Slashdot Mirror
Saving the Net
An anonymous reader writes "Doc Searls, editor at Linux Journal, has a very insightful editorial that brings it all together - the FCC media consolidation ruling, SCO vs. Linux, why broadband is under attack by telcos and cable systems, why we lost Eldred vs. Ashcroft, what's really interesting about Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and a very astute observation about the vast gulf between Liberals and Conservatives."
How about we all agree to disband and join bbs's ?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
From the article: But they avoid visiting a fact that should be deeply troubling to every candidate running (and then governing) for money rather than for voters: Dean's lead is owed to a huge number of small donations, not to a small number of large special interests. If he's being bought, it's by his voters. This is a New Thing. It's also been made possible by the Net.
This was part of what the internet was all about: democratizing the ability of an individual outside the established powers to enter into competition or publication or public recognition. Dean has been smart about this and so far, he certainly has my vote.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm happy with AOL and MSN. They provide all I need. I find more useful content on there anyway then I do on the "internet"
When will Americans learn what "liberal" really means? Many Americans use it as if it is an insult, and they seem ignorant to the fact that the United States was founded on the basis of liberalism.
The author spends too much time polarizing this into a liberal vs. conservative issue. That's a meaningless division, much like republican vs. democrat. Obviously he has a lot of issues with what he deems as conservatives, so he's stereotyping them and lashing out.
(As a side note, the raw meaning of the term "conservative" is pretty interesting in regard to his issues. You could say that people who want music and software to be free are "liberal." You could also say that people who think that a UNIX-alike is the pinnacle of operating system design are "conservative.")
To paraphrase a common saying, do not attribute to consipracy that which can be adequately explained by greed.
There's little doubt that there's movements working against what much of the Linux communities believe in, but there's no Big Bad hidden agenda here -- just simple, petty and local greed.
Regards,
--
*Art
Terminator is trying to ..excuse me RIAA/MPAA is trying to get Arnold to run for President under their banner..
Not a joke people..
Its time for Revolution...
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The only 'major' piece missing is a simple and cheap form of active aiming to keep the transmitter and receiver reliably pointing at each other. There's a project for someone.
Well, I'll just go build my own internet... with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the internet.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Move the whole thing to Canada.
Seriously now. You want Howard Dean? We've got a party full of them. We just keep electing them, and we can't stop ourselves.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
OK, AOL would never let you play streamed Harry Potter movies on it, but you could use the web and run office applications, which would keep most of us happy. Wouldn't it?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
That article just seemed to be a collection of random quotes thrown together without one original thought from the author or even an underlying explanation of how they fit together.
A great example is the quote from the National Review. It is a great quote and specifically attacks the changes that have happened in copyright law. At the end of the quote the article "author" says "National Review is a conservative magazine. John Bloom is a conservative columnist. This is significant." But he doesn't go on to explain WHY this is significant. Is it because the author is surprised that a conservative can have an intelligent thought?
In other things he is just plain wrong. He states that "Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media)." Yet it is the democrats who are most in the pocket of big business. Here is a clue - Hollywood is 99.9% liberals. The other 0.1% is Drew Carey. Senator Hollings is a Democrat. DMCA was signed by a Democrat into law. Mary Bono may be a Republican but only in name.
If you think that the internet is failing than this article is a great sign it isn't. The fact that any unintelligent schlub could post an article like this and receive praise for it proves it.
The word consumer, as a whole, is also a source of aggravation. It implies a notion of being fed, of being given content that you don't necessarily desire. And this is precisely what this notion of "distributors of intellectual property" is demanding of you. Sit down in front of your computer/TV, pay an exorbitant fee, and watch the same old boring content and advertisement barrage over and over again. The great thing about the current computer is its ability to allow for the construction of content, not its ability to supply it. This is further amplified by the Internet, and the accompanying ease of distribution and immense audience. For instance, a musician could record a song onto his computer and sell it via the Internet, or a graphic artist could market his art. In the future, perhaps even an independent film company could market it's wares online. A future dictated by DRM and "property" restrictions allows only a few select companies to digitally "watermark" their media in a manner which the now-crippled computer can read. Does anyone honestly believe that these same companies that desire such immense control will relinquish it in the future to independents desiring to sell to the same market?
Suddenly a person is no longer an individual, but a forced consumer of multiple mega-corporations. The prospect is as disturbing as it is possible. The myth of "intellectual property" is curbing and inhibiting the free expression of ideas and content, precisely what copyright law was intended to promote.
---rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Quick! Call Al Gore!
... money. Plain and simple.
When a lot of big companies start seeing a potential to see their profits tumble they will react agressively to protect their interests. Is it any wonder that the media companies are worried that millions of people around the world are sharing millions of music tracks and films? Are the software companies worried about people downloading software? The answer is yes.
Do such companies want to control the internet? Undoutedly. Can you imagine the potential for a company like Disney to broadcast Disney.tv to every household on the planet with an internet enabled tv? Wow... you are talking serious money there, but people can already do it - for free at the moment.
I think a lot of these people identify the internet as this 'Holy Grail' to make billions, if only they had the final, killer ingredient. Whilst this potential exists, where there's money there's immense power and this power will try to bend, distort and manouever the internet as best it can towards its vested interests.
Howard Dean seems to be a very unusual candidate with regard to the use of technology and the tech crowd in general. How about we try to get an interview with him? We can ask him about DMCA, Patriot act and stuff like that. Wouldn't it be nice to have a president who actually heard of Slashdot?:)
He appeared on Lessig's blog which has (I would guess) a lot fewer readers than Slashdot, so it seems likely he would agree, if we approached it right. Does anyone know his campaign people, so we can find out?
I am not sure why this was marked as offtopic. A little doomsday-ish maybe, but not offtopic. Face it, everyone is vying for control over the net. The Chinese government wants to control it, The U.S. Government wants to control it, the corporations want to control it.
They have concluded what Marshall McLuhan had years ago, that the medium is the message. The natrual extension of this is that whoever controls the medium, controls the message.
Without the anarchy which fostered the internet, we will end up with another passive form of entertainment that is inaccessable to the masses from a broadcast standpoint, television.
The internet is the voice of the people (scary,innit?). Sure some people speak louder than others, and some are leaders while others are followers. But everyone has a voice, and that is what is being taken away from us, slowly at first, and then with great vigor as we become more complacent.
I have a website, and nobody in their right mind would give me a television show. I don't know if that's considered progress, but I like where this whole internet thing could go, if only we're allowed to take it there ourselves.
This is a frequent criticism of Modern Democracy. For the moment we'll hold aside the fact that Ancient Democracy was available only to property-holding males (something the republicans I'm sure would love to bring back). Ancient Democracy was not about getting paid, in salary or in kind; in was civic duty.
Modern Democracy, at least as practiced in the USA, is all about money. And as has been said about corruption, "...follow the money." Why don't american politicians finally prove that they're not the lords of a corrupt system, but the leaders of a just system and ban soft money.
I knew then, knew utterly,
the deal done in my heart forever,
though how I knew not,
nor ever have.
Very smart.
The author does an excellent job of synthesizing a number of disparate, troubling issues going on in our society at the moment into a very coherent whole.
If you can understand that democracies are only as good as their voters' information systems, or that markets are only as healthy as the exchange of goods, services, and ideas in them is free, then you should be able to appreciate where the author is going.
The reason esoteric issues like telecom and media regulation, and intellectual "property" law end up commanding such a large amount of attention in the community is because both of these, people are realizing, are not just important, but absolutely essential, to maintaining those very important American principles.
A cheap, ubiquitous communications medium. The free flow of information which respects, but it is not outrageously hobbled by, the rights of authors... It's only our economy, and our democracy, at stake.
I think we need a galvanizing issue. I suggest Saving the Net. To do that, we need to treat the Net as two things:
1. a public domain, and therefore
2. a natural habitat for markets
In other words, we need to see the Net as a marketplace that has done enormous good, is under extreme threat and needs to be saved.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I once told a friend, "There is far more Stupidity than Evil in the world."
I have since unfortunately found the corollary, "Sufficient Stupidity combined with enough Power is effectively indistinguishable from Evil."
Something like that applies here, "Sufficient Greed combined with enough Power/Wealth can effect the appearance of a Conspiracy."
Think "Greedy Lemmings," and it can look like a Conspiracy.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The other [factor] is the high regard political conservatives hold for successful enterprises. Combine the two, and you get conservatives eagerly rewarding companies whose primary achievements consist of successful long-term adaptation to highly regulated environments. That's what's happened with broadcasting and telecom.
Lest we forget, it is actually the Democratic Party that is more in the pocket of Hollywood and the media companies, while the Republican Party tends to favor "big business" in general. Both parties have their share of guilt in all this mess. The DMCA was passed with bipartisan (i.e. substantial Democratic) support and was signed into law by a Democrat (Clinton). Trial and IP lawyers also tend to support the Democrats (cf. John Edwards). (Over-)deregulation of the media and telecoms industries took place largely during the Clinton Administration (though it started in the first Bush Administration).
