Carlos sez, "A Portuguese Authors Association was caught faking authors' names in support of an abusive proposed law to add a copyright tax to every gigabyte of digital storage."
António Pinho Vargas (one of my most appreciated Portuguese music composers, you should check his Tom Waits if you don't know him) has came forth and revealed that it has no idea of how his name got there, and that he was never contacted about it. More so, he said he doubts some of the other names he sees there, from friends of his, would have agreed to that as well!
I think this says it all regarding these "author protection associations"... When they have to resort to such low tactics and fake their own members names to support such illogical laws, it's a sign that something really has to change! (And by that I don't mean taxing each and every gigabyte now matter what you intend to use it for!
Portuguese Authors Association Caught Faking Authors Names
(Thanks, Carlos!)
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Didn’t ASCAP and their like get a tax imposed on blank casette tapes and blank CDs that said “For Music”? Scary thought if there was a blanket tax on the number of gigabytes my PC had.
OH MY…what the hell is wrong with the world? the copyright lobby is firing without end. its a dying beast in its last fits of rage. its insane.
This is what we fight against, and it’s why we need to elect tireless representatives to fight against it as well.
It’s the new battleplan for corporations: To actively destabilize any government that doesn’t jump when they crack the whip. Deploy legions of thieving little underling sonsabitches to use up so much of legislators’ time constantly fighting these nickel-&-dime scams, that nothing else substantive will get accomplished – And then the legislators, who actually successfully held back waves of bullshit, will be targeted by the corporate-funded election committees of their opponents and accused by the thieving sonsabitches’ parent corporations of “accomplishing nothing during their time in office” – And, probably, of “costing America thousands of jobs”.
Eat The Rich, before they eat you.
One of the big issues is that we need a truly new breed of politician, more akin to a protester. Someone willing to fight for the people; rather than appease the media and corporations.
That’s a big ask though which involves very complicated campaigns and logistics. Probably unlikely too.
yea but i hear ya! we need them bad. problem is we need them now. also if you are ever gonna be anything in western politics you have to be educated in the right places (eton, harvard, oxford, cambridge). once you are in there u ll get mindwashed anyway….
Maybe I’m just old and grumpy, but… what part of this is unexpected ? This is “business as usual” in Portugal, and most places I know enough about to have an opinion on.
This needs editing:
“António Pinho Vargas has came forth and revealed that it has no idea of how his name got there, and that he was never contacted about it.”
He, not it.
Feel free to address that to the person that wrote it.
What the copyright lobby seems to forget so often is that piracy happens because a certain percentage of people don’t feel guilty about enjoying media from a certain percentage of artists without compensating them.
You’d think they’d just focus on making people feel more guilty, perhaps by encouraging the artists to develop closer connections with their audience.
When the copyright lobby pushes legislation like this, they’ll actually be making consumers feel LESS guilty about piracy, which will quickly erase whatever revenue gains come as result of the new law.
That’s far too logical for politics.
In this particular case, defining the SPA as the “copyright lobby” though not technically incorrect is a bit of a misnomer – they are, quite simply, trying to increase their own revenue, using the term “anti-piracy law” to make it sound like something “everybody should be for”.
“Greedy liars using copyright as a strawman argument” would perhaps be a bit closer to the mark – heck, even the copyright lobby should be mad at them :)
make it 2 authors http://yfrog.com/kfgdesxj