Why do we set up an inherently undemocratic system of governance that we believe will actually work?
We have corporations that are managed by middlemen who make short term profit with long term costs. The workers have no say in just such a system.
That's liberalism in a nutshell. What we've done is go right back to the 1920s where a private market has been said to work best without the government, the rich can rule the country, and nothing can be done for the public.
And we've watched that argument explode in the face of every right wing person for the past 30 years as the public has suffered for it. Lobbyists and lawyers control Congress over the demands of the people, gerrymandering has effectively taken away the voice of minorities in America, and our politicians fight each other while protecting the rich and powerful.
But the debt really isn't a problem because Obama is indeed paying it down. Our deficit is also going down.
The rights and liberties we cherish in a democratic republic? That's what's going down. Screw the 2nd Amendment. I want my 4th and 5th Amendment rights. I want my 14th Amendment rights. I want the right to speak without being incriminated like Aaron Schwartz. I want the right to protest a war without being labeled a terrorist. I want the right to argue with someone who I might not agree with politically so that we can find the flaws of our position and improve our nation.
But what I don't want is to believe that our government can't be brought to heel. I refuse to believe that our democracy is so far gone that we can never attain it.
So the problem has a solution. Force Congress to listen to the people instead of the money that's already in politics. Force our corporations to be changed to something far more beneficial. We tried reforms to the system. It's time for some new ideas. We can try minimal income projects similar to Social Security. That seems to have worked for the past 75 years. Other projects I can think of are co-ops where the workers decide what they produce, where they produce and how they produce. Obviously, this creates new challenges than just raising taxes and watching the same movie play out a little faster than when it occurred in 1932.
Hold the phone here. The USG is cloning data. From that cloning, they're creating a more complete picture of the people they're spying on which is everyone. But that information can be hacked or retrieved and it making clones which are shared by the NSA, the FBI, and the DoJ just as an example.
But this creates a lot of redundancy. Why continuously clone the same data? And how do you prevent it from falling into the public's hands?
I really think the government is pushing themselves into an indefensible position from a logical perspective. The government believes it doesn't have to follow the Constitution. It doesn't believe that it has to protect the rights of citizens. It can spy on anyone that it wants. It protects the aristocracy in a number of ways. We've seen that these people won't prosecute HSBC or any large scale fraud. They'd rather waste resources going after drugs and societal problems that could be resolved in much better ways.
It's not a government of, by, or for the people. It's a government running scared and not learning from its mistakes. In fact, it's creating even more and causing the public to lose faith in it. That's not disappointing. It's downright tragic. What's the use of a government that protects some of us, but not all of us? What's the point of a government running scared and hiding behind minutiae instead of working with the public?
How is it that our own government has essentially become redundant?
It is absolutely mindboggling the length that copyright has gone to justify unethical behavior like this.
This is just more incentive to abolish copyright and create more incentives for the public to make music and art instead of having to deal with greedy lawyers hellbent on making money illegally.
I know, I'm going on a tangent but you brought up Borderlands...
I hate it for what it did. It's the epitome of what's wrong with the video game industry. I think it relied too heavily on bad writing, horrible plagiarism, and the concept that players merely want more loot.
This is why Diablo 3 failed.
But I'll talk about that in a minute.
Borderland 2's gorillion problems explains the plagiarism. They stole EVERYTHING about that game and I hope people see why if they watch the video. But even in the first, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what happened with the game. I just didn't have fun with it. I was a mercernary that didn't care about the characters, the setting was too barren, and in the end, I just felt like there was nothing to compel me to really pick up the second one. Having watched the second one, I just felt that the story and narrative was just horrible with one dimensional characters willing to betray their souls depending on the context.
But to watch them screw over developers and other people that you took the game from? Really?
Now let me get into Diablo...
You want to know why Diablo 3 failed? It wasn't just DRM. They thought the game was about loot. It's the same problem as Borderlands 3. Play the game and you don't have that environmental horror feel that you get from the first two games. I was scared of the Butcher in the first game. You saw that he was an evil demon willing to kill you. Look at him in the third game. He's introduced like a pro wrestler. The environment is lighter and you just don't feel like he's that big of a deal. Sure, the game's polished to all hell, but you just don't have that terror of the demons that you did in the first few games.
And that's the problem. We have sequels that just don't have that heart in them. They give people what a focus group wants but not what we, the gamers, want.
People obviously forget all of the claims the industry has made and we can use EA as the quintessential example.
