You see, we’re not a part of the debate and the conversation — perhaps showing how their strong belief in stronger IP is dangerous — but we’re a “threat” that needs to be dealt with. Nice to know that the US’s worldwide IP enforcers have such open minds.

Of course you are a part of the debate. But the job of an IP Attache is not to engage in debate about whether intellectual property laws are a good idea or not, their job is to enforce intellectual property laws and relevant international treaties regarding intellectual property. Their pointing out that anti-IP advocates make their job more difficult by undermining the enforcement of valid legal protection is simply a statement of fact.

It has absolutely nothing to do with having or not having an open mind. Their views on the subject are irrelevant. It’s their job to be aggressively pro-IP. If they aren’t aggressive in their advocacy for enforcement of the law, they should be fired.

Apparently none of you actually go through the sweat, blood, and tears of creating IP from scratch… Entertainment other than entertaining yourself, isn’t free. Software shouldn’t be free unless the developer/producer wants it to be. In the global market IP isn’t usually something that facilitates the basic standard of living, and so does not need to be provided to people as a right or at no cost. I’m not sure there actually is a valid other side to this “debate.” And yes it is a “threat” to legal enforcement of IP laws to have domestic idiots saying that things they didn’t produce… should be unprotected. The “stealing from the public domain” to make IP issue is a red herring. Ok? Stop being silly. That’s not what’s being discussed here. Not everybody on the planet can afford to hear/watch/use everthing merely because it exists – and in many cases can be easily transported in cyberspace. Open source collectives are not the same as “Knowledge wants to be free.” advocates. And you are naive or ignorant of the concept (and actual costs) of investment in competitive advantages by nation-states, corporations and other entitites to think that geo-political forces are not motivating a lot of the lax-IP attitudes around the world. “Too aggressive?” How aggressive are you all about protecting your bank accounts? Do you think there’s a too aggressive amount of protection your bank can have for your hard earned cash?

LostSailor Wrote:

“Would you support a cop having an open mind about doing his job enforcing the law based on what he thinks about the law?”

Absolutely! This is their duty in a truly just society. What if a law was passed which stated that all guys named LostSailor should be castrated? I would hope that any sensible person would disobey that law.

If the Nazis had used their humanity to make decisions rather than blindly follow in lockstep every order given them…imagine how different history would have turned out.

If you believe that orders are to be followed without question…maybe you *should* be castrated.

…don’t get excited; I’m just kidding…

…although you *are* a poo-poo head.

Take that!

The problem here, is easily described by one word:

Tyranny.

We have a small group of people deciding the rules for everyone else, (and enforcing them), whilst hiding behind an illusion that the rules are beneficial for more people than they actually are.

(Note: I’m a musician and composer, so I have some investment in this).

For thousands/millions of years, humanity existed without such things as ‘intellectual property’ – even civilization precedes it by a long time. So the first thing to understand is that civilization will NOT end if such an invention should disappear – for an invention it is, and a very recent one…

As we all should know – copyright was originally invented to protect the profits of book making factories, to stop people from copying their books so they could recoup the investment of making the factory etc..

It was only later – (with the bearne convention) – that the whole ‘compensate the artist as an incentive to create future works’ comes into play.

What is happening is that the latter view is basically being corrupted to become a modern day equivalent of the original version of copyright – it now exists to protect the profits of the large corporations that try and control most of the media.

However, it must be understood that all this is actually working AGAINST humanities inherent behaviour, (which we obeyed without problem thousands of years). Because of this, in order for any of the ‘intellectual property’ law to actually be ‘moral’, it must compensate humanity for the loss of it’s previous ‘rights’ and behaviour, which is something the original bearne convention tried to do.

These days however, it’s become so corrupted again, that it cannot be called ‘right’ or ‘moral’ on a grand scale. Yes, on a small scale – dealing with composers/musicians personally/directly – it can be, but that doesn’t give these corporations any money…

Neither does copying/distributing the material without their permission, even if it is normal human behaviour…

The fact is, if you want to change human behaviour fully – you need two things, and carrot and a stick.

The problem with most media corporations is that they’re so afraid, they’ve forgotten about the carrot, and are getting the governments to enforce the biggest stick they can.

And they’ll LOSE, since HUMANITY always wins, even if it takes a thousand years…

Of course, if they USE humanity and human nature, rather than fighting it, they MIGHT actually WIN – but they don’t understand how…