The Glade 4.0

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... er-did.ars

Pretty sickening.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Why? They're helping copyright holders defend their right to profit from the distribution of their copyrighted content.

Does it suck up a lot of court time? I'm not sure. How much time does it take to get the subpoena for the ISPs? It sounds like the cases, once that data is obtained, are being settled out of court, rather than going on to clog the court system with actual trials.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This is such a great issue. On one side you have people wanting to be awarded compensatory and punitive damages that are just wildly beyond anything rational, and require these speculative leaps on the order of "just sharing this file means 50,000 people didn't go buy the song" or something. And like this article gets into, there's a burgeoning market of people who will basically cave to extortion to avoid the greater cost of litigation. And on the other side, well not the actual defendants' side, but the people who are generally commenting on this kind of thing, you have people making these fascinating constructs to defend, in a nutshell, taking **** without paying for it and then redistributing it, because, you know, the business model is antiquated and they just had it coming. Or something. There is just so much wrong, it's hard to find somewhere to start.

The thing I love is that the extortion can be avoided quite simply, too. People just don't want "so don't pirate" to be the answer.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So that makes the extortion right?

Copyright owners will never win. Copyright is an artificial and bizarre concept that cannot withstand technology. It doesn't belong to the people who are taking it, because it doesn't belong to anybody. It's thought, it's data, it's air. It's common domain. The law will never recognize that, which is fine because current government models which support this ridiculous concept are collapsing under their own weight anyway. Digital anarchy will eventually reign supreme, and we'll be better off for it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

^^

Basically these law firms have created online speed traps and everyone wants to cry foul.

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And until it does, if you get caught, you get to be extorted and/or judged against. I'm fine with that. It's just pretty silly to cry foul when it happens.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

You can be extorted and/or judged against.

My courts won't force ISPs to give up the names (or even keep records) of who had what IP at any given time without some pretty damning proof of crime being committed.

Anyway, it's not the hardcore pirates they're catching. It's people who don't even know how to use a computer, and don't realize they've been sharing music. (Or worse yet, those who don't know how to secure a wireless router.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Kinda anecdotally, as far as that goes, I recently upgraded from DSL to 18Mb fiber when it became available (AT&T UVerse). When they installed the residential gateway, its default config was to have WPA2-PSK enabled, and a business card to hand the end user with a password on it. Kinda nice considering all the open networks named Linksys that I encounter anywhere I go.

I thought I read a while back that courts were starting to fight back against the shotgun John Doe approach by saying you couldn't sue 300 (or whatever) John Does in the same case. The RIAA was supposed to file each John Doe lawsuit independently. Then again, I think this was just one judge who said that, and I think the RIAA might've just gone to a different jurisdiction.

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I get this, but it's problematic. Suppose that the police were just beating the ever-loving **** out of people the caught shop-lifting. I can certainly understand not having much sympathy for anyone so affected, but "who cares? It only happens to thieves!" wouldn't be the right answer to that situation. Wrongdoings of the defendants doesn't justify wrongdoing by the prosecution.

I think Jerun pretty much has the right of it. Both "sides" are screwed up and using really shitty justification for their actions. Turning to pragmatics, then, I'm inclined to believe that the IP police are presently doing more harm to society than the copyright offenders.

As to the law firms...I'm going to regard this much like I do personal injury lawyers. In principle, there's nothing wrong with them. In practice, though, they're frequently nothing more than legalized extortioneers who damage society rather than defending rights.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Dirtbags trying to extort money.

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Holy shitsnacks!

So you think its right to extort thousands of dollars out of someone for downloading a hundred bucks (at retail) worth of media?

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Holy shitsnacks!

I didn't say it's right.

I said it's not wrong to help IP owners protect what's theirs. I think it could be done better, but this is a better avenue to do so than ignoring that piracy exists.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

No this is the same as saying that mall security is writing $20 tickets to shoplifters rather than arresting them. The published penalty for theft of intellectual property and redistribution is $50,000 these people are instead paying much less than if they were taken to court and found guilty.

If you didn't steal and distribute the materials in question then you can always go to court and force them to prove your guilt.

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There is a problem with copyright law. One can not actually own an idea, and with the current state of our copyright law, piracy actually does need to exist for the good of society.

It took us over two hundred years to settle who invented calculus. Think of where our society might be if only Newton were allowed to work on it. Or, **** it, go with both of them. What if only Newton and Leibniz had been allowed to do work in that field of math, since they're both credited with having developed it independently of one another. The reason our technology is where it is today, the reason we have things like airplanes and the internet, is because other brilliant minds who came later were allowed to take someone else's idea and improve on it, and they were allowed to do it without paying some sort of premium.

Copyright law doesn't allow that. It's far too stringent. It does not protect the progenitors of ideas, it enforces monopolies. It goes well beyond giving credit where credit is due. For ****'s sake, Walt Disney is dead. There is no reason Mickey Mouse should not have entered the public domain.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.