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posted by takyon on Sunday November 08 2015, @08:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-say-no dept.

Dissident Voice reports:

A mass mobilization in Washington, DC from November 14 to 18 has been announced to begin the next stage of the campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

[...] "At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations", said Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance. She continued "The reality is that without trade justice there cannot be climate justice, food justice; there cannot be health justice or wage justice. That is why people are mobilizing to stop the TPP."

[...] The groups will begin their protests [on Monday morning, November 16] at the US Trade Representative building on 17th Street with the message that the TPP betrays the people, planet, and democracy.

This will be followed that evening by a protest that begins at the US Chamber of Commerce and White House then marches along K Street and ends at the Reagan International Trade Center.

The next day, the groups will have an international focus protesting at multiple sites along Embassy Row to stand in solidarity with people around the world who are fighting to stop the TPP.

On the final day, the groups will focus on Congress.

Previously: Trans-Pacific Partnership Text Released
Trans-Pacific Partnership: "Intellectual Property" Fears Become Reality


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @02:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @02:06PM (#260760)

    We also know, to a 99.998% degree of certainly, that the AC complaining about the modding here is actually the parent troll.

    You are correct. I was still asking the question, however. I do not consider my posts on this thread to be trolls, they were actually my opinions.

    It seems that anyone who supports the TPP and blogs about it here, is automatically considered a troll and/or shill, so their posts must be quickly ushered out of sight. That is just stupid. Your slogan ought to be "Free speech is posting something confirming what the regs here believe."

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @07:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @07:20PM (#260871)

    Due to Poe's law, it is difficult to distinguish between ill-informed opinion and deliberate trolling.

    A normal troll test is to check if the poster's argument is self-consistent.

    If an argument ignores known facts, that may be because the writer is uninformed, or deliberately spreading FUD. It is hard to tell. If does not help that the "powers that be" are known to use socks to steer discussion or suppress discussion they don't like.

    Of course, that last test can get awkward when people from different reference frames meet. What if the "known facts" in an echo-chamber of a community are actually wrong? If you follow the principle of assuming good faith, both parties should try to find a impartial third party they can agree on.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @08:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @08:55PM (#260921)

    Someone may have modded those ignorant comments down, but they were not deleted. I browse at -1 and so can anyone else, so I'm not sure how this is a free speech issue.

  • (Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:31AM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:31AM (#260997) Journal

    1. Introduction

    Ok, fine, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, only because I have a mighty rant that's bent pent up. Heh, maybe you could say I'm a nerd who's rantily frustrated!

    First of all, it sure the hell is your natural right (given by a sky wizard if you want) to upload and download anything you damned please. Listen up.

    Copyright and patent are not natural rights. They are not real property or personal property. This is why we call them imaginary property. Like imaginary numbers, imaginary property may only exist in our imaginations, but nevertheless it can come in handy. They're something that is part of the law because we allow Congress to create a framework [archives.gov]

    …To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;…

    Emphasis mine. Were copyright still limited, I would have a great deal more respect for it. However, I'm not going to go into details and try to negotiate what I think is a limited time and what I think is reasonable for copyrights. The point is, copyrights (and patents) are imaginary property. Any time I see the letters IP I read either “internet protocol” or ”imaginary property,” never “intellectual property.”

    I will however say that I believe that current copyright law has pushed the bounds of constitutionality to the breaking point, and TPP and TTIP promise to give a new legal theory for why we should accept ridiculous copyright laws and enforcement.

    2. Copyright

    Am I beating this drum because I'm one of those people who says herp derr it's in the Constitution, the Word of God Himself as Channeled by the Founding Fathers? No, because then I would be making the same mistake you are making. You're not thinking about the position you claim to have taken critically. Instead you're making a fundamentally authoritarian argument.

    Throughout history, people have told each other folklore perhaps around a campfire or by the fireplace. Many stories we know and love such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc, began not in the hive mind of some living-dead corporation (to borrow from Aristarchus up there) as an attempt to create a popular franchise. See what I did there? I saw something I thought was good, then I copied it and changed it slightly. The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen (see Frozen for the animated movie adaptation) are a slightly different case, since, while I am no folklorist myself so I may be wrong, these are mostly original stories. Even there, behold the power of folklore and archetype. It is without a doubt that Andersen was greatly influenced by folklore and archetype. He didn't just make those stories up out of whole cloth; one can trace the hero story back through thousands of years of history and it includes some smash hits of all time such as stories of heroes like Jesus, Gilgamesh, and Buddha, etc and also classics like Journey to the West (see Dragonball for a modern retelling).

