DefCon: ‘Credit Hackers’ Win the Credit Card Game … Legally | Threat Level | Wired.com: "Hundreds of “credit hackers” are legally gaming financial institutions by taking advantage of loopholes in the U.S. credit-reporting system, a security researcher says — warning that identity thieves could follow suit.
Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, took a security expert’s eye to the tricks already in use by a healthy subculture of clever consumers who have managed to garner zero-interest loans and erase some information from their credit profiles. He’s presenting his findings Saturday at the DefCon hacker convention.
“The techniques outlined in this paper are not traditional hacking,” he said in an interview. “All that is being done is taking advantage of the formalized structure of the process.”"
Sunday, August 2, 2009
riaa biden - Google Search
riaa biden - Google Search: "Joe Biden, huh? Talk about strike three. 2000: Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman “loses” election. Flash forward to 2008 and this stuffy ..."
boycott-riaa.com - CD Prices
boycott-riaa.com - CD Prices: "CD PRICES
The RIAA talks about how the costs have risen since the invention of the CD player in 1983 (I could have sworn it was earlier than that). They talk about consumer price index and cost of living increases to point out the cost of a CD are inexpensive comparatively. Using their numbers of a price of 12.75 in 1996 to 17.99 ( my number) that's a 41% price increase in 5 years.
Now then, in the same period, the cost of mid range CD Players have come down from around $400 dollars, to around $100 for a single disc machine the costs of the technology, have come way down.
In 1993 cheapest CDR recorder you could purchase was about $4500, yes $4500! Today the cost of a top of the line CDR recorder is under $200. Do the math, (of course the RIAA will have to hire a bank of high priced accountants and CD prices will rise again) CDR Prices have gone from $20 EACH to less than $1.00.
You be the judge.."
The RIAA talks about how the costs have risen since the invention of the CD player in 1983 (I could have sworn it was earlier than that). They talk about consumer price index and cost of living increases to point out the cost of a CD are inexpensive comparatively. Using their numbers of a price of 12.75 in 1996 to 17.99 ( my number) that's a 41% price increase in 5 years.
Now then, in the same period, the cost of mid range CD Players have come down from around $400 dollars, to around $100 for a single disc machine the costs of the technology, have come way down.
In 1993 cheapest CDR recorder you could purchase was about $4500, yes $4500! Today the cost of a top of the line CDR recorder is under $200. Do the math, (of course the RIAA will have to hire a bank of high priced accountants and CD prices will rise again) CDR Prices have gone from $20 EACH to less than $1.00.
You be the judge.."
riaa - Google Search
riaa - Google Search: "EFF: RIAA Subpoena Database Query ToolInstead, the RIAA-member record labels are filing 'Doe' lawsuits against unnamed individuals and then issuing subpoenas to ISPs as part of the discovery ..."
MPAA and RIAA Information Page - A Resource on RIAA and MPAA Lawsuits and P2P Litigation
MPAA and RIAA Information Page - A Resource on RIAA and MPAA Lawsuits and P2P Litigation: "L a w O f f i c e s o f C h a r l e s L e e M u d d J r.
Providing Legal Representation to Individuals and Business Organizations"
Providing Legal Representation to Individuals and Business Organizations"
Negativland and the RIAA (archive)
Negativland and the RIAA (archive): "The following archive covers our somewhat successful 1998 skirmish with the Recording Industry Association of America. The Washington Post article has the most succinct overview of what happened. Also included are some links and text we considered relevant to the situation at the time."
The RIAA Prank: Do They Really Care About Kazaa, Grokster, and Napster?
The RIAA Prank: Do They Really Care About Kazaa, Grokster, and Napster?: "The Recording Industry Association of America has been making headlines with their recent threat to sue anyone engaged in digital piracy. Take a look at this photo"
strangle Web radio in its crib by imposing impossible fee structures
strangle Web radio in its crib by imposing impossible fee structuresFacts and Figures
Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)
In addition every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.
85% of all music is released by 5 major labels (Sony, EMI, UMG, Time Warner, & BMG)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC Statement): "At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally." The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
The RIAA on their website say the cost of CD's haven't risen as much as they could have read our take it.
Read the settlement statement of the FTC findings against the Big 5 concerning charges that all five companies illegally modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs
See where the money really goes Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero) Interesting comment from Fox Entertainment Group (FOX) Chief Executive Peter Chernin, who has about as much of a clue as Jack Valenti:
"Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. . .Music companies are much less flexible.. . .It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD," he said.
"I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of Digital Media Association, in a recent interview commenting on Free vs Fee online music. His lobbying group represents music sites that are trying to promote and sell music over the Internet.
"It is not correct to assume that every time a copy is made, a sale is lost," said Gary Shapiro, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. And, he also pointed out that many of the companies he represents, which make computers and other gadgets that enable people to copy music or download MP3s, have seen their sales fall much more sharply.
Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)
In addition every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.
85% of all music is released by 5 major labels (Sony, EMI, UMG, Time Warner, & BMG)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC Statement): "At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally." The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
The RIAA on their website say the cost of CD's haven't risen as much as they could have read our take it.
Read the settlement statement of the FTC findings against the Big 5 concerning charges that all five companies illegally modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs
See where the money really goes Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero) Interesting comment from Fox Entertainment Group (FOX) Chief Executive Peter Chernin, who has about as much of a clue as Jack Valenti:
"Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. . .Music companies are much less flexible.. . .It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD," he said.
"I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of Digital Media Association, in a recent interview commenting on Free vs Fee online music. His lobbying group represents music sites that are trying to promote and sell music over the Internet.
"It is not correct to assume that every time a copy is made, a sale is lost," said Gary Shapiro, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. And, he also pointed out that many of the companies he represents, which make computers and other gadgets that enable people to copy music or download MP3s, have seen their sales fall much more sharply.
