Re: Re: And Russia has the arguably more strict guns laws than all these countries
No, it has more guns floating around than both Australi and the UK put together. So you’re just confirming my point.
Russia has an estimated 12,750,000 guns, legal and illegal, in circulation. The UK has about 4,060,000, and Australia has about 3,050,000, for a total of 7,110,000.
Let's check population circa 2011. Russia has a population of around 141,930,000. The UK has a population of 62,641,000 and Australia 22,620,600, for a total of 85,261,600.
Now divide the population by number of guns. For Russia that's about 11 guns per person. For the UK and Australia that's about 12 guns per person.
So yes, Russia has more total guns, with a much higher population...but less guns per person, with a significantly higher homicide rate (~841 for UK plus Australia, ~13,826 for Russia).
"Guns" are not a religion. Guns are a tool. An object. Like any object they can be used for good, for evil, correctly, or incorrectly.
You can throw out statistics all you want. It makes no difference because guns are objects.
You want to ban a dangerous object? Ban cars. Cars cause an incomparably higher number of deaths per year and are used in conjunction with a ridiculously higher number of crimes. Drunk driving, accidental death by vehicle, illegal activities facilitated by cars...you can't even compare the two for overall impact.
We aren't rushing to ban cars, though, because they aren't inherently bad. They have good uses too, mainly transportation, but also saving lives during emergencies.
Once we get into discussion about the "morality" of inanimate objects we've already left the realm of science, so throwing out stats is meaningless. Guns aren't good. They aren't bad. They just are. We need our policy focused on what is, and what we can actually affect, rather than trying to bend reality with paper.
Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
All these arguments about resolution are cute, but are forgetting a basic fact...resolution is completely independent from screen size. The iPhone 5's resolution is 1136x640 pixels and is four inches diagonally. Virtually all 720p TVs are 1280x720 pixels and can be over 43 inches diagonally. That's a huge difference in screen size and an almost negligible difference in resolution (and bandwith, for that matter). This is ignoring most PC monitors, which easily support numerous different resolutions.
You can argue he's "dumbing it down" but that doesn't work when either way it doesn't make technical sense.
Re: Re: There is no consensus on gun control's effectiveness in the scientific community
Yes, two articles from Ars Technica, one on changing background checks in a single state and the other a review of a article from the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine from an anti-gun researcher, is "consensus." I can find plenty of opinion articles that say the opposite, including links to studies which have shown that gun control laws increase rates of violent crime. If you want to cite Missouri as the reason why gun control laws "work" I can just as easily cite Washington D.C. from 1976-2008 as the reason why they don't.
Think about why the US has the highest rate of gun crime in the developed world.
I guess this depends on your definition of "developed." The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, but we're around number 28 for rate of gun violence per population.
The UK put major restrictions on guns after Dunblane, and its rate of gun crime has gone down as a result.
In the 18 years prior to 1996, Australia had 13 incidences of mass killings, defined as killings of 5 or more people in a single episode. Since 1996, the incidence of such killings has been ... zero. Why? Because gun laws were majorly tightened in 1996.
And Russia has the arguably more strict guns laws than all these countries and has a higher gun-related murder value than the U.S....despite having less than half the U.S. population. See? I can throw out random exmaples that only look at a tiny cross-section of the variables too!
Gun violence is a problem, sure. It just isn't the problem, and stricter gun control laws aren't the solution. If only real life worked like that, where every problem was isolated and had a direct solution. Too bad that only works in fantasy.
Sorry if I don't like making policy based on fantasy.
Re: Re: At no point does anyone actually establish...
[citation needed]
Also, blatantly false. There is no consensus on gun control's effectiveness in the scientific community. It is definitely not a crime to use government funding to research it. Funding has been blocked, however, primarily by the NRA lobbyists, NOT the Federal Government.
And no, I don't see how my "gun preoccupation" plays into the hands of my government. This makes absolutely no sense.
Let's assume your first paragraph was based on fact and not make-believe. You're saying that gun control has been established by the scientific community as effective in preventing gun violence in your first paragraph. In your second paragraph you say this "fact" plays into the hands of my government. How? Why? Having less guns or even gun violence lets me fight better against the government? Huh?
So you must pass laws against the inanimate objects. QED.
Your argument is that since people misuse guns we need to make guns illegal. Therefore we need to find enough people who agree with you to pass a law making guns illegal. This is democracy, where to solve problems we take a majority vote and implement a law to fix it.
There's just one issue with this method. At no point does anyone actually establish whether or not the proposed law actually solves or even impacts the original problem! It's like saying that most (real) piracy happens on boats, therefore if we ban boats we'll eliminate piracy.
Criminal laws can only do two things. The first is prevent law-abiding citizens from acting in a certain way. The second is punish criminals for breaking the law. It cannot prevent criminals from breaking the law.
The issue isn't law-abiding citizens with guns. It's criminals with guns. Therefore a law banning guns doesn't affect the issue. It doesn't even make much sense...should we ban knives because stabbings happen with knives? What about banning cars because drunk drivers kill people with cars? They aren't killing others with alcohol...it's the car that kills people!
There should be a litmus test to determine whether or not a law addresses an issue prior to vote. If you can't show any evidence that a particular law will solve a particular problem in any way, the law should not be allowed to be voted on until it does. Stupid laws would still get passed with bad logic, and good laws may not pass the test, but overall it would be a great step towards improving democracy.
Also, your use of Q.E.D. following a blatant fallancy made me physically ill. Bravo.
As a previous Time Warner user, my new rate has only increased by $50 for the exact same internet that still doesn't reach advertised speeds and has nearly unusable WiFi! Oh, sorry, I must be too ignorant to figure out why this is an improvement. My bad.
Wasn't the whole point of a library to give the public access to information they couldn't otherwise get, for free? I distinctly remember having a free library card that let me check out a book and read it to my heart's content (as long as I returned it by the due date so other people could read it too).
So why exactly does it matter if people are copying stuff from the library? What are they going to do, sell the stuff that someone could get for free? And even if they did, what has that cost the library?
Also, is really that big a deal to get a snapshot taken in the library? It's not like you're in a strip club when you're telling your wife you're working late. You're in one of the most benign, neutral places you can be. It's also a public area. Who is the library to say that, assuming I'm not actively disturbing other patrons, I can't take a picture?
Once you build a society based on following the rules rather than logic laws become useless and arbitrary.
Your definition applies to plenty of things that a logical person would not consider terrorism (horror films, for example) and does not apply to things that are usually considered terrorism (revealing classified information isn't that scary, but can still get people killed). So to make your definition work you then have to define "terror" which has a different actual meaning than the meaning you're using in context.
Ah, context. The missing link in the American judicial system. Without context, everyone is a criminal according to the law. Which is reality today.
The Internet is great at delivering lots of things to a few people, broadcasting is great at delivering a few things to lots of people. To dismiss it as "less important tech" would be to make a grave mistake.
This makes no technical sense. Replace all the cable broadcasts with internet servers and you have pretty much the same thing, just more versatile.
Heck, since it's all "on demand" it's technically better than traditional distribution systems. In other words, the server is only transmitting data when another system queries it, rather than constant transmission to all possible reception points for all possible streams (aka cable television). Think about it, what uses less bandwith...a radio station (constant transmission) or a push-to-talk radio (burst transmission). And this is ignoring potential that is impossible for traditional broadcasting, such as cascading bandwith (i.e. Bittorrent-style protocols).
It's not only "less important tech", it's useless tech. It's the horse and buggy to the Model T, and you're still arguing that horses are better since there aren't many paved roads or gas stations and all the laws are based around horses.
Horse and buggies are still around, but few would argue we should have cracked down on these newfangled "car" things before they destroyed an industry. Guess what? The buggy manufacturers went out of business, started making cars or otherwise moved on with their lives, and the world kept spinning.
Mass broadcasting is the same thing. It's legacy tech, from an industry that still thinks in terms of silly devices like CDs and movie theaters, obsolete in an age of flash drives and home theaters. The only reason these things still exist is due to laws, contracts, and those who use them for the social aspects. Which is fine...I still enjoy a good campfire or hike, but to imply that either is "modern technology" is insane.
Broadcasting technology has been obsolete for years, kept alive by a Frankenstein of lawyers and paper that has nothing to do with technology. If you want to make the arguement that it's good for the industry, that's fine, but please don't pretend there's any technological benefit to be found there.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This isn't the behavior of a dictatorship, how?
I'm going to assume you have no idea what you're talking about, or haven't thought it through. Or maybe you've just bought into war propaganda so much you've started to dehumanize our enemies. But this is not how America is supposed to fight wars, at least according to our military doctrine.
Being a "terrorist" is not a death sentence, and does not automatically make you an enemy combatant. Being associated with a terrorist certainly doesn't. Do you think that guy's family cares that he is plotting against the U.S., a foreign country that has done nothing for them? Of course not. Why does that make them deserve death? Should we start executing the families of murderers, because maybe they still visit their family member in prison?
WWII is a horrible example. That war became a massive murder-fest where military tactics were replaced with revenge. The sad part? Carpet bombings were ineffective. Read the history. They caused a lot of damage, but rarely affected the targeted nation's fighting capability on both sides. It was too imprecise to hit the military infrastructure and all bombing civilians did was make the soldiers fight harder and more desperately. You don't win wars that way...it's not only inhumane, it's ineffective.
We have a better class of soldier now, and a better class of military. This sort of thing detracts from that, and undermines our greater military objective. It saddens me to know this has been going on, and saddens me more that there are fellow American citizens applauding it.
Re: Re: This isn't the behavior of a dictatorship, how?
That's not how the laws of war work. You don't get to blow up a building full of civilians just because an enemy might be inside, or is likely to be inside. This is the 21st century and we DO check IDs in war zones.
Positive ID is a requirement for the infantry in America, even in combat zones. You don't get to shoot even known terrorists if they don't have weapons.
What makes drones so special that, without any possible risk to themselves, they get to skip this requirement? It's ridiculous and insulting to the men and women having to make that choice on the ground with their lives in danger. I imagine there's going to be some issues when people who have been court-martialed for making a bad call when they were looking in someone's eyes find out the rest of the government has been OK with "SIM card enemy ID."
Re: Copyright + gadgets = prosperity for producers. -- Gadgets without copyright = disaster for all.
Can't compete with free?
Riot games makes an estimated $150 million per year. Riot games only has one title, League of Legends, which is free. Heck, it doesn't even make it's money with ads.
I could go on and on, discussing free-to-play, Kickstarter, comedians who put their shows on YouTube, blah blah blah, but you have such a twisted understanding of reality it's really not worth it.