    My personal favorite kind of folklore is “creepypasta.” Just look how people have taken to the digital campfire that is internet forums to create entirely an entirely new mythos, including fan favorites like the Slenderman, tales of certain stretches of road where one may encounter supernatural dangers on certain nights, the Holder series, influences from urban legends, etc. These all go even further back to spooky tales people would tell around a campfire. If you're up to it, get a copy of Alvin Schwarz's The Scary Stories Treasury, then flip to the section at the end of each of what was originally 3 different books. Schwarz is an actual folklorist. Observe the different variations and retellings for each story he encountered and considered before penning his own versions.

    Here's the point I'm trying to come around to. Our culture, our folklore, the traditional characters we know and love, are called the public domain. The imaginary property lobby wants us to believe that when we torrent a movie, we're stealing from content creators. There is so much wrong with that. First of all, the word stealing is completely incorrect. Nobody has a right to get paid (sidenote: basic income could only ever be something like copyright—a compromise, not a natural right). Additionally, the content creator still has their copy. No content creator is being deprived of anything except in an imaginary, and according to research, dubious sense.¹

    So, ok, at this point you're probably looking for practical examples. I have two.

    Maybe you liked the Star Trek reboot and Star Trek into Darkness, so hey. Many of us disliked the reboot movie (I liked it for one), but Star Trek into Darkness was so utterly bad… that's a rant for another time. However, a bunch of fans and amateur producers, directors, and actors got together and said, “We want moar Star Trek; we want proper Star Trek!” So now we have a variety of fan productions, some of them quite good, that were entirely crowdfunded. However, these fan productions, the best of which have attracted people who actually played the characters they play (Icheb, Chekov, Sulu, [Yeoman/Lieutenant] Rand, Apollo et al to name a few off the top of my head), only exist with the blessings of Paramount and CBS. In a sane system, ST:TOS would have become part of the public domain by now, not because I want free shit, but because it's become a part of our culture. We can't even talk about Alcubierre drives without evoking the Enterprise's warp drive. The particle zoo of newer Trek (chronotons to name the worst offender) along with reversing the polarity of something consistently get mentioned when razzing made-up sci-fi physics.

    My other example is not as strong, but let's return to Schwartz. On Youtube, two productions have taken it upon themselves to create series where they interpret the scary stories that Schwartz collected. I can only assume that Schwartz's estate understood that as a folklorist, he would have understood that telling and retelling stories is how culture happens. In particular, look up both interpretations of the story High Beams to see what I mean. One is fairly close to the story as collected by Schwartz. The other adds new elements and perhaps an even more modern spin with the added scary element of a police officer that we can never be sure isn't trigger happy who completely misjudges the situation.

    3. Corporations

    Hookay. I hope I've established that obscene copyright laws steal from the public domain. Obscene copyright laws steal, in a very real and non-imaginary sense, from we the people and from our culture. Disney has what, two retellings of Cinderella and two of Sleeping Beauty? Each time they retell the story, they steal from us one retelling of Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty and lock it in the Vault. That is criminal in my view.

    Moving on. Here's the other thing that the trifecta of TPP, TTIP, and TISA threaten to do: usurp our constitutional government and replace it with corporate oligarchy. To put it simply: corporations are meant to be legal fictions that exist for the public good. However, this is an incredibly dangerous goal of that trifecta.

    Again, incorporation is not a natural right. I have the natural right to engage in the free trade of goods and services as an individual. I might even band together with some LGBT types I know to offer a service or product for trans folks. The option we have the natural right to use is the partnership. But, not so quick there, Tsubasa! Say one of the partners does something untoward. Well, now, all of the partners' heads are on the chopping block. That's how natural rights work. So, we have invented a compromise, a legal fiction: the corporation.

    As you look back through history, you will see that governments have granted various forms of corporate charters sparingly, at least before the 19th century. In the 19th century, it was decided that as a practical matter for resolving contract disputes (entering into a contract or covenant being one of those natural rights) that a corporation should be considered a person. For the purposes of contract disputes. Because it's just practical to do that. No argument here. However, we quickly slipped down the slippery slope. (Well, in an historical sense of quickly.)

