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I agree with your initial point - I think the rhetoric is at odds with what people do, which is pirate hollywood "blockbusters" and popular music. With regards
by xyzzy123 14y ago
I agree with your initial point - I think the rhetoric is at odds with what people do, which is pirate hollywood "blockbusters" and popular music.
With regards to the democracy issue, I'm not so sure.
For example, all the major copyright laws and amendments tend to get negotiated in secret between "industry" and the government (at least in NZ).
The NZ govt tried to bring in Bill 92A, ended up repealing it due to widespread protests. After things died down, they passed it (surprise!) "under urgency" in an emergency parliament session dealing with the Christchurch earthquake.
Also, politics suffers from "bundling". I can't unbundle a politician or party's stance on copyright infringement from their stance on say, social welfare or tax rates.
In NZ, both of the major parties supported Bill 92A, which makes "voting them out for it" very difficult.
- rayiner 14y agoBundling forces voters to prioritize issues. If a particular issue consistently fails to decide votes, it just means that voters don't care about the issue relative to other issues. Which makes the whole question of "what do voters really think about the copyright issue" entirely theoretical--what does it matter what people think of an issue that they don't really care about? But that's quite different from the assertion that the copyright issue is insulated from the democratic process.