Congrats, RIAA: Chilling Effects Have Killed Interest In New Digital Music Startups | Techdirt
Congrats, RIAA: Chilling Effects Have Killed Interest In New Digital Music Startups | Techdirt: "Congrats, RIAA: Chilling Effects Have Killed Interest In New Digital Music Startups
from the nice-work! dept
We've noticed that pretty much every single new and innovative digital music startup that pops up eventually gets sued by the record labels. The labels seem to view this as a part of basic negotiations -- and, in fact, many of the lawsuits have ended in partnership/equity deals. But, those deals tend to be suffocating. Given that (likelihood of getting sued or getting a deal that makes a profitable business impossible), is it any wonder that entrepreneurs are shying away from any sort of digital music startup these days, in favor of opportunities with no obsolete gatekeepers demanding huge chunks of whatever revenue they might one day make?"
from the nice-work! dept
We've noticed that pretty much every single new and innovative digital music startup that pops up eventually gets sued by the record labels. The labels seem to view this as a part of basic negotiations -- and, in fact, many of the lawsuits have ended in partnership/equity deals. But, those deals tend to be suffocating. Given that (likelihood of getting sued or getting a deal that makes a profitable business impossible), is it any wonder that entrepreneurs are shying away from any sort of digital music startup these days, in favor of opportunities with no obsolete gatekeepers demanding huge chunks of whatever revenue they might one day make?"
Boycott The IRAA!
Facts and Figures
Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)
In addition every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.
85% of all music is released by 5 major labels (Sony, EMI, UMG, Time Warner, & BMG)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC Statement): "At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally." The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
The RIAA on their website say the cost of CD's haven't risen as much as they could have read our take it.
Read the settlement statement of the FTC findings against the Big 5 concerning charges that all five companies illegally modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs
See where the money really goes Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero) Interesting comment from Fox Entertainment Group (FOX) Chief Executive Peter Chernin, who has about as much of a clue as Jack Valenti:
"Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. . .Music companies are much less flexible.. . .It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD," he said.
"I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of Digital Media Association, in a recent interview commenting on Free vs Fee online music. His lobbying group represents music sites that are trying to promote and sell music over the Internet.
"It is not correct to assume that every time a copy is made, a sale is lost," said Gary Shapiro, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. And, he also pointed out that many of the companies he represents, which make computers and other gadgets that enable people to copy music or download MP3s, have seen their sales fall much more sharply.
Boycott The RIAA
Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)
In addition every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.
85% of all music is released by 5 major labels (Sony, EMI, UMG, Time Warner, & BMG)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC Statement): "At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally." The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
The RIAA on their website say the cost of CD's haven't risen as much as they could have read our take it.
Read the settlement statement of the FTC findings against the Big 5 concerning charges that all five companies illegally modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs
See where the money really goes Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero) Interesting comment from Fox Entertainment Group (FOX) Chief Executive Peter Chernin, who has about as much of a clue as Jack Valenti:
"Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. . .Music companies are much less flexible.. . .It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD," he said.
"I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of Digital Media Association, in a recent interview commenting on Free vs Fee online music. His lobbying group represents music sites that are trying to promote and sell music over the Internet.
"It is not correct to assume that every time a copy is made, a sale is lost," said Gary Shapiro, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. And, he also pointed out that many of the companies he represents, which make computers and other gadgets that enable people to copy music or download MP3s, have seen their sales fall much more sharply.
Boycott The RIAA
DRM is ****, RIAA Says | TorrentFreak
DRM is ****, RIAA Says | TorrentFreak: "For years the RIAA has defended the use of DRM, much to the dislike of millions of honest customers who actually paid for their music. Now, in a shocking turnaround, the outfit seems to have come to the realization that DRM does more harm than good and has officially declared its death."
Has the housing market hit bottom?
Now that a number of recent housing reports are generating some incredibly positive headlines and the global economy appears to be slowly digging its way out of an enormous hole that was created last fall when the world nearly came to an end, the burning question on the minds of millions of people is ... Has the housing market hit bottom?
Has the housing market hit bottom?
Has the housing market hit bottom?
CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion » RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum
CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion » RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum: "Update (1/6/2009): Prof. Nesson and his students are going down to Rhode Island federal court today to protect Joel’s mother and father from having to surrender their personal computer (and the private information on it) from the RIAA’s hired guns. Learn more about it by reading our press release and following us on Twitter. More information as we get it!
Prof. Nesson and a crack team of CyberOne students is in the process of defending Joel Tenenbaum, a digital native, from the RIAA."
Prof. Nesson and a crack team of CyberOne students is in the process of defending Joel Tenenbaum, a digital native, from the RIAA."
RIAA Lawsuits - Expert Witnesses Fund
A fund to help provide computer expert witnesses to combat RIAA's ongoing lawsuits, and to defend against the RIAA's attempt to redefine copyright law.
You can directly support the work of the Free Software Foundation by becoming a card carrying Associate Member. This donation form is for directed donations towards a fund organized in coordination with Recording Industry Vs The People. Donors can enjoy:A tax deduction for donating to a registered 501(c)3 organization
A listing on our 'Thank GNUs' web page for donations of $500 or more (if desired)
The satisfaction of supporting the defense of the RIAA lawsuits
You can also mail us a donation. Read our Privacy Policy. In 2007 FSF is rated as 4 stars out of 4: 'Exceptional. Exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in its Cause.' by Charity Navigator."
You can directly support the work of the Free Software Foundation by becoming a card carrying Associate Member. This donation form is for directed donations towards a fund organized in coordination with Recording Industry Vs The People. Donors can enjoy:A tax deduction for donating to a registered 501(c)3 organization
A listing on our 'Thank GNUs' web page for donations of $500 or more (if desired)
The satisfaction of supporting the defense of the RIAA lawsuits
You can also mail us a donation. Read our Privacy Policy. In 2007 FSF is rated as 4 stars out of 4: 'Exceptional. Exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in its Cause.' by Charity Navigator."
Loan Servicers Work the Fine Print in Obama Foreclosure Plan | The Washington Independent
Even as the Obama administration presses the lending industry to get more mortgage loans modified, the practice of forcing borrowers to sign away their legal rights in order to get their loans reworked is a tactic that some servicers just won’t give up on.
