I saw it.
Again, copyright trumps freedom of speech. Hence why I can’t go reproduce Harry Potter and make money off of it.
People reading my version of Harry Potter would be receiving information regardless of the medium used, right?
There is absolutely no difference between copyright enforcement on the internet and in print. People are just assuming e-protection will be abused in ways print protection never has been.
except in the e instance no one is making money off somebody else’s work unless the ‘consumers’ are really fucking stupid.
But they’re still distributing copyrighted material. It’s still illegal. Deal with it.
I could argue this, but there’s no reason really. Whatever happens happens, regardless of what we think of it. Arguing whether its right or wrong or whatever won’t change anything. But we all know this. This bill has no chance to pass. To many of people like us are going to stop it. And I’m sure that people in government torrent stuff too.
I would argue that Copyrighs are protecting a companies freedom of speech, and keeping others from infringing on it. 
You would then be arguing a position that makes no sense.
Copyright has to do with the right to profit from and receive credit for your work, neither of which are addressed by freedom of speech.
The whole information age debacle of people being able to download anything they want for free is kind of a mystery to me. I don’t know what the solution is, but I accept that internet piracy is a problem in the most direct sense. It is true that the internet has helped a lot of companies profit more because faster distribution means advertising is easier in a lot of ways. But it’s not because of the people who download games/music/movies. It’s because those people are in some weird middle-man advertising limbo. By downloading a movie, you essentially become like a dude who works for the New York Times who gets DVDs shipped to him pre-release so he can write a review of your movie so people will go see it. Except instead of writing to the Times, you just tell your friends “yo that movie was jacked!!”.
Anyway, the point is that yes, to receive information that was created by someone to sell without paying for it often deprives them of money in the most direct of senses. But censorship isn’t cool either. And the most interesting part of the debate is that the question is essentially one of “when is it okay?”. No one’s going to sue you for lending your book to your friend so he doesn’t have to buy it.
But that’s really all that aXXo does when he buys a DVD and shares a torrent linked to the data on it. He just does it with millions of people.
So yeah, is it right to shut down sites that violate the rights of certain people? I don’t know. Child porn is banned worldwide, and I can’t say I really disagree with that, nor have I experienced any negative side effects as a result of that. But censorship in general is a very very heavy-handed and drastic action. For the children, sure. But the people lobbying for this sort of shit? The RIAA, the big 6, hollywood, whatever? No fucking sympathy for them at all. Maybe if the copyrights belonged to the people actually creating the work it’d be better.
They don’t though, so the more I’ve thought about this the more I’ve been thinking it’s part of a broken system more than anything else. It’s well and good to say “pirates are stealing!!” and “artists don’t get enough money!!” but to tie the two together is drastic.
Artists don’t get enough money, period. What do they care about? That people like their things. So here’s the big solution. Ready?
Artists should get paid depending on whether people like what they make. I believe that it’s ridiculous to have to pay for art (games, movies, and music alike. software is a separate issue in my mind), and I believe that it’s ridiculous for an artist to have to know about how to manage a business to be successful. I couldn’t even begin to say how to form such a solution, but I earnestly believe that applying capitalism to art is enormously misguided. Artists don’t do art cause it pays well. The people who need more art aren’t the ones with more money. It just doesn’t make sense.
tl;dr artists should get more money, customers should pay less, big distributors should go beat their stupid fucking heads into a wall until they die of how obnoxious they are and how many people’s lives they have ruined
I laughed (out loud, even) and agreed.
Again, copyright trumps freedom of speech. Hence why I can’t go reproduce Harry Potter and make money off of it.
People reading my version of Harry Potter would be receiving information regardless of the medium used, right?
There is absolutely no difference between copyright enforcement on the internet and in print. People are just assuming e-protection will be abused in ways print protection never has been.
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I’m pretty sure the constitution trumps all. But then again, copyright infringement wasn’t their first priority when they wrote the constitution so one could argue it’s outdated and irrelevant.
If the Constitutional right to free expression extended to breaching of copyrighted materials there would be no copyrights, patents, et cetera. Our entire market would be fucked up by that; if you could take the material from any publication/game/CD/whatever and duplicated it and pass it out for free with no consequences, there would be no market for them.
And if you thought DRM was bad with only limited piracy, imagine a world like that.
Again, there is absolutely no fundamental difference between copyrights and e-copyrights, and again, the First Amendment would not protect you if you went to street corners to start passing out copies of copyrighted novels, dictionaries and albums.
Dude, do you live under a rock ?
YES! Their Internet is censored.
I mostly stick to Hong Kong; I’m not super-familiar with the policies of the underdeveloped areas.
Damn, Daz, you are just all over this topic. It’s impressive.
@Cloud: thank you for giving me the basic gist of the bill. I can interpret law text, but not very well, and it’s definitely a strain.
That said, I don’t really have much to say on the bill or my opinion of it. I made a comment about piracy in general a few pages back, but other than that, I haven’t really formulated enough of an opinion to take a side. I’ll get back to you. 
Tim, thank you for summarizing my opinions so well, my mind works in such a way that I can never get thoughts down on paper (or text as it were) that well, thank you.
Yeah like Shanghai. SO underdeveloped. >_>
And you’re welcome, Syntax Man
It was a bit rambly but I think I got the gist of it. It’s a fairly important subject for me as both a pirate and an aspiring artist, not to mention a huge information geek.
I would approve this bill if it specifically targeted piracy/copyright protection, but it doesn’t. It targets the internet. The way it is currently written leaves far too much of a possibility for it to become a slippery slope.
Jesus fuck Zurg.
PS It’s like you have a criminal inability to even attempt, or disinterest in even attempting, to understand the subject you’re arguing about, on a consistent basis. I find myself at odds with you on EVERYTHING, not even because your viewpoint is always disagreeable, but because you just say shit without thinking about it.
Burn.
In other news. I’m sure we’re all against this, why are we discussing it.
Because we’re not all against this.
“I would approve this bill if it specifically targeted piracy/copyright protection”
It does. Ergo, Zurg approves this bill.
I’m not opposed to it either; I’m on the fence.
And Daz’s condescending remarks and name-calling makes me think he’s not exactly opposed to the bill.