Comments for Australian Judge Explains Why Three Strikes Isn't Reasonable at http://www.michaelgeist.ca , comment 1 to 75 out of 20 comments http://www.michaelgeist.ca Sat, 25 May 2013 06:06:19 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18807 Take your ball and go home. When you lose, it must always be because the other guy cheated or played in bad faith. At least your final say is age appropriate to your argument. - strunk&white Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:53:43 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18806 Ummm, excuse me. You are the one that "made the leap from specific case to general" by comparing mafia film piracy to oldguy's prohibition analogy regarding filesharing. Frankly this whole line of discussion is getting quite tiring. A brick wall would be more capable of seeing other perspectives than you are so there is little point. As oldguy and tom said, you really are nothing more than a flamebaiter. I notice he has dropped out of the conversation. It is truly unfortunate that our legislators take their advice on copyright reform from your peer group. We will have a far worse copyright system as a result. Creators as well as users will suffer as a result. It is fortunate that through technology, I at least have the ability to mitigate the negative personal effects of this wrongheadedness. It is far from my ideal solution though. C'est la vie. - Captain Hook Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:08:40 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18797 Hook, you deceive no-one but yourself. If you can't see my argument in what I've already written you are more ignorant than even I believe you to be, and that's some ignorant already. YOU made the leap from specific case to general -- I've been careful always to talk about illegal filesharing, so don't try to catch me in your own web of rationalizations. But keep talking because I LOVE hearing how the big bad pirate captain doesn't actually pirate things himself. I know you chickened out of the Australia dare, but this is better by far. Please, laws that I don't respect, please don't prosecute me... all I ever did was download. I'm not one of those criminal uploaders I defend but disavow as soon as the heat is on. And for those bored of Hook's backpedaling -- here is a great write-up that just about covers all I have to say myself about illegal file "sharing." I start with a quote: "The Internet has done much to facilitate the dissemination of information – for which it deserves great praise. At the same time, however, it has revealed the incredible human capacity for rationalization." -- Peter S. Menell, Professor of Law, University of California-Berkeley School of Law ... and the rest: http://bit.ly/baKSyw - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:20:04 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18795 Boy you really can twist arguments. It must be really uncomfortable when you have to twist the words around to such an extent in order to make such a poor argument. We were talking about fileshareing right? You brought the mafia in as though filesharing somehow supported organized crime. You tried to back up this claim by saying that if I bought a DVD from organized crime then shared it, that would mean that filesharing supports organized crime. Using this example in the cigarette analogy would then be to say that that ALL cigarette sharing supports organized crime. Not just those bought from criminals. Now getting back to to file sharing. I have never purchased a pirate DVD. I've never actually ripped and shared any DVD for that matter. I certainly have downloaded a few though. Now pleeeeeeeese explain to me how this behaviour supports organized crime. - Captain Hook Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:17:08 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18794 let me see if I've figured out how arguments happen over here. My next move should be... No, you give YOUR head a shake! Yeah, that's the ticket. I repeat... look, Hook, you don't have to feel guilty about your complicity in criminal behaviour. I wish you would, since I wish that for all criminals, but I'm used to the disappointment. Just stop trying to pretend you are not complicit. Smuggling smokes is a crime, and yes, anyone sharing in the spoils of crime is complicit in the crime, even if they are unaware of their complicity, or just in deep denial. Now, should the punishment be the same for the sharing smoker as it is for the dude with a trunkful of cartons? By the way, thanks for using a physical property analogy -- I think the moral issue is a lot like those surrounding physical property as well -- see, common ground. Anyway, I don't think the punishments should be the same... BUT the difference in severity of penalties has no bearing (not baring) on the moral issue. Illicit, illegal filesharing is teaching a generation that as long as it is unlikely they will be caught, complicity in criminal behaviour -- real, actual criminality -- is okay. Look at the chart in that study I referenced... contract killing is one of the categories. You guys lecture the world about the big bad corporations and their lobbyists, while glossing over your own "corporate" complicity. Hypocrites. Could you upload and fileshare a "legit DVD"? Well, of course, but not legally. The step you take to ignore the copyright notice on that legit DVD, or the step you take to break whatever DRM is trying to stop you from sending endless copies of it around the world for free is the same amoral step organized criminals take in their business model. That step is called willfully breaking the law. You say the law is bad, so we SHOULD break it. Guess what, so