Hacker News Reader

Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

We need a massive, concerted effort to widely distribute digitally, for free, the works of all the authors who would have entered public domain. It's clear that negotiating with our leaders has failed; the free and open internet that has served us so well in the preceding decades is closing faster than ever and our only hope is digital civil disobedience.

View on HN

Whilst "digital civil disobedience" is all well and good, breaking their rules won't help us break their will.

The last bastion of hope is a "union of the consumers", where we collectively punish and break companies that we collectively see as dangerous to the future of our world.

We only need to tear down one company to be able to set off a chain reaction. Once consumers realise the power they hold as a well organised and effective collective, the people can pull back some of the power from the corporation (and our governments to which they now hold the power over).

Corporations can't survive without income and customers. Every day we vote with our wallets without giving it a second thought. It's time we started to appreciate that fact.

Edit:

I know this isn't particularly realistic :-(

The problem is that the overwhelming majority of consumers don't know or care enough about copyright to form a union. And you can't have any leverage as a union if you are a small minority of the entire consumer-base.

And many of those that do know and care simply don't care enough to stand by their principles (or simply would rather pirate stuff in private - which doesn't have the same impact as a union).

That is the traditional problem of a boycott and what makes it ineffectual.

Moreover, the ineffectuality of boycotts makes people less likely to actually believe in them.

Which is exactly what "they" want you to think.

s/boycott/vote/g

Isn't supporting the EFF kind of like being in a union? Granted, the EFF probably doesn't excel at organizing people for protests in the streets.

And ACLU is an actual union, but I don't think they are particularly interested in the copyright issue.

The EFF is a lobbying group, just like any that would work for oil&gas, tobacco, or a telephone company.

And less well resourced.

Also, in some countries, calls for boycott are illegal.

I was going to say bullshit but you're right. Even Israel does this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_Prevention_of_Damage_t...

FTA:

> Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel through Boycott (Hebrew: חוק למניעת פגיעה במדינת ישראל באמצעות חרם, התשע"א-2011), also commonly known as the Boycott law, is an Israeli Anti-boycott law that was approved in the Knesset on 11 July 2011. The law has been widely criticised.

I strongly believe that Israel has a right to exist but laws like these do not give me hope for the Israeli people if they are complacent or (worse) supportive of these repressive laws.

> I strongly believe that Israel has a right to exist but

I don't get how questioning fascism becomes a question over a state's legitimacy. Could you imagine if someone said that the USAPATRIOT Act brought into question the USA's right to exist?

Wow, I didn't even think about it as I wrote it. I think I wrote it because I needed to remind myself. I guess somehow I have put it in my head that people who oppose anything that the government of Israel does is likely an enemy of Israel. You're right. Reality is not so black and white. I know I criticized George W Bush right here in the US about the "either you're with us or you're against us" dichotomy. Kind of makes me a hypocrite when I don't see my own bias on the same topic when it comes to Israel.

It is absolutely possible to (and indeed we should encourage people to) speak up against the bad actions and policies of the government of Israel. Doing so does not make us enemies of Israel. This is so very simple and logical in any other context but I have to stop and think when it comes to this issue. I think I was trying to convince myself that I am not doing or saying anything that could hurt.

Perhaps by reaffirming my support for the right to exist hurts rather than helps the situation. I didn't think of that. I feel pretty stupid.

It's the language that Israel's leaders use all the time, so it's not surprising that it slips into more intelligent conversation.

The fact that you feel the need to do this is evidence of how powerful their propaganda machine is: even criticizing an objectively awful law we feel the need to go out of our way to assure our audience that we are not hate-filled antisemites as a precaution, because of how often any criticism no matter how valid is instantly written off as hateful antisemitism.

Because Israel's right to exist is constantly attacked by many people, to the point that any criticism of them may be interpreted by some as a criticism of their legitimacy, whether that's a logical assumption or not. Unfortunately, to effectively communicate you often have to write for other people's (sometimes mistaken) assumptions about what you may mean.

> Could you imagine if someone said that the USAPATRIOT Act brought into question the USA's right to exist?

