Dáil to discuss Sherlock's changes to copyright law next Tuesday

50 mins?

Jaysus lads, are ye serious?

Sean has the real look of a committed idealogue in that picture, doesn't he?

"I know what is best, no need to debate this" kinda thing?

The problem isn't Sherlock, and it isn't even this SI, the problems deeper than that. It's that in this system of government, once you're in Government, there are no more checks or balances until the next General Election. People can make noise and protest, sure, but you still get your way now and your salary every month and your unvouched expenses and your pension once you get voted out of office. And face it, if you had that, you wouldn't care what Joe Public said....

A lot of the lobbying groups behind SOPA-ACTA vehmently oppose even the idea of free software such as blender.org - Home, ardour - the digital audio workstation, GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program and List of Linux distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sooner or later those people will bend any law to go after Linux and other programs that distribute freely, that are written by communities of people for the benefit of all, instead of the greed of a few.

That literally is what is happening on the ground at the moment in the lobbying industry.

If you care about being able to download your copy of Blender in 5 years without going to jail, then it would be a good idea to oppose SOPA-ACTA.

Just in case you think I support people being able to crack software and illegally upload films to the internet, I do not.

The laws being proposed are nothing to do with people distributing illegally cracked software or the latest bluray.

The laws being proposed as designed to restrict copyright protection to very powerful organisations and prevent ownership of copyright outside of those powerful organisations.

If ACTA was a proposed law designed to stop illegally copied software and films, I would probably support it. I know what it is like to be ripped of by someone copying my work and I also know the financial losses are real.

SOPA-ACTA is not about protecting artists, coders or ordinary people holding patents/copyrights.

SOPA-ACTA is purely about restricting copyright and patent protection to powerful organisations at the expense of artists, coders and the freedoms of the general public.

A Dáil debate on copyright law should be fascinating.
I hope someone explains to Mattie and Ming that its not about copying homework into your copybook

Originally Posted by Astral Peaks

50 mins?

Jaysus lads, are ye serious?

Sean has the real look of a committed idealogue in that picture, doesn't he?

"I know what is best, no need to debate this" kinda thing?

Hhhmmm....maybe Astral, although my interpretation of his look in this picture is more like:

''Right lads, what is I have to do? Sign this law in....OK no problem.....so, what am I signing again....?''

Minister Sherlock is further confusing the issue by on one hand stating that all involved stakeholders should get together round the table to discuss the issue, whilst on the other saying he wants to press ahead with the legislation anyway.

For an apparently intelligent guy, he's coming across as a naive young lad being lead by the corporates who want this legislation in.

Here's a post for the mods (and maybe DC) to consider...

Below is a copy of a screenshot of Sean Sherlocks website home page. The website has a copyright declaration in its footer and presumably the content etc is the Intellectual Property of Sean Sherlock. (Ironically the screen shot also highlights copyright violations that existed on the site until they were removed on Wednesday this week, but maybe we'll ignore this so as to stick to the main point).

The questions for the mods -

1. Is P.ie (or possibly me) guilty of a copyright violation by sharing on this site.
2. Should P.ie remove the image to protect itself against allegations of copyright violation.
3. If the image is removed, does this set a precedent where all images shared here need to be vetted for copyright violation.

or, are we all unsure about where we stand on this and some clarification / guidelines are required on P.ie.

The proposed new legislation gives copyright holders the legal right to seek an injunction whereby ISPs can be obliged to block access to websites violating copyright law. Theoretically this includes P.ie, and is therefore relevant to all who use this site.



Mods - do you have a clear and consistent policy on this one, or is it something to start thinking about?

I will use the program blender.org - Home as an example of how this law will work in reality, before a Barrister even gets case law established. Case law on this could be an even bigger nightmare, particularly with the uneducated judges that Ireland has.

Sooner or later some very smart Lawyer-Barrister-Solicitor in Ireland or Europe will read this legislation and then get some coders to search for and discover that one or two obscure lines of code deep in the bowels of a program such as blender.org - Home "resemble or are similar" to lines of code in a product that one of his clients has under copyright protection or a company that he can approach to act for. Under SOPA-ACTA, that would be enough for a company to get a judge to authorise immediate confiscation of the domain names of every server that was used to download the program Blender.

It would, of course, eventually be sorted out in court, but only after if the server owners and code writers had spent in Ireland several hundreds of thousands of euros and possibly years on legal defense - unless they chose to settle the case - with a large part of the settlement going to the clever solicitor-barrister-lawyer.

