I appreciate your willingness to take the time to be nice The book that you recommend points out the author clearly opts for a egalitarian democracy. With all do respect you have taken certain uninformed liberties of where I am in my understanding of the state of democracy, sopa, and politics. IMHO that is quite a leap considering you have never met me or for all I can tell you have not even tried to dig any deeper into knowing where I stand on these issues other than the above post. That's a pretty shallow response on your part wouldn't you say and void of respect I might add. If my understanding of the present situation is lacking in your eyes, please enlighten me. As to where it all got started I would love to have that conversation with you but it require for you to do some reading first,.Oh yea,"Do yourself a favor, read it, understand it and do some more research on the internet" http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm The framers of the U.S. constitution took from the Iroquois constitution the idea of their democracy leaving out what they thought necessary to keep their idea of capitalism in tact. Unfortunately they left out the very parts that would insure it's success. My people have the longest peace that has ever been known on this planet. Please forgive me if I am a little taken back by your ignorance. Oh yea, sorry I can't say this any nicer. R29K your depth continues to amaze me.
You write: "and if he finds a consensus here, that something needs to be done about it, so much the better and no harm done, in my book.. " I am simply trying to point out that there is a huge difference between "finding a consensus" and "doing something about it". Surely you can see that? And in my mail I was pointing to a book that explains very well why getting from the consensus to action that will work, is just about impossible...
I am sorry, but there seems to be a misunderstanding here, it was not my intention to attack anything or disrespect your point of view. Basically, your post was the last one published and so it was the last one I read after reading through the whole thread. So, my answer was to the spirit of the whole thread more than to you post, for that I apologize. I believe I understand, why you misunderstand. You write: „If my understanding of the present situation is lacking in your eyes, please enlighten me.“ No problem. See, your post ends with this sentence: „I have hope when I see this dialogue taking place. The big question is will We do it time.“ And to this every word of my post applies. There is no dialogue outside this thread in the real world. Outside, there are internet users on one side, and there are US governments on the other side, which have always and will always protect the interests of corporations, in this case the content industry. And as to „doing it in time“, the book I mentioned which is almost 10 years old, describes a developmemnt that has already happened, and which contains precisely the „understanding of the present situation (that) is lacking“ in your words. And there is nothing „shallow“ about pointing out the consequences that has. The western states of the so-called first world have long ago ceased to be democratic. And my point was that your idea of doing anything against that „in time“ is absurd. Maybe I misunderstand your statement, then please, enlighten me.
point taken, hl.. nobody said it was easy.. but neither is it impossible.. and no book of 2005 vintage is going to tell me otherwise, sorry..
The book looks like an interesting read that's all. It brings up something my father was telling me about awhile back but I didn't pay much attention to him because Politics is just boring . He was talking about the flaws of Democracy, which leads Democracy to eventually end up in something like Communism. Which it seems the book is about, the degradation of Democracy and the repercussions .
I appreciate your willingness to respond and in tone closer to the respect I as well as the others who have taken the time to post here deserve. It is hard to give credence to what a man says when He begins a sentence with "I think, you all need to" it assumes that the persons you are directing it towards have not the ability to effect change in there life and that they arrived at their present station in life through mindful ignorance. You start with another sentence "You should really start by understanding the present situation" Is that not a shallow perception of where I way in on these issues given my first post was. As you said you read through the thread My people have known the things that would plague this democracy from it's inception, this is not an idea that suddenly came to me. The author of the book you recommend did he bother to go to the Elders of the oldest democracy on the planet for input? If not that is how I define shallow. I would like for you to point out to me the absurdities in this statements. It would seem that you have surrendered to the idea that it's over, that collectively it's not even worth the effort. My people have always believed that to govern for the next seven generations is the only way to survive. I would like to point out to you that the only reason that your tribe survived thus far is from the wisdom of your elders and ancestors. I am not trying to tell you what to do but if I were looking for answers the first place I would go is to seek the council of them that know.
