What is Digg?156 Comments
- Osirisofdoom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4*Is the United States getting increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world where technology matters are concerned?*
I think the US is getting out of touch with everything. Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't live anywhere else, but...yeah. - lmbrjck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3IMHO the US has a reason to be concerned about file sharing since most of the works that are being pirated are works created by American artists and companies.
- orangeman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Since the rest of the world is mostly pirating US intellectual property, I'd say the US has good reason to have a different viewpoint than those other countries on p2p.
- NidStyles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"of course we're out of touch, our country is run by crazed profit obsessed rednecks. screw the people over and make them pay us for the privledge of being screwed over. The US is a great country, but these hillbillies are ruining it for everyone."
Just one question, how are people from Mass. considered Hillbillies? You are aware the Bush family, and the rest of their friends are from Mass. and the rest of the New England area, right? - kilofox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ask a northen african living in France if France is beacon of freedom. Maybe all those fires they lit a couple of months ago were in fact "Freedom Beacons"? Thank you France for being the counry of opportunity! I can live in a slum just like they do in America!!! Yeah!!!
- DrCrane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The point of democracy is constant, no-holds-barred, debate about how things should be, what we're all entitled to as citizens, and what's right and what's wrong.
It's true--corporations have had a much louder voice in this debate than most people would consider healthy. But, they are not the only voice and the debate is not over.
It's true--the people running the government now are trying to sway the debate in their favor but when isn't that true? Won't their actions cause a backlash that will, once again, balance things out?
To all of you who say things like "don't like it? get the f**k out", do try to keep in mind that democracy is a conversation not a McDonald's. Don't like it? Too bad. You're participating, not moderating.
To everyone else, remember that there is one inescapable truth that governs all of our actions. Everything you ever do will be to serve your own best interest. It can be a rather unruly thought at times but let it sink in. - vvaduva, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Is the United States getting increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world where technology matters are concerned?"
No it isn't...that's a stupid question. Can anyone point to a legal case where two people have been prevented by the government from sharing files they legally own? No matter how you turn it..downloading music and movies you haven't paid for is morally wrong. The proper question should be "Why should the U.S. copy what the idiots and socialists in France and Canada are doing?" - helix400, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow, a story on the internet that bashes the US, claiming it is out of touch with the world? I have never, NEVER seen the internet used for such a purpose before.
- PacketScan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is what happens when corporations BUY legislation.
- OttoReverse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought we were talking about file-sharing!?
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1a digg on file sharing and it ends up in a 9/11 conspiracy argument. unbelievable!
somebody should come up with a name for this - equivalent to Godwins Law - but instead of Hitler, its 9/11
Muddle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Care to elaborate???
Sure, try to convince others that the people they vote for do not and have never had their best interest at heart. The rich have purchased the entire political process, including all three branches of the government. G.W. Bush has been caught in more lies than any other prior president, he's nominated people to the judiciary who's expressed agenda is to whittle away at your rights and the people you've elected to office have abandoned you for corporate sponsored all expenses payed golf trips to Scotland. - cheese06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hello we live in a capitalist society, where we value ownership and abide by copyright rules. as far as downloading illegally, i do it all the time, but in essence, it is stealing copyrighted information. what makes america so great is its rule of law. without it, america would be in the dumps. this is coming from a guy whose gotten a DUI, i dont have a sense of hate towards the govt, i appreciate their commitment to upholding the law. if the rest of the world wants to jump off a bridge, then so goddamn be it, i respect america's decision to keep downloading music illegal.
as far as everyone screaming OMG BRING MICHAEL MOORE this whole COUNTRY IS RULED BY BIG CORPORATIONS, run by rednecks. talk about generalizing to the max, ignorant, and btw very uneducated response.
ive had the opportunity to see the legislative process in action, and yes theres lobbyists, of course there are, but these congressmen/senators bust their ***** balls working for the american people. why dont you guys try visiting the beltway and get some goddamn perspective on the executive/legislative/judicial process. - Quantic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Whatever happened to the days when it was assumed when you bought the album you had the right to copy it, you own/ owned it. I know of very few artists whom have told me that I have every right to copy and resell their music because I own it and therefore also have a right to profiting from it. I guess an analogy could be buying a lawnmower and using it to mow your own lawn, you own that mower so why shouldnt you be able to use it to offer your services to other people. I know its not that great of one but the idea is there.
