Posts Tagged ‘dmca’

Tories to Tax Dancing

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012

(The prudish townsfolk from Footloose approve of this new legislation.)

The Copyright Board of Canada has initiated new fees to play recorded music at large gatherings, like weddings and parties. If there’s fewer than one hundred people, the fees start at $9.25 per day.  400 guests will cost $27.76.  And get this… if dancing is involved that fee doubles to $55.52.

What an asinine load of horse manure. Why would the crowd’s reaction to the music being played have any impact on the royalties owed?

Not that artists are likely to see a dime from this new tax. Nope, any money reaped is sure to go squarely into the hands of recording industry executives, helping them to fund another round of ludicrous litigation against the entire population.

On the bright side, it’s crap like this that is fueling humanity’s uprising against corporate rule. A few more encroachments might be all it takes for society to snap, forever ousting these cronies from power.

Cloud Computing… For Real!

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

Watch out for more drones in the sky! Only this time, instead of bombing innocents and invading privacy, new unmanned aircraft are being designed to host Internet web sites.

The Pirate Bay – the world’s largest free information enabler – announced plans to develop and release so-called Low Orbit Server Stations, which will fly above international waters to serve the world’s file-sharing community.

So, once launched, even if some corporate lobbyists manage to convince governments to execute a take-down on The Pirate Bay’s servers, their raids will prove futile, since the information they seek will be, literally, up in the air.

For now, the idea is just that, an idea. There are several technical issues to overcome, including building solar powered aircraft that can hold computing equipment and networking devices while staying airborne 24 hours a day.

Still, once completed, the implications will be awesome!

ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, C-11, and whatever other censorship nonsense the government tries to impose on us will be no match for human ingenuity. If they want to crack down on our free Internet, we will build a new one.

Picture thousands of wireless hotspots forming a meshed network, mounted on rooftops, street poles, cars, and robotic drones hovering above, to provide everyone with free access to an unrestricted Internet.

With 3D printers churning out more amazing stuff every day, and solar getting so effective and accessible, a decade or two is all it will take to deploy an indomitable mesh Internet across all of earth’s major hubs.

Hooray! One more blow to the encroaching totalitarian regime.

 

Internet Going Black Tomorrow

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Stock up on your memes while you still can: wide swaths of the Internet will be unavailable for at least 12 hours, starting tomorrow January 18th!

The outage is part of a coordinated protest against Internet-destroying legislation, like SOPA and PIPA, which have been creeping their way into American law books.

Major players, including Wikipedia, Google and Reddit will remove normal content in lieu of a simple message of protest, along with informative materials explaining the importance of a free internet and why we need to protect it.

Awesome!  No doubt Washington will notice, and hopefully they will learn a valuable lesson: do not piss off the Internet.

Public Pressure Protects Canadian Internet

Friday, April 29th, 2011

One day, the net will bring our world together enough to redistribute power and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. Until then, we must vehemently protect our free Internet from forces conspiring to restrict the flow of information.

Being vocal is one of the best ways to safeguard our precious Internet, as confirmed by a recently leaked cable which notes how Canada’s Conservative government delayed introducing copyright legislation in early 2008 due to public opposition.

The document states how then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice told U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins that cabinet colleagues and Conservative MPs were worried about getting public scorn by chasing copyright reform:

Our contacts downplayed the small – but increasingly vocal – public opposition to copyright reform led by University of Ottawa law professor Dr. Michael Geist.  On February 25, however, Industry Minister Prentice (please protect) admitted to the Ambassador that some Cabinet members and Conservative Members of Parliament – including MPs who won their ridings by slim margins – opposed tabling the copyright bill now because it might be used against them in the next federal election.  Prentice said the copyright bill had become a “political” issue.

See… this is what democracy looks like! Making noise, and lots of it. It’s about large groups of people, united and motivated by the same issue, rousing enough rabble to draw our politicians’ attention away from their high-paying special interests long enough to effect change.

We need to stay eternally vigilant in our struggle to keep the ugly stench of bureaucracy and corporate greed from destroying our beautiful Internet.

Today’s Trip Towards Totalitarianism: Google Caves to the likes of RIAA

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Google has catered to the likes of RIAA and other DMCA douchebags by removing terms that relate to copyright infringement from the auto-complete feature.  They also expedited the process to issue DMCA takedown notices.

Not really a big deal, feature-wise. Now you just have to type in the whole phrase yourself instead of having Google do it for you. Pirates will still be able to find what the same content, but it makes it less likely that non-pirates will stumble upon copyrighted material.

But this change is a big deal when it comes to precedent. Google already has a tarnished record when it comes to cowing down to pressure from influential institutions, like when they catered somewhat to China’s dictatorial demands.

Now, here we see Google capitulating to the whole anti-p2p movement – a litigious movement which critics say protect obsolete views of intellectual property in order to maximize profits for the big corporations (and their shareholders) that sit atop the mainstream entertainment industries.

Yes, Google has taken just taken a minor step. But it is still ONE MORE STEP!  Everyday, more and more rights are being stripped from us. Everyday, this big beast called totalitarianism clamps down on our world.

German citizens, recollecting Germany after the rise of the Nazi’s, would speak to how fascism set in. A small step here, a new restriction there. Never enough to really cause a riot. Just more each day for a few years,  until the government’s power crossed a threshold – the tipping point – and then it was too late. Out of nowhere, fascism came crashing down on them like a bear trap.

The establishment had all the means in place to easily quash any rebellion. The people were under complete control and they had no choice but to comply. An entire population was at the whim of the system and those who sat atop.

This is what can happen to our entire world if we aren’t careful. Forces are working diligently to make totalitarianism happen. It’s not even just the the Illuminati or the Bilderberg group or whatever secret society you want to name.

Totalitarianism can breed from within any of us.

Any mother who thinks more safety precautions are a good thing because they will make us safer. Any father who caters to irrational fears and mindlessly trusts a system to protect his family and keep them safe. Any one of us who doesn’t want to accept responsibility and accountability for our own lives and would rather just let someone else do it for us.

Fortunately, not all forces are working to instill Big Brother’s police state. One force that can (and will) counterbalance totalitarianism is the power that comes from humans uniting. We are coming together as a species, like never before, and the forces we are unleashing will keep totalitarianism at bay.

Humans are capable of remarkable things. We are starting to come together, and we will rise up against oppression to make world peace and a brighter future a reality.