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Politicians, Napster, And The Invention Of The Net
sdo1 pointed us to the major candidates take on napster. Here's Bush and here's Gore. A phenomenal number of submissions have arrived regarding
Gore's invention of the Internet (mostly surrounding the fact that Vint Cerf credits Gore as being the most influential politician in its creation). And lastly is a series of more techie oriented interviews
with Nader and Gore (well, Gore's advisor anyway) that is running on Wired.
Just because it's been around a while doesn't make it "all right." Character assassination is the dirtiest of dirty tricks and about as morally responsible as getting your daughter's Girl Scout Troop hooked on crack. Yes, I hate both of the men in question, but I would never resort to distortion of the truth to make either of them look worse than I can make them look by simply dissemination the real truth about them (like, for example, that Al Gore is a huge proponent of that nasty Clipper Chip thing and would almost certainly start pushing it if he got elected; he cares about how we feel about censorship about as much as Metallica cares how we feel about peer-to-peer file sharing).
Gore has benefitted from it before; now he is the victim of it. I'm sure Bush is the victim of a bit too (though that Agre article is lamentably pro-Gore). The point is that you pretty much can't believe anything the press says these days, and that the people of America are mostly sheep who can't do any original thinking or research for themselves and thus are at the mercy of whatever CNN spews at them as Truth. They see it on TV; they believe it; they pass it on to the people who somehow didn't see it on TV and are believed when they do so as if they were the original source of the information to begin with. "Oh, well, I saw it on (CNN|MSNBC|ABC News|CBS News|NBC News|20/20|Nightline|The Rupert Murdoch Propaganda Network) so it must be true!"
That's what I'm trying to prevent. People need to learn that the media has opinions just as biased as the rest of humanity (being humans themselves) and are under the control of a very very few, very very powerful moguls who are more inclined to protect their peers and the very few people who might possibly have some power over them (the other moguls and almost all politicians), and thus themselves, by spreading propaganda instead of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Objective journalism just doesn't exist anymore in mainstream society. Yes, there are a few websites here and there with Truth on them, but they're so swamped by the ones that spew garbage that you'd never notice them unless someone pointed them out to you.
So here I am. Pointing things out to you. Things you would probably never be exposed to if left to your own devices and media outlets. I do this in the hope that you will learn something, even if that something is only that you mustn't believe something just because it was said by a "trusted, respected" news source like CNN.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character.
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This seems to be the whole point of the article, and this is completly untrue! I submit to you the results of these recent Reuters/Zogby polls:
Bush's Star Wars Anti-ballistic Shield Favored:
http:/http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001017/
Majority Opposed to Selling High-Tech Weapons to China:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001017/zo/chi
More Autonomy for States to Set School Standards
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001017/zo/sch
Accountability Narrowly Beat Out Smaller Class Size:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001016/zo/cla
State Rights Favored Over Federal Regulations on Health Care:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001016/zo/hea
Teaching Certification Based on Teacher's Ability Favored:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001013/zo/tea
More Than Fifty Percent Favor Bush-Cheney's Homeless Plan:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001012/zo/hom
Bush-Cheney Position Preferred on Global Warming Treaty:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001011/zo/war
It's rather obvious that the majority agree with Bush's policies. The statement above about the public favoring Gore's policies only displays sloppy reporting, the same kind that allowed the "invented the internet" story to get way out of proportion.
However, most believe that Gore is intelligent while Bush is dumb. A quick look at the facts show that while Bush was no straight A student, he did considerably better than Gore in undergrad school. Gores third semester at Harvard yielded straight C's with one D, worse than ANY semester Bush had at Harvard. Gore also flunked out of grad school with 5 F's out of 8 classes, and dropped out of Law school while failing. Obviously, the man is not smart, he is just better spoken than Bush. Bush certainly held his own in the debates, even coming across MORE intelligent than Gore at times.
We also all know Bush is a cocaine user right? Well, no, that was an invented story as well. We DO know he used to have a drinking problem, and didn't like to talk about it. Once, when a reporter was asking him about his, she also asked him if he did drugs. He refused to answer, so it seems everyone assumed he was a cocaine user. This is the kind of assumption that the democrats were so opposed to when it applied to Clinton (well, until the assumptions were proven true).
My point here is, Bush is just (if not more) as subject to rumor and lies as Gore, only the majority of the public SUPPORT his policies. THIS is why he is in the lead.
Finkployd
Well, there must be *something* causing the media to keep repeating provably false assertions. If it isn't bias or coercion, what could it be?
The problem with the media as a whole is that it's far far too powerful for several reasons; (1) everyone instantly believes everything they hear from any published news source; (2) the owners of these news sources have their own agendas and opinions and biases and thus just cannot have their own news programs going against these biases and agendas; (3) the owners of these news sources are very rich and very powerful and have friends who are very rich and very powerful, which means they're *always* going to be willing to subvert, warp, mangle, spindle, and mutilate the truth so that it favors the viewpoints of anyone who happens to be in power over them (first), themselves (second), and their friends (third). This mixture cannot help but lead to gross misrepresentation of facts (and lies AS fact) on the news programs that they as a group control (which is, at last count, all of them except for a few Access Television programs in various cities).
And yes, I applaud you for not quibbling about semicolons. Too many others do, though... as if it's their only means of attacking a post they don't like. Poor Jon Katz...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
This is one of those pieces of doggerel that got repeated with such regularity that it became truth without ever being based in fact. It was an exaggeration made by Anti-Gore advocate Declan McCullagh, which he shamelessly promoted at every opportunity.
