Re: Pro-IP bill passed the house: User-created conte nt providers, beware!

> From: Bob
> You've got it wrong -- it's the corporations that need 
> abolishing.

I'd agree that corporations shouldn't be considered equal to human beings,
and thus should have no rights except those arising from their human
constituents.

> Copyright (and other forms of IP) is a fine thing, so long as  it 
> belongs to creators, rather than (undying and polymorphous) employers.

You believe that a person has the natural right to prevent any other from
copying or making derivatives of their published works?

NB An author has a natural right not to be plagiarised or otherwise
misattributed, but this right isn't protected by copyright.

> Nonetheless, the reality is that neither such broad 
> reformation is within reach.

Unless each of us outstretches our arms instead of believing ourselves
congenitally enfeebled.

> 
> However, I believe Jon's concern was that the bill in 
> question empowers IP holders in ways that overstep reason.

And I'm suggesting that if you support corporations' commercial privileges
such as copyright and patent you can't complain when the corporations'
representatives take steps necessary to enforce their privileges against
continued violation by the public - and those nefarious businesses that
facilitate such violation.

Do you allow members of the public to make unauthorised exchanges of
copyrighted works? Do you allow them to store their unauthorised copies on
your premises? Do you even facilitate their making of unauthorised copies or
derivatives?

To both support copyright and yet decry measures necessary to secure its
enforcement should be recognised as Doublethink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

Either copyright is wholesome and you should embrace the stormtroopers when
they assist you in performing an impromptu audit of your premises and your
customers' data that you store, or you should recognise the bug in your
brain and make the paradigm shift: the public has a natural right to
cultural liberty, to freely share and build upon published works.

Despite the incredible human faculty for Doublethink, I don't think it's
healthy for one's sanity. 

There is a 300 year old bug in the law and it has set governments and the
corporations they represent against the public.

Legislators make law. Lawyers understand, document, and explain it. Judges
interpret it. No-one is employed or empowered to debug it. We just wait
until the anachronism (currently a white elephant in the living room) gets
to the size of a StayPufft Marshmallow Man and rampages across the city - a
joke, but it still tramples over thousands of poor citizens who happen to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Copyright is a fricking great positive feedback loop (persecute the public
to protect the ability of publishing corporations to provide benefit to the
public) and you're midway through its crescendo. Either the bug gets fixed
or the system crashes. The GPL was just a partial workaround that has
reduced the pressure from the software industry for a while (excellently
coded by Stallman et al). Creative Commons also helped out slightly (not
quite as good, having been written by a lawyer rather than a programmer).
Unfortunately, the pressure's still increasing, the temperature's rising,
and the noise is getting louder.

There is no fix left except abolition.

So, either the problem is that copyright isn't being sufficiently enforced
and the Pro-IP bill is the appropriate remedy, or there's a far more
fundamental bug in the law and both copyright and the Pro-IP bill should be
rejected.

In other words, either it is in human nature to share and build upon others'
published work (art or invention), or such behaviour is to be considered
anti-social thievery (to be prohibited and held as the sole preserve of the
privileged author or copyright holder).

Folks, it's 'make your mind up' time...

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