I am struggling with the English language. I have so much to say, but it's such an effort to write a post. Also to read that book. I actually don't need. There is a basic thing: Is it right that a government can seize a foreign server / domain? Even more would you consider it as a democratic measure? The US gov sees one aspect only. To protect their interests. But at which costs? What about the mu customers which have paid for the service and have uploaded legal contents? What is about their money? Aren't they criminalized now? 2 more aspects: Does the government still represent the people's opinion? The potential danger for a democracy is that the gov is doing their own thing without to listen to the people. The only thing that counts is to support their lobbyists (economy). I can notice about that phenomenon in the EU as well. There are national governments which enforce things the people actually don’t want. Credibility is a keyword. If a gov loses it, the democracy is in danger. This has nothing to do with communism. I guess many US people still use the word 'communist' as a word to insult, but actually without to know what communism really is. Basically is it a good thing, but it has failed due to the greed for money, what capitalism actually supports. Manipulating through media such as TV. Ever saw the series CSI: Miami, lol? There are US authorities, police and forensics working together. How works manipulation? (which is supported and desired by the same authorities in real life-->US gov. in real life) They create a special impression: Good looking and cool people working at the police / forensic, high tech labs, visuals, animation, cool clothes. Their job: To fight crime or even terrorism, actually a good intention everybody who is watching this would agree with it. What is the message behind the scene? The science is that much advanced that crime is not worthwhile. You get caught, so better don’t even think about to become criminal. There are databases. Fingerprints, phone calls, IP addresses, ballistics, blood values, genetic data..etc. Now a scene found at any part of the series. A cool guy from the US authorities sits in front of his PC. He has access to all the databases. He has some photos, fingerprints info’s etc and feeds the PC with it and queries the database. Soon it spits out an address of a US citizen. Cool, high tech at its best, in the hands of US authorities, it’s in good hands, they want make you to believe that-->manipulation. OK so they bring the person found via high tech databases to the interrogation room. But it happens frequently that the chain of conclusion was wrong in one part. So the police has to admit that they were wrong. So the suspect can go. Later they get another suspect and another but the series always ends with an success of the US officials-->glorification of the work!!! What about the false accusations? What about the innocent particular person? The series never has scenes about. As soon as he can leave the interrogation room the scene ends. But what is in real life? What about all the trouble?. What about his job, his neighbours thinking about, his reputation, his family his kids? The kids at school probably have to hear from other kids that their father was an potential criminal. If you have lost reputation even though you were innocent, nobody can correct that fault. All this remains in the dark. This is manipulation!!! To present only ONE aspect, wrapped in golden paper, to justify the ENTIRE action. Nothing else the US gov is doing when justifying the shut down of megaupload.
The book seems to be interesting R29K,but as Yen said it´s hard for me to read it good,i don´t understand every word in English and then i miss important things I would also like to post my thoughts more often,but my English isn´t that good that i can explain it in the way i would like to do it,so i better leave it then. @ Yen i know how you feel about English,i have the same problem.So your not alone mate
@yen. glad you took the plunge to post. half the night i thought you must be looking at it, a subject dear to your heart, and watching developments with admirable restraint in answering.. -my first thoughts on your post, yes there is a language thing in this, and i find it difficult too [no native speaker..] -it is about the scope of this. HL tried to put us with both feet on the ground, and i have no problem with that whatsoever, -however, he limits it to politics. and quotes a 2005 book to promote defaitism. -it is not only about politics. it is also about economics, and the power to abuse the economical position the us gvt is in. -and doing this [closing mu] has shown masses of people that more is at risk, such as their own legal data. -we have recently seen some instances where the alerted masses have forced some issues. no more sopa, etc..[for the time being, anyway] and therefore no need for fatalism based on just politics & marketing, imho..
Today, 4shared.com, are deleting many files 'pirates' ... Many other servers doing the same. I'm starting to think that we will have more files on the web.
4Shared is US based so it will have to do something. Can't people type in their native language into Google Translate and then convert to English it won't be perfect but it will work ?
Through my eyes there has always been a certain beauty in the innocence represented in the honest attempt, however awkward, of someone trying to communicate in a language other than their native tongue. That being said I am open to anyone's PM who wishes for me to clarify anything I have said in order to move the dialogue forward.