People will pay for things they value, whether or not they can get it for free. I can get any movie, game, or song I want for free, and easily, but I pay subscriptions to Netflix, Slacker, and have purchased thousands of dollars in Steam/GoG games. Why? They offer a better service.
Here's the flaw in your argument. Copyright is already not enforced and piracy is widespread. Yes the industry just keeps growing, year after record breaking year. In fact, infringement is easier than ever as bandwith and technology improve.
Copyright does nothing to benefit the majority of artists. It doesn't help consumers at all. So who's benefiting? Oh, right, the giant publishers that can't cope with technology that made publishing obsolete.
If they die out it will have exactly the same effect as the death of the horse and buggy industry in the 20th century...nobody cares. And maybe the horse and buggy guys can go work for a company that actually does something productive instead of stealing from artists.
You wan't moral outrage? Go read the history of the "copyright industry's" abuses of artists, and how they routinely deny artists access to their own work. Now look up the word "steal" and note how it involves taking something away from someone else. Who's the real thief? The infringer, or the person who takes someone else's work as their own and sells it?
You've got your anger all backwards, and it's sad and funny at the same time.
10,000 years ago societies could produce more physical goods than they needed; that was without modern technology. Every time we increase the labour potential of industry we reduce the amount of human investment required to maintain it; we are at the point, now, where self maintaining, self fabricating, and fully automated foundries could pump out every necessity (and most luxuries) with a social cost of ZERO and distribute them without even bothering with money at all.
This is pretty much it. I higly recommend a book called Drive by Daniel H. Pink. It discusses intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation and how they affect human behavior. The fact is that, even if someone didn't have to worry about money at all, they would still find work to do. Humans are not motivated purely by the pursuit of wealth; in fact, it's a fairly minor drive.
There are a couple technologies that are going to really clash with the status quo of the industrial era being developed right now. Individually they are of minor importance, but together they could possibly revolutionize modern society.
The first is 3D printing. While right now 3D printing is pretty limited and very expensive, much like 1980s era computers, the applications of these devices over the next 20 years are going to explode dramatically. The entire industrial era economy is based on manufacturing and distribution; it's only once computers put a twist in the "distrubution" model of the industrial era that we've seen a big disruption. More recently even manufacturing is becoming a point of conflict as the line between "content creator" and "consumer" continues to blur.
Now throw a device into the mix that literally negates the need for manufacturing and distribution. As long as you have the raw materials (which are fairly universal and can be aquired easily via our existing distribution systems) you can simply print out almost anything you need. Want new shoes? Print them. Need a nail? A hammer? Print them. Want a hamburger? A fancy meal? Print it. Need more materials? Have a drone deliver them to your house.
The next change is power. People are moving towards "clean" energy for all the wrong reasons (the environment) but discovering its biggest advantage in the process (economics). Right now most renewable energy sources are expensive investments with limited viability. Ten years from now? I expect most new vehicles will be hybrid or hybrid with purely electrical capability, and fuel cells will be looked at closely again (primarily due to 3D printing...when you can print at the molecular level you can dramatically reduce fuel cell costs).
This has a HUGE worldwide impact, and it's one many companies and governments are desperate to avoid. Why? Because these technologies practically make the global economy obsolete. Why buy cheap manufactured goods from China when we can just print them in our own house? Why import billions of gallons of oil when we can produce our own energy?
And what about scarcity? As a race we've long since negated food as a scarce resource; the U.S. alone could manufacture enough food to feed most of the world. We don't because we actually pay farmers to produce less food so we don't drive food prices down too low. Water isn't even a factor; with even moderate improvements to renewable energy and infrastructure we could generate more fresh water than we could possibly need. Fuel isn't an issue in a society that generates it's own unlimited fuel.
In 20 years many mundane tasks will become automated. We already have devices that can vacuum your house, clean up after and feed your pets, wash your dishes, clean your laundry...there's no reason these things can't be further automated. Computers have effectively replaced many mid-level white collar jobs; accountants, pay companies, tax professionals, and many others are facing obsolencence in the face of Excel and tax programs. In 20 years programming will be taught along science and math as a basic skill, and computers will be able to program most simple tasks themselves.
And this is all based on stuff we know exists today. In 20 years we could have a second computer revolution depending on theoretical technologies, such as quantum computers, fusion power, commercial and personal space travel, cloning, 3D printed organs, virtual reality...the list goes on and on.
We're on the brink of a new world. There's going to be a lot of resistance, that's for sure. But humans are both pragmatic and idealistic, and eventually our curiousity and drive will move us farther than anyone today can imagine. I for one look forward to it.
Re: The take is set by the phrase: "adolescent years".
Blue, you are once again operating under a false assumption. Let me make this perfectly clear. It is virtually impossible, by definition, to steal an idea. The only way you could arguably steal an idea is by hearing someone else's idea and promptly murdering them, therefore depriving them of the idea. Otherwise you are simply copying an idea. And "copying" has never, ever meant "stealing". Reality doesn't work that way.
I don't know any other way to put it. If someone says "Hey, the sky is blue" that's an idea. If I later say the same thing, I haven't stolen anything. They still have their idea, and the sky is still blue.
This is an uncomfortable truth, because it leads to another uncomfortable truth, which is that the only "rights" people have are those that they are given by others. "Basic human rights" sounds good but don't exist within reality. If, for example, "life" were a basic human right nobody could murder because they have a right to life. Reality disagrees.
