Actually in some states you would be dead wrong. You wrote:
"So regulation of firearms is already premised on the Orwellian assumption that you don't have the right to hide your firearm posession[sic] from the government."
For example in Maine the government is _prohibited_, yes I wrote _prohibited_by_law_ from keeping track of the fact that a private citizen may or may not possess a firearm. It is legal for private citizens and gun shows to sell guns to each other. You are not supposed to posses a firearm if you are a mental patient or a convicted felon, but practically there is no way for them to find out unless you running around with a firearm and give them a reason to check on your history.
Carrying a firearm openly is legal practically everywhere (there are a few places like government buildings where you can't). The closest thing to a record is when you apply for a concealed gun permit, then they would have a record that you have a permit to carry concealed, but even then the government doesn't know if or how many firearms you own.
Not too long ago they passed a law requiring people subject to a restraining order to surrender their firearms to the police. It didn't pass, until it was changed so that you could surrender any firearms to a friend or neighbor. Even in this the government isn't allowed to know if or how many firearms you might posses.
As you can see, it might be illegal to have a firearm with a missing or concealed serial number, but unless it is used in a crime there's no practical way for the government to know that. Also, since most people don't trade in serial numberless firearms, the fact the no one is required to register thei
When it comes to social sites the PHB and Wall street believe it's all about the numbers.
It's why Yahoo, Microsoft, heck even Google have tried converting their existing communities into social profiles.
Everyone that hosts email has tried/is trying to convert all those accounts into profiles.
Companies are trying to _manufacture_ a network effect. Not too many people care about a social site until enough of the people they care about are using it.
The correct way is to have a compelling reason for people to use your site. Or failing that have the current leader implode. FaceBook is the current big kid on the block. Unless someone else offers something 'better' or FaceBook annoys enough people to get them to start leaving, another company is going to have a difficult time competing.
This dating site, if it's real, is just trying to do what Google tried with GMail. To bulk up it's numbers to make itself more attractive.
Wrong headed, lawsuit bait, but sadly what I've come to expect these days.
Just making a truly compelling site is just too much work it seems.
The reason that the politicians continually let the fox guard the hen house, is that the fox hands them large bags of cash.
For the right amount of money, our farmers (politicians) are willing to turn the hen house (the county) into a game ranch for the foxes (vested interests).
Until they grow some moral fiber (not likely), or make such blatant payoffs illegal (even less likely since those that make the laws are collecting the payoffs) expect it to get worse before it gets better.
The problem is that, in the US at least, for the last 30 years companies aren't interested in a "modest profit". Hell, they aren't even interested in a 'long term' by any reasonable definition of the term.
Companies, and the people that run them are interested in one thing and one thing only, money. They are doing anything to get the _most_ money they think they possibly can _now_. To heck with the country, the economy, people. To heck with even the long term prospects of their companies. These are the people who would burn down their neighbors house to resell the nails.
It's what happens when capitalism is allowed to run amuck. You would have thought we would have learned that lesson after the 'Great Depression'. It one of the primary reasons we are supposed to have a government. Laws were put in place to regulate the unrestrained greed and the country more or less prospered. Sure there weren't as many _super_ rich, but more of the country was better off.
The government (Bush, Obama, it's all the same; government by the rich to the detriment of everyone else) has abdicated it's responsibility. Deregulation (banks back to playing the stock market, magical 'derivatives') and worse 'self-regulation' or 'self-enforcement' (FDA, EPA, etc.) Laws like the 'Micky mouse' copyright extension act, who's only purpose is to funnel more money into the pockets of those paying for laws to be passed. Waging wars we can't afford and should have been in to begin with (Iraq, Afghanistan) so that we can funnel more money we don't have into the coffers of the military industrial complex. To the latest, holding the renewal of unemployment benefits hostage to massive tax cuts for the mega rich.
Until the government; legislative, executive, and judicial, stop pandering to lobbyists, and start doing what's right for their constituents and the country itself things will only get worse before it gets better.
To do that, they will have to forgo getting richer themselves.
To do that, they will have to pass laws that will negatively impact the wealthy (including themselves) for the good of the country.
To do that, they will have to have to apply common sense and enforce the laws equally against the rich and the powerful as they do to the common man.
It would be a nice change, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
RE: Uggg... Are you a shill or are you really this dense? (was: Re: Re: Re: Censorship is not copyright, they both start with C but after that they are different)
Ugggg.....
Can you really be this dense? You seem to be purposely misconstruing the argument (straw man anyone?) and then argue that in your interpretation of the argument, Mike is wrong.
I would like to apologize in advance to Mike. Hopefully, this is for the benefit of those reading this, including Darryl;
Censorship does not equal copyright. No one's ever said that they were (at least in this conversation so far) except Darryl. Censorship is the keeping of information away from people usually by some one or some organization with power. It may of may not be backed by a system (like Movie ratings) or by various laws.
Copyright is an idea, backed by law, that the government can increase the production and availability of public domain works by giving a government monopoly over certain uses of a work (book, photo, painting, etc.) to their authors.
Currently copyright is causing more harm than good. Copyright has passed from the hands of authors (and in this group I am including songwriters, artists, sculptors and other creators of copyrightable items) to third parties, such as publishers and others. The term of copyright has been extended to such a degree, that contrary to its intended purpose, it actually starving the public domain. It is being forced upon everyone, such that it applies even to those that don't want it's protection. This further starves the public domain and introduces the tragedy of orphaned works.
On order for copyright to be legal under the freedoms granted to the people under the first amendment of the Constitution it can't protect and idea, only the particular structure of that idea and it has to allow for "fair use". Fair Use are those uses the public wishes to make of a protected work regardless of the wishes of the copyright holder. Fair Use is a complicated legal matter that can only be decided by a judge after reviewing the particular facts of a particular use.
