His­tory of Copy­right [Falkvinge on Infopol­icy]

Given the recent fuss raised by cor­rupt politi­cians (SOPA and ACTA) and thugs enforc­ing the “laws” of the Evil Empire on its pup­pet states, its inter­est­ing to look at this seven part series on the his­tory of copyright.

Rules of Amer­i­can jus­tice: a tale of three cases. The Rules of Amer­i­can Jus­tice are quite clear:

(1) If you are a high-ranking gov­ern­ment offi­cial who com­mits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immu­nity, both civil and crim­i­nal, and will have the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent demand that all cit­i­zens Look For­ward, Not Backward.

(2) If you are a low-ranking mem­ber of the mil­i­tary, you will receive rel­a­tively triv­ial pun­ish­ments in order to pro­tect higher-ranking offi­cials and cast the appear­ance of accountability.

(3) If you are a vic­tim of Amer­i­can war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any enti­tle­ment to see the inside of a courtroom.

(4) If you talk pub­licly about any of these war crimes, you have com­mit­ted the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espi­onage – and will have the full weight of the Amer­i­can crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem come crash­ing down upon you. [Glenn Green­wald]

It’s pretty obvi­ous that the U.S. legal sys­tem really has noth­ing to do with jus­tice except through the occa­sional coin­ci­dence, in much the same way that the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion has noth­ing to do with the U.S. government.

Seen on Twitter:

The Irish Copy­right Act appears to have been copied almost ver­ba­tim from the UK Copy­right Act. How ironic.

@sensiblestu

That’s prob­a­bly because the copy­right indus­try lob­by­ist who wrote the act sent the same file to the politi­cians he bought in each country.

Yet Another Reminder That Democ­racy Is An Illu­sion. On the exact same day that every­one was cel­e­brat­ing vic­tory over SOPA/PIPA, the US gov­ern­ment sim­ply used another set of reg­u­la­tions to nab Dot­com and seize his assets. The fact that SOPA was scrapped turned out to be com­pletely irrel­e­vant, they just found other rules to apply (or break).

As usual, it’s prob­a­bly not legal. But such tech­ni­cal­i­ties don’t mat­ter in the ‘guilty until proven inno­cent’ sys­tem in which we live. Exec­u­tive agen­cies exer­cise extreme lat­i­tude when con­fis­cat­ing assets, and vic­tims often don’t have the oppor­tu­nity to address the mat­ter in front of a judge for years, if ever.

[…]

You see, we don’t live in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­racy. Democ­racy is an illu­sion to make peo­ple believe that they’re free. Instead, it’s blocs of large cor­po­ra­tions who are really in con­trol. If the enter­tain­ment busi­ness wants Kim Dot­com to go away, the gov­ern­ment will invent or break any law nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen. They’re all in bed together.
What’s more, it doesn’t mat­ter which group or party is in power. Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can, Labour or Con­ser­v­a­tive, Lib­eral or New Demo­c­ra­tic… they’re all for sale. Cit­i­zens con­cern them­selves with the out­come of elec­tions, invest­ing heavy emo­tional and finan­cial sup­port for ‘their guy’. Com­pa­nies just wait it out and buy off whichever can­di­dates win. [Busi­ness Insider]

Today is SOPA black­out day, as many promi­nent web­sites protest a bill which, if passed, would allow the copy­right indus­try to shut down any site that links to another site which con­tains links to what they con­sider copy­right infringe­ment, such as The Pirate Bay. There would still be ways around it, so I decided to exer­cise one of them today: I saved a backup copy of every post here, and inserted it into Freenet, where it is impos­si­ble for any gov­ern­ment to remove it.

This year’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates span the polit­i­cal spec­trum. They are both pro-abortion and anti-abortion. They have both embraced and opposed bans on assault weapons. They have both accepted and rejected the idea of human-induced cli­mate change, both pro­moted and derided a gov­ern­ment takeover of health care, sup­ported both amnesty for ille­gal aliens and build­ing a giant wall on the border.

And that’s just Mitt Romney.

A. Bar­ton Hinkle

When a char­ac­ter in a movie says, “We’ll ride out at first light,” the scene when they ride out should prob­a­bly not be shot at around noon. Just because Hol­ly­wood exec­u­tives are too stu­pid to tell the dif­fer­ence doesn’t mean every­body is.

“We Demand a Vapid, Con­de­scend­ing, Mean­ing­less, Polit­i­cally Safe Response to This Peti­tion.”.

Rea­son has cast a gim­let eye on the White House’s “We
the Peo­ple” peti­tion site before. (See Peter Suderman’s “5,000
Sig­na­tures Will Get You a Response From White House Pol­icy Wonks,
Unless Your Idea is “Bad” or About Weed”) But some enter­pris­ing
cit­i­zens have take the enter­prise of ques­tion­ing the enter­prise
even fur­ther, sub­mit­ting this
peti­tion on the site:

We demand a vapid, con­de­scend­ing, mean­ing­less,
polit­i­cally safe response to this petition.

Since these peti­tions are ignored apart from an occa­sional
patron­iz­ing and inane polit­i­cal state­ment amount­ing to noth­ing more
than a con­de­scend­ing pat on the head, we the sign­ers would enjoy
hav­ing the illu­sion of suc­cess. Since no other out­come to this
process seems pos­si­ble, we demand that the White House imme­di­ately
assign a junior staffer to com­pose a tame and vapid response to
this peti­tion, and never attempt to take any mean­ing­ful action on
this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

After being hit with ques­tions about UFOs and legal­iz­ing weed,
the White House has raised the thresh­old for a guar­an­teed response
to
25,000 e-signatures in 30 days. To date, the peti­tion has
9,228. (Thanks in part to get­ting some
media cov­er­age yes­ter­day.) Go to town, commenters.

Via Jerry Brito’s Google+ feed, where he describes the peti­tion
as “fatal­is­tic and cyn­i­cal.” I agree. And I would also like a
cookie.

[Hit and Run]

Com­ple­ment­ing the hon­est cam­paign ad, here’s the only real­is­tic peti­tion I’ve ever seen.

There’s a video on YouTube of the only hon­est cam­paign adver­tise­ment I’ve ever seen.

Scared Sober: LAPD Plan­ning at Least 2 DUI Check­points this Hal­loween Week­end. The Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment wants to remind rev­el­ers this Hal­loweek­end that there are few things scarier than drunk dri­vers. In addi­tion to issu­ing a reminder about ways to stay safe while cel­e­brat­ing, they will be oper­at­ing at least two DUI check­points this week­end. [LAist]

I can remem­ber when author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ments that set up inter­nal check­points of heav­ily armed police were one of those scarier things–they were shown that way in movies set in the Third Reich and Soviet Union, at least. Of course, that was back in the 1980s when peo­ple were afraid of being con­quered by the Soviet Union. They should have been more afraid that the coun­try would vol­un­tar­ily turn itself into the Soviet Union.