on a show with more on the growing fuss around attempts to protect us copyright. welcome to the ilona show we look at the real headlines with none of the mersey working live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at a supreme court ruling from yesterday that allows congress to take the works were certain works out of the public domain and then grant them copyright protection again so we can ask if this is a step backwards then as more trouble in the euro zone hedge funds are threatening

to take greece to the human rights court to force the country to make good on its bond payments so we've never seen anything like this try before arty's or me trick athena's producer on the capital account is going to give us all the details and we've told you about the government labeling animal rights activists as terrorists but calling journalists extremists for that kind of critical reporting that's right it's actually happening we're going to speak to will potter who runs the blog green is the new read about the chilling of free speech we'll have all of that and more feet and i couldn't he does have happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has decided to miss. it so today is january nineteenth two thousand and twelve not that really means anything in the mainstream media world to them it's just another day which means just more obsessive political horse race coverage than other seismic shift in the g.o.p. presidential race rick perry expected to drop out two breaking political news stories

right here in the newsroom first up rick perry getting ready to tell his. porters' that he's out major shakeup in the g.o.p. race for the white house there's a surprise just about every day in this race that in iowa the certified caucus results are in and guess what rick santorum won rick perry is out you gingrich is a way back in and it looks like rick santorum won iowa. just notice a little something missing from the news this morning i don't know like that really big thing that happened yesterday where hundreds of websites blacked out their content in protest of these two really bad pieces of legislation that are working their way through the house in the senate just yesterday i was half heartedly congratulating the mainstream media for finally paying attention to sopa and protect ip because let's face it yesterday was pretty hard to ignore the country was up in arms over not being able to get all of their questions answered by going to pedia but after welcoming it to the mainstream media to this real world where

the rest of us live and talk about the issues that actually affect our lives i also predicted yesterday that it wasn't going to last long that by today they'd be back to their useless nonsense and what do you know i was right now this isn't really a testament to my awesome powers of seeing the future not as much so as it is a sad state of affairs about how utterly predictable our mainstream media has become even when they do take a little break from their usual partisan he said she said just for a few hours even for a full day to report on a different story they never follow up so let me do a little follow up for you because this massive protests that we saw nationwide with black out of sight with people calling into the offices and crashing websites of members of congress and actually produced results we gave you a few specific names last night but let me just tell you that overall by the end of yesterday at least six co-sponsors had announce that they withdrew their support from either sopa or or pipa twenty five senators came out in opposition at least

seventy members of congress over all took a stand and publicly voice strong opposition to either one of these bills and ago. pro publica but sides of those seventy there were forty one additional politicians that are now categorized as leaning no on top of that four point five million people signed a google anti-social petition to guess what we finally had an example where the people spoke out and politicians at least in part listened to i'd say that's a pretty big deal i think that is worth the mainstream media following up on but apparently they did it is another example of how they don't actually care about what you care about and that's why they don't cover it because they're not here to inform you they have to get paid by their corporate owners to talk about the nonsense to keep everyone distracted but i don't think that it's working any more so now before and this rant let me just make a few points very clear yesterday was indeed a success on many levels it showed the online activism is a force to be reckoned with when you mess with something that we all use and love and don't want to lose which is the freedom of the internet people aren't going to

sit on their couch and live in apathy and let it slide they'll sit on their couch and blackout websites or overload the websites of members of congress. i kid there's a lot more to it than just that but i do say good job everyone that entertainment industry is already pissed too and it's great hollywood moguls are now reportedly telling president obama that they're going to stop their donations to his campaign because of the administration's stand on sopa and pipa but they'll learn that they won't be able to buy influence forever and so let's hope that that's true let's make sure that's true by staying vigilant about sopa and pipa because while they haven't been voted on yet while sopa is the postponed they're not fully dead so don't like congress think that you're not looking anymore and then try to pass them on the sly but for what was achieved yesterday i think that it's a pretty big deal the mainstream media and their painfully short attention span. they chose to miss.

