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While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly. To stop this mad

While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly. To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations. It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anything, at least on their own. Fight the real enemy, and fight it with all means necessary - may those be alternative licenses, spreading the word, piracy, or straight out aggression[1]. Until the content industries are either out of power or simply gone (and I doubt the former can be achieved without the latter), this war on freedom for the sake of corporate profits will continue. [1]: I'm talking about stuff like Operation Payback and Anonymous in general. I dislike calling it "cyber warfare" because the term is retarded newspeak, but it's essentially what I mean.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do. Politicians are not helpless babies who have no choice but to give big content what it wants. They are intelligent adults who choose to side with big content. The people you need to bring down are Biden/Obama, Orrin Hatch, etc.
- jterce 15y ago
  Agreed. It's the same as the "occupy" movement saying that corporations shouldn't influence government. It's true, but it's the politicians who are the problem. Everyone, the content providers included, should be representing their best interests to politicians. The burden is on the politicians to remain uncorrupted and to represent the best interests of their constituents to the fullest degree possible under law.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    If, after several hundred years of trying, we haven't yet found the mythical race of "uncorruptible politician", it might be time for a plan B, like systemic changes to reduce the effects of corruption on the very-human politicians we do have (and are likely to continue having). That's essentially the campaign-finance-reform argument, that the problem isn't going to be solved by hoping that the next crop of politicians, unlike just about every crop throughout human history, will be selfless saints who don't respond to incentives; rather, the solution is to change the incentives.
    - pnathan 15y ago
      This is the solution; a system level design that assumes a level of corruption and general stupidity, then feeds incentives to help the broad spectrum of society.
    - Gormo 15y ago
      What makes it any more reasonable to suggest that it's possible to change the incentives than to suggest we can find uncorruptible politicians? I don't think that this systemic view aligns with the campaign-finance-reform argument argument at all; the people who want money out of politics regard money itself as the root cause of the problem, but neglects to address the real underlying incentives that money - merely an abstraction of value - actually represents. If you take money out of the picture, those incentives will still exist, and still convey political advantage. Who dominates politics then, if not the wealthiest? The most well-connected? The most ruthless? The real, underlying systemic problem is the centralized concentration of de jure power in a small set of political institutions. This will always be susceptible to concentrated influence, whether via money or otherwise.
      - jbooth 15y ago
        Well, here in the real world, there was a Citizen's United decision in 2009, and there was record-setting advertising spending from industry groups in 2010. In a midterm election. Noone's claiming they have a perfect system, I'd be satisfied if we stopped sliding backwards.
- nroach 15y ago
  Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do." More along the lines of: "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." But I agree that a lack of term limits or accountability means that its the career politicians who are ultimately responsible.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." Ok, more precisely: "pretty please take away people's freedom or else we might tell everybody that you're a poopy head."
    - jbooth 15y ago
      It's not "tell everyone you're a poopy-head", it's "run saturation-level advertising claiming that you voted to take away medicare, raise taxes and make it illegal for people to visit certain websites", unless you agree to our bill making it illegal to visit certain websites. Advertising works. I've canvassed the last 4 or so national election years and every single time I hear a lot of people echo the latest attack ad as truth, or say "I just don't know who to believe".
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary to go to special measures to protect content from being "stolen" because it's such a big and growing "problem". In many cases these steps can be quite natural and good seeming. The biggest problems are that the MPAA/RIAA have a lot more access to politicians than and a much more well honed "pitch" than any organization seeking to defend individuals.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- amurmann 15y ago
  It's more of a systemic problem with how democracy (if you want to call it that) works in this country. The costs of running a successful, political campaign are unbelievably high and contributions from corporations and lobby organizations play a major role in it. For all practical purposes, you only get the choice between two huge parties. Not only is a large segment of the population pretty much bound to one party, since they would never ever vote for the other party, but for those people who actually might swing their vote, there are even more issues at hand. Even if you wanted to use corruption as your single decision criterium, the choice would be hard. Both parties managed to stay pretty en par in that and that's all they needed to do. The brain washing that the campaign contributions pay for also work really well. It's astonishing what unimportant tiny events change in the polls before a presidential election. There is a complete decoupling from reality, once the race nears the finish. If we want a better working system, we need a better democratic process. Sadly the US was a pioneer in that and is still stuck with a system, that was brilliant for its time, but needs updating. We need a system that allows more than two parties to participate and we need better campaign funding regulation. That's the only way we can permanently stop BS like this
- poppysan 15y ago
  How does Obama/Biden side with "big content"? Everyone has their preference to repub or dems, but this seems unfounded to me...
