Fwd: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

[ted leslie]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:33:45 -0400
CLIFFORD ILKAY <clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> ted leslie wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:38:12 -0400
> > Mr Chris Aitken <chris-n/jUll39koHNgV/OU4+dkA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> Colin McGregor wrote:
> >>> FYI:
> >>>
> >>> Here is the e-mail I received from my MP re: Bill 61. Sigh... not
> >>> exactly against the bill, but not exactly for it either...
> >>>   
> >> This is probably going to piss off a lot of people, but I'm not (only) 
> >> trying to be the devil's advocate here, so I'm going to ask anyway:
> >>
> >> Isn't all this about us wanting something for nothing? I mean isn't 
> >> someone spending emotion, time, and money creating, developing and 
> >> distributing something that we want it for nothing. And, yeah, I know a 
> >> lot of what we're talking about is degrees. I mean when a single mother 
> >> is fined thousands of dollars for downloading a few songs for her kid it 
> >> seems extreme. Nevertheless, are we not still talking about someone 
> >> wanting something for nothing?
> >>
> >> Just because you get away with compact cassette taping LPs in the 
> >> seventies, burning CDs of LPs and CDs in the eighties, burning DVDs of 
> >> movies in the nineties, and downloading songs via gtkpod to iPod in the 
> >> 00s, is one entitled to this forever? Should we not be grateful we 
> >> enjoyed the ride for forty years?
> >>
> >> I know I sound like an idiot writing all this. I actually have read 
> >> quite a bit of the articles and viewed youtube clips referred to in 
> >> emails from tlug over the past few weeks, and even had a sit down with 
> >> Charlie Angus. I just find it hard to make up my mind on all this. For 
> >> instance, I have recently joined SOCAN and am writing and recording 
> >> songs with a view to having them published and picked up by recording 
> >> artists. I feel I should at least consider supporting the system that 
> >> may (in part) support me some day.
> >>
> >> I'd be interested in your thoughts. Seriously.
> > 
> > You're absolutely right, most people are thieves, and we get the crappy ass system WE collectively deserve.
> > (isn't it nice how that works out)
> > 
> > The real issue will be when Internet downloading allows for massive theft of HD movies,
> > i.e. 20GB a movie (bluray), and people can do this 10-100 times a month,
> > i.e. bandwidth caps would be needed that we can only now just dream about,
> > but when these 20-50Mb/s feeds i am starting to hear about become more common place,
> > and you can thieve a tonnes of HD movies, its going to be a whole different ball game then it is now.
> > (this will really! hurt the industry). 
> > My guess is it will turn back around to what it was in the 80's in the US, where
> > people will get prosecuted for doing this if anymore more then "casually" 
> > and it will put the fear into people. 
> > But catching people thieving music on Internet, or stereo equipment from wall mart, or robbing money from a bank,
> > its all the same - catch'm and slap them around a whole bunch, the world will be a lot better place.
> > As for money grubbing record companies, and ticket master, etc, you'd hope a really good Internet ecommerce
> > would keep those bastards in check. 
> > 
> > Do you sound like a idiot? no way!, your just not a thief, and that's a good thing! be proud of it, its a dying breed.
> 
> Ted, your message is so full of wrong assumptions that I almost expected 
> you to ask those who are against this bill, "When did you stop beating 
> your wife?" Who was it that said something like, "Men of conscience are 
> so not because of restraint of law but because they have morals."? Most 
> people are NOT thieves. 

I guess there is a fine line between breach of contract and illegal possession,
but some times they are close. If you rent something or granted license to use 
it in a certain way, and that expires and you don't give it back, then 
in some cases you stole it.
Maybe i should re-word what i said as breach on contract, and the
penalty of such breach can at times be worse then theft of an object.
I as a producer of something that can be copied, should be able to put
any right on its use i want, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
Most musicians just don't want the stuff copied and given away whily-nilly.
If a DRM scheme could allow copying amongst your own devices, no one is going to 
argue against that, but usually by allowing that, it extends it to be easy to
copy it to other people who havn't paid for it.