The funny part is you come uncomfortably close to arguing the exact point of most of the articles here on Techdirt while railing at exactly the wrong problem. The reason "The Rich" have the markets locked up is because they can use IP laws to leverage their dominance and compete at the market level using legislation and the judicial system. Since their competition can't afford the costs of lobbying and lawyers they get crushed and "The Rich" stay rich.
If you want a fair market we need to remove IP, not make it stronger. Keep reading the stuff here...you're so close to the truth, and still so far away.
The "tradeoffs" are between a smaller pie and a bigger one, and Picker seems to be upset if the law favors a bigger pie. I can't see how that makes any sense from an economic standpoint.
This is simple. A bigger pie means that each piece is less valuable. A small pie means that each piece is more valuable. The big pie probably also has a lot more people benefiting from it than the small pie.
When you're one of the people already benefiting from the small, valuable pie, why would you want to let other people in?
From a greater economic standpoint, what you're saying makes perfect sense. More accessibility means more people benefiting which improves the overall economy. But from a individual standpoint, the individual making a lot of money now may go down to making less money, and for them that's all that matters.
I'm not saying it's right. But you can always make sense of human greed and self-serving behavior.
That's not what I said. The anticircumvention provisions strengthen copyright holders' rights by making it more difficult to circumvent access controls. Those access controls make it more difficult to infringe. By making it legal to traffic in these circumvention technologies, that in turn makes it easier to infringe.
Ah, I think I get the fundamental difference in viewpoint that's causing the issue. Let me see if I understand this correctly.
In your view, copyright is a natural right that creators of works possess. They created it, therefore they own it, and anyone else who accesses must follow their rules. "Fair use" is an exception that temporarily diminshes the creator's rights in order to allow the public access to certain allowed uses of the work, such as parody or news reporting. Is that close?
Because that's the opposite of my view, and arguably of the Constitutional view. In my view copyright is a temporary right granted to creators to supress my natural right to do with it whatever the heck I want.
To take it to a real world example, if one of my friends tells a story at a party, what "right" does he have to that story? I can tell the story, change the story, or do whatever I want with it, as people have always done. People copy each other reflexively and naturally; look up the concept of "mirroring" in psychology. They have no natural right to their stories, ideas, and behaviors that prevent other people from mimicking or using in their own way. How do you think dialects start?
In other words, "copyright" is a commercial protection of culture to encourage the creation of more culture. Put another way, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The key part in both concepts is the purpose or intent...in my version the "encourage the creation of more culture" and in the Constitutional language "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts."
You seem focused on the rights of creators as if the purpose of those rights is to make the creators money and to prevent other people from infringing on their copyright. This is not, and has never been, the purpose behind copyright law, although it is being widely used for it now.
So from your point of view, this change would weaken copyright law by removing the "right" of preventing infringement and loss of control. From my point of view this change strengthens copyright law by promoting the exchange of ideas, reducing economic waste by those who are not creators (the distribution companies), and by increasing the value of copyrighted works.
To illustrate my point, I will utilize a bit of fair use:
"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."
AJ is just excited that he found something that appears to prove his point. If only he weren't begging the question fallaciously every time he'd almost have made a valid point. By the way, using a fallacy while accusing someone else of a fallacy is called irony.
Let me explain. The basic premise of your argument is wrong. You are saying that removing the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA weakens the rights of copyright holders because removing the anti-circumvention clause weakens the rights of copyright holders. This is a logical fallacy known as "begging the question" (as opposed to the common use where it means creating a question). Repetition of your fallacy does not improve it's validity.
The second part of your statement must be argued for the initial postulate to be valid. In other words, you must first explain how making circumvention of protections for non-illegal uses of copyrighted material in any way affects the rights of copyright holders.
For example, let's take another set of laws. It is illegal for you to break into my house. It is not illegal for you to enter if I give you permission, and it is always legal for me to enter my own house barring something like a restraining order. Let's imagine it is also illegal to climb into a house through a window since that is circumventing the security of the house.
Now, as a homeowner, I have the right to prevent unauthorized entry to my home. If I accidentally lock myself out of the house, and climb in through a window, should I be prosecuted for breaking and entering under the clause of the law that states going through the window is illegal? And if that law were removed, so it is now legal for *me* to enter my house, but still illegal for an intruder, does that diminish my homeowners rights in any way? Either way the right to enter my house is unaffected...someone entering illegally is illegal, regardless of the method, and someone entering legally should not be a criminal for entering through an "illegal" method.
So what Mike stated is correct...the actual copyrights of copyright holders are unaffected by this change. The ability to take legal activity and treat it as illegal simply due to the method would be removed. This may help reduce the abuse of copyright law for non-copyright purposes but does nothing to diminish the copyrights themselves.
Your home air oscillation device using rapidly spinning polyethylene blades in order to rapidly displace the local breathable gasses. This displacement can lower the local oxygen level as well as cause rapid evaporation of body moisture and lowered body temperature. A similar effect in nature is the primary cause of deadly cyclonic activity. In fact, the Korea Consumer Protection Board released a consumer safety alert is 2006 warning of such devices causing asphyxiation or hypothermia.
Unless I'm mistaken, isn't this device primarily voice activated? As in, to take a picture, you have to either say "Glass, take a picture" or reach up and press a button. If there's a mind control feature included I certainly haven't read about it. I would think that talking out loud for recording would be kind of a big give away.
For filming, you have a similar issue, plus you have to disable the recording LED. The device itself is not inconspicious; if you're concerned about privacy, why not just ask someone to take it off? I wouldn't think there would be any more issues in bathrooms than there are now and I seriously doubt they'll become a permanent feature of corrective eye lenses.
