The Isocracy Network interviews Mr. Carson on the theory and practice of mutualism, worker self-management, anarchist thinkers and his critics.

3 Nov 09 | The Isocracy Network

Kevin Carson, an American political theorist and a contemporary leader in discussions concerning mutualism and author of three extremely important books on co-operation, mutualism and capitalism. Describing his politics as being “the outer fringes of both free market libertarianism and socialism”, he certainly will find a welcoming audience among our group—which is why he’s been asked several difficult questions.

“The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” is available in HTML format and Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective are both available as PDF files.

Firstly, thank you Kevin for agreeing to this interview with The Isocracy Network.

Thanks for inviting me.

Could you begin by giving a description of mutualism from the initial definition offered by the anarchist, Proudhon, to contemporary examples and your own involvement in this sort of analysis of political economy?

Well, first of all, it’s important to distinguish between mutualism as a general form of praxis, and mutualism as a theory. Mutualist practices (friendly societies and lodges, guilds, arrangements for mutual aid, etc.) are probably old as the human race. Proudhon, Owen, Warren, et al simply created a theoretical framework that emphasized such forms of organization as a building block of society. It’s a bit like the centipede trying to figure out how it’s been walking all this time, or the man who was astonished to learn he’d been speaking in prose all along and didn’t even know it.

For that matter, there have been important anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin who emphasized mutual aid and other mutual organizations, without in any strict sense being mutualists. Cooperatives and mutuals have been central to the counterinstitution-building of much of the decentralist Left in the U.S. since the 1960s, but their thought is not explicitly mutualist either.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that most of the important examples of mutualist practice (the cooperative movement, the local currency and alternative credit movements, etc.) are not explicitly or self-consciously mutualist in ideology.

Having read Proudhon for some years, his thought is so complex and at times even seemingly self-contradictory, that I still hesitate to summarize it. But I’d venture to say, as an approximation, that his programme centered on: 1) abolishing artificial property rights in land and artificial scarcity of credit, so that the working class could secure cheap access to the prerequisites of production; and 2) organizing the economy around associations of producers. Of course Proudhon was an important founding thinker for anarchism as a whole as well as for mutualism; so these ideas, in modified form, have heavily influenced later collectivist, communist and syndicalist variants of anarchism.

Mutualist praxis was central to the Owenite movement in the U.K. (e.g. Owenite craft unions organized cooperative production and distribution by strikers in their own shops), as well as such things as the Rochedale cooperatives, the Chartists, and land colonization movements. Owenism, by way of Christian socialism and guild socialism, probably had a significant (if indirect) influence on distributism.

In the U.S. mutualism’s primary founder was the Owenite Josiah Warren. Warrenism, cross-pollinated with J.K. Ingalls’ occupancy-and-use view of land ownership and William Greene’s mutual banking theories, together led to the plumbline individualism of Benjamin Tucker. Tucker focused almost entirely on the abolition of artificial property rights and privilege in land and credit, assuming that when the legal props to rent and interest were removed and cheap land and credit were universally available, the forms of organization would take care of themselves. He displayed almost no interest whatever in cooperatives, associations for mutual aid, etc., as such.

Dyer Lum, John Beverley Robinson, and Clarence Swartz, all heavily influenced by Tucker, supplemented his focus on eliminating monopolies with some positive speculation on cooperative forms of organization; in so doing, they represented a partial fusion of Tucker’s version of individualism with the older cooperativist tradition of Proudhon and Owen. Lum, in particular, was also friendly to the radical labor movement and had fairly close ties to the I.W.W.

Would a highly successful large worker’s cooperatives, like the John Lewis Partnership in the U.K., and the Mondragón Corporation in Spain [centered in Basque Country] serve as evidence that mutualist economics can and does work in the large scale? Are credit unions evidence that mutualist economics can replace capitalist banking?

Although I’m quite friendly to both Mondragon and credit unions, and consider their influence to be decidedly positive, I believe their form is still distorted considerably by the capitalist milieu within which they exist. I like Mondragon’s federated system of cooperative producers, distributors and banks within a single umbrella organization. But it’s much too centralized a system in my opinion, with worker representation only effected at the level of the board of directors for the system as a whole; below the level of the Mondragon system as a whole, it’s a fairly top-down system of conventional management, with no significant self-management at the level of individual departments or factories.

I would greatly prefer local markets with lots of stand-alone cooperative manufacturing shops on the Emilia-Romagna model, integrated with cooperative banks in some sort of barter or local currency network of the sort promoted by Tom Greco.

Most credit unions, unfortunately, have adopted the culture of the conventional banking industry, and have almost no ideological affinity for the larger cooperative or counter-economy movement. Of course they are still greatly preferable to capitalist banks; being controlled by many small, local depositors, they are far less prone to the excesses of the capitalist banking system that we’ve seen in recent years.

Proudhon, although arguing that he opposed the idea of individuals deriving an income through rent and investments, said that he never wished “to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree” such activities. A contemporary mainstream economist may argue that Proudhon’s position here would be particularly utopian in those markets that have high barriers to entry or other monopolistic features, that a worker’s cooperative versus an entrenched capitalist enterprise in such a market would require a miracle on the scale of David vs, Goliath for success.

That sounds a bit like Tucker’s pessimistic view of things in his later years, when he seemed resigned to the idea that the large industrial trusts had grown to the point that their market power would persist even after the Four Monopolies were removed.

I think such a view neglects the extent to which capital-intensiveness is a source of high overhead cost and inefficiency, and is only made artificially profitable by the state’s subsidies and protections. In fact production as such has become far less capital-intensive over the past three decades, with the old mass-production core outsourcing increasing shares of total production to flexible manufacturing networks and job-shops, and some of them retaining little more than control over marketing and “intellectual property.” The development of cheap, small-scale CNC tools in the 1970s meant that the capital outlays required for manufacturing imploded by one or two orders of magnitude. That was the beginning of a long shift from older mass-production industry to Emilia-Romagna, the Toyota supplier network, the job-shops of Shenzhen and Shanghai, etc.

The process continues even further in the same direction with the desktop manufacturing revolution of recent years: cheap, homebrew CNC machines scalable to the small shop and garage.

When physical capital costs are so low, most of the financial role of the old industrial core is becoming redundant. And with small-scale production driven by local orders on a lean, demand-pull, JIT basis, marketing is similarly redundant.

“Intellectual property” is the main surviving buttress to the old corporate walls, and it’s becoming increasingly unenforceable.

A follower of Henry George would argue in the realm of natural resources it would be impossible for success and that land-rents should be socialised. How would you respond to these claims?

I’m quite friendly to George, and think the lines between individualism and Georgism are a lot less harsh than (say) Tucker would have believed. But I believe a great deal of rent could be eliminated simply by removing subsidies to economic centralization and positive externalities created by taxpayers—not to mention by removing state enforcement of title to vacant and unimproved land. If as much urban infrastructure as possible were funded by user fees, and cities broken up into lots of mixed-use neighborhoods in which residential areas had their own miniature “downtown” cores, differential rent would be far less significant. I think a majority of George’s aims could be achieved by Tucker’s means, or even by a throughgoing application of Rothbard’s means.

With examples of worker’s self-management in the former Yugoslavia, and modelling by economists such as Jaroslav Vanek and Benjamin Ward, it has been shown in some cases (especially in critical infrastructure) it is advantageous for labor-managed firms, in their objective of increasing income per worker, to either lay-off workers or—like a monopolistic capitalist firm – to reduce productivity and thus derive monopoly profits. How would a contemporary version of mutualism prevent these problems?

