I think one thing people are leaving out in terms of right and wrong is the negative connotations of trolling. Trolling, by definition, has been deemed a nuisance by those on the Internet. They are not artists making a protest, but people who are being disruptive for disruption's sake. So I don't think they are perceived as deserving the same protection as someone trying to overthrow a repressive government.
Now, some would likely argue that anyone posting on the Internet has the right to have all personal information hidden if they choose (and the privacy movement is certainly fighting data-collecting companies to guarantee that), but if we believe all posts on the Internet are equally valuable, why do we even have a term for trolling? Someone has made a value judgment about the desirability or not about the content being posted.
Also, what about phone pranks back in the day? Was that considered free speech, implying you weren't allowed to track down who was harassing you? And another question: Where is the line between stalking/harassment and free speech?
Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
Why The Internet Cool Kids Think Gawker Outing Reddit's Violentacrez Is The 'Best Story About The Web' This Year - Forbes: "Over the years, hundreds of people have identified their trolls, either through Internet detective work or by taking their anonymous harasser to court and getting tech companies to reveal the customer behind the IP addresses and account information disclosed to them. What Chen’s piece (and a recent widely-shared one from Leo Traynor) do illustrate is that it’s perhaps getting easier to identify trolls without legal intervention."
There are lots of problems with the US system. One is having employers providing insurance that doesn't easily transfer. And if private insurance companies are allowed to reject people with pre-existing conditions, then if you leave a job where you are insured and try to get insurance on your own, it can be hard.
The Obamacare version is basically the Republican version of health care, but now they don't like it because Obama has adopted it. But basically if you want to cover health care costs via insurance, you have to get lots of people to buy the insurance to raise the money to cover sick people. Otherwise insurance doesn't work. The other options are to have people pay out of pocket (which is great for healthy people but not workable for sick people) or to have a government-run program.
The out-of-pocket system appeals to people when they are young and healthy, but if they had an accident, got cancer, had kidney disease, etc., and were told they weren't going to get treatment unless they raised the necessary funds, they would likely freak out.
Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
You might be consistent, but I'm skeptical that others are.
Like I said, collectively people seem to be against outing their friends (or people they perceive as similar to themselves) but fine with outing with people they don't like or can't relate to.
I'm wary of all data gathering companies do, so privacy issues are a concern to me. But when companies (or those who work for them) make money selling data, they seem become a whole lot less concerned about invasions of privacy. I've gotten the, "Well, then don't get on the Internet if you don't want people to collect data on you" argument a lot.
The Reddit incident kind of reminds me of high school. Let's say there is an obnoxious student anonymously harassing people. Some students decide to catch him in the act. I think they are perfectly justified in finding a way to expose him. Or let's say it's a church group and one member is leaving vile notes around the church anonymously. I think the members have every right to spy on him to catch him.
Or think of it as a game. One person trolls anonymously. Another person tries to unmask him. Seems like the act of trolling virtually invites some scrutiny.
In this case the journalist didn't say, "I'll expose him so he'll lose his job." The losing of the job just happened because the guy's identity was unmasked and presumably the employer found him to be distasteful or a liability. If you think employers shouldn't be able to fire people for such reasons, then you'll probably support some of the more liberal political causes. If you feel an employer should be able to fire whomever he wants for whatever reason, then you'll probably support some of the more conservative or libertarian causes.
Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
But if you always cropped your shots to remove your face, and someone doxxed you anyway, I think complaints would be justified.
Okay, then people should be up in arms whenever anyone's private life gets exposed, and you know that isn't the case. Where's the outrage when a celebrity's sex tape gets released? More than likely it will go viral.
I think people come to the defense of their friends who get outed, but don't really care (and in fact enjoy it) when others get outed.
But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
When people complain that there isn't enough privacy protection on the Internet, the common retort is that one should assume everything you post on the Internet is public and you should act accordingly. So thinking you won't be outed if you post nasty stuff is a bit naive, isn't it?
And what about hackers who take it upon themselves to post stuff that others don't want posted? Are they good guys or bad guys?