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    If this seems unfounded to you, it's because you are unfamiliar with Biden's record. http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html?tag=mncol;txt http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.pdf http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.p... http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite-radio-recording/2100-1028_3-6149915.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite... http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html?tag=mncol;t... Please note that I was attempting to avoid partisanship by naming Orrin Hatch (R, Utah) as well.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - candleholder 15y ago
    http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicitor-general http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicit...
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  While I appreciate you calling out the lovely senator from my state (and I completely agree), with such a poorly informed public and with issues that exceed the capacity of many to understand even if they did try yo become informed, I don't think there is a solution that doesn't require a massive overhaul. Personally, I've like many aspects of the Starship Troopers model: if you don't care enough to serve your country (military or humanitarian), you may still live there, but you are disenfranchised. I suspect there is the real potential for tyranny of the voters, but, in theory, the service is supposed to limit that.
- cabalamat 15y ago
  > The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". It's not the fault of corporations. It's not the fault of politicians. It's the fault of corporations and politicians working together. When that happens, it is usually not in the public interest.
cheez 15y ago
The real solution might be to strip government of most of its power rather than try and change it.
- javek 15y ago
  If you were to take away power from the government, who would be left to defend the interests of the powerless? While it's true that government usually turns out to be an instrument used by the powerful to control the powerless, it is undeniable that the rule of law has occasionally functioned well enough to protect a minority from a majority. It offers a framework with at least the possibility of protecting the powerless. Take away that framework, and the faction with the biggest guns will win. People forget that even in the US, in the early 20th century large corporations used lethal force wielded by their own private mercenaries to keep an oppressed worker population under control. If government had no power, these gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted without the hassle of approval and public debate.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    You are arguing against a straw man. Cheez wasn't advocating taking all power from the government, just "most". Applying the principle of charity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity ) to cheez's remarks, one would assume that preventing violence is not one of the powers he advocated taking from the government.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum. If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Similarly, if anyone advocates more test coverage, we should automatically assume they want 100% quickcheck-like coverage testing all possible occurrences including power outages, network cables being unplugged, etc. What nonsense! How could anyone get work done in a place like that? Or, to use a political example, if anyone advocates more regulation of X, it's incumbent on them to explicitly explain they aren't actually advocating Stalism. This gives us an easy way to dismiss all views we disagree with without even having to consider the actual proposal.
mahyarm 15y ago
I think your best bet is to have the tech companies acquire the media companies and be done with it. Tech in general dwarfs the content industries that propagate this by several orders of magnitude. Media also drives a large proportion of sales in the tech industry. Or tech can start lobbying in proportion to their size, they could put them to shame in no time flat. If they actually acquire media although, would they do the right thing? I doubt it.
Alex3917 15y ago
"It's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly." That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white house ignores it generates dozens or hundreds of news articles, which all push people's opinions in favor of reform.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  People support marijuana legalisation primarily because they want to get high rather than because of an e-petition. Decriminilisation in places like california and modern research into medicanal uses has probably helped too.
  - cheald 15y ago
    Speaking as someone who has absolutely no interest in getting high, I support legalization, mostly because I don't think the government has any business telling people what they can or can't put into their bodies, because marijuana convictions account for an astounding number of people in our prisons, and because we already legalize, regulate, and tax alcohol and tobacco, both of which are demonstrably unhealthier than pot. That's just for recreational usage; I think that the medical approach is even easier. Again, we already legalize and regulate medical narcotics far more dangerous and addictive than pot, and there's a fairly long list of medical benefits associated with it. I think it does a lot of disservice to the issue to just write it off as "lol, potheads want to smoke up, they're the only ones that want this legalized".
sixtofour 15y ago
They don't mind Operation Payback or Anonymous much at all, because their actions are inconsequential relative to the unimaginable amounts of money they're making. You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice. And there's your solution: Stop giving them money! Period. We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with. If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply. You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money. Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there. Make your own content, and be content with less content.
yuhong 15y ago
Yea, why is this going to the White House instead of Congress in the first place? Anyway, personally I think it will deadlock in Congress for years like the net neutrality mess thanks to companies like Google. The key would to be keep it going until the content industry dies (or at least the lobbying) which will take years (I like to compare it to end of support for XP).

