Anyone who knows me personally probably know that I’m almost rabidly non-political. My general view is that “the system” is so utterly broken down to it’s foundation, that I refuse to participate if at all possible.
In my lifetime there have been very, VERY few exceptions to this rule for me, but today is the day for one to surface.
This is SO completely insane that I thought it had to be a hoax… like those “Microsoft is giving away a million dollars for passing on this email” chain letters (yes, they are a hoax! LOL)
But this is real… and for anyone who is reading this, and therefore obviously uses the internet, I think you better know about it.
http://pol.moveon.org/nointernetcensorship/
I’ve signed the petition (something I never EVER do!), if you live in the US won’t you sign it as well? Actually, I’m assuming it’s limited to US residents but I don’t know that for a fact… although it does require a zipcode.
Oh also please note that unlike many absurd attempts to change things by gathering internet petitions (which are always doomed to failure by design!), this is not expecting the petition to change anyone’s minds. It’s an attempt to gather hopefully millions of names, so that they can be read in succession for however long it takes, in order to fillibuster this bill on the Senate floor and keep it from ever passing.
I think that’s rather creative, and I sure hope it works!
Here’s a wikipedia article on the matter at hand (known as SOPA). I strongly urge you to read it and do what you can to stop this thing in its tracks!
Jonathan
So good to see an internet marketer talking about this. I’ve been wondering where the rage is for “the system” that is trying to take away our financial livelihood. But I disagree with you on one point. The fact that the system is “so utterly broken down” is NOT a reason to disengage. If everyone just sits by and lets a broken system take over, what do you think is going to happen? (And given enough time to be broken, how much harder do you think it’s going to be to turn around?) Just sayin…
Totally appreciate you sharing your opinion. 🙂 I know that mine is generally a very minority one. The way I see it, if I had a website that was completely and totally hacked beyond recognition and I had no backup to revert to, I wouldn’t try to fix it. I’d nuke it and start over. And that’s where I feel the current “system” in the US is (and I know it’s not exclusive to us either). Beyond repair. I don’t for a moment suggest that I know what to do instead. I know when my car is beyond repair as well but I don’t know what type of car would be a better choice or why.
I don’t think there is any “turning around” this system. It was designed for 13 tiny little colonies and a small population full of isolated communities who would have very little regular contact with one another. It makes no sense to me given what our country (and world) has become.
I just personally choose not to participate (politically anyway) in a system I think is broken at its most fundamental core levels. But then again that’s one great aspect of the system – that I have the right to make that choice! 😉
JVC
“The way I see it, if I had a website that was completely and totally hacked beyond recognition and I had no backup to revert to, I wouldn’t try to fix it. I’d nuke it and start over.”
Perfect! Ron Paul is that nuke. Get political and vote Ron Paul 2012.
http://www.RonPaul2012.com/
The problem is not a broken system. The problem is you and I, who have ignored the system for so long that it broke. It’s time to stop complaining about it and DO SOMETHING about it. And yes, our original republic, based on our Constitution, would still work today. The amount of people is all that has changed. Your rights, granted to you by birth, have not.
P.S. WordPress? MoveOn? Wikipedia? These are not places to go for facts, Jonathan. These are sites that refuse to “read the bill” and then spread only lies. They do no research and fact checking on anything before spreading their left-wing propaganda, racism, bigotry, intolerance and fear mongering. A site based on 0% facts and 100% opinions cannot be quoted as a source of facts. And self-defeatists are not freedom fighters.
Here is a link to the actual bill —a link that you will likely never find on any left-winger site, because they don’t want you to know the truths (such as SOPA does NOT affect American websites and SOPA does NOT provide over-reaching powers to intellectual property owners).
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20HR%203261.pdf
P.P.S. If I stole LPGen and sold it as my own, you would be totally okay with that. You said so when you signed that petition. Maybe you should read the bill…
Oh boy here we go… this is why I tend to be so non-political. It tends to start pointless arguments that people will simply never agree upon.
If you stole LPGen and sold it, no I wouldn’t “be OK with it”. But I’m smart enough to know that IT CANNOT BE STOPPED, and those who would steal my stuff were never my customers in the first place. LPGen has been on blackhat and filesharing sites since the day I released it. I’ve found it many times… and every time I do, I download it to see if it works. And guess what? It doesn’t, because the code is encrypted. Only once have I found a decrypted copy, and it was a very old and buggy beta version that I wouldn’t dare use. Software copying/sharing simply is NOT the problem that “the powers that be” would have us believe, because those were for the most part not paying customers anyway. I’m not talking about organized counterfeiting rings. Obviously that’s a different story because they are selling the product claiming it is in fact the original.
Agreeing to disagree here… you have your opinions and you’re entitled to them, but I don’t share them.
Jonathan
“Oh boy here we go… this is why I tend to be so non-political. It tends to start pointless arguments that people will simply never agree upon.”
Agreed. (oh, the irony!)
“Software copying/sharing simply is NOT the problem that ‘the powers that be’ would have us believe…”
How do you know that? I mean you track your own clicks and impressions, not the movements of everyone else on the Internet. The government, on the other hand, along with their good buddies Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, Facebook and AOL, track everything that everyone does online and off.