does the mafia. Give my head a shake? That's all I do when I read your comments. - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:02:03 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18791 Now I know you're nuts. Sure buying the pirated DVD helps crime. But what the heck does that have to do with file sharing? I could just as easily upload a legit DVD. The data on the P2P network would be identical but there would be no gain for crime. These are two completely unrelated acts. How about this then. I can buy contraband cigarettes from a criminal too. I can then proceed to share those cigarettes with my friends. Using your logic, therefore sharing cigarettes helps organized crime. Give your head a shake and see if you can actually come up with something meaningful. - Captain Hook Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:37:22 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18790 Hook buys pirated DVD from street merchant. Hook uploads pirated un-DRMed movie from DVD to Internet to share with his one million closest friends. Organized crime pockets Hook's money and uses it to kill puppies or something equally horrible. Multiply by amount of uploading to illegal filesharing sites. Voila. Look, Hook, if you don't feel guilty about what you advocate, how could there be guilt by association? I'm saying, clearly, piracy's methods and ethics puts you in bed with organized crime on the moral spectrum by which we run our society. It's your choice how you feel about that. Look back through this and other threads. My argument all along has been about the morality of piracy. Where the file comes from is a moral issue, like it or not. Red Herring! Red Herring! Do you know any other rhetoric catch-phrases? - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:21:36 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18789 Fine. I've been busted by the grammar police. At least they don't have as much power as the copyright police.... yet. Definitely a tangent. I'd be happy to come over to your place and explain things to you some time. I notice you've made some changes there quite recently. When I get a chance I'll pop by and make a contribution myself. "Are you telling me you don't think the movie files you and other teenagers torrent could not possibly have come from mobbed up DVDs? How naive are you, exactly? -- give me a measurement I can work with." Not nearly as much as you apparently. Would you like to enlighten me as to exactly how organized crime profits from individuals who share files over the Net. If anything, torrenting movies would reduce the market for pirated DVDs as it would give people a free alternative to the flea market stalls you are complaining about. "there also exist organized crime syndicates who use piracy profits to fund far more dangerous criminal activity. Now, for extra credit, guess whose position is closer to the organized criminals on that spectrum, yours or mine?" This is a total red herring, but since you bring it up, the answer is -- yours! At least in terms of what helps organized crime profit. You want to reinforce copyright monopolies, allowing rights holders to better maximize the revenue from their monopolies. This means prices will be higher and will create a better market for crime. Go ahead and ask anyone who sells DVDs for a living if they'd actually like to see the abolishment of copyright or even anything close to it. No way. They want strong copyright laws just like you. But like I said it is a red herring because you have yet to demonstrate exactly how any organized crime benefits from file sharing. This is another one of your poor attempts at guilt by association. Pitiful. - Captain Hook Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:01:50 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18788 I think you mean "bear" the full weight of the law. It might be a typo, but I doubt it. Let me help you with your confusion. Here's how my mind works. I get involved in a line of inquiry, such as "is there a moral justification for Internet piracy," and I try to gather as much information as possible about it, to be well-informed and not come across as a buffoon masquerading as an expert on something I know very little about -- for an example of that kind of thing, check out the first commenter on this thread over at Sookman's blog. http://www.barrysookman.com/2010/02/12/digital-copying-and-libraries-copyright-and-licensing-considerations/#comments How embarrassing. You'd think the guy would either read about the law, or admit upfront how little he knows on the subject. Anyway, that's a satisfying tangent but a tangent nonetheless -- my point is it is probably enlightening to some to realize that along the moral spectrum between respecting copyright (however inconvenient) while attempting to help it into the digital age, and just flat out supporting illegal filesharing as a practice, there also exist organized crime syndicates who use piracy profits to fund far more dangerous criminal activity. Now, for extra credit, guess whose position is closer to the organized criminals on that spectrum, yours or mine? Are you telling me you don't think the movie files you and other teenagers torrent could not possibly have come from mobbed up DVDs? How naive are you, exactly? -- give me a measurement I can work with. But why talk about morality -- morality is relative, no? - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:27:51 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18787 whitey, I must say it is absolutely fascinating to try to figure out how your mind works. Likely an impossible task, but a fascinating exercise none the less. I'm sure it would surprise you to learn that there is