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that I've seen the The Corporation just today.

Everyone should see it at least once.

you've got it pretty much right.

i don't think that piracy is wrong. after i've bought a cd or movie or program, i OWN the cd and everything on it. i paid for the dips and peaks on the cd, i OWN them. and i don't think that some company should be able to tell me what i can and can't do with something that i own just because they bought themselves some congressmen and made some crappy law. just because there is a law against something, doesn't mean that it is wrong and just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's right.

and from the record companies' point of view, they see piracy as a threat to their profit stream and are doing what they think will protect their profit stream. they don't care about illegal or legal, they just want their money and they'll buy more congressmen to change the laws to get their money if they need to.
they don't see the connection that their strategy of pushing crappy music is resulting in smaller profits. it can't be their fault that they aren't making as much money as they used to, it HAS to be someone else's fault.

this is why corporations having so much power is bad for us. their focus is only on profits and they don't have a conscience. so, if you're in the way of them getting their money, well too bad. this movie pretty much sums it all up...

http://thecorporation.tv/

First Article: From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment.

Second Article: Nearly a decade after it was first developed, Linux is gaining popularity with corporate IT departments that admire the operating system for its stability and security.

If most corporations are considered psychopaths, then these guys are schizophrenic.

There's actually a really interesting documentary floating around that looks at the idea of a corporation as a psychopath. In the documentary, a psychiatrist lists out the common attributes of psychopaths (warped sense of right and wrong, inability to feel remorse or responsibility, sole fixation on a goal, manipulators, etc), and corporations basically fulfill them all.

Highly recommended viewing. There's also a book based around the same ideas, check the following links for more info.

The Corporation - IMDB
The Corporation - Official Site
The Corporation (book)

The movie "The Corporation" shows that corporations can be clinically defined as psychopaths. Basically it implies that any given corporation will always do what is best for profits now, with no empathy, remorse or regret. It's my thought that there will come a time when Google will shoot itself in the foot, much like most companies will do/have done.

Not all companies are evil, but they revolve around a profit motive, aka the bottom line, which does not make their actions in your best interests most of the time. A great non-academic introduction to this is The Corporation.

The way I see it, a program controls what the user can and cannot do, it is in effect law. The "code is law" (lessig and others) and "computer programmers are the unacknowledged legislators of cyberspace" lead you to the statement:

Even if they aren't all evil, do you want corporations writing your laws for you?

And on the second count, the GPL might not be perfect (as patents escape the scope of "copyright") but it's the best thing we have right now for this purpose. The BSD licence you prefer does not protect this purpose at all, and that's ok. But if you value these things, then the GPL is your best bet.

I respect the BSD it's a good form of altruism and open source design philosophy is good re: engineering. But the GPL goes beyond open source or free binaries to get to *free software* which embodies the freedoms outlined in TFA, and it is in this that it's true strength lies.

And on Stallman, like or dislike, you have to admit the man is not only programmer, but has managed to put the work he does into the context of society and start a movement to make the world a better place. That's not something I will ever diss out. Shelly (the poet) once said: 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', and by this he meant that the language which we use in the *everyday* is shaped by the poet and therefore what we are able to do with it is made possible by the poet [1]. I think Stallman has made the modern counterpart to this philosophy that it's in the *everyday* things we do that freedom resides. No need to turn people into saints and ignore their faults, but credit where credit is due I think.

I don't have anything against the BSD licence, but I do have something against a minority of BSD trolls who attempt to spread FUD about linux and how "it's for n00bs". FreeBSD for example is a great OS with parts better than many linux distros, but many linux distros also have far superior technologies than BSD. These points aren't at issue for a GPL-lover like me, because it is the *social* "technology" embedded in the legal document which is by far and away a more important thing.

Hope to see you on the GPL-side sometime.

[1] - And modern studies of the influence of people like chaucer or shakespeare on our modern language confirm this through and through. What we are able to say is shaped by them, further, and perhaps people might not agree here - what we are able to think. I suggest reading up on semiotics and wittgenstien for some trully mind blowing stuff.

Here's an example of a coroporate exploit of externality . The film, The Corporation which is being shown in Aus at the moment details how companies avoid responsibility. The company developing the software has passed the *cost* of defects and inability to operate as required to the the client, the FBI. In turn funded by the US tax payer.

Counter to this it the poor technology management at the FBI. Is there really such a technology and project management and *knowledge gap* ?

I'm not going to defend capitalism (granted I think it's much better than communism), but communism itself is pretty bad.

I myself have fairly left-wing views (I'm from Canada and completely agree with universal healthcare, etc), but communism doesn't seem to take one thing into consideration: Humans are greedy, and this includes the ones controlling the government of a communist country. Much like the very purpose of an incorporation (Check out this movie), there's an underlyting wrongness about communism that doesn't have enough checks and balances (at least not in my country of origin).