Waivers requiring borrowers to give up any legal claims related to their mortgages, even in cases where borrowers may be victims of predatory lending, are showing up sporadically in loan modification agreements under the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable plan, consumer attorneys say. They were stunned to find the legal waivers still being used, despite more than a year of efforts – including calls from lawmakers – to get rid of them.
Loan Servicers Work the Fine Print in Obama Foreclosure Plan The Washington Independent
Waivers requiring borrowers to give up any legal claims related to their mortgages, even in cases where borrowers may be victims of predatory lending, are showing up sporadically in loan modification agreements under the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable plan, consumer attorneys say. They were stunned to find the legal waivers still being used, despite more than a year of efforts – including calls from lawmakers – to get rid of them.
Loan Servicers Work the Fine Print in Obama Foreclosure Plan The Washington Independent
DRM is ****, RIAA Says
"For years the RIAA has defended the use of DRM, much to the dislike of millions of honest customers who actually paid for their music. Now, in a shocking turnaround, the outfit seems to have come to the realization that DRM does more harm than good and has officially declared its death."
RIAA Radar
RIAA Radar: Home: "Why is it important to know if an album was released by an RIAA member or not?
That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files. (Feel free to visit the RIAA and Boycott-RIAA.com to learn more!)"
That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files. (Feel free to visit the RIAA and Boycott-RIAA.com to learn more!)"
Recording Industry vs. The People
Recording Industry vs. The People: "Recording Industry vs The People"
Maybe The RIAA Should Just Charge $22,500 Per Song
Maybe The RIAA Should Just Charge $22,500 Per Song: "The question begging to be asked: how is a song worth $22,500? Given that most tracks sell for $0.99 in iTunes, a 100x multiple would put the fine at $99 per song. A 1000x multiple would lead to a fine of $990. You might say that it’s comparable to being fined $100,000 for stealing a comic book, except that in this case it would be more like photocopying the comic and leaving the original on the shelf.
It’s a question the judge is looking into, reports Ars Technica:
Judge Gertner previously announced that she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of due process of the law. While no federal court has ever invalidated an award of copyright statutory damages as constitutionally excessive, the record labels’ litigation campaign has spurred arguments that the Supreme Court cases imposing limits on punitive damages should be extended to statutory damages, which may contain a punitive element.
If a song is worth $22,500, the record industry is truly giving us a bargain by selling them for $0.99 on iTunes."
It’s a question the judge is looking into, reports Ars Technica:
Judge Gertner previously announced that she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of due process of the law. While no federal court has ever invalidated an award of copyright statutory damages as constitutionally excessive, the record labels’ litigation campaign has spurred arguments that the Supreme Court cases imposing limits on punitive damages should be extended to statutory damages, which may contain a punitive element.
If a song is worth $22,500, the record industry is truly giving us a bargain by selling them for $0.99 on iTunes."
Consciousness Capitalism: Corporations Are Now After Our Very Beings | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet
Capitalism has raped the resources of the world. Now corporations are left to strip human experience from life, then rent it back to us.
A few years ago, compliments of the George W. Bush administration, I got an education in political reality. The kind of education that makes you get drunk at night and scream and bitch at every shred of national news:
"Do you see how these capitalist bastards have made so much money killing babies in Iraq? And how they are have brainwashed us and gouged us for every human need, from health care to drinking water?" I'd rage to my wife.
"It's just the way things are," she said. "It's only a system."
My good wife often thinks I have slipped my moorings. But she never says right out loud that I'm crazy because, let's face it, honesty in marriage only goes so far. Furthermore, I'd be the first to proclaim that she's right.
I have slipped my moorings, and am downright ecstatic about it, given what the collective American consciousness is moored to these days. Anyway, I am, as I said, ecstatic. When I am not utterly depressed. Which is often. And always, always, always, it is because of the latest outrage pulled off by government/corporations -- the terms have been interchangeable for at least 50 years in this country, maybe longer.
For all its pretense and manufactured consent, our government is just a corporate racket now, and probably will remain so from here on out. This is a white people's thing, an Anglo-European tradition. Moreover, we no longer get real dictators such as a Hitler, or a good old bone-gnawing despot like Idi Amin. We get money syndicates in powdered wigs or Seville Row suits, cartels of robber barons and banking racketeers.
The corporate rackets of European white people, especially banking, have a venerable history of sanction, dating back at least to when William the Conqueror granted the corporation of London the rights to handle his English loot.
For all his cruelty (he skinned the people and hung their tanned hides from their own windows, and if that ain't the purest kind of meanness, I don't know what is!) William, just like Allen Greenspan and Bernie Madoff, understood that the real muscle hangs out in the temples of banking and money changing.
Even a thousand years before that however, nobody in their right mind dared mess with the money cartels.
DATELINE JUDEA, A.D. 26 -- Pontius Pilate to Jesus: "Look you seem to be a nice Jewish kid from ... where izzit? ... Nazareth? But you gotta quit fuckin wid da moneychangers, cause I get a piece of dat action, see? So stop dickin' with 'em. And especially you gotta swear off this Son of God, King of the Jews shtick. Ain't but one king aroun jeer, and you're lookin' at him. So lay off that stuff, and we can put this whole thing behind us, you and me. On the other hand, I got a couple of thieves I'm gonna do in tomorrow; and you can join 'em if you want. Your call kid. Now whose yer daddy?"
"I am the Son of God."
"Grab a cross on the way out."
On and on it goes. As the bailouts of the bankers recently proved, even Barack Obama, who descended to earth from Chicago with 10 gilded seraphim holding up his balls, doesn't screw with the corporate money changers. Or the banking corporations, or the insurance corporations, or the medical corporations, or the defense corporations ...
Corporations are now, for all practical purposes, the only way anything can get done, made or distributed, or even imagined as a way of anything coming into being (except babies). Look around you. Is there anything, from the food in the fridge to the fridge itself, from the furniture to the very varnish on the floors or the clothes we wear that was not delivered unto us by corporations?
