I posted this on Richard Dawkins' website about this exact topic:
As someone who has performed sophisticated magic tricks, I can confidently say that the planting of false memories in audiences' minds is vital for the success of the tricks.
Part of this involves repetition. Imagine I place a card on the table and put my hand flat on top of it. For the audience, I start rubbing the card as if to make it disappear. Crucially, I lift my hand up for a moment to "check" the card on the table and put my hand on top of it again, making a bit of a big deal about examining if the card is "set up" correctly. I'll explain why this seemingly pointless part of the "routine" is crucial in a moment. I then rub as before, build up to a climax, but it never comes as I lift my hand up to show the card is still there.
I explain "hmm, okay, well that didn't work". Everyone relaxes. The card goes back on the deck. And now I can do a steal at this moment when everyone is off guard because they think the trick is finished. Before anyone notices the trick is beginning again I quickly slide the card from the deck in my other hand onto the table using the thumb, but steal it back onto the deck again with my thumb with this other hand at the last moment all timed as I once again supposedly as before cover the card with my initial hand. "Let me try again." Now everyone is in a state of "catching me out" as I say this, but it is too late. They've missed the key move. Thinking back to double check that seemingly innocent move is a lot harder than it seems when it was remembered during a time when no tricks were "officially" happening from my cue. Why be in a state of scrutiny if you are lead to believe there is nothing to scrutinise?
And just in case, to really convince that the vanished card is still there I joke around and lift my hand an inch off the table, pretending to have the card stuck flat on my palm where nobody can see. I'll even pretend to struggle to keep it stuck, making it look like I am about to drop it. "It's disappeared!" I'll say. "Ah, he's just palming it in his hand" is what the audience naturally think at this time, falling for the trap: presuming that I have it at ALL. Then I put my hand down flat on the table again. "Now I'll bring it back! Magic!" As they laugh, or even moan "oh come on!", they all get reeled in even more to the idea that the card is there to begin with. Needless to say that we as magicians love well-executed convincers.
Before the reveal, I wave my other hand over my initial hand abnormally as if I am going to perform the sneaky move now, just so I can captivate and frustrate my audience a little more and give them wild geese to chase.
And finally, I just love the gasps I get when I look confused after more rubbing to "bring it back", slowly lift my hand up and this time clearly show my palm with no card, saying "oh.. I really have lost it..". Not a soul among them can back track through all those layers of presumption and false memories to work out what the hell happened.
It is something so simple yet so sweet, and it proves that you actually do not need to know many sleights to achieve good effects. All you need is a sense of how to engage an audience on a social, showmanship level.
So yes. I am obviously for the idea that eye-witness testimony in court should be heavily doubted. There are some things you can get from it: for example, if the witness reveals a piece of solid knowledge that could not have been a coincidence "I was not next to the blue Nissan car at Gray Street at 7:30pm", "but nobody in the court mentioned a blue Nissan, sir?" Things like that you probably can reasonably deduce, but more evidence is needed in cases of obscurity.
And I also do not see why the ideas of misdirection and false memories cannot be likened with animals. We have all pretended to throw the ball for the dog to run out and catch while hiding it behind our backs.
EDIT: Ah yes. The reason why at the start I do the routine of trying to do the trick and failing is PURELY so that I have an excuse to lift my hand up for a moment to show the card and then put my hand back down again. The hope is that after the real trick has been done, the audience will confuse what happened the first time with what happened the second time. Their final memory might reconstruct itself so that it ends up as "he lifted his hand, showed the card, put it back down, rubbed, and THEN it vanished!" If they end up remembering it like this, it becomes impossible to work out. Failing twice instead of once just to do the visual "checking" act for the audience would reinforce it more (although I would not do it three times). They may indeed miss that you did not do this check the true time you performed the trick.
But if the U.S. does not do anything, that is also a slippery slope of collusion through bystander effects.
Put it this way: if a crazed killer was shooting innocent people on the street and the police were doing nothing to stop it, you would not say that "lack of government intervention" was the right course of action, and you would quite rightly go further and say that the government not doing anything was a form of deliberate alliance with the killer. In other words, the government can possess some degree of fascism by doing nothing.