well some are calling it a bit of unfortunate irony if i may use the words of mike mastic from that the same day that. a massive protest was staged against sopa and pipa the supreme court ruled in favor of more copyright and against the public domain in the case of golan versus holder let me explain the using international copyright treaty known as the berne convention for some of its reasoning as supreme court ruled that congress will have the power to take works they're already in the public domain back out of that public domain and i grant them copyright status to get so if you are a publisher an educator an orchestra conductor that's relied on certain works to do your job and you've been able to use them freely congress can now change that so what is that decision mean for the future how far reaching might it be and as a go against the entire point of copyright as a means of promoting the arts and sciences and encouraging others to produce for the benefit of the public joining me to discuss this is christine again air intellectual property property attorney excuse me and a partner at marcos christie the thank you so much for joining us and i think that

i just butchered your last name i apologize there but let's get into let's get into this case i want to know what your take is not it so you're taking works that have already been in the public domain and they're saying that congress can take them back out and grant them copyright again does that seem like a bit of a step backwards. it is certainly a step backwards in the public domain. is robust and it's allowed any educators as well as other three. to create another chance to include so many people in fabulous projects book on and off line the decision basically takes us as that actor and essentially reaffirmed the decision about nine years ago versus. which gives congress. the thirty over copyright law and so i think you know in the last ten years we've seen so many advances in technology and way to do with technology this is certainly hurt people that use public domain works especially in robust

internet projects that we've seen over the last ten years how much do you think that it might hurt. because some of the people that are arguing against this case said that it is a breach of their free speech rights they've been able to use all this information for all this time and suddenly it's being taken away do you do you think that that's a fair statement to make. certainly. when something's in the public domain is the assumption is that you're able to use it whether you're doing an education project whether you're doing something and it's not education oriented the assumption was it's for public use and so when you take something out of public use and let people have rights against you those words you are hurting all those people that my note for education reasons that otherwise been building on top of that work or integrating that work into new material and so i think it's going to be very hurtful to future content creators who use public so it works i think that educational institutions have been able to integrate in public domain works in the

education process are going to have to now go back and audit how they've been using public domain works but i think more importantly it sort of gives a car on the congress that every time they want to something in the copyright space it seems as though the supreme court sort of reminds it and so back to the. piece of legislation from one thousand nine hundred sixty engine at what is the term of copyright well can actually copyright it and then the bigger question which comes out of this is cases now you can say things that everybody for public use to put them back into private ownership stats and so i think it's really scary in terms of creativity in terms of how people use the internet today and you know especially if we apply it to the types of legislation that our current congress is bringing up we've been talking a lot about sopa about protect ip which are pieces of legislation that they say are there to protect copyright to combat piracy and yet everybody that really looks at the details can tell you that it's not actually going to combat piracy at all and

it's going to do just the opposite so is this the wrong kind of congress to give this power over to. the. and i think that we've seen this and it's with the congress for a long time now unfortunately this attitude towards part of the problem is that this happened with a lot of technology related legislation is there's a misunderstanding of the power of technology and how it's applied and one of the reasons why people share content or share files and i think that this is just part of a larger conversation we've been having about copyright for the last twenty years i'm going to fortunately this decision takes us a step back even further and i think it also gives congress the assumption that you know if they pass something related to copyright trying to protect content owners then you know the court may just green light it whether or not it's constitutional or not i think people are up in arms about so because it was you know laterally giving government agencies the right to decide what's in bridging content and what's not i think the same conversation could be applied to public domain works

now the things that can be taken out of the public domain or this case that you read that way interesting to see what congress does in relation to so and future legislation also we have to look at this ruling at the supreme court made and part of the reasoning too that some of the justices used was that they were talking about the berne convention that there is this international treaty that we have to comply with and so while we decided that some of these works could be in the public domain they weren't yet internationally and these are for and it works but you know i hate to be a little cynical here since when does the u.s. really care so much about international treaties and complying with that we can't help but feel like it almost seems like a little political jab of our own because we want to and have everyone else and force our copyright laws for us around the world. yeah i mean that doesn't work and i think that was copyright arks patents on any type of intellectual property you know international standards or me as a practicing attorney i ran against this all the time at the same time we live in a country where the first and then it is really robust and there's

