http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57368523-261/feds-we-obtained-megaupload-conversations-with-search-warrant/ MegaUpload internal communications acquired by the FBI using trojans. ------------------ MS Vista OS DRM http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry. Posted Dec 24, 2006 09:11 AM PST Category: COMPUTERS/SECURITY In other words, once again Microsoft's answer to hackers and pirates is to saddle the rest of us with slower and more cumbersome systems. http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/10691.cfm Vista gets a public challenge on its DRM schemes Gutmann had brought up that Vista appears to be so locked down with DRM standards that users are finding it impossible to view any HD content from their machines if they do not specifically meet Microsoft's strict standards. One of these standards are a graphics card that supports HDCP or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, a form of DRM developed by Intel. If a user does not have a graphics card that actively supports HDCP, their premium high-definition content, whether obtained legally, recorded with their own high-definition equipment or otherwise, is throttled in quality and displayed at much less than high-definition. Posted Aug 10, 2007 10:03 PM PST ------------------- http://torrentfreak.com/pirated-by-itunes-artist-turns-to-bittorrent-080206/ Pirated by iTunes, Artist Turns to BitTorrent Many people that i'd meet at my shows would say that they bought my music on iTunes, yet I've never signed any sort of agreement allowing iTunes to host my music, and I've certainly never seen a dime of money for my albums hosted there. So I started investigating the numbers from the label, which led me to some shocking revelations about how little the artist and label was getting in comparison to the retailers. When I got around to asking about iTunes, the owner of Sublight Records pleaded with me to "leave it be". Everyone else made an extraordinary effort to ignore my calls and emails. When I finally got a hold of the digital distributor (I must note that "digital distributor" is the most pathetic job title I've ever heard), I was told that once the files are in the iTunes system, it literally couldn't be removed or taken down for a year. So, either Apple has created a self-aware doomsday machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with, or everyone involved is just enjoying the gravy train of ripping off artists like myself and using Apple's backbone of attorneys as an intimidation factor. Posted Feb 6, 2008 06:15 AM PST Category: ENTERTAINMENT This is very alarming, because we know many artists (my wife included) who have albums at iTunes. WE keep hearing that the albums are being purchased, but somehow we never see any money for it. If Apple/iTunes were ripping off the musicians, that would be a scandal that would bring down the RIAA and justly so. This does not justify stealing copies of music, but the same policy of honesty must apply to the music distribution companies. http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-keeps-settlement-money-080228/ RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue When EMI, Universal Music and Warner music reached settlement agreements with the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, they collected hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation - money that was supposed to go to artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed upon when the networks were operating with unlicensed music. Now, according to an article, the managers of some major artists are getting very impatient, as it appears the very people who were supposed to be compensated - the artists - haven't received anything from the massive settlements. They say the cash - estimated to be as much as $400m - hasn't filtered through to their clients and understandably they're getting very impatient. Posted Feb 29, 2008 06:49 AM PST Category: ENTERTAINMENT ------------------------------ SOPA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc Be a HERO and Help STOP SOPA Now!! I'll tell you How! This Video that Must Be SHARED! Go to http://onecandleinthedark.blogspot.com and http://www.cbsyousuck.com for thousands of pages of evidence and links to the original source research on the Internet Wayback Machine. http://rondam.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-everyone-in-sopa-debate-is-missing.html http://blog.curry.com/stories/2012/01/16/sopaIsARedHerring.html http://www.zerohedge.com/news/numbers-cited-sopa-supporters-may-be-fictitious 20120121 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/sopa-shelved#comment-2083393 My comment: ------------------ "SOPA dies" No, SOPA is just offstage temporarily, having a new face applied. The only way SOPA, PIPA, and all the other incarnations of Internet and Information-Freedom killing legislation will 'die', is if the bastards who keep dreaming this shit up, are dead. Fascist, NWO, Zionist one-world-government zombies... until you blow their heads off with a shotgun, they just keep on coming. Incidentally, just to repeat the obvious for those who still don't get it - copyright and DRM arguments are just excuses. The people behind this fascist control shit don't actually give a rat's arse about copyright violation. In fact it was them all along behind the creation and distribution of most freeware file sharing software. Problem, reaction, solution. They wanted as much illegal file sharing on the net as possible, so they could then point and complain about it, and demand bullshit laws like SOPA. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc The narrator is pretty annoying, but the information is dynamite. Deliberate entrapment, going on over a decade. Clear as day. Shotguns. It's the only way to be sure. ------------------------ 20120209 http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/02/08/reid-sneaks-sopa-senate-82141/ Reid Sneaks SOPA Back Into Senate With New Name Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is re-branding SOPA and the Protect IP act under a new name to launch a second round of attacks in an attempt to censor the Internet. 20120405 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120402/09551618327/where-tpp-goes-beyond-acta-how-it-shows-us-future-ip-enforcement.shtml Where TPP Goes Beyond ACTA -- And How It Shows Us The Future Of IP Enforcement 20120429 http://www.informationliberation.com/index.php?id=39401 Throwing Out the Old by Jeffrey Tucker GKD: "I hurled them all in the dumpster, armload by armload. It was painful. It seemed crazy." It WAS crazy. Your instincts were correct. Data is data, great art is still great art no matter what year it is. You threw out priceless information treasures. The only thing that goes obsolete, is data storage mechanisms. If you'd kept those LPs, today you'd be able to capture them to sound files, run noise elimination software on them, compress using a lossless format like FLAC, back them up to multiple copies, and keep them forever - even for your descendants. Rip your CDs before you throw out the physical media this time. See comments on EAC above. Then offer the files to your friends and see how eager they are. Just don't tell the RIAA, or you'll have armed swat teams breaking down your door at 3am for such a heinous crime. (According to the recording industry, who want to sell you the same data over and over, on each turn of the data storage technology wheel.) If you want to be really conscientious, also scan the cover art and notes, include that with the sound files. Yeah, anon 204102 has some seriously elite-pawned ideas about money. An unregulated system of value exchange (alloidail, non-debt-based money) is crucial to freedom itself. Reframing his comments, if it weren't for those who control us all BY CONTROLLING THE MONEY SUPPLY, we've have cancer cures, reached Mars, etc long ago. All the recent push to eliminate cash entirely originates with the Elite/NWO one-world-government crowd, who want to reduce us all to powerless serfs. Take away cash and guns, and it's mission totally accomplished for them. -------------- Further to the above (122106), there's a very good reason for keeping personal backups of digital works. You can't assume the internet and its limitless resources will always be available, at least in the form it takes now. In fact it's quite reasonable to assume that it *won't* be available indefinitely. For one thing, the 1% absolutely hate the free, unregulated internet, and are working assiduously to cripple, or preferably destroy it. The internet is a direct threat to their continued death-grip on political power, and ultimately their very lives. If the public ever becomes widely aware of who the 1% are, what they do and how they do it, they're dead. Simply dead. And they know it. This gives them a strong incentive to succeed in destroying the net. The push behind monstrosities like SOPA, UCITA, SSSCA, CISPA and endlessly etc, is not about copyright revenues or security, it is about the 1% retaining control over the rest of us. They won't ever stop trying until the open internet is dead, or they are. And so, best to keep your own backups of data/music you love. Terrahertz 20120801 http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xh4rh/no_copyright_law_the_real_reason_for_germanys/?limit=500 http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html 08/18/2010 No Copyright Law The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? By Frank Thadeusz 20120831 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/why-johnny-cant-stream-how-video-copyright-went-insane/ 20120906 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrest-followed-by-59m-swedish-aid-package-for-cambodia-120905/ 20121003 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120927/00320920527/former-copyright-boss-new-technology-should-be-presumed-illegal-until-congress-says-otherwise.shtml Former Copyright Boss: New Technology Should Be Presumed Illegal Until Congress Says Otherwise 20121112 http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/smuggling-usb-sticks/ 20121119 http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2012/pre-1976 What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2012? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1955 20121121 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/us-patent-chief-to-software-patent-critics-give-it-a-rest-already/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4809986 US patent chief to software patent critics: "Give it a rest already" (arstechnica.com) 20121122 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/your-criticisms-are-completely-wrong-stallman-on-software-patents/ “Your criticisms are completely wrong”: Stallman on software patents, 20 years in Free software guru makes a still-unpopular plea with new urgency—just ban them. 20121122 https://plus.google.com/112752620647547057360/posts/9BMqpLS6i31#112752620647547057360/posts/9BMqpLS6i31 Here is the kicker: All laws and contracts are software code for this machine. The existence of this type of computer means all legal documents should now be subject to software patents and copyright. I say let the lawyers sweat in fear of intellectual property infringement every time they write a new clause in a contract as we developers currently do when we write code. 20121225 http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/24/tech/web/lester-chambers-kickstarter/index.html?hpt=hp_c1 On Web, 'Time Has Come' for '60s singer 20130131 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130129/09264821815.shtml Truly Stupid