It would't take that long before it became virtually impossible to find a server that would support download of *any* open source software such as Blender, and that is how it will effects all Open Source users of which there are tens of millions. For example The governments of Thailand and China officially fund writing open source books and tutorials for the program Blender in their respective countries.

China is a major Linux user as installed in possibly more than 100 million computers and over 300 million mobile phones, as well as all there servers, routers and various other computer equipment. Claim copyright on code that is installed on any Chinese government, university, school, business computers and the Chinese will go completely nuts. China has almost a soldier to every man woman and child in Ireland and is armed to the teeth with nuclear weaponary, as well as supplying us with all our clothing and most of our electronics. China could leave us all naked and with no new mobile phones although would not be bothered to do anything else. Sherlock is clearly deluded with delusions of grandeur.

Any time a Barrister or politician lobbies for a new law to "protect people", always take a closer look and scrutinise it very carefully for the fine print that gives the barristers a license to print money in a court of law. You'll find that what he/she is really seeking is another avenue by which lawyers can execute this form of legalized extortion of innocent citizens who are innovators who drive the economy in their respective areas of industries. This is true in the entire western world.

Any law that has been crafted in such a way, so as to appear to protect programmers and artists, you can safely bet that there would will be numerous loopholes that allowsbarristers to collect huge fees while paying a pittance to the "aggreived parties", while incurring zero risk for themselves. In that process that entire area of industry will be turned into a legal quagmire, which will stagnate and be under the complete control of only those who can afford to license it, even if it started out as purely open source.

Copyrights worldwide are governed under the Convention of Berne, since 1886. This legislation could potentially be and most likely will be in contradiction of the Convention of Berne. That could make Sherlock in breach of the Convention of Berne. International courts have always judged in favour of that convention in court cases. There is a serious possibility that the Dail might be passing legislation that Breaches the Convention of Berne and that could put them in the legal hotspot.

This has the potential to see someone endulging in Cute Heur lobbying and politics in front of an international court explaining there actions. That could actually be quite enteraining.

Junior Minister Sherlock has the power to sign the new laws without the assent of parliament

Um excuse me, but is nobody interested in how he has the power to do this ?

Better than nothing. Hopefully the TD's who have a clue will outline the issues and not just throw around buzzwords and hyperbole.

This is a serious piece of legislation which will impact ever person in the country and directly effect the technology sector, and thereby the technology jobs in this country. I hope at least one TD is up to speed on this.

Thats even before you get into the issues surrounding how it will effect every Internet user in Ireland as well.

Originally Posted by Nemesiscorporation

I will use the program (Website references removed on reply because I am a new user and I can't include links in my posts) as an example of how this law will work in reality, before a Barrister even gets case law established. Case law on this could be an even bigger nightmare, particularly with the uneducated judges that Ireland has.

Sooner or later some very smart Lawyer-Barrister-Solicitor in Ireland or Europe will read this legislation and then get some coders to search for and discover that one or two obscure lines of code deep in the bowels of a program such as "resemble or are similar" to lines of code in a product that one of his clients has under copyright protection or a company that he can approach to act for. Under SOPA-ACTA, that would be enough for a company to get a judge to authorise immediate confiscation of the domain names of every server that was used to download the program Blender.

When that happens I will have no tools.

I will have no choice but to use something like 3D Studio Max Premium 2012 which is priced from:
$6,495

We really can't let this happen.

The Government want to encourage Irish Business Start ups in the Gaming industry.

Then this happens!

Does he know the consequences for people like me?


If you would like to see one of the projects I use Blender for:

watch?v=0r2juA5-TAA


I am new to this website and I do not have permission to post a link to my Youtube video so if you are interested you can go to Youtube yourself and paste in the above text.

Originally Posted by Nemesiscorporation

I will use the program blender.org - Home as an example of how this law will work in reality, before a Barrister even gets case law established. Case law on this could be an even bigger nightmare, particularly with the uneducated judges that Ireland has.

Sooner or later some very smart Lawyer-Barrister-Solicitor in Ireland or Europe will read this legislation and then get some coders to search for and discover that one or two obscure lines of code deep in the bowels of a program such as blender.org - Home "resemble or are similar" to lines of code in a product that one of his clients has under copyright protection or a company that he can approach to act for. Under SOPA-ACTA, that would be enough for a company to get a judge to authorise immediate confiscation of the domain names of every server that was used to download the program Blender.

