I'm actually with you on this, in that I don't think the Fighting Sioux's name or logo is in any way racist. That said, if the local tribes say they'd rather you not use their tribe name as a moniker for a big institution of the state that long ago did you wrong, I think it's appropriate to change the name at their request....
There haven't been any real news stories to write about regarding the Blackhawks. That said, if they were to change their famous "Indian head" logo, I'd be all for it.
It's a particularly easy change to make, actually, as the Blackhawks aren't even named after the Indian tribe....
Re: Getting upset over a stolen name is natural and totally justified.
But, see, for this to work, you actually have to appropriate my likeness or persona as well. As you are in no way even moderately funny, I feel as though I'm in no danger here....
First of all, this comment should never have been reported and hidden, and I'm a little disappointed the community chose to do so just because of the name of the commenter. Report the comment, not the person making it, in my opinion.
That said, some points of major disagreement:
"A discussion of ideas and concepts doesn't require a perfect digital copy to happen. A perfect example would be this article, without listening to Nina's video, one would still have a very good idea of the content and her point of view, and could discuss them. Is any significant information lost if that video isn't available to me, or is unable to play on my mobile device at the time? The answer is not really as much as she thinks."
It's trivially easy to see how dangerous this line of thought is if we simply up the stakes. Take, let's say, a religious text. Imagine that a religious text is controlled in some way as to make it inaccessible to the wider public. Let's say, for instance, by language. So, you may have adherents to a faith following a book of providence that they cannot ever read. This seems to fir the analogy of this article with the associated video perfectly. What you'd have is the faithful blindly following what few individuals could read the original text and interpreting it for them. That means the faithful are following the interpreters and not the text, and could never check the text against the interpreters even if they wanted to. It's trivially easy to see how dangerous a situation like this is, as we have real-world examples.
Or, if you don't like the religious text analogy, make it a law that nobody can interpret due to the language it is written in. You'd have a public bound by a law that they could not themselves read or understand. It should be easy to see why that is dangerous and/or problematic as well. The point is that having the source text is paramount to understanding and learning. Censoring the source text/video/whatever deprives the public of that understanding, learning or, in the case of art, appreciation. One might argue that there is a larger case for this, but one CANNOT argue that the source material doesn't really matter, as you have above.
"Except in exceptional cases, nobody wants to use copyright to stop distribution, they want to use it as a legal basis under which distribution can occur. It would be incredibly difficult (if not impossible) for artists to be able to get compensation for their works if they had no legal standing."
This is obviously not true. Musicians made a living before copyright existed. They made a living before recorded music existed. There are any number of ways for artists to make a living without relying on legal standing. In fact, in the vast majority of transactions that result in an artist making money, the law is never consulted or considered.
Re: "I know, let's give them even /more/ reasons to hate us!"
I know what you mean and I think I know your good intentions in writing a comment like this, but I dislike this argument. For the would-be extremist, it seems pretty clear that little in the way of true terrestrial grievance or geopolitical factors need be applied. After all, there are oppressed peoples the world over, and not all of them react in identical fashions.
For me, I'd rather focus on the pure evil of tearing a child away from his/her parents without being made to produce evidence at trial for why. I don't think we have to worry about might-be future-terrorists in that scenario. I think we have plenty on our own plates to worry about....
The pure level of dumb and misunderstanding of what SCOTUS did in invoking the equal protections clause of the Constitution to invalidate discriminating state marriage laws, not to mention that silliness above about the separation of church and state, is absolutely astounding. Apparently some people need remedial civics lessons and a firmer understanding of what secular government is and does....
Re: But that violent video games aren't good is true regardless who says it.
That's not how a debate works, friend. The person asserting something has the burden of proof. In other words, all is allowed save until an argument against it can be constructed. If violent games had a net-zero benefit, then they should not be banned. A lack of benefit isn't a reason to exclude.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The real answer to hate speech
"what's the objective opposite of "cause harm to others"? It's not simple."
The objective opposite is "that action, idea or speech which causes the maximum benefit or happiness to others." These issues MUST start at the macro level before we talk about the micro, but an objective good is that which benefits the most people in the most quantity while correcting for any harm or negative impact on others.
In other words, it ends up being a math equation. If you can weight the good done to the people concerned while subtracting the weighted (where we can argue about how we weight this), you get a number. Positive numbers are objectively good, negative numbers are objectively bad, and some outcomes can end up more or less good or bad based on their number. How we arrive at that number is insanely complicated, and it never really is a number, but our own intuition, but when we take moral questions down to their bedrock, this process becomes evident.