The "smoking gun" quotation was, in fact, that Al Gore, during his tenure in the Congress, "took the initiative in creating the Internet." This was, in fact, the truth. Gore spearheaded efforts to fund NSFNet, and he (and other tech-savvy folk like Newt Gingrich) took a leadership role in getting funding for and support for net-related projects.
Much quibbling has occurred in the use of the words "took the initiative." There can be no mistake of the meaning Gore intended: in the same paragraph, he discussed many other legislative initiatives in the same context. My Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines initiative, particularly as used in this context, to refer to a form of legislative action.
The deconstruction of a brief phrase taken out of context, and the shameless repetition and exploitation of it by Declan, Armey and other partisans led to the present situation, where it is no longer even questioned whether Gore claimed to invent the internet.
The cost of blinding yourself to truth is that others can define it for you. Don't let this bullshit continue. Question everything. Even this response, until you are satisfied you know who was telling the truth, and who was lying.
While anti-Gore partisans are fond of talking about Gore's alleged prevarications, one must consider carefully the irony of the falsehoods the partisans themselves have propagated.
The New Science of Character Assassination
Phil Agre
15 October 2000
You are welcome to forward this article electronically to anyone for any noncommercial purpose.
The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character. A story in today's (10/15/00) New York Times states openly what has been clear all along, that this campaign of character assassination has been planned and executed over a long period by the Republicans.
--Story Link--
Character assassination is, of course, nothing new for Republicans, who mastered the art in the days of Richard Nixon. What's new is that the press constantly repeats the lies. Not just once or twice, not just the occasional slip, but over and over and over.
Let us consider the New York Times story in detail. Written by Alison Mitchell, it describes Al Gore's abject apology for two trivial and much-exaggerated errors in the first debate as "the culmination of a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy".
The New York Times discerns four landmarks in this campaign, and they are as follows:
... in December 1997 ... the [Republican National] committee announced it had started a
contest to come up with a slogan for Mr. Gore after he told reporters that the hero and heroine in
the novel "Love Story" were modeled after him and his wife, Tipper. (Erich Segal, the author,
soon said that his protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, was only partly based on Mr. Gore, while Jenny
Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore.)
In this case, the RNC's claim was false. Gore had not told anyone that Love Story was based on him and his wife. Rather, he had mentioned a newspaper article that had inaccurately said that, and was carefully to say that he only had the article's word to go on. Observe that Mitchell repeats the RNC's false account, and then (following the longstanding convention) makes it sound as though Segal was contradicting Gore, when in fact he was defending him. The false "Love Story" store continues to be repeated to the present day.
--Story Link--
So when Mr. Gore said in an interview with CNN in March 1999 that "during my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, issued this mocking statement: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the paper clip".
The problem, of course, was that Gore's claim was correct. As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
On the day Mr. Gore announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode in a wagon pulled by mules to the hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much of his youth.
"He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and that is not what he is", said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers on the family farm.
The problem, again, is that Gore's claim was true. He did work on his family farm as a child. This time, Mitchell admits that the Republicans were making it up. But she still shades the story by making it sound as though the truth hadn't come out until later, and as though the contrary view rests solely on the word of Gore's friends. In fact the childhood farm chores had been extensively reported for a decade. The false claim that Gore had lied about the chores was repeated on many occasions in the press.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
The Republicans got help as well from an unexpected source. When the Democratic primary fight became bitter, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey insisted that Mr. Gore had deliberately distorted his policy positions in what he called a "pattern of misrepresentation". At one point, Mr. Bradley spat out, "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?"
The problem is that Bradley is endlessly quoted to this effect without any attempt to determine whether he is right. In fact Bradley often wrongly accused Gore of distorting his positions.
And that's it. That, according to the New York Times, is the story of the Republicans' campaign to paint Al Gore as an embellisher. The New York Times cites four accusations, all of them false, and in every case the New York Times either repeats the false accusations as truth or else provides misleading accounts of them.
The New York Times' article is not an aberration. The list of false attacks on Al Gore's character that have been circulated in the media for the last two years is extraordinary. In some cases, as in the ones (mis)cited by the New York Times, Gore is accused of lying when he was actually telling the truth:
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
In other cases, Gore's words are twisted, misquoted, or simply made up to make him sound as though he were making a claim that he was not making. For example, some publications have even claimed, falsely, that Gore literally uttered the words "inventing the Internet".
--Story Link--
There are many others:
--Story Link--
Was this simply a mistake on Lehrer's part? Okay, but Lehrer made his "mistake" in the context of rebuking Gore for his own miniscule mistakes in the first debate.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
In yet other cases, Gore made a trivial error that has been exaggerated by his critics, and the exaggeration has been falsely attributed to him. Such is the case with the school in Florida that Gore cited in the first of his debates with George W. Bush.
--Story Link--
These are just a few examples among many. People make mistakes all the time. Al Gore is one of them, and it's surprising that an army of opposition researchers hasn't come up with more substantive errors after fact-checking a whole life of public statements. So is George W. Bush, whose errors during the two debates so far have been dramatically worse than those of Gore. To start with, Bush falsely implied that the Europeans have no troops in Kosovo, when in fact they have tens of thousands, and that the United States has significant numbers of troops in Haiti, when it does not. And he made numerous false statements:
That is just a partial list of Bush's "mistakes" in two ninety-minute debates, and it doesn't include the dubious numbers he quoted from Republicans in the Senate or the mess he made of education, taxes, Social Security, and the Middle East. Nor does it include the "mistakes" that littered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, or the especially egregious "mistakes" of his brutal campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and so on.