yummyfajitas 15y ago

To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do. Politicians are not helpless babies who have no choice but to give big content what it wants. They are intelligent adults who choose to side with big content. The people you need to bring down are Biden/Obama, Orrin Hatch, etc.

jterce 15y ago
Agreed. It's the same as the "occupy" movement saying that corporations shouldn't influence government. It's true, but it's the politicians who are the problem. Everyone, the content providers included, should be representing their best interests to politicians. The burden is on the politicians to remain uncorrupted and to represent the best interests of their constituents to the fullest degree possible under law.
- _delirium 15y ago
  If, after several hundred years of trying, we haven't yet found the mythical race of "uncorruptible politician", it might be time for a plan B, like systemic changes to reduce the effects of corruption on the very-human politicians we do have (and are likely to continue having). That's essentially the campaign-finance-reform argument, that the problem isn't going to be solved by hoping that the next crop of politicians, unlike just about every crop throughout human history, will be selfless saints who don't respond to incentives; rather, the solution is to change the incentives.
  - pnathan 15y ago
    This is the solution; a system level design that assumes a level of corruption and general stupidity, then feeds incentives to help the broad spectrum of society.
  - Gormo 15y ago
    What makes it any more reasonable to suggest that it's possible to change the incentives than to suggest we can find uncorruptible politicians? I don't think that this systemic view aligns with the campaign-finance-reform argument argument at all; the people who want money out of politics regard money itself as the root cause of the problem, but neglects to address the real underlying incentives that money - merely an abstraction of value - actually represents. If you take money out of the picture, those incentives will still exist, and still convey political advantage. Who dominates politics then, if not the wealthiest? The most well-connected? The most ruthless? The real, underlying systemic problem is the centralized concentration of de jure power in a small set of political institutions. This will always be susceptible to concentrated influence, whether via money or otherwise.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Well, here in the real world, there was a Citizen's United decision in 2009, and there was record-setting advertising spending from industry groups in 2010. In a midterm election. Noone's claiming they have a perfect system, I'd be satisfied if we stopped sliding backwards.
nroach 15y ago
Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do." More along the lines of: "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." But I agree that a lack of term limits or accountability means that its the career politicians who are ultimately responsible.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." Ok, more precisely: "pretty please take away people's freedom or else we might tell everybody that you're a poopy head."
  - jbooth 15y ago
    It's not "tell everyone you're a poopy-head", it's "run saturation-level advertising claiming that you voted to take away medicare, raise taxes and make it illegal for people to visit certain websites", unless you agree to our bill making it illegal to visit certain websites. Advertising works. I've canvassed the last 4 or so national election years and every single time I hear a lot of people echo the latest attack ad as truth, or say "I just don't know who to believe".
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary to go to special measures to protect content from being "stolen" because it's such a big and growing "problem". In many cases these steps can be quite natural and good seeming. The biggest problems are that the MPAA/RIAA have a lot more access to politicians than and a much more well honed "pitch" than any organization seeking to defend individuals.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
amurmann 15y ago
It's more of a systemic problem with how democracy (if you want to call it that) works in this country. The costs of running a successful, political campaign are unbelievably high and contributions from corporations and lobby organizations play a major role in it. For all practical purposes, you only get the choice between two huge parties. Not only is a large segment of the population pretty much bound to one party, since they would never ever vote for the other party, but for those people who actually might swing their vote, there are even more issues at hand. Even if you wanted to use corruption as your single decision criterium, the choice would be hard. Both parties managed to stay pretty en par in that and that's all they needed to do. The brain washing that the campaign contributions pay for also work really well. It's astonishing what unimportant tiny events change in the polls before a presidential election. There is a complete decoupling from reality, once the race nears the finish. If we want a better working system, we need a better democratic process. Sadly the US was a pioneer in that and is still stuck with a system, that was brilliant for its time, but needs updating. We need a system that allows more than two parties to participate and we need better campaign funding regulation. That's the only way we can permanently stop BS like this
poppysan 15y ago
How does Obama/Biden side with "big content"? Everyone has their preference to repub or dems, but this seems unfounded to me...
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  If this seems unfounded to you, it's because you are unfamiliar with Biden's record. http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html?tag=mncol;txt http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.pdf http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.p... http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite-radio-recording/2100-1028_3-6149915.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite... http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html?tag=mncol;txt http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html?tag=mncol;t... Please note that I was attempting to avoid partisanship by naming Orrin Hatch (R, Utah) as well.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- candleholder 15y ago
  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicitor-general http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicit...
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
While I appreciate you calling out the lovely senator from my state (and I completely agree), with such a poorly informed public and with issues that exceed the capacity of many to understand even if they did try yo become informed, I don't think there is a solution that doesn't require a massive overhaul. Personally, I've like many aspects of the Starship Troopers model: if you don't care enough to serve your country (military or humanitarian), you may still live there, but you are disenfranchised. I suspect there is the real potential for tyranny of the voters, but, in theory, the service is supposed to limit that.
cabalamat 15y ago
> The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". It's not the fault of corporations. It's not the fault of politicians. It's the fault of corporations and politicians working together. When that happens, it is usually not in the public interest.