- djinfidel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is ridiculous. The U.S. is CAPITALIST. France is SOCIALIST. In America, society works for the benefit of the business and the business tries to look after its employees. In France, society works for the benefit of the people, not the business. By legalizing the free download of music, France is essentially attacking American people because when the income of big music businesses and Hollywood is reduced, you can be sure that they'll marginalize the benefits packages, health insurance, etc. that all Americans should be entitled to. Companies will start cutting jobs just so they can keep their profits up. As for the artists, I think they should be on tour anyway to make their money and am therefore not concerned about their outlook because they have options. But the full-time employee of the company will suffer the greatest from this decision.
So, while the legislation in France may not have a large effect on their society and their artists will have to start concentrating on live performance, this could have some serious implications for the entertainment industry in America. - SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"IMHO the US has a reason to be concerned about file sharing since most of the works that are being pirated are works created by American artists and companies."
Legitimate point, however this is simply nothing more than an industry that has raped it's customer base (AND the artists) for years trying to catch up to the revolution they slept through and ignored. They promised us that CDs would come down in price from $14.99 but they only went up. They deserve to have had their sales hurt, it's the pound of flesh they owed.
Now... it is necessary to try to limit casual piracy (Kazza, Grokster, etc.) but many of the DRM technologies are far too prohibiting (if not outright intrusive *Cough* SONY *Cough*) if they would offer me the ability to pay for a song in any format and bitrate with a VERY light DRM ( a la allofmp3.com ) I would be more than happy to pay for it, and even maybe a premium for FLAC... but they are just clueless and are following the business model of the new millenium... If you can't earn the money, sue it out of your customer base.
SB - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1While I'm pro P2P and all that, you don't have to be a genius to recognize one major difference:
The rest of the world is happy to legalize this sort of thing, because THEY DO NOT MAKE ANYTHING. Just like it's easier for you and I to justify us downloading free music or movies or games over p2p (because of the big bad corporations that make the content) the other countries feel justified in doing the same to the content OUR country creates.
Not saying it's right or wrong or blah blah blah. Just saying - if most of the content being pirated was THEIR content, they'd have a big problem with it. But it's not. It's some other nation's content. Specifically, one that most of them are either jealous of or despise or both. - Nullifidian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The problem is most people think locally and not globally. Corporate influence has helped dictate american law and country borders get fuzzy when connected to the internet.
- vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ok for everyone who is stupid enough to actually type something like "oh so France and Canada make up the rest of the world" Let's talk about places like China or the Phillipines where pirating copywrited material (mostly from the US) is part of the economy. Want to talk about the US being out of touch? Just from this thread I gather that it seems most Americans don't even know where the majority of piracy is occurring...
And why do we have to bring the government into this? I don't like Bush and I didn't vote for him but I'm not stupid enough to assert that all liberals want to justify piracy! In fact, liberals like Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman (aka Senator Palpaltine) were the ones who fought for censorship of music in the early '90s so some liberals clearly want to limit the number of people listening to certain music. You can't just blame one political extreme for this stuff. Iranian ultra-conservatives just banned "western" music at the other end. IMO, both sides are equally to blame for the way things are and for continuing to allow corporations and well funded interest groups to exert unprecedented influence over the legislative process itself and for continuing to roadblock the way of technological process that they are so deathly afraid will start to hurt their bottom line. - Gringo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nothing like a good debate to get the blood pumping eh?
- BitSlash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes. Very yes.
- Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Stupid article.
So the vast majority of the french who don't fileshare are subsidizing P2P to make it "legal".
That sounds really fair.
How would you like to pay a monthly fee based on your bandwidth under the assumption that you "could" be using it all to download music? - Gringo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah right! George Bush speaks with a Bostonian accent, now I've heard everything.
Any way I can see the U.S. point of view though, as stated above, most of the intellectual property being illegally downloaded is from U.S. companies.
But also I see the consumer's point of view, look at the prices of some of this software. I find it hard to believe that $900 is justified for some of these software programs.
- Heavy_C, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Piracy is stealing, either you steal or you don't. Whether it's legal or not is just a legal formality. We're not worried whether it's right or not, just whether we get punished for it. I steal, and I won't stop till I'm punished. That's the way it seems to be for the majority of people.
- evizaer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The point is that America is wasting a ridiculous amount of money and time failing to thwart something that it has no idea how to fight. Other countries seem to let things go if they can't realistically do anything about it while America will go down, kicking and screaming, tugged by the seat of its pants by big business, special interests, and the aristocracy.
Something like that. - etherdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Best comment group I've ever seen on DIGG. I've lived in a lot of places in the world, and the US has only itself to blame. I refuse to talk to or see my parents since they voted for Bush. We are our own worst enemy. Everyone should read the book "More Like Us" by James Fallows, who posits that if we really acted as if our founding doctrines meant something, and which we hold ourselves out the the rest of the world as, we WOULD have the respect and admiration we desire. But the Republican hegemony, now so Orwellian, has made fear the overwhelming operand in US politics. We get what we deserve.