It’s been a long time since I read Vanek’s work on worker-managed economies, but my immediate reaction is that there’s probably no fool-proof set of governance rules. When the firm is controlled by capital-owners, they’ll behave in such a way as to maximize returns on capital; when it’s controlled by managers, as in most large Western corporations, they’ll maximize benefits to management at the expense of both labor and capital. At least in a worker-managed firm, the decisions will reflect the interests of a bare majority, which can’t be said of the other two mechanisms. Beyond that, I think the answer to the kind of behavior you describe lies in exit as much as in voice: the lower the capitalization requirements and the lower the barrier to entry for most forms of production, and the lower the cost threshold for comfortable subsistence, the less catastrophic changes in employment will be. I’d like to see an economy where a much larger share of total consumption needs are met through production for subsistence or barter in the household/informal sector, and the average time spent in wage employment is much less than at present.

That would mean a significantly larger share of the population would be self-employed than at present, a very large share would work hours that we would regard as “part-time,” household arrangements for pooling wages and hoarding labor-time would be much more resilient, and even wage-earners would tend to accept as normal prolonged periods of unemployment during which they lived off subsistence resources while waiting for a job to their liking.

Pro-capitalist neoliberals, such as George Reismann, Roderick T. Long have criticised your advocacy of mutualism. Reisman and Long both argue that you do not support John Locke’s ownership of landed property that has been mixed with labour or, to use the peculiarly U.S. vernacular, “homesteading”. It seems that both this critics have fundamentally misunderstood Locke’s concept of land ownership, which recognises a public cost for exclusion and use in addition to the right of added value. How do you respond to these criticisms?

To be frank, I can’t say with any degree of confidence what Reisman understands about anything. But I think Long acknowledged Locke’s Proviso and explicitly characterized his own position as “non-Proviso Lockeanism.” I’m not a Georgist myself, although I’d be well-disposed to a local property rules system based on some form of common ownership and community collection of rent. In any case, justifiably or not, when answering Lockean critics I tend to tacitly work from the premise that “Lockean” means “non-Proviso Lockean.” And for the most part, I think a radical and consistent application of non-Proviso Lockean rules would go most of the way toward achieving the aims of the Tucker-Ingalls land theory.

… all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous band of nature: … Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property… For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.

–John Locke, Of Civil Government – Second Treatise

For that matter, over time I’ve come to see the bounderies between the Tucker-Ingalls and non-Proviso Lockean systems as less distinct, and to perceive some practical problems with the Tucker system (at least the more radical variant–he seems to promote different versions of the system at different times). At times Tucker himself seemed to concede the existence of house-rent, but to argue that the nullification of titles to vacant land would (through market competition) cause the land-rent component of rent to disappear and overall rent to fall to the value of rent on buildings. Now, to me, that seems to imply that Tucker wasn’t necessarily (at least at times) dead-set against absentee ownership in principle. That variant of his land theory, at least, seems to imply that the important thing was to eliminate large-scale absentee title to vacant and unimproved land.

In any case, I tend to think that doing so would go a long way to eliminating landlord rent through market competition.

Another critic, Walter Block argues that you are actually some sort of Marxist because you use the labour theory of value for deriving a theory of exploitation. It would seem that (a) Block is unaware that Adam Smith and David Ricardo also used the labour theory of value and (b) using it to calculate a rate of exploitation is hardly the same as using it as an anchor to exchange values.

I think the Austrians also, for the most part, exaggerate the extent to which marginalism/subjectivism is a radical departure from classical labor and cost theories. It’s closer to the truth to say that marginalism provides a mechanism for explaining the tendency that Ricardo et al described. The marginalist/subjectivist claim that “utility determines value” is true in a technical sense, if you add the qualification “at any point in time given the snapshot of supply and demand in the spot market.” But it’s not true in the ordinary way we use those words. If you allow changes in supply over time to enter the picture, then supply alters until the utility of the marginal unit reflects the cost of producing it—i.e., exactly what Ricardo said.

It makes far more sense to treat marginalism as a complement or fulfillment to classical political economy, rather than as supplanting it.

Politically, where do you think mutualists should align themselves. Should they spend their efforts in building cooperative organisations, like Proudhon’s advocacy of dual power? Or is there some mileage to be made in being involved in existing political organisations, such as the Labour Party—Cooperative Party groups in the U.K.? What about in the United States; is the Libertarian Party salvageable?

I think by far the most important, and the most interest, of our tasks is actually building the kind of society we want, and doing so so far as possible without regard to the state. But there’s something to be said for putting external pressure on the state, and participating in political coalitions to remove as much state interference with our activities as possible. Of course the primary emphasis of such coalition-building should be forming pressure groups, rather than attempting to become part of a governing coalition.

A lot of this parallels Daniel DeLeon’s disputes with the anarchists in the I.W.W. DeLeon argued that “building the structure of the new society in the shell of the old” (i.e. building industrial unions to serve as organs of self-management) would not be enough by itself. So long as the capitalists controlled the state and its armed force, and the significant minority of people whose class interest was tied up with it, there was the danger of the “Iron Heel” being brought to bear against counter-organizations. On the other hand, political victory alone wasn’t sufficient; he gave the example of threats by Jay Gould to organize a national capital strike and lockout if the socialists ever captured the national government. Workers, DeLeon argued, should be focused on building counter-institutions, but also be prepared to seize the commanding heights of the state long enough to dismantle them and prevent them from being used against themselves.

What we need is a primary focus on institution building, without entirely neglecting the need for a political movement to run interference for the counter-institutions.

What’s more, there’s the very real danger an authoritarian state might make a concerted effort to stamp out the counter-economy through (for example) the kinds of totalitarian surveillance Richard Stallman described in “The Right to Read,” intensified licensing and zoning to suppress low-capital producers, etc. It’s a waste of effort and probably corrupting to seriously run our people for Congress or the White House. But it’s perfectly sensible to carry out propaganda against legislation like the DMCA, to support lobbying campaigns organized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and NORML, etc.

Proudhon argued that through a society of contracts between individuals, a federal structure could arise. This of course must presume that individuals have the capacity to engage in uncoerced contractual arrangements. What other political requirements do you think have a particular priority in breaking down authoritarian elements in statist rule?

Well, it could be that the authoritarian elements of statist rule will persist on paper right up to the point at which they become irrelevant. But in my opinion it’s at least worth a shot to pressure the state from outside, and form ad hoc alliances to pressure the state, in order to minimize its interference and fend off attempts at intensified interference. That includes local efforts against licensing and zoning that impede household microenterprise and micromanufacturing, local pressure to defend peaceful squatters and vagrants, pressure against the regulatory suppression of self-organized mutual-aid efforts, pressure at the national level against further expanding “intellectual property” law, and so forth.

Kevin, thank you for your time and views.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective. Mr. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

According to a recent announcement from Verizon Communications Company, the company will begin issuing “copyright notices” to customers accused of illegally downloading copyrighted material from the Internet. The notices will be sent on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and will be delivered by email or automated voice messaging. The notice, which other ISPs have also forwarded from the RIAA to customers upon the RIAA’s request, is expected to inform customers that they have been accused of illegal music sharing and advise them to delete the music they distribute.

Verizon’s announcement regarding the notices cautions that “customers who receive multiple notices from Verizon risk having their Internet service interrupted or turned off and serious legal consequences if the copyright owner decides to sue over the alleged infringement.” Asking ISPs to forward such notices to users is part of a new strategy to combat music piracy adopted by the RIAA after the organization decided a year ago to stop bringing lawsuits against individuals accused of file sharing.