I seriously doubt that Howard Dean is any angel on this, either. He's just as much a politician as any other. His rhetoric about being from the "Democractic wing of the Democratic Party" is a little ironic, given that he's against gun control, is hardly a pacifist (he supported Gulf War I and interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo), etc. etc. etc. I don't see him as being a liberal at all (neither in the modern "leftist" sense nor in the older Jeffersonian sense), but an opportunist like any other.
FWIW given my own political positions I'll probably be voting for "anything but Dubya", but I dislike the idolizing that Dean has been benefitting from of late. And I also dislike disingenuous attacks on one party or the other...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
From the article: And I'm hearing from people who insist that Linux is not exactly ownerless, either. "Linux is a registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds" appears on 268,000 Web documents, Google tells me. In at least one sense, these folks say, Linus owns Linux. That means it is, in a limited sense, proprietary.
This should really be corrected. The trademark is simply on the name. You can't go write your own software and call it Linux. But the software and code is as far from proprietary as you can get. If Linus started wrecking Linux with patches, you could take the code, rename it, and have your own kernel. This guy should RTFL (license) before he writes an article.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
As another poster pointed out, it's plain and simple greed. The big media companies want perpetual copyright so they can continue to milk those works as long as possible. Copyright to a media company is the same as a manufacturing company's raw materials or even inventory. Manufacturing organizations are taxed on their inventory; if the big media companies want to own all that copyright, they should be taxed on it.
The real issue here is that the overwhelming majority of people at large are not aware of these issues. Anyone attempting to educate the masses on such things are immediately shut out as hippie radicals. The only people really working at these issues are the ones who stand to make a profit on them (i.e. the big media companies). Those same people working relentlessly for profit via copyright are the ones who are so quick to equate Linux, open source, anything public domain, etc to communism.
The cruel irony here is that the very people who label public domain as communism are the same people who are robbing our freedoms.
Sigh. Linux and the Internet were great while they lasted.
I'm a hardcore conservative, and I'm not sure how much I agree with this definition. To my way of thinking, it's not a matter of "rewarding the strong". It's a matter of incentive --- if people are going to be taken care of no matter whether or not they do any useful work, they simply aren't likely to do any useful work. It's more a matter of rewarding effort than of rewarding strength. Granted, there are some serious problems with the way capitalism works too, and it does often turn out that the "stronger" ones do better. But I think that's the nature of freedom. You can't truly have freedom without the possibility of great success or great failure.
On a side note, as a conservative, I'm very strongly against the modern notion of "intellectual property". I'm all for property rights, capitalism, and the free market. But as the article mentions, copyright isn't a property right and shouldn't be treated as one. I believe in the Constitution above everything else, as far as politics go. And in the thinking of the founders, copyright cannot be a property right. Property is a right that the founders envisionsed as being inherent to mankind --- right up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights like that cannot be infringed by the state. They are not granted by the state. They are inherent to the people. But, the Constitution allows Congress to GRANT and LIMIT copyright. If copyright were an inherent right, they would have protected it as such --- they certainly wouldn't have given Congress the authority to "grant" it. Therefore I must conclude that the notion of "intellectual property" is thoroughly unconstitutional, and thus I cannot support it.
From the article:
Worse, [the Internet] was designed as an end-to-end system, where all the power to create, distribute and consume are located at the ends of the system and not in the middle.
The Net's end-to-end nature is so severely anathema to cable and telco companies that they have done everything they can to make the Net as controlled and asymmetrical as possible.
But the phone system is also end-to-end in nature. Cable and telco companies know they are just selling access, same as they sell access to the phone system or the cable system (most cable providers produce little by way of content; that's left to people like USA Networks and HBO.)
I think the situation at the telcos and cablecoms is far more complicated than how the author protrays. Witness the trouble Verizon took recently to block the subpoena of a customer whom the RIAA wanted. And one of the megacorps is Sony who both sells music and produces devices to copy that music.
News from the future:
July 23rd, 2008
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today upheld the Pre-emptive Piracy Prevention Act (PPPA), which gave the private armies employed by the sole remaining media corporation the power to declare and pursue war against individuals on US soil - who can then be designated as "enemy combatants" and tried by military tribunals created by our glorious leader, Grand Marshall Rupert Murdoch.