I'm curious how consistent people are about the morality of outing.
My father was career military (US military). Our medical care was provided for us. It was great not having to worry about how to pay for it.
Because of my personal experience, I'm all for a single payer system. But it doesn't have to be that if we can come up with a system that is more affordable. My health insurance premiums have been going up every year since I started buy my own insurance (about 20 years now). So if what we have had is so great, why were my premiums going up every year when I am healthy and rarely go to the doctor? You can't blame Obamacare for my rising premiums.
The reality is that our health care system doesn't work very well. It keeps costing us more money. Other countries are able to provide more services at less cost, so let's not delude ourselves into thinking we don't need to fix it. At the rate we are going, the few people who can afford health care will pay a lot of money for it, and everyone else will do without. It's going to collapse because it's too expensive. Actually the whole concept of insurance isn't really a good one for health care. The principle behind any kind of insurance is that you have lots of people paying into the pool, but only a few people needing to use it. But most people need some sort of health care. If you want to have people actually pay for the health services they use, then drop insurance altogether and make everyone pay out of pocket. And then when someone gets cancer, tough luck if they aren't rich.
Re: Re: Someone is going to have to pay for lobbying
Yes, that's what I think too.
Businesses and corporations don't lobby for causes they think will benefit society. They lobby for issues that will benefit them. So I am skeptical of the whole system. Politicians are most easily persuaded with money (to get them elected or for someone paying access to them). And the money comes from entities with a self-interest.
Luckily at the local and state level here in Colorado, we have citizen referendums which can get issues on the ballot. That, too, takes money: to collect the necessary signatures, and to fight organized campaigns to stop such referendums. But at least citizens can bring attention to issues that are important to them but which might fall through the cracks otherwise.
I think the patent system is broken. However, I don't think you'll see changes in the laws until one or more entities pick up the tab to lobby Washington for this. And the entities with money are huge corporations and trade organizations. But how many of them have made this their primary cause?
Imagine a day when people think to themselves, "Why on earth would I pay someone else to make music for me when I can make it myself?"
It's already happened to recording. A lot of people don't bother to go into a studio. They do it themselves at home.
It happened in photography long ago when cheap, easy-to-use cameras became available. It's happening even more now that so many people have good cameras in their phones. Sure, there are a few professionals who get hired, but for most photography, people do it themselves.
I've always maintained that music has been and will always be with us.
But I think the wall between musician and fan will disappear as music tools become smarter, easier, and cheaper. The revolution I see is not how to support a class of professional musicians, but how to give everyone the tools to make their own music.
How much lobbying is being done to get rid of patents?
So what is the current lobbying effort to get rid of patents? What big companies (e.g., Apple, Google) are paying to change the system? I don't have that info in front of me and figured one of you would probably have it.
The article said this, "But to really make a difference, such ideas require the participation of large technology companies, and the incentives to cooperate are small."
Well that might be a mistake, you can mistrust them equally it is allowed.
That's my point here. If you complain about government data collection and monitoring but don't complain about private enterprise data collection and monitoring, you're missing a lot of what is being collected about you. And from what I know about both entities, the amount of data being collected about you and closely followed and actually used against you is far greater by private companies than by government.
What I hear from private companies collecting data is this: "Tell the government to stay out of our way so we can collect even more data. And so citizens won't pay attention to what we are doing, we'll tell you the problem is government and not us."
Re: Re: Private companies also have more data on Americans than the Stasi
It will stop if you stop giving up the information to begin with.
There's a lot of stuff I won't do because I don't trust how the info is being used. And I'm sure there are others like me. The more private companies try to monitor us, the less we use their services, or the greater lengths we go to block their monitoring.
They know where you work, when you work, how much you got paid, and pretty much every other financial issue in your life. They know if you are married, single, a parent, paying child support, etc. They know when you get fired, they know when you get hired, they have your job history for a decade or more, etc.
That is already more than was collected 70 odd years ago.
Don't even get started on drivers licenses, license plates on cars, tickets, accidents, loans, your credit score... all normal things. Our connected society means that US government or it's proxies have all of that, and they can pretty much figure you out.