The prospect of an Internet service provider passing on notices that a user has been accused of illegal file sharing raises the question of whether the customer’s privacy is being violated–either by the RIAA’s investigation itself or the ISP’s involvement in passing on the notice. Verizon’s announcement does not state how the RIAA tracks down an anonymous online activity with a particular Internet user’s account. In the past, Verizon has refused to supply the RIAA with subscriber information, arguing that such actions would give the RIAA “complete access to private subscriber information without the due process protections afforded by the courts,” and challenged the argument that Verizon was required to provide such information under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The D.C. Circuit ruled in Verizon’s favor on this issue in 2003. In a statement issued this week by a Verizon spokesman, the company says it continues to recognize the importance of protecting user privacy, but that without the enforcement of copyright rights, “intellectual property won’t be generated at all.” It is unclear what motivated Verizon, the second-largest phone company in the U.S., to acquiesce to the RIAA’s demands at this time, and it will be interesting to see how Verizon customers react to such notices and whether they choose to challenge Verizon’s actions in court.

– Rachel Friedman

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13 de Noviembre, Juez William Alsup (Corte de California), Apple Vs. Psystar: el final decisivo de un juicio sumario decisivo

“Psystar Infringió el derecho exclusivo de Apple de crear trabajos derivativos de Mac OSX, específicamente, cometiendo 3 modificaciones (1) reemplazar el bootloader de Mac OSX con un bootloader distinto para habilitar el funcionamiento en una computadora Psystar de una copia no autorizada de Mac OSX; (2) Deshabilitar y remover los archivos de extensión de kernel de Apple; y (3) añadir extensiones kernel ajenas a Apple.”

También se suprimió el pedido de Psystar para un juicio sumario, en el que la compañía pretendía probar que Apple estaba haciendo mal uso de su copyright.

Es decir, la corte de California encontró a Psystar culpable de infringir el copyyright de Apple al instalar OSX en máquinas no autorizadas, violación del Digital Millenium Copyright Act al “sacarle la vuelta” a la barrera de proteción que impide la instalación de su sistema operativo en hardware de terceros.

Si bien no esto no significa que el caso está cerrado del todo (aún faltan resolver las contrademandas sobre ruptura de contrato, violación de trademark, competencia desleal, entre otros, interpuestos por Apple en contra de Psystar) si resulta ser un hito en este proceso legal, ya que aquí se juzgan los elementos de fondo que Psystar utilizaba como argumentos para defender su esquema de negocio.

El bolsillo negro que mantuvo al equipo legal de Psystar aún luego de su declaración de bancarrota debe estar muy triste: es un día bueno para Apple y su sistema propietario, aquello que hace de una Mac una Mac.

according to read write web, the US is looking at putting in place a law that will force ISPs to disconnect people who have violated copyright. In essence, i have no issue with this (except that its difficult to uphold) as it will protect copyright to some extent for those that want to keep on using that business model.  There is a risk of this being used for other purposes though as what forms a real infringement versus an excuse to gather information or curtail free speech. for example, if i put up a picture of mickey mouse which i am selling illegally (or monetizing through advertising) than disney has teh right to shut me down. However, if i am commenting that i think mickey mouse is an object of imperilaism, can disney shut me down for using their trademark?

the proposed bill goes one step further, if you download illegal material, you can be switched off the net. this makes the definition of “illegal” even trickeir, and begs to ask if we have a pretty strong body of law around libel and copyright, do we really need to have a very draconian and citizen unfriendly set of laws for the digital world?

the good news is that the US seem to be pretty much on its own. the EU has just passed a law that protects users rights on-line – so back to teh drawing board big brother.

read write web story

EU new telecoms law

Babya ’s CEO A.A. Fussy  today offered comment on Apple’s win in copyright infringement case against Psystar in California.

This is what he had to say about it,
‘I’m very pleased that the court’s judge, Willam Alsup has made a  ruling in favor in Apple for a summary judgement -especially because of their claim that Psystar is illegally copying, modifying, and distributing Apple’s copyrighted software-which the court affirmed. was the case  This would make it illegal to install OS X onto a netbook for instance0-as that would be a “Apple labelled” computer according to the Mac OS X license agreement.”

“This also confirms my suspecions that  Psystar was  in violation of the DMCA”

I was under the impression that municipal Wi-Fi was a dead idea that municipalities had abandoned a couple of years ago.  Apparently, Coshocton, Ohio didn’t get the memo, because it’s municipal Wi-Fi network has been shut down by the MPAA.

Well, that’s what Gizmodo’s saying, based on a BoingBoing report.  Apparently, the town’s entire network was shut down due to a single user downloading something that was copyrighted.

But really?  How did this happen?  The way things are written, it sounds like the MPAA discovered the illegality and pulled the plug on the network.  Can things actually go that way?  Hmmm… even as powerful as private entities are, surely they don’t have the power to summarily wipe out a public service.  Right?  More digging is necessary!

BoingBoing got the tip from the Coshocton Tribune, which carries a headline: “Illegal Movie Download Forces Shutdown of Free Wi-Fi.”  Apparently what happened is that the ISP (OneCommunity) was notified by Sony Pictures Entertainment that a movie was illegally downloaded over the network.  In turn, the ISP notified the county’s IT Department.  And I guess the IT Department yanked the plug?  It isn’t clear from the article; after explaining the chain of events, it goes into how piracy is bad.  So don’t pirate things, kids, okay?!?!?!

I’m not entirely sure why the decision to pull the plug was made.  ISPs were given safe harbor protections under the DMCA to protect them from the infringing activities of their customers.  (See 17 U.S.C. § 512; see also this Chilling Effects FAQ.)  The requirements for staying in the safe harbor are many, but suffice to say, if the ISP keeps its hands off stuff, then it’s pretty much in the clear. And that means that the town overreacted by pulling the plug, and–based on the scant information I’ve seen on this–I’d say it’s as much to blame as the MPAA is in this situation.

Oh well, I guess that’s why we’re not allowed to have nice things.

Vedad Krehic on ‘intellectual property’ at LewRockwell.com (LRC): How copyright has turned the record labels, software writers and film studios against their own customers.

by Vedad Krehic

9 Nov 09 | LRC

The consumer entertainment industry lobbyists lie. They lie over, and over, and over. They lie to the media, they lie to the politicians, they lie to you. The lies in question are rarely looked upon critically by the media or the politicians, only by grassroots opposition. The main lies involved are all variations on the same theme; copying equals theft. That is to say, if you copy a piece of data – be it a software program, a song, a movie, a book, that makes you a thief. You’re depriving the producer of that work of money which they supposedly have a right to.

I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t “educated” well enough in government schools, but no matter how I twist and turn my logic, I still fail to see how this even remotely makes sense. If I walk into a store and leave with a jacket for which I have not paid then I have deprived the store’s owner of his or her justly acquired, tangible property. They have one less jacket. They are directly harmed by my action.

If a friend, however, lends me a music CD and if I then make a copy, so that I can listen to the music without having to borrow the disc again in the future, nobody is harmed. It is possible that I could, for example, have made an agreement or contract with him when I borrowed the disc stating that I cannot copy it. If I were to do it anyway, I’d be in violation of a private agreement. If not, who is harmed by my act of duplication? I used my own tangible property (CD drive, computer, and hard drive or blank CD) to fashion a duplicate of the data on the CD. The original CD is still my friend’s property. I return it to him, and while he is no better or worse off than he was before, I am now better off. The imprint of the music on my tangible property makes that property marginally worth more to me, as I can enjoy its use to a greater extent than previously.

Was anyone harmed at any point here?

Yes—if you choose to believe the consumer entertainment industry. They claim there was a third party here that was being harmed. Can you see the third party? There was me, and there was my friend. There was my property and that of my friend. I don’t see the third party anywhere in that process. I suppose my friend could have been in a contract with the person or organization he purchased the CD from not to copy it, but I wouldn’t have been bound by that contract. Either way, I did nothing wrong.

