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the english empire once tried to mantain a monopoly over steam loom machines the americans cheated their way to competition, heck, even before that, the engli

the english empire once tried to mantain a monopoly over steam loom machines the americans cheated their way to competition, heck, even before that, the english empire got jumpstarted by stealing gold from the spanish (who were themselves exploiting it away from aztec and other mexican natives) I'm saying it's business as usual, but also, culture doesn't work like tangible physical widgets so we must stop letting a few steal this boon of digital copying by means of silly ideas like DRM, copyright, patents. all means to cause scarcity

nottorp 2y ago
Interesting, if we're to trust what NotOpenAI and Facebook say about their IP, the US should pay the UK reparations for IP theft based on textile industry profits starting in the 1850s until today?
choult 2y ago
Hollywood became popular for filmmaking because they were literally the opposite side of the country from Thomas Edison and his patents...
- anotherhue 2y ago
  That and the predictable weather (old film needs lots of light).
- kristianp 2y ago
  This is interesting, is it really true?
- emporas 2y ago
  United Kingdom was the first to steal a Chinese invention called gunpowder, use it to maximum effect and they were also at the opposite sides of the world. Do not forget the first law passed by a new nation in which every citizen has the right to burn trees and produce potassium a critical mineral in gunpowder. That nation was either Greece or America, i forget which one. In the Western civilizations, when we are stealing copyrighted material and patents we are not messing around. I remember when the Byzantine empire tried to steal secrets of silk production also from Chinese, that was so much fun. Great times we lived in the past, even greater now!
miltonlost 2y ago
People criming in the past is not an excuse for companies committing crimes today. You’re excusing lawlessness. Cain killed Abel and got away with it!! I can kill someone today too!!!
- appreciatorBus 2y ago
  I think it’s fine to criticize the hypocrisy of viciously defending the copyrights you own, while gleefully running roughshod over the ones you don’t. But it’s also possible that copyright as a concept, or in its current implementation, is bad and unjust. I’m sure some copyright holders would like nothing more than to see an argument that elevates copyright violation to the level of murder, morally or legally. But I think it’s more akin to jaywalking - violating an unjust law that mostly shouldn’t exist.
  - CptFribble 2y ago
    the reform needs to happen at the layer where whether a copyright is valid or not is decided upon, not before (at the point of "should copyright exist") and not after (enforcement). a world without copyright means those with the largest advertising budgets will reap nearly all the rewards from new IP created by small artists. BigCorp Inc. can just sit around and wait for talented musicians to post something interesting on soundcloud, for example, then just have their in-house people copy it and push it out to radio and streaming platforms via their massive ad budgets and favorable relationships for getting new material onto the waves immediately. meanwhile the original artist gets nothing. the position of advocating against all copyright protections at all only makes sense for people who are already wealthy enough that they don't need proceeds from their art to survive.
    - brookst 2y ago
      I don’t think this is true. At least in music, bands make far more money from touring and merch than they do from music sales. If copyright disappeared altogether, most smaller artists would be just fine because they have loyal fans and adjacent monetization strategies. See: Grateful Dead. They did just fine despite encouraging infringement of IP. IMO copyright mostly serves to protect the very biggest artists and companies, not the small ones.
