[Reader-list] re: reader, boell, lab, adorno, jail, textz.com

[fmadre at free.fr]

hi andreas, and all,

> >property, same for adorno, sebastian, andreas and you name it
> 
> want to sound too stupid, but i believe that it is necessary to
> address the reality of these laws.

far from me to even begin to think that this would be stupid, but we have to be 
reminded that the law is mostly always an a posteriori writing of common 
practice or, rather, a written agreement (at best) for a given society of 
acceptable practice at one moment in time. the law doesn't move fast and it can 
be budged only by said common practice. it is undeniable that there are hundred 
thousands of people out there (I have one at home using all our family 
bandwith) who have ready access to that common practice of file sharing but 
those people do not have access to the law in the same immediate way. the music 
industry has pushed on them the (bloody) CD and some people have actually 
bought the same intellectual product twice (once on vinyl, another on cd), the 
(look, I did not says 'evil') consumer electronics industry has pushed (as in 
your local waiting for the man situation) on the same people the fact that the 
PC is now your hi-fi system and that they could listen to the new product 
called CD into the new product called PC and then there was the new product 
called the online access and the broadband one too, all of those have been 
forced unto the public and the logical conclusion of that is that people use 
them and every where you care to look common practice in the world is that 
there are music files being exchanged by the millions. what I'm saying is that 
the law making citizens need now to recognize that the law abiding citizens 
_cannot abide anymore to laws that have been made redundant by all of the above.

now, for example, when emi approaches the people hosting the grey album on 
their sites with "we are telling you that the files you host have to be removed 
because we declare that the maker of those files has been producing them 
illegaly", it is obvious to me that this is pure vapor-threat and that no one 
in possession of a file should be threatened because said file might have been 
produced in an illegal way (thinking also now that there is no worldwide law on 
that or on anything anyway). it's a bit like the old hoaxes about the BBC 
owning "the link" or compuserve owning "the gif".

Also, I claim that the correlation between having a collection of files on your 
PC to possessing an actual CD is extremely remote... but now I have to leave 
for a meeting, sorry

> i thought that Britta's intervention was very important because she
> reminds us to maybe start thinking about these issues from the
> perspective of an 'owner': imagine something that you own personally
> and that you use to make a living (a car, a computer, a contract, a
> story to tell, a data-base of contacts, etc.) and imagine that
> somebody demands to freely use your property because s/he does not
> accept your property claim.

that's theorically ok, I think, as long as the person in question is engaged in 
the same exercise him/herself. which means that this is a very rethorical 
argument, andreas, all of this will only function on the morning of The Big 
Night, you know! 

this kind of reasoning cannot be used, it's like asking someone who is against 
capital punishement "what would you do if your daughter was raped and 
tortured ?" (a bit like)

f.