So who is this mysterious third party? At which point does he appear, and how is he harmed?

The third party is the copyright holder. Wait, the what-holder? What’s a copyright holder? Where does he come into play?

Well, let me explain. You see, there’s this notion advocated by some—primarily media lobbyists, objectivists and government officials—of an intellectual property (I.P.). What is an intellectual property, you may ask? Well, the gist of it is that if you do anything that requires a bit of work with the big, roundish object mounted on top of your neck, you have a time-limited monopoly on that action if you’re the first person to do it.

Not understandable? Let me enlighten you, dear reader, with some examples.

Let’s say you are the first to invent a new type of screwdriver. According to the theory of I.P., if you register it with a patent office, for all intents and purposes you now own that idea. You own it for a limited amount of time (20 years), after which the ownership magically vanishes. How can you own the idea, you might ask? Well, according to I.P., that means that nobody else can legally manufacture the same type of screwdriver for the duration of the ownership. Or, to put it in clearer terms, nobody has a right to compete with you. You have a monopoly. The same applies for all other sub-categories of I.P., including copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and so on; but this article is intended to focus mainly on copyright. For an extended discourse and refutation of the other ones, as well as a more in-depth take on copyright, I recommend to the reader Stephan Kinsella’s brilliant essay, “Against Intellectual Property” [.pdf]

Copyright follows the same logic as the screwdriver inventor. It posits that the act of making a “creative” work—such as writing a book, composing a song, painting a picture, taking a photo and so on—creates a different type of property on top of the tangible property that already exists in that item. Follow me, dear readers, if you can, through the logic. Let’s use a painting as an example. The painting consists of a canvas and some paint. That’s the tangible property. That’s what the painting’s owner owns. But, according to the theory of I.P., there is (assuming the painting hasn’t been placed into the public domain or had its copyright expire) another owner, as well. The painter, or whomever he might have signed over the copyright to the painting.

You see, the owner of the painting can do anything he wants with it (within the bounds of the non-aggression axiom). He can throw rancid tomatoes at it, he can hang it upside down, he can embed a block of wood straight through the middle of it. It’s his or her right as the owner. He may not, however, legally duplicate the pattern of paint on the canvas. There is an existing moral prohibition against duplicating it and then selling those duplicates as the original—it’s called fraud. There is no such moral prohibition against merely duplicating it, or, for that matter, duplicating it with the intention of selling the duplicates (assuming one doesn’t claim they are original). The reason he may not duplicate it is that the “creator,” the copyright holder, doesn’t allow it. Granted, there are some exceptions, such Creative Commons or other copyleft licenses which explicitly grant the right to copy within the framework of copyright law. Nevertheless, unless otherwise stated by the copyright holder, the legal assumption is that unauthorized duplication is not permitted.

Can anyone please explain to me how someone can be a just owner of something, yet not be allowed to exercise his or her ownership rights over it? He can throw rancid tomatoes at the painting, but not duplicate the pattern that makes the painting a painting, rather than just canvas and paint? Or, to use a different type of copyrightable pattern, how can someone own their own brain yet not own the part of it containing a song they memorized?

The logical conclusion is that the natural right of property and the idea of copyright, and of intellectual property in general, are fundamentally incompatible and conflict sharply. You cannot own something and have someone else dictate to you what you can and cannot do with it, without that being an element voluntarily arrived at through contract. In absence of a contract, the dictating party is initiating aggression against the just owner of an item. Intellectual property is an assault on tangible property.

What we’re looking at is protectionism in disguise—government giving preferential treatment to one specific industry at the expense of the rest of society. Now, let’s go back to the copyright holder, the mysterious third party who was hurt by me copying the CD’s contents. What I’ve done by copying my friend’s CD is violate a government-imposed monopoly on copying the CD’s contents, the monopoly belonging to the copyright holder. Hence, according to the idea of intellectual property, I’m a thief. I’ve had the audacity to compete with the beneficiary of the monopoly. That is the sense in which I’ve supposedly hurt a third party.

Let’s take a quick look at the current “copyright wars” being waged, in light of the above description of copyright. The music industry in particular and the broader copyright-dependent entertainment industries in general are in decline. Their profit margins are going down, and they don’t like it. The consumers aren’t as pleased with their products as they once were. The seemingly rational course of action for the industry is to look into why consumers aren’t pleased with their products, see what they can do better, innovate, and drop their prices to increase demand. What do the industries (by which I mean the members of the IFPI and MPA) do, however?

None of the above.

In fact, not only are they unwilling to innovate, they have gone to the extreme of starting to sue their own potential and real customers—with the number of lawsuits now over being over 20,000. I’m not a business major, but I’m pretty damn sure that’s not a good way to gain favour with your customers. In their view, every copy made is a lost sale; each person who makes a copy—and a download from a file-sharing network is a copy—must equal a lost sale. Because I’m sure you’ve all gone and bought every single song or movie you’ve heard or seen at a friend’s place, on the radio, on TV, and so on. Let’s cut the crap, okay?

There are many theories on why the entertainment industries’ profits are going down the drain. My own personal favourites are as follows:

1. Lack of innovation and fear of technology. The industries have always been afraid of new technology. The radio, the player-piano, the phonograph, the VCR, cassette tapes etc. were seen as threats by the industry, which responded by attempting to restrict sales and ownership. They’re notoriously skeptical towards new technology, and will bend over backwards to prevent it from becoming commonplace. They’re unwilling to experiment and find new ways to fulfill customer demand. Apple practically had to force iTunes onto the market, the record labels weren’t willing to go along with it at first. They weren’t willing to only sell individual songs, they wanted whole albums sold.One glaring example of the entertainment industries’ fear of technology was ex-MPAA president Jack Valenti’s 1982 statement to a U.S. Congressional panel:

   “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

   As we all know, VCRs went on to become one of the biggest profit sources for Hollywood in history, and now we have DVDs and Blu-Ray discs filling the VCR’s role.

2. Appealing to the lowest common denominator. This applies both to movies and music, but in my opinion, especially music. With their tight working relationship with radio and MTV-like TV channels, the IFPI members of the music industry have, until the last decade, had a virtual choke hold on customers. The radio and TV was the way new music was promoted and exposed to the customer. This is why a good portion of the popular music available today (which, of course, is a subjective opinion—but one many people would echo) is of dubious quality. Need I mention anything more than Britney Spears? The control they once had is now eroding. This is, I believe, one of the core reasons behind their stubborn unwillingness to embrace new technology, and especially the Internet: they give consumers more choice.Movies and news media, of course, aren’t exempt. Every year, Hollywood cranks out hundreds of movies, on which only a handful are truly worth spending one’s finite time. Who truly needs to see movies like Brüno? I mean, okay, it’s mildly humorous. But it’s far from intelligent.

   Here is an article by Michael Crichton discussing the quality of the media, with emphasis on news media in particular. While that isn’t directly what this article is discussing, its observations can be applied to that of the entertainment media as well.

3. Treating the customer like a criminal. You walk into a cinema, buy a ticket, sit down and wait for the movie to start. Then you see this.Doesn’t give you the impression that they like or trust their customers a whole lot, does it?

   But that’s just the beginning of it. The entertainment industries lobby politicians to strengthen and lengthen and broaden the scope of copyright laws. When last I checked, copyright in the U.S. lasts for life + 70 years. Who can claim that a musician should still have a monopoly on his or her works 70 years after they die?