Omnimedia spokesmen hailed the ruling, calling it a victory for intellectual property rights, and saying that it vindicated their use of nuclear weapons against the city of Palo Alto, where their intelligence indicated that the source of all the world's pirated content, the so-called "Universal Inserter," was hiding.
Mere minutes after the blast, the Universal Inserter uploaded an illegal copy of Charlice's new video (purchase a license to view title) [goatse.cx], to his partner in crime, the Universal Downloader. Experts believe the upload is genuine.
The attorney representing the Universal Inserter, Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig, who has drawn considerable controversy for refusing to acknowledge that his client even exists, was unavailable for comment as he is being held on charges of aiding and abetting the enemy at the Omnimedia detention center in Gautonomo Bay.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost. A man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts.
Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do, so for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and longed for his old life and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him and in disbelief, he asked her:
"Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said. "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"It's only me, "she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing did."
He was confused. "Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple, " replied the woman. "I made the rowboat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"B-B-But that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the other side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgettable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over to my place, then," she said. After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walked into the house, she said casually:
"It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like a drink?"
"No, no thank you," he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.
After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto it's end inside a swivel mechanism. "This woman is amazing," mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines - strategically positioned - and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.
"Tell me, " she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months. You know..." She stared into his eyes.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean--?" he replied...... "You mean.....I can check my e-mail from here?"
The rate of variation in amplitude of sunlight is very low and PIN diodes are very linear over wide dynamic ranges. The frequency of amplitude variation for the data signal is very high (say > 1MHz) compared to sunlight. Combining all of the above, it is usually possible to highpass filter to remove the effects of sunlight.
In addition, the power spectral density of a laser compares welll with the sun.
but my experience with PhD's tells me that intelligence and possesing a PhD does not neccesarily correlate.
;)
with me it does of course
How about the innocents killed by execution? Is that not a problem? How about the fact that it merely sets up the state as a band of murderous thugs? How about the fact that, at the end of the day, it just kills another person and therefore doesn't genuinely solve anything?
.
Innocent people killed by execution is a huge problem, but there are countless cases where there is no question that the convict is the perpetrator. In those cases, I support the death penalty.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them. (And hey, it clears prison space, which I'm sure the RIAA would love to put to use.)
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
>The internet is the voice of the people
But it's only the voice of the people who have access to things like electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, etc.
It falls short of being of much value to all the people who don't have those thing (refrigeration, plumbing, surplus food, literacy... much less home computers and cable modems...)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think the situation is even worse than the author describes. The media companies are turning copyright into a property right, which is bad enough, but they are also ensuring that they don't actually transfer any property rights when you buy from them.
They are setting up a sort of feudal system, where they own all the property, and we are merely serfs who get to pay rent to access the property.
It is important to restore some balance in the copyright law between the public and the media companies; but I think it is equally important to define what property rights (i.e. fair use rights) consumers have when they buy a CD or a DVD.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Much of our society is not fit to vote. They don't pay attention to the issues, they don't critically think about what they see and hear and they sure as hell don't have enough passion to keep a fire lit under our leaders' asses. Giving every tom, dick, harry, jane and sally the right to vote is the perfect way to guarantee that you will have a government that does represent us. "Swing voters" are only at best about 20% of the electorate, the rest are pretty much 50/50 both major parties. If we could get rid of the other 80%'s right to vote then we'd have an electorate filled mostly with at a minimum semi-critical thinkers.
It's taboo to say that just because you're a citizen doesn't mean you are fit to wield any form of political power. Of course it all goes back to the inability of most Americans to pass a moral judgement against someone's behavior and beliefs. How often do we hear "well that's their culture and it's just different from ours?" I'm in college and I hear that all the time. I get a look of utter disgust like I'm a member of the KKK when I suggest that not everyone is biochemically equal and that certain cultural practices are barbaric and worthy of our deepest contempt. When I criticized many African and Middle Eastern countries for tolerating female circumcision I got a little bit of "how dare you criticize Africa you honkey" from some of the blacks there.
You want to get rid of corruption? It won't end with banning soft money. You have many reforms needed on top of that.
1) Make it a class 4-6 felony to give soft money. You know what that felony class range is? Around 10 years to life as possible sentences.
