"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty." -- Lord Chief Justice Halisham
A bit of venting here today..
1. when an isp blocks any specific port, can it do so with a little bit of
courtesy and say 'port blocked by xyz isp' when i telnet there? thats all i ask for at this point. i shall not go into the question of what difference does it make to them whether i run my server on 80 or 88 or 8080 or 1337. nor shall i go into the question of my paying $70/mth for 100mbps,
unlimited usage, when
blocking port 80 is definitely a
limitation.
i'm not even going to complain that selling 'up to' 100mbps is disingenuous if i only get that occasionally - its a number that has exactly zero use for predicting what i will get most of the time.
2. all over the world, the media industries are trying to influence governments to take an active stance in enforcing i.p. rights. like the 3-strikes law in france. why would law enforcement do something like that is beyond me.
i believe its a purely civil matter. if anyone infringed on any patent or copyright, it should be up to the owner of the copyright to sue the infringer in court to recover damages. the government is not supposed to be handling disputes between you and your neighbour, it protects its people. disputes between you and your neighbour, you have to sue your neighbour yourself.
the government enforcing i.p. rights is like the police arresting people for being late with their phone bills. its entirely up to the telecoms firm to recover the bills you owe them. and so it should be entirely up to the recording and movie industries to recover their losses caused by infringements on their copyrights.
3. i.p. protections like copyrights and patents are temporary monopolies on the distribution of the protected item given to the creator to let them earn some money off it so that it encourages them to continue creating more things, and to encourage others to create. at the end of the temporary monopoly, the work goes to public domain. the idea is once anything is
published, its in public domain. we the people pitied the starving artists and let them earn a bit of coin to feed themselves, thats all. if they didn't like handing over the work to the public, then they could jolly well
keep it private. like what kfc and coca cola do for their recipes, for example.
so i don't understand why film studios own the rights to films and not directors, why recording companies own the rights to the music and not the singers and bands. nor why the copyright on music has grown from 12yrs to life+99yrs now. especially since the pharmaceutical companies spends billions every year on research, and their products get only a 5 year patent(extendable to 10 for specialised use cases).
4. if, impossible as it may seem, the governments actually get it, and restore copyrights to what they once were - 12 yrs long, and require the creators to do their own enforcement just like everyone else, then they may be forced to see their real problem.
throughout history consumers really ever paid for content. content is literally free. what consumers paid for was distribution. and copyright was about the distribution. not content.
think about the newspaper industry - the readers pay the cover price of the newspapers and the advertisers pay for the right to advertise to those readers.
tv - viewers pay the tv license and advertisers pay for the right , again, to advertise to those viewers.
we only pay for books because they needed to be carted from the printer to the bookshop and that costs money.
but now with digital content, the cost of distributing an addition copy is essentially nothing. only the copyright prevents the second copy from being distributed at a price reasonable to what its distribution costs.
fair enough that authors and song writers should have the protection of copyrights - and they should be allowed to enforce them. but the copyrights should be nearer 12 years and not 100 years long, and the authors and song writers should do it for themselves.
and if they thought that it was not realistic to do so, then they should come up with a new business model like what everyone else had to do. if they cannot adapt to digital media then they deserve to go out of business, like how the horse-carriage makers went out of business after Ford made cars affordable for everyone.
moreover, even the authors and song writers adapted to new conditions before. they survived the photocopying machine, the phonograph, the cassette tape, the VHS tape, the CDR and the DVD-R/RW. the real problem is this time they're just too lazy or too powerful, and they're not adapting to the advent of the internet. thats all.
5. besides capping copyright periods to 12 yrs and allowing creators to enforce their rights, the government should also look into the consumers' rights, i think.
if i bought a dvd, i expect to be able to watch it anywhere in the world, on my pc and on my dvd-player. i should be persecutable by the movie studio if i distributed copies of that dvd to my friends or other people. but since i bought that dvd, i should be able to enjoy it however/whenever/wherever i damn well please.
this right to do whatever i damn well please with things that are mine, i do hope that governments will take more seriously. but then again, that seems to be impossible in today's climate.