It is also worth noticing the parallels here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law , and how some countries make it a legal obligation to call for help if a dying person is spotted. They are beginning to recognise that bystanders have a great deal of responsibility in these situations whether they like it or not, and should be seen as dangerous if they are inhumane enough to let dying citizens fade away needlessly.
This also makes sense from a Leftist's point of view, where some redistribution of wealth is necessary to give bare necessities to those who need it most.
I hope I should not have to mention Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia. And yes, I also happen to think Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea under the Kim-Il-Sung regime meet the conditions for intervention.
This doesn't have to be unilateral, by the way. There is clearly a change occurring in the Zeitgeist where totalitarianism, genocide and fascism are becoming the explicit enemies, and other democracies should feel free to join in at any time. It would sure cut the tax rates and set a global precedent.
And the U.S. should DEFINITELY take up this kind of responsibility, especially how it persists with its huge military industrial complex. Since they have burdened themselves with this weaponry, they have made themselves responsible, and they have made themselves obligated to stop genocides and take out regimes that have hit the bottom of the barrel of humanity.
Re: Well, you guys say was no infringed content on Megaupload...
MegaUpload's piracy was caused by copyright law.
There is a reason why when you repress what the public believes to be true through legislation, whether it be the war on drugs, alcohol or prostitution, it turns ugly through black-market monopolies.
If we started funding creativity and not creations, and started backing the crowdfunding revolution and copyright abolition instead, we would have none of these problems.
I have always loved how porn censors, who claim that pornography corrupts us, always seem to insist that they are the exception to the rule.
I think I know what is going on here. People in our society are just too afraid to call out on parents for being the lazy, irresponsible fucks that they are. We would rather live in a culture where parents are treated like perfect, misunderstood angels who are "just trying to do what is best" and who the rest of us, who have no kids and therefore have a more objective insight to these issues, would not dream of telling how to raise their kids. Fuck that. The cliche "don't tell me how to raise my kids" is one of the stupidest absurdities ever spouted by those who do not like to be criticised and do not like the idea that they are doing a shitty job at it. If people would actually LISTEN to what garble they chant like mantras for two seconds they would know what nonsense it is.
Well guess what? I am here to shatter your silly little comfort zones.
Parents who make these kinds of calls for government babysitting are exactly the same sort of people who will buy their kids 18-rated games since the kids get asked for ID at the shops, and then claim that society, yes everyone ELSE, is responsible for exposing kids to violent content. We PRAISE these parents who expose kids to questionable content as being in the moral right. Can anything be more fucking contemptible? And the reason I can be sure of this is that it is far easier for these sorts of parents to blame a government's policy than tell their sweet little angels "no" once in a while.
These people have no right to advocate such a dangerous course of government empowering action and spit on free speech. No. Fucking. Right.
Remember, we are in an age where schools are encouraged to dumb down their exams, self-esteem "classes" are encouraged even in spite of blatant requirements to tell kids they are doing something wrong, where discipline is tossed aside, etc. There is also "value for tax money" too when it comes to schools, I will admit. But you cannot ignore the former.
I can guarantee you that any porn filter will be turned off by these same parents. Because they do not want their kids to be mad at them. These people are not worth our time. Put your fucking family computer in the living room so that you can pay attention to what your kids are doing, use a bit of common sense, and for God's sake stop claiming that having a kid makes you right about everything all the time.
I am sorry if I have caused a bit of confusion here with my rhetoric. I really should have got rid of that paragraph underneath " "...copyright infringement..." ".
Copyright holders are champions of the First Amendment, have every incentive to see their work disseminated as widely as possible, and have no reason to censor anything.
A little thought experiment here. Imagine you are in a debate supporting the idea of free speech in general, and you are on the proposition side of the house that believes "freedom of speech necessarily entails the right to offend."
Your opponents consist of those who traditionally say that hate speech should be made illegal, as well as, say, speech that is offensive towards religious sensibilities.
