Norwegian Lawyers Must Stop Chasing File Sharers 186
Skapare sends word from TorrentFreak that Norway's Simonsen law firm has lost their license to pursue file sharers. "Just days after Norway's data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it's now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won't be renewed." Skapare adds, "Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously. Maybe they've been watching the abuses in the USA. More info on the Norwegian perspective in this Google translation from Dagbladet.no."
Half-right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously. Maybe they've been watching the abuses in the USA.
A bigger part of it is just that European governments take the privacy of their citizens very seriously.
Except Britain, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
And Sweden *cough*IPRED*cough*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
*cough*IPRED*cough*
I recommend seeing a doctor, right away.
Re:Half-right... (Score:5, Funny)
A bigger part of it is just that European governments take the privacy of their citizens very seriously.
Except Britain, of course.
I was under the impression the British government took privacy very - almost too - seriously. They even have those cameras set up to monitor private lives - ensuring no one's right to privacy goes overlooked or unwatched. How can the government know their citizens have privacy if the government can't watch?
How do I Immigrate? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:5, Informative)
Instructions [www.udi.no]
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:4, Funny)
Critical oil industry application skills would be a help. Or saturation diving experience.
. . . and if your idea of Christmas Dinner is a blow-torched sheep's head, you're in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalahove [wikipedia.org]
"I got dibs on the tongue!"
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:5, Informative)
Before we scare away all the nice people, it's a traditional christmas dinner but not the most typical. Top three are pork ribs, Pinnekjøtt [wikipedia.org] and Lutefisk [wikipedia.org]. A minority has also adopted the english christmas turkey, smalahove is probably around 5th place. P.S. If you read anywhere that Pizza Grandiosa [wikipedia.org] is popular for christmas, it's for the kids that don't want the wierd stuff :D
Re:How do I Immigrate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Top three are pork ribs, Pinnekjøtt and Lutefisk.
Advice: avoid lutefisk. It's nasty, very nasty.
In fact, in the nastiest dish in the world competition, Norway powered into second place with lutefisk. It was judged more repulsive than Scotland's haggis, but less disgusting than the Swedish entry, surströmming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstrmming [wikipedia.org], even the Swedes have to drink a bottle of vodka before eating it).
Boiled sheep's eyes or raw sea-slugs taste a lot nicer than lutefisk or surströmming. I speak from actual experience.
One third right... (Score:2)
And Germany. And...?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All in the name of war against terror, of course.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah right (Score:2)
What are you smoking?
They have passed directives which require all ISP's in all countries TO LOG IP destinations and protocol of ALL their users. And that's one example.
This is not over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It is that what is police business is now pretty much outsourced to a private entity. An entity with a very strong economic stake in said business.
The ip addresses this firm has collected has for instance been used to demand personal information on users from ISPs. They want to have the right to acquire that sort of information -without- involving the courts. That is completely unacceptable. What makes this even worse is that what is currently happening an
Re:This is not over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
"Pirate-hunters" -- you are speaking of course about their age-old enemies, the ninjas?
Re:This is not over yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pirate-hunters" -- you are speaking of course about their age-old enemies, the ninjas?
Is this why we never hear of piracy reports from Japan. I just put two and two together and it now makes perfect sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Pirate-hunters" -- you are speaking of course about their age-old enemies, the ninjas?
Samus Aran is a ninja? That does explain a lot, I guess.
Re:This is not over yet... (Score:4, Interesting)
"- Da er et brev med en anbefaling på ingen måte nok. Hvis ikke det kommer noen nye opplysninger, vil jeg ikke tro at brevet gjør noen særlig forskjell, sier han. "
(..since we recently had a meeting with the department concerning this..)
"- A letter with a recommondation is by no means enough. Unless there is new information relevant to the case, I do not believe the letter will make any difference".
Re: (Score:2)
He was positive the last time too, but the data protection agency has basicly said we need laws/regulatiosn to keep doing this - no more temporary permits. The translation in poor:
"This is a letter with a recommendation in no way NOK. If not there is any new information, I will not believe that letter makes much difference, "he said."
should be:
"Then a letter of recommendation is in no way enough. If there is no new information, I do not believe the letter will make much difference" he said.
