I think these are types of people generally attracted to government jobs — judges, sheriffs, world bankers, politicians and bureaucrats. They make money by exercising violence against peaceful people. Here, the violence spills into their domestic life.

http://gawker.com/5855478/reddit-video-apparently-shows-texas-family-judge-beating-disabled-daughter
(warning, disturbing video)

Ideas are not property. They cannot be property.

he picture below (from this Flickr feed) illustrates the large number of lawsuits between players in the telecom sector–most seem to be patent infringement suits or suits based on antitrust law, i.e., totally without merit and a complete waste of resources. Without patent and antitrust law, we would have a less wasteful, less litigious, more competitive market. This ain’t the result of capitalism, but of unlibertarian state law. (H/t Jock Coats) (Read more)

New Zealands Three Strikes Law was Pushed, Bought and Paid for by the US – Wikileaks The slow trickle of leaked diplomatic cables from Wikileaks may not be in the headlines as much as it was when it started, but revelations keep pouring out of the website. Recently, new diplomatic cables published on the site revealed just how, not only influential the US was, but just how much control the US had over the passage of the three strikes law in New Zealand.

If there wasn’t any anti-American sentiment before in New Zealand, there certainly will be for some after new diplomatic cables were published revealing the role the US had in pushing for a three strikes law in New Zealand. The New Zealand’s new three strikes law was the most controversial copyright laws in the country and one of the most controverisal in the world. While the law was being proposed, debate was fierce. The law sparked repeated blackout protests where websites would black out their website logo’s in protest of the law since it is widely seen as a censorship law more than a copyright enforcement law. Last month, in spite of major opposition and protests, New Zealand passed the law anyway to the dismay of the New Zealand population. Now, thanks to Wikileaks, we can see just how far back the United States was pushing New Zealand to pass that law in the first place. (Read more)

‘Skynet’ law comes into effect Downloaders beware – from today you can face serious fines for online piracy.

The Government’s Copyright Amendment Act comes into force today and anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off.

Internet New Zealand chief executive Vikram Kumar says the law means the person who pays the bill for the account needs to be very aware of who’s using the internet and what they’re using it for. (Read more)

As a crucial Australian copyright lawsuit goes to its High Court for consideration, a new WikiLeaks cable from the US State Department suggests that the force behind the action is anything but local. On the surface, it appears that the suit against iiNet—on the grounds that the country’s third biggest ISP hasn’t done enough to crack down on illegal file sharers—is an Australian content initiative. But according to the cable, the prime mover behind the suit is actually the Motion Picture Association of America, through the Motion Picture Association, its international arm.

The MPA, “does not want that fact to be broadcasted,” the 2008 communiqué from then Ambassador Robert D. McCallum Jr. explained. “MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public,” the summary of the case added, to dodge the impression that it is “just Hollywood ‘bullying some poor little Australian ISP’.”

This revelation, along with earlier leaks, once again raises a disturbing question. How far are the US State Department and US-based content industries intruding into the IP affairs of other countries—particularly members of The Commonwealth?
A public face

The movie studio case against iiNet was launched by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) in 2008. The trade association hired a monitoring company to scan BitTorrent networks for infringement, then submitted a “telephone directory-sized list” of allegedly infringing IP addresses to iiNet and insisted that it take action against these subscribers. (Read more)

New York – August 11, 2011 – The 83 family farmers, small and family owned seed businesses, and agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed filed papers in federal court today defending their right to seek legal protection from the threat of being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed. The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) represents the plaintiffs in the suit, titled Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), et al. v. Monsanto and pending in the Southern District of New York. Today’s filings respond to a motion filed by Monsanto in mid-July to have the case dismissed. In support of the plantiffs’ right to bring the case, 12 agricultural organizations also filed a friend-of-the-court amici brief.

“Rather than give a straight forward answer on whether they would sue our clients for patent infringement if they are ever contaminated by Monsanto’s transgenic seed, Monsanto has instead chosen to try to deny our clients the right to receive legal protection from the courts,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. “Today’s filings include sworn statements by several of the plaintiffs themselves explaining to the court how the risk of contamination by transgenic seed is real and why they cannot trust Monsanto to not use an occurrence of contamination as a basis to accuse them of patent infringement.”

It is now virtually impossible for a U.S. farmer to grow crops of their choosing (corn, soybeans, canola, etc.) and remain GMO-free because of the numerous biological and human means by which seeds can spread. (Read more from osgata.org)

from Stephan Kinsella: Techcrunch: Android Patent Trouble Worsens: Motorola Considers Collecting IP Royalties. (h/t Rob Wicks) Yet another patent threat (in addition to those from Apple and Microsoft and who knows who else) to Android. I sure love my iPhone but I’m feeling ickier and ickier using it, since part of its success and lack of competition is Apple’s use of patents, instead of superior products, prices, and service, to crush its competition.

This week the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s IP lobby arm, issued a release placing Canadian counterfeiting costs at $30 billion per year. That figure is being used to lobby the government to enact new border measure provisions that could lead to the searching of luggage as travellers enter Canada. It is tempting to dismiss the claims on the basis that the policy rationale makes no sense – if counterfeit toothpaste is indeed “coming across the border in droves” as the Chamber claims, searching traveller luggage won’t address that issue. Moreover, it should be noted that even the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement features an exception for de minimis imports that an individual might carry as it recognizes that addressing counterfeiting concerns does not involve targeting individuals. Yet given the decision to resurrect the bogus $30 billion figure, it is important to again call attention to its origins and how it is simply a fabrication. (Read more from michaelgeist.ca)

The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill gives media companies the right to accuse people of infringing copyright, with offenders to be fined up to NZ$15,000 (US$11,904) by a new Copyright Tribunal.

