Media Roots Radio: Video Game Warfare, Covert War in Iran, SOPA & Fair Use
Via Media Roots:
Abby and Robbie discuss the reality of war: the pre-propaganda that has manufactured consent for the illegal occupations, video game warfare and cognitive dissonance in combat, the Marine urination scandal; Martin Luther King Jr. and historical revisionism minimizing how anti-imperialism was the main pillar of his philosophical platform; the CIA and the US covert war in Iran; SOPA, PIPA breakdown, the difference between copyright and fair use, the threat to net neutrality and websites like Media Roots under this overarching legislation.
Poland Suspends ACTA
Donald Tusk. Photo: Πρωθυπουργός της Ελλάδας, modified by PL Przemek (CC)
From TOKFM, translated by Google:
I made a definite decision to suspend the ratification process of ACTA – said Prime Minister Donald Tusk today. – It is not enough – a lawyer immediately commented Peter Waglowski (Vagla). – Signature of the international agreement itself is the “concreting” normative discussion in Poland.
Tusk admitted that during the consultation ws. ACTA represents the interests of the environment and point of view of Internet users were not adequately represented and consulted with organizations primarily associated with broadcasters and creators.
Tusk promises to open debate
– We need to make sure that ACTA is one hundred percent safe for the citizens – said the Prime Minister. – Until you explain yourself all the questions, so long will be suspended the ratification process of ACTA and can not be excluded that in the final will mean a lack of acceptance for…
Anonymous’s ‘Black March’ Media Survival Guide
"copyrighted media won't be allowed while internet is censored"
Anonymous and other various Internet freedom groups are calling on people to boycott the corporate media for the entire month of March 2012 in efforts to affect the bottom line of organizations calling for the imposition of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA will profoundly restrict the fundamental rights, freedom of expression and communication privacy of Internet users the world over.
For those of you who intend to participate in the boycott, there is plenty of public domain and Creative Commons licensed media that, for now, is freely available for you to download and enjoy, enough for the entire month of March.
The following is by no means an exhaustive list of sources to help you remain entertained while participating in the Black March Boycotts.
Video
- Internet Archive: Moving Images
- Creative Commons Video Section
- OpenFlix
- The Open Video Project
- Public Domain Comedy Video
- Public Domain Torrents
- Public.Resource.org
- Wikipedia list of films in the Public Domain
Audio /…
The Megapocalypse Of Kim DotCom
Via Modern Mythology (by P. Emerson Williams)
An operation planned by a large international team of law enforcement working over the course of years and carried out with helicopters and machine guns in a military style raid. Taking refuge in a safe room, reportedly found “near a semi-automatic shotgun”, a larger than life villain is dragged out and taken into custody.
Photo: Andreas Bohnenstengel (CC)
No, the target is not a drug kingpin, nor a deposed dictator (hence the safe room – sewage drains are reserved final hiding places for deposed dictators and jihadist masterminds), not a banker responsible for tearing the world economy apart, nor a corrupt Western politician on the leash of said bankers.
Much hay has been made of Kim Dotcom’s expansive mansion, expensive toys and cheesy movie villain antics. For those wondering why Megaupload was the target this fact alone should make it clear. They needed someone who would not invoke sympathy,…
Lots Of Illegal Downloading Occurring At The NBC, Sony Pictures, Fox Offices
From the pot-calling-the-kettle-black department, via TorrentFreak:
A few days ago we wrote about a new website that exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded on BitTorrent.
Armed with the IP-ranges of major Hollywood studios we decided to find out what they’ve been downloading. As expected, it didn’t take us long before we found BitTorrent ‘pirates’ at several leading entertainment industry companies. Yes, these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they’ve been caught sharing copyrighted material.
First up is Sony Pictures Entertainment. This single IP-address alone a wide variety of music and movies have been downloaded. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, as YouHaveDownloaded only tracks only a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads.
Another Hollywood studio where it’s not uncommon to download music, TV-shows and movies is NBC Universal. The employee(s) behind one of the IP-addresses at the Fort Lauderdale office…
The Freakonomics Of Hollywood’s Piracy Claims
The Freakonomics dudes have called BS on Hollywood’s piracy claims. Adrianne Jeffries reports for BetaBeat:
Anti-piracy rhetoric holds that online piracy is a devastating force on the U.S. economy, responsible for the theft of between $200 billion and $250 billion per year and the loss of 750,000 good American jobs. “These numbers seem truly dire: a $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010,” write the economists over at Freakonomics.
But those numbers are wrong, the authors say, citing a breakdown by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez.
In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin…
Supreme Court Rules Congress May ‘Re-Copyright’ Public Domain Works
Decades or centuries after its creator has passed on to another realm, a piece of art or film or literature may remain copyrighted content, perhaps forever, the Supreme Court has ruled. Ars Technica reports:
Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”
The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.
They claimed that re-copyrighting public works would breach the speech rights of those who are now…
SOPA Author Is A Copyright Violator
Vice notes that many of the congress members supporting SOPA/PIPA perhaps need to do a bit of inner soul searching, as they themselves have websites with copyright violations. That includes Lamar Smith of Texas, the author of SOPA, whose website background is a photo (likely lifted from Flickr) by someone named DJ Schulte, who does not receive credit or a link as he should have:
Missing Wikipedia? Here’s How You Can Access It
As most Internet users already know, leading Internet companies like Google, Wikipedia, and Craigslist are protesting the SOPA legislation very publicly today, with Wikipedia totally blacked out. But, if you really, really need to access Wikipedia today, they have kindly explained how to come in through the back door:
Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?
Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn’t to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it’s okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.
SOPA On The Shelf
EFF (CC)
Is there still hope for freedom? Probably not, but at least we’ve got the next best thing: The Interwebs! From the Washington Monthly Political Animal blog by Steve Benen:
Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.
At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.
The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to…
Rupert Murdoch’s Late Night SOPA Tweets
Oh dear Rupert, is this how you spend Saturday night these days?
Well now we know where he stands on SOPA, and what a great relationship he has with Google and other leading Internet companies…
Spanish Author Quits Writing, Claims More Copies Of Her Books Are Stolen Than Sold
Lucía Etxebarría. Photo: Xavier Thomas (http://photo75.online.fr)
Are things really so hopeless for writers? In Spain perhaps. Giles Tremlett reports for the Guardian (thanks to Mike for the tip):
An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.
“Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time,” Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.
Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.
She pointed to Spain’s position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. “We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so…
Swiss Government Study: Online Piracy Benefits Artists
Encouraging results regarding unauthorized downloading, via TorrentFreak:
The Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.
The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.
The entertainment industries have opposed all these technological inventions out of fear that their businesses would be crushed. This is not the right response according to the Swiss government, which favors the option of putting technology to good use instead of taking the repressive approach.
The government report further concludes that even in the current situation where piracy is rampant, the entertainment industries are not necessarily…
Bob Dylan, Plagiarist
It’s hard to believe that Dylan would so naively copy other people’s work and pass it off as his own, but that appears to be exactly what he’s done. From ARTINFO:
Time and time again folk rock legend Bob Dylan has blatantly borrowed for his lyrics. Christie’s auction house acknowledged in 2009 that a handwritten Dylan poem that was up for sale really consisted of words from a song by country crooner Hank Snow. Director Martin Scorsese showed in his 2005 documentary, “No Direction Home,” how Dylan stole the line “Go away from my window…” — the immortal opener of his 1964 song “It Ain’t Me, Babe” — from singer John Jacob Niles. Dylan also purloined text from Japanese writer Junichi Saga’s novel “Confessions of a Yakuza” for his 2001 album “Love and Theft.” And that’s not the only thing Dylan lifted from Asia.
Bob Dylan's "Opium," (2009) next to a photograph by Léon Busy, taken in Vietnam in 1915. Credits:…
China’s Fake Apple Stores
Fascinatingly, in is now common in China to find counterfeit branches of the Apple store.
Then again, what makes any Apple store “real” when the point is to use psychology to sell an intangible “brand”? And how can you tell a real Apple store from a fraudulent one? Paradoxically, real Apple stores never say “Apple store”. The Consumerist reports:
An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.
None of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes…
Who Is The Protect IP Act Really Protecting?
The Preventing Real Online Threats of Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PROTECT IP Act, is supposedly targeted at so-called ”rogue websites” that trade in infringing goods. Abigail Phillips gives some much-needed context to the controversial legislation for the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Last year’s rogue website legislation is back on the table, with a new name: the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011″—or (wink, wink) “PROTECT IP”. The draft language is available here.
The earlier bill, which failed to pass thanks largely to a hold on the legislation placed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, would have given the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers targeted at websites “dedicated to infringing activities,” even where those websites were not based in the United States. Despite some salient differences (described below) in the new version, we are no less dismayed by this most recent…
The Pirate Bay: ‘The Battle of Internets is About to Begin’
Ernesto writes on TorrentFreak:
Talks on implementing a Europe-wide firewall to censor and block ‘illicit’ websites has caused concern among many Internet users in recent weeks, and today one of the targeted sites has joined the discussion. Quoting one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team is rallying the public to defend the free Internet and end the threat posed by the entertainment industries’ copyright lobby.
In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal.
To deal with illicit sites on the Internet, the group suggested the adoption of a China-like firewall to block websites deemed ‘inappropriate’. The controversial proposal immediately met resistance from various sides, including ISPs who would be tasked with maintaining the blocklist. The copyright lobby on the other hand welcomes the initiative which they’ve been suggesting for years.
One of the sites that has a fair share of experience…
YouTube Punishes Copyright Offenders With Animated Pirate Cat
Thursday YouTube announced a new program which requires copyright offenders to watch an animated cartoon starring a pirate cat. “In an adjustment to it’s three-strikes-and-your-banned-for life policy, the site is now requiring alleged offenders to watch a four minute ‘re-education’ movie featuring an animated cat, then complete a four-question multiple choice exam,” YouTube explained on their site. “Only then can the user upload clips again…”
The cartoon — entitled “Happy Tree Friends” — features singing animals who demonstrate the difference between uploading an infringing video and creating original content. (”YouTube has decided the solution is to patronize those users,” jokes one technology blog.) “Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them,” YouTube said in Thursday’s announcement. And some users who complete the YouTube “Copyright School” can also have copyright strikes removed from their account.