Currently, under the much maligned DMCA, there is a process by which a copyright holder can attempt to have a particular use of copyrighted material removed from the internet. It involves the copyright holder notifying the publisher that they hold the copyright to the item in questions and they believe that the use is unauthorized. The publisher then removes the work from the web page/ftp site/whatever is under their control and notifies the person who posted it. They then have the ability to contest the notice of the first person and have the item restored. After that, if both parties are still in disagreement, the copyright holder can file a civil suit against the poster of said item.
The _current_ problem is that copyright holders aren't satisfied with the process. The government, at their urging, has decided to remove entire domains from the internet based on the mere accusation of a copyright holder that some item(s) under that domain are infringing on their copyrights.
This is an accusation, not a finding of law. This doesn't, in fact it can't, take into account any fair use of the item(s) in question.
Finally, and here we get back to the censorship issue, it's not a fine grained approach. Everything else at that domain gets removed from the internet because there is a _claim_ that something there is infringing.
There are two major forms of censorship going on here _because_ of the way copyright holders are trying to 'protect' their copyrights.
The first is the innocent bystander. If you happen to express anything on a domain that is summarily removed from the internet this way, your message has been _censored_.
The second is the malicious accusation. If you disagree with something someone's written. Be it a review, or a religious or political viewpoint. You can accuse the domain itself of violating "a" (it doesn't even have to be yours) copyright, and potentially the entire domain will get seized.
There is no notice, no chance to go before the judge and argue your case. Copyright enforcement (or business plan protectionism) trumps everything else. No rights, no appeal, no nothing.
Darryl wrote:
"Copyright law is applied, and the tools to enable the crime to be commited [sic] are conficated [sic]."
Copyright law isn't applied. An idealized version of how monied interests think copyright _should_be_ is applied.
Darryl also asked:
"So do you think if they raided a CD burning house, making pirate copies of a movie or music, would they only confiscate the CD that are allready [sic] burned ? or would they take the blank DVD's and CD, the label printers, the burners, the computers, the master copies ?"
Well Darryl, if they raided a newsroom, they are _not_ allowed to shut it down. They can get copies of certain files, machines, etc. Precisely because of the concern about improperly censoring things. Also, if the police, with a proper search warrant, raid a "CD burning house" the accused has the right to face their accuser, to go before a judge and argue their case, to get their stuff back.
To apply your "CD burning house" analogy to what's actually happening would be:
Someone claims that you are making illegal copies of a movie or music. The police _do_not_ get a warrant and raid your house. What they do is contact the owners of the apartment complex that you are living in. The apartment owners then throw everyone in the _entire_ apartment building out on the street and change all the locks. They then give the keys to the government.
The accused "CD burners" are locked out, sure, but so are the room that's used for the knitting circle. So is the free weekly newspaper two floors down. So is the quaint little bar on the first floor that aspiring young musicians go to play. So is every individual that lives in that building, from young single mom to elderly grandfather.
That _wouldn't_ happen in real life, not even in the case of suspected drug dealers, so why should it be allowed to happen on the internet?
So Darryl, censorship isn't copyright, but that latter can be used as a tool to commit the former.
Wayfinder:
"I am *personally* willing to go through a scanner, period, if it means it will eliminate the chance of someone sneaking a bomb aboard a plane."
More power to you. Unfortunately, what little evidence that does exist shows that the 'enhanced scanners' wouldn't have detected they type of explosive it's supposedly been rolled out to protect us against. Heck, it has problems if your clothes have too many pleats. So you can proudly submit to a process that _won't_ eliminate the chance of someone sneaking a bomb aboard a plane.
Wayfinder:
"They should go through intensive training, not only in use of these devices, but in ethics as well. They should go through aberrant personality tests to insure they are relatively stable individuals to start with. If that is NOT being done... then that is a problem, to be sure."
Well, there's another problem. Techdirt itself not too long ago ran the story that there is little of any training at all. The few lucky ones that do get training, get training on scanners that aren't anything like the ones they are using. The rest are encouraged to sign the forms claiming they've received training, in lieu of any _actual_ training. So there goes your "ER Doctor" analogy.
It's impossible to prevent a determined lone operative from killing someone if he's willing to die in the attempt. That's just a fact of life.
What we are seeing is Security Theater at its worse. Corporate Fascism run a muck.
The TSA and all of it's ridiculousness hasn't stopped a single airplane terrorist plot.
Go ahead, reread that last sentence, I'll wait. It didn't stop the shoe bomber, the undie bomber, the printer bomber, the liquid bomber, and it won't stop whatever idiotic plot some deranged individual comes up with next. So remember that while you watch some 4 year old, or a crippled 87 year old abused and humiliated.
Want to know what would actually help? Aside from running around overseas giving people more reasons to hate America that is.
Improve emergency response. Better police, fire, ambulances will minimize the impact of any successful terrorist attack regardless of where it happens (airport, shopping mall, subway, etc.)
Improve basic intelligence gathering and dissemination. What caught the liquid bomber? Good old fashioned detective work. We knew about 9/11 before it happened. We just failed to connect the dots. The wrong people knew and we didn't do anything about it.
Encourage people to stand up for themselves. That's what stopped the final plane on 9/11. That's what stopped the shoe bomber and the undie bomber. Not the TSA, other passengers that said to themselves, "that isn't right" and felt empowered to do something about it.
You want to protect planes specifically? Install a metal detector, a few random bomb sniffing dogs, trained (I mean really trained, not TSA trained) armed guards. That will allow you to catch the 'low hanging fruit'. Which in the end, the only type of terrorist this might possibly catch. The dumb and the simplistic.
Add background checks for pilots and the crews that man or service the planes. Reinforced cockpit doors to keep any one who happens to 'loose it' regardless of whether they happen to be a terrorist away from the planes controls.
There you go. About as safe as you can reasonably expect to be in the modern world.
No spending a gazillion dollars.
No civil liberty violations.
No humiliation and degredation.
Re: Now you see the _real_reason_ for the over the top patdowns....