Either way the fact that our government is concerned over our privacy is laughable. This is purely an attempt to get a legislative foothold on a new technology so they can ban it rather than compete. They're still trying to figure out this "internet" thing, can't have us getting some fancy...um...thing that's the same as a smart phone, but always being held in front of your face. Oooh, scary.
Privacy is a real concern. Google Glass just isn't the big threat to it. Cute attempt to divert attention, though.
On the post: State Dept Launches 'Free the Press' Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter
Re: Re: And Russia has the arguably more strict guns laws than all these countries
Russia has an estimated 12,750,000 guns, legal and illegal, in circulation. The UK has about 4,060,000, and Australia has about 3,050,000, for a total of 7,110,000.
Let's check population circa 2011. Russia has a population of around 141,930,000. The UK has a population of 62,641,000 and Australia 22,620,600, for a total of 85,261,600.
Now divide the population by number of guns. For Russia that's about 11 guns per person. For the UK and Australia that's about 12 guns per person.
So yes, Russia has more total guns, with a much higher population...but less guns per person, with a significantly higher homicide rate (~841 for UK plus Australia, ~13,826 for Russia).
"Guns" are not a religion. Guns are a tool. An object. Like any object they can be used for good, for evil, correctly, or incorrectly.
You can throw out statistics all you want. It makes no difference because guns are objects.
You want to ban a dangerous object? Ban cars. Cars cause an incomparably higher number of deaths per year and are used in conjunction with a ridiculously higher number of crimes. Drunk driving, accidental death by vehicle, illegal activities facilitated by cars...you can't even compare the two for overall impact.
We aren't rushing to ban cars, though, because they aren't inherently bad. They have good uses too, mainly transportation, but also saving lives during emergencies.
Once we get into discussion about the "morality" of inanimate objects we've already left the realm of science, so throwing out stats is meaningless. Guns aren't good. They aren't bad. They just are. We need our policy focused on what is, and what we can actually affect, rather than trying to bend reality with paper.
On the post: Jeffrey Katzenberg: The New Pricing Model For Movies Will Be Based On The Viewer's Screen Size
Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
You can argue he's "dumbing it down" but that doesn't work when either way it doesn't make technical sense.
On the post: State Dept Launches 'Free the Press' Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter
Re: Re: There is no consensus on gun control's effectiveness in the scientific community
Think about why the US has the highest rate of gun crime in the developed world.
I guess this depends on your definition of "developed." The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, but we're around number 28 for rate of gun violence per population.
The UK put major restrictions on guns after Dunblane, and its rate of gun crime has gone down as a result.
In the 18 years prior to 1996, Australia had 13 incidences of mass killings, defined as killings of 5 or more people in a single episode. Since 1996, the incidence of such killings has been ... zero. Why? Because gun laws were majorly tightened in 1996.
And Russia has the arguably more strict guns laws than all these countries and has a higher gun-related murder value than the U.S....despite having less than half the U.S. population. See? I can throw out random exmaples that only look at a tiny cross-section of the variables too!
Gun violence is a problem, sure. It just isn't the problem, and stricter gun control laws aren't the solution. If only real life worked like that, where every problem was isolated and had a direct solution. Too bad that only works in fantasy.
Sorry if I don't like making policy based on fantasy.
On the post: Censorious Parent Calls Cops On Teen Giving Away Books In A Local Park
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'll argue the other side
This section almost gave me a concussion due to the force of my face palm. I demand medical compensation for injuries sustained.
On second thought, just keep the two cents to yourself. It's better for everyone. Thanks.
On the post: State Dept Launches 'Free the Press' Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter
Re: Re: At no point does anyone actually establish...
Also, blatantly false. There is no consensus on gun control's effectiveness in the scientific community. It is definitely not a crime to use government funding to research it. Funding has been blocked, however, primarily by the NRA lobbyists, NOT the Federal Government.
And no, I don't see how my "gun preoccupation" plays into the hands of my government. This makes absolutely no sense.
Let's assume your first paragraph was based on fact and not make-believe. You're saying that gun control has been established by the scientific community as effective in preventing gun violence in your first paragraph. In your second paragraph you say this "fact" plays into the hands of my government. How? Why? Having less guns or even gun violence lets me fight better against the government? Huh?
Seriously, though, I'd love to see your sources.
On the post: State Dept Launches 'Free the Press' Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter
Re: Re: Those darned inanimate objects
Your argument is that since people misuse guns we need to make guns illegal. Therefore we need to find enough people who agree with you to pass a law making guns illegal. This is democracy, where to solve problems we take a majority vote and implement a law to fix it.
There's just one issue with this method. At no point does anyone actually establish whether or not the proposed law actually solves or even impacts the original problem! It's like saying that most (real) piracy happens on boats, therefore if we ban boats we'll eliminate piracy.
Criminal laws can only do two things. The first is prevent law-abiding citizens from acting in a certain way. The second is punish criminals for breaking the law. It cannot prevent criminals from breaking the law.
The issue isn't law-abiding citizens with guns. It's criminals with guns. Therefore a law banning guns doesn't affect the issue. It doesn't even make much sense...should we ban knives because stabbings happen with knives? What about banning cars because drunk drivers kill people with cars? They aren't killing others with alcohol...it's the car that kills people!