a right that the first let me guess protected on a day to day basis so. we're sort of have this just the position now of copyright versus the first and then it disappears you know sort of reminds us of how that conversation is going and why it's important for internet activism so activism yesterday and future internet activism in terms of how in congress their opinions are understanding public opinion about copyright and first amendment issues but what do you think of this massive protest that we saw yesterday would you say that it was a success. it was the second time sort of internet history that there's been a rally around issues relating to copyright first amendment rights the communications decency act years ago i was the first time that the internet really rallied around something and it was going to be technology and it was sort of industry crushing so i think there's a lot of potential for a future legislative efforts but at the same time i think that there's also just an

underlying political system that has problems and so i would definitely encourage people even beyond beyond to protect ip act that they let other. congress there. to communicate with their local representatives but i think also just you know exercising their voting rights and exercising their rights it's. not in the political process it's two thousand but we need issues are going to go away courts are still trying to figure out how to grapple with technology so i think the best way for citizens to be actively involved is to use a creativity like they use yesterday and find ways to be involved in the political process on a day to day basis why i think the guest today might help in the sense that at least gave people this feeling that maybe they can actually make a difference if they do go out and vote or call their congress members or write to them and that's not always going to be big money and they get a series and lobbyist that went out at least that was my takeaway christina thank you so much for joining us tonight. i thought of this

a day after the online world came together to fight the deal taken play. it is their war against pirates tell you what sites sell in their most recent break and we're going to talk economics with jimmy trick of hedge funds are fighting back in greece and the world bank gave a very dismal outlook your future will be right. today . these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing operation throughout the day.

and i went out there who is familiar with the internet service mega upload should pay attention because the feds could very well be watching you better off already has made an announcement today that seven people connected to the website have been charged with running a criminal enterprise revolves around copyright infringement and the site has been shut down now megaupload is considered a locker service that allows users to transfer large files on the web which makes it possible for pirates to share things like songs movies and other copyrighted materials we should also note however that there are various other reasons for people to use the service besides sharing movies and music but a grand jury indictment says the site has caused five hundred million dollars in damages to copyright holders and thus far four out of seven people charged have

been arrested in new zealand while the d.o.j. and the f.b.i. continue. one for the last three people linked to the website so it's yet another example of the u.s. using its author already to enforce its rules in foreign countries despite the laws in those countries now the indictment says that those seven people have been charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy and this case has been labeled amongst the largest when it comes to criminal copyright and forcemeat here in the u.s. we should also note that several servers eighteen domain names and fifty million dollars in assets were also seized by the d.o.j. and the f.b.i. now it's ironic here is that this indictment was handed down by a grand jury about two weeks ago yet we are just now hearing about it so could it be just coincidence that this information has been revealed just a day after the massive internet blackout blackout where thousands of websites protested sopa and pipa legislation that is sold as a counter to copyright infringement apparently we weren't the only ones who thought so shortly after they carried out their raid on mega upload d.o.j.

the right way and a universal's web sites were shut down by members of anonymous and i have to this organization said that they will continue to wage war until something is done about sopa but it's clear that despite the number of people growing number of people who have come out opposing these bills the government is going to continue waging its own war against the pirates without the support of the american people and these bills so the fact that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars just to go after seven people that are in charge of a foreign website they can makes it pretty clear this battle is just getting started. it's no secret that an overwhelming majority of americans are saddled in some kind of debt might be credit card debt might be a mortgage but for young americans student loan debt has become an almost insurmountable burden don't forget that last year student loan debt passed the one trillion dollar mark and despite the fact that tuition is going up federal aid in the system programs are being cut due to fears of our growing national debt in fact student loan debt is actually proving to be

a bigger issue than credit card debt something that many would consider ludicrous in the past and so one state has been. really vocal about their tuition problems that would be my former home state of california we've seen several instances across the state in recent years where students of protest of the tuition hikes and today students once again made their voices heard now there are threats of tuition hikes yet again thanks to budget cuts and so governor jerry brown has come forward a proposal that would eliminate three hundred million dollars in funding for education if the state decides not to approve taxes tax increases for wealthy californians so some students decide to stage a sit in at a board of regents meeting at u.c. riverside. so during the sit several students announce alternative ways to help young adults get the education that they desire within the u.c.