   Furthermore, they lobby for laws like the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which, among other things, further erodes property rights in that it makes reverse engineering DRM systems illegal. What’s DRM, you ask? DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Restrictions might be a more apt term than rights. DRM is, in short, copy protection technology. It’s there on your DVDs, your Blu-Ray discs, your Audible audiobooks, and unfortunately many other places also. Sure, one could have DRM without copyright, but it wouldn’t make much sense to do so. DRM makes it difficult, but not impossible, to make copies of the contents of a medium such as a DVD. It’s a failed attempt by the copyright industries to use technology to prevent the use of other technology.

   The results of using DRM have been mainly preventing non-tech-savvy users from making backups of their own discs (as tech-savvy users can figure out ways to copy them anyway) and to introduce unnecessary inconvenience to the customer. Here are a few examples.

4. The entertainment industries’ crusade against file sharing. A truly stillborn, yet relentlessly continued policy. This harks back to #1 & #3, but deserves a mention of its own. File sharing, which is to say, people sharing media content in the form of digital files such as MP3s, has had a history dating back to the beginning of the digital computer age, but in its current, Internet based incarnation dates back only a decade. It started with Shawn Fanning releasing Napster in 1999. There were a few file-sharing networks prior to Napster, such as HotLine and Audiogalaxy, but Napster is the first one that got real traction. Millions of users copying music files from each other via the Internet. The music industry freaked.

They had Napster shut down. Due to its centralized nature, it was a simple case of shutting down the central coordinating server. Since then, file sharing has been a whack-a-mole game with the entertainment industries’ lawyers and paid politicians constantly trying to shut down various file-sharing networks, and new ones—more decentralized, anonymized and secure—popping up to fill their place. And with every blow, they make file sharing an even stronger movement. This isn’t just me being dramatic, it’s a simple fact. They give it publicity. For example, ThePirateBay, a Swedish BitTorrent (a popular file-sharing technology) tracker and search engine, was attempted to be shut down multiple times by various governments, as well as many national government attempting to ban Internet providers in their respective countries from allowing their users to access the site. Every single attempt has been met with ridicule, and ThePirateBay’s user base grew exponentially as a result of the publicity. The previous owners of ThePirateBay are now on trial for promoting copyright infringement. More on ThePirateBay’s legal saga.

All of these elements combine to form a highly unfavourable impression of the copyright industry in consumers’ eyes. Technology is making traditional entertainment industry business models obsolete. Instead of innovating, the industries are using the hammer of government to force their customers to comply with 1970s business models—and now those customers are rebelling. As a result, the measures applied by governments to coerce them just keep getting more and more draconian. The ACTA, or Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international copyright treaty which is being negotiated in secrecy, is just the latest in a series of totalitarian treaties promoted by the copyright-dependent entertainment industries.

That treaty, if passed, would mark the death of the Internet as we know it; pretty much every single website and service with user-uploaded content would be forced out of business by the sheer cost of compliance. Bye-bye YouTube, Flickr, Google Book Search, digg, Wikipedia, etc.

We can’t let this insanity go on any longer – eliminate imaginary property!

[Thanks for editorial help from John T.]

Vedad Krehic is a student studying digital media production in Norway. Send him mail.

RELATED:

• Intellectual Property — A Libertarian Critique
• Stephan Kinsella on ‘Intellectual Property’ and Libertarianism (mp3)
• Should You Give Away Your Precious IP?
• Copyright Communism?
• IP: It’s a Market Failure Argument
• The Mercantilism of Our Time
• Monopoly Kills Creativity

A few day ago I was perusing one of about a dozen sites I… peruse… when I
found another story about the corporations planning to strip you of your current
rights.  Yes ‘”the” Corporations, like Hollywood and the Movie Industry, and the
Record Labels.  In a world where alot of wingnuts fear “the government”, usually
without good reason, there is an issue where we should all be concerned, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement (aka
ACTA).  What is ACTA you might be wondering? Well let’s look at wikipedia’s
first paragraph “a proposed plurilateral trade agreement which is
claimed by its proponents to be in response “to the increase in global trade of
counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works.”^[1]
The scope of ACTA is broad, including counterfeit physical goods,
as well as “internet distribution and information technology”.^[2]” 
What’s that?  It’s a secret internet treaty being negotiated in secret.  If you
read through it, which you can’t because it’s negotiated in secret you’d see
the push for a global set of copyright rules that would have ISP’s respond to DMCA-style takedown notices under a 3 strikes rule.  In
essence your ISP would be required to terminate your internet connection after
receiving 3 complaints against your IP address.  Someone have a beef with you,
they complain 3 times and poof your gone, disconnected from the internet.  Not
just you, but everyone in your household because they’re all at the same IP
address.

Safe Harbor?  Forget about it. Due process?  Gone. And ISPs would lose their
safe harbor status, so they’d be responsible for everything posted from users. 
Now think about it, a company would complain against you, demand your  user
information and your ISP would hand it over, why wouldn’t they?  What’s the
reason to hold out for you and disrupt  their business?  So YouTube,
Photobucket, Flickr, MySpace, Google/BING/Yahoo… anything with user generated
content… gone. That just leaves “The Corporations” and their product.  You
should be worried, you should be concerned.  With most people now using the
Internet for fun, communication, sharing, and work it could all come to a
grinding halt.  What goods a wifi connection when you can only watch what the
corporations want you to see? You hate ads? You like free software of any kind?
Be prepared for seismic changes if this goes through. Alot of people fear a one
world government, maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, what they should
fear is a One World Corporation with the powers of a government. How much is
your freedom of expression worth? You may find out soon and you might not be
able to afford it.

Want to find out more? http://www.eff.org/issues/acta

I have been reading lately loads of stuff regarding SL community preparing this and that to stop copy theft of their content. Copyright infringement, DMCA and all other stuff you can hear lately in various circles of Second Life. Lets take a look on other side of the story. Well, at least MY views on that matter to be perfectly clear about it…Frankly, I believe that already majority of stuff that is uploaded daily in SL is already stolen. One way or another. Of course, you cant actually steal scripts (yea,yeah i know you can SL is like swiss cheese but lets stick to stuff every idiot can rip off), but thats bit different story. I mean seriously, if all zillion and 4 merchants that are currently selling their shit in SL are THAT good, then i think major software industries are missing some major buck not hiring them and give them loads of money for their work. On the other hand let’s try to check out assets that you can upload in SL and claim them as yours, protect them with DMCA and all other shit nobody actually gives 2 crap about.

1. Textures – ahhh… linkset without textures is just fucking plank. Lets see… texmod can easily rip textures from, mind you high-end games in which somebody really sit and made them from scratch (or reference pics which they had to buy since they DO care about DMCA and other shit). Just as easy as glintercept will rip and decode SL textures on the fly…

2. Skins/Clothes – Daz3d, Renderosity, Runtime DNA and loads more are selling poser character textures and you can easily convert them to SL compatible textures. Heck, you even have texture converter that do that for you in matter of minutes. As of clothes, yeah it can be bit difficult to make seamless clothes and due to fact that SL avatar template is well, pretty non user-friendly, I can give  some credits to creators for that. Again, you can still get away with loads of textures from games as starting point and with little adjusting you can get decent results, and with couple of hours working on them you can get nice results. Well at least faster than you would spend making them from scratch.

3. Sounds – do i really have to comment this? Does all gun makers are Foley artists as well? I really dont think so. Those they are, i hardly think need to sell their shit on SL. It’s pretty much wanted profession and nobody can tell me that they will earn more money in SL than in some sound studio in RL. Sure you can get some effects online for free, but you can also, as easy as with textures rip them from games for “custom unbelievably realistic sound effects our <add SL product here> is using”.

