3 ms·

This is a straw man. I primarily objected to the use of the word "progress" as a euphemism for "copyright infringement". It is fundamentally wrong to support o

by sfk 17y ago

This is a straw man. I primarily objected to the use of the word "progress" as a euphemism for "copyright infringement". It is fundamentally wrong to support one kind of infringement while condemning another. The damages awarded in the U.S. are completely out of hand and this needs to be addressed immediately, but that is a separate issue.

gloob 17y ago
It is fundamentally wrong to support one kind of infringement while condemning another. I would disagree, actually. By way of comparison, most countries have multiple distinct crimes or not-crimes that "killing someone" can fall into: killing an enemy soldier in wartime is generally okayed, offing a fetus is okayed in many countries, killing someone by accident is (broadly speaking) manslaughter, and doing it intentionally (if it doesn't fall into one of the above categories) is murder. I don't see any terribly compelling reason why similar divisions couldn't be worked out for the copyright issue.
- roc 17y ago
  It already was worked out. It was formerly separated out into theft, piracy and infringement and commercial and non-commercial variants. But the entrenched interests have been busily working and spending away to knock down those distinctions, because it prohibited their ability to utterly financially destroy an accused file-sharer to make an example to the others. The distinctions also weakened their attempted argument of conflating the morality and legality of personal sharing, format shifting and time shifting with commercial infringement and outright theft.
  - roc 17y ago
    Why exactly did that get downvoted? Is the No Electronic Theft Act that criminalized some non-commercial re-distribution not part of the public record? Is the RIAAs attempt to get the justice department pursue file-sharers under the No Electronic Theft Act not a published fact? Did the "Pirate Act" not seek to criminalize a broader group of non-commercial infringement? Did the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 not shift the burden of policing copyright from the copyright holder to colleges and universities under threat of withholding federal financial assistance for non-compliance? Do the leaked ACTA documents not show yet-another attempted expansion for treating file-sharing as a criminal act? Is the RIAAs legal strategy against peer-to-peer users not commonly known? It's not like I'm spinning conspiracy theories here. There are stacks of information in the public record about the content industry's push to remove the distinctions between commercial and non-commercial and civil and criminal infringement.

by sfk 17y ago

gloob 17y ago

It is fundamentally wrong to support one kind of infringement while condemning another. I would disagree, actually. By way of comparison, most countries have multiple distinct crimes or not-crimes that "killing someone" can fall into: killing an enemy soldier in wartime is generally okayed, offing a fetus is okayed in many countries, killing someone by accident is (broadly speaking) manslaughter, and doing it intentionally (if it doesn't fall into one of the above categories) is murder. I don't see any terribly compelling reason why similar divisions couldn't be worked out for the copyright issue.

roc 17y ago
It already was worked out. It was formerly separated out into theft, piracy and infringement and commercial and non-commercial variants. But the entrenched interests have been busily working and spending away to knock down those distinctions, because it prohibited their ability to utterly financially destroy an accused file-sharer to make an example to the others. The distinctions also weakened their attempted argument of conflating the morality and legality of personal sharing, format shifting and time shifting with commercial infringement and outright theft.
- roc 17y ago
  Why exactly did that get downvoted? Is the No Electronic Theft Act that criminalized some non-commercial re-distribution not part of the public record? Is the RIAAs attempt to get the justice department pursue file-sharers under the No Electronic Theft Act not a published fact? Did the "Pirate Act" not seek to criminalize a broader group of non-commercial infringement? Did the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 not shift the burden of policing copyright from the copyright holder to colleges and universities under threat of withholding federal financial assistance for non-compliance? Do the leaked ACTA documents not show yet-another attempted expansion for treating file-sharing as a criminal act? Is the RIAAs legal strategy against peer-to-peer users not commonly known? It's not like I'm spinning conspiracy theories here. There are stacks of information in the public record about the content industry's push to remove the distinctions between commercial and non-commercial and civil and criminal infringement.