After you make your case, hopefully revolving around the idea that the knowledge of what is false is just as important as the knowledge of what is true, your opponents make the following straw man towards you:
"The proposition seems to claim that there are no limits to free speech," (the straw man here is that you never said there should be no limits to speech, even although you did say that there should be no limit to opinions, which is quite different. This typical, predictable straw man continues, and examples of speech that ought to be restricted are mentioned) "voice activated guns, libellous claims or slander, incitement to violence," (and then that old cliché which, if you trace back to its origins, was a blatant attempt to stop the real fire fighters from shouting fire when there really was a fire in a very crowded, war-hungry theatre) "shouting fire in a crowded theatre, showing pornography to children, yelling in somebody's ear to the point where they become deaf, and..."
And now, the punch line. Can anyone guess another limit the opposition might mention? Or maybe the better question is can anyone NOT guess it?
"...copyright infringement..."
I encounter this all the time when I get into a general free speech debate. They put their own words into my mouth and attack them instead. Copyright has nothing to do with the debate about expression of opinions, yet they present the issue as if it did.
Now, why would they point to copyright as part of this strawman? Because it is NOT actually part of the straw man, and is an issue which actually brings the other side back on topic and AWAY from the strawman again.
Copyright IS a limit to opinions, and not speech. They are correct. But I propose that limit should also not exist. To make a copy, authorised or not, derivative or not, is to copy the opinion of others and express either that exact same or derived opinion yourself. Therefore, stopping this process stops the expression of certain opinions. Try as you may, you cannot release a new book about Harry Potter, for example, and give different opinions about the characters through your story telling abilities, even although it is the only way this particular opinion can or will ever exist. Making your own characters to work around the hurdle, even as portrayals or references, will never let you deliver the same emotional impact to your audience because they are being restricted intimately with the copyright-imprisoned characters. And no substitute will ever do. It "wouldn't be the same" without them.
So bearing this in mind, the opposition of the free speech debate scenario here are actually providing a very direct challenge to the idea that copyright holders are "champions" of free speech as implied by this frivilous quotation at the beginning.
Either copyright is an enabler of opinions, or it is a disabler. It cannot be both. And considering the only correctly identified "limit" that the opposition had insight to in the free speech debate, I am strongly inclined to choose the latter.
Copyright maximalists and free-speech limit imposers cannot both be right.
This may sound rather suicidal, but I think one of the greatest things Edward Snowden could do at this moment in time is go back to the United States and accept any challenges the government throws at him.
Trust me when I say that it would be the tipping point.
Many of the great dissenters of the world have had to turn to civil disobedience in one form or another, and have had to spend time in prison to fight for what is right. There comes a point where more than protest is required.
You can rest assured that even more of a media storm around Snowden is the last thing NSA supporters want.
Every time you censor revolting opinions you stop the healthy spread of satire because you stop me from laughing at somebody I have a right to laugh at.
Every time you silence a hateful opinion you stop me from knowing if and when there is a spread of hate taking place around my community and you deny me the right to do something about it.
Every time you stop the guy who insists there was no Holocaust, or Armenian genocide, or Rwandan genocide, or al-Anfal campaign, or Srebrenica massacre from speaking out, you make the entire community ignorant of the truly evil attitudes of the world that we must be prepared to fight against.
Because getting high on capitalism and becoming isolated from and ignorant about the evils of the world is surely a healthy, moral course of action. Right?
This is what absolutely, conclusively demolishes the claim that we must be shielded from uncomfortable opinions: knowing what is not true is in itself a form of knowledge. The knowledge of lies is just as important as the knowledge of truths. We can best protect ourselves by knowing what to resist. Do not tell me for one second that profoundly offensive human behaviours that exist in this world must be censored for our supposedly childish eyes in the name of securing our own selfish, utopian, comfortable and quiet lifestyles.
In order to know thy enemy, and therefore fight thy enemy, one must know he is an enemy. And restricting the laws that make enemies voluntary show themselves as the miserable targets of discredit and humiliation that they are, is an impulse that exists from spoiled children who suffer from too many First World Problems and too much historical ignorance.
Stop watching fucking American Idol, read a history book or (gasp!) two, contemplate if you can the mass killings that take place on a daily basis on this planet with little or no outcry, wake up, and smell the fascism.
Education is about reading the copyright laws and ridiculing them.
Its transparent contradictions.
Its rationalisations.
Its blatant disregard for revolutionary technology.
Its slippery slopes.
Its encouragement of delusions towards creators.
Its unfalsifiable tautologies.
Its impossible balancing act.
