DMCA Content Protection

http://www.dmca.com/Protection.aspx

I've just been surfing around clicking random links that caught my eye (as you do ) and I found myself on the DMCA site.

They offer a free DMCA protection badge, which entitles the person who displays it to one free DMCA takedown notice a year, or you can purchase a Pro account which offers a bit more.

Does anyone use it (either free or Pro). What do you think of it? I'm wondering if having a badge on your site is actually as much of a deterrent as the website claims.

oh dear!

I haven't looked too deeply into the page as yet. Need the kids in bed before I can concentrate

No, I refuse to support anything to do with the DMCA much less give them more money to be the copyright police.

When they start putting things in the public domain again and reduce the number of years until copyright expire I'll warm up to the idea of copyrights again. As of now, I see them begin abused so much by the big fish that the original purpose of them is no longer possible making the idea of a copyright useless. We'd be better off in a system without copyrights, or a system that gives you nothing more than "credit" for the original work.

The idea that movies made in the 1930s will still be under copyright when I die (Disney) boggles my mind. Those things should have fallen into the public domain years ago. Instead they just keep extending the number of years until the copyright expires, they might as well say "copyrighted by Disney; until the end of time".

Well, here is my position.

First off, I've paid in. I may be young but I've gone through;

Beta -> VHS -> Laserdisc -> DVD (never mind the bad decision on beta/LD...moving on), oh and I did go to the cinema up until 2002 or so.
Albums and Tapes -> CD -> mp3 (napster ) -> FLAC/whatever audio format they're selling this month on itunes (hint: I don't really have an itunes account ).
Video games: 8-bit - current gen, with several gaming PCs and quarters spent on pin-ball and arcade games in between.
Bunny ears -> c-band dish -> primestar DBS -> Directv DBS
Dial-up -> ISDN -> Cable line
POTS -> Cell phone -> Smart phone and VoIP

Even excluding the fact that I've paid two-four times for the same content, just "enhanced" or with "added content" or any other tag line they reel you in on I've kicked in a lot, millions, at the very least. That's just me, how much money have you wasted on their crap?

Now don't get me wrong. I don't consider the work of say, Jimi Hendrix to be "crap". But the man is dead, his work is done, and it shouldn't cost an entry fee for the ears of a new generation to hear it. I didn't have a problem with paying a fee for having Jimi around on disc to play for myself or company. What I do have a problem with, is the fact that if more than say 3 people hear the stereo, or I'm paying it in a public place, it can be considered a "public performance" and whomever holds the copyrights to Jimi's work can sue me for everything I own, and probably everyone within earshot of the stereo.

We pay $135 a month for TV in my home, yes, you read that right. $135 for TV and I'm sitting here with $10 in my pocket and living on frozen food. At any rate, we pay that fee mainly to watch sports and other live events, and the odd movie on HBO. Again, I'm kicking in, and if I'm paying for the right to see a movie that HBO is going to run 20 times this month anyway I don't see the difference between watching said movie on that little box connected to my TV or my PC connected to the same TV. What's the difference if its coming from a .mkv file on a local HDD or begin beamed into my backyard from space? Its the same damn movie, I paid for it...

Another thing, in my country us tax payers paid for all these lines they have running around. We subsidized the build out of these networks, and handed control of them to private corporations that were supposed to return control of them to the people after an agreed upon number of years. That never happened, and it never will. Its not just the cables, we used to own the air too, until we let the government slice it up and sell of the rights to use it to the highest bidder.

So excuse me if I figured out your little key to decode the single you're beaming into my backyard (and head, thanks for the possible cancer risk) and see it without paying the entry fee. I was just having fun.

I suppose the fact that I was raised in a home with pirated satellite TV isn't helping my case? I dunno, I just never saw the point in it. If there was an option between free and $20 I typically chose free. I mean, you can have a movie and a small box of candy for maybe $20 (I don't even know anymore) or you can have two pizzas, and a 6-pack, and the movie. I could even do the last bit legally if I'm willing to wait a few months (thank you redbox) and pony up the extra 2 bucks, and I'm not THAT cheap sooo...

Its not that I feel like I can free load...it's just. I was raised and had the fact drilled into me that artiest do their work "for the art", or "for the love" and all that other bullshit. But the fact is its for the money now. All I'm saying, is we stop kicking in massive amounts of money. They'll figure out how to eat just like the rest of us, and if you can't make it on your "art" get a real job and regulate the art to a hobby like the rest of us. This is coming from a man that has a friend that left everything behind to go out to Nashville and "make it", and he's making it only because he worked hard. If he becomes some rich country singer, good for him, but I don't expect him to ever come up to me and DEMAND that I pay to listen to what comes out of his mouth. We fed the boy for every weekend for two years, never mind the free beer, as I said before I've kicked in.

This isn't really about money anyway, its about people and their culture. That's basically what we've done, commercialized our culture. Instead of telling stories and singing songs around a camp fire we pay to hear or see a recording or something, or for the right to have fun in some virtual area. Don't even get me started on "DLC"...god I hate DLC so much. Hey guys, here is a bright idea! Lets sell a game for $60, but not just any game, lets make a sequel to a really awesome game from somebodies childhood...now stay with me here! Lets put the bulk of the content in a store, sell it for $10 a pop, release 5 new things every week, and piss off the entire user base!

I HATE DLC.....

You know what, this has riled me up. I won't let this ruin my night. I have a pin-ball tournament to dominate next weekend.

You want to see the real down side to our current system? Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day. His speeches will be played, and movies clips will be shown of him all day tomorrow on TV. His picture will be in the paper, he will be on big name websites. His face will be EVERYWHERE and his voice will be coming a long for a ride. Now here is the problem, you would consider the MLK speeches to be an important part of the history of the world, right? A step in the right direction? A story of a man that died for his idles and dream. It is something that will be talked about long after you and I are gone.