When EA was created, the problem was competition. They bought different studios and got larger as a result and created a retail publishing monopoly. Games suffered under them because they worried more about budgets and focus groups than they did unique games that appealed to various consumers.
As they got larger, they began to find reasons to make customers buy more of their games. High prices, DRM, codes to input, you name it.
So then they get competition in Steam. And Steam escapes their notice. Meanwhile, EA gets larger and larger, dominating the retail space and games suffer under them. They release their sports franchises and gain monopolies on all sports titles.
But they can't conquer the digital space that Steam and GoG now supply. What do they do? Push out Origin. They push out an inferior product that takes your data and sells it for even more money and ads while making the price of the games the exact same $60 price tag. They have no distribution to worry about, no overhead, just put up good games.
Yet the price is still the same.
How about modding tools for games? Won't even try to get consumers to become their best creators. Instead, there's only one way they think and that's to get your wallet.
Then they implement more DRM, more intrusive access to your data, and more crap that people don't want.
EA, quite frankly, is just trying to control a market that no one wants. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. It's time for them to fail really hard.
I just don't see the issue with checking people who've been arrested against the list of unsolved crimes.
Because you don't happen to be racially profiled. What we're creating is a massive database of people falsely convicted for crimes and then hold their DNA just in case they commit a crime.
The DNA is held for 50 years by the FBI. You add that to the NSA spying, the fusion centers, and the massive amounts of sentencing rules that are vague and put you in prison for 50 years.
You have a slave/police state. You have a racially motivated justice system that is looking for minorities to exploit instead of assist. You have imperialism going on in America against brown skinned people and it's downright disturbing that this has been allowed.
Yep. They had every incentive in the world to stifle innovation and they took it.
For the past 40 years, they've had a controlled environment where their world was nothing more than complain for regulatory capture, get it from the government, ignore the public, and screw over artists and creative types for business types and CEOs. They have had the laws changed to their favor to ensure that they get an entitled gravy train while taking advantage of every last subsidy on the local, state, federal and international level.
This was not a free market. They could care less about the Constitution or the public so long as they made more and more money.
What is FINALLY happening is that the chickens are coming home to roost. Their monopolies peaked in 1999 but as can be seen, now that they have to deal with actual competition, they don't know what to do. The old methods and tactics don't work when the people are informed and avoid either their music or their tactics and it's downright stupid to believe that you can stop piracy through enforcement.
I, for one, am glad that the recording industry is going down. They don't represent the public or the concerns of those that enjoy innovation and technology. And soon, the RIAA will be going the way of the Dodo unless they change their management to understand the new digital realities.
I REALLLY want to believe that Sony will capitalize...
And I really want to believe Sony has a clue...
But given their history of boneheaded notions, fair use violations, and war on hackers, they might capitalize on this mistake but not utilize it to they're full advantage.
I just have this notion that the PC will ultimately win since it had so many more advantages to consoles.
Somewhere, an MPAA executive is salivating over the idea of having the ultimate power to control markets just like FACT is attempting.
I'm pretty sure that in the next round of legislation, that's going to be in the TPP. You just can't let FACT have all of the credit in a royally bad idea.
Second, I don't doubt that the kid does stupid things. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most kids indeed learn their behavior and have to learn from their mistakes. That's what growing up is all about.
I just think the Zero Tolerance policies that we have are backfiring big time with regards to students who are a harm to no one but themselves and their rap careers.
Re: Re: Re: What a melange! Think hit EVERY one of your wacky notions!
Sticking to copyright: while Disney may have "stolen" from fairy tales (no one complained), the labor of thinking up, working out, and producing Mickey Mouse was nearly all due to Walt Disney (and his gang of slave-artists to draw the many images), so the resulting film is ALL his.
No. He stole from Grimm Fairy Tales, who took from thousands of years of stories to tell the children in regards to good moral upbringing.
Then you have to think about this... Walt Disney is DEAD!
He no longer has anything to do with creativity. His corporation is a shell, meant only to make money.
And to ENJOY the product of his work, you only had to pay a nickel!
Wrong. The public enjoyed his work and nowadays they enjoy it on the Pirate Bay since Disney's Vault is a figment of our imagination.
If you don't want to pay, you don't have to, but you've then NO right to enjoy the content.
Nope. I can enjoy it in a number of legal avenues without paying for it. A friend has a DVD. Or a friend has a VCR tape. And I've yet to pay. The same as people sharing media nowadays on Pirate Bay that you can't seem to wrap your head around.