4. Animations - frankly, I know maybe 2 or 3 people who actually make their anims from scratch. Again, with little effort you can (and most are) rip poser animations and apply them on already rigged and poser ready SL avatar and sell them for idiotically high amount of money. Dont get me wrong, I do my anims from scratch, and anyone that ever tried to make 30+ frames animation froms scratch (FK or IK doesnt matter) knows what kind of pain that is. Yeah, you can buy motion rig and do motion capture… well scratch that… you CANT buy it as it cost about arm, leg, kidney and liver, so that solution is not for fuckfaces that make anims for SL. Of course, those that DO make their anims, charge them high since they spend loads of time creating it. Those that rip them charge them even more since they want fast money anyway and besides “why should I charge them less when this guy charge them this high”.

5. Shapes – ok this is biggest joke in SL. Shape creators should be, IMHO, Hanged, drawn and quartered for charging damn shape 1k+ lindens. Oh yeah, you get nice “styling card” where creator tells you where to spend another 3-4k L$ so that your new shape looks just like in his pictures. FFS, people, just move fucking sliders, it’s not fucking Daz3d model with 2000 morphs! It’s stupid SL avatar with 20-30 morphs so if you cannot make desired shape yourself, then please go stick your head in owen and grab some smokes.

6. Sculpts – well, hats off for that, not much you can steal from RL due to restraints they have. I give my full kudos (I know nobody gives 2 shits about it) to them for stuff they make. (but, wait there is more, read on…).

And now comes fun part…

Lets say for sake of telling me that im full of shit, and that what i just wrote isnt true at all. Lets say that Im just jealous fuckface that never made anything in my life (which is so wrong but nvm) and that ALL content creators make their stuff from scratch.

Well dear gents and ladies will you be so kind to explain to me how exactly you make them? Name your tools that you are using for them (let me help you Photoshop, Poser, 3ds max, Maya, Motion builder, Cinema 4d, MilkShape, Zbrush etc, etc.) Now name all of them that you actually OWN. Like, “i have spent 999 bucks for PS” or “i have spent CRAPLOAD of money on Autodesk soft that i use for sculpts”. Those few that actually are going in that small amount of people I already mention and I own apologize. I know… Some of you will say now “fuck you retard, im using blender and Gimp – they are free”. Well, I simply not buying it. I once read on some group charter that some dude is making his textures for sculpties in MS Paint (!?). Sure, thats also possible, especially if you are this guy.

Now, dont get me wrong, I dont support stealing in any way, but if you are already stealing (one way or another) from somebody else, e.g. not paying for software you are using, using sound effects from Lucas Arts games for your shit, what exactly gives you right to protest when somebody steal your shit? As its said in title, Easy come – easy go

[Edit @3:15AM]

Just for fun I went to sl with one of dreaded clients that shows skin textures (and for that matter dumps them as well). Not because I wanted to steal, but out of curiosity what people will put as copy notices on their textures. Well, Millage Valenti, pretty good ranked seller of skins and other various stuff in SL is actually HEAVILY VIOLATING INSL logo guidelines, and by that SL as trade mark as well. (e.g. Inside INSL logo he putted MV logo and some other shit).
So, he is obviously not respecting SL as trade mark and logo yet somehow, buy putting all that shit in his textures he wants to protect his shit by posting all kinds of copy notices and shit? Fuck, call me fuck face, idiot, retard or whatever you want but that’s just plain hypocrisy. Only reason is why im not posting that textures here is because i really dont want to have anything with exporting anything from SL, but that is true, and for example if somebody file abuse I bet LL would be pleased to kill his sorry ass. Then he can go to court like that porn mogul Stroker and to cry over it because his pool is closed…

Sont présentement réunis des représentants de tous les pays du monde pour négocier, sous forte influenace de corporations géantes productrices de contenu, un traité international sur les activités, la surveillance et la sanction des usagers d’Internet. Il s’agit de l’Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) ou Accord commercial relatif à la contrefaçon (v. site du Canada).

Au menu, entre autres:

• la possibilité de bloquer, pour un an, l’accès internet à un endroit où 3 infractions au copyright ont peut-être été commises (pas besoin de le prouver). — une nouvelle manifestation de la très stupide image base-ballienne du «three strikes and you’re out». Notez qu’il s’agit également d’un endroit, ou d’une connexion géographique: donc tous les membres d’une famille, par exemple, seraient interdits d’accès. Donc, parce qu’on le fait au base-ball, il est logique de le faire ici. Il n’y a aucune raison criminologique, psychologique, sociologique ou juridique derrière le chiffre 3. C’est la loi du sport qui fait loi.
• Renforcement des moyens de protection anti-duplication et anti-transfert par la loi, tout comme le prévoit déjà le DMCA étatsunien. Que les moyens soient techniquement solides ou non, il sera illégal de les contourner.
• La possible réduction des capacités (légales, non pas techniques) de transfert réduira la capacité des consommateurs d’utiliser le contenu acheté (par exemple, pour faire des cd pour l’auto à partir de MP3 téléchargés; pour passer d’un dispositif à l’autre comme d’un lecteur MP3 à un ordinateur à un téléphone à un cdrom)
• la criminalisation généralisée de toute atteinte au copyright, qu’un gain financier soit ou non présent. Ceci signifie la création d’un casier judiciaire pour tout Canadien — en fait, tout habitant de la planète — pour toute infraction relative au lois du copyright, qui seront, de plus, de plus en plus strictes.

Le côté étrange de tout ça est que bien qu’il y soit question de choses fondamentalement importantes pour une société qui conduit de plus en plus de ses affaires sur Internet, les médias canadiens sont pratiquement muets sur les négociations et sur la question du copyright en général — sauf lorsqu’ils font valoir ce copyright pour protéger leur propre contenu. Y aurait-il conflit d’intérêts, les grands médias passant sous silence le développement de nouvelles lois qui les favoriseront en bout de ligne?

À la fois, les médias profitent allègrement de toutes sortes de failles dans les lois en re-publiant eux-mêmes n’importe quoi si ça risque de générer de l’intérêt. À éclaircir.

Une exception: Ottawa Citizen.

Cela dit, il y a de fortes chances pour que ce traité devienne inappliquable aussitôt qu’on tentera de le transformer en droit positif dans chaque pays signataire: il existe déjà plusieurs moyens de télécharger et de diffuser de manière cryptée et/ou anonyme, ce qui rendra toute la question sans objet. Évidemment, comme c’est déjà le cas avec le DMCA étatsunien et les multiples poursuites entreprises par la RIAA (représentente des compagnies de disques) contre les consommateurs échangeurs de fichiers, ce sont toujours les moins actifs et les moins blâmables qui se font attraper. Les «pros» du téléchargement, ceux qui font des copies piratées de cd et de dvd pour ensuite les vendre au marché aux puces locaux, trouveront plus facilement et plus rapidement les moyens de se cacher. Les enfants et les mères de familles, moins rapides et moins conscients de violer une loi, continueront d’utiliser torrents et P2P de manière plus visible et plus identifiable.

Ceci arrive au moment où le Canada en est à discuter de sa loi sur le copyright, en vue d’un rafraîchissement. Ce processus démocratique serait bien sûr complètement court-circuité par l’adoption d’ACTA par le Canada. Un bon moyen de faire plaisir aux transnationales du contenu tout en offrant au citoyen une fin de non-recevoir qu’on justifiera par la présence du traité et le fait qu’il lie les mains du gouvernement qui l’a ratifié.

v . le blogue de Michael Geist pour une analyse en profondeur.

posted November 6, 2009

Texas based music lawyer Tamera H. Bennett will join music industry veterans, James Griffen, Kim Guggenheim, Jim Hillegass, Andrew Schuon, and Owen J. Sloane, Jr. , in Beverly Hills on November 19 to discuss “The Music Industry’s Response to Piracy:  Intervention or Innovation.”