Private companies know all of that, too, and I am more concerned with what they are gathering on me than the government. I trust the government more than private enterprise. Has to do with the fact that my father was career military. Private enterprise, for example, links personal info from a broad range of places to how much you pay for certain services or whether you can even get them. The government isn't interested in linking every detail of your life to every other detail of your life to the extent that private enterprise is.
Private companies also have more data on Americans than the Stasi
I'm all for limiting what is collected about us. But if private companies continue to do it, then the problem isn't solved even if governments stay out of it.
The world has excess labor capacity.
The world has excess manufacturing capacity.
The world doesn't have excess for some raw materials, and that is likely to be a battleground.
I'm totally fine with getting rid of IP protections and, for example, allowing people to get a perfect knockoff of an iPhone for a fraction of what a real one costs. But I would also like to see economic thinking adjusted to account for hypercompetition and deflationary pricing. Sell a product today and see multiple copies available almost immediately. One of the advantages of 3D printing is that you no longer need economies of scale to drive down costs for whatever the printer can make. Hopefully that will both keep costs down and eliminate waste.
If you open source and everyone volunteers their time, it's a non cost. If so many people are looking for jobs they are taking a minimal amount of money, it isn't free, but it isn't scarce. Basically labor is unlimited now because people are either working for free or for little. And for every job out there, someone is trying to figure out how to reduce the labor costs to zero by having a machine do it.
Labor is abundant. And I can also point you to charts showing the amount of money in this country going to wages is declining while corporate profits are increasing. The wage earner is disappearing.
What important about all this is that under the old system it was near imposable to make a living. What people forget is that even if you made it to a label you most likely ended up in debt. With out the labels help you'd be lucky to be able to make making and playing your own music a long term job.
Most people making a living in music were never part of the old system. They had music jobs that paid a decent living or they were DIY all along. And being DIY during the cassette and CD days was actually very good because it didn't cost you a lot to make those and yet you could sell them for full retail at your shows and keep all of that money. Now that people aren't buy much recorded music (I don't mean piracy, I mean they are getting free legal music or they are buying a few tracks rather than an album), those CD/cassette sales have largely disappeared for DIY artists and that brought in a chunk of money. Successful unsigned artists were doing between 3000 and 10,000 plus sales per year. At $15 a CD, that was $45,000 to $150,000 they could keep entirely for themselves. It's been hard to find substitutes for that income.
Also many clubs that used to hire live musicians have switched to DJs. Same with weddings. And schools that have used music teachers have cut back on that.
So a lot of old music streams for unsigned artists have dried up.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Trolling is a public activity
Now, some would likely argue that anyone posting on the Internet has the right to have all personal information hidden if they choose (and the privacy movement is certainly fighting data-collecting companies to guarantee that), but if we believe all posts on the Internet are equally valuable, why do we even have a term for trolling? Someone has made a value judgment about the desirability or not about the content being posted.
Also, what about phone pranks back in the day? Was that considered free speech, implying you weren't allowed to track down who was harassing you? And another question: Where is the line between stalking/harassment and free speech?
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
On the post: Amanda Palmer Unleashes The Voice Of The People About Health Insurance Via Twitter
A big problem is tying insurance to a job
The Obamacare version is basically the Republican version of health care, but now they don't like it because Obama has adopted it. But basically if you want to cover health care costs via insurance, you have to get lots of people to buy the insurance to raise the money to cover sick people. Otherwise insurance doesn't work. The other options are to have people pay out of pocket (which is great for healthy people but not workable for sick people) or to have a government-run program.
The out-of-pocket system appeals to people when they are young and healthy, but if they had an accident, got cancer, had kidney disease, etc., and were told they weren't going to get treatment unless they raised the necessary funds, they would likely freak out.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
Like I said, collectively people seem to be against outing their friends (or people they perceive as similar to themselves) but fine with outing with people they don't like or can't relate to.