I don't agree. If you read The Lewis Powell Memo you see that corporations frame the arguments regarding copyright and fair use. Most people have takedowns and other issues occur without ever trying a fair use defense in court. There are no teeth to the people having such a defense so it's useless.
We remember that Kim Dotcom along with other victims of domain seizures have had no judicial review in their illegal takedowns.
The host also (again, oddly) claims that fair use is mostly based on a court case from 1982 (which one?!?) and that people fear to test it.
I'm going to go on a limb and think they're talking about Sony v Universal and its fair use rulings. Yes, that's 1984. But it just doesn't vibe that they're talking about a 1982 ruling unless they simply got the year wrong.
What corporations have successfully done is privatize the judicial system over the past 40 years. This privatization was to be written with SOPA where corporations have more rights than people. Even now, we discuss all of the videos and takedowns issued with no fair use. That's the problem. We indeed have given corporations a lot of decisions. It's no wonder that the MPAA feels entitled to push both major parties to do what they want given how it's worked tremendously well for a LOOOONG time.
On the post: A Trip Down Memory Lane: People Warned What Would Happen When Congress Passed Bills To Enable Vast Spying
Re: Re: Part of the problem
It's recognizing that taking away power while not taking away corporate power will maintain the status quo and make it worse for people.
On the post: Washington Post Quietly Backtrcks On Claim That Tech Companies Knowingly Gave NSA Data, As Denials Get Stronger
On the post: A Trip Down Memory Lane: People Warned What Would Happen When Congress Passed Bills To Enable Vast Spying
Part of the problem
Why do we set up an inherently undemocratic system of governance that we believe will actually work?
We have corporations that are managed by middlemen who make short term profit with long term costs. The workers have no say in just such a system.
That's liberalism in a nutshell. What we've done is go right back to the 1920s where a private market has been said to work best without the government, the rich can rule the country, and nothing can be done for the public.
And we've watched that argument explode in the face of every right wing person for the past 30 years as the public has suffered for it. Lobbyists and lawyers control Congress over the demands of the people, gerrymandering has effectively taken away the voice of minorities in America, and our politicians fight each other while protecting the rich and powerful.
But the debt really isn't a problem because Obama is indeed paying it down. Our deficit is also going down.
The rights and liberties we cherish in a democratic republic? That's what's going down. Screw the 2nd Amendment. I want my 4th and 5th Amendment rights. I want my 14th Amendment rights. I want the right to speak without being incriminated like Aaron Schwartz. I want the right to protest a war without being labeled a terrorist. I want the right to argue with someone who I might not agree with politically so that we can find the flaws of our position and improve our nation.
But what I don't want is to believe that our government can't be brought to heel. I refuse to believe that our democracy is so far gone that we can never attain it.
So the problem has a solution. Force Congress to listen to the people instead of the money that's already in politics. Force our corporations to be changed to something far more beneficial. We tried reforms to the system. It's time for some new ideas. We can try minimal income projects similar to Social Security. That seems to have worked for the past 75 years. Other projects I can think of are co-ops where the workers decide what they produce, where they produce and how they produce. Obviously, this creates new challenges than just raising taxes and watching the same movie play out a little faster than when it occurred in 1932.
ootb does have a point, no question.
On the post: Oh, And One More Thing: NSA Directly Accessing Information From Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple And More
Re:
They warned us along with other whistleblowers and they were punished harshly for telling the truth.
On the post: Tech Companies Deny Letting NSA Have Realtime Access To Their Servers, But Choose Their Words Carefully
Redundancy
But this creates a lot of redundancy. Why continuously clone the same data? And how do you prevent it from falling into the public's hands?
I really think the government is pushing themselves into an indefensible position from a logical perspective. The government believes it doesn't have to follow the Constitution. It doesn't believe that it has to protect the rights of citizens. It can spy on anyone that it wants. It protects the aristocracy in a number of ways. We've seen that these people won't prosecute HSBC or any large scale fraud. They'd rather waste resources going after drugs and societal problems that could be resolved in much better ways.
It's not a government of, by, or for the people. It's a government running scared and not learning from its mistakes. In fact, it's creating even more and causing the public to lose faith in it. That's not disappointing. It's downright tragic. What's the use of a government that protects some of us, but not all of us? What's the point of a government running scared and hiding behind minutiae instead of working with the public?