    Over 150 years later, the corporation has emerged as a full albeit bloodless, living-dead person. Corporations cannot be put in jail and they cannot be sentenced to death, no matter how many individuals they kill or maim through lack of safety culture, pollution, or you name it. Yet, in the Citizens United decision, corporations were granted the full natural rights of a person. This is a gross perversion of natural rights. Only men (#include <women.h>—I am an Amazon after all) should be eligible for natural rights, because a community may put a man in prison or if his transgressions are egregious enough, a community may sentence him to death. Instead, we have “too big to fail.”

    Corporations are only allowed to exist, and must only be allowed to exist, to serve the government. Any legitimate government must serve the ultimate source of its power, the people. However, things become corrupt over time. Perhaps it's just a giant coincidence and tragedy of the commons. I will say this however. Open your eyes. I have been using the phrase “Masters of the Universe” to describe TPTB (the powers that be), but Occam's razor has left me with no choice but to throw in with Phoenix's example of legitimate usage of the term Illuminati.

    The Illuminati wish to make multinational—I would argue for the term transnational—corporations the masters of government. No so fast, Tsubasa!, you say. Aren't corporations just a bunch of people?

    Well, this gets to the core of the problem. This is the question you must answer sufficiently if you want to throw in with the notion that corporations are just a bunch of people: how much say does the janitor have?

    4. Conclusion

    This has all happened before, and I pray that this does not end in tears. There will be tears along the way. It will get worse before it gets better. There was once a series of legislation that got rammed through. Let's call them the SA, DA, and TA. Then came the MGA and finally the IA. Afterwards was the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the rest is history.

    Let's see where we stand. We've made improvements to our system of government and expanded the number of boxes available for use. Please use these in the order listed for best happiness of all:

    ☑ Soap box
    ☑ Ballot box
    ☐ Jury box
    ☐ Ammo box

    Special provision: please check off the item labeled “Jury box” should the general public fail to understand the natural right of jury nullification while they still have it. Were I to indulge my cynical nature, I would have checked it off.

    ¹ I'm going to ignore the complexities of the reality of how the corporations steal from the creatives in the end.

    • (Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:44AM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:44AM (#261002) Journal

      Ugh, my apologies for the typos. I suppose something of that minimal length is something that one should print out to paper, wait until the next day, then proofread with a red pen handy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:31AM (#261051)

      Copyright law is very mature, and it doesn't forbid works that are merely inspired by others. Case in point: Dynasty [imdb.com], an award-winning TV show about a warring family in the oild business, which was more than a little like Dallas [imdb.com]. Here's another: Microsoft's .NET and C#, which bears more than a little resemblance to Sun's Java and JVM. Copyright does not prevent anyone from "standing on the shoulders of giants". What it does do is set laws against lazy, greedy people thinking they have the right to the fruits of other people's labor, w/o doing any work themselves beyond google searches and the like, just because some hordes of shitheads camped out in Slashdot posting their theories about information wanting to be free.

      • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:27AM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:27AM (#261561)

        What it does do is set laws against lazy, greedy people thinking they have the right to the fruits of other people's labor

        What it does is allow government thugs to censor information and stifle competition by giving people government-enforced monopolies over implementations of ideas (enforced by censorship). Someone copying some data that someone else released to the public in some way can't do any harm because no one has lost anything. There may have been an initial investment of time and money that some person took to assemble the data, but the people who later copy the result had no part in that decision; it was not forced upon you, so you cannot say that that initial investment is a 'loss' that people create when they make unauthorized copies of some work. You have created a victimless crime, and to make matters worse, you infringe upon people's fundamental right to free speech while doing so. Copyright should not exist in any form.

        Of course, it's just as easy to characterize you as a freedom-hating monopolist scumbag. I notice that there are countless attacks on people who care more about freedom than they do about your ability to make money by having a government-enforced monopoly over ideas that infringes upon privacy property and free speech rights. Making money is not wrong in and of itself, but certain methods of making money can be wrong. Censorship is not the right way, even if it did work (which it doesn't).

        just because some hordes of shitheads camped out in Slashdot posting their theories about information wanting to be free.

        Information doesn't want and can't want anything because it is not a living being.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:42AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:42AM (#261172) Journal

    OMG!

    I do not consider my posts on this thread to be trolls, they were actually my opinions.

    I seriously do not know which is more regrettable, that you did not know you were trolling, or that what you were trolling with were your actual opinions. You do realize, of course, that just because something is your actual opinion, that does not mean it is still not trolling. Let me pose yet another example. "Microsoft has finally liberated us from the endless upgrade regime buy forcing Windows Ten Upgrades." What do you reckon the odds are that such a post is from an actual Soylentil, instead of a Micro$oft shill?