--Story Link--
With only a few exceptions (like the one just cited), the press has gone to great lengths to cover up or minimize Bush's false statements. Press coverage of the first debate focused overwhelmingly on Gore's two comparatively trivial errors and on endless suggestions that Gore was rude for having sighed several times.
--Story Link--
Of course, the sighs were often exaggerated by turning the volume up. (Falsely calling someone a liar, as Bush did several times, is not rude?) Pundits bizarrely praised Bush for his command of the issues after the first debate despite his lengthy catalog of errors:
--Catalog Link--
And the 10/5/00 Washington Post buried the Democrats' list of Bush errors at the end of a long story about Bush's accusations against Gore.
The problem is systemic. A reporter for a British newspaper, the Observer, was struck at the completely different approaches of the reporters covering Gore and Bush, and reported a disturbing incident in which a Washington Post reporter well-known for her open hostility to Gore held a toy gun to his head.
--Story Link--
Indeed, press coverage of Gore has been spun in a strongly negative fashion for a long time.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
The press, following the lead of Republican "investigators", has repeatedly falsified and spun the famous Buddhist temple event, among others.
--Story Link--
They have also falsified and exaggerated Gore's performance in earlier debates, thereby creating a caricuture of him as a vicious attacker.
--Story Link--
Yes, the press has suggested that Bush is not mentally competent to run the country. But it has not fabricated huge amounts of evidence to support this charge, and it has not routinely used vocabulary that is remotely as harsh as that used against Gore. You have rarely seen the media call Bush a "moron" or "idiot", but Gore has routinely been called much worse. Here is a very partial list:
(I am citing the Daily Howler for most of these examples so that you can read some analysis of them. But the Howler provides precise citations for the originals, which should be easy to look up.)
Indeed, Bush's alleged mental incompetence is often tacitly used to excuse his falsehoods -- he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he can't be lying. Or Gore is accused of a "pattern" of false and exaggerated statements, but then Bush escapes the same accusation for the simple reason that nobody bothers to gather Bush's false and exaggerated statements in one place.
This is just the press. We're not even talking about the conservatives on the Internet that have been circulating long lists of Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations -- most of which are, of course, themselves lies or exaggerations, including garbled and embellished versions of the already false versions in the press. Some of these lists are credited to the RNC, but of course it is hard to know for sure.
The new science of character assassination, then, has several components:
But it's not just that. It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch's media properties, such as Fox and the New York Post, publish smears against people who disagree with Murdoch's far-right views. But it can hardly be an accident that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all assigned reporters to the Gore campaign who write, day in and day out, the same sorts of exaggerated smears. To be sure, the press is not unanimous in spreading Republican lies as truth; the contrast between the NYT/Post/AP axis and the calm reporting of the Los Angeles Times could hardly be greater. But the Post, Times, and AP, all well-connected and widely syndicated, set the tone for the press as a whole. The fix is clearly in, and these establishment media operations are clearly down with it. They see which way the wind is blowing, and they don't want to get left behind.
A kind of coup is in effect, continuing the pattern of the Whitewater hoax and impeachment. If the far right succeeds in its campaign, then the incoming government will be staffed by people who are trained in the new science of character assassination. It's all they know. And having destroyed Al Gore, they will come after the rest of us.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Philip E. Agre.
All rights reserved.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
The whole concept of "throwing a vote away" is pretty much akin to FUD in my mind. Why do you ask the question? Are you implying that if he doesn't vote for the same candidate you are that he is wasting a vote? Are you implying that if he doesn't vote for a front-runner he is wasting a vote?
A vote is a person's choice. Making a decision should never be considered wasteful.
I dunno. I suspect the candidates didn't write the answers -- I'm sure they "spoke" the answers. They sound more like spoken answers than written answers.
... heh ... well, we're gonna explain what makes a good leader, heh heh, because, er, as you know ... a good -- the best leaders lead, yeah, they lead, and you know leading is important when, uh ... heh ... when you're a leader... heh heh.
But I must say that Bush's answer is vintage Shrub: lotsa words but completely devoid of content. Kinda like the dazed-and-confused look he had at last night's debate: eager for the attack but, um, we're not really sure about the specifics yet, Jim, so, er, we're just gonna explain why, ah, why
In all fairness, Gore's answer to the Napster controversy isn't much better but at least he indicates how the issue will (I'm 100% sure) be solved: licensing. Maybe the licensing is something Napster, Inc. will pay. Maybe it's something that will be passed onto the consumers.
But I'm sure -- I'm positive, in fact -- that licensing (ala ASCAP) is how Napster will ultimately be resolved.
we don't care about "you, as a musician". we've already heard from 244000 other "musician tekkies" who don't care if they ever make a dime from their music (which is ironic siince almost none of them would have anyway). We've heard from so many of these miserable fucks that plinking down a statement regarding your personal altruism is no longer honorable. Instead it is *karma whoring*.
What we care about, at least in this particular discussion, is what Bubba g and Algore think about it all. Since we are about to empower one of them as the supreme executive dude and all.
the whole world will hear what they have to say... on a daily basis.
> It's kind of like when you go to a party, and everyone snorts off the same mirror."
Damn me, that's the definition of a server, not peer-to-peer sharing. I'll get back to you as soon as I get home and consult my copy of High Tech Made Easy: Real-Life Explanations for Politicians and Other Dummies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Bwaaah ah ah. No matter how outrageous your sarcasms are, there's always a chump to take it seriously.
So you want names, smartie? What about Air, Laurent Garnier? Just off the top of my head.
