Slashdot Mirror

Actually the American Dream is a bit of a myth, especially these days.

Pew did some research on it, but this article has some great graphs illustrating how social mobility has declined in America (and many other places).

People born in the 80s have a much poorer chance of moving up in the world than their parents. Their fortunes are much more closely tied to their parents'.

Americans tend to overestimate social mobility by quite a margin, which stops them taking action (via the ballot box) to fix it.

https://insight.kellogg.northw...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

Kind of seems like we have the opposite question here - what kind of ghost town do you live in that you have only a single polling center you can use?

States like Texas, Georgia, etc have been closing polling places in minority neighborhoods. This is why, every single election, the longest lines you see are in minority communities.

I mean, come on, SuperKendall. You must know better than this. It's not like Republicans have been hiding their voter suppression efforts. How do you not know this stuff?

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/r...

In that case, your post was a bit unclear. Not sure why you're assuming a 1$ raise would somehow cost $1.50 since the raise doesn't increase the overhead for employing someone. It would cost $1.07 due to matching SS contribution.

$0.50 is a figure I'm using based on what I have heard from payroll accountants. There's more than just social security that needs to be paid in. There's unemployment as well as other government mandated benefits. It's a fairly well researched topic but suffice it to say, each $1 of wages corresponds to roughly at least $0.40 of additional costs for that employee and it can go higher. If you want to read up on it you can view this Pew link.

You mean like banning straws under threat of prison sentence? They did it. Jail time for a plastic straw.

Yeah, I didn't believe this so I looked it up.

I couldn't actually find anything on the penalties SF is planning to impose, but it does sound like you've confused Santa Barbara with San Francisco along with a little fake news from Fox, the Daily Mail and Donald Trump Jr.

Santa Barbara wants to lock up straw users? That'd be outrageous, if it were actually true

Santa Barbara is considering a straw ban — and no, you won’t be jailed for violating it

Latchford pointed out that, since Santa Barbara’s plastic bag ordinance went into effect in 2014, “we haven’t had a single fine.”

Pushing for compliance rather than maximum penalties is similar to how they've handled public smoking bans and bans on throwing away certain recyclable material (e.g. plain cardboard) where I live (not California).

I really am not familiar with the public defecation situation in SF and I doubt you are either so I won't speak to that, but your other claim:

You mean like decriminalising the act of purposefully infecting other people with an incurable deadly disease? They did that, too

No, they did not. Knowingly exposing another to HIV is still a crime.

The co-author of the bill explains:

Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 239, a bill I co-authored to modernize California’s HIV criminal statutes by treating HIV *exactly* the same as other serious and deadly diseases such as Ebola, SARS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis: as a misdemeanor. Under current California law, only HIV is treated as a felony, and you don’t have to infect anyone—or even create a risk of infection—to be guilty and go to state prison.

SB 239 doesn’t eliminate criminal penalties for reckless behavior by people living with HIV. Rather, it simply aligns our criminal treatment of HIV with how we treat every other serious infectious disease in existence: as a misdemeanor.

We Modernized California’s HIV Criminal Laws & the Right Wing Attacked

And this should blow your mind:

In 1994, Texas became the first state to repeal its HIV criminal laws, according to the Center for HIV Law and Policy.

Nor do all other states treat exposing another to it as a felony.

HIV Crime Laws: Historical Relics or Public Safety Measures?

And finally - and I admit I'm going out on a limb here because I've never lived in California, but I don't think SF is considered "Southern California". According to Wikipedia, it's "Northern California".

So who's crazier? The San Franciscans in Southern California or Texans? Or the states who never made it a felony in the first place?

The feat is performed with the assistance of Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot, which could be used in NHS operating theatres for the first time later this year if approved for clinical use.

Socialized medicine is good for innovation. Meanwhile, in the United States, the cost of prescription drugs has gone up again after President Trump announced new policies that would bring down drug prices.

America, you played yourself.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re...

OK, I'll hold your hand for you, since you talk so sweetly:
Number of colleges in 2000 (technically Title IV postsecondary institutions): 6,479 In 2013: 7,236. Total increase of 11.9%. Source
Number of college students in 2000: 13.2 million In 2015: 17.0 million. Total increase of 29%. Source

But just so you don't accuse me of cherry-picking numbers, let's use the larger increase of 45% between 2000 and 2012 from Pew - they only consider full-time students.

