Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown: Piracy a Thought Crime

In what way is piracy a "thought crime"?

 

Anti-copyright people tend to be major drama queens.

 

Yeah, it's all fun and games until you buy Microsoft Office on the streets of Shainhai for $2.

 

Even though this is about fashion, the relevance of copyright law makes this on topic-
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0"]YouTube- Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion's free culture[/ame]

We don't necessarily need copyright law to encourage publishing of intellectual property. We have plenty of creative production that isn't protected by it that sets a precedent for non-copyrighted creativity.

 

What?

 

saosebastiao is just off his meds again.

 

If you watch the whole video, you might catch the point.

Copyrights and other intellectual property rights are intended to encourage the release and production of intellectual property. The video clearly shows that industries that aren't protected by intellectual property rights are more productive, more creative, and they make bigger impacts into our lives.

The music and film industries are worried about copyright protection because they make their money by screwing artists out of their money... and now that piracy has stolen their game from them (irrevocably) they are now in it "for the artists".

What they don't tell you is that the biggest threat to their business isn't piracy, but their outdated business model that depends on industry insiders, paid off radio djs, exclusive distribution channels, and contracts that take 80% or more of revenue from artists.

The fact is that piracy in the 21st century has opened up new doors to profitability for the artists instead of the record companies and film companies. There are so many artists that have made it big in the middle of the age of piracy that most artists don't even bother with trying to get big name contracts anymore. Musicians, while they aren't making much selling cds or mp3s, make a killing on concerts and merchandise. And small time directors, actors, and producers almost always make names for themselves in low budget movies that don't make it into standard theaters and get distributed by torrents instead.

I bet that today you can find more record and film companies complaining about piracy than you can find of the artists that they supposedly represent.

 

Last stop. No cigar smoking on the platform, please...

 

I'm still waiting to hear about the "thought police."

 

There was something to the effect that folks might get busted for logging on to sites which made pirate downloads available, whether or not they downloaded anything.

I think thats what he was on about on that....

 

Thanks for translating.

 

It's not.

But it's funny that he starts a thread about piracy by posting an entire article from a different site on BS.

 

piracy = bad think

 

Open Office is free.

 

I'm all for open source and everything, but Open Office is about as desirable as a boar fart 3 inches from my nose.

 

I'm not familiar with that experience. But I can tell you it works just fine on my wife's Macbook. And judging from the bitching and moaning from my coworkers forced to use Office 2007, a tad less frustrating. I'm thankfully on 2003 still.

 

Have you actually spent more than 20 minutes trying to use 2007? It is incredibly easy, and the ribbon makes working so much faster. The interface is one of the greatest innovations since the internet. I've tried going back to excel 2003, and everything I do takes me twice as long, fiddling with menus and trying to find miniature buttons.

 

What the hell, I'll take a stab at this.

If you watch that video that saosebastiao posted, near the end Johanna Blakely gets into the question of intellectual property protection for ideas vs. material goods. She argues that in this digital age, when music and even books are no longer physical objects but rather digital files, the line between idea and object is getting blurred. In most people's minds, a song has no actual physical existence. It's pretty much an idea.

So... if people are to be prosecuted for enjoying other people's ideas, could that not be construed as a thought crime, in a manner of speaking?

 

Nope. I just know that I've had to walk some of my coworkers through what used to be simple tasks on 2003.

 

It must be designed to make all the old harder things easy, and vice versa, because the people who overuse portions of it (the harder stuff) seem to like it - but those of us who like to only do the simplest things can no longer figure out how, the functionality all seems to have been hidden or removed, you have to navigate through layers of menus to do the simplest tasks. I hate the new interface. Hate it.

 

So do many many companies. Which is why so many of them (mine included) are now using an 8 year old Office suite...

 

I see, thank you for translating.