How is it that our own government has essentially become redundant?
On the post: Irony Alert: John Steele Denies Uploading Anything Ever Despite Growing IP Evidence
Incentives are too great...
This is just more incentive to abolish copyright and create more incentives for the public to make music and art instead of having to deal with greedy lawyers hellbent on making money illegally.
On the post: Microsoft's Attack On Used Game Sales Asks Customers To Sacrifice Their Rights To Save An Industry
Gamer
I hate it for what it did. It's the epitome of what's wrong with the video game industry. I think it relied too heavily on bad writing, horrible plagiarism, and the concept that players merely want more loot.
This is why Diablo 3 failed.
But I'll talk about that in a minute.
Borderland 2's gorillion problems explains the plagiarism. They stole EVERYTHING about that game and I hope people see why if they watch the video. But even in the first, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what happened with the game. I just didn't have fun with it. I was a mercernary that didn't care about the characters, the setting was too barren, and in the end, I just felt like there was nothing to compel me to really pick up the second one. Having watched the second one, I just felt that the story and narrative was just horrible with one dimensional characters willing to betray their souls depending on the context.
But to watch them screw over developers and other people that you took the game from? Really?
Now let me get into Diablo...
You want to know why Diablo 3 failed? It wasn't just DRM. They thought the game was about loot. It's the same problem as Borderlands 3. Play the game and you don't have that environmental horror feel that you get from the first two games. I was scared of the Butcher in the first game. You saw that he was an evil demon willing to kill you. Look at him in the third game. He's introduced like a pro wrestler. The environment is lighter and you just don't feel like he's that big of a deal. Sure, the game's polished to all hell, but you just don't have that terror of the demons that you did in the first few games.
And that's the problem. We have sequels that just don't have that heart in them. They give people what a focus group wants but not what we, the gamers, want.
On the post: Microsoft's Attack On Used Game Sales Asks Customers To Sacrifice Their Rights To Save An Industry
Re:
When EA was created, the problem was competition. They bought different studios and got larger as a result and created a retail publishing monopoly. Games suffered under them because they worried more about budgets and focus groups than they did unique games that appealed to various consumers.
As they got larger, they began to find reasons to make customers buy more of their games. High prices, DRM, codes to input, you name it.
So then they get competition in Steam. And Steam escapes their notice. Meanwhile, EA gets larger and larger, dominating the retail space and games suffer under them. They release their sports franchises and gain monopolies on all sports titles.
But they can't conquer the digital space that Steam and GoG now supply. What do they do? Push out Origin. They push out an inferior product that takes your data and sells it for even more money and ads while making the price of the games the exact same $60 price tag. They have no distribution to worry about, no overhead, just put up good games.
Yet the price is still the same.
How about modding tools for games? Won't even try to get consumers to become their best creators. Instead, there's only one way they think and that's to get your wallet.
Then they implement more DRM, more intrusive access to your data, and more crap that people don't want.
EA, quite frankly, is just trying to control a market that no one wants. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. It's time for them to fail really hard.
On the post: Horrifying Supreme Court Ruling Lets Police Collect DNA Because You Might Just Be A Horrible Criminal
Re: Re:
Because you don't happen to be racially profiled. What we're creating is a massive database of people falsely convicted for crimes and then hold their DNA just in case they commit a crime.
The DNA is held for 50 years by the FBI. You add that to the NSA spying, the fusion centers, and the massive amounts of sentencing rules that are vague and put you in prison for 50 years.
You have a slave/police state. You have a racially motivated justice system that is looking for minorities to exploit instead of assist. You have imperialism going on in America against brown skinned people and it's downright disturbing that this has been allowed.
On the post: British Politicians: There's Child Porn On The Internet And Google Needs To Do Something About It
The real question...
"What are YOU going to do to fix this problem?"
I'd love to see the results of that inquiry.
On the post: Massive Growth In Independent Musicians & Singers Over The Past Decade
Re: Wow
Yep. They had every incentive in the world to stifle innovation and they took it.
For the past 40 years, they've had a controlled environment where their world was nothing more than complain for regulatory capture, get it from the government, ignore the public, and screw over artists and creative types for business types and CEOs. They have had the laws changed to their favor to ensure that they get an entitled gravy train while taking advantage of every last subsidy on the local, state, federal and international level.
This was not a free market. They could care less about the Constitution or the public so long as they made more and more money.