Wayfinder:
"Myself, I will be willing to step through a simple scanner check and avoid the entire patdown [sic] process."
That simple sentence sums up the entire reasoning behind these _over_the_top_ 'pat downs'.
The TSA knew that they couldn't _force_ everyone to submit to their enhanced, privacy stripping, humiliating, potentially health threatening new machines. If too many people opted out then there wouldn't be any reason to keep them.
(I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the correct mix of authoritarian abuse and outright greed that lead to the installations of these machines to begin with.)
It was no coincidence that these 'enhanced pat downs' showed up just as the TSA announced that these scanners would become the _primary_ new security mechanism. If they made the alternative to being scanned, uncomfortable, humiliating, and utterly horrific, then people would gladly submit to being 'scanned' just to avoid the pat downs. "Wayfinder" has shown that for a portion of the populace, things are working according to plan.
The TSA's plan is no better than handing over your money, or being violated by a criminal if the alternative is getting shot. Worse, because it's the government that's violating us.
"Isn't it much better to be violated by this machine than to let Bruno have his way with your wife and children. So few people have 'opted out' today and Bruno really enjoys redheads with braces. Oh... you've changed your mind... Bruno will be sooooo.. disappointed. Just step inside. Yes, now smile, your scan might make it into this years calendar edition. What? Oh, nothing.", says the friendly TSA supervisor.
Well if the TSA remains true to form, as soon as people started wearing a TLD or any other device that could accurately measure the amount of radiation exposure, all such devices would appear on the 'illegal to possess' list.
The TSA agent will remove any and all such devices before you get anywhere near the scanner, 'for security reasons'.
You can mail it back to yourself of let the friendly TSA agent dispose of it.
Yep, you have described the vicious cycle that's helping to keep this recession on the edge of a depression.
If people aren't paid enough, they can afford to buy. If people don't buy then demand goes down. More attempts are made to 'reduce costs'. Off shoring, closing factories, laying people off, everything _except_ reducing the highly inflated wages of those at the top. This leads to more people out of work, and the cycle repeats.
Some companies can realize some profits, on paper, for a short time, but it's unsustainable.
Things like NAFTA could have been used to raise the standard of living for workers everywhere. Something as simple as not allowing out sourcing to locales that didn't have at least our level of workers protections, environmental protections, etc. Instead it has lead to a race to the bottom. Labor is moved to localities that are the cheapest and most exploitable. Mexico -> India -> China, etc.
This is only a short term solution. It makes the corporate officers more money now, but it's unsustainable. Eventually, as all the work goes to the most exploitative regions no one will be able to afford any of the products produced.
Even Henry Ford understood the virtuous cycle. He was roundly criticized for paying his workers enough to purchase the products they were creating. If you pay your workers a decent wage, they can afford to buy more things. That raises demand, leading to more employment and higher wages.
Of course this requires a commitment to long term sustainability as opposed to maximizing short term profits. It also requires workers to be paid decently. CEO's making 2000x what the average worker makes needs to be a thing of the past.
Government can help establishing a real living minimum wage. By prohibiting out sourcing to exploitative regions. By providing a standard retirement and health care package for all its citizens. Government should be providing a base and defining the rules of the game that favor the long term health of the country as a whole.
Unfortunately, government has become the puppet of big businesses that are too greedy and short sighted to know or care what's good for this country.
Until the government starts putting the welfare of the country and its citizens ahead of 'easy money' then unfortunately I think things are only going to get worse.
When being harassed by authority figures it's _never_ in _your_ best interests to go somewhere private.
Sure it may be a little more embarrassing, but it's ultimately _much_ safer.
If I were flying, I would;
1. Make sure to opt out of any screening that you can.
2. Where hard athletic protection (the kind you use for football or some other contact sport).
3. When the confused / frustrated TSA 'agent' asks you to go to a 'private area' refuse. If they want to sexually assault me, I want as many witnesses as possible.
#2 protects your 'junk'
#3 almost guarantees that they'll end up sexually assaulting you.
No one was stealing anything, you were waiting for someone to say it, so there it is. Copyright infringement _isn't_ stealing.
The blogger wasn't 'giving away property', since there was no actual property to give. If people actually took _actual_ items from Mike's hypothetical locker, that would be stealing.
Files are like ideas. Unless someone handed you an actual CD or some other physical medium, no one transfers anything. Think about that for a second. When I 'download' a file; this web page, a copy of Open Office, anything, what _actually_ happens? Does some mystical copy machine in the sky make a copy, chop it into little bits and send them to me? If that was the case, then all I would need is just enough hard drive space to run my OS and web browser. I could go on a downloading spree and notice that my hard drive 'magically' grew to several terabytes. But that's not what happens. What happens is that you download the instructions to use up some of your own memory or hard drive space rearranging it into the same pattern as the program, song, e-book, etc. Computers are the ultimate in green technology. Everything you download, watch, read, create, is made of 100% recycled bits.
If people went to Mike's hypothetical locker and got instructions on how to make their own copies of everything in it, that would be a closer match. Even then though it falls down. In your case you would be providing third parties with access to Mike's things. This case would be more like Mike providing anyone interested with instructions of how to get their own copy of something of his.
The person who posted the link, posted it to a file that someone else _wanted_ the world to see.
It would be like if I went to a bulletin board and posted the recipe for my grand mother's great mystery cookies in the local natural living food store. Then someone else noticed my recipe and posted their own note at the local college library. "Want a really good cookie recipe, there's one posted on the natural living food store's bulletin board".
A cookie factory wants the entire bulletin board taken down, because when they asked that the "link" to the recipe they felt "infringed" on their "natural right" to bake cookies wasn't removed, they had no other choice.
Unlike cookies, or books, or music CD's, computers can now share instructions on how other computers can rearrange their own resources to create an exact copy of what ever they have a copy of. Combine this with the ability to store stories, programs, music, video, etc. as the simple rearrangement of ones and zeros and you are where you're at today.