It would, of course, eventually be sorted out in court, but only after if the server owners and code writers had spent in Ireland several hundreds of thousands of euros and possibly years on legal defense - unless they chose to settle the case - with a large part of the settlement going to the clever solicitor-barrister-lawyer.

It would't take that long before it became virtually impossible to find a server that would support download of *any* open source software such as Blender, and that is how it will effects all Open Source users of which there are tens of millions. For example The governments of Thailand and China officially fund writing open source books and tutorials for the program Blender in their respective countries.

You are talking absolute nonsense regarding open source software. These anti-piracy acts have nothing to do with open source software. Open source software is going nowhere. The internet is built on linux/unix for god sake. "Lines of code being similar"?? Of course code in blender is going to be similar to other 3d modelling packages, code for manipulating vectors is going to look the same in any application. You have no clue about software copyrighting so stop talking nonsense.

Originally Posted by independentgamecreator

When that happens I will have no tools.

I will have no choice but to use something like 3D Studio Max Premium 2012 which is priced from:
$6,495

We really can't let this happen.

The Government want to encourage Irish Business Start ups in the Gaming industry.

Then this happens!

Does he know the consequences for people like me?


If you would like to see one of the projects I use Blender for:

watch?v=0r2juA5-TAA


I am new to this website and I do not have permission to post a link to my Youtube video so if you are interested you can go to Youtube yourself and paste in the above text.

I am a Blender user myself.

I am seriously consider a full switch to Blender once all the bugs in the new cycles render engine are sorted out. Basically a kid witha gaming machine with a GTX590 (1000 cuba core) machine can render faster and at higher quality than I can with my Quadro FX5600 based machine, as recent render tests have shown. I was about to build a new machine around a Fermi 6000 graphics card but have decided to wait until I see how the Blender cycles renderer works out on GTX590 based machines as it may work out at half the price.

I like the concept that you have at Mick and Ming the Video Game.mp4 - YouTube

The concept is good and to be honest I had a good laugh to myself the idea behind it. The concept pokes the crisis from a certain point of view, that some people will identify with. As a game concept it is a good idea.

I think you should use it as a training platform for yourself and develop it further. There is potential in that. The games looks playable. I know you have a lot of work to do on textures and other areas, but your coding seems to work quite well from what I saw. I would encourage you to work further on it.

Here is where ACTA is being discussed on Blender Nation in case you have not already seen it. Stop ACTA! | BlenderNation I go by the handle Nemesis on Blender Nation.

I have Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite 2012 on my graphics workstation. I am not buying an upgrade to it again. The EULA is beyond insane. I have friends who travel across borders as part of there jobs and they are starting to get worried as well about Autodesk programs being classed as illegal copies, if they are on a computer that travels across a border. A lot of Irish engineers travel worldwide as there is no jobs back home, so have no choice but to work over borders. I know several Irish people who use Autocad as part of there jobs who literally are working across several countries. They are in breach of there EULA's even though they bought and paid for the programs.

3DS 2012 keeps trying to conect to the internet on my machine which has actually crashed it mid render. It will not activate without an internet connection. Apparently the illegally cracked version gets around that.

I would like to suggest you check out the training DVDs and books on the blender site.

I would recommend the following.
Blender 2.5 Character Animation Cookbook
Introducing Character Animation, 2.5 edition
Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6
Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, And Scenery
DVD training 6: Blenderella
DVD training 7: Blend & Paint
DVD: Vehicle Modeling
DVD: Low Poly Character Training
A good book on Python

Also if you have not already, get yourself a graphics tablet. You don't need the latest from Wacom. The A4 sized tablets from Trust are more than good enough. If you have money I would suggest a 3D Connexion mouse as it comes into its own in Blender.

Keep up the good work and I hope your skills improve well over time.

Andrea

Originally Posted by gimme5minutes

You are talking absolute nonsense regarding open source software. These anti-piracy acts have nothing to do with open source software. Open source software is going nowhere. The internet is built on linux/unix for god sake. "Lines of code being similar"?? Of course code in blender is going to be similar to other 3d modelling packages, code for manipulating vectors is going to look the same in any application. You have no clue about software copyrighting so stop talking nonsense.

Interesting.

You state that Open Source software is going nowhere and then state that the internet is built on linux-unix. Please make up your mind.

As for copyright, you clearly have no idea and also have not read the proposed new rules.

As you are clearly anti-open source you are negating your own arguements with your blinkered thinking.