In the wake of the movie "The Pirate Bay: Away From Keyboard" or the future of the Internet
I, as probably many of you, watched with interest the developments of the trial of the organizers of the Pirates Bay site. In recent years, the news about them has completely stalled, but the appearance of the notorious film, added a certain amount of oil to their fire. Let's leave the holivars for a moment, and see what the situation in our world is at the moment. Under the cut a few calculations and questions about
Even if we do not trust the profit figures given to us by the guys from the Bay, discarding the fact that they still earned advertising, the following is obvious:
1. Due to the political pressure exerted by the States on Sweden, three people were arrested and convicted. Two of them are now in prison, and one is wanted by Interpol.
2. Providers hosting the site of the Bay were blackmailed by the use of legal sanctions before the trial began.
3. The “legitimacy” and “usefulness” of modern copyright legislation was unconditionally promoted to the masses; experts who have an opposition opinion on this legislation have been ridiculed, and their authority has been questioned by personal attacks.
4. “Pirates Bay” both worked and works.
The recent scandal with the organization of Liters and “reader programs” (Moon-reader, CoolReader, Reader, etc.) showed that the public has the weight and opportunity to influence the outcome of events in cases of frankly criminal actions of the so-called right holders. Of course, the well-being of Liters, as a business, is directly dependent on public opinion, so this concept is not applicable to organizations like the RIAA and others like it.
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First, let's define who we are and why we need to change something. The Internet is used by a sufficiently large audience. Among the “strongest” groups, “technical specialists” (like us), “creators” - those who create products subject to copyright, “freeloaders” (please, in the context of this article, do not take this the term is negative) - people who use software for free from the principle, and “popularists” - people who follow trends and torrent music because it’s popular with their surroundings, or buy tracks on iTunes because it’s popular with their specific environment and. These four groups of course intersect.
(Warning questions like “where is the group of copyright advocates?” - “Creators” and copyright advocates are not the same people. Copyright protection is a business, people make money on it. Their own opinion about this is not relevant, repeated Cases where copyright advocates themselves are in the role of defendants in cases of violation of that same copyright. Individuals will fall into one or more of these groups.)
Returning to "us" and our capabilities. Since the majority of those present are technical specialists, I will speak about “us” on behalf of techies. We know perfectly well that file sharing existed long before torrents and Pirates Cove, and that torrents essentially only popularized file sharing among the masses of the population. Those of us who are a freeloader or an ideological pirate will always find ways to get the right software. Those of us who like to break DRM / copyright protection on disks will not stop doing this. It took me less than five minutes (to argue) to find a specific book outside of torrents. It is impossible to restrict our freedom by law - IRC channels, quiet invite-only sites, hypertext fidonets, darknets and others will appear.
What will become with the ordinary user? He / she will have to buy programs / movies / games. The problem with this state of affairs is that modern culture is increasingly built on blatant lies when things are given to us without being able to learn about their quality, when people who have found software vulnerabilities and made public are persecuted "according to the law", when game review authors, software, and iron blackmail dismissal, demanding to put high marks low quality consumer goods. And if we, as techies, are often protected from this (because we know where to look for yet independent reviews), then our relatives, moms, dads, boys, girls and grandparents - no. They will continue to believe the TV, in front of yellowing newspapers, contacts and facebook. (There is a seizure of mass media by the business, right after the precepts of Ilyich. And here we are not talking about a global conspiracy, just the immediate benefit everywhere has become / becomes above the truth.)
Despite its daring oppositional appearance, Pirate Cove directly puts pressure on the consumer weakness of the population and is the personification of the mainstream. “All books / films / games / series here and now!” - could easily become their motto. The bay and similar sites are a direct symptom of our main problem - the culture of unrestrained, uncontrolled consumerism. To some extent in this case, this culture has turned against the very people who promote it.
What can we techies do about it? How do we protect loved ones from the cult of consumerism? Will we promote file sharing to the masses, or we’ll go and watch corporations drowning while controlling the Internet?
I have no answers to these questions. Do you have them?
Repeating others' maxims,
Not understanding the configuration
Sign the petition
Spending time in prostration
We cherish the freedom of fiction,
Satisfying the hunger of the company,
Evaporated in convection flow
The innocence of our presumption,
Opposition has sold itself
Under the frenzied ovation,
Seasoned on top by police
Bad insinuations.
We do not need extra frictions,
We value production
We are divided into small fractions,
Where are our constitutional rights?
Prerequisites
Even if we do not trust the profit figures given to us by the guys from the Bay, discarding the fact that they still earned advertising, the following is obvious:
1. Due to the political pressure exerted by the States on Sweden, three people were arrested and convicted. Two of them are now in prison, and one is wanted by Interpol.
2. Providers hosting the site of the Bay were blackmailed by the use of legal sanctions before the trial began.
3. The “legitimacy” and “usefulness” of modern copyright legislation was unconditionally promoted to the masses; experts who have an opposition opinion on this legislation have been ridiculed, and their authority has been questioned by personal attacks.
4. “Pirates Bay” both worked and works.
Banquet Continuation
The recent scandal with the organization of Liters and “reader programs” (Moon-reader, CoolReader, Reader, etc.) showed that the public has the weight and opportunity to influence the outcome of events in cases of frankly criminal actions of the so-called right holders. Of course, the well-being of Liters, as a business, is directly dependent on public opinion, so this concept is not applicable to organizations like the RIAA and others like it.
')
What we can?
First, let's define who we are and why we need to change something. The Internet is used by a sufficiently large audience. Among the “strongest” groups, “technical specialists” (like us), “creators” - those who create products subject to copyright, “freeloaders” (please, in the context of this article, do not take this the term is negative) - people who use software for free from the principle, and “popularists” - people who follow trends and torrent music because it’s popular with their surroundings, or buy tracks on iTunes because it’s popular with their specific environment and. These four groups of course intersect.
(Warning questions like “where is the group of copyright advocates?” - “Creators” and copyright advocates are not the same people. Copyright protection is a business, people make money on it. Their own opinion about this is not relevant, repeated Cases where copyright advocates themselves are in the role of defendants in cases of violation of that same copyright. Individuals will fall into one or more of these groups.)
Returning to "us" and our capabilities. Since the majority of those present are technical specialists, I will speak about “us” on behalf of techies. We know perfectly well that file sharing existed long before torrents and Pirates Cove, and that torrents essentially only popularized file sharing among the masses of the population. Those of us who are a freeloader or an ideological pirate will always find ways to get the right software. Those of us who like to break DRM / copyright protection on disks will not stop doing this. It took me less than five minutes (to argue) to find a specific book outside of torrents. It is impossible to restrict our freedom by law - IRC channels, quiet invite-only sites, hypertext fidonets, darknets and others will appear.
What will become with the ordinary user? He / she will have to buy programs / movies / games. The problem with this state of affairs is that modern culture is increasingly built on blatant lies when things are given to us without being able to learn about their quality, when people who have found software vulnerabilities and made public are persecuted "according to the law", when game review authors, software, and iron blackmail dismissal, demanding to put high marks low quality consumer goods. And if we, as techies, are often protected from this (because we know where to look for yet independent reviews), then our relatives, moms, dads, boys, girls and grandparents - no. They will continue to believe the TV, in front of yellowing newspapers, contacts and facebook. (There is a seizure of mass media by the business, right after the precepts of Ilyich. And here we are not talking about a global conspiracy, just the immediate benefit everywhere has become / becomes above the truth.)
Despite its daring oppositional appearance, Pirate Cove directly puts pressure on the consumer weakness of the population and is the personification of the mainstream. “All books / films / games / series here and now!” - could easily become their motto. The bay and similar sites are a direct symptom of our main problem - the culture of unrestrained, uncontrolled consumerism. To some extent in this case, this culture has turned against the very people who promote it.
What can we techies do about it? How do we protect loved ones from the cult of consumerism? Will we promote file sharing to the masses, or we’ll go and watch corporations drowning while controlling the Internet?
I have no answers to these questions. Do you have them?
Repeating others' maxims,
Not understanding the configuration
Sign the petition
Spending time in prostration
We cherish the freedom of fiction,
Satisfying the hunger of the company,
Evaporated in convection flow
The innocence of our presumption,
Opposition has sold itself
Under the frenzied ovation,
Seasoned on top by police
Bad insinuations.
We do not need extra frictions,
We value production
We are divided into small fractions,
Where are our constitutional rights?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/169327/
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