Its a-historial failure to demand free speech regulation without corruption.
Its war on philosophies that pose a credible alternative to its claims such as assurance contracts.
Its dismissal of the fruits of labour of derivative artists as acceptable collateral damage.
Its monopolistic encouragement, both from legal and illegal pillars.
There is a reason why a child can see through all of it, as so easily demonstrated by the young generation of today who have come to absolutely hate the copyright laws.
It just takes one person: "why should we have to give up hard fought freedoms in the name of an unenforcable world-fence?" Word gets around, and the revolution starts.
Re: An incredible, ridiculous, and almost entirely fact-free article.
"The system works well."
Unfalsifiable claims are usually the weakest. The only way you can say the system works well as opposed to any other system is to compare experimental data between copyrighted and non-copyrighted societies in this modern age. You have to face up to the possibility that something such as crowdfunding could be the better model since it protects the fruits of labour as a service and not a product, bearing in mind that copyright must be removed from the equation in order to not contaminate the results.
"You always end up same place!"
Do you even grammar, bro? That's like the 1000th time you've not noticed.
I am not going to cease to repeat that deviantArt is the key question in all of this.
If you cannot follow through on your philosophy of copyright by demanding this website be shut down for monetising on copyright infringement, you have to face up to your contradictions or stop participating in the discussion.
And if you can follow through... do not be surprised when you end up facing a furious wave of angry artists demanding you be chucked out of office for being a threat to their fruits of labour.
On the post: DailyDirt: How Reliable Is Your Memory?
As someone who has performed sophisticated magic tricks, I can confidently say that the planting of false memories in audiences' minds is vital for the success of the tricks.
Part of this involves repetition. Imagine I place a card on the table and put my hand flat on top of it. For the audience, I start rubbing the card as if to make it disappear. Crucially, I lift my hand up for a moment to "check" the card on the table and put my hand on top of it again, making a bit of a big deal about examining if the card is "set up" correctly. I'll explain why this seemingly pointless part of the "routine" is crucial in a moment. I then rub as before, build up to a climax, but it never comes as I lift my hand up to show the card is still there.
I explain "hmm, okay, well that didn't work". Everyone relaxes. The card goes back on the deck. And now I can do a steal at this moment when everyone is off guard because they think the trick is finished. Before anyone notices the trick is beginning again I quickly slide the card from the deck in my other hand onto the table using the thumb, but steal it back onto the deck again with my thumb with this other hand at the last moment all timed as I once again supposedly as before cover the card with my initial hand. "Let me try again." Now everyone is in a state of "catching me out" as I say this, but it is too late. They've missed the key move. Thinking back to double check that seemingly innocent move is a lot harder than it seems when it was remembered during a time when no tricks were "officially" happening from my cue. Why be in a state of scrutiny if you are lead to believe there is nothing to scrutinise?
And just in case, to really convince that the vanished card is still there I joke around and lift my hand an inch off the table, pretending to have the card stuck flat on my palm where nobody can see. I'll even pretend to struggle to keep it stuck, making it look like I am about to drop it. "It's disappeared!" I'll say. "Ah, he's just palming it in his hand" is what the audience naturally think at this time, falling for the trap: presuming that I have it at ALL. Then I put my hand down flat on the table again. "Now I'll bring it back! Magic!" As they laugh, or even moan "oh come on!", they all get reeled in even more to the idea that the card is there to begin with. Needless to say that we as magicians love well-executed convincers.
Before the reveal, I wave my other hand over my initial hand abnormally as if I am going to perform the sneaky move now, just so I can captivate and frustrate my audience a little more and give them wild geese to chase.
And finally, I just love the gasps I get when I look confused after more rubbing to "bring it back", slowly lift my hand up and this time clearly show my palm with no card, saying "oh.. I really have lost it..". Not a soul among them can back track through all those layers of presumption and false memories to work out what the hell happened.
It is something so simple yet so sweet, and it proves that you actually do not need to know many sleights to achieve good effects. All you need is a sense of how to engage an audience on a social, showmanship level.
So yes. I am obviously for the idea that eye-witness testimony in court should be heavily doubted. There are some things you can get from it: for example, if the witness reveals a piece of solid knowledge that could not have been a coincidence "I was not next to the blue Nissan car at Gray Street at 7:30pm", "but nobody in the court mentioned a blue Nissan, sir?" Things like that you probably can reasonably deduce, but more evidence is needed in cases of obscurity.
