France, Australia, Britain, Canada, Iran and China aren’t the only countries either deliberating on or actively using mandatory DNS blacklists. It seems that there is an all-out PR war in Germany over the governments plan to pass a law which mandates the use of web blacklists. That didn’t go over too well with German citizens as there is already over 100,000 signatures that has been added to a petition and protests that shows how citizens are not happy with such a plan.
Many countries including the United States have denounced the ideas of censorship in China. When countries like Iran and China use internet censorship, they often get heavily criticized for even thinking about doing that. Yet, how often do these criticisms come from the same countries regarding the censorship practises in Australia or, in this case, Germany? What makes Australia’s and Germany’s internet censorship tactics so much more acceptable since even the Chinese government has said that it’s blacklists are used to fight pornography online. Of course, many know that such blacklists have, more often then not, been used to block legal content – an issue that raises serious questions about free speech.
What’s also at stake is a very real threat the censorship tactics could be used to target file-sharers. Germany has become the first country to have to deal with the copyright industry trying to use the mandatory blacklists to block file-sharing websites. Whether or not there will be a third attempt to include file-sharing sites like Rapidshare into the blacklist is unclear at this point. However, a post on netzpolitik certainly highlights heavy resistance toward the legislation. As of this writing, a petition to stop the DNS blacklist has gotten more than 134,000 signatures. Coupled with the online petition, there have already been public demonstrations on this issue.
Two months ago, German book publishers wanted to use mandatory blacklists to block Rapidshare. Early last year, the German government had to tell rights holders that data retention is for fighting terrorism, not copyright infringement.
In spite of the history of the German filters and data retention, the German government still insists that the filters will be used merely to block child pornography. Even then, some people don’t buy this given that a simple use of a proxy can be used to bypass the filters in the first place. So the real question is, who is this really intended for and who is this really intended to serve?
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
Related
- German Book Publishers Want to Add Rapidshare to ISP Blacklist
- German Parliament Passes Web Censorship Legislation
- Chinese Government Mandated Search Engine Blacklist Leaked
- German Pirate Party Now Has a Seat in German Reichstag
- German Minister Announces Plans for Mandatory Web Filtering
Years ago I said that file sharers needed to quit the hyperbole and be responsible before they turned the internet into a giant ghetto with a fence around it. And so it comes to pass.
If you take the value out of content, there is no money in the internet community, becuase all we have here is the content we create. If the community as a whole engages in widespread theft, there will be fences and cameras everywhere. Just like one big ghetto.
It could have been so cool. Thanks guys.
If it has been years, yet still you do not realize that you have delusions about file-sharing, then shut up!
Do you say that the damned manipulators should be allowed to influence creation of laws and be able intimidate or threaten citizens as if they were criminals should get away with it? This is not hyperbole, but an ongoing phenomenon.
I will assume the ‘content’ you are referring to is artistic content. The creators or even the distributors in fact do not value their own content by monetary amounts, but those who see and/or hear it.
You’re assumption that online users don’t have money is utter nonsense; there are such things as e-commerce and online transactions, if you have yet not noticed.
If you only have the content you create, then you should just stop doing that until you learn more and develop new skills, because a human is not meant only do a single thing and relying on that to earn a living.
By your view of file-sharing, the whole Internet community is already engaging in widespread theft. In fact, that’s what many ignorant people also think, so don’t bother believing that your views are unique, as they are the most typical of those putting down file-sharing or the Internet itself. Monitoring laws are already being considered no matter what the conflict involving the Internet is.
Also, do not call the Internet a ghetto, as it has knows no bounds and nobody has the right to place it in any.
Now for you. You should probably cease your nonsensical delusions about money or how people are losing money when users use file-sharing. It is apparent in your username. Not everything has monetary value.
Real pirating i.e. selling others’ works as one’s own is condemned. Also, do not compare file-sharing with robbing of tangible goods, because those exist as physical entities and cannot be duplicated by hand. File-sharing allows to influence human factors and behavior into becoming more convergent, but not one of those damn bastards have ever taken consideration of it let alone it’s advantage.
publishing without the right is piracy – whether it’s for profit or not. Letting people leech on p2p is publishing – distributing a copy of a work. If you don’t have the copyright – the right to make and distribute copies – it is piracy. Just because you can do it for free does not change the international conventions known as ‘copyright’.
“… p2p is publishing …”
You really should check your own vocabulary:
“publication: the business of issuing printed matter for sale or distribution”
And in relevance to economics,
“distribution: the commercial activity of transporting and selling goods from a producer to a consumer”
Therefore P2P and piracy are NOT the same thing.
Also, when you say that I make no sense, it is to only you and it is your problem, not mine.
P2P is online publishing and distribution, epsecially in the contect of an ebook or a song. It is making multiple copies available to a mass audience – publishing and distribution. Just to make things clear for everyone.
“Just to make things clear for everyone.”
Clearly confusing, that is….
P2P can be utilized to publish and distribute, but it is absolutely not online publishing/distribution!
Should I put it in an equation for you?