Ideas: Adding DRM To HTML5 You would have thought by now that people would understand that DRM is not only a bad idea, but totally unnecessary: Apple dropped DRM from music downloads in 2009 and seems to be making ends meet. Despite these obvious truths, the stupidity that is DRM continues to spread. Here, for example, is a particularly stupid example of DRM stupidity, as revealed by Manu Sporny: A few days ago, a new proposal was put forward in the HTML Working Group (HTML WG) by Microsoft, Netflix, and Google to take DRM in HTML5 to the next stage of standardization at W3C. 20130507 http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/06/does-prenda-believe-in-no-win-scenarios-because-judge-wright-just-gave-them-one/ Prenda gets a spanking 20130531 http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/05/30/good-old-games-gog-com-and-the-drm-free-revolution/ Good Old Games: GOG.com And The DRM-Free Revolution "DRM solves piracy like a bag of concrete solves hunger." That’s GOG.com managing director Guillaume Rambourg, eloquently summarizing his views on DRM—Digital Rights Management—the copy protection measures many entertainment media companies put in place to thwart piracy. But Rambourg isn’t convinced DRM even works, or that DRM and the piracy it purports to try and prevent are even related to one another in any meaningful way. 21030606 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/forensics_reveal_more_on_prenda_laws_trolling_techniques/ Copyright troll Prenda Law accused of seeding own torrents Web of companies formed an end-to-end production, piracy and lawsuit-filing machine 20130805 http://intellihub.com/2013/08/04/a-tipping-point-against-the-copyright-monopoly-regime-is-a-lot-closer-than-you-think/ A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Regime Is A Lot Closer Than You Think We are ridiculously close to a tipping point which will start dismantling the atrocious copyright and patent monopolies, worldwide. Specifically, we are about 1.5% of political support in Germany away from that tipping point. 20130925 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-collective-memory-how-copyright-made-mid-century-books-vanish/278209/ The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6440362 20131023 http://intellihub.com/2013/10/21/longer-copyright-terms-stiffer-copyright-penalties-coming-thanks-tpp-acta/ Longer Copyright Terms, Stiffer Copyright Penalties Coming, Thanks to TPP and ACTA The TPP is being negotiated in secret and is rolling ahead full-steam. It seems like it will be ratified by year-end by a number of countries. 20140115 http://torrentfreak.com/eu-offers-public-a-chance-to-fix-copyright-law-140113/ " Copyright and the Internet have been struggling to get along for many years and some feel we are now due a comprehensive update of the former in order for it to work more harmoniously with the latter. In deciding how to progress the EU Commission has opened a public consultation which allows all citizens – even those in the U.S. – a rare opportunity to change the path of copyright law. But with just three weeks left, time is ticking away. Note that you can [participate in the consultation] even if you do not live in Europe,” the EFF explains. “Just as United States laws can influence legislators in the rest of the world, so can European legislation have an impact on all Internet users: Both through our interactions with users and companies in the region and in how they can set new policy precedents." This is something that should be spread by everyone, everywhere, so as to counter the undoubted hundreds, possibly even thousands (seriously, I wouldn't put it past them, they've gone to extreme lengths in the past) of participants that will be paid by the MPAA to skew the results. 20140515 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart Future versions of the open-source Firefox browser will include closed-source digital rights management (DRM) from Adobe, the Mozilla project’s chief technology officer, Andreas Gal, announced on Wednesday. The purpose is to support commercial video streams. But this is a radical, disheartening development in the history of the organisation, long held out as a beacon for the open, free spirit of the web as a tool for liberation. 20140625 https://medium.com/@xor/houston-we-have-a-public-domain-problem-bd971c57dfdc https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7941636 Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem A bogus SoundCloud takedown reveals a much larger issue with private sites and the public domain. 20141008 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-again-price-drm-your-privacy-and-security Adobe Spyware Reveals (Again) the Price of DRM: Your Privacy and Security 20141209 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141207/06562729345/labels-barely-release-1964-dylan-beach-boys-archive-materials-solely-to-get-extended-copyrights.shtml Labels Barely Release 1964 Dylan, Beach Boys Archive Materials Solely To Get Extended Copyrights The release had absolutely nothing to do with actually getting the works out to fans, and absolutely everything to do with copyright. You see, back in 2011, despite having absolutely no economic rationale for doing so, the EU retroactively extended copyright on music from 50 years to 70 years. However, there was a tiny catch: there was a "use it or lose it" provision in the law, saying that the music had to have been "released" to qualify for that 20 year extension. Thus, Sony realized with Dylan that it had to "release" (and I use the term loosely) some of its old recordings that had never been officially released, or it would lose the copyright on them. 20150206 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/negotiators-burn-their-last-opportunity-salvage-tpp-caving-copyright-term