A California company called BlueBeat has been selling MP3 tracks for 25 cents each and streaming them for free. Online music retail is pretty much old news, though the price point is low enough to attract attention. But as Macworld’s Jonathan Seff wrote, the site is also selling the Beatles’ catalog — without a license. Seff pointed out that the site’s terms of use say that if users feel that the music posted to the site has been uploaded in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then they can contact the people running the site to have it removed.

There’s also a warning, Seff said, that false accusations can be penalized under the DMCA.

Well, apparently EMI, the company that owns the rights to the Beatles’ catalog, filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement and had a temporary restraining order granted to stop the site from continuing its business. When I checked a few moments ago, the site was completely unavailable.

Nate  Anderson at Ars Technica wrote yesterday that the company that runs BlueBeat.com, Media Rights Technologies, is claiming that what the site is doing is completely legit. Why? Because it owns the copyright to the music it sells. Anderson wrote that, in a reply to Recording Industry Association of America general counsel Steven Marks, Media Rights Technologies CEO Hank Risan said he is the author of the music files, which were created using a process called psycho-acoustic simulation. The company has filed for copyright protection on the songs.

MRT said, in a response to the lawsuit, that the company doesn’t feel the plaintiff will succeed because the two recordings are completely different. You see,  according to U.S. copyright law, if there’s a new recording of a song featuring different sounds, then that’s considered a new work.

Anderson said that MRT is taking the Beatles’ (and other artists’) tracks and adding video content to them that can only be seen with the company’s proprietary player. Thus, according to the company, these are new audio-visual works.

I don’t think that MRT will succeed in this case. And I’m far from the only one. I suppose we’ll see.

For more on MP3s and related tech, take a look at these articles:

How MP3 Files Work
How Streaming Video and Audio Work
How iTunes Works

The Democrats’ continuing war on the Internet

Posted by Neil Stevens (Profile)

Wednesday, November 4th at 10:02PM EST

8 Comments

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations continue in a few hours as Seoul, Korea plays host to the latest round of talks.  The governments have posted the meeting agenda, which unsurprisingly focuses on the issue of Internet enforcement [UPDATE 11/4: Post on discussions for day two of ACTA talks, including the criminal enforcement provisions].  The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

WTF?  Wake up, there is no transparency and we are about to be held to a standard that almost prohibits free speech.  As an author, we do our best to provide proper credits for anything we cite as a source.  We would hope that spammers and authentic writers do the same for us, and usually they do for fear of being held accountable in a lawsuit.  Click on the disclosure tab at the top to see how we have tried to cover our a$$.

“On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty.”  

“A U.S.-drafted chapter on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators,  and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one’s own work.” writes http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/copyright_treaty_leaked_trouble_for_isps_and_in.php

In the U.S. you are innocent until proven guilty, but this may usurp everything you have ever learned about properly citing your sources and in the process limit your free speech.  Say nothing of fines and threats of imprisonment.

The leaks suggest that countries who sign up to the U.S promoted plan would have to force ISPs to proactively police copyright on user-generated content, cut off those accused (or face liability), and put “graduated response” clauses in customer contracts. An example of a graduated response is France’s “three strikes and you’re out” law. There, you get two warnings if caught sharing music or movies, then you’re banned for up to two years. http://gizmodo.com/5396757/secret-copyright-treaty-details-leak-isps-worldwide-to-become-copyright-cops 

Two years without the Internet?  Tsk, tsk- as if someone who broke copyright law couldn’t walk into an Internet cafe in Paris, Korea, Russia or the middle of butt fcuk Egypt to log on.  Good luck with that enforcement.  $hit, America can’t keep the illegal immigrants out and we are expected to believe in the Internet police?  We still believe in Santa, because if you don’t believe- you don’t receive.

Just how much control does President Obama seek?  Prohibiting free speech further erodes every citizen’s right and enhances government control over yet another aspect of our life. 

Best if all- ““The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to ‘national security’ concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.” You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it’s hidden from public scrutiny for National Security. via http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/144240/Secret-Copyright-Treaty-Leaks-Its-Bad-Very-Bad

If and when this thing gets signed, duly note that we have properly credited the excerpted quotes.  Just in case the ping and link from the photo doesn’t work, it is from http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2006/Jun/ .  We’ll even take it a bit farther in the interest of disclosure- they sell T-shirts with slogans at  http://www.sharingmachine.com/ and would you look at their disclosure-”You may display TFD/MTTS/ND comics on your website, blog, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. as long as you link back to www.toothpastefordinner.com / www.marriedtothesea.com / www.nataliedee.com. The box marked “Cut/paste this HTML code” next to every comic does this for you. “  We believe we are in full compliance of the laws of the U.S.A. and graciously meet the requests of the site owners.

We’re so broke over the U.S. economic stimulus package there isn’t anything left to sue us over.  Maybe a 5 year old monitor and a keyboard with Swine Flu germs.  We can’t even afford the cool t-shirts from www.toothpastefordinner.com!

The Federal Trade Commission today (10.5.09) announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm 

Blogs are a blessing and a curse in the world of advocacy. With so many different voices floating around, it’s easy to get caught up in a piece of support that may not be appropriately accurate. writes Who links to me at http://wholinkstome.com/blog/ftc-regulations-on-bloggers/

Blog while you can. BTW, every www.gov site you visit – your own ISP is logged as a permanent record.  This, while the White House can barely keep track of it’s in person visitor logs.

This is a followup to the below post about TI calculators and such and so on and etc.

The latest is that the October 26 deadline has passed, which means the three clients of the EFF involving the TI signing keys. Not only has TI not said anything in response, but they have sent even more DMCA notice letters to various people (when I heard this, I checked this blog. No notice yet (yay!/aw!).), including one to the second site of EFF client Duncan (Duncan has, in response, filed a DMCA section 512 counternotice)! :O

For some newsy links: This link features the page at ticalc.org (from which you can get to all the following links), Duncan’s second website (403 Forbidden, so unless you’re part of the university(?) or you want to see their funny (I find it funny) custom 403 message, don’t bother), EFF’s blog post on the subject, and some info on a DMCA Section 512

The next post will contain various banners and etc. that you can parade around the internet(s) or print out on sticker paper, maybe. Or just print and apply type. Or neither. Or Both.

PS: The title of this post follows the “French Taunting” tone, as expressed in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. French Taunters might say the following to Texas Instruments: “Go away now, or I shall crush your legal paper in a fine, fine powder, mix in arsenic and cyanide, and force your legal team to drink it in their fancy expensive Starbucks frappamulchileacappufréchino high-fibrëmachinaŭmay coffee!”

EFF and Net Choice Honor Dubious Achievements

In an effort to out what it perceives as bogus DMCA takedown notices, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a TakeDown Hall of Shame. Initial inductees include NPR, the National Organization for Marraige, Michael Savage, Ralph Lauren, Warner Music, DeBeers, Diebold and NBC.   More info:  Ars Technica article.

Net Choice has launched the Internet Advocates Watchlist for Ugly Laws.  The state of North Carolina managed to get 3 proposals in the latest list including its “Amazon sales tax” law enacted in August.

Nigeria Cracks Down on Web Scammers

Working with Microsoft, the Nigerian government has announced a campaign to fight web scams that have made the country so infamous.  The campaign will include both shutting down offending sites (over 800 so far) but also beginning mitigation efforts by sending emails to those targeted under the scams.  The government hopes to see Nigeria fall from the list of top 10 countries for email fraud.  See Ars Technica article.