There is No Natural Right to hoard ideas. If you don't want other people to know about your ideas then don't tell anyone. Previously it was very cumbersome, costly, unwieldy to create copies of ideas. You needed lots of monks with time on their hands. This became lots of printing presses, then lots of record pressing machines. The only way to get a copy was to transcribe it yourself (for books) or pay someone who had the means (industry) to create them. Record companies, book publishers, etc.
When the recordable audio tape, and VHS, and the Xerox machine were created we started to see things change, stress fractures appeared in the establishment. But these were analog copies, and they required to recipient to purchase, blank tapes (cassettes or VHS) or paper and ink (Xerox copy machines). Now we have 'green' technology, a 500GB hard drive can be had for under $50 US. You can reuse that space for many things, all you need are the instructions on how to rearrange those ones and zeros. Convert some of _your_ hard drive space into a story, read the story. Get tired of it, rearrange it into an collection of songs or a movie, you like that music, save it to a CD-ROM, and reuse that hard drive space for something else.
People no longer _need_ an industrial gatekeeper to create and disseminate copies of ideas. There was a time when people could only hear about what was in the bible from priests. It was written in a language that most people couldn't read, and even if they could, there weren't that many bibles around. The printing press got copies into the hands of literate people, in languages that they could read themselves. It helped spark the Protestant Reformation (well the abuses of those in power helped as well).
Here we are at Gutenberg all over again. There is no natural right to ideas, people aren't stealing property (no ones busting into Walmart and making off with an isle worth of CD's). People are only sharing ideas, trading recipes on how to make parts of their own hard drives into copies of what their neighbors hard drive contains.
Morally there's nothing wrong with this. Financially, its devastating to those people who make large sums of money over controlling the means of duplicating ideas.
The only reason it's even a little bit illegal is that we are living in a corrupt and bankrupt time. The Golden Rule of 'he who has the gold makes the rules'. The shortsighted greed that lead to our current economic climate, where the rich will get richer, at least until the system collapses.
Prohibition has shown us that laws that make everyone criminals aren't effective and can't last. We have been making the same mistake with the 'war on drugs', and even worse with the 'war on ideas'. At least with alcohol and drugs, some people didn't partake. Asking people not to partake of sharing ideas is like asking people not to breath. In the end it just can't be done.
How many people will have their lives ruined until the powers that be realize this?
That almost seems like a good idea...... nah who am I kidding, that's a terrible idea.
If company A invents, and I use the word very loosely, a round towel and company B says "WoW what an incredible idea" and starts selling round towels as well, company A can use a design patent to get the courts to shut them down?
What if Company B put their round towels in a package that wasn't anything like Company A's would they still be in trouble? What about if they marketed it as "Our towels aren't anything like those round towels from Company A, our are rounder".
Aren't there already laws against counterfeiting that could be used to prevent one company from passing off their products as being authentic another company products? Why would any design need to be protected?
When it comes to streaming, at least on the PS3/Wii, you still need a 'disc delivered in the mail'. The good thing is that you only have to wait once (and you don't have to return it when you're done).
Perhaps more a matter of their exclusive XBox deal than any hardware phobia on NetFlix' part.
Much lower prices than the competition
Much simpler process
I'm surprised that their bigger competition hasn't *squashed* them already.
The established players (think Blockbuster) were far too addicted to their late fee bonanza to think about the customer. They also overestimated people's desire to watch a movie right-now. Apparently lots of people were willing to wait a day or two, if it means that they don't have to worry about late fees and rushing out to the store.
Their prices keep going up and up and up. Last time I checked it cost about half the price of buying a DVD to rent one.
RedBox has the 'must watch it now crowd' for recent movies. At $1 a night, you can forget to return it for over a week for less than it costs to rent it from BlockBuster. Netflix has the 'I'm not in a rush, and I don't want to have to worry about it crowd'. It doesn't hurt that they have a much larger selection than any brick and mortar establishment could.
I think the problem with Amazon/Walmart/etc. is a combination of:
looking for the fast buck over long term profits
paying 'lip service' to customer value and convenience
and the time honored companion of most online ventures;
pleasing the wrong people (mostly other executives and entertainment moguls).
Hopefully NetFlix (and RedBox) doesn't get bought out, or loose sight of what got them where they are.
Have you complianed to your congress critter today?
All I can say is *Ugggg......*
Called my congress critter and expressed my deep displeasure at their being a cosponsor of this ludicrous bill.
As expected the aide had no idea what I was talking about.
More of us need to let them know that we are watching. I think too many of them imagine (probably correctly so) that most of their constituents don't know what they are doing and so don't/won't complain.
A little anti-constituent law here, a little campaign contribution there.
On the post: Swedish ISP Will Automatically Encrypt All Traffic To Protect Privacy Under New Data Retention Laws
Re: _Bad_ Gun analogy
"So regulation of firearms is already premised on the Orwellian assumption that you don't have the right to hide your firearm posession[sic] from the government."
For example in Maine the government is _prohibited_, yes I wrote _prohibited_by_law_ from keeping track of the fact that a private citizen may or may not possess a firearm. It is legal for private citizens and gun shows to sell guns to each other. You are not supposed to posses a firearm if you are a mental patient or a convicted felon, but practically there is no way for them to find out unless you running around with a firearm and give them a reason to check on your history.
Carrying a firearm openly is legal practically everywhere (there are a few places like government buildings where you can't). The closest thing to a record is when you apply for a concealed gun permit, then they would have a record that you have a permit to carry concealed, but even then the government doesn't know if or how many firearms you own.
Not too long ago they passed a law requiring people subject to a restraining order to surrender their firearms to the police. It didn't pass, until it was changed so that you could surrender any firearms to a friend or neighbor. Even in this the government isn't allowed to know if or how many firearms you might posses.
