How is there a "TechDirt Double Standard"? Over the last few years I have read TechDirt where various studies are discussed that disprove various copyright and patent myths. I have then gone and tried to find studies that would support strong copyright and strong patents.
Honestly, I haven't found them. I have found lots of very questionable studies, but nothing rigorous with defined, published methodologies done by independent and reputable organizations.
So what is the "TechDirt Double Standard" of which you speak? What are the studies that TechDirt ignores or spins?
I always download my Linux distributions via torrents as they are far faster (and cheaper for those publishing distributions).
These are huge. I am having a hard time believing I am the only one that does this.
The torrent protocol is useful and is used for all sorts of open source tasks where code and meta information needs to be distributed across the web.
I don't think such uses would be more than a few percent all torrent uses, but I find it difficult to believe they would be less than a percent. On top of that, much content is distributed via torrent legally.
So I kinda doubt the 99 percent copyright infringing statistic for torrents.
Actually, I don't pirate much of anything. I buy cable at some 70 dollars a month, and go to the theaters for the movies I want to watch (I rarely want to watch a movie at home).
I don't buy music at all. If I am going to listen to something, I listen to podcasts, and I donate to support the podcasts I like.
However, I am also a podcaster, and it really stinks that it is so hard to legally use content in a podcast that I avoid everything but absolutely free and clear original content. Sure I might like a bit of music, but is it worth the risk?
You might think that everyone pirates and is just out to steal from Big Content, but you would be wrong in so many ways. Much of the reason I hate this obsession about pirates is that it is a huge waste of time that could be dealt with much quicker and easier if legal products were just available for sell at a price that makes sense.
The Free flow of digital information is here forever. As network speeds go up, computational power for encryption goes up, and as storage costs continue to plummet, the flow of digital information will increase. The more digital information can be exchanged, the more people will exchange that information. And much of that information will be so called copyrighted material.
That is the way it is, and no law can change the facts.
The goal of the MPAA is to push the Federal Government to fight piracy by whatever means necessary.
Freedom of speech? Not important when compared to copyright.
Due process? Not important for domains where 1) The websites in question do not belong to Big Content, and 2) the domains might be in the vicinity of a copyright infringer, or 3) the domain could have links to a copyright infringer, or 4) the MPAA doesn't really like/understand/care what the website is doing.
Shake downs? Great! Free Money!
Governmental mandated backdoors into every formally secure system for communications and transactions? WE Need this to stop piracy/counterfeiting/child porn/terrorism! Who cares if these systems get hacked and people lose their retirement/paychecks/privacy/savings?
When someone is Fighting Freedom like the MPAA, they deserve the recognition and honor that fits their efforts!
The MPAA and their members are THE Freedom Fighters of Our Age!
I don't know about Shakespeare, but if you listen closely at Bach's grave you can still hear the scratching....
Apparently though long dead, he is still decomposing...
Wait, does this mean that all jokes that include historical figures are potentially against the law? Should I be worried about Bach's great great great great great great great nephew's wrath?
"The Catholic Church shut down Galileo for a hundred years. I think we can shut down Julian Assange.''
The quote is exactly right, but in ways perhaps this Australian Parliament Member did not intend.
Heliocentrism was accepted by the Church as soon as it was *actually proven* 100 years later. Heliocentrism did not threaten the Church, but the fact that Galileo could only provide circumstantial evidence was used to club Galileo.
If Galileo wasn't punished for heliocentrism, what was his transgression? Galileo was punished for insulting the Pope, which he did in his book, which remained banned for that reason.
Let's be clear: Galileo was NOT held guilty for his study of the nature of our universe, but punished for insulting the politically powerful.
Likewise, Julian Assange's transgression is NOT publishing leaks, and providing a means by which whistle blowers can uncover dark secrets. His transgression is uncovering dark secrets of the politically powerful U.S. Government.
A veneer of science was tacked to Galileo's punishment, which embarrasses the Church today. A veneer of legalities may well be tacked to some punishment of Julian Assange for publishing these leaks from the U.S. Government.
This is TechDirt, so I know that we are going to worry about copyright more than anything else. Still....