Or maybe they don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe its not that they care so much about privacy that they don't care so much about piracy.
The reason the US gets so butt-hurt about piracy is because hollywood dominates the entertainment business worldwide - there are only a handful of countries were domestic movies regularly outsell hollywood productions at the box office (mostly S Korea, France, India and mainland China and some of that is helped by quota restrictions on foreign productions), and my guess is that the number is even smaller when it comes to DVDs.
Now I'm going to make a wild-ass guess that a lot of the locally produced works in Norway receive significant public funding. If true, that's also an incentive to ignore piracy because if tax dollars are paying for the creation then it isn't a big leap of logic to expect that the results are "owned" by the public too.
So, from that perspective, it seems reasonable that anti-piracy would be near the bottom of the list of government priorities in Norway (and many other countries for that matter).
Re:Or maybe they don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe its not that they care so much about privacy that they don't care so much about piracy.
The reason the US gets so butt-hurt about piracy is because hollywood dominates the entertainment business worldwide - there are only a handful of countries were domestic movies regularly outsell hollywood productions at the box office (mostly S Korea, France, India and mainland China and some of that is helped by quota restrictions on foreign productions), and my guess is that the number is even smaller when it comes to DVDs.
Now I'm going to make a wild-ass guess that a lot of the locally produced works in Norway receive significant public funding. If true, that's also an incentive to ignore piracy because if tax dollars are paying for the creation then it isn't a big leap of logic to expect that the results are "owned" by the public too.
So, from that perspective, it seems reasonable that anti-piracy would be near the bottom of the list of government priorities in Norway (and many other countries for that matter).
I've always felt that when govenrments worry about things like piracy and drug usage, what they're really doing is sending the message "we have an overabundance of resources and personnel which is why we can afford to worry about these things -- please reduce our size and power immediately." The message is quite clear but there are a lot of people who have difficulty interpreting it.
Re: (Score:2)
what they're really doing is sending the message "we have an overabundance of resources and personnel which is why we can afford to worry about these things -- please reduce our size and power immediately."
Holy shit. You're right. I've never thought of it that way. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re: (Score:2)
[hunting piracy and drugs is] sending the message "we have an overabundance of resources and personnel [...] please reduce our size and power immediately."
I always thought it sent the message "We have the power to control your lives because there's no oversight or accountability, and we want to because we're powertripping pricks, so screw you and give us more power".
Not that I agree with it...
Re: (Score:2)
hollywood dominates the entertainment business worldwide - there are only a handful of countries were domestic movies regularly outsell hollywood productions at the box office...and some of that is helped by quota restrictions on foreign productions
I suspect that would be true across the board - music, books, games and videos of every sort.
But that has implications the geek may not like.
It suggests - first of all - that the small scale open-sourced "garage band" culture the geek imagines will never happen.
So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:2, Interesting)
We've a few questions.
1. What's the tech economy like over there?
2. How long does it take to learn your language OR how English friendly is it?
3. What's the average cost of living in your cities?
Thanks in advance.
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:4, Informative)
1. It's OK. Mostly in finance and oil industry. Java (SOA) is heavily used.
2. Business is basically English (even for Norwegian companies). My company has Swedes (lots), Sri Lankan, Englishmen, couple of Indians/Pakistani, French. Coding/documentation is in English.
3. About like Bay Area.
All that, and we get standard 5 weeks of paid vacation, paternity/maternity leave (husband/wife get to share how much they spend at home the first year), strong currency (relatively cheap to buy stuff when you travel), beautiful Swedish women.
Minuses: a socialist government and Jante Law [wikipedia.org] ingrained in the Norwegian psyche.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:5, Informative)
If you make a lot of money, and spend most of it on non-food, it is probably possible to pass 60 %, but that is rare.
I would also say the numbers are misleading without some information on what you get. Norway, like the rest of Europe, has universal heath care so there is no health insurance to pay, no matter what preconditions you may have. The taxes also include unemployment benefits, a pension plan and 100 % pay for a year if you can't work due to illness. Comparing tax rates without accounting for insurances you absolutely need to have is not fair.
Re: (Score:2)
I will add just one thing to that: businesses don't actually pay taxes. Sure, they are charged taxes and they transfer money to the government, but when they do so they act as collection agents for the government. The difference between exclusive sales taxes and inclusive income taxes is that for the sales tax, the receipt given to the customer itemizes exactly how much of the total sum was spent on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In isolation, no. However, taxes have a unique status among all other expenses: they tend to affect all companies equally. So if you make widgets, and your tax rate increases, so does the rate of all other companies making widgets. Result: price of widgets increases by some margin. The supply-and-demand scenario you mention does not apply here.
It'd be nice if you would address this before being so quick t
Re: (Score:2)
That also depends on the market. If the widget market is a high-margin business with high barriers to entry (what companies like to call "competitive moats"), then an increase in tax rates will tend to just reduce profits. The profit margins would still be high even post-tax, so there's no reason for companies to exit the business, so supply isn't reduced.
Classical economics basically assumes that costs of goods and services approach their cost of production, plus a marginal profit at the minimum needed to
Re: (Score:2)
Top-tax is 48% (starts at 450.000kr if I remember it right). Why don't you guys just simply google it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because a native might provide information on the secondary taxes not listed on that page.
It is a great page, but it doesn't come close to the total tax load.
In the US, the stated tax rate is 28% on the page.
In reality, it's much higher.
So I know that the rate on that page doesn't include.
Social security Taxes (7.5%) -- except for rich people.. who it can be .1% or less (esp if they structure their income as dividends) .1% o
Employer portion of social security (7.5%) -- except for rich people.. who it can be
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot Medicare taxes (2.9% of income?) too.
Re: (Score:2)
You might want to take a close look at those "taxes": many of them are actually service fees or are otherwise returned to the phone company.
For example, my monthly phone bill is about $24, of which $12.50 is for phone service. However, the second-largest part of the bill is a $7.50 fee named and described as if it were a tax, but it's actually what I'm paying the phone company for access to their network -- the government doesn't see one penny o
Re: (Score:2)
Got it. Paid by employer.
Got it. Paid by government.
Got it. Paid by employer.
You mean like if I'm disabled? Got it. Paid by government.
Got it. At least up to age 18, but then they are not children anymore. Paid by government.
All this and, since I work for a non
Re: (Score:2)
"Minuses: a socialist government and Jante Law ingrained in the Norwegian psyche."
So, how do you say "passive-aggressive" in Norwegian?
Re: (Score:2)
I dispute this as a resident of Norway.
The Swedes are more difficult and grumpy whereas the Norwegian are easy and carefree. They do look similar though.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1. Soso. Opera's doing very nicely these days at least. :p Also, I think we're a leading force in micro/nano technology.
2. Norwegian is kinda hard to learn as you can't learn it well by studying alone. It has so many ways of expressing yourself that wouldn't make any sense in eg. English. I guess it's the same for most languages, but Norwegian is considered a hard language to learn because of all the irregularites. Something we learn in school is "EVERY rule has an (many) exceptions." :p English and Norwegi
Re: (Score:2)
I think Dubai was more expensive than Oslo :)
But it's OK, actually. Most big cities in the north and west of Europe are getting expensive, but salaries are matching. Apartments can range from a few thousand NOK if you have luck (my cave is one of the cheap ones) to 15000 NOK (well over $2000) if you're an idiot. You don't need to live smack-dab in the middle of downtown, especially if you don't actually work there. It's also a relatively small city, so despite the best efforts of Ruter/NSB, you can get to w
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why you think that Norwegian is hard to learn but we have a student from England here and he learnt fluent Norwegian within a few months without any major effort. The language is pretty easy, no fancy grammar or the like.
Try learning Russian or Finnish and then compare it to Norwegian!
Re: (Score:2)
Norwegians think itÂs a hard language to learn but itÂs construction is largely the same as English. Obviously it has weird constructs (like indicating "the" twice if thereÂs a adjective describing a noun but not if there isnÂt - wtf?) but it isnÂt madly different than English. It is surprisingy imprecise compared to English though which makes it easier to learn than it might be.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say you probably could learn passable Norwegian by studying alone. To be fluent in any language you've really got to surround yourself with native speakers. I think what makes Norwegian difficult is the diversity of dialects - a learner that could get by in Oslo might struggle in for example Ålesund.
English doesn't really have that problem as it's fairly standardised worldwide, although there's a bit of variation in the UK and Ireland. The problem with English is the sheer size of the vocabular
Re: (Score:2)
Major companies work in English. English is a required language in all schools now, so only the older people and the language challenged can't speak it in some way. But, Norwegian isn't so hard to learn. Lots of words shorter than English ... "light and sound" is "lys og lyd" ... "USB memory stick" is "USB minne pinne" ... "lightning and thunder" is "lyn og torden". And "FAEN [youtube.com]" is the universal curse word.
Cost of living in the Oslo area is very high (you might want to try Trondheim if you like the cold
Re:So, for the Norwegian Slashdotters: (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Norwegian myself, though lived there 7 years. Possibly moving back in the near future.
You forgot to ask for:
So yes, it's a pretty nice place to be, unless you can't stand snow, rain, and socialists in power.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice summary even though I don't understand how one could think that French would be easier to learn than Norwegian.
Actually 100% of the movies are original language with subtitles, except for children stuff. I have yet to find a single dubbed 12+ movie.
Re: (Score:2)
2. Norwegian is not as difficult as German but not as easy as French, many words are not guessable. Main difficulty is that everybody speaks very good English and practising Norwegian is quite difficult if you are not strong-willed. Also, most imported TV shows and movies are in original language (i.e. 90% English). Learning Norwegian also means you can read Danish and read/understand Swedish.
If norwegian is your first langauge outside english, I'd call it optimistic to understand swedish and danish as well. You said you live in germany now and knowing german helps a lot, often words have their german counterpart instead. For example window = vindu (norwegian) - vindue (danish) - fönster (swedish) - Fenster (german).
Healthcare: Grand Old Socialist system.
This might need a small clarification for US readers. It goes something like this:
Norwegian left <---> Norwegian right <--------------------> Democrats <---> R
Re: (Score:2)
There are multiple ways I could interpret that, and I hope I interpreted it correctly. It sounds like your country is free of the abomination that exists in the USA since around the 1930s, which is the partitioning (and thus, d
Re: (Score:2)
I love the political difference:
Norwegian left Norwegian right Democrats Republicans
It really scares me how narrow the political spectrum in the US is.
What bothers me is that it is a spectrum at all. The reason why political spectrums can be accurately represented by two points (defining the extremes) and a line (defining the possible middle points) is because it is one-dimensional thinking.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein: "The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them."
Lots of our problems t
Offtopic, but nowhere else to ask (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do unordered lists like that look odd to anyone else? This only happens to me on Slashdot, but whenever anyone uses the UL and LI tags here, it ends up putting annoying greyish bars smack in the middle of the list.
It does to me, specifically the gray bars that appear below (on the z-axis) the list items.
offtopic (Score:2)
I've been living in Sweden for 5 years (originally Irish) and am starting to plan a move to Berlin. Any tips on how to handle a move to Germany, or things to be prepared for?
(I've heard the job situation is not great, but I work in science and find it's generally unaffected as of yet by the economic situation).
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there is not much that can go wrong. Assuming the Swedish system is not too different from the Norwegian, expect increased healthcare costs, since Germany is based on private (and public) insurances; my expenses more than doubled. On the other hand, supposing you are a post-doc, you will pay no taxes.
More on healthcare: watch out carefully for very convenient offers geared for academicians. I got such an offer for about 50 euros a month, but reading the small print I figured out they do not pay for an
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of English words come from French instead of Norsk, so for English speakers, French really could be easier. Having studied both as a native English speaker (my nickname does not mean I'm from Sweden) I'd say they are close to equal. A German speaker might find Norwegian easier than French. The Danes and Swedes no doubt will as the languages are very similar.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Opera is based in Oslo. A couple of Oil&Gas oriented IT companies exist.
2. Norwegian is very easy to learn if you actually take a little time and do it. But it's not required, especially not for an IT job.
3. Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in world, but so are the incomes.
Plus: a socialist government, 44(54) weeks maternity/paternity leave 100%(80%), amazing countryside
Have a look at wikipedia. If you like to live the "American dream" then you will probably be disappointed. If you life witho
Election year (Score:5, Informative)
Don't expect this to be the last word on the matter, the politicians just don't want to rock the boat right now.
The Minister of culture has openly supported the vigilante tactics of the "pirate-hunters", but this is probably not the right time of the 4-year election cycle to do anything drastic.
During the last election the same man promised to re-legalese file sharing. The statement was retracted only days after a surprising high turnout of young voters won him and his party the election...
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but "Trond Giske, 4.0, god som gull", is demonstratebly not the brightest chap. Anything he says without a script should be just plainly disregarded.
There's a reason he's stuck as minister of culture. He's open, friendly and generally agreeable, so they want him as a visible part of the team, but not doing anything important. If he ever gets an important position, I will consider turning in my citizinship.
It's not fair! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, I wish I were Norwegian!
Well, if it's any consolation, you can at least blame your mother for that.
Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Anybody getting of on that shit needs to have their dick cut off.
That's perhaps a bit harsh. I know a couple of guys that get off over anime drawings of young looking girls. The stuff revolts me, I find it incredibly repulsive... But we talked about why it is that they like younger looking females, and we all agreed that the most plausible explanation (we could think of) was that attraction to younger females was at one point in our evolution quite favourable due to much shorter life spans. If you were going to breed, you did it when you were young. This of course select
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would not even go as far as to argue that point as it distracts from the real reason people should be tolerant of harmless behaviour, it is none of their business. As soon as you start going on the defensive you fuel the aura of guilt people perceive with deviants. If they can't appreciate on their own the value of tolerance then educate them through examples of things in their lives that should not be tolerated if you apply their standards equally. If that doesn't work then they aren't worth the effort,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We're just, well, sensible.
I'm assuming you mean "we" as in everyone except all those crazy death metal bastards who burn down churches, right? Those guys are SCARY. Fucked up shit happens everywhere... Norway is no exception.
Full disclosure: I'm Canadian, and I think we're fairly sensible most of the time too, but then you hear about the white supremacist parents drawing swastikas on their kids, the revolving-door youth "justice" system, the bus beheader, the deadbeat drunk who left his young daughters outside to freeze to death in
Re: (Score:2)
In all technicality, the main guy behind the church-burning is Varg Vikernes [wikipedia.org] (recently released from prison), who's band Burzum [wikipedia.org] was more Black Metal or Dark Ambient, not death metal.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't mean to say that all death metal guys are bastards, just the ones that burn down churches for the fun of it.
I know some crazy metal people, some of whom look the part, some of whom don't, but they're nice normal people all around. I would love to go to Wacken one day with them, except I'd need to bring a spare liver or I don't think I would make it home hehe. I'm not a metal fan, but the party is apparently fantastic.
Re: (Score:2)
You mention the censorship filter (which even the universities and colleges subscribe to). You didn't mention that fictional writings depicting people described as minors having sex, is illegal. So are drawings of such, and animation. We also just barely escaped legislation against saying or writing criticism against organised religion. Our Prime Minister of many years was an ordained priest, placing us in league with Iran. When a person is born in Norway, he is automatically a member of our protestant stat
Re: (Score:2)
I actually downloaded the list of wikileaks once, switched to opendns (whom we all should avoid) and checked it out. I really, really regretted it. There really was childporn there.
Did you check the entire list? I haven't seen it, but I'd guess that it contains more than just a handful of sites, so checking the entire list could be a pretty hefty job. There is no surprise that the list contains child porn sites, I mean, that's the publicly stated goal of the list. The problem with such a list is that there may be certain sites sneaked into the list by the government, despite having no connection to child porn, simply because the government deems them unfit for general consumption. Sin
Hardly censorship (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not ridiculously easy for an average person to find alternative DNS servers and change his DNS settings with them. Many people who accidentally hit the "stop sign" Verboten page are terrified. It's a reminder that they are under the watchful eyes of the criminal police, and I do think that can inhibit their inclination to freely seek and post information.
It's censorship, but it's a censorship that most people agree with. And if you disagree with it, you're suspicious, so you better shut up.
Yarrrrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm currently sitting here listening to an mp3 of the Symphony of the Seas, from the old album Hooked on Classics, along with mental flashbacks of the scene where the Jolly Roger was raised during Pirates of the Carribean.
As this article refers to a victory for piracy, it is a good opportunity to issue a collective, impassioned scream of defiance against the very concept of intellectual property; to remind ourselves of who the enemy is, and why they must, and eventually will, be entirely and unrelentingly destroyed.
WIPO, RIAA, MPAA, and other related organisations, you are recognised as institutions which perpetuate the toxic mentality that making money is, in itself, more important than being alive to spend it. In our ongoing war with you, it is we, the greater public of this planet, who have the will of God on our side. We will have justice. We will have vengeance.
You are going to be removed from human memory.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Without intellectual property, I end up spending years working on stuff and essentially giving it away to the world
Only if you choose to. No one's forcing you to do any work that you aren't being paid for. If you choose to do that, hoping to get paid later by selling copies, and then it doesn't pan out because people get copies elsewhere, that's as much your fault as it is theirs.
Why am I not entitled to a small amount of protection in the marketplace, so that I can earn a living from my hard work?
Because no one else needs "protection" in order to earn a living from their hard work. You can learn to make a living without it just like they do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why am I not entitled to a small amount of protection in the marketplace, so that I can earn a living from my hard work?
Because the rest of us are worse off if you have it.
I think that's the argument copyright abolitionists should make to have a good case. I want them (us) to have data backing it up. ISTR there being some, but I haven't exactly looked hard.
Is it really a good idea to undermine the ability of digital creators to even earn a living?
Red Hat makes money even though CentOS and Fedora exist, giving away essentially the same software. Red Hat gives away software as a driver for support sales.
I hear musicians make a pittance from RIAA-member (Sony, BMI, Capitol Records, etc.) contracts, and get most of
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, small.
I see what I'm doing as "value added". My years of work are the "value added" part.
Besides, you could easily apply those same concepts to "real" property. Take land-property as an example: the earth was here long before humans.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you bring in "value added", suddenly cars and crops become legitimate property. The same goes for the digital world.
Not quite.
A car is legitimate property because it can only be in one place at a time. If I take your car, you don't have it anymore. As the owner of a car, you have the right to hang onto that car until you voluntarily give it up, so if I want it, I'll have to pay you (or convince you some other way).
Information doesn't work that way. You can keep your copy of a song, program, etc. and use it however you like even while someone else is distributing copies: their use can't possibly conflict with your use. It
Re: (Score:2)
Keep in mind the context of the discussion: the context was this - copyrighted media does not occur in a vacuum; we are all creatures of our own culture; and so, things that I create are influenced by our common culture. The argument that he was making was that digital content cannot be copyrighted or 'monopolized' because (in some ways) it sprang from our common culture -
Re: (Score:2)
My argument, then, was about whether or not a thing needed to be 100% the product of our own mind/labor in order to have certain special rights over it. My answer is "no", and then I illustrated with physical property that that particular line of argument doesn't hold up.
Agreed.
That may be, but where did this "ownership" come from in the first place? If I wanted to get all hippy, I could say that the universe belongs to all of us. Any attempts of a farmer to claim he *owns* seeds, soil, or water are really a 'theft' from humanity and the earth's creatures.
Hippy or not, those are all physical things and they can only be in one place at a time. There are other ways we could decide who will possess that seed at any given time -- maybe it could belong to a different person every day, or every minute -- but we can't escape the fact that someone must have exclusive possession of it at any given time.
When you describe this as "rearranging bits" you're actually generalizing the situation and depriving bits of meaning. Once you've done that, you can make a variety of arguments that are true in general, but may be false in more specific cases.
Fair enough. Let me clarify.
I contend that I do have the right to rearrange bits on my hard drive into any pattern -- period. In general, and in all specific ca
Re: (Score:2)
The farmer sells crops - but he didn't construct the seeds ex-nihilo, he didn't sit down and design the genetics, he didn't create the sunlight or the soil. Therefore, farmers should not be entitled to sell crops. They should not have the benefit of laws that prevent people from taking them without paying him, because he was not 100% responsible for creating the food.
The real difference is that in the crops example it took real people real effort to create each single piece of corn. If we had a magical corn duplication device that we could just plug into the wall and have it output corn, then certainly we shouldn't be paying any /farmer/ for each corn that we produce with that machine!
Likewise, since a digital copy of a digital work does not involve any actual work for anyone other than myself (having to type the copy command or whatever) then there is no fundamental re
Re: (Score:2)
I agree 100%. The fact that I work on a project for several years entitles me to exactly $0. However, I do think I deserve a chance to setup prices for my work. The consumer can choose to accept that deal or reject it. The existence of piracy / ignoring of copyright, on the other hand, eliminates my ability to negotiate at all. It's like walkin
Re: (Score:2)
The existence of piracy / ignoring of copyright, on the other hand, eliminates my ability to negotiate at all. It's like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices I accept or I'll simply take the item.
Not really. It's more like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices you accept, or you'll get an identical item from the cheaper shop next door. When you go next door, the first shopkeeper doesn't become any poorer; he just doesn't gain your business.
Piracy doesn't eliminate your ability to negotiate, it provides competition. You're offering copies of a file for $X, they're offering copies of the same file for $0. That's a competition you won't win, because the cost of pro
Re: (Score:2)
Piracy / no copyright, then, eliminates the creator's ability to negotiate at all, and gives the consumer complete and total control over the transaction - no matter how unreasonable they want to be.
You won't be negotiating directly with each customer but then that is probably not something you want to do anyway. What you are doing is setting a price point and seeing that some amount of people choose to buy from you at that price point. If you choose to lower the price you will probably see that you get more sales and if you increase it you will get fewer. This can be considered a form of negotiation even if economists tend to call it price elasticity and such. This is how business on a larger scale ha
Re: (Score:2)
I can provide you with a long list of creators complaining about piracy, if you would like.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
2. I'm not defending the excessively long copyright lengths that we see. Personally, I think ten or twenty years is plenty. What I'm arguing about is the idea that copyright lengths should be eliminated, or filesharing legalized. What those things do is effectively reduce copyright lengths to 0 seconds. Heck, I've toyed with the idea of putting my own work under a much shorter copyright length (like a 14-year founder's co
Re: (Score:2)
I'm currently sitting here listening to an mp3 of the Symphony of the Seas, from the old album Hooked on Classics, along with mental flashbacks of the scene where the Jolly Roger was raised during Pirates of the Carribean.
In other words:
You are wholly a product of a pop culture in which strong copyright is the norm.
--- and how typically geek it is that your fantasies of piracy come second-hand from a Disney theme park ride.
Symphony Of The Seas [amazon.com] 89 cents.
Hooked on Classics was a series of record albums first
A good start... (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy ser (Score:2)
Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously
I wish my government would. Little did the founding fathers suspect that some day our privacy would be at risk, or it would have been included in the Bill of Rights.
Re: (Score:2)
miss-read (Score:2)
>Skapare adds, "Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously.
Funny, I first read that as "Sounds like Norway's government treats PIRACY seriously". and thought, that's a contradiction.
Privacy first, piracy second. Suits me.
The summary is wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
The "pirate chasing"-lawyers got a temporary license in 2006 for doing exactly that while we were waiting for new laws.
That license is now expiring (This autumn) and they're not getting a new one. Not because they want to protect the privacy of Norwegian citizens, but because temporary is temporary.
Now, read my last sentence again please.
(Still though, Norway's a good place to live - can recommend it to everyone!)
Re: (Score:2)
It's worth noting that they're appealing the decision, which means they can keep the license to surveil until Autumn when the appeal can be handled. At the same time, our Minister of Culture and Education (who is as paid-off by copyright mafiaa as America's Orrin Hatch) is pressuring the Norwegian Data Protectorate (which decided to halt the surveillance permit) to change its mind. I don't think this private surveillance is going anywhere, to be honest.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
If I ever find you, you son of a bitch, I will pummel you within an inch of your life with magic missiles until you beg for mercy. Perhaps if my mood at the time feels chaotic evil I will cast chromatic spray upon you for the coup de grace. You should beware because I am much more powerful than a lowly level 5 dwarf. Huzzah!
Re: (Score:2)
web-sights....
I think we are done here...
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot and its readers all said that content owners should go after individual infringers back in 2000 when Napster was getting sued. What's changed?
That's an easy one, I wasn't reading Slashdot in 2000. Go find a time machine so you can troll somewhere more relevant.