school system one of which is actually being met with some interest and of course a lot of criticism of opposable brought forth by you see is a no tuition alternative that would allow students to pay after they graduate rather than before you see the idea here is the graduates of pay five percent of their wages for twenty years and six percent for international and out of state students graduates who go on to work in public service and those who stay in state and do work would receive discounts on their tuition payments so you have to wonder how much of that actually cost students all depends on how much you make the average starting salary for you see graduate is around fifty thousand dollars five percent of that would be twenty five hundred dollars per year now obviously if you make more money than that you can have to pay more back to the u.c. system however if you're a student struggling to get work and this could ease your worries about making those student loan payments so some are labeling this plan as a radical but you see president mark yudof says that he's going to seriously consider it and i commend him for that the status quo is clearly not working and where some people see radical others see innovation so all this is just one option

of the board of regents say they're considering i really hope they dig the time to actually do so time. are changing it's time for our education system to hop on board and think it's a new options. now on the presidential debates here in the u.s. continue to ignore the situation in europe the rest of the world is not just this week the world bank and its global growth forecast by the most inferior years to two point five percent this year and they said of the euro area of my actually contract by point three percent the threat of a greek default is still in the air as failed talks and signals that they just might miss that fourteen point five billion euro bond payment on march twentieth and incomes yet a new problem in order for greece to receive this latest bailout and cut its debt and bond restructuring is considered a key element and greece is considering passing legislation to force all private bond holders to take losses to the hedge funds are fighting back they've now threatened to sue greece in a human rights court arguing degrees of violated bondholder rights so what does it all mean well here to break it down for us is dimitri iffiness producer on r.t.s.

capital count week very nice to have you on the show and i learned a debut interview we're happy to have you here i've been excited all right so first explain this to me because i think that when most people think human rights court they don't necessarily think bondholders why does this go to get so apparently that it's a technicality in the european court of law but i think the real crime here remember when greece signed the first number and of understanding ninety percent of their was written under recall and the agreement was that the rest of that would be written under u.k. law so the point was how do you secure the debt so that the greek government could be sued in a court of law so that bond holders could get their money back this is something that wouldn't happen if they hadn't signed the memorandum and this is kind of where you'd expect this to be the fact that they're calling it a human rights violation is just a technicality but has anybody ever done this before oh absolutely i mean it's an ok i know you had associates they had but i think was ninety six or before the brady bill. restructuring plan in latin america they bought some large amount of money of commercial paper guaranteed by the peruvian government from peru they went

through a legal battle they ended up. and through a brussels court and they had some sort of thing with a clearing house there and they basically got about fifty six million dollars worth of money back from proving government it was a vulture fund they basically bought the debt knowing that they would buy it and then sue the government to get their money so even though the government was foreign it was it was in peru they sued them and actually got money i got a lot of people are saying that this probably isn't necessarily going to make people feel sympathetic towards the hedge funds or towards these bond holders because they consider them to be part of the reason why these negotiations fell apart last week right why this is going nowhere and greece can't come up with a deal what do you think i wouldn't i mean yeah hedge funds are involved in the hedge funds but the headphones are also getting screwed the other side because they're the ones that bought c.d.'s is having those c.d.'s as warren triggered even though greece is already technically defaulted and i think the bigger issue is the banks because the banks are the ones who don't want to take right now so they've been kind of turning this paper all around us with the l.t. our own europe was about it was just about how do you get these banks to buy more

of the crap that they already have in their balance sheet that they don't want to get rid of they want to get rid of but can't so they can keep their ass values i keep saying afloat zombie banks may survive but i would leave it more on the banks than on hedge funds and hedge funds or like. banks with the giant elephant whales in the in the logic it's a blame game these days right everybody wants to point things i would want to there's a plan but so you're saying that you know technically greece already defaulted we still haven't seen this massive chain reaction that a lot of people were expecting so what do you think i mean is are the chances of seeing this just sort of the default the same now as they were a couple of months ago. so it's hard to like put a number on that so probably yes i think that eventually there will be a full default by greece i've been so i said that from the last tranche of it was the six tranche that they got an october last one that they would get i don't think come march it's all over well i don't know yeah i mean what i think is that they have to come to the table and negotiate something or yeah they're going to it's going to be an order the leverage in greece right now they have