As for good stuff you'll never hear about besides here: Tricatel, worldwide specialists in lounge music, featuring Valérie Lemercier and Michel Houellebecq. 'course you won't get those on MTV. Eh eh eh. Oh oh oh. Oh well it's funny but you won't get it. Too bad.
--
>160kbps and a CD track, though. Maybe I've just
>got bad ears.
More likely you have shitty audio gear.
When I Napster a track, and like it enough to keep, I make a point of tracking down the CD (given the RIAA/metallica's attack on the internet tho, I only buy USED CDs now); because if you have a *REAL* stereo with GOOD speakers, you *CAN* tell the difference.
Truth be told, though, on the Altec Lansing speakers hooked to my computer, or on the $5 cheapo headphones I toss in my laptop bag, *I* can't tell the difference either. But I use my Mac at home for SAMPLING music to decide if it's worth purchasing; and my laptop for music at work, where I can't really bring in any gear.
But on a *REAL* sound system, the difference is painful. And the computers of >99% of the populace don't count.
Sorry, but that Soundblaster (or compatible) card != a McIntosh tube amp.
Nor are those POS Labtec speakers in the same league as a proper set of Bose speakers.
Your $5 Koss headphones from K-Mart? Thanks, but I'll keep my Sennheisers, thank you very much.
Oh, and do you even want to CONSIDER all the extraneous electronic noise inside your average computer case, fscking up your audio?
One would think that at least metallica themselves, if not their masters at the RIAA headquarters, would know all this.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet
The full phrasing is important because the statement clearly is talking about what he did as a congressperson. He took the initiative over other Congresspeople to create the internet. (I never stated that he the quote meant a legistlative "initiative". Just that he took the Congressional initiative in creating the internet). There may have been many other people who had taken initiative to create the internet, but Gore took the inititive as a congress person.
According to the Internet Timeline, in 1986 the NSFNET was just created with a backbone of 56Kbps, but Vint Cerf acknowledged that "As far back as 1986, [Gore] was holding hearings on this subject (supercomputing, fiber networks...) and asking about their promise and what could be done to realize them. Bob Kahn, with whom I worked to develop the Internet design in 1973, participated in several hearings held by then-Senator Gore". In 1986, the internet was far from done. It was still being created. It can be said that it is still being created, but it can eaily be said that Al Gore played an important part in creating the internet. Not the first internet, but the internet, the one you are using right now.
I'll probably be moderated down again for stating this opinion, but I really don't care. I am rather sick of the media falsifying and cut quoting statements by Gore. For a longer disection of many Gore "lies," there is another good article on snopes.
-no broken link
I don't think a country where they had to introduce legislation to force radio stations to play music from local artists can be said to have any kind of "talent" at all.
Whereas a country which has to put "Parental Advisory" stickers on records and where radio stations have to censor "offensive" (= one occurence of 'fuck') songs to keep their license has a LOT to tell the world about freedom of speech and talent.
--
If the poor stay poor even if they ARE getting resources from the government, then obviously this is not contributing to the overall "health" of the society and the strategy needs to be changed.
Whether that involves using propaganda & incentives to excite motivation, or merely making opportunities in the form of education available, is a matter of experimentation & implementation. The goal is still the same: improving the health of the society as a whole.
What a bunch of bullshit. The TRULY poor don't have the resources to do anything but try and survive. Without help or a lucky break, they don't have a chance in hell of changing their circumstances by themselves, whether or not they "take responsibility" for themselves.
What I find really hypocritical are those people who like to think that the poor cause and can always take care of their own problems, and that the rest of the society has no obligation to help them out. Oh wait, that's somebody just like YOU - huh, imagine that.
A utilitarian ethic based on the health of the overall society is a shallow, depraved thing? Is this kind of like the shallow, depraved attitude of abandoning the poor because you believe they're all selfish greedy bastards who should be allowed to starve to death so that you don't have to pay any taxes to help them out?
I have been a musician for several years now, and I was very pleased (as a techie) to see that I could listen to low-quality songs on my desktop computer. Heres what I have to say as far as paying for music is concerned:
art is free, as it should be.
music is something they've found a way to capitalize on, and they have.
If people turn down their money-guided mindsets and think about the music, they'll be more creative, and free. Which is why (as a musician) I dont mind if The whole world hears what I have to say.
It is extremely unlikely that the candidates, or at least Bush, really wrote those statements. I find it highly unlikely that the Governer knows what peer-to-peer file sharing means. Furthermore, both major US candidates propose that the artists should be compensated, but neither states how. Bush makes a blanket statement -- it is unfair to artists, and we need to compensate all of them. Meanwhile, Gore states that new solutions will develop naturally, as they did in radio. Both of them conveniently ignore the RIAA, MPAA, and other huge lobbying organizations. All in all, a very uninformitive answer to a pertinant question for geeks.
Gore can be given credit for sponsoring some bills. This is infinitesimal (sp?) with all that was poured into the Internet--I was actually taught NII (National Information Infrastructure) and GII (Global Information Infrastructure) at Purdue.
Items I consider:
- How much money did the Baby Bells contribute?
- How many people developed it or for it?
IMHO, the Internet would have come along even if Gore had been against it from the beginning. I consider it a group effort and nothing more.Jim Lehrer: Welcome to the second presidential debate between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush. The candidates have agreed on these rules: I will ask a question. The candidate will ignore the question and deliver rehearsed remarks designed to appeal to undecided women voters. The opponent will then have one minute to respond by trying to frighten senior citizens into voting for him. When a speaker's time has expired, I will whimper softly while he continues to spew incomprehensible statistics for three more minutes. Let's start with the vice president. Mr. Gore, can you give us the name of a downtrodden citizen and then tell us his or her story in a way that strains the bounds of common sense?