Our dependency on corporations at every level of the needs hierarchy is total. We cannot see beyond the corporate manufactured reality because, to us, it is the only possible reality. We cannot see around it or out of it from the inside. Corporate reality is all permeating. Air tight, too. Each part so perfectly reinforces all of its other parts as to be seamless. Inescapable. In that sense, we are prisoners for life.
The corporate-government-media complex that manufactures our mass consciousness (hereinafter referred to as "the bastards" for clarity purposes) is simultaneously unknowable, yet easy to believe in.
With its millions of moving parts, seen and unseen -- financial, media, manufacturing, technological, material -- no one, not even its most elevated masters, can conceive of the system's entirety, or even in the same way. This great loom of ideation, with its many spindles, flycocks and shuttles, can weave any fantasy one desires and certainly sustain any individual's commodity or identity fetish.
At the same time, the sheer magnitude of corporatism's crushing drain upon humanity -- for the benefit of an elite global few -- is all but invisible to most Western peoples participating in its sustaining rituals.
Corporatism's rituals are as reverentially and unquestionably observed in daily behavior as those of ancient Egypt's theocracy or the blood sacrifice of the Aztecs. The Aztecs thoroughly believed their world would end if the gods were not fed enough still-beating human hearts. We believe that the world turns on employment figures, stock prices, our jobs, productivity and consumption. Hourly, we receive reports from the media priesthood on the health of an aggregate god known as the economy. The masses pause to listen, then ask inside their heads, "Will my job, my only source of family sustenance, disappear? I must try harder."
And so, fearfully, we render tribute to Moloch in the form of increased toil, more sheaves of what they alone produced (for it is labor that produces all authentic wealth) in the form of bailouts and sons sacrificed on the altar of war.
High and low, we have been transfigured into a society of performers behaving the way we are expected to behave as productive citizens. Production as measured by the bastards. And we cannot expect to find any Gandhis or Simón Bolivars among that high caste. One does not get there by leading salt strikes, nor does one appear in their boardrooms on behalf of the masses wearing beggar's cloth.
"The masses, the masses, the masses. Whatever are we to do with them?" laughed a political adviser friend, only half-jokingly. True, we've always been such a herd, always been given to self-imposed blindness of the whole. But now we are blindfolded. There is a difference.
During earlier times in this fabled republic -- and much of it has always been just that, a fable -- there were somewhat better odds of escaping such blindness. Now it is considered the normal condition; we see it as in our best interests to embrace such national blindness. In doing so, we all but ensure a new Dark Age.
Oh, quit bitching you fart-stained old gasbag. The next Dark Age is sure to have a wireless connection and an RFID sex hot line locator chip in your neck. The boys in Tyson's corporate are already doing it to chickens in the poultry market for a couple cents per bird. Just be glad you were born in America!
For sure it will be wired. Because the next phase of history's greatest ongoing screwjob, capitalism, depends on it being wired. With the demise of first mercantile capitalism, and now with industrial capitalism on the ropes everywhere, and after having wasted most of the world's vital resources, you'd think the whole stinking drama of greed and mass exploitation would necessarily draw to a close.
You'd think there would be nothing left to huckster after having pissed in most of the world's clean drinking water, gutted its forests and jungles, leveled its mountains for coal and minerals, and turned the atmosphere into a blanket of simmering toxins, well, you'd think it was time for the bastards to fold the game and go home with their winnings. No such luck.
Enter yet a third phase: Consciousness Capitalism! The private appropriation of human consciousness as a "nonmaterial asset." Or cognitive capitalism, in nerd and pinhead speak.
Which goes to show you can never underestimate the dark bastards at the helm. Yes, these guys are good.
Essentially, we're talking about stripping the human experience from life, then renting it back to humans. So how does one do that? Through the same Western European historical process used to fuck over the world in the first two rounds of capitalism -- propertization. Denying access to something because it's MINE-MINE-MINE-MINE!
Charge rents for your monopoly on the access. Manufacture artificial scarcity, even of human consciousness and experience by redefining and reshaping it. The tools here are legal means such as intellectual property rights, patents softwares ...
Cognitive capitalism by definition requires that mass consciousness be networked at all individual nodes. Each node is its own experiential realm of service relationships, entertainment, travel and the multitude of experience industries that are rapidly coming to dominate the global economy. Life as a paid-for experience, with none of the hassles of ownership.
Rent a Life, Inc.
(Actually, we've always rented our lives from the bastards, under such things as the pretense that mortgage payments were not just another gussied up form of rent, and so forth). If you've got the money to pay for access to their networks, it's great. I guess. If you're too poor, then you are left to fight it out in naked barbarian streets of the unwired. Given the choice, most of us would rather be inside the gates, not on the streets. But any rational person would fear the gatekeepers.
Already we are seeing cognitive mutations of our relationships with our homes, our communities and our idea of what the world is. I had an absolutely brilliant young man visit me in Belize, well known as a futurist on the Internet and avid player of Second Life. By his own admission, he could not find anyone in the entire country he could communicate with.
Community and the world are becoming concepts, images and ideas ungrounded in the earthly "thingness" and the attending husbandry and respect for such, and replaced by the ultimate purchased commodity, the experience of life itself. Each person becomes an experiential Empire of One. Occupant of a single node in the network, seeking personal validation through paid-for personal experience and free from the bonds of human cooperation and responsiveness. Free from material boundaries.
Experience products, compared to those of industrial capitalism, are dirt cheap for the bastards to produce. The hard costs, land, factories, labor, are outsourced (dumped) in China. Let the Mandarin capitalists own those burdens.
The Mandarin capitalists are deliriously happy to accept 'em. Because they can offset those costs in a million ways they'd just as soon not talk about. Like burning the cheapest sweat-labor coal in the dirtiest power plants they can build to power their workhouse chip factories. As in, Hey Chang! It's quitting time. Go beat those goddamned peasant workers back into their chicken cages for the night!"
Meanwhile, back here in the land of free, we are, as always, at least one water buffalo step ahead of the Chinese when it comes to enterprise. Consequently, we have moved on from Proudhon's property-as-theft model, to extortion.