I have tried to find any data to indicate that Credit Scores are related to risk, i.e. that Banks other lenders REALLY need to charge more interest to someone with a 650 score rather than a 700 score to make the same return.
In fact, when banks were on the edge, I heard EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE was true, that someone with a near perfect score never pays fees, pays lower interest, and in general avoids all the traps lenders set up to make more money. That someone with a 600 or 650 score is statistically the same risk as someone with a 700 or 750 score, but is going to pay way more fees and penalties plus pay the higher interest.
So this question is really just as relevant to the public as a whole. Why won't banks do the studies to PROVE their polices actually do account for added risk?? Because they can't, and in fact much of the whole "Credit Score" scam is just a legal way to collude to charge most Americans more money.
None of the studies of Autism and Vaccines over the last 10 years have ignored kids that were "fine until vaccinated". That would be the point.
The problem is that regardless of whether you vaccinate a child or don't vaccinate a child, the same percentages of kids in both groups end up with Autism.
I do have children. But why exactly would I put my child at a .001 risk of suffering or even dying horribly from a childhood disease to avoid a .00000001 percent risk (or even less) that they might have a reaction to a vaccine?
The problem here ISN'T that I don't have kids (I have four) but that I also took courses in Statistics and Math.
You can't do ANYTHING without risk. I have already "won the lottery" by having a young adult cancer hardly anyone gets, and almost nobody after 35 years of age, and I got it at 45. Then for five years I suffered with neurological issues that kept progressing until I recently was diagnosed with a strange form of anemia that responds to treatment but doesn't show up in my blood work.
So yes it stinks to be the one that gets the "almost nobody ever gets it" disease. But you can't make decisions by worrying about the tiny, tiny, tiny far to the outside risks when there are big, measurable, and proven risks you need to avoid.
Quit listening to the noise. Look at the studies. Populations of kids who get vaccines have the same rates of autism as those that don't. That could not be true if vaccines were the cause of autism.
Lastly, my oldest does have Asperger's Syndrome, and did have a mild reaction to her first vaccine. But there was no change in behavior prior to or after vaccination, and in fact had demonstrated certain unusual behaviors (like staring at large shapes or shadows, and preferring a wind up swing to being rocked) from the beginning. And my oldest was 8 years old before being diagnosed.
My other three children were very different, and only after having other kids did we realize how unusual some of the behaviors of my oldest were.
I could beat myself up over the condition of my oldest, but in fact I feel doing so would be a ridiculous waste of energy. I knew all my kids would be exposed to other kids and even kids that were not vaccinated. So all of them were, and all of them have been healthy, good kids. My oldest is a wonderful and talented person who is going to do well in life. A life they might not have had in a world without vaccines.
Vaccines are not *perfectly* safe. There are risks. But it is stupid and nearly impossible to run from every possible risk in this world.
Kids with compromised immune system diseases (particularly some mitochondrial conditions, if memory serves) are subject to horrible reactions to vaccines. However, most of these conditions are nearly always un-treatable and fatal within childhood (as the child is going to react to ANY infection the same way).
You just can't avoid all risks. Millions could be spent on each child trying to insure that absolutely no condition exists in the child that might react to a vaccine. And after bankrupting the country, you might save a handful of kids from reactions to vaccines, while millions upon millions of kids are thrust into poverty to starve to pay for the process.
This is why we accept some amount of risk to vaccinate our children. Something bad COULD happen, but for 99.9999999 percent of the kids, it will all be just fine.
Anecdotal evidence based on subjective, non-reproducible, undocumented observations by untrained individuals part of a selected group (parents with autistic kids) is useless scientifically.
For example, I know a guy who in three accidents was told he would have been killed if he had been wearing a seatbelt. He won't wear them as he now believes them dangerous.
Sorry, I am not buying your superstitious fear of vaccinations, nor do I buy my friend's superstitious fear of seatbelts.
A Spinal Surgeon also might have no interest in arguing a topic with someone who isn't likely to listen.
This happens all the time. In the real world, I am often likely just to keep my mouth shut rather than waste my time trying to educate someone who isn't going to listen anyway.
Okay, maybe I lied. I DO tend to waste my time rather than keep my mouth shut like I should. But it goes without saying that this Spinal Surgeon is smarter than I am.
