Posted on 01/03/2010 9:18:51 AM PST by Paul46360
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Irish rock star Bono called Sunday for tougher controls over the spread of intellectual property over the Internet, arguing that file swiping and sharing hurt creators of cultural products
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This criminalization of infringement is starting to annoy me. Copyright being a right of an individual, infringement has historically been a civil issue between the person whose right has been violated and the person who violated those rights. You hired a lawyer and enforced your own rights in a civil suit against the infringer.
I understood it early on when criminalization of infringement was invented to go after large pirating organizations. I forgot the slippery slope. Now the copyright cartel is basically trying to use the government as its enforcement arm.
If you don't see a problem with that, then consider that they are basically shifting the costs of enforcing their copyrights to the taxpayer. We pay our taxes to protect their profits.
Likewise, I DEMAND that people take Bonos songs and give them away to those who did not buy them.
In you face Bono.
Being a millionaire socialist is inherently hypocritical.
I’d take trademarks out of your list. A trademark itself requires no real creativity, and can be as simple as a word or phrase someone pulled out of his nether regions. What’s valuable with a trademark is the reputation of the company or product behind it. The trademark is just an identifier, and trademark law exists to make sure nobody uses someone else’s identifier, causing consumer confusion as to who is making what.
Take “Apple” for example in relation to consumer electronics. There’s no creativity in that. But that name in that context is worth billions because of the company and its products behind it.
Bands came and went as people lost interest in them long before Al Gore invented the Internet. Who did the washed-up has-beens blame then?
My new Dell has XP and the WGA app pops off after boot time. Once I install it, the DRM kicks in.
Actually this is merely an example of the people simply ignoring a law that has been stretched by corporate interests to a form far beyond it's original purpose and effectively extended into perpetuity.
Just about everything in this bozo's catalog should be in the public domain, as it's been more than 30 years since he's published anything worth listening to.
If copyright ever returns to sane terms, (the original term was 14 years that was renewable once for a total of 28 years), I'll start paying attention to it. Until then they can suck eggs.
Dear Bono:
Dial the WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMBulance.
Loser.
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