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Agreed. What's more, this is exactly what the 'left' wing political parties should be doing about now. They always say they can't get young people to vote. They
by CM30 8y ago
Agreed. What's more, this is exactly what the 'left' wing political parties should be doing about now. They always say they can't get young people to vote. They always complain about losing to their opponents or what not.
Well, maybe actually saying they'll fix copyright laws, throw large corporations to the curb and actively fighting to reduce the term to a reasonable length may help with that. Show they're not corporate shills, and do something that younger people may actually support them with.
Is that enough on its own? Hell no, there are tons of things these parties need to do to win trust back. But it would be a great rallying point for them, and get a decent amount of support from internet folks and younger people.
- shmerl 8y agoWhat's the story with the Pirate Party in US? I wouldn't call this a "left" or "right" issue even. Those terms aren't descriptive of this problem.
- MaulingMonkey 8y agoThe story is that there is no story. They have no seats, no news, I don't really hear about them at all, good or bad. People just pirate instead of making a political statement out of it. Sometimes they justify it in terms of how they're broke anyways, or support creators in other ways, or in terms of how ridiculous copyright law has gotten... but none of it really rises to the level of a significant political movement. Maybe it's the usually toothless enforcement, or the general lack of will to sue 5 year olds for millions over singing happy birthday, or just enough settlement NDAs to hide the lawsuits under the rug, but I guess it just isn't seen as much of a political issue. I suspect it's seen as a theoretical problem more than a practical one. When specific instances of draconian abuse of IP law do rise to being a visible practical problem (company vs company doesn't count), eventually enough political pressure mounts that one of the parties might fix it. But there are "bigger" issues, so it's usually pretty quiet, with neither party having clean enough hands to score any easy points, so they just settle for not kicking any more puppies. While copyright reform gets little traction, mucking with the ability to pirate will stir up enough of a hornets nest to actually be a political issue (cough Net neutrality cough), which is currently generally "fixed" by the more regulation-happy Democrats than the business-friendly Republicans.
- shmerl 8y ago> The story is that there is no story. Exactly the point. Why is that? In Europe they exist.
- duncan-donuts 8y agoWe really only have 2 parties here. Sure, independent parties have held office, but the people in the US really only vote red or blue. Other parties don’t really get national coverage either. When it comes time for presidential debates you’ll only ever see 2 parties represented. No one can take a different option seriously because we’re not really giving a different option ground to stand on.
- shmerl 8y agoSo this needs fixing first then.
- millstone 8y ago"Red or blue" is too reductive. Trump and Romney were both "team red" but could not be more different as candidates. While the US has only two major parties, these parties are unusually flexible and can accomodate major shifts: the Reagan revolution, "third way" Bill Clinton, Trump... The intra-group conflicts do get played out in the primaries.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoThe problem is that they are corporate shills. There are quite a few things I wish the Democratic party would do that I'd support, and lots of them they did historically. Even if they were still actually pushing anti-war, freedom of speech, and related things then that would be fantastic, but lately they seem to tow the same line as the Republicans on those issues.
- bootlooped 8y agoI think the focus on extremely divisive issues like abortion, lgbt, climate change, etc... has brought the two parties more into line on most other issues, to the delight of many low key interest groups.
- trophycase 8y agoIt's insane, why not give ground on relatively unimportant wedge issues to fix real problems like inequality, climate change, etc...
- astrodust 8y agoYou really don't follow politics, do you?
- tangent128 8y agoBecause if you put the elimination of marriage and gender equality on the table, nobody's going to believe you're remotely interested in fixing inequality.
- Consultant32452 8y agoThose are important issues for progressives. The right and middle share common most important issues: jobs, border, security. Progressives make up only about 8% of the population, and they're overwhelmingly white and wealthy. Here's a video discussing the relevant study. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1TrY-t0ng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1TrY-t0ng
- acheron 8y agoYou mean the “left” parties that are bankrolled by Hollywood and media companies? That’s who you want to roll back copyright terms?
- ahoy 8y agoThere is no left party in America.
- arcticbull 8y agoThis is correct; the options in the US as of the last election cycle are center-right and far-right. A Sanders type party would be left or probably more accurately center-left. That’s not a value judgement (you’re not a bad person for picking one or the other) just an assessment relative to world politics. Obama was a pretty center-right politician, and Hillary would have been also. He didn’t support socialized medicine, didn’t support socialized education, didn’t push for a $15 minimum wage, didn’t really bolster unions — though didn’t try and demolish them either — and didn’t really tax the wealthy. He was also fairly supportive of the surveillance state. To his credit he did a lot of good work bolstering environmental regulations and pushing forward climate science. I’m a leftist by Canadian standards and I liked and respected Obama and I can confirm he was no leftist.
- TomMckenny 8y agoI might add that even California, one of the "left" most states, still has a death penalty.
- bruceb 8y agoOnly 13 men have been executed since 1978, none since 2006. Isn't really a good measure of being "left" or not.