Gore: As I was saying to Tipper last night after we tenderly made love the way we have so often during the 30 years of our rock-solid marriage, the downtrodden have a clear choice in this election. My opponent wants to cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans. I, on the other hand, want to put the richest 1 percent in an iron clad lockbox so they can't hurt old people like Roberta Frampinhamper, who is here tonight. Mrs. Frampinhamper has been selling her internal organs, one by one, to pay for gas so that she can travel to these debates and personify problems for me. Also, her poodle has arthritis.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush, your rebuttal.
Bush: Governors are on the front lines every day, hugging people, crying with them, relieving suffering anywhere a photo opportunity exists. I want to empower those crying people to make their own decisions, unlike my opponent, whose mother is not Barbara Bush.
Lehrer: Let's turn to foreign affairs. Gov. Bush, if Slobodan Milosevic were to launch a bid to return to power in Yugoslavia, would you be able to pronounce his name?
Bush: The current administration had eight years to deal with that guy and didn't get it done. If I'm elected, the first thing I would do about that guy is have Dick Cheney confer with our allies. And then Dick would present me several options for dealing with that guy. And then Dick would tell me which one to choose. You know, as governor of Texas, I have to make tough foreign policy decisions every day about how we're going to deal with New Mexico.
Lehrer: Mr. Gore, your rebuttal.
Gore: Foreign policy is something I've always been keenly interested in. I served my country in Vietnam. I had an uncle who was a victim of poison gas in World War I. I myself lost a leg in the Franco-Prussian War. And when that war was over, I came home and tenderly made love to Tipper in a way that any undecided woman voter would find romantic. If I'm entrusted with the office of president, I pledge to deal knowledgeably with any threat, foreign or domestic, by putting it in an iron clad lockbox. Because the American people deserve a president who can comfort them with simple metaphors.
Lehrer: Vice President Gore, how would you reform the Social Security system?
Gore: It's a vital issue, Jim. That's why Joe Lieberman and I have proposed changing the laws of mathematics to allow us to give $50,000 to every senior citizen without having it cost the federal treasury a single penny until the year 2250. In addition, my budget commits $60 trillion over the next 10 years to guarantee that all senior citizens can have drugs delivered free to their homes every Monday by a federal employee who will also help them with the child-proof cap.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush?
Bush: That's fuzzy math. I know, because as governor of Texas, I have to do math every day. I have to add up the numbers and decide whether I'm going to fill potholes out on Rt. 36 east of Abilene or commit funds to reroof the sheep barn at the Texas state fairgrounds.
Lehrer: It's time for closing statements.
Gore: I'm my own man. I may not be the most exciting politician, but I will fight for the working families of America, in addition to turning the White House into a lusty pit of marital love for Tipper and me.
Bush: It's time to put aside the partisanship of the past by electing no one but Republicans.
Lehrer: Good night.
There was a "field hearing" in Utah about two weeks ago on Napster, held by Senator Hatch. Shawn Fanning (wrote the beast) was there, and a few others. A friend of mine wrote the piece above, and submitted it to slashdot, but to no avail. Give it a read; it's interesting. Among other things, it indicates Hatch supports Napster, but wants seems to want to see ASCAP like royalty schemes (which really isn't too unreasonable -- my only concern is once you get the big boys involved, it'll turn into a payola oriented media...)
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
And Gore has been funded by Occidental Oil: no less "beholden" than Bush.
Under Reagan and Bush the deficit soared. Under Clinton and Gore it is going down.
Don't be naïve. Clinton/Gore had no more to do with the present budget surpluses than Reagan did with the deficits. In case you haven't read anything about the Constitution in the U.S., it is Congress that establishes the budget. It is Congress that establishes tax rates. The President has no power to legislate (modulo the unconstitutional "executive order," which really ought to be abolished) and he has no power to control how much of your money Congress wants to spend. The most that could be said is that Reagan signed a Democrat Congress's budget laws (which was stupid) and Clinton signs a GOP Congress's budget laws (which, while not smart, is less stupid).
instead of giving Bill Gates and H. Ross Perot a big tax cut they don't need,...
This isn't about "needs"; it's about justice. And it is unjust for the wealthiest to be taxed at higher rates than those who have less. The rates should be the same for everyone without exception. THAT is what is just.
he'll use the money to give more kids a chance at college and possibly a techie career. That's a big win in my book.
Why should I be forced at gunpoint to pay to educate your children? THAT is a big loss in my book.
Women and men should have to right to decide if they want to reproduce.
Nice rhetoric, but that's not what you mean. What you mean is that anyone (including teens) should be free to have sex whenever, wherever, however, and with whomever (or whatever) they wish, without consequences. This is simple libertinism, and it's disgusting. The fact is that men and women have ALWAYS had the "right" to decide whether to reproduce: they could simply abstain from sex. The fact that you consider this (as I'm sure you do) to be "unrealistic" or whatever betrays that what you are really after is sex without consequences (hence the Left's similar commitment to finding cures to diseases that are only prevalent among the sexually profligate). The world doesn't work that way.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
"The Congress shall have the power...TO PROMOTE THE USEFUL ARTS, by securing for limited Times to Authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Art 1, Sec. 8
Note that the purpose of the intellectual property laws is the promotion of the useful arts--not the promotion of income for the creators of those useful arts. The focus is on the benefit the useful arts will bestow on the public, NOT the benefit that should be bestowed upon the artist.
I think most true artists (as opposed to "created" artists, i.e. boy-bands) would agree that their motivation in creating music is not money. Motivation flows naturally from the desire/need to express and create.