However, every time an MLK recording is shown on TV, or played on the radio, or used in anyway the MLK family is supposed to get some pocket change. Now, I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand I'm like well he's family, on the other I'm like screw you stop free loading off a dead man if you really respected his message you would play it for free, for everyone, as loud as you could.

By the way, I don't come from a place where MLK is too well respected by some of the older folks, racism still runs pretty deep here in the older generations and don't think for a second both sides haven't managed to pass some of that down. But he represents a change in our culture, as least in this small portion of the world. It should be free for anyone to hear his words, the fact that we can do something like listen to someones voice in the 1960s is amazing and shouldn't be cooped up and profited from. If they had a means of recording a voice in the times of Jesus would we profit from that?

Never mind...I forgot about Bible publishers...I used to do business with those guys and they are all business lemme tell you. Anyway /rant.

I'll just say this: people accustomed to sitting on their ass all day doing nothing tend to want to stay that way.

Respect, must have been a really good show. I've always felt I was born too late......I missed the 60s ><. I did get "turned on" around age 16 though, thanks to meeting some older folks. I mean, I always liked the music of that era, but I didn't understand it until around the age of 16 and I'm sure you know what I'm driving at.

TV is a joke, especially the commercials. Some shows, I swear I would be interested in them if they didn't run commercials every 5 minutes. Just look at the numbers, you're only getting 42 minutes of show per an hour of television watching, and that's on a channel that hasn't gone completely to hell (MTV) and for a show with a designed running time of "an hour". I have to "watch" 2-4 shows concurrently to even deal with TV...I'll have one main show I'm watching and check in on the other ones when commercials start on the main show. I've gotten so good that I can time it without a clock xD

On a personal note: Do you miss c-band? I know I do! Just something about that big ugly dish and the ability to see it move with the press of a button always got to me. I love switching between the different birds and finding those odd channels...or the programming feeds! God it was so awesome to watch a football game, with no commercials, and hear/see what was going on while everyone else was watching commercials . I didn't know it at the time, but we gave it up when they went all digital/encrypted, either because it started costing too much or no one could break the encryption (or only break it partially, like you could get audio but no video).

We didn't even have the option for cable or OTA TV in the home I grew up in. We lived in a bottom, surrounded by hills and pine forest.

Well, they do get paid to keep people locked up in there, I forget how much but its like $200-$400 a month per prisoner per jail cell. I'm sure it varies depending on the state and what kinds of prisoners you're keeping in there. They also make money off the work they do and the good they produce.

As far as why you see crime, well, it's glorified. A lot of young people are in a position where they can't find work, can't afford school, can't get a loan. They're going to go out and do something to feed themselves at some point. Selling drugs or stealing copper/metal are two things I see people doing all of the time to make it by. Some of those young guys are actually really business savvy, and since there is always a demand for drugs....well money to be made. I've never in my life seen the black market for drugs slow down, not a damn bit. They might come around a put a dent in it and shut an area down where that sort of thing was going on, but two weeks later, new guys move in set up shop and its business as usual.

Since I also have a bit of a tin-foil hat ^^: I think they glorify it for a few reasons;

1: People that fly straight, they see those guys in prison, those drug dealers, and even the reality TV "stars" you mentioned as the "freaks" of our time. Instead of a seeing freak shows of the olden days we watch TV so they put some guy you'd never let your daughter within 1000 yards of on there so you can be exposed to it and think; "What an idiot/horrible man/insert whatever you want here".

2: For another group of consumers, a lot of these guys are people they look up to. Say I'm a kid selling <insert drug here> and I see some guy that's a "king pin" on "Drugs Inc." talking about how he controls the flow of cocaine into the city of LA. I automatically want to be that guy. To me he represents the top of the trade, and on top of that, unlike me he doesn't have to worry much about the police showing up to hand him 25-50 years for what I currently have in my pocket, nor does he have to worry about someone in the same trade as me sneaking up on me and blowing my brains out for whats in my pocket (well, at least not is often). Point begin, that guy on TV is pretty much above the law as long as he follows the rules and pays off the right people, I can't do those things. I know someone is going to read this and think; "why not go to school or find a job?". You go tell that to a random drug dealer that's supporting a family and see what he says. He'll tell you this: I got mouths to feed, I have bills to pay, and this trade I'm in while illegal pays a lot more than some minimum wage job. As for school; pay my way through and support my family for 2 years.

I'm just saying, there are a lot of people out there that see no way other than some illegal money on the side to make it through a month. I know a lot of guys that supported themselves by hustling in pool halls, selling drugs, and doing other stupid things until they either grew up and got a real job, died, or they're still doing those stupid thing to this day. With the way the job market is now we're going to have to be really careful that we manage the problem of the kids coming up. If they can't find jobs they WILL turn to a black market or something shady to make it by, even more so if they have kids to support. Those people lead very stressful lives and don't tend to live as long as someone more well off. I don't envy them one bit.

We're way off topic now, but I wanted to give you a proper reply; On topic:

SOPA died in the house today and will not be passed, but we have another bill (PIPA) to worry about so keep an eye out for news related to that.

Yeah *sigh* I hate that! Especially when a programme has ended and you're just flicking to find something else to watch.

The basic package for Sky is around £40 a month... but, and this is the annoying bit - we still have to pay for a TV licence on top of that (because of the BBC) which is around £150 a year.... We rarely watch terrestrial tv (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 or Channel 5) and watch mainly the channels offered by Sky. We have the full package for sky which includes the basic channels, music, movies and sport - so we pay around £74 a month for that. Don't mind paying for Sky, do mind paying for the BBC!