I'm wary of all data gathering companies do, so privacy issues are a concern to me. But when companies (or those who work for them) make money selling data, they seem become a whole lot less concerned about invasions of privacy. I've gotten the, "Well, then don't get on the Internet if you don't want people to collect data on you" argument a lot.
The Reddit incident kind of reminds me of high school. Let's say there is an obnoxious student anonymously harassing people. Some students decide to catch him in the act. I think they are perfectly justified in finding a way to expose him. Or let's say it's a church group and one member is leaving vile notes around the church anonymously. I think the members have every right to spy on him to catch him.
Or think of it as a game. One person trolls anonymously. Another person tries to unmask him. Seems like the act of trolling virtually invites some scrutiny.
In this case the journalist didn't say, "I'll expose him so he'll lose his job." The losing of the job just happened because the guy's identity was unmasked and presumably the employer found him to be distasteful or a liability. If you think employers shouldn't be able to fire people for such reasons, then you'll probably support some of the more liberal political causes. If you feel an employer should be able to fire whomever he wants for whatever reason, then you'll probably support some of the more conservative or libertarian causes.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
Okay, then people should be up in arms whenever anyone's private life gets exposed, and you know that isn't the case. Where's the outrage when a celebrity's sex tape gets released? More than likely it will go viral.
I think people come to the defense of their friends who get outed, but don't really care (and in fact enjoy it) when others get outed.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
And what about hackers who take it upon themselves to post stuff that others don't want posted? Are they good guys or bad guys?
I'm curious how consistent people are about the morality of outing.
On the post: Amanda Palmer Unleashes The Voice Of The People About Health Insurance Via Twitter
I grew up with government-run medical care
Because of my personal experience, I'm all for a single payer system. But it doesn't have to be that if we can come up with a system that is more affordable. My health insurance premiums have been going up every year since I started buy my own insurance (about 20 years now). So if what we have had is so great, why were my premiums going up every year when I am healthy and rarely go to the doctor? You can't blame Obamacare for my rising premiums.
The reality is that our health care system doesn't work very well. It keeps costing us more money. Other countries are able to provide more services at less cost, so let's not delude ourselves into thinking we don't need to fix it. At the rate we are going, the few people who can afford health care will pay a lot of money for it, and everyone else will do without. It's going to collapse because it's too expensive. Actually the whole concept of insurance isn't really a good one for health care. The principle behind any kind of insurance is that you have lots of people paying into the pool, but only a few people needing to use it. But most people need some sort of health care. If you want to have people actually pay for the health services they use, then drop insurance altogether and make everyone pay out of pocket. And then when someone gets cancer, tough luck if they aren't rich.
On the post: The Dark Patent Troll Rises: Now 40% Of All Patent Litigation
Re: Re: Someone is going to have to pay for lobbying
Businesses and corporations don't lobby for causes they think will benefit society. They lobby for issues that will benefit them. So I am skeptical of the whole system. Politicians are most easily persuaded with money (to get them elected or for someone paying access to them). And the money comes from entities with a self-interest.
Luckily at the local and state level here in Colorado, we have citizen referendums which can get issues on the ballot. That, too, takes money: to collect the necessary signatures, and to fight organized campaigns to stop such referendums. But at least citizens can bring attention to issues that are important to them but which might fall through the cracks otherwise.
On the post: The Dark Patent Troll Rises: Now 40% Of All Patent Litigation
Someone is going to have to pay for lobbying
On the post: Next Time Someone Suggests Piracy Will Kill Music, Remind Them That Music Survived The Last Ice Age
Re: Eliminating the "professional" musician
It's already happened to recording. A lot of people don't bother to go into a studio. They do it themselves at home.
It happened in photography long ago when cheap, easy-to-use cameras became available. It's happening even more now that so many people have good cameras in their phones. Sure, there are a few professionals who get hired, but for most photography, people do it themselves.
On the post: Next Time Someone Suggests Piracy Will Kill Music, Remind Them That Music Survived The Last Ice Age
Eliminating the "professional" musician
But I think the wall between musician and fan will disappear as music tools become smarter, easier, and cheaper. The revolution I see is not how to support a class of professional musicians, but how to give everyone the tools to make their own music.