I am not advocating that artists should not be compensated for their work, but that there needs to be a shift in considering music as a commodity to a service and a subsequent modification in how artists are paid for their expressive creations. We have lost sight of the purpose of the copyright laws, over the past several years particularly, and new technology such as PtoP file sharing is providing an opportunity to reassess the benefits that laws are intended to promote. Are laws to promote the greatest benefit to the individual, or promote the greatest benefit to everyone?
I didn't wonder that there was no rebuttals to either Gore or Bush's comments. After all, they didn't say anything.
Although I think it is funny that they kept on talking about 'artists rights'...my Goddess, can they really believe that shit? Can they believe that anyone else can believe that shit? Artists aren't losing money on Napster, record companies are. That might sound like such an obvious fact, but obviously these presidential candidates feel like they can live in an alternative reality by using different words.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Compromise is great, but once in a while things have to just be changed, one way or the other.
OK, I'll bite. Both Clapton and Lennon had their heydays in times when Britain was ruled by a Conservative government. Britain has never really been a socialist country, although the Labour governments of the mid-60s and mid-70s definitely had socialist taxation policies...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Yes, I would also like to know! I'd assume that more "IT professionals" (whatever that really means) are considered wealthy by the government, so the last thing they would want would be Gore in office!
I just don't get it. If you're a techie, why don't you realize how much of a whore he is? He's just saying what the "working middle class" wants to hear.
If you make more than $40k a year, I suggest you vote for Bush if no other reason that to protect your own money! If Gore gets in, we'll be a socialist government in 4 years, and your hard-earned money will be going to support those in society who just choose not to work.
Why do you want the government taking MORE of your money?
--- witty signature
President of United States of America or any other country's leader is NOT a geek. He does not have to understand what OSS really means and what p2p is. There are much much more important issues than napster to be considered first, such as education, before american kids become the dumbest on the planet(well, some already are, and they troll on slashdot), environment protection, health care, tax cut, etc. heh, I could use a couple of extra thousands every year to go to vacation while the rest of the trolls moaning over their loss of access to mp3s on slashdot.
It is funny how many slashdotters look no further from the gigantic computer monitor right in front of them.
Being unfamiliar with the American elections I can't go into much details (just that I don't give these comments much credit since the candidates mostly tell you what you would like to hear) but it does remind me of an earlier /. article concerning shortage of people within the IT sector. Isn't it true that mp3's are wildely spread within this sector? If you want to be able to access them you'll need to know something about it or be influenced by it. Which makes me wonder; did these candidates just tell us that there is indeed a sense of truth in the stories about the shortage? Maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there, allways a good option, but just think of it; would a country of which its highest political 'leader' speaks heavily against the small things which make life & work more comfterble (I know, should grab the dictionary :/) (I like listening to internet radio at work) appeal to you? Dunno about you guys but if I'd hear that (and take the possible acitons into consideration) I'd think it over before going there armed with my mp3 player filled with some nice JPop / Anime tunes.
The fact that electing Bush will probably mean that rich people get to keep more of their money doesn't really motivate me to vote for him (I can see it motivating people with money but why people who earn less than 70K a year would vote for Bush by reason of this "tax cut" really astounds me).
a rts/charttalk%2040-87.pdf). Don't even get me started on how much it's going to hurt if we don't deal with the looming disaster that is Medicare/Medicaid.
I am also not really concerned that I won't see any benefit from either candidate's tax plan since I'm a single, unmarried woman without children. Paying down the debt and "fixing" social security so that MY generation (Gen X's) aren't hit with a 30-50% increase in social security tax rates when the baby boomers start retiring is of far greater concern to me (for more depressing numbers see http://www.concordcoalition.org/federal_budget/ch
But in the end it comes down to what I care about most - control over my own body and my own actions. Bush, who will appoint anti-choice Supreme Court Justices, is a far greater threat to my rights than Gore is. Money is really insignificant in the long run.
Tigris
France? they're idea of Rock and Roll is a joke.
Bah. What do you know about it? What does it prove besides that the USA has a stronghold on music distribution?
But phear not, we have the local likes of Britney Spears. Just without the boob job.
--
Actually, this is the attitude that I understood YOU to be saying in your previous messages, that the welfare state isn't working and should be abolished. *My* point was that if the system aint working, you need to fix it. And from a government's viewpoint, the goal to keep in mind while fixing such a system is the longterm health of the society as a whole.
Common sense, and fits with what I've been saying about choosing a different strategy if the current one isn't working. It doesn't address the fact that you're going to have to use up SOME sort of resource to "educate" such people as to the society-friendly way to do things, and it's going to be the people who HAVE those resources who are going to have to pay for it. And it might be better for the longterm benefit of the society if government takes it from them, even if they don't want to give it. They probably won't be happy about it, but from a governmental viewpoint, their "happiness" does not trump the goal of the longterm health of the society.
You seem to be fixated on the idea that private is always better than public service. Get over it - it limits your solutions. The goal of any government is SUPPOSED to be the health of the society as a whole, which is not necessarily (and not likely) the goal of private institutions, whether or not they have labeled themselves as "charities".
As far as the number of people of who truly poor through no fault of their own - I'm sure it is to your benefit to think that there are only a very tiny number of these people, and that they should should be properly grateful that you deigned to give them some of your hardearned income. Of course, if they don't happen to do the proper bootlicking or don't quite agree with your way of looking at things - then why the hell should you help them out? Huh - maybe that's what a properly functioning government is for, to take care of health of the society as a whole, even if it inconveniences or annoys some of the individuals.