The “three strikes” bill replaces the abandoned Section 92a of the Copyright Act, devised by the former Labour government.

Campaigns, including an Internet blackout protest from people angry that the early legislation would have allowed Internet users to be cut-off, led the current government to work out a compromise. (Read more from zdnetasia.com)

:)

The late Leslie Nielsen first gained comic notoriety for the 1980 film Airplane!, which is often portrayed as a parody of 1970s-era disaster films like Airport. In fact Airplane! was a satirical remake of the little-known 1957 film Zero Hour! Filmmakers Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahms were taping late-night television commercials, looking for material to spoof, when they realized the movie that was airing “around” the commercials — Zero Hour! — provided a riper target.

A number of scenes and dialogue in Airplane! are lifted directly from Zero Hour!, as this montage demonstrates:

The Zucker-Abrahms group acquired the legal rights to Zero Hour! to avoid any problems. But the point here is that far from devaluing the original film or “pirating” anyone’s “intellectual property,” the Airplane! creators took an otherwise forgettable movie and reworked it into a modern comedy classic. Sure, the initial idea wasn’t original. But artistic success isn’t about “originality” so much as it’s about having the talent to execute — or re-execute — an idea in such a way as to create value in the minds of consumers. (Read more from blog.mises.org)

Intellectual Property helps makes this behavior possible. In an IP-free world, people could more easily abandon a company that cooperates with abusive governments (like ours), but in our world, where ideas are considered property, and imitation can be halted by means of government violence, it is much less likely companies will have a reason to resist such invasive actions.

he US government has subpoenaed Twitter in a bid to support an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Wikileaks and people involved or connected to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic member of parliament, broke the law.

According to Wikileaks lawyer Mark Stephens live on the BBC News a short time ago, it is believed Facebook and Google (see here) have also been contacted regarding Wikileaks members and potential whistleblowers.

Update (12:20am GMT): Mark Stephens on the BBC News also makes clear that the court order will also cover the “600,000 odd followers that Wikileaks has on Twitter“. (Read more from zdnet.com)

The US is really ramping up its war on intellectual property infringement, a war which I’m sure will be just as successful, cheap and supported by the people as the wars on drugs and terrorism. The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN – not because owners of these sites were convicted of anything, but merely because complaints have been filed against them. Anyone want to take a guess how long it will be before the US government blocks WikiLeaks? Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.

The current seizures of domains did not even use the proposed bill which recently passed the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The seizures come from the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and cover about 70 websites relating to potential copyright infringement and counterfeit goods, among which is Torrent-Finder.com, a mere torrent search engine which does not host or even link to torrents; it displays content hosted elsewhere through embedded iframes.

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the owner of Torrent-Finder explained TorrentFreak, “I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.”

This is equivalent to having your house seized for pointing out to someone you can buy weed in the college district. (Read more from osnews.com)

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

. . . .

Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act — up to $150,000 for a single infringement — to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client. (Read more from wired.com)

1) The media is not in trouble, contrary to what many “media studies” students are taught in their University classrooms. The media is in a golden age. Competition with bloggers and independant media have established this golden age. It’s the old media whose lies are no longer effective that are in trouble. They hate losing money and influence.

2) Lets hope this isn’t the avenue the establishment to take back its lost influence over society.

3) Philosophically, intellectual property is not property. More:

Short version: They ignore their intellectual property (which is NOT property), and let fans do their thing.

I remember flying from Seattle to Las Vegas, the night before a Dead show, with a plane full of Deadheads. The guy next to me said he was “Jonesin’ for some Hornsby” (Bruce Hornsby, who played over a hundred shows with the Dead, from 1988 until founder Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995). My fellow passenger proceeded to pull down a suitcase from the overhead compartment; it was filled with cassette tapes — all labeled and sorted by concert date and location.

Did this taping hurt album sales? No. It served as free marketing for the band. And as David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan point out in their new book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History, the band went as far as to set up special sections for tapers in 1984. These sections were behind the band’s mixing board and would form a “forest of professional-grade microphones rising to the sky.”

So if there were all these bootleg tapes floating around, has anyone been buying Dead albums? I guess so: the band has had 19 gold albums, 6 platinum albums, and 4 albums that have gone multiplatinum.

In their punchy little book, Scott and Halligan point out that the Grateful Dead turned the “the-band-tours-to-support-the-album” concept completely on it’s head. For the Dead, the concerts are the experience they are selling. The scarce good is that particular night’s performance, and the band makes each performance radically different. The band in its various forms has done over 2,300 shows, and no 2 are alike. Not only have the song lists been different each night, but the band plays different versions of all the songs. Instead of only touring periodically in support of a new album, the Dead has toured constantly.

Committed Deadheads have followed the band around to see hundreds of shows. In some cases these fans support their Dead habit by selling merchandise or food items in the parking lot, and this activity is endorsed by the band. Like Amazon with its affiliate program, the Dead supports anyone who sells band merchandise. (Read more from mises.org)