Before any international agreement may be ratified, [our country] must pass all the laws needed to comply with that agreement ahead of time, through regular democratic processes.
I would be happy to see if they start sponsoring pirate groups to undermine the right holders from "unfriendly countries" as a form of economic warfare.
It's already legalized for certain classes of software[1], but I think it has not yet formally extended into other types of content.
This one [1] is from Roskomsvoboda (a domestic EFF-like organization) and is much more complete. The rutracker.org itself is listed on last pages as unblocked, but that's purely technical and is done to update the IP address. Generally, there's no way to tell if a site is blocked except to test it from inside the country, that's true for every national firewall.
Moreover, Rutracker itself never blocked Russian IPs to signal anything, that was a fake started by Forbes (yes, really) and reposted by everyone else. Rutracker fought a DDoS attack for a couple days and was always open otherwise, and still is. You can open it from inside Russia without any VPN if you use a DPI circumvention tool or find a rare ISP that doesn't enforce the national blacklist.
The same can be said about the supposed legalization of piracy in Russia, which didn't happen and never even been taken seriously, it was just media overreacting to everything. I guess plenty of people were mislead by this and still believe it. I also strongly disagree with @grishka above - copyright was extremely strictly enforced, our copyright agencies put MAFIAA to shame, sadly. It might change now, of course, but still didn't. The copyright was enforced for organizations, though - we never had warning letters for torrenting like in some countries, for example.
Go ahead digitally drain accounts, they’d just be putting the economic producers out on the street. See how that works out.
Only 800,000 sworn LEO. 10k NYC cops threatened to strike over vaccine mandates and only 34 did. There’s no loyalty to politicians.
It’s a stand off elites cannot win. There can be houses, food, discovery, technology and art without the deference to a caricature with a title.
Bridges and technology need uniform language and measure for stability and correctness. The species does not need to carry forward ephemeral memes and suspect story that coddles a minority.
Also can confirm, the initiative to allow pirated software was rejected for now.
Things are different for movies and book though.
The united coalition of Lizardmen and Freemasons, funded by George Soros. Bill Gates declined to invest.
It's possible to participate in proxy war when you didn't start it. Might even have better optics.
I don't think it's a wild conspiracy theory because Russia has been labeled a rogue state for some time and the US has an interest in regime change. It's not official policy but enough people have warned the US that regime change is a bad idea, including the NYT, that I don't think it's easily dismissed. I think it's quite possible there are western corporate and regulatory interests in having a Russian regime that cooperates with their interests more. But I can see how this is an extremely cynical take and I didn't mean to suggest that was the only reason for a war.
The US didn't put boots on the ground to help the UK in the Falklands even when it would have made things much easier. That doesn't mean the US and the UK were not allies or that the US did not help in other ways.
True, but...
> The US didn't put boots on the ground to help the UK in the Falklands
The UK is, and was, a NATO member. (Indeed, a major factor that led Argentina to think that they could take the Falklands was the reorganization of the UK Navy around its role in NATO which compromised it's capacity for independent operations.)
Nobody said they were however NATO member does mean ally and we're pretty lukewarm on that prospect. There could certainly be another alliance made outside of NATO that would make them an ally, there could be, but there isn't. We have friendly relations with Ukraine and support a faction of their government but we're pretty cagey with our military support.
US allies frequently are involved in wars that don't get US boots on the ground. This is pretty much constant for Israel, for instance.
who will fund the election campaigns and favorable media coverage for the agreeable candidates and parties?
whose arms will they buy and whose military bases will they build to defend themselves against each other and/or what little is left of Russia and/or China?
whose companies will get contracts for resource extraction and favorable conditions to operate there?
...
the collapse of Russia would be a greater boon to the US than the WWII was, and had Russia been a benevolent democracy, it would've been at least halfway there by now
And for the people in Russia.
I hope there's a chance that'll happen if indeed Putin has an illness and is dead soon
> the US wants Russia broken down into two dozen irrelevant ethnostates
That's delusional and was what I was replying to.
When it comes to actual real power, economic, soft, military, or whatever, Russia has a smaller GDP than Italy. If you imagine Italy trying to push the US 'out of the picture' so they could have 'free reign' in Europe, you can see how ridiculous Russia's 'geopolitics' is.
What's really happening is that Putin's domestic power and legitimacy stems from his ability to be a plausible cosplay Bismark while keeping the kleptocrats that are robbing the Russian people happy.
If push comes to anything close to a shove, there's simply no way Russia can contend with any of its neighbors, all of whom are just way more powerful (India, China, Japan, South Korea) or in actual world-leading blocs (EU members, NATO members, etc). That won't change until the Russian economy and society itself changes, and that's impossible without substantial reassessment and reorganization that would undoubtedly include the end of Putin's regime.
You mean the war of aggression that Russia is waging against Ukraine?
Russia is waging war against Ukraine.
Ukraine is defending itself against Russia.
These facts are very straightforward.
It'd be like if someone made a million dollars, and you accused them that its all a front to launder ten dollars. It doesn't make sense.
