Once again the laws that are pushed by the elite are only for the masses, not for the elite itself. How can they propose laws with a straight face that they themselves know they are constantly breaking?
I'm really starting to think we need to chip away at the politicians' immunity. Too often they try to pass laws that they themselves wouldn't be held accountable for breaking.
While it probably wasn't the president himself, that makes no difference at all in the context of the French "three strikes" law that allows disconnecting file sharers for up to 12 months without the possibility of judicial appeal. I don't know how to express this, there's simply not a chance in hell, not even in a million years, that the Élysée (the French equivalent of the White House) will be disconnected from the Internet because of file sharing.
I am by no means an expert in French Law but after reading through the text of the law on Legifrance I did not find an provisions that would limit the law to private or home users only. Perhaps someone from France could confirm this?
That's the point you can't. I live in France and remember when the "3 strikes" law was passed. People complained about intruders breaking in ther home networks to download illegaly. Government asnwered: "you should be responsible for securing your router".
You're fighting yourself, not the elites, because what you are fighting is human nature.
It's human nature to be more forgiving to yourself, your family, and your kind, than to others.
This is how it's always been. And this is how you yourself have lived your entire life.
As long as you don't understand this, nothing will change. Because all you're doing is complaining about something you 1) can't change and 2) don't even practice.
Only after this realization can the real conversation start. Everything before is pointless.
Let's not forget that Sarkozy already has at least one strike. He used a song from MGMT on multiple occasions without permission. And then he insulted them further by offering 1 Euro (yes, 1 Euro!) as compensation.
The law is not just about enforcing property rights. It also needs to be pragmatic. If almost everyone is doing it, it's wrong to try to outlaw it.
OK, you could use a similar argument about Greek taxes - everyone cheats the system, and brings it down. But it's pointless blaming the people. Maybe the system has to change.
When transaction taxes become too high, they're evaded as well.
For example, post-prohibition bootlegging in the US lasted as long as the booze tax was "high enough" relative to production cost.
We already have folks smuggling cigarettes in the US to evade taxes. And, in high tax states, some merchants don't collect sales tax.
No, a VAT doesn't stop this - smuggling and off the books manufacture isn't VAT-taxed. (Yes, you may get the VAT on the inputs, but not on any of the downstream value.)
There are big problems with that logic. You may say "everyone smokes pot so you can't outlaw it" but they did. In fact it's common to make laws against things everybody does simply because it has become a rampant problem.
See, the problem is that it is not okay to bring a video camera into a theater, record a movie, and then give it out for free or profit. It doesn't matter if you believe copyright is silly or archaic, it's still law. I hate the laws currently being proposed that basically censor the web but the honest truth is that free distribution of paid content really does hurt the creator. The people who make the things that are worth the time to pirate need to be compensated and if they aren't getting paid then they either stop creating or make doing things the legal way a huge pain in the ass for both pirates and normal users.
Remember how you had to activate Windows XP back in the day? That was a huge pain in the ass for people who bought the software legally but was put in place because Microsoft had such a big piracy problem. I think we're actually creating this problem for ourselves and Shifting the blame and responsibility. Even the pirate websites who are giving lawmakers the biggest excuse to make these oppressive laws are actually being defended by the very people they are hurting. Which do you want more: the new Britney Spears single for free or an open, I censored web?
There is no evidence either that Trident Media Guard (the company that reports IP infringers to the 3-strike authority) should be trusted more than youhavedownloaded.
According to the author ([1], somewhere in the comments, in French), he's migrated to a dedicated server. Wait for the DNS to update and the page should be back up..
On clicking one of the random IP addresses it showed me that they had tracked, the right sidebar Facebook comment column had a comment from a developer that stated they tested the application locally, and then pushed the same database live, so many of the 192.168.0.0/16 block (and I could assume other RFC 1918 blocks) are the actual developers traffic.
Fake IP poisoning from the tracker? Unless "YouHaveDownloaded.com" actually connected to this IP as part of that torrent, this seems highly unlikely to be real.
Governments around the world have been given the excuse to create overreaching and piracy laws because we let them. I'm not surprised this has happened but we should be asking what is the bigger problem. Is it people pirating and distributing copyrighted materials or is it us, the downloading public, that should be punished for not being able to resist the lure of pirates.
I personally feel that if all of us as users realized that we're handing them excuses to censor the web on a silver platter we would quit downloading copyright materials. There is such a fine line between sharing and piracy that it's hard to decide which side any person falls on. Now, a person who records a movie in a theater and puts it online is guilty. No doubt about it. But what about the person who buys a CD, rips it to his computer, then wants to share it with some friends? If he sends a few copies to friends via email or other non public way, is he doing wrong? I'd argue no. But that's what makes this whole thing so scary. On the one hand there's a clear case we are the reason these laws happen. Our inability to resist the lure of free, pirated media. But then we also cannot restrict our right to share our own property with some people.
So I'm wondering, when does it stop being sharing and turn into privacy. Never is not the answer. Whether you support or think it shouldn't exist, the fact is that copyright laws have been in effect for a long time. So considering that, where does the line get drawn?
Again, copyright law (and patents, and trademarks) exist to help the public. It takes the form of a monopoly to create an incentive for works to be produced.
There's absolutely zero proof that even with all this piracy going on, that the amount of creative work has diminished. In fact, from my anecdotal evidence, I'd say there's even more creative works available now than ever before.
Thus, stronger copyright laws targeting non-commercial users are simply unneeded. The public is already getting the benefit of having huge amounts of art being generated (with no signs of slowdown), so there's no justifiable argument for these stronger laws, despite piracy.
I'm really starting to think we need to chip away at the politicians' immunity. Too often they try to pass laws that they themselves wouldn't be held accountable for breaking.