There should be a litmus test to determine whether or not a law addresses an issue prior to vote. If you can't show any evidence that a particular law will solve a particular problem in any way, the law should not be allowed to be voted on until it does. Stupid laws would still get passed with bad logic, and good laws may not pass the test, but overall it would be a great step towards improving democracy.
Also, your use of Q.E.D. following a blatant fallancy made me physically ill. Bravo.
On the post: Comcast Says That If You Object To Its Merger With Time Warner Cable, You're Ignorant And Unreasonable
On the post: British Library Says It's Copyright Infringement To Take Photos Inside The Library; Demands Person Delete Tweet
So why exactly does it matter if people are copying stuff from the library? What are they going to do, sell the stuff that someone could get for free? And even if they did, what has that cost the library?
Also, is really that big a deal to get a snapshot taken in the library? It's not like you're in a strip club when you're telling your wife you're working late. You're in one of the most benign, neutral places you can be. It's also a public area. Who is the library to say that, assuming I'm not actively disturbing other patrons, I can't take a picture?
Are we so desperate for stuff to get upset about?
On the post: Exile: Sarah Harrison On Paying The Price For Helping Edward Snowden
Re: Terrorism?
Once you build a society based on following the rules rather than logic laws become useless and arbitrary.
Your definition applies to plenty of things that a logical person would not consider terrorism (horror films, for example) and does not apply to things that are usually considered terrorism (revealing classified information isn't that scary, but can still get people killed). So to make your definition work you then have to define "terror" which has a different actual meaning than the meaning you're using in context.
Ah, context. The missing link in the American judicial system. Without context, everyone is a criminal according to the law. Which is reality today.
On the post: US Solicitor General's Office, Run By Former Top MPAA Lawyer, Shockingly Sides With Broadcasters Over Aereo
Re: Re:
This makes no technical sense. Replace all the cable broadcasts with internet servers and you have pretty much the same thing, just more versatile.
Heck, since it's all "on demand" it's technically better than traditional distribution systems. In other words, the server is only transmitting data when another system queries it, rather than constant transmission to all possible reception points for all possible streams (aka cable television). Think about it, what uses less bandwith...a radio station (constant transmission) or a push-to-talk radio (burst transmission). And this is ignoring potential that is impossible for traditional broadcasting, such as cascading bandwith (i.e. Bittorrent-style protocols).
It's not only "less important tech", it's useless tech. It's the horse and buggy to the Model T, and you're still arguing that horses are better since there aren't many paved roads or gas stations and all the laws are based around horses.
Horse and buggies are still around, but few would argue we should have cracked down on these newfangled "car" things before they destroyed an industry. Guess what? The buggy manufacturers went out of business, started making cars or otherwise moved on with their lives, and the world kept spinning.
Mass broadcasting is the same thing. It's legacy tech, from an industry that still thinks in terms of silly devices like CDs and movie theaters, obsolete in an age of flash drives and home theaters. The only reason these things still exist is due to laws, contracts, and those who use them for the social aspects. Which is fine...I still enjoy a good campfire or hike, but to imply that either is "modern technology" is insane.
Broadcasting technology has been obsolete for years, kept alive by a Frankenstein of lawyers and paper that has nothing to do with technology. If you want to make the arguement that it's good for the industry, that's fine, but please don't pretend there's any technological benefit to be found there.
On the post: New Whistleblower Reveals NSA Picking Drone Targets Based On Bad Data: 'Death By Unreliable Metadata'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This isn't the behavior of a dictatorship, how?
Being a "terrorist" is not a death sentence, and does not automatically make you an enemy combatant. Being associated with a terrorist certainly doesn't. Do you think that guy's family cares that he is plotting against the U.S., a foreign country that has done nothing for them? Of course not. Why does that make them deserve death? Should we start executing the families of murderers, because maybe they still visit their family member in prison?
WWII is a horrible example. That war became a massive murder-fest where military tactics were replaced with revenge. The sad part? Carpet bombings were ineffective. Read the history. They caused a lot of damage, but rarely affected the targeted nation's fighting capability on both sides. It was too imprecise to hit the military infrastructure and all bombing civilians did was make the soldiers fight harder and more desperately. You don't win wars that way...it's not only inhumane, it's ineffective.
We have a better class of soldier now, and a better class of military. This sort of thing detracts from that, and undermines our greater military objective. It saddens me to know this has been going on, and saddens me more that there are fellow American citizens applauding it.
On the post: New Whistleblower Reveals NSA Picking Drone Targets Based On Bad Data: 'Death By Unreliable Metadata'
Re: Re: This isn't the behavior of a dictatorship, how?
Positive ID is a requirement for the infantry in America, even in combat zones. You don't get to shoot even known terrorists if they don't have weapons.
What makes drones so special that, without any possible risk to themselves, they get to skip this requirement? It's ridiculous and insulting to the men and women having to make that choice on the ground with their lives in danger. I imagine there's going to be some issues when people who have been court-martialed for making a bad call when they were looking in someone's eyes find out the rest of the government has been OK with "SIM card enemy ID."
And they'd be perfectly right to be upset.
On the post: Fair Use Is About Much More Than Remixing: It's About Allowing All Kinds Of Innovation
Re: Copyright + gadgets = prosperity for producers. -- Gadgets without copyright = disaster for all.
Riot games makes an estimated $150 million per year. Riot games only has one title, League of Legends, which is free. Heck, it doesn't even make it's money with ads.