a huge depression going on there's deflation that's why the debt to g.d.p. is growing it's growing more so than just the debt because the g.d.p. is. contract so it's a tremendous problem in greece is going to be solved just by and i think austerity measures along well that's the thing too right i mean let's say that they do not get measures let's say if they do do what the i.m.f. and what angela merkel wants them to as you mentioned greece's debt is growing and astronomic rate so even if they supposedly follow the rules here and go along with this deal what is going to help greece at the end of that the fall to. the ideal scenario i think for greece would be a default they maintain the euro for private sector purchases of the government wants to run up a huge amount of of if you want to spend a lot of money they should issue drachmas for the public sector and they can you get the inflation but the private sector continued to use the euro for all the because there are a lot of contracts that are have been issued over time in european infor in europe in europe so be difficult to just break those up there's no reason that they have to exit the euro entirely they could have competing currencies that would be the ideal in for the united states and that be

a deal anyway that would put some sort of curb on central bank money printing so that would be ideal for me i mean i know that would be ideal for you i would certainly be ideal for. this earlier but not for meeting. well it's like that with i.m.f. is saying right now so they came out and said that basically when they look in the future they see the need for a trillion dollars in funds so they want five hundred billion dollars more but where exactly are they going to get this money because the u.s. keeps saying no we're not interested treasury secretary tim geithner keeps making the exact same statement the u.s. is not going to put more into this i am i find it so funny right because the i'm a prince the money the princess the r.'s and her to get those has to be capitalized how does your capitalized because capitalized by these other feel issuing banks has also issued debt based money so they're all bankrupt and they're all rolling over this fantasy game to continue to consolidate wealth in the financial system so it's a shell game i mean if the i.m.f. there have his ability when other bank of they have no capital they get their money are going to stop asking for money with their own interview for their us now but who are they asking they're asking the breaks right they're asking brazil russia and india and china and they want to pan to also take part in this before right for

the g. twenty in mexico so we know what the u.s. the stance is. what are the breaks and what are japan saying what i'm saying also is that even if they ask the chinese all right even if they ask the british in the past brazil if there's germany ok the reality is that these countries that are surplus countries that have savings have let that money out already and are on the hook to debtor nations or debt or com companies or better countries and they're trying to find a way to keep their debts from getting written down so it's all basically a shell game because the debt is so huge that's my point so yeah they can go and ask china for money and they can go but the amount of debt is astronomical the system you were seven hundred trillion dollars in notional durness contracts this is the last number that we got from the b.s. there's not that much g.d.p. on a planet. something really well it's really not and that we've reached now everybody is in such massive debt what are you going to do just just wipe it all out there will because every the thing is the fed doesn't just print money and the banks which is providing they print money with interest hanging from so the system is architected so that every time you print money you have to print more and so the

debt always becomes a matter which is why you have a dead jubilee or you have defaults you can have this perpetual system because all you have maybe don't you believe right if you have everybody is already living it up this way for so long or you could have done that should listen really quick before we wrap it up to you to meet right now that next week you're going to be hosting that have to look out for ali very excited to see and lauren is going to be on her way to die so you know what we can expect to come out of she's going to be rubbing elbows with some big wigs over in davos you know it's high up there in the mountains and. davos is pretty much the place where all the big shots of europe and the u.s. go to call the shots hope in the. stores we hope that she gets into some of those hallways and some of those backroom deals i guess being made to me thanks so much for joining us tonight. just ahead tonight you know the government is going after animal rights activists by calling them terrorists but i can tell you how they went after one journalist and label him an extremist court will try to assess that.

culture is that so much about the mayor's money mentoring is a she said to me the money for my theory and supporters of the stunt on line piracy act claim they are losing billions of dollars a year to stand on the internet opponents of social worth the engine.

it's ten thirty pm in moscow these are your r.t. headlines acar strike back anonymous cripples major u.s. government and corporate websites in response to a crackdown on a file sharing service and pending anti-piracy laws. the syrian opposition holds more mass protests demanding prisoners be released despite a general amnesty granted by president assad earlier this week. and a multi-billion pound battle between a russian tycoon or a monarchy.