Let’s take a look at a couple of scenarios, in the context of our new world of music copyright awareness and enforcement:

#1 – Vienna, 1774: Ever listen to the middle – “Andante ma Adagio” -  movement of Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto? I mean really listen. It’s there, and it’s not even very subtle: this melody, written when the composer was just 18, was RE-used as the melody for his gorgeous aria, Porgi Amor from The Marriage of Figaro 12 years later.

Legal? Of course, this is Mozart borrowing from himself. Handel did it, Vivaldi did it, and they’re in in good company with countless others through the centuries all the way to today.

#2 – Vienna, 1782: Early springtime, and Mozart was preparing for a series of upcoming concerts for Lent. One of the new pieces to be premiered was his A Major Piano Concerto (#12), K414. While writing the work, he learned of the Jan. 1st death of his good friend, Johann Christian Bach. As a special tribute to his former mentor, Mozart borrowed one of J.C. Bach’s own melodies (from the opera La Calamita de Cuori) and used the theme as the basis for the new concerto’s poignant second movement.

Legal? Probably not. These days a reckless stunt like that could land Mozart in court, paying for representation to respond to “cease and decist” notifications, and having to create a defense for his unauthorized use of J.C.’s tune.

The world’s view of these things has changed much since Mozart’s time, in hugely significant ways that can’t be underestimated for their potential to change the course of today’s music. Borrowing isn’t “borrowing” anymore, it’s sampling, sometimes of original melodies and other times entire pieces of another artist’s recorded material. Intent, financial gain, and artistic control all figure into the larger conversation. Musical creativity is governed by strict copyright laws and it’s a hot point of contention on many fronts in today’s music scene.

On The Media dedicated their most recent program to a fascinating, in-depth exploration of the issues around these music laws.

Must hear this program, my friends.

No Usage Based Billing

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #114 announced that the new version of Ubuntu will be released on October 29th, 2009.

Looks like these guys are the modern day equivalent of Blank Reg

I guess even Google isn’t big enough to fight this bad law. At the time of this writing, Microsofts’s Bing search engine was still allowing Pirate Bay searches. It will be interesting to see if they get a DMCA TakeDown as well.

Guess it pays to have more than one search engine online, what? It is sad to see the absence of due process affecting the civil rights of our formerly free (as in speech) American cousins.

To download Ubuntu, you can go to Ubuntu Complete Download Options page, which will direct you.

Canadian users are directed to the University of Waterloo site, the Canada iweb Technologies site and the Canada Portafixe site.

For those of us who are very new to all this Torrent Freak: Use BitTorrent to Upgrade to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ explains how to do this in human language.

For the best support of all, try to find a local Linux/Ubuntu/Fedora/KDE/etc. users group because they are probably hosting a (free as in beer as well as free as in speech) release party. If you have a laptop bring it along and the folks at the party will most likely help you install it on your computer. If you don’t, by attending the party you can learn how its done, and maybe even come away from the party with a burned CD or DVD.

Here are the Confirmed Canadian Karmic Koala release parties scheduled at the time of writing. To find more or parties in other parts of the world check the main ubuntu wiki party page.

I’m really new to this, but since it seems that almost all the people promoting GNU Linux applications like Ubuntu are private individuals who are not making any money off of this stuff, they do it because they love it and believe in it. (Think about it… getting the world out from under Windows domination? How worthy can you get?)

Part of the whole GNU Linux deal is the community. Everyone helps everyone for the public good. When someone at one of these meetings gives you a burned CD it is unlikely they will charge you for it, but 99 times out of a hundred they have paid for the CDs they give away out of their own pocket.

Although I may get some flack for saying this it seems to me that since economic times are still tough if you can afford it, it would be great if you brought a handful of blank writable CDs along to the party for sharing. Its great that the technical folks are willing to share their expertise, but they shouldn’t have to bankrupt themselves to do it. In a community everybody does what they can. I figure its along the lines of bringing a bottle of wine or a tray of devilled eggs when someone invites you to dinner. It’s sharing, which is very cool.

If you’re not sure about switching to a GNU Linux operating system, its possible to get a bootable live CD so that you can try it out without switching.

I’m horrendously busy as I’m trying to get a few crucial jobs finished up so I can participate in NaNoWriMo, but I’ve only been to one release party which was disrupted by a transit strike, so I might toddle along to the Kwartzlab party tonight.

By the way, this is “breaking news” not the fourth part of the alphabet series.

Linux distributions make extensive LEGAL use of bitTorrent transfers. Of course the downside is that in Canada the CRTC has given Bell Canada blanket approval to “throttle” all dsl Internet BitTorrent traffic under the erroneous assumption that all BitTorrent Internet traffic involves copyright infringement.

STOP Usage Based Billing

On Monday, October 19th, the Yes Men, a group of artist/political activists, set up a mock website that looked like the Chamber of Commerce’s, and held a mock press conference where they announced that the Chamber was shifting its opposition to serious efforts to address global warming. Major news sources were fooled into reporting the story.

In response, the Chamber tried to have the mock site taken down by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice to the site’s upstream provider, Hurricane Electric. The notice claimed that the site constituted copyright infringement and demanded that it be shut down immediately and that the creator’s service be canceled. Hurricane Electric, who was hosting The Yes Men through May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with a strong commitment to protecting free speech, immediately pulled the plug. May First / People Link immediately “mirrored” the site, and then negotiated with Hurricane Electric to restore service to their other members.

The Chamber of Commerce is now suing the Yes Men for trademark infringement, charging that their action was “nothing less than commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism.” The Chamber is charging the Yes Men with  “misappropriation of our valuable intellectual property” and claims that this was done to promote the new Yes Men movie, The Yes Men Fix The World.

It is not hard, however, to ascertain that the Yes Men’s prime goal was to provoke a vibrant public debate about the Chamber’s political positions by looking at the history of similar hoaxes organized by the group that have drawn public attention to pressing political issues. Here are some highlights:

• In 2007 the Yes Men made an announcement that Exxon Mobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum. (Broadview Networks, the Yes Men’s upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men’s spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men’s email service. They also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they’d restore the group’s email service.)

• In 2002 the Yes Men created a parody site resembling that of Dow Chemical launching a critique of the corporation for placing profits above reparations for the 1984 lethal gas leak in Bhopal, India. (After receiving legal threats from the Dow Chemical, the Internet access provider NTT/Verio declared it would terminate its contract with the Thing.net which hosted the Yes Men)

• In 1999 the group co-constructed GWBush.com, a website that at first glance appeared to be that of Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush. The first version incurred Bush’s wrath, and his lawyers sent a threatening letter. By the time the second version of GWBush.com was published, with much more content, the Bush campaign had complained to the Federal Elections Commission. These attacks resulted Bush’s televised response to a reporter’s question about the site: “There ought to be limits to freedom,” (For more on Bush’s response, visit the Thomas Jefferson Center Muzzle Archive.)

The Yes Men call what they do “identity correction” – by impersonating corporate leaders and spokesmen they draw attention to the ethics of large corporations and their role in the world at large. This work falls well within the tradition of social parody and satire and succeeds, to a large extent, thanks to the efforts made by corporations to silence their critics.

The suit filed by the Chamber of Commerce may be a good thing – while previously Yes Men websites have been censored by private internet service providers preempting any First Amendment discussion, the current case should make it clear that political commentary is protected no matter whether it appears as a screed in a newspaper or takes the form of a satirical art prank. Neither corporations nor public officials should be immune from public scrutiny and ridicule – on the contrary, the health of democracy depends on a lively culture of critical inquiry into political and corporate practices.