The new extortion is conducted through creation of a state of artificial scarcity, which is done by turning the dials of your patents, softwares and intellectual property rights machinery, which is protected by your corporate legal goon squad.
The time for extortion through consciousness capitalism is ripe in both senses of the word. People in developed nations, America especially, are ditching material goods, the veritable mountain of Asian techno-junk, sweat-labor clothing, and gewgaws, not to mention the now-worthless, overpriced suburban fuckboxes they purchased to store all that stuff in.
Nothing is stranger, or sadder in a way, than watching the monolithic suburban yard sale that is now America suburban Saturday morning. Material assemblage might be a better word than sale, because there are almost no buyers, not even many "for free" takers. Just sellers. Everybody needs cash to pay down the plastic. Or eat. It's broke out there. (Although Europeans and North Americans don't really know the meaning of the word broke yet. Ask folks south of the equator).
Meanwhile, at the Twilight Zone Café, in Winchester, Va., Ernie, the retired backhoe driver takes another pull on his Old Milwaukee beer and says: "Now tell me this perfessor, didn't we bring all this on ourselves? Ain't we got some personal responsibility for what happens to us?"
Good question. Did we create this catastrophic system, or was it created by the bastards, and in turn re-created us?
How much is attributable to the smallness and ratlike sensibilities of ordinary men such as ourselves? Has human ingenuity and ability to mass replicate goods and information provided nothing more than a theater of operations for some macabre and prolonged last act in the human drama -- ecocide?
"Oh, science will come up with something," observes Ernie. "It always does."
I bite my tongue and don't say that I believe human ingenuity is much overrated stuff. But even assuming it isn't, and that we all get issued solar-powered houseboats during the global-warming meltdown, we're still gonna need oxygen.
Maybe Ernie is right, though. Maybe we did bring all this on ourselves by not accepting that new "personal responsibility," the Republican Party proffered a while back. But I'm blaming the bastards anyway, because first off, they've got all the power; and second, they've become obscenely rich off it; and third, I don't like the fuckers to start with. And it's not because I am jealous of their wealth either. I leave that mediocre sort of animal jealousy to realtors and super-striving dentists.
After a rather short stint in "the ownership society," material products are now increasingly replaced by immaterial licensed experiences. We will no longer "own" anything, much less attempt to own everything we can lay hands on. Which is good. But the bastards will finally own everything. Which is bad.
Certainly cognitive capitalism will relieve stress on the world's resources to some degree. A nation of cyber-vegetables trying to get laid or get rich in a Second Life-type experience may be easier on poor old Mother Earth, though she's probably be gagging at the thought of what we'll have become.
Malcontent that she is, Mother Earth has been unhappy with man's behavior for a long time. And after being, bombed, mined, poisoned and generally molested for so long, who can blame her for her opinion, which is that, "On the sixth day, God fucked up."
Three beers and a couple thousand words later, it's hard to disagree.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141668/consciousness_capitalism:_corporations_are_now_after_our_very_beings/?page=entire "Capitalism has raped the resources of the world. Now corporations are left to strip human experience from life, then rent it back to us."
A few years ago, compliments of the George W. Bush administration, I got an education in political reality. The kind of education that makes you get drunk at night and scream and bitch at every shred of national news:
"Do you see how these capitalist bastards have made so much money killing babies in Iraq? And how they are have brainwashed us and gouged us for every human need, from health care to drinking water?" I'd rage to my wife.
"It's just the way things are," she said. "It's only a system."
My good wife often thinks I have slipped my moorings. But she never says right out loud that I'm crazy because, let's face it, honesty in marriage only goes so far. Furthermore, I'd be the first to proclaim that she's right.
I have slipped my moorings, and am downright ecstatic about it, given what the collective American consciousness is moored to these days. Anyway, I am, as I said, ecstatic. When I am not utterly depressed. Which is often. And always, always, always, it is because of the latest outrage pulled off by government/corporations -- the terms have been interchangeable for at least 50 years in this country, maybe longer.
For all its pretense and manufactured consent, our government is just a corporate racket now, and probably will remain so from here on out. This is a white people's thing, an Anglo-European tradition. Moreover, we no longer get real dictators such as a Hitler, or a good old bone-gnawing despot like Idi Amin. We get money syndicates in powdered wigs or Seville Row suits, cartels of robber barons and banking racketeers.
The corporate rackets of European white people, especially banking, have a venerable history of sanction, dating back at least to when William the Conqueror granted the corporation of London the rights to handle his English loot.
For all his cruelty (he skinned the people and hung their tanned hides from their own windows, and if that ain't the purest kind of meanness, I don't know what is!) William, just like Allen Greenspan and Bernie Madoff, understood that the real muscle hangs out in the temples of banking and money changing.
Even a thousand years before that however, nobody in their right mind dared mess with the money cartels.
DATELINE JUDEA, A.D. 26 -- Pontius Pilate to Jesus: "Look you seem to be a nice Jewish kid from ... where izzit? ... Nazareth? But you gotta quit fuckin wid da moneychangers, cause I get a piece of dat action, see? So stop dickin' with 'em. And especially you gotta swear off this Son of God, King of the Jews shtick. Ain't but one king aroun jeer, and you're lookin' at him. So lay off that stuff, and we can put this whole thing behind us, you and me. On the other hand, I got a couple of thieves I'm gonna do in tomorrow; and you can join 'em if you want. Your call kid. Now whose yer daddy?"
"I am the Son of God."
"Grab a cross on the way out."
On and on it goes. As the bailouts of the bankers recently proved, even Barack Obama, who descended to earth from Chicago with 10 gilded seraphim holding up his balls, doesn't screw with the corporate money changers. Or the banking corporations, or the insurance corporations, or the medical corporations, or the defense corporations ...
Corporations are now, for all practical purposes, the only way anything can get done, made or distributed, or even imagined as a way of anything coming into being (except babies). Look around you. Is there anything, from the food in the fridge to the fridge itself, from the furniture to the very varnish on the floors or the clothes we wear that was not delivered unto us by corporations?