As you can see, it might be illegal to have a firearm with a missing or concealed serial number, but unless it is used in a crime there's no practical way for the government to know that. Also, since most people don't trade in serial numberless firearms, the fact the no one is required to register thei
On the post: Dating Site's Plans To Create Profiles By Scraping Social Networks: Publicity Stunt Or Just Dumb?
It's all about the numbers
It's why Yahoo, Microsoft, heck even Google have tried converting their existing communities into social profiles.
Everyone that hosts email has tried/is trying to convert all those accounts into profiles.
Companies are trying to _manufacture_ a network effect. Not too many people care about a social site until enough of the people they care about are using it.
The correct way is to have a compelling reason for people to use your site. Or failing that have the current leader implode. FaceBook is the current big kid on the block. Unless someone else offers something 'better' or FaceBook annoys enough people to get them to start leaving, another company is going to have a difficult time competing.
This dating site, if it's real, is just trying to do what Google tried with GMail. To bulk up it's numbers to make itself more attractive.
Wrong headed, lawsuit bait, but sadly what I've come to expect these days.
Just making a truly compelling site is just too much work it seems.
On the post: As Expected, FCC Approving Net Neutrality Rules That AT&T Wants
Re: Regulatory capture at its finest
The reason that the politicians continually let the fox guard the hen house, is that the fox hands them large bags of cash.
For the right amount of money, our farmers (politicians) are willing to turn the hen house (the county) into a game ranch for the foxes (vested interests).
Until they grow some moral fiber (not likely), or make such blatant payoffs illegal (even less likely since those that make the laws are collecting the payoffs) expect it to get worse before it gets better.
On the post: Deep Packet Inspection Firms Trying To Turn Net Neutrality Satire Into Reality
Re: the issue turns on the phrase "modest profit"
Companies, and the people that run them are interested in one thing and one thing only, money. They are doing anything to get the _most_ money they think they possibly can _now_. To heck with the country, the economy, people. To heck with even the long term prospects of their companies. These are the people who would burn down their neighbors house to resell the nails.
It's what happens when capitalism is allowed to run amuck. You would have thought we would have learned that lesson after the 'Great Depression'. It one of the primary reasons we are supposed to have a government. Laws were put in place to regulate the unrestrained greed and the country more or less prospered. Sure there weren't as many _super_ rich, but more of the country was better off.
The government (Bush, Obama, it's all the same; government by the rich to the detriment of everyone else) has abdicated it's responsibility. Deregulation (banks back to playing the stock market, magical 'derivatives') and worse 'self-regulation' or 'self-enforcement' (FDA, EPA, etc.) Laws like the 'Micky mouse' copyright extension act, who's only purpose is to funnel more money into the pockets of those paying for laws to be passed. Waging wars we can't afford and should have been in to begin with (Iraq, Afghanistan) so that we can funnel more money we don't have into the coffers of the military industrial complex. To the latest, holding the renewal of unemployment benefits hostage to massive tax cuts for the mega rich.
Until the government; legislative, executive, and judicial, stop pandering to lobbyists, and start doing what's right for their constituents and the country itself things will only get worse before it gets better.
To do that, they will have to forgo getting richer themselves.
To do that, they will have to pass laws that will negatively impact the wealthy (including themselves) for the good of the country.
To do that, they will have to have to apply common sense and enforce the laws equally against the rich and the powerful as they do to the common man.
It would be a nice change, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
On the post: Lieberman Praises Companies Helping Him Try To Censor Wikileaks
Where's Collins or anyone else?
Is there any report of Collins or any of the other Senators following Leiberman off the Constitutional 'deep end'?
It would be good to know, for those constituents who might not be in Leiberman's district to complain directly.
On the post: US Copyright Czar: Expect More Domain Censorship
RE: Uggg... Are you a shill or are you really this dense? (was: Re: Re: Re: Censorship is not copyright, they both start with C but after that they are different)
Can you really be this dense? You seem to be purposely misconstruing the argument (straw man anyone?) and then argue that in your interpretation of the argument, Mike is wrong.
I would like to apologize in advance to Mike. Hopefully, this is for the benefit of those reading this, including Darryl;
Censorship does not equal copyright. No one's ever said that they were (at least in this conversation so far) except Darryl. Censorship is the keeping of information away from people usually by some one or some organization with power. It may of may not be backed by a system (like Movie ratings) or by various laws.
Copyright is an idea, backed by law, that the government can increase the production and availability of public domain works by giving a government monopoly over certain uses of a work (book, photo, painting, etc.) to their authors.
Currently copyright is causing more harm than good. Copyright has passed from the hands of authors (and in this group I am including songwriters, artists, sculptors and other creators of copyrightable items) to third parties, such as publishers and others. The term of copyright has been extended to such a degree, that contrary to its intended purpose, it actually starving the public domain. It is being forced upon everyone, such that it applies even to those that don't want it's protection. This further starves the public domain and introduces the tragedy of orphaned works.
On order for copyright to be legal under the freedoms granted to the people under the first amendment of the Constitution it can't protect and idea, only the particular structure of that idea and it has to allow for "fair use". Fair Use are those uses the public wishes to make of a protected work regardless of the wishes of the copyright holder. Fair Use is a complicated legal matter that can only be decided by a judge after reviewing the particular facts of a particular use.
Currently, under the much maligned DMCA, there is a process by which a copyright holder can attempt to have a particular use of copyrighted material removed from the internet. It involves the copyright holder notifying the publisher that they hold the copyright to the item in questions and they believe that the use is unauthorized. The publisher then removes the work from the web page/ftp site/whatever is under their control and notifies the person who posted it. They then have the ability to contest the notice of the first person and have the item restored. After that, if both parties are still in disagreement, the copyright holder can file a civil suit against the poster of said item.
The _current_ problem is that copyright holders aren't satisfied with the process. The government, at their urging, has decided to remove entire domains from the internet based on the mere accusation of a copyright holder that some item(s) under that domain are infringing on their copyrights.