From the same link:

A major shift has occurred in the relative levels of funding provided by states and the federal government in recent years. By 2010, federal revenue per full-time equivalent (FTE) student surpassed that of states for the first time in at least two decades, after adjusting for enrollment and inflation. From 2000 to 2012, revenue per FTE student from federal sources going to public, nonprofit, and for-profit institutions grew by 32 percent in real terms, while state revenue fell by 37 percent. The number of FTE students at the nation’s colleges and universities grew by 45 percent during the same period. Without adjusting for enrollment growth, total federal revenue grew by 92 percent from $43.3 billion to $83.2 billion in real terms, while state revenue fell by 9 percent from $77.8 billion to $70.8 billion after adjusting for inflation.

To sum up, enrollment increased by 45%. Number of schools rose by around 12%. Total state and federal direct funding (sans loans and tax credits) went from $121.1 billion to $154.0 billion, for a total of 27% increase in direct funding. In addition to that, tax credits have increased from around $12 billion to around $31 billion. Add that to the direct funding and you have $133.1 billion vs $185.0 billion, or a total increase of 39%. Enter student loans. I get that these are meant to be repaid (except the subsidy) and should not count as direct subsidy. But the fact remains that they have increased 376% in the same time period.

So if we use total enrollment, then direct funding has been approximately flat, but tax credits have increased substantially. If we use only full time students, then direct funding has decreased significantly, but when you add in tax credits the decrease is not as significant, around 6%. If you consider student loans to be a kind of subsidy, there certainly has been no decrease no matter how you run the numbers.

I'm on firm ground, even if I don't have your silver tongue.

I'd love to see the original real citation for this welll known 'fact'.

There are many. Finding the original would be a pointless endeavor though.

I wonder if it includes things like the military, a federal expense, defending the liberal coasts, and pouring federal money into the navy and Air Force bases that do so.

Yes, those have been factored into many charts, though some concentrate on the "welfare" aspect.

That's free money for California, where I live btw.

Nope. Quite expensive actually. Military spending isn't funded by a magic fairy. The days of sending forth conquering armies to gather tribute are long gone.

Blue States are actually on the hook, especially for the Right-wing war-mongering. And frankly, the GOP would gladly close every base in California, they HATE the state enough to spite the country. It has become their Sodom and Gomorroh, and it's barely 30 years since Reagan, who they never mention as being governor of California or an actor.

I also expect that eliminating the state deduction will force out of control liberal states to lower their taxes and stop flushing money down the toilet and useless social programs that only grow every year but don't help the people they're supposed to much less have an end goal.

Except you are assuming they are "out of control" and "flushing money down the toilet" on "useless social programs" that "don't help the people" which is bad enough, yet your method is even more deeply flawed since instead of offering a better alternative, you are just randomly attacking your opposition under a false pretense of noble motives.

Eliminating the mortgage deduction should force housing prices to come down, too. I'm ok with that, also.

Except it won't happen, since you aren't even addressing the reason for high housing prices. Here's a hint: The financiers don't want housing prices to come down, they LOVE the escalation.

The tax system has artificially altered major parts of our economy into a twisted mutated wreck. Time to restore,rose rather than fight over who gets to fuck over whom in a giant game of musical taxation chairs.

You're blaming taxation. The true causes are far more sinister and nefarious. You're being exploited and oppressed, but you don't know who has the whip.

PS, Newt Gingrich claimed he fixed that bit about paying people not to work, rural poor people do vote for Republicans, and yes, big companies like Wal-Mart and McDonalds do instruct their employees to get on food-stamps and other programs.

Also, the pill-pushers are big pharma, who the GOP loves. Just like Big Tobacco.

Mysteriously, however, funding schools, health programs, and improving people's lives by fixing their homes is forbidden as it is offensive. Except for the private religious schools indoctrinating the next generation of Wor$hipers at the Church of Christ Money-lender. That is a goal worth billions.

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index.

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes. And no, wages haven't grown to fill that gap.

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step.

1980: Sweden: $942 / Switzerland: $1013 / USA: $1091
2008: Sweden: $3470 / Switzerland: $4627/ USA: $7538

That is not in "lock-step" by a long shot, US spending has increased considerably more than the 2 next nearest countries.