nothing inconsistent with this report you dug up and what oldguy and I have been advocating all along. There is a world of difference between selling pirated DVDs and supporting filesharing (me) or not supporting DRM (both of us). Frankly I am in total agreement with you that "selling pirated films is not a victimless crime", and anyone that does so should bare the full weight of the law. Does that make you happy? The funny thing is that we are days into this thread and yet you think this has some relivance to what we've been talking about. Amazing! - Captain Hook Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:50:16 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18784 I've been doing some reading (radical concept, I know) around soccer match-fixing and organized crime. Some fascinating literature out there. Anyway, in Declan Hill's The Fix, I came across a tangential description of pirated movie stalls in an Asian market. Various stalls had been burnt to the ground. Seems the mafia controlling film piracy doesn't much like independent competition. So, I looked around the Internet and came up with this report: "Abstract This report argues that buying and selling pirated films is not a victimless crime. Because profits are huge, the cost of entry minimal, and the risks relatively low, organized-crime groups worldwide use counterfeiting to fund serious criminal activities. Three case studies offer evidence that terrorist groups have also supported their operations through film piracy. Stronger measures are recommended to combat a problem that threatens the global information economy, public safety, and national security." http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9417/index1.html If this line of reserach pans out, I'm going to have to congratulate you on your prohibition analogy, oldguy. It looks like the comparison might be very accurate -- though not in the way you intended. Of course, I did mention Al Capone before, but no-one wanted to hear about him. - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:24:02 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18771 Strunk & White is not a law firm. It is a reference to the writing manual The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. You should try and find a pirated copy of it somewhere and claim your portion of the cultural commons. Fast. Lord knows you need it. And while you're at it, you should compare notes with Hook because he actually is saying that fair-dealing enabled DRM is as impossible as a perpetual motion machine. So, oldguy, because there will always be pirates we should remove all barriers around our property? How about thinking of fair-dealing enabled DRM as a "Please Respect My Property" sign? Which question are you waiting for an answer on? Wait, before you ask again, maybe you and Tom could show me where I've indicated I am against fair dealing, or that I want perpetual copyright (get Hook in on that search as well). Copyright for authors and creators only? I have pointed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights many times -- copyright is for everyone. The CBoC understands that. I'm guessing Geist understands that. Why no-one can convince you geniuses of it is beyond me. - strunk&white Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:14:47 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18765 Thanks Tom. Your point is taken.. I have tried to give our lawyerly titled participant the benefit of the doubt, obviously too many times. - oldguy Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:20:25 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18764 Ah, but you don't want a rebuttal. I'm not really sure what you want, perhaps to bait people into a flame war. You are welcome to correct that impression of course. You might start by answering the questions I asked earlier in this thread. And now my rebuttal of the only real point in your last posting. Bono is espousing a line that implies it is easy or doable with current technology. Read his words in context. He is advocating a "solution" that will solve nothing. You are doing no better in this sense: "a bunch of technobafflers claiming there's only one way." No, I'm saying that the way Bono (and you) are advocating simply will not work. Same with DRM and TPM. Those "technobafflers" you hold in disdain will be hardly be impacted by DRM, and what they do will be duplicated over and over again via sharing knowledge and information. It is an ineffectual attempt to address the wrong problem, that causes far more problems for the average person who attempts to obey the law than those that disregard it. So it will happen openly and widely regardless of legality, effectively turning everyone into a criminal. The answer doesn't lie in better technical measures or increased enforcement. Look for the root cause, the disrespect that those masses seem to have for today's copyright law. Why. What has changed. What behaviour, values, or environment has changed to bring about that disrespect. Take their views seriously. Understand them. The world has changed in the last 25 years. Historical "tried and true" ways just cannot work anymore. .. "but I doubt any government will allow the incentive to create to be completely debased by a bunch of technobafflers" Personally, I would leave understanding of workable technical solutions to the techies, interpreting law to the judges, and government to the people. Our system has built in ways to update and change laws that no longer fit the needs of the people... - oldguy Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:14:27 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18761 Why does everyone here entertain this strunken&white