Yeah, I know the words in the title are made up, but bear with me.

Copywrongs are [amongst other things] the current pushes by the media companies [not the artists though] to extend UK copyright protection to 95 years. 95 years.

Hands up everyone who has music from 95 years ago? Don't be shy. Come on. No? Oh.
Hands up everyone who has music from 50 years ago? Ah there are some about. You do realize that currently these will fall out of copyright and into the public domain? That artists such as The Beatles, Elvis, Haley and the Comets, Louis Armstrong and so on [I've run out of artists from that era ...] will be public domain in the 2010's?

We can't have everyone enjoying the music without having to pay for it, can we? Well yes, we can, and must.

Perpetual copyright can be achieved by gradually incrementing the copyright protection legislation till it is in effect perpetual. Disney's copyright extensions to works from the 1920's meant that Mickey Mouse et al won't enter the public domain till 2019+, instead of the original 2003.
I'll take bets that in 2015, Disney will be approaching Congress for an extension.

Whilst copyright is essential to encourage works to be produced, it should not allow an artist to use one work as their sole income because of perpetual or ridiculously long copyright terms.
We could see Disney et al stop producing works and only enforce current copyright, whilst "lobbying" the US Congress to extend copyright protection.

This moves us to the question: if the current media companies move to enforcement rather than creation, what will we be listening/watching/enjoying 50 years from now? If anything like the opening question, we'd be bored of today's music/movies/arts in 50 years time, and expecting something new.

This is where the Shareright bit comes in. There are already mechanisms in place, such as the Creative Commons which allow people use of works in a legally lenient way. Artists are against DRM and suing fans. The IPPR are calling for it to be legal to copy CD's for personal use [also see http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=2404].

What is needed now is legislation to be brought in to enforce the original purpose of copyright; encouraging artists to create new content. The original copyright law in the UK from the 1700's allowed 14 years copyright, with an extension of another 14 years if applied for.
Thats 14 years regardless of whether the author is alive or not. Not the current "life of author plus 50".

If you do produce content, use a Creative Commons License, so that users can enjoy, copy, and distribute your works legally.

In other news... RailMan is coming along nicely, I'm currently working on the server/client sockets; Uni is good, I'm finally enjoying it ; Lapwing-Linux is in limbo, wayyy too much to do [like writing articles on copyright law that no-one reads ... ].

Enjoy the rest of the day peoples!

Using a random plugin from guifications.org, I've found this website http://www.bash.org, which is a load of random IRC chat snippets people have posted in.

The best one so far is this one;
<[Cadaver]> There were three people on an airplane. One was Thomas Jefferson. One was George Bush. And the last was Bill Clinton. They opened up the airplane door and Thomas Jefferson threw out a 100 dollar bill and said "I just saved a family!" George Bush looked at Jefferson and then threw out 2 100 dollar bills. He then said, "I just saved TWO families!" Bill Clinton looked at Thomas Jefferson then at George. He sighed and pushed George Bush off the plane and said "I just saved the world!" ^_^

http://www.bash.org/?416874

Ah, how I laughed

This is cool, always thought it would be cool to do;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=411993&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source

Tank Paintballing. I can imagine my brother charging across the battlefield shouting "FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!" all day. The thing is, I think when he ran out of ammo he'd shout something like "Ram the b*stards!! Ram em!!"

Come to think of it, it's why I always lost when playing Halo against him in tanks. Damn. I think I'd be the driver in his tank ...

I want to go play with paintballing tanks .....

UpdateNow for something completely different: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A88XB7_Jz7s
Use WPA, MAC filtering, change the broadcast channel and do not broadcast the ESSID.

We'm all doomed:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15347.htm

I'm off to find a bunker somewhere. Or learn Mandarin/Russian.

The wikipedia article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006].

Wow. It's all I can say.

No "sam's alarmist, anarchist, anti american" calls please, this is real, written down and passed into law.

You are an "unlawful enemy combatant" [UEC] if you have "... been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."

Re-read the emphasized bit. Read it again. This gives the President and Secretary of Defense carte blanche to declare people UEC's from within hidden tribunals. This could happen in the field, with American officers deciding there and then that some innocents are UEC's and taking action.

Reading through more of it, and in an effort not to bore you , heres a quick fire summary;

1) The judge may include heresay, warrantless evidence, testimony obtained through "coercion" [coercion is defined by the President, torture, rape etc are not allowed] and "classified evidence not made available to the defense", with only a military lawyer present; this jumps up and down on the Third Geneva Convention, Article 3, ie "The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
2) Oops, not allowed to use the Geneva Conventions in defense anyway; "No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus"
3) "the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions ... which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions" Err, right; the USA reserved the right to punish persons detained under the Geneva Conventions with the death penalty.
4) The right not incriminate oneself is effectively removed, as evidence gathered under "coercion" is allowed, ie the interrogators can legally beat a false confession out of a UEC and declare it as evidence.
5) Back to the Third Geneva Convention, Article 17; "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." Looks like they'll ignore that one as well.

Ah well, theres more I can go on about, but I can tell some people have already gone to sleep.

I would hope that the UK government now sees the USA for what it is; a thug and bully.

If you went to a supermarket whose security guards took away shoppers and staff in the middle of the store and came back with said person bruised and got someone else, then did it again and again, who frisked you on the way in, frisked you on the way out and only let you come in with a signed permit, whilst telling you all the time it's for your own security and safety, you'd quickly go elsewhere.

The UK needs to find somewhere else to shop. And quickly, else the combination of beatings and "security announcements" will brainwash us into accepting it as normal, or worse, becoming a security guard at the store.