There is a certain cost to shipping products from China, but that doesn't explain a cost difference of 1.50 vs 17 dollars. Plenty of other products can be made in China and sold here requiring all the expenses of shipping, stocking, running a register, and yet do not exhibit the same 1.50 to 17 dollar inflation of price.
No, the real reason DVDs and other media is so expensive in the West is the fact that the rights to such media end up in huge Corporate Media Cartels, who demand excessively high fees on such content, driving up the price. Only when their sales begin an undeniable fall towards zero in the face of competition (both legal and illegal) will they give up gouging customers in the West.
If they could get away with selling DVDs in China for 17 dollars a pop, they would regardless of the average salaries there (which BTW are not that different in parts of China than they are in the West).
An interesting video on this topic can be found here:
I am pretty sure Jeff used a PC Laptop. You can't write viruses on a Mac....
(Hee Hee).
Marc Thiessen has clearly watched too many movies. Yeah, this hugely complicated and sophisticated worm was able to do some directed damage to a particular bit of hardware. But the idea that it is a good idea to write a work that can infect a standard Web Server and cause damage to thousands of different computers (all with their own browser/os/hardware configurations) world wide to wipe out what are essentially text files....
Even if it could be done (which it can't), putting that in the wild would be like handing the design and plans and components for software nuclear weapons to all comers whether they want them or not. The world wide software devastation would be vast and unlimited.
But luckily, software is just lots harder to write to do that kind of thing than people use education comes from movies could possibly understand.
"In as much as even the simplest preventive measures have NOT been taken to avoid casualties at security checkpoints, one can only assume one of several possibilities are true: "
--- So sorry for submitting without proofing! So many errors, but this one was the worst!
The theory is that our security at Airport is making us safer.
Is there ANY way we can test this?
Well, first of all, the assumption is that there exists a threat from someone. Obviously, we are safer if bombings are being prevented. So compare the U.S. to any place in the world where bombings ARE being attempted, and you will find that security check points DO stop the bombings, but at the cost of becoming bombing targets themselves!
Search for "Suicide Bombing security checkpoint" and look at the *hundreds* of bombings, killing hundreds upon hundreds of people. Where security checkpoints are *really* needed, security checkpoints themselves become targets themselves. I cannot find anywhere in the world where bombings are actively attempted where security checkpoints are not themselves targets of bombings.
Have we had any bombings at Airport security check points? No we have not. We have not had the bombings because there are few if any attempts to bomb airplanes in the U.S. currently. And the TSA knows this to be true. If it were not true, then surely they would take into account the threat to security check points themselves, and do things harden the check points themselves against bombings.
How would this be done? To be honest, there are many obvious ways to address the risk of bombings where people have not yet gone through any security layer. The most obvious is to keep the density of people as low as possible outside of the security checkpoint. Making people stand in dense groups by winding the line against themselves will maximize casualties in the event of a bombing.
In as much as even the simplest preventive measures have been taken to avoid casualties at security checkpoints, one can only assume one of several possibilities are true:
1) The TSA knows there is little legitimate threat of bombing within the USA, or
2) The main decisions being made about security and how security will be performed at checkpoints is driven by considerations other than the actual risks to the airlines and their customers (i.e. corporate interests selling security services, or political goals and considerations), or
3) The people running the TSA do not have a clue and institute procedures randomly in response to unusual, public, and largely unsuccessful events while ignoring the every day experience of people actually dealing with terrorists.
Honestly, I believe the truth is some mix of all three.
I think you should speak for yourself, as some of us that follow this blog do care about Mike's opinions, and admire how he is able to "execute" on his ideas with this blog and elsewhere.
Claiming Mike's ideas are worthless doesn't impress anyone if you cannot articulate *why* you think his ideas are worthless. You are just an anonymous Troll.
On the post: The Amount Of Content Created In Spite Of Copyright Is Staggering
Re: Re: Re:
Honestly, I haven't found them. I have found lots of very questionable studies, but nothing rigorous with defined, published methodologies done by independent and reputable organizations.
So what is the "TechDirt Double Standard" of which you speak? What are the studies that TechDirt ignores or spins?