Your statement:
P2P = online publishing + distribution
In reality:
(does not equal; is not; [=/=])
P2P =/= online publishing/distribution
Proof by contradiction using definitions:
Assume
P2P = online publishing/distribution
But by definition,
“Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is a method of delivering computer network services in which the participants share a portion of their own resources, such as processing power, disk storage, network bandwidth, printing facilities.”
“publication: the business of issuing printed matter for sale or distribution”
“distribution: the commercial activity of transporting and selling goods from a producer to a consumer”
Therefore,
P2P =/= online publishing/distribution
That is to be demonstrated.
Making copies of something and giving it away is publishing. When you make a torrent and or host one on your box, you are making copies of something and distributing it. It’s the same for music, movies and books. That’s what all the fiss is about – copyright, the right to publish copies.
“When you make a torrent and or host one on your box, you are making copies of …”
What is a torrent file, dimwit?
I’m just explaining the facts to you, friend. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
You still insist your thoughts to be facts? How pathetic. I already demonstrated them to be false.
Actually Mal, I think you may be wrong.
You think of file sharing as theft – I call it fair market competition.
Adam Smith – the Original economist is credited with discovering that 85% of mankind is inherently honest – IF given the opportunity to be so.
The second that the content industry introduces reasonable priced downloads e.g.: 6 cents to 20 cents per music track and 13 cents to $1.24 for movies (depending on catalogue age for both) then the quicker they will making twenty times what they do now.
Get a life Mal, or hire an economist……
Tom – A Phd Economist.
Okay, so out of that six cents, you have to pay the songwriter five by law, so the performer gets what, the agent that does all the business gets what, the label that does the promotion gets what, and the guy publishing it gets what?
There seems to be a lot of real misinformation about how the music indistry works.
A dollar for a movie? What kind of movies can get made for that kind of return? I know of only two – porn and indian musicals.
I have ten bucks – I can buy an album or go to Taco Bell. Which one has more value? It’s that simple. You’re an economist, figure it out.
Does that include when the record labels went to court to demand the royalty rates be lowered to conform to “international standards” a year or two ago? I’m just checking.
I don’t think you’re talking about publishing, which the songwriteres get. Are you talking about the mechanicals from radio?
A lot of times publishing is all a band will see for a long time becuase they have to pay back the money that was fronted to them by the label. They pay it back out of the royalties off of thier records – which is seperate from publishing. If they get played on the radio, they get money for that as well – by law. The internet radio stations tried to organize against paying artists full royalties and lost that fight.
The thing is, record deals suck. They have always sucked. Right when artists unions etc. were starting to make some headway and get bettter standard contracts for artists, napster and p2p happened and they lost all leverage (it would be like auto workers trying to get more money from GM now.)
The upshot is that now the deals are even worse, with labels taking a piece of everyhthing you make – the performances, the shirts, all of it. So your average artist who wants to make a living as opposed to waiting tables and messing around in his home town is in a much worse position then they were ten years ago.
Just when average people were ready to take control, with the ability to make records at home, or publish books with POD, and make enough money to get by, file sharing came along and killed it all.
Greed comes from both ends for the artists – from the money men and the end users – everyone wants what they do but nobody is willing to pay for it. In the bad old days the labels ripped off artists, now everyone is in on the game, a great big clusterfuck tag team.
This article is about DNS blacklists. You insult Internet users and the Internet itself. Tom Koltai gave an example concerning downloads. DrewWilson asked you to simply confirm about the royalty rates.
Now you argue about publishing, using more insincere/false statements? Clearly you are in the wrong page here.
You should have spared your fingers and not have wasted your time, as I’m not even going to bother with your worthless wall of text.
Where are you from, dan?
Where is that pea of a brain of yours, malgre?
It’s obvious you are assuming that only a couple of people are going to buy, when you wrote
“I have ten bucks – I can buy an album or go to Taco Bell.”
How the hell do think PennyTalk runs its business if only a few people use its service?
What Tom Koltai gave
was an example clearly regarding downloads only.
Internet has finally become what have people always wanted. Free place. Free place to meet people who are interested in the same thing.
And that is what politicians are afraid of. They are afraid of that every people is different and everyone likes different things. Thus they are hard to control.
dear malgreenberg:
astroturfing is wrong. quit that job before you lose your soul.
At the moment, you’re not even a human being, you have no ideas of your own, someone is just renting your body. Sad.
You just go on believing that. I work for myself, and unlike others, I come to my own conclusions.
Fortunately for you, like many others similar to you, you don’t verify your conclusions, and your conclusions are always speculative.
I ask where you are from because your pattern of speech is non – english. From what country do you hail?
Is that so? I figured that anyone who wrote in proper grammar would be able tell the difference between text and speech. And even now I thought your brain was in proper grammar.
Well, now I don’t understand that at all. Are you sure English is your first language?
OK, I get it. How old are you?
That is so typical for an idiot to beg for petty information and also so pitiful for you to not detect satire especially in writing.
Well, methinks he doth protest too much. ;>
“Well, methinks he doth protest too much. ;>”
Fail