person? (rhetorical question) You obviously know by now strunken&white only respects strunken&white's opinion. Before the New Year, I saw a lot of winded attempts to convince strunken&white of Copyright Law's fair dealing inclusions; however, strunken&white insists Copyright Law is meant for "authors/creators" and nobody else. Nothing has changed since, including more winded and futile attempts. This is funny because if you all just ignore strunken&white, this narcissist will just disappear, forgotten. But no, you keep feeding this narcissist, who won't provide any realistic evidence for this narcissist's position, except the one mindset that copyright should last an eternity and "authors/creators" must have all authority including the powers of the police, judge, jury, and executioner - not to mention all filesharers are immoral scums of the earth. This reminds me of the oil baron who posted his $10000 piece in the papers trying to debunk global warming, when he does Zero science. "Shoot a valuable pearl at a sparrow overhead, and the world will laugh at you [oil baron]!" proverb, I think. Ah yes, quotations on "authors/creators", it simply means this narcissist doesn't believe in authors and creators anyway. Draw your own conclusions from here because the real theft is stealing rights from authors and creators in contracts, not some infringing Uploads. (Please don't confuse Download with Upload, like our news media for their own agenda.) - tom Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:43:05 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18759 "You don't like the potential bad effects of DRM, so instead of creating or even imagining a system that would do the good without allowing the bad such as unintended trespass on fair dealing we just get a blanket call for no DRM." Gosh your right whitey. How silly of me. Why don't you help me image a solution for those problems. After that I'll show you my really great perpetual motion machine. I haven't quite got all the bugs worked out yet. Perhaps you could help me imagine a solution them too. Really. I mean the third law of thermodynamics is really just a political excuse created by the oil companies so that we couldn't all enjoy free energy. Nobody wants to completely debase copyright, but we want solutions that are realistic and fair. If the government wont listen to them, then the "technobafflers" will make their own solutions which unfortunately will be contrary to existing government policy. Too bad for them. - Captain Hook Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:36:25 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18758 What is it exactly I'm supposed to be ashamed about in that statement of mine you keep quoting? I still believe it's a pose, and I explained my position on that in my very next comment. Sheesh, you guys and your pathetic "gotcha" moments. Are you sure you and Hook aren't the same person? "Wrong," is at about his level of rebuttal. Bono doesn't know fully encrypted connections therefore his opinion on the rights of creators must be off base. I've heard this line before. You don't like the potential bad effects of DRM, so instead of creating or even imagining a system that would do the good (limited creator control -- what the CBoC might call the "incentive to create") without allowing the bad such as unintended trespass on fair dealing (still a debatable point, btw) we just get a blanket call for no DRM. Because "if we understood the technology" we'd know there's only one way. Bull whacky -- there's only one way because politically you only want one way. I don't want anyone to feel restricted in their fair dealings, but I doubt any government will allow the incentive to create to be completely debased by a bunch of technobafflers claiming there's only one way. You may think you have some god ideas, but ain't no-one going to listen to them while you stand on that side of the piracy line. No-one in power at least. - strunk&white Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:18:12 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18757 "Let me think about it, oldguy.... nope, it's a pose." Remember, you said it, I didn't. "You will, but you shouldn't. Which pretty much also describes your whole position on copyright." Wrong. Which logically follows from the above. You don't take it seriously, so you don't pay attention, so you don't get it right. - oldguy Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:10 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18756 "We know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content," - Bono And there speaks someone that knows absolutely nothing about technology. An analogy might be this statement: "We know it is perfectly possible to block access to a phone number, so it's also perfectly possible to block certain words from being said over the telephone." There is a world of difference between these requirements. The capability to do the first does not equate to the capability to doing the second. The ISPs and the media conglomerates now realize this, which is why they are pushing for a carte blanche to exercise the first capability. If Bono knew anything at all about the technology behind the "effort to stop child pornography" and the "effort to suppress online dissent", he would know these equate to simply blocking access to a phone number. A long way from content monitoring, especially with fully encrypted connections. - oldguy Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:36:31 +0100 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4760/125/#comment-18753 ... how I hate typos. Also technical, one "a". - strunk&white Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:06:38 +0100