Censorship Bills and Everything Else

[bartekko]

Who was the person holding up the Pinkie banner, and what does it say?

About "Who" I am not sure, but "What" is "Don't take away our ponies." and pinkie says "Stop (second person) ACTA"

[Tephnos]

So, this ACTA bill. It's been on the negotiation table for a while now, behind closed doors and in utter secret. The foi requested more details on the language of it, but were denied for 'national security' reasons.

We all laughed at the tin foil hats. Turns out they were right. The white collar crook's lust for power is very, very real, and this bull is the first step in a world totalitarian government. They don't even try to hide it anymore.

It reminds me of Churchill back in the mid 1930s when he screamed about Germany's intentions. Nobody believed him and laughed him off. Look how that turned out. On the more extreme end (and I mean extreme tin foil), the speech Kennedy gave just a couple of days before he was assassinated. Let's take a look, shall we?

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Then he was killed. Funny that. (I'm not personally sure what to think, it's still a little too tin foil for me, but they're right about what the world is coming too)

The point is, we love to dismiss foresight, sticking our heads up our asses and pretending everything is completely fine.

Poland signed the ACTA bill this morning
The Obama administration signed it in secret in September.

The OPEN bill, the counter to SOPA and PIPA (Not forgetting the PCFOPA bill), doesn't even matter anymore. If ACTA is written in and signed, which it probably will seeing as it's been in the works for years in total secret, the US can just sign the SOPA bill and basically say: "Well, everyone else is doing it, not our fault."

Chris Dodd, the chairman of the MPAA, actually admitted on TV that his goal was to lobby congress with money to fuel his own agenda, and he used threads to say what would happen to those not voting in his favour. This is completely illegal, and yet he's going free because of his status and lobbying power.

The biggest irony of it all:

"Many independent filmmakers, who controlled from one-quarter to one-third of the domestic marketplace, responded to the creation of the MPPC by moving their operations to Hollywood, whose distance from Edison's home base of New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents."

Hollywood exists because they didn't want to pay Edison's intellectual property.

The concept of long-term idea ownership is crushing creativity and ingenuity. Human creativity and knowledge are stopped right in it's tracks and stifled because of it. Instead of our collective pool of ideas and knowledge being a limitless resource for the people to use, they want to make ideas something to be controlled. At no point in human history have we had the sheer ability to communicate ideas so rapidly with almost every other human on the planet. We have the ability to evolve ourselves, intellectually as a species, at an unprecedented rate never seen before, but of course corporation and governments want to make the flow of ideas run only in their channels and only to benefit them. Enough of this, there is so much information floating around on the internet that nobody could possibly hope to control it all, and that amount will only grow as poorer third world countries finally get online. Humanity should benefit from what humanity produces. It is not for a tiny minority to decide that the fruits of our labour be concentrated solely upon their own selfish selves.

There is a dictatorship, and they have been working on bypassing all the checks and balances for years. There is no doubt that the masses will eat up the whole 'piracy is evil and must be stopped' so that they can have the next series of their favourite sitcom or something. Because, this is what is pushed on them day in, day out. Psychology 101, if you will. So many people know so little about the technology that surrounds them. It's frightening, really. There is indeed a problem, and it's not just the politicians. It's the average person who does not know how to use a computer, yet are willing to vote and make decisions that people can't and don't agree with. The people, essentially, need to stop voting for the 'status quo'. There is so many people who say that change is needed, and then they go and vote for the idiot who perpetuates it with his own agenda. It really comes down to actual protest. Protest is needed, and do what America's founding fathers once did. They recognised a government which does not represent the people and attempt change. We're probably not even close to what their final agenda is, not by a long shot. There was once this thing called slavery. A president overturned it. Since then, they've been working on reinstating it, piece by piece.

One of the first things people need to do, is to stop making excuses for bad business. An example: AT&T ended their unlimited data plans. People said "2GB is more than enough". They are refusing to see the forest for the trees. Despite the fact that 2GB isn't more than enough, that they did was give you less, but charge you more for it. Yet people as a collective didn't really do anything. They got away with it. If you want to remove business from politics, by a simple rule of mathematics, you need to take the business out. Don't buy from shady companies with questionable business practices. Obviously, this is much easier said than done, seeing as a lot of companies own things that you wouldn't even think were related to said company at all. However, money talks. If you don't have enough money on your own, band together and as a collective you do. Business aren't the only groups of people who can form monopolies. Nobody is forcing you to buy a product nearly every single time. You don't have to buy video games loaded with DRM, you don't have to go to the movies (OTA is free), you don't have to buy music (the radio is free). These are all merely forms of entertainment, and you can survive without them, it won't kill you. Honestly, what is the recourse here? Corporations pushing their agendas through with boatloads of money, no regulation of lobbyist procedure, and companies writing our laws. Now, they are internationally navigating past our government system of checks and balances. We cant just simply say: "Oh, but you can always elect other people!" It's been statistically proven that whoever has the most money thrown at them (read: corporations 'donating') almost always win an election.

However, the problem is not in Washington D.C. Yeah, there's a bunch of liars, thieves, and killers. The problem is not there, and the solution is not there. The problem is in the heads of over 300 million people who actually think they have a moral obligation to bow to these psychopaths, and do exactly what they say. If people actually thought for a minute "wait a minute, I don't have to bow to anyone, I follow my own beliefs and wishes, I do what I believe is right". If people understood that, there would be no need for an election, no need for a revolution, no need for anything. They're already free. Unfortunately, they don't know it, and the corporations and governments want them to never realise this.

I think the only good thing coming out of this is that people are finally starting to realise the white collar crook's lust for greed and power, and are pushing them to the threshold of revolution. They're just relics of an old model of society clinging desperately for life. The future is clearly against this, and these people are going to lose their power, and society, very slowly, will change. We've lived in a kleptocracy for a long time now, they're just finally being open about it. Money runs the US, the world, and everyone knows that. Nothing short of a full scale revolution (in any way) is going to change this system.

[Mundius]

"They're already free. Unfortunately, they don't know it, and the corporations and governments want them to never realise this."

Sadly, this isn't always true. There are countries that don't have this freedom, and sadly, with most laws, they never will. This is why I want to have a government that's with no Internet laws that isn't posing a major threat to thousands.

Being on topic, would I protest ACTA on the lawn in front of our legislature building? Yes. But I can't.

You know what? FUCK ACTA.