2) Pass a constitutional amendment waiving 8th amendment protection for those attempting to corrupt the government so that if you catch a lobbyist trying to bribe someone you can execute them if they are a repeat offender. Waive the same protection for elected and appointed government officials
3) Allow each state to pass its own ethics rules. Allow each state to issue a warrant for the arrest of a member of Congress from their delegation who has violated their rules. Also give the state police the power to place their member of Congress under arrest anywhere in the US and extradite them to their state for criminal prosecution.
4) Give each state legislature the power to pass a vote of no confidence in their congressional delegation.
5) Create a new form of impeachement for the executive branch where if a simple majority of state legislatures pass a vote of no confidence in a member of the cabinet they're out and if 2/3 or more vote on the President he's removed.
6) Since we're also talking about democratic reforms how about we pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting judges from ordering appropriations of taxpayer money and creating public policy. They can rule it unconstitutional, but not create it.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This statement is ludicrous. Linus owns the name Linux, not the operating system. There is a very big difference. He owns none of the code. He only has control over what can be called Linux. So far he seems to have been pretty lenient with that trademark as there are over a hundred distros and most, if not all of them, use the word Linux in some part of their name.
Time makes more converts than reason
http://ronja.twibright.com/
(Exactly what you were talking about!)
Tony.
Ludicrous? Tell that to those guys who'll sell you plots on the moon and the planets in our solar system.
Apparently they just said 'all of that is ours' and it now actually is because no one complained (check the FAQ).
Finally, a note from the company's self-proclaimed Head Cheese: At the time if the writing of this news letter I need to let all of you know I have been presented a wonderful acknowledgment from the Congress of the United States. I have been named co-chairman of the Republican Congressional Business Advisory Council. I have also been given the National Republican Leadership Award and most recently I have been issued the highest honor the National Republican Congressional Committee has, the prestigious Republican Gold Medal.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
It's not about politics. At least not as how we normally think about it.
The idea that "property" is the one all-consuming right that we have, quite frankly is self-destructive. Sure, property is important...but copyright is exactly that. IP is bullshit.
To go a step further, the reason for this is the belief that we can all "do it ourselves". That somehow, we can pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and make ourselves successful is frankly...bullshit.
There are more important things than business, and money and profit.
Culture and society.
Those are the most important things we have. Without those things, everything else is meaningless. We need to start to realize that.
I agree with a limited copyright. My idea? Copyright should last for 20 years, or until the commercial aspect is gone. If you take something off the market, put it in the public domain. Allow those that care about the culture to nurture it.
They are conservative ideas however. One of the problem is that nobody can refute them in the current political enviroment. Make a sneeze toward it and you called a commie.
How can you fix it?
I don't know..
You fool! He's a Libertarian, not a liberal. Get it right: Conservatives worship Satan; Liberals defend their right to do it; Libertarians don't care if they do it, as long as they do it over there.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Apparently Orrin Hatch is trying to change that.
About time too. Who needs to send troops to 'liberate' a foreign country when you can just send the Pres to kick some ass?
Warning: May contain nuts
Rebirth must come via legislation. Any attempts at a rebirth via technology will end up the same way.
We can run an internet underground, connecting sites via wireless gear, and that would be legislated, not to mention that it does not scale well. We can purchase expensive gear, but we cannot connect it via private lines. We cannot lay fiber or copper. We could buy fibre and copper, but we don't have enough money.
If I understand what you're talking about, QC runs over the existing infrastructure, and therefore can be regulated. Run wirelessly, all communications are self-regulating. Without substantial infrastructure, planning and money, it will never be more than a pet project.
It's very frustrating for me, and hard for me to understand. To me, the best way to live is to learn as much as you can, and try to find the best choices for yourself by gathering as much information as is possible (or feasible; you don't want to spend 2 hours researching where you will eat lunch today). Art and creation are, I believe, some of the most fun you can have without being naked (not that that's excluded...)
But a lot of people seem really, truly content with being told what to eat, wear, listen to, drive, vote for, support, etc. There are people who always vote Democrat/Republican without any consideration for the actual candidate. There are people that prefer McDonald's to real food. Most people just do what their friends do, and how did their friends start doing it? What's the source? I guess there's no way to be sure, but I'm betting it was an advertisement.
Maybe it's because it makes life easy. You listen to music to relax, and thinking about it is too hard. It's easier to watch TV than to read a book. It's easy to enjoy fast food, because it's a collection of chemicals designed to be pleasing to the largest number of people. No dangerous sharp edges for you to beware.