cheez 15y ago

The real solution might be to strip government of most of its power rather than try and change it.

javek 15y ago
If you were to take away power from the government, who would be left to defend the interests of the powerless? While it's true that government usually turns out to be an instrument used by the powerful to control the powerless, it is undeniable that the rule of law has occasionally functioned well enough to protect a minority from a majority. It offers a framework with at least the possibility of protecting the powerless. Take away that framework, and the faction with the biggest guns will win. People forget that even in the US, in the early 20th century large corporations used lethal force wielded by their own private mercenaries to keep an oppressed worker population under control. If government had no power, these gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted without the hassle of approval and public debate.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  You are arguing against a straw man. Cheez wasn't advocating taking all power from the government, just "most". Applying the principle of charity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity ) to cheez's remarks, one would assume that preventing violence is not one of the powers he advocated taking from the government.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum. If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      Similarly, if anyone advocates more test coverage, we should automatically assume they want 100% quickcheck-like coverage testing all possible occurrences including power outages, network cables being unplugged, etc. What nonsense! How could anyone get work done in a place like that? Or, to use a political example, if anyone advocates more regulation of X, it's incumbent on them to explicitly explain they aren't actually advocating Stalism. This gives us an easy way to dismiss all views we disagree with without even having to consider the actual proposal.

mahyarm 15y ago

I think your best bet is to have the tech companies acquire the media companies and be done with it. Tech in general dwarfs the content industries that propagate this by several orders of magnitude. Media also drives a large proportion of sales in the tech industry. Or tech can start lobbying in proportion to their size, they could put them to shame in no time flat. If they actually acquire media although, would they do the right thing? I doubt it.

Alex3917 15y ago

"It's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly." That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white house ignores it generates dozens or hundreds of news articles, which all push people's opinions in favor of reform.

jiggy2011 15y ago
People support marijuana legalisation primarily because they want to get high rather than because of an e-petition. Decriminilisation in places like california and modern research into medicanal uses has probably helped too.
- cheald 15y ago
  Speaking as someone who has absolutely no interest in getting high, I support legalization, mostly because I don't think the government has any business telling people what they can or can't put into their bodies, because marijuana convictions account for an astounding number of people in our prisons, and because we already legalize, regulate, and tax alcohol and tobacco, both of which are demonstrably unhealthier than pot. That's just for recreational usage; I think that the medical approach is even easier. Again, we already legalize and regulate medical narcotics far more dangerous and addictive than pot, and there's a fairly long list of medical benefits associated with it. I think it does a lot of disservice to the issue to just write it off as "lol, potheads want to smoke up, they're the only ones that want this legalized".

sixtofour 15y ago

They don't mind Operation Payback or Anonymous much at all, because their actions are inconsequential relative to the unimaginable amounts of money they're making. You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice. And there's your solution: Stop giving them money! Period. We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with. If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply. You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money. Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there. Make your own content, and be content with less content.

yuhong 15y ago

Yea, why is this going to the White House instead of Congress in the first place? Anyway, personally I think it will deadlock in Congress for years like the net neutrality mess thanks to companies like Google. The key would to be keep it going until the content industry dies (or at least the lobbying) which will take years (I like to compare it to end of support for XP).