>Why would you assume secret copyright interests
I did not. I said "western IP, financial, and other regulation.". That includes a lot but in all amounts to essentially geopolitical control.
However, this being a thread about copyright and this being a technology website I mentioned copyright and I think copyright laws and regulations are vastly more important than you are implying. The article mentions trade agreements that can force ISPs to block web pages. As it stands right now, the internet is decentralized but single government control of the internet is increasingly becoming apparent. Western nations share copyright laws which ultimately centralizes the internet across many different people and countries. So, for example, ISP web site blocking can be performed across many different ISPs globally with similar regulation and controls in all these different jurisdictions. (edit: especially at the behest of US based corporations)
I think this is ultimately harmful for internet users especially because it can be associated with censorship. Previously, the decentralized nature of the internet made it harder for any single entity to control it, however, it is looking increasingly feasible to do so. So I agree with the parent commenter and add that it is actually beneficial for the internet if Russia enables pirating and is not under US/western internet regulations. Having alternatives is good for the internet and I think that's a very important point.
However on a scale of things that maintain usa's geopolitical position, copyright is kind of minor comparatively. Copyright is the long game soft power sort of thing. Ukraine is the short game. USA needs to show the world that if bad things happen to a country because they are friendly to usa, america wont let it go unremarked. If they don't, other countries will take note, and america loses its pax americana position. The ukraine thing is a rather direct challenge of america's hegemonic position. America is responding to it because its either that, or they lose their world position (or a step in that direction).
Im not saying america is above the type of long term power games you suggest, just that in this case they have a much more pressing reason to be involved, and i don't think secret conspiracy reasons make sense when their hand is basically being forced by direct means.
Imagine a world where Chinese, Russian, Indian and Japanese companies get to sell their goods worldwide without a single care about American patents? If that happened tomorrow, just for one example, BYD would probably become the largest car company in the world (because they have the cheapest and most reliable batteries, but only in China due to IP laws around the chemistry). It would be a direct and immediate challenge to the American hegemony.
To the extent that it is approximately accurate to describe such a war as existing, it is motivated not arouns looping Russia into Western IP, financial, etc., regulatory regimes, but around dealing with the security threat represented by actions like the Russian invasion of Moldova (1990-present), Georgia (2008-present), and Ukraine (2014-present), and, most particularly, the massive escalation of the last that occurred this year.
Russia's independence from and defiance of the western law enforcement agencies, in things like money laundering, building a SWIFT alternative, cybercrime, piracy, and digital interference, among many others, are things that I think the US would like to do away with. Those aren't strictly security concerns but could still be defined that way. It would not surprise me at all if the US saw an opportunity for regime change that is more friendly to its own interests. Regime change seems to be a goal at present but has not been made official.
I stated in another post that I felt that a centralized internet under more or less the same western laws globally, with exceptions like China, was not good for the internet which is why I agreed with the parent comment. That was my main point: Russian defiance of copyright laws is good for the internet. I believe that is not a view shared by most governments. I am less interested in war specifics.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mc-donalds-starbucks-and-othe...
Such things would seem like an easy political win, and also walking back said statements are also then a valuable bartering chip for the future.
I guess only copyright holding countries like to abide to these treaties. Particularly European countries. Some have anacronic copyright laws.
He told his elite he fucked up. Russia was turning the war around, and specifically it was because of Donets, where there was a tank factory that made a disgusting amount of tanks, because its people were "living like animals." So they could make more tanks! So Communism worked at that place, at that time, when people worked with abandon, incentives be damned. And in fact English and Americans didn't want Russians to have a decisive victory, they wanted them to barely win so there wouldn't be a Cold War, not roll over Berlin before they did.
Donets has never stopped fighting Nazism.
EDIT: My Youtube isn't cooperating, it showed me a video about that recording where they cut and let a historian talk right in the moment I'm talking about, when a subordinate said "In Donets!" and Adolph Hitler replies, "Aye, in Donets". That's where they cut it. That tells you everything.
Like the Misanthropy Division, like what? Division? Oh yeah, if the word is Division it's real. Yeah those guys are real Nazis, just America doesn't care in the abstract, only in the specific when it is good for them. Gave them a pass and let them leave Germany the minute Soviets tanked Berlin. Just like not caring about tons of other things that you would think if you listened to their--to our, I'm American--Hollywood and proclamations, League of Nations. Korea bought into that over and over. I'm surprised anybody listens, History isn't that favorable if you remove WWII as the outlier it is. And now it turns out they never actually cared about Nazism, they're going to "rebrand" it now as National Socialism, poor history channel the ratings!
But realistically Donets, that just hurts, those were the people of Donets that lived like animals cranking out tanks around the clock. They didn't go anywhere, they didn't get exterminated, barely, they stopped the Nazis from getting there...but not forever. Recurring nightmare.
how good is your history dude?
https://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/35_countries_the_u_s_has_ba...
Of course the World Bank and IMF will be happy to help you out of you drop them again though.