Yeah, I know. Also Fileserve, Uploader and a few others. Depositfiles, Oron, and Rapidshare still good. It's shaking itself out. As a visit to Filestube.com - a download search engine - will show, people are still posting, just shifting the activity to the above mentioned file sharing sites. Dilip
I think a lot of people in the US see downloading a movie and viewing it as stealing, people that steal are criminals and criminal's should be punished. I even know people that have thousands of DVD's that they downloaded or rented and made a copy of (including scanning the covers), and consider's what he is doing is stealing. He is even a musician and doesn't understand the distinction between unlicensed reproduction and theft. If a majority of the US population think that foreign countries are stealing from US corporations and causing US unemployment then that is all the justification the US needs to bully foreign countries. If some of the customers of MU were receiving money to upload copyrighted works, then they could be charged separately for criminal copyright infringement or most likely they will be offered a deal to testify against MU in court, and in exchange the charges will be dropped. The innocent individuals have lost both their money and data. It does seem that the US government is out of touch with current technology, The public hearings for the SOPA bill proved that. When a political leader says that they don't know how the internet works, and then says they don't believe the testimony of the likes of Google, because their source (lawers for the MPAA) say that seizing and black listing domains wont harm the global DNS system/internet, point to something is really wrong with that individuals thinking processes. The founders of the US did not trust government and constructed a system that is very slow too change, we can cause change by voting individuals into office that more closely represent the average citizen, we also have the right to the private ownership of firearms which allow's the possibility for armed revolution (I doubt such a thing would last long against a modern military). The point is that the democracy in the US has the built in ability to self correct but requires persistent long term pressure for that change to happen. One thing that non US citizens should understand about US politics is that it often runs on fear mongering and that from the period beginning at the end of world war II and until the USSR collapsed communism was enemy number one. for 40 years US citizen's lived in fear that any moment the "commies" would drop nuclear weapon on their city, people built bomb shelters in their basements and stock piled supplies. when I was in school 1984 and Animal Farm were required reading. and politicians would get elected based on their hard line stance against communism, at one time the paranoia was so bad that if someone was suspected of being a member of the Communist party in the US they were investigated by the FBI and required to name other individuals involved in the "Communist plot" the pressure was so great that often times people would just name the first person that came to mind, which caused conformation bias that continued to feed the paranoia. It seems silly now but it was very serious business and nearly caused a nuclear war during the "Cuban Missile Crisis". Even if a US citizen was a critical thinker and wanted to read the communist manifesto just to see what all the fuss was about it just wasn't done. as a result there is very little positive factual information about communism in American pop culture. the things that communism is associated with in American culture are atheism, Pol Pot and the killing fields, thought police, Stalin's gulags, Franz Kafka's The Trial, etc. That being said, I have heard the word communism used to described some of President Obama's policy's during the economic collapse in the US. The hard line free market groups wanted to let some of the US's largest corporations completely fail and let the free market correct itself, the Obama administration thought that was an awful idea and decided to prop up the failing corporations with public funds, I believe that in at lest one instance the US government purchased a controlling interest in an automotive manufacturer and ran it until it was profitable (government controls the means of production), American politics being what it is Obama was labeled a "Communist" (among other things) by groups that disagreed with his policy's. There is no doubt that the word "Communist" was used in this context in an attempt at political fear mongering, and to invoke a knee jerk reaction in the people that lived through the paranoia of the "Cold War". I'm not trying to excuse the ignorance of the American people as a whole, but provide some insight to people that don't understand American politics. this is also a very good example of how the American people are manipulated. any critically thinking person is horrified by any of the "CSI" or "Law and Order" TV series, forensic teams do not carry guns, they do not interrogate suspects. The US does have DNA and fingerprint databases but only individuals that have been in trouble with the law or voluntarily had their details added to the database are in it, also databases are not currently shared, State/Local Police do not have access to FBI databases and have to send evidence to the FBI to be checked. so no scan a fingerprint with a cell phone get the "perps" address and then go arrest the bad guy. Anyone subjected to the type of investigation depicted in these shows would have a good slander, defamation, wrongful arrest, harassment case against the state. I don't really see these shows as government propaganda, I do see them as a placebo for people frustrated buy crime, and possibly a tool to recruit individuals into law enforcement. The way the politicians were pushing to pass SOPA, and then the MU raid, to me suggests that the MU raid was timed to happen shortly after SOPA would have passed to send a message that the US is going to start taking an aggressive stand against copyright infringement.
Many great points and historically accurate IMHO. Thanks for taking the time to post so many good examples of the evolution of U.S. democracy to broaden the perspective and stimulate a more complete dialogue.
Your sentence just about sums it up: "HL tried to put us with both feet on the ground". What I am saying is, that the Megaupload story is the beginning of something qualitative new. The signing of ACTA yesterday was a further step and the only thing we can be certain of is, that it will not be that last one.... I mentioned a seven year old book, because it was the first one, that spoke about it and where the word "post-democracy" was coined. Everybody who just does a few minutes of reflecting about what the word "post-democracy" actually means and then looks at the world, will see that there is actually already a real problem out there. I have no problem with it, if you do not want to see this like I do. But the thread is about the consequences of the actions US institution were able to take in another country, and what that will mean in the future. So I am interested in the discussions about it, because those discussion will tell me what can be done about it, which does not make me optimistic at all.... So, in a few years we will all be remembering what the internet used to be. It has been clear to me for quite some time, that governments and corporation, not two really different things, will try to get control of the internet. A free uncontrolled internet does interfere with their business. And one has to be blind not to see, that the consecutive governments of one particular country, that has been willing to continually spend billions on fighting wars in the rest of the world to protect its economic interests, will watch a free internet interfering with its business.