I found the Bernie fan!

Found the trickle down believer!

In reality, when you increase your income, you've increased somebody else's wealth. How? Well, people pay you for something they want or need, and when you create what they want or provide a service that they want or need, you are creating wealth from thin air (or from raw materials,) and then giving the wealth to them in exchange for money. When the rich become richer, they increase the wealth of those who gave them more money.

LOL, people like you have been saying that since the 80s yet the income of 90% of Americans has not risen in real terms since the 70s (and if you're interested in wealth the bottom 50% of families have not see their wealth rise 1989-2007).

Trickle-down economics has provably failed to make the majority of people better off. The only people who actually put money back into the economy via spending is the middle class, when the rich get a larger share of the bigger pie they just keep it to themselves.

Now, for the hard numbers: The fact is, capitalist economies encourage the creation of wealth

The Nordic model is pro free-market capitalism, so what's your point?

Furthermore, the data more or less debunks the notion that income inequality is getting worse

Interesting that you're only linking to videos talking about statistically improv

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index.

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes. And no, wages haven't grown to fill that gap.

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step.

1980: Sweden: $942 / Switzerland: $1013 / USA: $1091
2008: Sweden: $3470 / Switzerland: $4627/ USA: $7538

That is not in "lock-step" by a long shot, US spending has increased considerably more than the 2 next nearest countries.

I found the Bernie fan!

Found the trickle down believer!

In reality, when you increase your income, you've increased somebody else's wealth. How? Well, people pay you for something they want or need, and when you create what they want or provide a service that they want or need, you are creating wealth from thin air (or from raw materials,) and then giving the wealth to them in exchange for money. When the rich become richer, they increase the wealth of those who gave them more money.

LOL, people like you have been saying that since the 80s yet the income of 90% of Americans has not risen in real terms since the 70s (and if you're interested in wealth the bottom 50% of families have not see their wealth rise 1989-2007).

Trickle-down economics has provably failed to make the majority of people better off. The only people who actually put money back into the economy via spending is the middle class, when the rich get a larger share of the bigger pie they just keep it to themselves.

Now, for the hard numbers: The fact is, capitalist economies encourage the creation of wealth

The Nordic model is pro free-market capitalism, so what's your point?

Furthermore, the data more or less debunks the notion that income inequality is getting worse

Interesting that you're only linking to videos talking about statistically improv

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index.

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes. And no, wages haven't grown to fill that gap.

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step.

1980: Sweden: $942 / Switzerland: $1013 / USA: $1091
2008: Sweden: $3470 / Switzerland: $4627/ USA: $7538

That is not in "lock-step" by a long shot, US spending has increased considerably more than the 2 next nearest countries.

I found the Bernie fan!

Found the trickle down believer!

In reality, when you increase your income, you've increased somebody else's wealth. How? Well, people pay you for something they want or need, and when you create what they want or provide a service that they want or need, you are creating wealth from thin air (or from raw materials,) and then giving the wealth to them in exchange for money. When the rich become richer, they increase the wealth of those who gave them more money.

LOL, people like you have been saying that since the 80s yet the income of 90% of Americans has not risen in real terms since the 70s (and if you're interested in wealth the bottom 50% of families have not see their wealth rise 1989-2007).

Trickle-down economics has provably failed to make the majority of people better off. The only people who actually put money back into the economy via spending is the middle class, when the rich get a larger share of the bigger pie they just keep it to themselves.

Now, for the hard numbers: The fact is, capitalist economies encourage the creation of wealth

The Nordic model is pro free-market capitalism, so what's your point?

Furthermore, the data more or less debunks the notion that income inequality is getting worse

Interesting that you're only linking to videos talking about statistically improv

Oh I don't know. I think parts of the country are fairly far along in that regard. Take the 11 California counties which have more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... In one particular county that was at 144% registration a 66% turnout means we got 99.3% of the citizenry to turn out to vote. Quite the miracle...

Yes, yes, rail at your pretended outrage. That story has been passed along the right-wing noise brigade quite a lot lately, no surprise that you are spreading the fires here. Guess it's a lot bettter when you can denounce California instead of other stateS.

But here's the thing, the state tallies do not support the claims of Judicial Watch.

Besides, it's not a crime for a person to have registered to vote in more than one place, and in today's mobile society, people like Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Tiffany Trump simply can't be expected to handle that kind of paperwork.