Our dependency on corporations at every level of the needs hierarchy is total. We cannot see beyond the corporate manufactured reality because, to us, it is the only possible reality. We cannot see around it or out of it from the inside. Corporate reality is all permeating. Air tight, too. Each part so perfectly reinforces all of its other parts as to be seamless. Inescapable. In that sense, we are prisoners for life.
The corporate-government-media complex that manufactures our mass consciousness (hereinafter referred to as "the bastards" for clarity purposes) is simultaneously unknowable, yet easy to believe in.
With its millions of moving parts, seen and unseen -- financial, media, manufacturing, technological, material -- no one, not even its most elevated masters, can conceive of the system's entirety, or even in the same way. This great loom of ideation, with its many spindles, flycocks and shuttles, can weave any fantasy one desires and certainly sustain any individual's commodity or identity fetish.
At the same time, the sheer magnitude of corporatism's crushing drain upon humanity -- for the benefit of an elite global few -- is all but invisible to most Western peoples participating in its sustaining rituals.
Corporatism's rituals are as reverentially and unquestionably observed in daily behavior as those of ancient Egypt's theocracy or the blood sacrifice of the Aztecs. The Aztecs thoroughly believed their world would end if the gods were not fed enough still-beating human hearts. We believe that the world turns on employment figures, stock prices, our jobs, productivity and consumption. Hourly, we receive reports from the media priesthood on the health of an aggregate god known as the economy. The masses pause to listen, then ask inside their heads, "Will my job, my only source of family sustenance, disappear? I must try harder."
And so, fearfully, we render tribute to Moloch in the form of increased toil, more sheaves of what they alone produced (for it is labor that produces all authentic wealth) in the form of bailouts and sons sacrificed on the altar of war.
High and low, we have been transfigured into a society of performers behaving the way we are expected to behave as productive citizens. Production as measured by the bastards. And we cannot expect to find any Gandhis or Simón Bolivars among that high caste. One does not get there by leading salt strikes, nor does one appear in their boardrooms on behalf of the masses wearing beggar's cloth.
"The masses, the masses, the masses. Whatever are we to do with them?" laughed a political adviser friend, only half-jokingly. True, we've always been such a herd, always been given to self-imposed blindness of the whole. But now we are blindfolded. There is a difference.
During earlier times in this fabled republic -- and much of it has always been just that, a fable -- there were somewhat better odds of escaping such blindness. Now it is considered the normal condition; we see it as in our best interests to embrace such national blindness. In doing so, we all but ensure a new Dark Age.
Oh, quit bitching you fart-stained old gasbag. The next Dark Age is sure to have a wireless connection and an RFID sex hot line locator chip in your neck. The boys in Tyson's corporate are already doing it to chickens in the poultry market for a couple cents per bird. Just be glad you were born in America!
For sure it will be wired. Because the next phase of history's greatest ongoing screwjob, capitalism, depends on it being wired. With the demise of first mercantile capitalism, and now with industrial capitalism on the ropes everywhere, and after having wasted most of the world's vital resources, you'd think the whole stinking drama of greed and mass exploitation would necessarily draw to a close.
You'd think there would be nothing left to huckster after having pissed in most of the world's clean drinking water, gutted its forests and jungles, leveled its mountains for coal and minerals, and turned the atmosphere into a blanket of simmering toxins, well, you'd think it was time for the bastards to fold the game and go home with their winnings. No such luck.
Enter yet a third phase: Consciousness Capitalism! The private appropriation of human consciousness as a "nonmaterial asset." Or cognitive capitalism, in nerd and pinhead speak.
Which goes to show you can never underestimate the dark bastards at the helm. Yes, these guys are good.
Essentially, we're talking about stripping the human experience from life, then renting it back to humans. So how does one do that? Through the same Western European historical process used to fuck over the world in the first two rounds of capitalism -- propertization. Denying access to something because it's MINE-MINE-MINE-MINE!
Charge rents for your monopoly on the access. Manufacture artificial scarcity, even of human consciousness and experience by redefining and reshaping it. The tools here are legal means such as intellectual property rights, patents softwares ...
Cognitive capitalism by definition requires that mass consciousness be networked at all individual nodes. Each node is its own experiential realm of service relationships, entertainment, travel and the multitude of experience industries that are rapidly coming to dominate the global economy. Life as a paid-for experience, with none of the hassles of ownership.
Rent a Life, Inc.
(Actually, we've always rented our lives from the bastards, under such things as the pretense that mortgage payments were not just another gussied up form of rent, and so forth). If you've got the money to pay for access to their networks, it's great. I guess. If you're too poor, then you are left to fight it out in naked barbarian streets of the unwired. Given the choice, most of us would rather be inside the gates, not on the streets. But any rational person would fear the gatekeepers.
Already we are seeing cognitive mutations of our relationships with our homes, our communities and our idea of what the world is. I had an absolutely brilliant young man visit me in Belize, well known as a futurist on the Internet and avid player of Second Life. By his own admission, he could not find anyone in the entire country he could communicate with.
Community and the world are becoming concepts, images and ideas ungrounded in the earthly "thingness" and the attending husbandry and respect for such, and replaced by the ultimate purchased commodity, the experience of life itself. Each person becomes an experiential Empire of One. Occupant of a single node in the network, seeking personal validation through paid-for personal experience and free from the bonds of human cooperation and responsiveness. Free from material boundaries.
Experience products, compared to those of industrial capitalism, are dirt cheap for the bastards to produce. The hard costs, land, factories, labor, are outsourced (dumped) in China. Let the Mandarin capitalists own those burdens.
The Mandarin capitalists are deliriously happy to accept 'em. Because they can offset those costs in a million ways they'd just as soon not talk about. Like burning the cheapest sweat-labor coal in the dirtiest power plants they can build to power their workhouse chip factories. As in, Hey Chang! It's quitting time. Go beat those goddamned peasant workers back into their chicken cages for the night!"
Meanwhile, back here in the land of free, we are, as always, at least one water buffalo step ahead of the Chinese when it comes to enterprise. Consequently, we have moved on from Proudhon's property-as-theft model, to extortion.