- ichthus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1So the author bases his opinion on what France and Canada are doing, and that amounts to the "rest of the world?" Please.
- cvrefugee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Seriously people, you have lots of options instead of pirating music. New CDs sell for $10. You can buy indivdual songs for $1 on iTunes. You can rent music for $15/month. Do I buy music? No. It's not because I don't want to pay for it, it's because there's nothing new that I like.
- kilofox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Yes. We're a bit of a joke and it's certainly not limited to our hamfisted attempts at thwarting p2p pirates"
Care to elaborate??? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Have you lived any other place ...the united states is the bomb or you would of been in jail for still that last file.
- TacitusBen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'd have to agree with the first commenter. The US is culturally out of touch with the rest of the world as a result of being devoid of culture. As for living somewhere else, though, it's actully pretty nice.
- SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wholly jeezus
- Joe_rigby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If the world were a department store, the United States would be the "Out of Touch" department.
- SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Regardless, ol' dubya, no matter where he and his administration are from, are about as clueless as Tara Reid at an AA meeting.
- SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thank you Crane, I always loose it at that point and I think I'm just gonna go have a beer, chill out and enjoy the holidays :D
- OttoReverse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What most people don't realize about the Canadian Judge's decsision on P2P downloading of music, is that he decided that we already pay for it in the form of levees charged on blank media such as cd-roms as well as devices like the iPod. That money is collected and distributed to artists (how I don't know).
So its not like the Judge said pirating music via P2P is ok. Its more like, if you buy media or mp3 players you are paying for music you may potentially copy in the future.
Personally, I'd rather not pay the levees and have pirated music downloading illegal. Why should I pay a levee for a cd-rom I'm going to burn Linux to?
Regardless, I think industry (Canadian, world-wide, and in the US) need to re-think their business model to combat piracy with good products, at a reasonable price, and with easy access (i.e. Internet downloads, and NO DRM). Many people pirate music because it is easy to do, not because they don't want to pay. Give us 25 cent songs with no drm and no proprietary software (read iTunes) required and I'd buy a crapload of songs each month! - ursabear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0On the subject of the post...
Sure, some things about the US Government could be improved... It's important to understand that our government is wonderful in so many ways, and is a work in progress - all at the same time.
Whether or not another country changes the rules about handling intellectual property does not make the US better or worse at handling intellectual property.
It is critically important that we understand something that keeps getting lost in these stories: It is not OK to take something of someone else's just because you can, just because you don't think you should pay for it, or just because of .
Somehow or another, we must all make money - hopefully enough to support our families. If everything intellectual was free, it would be difficult to make a living in anything other than service jobs. Service jobs are critical and important, but they are not everything - and if you think about it, service jobs are usually paid for by companies that have intellectual or brand properties that would be difficult to sell if anarchy was the rule (and everything you could copy would be free.) - SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Kinda reminds me of the decision they made regarding cloned DirecTV and DISH units in Canada... I think it was summarized as "If you can't purchase it here, how can you be accused of stealing it?"
- JoePrey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The title makes me laugh
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yawn...
- SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0SyDIGG -
>.< DoH! >.< - Cann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I may be wrong, but don't we already have similar taxes on cd-r's / recorders?
- ursabear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@cann:
Yes, when you buy a "music CD" (these are the blank CDRs that specifically say that they are for music), you are paying extra tax. Weak, yes... The original DAT stereo tape recorders had HUGE taxes, making them far more expensive than cassette (and now CD) recorders. The "copy tax" completely sunk a really good recording technology. - handband2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hmmm...
What would of been Jerry Garcia's response to this?
What will be Lars Ulrich thoughts on this?
Two musicians and I'm guessing two different responses.... - AttroPheed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Is the United States getting increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world where technology matters are concerned?"
Yes. We're a bit of a joke and it's certainly not limited to our hamfisted attempts at thwarting p2p pirates. - handband2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0cheese06
Note, in a capitalist society you can have a "commitment to upholding the law" but you also get corruption and misuse of power.
The system has to fine tuned sometimes.... It sounds like the system needs to be tuned up a little. - lukas88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i don't think we care if its legal or illegal
- jav1231, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1There seems to be alot of people proud of socialism. There are only two classes who think socialism is good: The elite and the lazy. Kinda brings that whole "France is socialist!" comment riiiiight into focus.
- Muddle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The title of the piece is wrong!
It should be: “U.S. Congressional Corporate whore's VS. the entire world, including U.S. Citizens, on file-sharing" - kyote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0djinfidel: When did you become "entitled" to benefits packages, health insurance?
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