And I also do not see why the ideas of misdirection and false memories cannot be likened with animals. We have all pretended to throw the ball for the dog to run out and catch while hiding it behind our backs.
EDIT: Ah yes. The reason why at the start I do the routine of trying to do the trick and failing is PURELY so that I have an excuse to lift my hand up for a moment to show the card and then put my hand back down again. The hope is that after the real trick has been done, the audience will confuse what happened the first time with what happened the second time. Their final memory might reconstruct itself so that it ends up as "he lifted his hand, showed the card, put it back down, rubbed, and THEN it vanished!" If they end up remembering it like this, it becomes impossible to work out. Failing twice instead of once just to do the visual "checking" act for the audience would reinforce it more (although I would not do it three times). They may indeed miss that you did not do this check the true time you performed the trick.
On the post: Saudi Arabian Court Sentences Blogger To 7 Years, 600 Lashes Under Cybercrime Law
Re:
Put it this way: if a crazed killer was shooting innocent people on the street and the police were doing nothing to stop it, you would not say that "lack of government intervention" was the right course of action, and you would quite rightly go further and say that the government not doing anything was a form of deliberate alliance with the killer. In other words, the government can possess some degree of fascism by doing nothing.
It is also worth noticing the parallels here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law , and how some countries make it a legal obligation to call for help if a dying person is spotted. They are beginning to recognise that bystanders have a great deal of responsibility in these situations whether they like it or not, and should be seen as dangerous if they are inhumane enough to let dying citizens fade away needlessly.
This also makes sense from a Leftist's point of view, where some redistribution of wealth is necessary to give bare necessities to those who need it most.
I hope I should not have to mention Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia. And yes, I also happen to think Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea under the Kim-Il-Sung regime meet the conditions for intervention.
This doesn't have to be unilateral, by the way. There is clearly a change occurring in the Zeitgeist where totalitarianism, genocide and fascism are becoming the explicit enemies, and other democracies should feel free to join in at any time. It would sure cut the tax rates and set a global precedent.
And the U.S. should DEFINITELY take up this kind of responsibility, especially how it persists with its huge military industrial complex. Since they have burdened themselves with this weaponry, they have made themselves responsible, and they have made themselves obligated to stop genocides and take out regimes that have hit the bottom of the barrel of humanity.
On the post: Rotolight Uses DMCA To Censor Review They Didn't Like, Admits To DMCA Abuse For Censorship
Re: Well, you guys say was no infringed content on Megaupload...
There is a reason why when you repress what the public believes to be true through legislation, whether it be the war on drugs, alcohol or prostitution, it turns ugly through black-market monopolies.
If we started funding creativity and not creations, and started backing the crowdfunding revolution and copyright abolition instead, we would have none of these problems.
On the post: A 'Watershed' For The Internet, An Invitation To Use A N. Korean ISP And Other Fallout From The UK's Porn Filtering Plan
I think I know what is going on here. People in our society are just too afraid to call out on parents for being the lazy, irresponsible fucks that they are. We would rather live in a culture where parents are treated like perfect, misunderstood angels who are "just trying to do what is best" and who the rest of us, who have no kids and therefore have a more objective insight to these issues, would not dream of telling how to raise their kids. Fuck that. The cliche "don't tell me how to raise my kids" is one of the stupidest absurdities ever spouted by those who do not like to be criticised and do not like the idea that they are doing a shitty job at it. If people would actually LISTEN to what garble they chant like mantras for two seconds they would know what nonsense it is.
Well guess what? I am here to shatter your silly little comfort zones.
Parents who make these kinds of calls for government babysitting are exactly the same sort of people who will buy their kids 18-rated games since the kids get asked for ID at the shops, and then claim that society, yes everyone ELSE, is responsible for exposing kids to violent content. We PRAISE these parents who expose kids to questionable content as being in the moral right. Can anything be more fucking contemptible? And the reason I can be sure of this is that it is far easier for these sorts of parents to blame a government's policy than tell their sweet little angels "no" once in a while.