On the post: The Amount Of Content Created In Spite Of Copyright Is Staggering
Re: Fair use
These are huge. I am having a hard time believing I am the only one that does this.
The torrent protocol is useful and is used for all sorts of open source tasks where code and meta information needs to be distributed across the web.
I don't think such uses would be more than a few percent all torrent uses, but I find it difficult to believe they would be less than a percent. On top of that, much content is distributed via torrent legally.
So I kinda doubt the 99 percent copyright infringing statistic for torrents.
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Welcome.
I don't buy music at all. If I am going to listen to something, I listen to podcasts, and I donate to support the podcasts I like.
However, I am also a podcaster, and it really stinks that it is so hard to legally use content in a podcast that I avoid everything but absolutely free and clear original content. Sure I might like a bit of music, but is it worth the risk?
You might think that everyone pirates and is just out to steal from Big Content, but you would be wrong in so many ways. Much of the reason I hate this obsession about pirates is that it is a huge waste of time that could be dealt with much quicker and easier if legal products were just available for sell at a price that makes sense.
The Free flow of digital information is here forever. As network speeds go up, computational power for encryption goes up, and as storage costs continue to plummet, the flow of digital information will increase. The more digital information can be exchanged, the more people will exchange that information. And much of that information will be so called copyrighted material.
That is the way it is, and no law can change the facts.
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
Re: Re: Re: MPAA : The Undisputed Freedom Fighters of Our Age
I always use a spell checker because I never really did learn to spell. But spell checkers don't catch the wrong words spelled correctly.
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
MPAA : The Undisputed Freedom Fighters of Our Age
Freedom of speech? Not important when compared to copyright.
Due process? Not important for domains where 1) The websites in question do not belong to Big Content, and 2) the domains might be in the vicinity of a copyright infringer, or 3) the domain could have links to a copyright infringer, or 4) the MPAA doesn't really like/understand/care what the website is doing.
Shake downs? Great! Free Money!
Governmental mandated backdoors into every formally secure system for communications and transactions? WE Need this to stop piracy/counterfeiting/child porn/terrorism! Who cares if these systems get hacked and people lose their retirement/paychecks/privacy/savings?
When someone is Fighting Freedom like the MPAA, they deserve the recognition and honor that fits their efforts!
The MPAA and their members are THE Freedom Fighters of Our Age!
On the post: Tolkien Estate In Legal Spat With Author Of Historical Fiction; Will Publicity Rights Kill Off Historical Fiction?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Apparently though long dead, he is still decomposing...
Wait, does this mean that all jokes that include historical figures are potentially against the law? Should I be worried about Bach's great great great great great great great nephew's wrath?
On the post: Tolkien Estate In Legal Spat With Author Of Historical Fiction; Will Publicity Rights Kill Off Historical Fiction?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Australian Politician Compares Attempts To Silence Assange With Catholic Church Silencing Galileo
Maybe more Appropriate than it first seems...
The quote is exactly right, but in ways perhaps this Australian Parliament Member did not intend.
Heliocentrism was accepted by the Church as soon as it was *actually proven* 100 years later. Heliocentrism did not threaten the Church, but the fact that Galileo could only provide circumstantial evidence was used to club Galileo.
If Galileo wasn't punished for heliocentrism, what was his transgression? Galileo was punished for insulting the Pope, which he did in his book, which remained banned for that reason.
Let's be clear: Galileo was NOT held guilty for his study of the nature of our universe, but punished for insulting the politically powerful.
Likewise, Julian Assange's transgression is NOT publishing leaks, and providing a means by which whistle blowers can uncover dark secrets. His transgression is uncovering dark secrets of the politically powerful U.S. Government.
A veneer of science was tacked to Galileo's punishment, which embarrasses the Church today. A veneer of legalities may well be tacked to some punishment of Julian Assange for publishing these leaks from the U.S. Government.
On the post: Why Won't Copyright Holders Run Studies On The Actual Impact Of Piracy?
Publishers are not alone in this
I have tried to find any data to indicate that Credit Scores are related to risk, i.e. that Banks other lenders REALLY need to charge more interest to someone with a 650 score rather than a 700 score to make the same return.