portaouflop 2y ago
Why do I get sued when I share some BitTorrents but $bigcorp can just do it with 1000 scale without problems? The issue here is not copyright/patents/etc - the issue is that the law is applied selectively — the issue is that Aaron Schwartz is dead for sharing knowledge with the public and Zuccborg is a billionaire building his torment nexus
- brookst 2y ago
  I mean this news broke today. It may be premature to declare that nobody will sue Meta. In fact I would cheerfully bet that someone will, and that they will spend more in defense/settlement than any 1000 individuals would.
sebzim4500 2y ago
I don't think I've heard the term "English empire". Is it an attempt by the Scottish to pretend they weren't involved?
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  Just like Austria's greatest historical accomplishment: convincing the world the Hitler was German
- nkozyra 2y ago
  I was assuming they were talking about pre-1706 given the Spanish gold context.
- 52-6F-62 2y ago
  Is this an attempt to imply the Scots had imperial ambitions and have not been fighting to keep their homes free of invasion for several thousand years? Fuck this sounds familiar right now
  - sebzim4500 2y ago
    >Is this an attempt to imply the Scots had imperial ambitions and have not been fighting to keep their homes free of invasion for several thousand years? Obviously yes. Who have they been fighting to avoid invasion exactly? >Fuck this sounds familiar right now Maybe you read it in a history textbook.
    - 52-6F-62 2y ago
      Hmm, no you misunderstand. Scotland was consumed by monied interests from across the water long ago. Now there’s just scattered populations, many of us dispossessed of our ancestral homes and not all by choice. The past doesn’t vanish because of what Rome and its inheritors accords as history. Some of us have long memories. It is particularly a prescient notion because I happen to be living in Canada. If you’ve read the news you should understand what I’m saying.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
m4rtink 2y ago
The textile industry in Brno here in Czech Republic (sometimes called "Moravian Manchester") was hugely helped by a local noble posing as a worker in England & the smuggling detailed self-drawn plans of industrial machinery back: "Brno’s fortunes were changed forever when a young freemason called Franz Hugo Salma set out for England in 1801. He intended to steal the plans for the most modern textile machinery in the world. His crime, the first recorded act of industrial espionage, boosted the competitiveness of Moravian textiles. Soon after smuggling the plans out disguised as a worker, and handing them over to Brno’s fledgling textile industry, Brno became the most important textile centre in the Habsburg empire." You can even go see some of the original plans in a museum: "Eleven designs are still preserved in the library of the Rájec chateau. They form a unique set of documents demonstrating both the level of wool processing technology at the turn of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as the aims and means of the relatively rare business of industrial espionage at that time." https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/brno-phenomenon/this-is-brno-katerina-tuckova-in-search-of-brnos-industrial-history/ https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/brno-phenomenon/this-is-brno-kate... https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/place/salm-reifferscheidt-palace/ https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/place/salm-reifferscheidt-palace/