These people have no right to advocate such a dangerous course of government empowering action and spit on free speech. No. Fucking. Right.
Remember, we are in an age where schools are encouraged to dumb down their exams, self-esteem "classes" are encouraged even in spite of blatant requirements to tell kids they are doing something wrong, where discipline is tossed aside, etc. There is also "value for tax money" too when it comes to schools, I will admit. But you cannot ignore the former.
I can guarantee you that any porn filter will be turned off by these same parents. Because they do not want their kids to be mad at them. These people are not worth our time. Put your fucking family computer in the living room so that you can pay attention to what your kids are doing, use a bit of common sense, and for God's sake stop claiming that having a kid makes you right about everything all the time.
On the post: Why Yes, Copyright Can Be Used To Censor, And 'Fair Use Creep' Is Also Called 'Free Speech'
Re:
On the post: Why Yes, Copyright Can Be Used To Censor, And 'Fair Use Creep' Is Also Called 'Free Speech'
A little thought experiment here. Imagine you are in a debate supporting the idea of free speech in general, and you are on the proposition side of the house that believes "freedom of speech necessarily entails the right to offend."
Your opponents consist of those who traditionally say that hate speech should be made illegal, as well as, say, speech that is offensive towards religious sensibilities.
After you make your case, hopefully revolving around the idea that the knowledge of what is false is just as important as the knowledge of what is true, your opponents make the following straw man towards you:
"The proposition seems to claim that there are no limits to free speech," (the straw man here is that you never said there should be no limits to speech, even although you did say that there should be no limit to opinions, which is quite different. This typical, predictable straw man continues, and examples of speech that ought to be restricted are mentioned) "voice activated guns, libellous claims or slander, incitement to violence," (and then that old cliché which, if you trace back to its origins, was a blatant attempt to stop the real fire fighters from shouting fire when there really was a fire in a very crowded, war-hungry theatre) "shouting fire in a crowded theatre, showing pornography to children, yelling in somebody's ear to the point where they become deaf, and..."
And now, the punch line. Can anyone guess another limit the opposition might mention? Or maybe the better question is can anyone NOT guess it?
"...copyright infringement..."
I encounter this all the time when I get into a general free speech debate. They put their own words into my mouth and attack them instead. Copyright has nothing to do with the debate about expression of opinions, yet they present the issue as if it did.
Now, why would they point to copyright as part of this strawman? Because it is NOT actually part of the straw man, and is an issue which actually brings the other side back on topic and AWAY from the strawman again.
Copyright IS a limit to opinions, and not speech. They are correct. But I propose that limit should also not exist. To make a copy, authorised or not, derivative or not, is to copy the opinion of others and express either that exact same or derived opinion yourself. Therefore, stopping this process stops the expression of certain opinions. Try as you may, you cannot release a new book about Harry Potter, for example, and give different opinions about the characters through your story telling abilities, even although it is the only way this particular opinion can or will ever exist. Making your own characters to work around the hurdle, even as portrayals or references, will never let you deliver the same emotional impact to your audience because they are being restricted intimately with the copyright-imprisoned characters. And no substitute will ever do. It "wouldn't be the same" without them.
So bearing this in mind, the opposition of the free speech debate scenario here are actually providing a very direct challenge to the idea that copyright holders are "champions" of free speech as implied by this frivilous quotation at the beginning.
Either copyright is an enabler of opinions, or it is a disabler. It cannot be both. And considering the only correctly identified "limit" that the opposition had insight to in the free speech debate, I am strongly inclined to choose the latter.
Copyright maximalists and free-speech limit imposers cannot both be right.
On the post: What Edward Snowden Has Given Us
Re: Re:
And they most definitely cannot shut up Reddit and Twitter.
On the post: What Edward Snowden Has Given Us
Trust me when I say that it would be the tipping point.
Many of the great dissenters of the world have had to turn to civil disobedience in one form or another, and have had to spend time in prison to fight for what is right. There comes a point where more than protest is required.
You can rest assured that even more of a media storm around Snowden is the last thing NSA supporters want.
On the post: Student's Free Speech Victory Is A Victory For Everyone Even If You Disagree With His Speech
Censorship is for the spoiled.
Every time you silence a hateful opinion you stop me from knowing if and when there is a spread of hate taking place around my community and you deny me the right to do something about it.
