What is Digg?120 Comments
- Aidenag, on 10/12/2007, -7/+42WOW!... thats even worse than the 600,000 school bus drivers in america now on the lookout for "suspicious terrorist activity"
This is one of the steps germany took to supress people..
good timing that Linklaters new flick "A Scanner Darkly" is coming out soon with a plot directly relating to things like this. - jordanrobbins, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31You mean the RIAA Youth!
- pbaehr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24Digg, apparently.
- offput, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27it cannot be theft because you are taking a copy. It might be illegal (according to certain unnamed countries draconian laws) but it is not theft because the original is left intact with the original owner.
- striker1211, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Shouldn't they be worrying more about the piracy that goes on in their streets? I mean people on the net aren't profiting, those street peddlers are.
- gDubz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19'Piracy' is not 'theft'. In fact, 'Piracy' in terms of law has nothing to do with p2p or file sharing. The offense is Copyright infringement. As far as I know, it's a civil offense, not criminal.
The words piracy and theft (and stealing in general) is the result of RIAA/MPAA efforts to deter people from copyright infringement. It makes it sound really bad. There's a commercial that runs in Canada about a guy walking home from work. On his way they show how he could rob a woman's purse, or steal a car... eventually he comes home after not robbing anyone and turns on his TV. "Stealing satellite signals is the same as any other theft" it said. RIAA/MPAA use similar tactics, and in my opinion, it's ******t.
That said, I do feel that copying copyrighted material and selling it is wrong and should be punished. And I really like this Chinese anti-"piracy" idea, since I also think that people should pay for the intellectual property that companies produce to sell. - mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21But who will watch the watchers??
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Same thing, right?
- taylorhayward, on 10/12/2007, -11/+241984
- poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15FILESHARING is different than PIRACY.
- Oxidizer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15“Nearly all the children now days were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the Party and everything connected with it.”
- kevbryant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14try that over here and Ill find them and beat the snot out of each one, then steal their cd's
- Tiabin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Everyone of you pious sons of bitches that ever installed windows on more than one of your computers from the same CD are infringing on copyright. That product was licensed for only one PC. God help you if you own more than one computer in your household or run a home business... Your wife better be working night shifts to pay for the software.
- MMNManiac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@ guys who make references to Germany/Hitler
I'm not sure if you knew, but the gov't of china decades ago wasn't much different than Hitler's Germany. Mao killed millions of his OWN people, and yet, his face is still plastered all over the place TODAY - on dollar/yuan bills, walls, posterboards, etc. It's much better now than it was before (i.e. no more random killings), but you still cannot speak against the govt, protest/demonstrate, etc. and a hundred other things that many of us take for granted.
Anyways, this is just a stunt. Anyone who's visited HK or china will tell u that piracy is alive and well. :-p - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11200,000 Hall Monitors, eh? Do you think they'll all be asking for bribes to keep from reporting?
- aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19They're probably called Hitler Youth.
- Doriath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@freeman755
"Yes, 1984 is definately foreshadowed with this."
are you certain that this wasn't foreshadowed by 1984? - DoctorEvil, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Communist youth being used to spy on their fellow citizens? That's never happened before...
- BasouKazuma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Really, i loathe bootleggers. It's debatable whether or not distributing copyrighted files is wrong but selling movies and music that you don't own is just despicable.
- theratdotus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5i thought they embraced communism.
- sosuke, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6as to the nazi references, i think its due to the mass recruitment and conditioning of the youth that rings the clearest for me, MMNManiac is right though that China has been similar to this in the past
- EricAnderton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Agreed. Perhaps there's more to this than meets the eye. For example, piracy hasn't bothered China much in the past, so maybe its more of an international PR stunt. Also, it looks an awful lot like a test-run of using youth-groups to spy online, on behalf of "the party". Since China does have this philosophy of "the party controlls the means of production", perhaps corporate and party interests are considered the same here - which would make them more government spies rather than copyright advocates.
BTW, clever icon! - ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Wow that's scary.
- Klever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5LOL! 700 "cadets", 3 months, and all they received is 800 reports?? Way to shoot for the moon there. I'm pretty sure I could locate 800 places where there are copyright violations within a few hours....but I wouldnt because only lame bastards with nothing better to do snitch on others.
Good policy though, its a nice front for China to say "Look MPAA, RIAA, BSA.....we are getting SERIOUS about piracy" LoLz, sureee. - aroedl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'd do the job. Get the best stuff first.
- Ryosen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4....and in their spare time, they farm gold.
- Strangers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"uh, there's one big difference. china is a COMMUNIST COUNTRY. thanks to the magic of democracy, this will never happen in America."
Is it still a democracy when you have the choice between two men, and the same companies are funding them both? There's one guy holding the two puppets. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5some kid will think this is fun and bust alot of people
some kids wil use it to bust their enemies.
and hopefully some smart kid will plant some media on the principils computer and frame him - freeman755, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Yes, 1984 is definately foreshadowed with this.
- Klever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is really an covert plan to keep kids from playing WoW in sweatshops :P
- NJank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4no, don't steal them, just copy them.
- Minidisc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you were one of the 200,000 youths being hired and you saw a family member illegally downloading/uploading, would you report it?
- alspar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Although Hong Kong is now a part of China, it is wrong to talk about it as though it were China. HK has an entirely separate legal system guaranteed until 2047 by the terms of the handover (although who exactly would stop china if they violated this agreement is unclear). Despite this, its fair to say legally speaking, HK has more in common with Western democracies than it does with the mainland.
- birch25, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"can everyone please refrain from pushing their political views until AFTER puberty? thanks"
agreed. when i was younger, i thought everyone was evil (especially those in power) except me and everyone my age. it's funny to look back on how ignorant i was. and i'm only 20 now!
oh, and the only people "living in fear" are young people (needlessly) and paranoid adults who never grew out of their childlike mindset. are there problems with american government? yes. are we living in a police state? hell no! you people have nothing to fear, so you think any problem is the end of the world. - boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think it depends on whether they were hired or drafted. If they were hired (i.e. they signed up voluntarily), then I suppose they might. If they were drafted, maybe not (depending on how conditioned they were in school and in training for this job).
- hundrednorth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hong Kong was repatriated back to China in 1997.
- gekkokid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4digg is good at spreading the "fear"
- GeneralSun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I can't believe you guys are digging this up. This is obviously spam for knives.
- offput, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm pretty sure Britain handed HK back to China in 1997 as per some century old contract they made.
- jihadjohnson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Some how reminds me of the "thought police" in 1984
- sosuke, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4They hired, 200,000 youths, my god, at what cost? I can't imagine they would be making much money.
Do they each get their own knife? http://www.wwiidaggers.com/HYK.htm - mighty_mouth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think that ahhell is Captain Obvious's secret identity.
- WailOS, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Isn't it interesting how quickly "anti-piracy" people fall back on semantic/circular arguments to justify their dogmatic positions?
eg. "Piracy is wrong. That's why it's called Piracy."
eg. "You're stealing. Stealing is wrong."
The question here is not "is it legal or illegal?" the question is "is it moral or immoral?" While stealing is wrong because you're depriving someone of something that you didn't earn, there's no deprivation involved with filesharing. The only deprivation is theoretical - Retroactive reasoning that IF the ideas had been bought THEN in that light your filesharing could be theoretically seen as depriving someone of their earned profits.
Of course the problem with this is that it assumes the only way to make a profit from a product is via its distribution. The book industry, the recording industry, the film industry, all of these make their money from distributing products that they didn't create. But what technology giveth, in the form of allowing large corporations to allocate huge resources towards distributing others' work, technology taketh away, in the form of undermining the distribution-profit-model used by these media giants. But there's no fundamental moral reason to prioritize one of these over the other.
What the internet does is more effective than even the best marketing departments can hope to achieve. It puts creators in direct contact with their fans, and lets them distribute their work to their fans at no cost. Record labels and film studios charge, effectively, thousands to millions of dollars for this service. Artists get only a pittance of money in return for their work, hoping to recoup the costs in swag and tickets. The only real service that record labels offer is this -- On the internet, a crappy album or movie will be quickly panned. If you sign up with the studios, you get the security of a contract regardless of the quality of your work. Basically, your highs won't be as high, but your lows will never get too low (unless you're dropped).
I'm sure some of you are red with anger at this point, but there are already early-adopters taking the plunge -- Bands releasing CDs with the realization that they'd prefer the good marketing the internet provides, the increased fan base and the increased revenue from swag and tickets, along with the increased artistic freedom-- to making a few pennies off an album with a recording studio.
The fact of the matter is that those who are tying themselves into a technologically-dependent profit-making model have no moral right to my money, no matter how much they try to muddy the waters with bad reasoning and semantic games. This is the way the world works -- Some early adopters get burned, some cash in, and eventually the old model is superceded by the new. - Tsuroerusu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's certainly not in China you're gonna get your right to privacy any time soon.
- green67, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I dunno.....only 200,000?....that's about 6532 people for each of them to watch(before using the "probability algorithms")....NSA eat your heart out...
- poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2lol, that's a good point... i think i see about 800 infringements in an HOUR each day.
- gann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hey I am a young Hong-konger and haven't heard of such plan before! 200000?!! WTF?!! I went to the official website of HK Customs (http://www.customs.gov.hk) and saw no info about this. How can I join? How much will I get paid? Is there a monthly rate or pay per head count? Full-time or part-time? Nothing about it.
That said, I don't think the news is inaccurate (as the original source is SCMP, a reputable newspaper). 200000 is probably just an estimated figure; or most of them just volunteers, registered just to see their names appeared on some list. And I think it's stupid to have such plan and doubt the effectiveness of it. Seeing that you guys related this to 1984, hitler, etc. Jeez I am gonna report this in my blog. - Esstee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Digital copyright infringement is somewhat of a loophole in the system.
Mainly because it does not conform to the standards when copyright laws are applied. The defacto in software and media DRM is through replication. The law was not drafted with digital replication in mind. However since the law is not etched on ones and zero's but on principles it requires some compromises to work. The fact is, when someone works to produce something and another person takes that work without paying the required amount, those individuals in question are taking something that does not belong to them. Remember laws are not logical math but an enforcement of a hierarchical structure with the intent to maintain stability and fairness. (even if its far from perfect)
I guess at best, this is one of those examples. - gann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2INACCURATE!
Recruit != hire. I am a Hong-konger and from what I've just learned, the Government merely recruited a number of members from some volunteer groups (like HK Youth Red Cross) that will do something to fight piracy. And that's it. 200000 is just a very rough estimates. This is very, VERY far from "hires 200000 youthful spies." - Nerfdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3the nazis did this "back in the day". GG hong kong
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