Hmmmm...
I guess you're not on Twitter then?
Filesharers have deployed the ultimate weapon on the Antipodean front in their global copyright battle with the music and film industries: Twitter*. New Zealand is on the verge of enacting laws to curb illegal filesharing. ISPs will be compelled to introduce policies that could lead to disconnection from the internet for …
Twitter is in fact irrelevant. None the less, piracy will continue to be a crime and ISPs and others will be forced to act responsbily or pay the consequences. Virtually all industries have governmental supervision and it's no surprise that ISPs are required to do their part to reduce piracy, seeing as though they profit from providing Net access.
So if the avatar blackout is a new sign of protest how long will it be before several protests are using it at once and you can't tell what any individual Twat (that is the correct noun for a Twitter user isn't it?) is protesting about?
Seriously though this really is an indicator of how self important the Twitter crowd are, isn't it? They protest only in their own narrow world. How many Twitter users are there? And how many people have net access? Now divide the former by the latter, multiply by a hundred and you have the percentage of netizens who even vaguely give a shit.
Please forgive an oldie like me but I was brought up to think of a TWIT and being something of a (in today's parlance) twat who generally said little or nothing of any significance, in other words crap.
I therefore thought that Twitter was for a bunch of twits talking about nothing of any significance - or in today's language a bunch of twats talking crap!
Anonymous coz I scared of twats, sorry twits!
Sigh, I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but...
Copyright infringement is not a criminal offence (at least not in the UK); it is a civil tort.
Idiots like you who continue to suggest that it's a crime/theft/piracy will continue to be ignored while you continue talking out of your arse.
sign of protest would be by having a 'link to copyrighted material twitter hour'. where instead of twattering what they had for breakfast, how disgusted they are by jade goody/the daily mail etc. they all leave a link to there favourite album, film, tv show which is available to stream d/l from an outside site.
(with brackets saying - 'the user takes no responsibility for what is outside this link and how other users use it' or something to that effect)
HI. Nice article. Just one thing to add, the law is not for ISPs to disconnect people who share files illegally, that would be expected and difficult to protest, it is specifically for ISPs to disconnect ANYBODY who uses ANY P2P protocol on the assumption that anybody who does this is illegally filesharing.
Kiwis are unhappy because the government has now effectively created a law that assumes guilt. Regardless of how many people who actually know that P2P is used to disseminate ISOs of open source software, for example. Basically, the government is putting into effect a law it has now idea what it covers, what it does and how to enforce it except to say, you are guilty by association.
Does the protest make sense now?
Unhappy Kiwi.
Ah, the rush of exuberance that accompanies the first manifestation of an idea in a slightly new form. Point naughtism, to coin a phrase. If only we could live to be 200 or 300 years old, we might be more jaded in our evaluation of these new forms. Online romance is simply telegraph romance recurring. Better that we don't, for fear we lose the wonder in every blooming thing.
Public Demonstration
In Wellington on the steps of Parliament on Thursday 19th at MIDDAY
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html
El Reg decided not to mention this, or the fact that the blackout is net wide ( websites, not just twitter and social bookmarking ), because, well, they'd rather have a laugh than report usefully.
What capitalism? Most people might not realise this, but capitalism has not existed for over a century. What we have today is mainly national socialism, the collaboration of private industry with the state. This copyright nonsense is exactly that, and it forms a necessary part of national socialism. We cant have competition on any level after all. Copyrights are just a monopoly, one enforced by the state.
let me get this straight, they want to protest a law that effect their internet life and they are doing that be BEING online?
shouldn't the protest be in the form of a boycott of the internet for a week? If you need to use the internet for work then that is required. But to protest, you will need to turn the internet off at your home for a week. That is the only way to make your disagreement with the law be known. Let online shops and websites complain about the loss of business. This will make the government listen.
this is the same as people trying to protest the high price that mobile operators charge for SMSs. And starting sending SMSs to everyone arranging for the protest of not sending SMSs for one day. Then, after the protest, start sending SMSs about how successful the protest must have been and discuss the effect of the protest via SMS. Yay, the mobile operators _will_ reduce the price since they don't want another protest to be arranged and discussed ever again.
complaining without taking action is pointless, when are the young once going to figure this out?
Fucking twitter? What sort of a protest is that? Get out there on the streets and march, block roads, cause chaos, bring the nation to a halt, before all your rights are taken away. Look at France, do you see them changing their twitter profiles, the fuck you do, viva la revolution.
Well if it comes into law in the UK.. we'll loose Iplayer, Skyanytime, 4oD, joost, skype, other telephone services, movie on demand services, Blizzard update services (and hence playing the online games). Even services offered by the hollywood studio's themselves. Thats all before we even delve into the illegal side of things :)
But hey thats ok, it will make the ISP's happy. And once it's in place then hey... the law can pick and choose when to apply it to whom ever they like :)
Yes we needs open laws like this... 'Just in case'
I hope NZ has the sence to do a U turn on this :)
The problem with the legislation coming into effect this month is that it can result in the arbitrary disconnection of anybody repeatedly accused of infringing copyright.
I could accuse El Reg of infringing copyright by making available comments I had posted. If I were to do this more than twice, The Register would have to be cut off. I do not have to provide evidence, but merely make the accusation.
In order to try to limit the damage that could clearly be caused by this ill-considered legislation, a Code of Practice has been drafted. This was drafted by representatives of the NZ ISPs, and representatives of the very people most likely to abuse the law, This code of practice means that only the big labels will be able to make a complaint; artists themselves are not only left without the ability to protect themselves, but will likely become victims of the legislation and left without Internet access as well.
This is why we protest.
It never ceases to amaze me how the recording industry makes any money at all, because the people running it haven't got a f@cking clue about how their market works. They fail on so many levels it's bewildering.
At least 95% of my extensive record collection was bought as a direct result of home taping in the '70s and '80s, getting into artists and then buying their albums. In the '70s, the recording industry ran a campaign "home taping is killing music". Had I bowed to their bullying, they would have lost out on thousands of pounds worth of sales to me alone. (Incidentally, the people who do the real work in the industry realised this was bull - the muso's mag International Musician & Recording World parodied the campaign with a series of memorable articles under the title "Home taping is skill in music".)
As a one time aspiring musician, I can tell the moguls that most musicians learn their craft as skint kids, by covering their favourite musicians of the day. One band member buys an album, the others take a copy and learn their favourite tracks. Eventually, a lucky few of these "thieves" go on to write their own stuff and sell it to the next generation, (probably getting ripped off by the fat cats of the industry on the way). If the industry succeeded in their desire to force these musicians to each buy their own copy, the well of talent would quickly run dry.
A graph of record sales compared to file-sharing I once saw showed that, at the height of Napster's popularity record sales were also at a peak. As soon as Napster was shut down, sales plummetted. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that file-sharing is FREE advertizing for the industry, yet the dullards at the top are intent on stamping it out.
In recent years, listening to Pandora prompted me to buy lots of music from artists I would otherwise never have heard of. Since the industry effectively shut down Pandora access from the UK, I haven't bought a single CD. This is partly as a personal boycott of the industry, but largely because these days I just never hear anything that inspires me to get out my wallet.
As far as I'm concerned, the industry has shot itself in the foot. It's run by a bunch of money-grabbing, ignorant, short-sighted pond-scum who hate music and should have no place in the industry.
Mines the one with the media player with a rapidly aging collection of mp3s, illegally ripped from bought CDs.