And, in all actuality, it’s probably a much BIGGER problem than they say it is. But they are only focusing on the larger sites, like the now defunct MegaUpload.com. They’re not focusing on the individual people who go to those sites and download stolen software, music and movies. And I realize that people think that if they call it “sharing” it will magically not be “stealing.” But that’s just what it is, plain and simple. Under any name, theft is theft and theft is illegal. The socialists have too many people believing that they have a right to other peoples’ stuff. The first line in the GPL license, for example: “The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works.” (In other words, “wah, they’re stealing our right to steal their stuff.”) Uh, no. It just does not work that way. Rights, or “freedoms,” cannot be taken away that were never had in the first place.
I don’t understand the thought behind ‘we should have intellectual property rights offline, but not on’ or ‘we should have copyright laws offline, but not on’. Why should common-sense laws not be extended to the Internet? Why should your rights not be protected online as they are off? Wherever your property is, that’s YOUR property. Nobody else has any right to it, whatsoever, that you do not specifically grant rights to, such as a paying customer. Do you see what I mean? It’s YOURS, dude. And you have every right to protect what’s yours.
“… because those were for the most part not paying customers anyway.”
I don’t get that logic, Jonathan. It’s not a problem because they’re not paying customers? Dude, that’s EXACTLY the problem. They STOLE what you spent time, effort, skills and probably money on building. You have every right to compensation.
I’m not trying to disrespect you or bring a ton of political attention to your blog; just trying to cast a light on this from a logical perspective. Your property, the ownership of your property and all rights to your property are yours alone; no one else’s.
Dave
Well you’re right I don’t have personal data on how many illegal downloads WOULD HAVE otherwise resulted in a sale. But I can speak from my own experience as well as that of lots of people I’ve known. If I can buy something at a price I feel justifies the purchase for me, I generally will. If not… I won’t. That means I was never a potential customer, plain and simple. So if I were to later decide to download a copy of something from a torrent site, the studio/developer/whoever hasn’t lost ANYTHING because they were never going to get anything from me in the first place. I’d have quite happily just plain gone without it.
I’ve been around software literally my entire life, since my dad was a software developer in the 1960s before I was even born. He was one of the original Apple third-party developers and was largely responsible for the software that drove a VERY early “tablet” called the KoalaPad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad – David Thornburg was one of my dad’s good friends back then) among many other things. Back when I was a kid in the mid 80s I used to swap copies of games for the Atari and Apple computers with all my friends (no internet and even BBSes were impractical for this kind of stuff due to file transfer speeds). There was NO WAY any of us were potential customers for those companies. We had no money and our parents certainly weren’t going to buy the games for us. Most of us later got into the tech industry in some capacity, and the actual fact is we owe our computer literacy to illegally swapping programs amongst us. Not saying that the end always justifies the means here, just stating a fact. As a professional software developer, my dad was never real comfortable with me sharing games with my friends. But somehow the video game industry didn’t exactly go away.
Later in my life, I got interested in digital audio and video (early 1990s) and built a home studio where I could edit early quicktime videos and produce some (by today’s standards simple) special effects. I did this all with copied software – Adobe Premiere, CoSA After Effects (later Adobe After Effects), and others. Once again, I was never a customer for those companies as I couldn’t have afforded their products regardless. But I ended up launching a career and in fact an entire post production company, because of what I taught myself. And later when I was making money with those skills, I purchased their products if I used them in my business, because I was FINALLY actually a customer.
So, stealing vs. sharing. Let’s get semantic here… to “steal” something, doesn’t that mean you have to take it from someone such that they no longer have it? I realize one could say that ideas can be stolen, but I would say that’s copying as opposed to theft. In the digital age, this gets tricky because things can be so easily copied and their quality is identical – DVD and CD rips, etc. Now if someone is copying someone else’s software property and selling it claiming to be an original “official” copy, then that’s counterfeiting and is most certainly a crime. But if one person downloads something that they would never have paid for, and gives a copy of it to someone else who also would never have paid for it… I don’t see any harm having been caused. Websites however that charge a fee to belong and then do “group buys” or whatever, are in my opinion not OK and I don’t condone them.
As for the GPL, you don’t have to use it, plain and simple. Nobody is suggesting that the GPL should be universally adopted (not that I know of anyway!). But the creators of WP and many other products, have chosen to use that as their licensing model, and if you want to use their stuff (for free btw) then you are expected to contribute to what they want to build with their platform. Once again, you’re not required to do so, unless you want to benefit from what they’ve done. You’re free to go create your OWN blogging platform, and license it however you want. There are other blogging platforms out there that are not GPL, and funnily enough… they have a tiny miniscule amount of market share compared to WP. Developers are also free to make portions of their WP products NOT GPL, as themes such as Thesis and many others have done.
Since WP is licensed under the GPL, I most certainly DO have the “right” to do what I want with it, including sell it, give it away, claim it as my own, etc. They have indeed GIVEN me that right.
