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[Montague]

A friend of mine that works at wallmart told me they had a workers meeting the other day and were told they weren't allowed to sign any sort of sopa petition.  Since wallmart supports sopa they would considerd signing one would be a conflict of interest and would result in a write up or termination.

Discuss

Wal-Mart always does crap like that, it's not really a suprise. They only sell censored music, so you think they can't even say they are losing sales, at least not to people who actually want to hear the lyrics to their vulgar young-people music or whatever.
 
I think it's ironic that they always defend their actions by saying they are acting within a free-market capitalism, while they seem to have no problem selling poisonous dog food and whatever other wonderful garbage from communist countries. I'm thrilled to see they've made the leap from simply supporting dictatorships overseas to actively working to create one here at home.

[Leafsnail]

Get a day job for that. Truly exceptional artists can work on art full time because they'll get donations from fans (see Toady).

1) Wasting time with a "day job" is never a good thing.
2) That's demonstratively false. See: Van Gogh. Admittedly it's not much different right now, but popularity has never proven anything to be "exceptional," and asking for donations to be the main source of income would only make it worse, imo.

We need to give artists MORE time to work on their stuff, not less. Day jobs are a waste of time, so paying artists for their stuff at least makes it so they don't have to worry about that.

Would Van Gogh have been helped by stronger Intellectual Property laws?  I'm having trouble working out how the example is relevant.

[Bohandas]

A friend of mine that works at wallmart told me they had a workers meeting the other day and were told they weren't allowed to sign any sort of sopa petition.  Since wallmart supports sopa they would considerd signing one would be a conflict of interest and would result in a write up or termination.

Discuss

They should file a lawsuit against Walmart.

[Neonivek]

A friend of mine that works at wallmart told me they had a workers meeting the other day and were told they weren't allowed to sign any sort of sopa petition.  Since wallmart supports sopa they would considerd signing one would be a conflict of interest and would result in a write up or termination.

Discuss

They should file a lawsuit against Walmart.

Walmarts are masters at preventing that. Which they can only get away with because they are so large.

[Valid_Dark]

And I just want to say, May MegaUpload Rest in peace,
pay your respect by watching this video of featured leading recording artists including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Macy Gray, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige, singing the praises of the once popular service.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9caPFPQUNs


and it comes with a little history lesson that shines some light on the illegitimacy of the Universal Music Group (UMG)

When this video was first posted on youtube Universal demanded it be removed, claiming that it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  Which it doesn't, this was their attempt to stifle megaupload's attempt at advertisement as Megaupload was releasing a service like itunes later that month called Megabox, which would give the artists 90% of the profit made from their music.
it was a deliberate step in order to prevent a real competitor spreading news of its existance. The irony is it probably benefited Megaupload by providing the type of media coverage that money cannot buy.

Megauploads CEO had to send a letter to youtube saying, "let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to Universal Music Group. We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing Megaupload."
He further commented that all attempts to contact the music giant to start a dialogue have resulted in questionable legal threats, including demands for a public apology.

I believe this to be the official start of the bad blood between the two companies, and led me to believe more backhanding that originally thought was involved in the sites shutdown.

discuss

[Dae]

This was their attempt to stifle megaupload's attempt at advertisement as Universal was releasing a service like itunes  later that month called Megabox.
it was a deliberate step in order to prevent a real competitor spreading news of its existance.

I think you have a typo in there so just to clarify : MegaUpload was launching MegaBox, a new label where 90% of the profits from retail sales would be channelled to the artists, as well as MegaMusic, the frontend platform for listening and selling music from artists labelled under MegaBox. The video and the MegaSong were supposed to advertise their launch.

A law passed recently in the US, quite silently with everybody bothering with SOPA and PIPA.

Basically, the US can now take public domain works and copyright them back.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

A law passed recently in the US, quite silently with everybody bothering with SOPA and PIPA.

Basically, the US can now take public domain works and copyright them back.

Which doesn't make any sense at all, unless the US is officially given free rule over all in existence, and can now claim objects under a copyright that they had zero to do with originally. Does this mean uncopyrighted works will eventually be written into a law allowing the US to "protect the rights of innovators" by assimilating even uncopyrighted objects, for the sake of fighting piracy? Doesn't seem any different to me, Public Domain is the same as belonging to the people, in my opinion.

[SalmonGod]

If you completely abolish copyright, you can surely expect large companies stealing ideas, concepts and entire products and outproducing the original owners. Compromise, not abolishment is needed :/

The irony, though, is that intellectual property laws cause this to happen MORE.  They turn ideas into commodities that are subject to ownership and sale.  Very few artists have the resources to create independently, so they sell their ideas into contracts with wealthy non-artist entrepreneurs in order to survive while having the means to continue engaging in art.  Those employers design their contracts to be as exploitative as possible, and artists have no power to do anything about it.  Many even write contracts stating that absolutely any idea an artist has while employed with a business becomes the property of that business.

Without intellectual property laws, large companies might make use of an artist's ideas without permission, and that's an unfortunate thing.  However, they wouldn't be able to obtain complete ownership and exclusive control over an artist's creations like they can today.

I maintain that creative artists need control over their product so they can make a living off their actual art, not novelty mugs or whatever.

I think art is in a rather sorry state because it's become a job rather than a passion. If you're in it for the money you're not really an artist.

And this is the most important issue here, I think.  None of this would even be an issue if society allowed people some breathing room; if every single person who isn't independently wealthy didn't require a constant source of income to justify their survival.  I agree that art and culture in general is in a sorry state.  Most of our art today isn't produced because the people responsible feel they have something original, profound, or deeply expressive to offer.  It's produced because people need to make something... anything... to put food on the table every day.  If not for this, the issue of exclusive rights to one's own ideas wouldn't even matter.  People would still care about getting proper credit for their work, but that's almost entirely separate from the nature of modern intellectual property law.

[Criptfeind]

A law passed recently in the US, quite silently with everybody bothering with SOPA and PIPA.

Basically, the US can now take public domain works and copyright them back.

Which doesn't make any sense at all, unless the US is officially given free rule over all in existence, and can now claim objects under a copyright that they had zero to do with originally. Does this mean uncopyrighted works will eventually be written into a law allowing the US to "protect the rights of innovators" by assimilating even uncopyrighted objects, for the sake of fighting piracy? Doesn't seem any different to me, Public Domain is the same as belonging to the people, in my opinion.

Yes. I thought that as well. Something like that should have a referendum for each work lost to copy right.

[Valid_Dark]

A law passed recently in the US, quite silently with everybody bothering with SOPA and PIPA.

Basically, the US can now take public domain works and copyright them back.

well thats fucked,
on the other hand, nows the time for me to start copywronging everything I can think of, (how about the abc song to start, I'll make the schools pay me each time they teach it to new children, or else the school shall be shut down due to piracy, for using MY song without MY permission)
what else can I copyright? pachelbel's canon? I like the sound of it, I'll take it. Want it played at your wedding? have to talk to ME first.
what else?
How about inventions of long ago, I think I'll copyright the design of scissors while I'm at it, currently own a scissor factory? Too bad, you have to pay me for MY design before you can produce another scissor, or else it's theft of MY design.

[GlyphGryph]

Now, now, you're not a wealthy corporation! What makes you think they'd let someone like YOU do any of that?

[Valid_Dark]

If corporations are people, why isn't the inverse true?

[Dae]

A corporation is not people. It is a way for money to get bigger. Picture a plastic bag full of dollar bills, except the plastic bag is made of people.

[Valid_Dark]

In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.

and

In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, The Supreme Court recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons

[GlyphGryph]

So you're saying that corporations are soylent green?