You have every right to extend to someone a copy of a song you wrote, or your DNA sequence,
both are yours, and can be copied, but you probably want a say about how they are copied, who
can have them, and how they are used. There is no difference between your DNA sequence and
notes on a page, both personal to you and both deserving of any constraints, limitations to 
use of copy that you want to put on it, else you will not allow copy.
So its just about honouring a contract. 
So just keep in mind, when you talk about copying things, laws around it, DRM, etc,
sub in the words "your personal DNA sequence" for the word "song", and see how it sounds,
because one day, it will be like that, and you might then care about how the stuff is handled,
and what happens to people that don't handle it with respect to how you (the producer of the song or DNA)
want it handled.
Of course one day people will just take some hair they found of yours, throw it into a DNA-sequencer-2000
from The-Source, then publish your sequence out on the Internet for everyone to see, and see what 
kind of genetic background you have, and what ailments, or predispositions you may have.
you would probably want some laws against people doing this?
And its not for anyone to say that  DNA sequences be treated any differently then a song,
both are entitled to the same freedoms or restrictions of use as deemed by the producer.

I think of breach of contract, and if by doing so, one gets benefit they shouldn't have got,  as stealing,
but i guess technically that's debatable, and depends on circumstance. Stealing or breach on contract, whatever,
its a crime, and people shouldn't do it.

as for your thoughts on govn't below, i agree,
but as to who and what rights people have to copy my DNA or my songs, i guess we disagree.

I do believe most people are thieves, history and events show it,
natural disasters like Louisiana - the wide scale looting, the stats on the % of Canadian who have swiss bank accounts,
or cheat on tax returns, as it was said in the Planet Of the Apes,- Don't go searching for this answer, as you will NOT
like what you find.

-tl





> Most people are honest and know the difference 
> between right and wrong. The minority of people who are thieves will 
> remain so regardless of how many idiotic laws are passed. I don't even 
> agree that the actions you enumerated are necessarily theft. The devil 
> is in the details. People may actually start doing the things you listed 
> above as a form of civil disobedience or simply because it would be more 
> convenient to format shift by downloading via BitTorrent than swim 
> through shark-infested DRM waters just to transfer a 
> legitimately-purchased DVD to an iPod.
> 
> Enforcing this law will have the effect of eroding respect for laws and 
> that cannot be a good thing. There is no effective means of enforcing 
> this law without further advancing the agenda of the proponents of the 
> surveillance society.
> 
> The only two parties capable of forming a majority government are both 
> in favour of it, though the Liberals now blather on about "consultation" 
> when they themselves were poised to pass something equally stinky when 
> they were in power.
> 
> This bill, or some variant thereof will eventually pass, if not this 
> time, next time, regardless of which party is in power. The proponents 
> of the bill are well-funded and know that the message can be manipulated 
> and reframed very easily. It's a slam dunk for any halfway capable PR 
> firm to isolate the opponents of this bill as cranks and pariahs. Their 
> success in doing this with Canadian gun owners, the vast majority of 
> whom are law-abiding citizens, serves as the template. We'll be promised 
> a Utopian future with wondrous technological advancements if only our 
> "antiquated" laws are "modernized" to accommodate the "digital age". 
> Industry lobbies and the government have virtually unlimited amounts of 
> money to spend on propaganda. The issue being quite complex and voters 
> having a notoriously short attention span makes it all but certain that 
> the average voter will fall in line. Politicians, most of whom are 
> technologically illiterate opportunists, will fall in line after they've 
> established that voting for the bill carries little political risk and 
> potentially, great upside as they're wooed by lobby groups. After all, 
> they have to think about what they'll do for a living after they leave 
> office. Welcome to the best government money can buy! I'm waiting for 
> the plaintive pleas of, "Do it for the children!" to start soon.
> 
> Our elected representatives do not seem to be considering the law of 
> unintended consequences. Governments have a tendency to create 
> distortions in the market that are often not good. No one has any idea 
> about what innovations or what new business models will never see the 
> light of day if C-61 is passed. The bill seems an attempt to prop up the 
> failed business models of the music and movie industries, and their 
> distributors like Rogers and Bell. Witness how successfully Rogers and 
> Bell have managed to portray traffic shaping as necessary to prevent the 
> collapse of the Internet by those "bandwidth hogs" who are downloading 
> "illegal" content. I'm surprised they haven't yet portrayed people who 
> use BitTorrent as pedophiles. That will come later I suppose if they get 
> desperate.
> 
> To borrow from Martin Niemoller's famous quote:
> 
> First they came for gun owners but I was not a gun owner so I did not 
> speak out.
> 
> Then they came for pit bulls but I was not a pit bull owner so I did not 
> speak out (never mind that no one can actually define what a pit bull is).
> 
> When they came after my right to make private copies of my music and 
> movies, and rendered some of my recording and playback devices illegal, 
> there was no one left to speak out for me.
> 
> Ladies and gentlemen, all hail our new overlords from the MPAA, RIAA, 
> CRIA, and other anti-freedom organizations.
> -- 
> Regards,
> 
> Clifford
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
> 


-- 
ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org>
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists