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Obama Administration: Piracy == Theft

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According to US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke the Obama Administration is going to go after pirates and reform copyright.

“As Vice President Biden has said on more than one occasion, ‘Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,’ and it should be dealt with accordingly.”

No, Gary. It’s not. How do these idiots get so highly placed in government? This man needs to be removed from office for reasons of clear mental incapacity.

Piracy is not theft. The act of theft by its very definition implies the taking of property without consent and with intent to deprive the owner of its use. Copying a song over P2P does not remove the original, no one is deprived, and it is done with consent of the owner of the file. Filesharing is no different from making someone a mixtape. Just because the actions are on a larger scale and take place on the Internet do not mean it is theft.

Also, last I heard, the music industry and Hollywood are still doing pretty well.

I have no problem going after commercial pirates who are selling counterfeit copies of goods on a large scale, but we need to spread the message that non-commercial filesharing is not theft.

Lastly, if you are in the music business to make money – chances are you aren’t making good music anyway.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

FBI spending more money and time on copyright violations than missing persons

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You know that show ‘Without a Trace’?  The one about the FBI Missing Person’s task force?  I didn’t know that the FBI actually did that kind of work, but they do.  I also didn’t know that Big Media have pushed the feds with all their lobbying dollars to create a copyright enforcement task force and to devote more time, money and resources tracking down who is uploading a shitty camera copy of Dinner With Shmucks to Justin.tv.

Copyright Infringement should be a civil issue between the 2 parties, but currently these cases at the FBI are seemingly more important than fraud and missing persons – you know, where people’s actual lives are forever affected.  Wired’s Threat Level blog breaks down the current backlog of processing  DNA from missing persons crime scenes where homicide may have taken place.  Couldn’t the FBI be spending their time a little better?

Also, putting FBI seal on the top of this article for the lulz.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Worlds first Pirate ISP launched in Sweden.

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Of course, this happens first in Sweden.  And, of course its backed by the guys from The Pirate Bay.  The new ISP service will be designed to deliver consumer internet in line with the Pirate Party‘s ideals: competition, privacy and anonymity.  The ISP will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs.

According to Gustav Nipe, longstanding Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP, will roll out big by the end of the summer.  Currently the ISP is serving 100 residents of a building organization in the city of Lund for initial testing.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Voice your opinions on the Canadian DMCA – Send a letter with this website

Go here and fill out your letter, there is a pre-formed template to make it easy.

First, Moore called you ‘radical extremists’, now he won’t even respond at all to requests to comment on his bill.

Tell Moore and your local MP that you don’t want Bill C-32 as it stands to get passed.  Make sure that you tell them that the Digital Lock provisions are bollocks.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Blizzard flip-flops: RealID will not be used on their forums.

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Blizzard has changed its mind, and will no longer be publishing your real name along with your posts on its forums.  Mike Morhaime, CEO & Cofounder of  Blizzard Entertainment had this to say today (source):

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Popularity: 18% [?]

Porn: DRM free and making money hand over fist.

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As stated in this post over at NewTeeVee one of the largest players in the porn industry doesn’t use DRM and is still raking in huge sums of cash (about $29 million in revenue in 2009).  Only a really small percentage of pron producers and distributors put DRM on their products, and they seem to be doing just fine.  Porn has historically kept at the cutting edge of technology and has fully embraced the digital age with streaming and downloads everywhere.

Private Media Group CEO Ilan Bunimovitz told NewTeeVee:

“Free and pirated content is available regardless of whether the encoding is done by us or not… The way to fight piracy is not to limit who you sell content to, it’s by fighting pirates,”

Regarding embracing portability to all platforms ““Once you (buy) this piece of content, it’s yours on any screen you own”, explained Bunimovitz.

Here, here.  Now if only Big Media would take the hint…

Popularity: 64% [?]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada looking into Blizzard’s use of RealID

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has apparently have received an overwhelming amount of complains since the beginning of this week regarding the deployment of RealID, and will launch an investigation on the legality of such changes. Blizzard is threading a very thin line here, possibly infringing the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA, full text available here: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-8.6/FullText.html, condensed and simplified version here: http://www.priv.gc.ca/information/guide_e.cfm).

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Blizzard will start posting your real name alongside your posts on its forums.

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In a move that stunned many Blizzard has announced that it will start incorporating its Real ID feature that links your game accounts to your battle.net account and displays your real name to posts made on its forums.

RealID was recently put into game, and is a good idea but poorly thought out.  There needs to be a way for players who are friends to be able to find each other in game wherever they are and whatever character/server they may be playing on.  This I understand and agree with.  I was OK with showing my real name in the game because it is only viewable by people who I accept their RealID invite.  People that Blizzard’s own statements say should be my real life friends whom I trust with that information.  Still, I think I should get to choose an umbrella account name to use instead of my real name.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

Prince is completely over

Prince & The Revolution via last.fm

Prince sucks.  Some of his music I like, but as a person he is a total eccentric idiot.  He really thinks that gadgets and the internet are totally over and are going to go the way of MTV.

Prince is releasing his CD for free included only in The Daily Mirror.  Fine.  OK.  He then goes on to say:

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

Prince doesnt sell his music on iTunes, has his tunes barred from YouTube and even shut down his own website.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music.”

No, you don’t… and you just don’t get it.  So, the only way that I can obtain your music in a format that I want is to pirate it then?  Cheers, I may do just that.  Idiot luddite.

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Popularity: -0% [?]

The King is dead, long live the King!!!

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ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has seized the following domains: TVShack.net, Movies-Links.tv, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.  If you ask me, ICE should be securing America’s borders, not being the Internet Police…

No, not NinjaVideo!!!!! 

I am hoping some of these sites move offshore (and should have been from the get-go if you ask me) and resume their activities.  Ninja was a great place to find TV shows that are unavailable in my country.  And, really who gives a crap if people are watching TV at their leisure on their terms on the internets?

Regardless how many people they sue, and how many BS laws get passed in Canada and other countries, and how many secret treaties they have and how many politicians Big Media can pay for there will still be piracy.

Why? Not because we are cheap, not because we like to ‘steal’, not because we think piracy is sexy and not because we don’t think these things are worth the money.

It is because we currently cannot consume our media on our terms.  The more Big Media pushes for DMCA-like laws in our countries, the more they take the rights to our devices and purchased movies and music away, the more they attempt to circumvent the democratic process by purchasing politicians the MORE WE WILL REVOLT.

It is not piracy.  It is not theft.  It is not copyright infringement.  It is civil revolt.

Give it to me how I want it.  And I will pay for it.  Until then, for every site that you take down many many more will pop up in its place.  Nobody has started using crypto and TOR nodes in their file sharing applications yet – but they can and will.  Give it to us the way we want it, at a price that we are willing to pay and the war will end.  Otherwise, prepare for battle.

EDIT:  According to TorrentFreak, Movies-Links.TV and TVShack.net are now operating at Watch-Movies-tv.info and TVShack.cc, respectively. (Whack-A-Mole Time!!!) Long live the King indeed.

EDITx2: It seems as though some of the sites were hosted offshore, but the domains must have been registered to US persons or companies in order for ICE to take them over.  ICE also seized PayPal and bank accounts attached to the sites apparently.  In the future, those should also be registered to non US persons.  (See how this works?  The sites pop back up, and evolve.  It’s like a mutating virus.)

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Popularity: 41% [?]