However, based on that premise they've instituted rules to "protect" intellectual property, but unfortunately they're so weighted toward the "owner" of the IP that they do (IMHO serious) harm to regular users and consumers. It seems to me that regardless of which political side you fall under, we should agree that governments exist to protect the rights and interests of everyone, not just a select few.
Something is really wrong here, and getting mad at Google or Widevine or some other company is a red herring. The real problem is what we've allowed our government(s) to do. We need to fight back there. Once the government isn't propping up the companies anymore, their abuse will disappear.
To the established owners of IP. If you're not an established creator, you're going to be on the side that gets hurt by the IP. Some IP claims are gonna hit you sooner or later, and even if they're complete bullshit, you won't be able to do anything about them.
Established owners can generate enough of a fuss that they could cause an outrage big enough for some actual human to look into your issues, but if you're not big enough for that... tough luck. Try again from scratch once Google cuts you out. This happens regularly across their products, be it Google Play, YouTube, or Chrome's extensions store.
Systems fucked. The little guy should have the advantage, not the already rich one.
Replace companies with nobility or aristocracy and you're talking about a problem as old as civilization itself. The fact is, small groups with control over a lot of resource (elites) will always work to consolidate and secure their power. Barring some radical, unforeseen technology, the masses of people will always have a more difficult time coordinating their actions to prevent this. This is the class struggle narrative of history.
When was that?
Some of it has been overturned recently but limits have existed for periods of time.
Meanwhile, mainstream television is waning in influence for political advertising. Now it's all about Facebook. Think of the micro-targeting turnout power they have. It's obscene!
I have no interest in a fallacious debate.
The problems with democracy that were described _still_ exist today. One can dislike communism and still acknowledge the criticisms of capitalism as valid and in need of address.
Communism was never actually executed true to the image. The state of the proleteriat was supposed to wither away - instead it became a dictatorship with secret police.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
It is also legal to do a reverse engineering of software to allow it to run on your system, software, hardware (so I think a browser also applies).
(I'm not a lawyer, just reading some of the more technical law articles)
There are lots of differences in the details, but I wouldn't make a blanket statement that it's completely legal without actually checking the corresponding laws.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive#Technologi...
The directives are "transposed" into national law, country by country - and each country can (and does) add a local "flavor" to it. So if the Poles have watered down the anti-circumvention clause (it is very vague in the directive, giving a ton of maneuvering space to the national parliaments), the situation he is describing is very possible. On the opposite side of the spectrum is traditionally France, with its (fortunately incredibly ineffective) three strike system. Very different approaches to things even though both countries are implementing the same copyright directive.
The other type of texts coming from Brussels are "regulations" - those go into effect immediately, without having to be rewritten into national laws. GDPR is an example of such regulation.
Be careful with that one. The Netherlands had that too until some European court decided that our laws were foolish and went "that's all wrong, it's obviously illegal" after which there was case law about it being illegal and now it's illegal. The ministry immediately went "oh, well, we s'ppose it's illegal then from roundabout last week!"
In case you were wondering who's behind this expensive lawsuit that lasted from 2008 to 2014: we had "home copy tax" (thuiskopieheffing), so you pay a few bucks extra for storage devices (hard drives, usb sticks, smartphones) and that was redistributed to rights holders as compensation for "home copies" (copies for personal use in your household, backups, that sort of thing). Shops did not like that they had to pay extra taxes that they did not have to pay in other countries, so they went to court and got us where we are now.
Dutch news about it: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/95332/nederland-mag-illegaal-dow...
> Nederland stelt dat het downloaden van dergelijk materiaal hetzelfde is als het kopiëren van een cd of dvd, maar daar gaat het Europese Hof niet in mee. Volgens het Hof kan een wet die 'geen enkel onderscheid maakt tussen kopieën uit geoorloofde bronnen en kopieën uit vervalste bronnen' niet worden gedoogd, omdat dergelijke wetgeving auteursrechtinbreuk kan bevorderen.
Translated:
~ The Netherlands claims that downloading of such material is the same as copying a cd or dvd, but the EU court does not agree. According to the EU court, a law that makes 'no distinction can be made between copied from allowed sources and from forged sources' can be allowed, because such laws promote copyright infringement.
