German warning scheme goes to the USA

[smallsleepyrascalcat]

Nothing in this world could make this pic boring.

Except for another pic of this cutie without speedos :devil:

 

[smallsleepyrascalcat]

No, we have fun ;P

 

[gramison]

The first few times I read that, I definitely saw *bonify* instead of borify

Gramison, you raise some interesting points for discussion --however there is a fundamental imbalance that needs to be addressed. One the one hand, there are powerful and obscenely wealthy corporations who exert their influence (by lobbying political parties, hiring teams of lawyers, etc.) in order to bring about a pattern of regulation that, surprise-surprise, serves corporate interests. On the other hand there are the ordinary folks, many of whom cannot afford to put food on their tables, let alone pay $19.99 for a CD, or whatever.

I don't think that analogy really holds. Food is generally considered a necessity to live. Entertainment not so much. This family may very well also not be able to afford toys or cell phones or musical instruments or a car, yet we see nothing evil in that.

Are corporations charging too much for their products? Are the big agri-businesses charging too much for their produce (food) or do they lobby (politically corrupt) governments to introduce and enforce legislation and policies that result in unfair distribution of food?

Just because you feel that something is overpriced doesn't give you the right to steal it. Also, in the US at least, food is unbelievably cheap when you consider the growing and shipping processes it goes through. But let's focus on the music industry.

And in relation to smaller business entities, do corporations cooperate with governments in order to promote the interests of the small man --or do they simply (and one might even say blatantly) promote various corporate agendas (including the gradual eradication of small to medium sized business in order to create monopolies, or near monopolies --e.g. Microsoft, google Inc...).

I don't see what monopolies or big vs. little corporation has to do with this issue. Any recording company/consortium is protected equally under DMCA. RIAA is not making any attempts to squash competition.

Consider these various imbalances. This is the
-------snip------
holders without detailing correlative exceptions, limitations, and procedural safeguards for users."

The rest of your post concerns proposed legislation witch which I am not familiar. As I do not have the time to thoroughly learn about it at the moment, I will trust what you say about it.

This DOES NOT, however, really address the arguments against the current state of affairs. These are the questions I want answered:
Why should file-sharing be legal?
Where has the RIAA overstepped its bounds?
What about current copyright law is unconstitutional or immoral?

 

[gramison]

I have spoken to patterns, imbalances, and the wider injustices being perpetuated via the manipulation/corruption of government/legislators. I will also continue to acknowledge the complexity of economic power structures/networks, versus treating of the various parties and entities as if they existed in a vacuum. For example, why do you wish to now limit discussion to the music industry? What of Hollywood, printing houses, the mainstream media and porn? Who owns these various industries, and to what extent might they be embedded in 'corporate networks'?

The music industry is the most visible example in entertainment business and in intellectual property controversies. That is all. They were an example that most people are hopefully familiar with. I certainly don't mind discussing the other industries you mention.

Per Newage's criticisms of your earlier arguments, you seem to kind of rest on or narrow the focus to some mere point of law

What should we be concerned with if not with law? Either the law is considered just, then we should debate whether the actions are permissible by law and why. If the law is considered unjust, then we should attempt to examine why.

and on this (rather weak/limited) basis proceed to produce little lists of bullet-questions.

The questions were an attempt to provide some direction to this conversation. If you do not wish to debate those issues in this thread, I will be more than happy to create another.

Please now speak to the wider issues and concerns as already highlighted by various posters.

Part of the issue here may be that I sometimes have trouble identify the main points others are trying to make. I try to make concise statements and then back them up with analogies and logical arguments. If it's not too mch of a burden, I would ask you to humour me and perhaps be slightly more explicit as to what point you aim to defend (perhaps bolding a topic sentence). I can't tell if you're saying "the government is corrupt", "the entertainment industry is evil", "file-sharing should be legal", "intellectual property should not be protected" or "the world is unbalanced." Those have all been mentioned or alluded to more than once so far.


With that aside, I would like to return to the original topic of this thread and raise the following question for discussion.
Where has the USCG violated the law when pursuing users who "share movies without permission" using BitTorrent?