Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-03-31/News and notes

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From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

EU’s Parliament Signs Off on Disastrous Internet Law: What Happens Next?
Facing Criticism from All Sides, EU’s Terrible Copyright Amendments Stumble into the New Year

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The "blackouts" were an impotent snit that the EU, flawed as it is, is actually trying to address the rights involved in intellectual property. The issues can be discussed, but "blackouts" do essentially nihil. Flaws are something to convince the EU lawmakers of, not something to make a todo over online. IMO. Collect (talk) 17:57, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The system of "intellectual property" is an extension of the system of human property: it is a slave system. There have been times where a veneer of gentility has been placed on the practice, but this is certainly not one of them. When you are told that you can't set up a way to talk to your neighbors about the news without paying to have a machine watch over your conversation to implement the Massa's wishes, to keep you from saying too much about the news and to check everything you say to see if it's someone else's "property", what does that make you?!

The people have stood around cowed, confused, afraid, as the most radical and conniving extremists of the New Capitalism have made ever more bizarre demands - patenting software algorithms, business plans, setting up ownership of asteroids and space militaries to enforce them. We have stood paralyzed as the health care system, entrusted to the capitalists, stopped wiping out diseases and instead focused on dribbling out treatments for conditions like hepatitis C to only the wealthiest few while the millions of poorer infected were used as a reservoir to infect future wealthy customers. Now the connivers come to destroy even the hope of the people for a saner future, to carve up the remnants of even the cheapest and most fundamental of rights as they usher in an age where humans are the cattle of robotic masters.

But it shall not stand. "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." The cost of defeating slavery in the United States was high: 1 out of every 40 people in the entire country was killed. Yet who can say it didn't need to be paid? There is a Dark Age coming, not because of some divine malice, but out of necessity, and the question we need to ask ourselves is how long and how Dark our actions will make it necessary for it to be. Wnt (talk) 12:15, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that "copyright is slavery" utterly. Nor ar patents "slavery". Nor is keeping the design of nuclear bombs secret "slavery." Nor is protecting software "slavery." The "dark age" of allowing copyrights and patents led to US strength - in computers, communications, books, movies, art, music and more. So, I disagree. Collect (talk) 12:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The strengths you describe are the result of a) there being worse censorship policies in countries that otherwise potentially could have competed and b) government grants for research. Wnt (talk) 03:38, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or it is possible that you might be quite wrong, of course. Collect (talk) 12:59, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]