The new extortion is conducted through creation of a state of artificial scarcity, which is done by turning the dials of your patents, softwares and intellectual property rights machinery, which is protected by your corporate legal goon squad.
The time for extortion through consciousness capitalism is ripe in both senses of the word. People in developed nations, America especially, are ditching material goods, the veritable mountain of Asian techno-junk, sweat-labor clothing, and gewgaws, not to mention the now-worthless, overpriced suburban fuckboxes they purchased to store all that stuff in.
Nothing is stranger, or sadder in a way, than watching the monolithic suburban yard sale that is now America suburban Saturday morning. Material assemblage might be a better word than sale, because there are almost no buyers, not even many "for free" takers. Just sellers. Everybody needs cash to pay down the plastic. Or eat. It's broke out there. (Although Europeans and North Americans don't really know the meaning of the word broke yet. Ask folks south of the equator).
Meanwhile, at the Twilight Zone Café, in Winchester, Va., Ernie, the retired backhoe driver takes another pull on his Old Milwaukee beer and says: "Now tell me this perfessor, didn't we bring all this on ourselves? Ain't we got some personal responsibility for what happens to us?"
Good question. Did we create this catastrophic system, or was it created by the bastards, and in turn re-created us?
How much is attributable to the smallness and ratlike sensibilities of ordinary men such as ourselves? Has human ingenuity and ability to mass replicate goods and information provided nothing more than a theater of operations for some macabre and prolonged last act in the human drama -- ecocide?
"Oh, science will come up with something," observes Ernie. "It always does."
I bite my tongue and don't say that I believe human ingenuity is much overrated stuff. But even assuming it isn't, and that we all get issued solar-powered houseboats during the global-warming meltdown, we're still gonna need oxygen.
Maybe Ernie is right, though. Maybe we did bring all this on ourselves by not accepting that new "personal responsibility," the Republican Party proffered a while back. But I'm blaming the bastards anyway, because first off, they've got all the power; and second, they've become obscenely rich off it; and third, I don't like the fuckers to start with. And it's not because I am jealous of their wealth either. I leave that mediocre sort of animal jealousy to realtors and super-striving dentists.
After a rather short stint in "the ownership society," material products are now increasingly replaced by immaterial licensed experiences. We will no longer "own" anything, much less attempt to own everything we can lay hands on. Which is good. But the bastards will finally own everything. Which is bad.
Certainly cognitive capitalism will relieve stress on the world's resources to some degree. A nation of cyber-vegetables trying to get laid or get rich in a Second Life-type experience may be easier on poor old Mother Earth, though she's probably be gagging at the thought of what we'll have become.
Malcontent that she is, Mother Earth has been unhappy with man's behavior for a long time. And after being, bombed, mined, poisoned and generally molested for so long, who can blame her for her opinion, which is that, "On the sixth day, God fucked up."
Three beers and a couple thousand words later, it's hard to disagree.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141668/consciousness_capitalism:_corporations_are_now_after_our_very_beings/?page=entire "Capitalism has raped the resources of the world. Now corporations are left to strip human experience from life, then rent it back to us."
Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan | Threat Level | Wired.com
Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan | Threat Level | Wired.com: "Two weeks after the Recording Industry Association of America announced it had struck deals with top internet service providers to cut off unrepentant music sharers, not a single major ISP will cop to agreeing to the ambitious scheme, and one top broadband company says it’s not on board.
The RIAA’s announcement came as it revealed it was closing down its massive litigation campaign, which has targeted more than 30,000 individuals for allegedly sharing copyrighted music on the internet. Instead of federal lawsuits, the RIAA claims it would now rely on a series of accords it had reached with 'leading' internet service providers, in which the ISPs have agreed to terminate customers the RIAA catches uploading three times, the association said."
The RIAA’s announcement came as it revealed it was closing down its massive litigation campaign, which has targeted more than 30,000 individuals for allegedly sharing copyrighted music on the internet. Instead of federal lawsuits, the RIAA claims it would now rely on a series of accords it had reached with 'leading' internet service providers, in which the ISPs have agreed to terminate customers the RIAA catches uploading three times, the association said."
MPAA Says No Proof Needed in P2P Copyright Infringement Lawsuits | Threat Level | Wired.com
MPAA Says No Proof Needed in P2P Copyright Infringement Lawsuits | Threat Level | Wired.com: "The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.
'Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances,' MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial."
'Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances,' MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial."
ISPs say they are not working with RIAA | RIAA Intimidation.com
ISPs say they are not working with RIAA | RIAA Intimidation.com: "ISPs say they are not working with RIAA
By micro99 at 26 March, 2009, 3:58 pm Last year the Recording Industry Association of America announced it would work with internet service providers (ISPs) to cut down on illegal music downloading in lieu of lawsuits. It appears that might now be happening, although the ISPs deny they are assisting."
By micro99 at 26 March, 2009, 3:58 pm Last year the Recording Industry Association of America announced it would work with internet service providers (ISPs) to cut down on illegal music downloading in lieu of lawsuits. It appears that might now be happening, although the ISPs deny they are assisting."
Slashdot | Answers From Lawyers Who Defend Against RIAA Suits
Slashdot | Answers From Lawyers Who Defend Against RIAA Suits: "What should we do to prevent needing your services? Another way of putting this is, how do we avoid getting sued by the RIAA?
Beckerman:
All of the cases that I have seen stem from people who are using a Fast Track sharing program such as Kazaa, Imesh, Gnutella, LimeWire, etc., having a shared files folder with copyrighted songs in it, even if the song files were obtained legally. So even making sure to pay for all of your downloads wouldn't protect you from a lawsuit. The only way I know to avoid the present litigation wave is to avoid having shared files of copyrighted songs."
Beckerman:
All of the cases that I have seen stem from people who are using a Fast Track sharing program such as Kazaa, Imesh, Gnutella, LimeWire, etc., having a shared files folder with copyrighted songs in it, even if the song files were obtained legally. So even making sure to pay for all of your downloads wouldn't protect you from a lawsuit. The only way I know to avoid the present litigation wave is to avoid having shared files of copyrighted songs."