I could go on and on, discussing free-to-play, Kickstarter, comedians who put their shows on YouTube, blah blah blah, but you have such a twisted understanding of reality it's really not worth it.
People will pay for things they value, whether or not they can get it for free. I can get any movie, game, or song I want for free, and easily, but I pay subscriptions to Netflix, Slacker, and have purchased thousands of dollars in Steam/GoG games. Why? They offer a better service.
Here's the flaw in your argument. Copyright is already not enforced and piracy is widespread. Yes the industry just keeps growing, year after record breaking year. In fact, infringement is easier than ever as bandwith and technology improve.
Copyright does nothing to benefit the majority of artists. It doesn't help consumers at all. So who's benefiting? Oh, right, the giant publishers that can't cope with technology that made publishing obsolete.
If they die out it will have exactly the same effect as the death of the horse and buggy industry in the 20th century...nobody cares. And maybe the horse and buggy guys can go work for a company that actually does something productive instead of stealing from artists.
You wan't moral outrage? Go read the history of the "copyright industry's" abuses of artists, and how they routinely deny artists access to their own work. Now look up the word "steal" and note how it involves taking something away from someone else. Who's the real thief? The infringer, or the person who takes someone else's work as their own and sells it?
You've got your anger all backwards, and it's sad and funny at the same time.
On the post: How To Solve The Piracy Problem: Give Everyone A Basic Income For Doing Nothing
Re:
This is pretty much it. I higly recommend a book called Drive by Daniel H. Pink. It discusses intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation and how they affect human behavior. The fact is that, even if someone didn't have to worry about money at all, they would still find work to do. Humans are not motivated purely by the pursuit of wealth; in fact, it's a fairly minor drive.
There are a couple technologies that are going to really clash with the status quo of the industrial era being developed right now. Individually they are of minor importance, but together they could possibly revolutionize modern society.
The first is 3D printing. While right now 3D printing is pretty limited and very expensive, much like 1980s era computers, the applications of these devices over the next 20 years are going to explode dramatically. The entire industrial era economy is based on manufacturing and distribution; it's only once computers put a twist in the "distrubution" model of the industrial era that we've seen a big disruption. More recently even manufacturing is becoming a point of conflict as the line between "content creator" and "consumer" continues to blur.
Now throw a device into the mix that literally negates the need for manufacturing and distribution. As long as you have the raw materials (which are fairly universal and can be aquired easily via our existing distribution systems) you can simply print out almost anything you need. Want new shoes? Print them. Need a nail? A hammer? Print them. Want a hamburger? A fancy meal? Print it. Need more materials? Have a drone deliver them to your house.
The next change is power. People are moving towards "clean" energy for all the wrong reasons (the environment) but discovering its biggest advantage in the process (economics). Right now most renewable energy sources are expensive investments with limited viability. Ten years from now? I expect most new vehicles will be hybrid or hybrid with purely electrical capability, and fuel cells will be looked at closely again (primarily due to 3D printing...when you can print at the molecular level you can dramatically reduce fuel cell costs).
This has a HUGE worldwide impact, and it's one many companies and governments are desperate to avoid. Why? Because these technologies practically make the global economy obsolete. Why buy cheap manufactured goods from China when we can just print them in our own house? Why import billions of gallons of oil when we can produce our own energy?
And what about scarcity? As a race we've long since negated food as a scarce resource; the U.S. alone could manufacture enough food to feed most of the world. We don't because we actually pay farmers to produce less food so we don't drive food prices down too low. Water isn't even a factor; with even moderate improvements to renewable energy and infrastructure we could generate more fresh water than we could possibly need. Fuel isn't an issue in a society that generates it's own unlimited fuel.
In 20 years many mundane tasks will become automated. We already have devices that can vacuum your house, clean up after and feed your pets, wash your dishes, clean your laundry...there's no reason these things can't be further automated. Computers have effectively replaced many mid-level white collar jobs; accountants, pay companies, tax professionals, and many others are facing obsolencence in the face of Excel and tax programs. In 20 years programming will be taught along science and math as a basic skill, and computers will be able to program most simple tasks themselves.
And this is all based on stuff we know exists today. In 20 years we could have a second computer revolution depending on theoretical technologies, such as quantum computers, fusion power, commercial and personal space travel, cloning, 3D printed organs, virtual reality...the list goes on and on.
We're on the brink of a new world. There's going to be a lot of resistance, that's for sure. But humans are both pragmatic and idealistic, and eventually our curiousity and drive will move us farther than anyone today can imagine. I for one look forward to it.
On the post: US Innovation: Built On Copying And Permissionless Innovation
Re: The take is set by the phrase: "adolescent years".
I don't know any other way to put it. If someone says "Hey, the sky is blue" that's an idea. If I later say the same thing, I haven't stolen anything. They still have their idea, and the sky is still blue.
This is an uncomfortable truth, because it leads to another uncomfortable truth, which is that the only "rights" people have are those that they are given by others. "Basic human rights" sounds good but don't exist within reality. If, for example, "life" were a basic human right nobody could murder because they have a right to life. Reality disagrees.
The funny part is you come uncomfortably close to arguing the exact point of most of the articles here on Techdirt while railing at exactly the wrong problem. The reason "The Rich" have the markets locked up is because they can use IP laws to leverage their dominance and compete at the market level using legislation and the judicial system. Since their competition can't afford the costs of lobbying and lawyers they get crushed and "The Rich" stay rich.