That is to say, very few countries actually have a choice on agreeing to "free trade" policies, local laws aren't really enough to resist that.
It does change something. It makes it much harder for that law to be changed in future.
> must pass all the laws needed to comply with that agreement ahead of time
Which is already met, so it wouldn't change anything.
The judicial system is constitutionally required to ignore it. The legislature is mostly controlled by the executive. And the executive only respects international agreements when they are convenient.
I can't get to torrent search engines in the UK. I double click Nordvpn.com/bigmoney and then click "connect". I can now get to the torrent search engine without issue, even while connecting to a UK node....
Its a lot of words to add maybe three seconds of delay to my web browsing experience.
In the US it must go through the Senate, the President, and depending on things the House may have some say in the funding:
> Treaty power is a coordinated effort between the Executive branch and the Senate. The President may form and negotiate, but the treaty must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Only after the Senate approves the treaty can the President ratify it. Once it is ratified, it becomes binding on all the states under the Supremacy Clause. While the House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the supermajority requirement for the Senate's advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult to rally enough political support for international treaties. Also, if implementation of the treaty requires the expenditure of funds, the House of Representatives may be able to block or at least impede such implementation by refusing to vote for the appropriation of the necessary funds.
But you raise a good point - without a single-subject rule [1], we would be quickly back to square one, as instead of voting on ratification, there would be a large "Trans Pacific Partnership Omnibus Bill" that would simply have everything thrown in, without giving the public or the system the chance to examine each clause individually.
The rot runs deep.
U.S. Constitution Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
No one is claiming that accessing media that is in the public domain is piracy. We are specifically talking about media that is not in the public domain.
this is what happens when major profitable works hit the public domain deadline.
If that's the case, your argument is a tautology:
"There's no right to do things that you don't have a right to do."
The constitution also allows the government to limit that right "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
There are quite a few limitiations in that right that current copyright laws arguably go beyond.
It's our most sacred institution, and should be supported as such.
No, a ridiculously overbroad label isn't strictly true. It's strictly false, and the primary example of what strictly false means
Disregarding entirely the morality of the situation, which is immaterial to the statement in question. And disregarding 'making sure creators are reasonably compensated', which is almost tangential (since the earliest eras of man we've had media production, eg cave painting, and so consumers of media, as far as we know without monetary consideration).
Those who download material restricted by copyright from torrent sites, without an exception or license are nonetheless media 'consumers'. (i)
Copyright laws restrict the activity of these media consumers. (ii)
Restricting of media consumption leads, overall, to less media consumption. (iii)
Restricting an activity is to be 'anti' that activity. (iv)
Conclusion: copyright laws are anti media consumer. (v)
Where is your issue with the verity of this?
Murder is pro-civilian because it protects civilians, but copyright law doesn't protect media consumers.
Your plant analogy seems to be a suggestion that we're making an instance-to-class logical leap (fallacy of accident?). I don't see it, at which step do you think we did that? The argument at hand is more akin to "eating plants will kill some people".
I think clause (iii) is the obvious point at which one could challenge this line. You might contend that with no copyright law (2.i) their would be less media production (2.ii) and that this would lead to less consumers (2.iii). But I think this is obviously false, we'd have the same number of consumers but arguably poorer quality media to consume.
things aren't anti-consumer merely because individual instances of them carry consequences you don't like, and the vast majority of these laws don't do that
you seem to be confusing copyright protection for drm
If we now take a look at the causes, it's quite clear that it shouldn't and can't be improved with restrictions. The underlying reasons and their possible solutions have been highlighted well by cable, Netflix and Steam. Unfortunately streaming services are cable-ifying. We'll probably have to endure and wait for history to repeat again. If you didn't get what I meant - making a service not affordable, cumbersome and restrictive makes people seek alternatives.
Third and possibly the worst aspect here is that such legislation has collateral damage. Large players can steal content, revenue and obliterate anyone standing against them - simply by having deeper wallets. There are Kafkaesque content filters that you can't properly dispute. Artists have to agree to unfair contracts to properly earn royalties. Consumers get hurt by idiotic DRM. In the recent years I've seen Google search results being removed with DMCA requests by "unknown" for sharing "unknown" made by "unknown". Lumen DB literally contains entries like this.
There's no way they'll improve their behaviour when given more power, there's no way it'll improve citizen's lives, it won't even help artists in any reasonable extent. It would only help a few select shareholders.
That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant
Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way
It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad
Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against
I listed other anti-consumer laws, how the current ones are both anti-consumer and creator, how future ones can make it even worse. That is very on-topic.
> That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant
Vast majority of them are terrible, that is relevant.
> Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way
Even if that were the case, which it isn't, that doesn't make them good. There's literally no merit you can infer from saying "you don't know about those laws".
> It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad
It's like picking a party and listing what they've done and generalizing from that, that they aren't doing good things.
> Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against
Intentional attempt at excluding parts of the discussion because you don't have good arguments against them.
No evidence supports this
I'm not interested in arguing with a set of unjustified faiths