How it feels to be sued for $4.5m | Music | guardian.co.uk
How it feels to be sued for $4.5m | Music | guardian.co.uk: "How it feels to be sued for $4.5mWhen I contemplate the above sum, I have to remind myself what I'm being charged with. Investment fraud? An attack against the government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave"
RIAA suit defense responses CDFreaks
RIAA suit defense responses CDFreaks: "What might really be the biggest uppercut to the RIAA would be some kind of grassroots campaign that took out major space in newspapers across the U.S., documenting obvious RIAA strong-arm tactics, designed to frighten and intimidate, rather than to defend against a real injustice (the assumption is large-scale music piracy). While such a campaign would cost much, and require great coordination in standardizing the documented cases and salient points highlighting obvious flaws, it might seriously curtail many frivolous lawsuits on the RIAA’s part, greatly reducing the ‘photocopier” lawsuit approach the organization currently embraces."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign - Part I
"A women diagnosed with ADHD and treatment resistant depression might end up taking Strattera, Cymbalta and Zyprexa, all sold by Eli Lilly. The recent prices of these drugs at a middle dose on DrugStore.com were $427 for 100 capsules of Strattera, $391 for 90 capsules of Cymbalta, and Zyprexa was $1,195 per ninety pills. A year of these three drugs would bring in roughly $24,156, per patient, for Lilly and the pharmacy alone, not counting the prescribing doctors' fees and the cost of any therapy sessions deemed necessary."
Check out the full story at The Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign - Part I
Check out the full story at The Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign - Part I
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
RIAA Seeks Web Removal of ‘Illegal’ Court Recordings | Threat Level | Wired.com
RIAA Seeks Web Removal of ‘Illegal’ Court Recordings Threat Level Wired.com: "The Recording Industry Association of America on Monday demanded a federal judge order Harvard University’s Charles Nesson to remove from the internet “unauthorized and illegal recordings” of pretrial hearings and depositions in a file-sharing lawsuit headed to trial."
Happy Independence Day, U.S. Imperialists! | Danger Room | Wired.com
Happy Independence Day, U.S. Imperialists! Danger Room Wired.com: "North Korea defied the U.N. Security Council today by firing off a barrage of ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting defense sources, said the missiles appeared to be Scud-type missiles with an estimated range of 400 to 500 km; they may have been Rodong missiles, which are essentially a scaled-up version of the Scud design."
Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan | Threat Level | Wired.com
Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan Threat Level Wired.com: "Two weeks after the Recording Industry Association of America announced it had struck deals with top internet service providers to cut off unrepentant music sharers, not a single major ISP will cop to agreeing to the ambitious scheme, and one top broadband company says it’s not on board."
Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen | Threat Level | Wired.com
Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen Threat Level Wired.com: "A federal judge is awarding Tanya Andersen, who defeated the Recording Industry Association of America’s file sharing lawsuit, $108,000 in legal fees to compensate for defending herself against the RIAA.
The award, made public Wedesday by U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of Oregon, marks the second time that a target of the RIAA who beat a lawsuit was awarded attorney’s fees. In August, a federal judge ordered the RIAA to pay $68,685 in litigation costs to two Oklahoma women whose case was dismissed."
The award, made public Wedesday by U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of Oregon, marks the second time that a target of the RIAA who beat a lawsuit was awarded attorney’s fees. In August, a federal judge ordered the RIAA to pay $68,685 in litigation costs to two Oklahoma women whose case was dismissed."
Copyrights And Patents | Threat Level | Wired.com
Copyrights And Patents Threat Level Wired.com: "Archive for the ‘Copyrights and Patents’ Category
Pirate Bay Heads to Davy Jones’ Locker"
Pirate Bay Heads to Davy Jones’ Locker"
Monday, July 6, 2009
Measuring Everything That Moves
Measuring Everything That Moves: "Measuring Everything That Moves: The New Surveillance at Work"
RIAA v. The People | Electronic Frontier Foundation
RIAA v. The People Electronic Frontier Foundation: "RIAA v. The People
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers. The recording industry has now filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against well over 28,000 individuals, and there is no end in sight. While the strategy of forcing ordinary music fans to pay thousands of dollars to avoid even bigger RIAA-member lawsuits is itself troubling, many innocent individuals are also being caught in the crossfire."
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers. The recording industry has now filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against well over 28,000 individuals, and there is no end in sight. While the strategy of forcing ordinary music fans to pay thousands of dollars to avoid even bigger RIAA-member lawsuits is itself troubling, many innocent individuals are also being caught in the crossfire."
RIAA v. The People | Electronic Frontier Foundation
RIAA v. The People Electronic Frontier Foundation: "RIAA v. The People
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers. The recording industry has now filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against well over 28,000 individuals, and there is no end in sight. While the strategy of forcing ordinary music fans to pay thousands of dollars to avoid even bigger RIAA-member lawsuits is itself troubling, many innocent individuals are also being caught in the crossfire."
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers. The recording industry has now filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against well over 28,000 individuals, and there is no end in sight. While the strategy of forcing ordinary music fans to pay thousands of dollars to avoid even bigger RIAA-member lawsuits is itself troubling, many innocent individuals are also being caught in the crossfire."
Electronista | Jammie Thomas seeks reduction of $1.9m RIAA damages
"Following an unsuccessful legal battle against the RIAA, Jammie Thomas-Rasset has asked a federal court for a new trial or a reduction of the $1.92 million in damages she was recently ordered to pay, according to CNET News. The defense lawyers have argued that the recent judgment is disproportionate to the crime, with approximately $80,000 placed on each of the 24 copyrighted songs she is accused of illegally sharing." Electronista Jammie Thomas seeks reduction of $1.9m RIAA damages:
File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation | Threat Level | Wired.com
This one's a bit dated, but I'm just getting on the scene. This seems an exeptionally important topic to follow. I don't know. I could be wrong.
File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation Threat Level Wired.com
File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation Threat Level Wired.com
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