If there was a large and vocal group of disenfranchised Native Americans which an active, extremist and violent military faction, then yes, I could imagine it. I wouldn't agree with it, but I could imagine it happening.

if Native Americans are only now begining to complain about their rights being taken away, because a law was passed stripping the rights of their settler/conquerors, they're probably a few hundred years too late, and badly misdirected.

A more apt comparison would be the natives taking the Great Treaty of 1722 (or its violations) to be the reason why the United States is illegitimate as a country. That might actually be an interesting argument.

> if Native Americans are only now begining to complain about their rights being taken away

That wasn't really the point of my argument, which was hypothetical, and to match the situation in Israel would mean that Native Americans would have always had a somewhat similar stance as the theoretical one presented. I'm not trying to mix current Native American sentiment into the discussion.

> A more apt comparison...

That depends on your goal. Mine was to provide a hypothetical but somewhat equivalent situation to possibly put your statement in a new perspective.

> That might actually be an interesting argument.

It probably is, but I'm inadequately educated on the topic currently to make any useful arguments in any direction on that. :/

Interesting. Since the difference between not buying something and a boycott is communicating your intentions to the public, I think this is really a restriction on speech.

France recently ruled that the BDS movement is illegal. Not sure that applies to companies though.

How will this work practically? Let's say we want to try this just for a month. Make a list of such companies and try not to spend our money with them. First of all, making this list itself isn't that simple, because of confusing and ever changing murky corporate structures (apps like buycott [1] can help here). In many industries, a handful of players control the entire market - just 3 or 4 companies control meat supply in the US, Monsanto controls a huge portion of seeds and so on. In the end we'll probably end up with a list of couple of dozen companies in our "bad list" and our options to shop (even the basic necessities) will be severely limited. Not saying it can't be done, it is just difficult to do it without some serious collective effort. It is definitely a good exercise to brainstorm ideas though, we gotta start somewhere.

http://buycott.com/

You buy from the least bad one.

Then the others become less bad, and you switch to them. And so on.

isn't that what we already do? I mean, I switched from Godaddy to Namecheap, Dropbox to Spideroak, etc. How is this not how things are done today?

SpiderOak isn't "better" than DropBox. It supports privacy but the service and support is utterly appalling.

I was getting upload speeds on the order of kilobytes per second on a gigabit fiber connection while my CPU was idling. Filed a support request and they bumbled around a bit and then ceased responding to me entirely until I opened another ticket and demanded a refund. It took 5 __months__ to get to this point, with them not responding for weeks at a time.

I'd recommend something like https://www.syncany.org/ over SpiderOak any day.

Depending on your needs, you could try Syncthing [1].

IMO the major functional differences between it and Dropbox are:

* You have to provide the servers that Dropbox provides. I.E. you have to provide the level of availability that you want. [2]

* FOSS licensed.

* Because your data is only ever stored on your machines, you are only limited by your own storage and bandwidth.

[1] https://syncthing.net/

[2] This requirement has actually loosened to some degree because the latest version of Syncthing introduced relay servers. So you still need to provide available storage servers, but you can use relays to overcome partitions in your network.

The first requirement is the one that kills SyncThing for me and why Syncany is more appealing.

To sum up my reasons very quickly:

- I want to store my data offsite, where it isn't vulnerable to breakins, fire, water damage etc.

- I have no offsite storage I can trust completely.

- Syncthing only supports storing plaintext on disk.

Therefore I can't use syncthing to securely and remotely store data.

This is where Syncany wins. You don't have to trust the storage endpoint.

Also, Syncthing requires having a CPU attached to your remote storage, meaning your remote options are limited to a VPS or dedicated server. This is significantly more expensive than buying block storage from Google or Amazon.

If Syncthing ever resolves https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/109 I'll be open to using it, until then it's out.

Yeah sure: but Syncthing is like Dropbox, and Syncany is like Backblaze. They're different products.

How so? Syncany syncs files/directories, Syncthing syncs files/directories and Dropbox syncs files/directories.