This is an accusation, not a finding of law. This doesn't, in fact it can't, take into account any fair use of the item(s) in question.
Finally, and here we get back to the censorship issue, it's not a fine grained approach. Everything else at that domain gets removed from the internet because there is a _claim_ that something there is infringing.
There are two major forms of censorship going on here _because_ of the way copyright holders are trying to 'protect' their copyrights.
The first is the innocent bystander. If you happen to express anything on a domain that is summarily removed from the internet this way, your message has been _censored_.
The second is the malicious accusation. If you disagree with something someone's written. Be it a review, or a religious or political viewpoint. You can accuse the domain itself of violating "a" (it doesn't even have to be yours) copyright, and potentially the entire domain will get seized.
There is no notice, no chance to go before the judge and argue your case. Copyright enforcement (or business plan protectionism) trumps everything else. No rights, no appeal, no nothing.
Darryl wrote:
"Copyright law is applied, and the tools to enable the crime to be commited [sic] are conficated [sic]."
Copyright law isn't applied. An idealized version of how monied interests think copyright _should_be_ is applied.
Darryl also asked:
"So do you think if they raided a CD burning house, making pirate copies of a movie or music, would they only confiscate the CD that are allready [sic] burned ? or would they take the blank DVD's and CD, the label printers, the burners, the computers, the master copies ?"
Well Darryl, if they raided a newsroom, they are _not_ allowed to shut it down. They can get copies of certain files, machines, etc. Precisely because of the concern about improperly censoring things. Also, if the police, with a proper search warrant, raid a "CD burning house" the accused has the right to face their accuser, to go before a judge and argue their case, to get their stuff back.
To apply your "CD burning house" analogy to what's actually happening would be:
Someone claims that you are making illegal copies of a movie or music. The police _do_not_ get a warrant and raid your house. What they do is contact the owners of the apartment complex that you are living in. The apartment owners then throw everyone in the _entire_ apartment building out on the street and change all the locks. They then give the keys to the government.
The accused "CD burners" are locked out, sure, but so are the room that's used for the knitting circle. So is the free weekly newspaper two floors down. So is the quaint little bar on the first floor that aspiring young musicians go to play. So is every individual that lives in that building, from young single mom to elderly grandfather.
That _wouldn't_ happen in real life, not even in the case of suspected drug dealers, so why should it be allowed to happen on the internet?
So Darryl, censorship isn't copyright, but that latter can be used as a tool to commit the former.
On the post: TSA Told To Tell Children That Groping Them Is A Game... Horrifying Sex Abuse Experts
Uggggg.....
"I am *personally* willing to go through a scanner, period, if it means it will eliminate the chance of someone sneaking a bomb aboard a plane."
More power to you. Unfortunately, what little evidence that does exist shows that the 'enhanced scanners' wouldn't have detected they type of explosive it's supposedly been rolled out to protect us against. Heck, it has problems if your clothes have too many pleats. So you can proudly submit to a process that _won't_ eliminate the chance of someone sneaking a bomb aboard a plane.
Wayfinder:
"They should go through intensive training, not only in use of these devices, but in ethics as well. They should go through aberrant personality tests to insure they are relatively stable individuals to start with. If that is NOT being done... then that is a problem, to be sure."
Well, there's another problem. Techdirt itself not too long ago ran the story that there is little of any training at all. The few lucky ones that do get training, get training on scanners that aren't anything like the ones they are using. The rest are encouraged to sign the forms claiming they've received training, in lieu of any _actual_ training. So there goes your "ER Doctor" analogy.
It's impossible to prevent a determined lone operative from killing someone if he's willing to die in the attempt. That's just a fact of life.
What we are seeing is Security Theater at its worse. Corporate Fascism run a muck.
The TSA and all of it's ridiculousness hasn't stopped a single airplane terrorist plot.
Go ahead, reread that last sentence, I'll wait. It didn't stop the shoe bomber, the undie bomber, the printer bomber, the liquid bomber, and it won't stop whatever idiotic plot some deranged individual comes up with next. So remember that while you watch some 4 year old, or a crippled 87 year old abused and humiliated.
Want to know what would actually help? Aside from running around overseas giving people more reasons to hate America that is.
Improve emergency response. Better police, fire, ambulances will minimize the impact of any successful terrorist attack regardless of where it happens (airport, shopping mall, subway, etc.)
Improve basic intelligence gathering and dissemination. What caught the liquid bomber? Good old fashioned detective work. We knew about 9/11 before it happened. We just failed to connect the dots. The wrong people knew and we didn't do anything about it.
Encourage people to stand up for themselves. That's what stopped the final plane on 9/11. That's what stopped the shoe bomber and the undie bomber. Not the TSA, other passengers that said to themselves, "that isn't right" and felt empowered to do something about it.
You want to protect planes specifically? Install a metal detector, a few random bomb sniffing dogs, trained (I mean really trained, not TSA trained) armed guards. That will allow you to catch the 'low hanging fruit'. Which in the end, the only type of terrorist this might possibly catch. The dumb and the simplistic.
Add background checks for pilots and the crews that man or service the planes. Reinforced cockpit doors to keep any one who happens to 'loose it' regardless of whether they happen to be a terrorist away from the planes controls.
There you go. About as safe as you can reasonably expect to be in the modern world.
No spending a gazillion dollars.
No civil liberty violations.
No humiliation and degredation.
On the post: TSA Told To Tell Children That Groping Them Is A Game... Horrifying Sex Abuse Experts
Re: Now you see the _real_reason_ for the over the top patdowns....
"Myself, I will be willing to step through a simple scanner check and avoid the entire patdown [sic] process."
That simple sentence sums up the entire reasoning behind these _over_the_top_ 'pat downs'.
The TSA knew that they couldn't _force_ everyone to submit to their enhanced, privacy stripping, humiliating, potentially health threatening new machines. If too many people opted out then there wouldn't be any reason to keep them.