If you want a fair market we need to remove IP, not make it stronger. Keep reading the stuff here...you're so close to the truth, and still so far away.
Good luck.
On the post: RIAA: There's Been No Innovation Stifling Here!
This is simple. A bigger pie means that each piece is less valuable. A small pie means that each piece is more valuable. The big pie probably also has a lot more people benefiting from it than the small pie.
When you're one of the people already benefiting from the small, valuable pie, why would you want to let other people in?
From a greater economic standpoint, what you're saying makes perfect sense. More accessibility means more people benefiting which improves the overall economy. But from a individual standpoint, the individual making a lot of money now may go down to making less money, and for them that's all that matters.
I'm not saying it's right. But you can always make sense of human greed and self-serving behavior.
On the post: If You Think You Should Actually Own Products You Bought, Now Would Be A Good Time To Call Congress
Re: Re:
Ah, I think I get the fundamental difference in viewpoint that's causing the issue. Let me see if I understand this correctly.
In your view, copyright is a natural right that creators of works possess. They created it, therefore they own it, and anyone else who accesses must follow their rules. "Fair use" is an exception that temporarily diminshes the creator's rights in order to allow the public access to certain allowed uses of the work, such as parody or news reporting. Is that close?
Because that's the opposite of my view, and arguably of the Constitutional view. In my view copyright is a temporary right granted to creators to supress my natural right to do with it whatever the heck I want.
To take it to a real world example, if one of my friends tells a story at a party, what "right" does he have to that story? I can tell the story, change the story, or do whatever I want with it, as people have always done. People copy each other reflexively and naturally; look up the concept of "mirroring" in psychology. They have no natural right to their stories, ideas, and behaviors that prevent other people from mimicking or using in their own way. How do you think dialects start?
In other words, "copyright" is a commercial protection of culture to encourage the creation of more culture. Put another way, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The key part in both concepts is the purpose or intent...in my version the "encourage the creation of more culture" and in the Constitutional language "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts."
You seem focused on the rights of creators as if the purpose of those rights is to make the creators money and to prevent other people from infringing on their copyright. This is not, and has never been, the purpose behind copyright law, although it is being widely used for it now.
So from your point of view, this change would weaken copyright law by removing the "right" of preventing infringement and loss of control. From my point of view this change strengthens copyright law by promoting the exchange of ideas, reducing economic waste by those who are not creators (the distribution companies), and by increasing the value of copyrighted works.
To illustrate my point, I will utilize a bit of fair use:
"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."
On the post: If You Think You Should Actually Own Products You Bought, Now Would Be A Good Time To Call Congress
Let me explain. The basic premise of your argument is wrong. You are saying that removing the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA weakens the rights of copyright holders because removing the anti-circumvention clause weakens the rights of copyright holders. This is a logical fallacy known as "begging the question" (as opposed to the common use where it means creating a question). Repetition of your fallacy does not improve it's validity.
The second part of your statement must be argued for the initial postulate to be valid. In other words, you must first explain how making circumvention of protections for non-illegal uses of copyrighted material in any way affects the rights of copyright holders.
For example, let's take another set of laws. It is illegal for you to break into my house. It is not illegal for you to enter if I give you permission, and it is always legal for me to enter my own house barring something like a restraining order. Let's imagine it is also illegal to climb into a house through a window since that is circumventing the security of the house.
Now, as a homeowner, I have the right to prevent unauthorized entry to my home. If I accidentally lock myself out of the house, and climb in through a window, should I be prosecuted for breaking and entering under the clause of the law that states going through the window is illegal? And if that law were removed, so it is now legal for *me* to enter my house, but still illegal for an intruder, does that diminish my homeowners rights in any way? Either way the right to enter my house is unaffected...someone entering illegally is illegal, regardless of the method, and someone entering legally should not be a criminal for entering through an "illegal" method.
So what Mike stated is correct...the actual copyrights of copyright holders are unaffected by this change. The ability to take legal activity and treat it as illegal simply due to the method would be removed. This may help reduce the abuse of copyright law for non-copyright purposes but does nothing to diminish the copyrights themselves.
On the post: Lots Of People Don't Turn Off Their Devices When They Fly
Re:
Your home air oscillation device using rapidly spinning polyethylene blades in order to rapidly displace the local breathable gasses. This displacement can lower the local oxygen level as well as cause rapid evaporation of body moisture and lowered body temperature. A similar effect in nature is the primary cause of deadly cyclonic activity. In fact, the Korea Consumer Protection Board released a consumer safety alert is 2006 warning of such devices causing asphyxiation or hypothermia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
This and other issues, like the unregulated use of dihydrogen oxide in common food products, must be corrected immediately!
On the post: Congress Grandstanding Over Google Glass 'Privacy' Concerns; Next Up: Privacy Concerns Over Your Eyes
For filming, you have a similar issue, plus you have to disable the recording LED. The device itself is not inconspicious; if you're concerned about privacy, why not just ask someone to take it off? I wouldn't think there would be any more issues in bathrooms than there are now and I seriously doubt they'll become a permanent feature of corrective eye lenses.
Either way the fact that our government is concerned over our privacy is laughable. This is purely an attempt to get a legislative foothold on a new technology so they can ban it rather than compete. They're still trying to figure out this "internet" thing, can't have us getting some fancy...um...thing that's the same as a smart phone, but always being held in front of your face. Oooh, scary.
Privacy is a real concern. Google Glass just isn't the big threat to it. Cute attempt to divert attention, though.
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