Keava said:
RoonMian said:
Therumancer said:
To be honest, all hype aside (and comments about how they would never go to war) I'd imagine if the US went to war like I describe to leverage China and other robber economies France and Germany are two of the nations that would be right behind us given their huge levels of victimization by REAL IP/patent thefts and knockoffs.
Germany cannot actively go to war unless it is a defensive one when one of the NATO countries is attacked. USA attacking China for economic reasons... Will have to do it without Germany.
And now I feel awkward for even trying to counter that ridiculous extremism with fact.
If any country these days would even think of attacking China They would find themselves without money to fund the campaign anyway. Most of national debts are at least partially held by China. Have fun.
Why do You think it's okay to fight for "freedom" and "human rights" in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and so on, but You won't hear a bad word about China from officials ? Western world can't do a thing to the biggest and currently, most thriving, economy in the world. It would be insanity... And good luck convincing Russia to even allow You to use their air space.
On topic however. The problem with ACTA is how it phrases stuff, like with all such bills and agreements. They are way too vague and open to interpretation which causes whole lot of issues. Sure the idea is noble, but it all comes down to execution. That's why in most countries where ACTA was discussed the first to rise red flags were institutions that deal with basic civil and privacy rights.
Another thing is the fact that big corporations having such influence over international laws. Thing is They still think people with blindly buy overpriced products, throwing money into Their, and only Their pockets. Times changed. Ever since services like iTunes or Netflix became popular we were given alternatives. You don't have to buy a full music album for single song, You don't have to pay all the "profit margin" fee's to retailers and distributors and can actually support artists directly.
I recently talked with one of writers in my country who told me that one of biggest media retailers here puts up a 75 % profit margin on books. This means 75% of a book cost goes to the retailer, not the publisher nor the writer behind it.
Industry needs to move forward and accept new trends. People who use internet regularly are often the most aware consumers, and They do research the options before deciding on purchase. Recent studies done showed, that even tho the problem of piracy is obvious and widespread, it's still the same group that spends the most money on all kinds of media, legally, while people who do not use internet spend way less on books/music/movies.
Thing is the big corporation feel threatened by the fact They will loose control over the products, because why do You need a contract with huge music company, which has very little benefits for You as an artist, when You can sell Yourself on Your own through internet, and get majority of the share into Your pocket instead?
Even the recent Tim Schafer's success on kickstarter shows, that if You provide good product You can count on Your fans to throw money at You if You just simply ask them, cutting out the middle man entirely from the process.
Bottom line is, ACTA is just another try to keep status quo without any real benefits for either artists or consumers.
I think your missing the point with China. The only reason why China is owed money is because the US and other countries decided not to push the issue of China's robber economy due to the belief that the money China was making was going to trickle down to the people themselves, who would demand more in the way of rights which the goverment would be forced to give them, leading to a renaissance of sorts where China would reform socially and begin developing it's own patents and IPs in greater numbers which it would want protected and would thus start playing by the rules.
Rather than going in to China and wiping out hundreds of millions of people we took a strategy where we felt by doing nothing the problem would correct itself.
China loaned money to the US and other nations largely in return for us not attacking them, this being money we needed t operate our goverments that would otherwise have been obtained from taxing businesses. In the context of a strategy game this would be considered "tribute", in reality it's phrased diplomatically as a loan.
This is why so many people talk about China basically lending us back the money it stole from us. The goverment(s) not backing business interests while they were being robbed... taking care of itself and it's operations, but letting the people who developed the product hang, are also a big part of why relations between businesses and the US goverment suck, and played heavily into the politics around the bank crashes and so on. Granted this IS a great simplification but it touches on a lot of things, not only this, but how we have problems with US businesses not doing things like using sweatshop labour to produce goods cheaply to compete with those knocking off their patents. The goverment pretty much letting their ideas being stolen but not letting domestic business even try and match the production costs for moral reasons. It can get pretty nasty on all sides, and involves a lot of issues that all boil down to this.
The thing is that economics and being owed money does not stop wars. Businessmen have been argueing since there has been trade that war was impossible due to the system of debts. In the end it all comes down to military power which is why the saying "Free Trade means he with the biggest guns trades freely" exists. A debt is only as good as the abillity of the person the money is owed to to collect it.
Now, instead of reforming China continued to oppress it's people and fed the money it was making into it's military. Building up it's naval forces in paticular so it could project it's huge population, and shore up the big weakness that has prevented it from becoming a world power. As it becomes more powerful those debts, irregardless of why they came to be, become more of an issue. See if China becomes powerful enough to collect on those debts because we let things continue down this road, we're in trouble because of our own strategy. This is one of the reasons why the longer we wait in going to war, the worse the overall situation becomes. Representing roughly 1/3rd of the population, and having that much land, China can outproduce the US and many other nations combined in an absolute sense, if it gains military superiority we're never going to take it back, and China is going to be able to continue to rob people at the very least, personally I think it's eventually going to turn into them invading other nations for living space.
There is plenty about it out there, I haven't just concocted this overnight, I've put a LOT of thought into it, and have been following the situation for a long time.
That's all just a side point though (as long as it is), the point about China is simply that their robber economy is the real issue. All of this ACTA/SOPA stuff is just a smoke screen for the goverments to seem like they are doing something without actually addressing the real issues because a war like the one that is nessicary is not something anyone wants to start. Basically you have politicians passing the buck hoping someone else down the road will do it and put the blood on their hands, so they won't have to and can milk their political careers.
The simple fact that these laws ultimatly wind up cutting into civil rights and giving the people less power is just a side benefit. If they pass good, if they don't, lawmakers can point to them and say "hey we tried" when issues of IP violations come up... totally overlooking that the actual issues involving patent and IP violations that are hurting national economies are not internal matters... the major culprits do what they do because they aren't following the laws to begin with.
-
Oh and in response to the guy who commented on Germany, understand that this wasn't a complete breakdown on everyone's roles. Germany would back the war, it doesn't mean it would actually send an army, and there is a LOT it can do besides them, such as providing economic and material support. If an actual war effort gets going the nations (like the US) that are largely responsible for the limitations on Germany would be inclined to loosen up on them.
To be honest throwing in with the US, win or lose, could lead to Germany actually being asked to build up another military, and have it spun into a lot of propaganda forgiving two world wars. Even if the war was lost, if everyone wasn't destroyed or conquered Germany could benefit from that for a long time to come.... but I digress, I don't think Germany would wind up being asked to build a military and send it to begin with, but if we did the actual request would probably be a sort of political wet dream for them because simply being asked to do it would carry meaning on a lot of differant levels.