nottorp 2y ago

Interesting, if we're to trust what NotOpenAI and Facebook say about their IP, the US should pay the UK reparations for IP theft based on textile industry profits starting in the 1850s until today?

choult 2y ago

Hollywood became popular for filmmaking because they were literally the opposite side of the country from Thomas Edison and his patents...

anotherhue 2y ago
That and the predictable weather (old film needs lots of light).
kristianp 2y ago
This is interesting, is it really true?
emporas 2y ago
United Kingdom was the first to steal a Chinese invention called gunpowder, use it to maximum effect and they were also at the opposite sides of the world. Do not forget the first law passed by a new nation in which every citizen has the right to burn trees and produce potassium a critical mineral in gunpowder. That nation was either Greece or America, i forget which one. In the Western civilizations, when we are stealing copyrighted material and patents we are not messing around. I remember when the Byzantine empire tried to steal secrets of silk production also from Chinese, that was so much fun. Great times we lived in the past, even greater now!

miltonlost 2y ago

People criming in the past is not an excuse for companies committing crimes today. You’re excusing lawlessness. Cain killed Abel and got away with it!! I can kill someone today too!!!

appreciatorBus 2y ago
I think it’s fine to criticize the hypocrisy of viciously defending the copyrights you own, while gleefully running roughshod over the ones you don’t. But it’s also possible that copyright as a concept, or in its current implementation, is bad and unjust. I’m sure some copyright holders would like nothing more than to see an argument that elevates copyright violation to the level of murder, morally or legally. But I think it’s more akin to jaywalking - violating an unjust law that mostly shouldn’t exist.
- CptFribble 2y ago
  the reform needs to happen at the layer where whether a copyright is valid or not is decided upon, not before (at the point of "should copyright exist") and not after (enforcement). a world without copyright means those with the largest advertising budgets will reap nearly all the rewards from new IP created by small artists. BigCorp Inc. can just sit around and wait for talented musicians to post something interesting on soundcloud, for example, then just have their in-house people copy it and push it out to radio and streaming platforms via their massive ad budgets and favorable relationships for getting new material onto the waves immediately. meanwhile the original artist gets nothing. the position of advocating against all copyright protections at all only makes sense for people who are already wealthy enough that they don't need proceeds from their art to survive.
  - brookst 2y ago
    I don’t think this is true. At least in music, bands make far more money from touring and merch than they do from music sales. If copyright disappeared altogether, most smaller artists would be just fine because they have loyal fans and adjacent monetization strategies. See: Grateful Dead. They did just fine despite encouraging infringement of IP. IMO copyright mostly serves to protect the very biggest artists and companies, not the small ones.

portaouflop 2y ago

Why do I get sued when I share some BitTorrents but $bigcorp can just do it with 1000 scale without problems? The issue here is not copyright/patents/etc - the issue is that the law is applied selectively — the issue is that Aaron Schwartz is dead for sharing knowledge with the public and Zuccborg is a billionaire building his torment nexus

brookst 2y ago
I mean this news broke today. It may be premature to declare that nobody will sue Meta. In fact I would cheerfully bet that someone will, and that they will spend more in defense/settlement than any 1000 individuals would.

sebzim4500 2y ago

I don't think I've heard the term "English empire". Is it an attempt by the Scottish to pretend they weren't involved?

HideousKojima 2y ago
Just like Austria's greatest historical accomplishment: convincing the world the Hitler was German
nkozyra 2y ago
I was assuming they were talking about pre-1706 given the Spanish gold context.
52-6F-62 2y ago
Is this an attempt to imply the Scots had imperial ambitions and have not been fighting to keep their homes free of invasion for several thousand years? Fuck this sounds familiar right now
- sebzim4500 2y ago
  >Is this an attempt to imply the Scots had imperial ambitions and have not been fighting to keep their homes free of invasion for several thousand years? Obviously yes. Who have they been fighting to avoid invasion exactly? >Fuck this sounds familiar right now Maybe you read it in a history textbook.
  - 52-6F-62 2y ago
    Hmm, no you misunderstand. Scotland was consumed by monied interests from across the water long ago. Now there’s just scattered populations, many of us dispossessed of our ancestral homes and not all by choice. The past doesn’t vanish because of what Rome and its inheritors accords as history. Some of us have long memories. It is particularly a prescient notion because I happen to be living in Canada. If you’ve read the news you should understand what I’m saying.
- jodrellblank 2y ago

m4rtink 2y ago

The textile industry in Brno here in Czech Republic (sometimes called "Moravian Manchester") was hugely helped by a local noble posing as a worker in England & the smuggling detailed self-drawn plans of industrial machinery back: "Brno’s fortunes were changed forever when a young freemason called Franz Hugo Salma set out for England in 1801. He intended to steal the plans for the most modern textile machinery in the world. His crime, the first recorded act of industrial espionage, boosted the competitiveness of Moravian textiles. Soon after smuggling the plans out disguised as a worker, and handing them over to Brno’s fledgling textile industry, Brno became the most important textile centre in the Habsburg empire." You can even go see some of the original plans in a museum: "Eleven designs are still preserved in the library of the Rájec chateau. They form a unique set of documents demonstrating both the level of wool processing technology at the turn of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as the aims and means of the relatively rare business of industrial espionage at that time." https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/brno-phenomenon/this-is-brno-katerina-tuckova-in-search-of-brnos-industrial-history/ https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/brno-phenomenon/this-is-brno-kate... https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/place/salm-reifferscheidt-palace/ https://www.gotobrno.cz/en/place/salm-reifferscheidt-palace/