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Outrageous Corporate Fear Mongering
Freely sharing culture is only a crime when tyrants' profits are threatened, such as the prohibition of slaves learning to read. Now, corporate indoctrination has convinced people that sharing books, films, speeches, and music is the same as violently boarding a ship at sea, then killing, raping, and torturing anyone who gets in the way of depriving people others of their property. If you watch John Carter without paying Disney executives outlandish, unfair, and unearned piles of cash and investors' who take profits for doing nothing then YOU are the criminal. If that's not government oppression in support of plutocracy, what is?

The corporations which run our society have done this by secretly framing a discussion in which culture (information and experiences for example) can only be accessed with permission. People are treated as objects whose only value is in their ability to pay, an unfortunate, systemic side effect of modern corporate capitalism. Mr. Mount and SmartPlanet should be ashamed of this kind of one sided, economically poorly informed piece which reads like an IBM propaganda/PR release.

The introduction to Title 17 of the U.S. code prior to the corporate-written DMCA dealing with films, music, etc., made clear that "bona fide enthusiasts" of various forms of entertainment, especially film are protected, and for good reasons! I recommend reading the first page of the 5 book "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith who observed that the degree of utilization of a society's resources improves that society's wealth. IP law taxing people by forcing payment for culture and using public funds to restriction their own access to culture is incredibly inefficient, and a drastic interference in free markets corporations claim they seek when it comes to dumping toxic waste in poor countries, or as in the past: use of slave labor, including child slaves. With the internet, these things can be distributed at nearly zero cost.

The depravities to which such "property" mentioned above has been historically put illustrate the amoral nature of limitless profit-seeking by non-human collectives. Justice used to be a societal goal, now its us-versus them profits in a predatory system which incurs massive, unnecessary costs and harm, a classic definition of "evil" in moral philosophy.
Posted by BurntSynapse
Updated - 20th Apr 2012
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So is anyone surprised?
This would be the same Argentinian government that just confiscated control over the real assets, property, and contractual rights of the entire private oil sector.

This would be the same Argentinian government that has effectively banned the importation of books claiming "health concerns" in the ink.

I am going to take a wild guess here. The government will suddenly become genuinely concerned about the IP "crisis", dictating swift and bold action to crack down, through government regulation of the internet.

Kirchnerism. The classic downward spiral of a socialist nation. IP is the least of your worries.
Posted by cd3rd
20th Apr 2012
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Yea take the money.
Support the obscenely wealthy forget the poor let them writhe with misery ignore them pay! And how. People with more money than they could count in a entire lifetime will have your last buck because someone told them to go and take it. Crush the poor land hard forever jail or mass executions , better yet disappearances like Chili evil evil people how dare they. The amoral nature of limitless profit-seeking by non-human collectives (corporate) with no restraint other than profit. Exaggerated not by much the "targeting" by legal strategism and public trial is like tearing a rabbit to pieces and throwing them about the garden to deter other rabbits. Solution 3 year copyright.
Posted by Altotus
21st Apr 2012
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