Take gun control, for instance. Let's say as a hypothetical we know or have strong reason to believe that outlawing all firearms everywhere in our country will lead to 1000 less deaths per year in the country (I'm not saying this is even remotely true, just a hypothetical). Let's say we also know that outlawing these guns will have a negative impact on hunters, on people who might need them to protect themselves (and may indeed be counted as deaths from crime if gun bans were enacted), and that there is a loss of freedom, however great or small that freedom might be. The moral question is does value of the negatives outweigh the positives of the 1000 lives, understanding we have to take into account who those 1000 lives are, how they live, how, if at all, they contribute to their own deaths, etc. It's complicated, but the process is simply a weight of benefit versus harm.
"I'll let that "good speech" comment slide here as that didn't come across objective (what exactly is good speech anyway? That's subjective)"
I really do hate that kind of cop out. What it does is to paint morality as some kind of subjective thing that cannot be quantified, discussed logically, or expressed in any kind of scientific terminology, which I think is laughably false. Morality is subject to all the same material laws the rest of our world and philosophy is subject to. Areas of moral ambiguity or areas in which we simply haven't applied enough thought capital to, or areas where a moral certainty might not exist (areas of which I think there are less in quantity than most people think).
If what I said above is true, than there can certainly be "good speech" as an objective reality. We just need to train our brains to understand how to see morality and goodness in a consequential or even scientific light....
I think we can dial your sentiment back a bit. I don't think the answer to hate speech is to "get over it." I think the answer to hate speech is better, more logical, good speech. We're all competing on the field of ideas and its important that bad ideas aren't left lingering or unchallenged.
On the post: Thou Shall Not Browse: Comcast Refuses Service Call To Chicago Church Out Of Fear
Re: GrammarDude
On the post: University Sending Out Trademark Letters To Parody Artist Over Logo/Mascot It Abandoned
Re: c'mon man
On the post: University Of Kentucky Battles Kentucky Mist Moonshine Maker Over Hats And T-Shirts
Re: Grammatical Question
1. man-sausage
2. hate-sandwich
3. anger-bomb
Now, if you would kindly stop questioning the ideas I get from my head-brain, that would be lovely, okaybyethanks.....
On the post: How The Redskins' Delightfully Vulgar Court Filing Won Me Over
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The key issue w/the Cleveland Indians is their super-racist logo, a cartoon indian brave that is literally cherry red in color....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Wahoo
On the post: How The Redskins' Delightfully Vulgar Court Filing Won Me Over
Re: Re:
It's a particularly easy change to make, actually, as the Blackhawks aren't even named after the Indian tribe....
On the post: Fox News Anchor's Suit Over Toy Hamster Likeness Results In Hilarious Point-By-Point Hasbro Rebuttal
Re: Getting upset over a stolen name is natural and totally justified.
On the post: Nina Paley Argues Why Copyright Is Brain Damage
Re:
That said, some points of major disagreement:
"A discussion of ideas and concepts doesn't require a perfect digital copy to happen. A perfect example would be this article, without listening to Nina's video, one would still have a very good idea of the content and her point of view, and could discuss them. Is any significant information lost if that video isn't available to me, or is unable to play on my mobile device at the time? The answer is not really as much as she thinks."
It's trivially easy to see how dangerous this line of thought is if we simply up the stakes. Take, let's say, a religious text. Imagine that a religious text is controlled in some way as to make it inaccessible to the wider public. Let's say, for instance, by language. So, you may have adherents to a faith following a book of providence that they cannot ever read. This seems to fir the analogy of this article with the associated video perfectly. What you'd have is the faithful blindly following what few individuals could read the original text and interpreting it for them. That means the faithful are following the interpreters and not the text, and could never check the text against the interpreters even if they wanted to. It's trivially easy to see how dangerous a situation like this is, as we have real-world examples.
Or, if you don't like the religious text analogy, make it a law that nobody can interpret due to the language it is written in. You'd have a public bound by a law that they could not themselves read or understand. It should be easy to see why that is dangerous and/or problematic as well. The point is that having the source text is paramount to understanding and learning. Censoring the source text/video/whatever deprives the public of that understanding, learning or, in the case of art, appreciation. One might argue that there is a larger case for this, but one CANNOT argue that the source material doesn't really matter, as you have above.
