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Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, has taken steps to refute the notion of many in the music publishing industry that each digital copy has a certain value--upon which should be based damages if someone is found to have committed copyright infringement.
Sunde has built a machine from a Raspberry PI, called Kopismashin, designed to make copies of single tracks at the rate of 100 copies per second [and drops them to /dev/null].
"I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy.... [F]ollowing their rhetoric and mindset it will bankrupt them," says Sunde.
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What's a Digital Copy Worth? Not Much, Says Peter Sunde's New Machine
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You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:59PM
What infuriates me is that we are using taxpayer money to enforce a private corporation's monopoly.
Well, we use tax payer's money to enforce laws that protect your property too, don't we? Your car, house, bank account? Pretty much every aspect of anything that can be called "property" is enforced by laws and police, at tax payer's expense. Its one of the things that every civilization sets up and enforces.
You can't just go help yourself to a truck off of the Power Companies parking lot on the basis that the Power Company is a monopoly.
The problem might lie in the fact that society allows monopolies to exist long after the economic necessity of having them disappeared.
But you can't blame the power company for _being_ a monopoly, and deny it protection under the law.
Allegedly there is competition in the music/film industry, so in theory, its not even a monopoly.
However, the fact that big media built an organization that exists solely to enforce the ill-gotten copyright of all the labels puts the lie to any pretense of competition. When it comes to enforcement, you never hear about a certain record company going after pirates, its always some trade organization acting something like a monopoly. I'm not sure how much of that organization is funded by tax payer money, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some is.
The problem here is that copyrights are just too damn long.
Also artist contracts are predatory.
Fix those things. Limit copyright, and allow only rental of copyrights for a time certain, not perpetual transfer.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:07PM
We don't have a history of doing that with imaginary property though. We'd step in with regards to physical counterfeit products because there's fraud involved. But barring a large scale commercial venture selling items that aren't properly licensed for fraud, the whole thing was a civil matter. The only harm involved was the violation of a licensing agreement or contract and that's always been something for the civil courts to deal with, not the criminal courts.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that if people are making a business misrepresenting digital files as properly licensed and distributing them for a price shouldn't be held accountable for the fraud inherent in the scheme. But, people do object to trying non-profit piracy in the criminal courts rather than making the owners shoulder the burden of enforcing their licenses the way that every other industry would have to.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Sunday December 27 2015, @01:59AM
What infuriates me is that we are using taxpayer money to enforce a private corporation's monopoly.
Well, we use tax payer's money to enforce laws that protect your property too, don't we? Your car, house, bank account? Pretty much every aspect of anything that can be called "property" is enforced by laws and police, at tax payer's expense. Its one of the things that every civilization sets up and enforces.
Yes, but this is not actual property. It's just a government grant of monopoly privilege that many people have started to call "property." The truth is if I truly own media like a disc or a piece of paper, I am morally justified putting whatever data on it I want. The idea of you "owning" a pattern of data is not something I agree with.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday December 27 2015, @02:57AM
While I understand that viewpoint, you have to understand that because this artificial monopoly was in fact issued by the society as a whole, agreed upon at the very founding of the nation, the monopoly remains the law of the land, indeed, the law of the world.
The "patterns", as you so glibly dismiss them, are created by people, some of whom exhibit unusual talent, and others are willing to pay for the "patterns". Why do you want them? Because they are appealing? Because you couldn't make the same yourself? They clearly have value to you. You are willing to take significant risk to acquire them.
Yet you dismiss them as patterns and devalue the creative process that the rest of society agrees does exist and is worth granting a temporary monopoly over the patterns to the creator.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Sunday December 27 2015, @03:23AM
I don't consider myself to be bound by agreements my ancestors made. If I did I'd be in the Catholic church, I guess. In fact I would say those agreements were wrong in the first place because not everybody agreed to them but everybody was bound by them. I agree with a lot of people that those agreements simply hold no authority [praxeology.net].
Sure, some people's worlds will change if they suddenly can't earn a living from a long-standing grant of monopoly privilege backed up by government force. But people's worlds change every day. If you make your living from a banana tree every day and one day it doesn't have bananas, you're like all of the rest of us and will have to come up with some other way to support yourself. Or if you make your living from forcing dark people to pick cotton ... you get the idea.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday December 27 2015, @03:57AM
I don't consider myself to be bound by agreements my ancestors made.
Then you are in for a very tough life.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Sunday December 27 2015, @03:27AM
Yet you dismiss them as patterns and devalue the creative process that the rest of society agrees does exist and is worth granting a temporary monopoly over the patterns to the creator.
No, the rest of society does not agree that it is worth granting a temporary monopoly over patterns. I doubt even half of society agrees with that, and the number is shrinking all the time.
As to whether that means I think the creative process is valuable or not - that's more of a religious question if you ask me. I used to play in high school band, and in football season we'd march out onto the field while the school district announcer gave a long speech about a bunch of stuff. One thing he always said, referencing the football team, was "do not by your actions cause them to doubt the value of their hard work, or of athletics." I always wondered "why? What difference does it make if some people think athletics is valuable and some don't? Why can't people have their own personal opinions about whether its valuable to do grueling training for football or not? Why must we all agree?" The basic gist of it was: hold our beliefs and value systems, or you are a bad person. That's a religion, if you ask me, and I don't share it.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings