16 Jul
2010
16 Jul
'10
9:20 p.m.
Rob wrote:
On Friday 16 July 2010 12:04, James Morris wrote:
Hmmm, it seems to me that if ISPs can prove copyright infringement,
they're monitoring their traffic contents, so they're no longer just
common carriers. Which means WE should be able to sue them for letting
spam arrive in our mail boxes! ;-)
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
How would you feel then, if you were a farmer,
about being prosecuted
for growing plants from the seed of the plants that grew from the
seeds purchased from international seed company X?
Or for growing plants from the seed of the plants that grew from seeds
purchased from international seed company X... and then blew onto your farm
from a neighboring farm. Which was an actual case such a company was
allowed to bring, not against the wind, but against a farmer who wasn't a
customer of theirs. The farmer lost. All because said company was allowed
a patent on the genes of a living thing. They made billions before such a
thing was possible, but billions weren't enough; they needed control over
people who weren't even their customers.
"Intellectual property" has spun way, way out of control. The only
workable tactic I can see when faced with multi-billion-dollar corporations
with an interest in things getting worse rather than better is to advocate
for it all to be thrown out so that the people advocating for a less
extreme approach to copyright/patent/trademark reform will seem like
reasonable people willing to compromise.
The other guys are doing the same, but to them, cutting off families'
Internet access based on an unproven accusation and making copyright
infringement a criminal act (or the facilitation of possible copyright
infringement, even if no actual copyright infringement takes place) are
examples of things they think *are* reasonable compromises.