11.30.13

The Fiction of ‘Piracy’

Posted in Action, Intellectual Monopoly at 2:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The problem known as “piracy” is an antiquated problem from history, tales, and Somalia, not people who challenge the real thieves — those who hoard and monopolise what’s public

AN interesting new report says that propaganda words like “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” (often used to imply guilt of serious crimes) are to be banned from a court in the context of copyrights [1]. Copyrights, after all, are about copying; the word isn’t pronounced ‘theftrights’. Might we finally see fact-based judgment as a result? Will judges not be tempted to get carried away and wrapped up in misconception spread in the corporate media by its monopolistic owners? Let’s hope so.

As the “Pirate Party” founder reminds us, the real thieves are those who take away from society at the expense of artists [2] (take, not copy), sometimes at the expense of the public sector or the public domain [3].

The so-called ‘IP’ cartel continues to be run by selfish sociopaths who think they are above the law (or simple are the law) and treat even their own employees like cattle [4. They would go as far as using terms like “Pirate Sites” [5] to describe sharing sites which businesses may use to transmit files and individuals may use to store their own (self-created) media. We need to stop the attack on sharing and one important step is abolishing the use of propaganda words. Judge Kathleen Williams is awesome. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. MPAA Banned From Using Piracy and Theft Terms in Hotfile Trial

   Leading up to the trial, Hotfile has scored several significant wins against the MPAA. The Florida federal court ruled on several motions this week, and many went in favor of the file-hosting service. Most prominently, Judge Kathleen Williams decided that the movie studios and its witnesses are not allowed to use “pejorative” terms including “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” during the upcoming proceedings.

2. Copyright Maximalists Harm Authors

   Copyright maximalists want all sorts of new laws to “help authors get paid”. Well, I’m a published author, and all their efforts to “help” cost me money. Even if we strictly limit the argument to printed books, copyright maximalists still only succeed in harming authors and publishers. This is how.

3. School system seeks copyright ownership of students’ work in Maryland

   It’s as if they lifted the plot right out of a Cory Doctorow novel. In Maryland, the Prince George’s County Board of Education is considering a proposal that would allow the school system to copyright ownership of all work created by students and teachers. The sweeping intellectual property grab could mean that anything from a drawing to an app to a lesson plan would become the property of the school system, not the creator.

4. WIPO Boss Accused Of Surreptitiously Collecting DNA Samples From WIPO Employees

   Francis Gurry, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization, seems to be running from scandal to scandal these days. While it has shown brief moments of enlightenment, for the most part, WIPO tends to be an organization very supportive of the copyright and patent maximalist agenda. Last year, we wrote about two incredible scandals that directly involved Gurry.

5. Court Orders Google, Microsoft & Yahoo to Make Pirate Sites Disappear

   While its common for search engines to receive DMCA takedown requests for specific URLs, events in France have taken things to a whole new level. In order to protect the copyrights of film producers, the High Court of Paris has concluded a 2011 case by ordering Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to completely de-list 16 video streaming sites from their search results.

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

The Problem is Distribution of Money, Not a Lack of Money

Posted in Finance at 2:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The fiction of shortages

Summary: If one can always generate a new Bitcoin or print more paper money, then ‘lack’ of money certainly cannot be the issue

THE UNITED STATES — more so than Britain — demonstrates huge disparity in wages [1], despite or because of prosperity at the very top. As one writer has just put it, “America has its own real-life upstairs/downstairs thing going on at the moment, best embodied by the Walton clan, who own the lion’s share of Walmart Stores, Inc. Walmart is the single largest private employer in America with a work force of some 1.3 million. Each of the four Walton’s who have an interest in the stores increased their net worth by $7bn last year alone. Meanwhile, the company’s sales associates, who make up the bulk of the work-force, earn an average of $8.81 per hour – less than the federal poverty level for a family of four.” People are willing to kill one another over basic merchandise in places like Walmart [2] — something which in in a debt-saddled Spain we cannot see quite because despite poverty the gap between rich and poor there is not as massive as it is in the US and UK (number 1 and 2 when it comes to disparity, depending on how it is measured). It’s not just class war. The UK finds new reasons to feud with the Spaniards [3], as always, but one thing that all Western nations seem to agree on is that it’s OK for the top 1% of salary earners should earn about as much as the bottom 50% combined (if not much more). No wonder there is a rush to Bitcoins [4] and other alternative currencies.

Wearing golden things and living in a palace at one of the world’s richest countries, one man in a gown speaks out against corruption and greed [5,6]. Sadly, we still live in a world where we look at to the richest people (like Bill Gates) as though it’s them who will reduce poverty. All they do is hoard and speak about poverty without actually doing something except contribute to the problem (albeit in secrecy). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Walmart and Downton Abbey: rampant inequality and detachment from reality

2. Mobs, Stampedes, Fights, Brawls, A Stabbing And Shooting: A Video Compilation Of Black Thursday 2013

3. David Cameron: Gibraltar diplomatic bag incident was an ‘extremely serious action’

   David Cameron has said that Spain was guilty of “an extremely serious action” by opening a diplomatic bag at the Gibraltar border and disclosed that the Spanish have assured the UK “this will not happen again”.

   Britain asked Spain for an “urgent explanation” this week after Guardia Civil officers opened and searched a UK diplomatic bag as it crossed the border from Gibraltar.

   Mr Cameron said he had received the assurance that it would not be repeated after Spain played down the incident and insisted that “technically it was not a diplomatic bag”.

4. Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site

   A digital ‘wallet’ containing 7,500 Bitcoins that James Howells generated on his laptop is buried under four feet of rubbish

5. Pope Francis ‘is mafia target after campaigning against corruption’

6. Pope Francis ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ Calls For Renewal Of Roman Catholic Church, Attacks ‘Idolatry Of Money’

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Links 30/11/2013: KDE and GNOME News

Posted in News Roundup at 1:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend