Korea Kicking People Offline With One Strike 176
An anonymous reader writes "While there's lots of talk of 'three strikes' laws in places like France, it may be worth looking over at South Korea, which put in place a strict new copyright law, required by a 'free trade' agreement with the US (which was the basis for ACTA). It went into effect in the middle of 2009, and now there's some data about how the program is going. What's most troubling is that the Copyright Commission appears to be using its powers to 'recommend' ISPs suspend user accounts based on just one strike, with no notice and no warning. The system lets the Commission make recommendations, but in well over 99% of the cases, the ISPs follow the recommendations, and they've never refused to suspend a user's account."
Isn't it odd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How widespread is piracy in SK? (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, the idea of "piracy" is laughable. Our entire property system is based on the notion of physical property. If we could duplicate anything, cars, food, clean water, gold, etc. we wouldn't need laws to protect our property because we could just duplicate it. IP is not property. "Piracy" is not theft. The very idea that an unaffiliated party would have to disconnect someone because they were doing something "bad" is silly. Should we be deprived of electricity if we get a speeding ticket? Should we have our water shut off if we run a stop sign? Should they suspend trash pickup if we jaywalk? Those make about as much sense as an ISP with no connection to media companies trying to protect property which doesn't even exist.
An unjust law is unjust not because of how few or how many people it punishes but simply by the fact it exists.
Re:Online gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
Doing "ifconfig eth0 hw ether NEWMAC" takes effort?
Re:Off with their heads! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not true. Crime rates where much higher at times when capital punishment was more popular.
Re:Off with their heads! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know its a joke, but....
"More Sex is Safer Sex" by Steven Landsburg presents an interesting case on the severity of punishment not being a deterrent.
The chapter on LoJack makes the connection that, raising the penalty on car theft has generally resulted in only minor changes in the actual crime rate. I don't remember what he cited there, but the other side... the LoJack case was impressive. What they saw was that if enough LoJacks were sold in an area to raise the overall chance of being caught by about 1%, it correlated with a 20% decrease in car thefts!
It makes sense. With all but the worst prison gangs, most people don't want to get caught. Getting caught means public records, it means trouble finding jobs, it means having to explain to friends and family, etc. There are lots of reasons to not want to get caught, in fact, the entirety of the penalty (whether its decapitation or a slap on the wrist) is modified by the chance of being caught.
So even if the penalty is decapitation, thats only the penalty of getting caught. If I can reasonably expect to do something and not get caught, then why would the penalty even come into the picture? Its like driving a car with your kid in the back seat. If you get in an accident, your child could be killed. There is a chance of this any and every time that you drive a car for any real distance.
However, few people would say that this horrible and unlikely outcome is reason enough to never put their child in a car and drive. In fact, I have never heard the argument made. In fact, I have never even heard the argument made that one should limit or try to avoid that situation.... even though the "worst outcome" is clearly quite severe... the chances of that outcome happening are considered widely acceptable risk.
-Steve
Re:A very good question indeed! (Score:2, Insightful)
Would slavery be any more justified if only 31 people died in a year of the slave trade? Would murder be justified if you only killed 31 people?
This is why due process is important (Score:4, Insightful)
And I don't mean "we looked at the evidence for the defendant and concluded unilaterally that he should be disconnected." I mean the right of the accused to defend oneself in a fair hearing. Due process is a fundamental part of the rule of law, and because it protects the innocent and guilty alike, states absolutely hate its inconvenience and the fact that it lets some of the guilty go free.
South Korea is remarkably forward-thinking in many ways, but apparently this isn't one of them.
"Free trade"? More like "shackled citizens" (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom to write laws and have them rubberstamped by congress.
Freedom to destroy the livelihood of any citizen caught listening to music they weren't allowed to hear.
Freedom to never, ever change their business model and continue selling their products at ever-higher prices and have those prices protected by the government.
Transparent Agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I'm just a paranoid stoner.
As someone involved with that habit and lifestyle, it's easy to notice the government's quite profitable agenda of socially marginalizing and exploiting parts of the population. Incentivize "proper" social conduct with the various perks of society with tools like credit scores and background checks, using jail as the stick when carrots fail to sufficiently motivate.
The x-strike laws strike me as a particularly transparent attempt to maintain this status quo. The internet has lead to the creation of online communities for just about every "unsavory" hobby, habit, or problem you could think of. The "wrong" people are no longer socially isolated; Legalization movements are making record progress; Government is losing control.
Somewhere at the top, someone finally realized the decentralized nature of the internet means standard models of exercising authority fall short. How to reassert control? Convince society of the necessity of elevating the internet to the level of the "gated community home, SUV, and health insurance," you know, out of the hands of those filthy subhumans who live outside the walls.
Copyright makes sense as the first step. Everyone already agrees on the vital role companies like the RIAA play in our economy, so we must take the privilege of internet from those who dare jeopardize its profits. Then, once it's socially acceptable to deny someone "the internet" for copyright violations, the floodgates are opened to deny it to anyone who displeases the powers that be. Internet privilege denial will become as standard a punishment as revoking a teen's driver's license is for almost any infraction these days.
"But Spazntwich," you say,"The internet is ubiquitous! You can't possibly prevent someone from getting on the internet!"
Of course you can't. Just like the government can't even keep drugs out of its own prisons. Ineffectiveness of a law has never been a reason to overturn one.
The internet's universal nature plays right into their hands. Any infraction, intentional or otherwise (remember citizen, ignorance is never an excuse!), will be a violation of probation/parole and place one back at the mercy of the authorities. Right where they want you.
Re:ACTA again (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear Kraft,
My Bad. I will buy you from now on.
Dear Kroger,
You cheese sucks ass
How to be the land of the free (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ACTA again (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe you should blame the government instead of the corporate leaders, it is after all high taxes from both federal and state as well as increased costs from regulations that push jobs out of this country. Yeah maybe there are greedy CEOs here and there, but by and large it's just becoming too expensive to hire people in this country.
Ya that's right, the US produces nothing but media (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely nothing. Well except microprocessors for pretty much every computer out there. Both Intel and AMD have R&D in the US, and Intel has many fabs. If you buy a current 45nm or 32nm chip it comes courtesy of Arizona or Oregon. But that's it! Oh, well except for aircraft. The US also produces those, and is in fact one of only two large commercial airline producers in the world (Boeing is US, Airbus is EU) though Embarer (Brazil) is slowly edging up from small jets. But that's it! Ummm except for Toyota Tundras. Toyota, despite being Japanese, makes cars everyone and some in the US. The Tundra is ONLY built in the US, it is shipped elsewhere.
Getting the point? The US makes lots of stuff. In fact not only is saying the US makes no manufactured goods wrong, it is the opposite of right. The US makes more manufactured goods than any other nations. China is on track to overtake that spot in 2020, but because China's manufacturing is growing, not because the US's is shrinking. The US makes tons and tons of shit, not just media.
If you don't see that it just means you haven't done research, or just look at the "made in" label and don't consider what that means. That is just the country of final assembly. Says nothing of where the parts were made. If you buy a mid-range Denon receiver it will be "made in China" (the high end ones are made in Japan). However all that means is a plant there assembled it as per the specs given from D&M in Japan. Open it up and you find parts form all over. The DSP is an Analog Devices unit, produced in the US. The capacitors are Japanese in make. The D/A converters are again American. You find stuff from all over in there, it just gets shipped to China for final assembly.
Same deal for many American products. A Ford GT500 is an American super car... In that they get assembled there, but the parts come from all over. Ford bought parts from many European supercar makers to make it happen. Nothing wrong at all with that, it is just how things are done. In some cases, one country is really good at things. Like if you want an LCD panel, good chance it comes from Korea. The LCD monitor itself may be assembled in China or Taiwan or elsewhere, but the panel was probably built in Korea. They build almost all of them, just a market Korea is very good at.
So please, if you want to attack the bad laws like ACTA, do so based on what is in them. Stop with the silly "The US doesn't make anything!" argument. That shows nothing but that you haven't done your homework. You don't even have to do much homework. Like I said there are some really obvious ones like Boeing.