In fact, when banks were on the edge, I heard EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE was true, that someone with a near perfect score never pays fees, pays lower interest, and in general avoids all the traps lenders set up to make more money. That someone with a 600 or 650 score is statistically the same risk as someone with a 700 or 750 score, but is going to pay way more fees and penalties plus pay the higher interest.
So this question is really just as relevant to the public as a whole. Why won't banks do the studies to PROVE their polices actually do account for added risk?? Because they can't, and in fact much of the whole "Credit Score" scam is just a legal way to collude to charge most Americans more money.
On the post: Report Claims Discredited Study That Linked Vaccines To Autism Wasn't Just A Mistake, But An Outright Fraud
Re:
The problem is that regardless of whether you vaccinate a child or don't vaccinate a child, the same percentages of kids in both groups end up with Autism.
Correlation does not prove Causation
http://xkcd.com/552/
On the post: Report Claims Discredited Study That Linked Vaccines To Autism Wasn't Just A Mistake, But An Outright Fraud
Re: Re: Re:
The problem here ISN'T that I don't have kids (I have four) but that I also took courses in Statistics and Math.
You can't do ANYTHING without risk. I have already "won the lottery" by having a young adult cancer hardly anyone gets, and almost nobody after 35 years of age, and I got it at 45. Then for five years I suffered with neurological issues that kept progressing until I recently was diagnosed with a strange form of anemia that responds to treatment but doesn't show up in my blood work.
So yes it stinks to be the one that gets the "almost nobody ever gets it" disease. But you can't make decisions by worrying about the tiny, tiny, tiny far to the outside risks when there are big, measurable, and proven risks you need to avoid.
Quit listening to the noise. Look at the studies. Populations of kids who get vaccines have the same rates of autism as those that don't. That could not be true if vaccines were the cause of autism.
Lastly, my oldest does have Asperger's Syndrome, and did have a mild reaction to her first vaccine. But there was no change in behavior prior to or after vaccination, and in fact had demonstrated certain unusual behaviors (like staring at large shapes or shadows, and preferring a wind up swing to being rocked) from the beginning. And my oldest was 8 years old before being diagnosed.
My other three children were very different, and only after having other kids did we realize how unusual some of the behaviors of my oldest were.
I could beat myself up over the condition of my oldest, but in fact I feel doing so would be a ridiculous waste of energy. I knew all my kids would be exposed to other kids and even kids that were not vaccinated. So all of them were, and all of them have been healthy, good kids. My oldest is a wonderful and talented person who is going to do well in life. A life they might not have had in a world without vaccines.
On the post: Report Claims Discredited Study That Linked Vaccines To Autism Wasn't Just A Mistake, But An Outright Fraud
Re:
Kids with compromised immune system diseases (particularly some mitochondrial conditions, if memory serves) are subject to horrible reactions to vaccines. However, most of these conditions are nearly always un-treatable and fatal within childhood (as the child is going to react to ANY infection the same way).
You just can't avoid all risks. Millions could be spent on each child trying to insure that absolutely no condition exists in the child that might react to a vaccine. And after bankrupting the country, you might save a handful of kids from reactions to vaccines, while millions upon millions of kids are thrust into poverty to starve to pay for the process.
This is why we accept some amount of risk to vaccinate our children. Something bad COULD happen, but for 99.9999999 percent of the kids, it will all be just fine.
On the post: Report Claims Discredited Study That Linked Vaccines To Autism Wasn't Just A Mistake, But An Outright Fraud
Re: Re: Re:
Autism doesn't make a "bright" child a "dullard".
Anecdotal evidence based on subjective, non-reproducible, undocumented observations by untrained individuals part of a selected group (parents with autistic kids) is useless scientifically.
For example, I know a guy who in three accidents was told he would have been killed if he had been wearing a seatbelt. He won't wear them as he now believes them dangerous.
Sorry, I am not buying your superstitious fear of vaccinations, nor do I buy my friend's superstitious fear of seatbelts.
On the post: Report Claims Discredited Study That Linked Vaccines To Autism Wasn't Just A Mistake, But An Outright Fraud
Re: Re: Re:
This happens all the time. In the real world, I am often likely just to keep my mouth shut rather than waste my time trying to educate someone who isn't going to listen anyway.