On the post: Last Year, Google & Apple Spent More On Patents Than On R&D
How much lobbying is being done to get rid of patents?
The article said this, "But to really make a difference, such ideas require the participation of large technology companies, and the incentives to cooperate are small."
On the post: The US Government Today Has More Data On The Average American Than The Stasi Did On East Germans
Would you have a problem with this if government was doing it?
On the post: The US Government Today Has More Data On The Average American Than The Stasi Did On East Germans
Re: Re: Re:
That's my point here. If you complain about government data collection and monitoring but don't complain about private enterprise data collection and monitoring, you're missing a lot of what is being collected about you. And from what I know about both entities, the amount of data being collected about you and closely followed and actually used against you is far greater by private companies than by government.
What I hear from private companies collecting data is this: "Tell the government to stay out of our way so we can collect even more data. And so citizens won't pay attention to what we are doing, we'll tell you the problem is government and not us."
On the post: The US Government Today Has More Data On The Average American Than The Stasi Did On East Germans
Re: Re: Private companies also have more data on Americans than the Stasi
There's a lot of stuff I won't do because I don't trust how the info is being used. And I'm sure there are others like me. The more private companies try to monitor us, the less we use their services, or the greater lengths we go to block their monitoring.
On the post: The US Government Today Has More Data On The Average American Than The Stasi Did On East Germans
Re:
That is already more than was collected 70 odd years ago.
Don't even get started on drivers licenses, license plates on cars, tickets, accidents, loans, your credit score... all normal things. Our connected society means that US government or it's proxies have all of that, and they can pretty much figure you out.
Private companies know all of that, too, and I am more concerned with what they are gathering on me than the government. I trust the government more than private enterprise. Has to do with the fact that my father was career military. Private enterprise, for example, links personal info from a broad range of places to how much you pay for certain services or whether you can even get them. The government isn't interested in linking every detail of your life to every other detail of your life to the extent that private enterprise is.
On the post: The US Government Today Has More Data On The Average American Than The Stasi Did On East Germans
Private companies also have more data on Americans than the Stasi
On the post: Why It Could Make Sense To Get Rid Of Patents Entirely, Even If They Work In A Few Cases
Re: Re:
The world has excess labor capacity.
The world has excess manufacturing capacity.
The world doesn't have excess for some raw materials, and that is likely to be a battleground.
I'm totally fine with getting rid of IP protections and, for example, allowing people to get a perfect knockoff of an iPhone for a fraction of what a real one costs. But I would also like to see economic thinking adjusted to account for hypercompetition and deflationary pricing. Sell a product today and see multiple copies available almost immediately. One of the advantages of 3D printing is that you no longer need economies of scale to drive down costs for whatever the printer can make. Hopefully that will both keep costs down and eliminate waste.
On the post: Why It Could Make Sense To Get Rid Of Patents Entirely, Even If They Work In A Few Cases
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Labor is abundant. And I can also point you to charts showing the amount of money in this country going to wages is declining while corporate profits are increasing. The wage earner is disappearing.
Foxconn getting by on $8 per iPhone
On the post: Out With The Old, In With The New: How Innovation Has Completely Changed The Music Business
Re: Re: Still Waitring
Most people making a living in music were never part of the old system. They had music jobs that paid a decent living or they were DIY all along. And being DIY during the cassette and CD days was actually very good because it didn't cost you a lot to make those and yet you could sell them for full retail at your shows and keep all of that money. Now that people aren't buy much recorded music (I don't mean piracy, I mean they are getting free legal music or they are buying a few tracks rather than an album), those CD/cassette sales have largely disappeared for DIY artists and that brought in a chunk of money. Successful unsigned artists were doing between 3000 and 10,000 plus sales per year. At $15 a CD, that was $45,000 to $150,000 they could keep entirely for themselves. It's been hard to find substitutes for that income.
Also many clubs that used to hire live musicians have switched to DJs. Same with weddings. And schools that have used music teachers have cut back on that.
So a lot of old music streams for unsigned artists have dried up.
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