Dutch news about the government's response: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/95335/kabinet-nederland-heeft-pe...
> Het is in Nederland per direct verboden om auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal te downloaden uit illegale bron, bijvoorbeeld via torrentsites en nieuwsgroepen. Dat stelt het kabinet in een reactie op een uitspraak van het EU-hof.
Translated
~ It is in the Netherlands henceforth prohibited to download copyrighted material from an illegal source, for example through torrent sites and newsgroups. This is the ministry's response to the ruling of the EU court.
So we didn't need any law change, parliamentary debate, nothing. It was in effect right away.
We have kind of the same in Germany, and our overview on Wikipedia[1] looks even more complicated and expensive than yours[1]. You're still not allowed to circumvent effective copyright protections to make your private copy. But I'd be surprised if e.g. music only available with DRM would be excluded from earning a share of that fee.
Interestingly, before the recent EU copyright reform, this fee benefited only authors directly, instead of the rights holder.
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuiskopieheffing
As per https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Polish_Copyright_Law
Article 23, paragraph 1:
> It shall be permitted to use free of charge the work, which has been already disseminated for purposes of private use without the permission of the author.
Article 6, point 3:
> the disseminated work shall mean a work which, with a permission of its author, has been made available to the public by any means whatsoever
So, it is legal to access the work without permission, if author gave prior permission to make it available to the public. However I'm not sure if selling a book in a store or showing a movie in a cinema would automatically mean that such work can be downloaded freely from the Internet - technically the work is available to the public, but I'm sure the author did not give permission for the work to be available on the Internet.
I'd advise not giving out bad advice then stating absolutes about the legal situation that are wrong.
Try not to help them by paying for entertainment.
That does depend on the countries, at least on my case in France there's an accessibility exception which makes it okay in his case to break the DRM legally because he does not have any other choice.
What if you design a web browser that just ignores most blobs of CSS/Javascript and renders content in a very different way. Are you now breaking copyright? Because you're rendering the data differently than the W3C standard or blocking certain elements?
I realize this is specifically about DRM content, but I feel like it won't be a stretch to try to apply these laws to common content.
Lets all start running Gopher servers again... Fuck the modern web.
Anti ad exit node proxies.
Basically an ecryoted proxy connection to a powerful ad stripping instance that will randomize and pipe all that shit to dev null, and reply to trackers with addesses of their competing ad systems.
So that every ad for “microsoft” appears as though its being used by apple users...
Someone who wants privacy/anonymity is likely to not want ads, but I think those who don't want ads is actually a larger group.
[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-block-ads...
though at this point it is kinda predictable - all news sites, except the ones with paywalls (and if you haven't bought the subscription, then its pointless visiting them). All information sources, except a few notable exceptions (usually aggregators like HN/Reddit, but also Medium).
Everything else divides into SaaS products, personal blogs and random shit. Random shit is usually ad-supported, the rest are usually fine.
it's all sort of moot anyway - the ads model is crap and getting worse, and businesses are going to have to move to something else soon. I don't think we'll have this problem long.
I'm often told in advance, by virtue of it coming up in a search result, promoted link, friends post, etc.
"This site contains adverts that perform obtrusive tracking" is seldom mentioned before or during the visit, the only way to know is by trying to block all such things and seeing the site fail if it tries to block the blocking.
Sometimes the advance information of content relevance is deceptive of course, and this often coincides with darkest patterns in the advertising/tracking.
Ajit pai.
"Circumventing" is much more broadly defined than it should be.
It's not just illegal to redistribute copyrighted material. That's the point of copyright and has been the case for a long time. It's also illegal to watch/consume content yourself in any way that the copyright-holder didn't explicitly enable, even if you have a general right to watch/consume that content. You're not allowed to create a browser that can watch DRM-protected Netflix content. And if someone does create such a browser, it's illegal for you to use it, even if you pay for a Netflix subscription.
That's pretty new (circa 1996 or so).
In 2002 I went to see Lawrence Lessig argue the Supreme Court challenge of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which introduced these anti-circumvention concepts. Here are my notes: https://allafrica.com/staff/kwindla/eldred.txt