Okay, maybe I lied. I DO tend to waste my time rather than keep my mouth shut like I should. But it goes without saying that this Spinal Surgeon is smarter than I am.
On the post: Supreme Court Ruling: You May Not Be Able To Legally Sell A Product First Made Outside The US
Fix the Watch.
Etch it out. Who will care that it is missing from the back?
On the post: Supreme Court Ruling: You May Not Be Able To Legally Sell A Product First Made Outside The US
Re: Re: Re: Re: Correct me if I'm wrong...
No, the real reason DVDs and other media is so expensive in the West is the fact that the rights to such media end up in huge Corporate Media Cartels, who demand excessively high fees on such content, driving up the price. Only when their sales begin an undeniable fall towards zero in the face of competition (both legal and illegal) will they give up gouging customers in the West.
If they could get away with selling DVDs in China for 17 dollars a pop, they would regardless of the average salaries there (which BTW are not that different in parts of China than they are in the West).
An interesting video on this topic can be found here:
http://www.flixxy.com/200-countries-200-years-4-minutes.htm
On the post: How Political Pundits Get Confused When They Don't Understand That Wikileaks Is Distributed
Re: Re: Re: Re: Isn't that illegal
(Hee Hee).
Marc Thiessen has clearly watched too many movies. Yeah, this hugely complicated and sophisticated worm was able to do some directed damage to a particular bit of hardware. But the idea that it is a good idea to write a work that can infect a standard Web Server and cause damage to thousands of different computers (all with their own browser/os/hardware configurations) world wide to wipe out what are essentially text files....
Even if it could be done (which it can't), putting that in the wild would be like handing the design and plans and components for software nuclear weapons to all comers whether they want them or not. The world wide software devastation would be vast and unlimited.
But luckily, software is just lots harder to write to do that kind of thing than people use education comes from movies could possibly understand.
On the post: Newspapers Say: Shut Up And Get Scanned And Groped
Re: So this makes us safer?
On the post: Newspapers Say: Shut Up And Get Scanned And Groped
So this makes us safer?
Is there ANY way we can test this?
Well, first of all, the assumption is that there exists a threat from someone. Obviously, we are safer if bombings are being prevented. So compare the U.S. to any place in the world where bombings ARE being attempted, and you will find that security check points DO stop the bombings, but at the cost of becoming bombing targets themselves!
Search for "Suicide Bombing security checkpoint" and look at the *hundreds* of bombings, killing hundreds upon hundreds of people. Where security checkpoints are *really* needed, security checkpoints themselves become targets themselves. I cannot find anywhere in the world where bombings are actively attempted where security checkpoints are not themselves targets of bombings.
Have we had any bombings at Airport security check points? No we have not. We have not had the bombings because there are few if any attempts to bomb airplanes in the U.S. currently. And the TSA knows this to be true. If it were not true, then surely they would take into account the threat to security check points themselves, and do things harden the check points themselves against bombings.
How would this be done? To be honest, there are many obvious ways to address the risk of bombings where people have not yet gone through any security layer. The most obvious is to keep the density of people as low as possible outside of the security checkpoint. Making people stand in dense groups by winding the line against themselves will maximize casualties in the event of a bombing.
In as much as even the simplest preventive measures have been taken to avoid casualties at security checkpoints, one can only assume one of several possibilities are true:
1) The TSA knows there is little legitimate threat of bombing within the USA, or
2) The main decisions being made about security and how security will be performed at checkpoints is driven by considerations other than the actual risks to the airlines and their customers (i.e. corporate interests selling security services, or political goals and considerations), or
3) The people running the TSA do not have a clue and institute procedures randomly in response to unusual, public, and largely unsuccessful events while ignoring the every day experience of people actually dealing with terrorists.
Honestly, I believe the truth is some mix of all three.
On the post: Do We Really Need A Patent Battle Over Group Buying?
Re:
I think you should speak for yourself, as some of us that follow this blog do care about Mike's opinions, and admire how he is able to "execute" on his ideas with this blog and elsewhere.
Claiming Mike's ideas are worthless doesn't impress anyone if you cannot articulate *why* you think his ideas are worthless. You are just an anonymous Troll.
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