Absolutely I have every right to protect what’s mine, and since I don’t license all of my stuff under the GPL, I retain the right to protect my work. However I’m not so naive as to believe that people will ever stop sharing/stealing software. It’s like believing that people won’t take songs off the radio and share the tapes. Or record TV shows on their VCR, etc. It can’t be stopped… but I believe (and no I can’t “prove” this) that the vast majority of people who have attempted to illegally download my products, would never have been a customer anyway. I don’t think they were JUST ABOUT to push the “buy” button, when the thought – “Hey maybe I can get this for free instead…” and went and downloaded it. MAYBE there are a few cases of that out there… but I don’t believe it’s a significant number and I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Ultimately I have to ask myself – is it worth the investment of time, energy, and money, to go after everyone who may have downloaded something I made, illegally? To me the answer to that is simple… NO WAY. It’s totally not worth doing and there are WAY better uses for my time, energy, and money.
These people are not paying customers NOT because they got it for free. You have it backwards. They got it for free because they were not paying customers. They never intended to give me their money, regardless of whether or not they could find my stuff for free. They were simply not prospects, period. Just as I wasn’t a prospect for the studio that created a movie I downloaded recently. I would not have paid any money for it, and if I couldn’t have downloaded it… fine, I wouldn’t have. It wouldn’t have impacted my life in any way except I would have spent 2 hours doing something else instead.
I could give movie or video game rentals as another example… I subscribed to GameFly (and Netflix too actually) for quite a while, and they would send me video games in the mail. These were games I would NOT have bought, and I have no idea if the developers receive any money from GameFly for their efforts (I’m guessing they have some sort of deal worked out but frankly I don’t know). But I had dozens of games sent to me over time, that I was not a prospect for. The ONLY reason I ever played them was because I could get them so incredibly cheaply. If GameFly had not been available to me, I just wouldn’t have played the games (or maybe I would have found other means to get them at no cost – because I certainly wasn’t going to buy them… they’re just not important enough to me to consider purchasing, with a few exceptions that I HAVE gladly paid for).
Anyway, let’s get back to logic:
If(person will pay me money)
{
they are a potential customer;
}else{
they are NOT a potential customer
}
I don’t think it gets any more logical than that.
I respect your argument here, I just don’t agree with it at a fairly fundamental level. I don’t really see any way for either of us to “prove” our viewpoints though, so we probably should just agree that we disagree.
And if I’m out of business soon because of software downloading, you can say “I told you so.” 😉
JVC
Twice now you’ve mentioned “agree to disagree.” So, I told myself that no matter what you posted, I would not post back, out of respect for you. But, you took my words completely out of context and turned them around and I cannot let that slide.
I did NOT criticize the GPL itself. And I support open source, although I have NO RESPECT AT ALL for people who try to force it on those who want, need and have a right to earn a living. I criticized ONE LINE in the GPL and I was absolutely correct in my criticism.
“The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works.”
That line states that you naturally have freedom to share and change OTHER PEOPLES’ property. No, sir, you do NOT. And, as with everything else in life, freedoms that you do not have cannot be taken away. That line does NOT say anything about the GPL. It says OTHER licenses. I criticized the OSI’s blatant lie about other licenses.
I am not backwards, friend. Backwards is believing that stealing is not actually theft. Backwards is believing that a thief has the intention of paying for something, while an honest person is the one who has no intention of paying. Why don’t you write to a few state inmates and ask what they intended on buying just before they got the max for habitual larceny?
I’d like to be walking by your house some morning just as you walk outside to find your car has been (for lack of better words) “stolen” overnight. I wonder what you would say then. Would you call the cops? And, if they caught the (uh, hum) “thief,” would you sue?
And, with the exception of my support for Ron Paul and respect for you, I have stated NO opinions on your site; only verifiable facts, most of which are common sense and need no verification. So, none of what I said is simply a point of view or matter of opinion to be agreed or disagreed with. If you disagree, then you are denying facts.
I’m a fan, Jonathan. I especially appreciate you sharing your “pre-pop” trick a while back. That’s a totally bad-ass trick and I am forever grateful. So I want to see you well. Below are a few numbers local to you. Please seek help immediately. Perhaps they can awaken you from your delusion. I know that statement can come across offensively. But please understand that I do not mean it offensively; I mean it sincerely. You believe that backwards is forwards and that anyone who is forwards is backwards. And, according to your own posts, you very strongly believe that theft is not theft no matter what facts are stated to the contrary. That is delusion. That is a fact.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/delusion
(415) 661-4786
(925) 284-2298
(650) 343-5718
P.S. Whether someone is a potential customer or not was never in question. What our posts have been about has been whether or not theft is actually theft. If you think that it can come through any clearer in code:
if(isset(‘Common_Sense’)) {
$Theft = ‘No Intention of Paying’;
} else {
$Theft = ‘Full Intention of Paying’;
}
$PPS = ‘That\’s Just Crazy, Dude.’;
Uhhh… ok now you’ve just completely lost me. I’m afraid you’re not making any sense to my ears, so I’m just going to let it lie. I respect your passion!
Jonathan