Every time you stop the guy who insists there was no Holocaust, or Armenian genocide, or Rwandan genocide, or al-Anfal campaign, or Srebrenica massacre from speaking out, you make the entire community ignorant of the truly evil attitudes of the world that we must be prepared to fight against.
Because getting high on capitalism and becoming isolated from and ignorant about the evils of the world is surely a healthy, moral course of action. Right?
This is what absolutely, conclusively demolishes the claim that we must be shielded from uncomfortable opinions: knowing what is not true is in itself a form of knowledge. The knowledge of lies is just as important as the knowledge of truths. We can best protect ourselves by knowing what to resist. Do not tell me for one second that profoundly offensive human behaviours that exist in this world must be censored for our supposedly childish eyes in the name of securing our own selfish, utopian, comfortable and quiet lifestyles.
In order to know thy enemy, and therefore fight thy enemy, one must know he is an enemy. And restricting the laws that make enemies voluntary show themselves as the miserable targets of discredit and humiliation that they are, is an impulse that exists from spoiled children who suffer from too many First World Problems and too much historical ignorance.
Stop watching fucking American Idol, read a history book or (gasp!) two, contemplate if you can the mass killings that take place on a daily basis on this planet with little or no outcry, wake up, and smell the fascism.
On the post: Jammie Thomas Refuses To Make RIAA Propaganda In Exchange For Reduced Payment
Its transparent contradictions.
Its rationalisations.
Its blatant disregard for revolutionary technology.
Its slippery slopes.
Its encouragement of delusions towards creators.
Its unfalsifiable tautologies.
Its impossible balancing act.
Its a-historial failure to demand free speech regulation without corruption.
Its war on philosophies that pose a credible alternative to its claims such as assurance contracts.
Its dismissal of the fruits of labour of derivative artists as acceptable collateral damage.
Its monopolistic encouragement, both from legal and illegal pillars.
There is a reason why a child can see through all of it, as so easily demonstrated by the young generation of today who have come to absolutely hate the copyright laws.
It just takes one person: "why should we have to give up hard fought freedoms in the name of an unenforcable world-fence?" Word gets around, and the revolution starts.
On the post: Congresswoman Claims 'Fair Use' And 'Transparency' Are Just 'Buzz Terms'
Re: An incredible, ridiculous, and almost entirely fact-free article.
Unfalsifiable claims are usually the weakest. The only way you can say the system works well as opposed to any other system is to compare experimental data between copyrighted and non-copyrighted societies in this modern age. You have to face up to the possibility that something such as crowdfunding could be the better model since it protects the fruits of labour as a service and not a product, bearing in mind that copyright must be removed from the equation in order to not contaminate the results.
"You always end up same place!"
Do you even grammar, bro? That's like the 1000th time you've not noticed.
On the post: Congresswoman Claims 'Fair Use' And 'Transparency' Are Just 'Buzz Terms'
If you cannot follow through on your philosophy of copyright by demanding this website be shut down for monetising on copyright infringement, you have to face up to your contradictions or stop participating in the discussion.
And if you can follow through... do not be surprised when you end up facing a furious wave of angry artists demanding you be chucked out of office for being a threat to their fruits of labour.
On the post: Swedish Rights Holders Order Police Raid To Shut Down Fan Translation Site
On the post: China, Once Again, Using Censorship Elsewhere To Justify Oppressive Great Firewall Of China
Delusion rate of fools who think that enforcing a copyright utopia does not come with consequences to liberty = 100%.
On the post: Blind Fear Of Cyberwar Drives Columnist To Call For Elimination Of The Internet
On the post: Blind Fear Of Cyberwar Drives Columnist To Call For Elimination Of The Internet
Re: Well, here's typical Mike railing, then finds it's satire.
On the post: UK Announces New Crime Unit Focusing Solely On IP Crimes
On the post: President Obama Calls Ed Snowden A 'Hacker' When He Didn't Hack Anything
On the post: Famous 'Converted Jihadist' Issues DMCA Takedowns On Videos Later Shown To Be False
Re:
On the post: Famous 'Converted Jihadist' Issues DMCA Takedowns On Videos Later Shown To Be False
Re:
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