(I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the correct mix of authoritarian abuse and outright greed that lead to the installations of these machines to begin with.)
It was no coincidence that these 'enhanced pat downs' showed up just as the TSA announced that these scanners would become the _primary_ new security mechanism. If they made the alternative to being scanned, uncomfortable, humiliating, and utterly horrific, then people would gladly submit to being 'scanned' just to avoid the pat downs. "Wayfinder" has shown that for a portion of the populace, things are working according to plan.
The TSA's plan is no better than handing over your money, or being violated by a criminal if the alternative is getting shot. Worse, because it's the government that's violating us.
"Isn't it much better to be violated by this machine than to let Bruno have his way with your wife and children. So few people have 'opted out' today and Bruno really enjoys redheads with braces. Oh... you've changed your mind... Bruno will be sooooo.. disappointed. Just step inside. Yes, now smile, your scan might make it into this years calendar edition. What? Oh, nothing.", says the friendly TSA supervisor.
On the post: Molecular Biologist Highlights Serious Safety Concerns Over TSA Scanners
Re: Why not TLDs?
The TSA agent will remove any and all such devices before you get anywhere near the scanner, 'for security reasons'.
You can mail it back to yourself of let the friendly TSA agent dispose of it.
On the post: Looks Like Visa Program For Science & Tech Grads Isn't Really Being Used For The Best & Brightest
You aren't wrong....
If people aren't paid enough, they can afford to buy. If people don't buy then demand goes down. More attempts are made to 'reduce costs'. Off shoring, closing factories, laying people off, everything _except_ reducing the highly inflated wages of those at the top. This leads to more people out of work, and the cycle repeats.
Some companies can realize some profits, on paper, for a short time, but it's unsustainable.
Things like NAFTA could have been used to raise the standard of living for workers everywhere. Something as simple as not allowing out sourcing to locales that didn't have at least our level of workers protections, environmental protections, etc. Instead it has lead to a race to the bottom. Labor is moved to localities that are the cheapest and most exploitable. Mexico -> India -> China, etc.
This is only a short term solution. It makes the corporate officers more money now, but it's unsustainable. Eventually, as all the work goes to the most exploitative regions no one will be able to afford any of the products produced.
Even Henry Ford understood the virtuous cycle. He was roundly criticized for paying his workers enough to purchase the products they were creating. If you pay your workers a decent wage, they can afford to buy more things. That raises demand, leading to more employment and higher wages.
Of course this requires a commitment to long term sustainability as opposed to maximizing short term profits. It also requires workers to be paid decently. CEO's making 2000x what the average worker makes needs to be a thing of the past.
Government can help establishing a real living minimum wage. By prohibiting out sourcing to exploitative regions. By providing a standard retirement and health care package for all its citizens. Government should be providing a base and defining the rules of the game that favor the long term health of the country as a whole.
Unfortunately, government has become the puppet of big businesses that are too greedy and short sighted to know or care what's good for this country.
Until the government starts putting the welfare of the country and its citizens ahead of 'easy money' then unfortunately I think things are only going to get worse.
On the post: TSA Likely To Face Multiple Sexual Assault Charges For New Searches
I agree stay out in public.....
Sure it may be a little more embarrassing, but it's ultimately _much_ safer.
If I were flying, I would;
1. Make sure to opt out of any screening that you can.
2. Where hard athletic protection (the kind you use for football or some other contact sport).
3. When the confused / frustrated TSA 'agent' asks you to go to a 'private area' refuse. If they want to sexually assault me, I want as many witnesses as possible.
#2 protects your 'junk'
#3 almost guarantees that they'll end up sexually assaulting you.
On the post: WordPress A Bit Too Quick In Doing DMCA Takedowns
Re: DMCA Take-downs
No one was stealing anything, you were waiting for someone to say it, so there it is. Copyright infringement _isn't_ stealing.
The blogger wasn't 'giving away property', since there was no actual property to give. If people actually took _actual_ items from Mike's hypothetical locker, that would be stealing.
Files are like ideas. Unless someone handed you an actual CD or some other physical medium, no one transfers anything. Think about that for a second. When I 'download' a file; this web page, a copy of Open Office, anything, what _actually_ happens? Does some mystical copy machine in the sky make a copy, chop it into little bits and send them to me? If that was the case, then all I would need is just enough hard drive space to run my OS and web browser. I could go on a downloading spree and notice that my hard drive 'magically' grew to several terabytes. But that's not what happens. What happens is that you download the instructions to use up some of your own memory or hard drive space rearranging it into the same pattern as the program, song, e-book, etc. Computers are the ultimate in green technology. Everything you download, watch, read, create, is made of 100% recycled bits.
If people went to Mike's hypothetical locker and got instructions on how to make their own copies of everything in it, that would be a closer match. Even then though it falls down. In your case you would be providing third parties with access to Mike's things. This case would be more like Mike providing anyone interested with instructions of how to get their own copy of something of his.
The person who posted the link, posted it to a file that someone else _wanted_ the world to see.
It would be like if I went to a bulletin board and posted the recipe for my grand mother's great mystery cookies in the local natural living food store. Then someone else noticed my recipe and posted their own note at the local college library. "Want a really good cookie recipe, there's one posted on the natural living food store's bulletin board".
A cookie factory wants the entire bulletin board taken down, because when they asked that the "link" to the recipe they felt "infringed" on their "natural right" to bake cookies wasn't removed, they had no other choice.
Unlike cookies, or books, or music CD's, computers can now share instructions on how other computers can rearrange their own resources to create an exact copy of what ever they have a copy of. Combine this with the ability to store stories, programs, music, video, etc. as the simple rearrangement of ones and zeros and you are where you're at today.
There is No Natural Right to hoard ideas. If you don't want other people to know about your ideas then don't tell anyone. Previously it was very cumbersome, costly, unwieldy to create copies of ideas. You needed lots of monks with time on their hands. This became lots of printing presses, then lots of record pressing machines. The only way to get a copy was to transcribe it yourself (for books) or pay someone who had the means (industry) to create them. Record companies, book publishers, etc.