848 documented criminal convictions, and this is just a sampling. Or perhaps you'd like to hear from the Pew Trusts and their finding of "Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.", not to mention millions of dead still registered to vote... Is that enough evidence for you? How much is needed before it becomes a concern - is it only dismissed because it tends to overwhelmingly break one way?

A rich black guy has every bit the same opportunity as a rich white guy. A poor black guy has the same opportunities as a poor white guy.

While I am not a sociologist, quick search for social mobility shows that poor blacks are more likely to stay poor.

Also, this is a good little read about banking apps in general...
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/02/mobile-payments

The state ends up taking on the additional burden of transportation infrastructure and improvement, schools for the employees children, etc. ( http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/pr... ), environmental impacts, on and on. So when a state 'forgives' taxes, it is just pushing it onto the existing residents. In the immediate area of the plant(s) people can be priced out of housing by increased competition. Even the labor force is usually imported during the construction phase from other places. Pretty much the same deal as with sports arenas, nationwide it ends up being a race to the bottom.

And what you completely and utterly fail to understand is that an imbalance in average SES doesn't automatically imply it's a race issue. Are you saying that a dirt poor white person is somehow better off than an equally poor black person?

I am absolutely saying this. Much better off. In fact poor black children have less than half the chance of upward income mobility as compared to poor white children. (source)

If the real problem is that poor people need a hand ... No need for policies to directly address race at all.

This is simply not backed up by facts. Four in five black children who started in the top three quintiles experienced downward mobility, compared with just two in five white children. Three in five white children who started in the bottom two quintiles experienced upward mobility, versus just one in four black children.

Minorities really do have more trouble with income mobility than whites in similar economic situations. Twice as many relatively well off black children experience downward mobility than similar white children, and well under half as many poor black children see upward mobility when compared to similar white children.

We should certainly have programs which help all poor individuals, but that does not exclude racially targeted programs from being necessary as well.

No, because Obama told the Feds to back-off on that.

Your link is dated February 2014. My link is dated January 2015. The banks still haven't gotten the memo.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/1/5/states-find-you-cant-take-legal-marijuana-money-to-the-bank

Nice.

No, because Obama told the Feds to back-off on that.

Your link is dated February 2014. My link is dated January 2015. The banks still haven't gotten the memo.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/1/5/states-find-you-cant-take-legal-marijuana-money-to-the-bank

No, because there's no connection between Microsoft, drug lords or money laundering in this case.

Most banks won't handle financial transactions with pot dispensaries. If Microsoft gets involved with this market segment, the banks may not deal with them either. It's the appearance of money laundering, not any actual crime of money laundering.

Nearly all of the nation's banks refuse to take money from marijuana sales or offer basic checking or credit card services to the industry for fear they'll be shut down by federal authorities, for whom marijuana remains an illegal narcotic. The banks won't do business with growers, processors, retail shops and medical dispensaries, nor with their employees and contractors.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/1/5/states-find-you-cant-take-legal-marijuana-money-to-the-bank

A pew survey, hmm, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/ab... and straight from there We work hand-in-hand with donors as we conceive and execute projects and these people control Phew surveys. You have no idea what half of Americans want and even less after reading a Phew http://www.merriam-webster.com... Survey (double value meaning, phew I am glad the survey I worked hand in hand with produced the results I wanted or phew this survey stinks, if fact both at the same time).

I'll bet anything you like more than half of the American population have no idea what so ever of what is going on at all and would not care and would emphatically try to ignore you if you tried to explain it to them, not that they would understand, no matter how hard you tried.

Gates obviously 100% supports the hack because I don't know, his major investment operating system is 100% dedicated to opening a back door into all of us, all of the time, Bill's message fuck you and your privacy more money, more power now and into the future, a future where every possible politician is subject to extortion over secret misbehaviours in their childhood and teen years. Total power and total control for the keepers of your secrets and it won't be you, you'll just become a victim of your secrets both real and digitally created, but created well because they can accurately slot into your real life and you can not disprove, they know you can not disprove them.

As a free person, my secrets are mine and no one else's and fuck anyone who thinks different.

Yes, it is difficult to parse. I meant it like this: "A labor-system that relies on disparity-to-persist advocates for equality-with-respect-to-conditions because equality-with-respect-to-conditions is a bias in favor of those in better-conditions."

