Midas Oracle .NET » Politics

The list of British artists I will stop listening to and never buy music from

Chris F. Masse — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:20:04 +0000

The Featured Artists Coalition’s AIR statement:

We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.

Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.

Signed:

Tim Rice-Oxley (Keane)
Jamie Turner
Adriano Buffone (Raygun)
Allan Bradbury
Helienne Lindvall
Tony Crean
Andrew Laidlaw (Luck Soul)
Isard Haasakker
Tony Morrelli (The Fire Escapes)
Jean-Baptiste Pilon (The Fire Escapes)
Mark Headley (The Fire Escapes)
Hal Ritson (The Young Punx)
Billy Bragg
Ben Ward
Karl Harrison
Howard Jones
Tjinder Singh (Cornershop)
Phil Simpson
Athleen
Steve Jones
John Reynolds
Sandie Shaw
David Rowntree (Blur)
Ed O’Brien (Radiohead)
Alan Sharland (The Hoosiers)
Martin Skarendahl (The Hoosiers)
Steven Hogarth (Marillion)
Mark Kelly (Marillion)
Guy Chambers
Patrick Wolf
Sam Duckworth (Get Cape Wear Cape Fly)
Jamie Allen
Toby Sebastian
James Kelly
Beryl Marsden
George Jones
Ross Millard (The Futureheads)
Stax Dempsey
Rona Sentinar
Fran Healy (Travis)
Karl Addy
Nathan Taylor (The Young Punx)
Josh Allegro
Ali Howard (Lucky Soul)
David Arnold
Lucy Pullin (The Fire Escapes)
Annie Lennox
Lily Allen (Not a Member of the FAC)
George Michael
Nick Mason (Pink floyd)
The Music Producers Guild
John B
Claudia Brucken (Propaganda)
Rick Wilde

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Russians tried to silence Cyxymu by way of DDoS —and, by the same token, made him famous.

Chris F. Masse — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:13:15 +0000

Mashable

http://cyxymu.livejournal.com/

http://twitter.com/cyxymu/

http://www.facebook.com/cyxymu

http://www.youtube.com/Cyxymu

As a result, more people will read him. Cyxymu is now famous —another Barbra Streisand effect.

Libertarians, don’t you like the Web?

InTrade prediction markets and ABC 20/20’s John Stossel on health care reform

Chris F. Masse — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:33:47 +0000

Health Care Reform

Via the informative Daily Chuck

The Yes Men

Chris F. Masse — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:45:50 +0000

Copyright laws threaten our Internet freedom.

Chris F. Masse — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:04:13 +0000

Op-Ed in the Financial Times against excessive copyright laws by the Pirate party’s member of the European parliament.

And, of course, I am “pirating” the article of the Financial Times.

Copyright laws threaten our online freedom.

By Christian Engström

Published: July 7 2009 18:10 | Last updated: July 7 2009 18:10

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.

On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.

File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade, the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.

The world is at a crossroads. The Internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.

The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.

The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.

The Internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the Pirate Bay, which makes the world’s culture easily available to anybody with an Internet connection. But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples by copyright.

The public increasingly recognizes the need for reform. That was why Piratpartiet – the Pirate party – won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the European parliament for the first time.

Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net, as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and transparent. This is our entire platform.

We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.

Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set the course we take into the information society, and will affect the lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society?

The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.

“The writer is the Pirate party’s member of the European parliament.”

Excellent.

Download Home film (Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s documentary film) = Descargar HOME película = Herunterladen HOME film = Télécharger film HOME

Chris F. Masse — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:24:25 +0000

Download HOME film (Descargar HOME película, Herunterladen HOME film, Télécharger HOME film), Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film — The Earth From Above

Install any video capture software. (Video Download Helper, or else)
Go to the YouTube channel for the film “HOME” (The Earth From Above). Choose your language.
Click on “play” and click on HD —high definition.
Download the film to your desktop.
Within Video Download Helper, click on HQ22 —for best quality.
Be patient while downloading; it is a big file.
Do preserve this film on your hard drive and on other supports.
If you don’t agree with the political comments, turn them off, and replace them with Jazz music or else.

There is a fight between Luc Besson (the film producer and copyright holder), who does not want the film to be made completely free for download, and Yann Arthus-Bertrand (the film director), who would like the film to be made completely free for download.

Translation:
- Download Home film = Descargar HOME película = Herunterladen HOME film = Télécharger film HOME

A TV news anchor bows before the US president.

Chris F. Masse — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:04:58 +0000

Does not sound good for the independence of the mainstream media. Look at the end of the tape.

Asking the very good questions to green activist Al Gore

Chris F. Masse — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:59:48 +0000

Socialism is a an addiction.

Chris F. Masse — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:37:46 +0000

“U.S. companies, consumers and communities may grow so addicted to government financial help that cutting them off could trigger another recession soon after the current one ends.”

Using a crisis atmosphere to amass more money and power in Washington

Chris F. Masse — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:22:55 +0000

True.