You still keep thinking that your "rights" trump those of the society as a whole. I'll keep on saying it, the government's responsibility is maintaining the longterm health of the society as a whole, not catering to the whims of individuals. What YOU want isn't necessarily what's best for the society as a whole, so the government doesn't have any obligation - and in fact would be abrogating its responsbility - to support your needs & desires over that of the rest of the society.
Oooooo - nice emotional rhetoric. Too bad it doesn't have any useful substance. Not to mention that you still don't have a clue what that "utilitarian ethic" really means (or maybe you do but just don't like the way it contradicts what YOU believe).
The people who "exercise" this kind of ethic are pragmatists. Their goal and _standard_ is the LONGTERM health of the society. They know that what's beneficial for the society as a whole, isn't necessarily going to be beneficial for some of the individuals. On the other hand, they'll understand that stomping all over too many individual liberties isn't going to help the health of the society either (given that the "health" of the society is some function of the health of the individuals).
This standard is a helluva lot deeper & rooted in reality than your so-called "standard" of right and wrong (which is probably defined by people who think like YOU, right?). Shallow-and-depraved pretty much describes people who define "right" and "wrong" to be for their own benefit, then use those definitions as a tool for excusing the harm that they inflict on society.
You do not need to be an anarchist to realize that property is not a natural state of affairs. Property is a "social construction" just like government. Once property did not exist. Later people decided that it would be a "good thing," as Martha Stewart might say, for people to be able to control other people and tangiable things so the idea of family was created wherein a man could be given government sanction of ownership over his tangiable possessions such as land, tools, slaves, wife, and children.
Later, people decided that owning other people might not be such a desirable thing so the definition of property was edited to exclude other people.
Much later than that, as printing became popular and lucrative, intellectual property was added to the list because people felt that it was desirable for authors and inventors to have some kind of property rights to their ideas and creative expressions.
Let's accept that although we may disagree with the definitions of property currently in vogue, there is no natural existence of property, so arguments based on nature won't pass muster. Further, arguments based on the historical concept of property will have to contend with the fact that for the first several thousand years of property, people could be considered property, which kind of dampens my desire to emulate those ideas.
The bright side, for those who would like to be able to take the work of others without being constrained by intellectual property laws (I too have chafed under the unfair laws that prohibit me from taking GPL code and wrapping it in my own closed source projects) is that property laws are no more nor less than arbitrary acts of legislation, which can be changed by amending our Constitution and persuading Congress to pass a few new laws. You can, however, find better fora in which to push for such action than bellyaching on /.
The OpenNap project and the Napigator server list demonstrate that the Napster servers are anything but a single centralized point of failure. To shut down Napster, the RIAA has to shut down the Napster, OpenNap, MyNapster, PowerNap, etc. networks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Bush: Copied right off the cereal box. Probably info provided by a tech advisor.
Gore: Familiar with the concept without dwelling on particular technology.
Bush, perhaps incidentally touches on (creator) the idea there are more who would suffer losses (i.e. record companies.) Then again, the reference is broad and therefore vague. In terms of answering it, neither suggests a meaningful solution.
Bottom line: Which is preferable in this type of matter? Government interference or leaving the parties to work it out? (Keep in mind, they RIAA has a lot of influence in the Govt.)
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, I'm not voting for him (Go Green!) but I did watch the debate last night, and judging from body language, and the fact that he didn't dodge as many questions as Shrub, I'd say Gore is the better of the two. There was one point where he jumped off his stool and walked right up to Dubya as if he were going to punch him - I got very excited, and thought "man, if Al punches George, I may have to change my vote!" Some folks say Gore has no personality; well, that may be true, but he's been a politician for 24 years. That would suck the joy out of anybody. :-)
If you're not considering a third party, go for Gore. At least he can compose and deliver a complete sentence.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/daily/10/17/who _invented_internet.html is the real link; hopefully SlashCode won't the "insert random spaces" game with this post.
Because most of the great music I listen to was made with the idea that the musicians would reap rewards from creating it.
Think about it, most rock stars come from capitalistic countries, and the ones that come from socialist countries (like Eric Clapton and John Lennon) emigrate to a capitalistic country without confiscatory tax policies as soon as they can.
Can you name any famous rock stars from a socialist country that make good music? Let's see Sweden, hmm, Abba and Ace of Base, nope, not good. France? they're idea of Rock and Roll is a joke. Russia? Nope.
The idea of being able to get rich and famous while partying, smoking, drinking and guitar playing, making it as a rebel and becoming a millionaire while giving the finger to the capitalistic society is what drives most rock musicians to be great, you need that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for motivation.
Yeah, Napster has the potential to cause America to lose it's lead in the Rock music biz by making artists lose their motivation, and if you didn't know, that brings a lot of cash into the country, I think it's right after aerospace, software and Hollywood.
That's a very comforting rationale - for everyone who's making a comfortable living. I'm sure that many poor young black men, in their vicious cycle of poverty & discrimination, are completely satisfied with your definition of "justice".
Government SHOULD exist to maximize the health of the society AS A WHOLE - and if the so-called "rights" of the extremely-minority privileged get a little bent, well that's too bad (as long as it's in a way that doesn't come back to bite the society as a whole in the long run).
'cause if the cost-benefit analysis says that the net gain of the society is more than your loss, then it's the right thing to do - for the society.
Of course, if the mechanisms of government have been hijacked for the benefit of a minority of society, rather than the whole, then you can start talking about "injustice" and actually mean something rational.
Face it. The same way horrendous cooking is the complement to good music in English culture, horrendous music is the complement to good cooking for the French.