- malnourish 8y agoThey also have solitary confinement
- SkyAtWork 8y agoHollywood and associated content creation/monetization businesses are historically strongly aligned with the Democrats - though I agree with your ideal, it is not likely that the party will bite the hand that feeds it.
- walshemj 8y agoReally you think with all the challenges that the young generation rent faces copyright extension is going to be the key motivator to vote out trump etc?
- dgzl 8y agoYou're talking about the "left wing" as if has any real meaning. You should use better political terms.
- mindcrime 8y agoSad that you got down-voted, because you're 100% correct on this point. "Left wing" and "right wing" are totally meaningless terms in modern times. Neither describes any consistent, principled ideology, but rather they each just refer to a cribbed together hodgepodge of different ideas, loosely related at best, and contradictory at worst. Mostly "left wing" and "right wing" exist now just to serve as pejoratives to refer to people in "the other camp" relative to whichever label an individual has chosen to identify with. A simple one-dimensional model like "left <-> right" cannot adequately represent the varieties of political thought in existence.
- incompatible 8y agoI don't think they are completely meaningless: Wikipedia manages to give a definition. However, I think they are often misused, misunderstood, and not very useful in practice.
- shmerl 8y agoWhich is to say, they are useless :)
- mindcrime 8y agoOK, to be fair, maybe I should have said "almost totally meaningless". But I still contend that they are terms that convey very little intrinsic meaning, and have become pejoratives more than anything else.
- incompatible 8y agoThey can be used as pejoratives once "extreme" is added.
- 8y ago
- ndnxhs 8y agoThis is no left-right issue. This is billion doller CEOs vs the rest of society.
- ahoy 8y agoBillionaires vs regular people is explicitly a right vs left issue.
- shmerl 8y agoRight and left are so diluted and ambiguous terms these days, to the point of being meaningless. Using them doesn't help any conversation.
- nicklaf 8y agoOn the other hand, perhaps it provides an opportunity for people to learn what the terms actually mean. (It took a Canadian to help me realize just how confused we Americans are on this topic.)
- jedmeyers 8y agoYet most billionaires and multimillionaires support Democratic party. Go figure.
- astrodust 8y agoA lot of high-profile ones do, but "most" is probably not true. There are a lot of very quiet, very angry billionaires out there.
- claudiawerner 8y agoThe US Democratic party, going by its principles, is center or center-right by most standards outside of the US.
- naniwaduni 8y ago
- eloff 8y agoSomething something about biting the hand that feeds you. Not a critique against the left, more like the system as a whole seems more and more about pandering to special interests and corporations.
- Svoka 8y agoif only left didn't have enough people calling 'em communists. I'm all for rolling back copyright extensions waaay back, but politically this will draw a giant target on your forehead, and aiming assist powered by Disney's billions. From other hand, deep frustration with such situation leads to the populism we see around us.
- cabalamat 8y ago> this is exactly what the 'left' wing political parties should be doing about now I could imagine someone like Trump, but smarter, doing it. Big tech and big content are aligned with the Democrats. So why should the Republicans care about pissing them off?
- briandear 8y agoNobody would have ever heard of, nor care about Mickey Mouse if it weren’t for that evil Disney corporation. Those corporations often fund and create the very IP you want to copy. If someone creates something, it’s weird that people feel entitled to it.
- claudiawerner 8y agoI think a point to make here is that the creative output of someone is often unrelated to other aspects; I know of many artists online, for instance, who are very skilled but have insane (relative to modern Internet conventions) restrictions, such as that you can't even re-share the picture with credit and a link to the artist. I also take issue with framing this as entitlement, since copyright only exists due to the idea that content producers are 'entitled' to restriction on what they release to the public. I'd also argue that all members of society should have some entitlement to re-use and re-mix the social product. This isn't such a popular idea in late hyper-commodification, but I think it's an important one nevertheless, just as the creators of the material felt entitled to use society's abstract product (ideas and support) maybe it's right for me to feel entitled to use their abstract product - the idea of Mickey Mouse and Batman.
- scarface74 8y agoThey always say they can't get young people to vote. They always complain about losing to their opponents or what not. Rolling back copyright is not exactly a great rallying cry for a politician. Out of all of the things that most young voters care about, that’s not on the top of their list.
- shmerl 8y agoEnough do though, in order for the Pirate Party to become big enough in Europe.
- kodablah 8y agoSwitching the context of the discussion by an entire continent might as well be a different discussion.
- reitanqild 8y agoAlso unlike American/UK first-past-the-pole voting most(?) of Europe uses a fairer (IMO) approach with multiple representatives from each district meaning more opinions gets heard instead of just two parties like in US. The pirate party wouldn't stand a chance in the US IMO.
- Aeolun 8y agoThe only thing you need to give me is affordable housing. But nobody seems really interested :/
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoI do think think young people care very much about copyright.