I don't think that's feasible either on a large scale. How about this strategy:

1. Pick the top three offenders (not in the same industry).

2. For each offender, find their cash cow, or top 3 most profitable products.

3. Make a concerted effort to boycott those products, and those products alone, indefinitely. Make some real damage.

The purpose here is to make an example out of someone. Build morale among protesters that if well organized, they can be effective.

First scenario: One million US/Canadian citizens sporadically decide to buy from company Y instead of company X... nobody notices.

Second scenario: Company Z suddenly loses 100,000 customers for their core product... I'll bet you someone notices.

Yes, see the history of fossil fuel divestment and boycotts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_divestment

We could simply boycott all movie theaters and Disney as both are a large part of the push for the IP copyright rules as a demonstration of will.

I suspect if that had a noticeable impact the other related companies would fall in line to avoid being targeted for a boycott.

Boycotting Star Wars would send a very large message.

Some German Cinemas have refused to show any Disney movies for months, and are still discussing if they’ll show Star Wars at all.

Disney wants far more of the profit the cinemas make, which is already next to nothing, and for some cinemas would lead to them paying Disney more than they have in income.

So cinemas have been boycotting Disney.

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/star-wars-boykott-deutsche...

Competing with them with a decentralized corporation is the only option here. They will manage to work around any boycotts by rebranding products through alternate channels.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Well, if we could break Disney while letting lawmakers know it's not because we want Porno Mickey, but because that little freak of nature is anal raping our constitution, maybe that would do it.

You're being downvoted for extreme comparisons, but I can bet none of the downvoters has even heard of, let alone read, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[0]. I've read it, and used similar wording as parent in my reaction.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

Well, I could have been a little more subtle in my choice of words. But it's really frustrating to know that one simple cartoon character is doing so much damage.

Edit: Actually, I think it's not so much my choice of words, but that this is HN and there's plenty of people here who are interested in copyright lasting infinity less one day.

I can't prove you wrong, much as I'd like to.

>The last bastion of hope is a "union of the consumers", where we collectively punish and break companies that we collectively see as dangerous to the future of our world.

You aren't likely to ever get the majority on board just for the sake of a boycott.

But if you make it so the products are completely free, safe to use, easy to obtain, and publicly supported as moral even if technically illegal, you can get the public to engage in a boycott of at least electronic media or media easily made electronic.

>breaking their rules won't help us break their will.

It seems to have worked for movies and music. We broke the rules and shared the product, they entered the online market and started offering a product people wanted, people bought it.

I'm not interested at all in playing by their rules. I'm interested in preserving access to our cultural artifacts. Keeping work from the people after the death of the author is pure greed and we shouldn't stand for it.

Isn't that Bit Torrent today?

Frankly, I think the only plausible way to deal with this is to compete with it. That is part of what Creative Commons is about.

Culture is getting dull. As we continue to extend these copyrights to protect Mickey, we dilute our own creative potential.

And I'm not sure Mickey is worth it. Disney makes an empire out of the Brothers Grimm, and refuses to give back.

That's the problem.

People can't easily understand what is being lost either. That's the other problem.

Personally, I find myself less inclined to participate. Rehashes of the same stuff just doesn't appeal. But, many people are fine with it all, or they don't realize the difference in overall "vibrancy" possible.

Thanks to the rules in the agreement, the license holders can ignore me and sue my government (who I assume will gladly settle), and I'll pay for the content in my taxes anyway...

This effort has existed for many years. It is called Project Gutenberg. Unfortunately, the Donate button on their homepage (via PayPal) does not work.

We already have it. It's called the Pirate Bay.

> It's clear that negotiating with our leaders has failed

I don't think that's quite white happened. It seems more like, our leaders have had their power stolen from them; they couldn't take the public's side even if the tried. Here, we have a policy decision - copyright duration - over which the legislature has traditionally had authority. But the decision was made by a group of diplomats and corporations, without legislative input or access. I don't think our leaders have real access to public opinion on this issue; wherever the decisions are made, corporations create a bubble of disinformation to conceal our ire.

That's some straight up revolution talk right there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com