Anyway, Bill should grow up and know better than to call people commies. It's unprofessional.

http://www.thecorporation.tv/

It's 3 hours long but worth every minute. I believe it's coming on dvd soon

1. They exist because they are legally entitled to exist.
2. They exist to make money.

The notion of corporate personhood and a debate of the merits thereof is the predominant theme of this book (and, presumably the movie aswell, but I'm more of a reader myself) and is dealt with in some depth.

It makes some very interesting points:

• Corporations are given all the rights and protections that any other citizen has, and yet they have very few of the duties and responsibilities that come with them.
• They are the only class of "citizen" which is LEGALLY REQUIRED to be 100% selfish - If they do anything which cannot be construed as maximising shareholder value (i.e. pursuing their own interest to the exclusion of any other) they can be sued by their shareholders. In other words, corporate philanthropy is actually ILLEGAL, unless there's something in it for them.
• The FBI's top consultant on psychopaths performs an analysis of corporate "persons", and pretty much every item on his checklist applies to them.

I won't list any more examples here, but it's a very thorough, well-written, in-depth discussion, and far from the radical leftie polemic which you might think it would be. Much harder to poke holes in than Michael Moore, anyway.

See The Corporation.

It actually won a lot of praise...

-davidu

If you sold used cars like software is sold, you would be in prison.
If you sold real estate like software is sold, you would be in prison.


And if you, as a private individual, conducted yourself in the manner of a large corporation, you would be considered a pyschopath.

"The evidence shows how a corporation can manipulate popular opinion via anonymous personalities, that open source companies can be just as ruthless as closed source when it comes to marketing their wares"

This story is a reminder that corporations are corporations and they will do almost anything to get money. In fact, by law they must put the bottom line above any other consideration. The documentary, The Corporation, discusses this fact, and how corporations are legal persons. The whole premise of the film is: Since corporations are recognized legal persons under the law, what kind of person are they?. Watch the movie to see the 'diagnosis' of what kind of person the corporation is.

Even nice corporations to open source like IBM will sell out open source in a heartbeat. To counter these corporations' bad motives and behaviour you have to punish them in the wallet, which means boycotting JBoss, M$, and any other misbehaving company. If you buy from them then you are an enabler of their wrong behaviour and, I argue, bear a part of the moral responsibility for their behaviour.

Do not buy corporate funded american products.
Do not go to corporate funded american movies.
Do not listen to corporate funded american music.
Do not wear corporate funded american clothing.

Nothing wrong with supporting the little guy.

The problem is that the corporation is LEGALLY A PERSON, but has none of the responsibilities of one. A corporation isn't even an organization of people, but of parts of people, only those parts which will earn it profit. In fact, I believe it is illegal for a CEO to make decisions that go against a corporations profitability even if they wanted to. Their responsibility is to the shareholders more than anyone that might be affected by their decisions. The government is also loath to revoke a corporate charter for almost any reason, even though it is one of the few truly powerful controls on corporate behaviour.

For more, you might want to check out the documentary, The Corporation, which has been in theaters and TV here in Canada and will show up in US theaters in the next few months. My sig is from someone in that documentary.

"In spite of this, Canadian television has yet to produce a domestic hit television series"

oh i guess you missed
anne of green gables (ew but it was mad popular)
trailer park boys
ed the sock
22 minutes
the national
all those rick mercer shows

well thats all i remmber for now, i dont own a tv so its all from memory. not to mention all the quality films that have come out of the NFB, Lions Gate or TVO. some that wont even be touched by US studios. (manufacturing consent, and the corporation come to mind. I think bowling for columbine was released under NFB but i might be wrong).

as for direct TV i had a dish and you can see plenty of them where i live. I only had to take it down when they built a building next to mine that blocked the signal. the RCMP isnt going to waste its time busting people who have dishes, maybe distribution but im sure they are under presure from bell and such to do that. they barely even bust growers unless someone tells them to "get tough on crime" and as everyone knows, stoners are an easy target.

if the RCMP bust people for stealing sat signals and growing weed, and those are the biggest problems, well that isn't very bad now is it?

This is the kind of thing that Frank Zappa warned us was going to happen. Sure, we say it all the time, "Corporations are running the country," meaning that corporations have undue influence over lawmakers; but it's getting to the point that we're going to have to find a stronger statement...

Take a look at The Corporation as a stronger statement. Here's the synopsis:

"Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a "person" in the eyes of the law, the feature documentary employs a checklist, based on actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and DSM IV, the standard tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. What emerges is a disturbing diagnosis.

Self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful, a corporation's operational principles make it anti-social. It breaches social and legal standards to get its way even while it mimics the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. It suffers no guilt. Diagnosis: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath ."

Bill Gates might not be psychotic, but his "person" the Microsoft Corporation is a psychopath if there ever was one. Add also the RIAA, MPAA, SCO...psychopath, psychopath, psychopath.

Treating corporations as people was a slimy legal trick pulled by corporate lawyers after they aded the 14th amendment to ensure the slaves rights. Up until then corporations were limited in scope.

I personally agree that the world would be a better place if corporations were limited in scope and not allowed to own other corporations. I strongly suggest to anyone who cares about these issues to see the documentary called The Corporation