When the recordable audio tape, and VHS, and the Xerox machine were created we started to see things change, stress fractures appeared in the establishment. But these were analog copies, and they required to recipient to purchase, blank tapes (cassettes or VHS) or paper and ink (Xerox copy machines). Now we have 'green' technology, a 500GB hard drive can be had for under $50 US. You can reuse that space for many things, all you need are the instructions on how to rearrange those ones and zeros. Convert some of _your_ hard drive space into a story, read the story. Get tired of it, rearrange it into an collection of songs or a movie, you like that music, save it to a CD-ROM, and reuse that hard drive space for something else.
People no longer _need_ an industrial gatekeeper to create and disseminate copies of ideas. There was a time when people could only hear about what was in the bible from priests. It was written in a language that most people couldn't read, and even if they could, there weren't that many bibles around. The printing press got copies into the hands of literate people, in languages that they could read themselves. It helped spark the Protestant Reformation (well the abuses of those in power helped as well).
Here we are at Gutenberg all over again. There is no natural right to ideas, people aren't stealing property (no ones busting into Walmart and making off with an isle worth of CD's). People are only sharing ideas, trading recipes on how to make parts of their own hard drives into copies of what their neighbors hard drive contains.
Morally there's nothing wrong with this. Financially, its devastating to those people who make large sums of money over controlling the means of duplicating ideas.
The only reason it's even a little bit illegal is that we are living in a corrupt and bankrupt time. The Golden Rule of 'he who has the gold makes the rules'. The shortsighted greed that lead to our current economic climate, where the rich will get richer, at least until the system collapses.
Prohibition has shown us that laws that make everyone criminals aren't effective and can't last. We have been making the same mistake with the 'war on drugs', and even worse with the 'war on ideas'. At least with alcohol and drugs, some people didn't partake. Asking people not to partake of sharing ideas is like asking people not to breath. In the end it just can't be done.
How many people will have their lives ruined until the powers that be realize this?
On the post: Turns Out You Can't Trademark A Circle Towel
Um....... O.K.
If company A invents, and I use the word very loosely, a round towel and company B says "WoW what an incredible idea" and starts selling round towels as well, company A can use a design patent to get the courts to shut them down?
What if Company B put their round towels in a package that wasn't anything like Company A's would they still be in trouble? What about if they marketed it as "Our towels aren't anything like those round towels from Company A, our are rounder".
Aren't there already laws against counterfeiting that could be used to prevent one company from passing off their products as being authentic another company products? Why would any design need to be protected?
On the post: Turns Out You Can't Trademark A Circle Towel
Re: Re: Say what???
So what's the point of a design patent? How does patenting the non-utility aspects of something promote progress or improve anything?
On the post: Turns Out You Can't Trademark A Circle Towel
Say what???
"Basically, they suggest he could have tried to secure a design patent [emphasis mine] on this..."
So apparently someone out there thinks that round, square, circle is innovative enough to deserve a patent?
Uggg..... The sooner we abolish patents and get back to actually doing things the better off we'll be.
On the post: Blockbuster Bankruptcy, Yet Again, Highlights How It's Not Easy To Just Copy The Disruptive Innovation
Re: RE: a few things on netflix
When it comes to streaming, at least on the PS3/Wii, you still need a 'disc delivered in the mail'. The good thing is that you only have to wait once (and you don't have to return it when you're done).
Perhaps more a matter of their exclusive XBox deal than any hardware phobia on NetFlix' part.
On the post: Blockbuster Bankruptcy, Yet Again, Highlights How It's Not Easy To Just Copy The Disruptive Innovation
Surprised they've lasted this long...
Much lower prices than the competition
Much simpler process
I'm surprised that their bigger competition hasn't *squashed* them already.
The established players (think Blockbuster) were far too addicted to their late fee bonanza to think about the customer. They also overestimated people's desire to watch a movie right-now. Apparently lots of people were willing to wait a day or two, if it means that they don't have to worry about late fees and rushing out to the store.
Their prices keep going up and up and up. Last time I checked it cost about half the price of buying a DVD to rent one.
RedBox has the 'must watch it now crowd' for recent movies. At $1 a night, you can forget to return it for over a week for less than it costs to rent it from BlockBuster. Netflix has the 'I'm not in a rush, and I don't want to have to worry about it crowd'. It doesn't hurt that they have a much larger selection than any brick and mortar establishment could.
I think the problem with Amazon/Walmart/etc. is a combination of:
looking for the fast buck over long term profits
paying 'lip service' to customer value and convenience
and the time honored companion of most online ventures;
pleasing the wrong people (mostly other executives and entertainment moguls).
Hopefully NetFlix (and RedBox) doesn't get bought out, or loose sight of what got them where they are.
On the post: The Many Ways In Which Fashion Copyrights Will Harm The Fashion Industry
Have you complianed to your congress critter today?
Called my congress critter and expressed my deep displeasure at their being a cosponsor of this ludicrous bill.
As expected the aide had no idea what I was talking about.
More of us need to let them know that we are watching. I think too many of them imagine (probably correctly so) that most of their constituents don't know what they are doing and so don't/won't complain.
A little anti-constituent law here, a little campaign contribution there.
On the post: Will The NAB Agree To A Performance Rights Tax In Exchange For Having RIAA Support Mandatory FM Radio In Mobile Phones?
Is this a typo?
"My mobile phone has an FM transmitter [emphasis mine] today , and I've never even looked at it."
Are you sure you didn't mean receiver?
I would find it strange that a cell phone would double as a pirate radio station.
Just a thought.
On the post: Will The NAB Agree To A Performance Rights Tax In Exchange For Having RIAA Support Mandatory FM Radio In Mobile Phones?
Is this a typo?
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