French Canadian rock, well, that's a whole different story. Hmmm. Gotta go listen to my Plume, Les Colocs, and Les Cowboys Fringants records.
CD sales aside, at some point during this debate we will all realize, even the politicians, that this is about a lot more than whether some kid can write some software that allows people to trade MP3s. I would have been much happier if the question had been 'How do you think the Napster decision will affect the way the United States defines property and fair use?' or even 'Do you understand that it will?'.
Every time Slashdot puts up a Napster or DeCSS the majority of the replies are of the 'You can't stop us' ilk. We've covered that already. No half assed attempt at crypto will be safe. If a person wants they will always be able to share peer to peer. The question is whether or not it will remain legal. The answer to that will affect a lot more than MP3s, it will help define the degree of control that corporations have over what you do. If you think Digital Convergance is insane for trying to cliam that they still own their Cue:Cats you could wrong, they might just be a little ahead of their time.
Icebox
That's not true. Both HMV and Future Shop have an "any reason" return policy. I have returned a few CDs to HMV that I did not like when I brought them home. I haven't done this at Future Shop, though I have asked them about their retrn policy.
-no broken link
You do realize that the president appoints Supreme Court and Federal Curcuit Court judges, don't you? That's probably the most major issue you could even think of. The supreme court is pretty much split half-and-half, and whoever gets elected will probably appoint two new judges, to tip the scales one way or the other. Read the September 9th issue of The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/index.mhtml?i=20001009 - the articles section) for just *how much* that matters.
The president does matter in that respect, and also his veto power. Try to imagine what the country would be like today if we had a republican president as well as a republican house and senate for the past 6 years.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
They both dodged that question like true professionals! I don't know who to vote for -- they are both good!
OK, Bush (or Bush's staff) seems to be toeing the RIAA - we have to make sure artists and corporations get their due in new media - think SDMI, etc.
Gore (or Gore's staff) suggests that new media demand new solutions - his comments about compromise suggest (maybe) that he would favor something like the settlement Napster proposed - nominal fee, payed to evil ASCP.
Neither one is charming, but Gore is less disturbing....
Will someone please explain the fascination with Al Gore among some of the techies? I'd like to know if this is a knee-jerk "he's a Democrat, let's support him", instead of a reasoned commitment. If it is a reasoned committment, please provide some solid facts, and URLs, showing why I should support him as currently, I see him as the third in command (Hillary is second) of the Clinton administration, dedicated to removing my constitutional rights, and personal privacy.
Where internet property, privacy, and access issues are concerned, whomever occupies the Oval Office is far less significant than the makeup of Congress. Those of us with a professional or social interest in these issues should focus on the activity (or lack thereof) of Congess, the FCC, and the federal judiciary. I would feel more comfortable if the new President does nothing at all, given that a little knowlege is a dangerous thing.
All your belongings are base to us.
developed Mosaic under a federal grant authorized by one of Gore's bills.
I have to wonder. Were the good folks in Tennesee clamoring for Universities to be connected by a high speed WAN, or for the development of a graphical hypertext browser?
I personally don't like Gore very much; the "new democrat" thing is a bit too close to toadying to the big corporations, but he's no dummy. He definitely had vision on the issue back in the 80s when all this stuff was just a pipe dream. People are forgetting how exotic this stuff was back then.
Politics can turn anything positive into a negative. It kind of reminds me of how Jerry Brown got the sobriquet "Governor Moonbeam". He noted that California was a big state, and spent a lot of money for officials to travel from one part of the state to another. He proposed looking into launching a geosynchronous satellite to do video conferencing, which would save on travel costs and increase speed. This idea doesn't seem so far-fetched today, does it?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm coming to realise that what Napster claims to be, the best thing in obtaining legal music, is nothing more than a front for what it really is - a tool for organisations like the RIAA to get Congress to impose the most draconian laws possible to ensure that they get to keep their beloved monopoly position.
Sure, it may sound paranoid, but who would really release a piece of software which anyone could have told you was going to be hammered into the ground by litigation and legislation? Maybe Shawn Fanning would have, but their are some savvy people working for Napster, and it's hard to see them as being naive visionaries fighting the corporate foe.
And besides, just look at the software itself. It's hardly a labour of love is it? It looks like someone spent about an hour using VB1 to put a front end on a fairly simple network protocol. And indeed, the very protocol itself is designed to make the service easy to shut down in the event that Napster "loses" in court.
No, I think that the entire company has been funded by the RIAA for the sole purpose of vindicating their "you're all thieves and pirates" stance. Maybe Shawn Fanning was for real once, but I'm sure the endless $$$ of the RIAA would have been enough to buy his complicity. And the RIAA has gotten a hell of a lot of leverage off of the back of cases like Metallica and Dr Dre.
It's been said before that Napster is one of the worst things that could have happened in the struggle to promote new business models and remove the RIAA monopoly. I think it's kind of obvious why.
Mr. Hundt is indeed proficient in a "techie" kind of way, but in the Wired interview (especially the last two installments) he glazed over far too many issues to allow my to buy off on his view just yet. I think we all realize by now that Gore didn't actually claim to invent the Internet; Hundt touches on this. What he doesn't seem to realize (and Gore either, for that matter) is that the Internet would have developed without him -- it certainly didn't need his help. As for what Gore's actually done for the 'net community at large... wiring classrooms? Great. Wonderful. But not exactly a "fully completely" tech policy.
As for Bush, well, he stated once and for all last night that he favors filters for Fed-$-receiving institutions, so it goes without saying that his tech policy is likely to be, shall we say, less than savory.
If only either candidate had the balls to clearly elucidate their position on just one issue, this would all be so much easier.