Well, it ain't the NYT, but....

Wiki has a good article on the topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

Property Rights Uber Alles!

Remember when the latest album of your favourite band would come out and you would borrow it from a friend, on cassette tape? Perhaps you didn't have it but you would pop it into your dual cassette stereo and make a copy for your own pleasure before returning it. Then perhaps next time, when you had the original, you might return the favour. That is how music was traded among me and my friends. Before CD burners, you would still make cassette copies of CDs.

This reminds me of one of the disingenuous arguments put forward by media corporations on copying. Which is that copying (downloading) hurts artists. With some exceptions, most artists can expect to make 1-4% on each sale. The bulk of artist income comes from touring. Before downloading, in the time of the cassette copy, the industry didn't really take much action. So let's dispense with myth that this is a moral dilemma. The record giants only cared when their profits suffered, not as a matter of principle.

Perhaps part of the reason people stopped paying $20 plus for a CD is because of the industry's tendancy toward the lowest common denominator. You would get a new CD with a few good songs. Notice to industry, your product sucks. iTunes has fixed this and proves that people are willing to pay a reasonable fee when they aren't forced to pay for filler.

Now that the internet has come of age, people expect free content. This harkens back to a time when the original comp-sci people believed that hardware was the thing and software should be free. Linux proves that a community effort can produce a viable result. Bill Gates had other plans. Apple has done some good things but are obsessed with managing their brand and tend to restrict choice.

In the age of YouTube and an unrestricted internet, the stage is set for independant artists to get their music out there, free and can leverage the power of technology to supplant the role traditionally held in monopoly by record companies. The only drawback is that it might just start to be about the music.

Know Your Rights

When property rights go wrong:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz61

When property rights do wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NlD_mw9xaI

There may be a clash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPeWSpB_7w4

Government of by and for Corporate interests

This is an Amerikan initiative. What can you expect from this utterly corrupt junta of corporate and military interests?

And why oh why are Canadians supporting Harper (he of the plasticised hair) as he works for these same interests? They view you and me as a herd of cattle to be exploited.

In the US, these same corrupt greedy traitors are also working to extend patent protection for longer periods, and in more and broader areas. Watch the Supreme Court of the US - they have taken up a patent case: the issue? Patenting a "business method". What a great way to eliminate competition! It would not surprise me at all that the Supremes rule for the patent - the court has been stacked for years with fascist fucks like Scalia, the execrable Alito, and Roberts of the plasticised hair (this is a pretty good marker of fascist tendencies).

Article Lockout

Just wanted to confirm that I too was "locked out" of this article yesterday.
As to the question of why Canadians are supporting Harper, I suspect that is due to the fact that we are now a "television nations," composed of passive non-thinkers who seek out tribal affiliations to mitigate their sense of anomie. Would be great to see a poll on this question and inspect the results.

I don't agree

that these craven efforts should serve to shut down human striving and attempts at innovation. In the face of this anal set of efforts to scrape up up to the meager marginal profits from the one good idea these dopes had in their miserable life, the rest of us might discover that all sorts of people can do all sorts of things. Instead of buying music, let us make music. Instead of vying for the ownership of someone else's intellect at inflated prices, let us try to mobilize our own intellects. Let us DO rather than consume. This is the way it works. Buckminster Fuller said:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

So, instead of trying to hack down the 'patent jungle', what we need to do is simply develop a new parallel realm of creativity and innovation, where patents do not rule, and fill it up with good stuff these losers would never had thought of, focused as they are on holding on to their pot of gold. Whining about how difficult it will be isn't going to help. In fact, it is a bonus that the rules are specified by the old set of people, so we are not wading into uncharted territory, but can know exactly how these people's minds and practices are fenced and cross-fenced. I love the one about 'method of business'. Should indeed be fascinating to see how that one plays out. In fact, has anyone thought about all the existing business methods that are tapped into by multiple users? They are going to spend years and years falling over each other to patent each one first, and then shoot down all the others who are still using 'their' method...Tickets in first row are free...!

Was anyone else locked out?

Yeah, doggone. I was.

Me, too

I was also locked out just now....with a "forbidden" notice.

My second try got me in.

The secrecy

If nothing else, all the secrecy is an indication that something very radical and potentially very unpopular is being considered.

To those who got 'locked out',

maybe this will help:

I was locked out once, and the remedy was to make this particular file a 'safe site'. This should not have been necessary, for I had previously done so with the main site 'Thetyee', and have never had to do so with an individual file since. However, in this case it seemed to be needed. I do not know if, as a sop to the secrecy of the issue, there is something peculiar about the configuration of this particular file, or this could even be a consequence of hacking, maybe in an attempt to track people surreptitiously, but the trick seemed to work. I have not been locked out since.