"Except in exceptional cases, nobody wants to use copyright to stop distribution, they want to use it as a legal basis under which distribution can occur. It would be incredibly difficult (if not impossible) for artists to be able to get compensation for their works if they had no legal standing."
This is obviously not true. Musicians made a living before copyright existed. They made a living before recorded music existed. There are any number of ways for artists to make a living without relying on legal standing. In fact, in the vast majority of transactions that result in an artist making money, the law is never consulted or considered.
On the post: UK Goes Full Orwell: Government To Take Children Away From Parents If They Might Become Radicalized
Re: "I know, let's give them even /more/ reasons to hate us!"
For me, I'd rather focus on the pure evil of tearing a child away from his/her parents without being made to produce evidence at trial for why. I don't think we have to worry about might-be future-terrorists in that scenario. I think we have plenty on our own plates to worry about....
On the post: Kim Davis's Approach To Email More Outdated Than Her Views On Marriage
Re: Re: Re: Re: Separation of Church and state
Why do people still make this argument? Logic and reason provide everything you need for morality. No God is necessary for good and evil to exist....
On the post: Kim Davis's Approach To Email More Outdated Than Her Views On Marriage
Comments
On the post: Kim Davis's Approach To Email More Outdated Than Her Views On Marriage
Re:
On the post: 3 California Cities Blocking Parking Ticket App For Being, Like, Way Too Useful
Re: wtf
On the post: Bobby Jindal Announces Violent Games/Movies To Blame For All Those Mass Shootings
Re: But that violent video games aren't good is true regardless who says it.
On the post: Bobby Jindal Announces Violent Games/Movies To Blame For All Those Mass Shootings
Re: Well done Tim!
On the post: No, Making Fun Of Donald Trump's Stupid Red Hat Isn't Trademark Infringement
Re: Fair Use and Parody
On the post: Predictable: The Fragmented Media Will Give Us All Our Post-Oregon-Shooting Outrage Blankets
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Zuckerberg Tells Angela Merkel Facebook Is On The Hate Speech Censorship Case
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The real answer to hate speech
The objective opposite is "that action, idea or speech which causes the maximum benefit or happiness to others." These issues MUST start at the macro level before we talk about the micro, but an objective good is that which benefits the most people in the most quantity while correcting for any harm or negative impact on others.
In other words, it ends up being a math equation. If you can weight the good done to the people concerned while subtracting the weighted (where we can argue about how we weight this), you get a number. Positive numbers are objectively good, negative numbers are objectively bad, and some outcomes can end up more or less good or bad based on their number. How we arrive at that number is insanely complicated, and it never really is a number, but our own intuition, but when we take moral questions down to their bedrock, this process becomes evident.
Take gun control, for instance. Let's say as a hypothetical we know or have strong reason to believe that outlawing all firearms everywhere in our country will lead to 1000 less deaths per year in the country (I'm not saying this is even remotely true, just a hypothetical). Let's say we also know that outlawing these guns will have a negative impact on hunters, on people who might need them to protect themselves (and may indeed be counted as deaths from crime if gun bans were enacted), and that there is a loss of freedom, however great or small that freedom might be. The moral question is does value of the negatives outweigh the positives of the 1000 lives, understanding we have to take into account who those 1000 lives are, how they live, how, if at all, they contribute to their own deaths, etc. It's complicated, but the process is simply a weight of benefit versus harm.
On the post: Zuckerberg Tells Angela Merkel Facebook Is On The Hate Speech Censorship Case
Re: Re: Re: The real answer to hate speech
I really do hate that kind of cop out. What it does is to paint morality as some kind of subjective thing that cannot be quantified, discussed logically, or expressed in any kind of scientific terminology, which I think is laughably false. Morality is subject to all the same material laws the rest of our world and philosophy is subject to. Areas of moral ambiguity or areas in which we simply haven't applied enough thought capital to, or areas where a moral certainty might not exist (areas of which I think there are less in quantity than most people think).
If what I said above is true, than there can certainly be "good speech" as an objective reality. We just need to train our brains to understand how to see morality and goodness in a consequential or even scientific light....
On the post: Zuckerberg Tells Angela Merkel Facebook Is On The Hate Speech Censorship Case
Re: The real answer to hate speech
On the post: Zuckerberg Tells Angela Merkel Facebook Is On The Hate Speech Censorship Case
Re: Re: Techdirt
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