What I am trying to say is that the labor system is designed for persistent disparity, and the way it does that is by arguing for "equality with respect to conditions". Better conditions is a natural advantage. This is not only an intuitive idea, but is a well documented fact. For example, poll taxes and such things apply to everyone, but don't affect everyone. It is the difference between application and the subjects of application that express institutional racism. This is why one way to effectively counter it is to measure whole-system bias, and counter based on measured effects, and that is the basis for affirmative action. If you come up with a better system that addresses the class migration problem, please the the word know!

Countering the effects of racism/sexism is not racism/sexism in the same way that offering a self-defense class for women is not sexist, but an attempt to address sexism elsewhere. Institutionalized racism is not affirmative action, but an effect of neighborhood segregation.

I keep hearing about how there are no new antibiotics, but I never really looked into it. A quick gooble search found 36 new antibiotics currently in development. Some of them are combinations of existing antibiotics (a promising but not very innovative approach) and some of them are new molecules.

The idea that government coercion is either morally justified or effective in achieving high vaccination rates is wrong.

I don't care to debate you about "morally justified" but you're definitely wrong about "effective in achieving high vaccination rates". It's pretty clear that states with more stringent vaccination requirements have higher vaccination rates:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re...

"In many but not all states, philosophical exemptions are easier to get than religious exemptions, which typically require parents to cite and explain the religious doctrine in question. Overall, states with philosophical exemptions have 2.5 times the rate of opt-outs than states with only religious exemptions."

Google is your friend.

Took all of 5 seconds to find examples like this from Wired.

The first link in the list has this regarding CAFE regulations of the time:

Domestic automakers predicted that fuel economy improvements would require a fleet primarily of subcompacts. In 1974, a Ford executive testified that the standards could “result in a Ford product line consisting . . . of all sub- Pinto-sized vehicles.”

I wish that were true. It sure looks like the US funds a vast majority of drug marketing, though.

But for completeness sake, here's some counterpoints.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=50434

With a country as large and heterogeneous as the US, it might be productive to look at inter-state comparisons as well. Pew has some interesting data in the area(PDF alert).

The other thing that you want to be alert to, though, is the confounding effects of non-teacher-related variables. It isn't exactly news, or rocket science, that some demographic variables work strongly in favour of educational success, and others work strongly against it. In a wealthy district with educated and engaged parents who would be furious with junior if he doesn't do his work and make the grade, and are happy to hire tutors, and test prep outfits, and whatnot, a teacher could probably do just about anything and have their students get good results on any of the major standardized tests(though they would face the risk of being lynched by parents if they slacked off too much). More demographically hostile areas are notorious for chewing up and spitting out the most idealistic and comitted teachers with not much in the way of results to show for it.

The ideal research programme, for someone who wants to improve education, would really seem to have at least two parts. The first would be trying to determine what makes a good teacher good. Compare teachers in highly similar environments to one another. Observe their rates of success, student improvement, etc. Compare their behaviors and methods, try and establish correlations. Test the behaviors and methods that correlate with good results to see if they are in fact causative. That's a nontrivial piece of social science work, and there are probably a lot of unionized fossils who won't like it; but it seems conceptually simple enough.

The much hairier project is working out what demographic and cultural factors work for and against education and then trying to do something about that. Unfortunately, that is likely to be a lot more difficult. Firing teachers deemed bad will be child's play compared to, say, eradicating pockets of entrenched poverty and violence and cultural dysfunction.

Giant squid have already been photographed in their natural habitat by Japanese scientists.

"Pew Internet Project surveys between January and June in 2005 show that 67 percent of the adult American population goes online".

No it doesn't, what it shows is that 67% of the 6,403 people surveyed go online - not the whole population (280,000,000+) of America.

This is almost as flawed as running a survey on Slashdot and concluding that 91% of the American population have never had a girlfriend.

Quote from the Methodology section of the PDF:
"The total number of respondents included in the 2002 findings was 14,416 and for 2005 was 6,403."

i found this note on a previous survey for p2p downloading:

In the March-May 2003 survey, 21% of Internet users responded "yes" to the question, "Do you allow others to download files from your computer, such as music or video files?"

I noticed the consipcous lack of the word 'copyrighted' there.
Just wondering if they had changed that.