What is FINALLY happening is that the chickens are coming home to roost. Their monopolies peaked in 1999 but as can be seen, now that they have to deal with actual competition, they don't know what to do. The old methods and tactics don't work when the people are informed and avoid either their music or their tactics and it's downright stupid to believe that you can stop piracy through enforcement.
I, for one, am glad that the recording industry is going down. They don't represent the public or the concerns of those that enjoy innovation and technology. And soon, the RIAA will be going the way of the Dodo unless they change their management to understand the new digital realities.
On the post: Massive Growth In Independent Musicians & Singers Over The Past Decade
Hmmm
Thanks for reminding me that I need to buy a T-shirt that I wanted to buy on Techdirt for a while.
Thanks for the free advertising.
On the post: Reports Of Xbox One's Handling Of Used Games Mobilizes Playstation Fans
Not quite right...
And I really want to believe Sony has a clue...
But given their history of boneheaded notions, fair use violations, and war on hackers, they might capitalize on this mistake but not utilize it to they're full advantage.
I just have this notion that the PC will ultimately win since it had so many more advantages to consoles.
On the post: Why Are UK Police Allowing Entertainment Industry Employees To Arrest And Interrogate People With Their Help?
*facepalm*
I'm pretty sure that in the next round of legislation, that's going to be in the TPP. You just can't let FACT have all of the credit in a royally bad idea.
On the post: Judge Deems Facebook-Posting Rapper Cameron D'Ambrosio A 'Threat,' Denies Bail
Re: Re: What an idiot
*sigh*
You can yell fire in a crowded theater. It's ill advised, but it happens.
Second, I don't doubt that the kid does stupid things. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most kids indeed learn their behavior and have to learn from their mistakes. That's what growing up is all about.
I just think the Zero Tolerance policies that we have are backfiring big time with regards to students who are a harm to no one but themselves and their rap careers.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: #1!
Not only did Shakespeare plagiarize works, but others plagiarized him.
That's just how it goes.
On the post: DailyDirt: Tuition Debt Is For Chumps?
Re: $3K used to be what a college degree cost...
If investors recognize that this bubble could pop just like home mortgages, you'll have all hell breaking loose.
On the post: Adam Savage On Why Copyright And Trademark Holders Need To Get Over Their Obsession With 'Control'
Re: Re: Re: What a melange! Think hit EVERY one of your wacky notions!
No. He stole from Grimm Fairy Tales, who took from thousands of years of stories to tell the children in regards to good moral upbringing.
Then you have to think about this... Walt Disney is DEAD!
He no longer has anything to do with creativity. His corporation is a shell, meant only to make money.
And to ENJOY the product of his work, you only had to pay a nickel!
Wrong. The public enjoyed his work and nowadays they enjoy it on the Pirate Bay since Disney's Vault is a figment of our imagination.
If you don't want to pay, you don't have to, but you've then NO right to enjoy the content.
Nope. I can enjoy it in a number of legal avenues without paying for it. A friend has a DVD. Or a friend has a VCR tape. And I've yet to pay. The same as people sharing media nowadays on Pirate Bay that you can't seem to wrap your head around.
On the post: Adam Savage On Why Copyright And Trademark Holders Need To Get Over Their Obsession With 'Control'
Disagreements...
I don't agree. If you read The Lewis Powell Memo you see that corporations frame the arguments regarding copyright and fair use. Most people have takedowns and other issues occur without ever trying a fair use defense in court. There are no teeth to the people having such a defense so it's useless.
We remember that Kim Dotcom along with other victims of domain seizures have had no judicial review in their illegal takedowns.
The host also (again, oddly) claims that fair use is mostly based on a court case from 1982 (which one?!?) and that people fear to test it.
I'm going to go on a limb and think they're talking about Sony v Universal and its fair use rulings. Yes, that's 1984. But it just doesn't vibe that they're talking about a 1982 ruling unless they simply got the year wrong.
What corporations have successfully done is privatize the judicial system over the past 40 years. This privatization was to be written with SOPA where corporations have more rights than people. Even now, we discuss all of the videos and takedowns issued with no fair use. That's the problem. We indeed have given corporations a lot of decisions. It's no wonder that the MPAA feels entitled to push both major parties to do what they want given how it's worked tremendously well for a LOOOONG time.
On the post: Ridiculous Timing: Obama Administration Responds To Spying On AP By Pushing Journalist Shield Law That Wouldn't Matter
Re:
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