Similarly, most people don't want to create. Artistic effort is difficult, requiring many hours to produce something. TV can be enjoyed now. Learning how to really cook would be hard, and my family needs dinner today. Hamburger Helper is good enough. It was a hard day at work and I have a lot on my mind. I don't have time to be creative.
Now, there's great joy to be had in take-out pizza, beer, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. Some days, it's nice to let someone else take the helm. But Einstein understood that we have to keep our brains moving in new directions in order to keep them alive (he played the violin). If all you do is work and consume, you are a unit. I couldn't stand it.
(Some people take great joy in their work, which is wonderful, and ideal even. But being one-dimensional is still bad. You'll get further if you stretch your mind in new directions as often as possible; you may be surprised at how related two seemingly dissimilar things really are.)
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
This is the key point from the article, the heart of what's wrong with the anti-IP movement and the Slashdot crowd:
On such a simple scale, it was clear how the majority of the Court would vote. Not because they are conservative, but because they are Americans. We have a (generally sensible) pro-property bias in this culture that makes it extremely hard for people to think critically about the most complicated form of property out there--what most call "intellectual property." To question property of any form makes you a communist. Yet this is precisely our problem: To make it clear that we are pro-copyright without being extremists either way.
So deep is this confusion that even a smart, and traditionally leftist, social commentator like Edward Rothstein makes the same fundamental mistake in a piece published Saturday. He describes the movement, of which I am part, as "countercultural," "radical," and anti-corporate. Now no doubt there are some for whom those terms are true descriptors. But I for one would be ecstatic if we could just have the same copyright law that existed under Richard Nixon..."
Through history the "there should be no such thing as private property!" movement has been driven by those who simply don't have much private property of their own and thus would like some of yours. This is the perception most of the mainstream has of the "it's our right to download movies and software!" crowd; that they simply want something for free because they lack the resources to pay.
You ask why we middle-Americans side with the big-media companies, but the answer is we don't. We side with the very basic American idea of you not being able to move into my houses with twenty of your hippy friends in the name of "property belongs to everybody!!! Who cares that we didn't build or maintain or earn or buy it!!!"
Someone will shout back that this isn't the argument of the anti-IP side, and I understand; but that's how it sounds to us. You didn't write or film or fund the movie. So why do you claim a "right" to see it free?
The author of the article is absolutely right; if you want to win the debate you must make it more about reforming copyright laws to make them more reasonable (the mainstream can get down with that), and less about "YOU EVIL CAPITALISTS DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP ANYTHING TO YOURSELVES WITHOUT SHARING WITH US!!!" The average American will NEVER come over to that side.
The ability to own property is as fundamental a freedom to this country as free speech or the right to privacy. If you want to change the minds of the masses (and you must if you want the politicians and CEO's to change theirs; bribes or no bribes they will go with the flow of public opinion in order to stay in office) you must re-frame the argument in that way... or watch your movement slowly die as the open-trading technology window closes. And it WILL close.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
You do realise that just like BS stands for 'Bullshit', Ph.D. just stands for Piled higher and Deeper?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
And you believe that the State is skilled enough to actually separate the wheat from the chaff? Hah! I, for one, will not take any odds of being a casualty of this system when other alternatives exist.
I'm curious as to what value you think it serves. I cannot see any real value in the death penalty, and therefore cannot support it in good faith.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money .
Uhm...how is choosing to not execute a person "tolerating murder"? States without a death penalty generally give those who would be executed a sentence of life without parole. This is hardly tolerance. Consider the alternative of life imprisonment, especially lifelong imprisonment with hard labor as I suggest. This is still, technically, a death sentence. The difference, however, is that the convict's life hasn't been taken, merely his/her liberty. The State doesn't give you life; it does give you liberty. In a case of life imprisonment, especially a harsh one as I believe in, most of the allegedly beneficial aspects of state-sponsored murder are preserved.
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them.
I really hope you can see what a vacant argument that is, especially when you mix it with your agreement about hard labor. Obviously, you have to recognize that, at a minimum, a living person is a unit of labor. Labor has a value. Regardless of that, though, you seem bound to the assumption that someone who murders is without value to humanity, I guess on the grounds that murder is morally reprehensible and immediately strips you of your value. Surely, then, we should start our condemnation with those who murder and extend it to those who support murder. That's fine. The executioners have their backs to the wall first, followed by their supporters.
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
Nobody batted an eye when McVeigh was essentially put in solitary confinement for several years. Clearly, people are able to distinguish between different levels of reprehensibility. I don't care if someone who's in prison for bouncing checks or selling marijuana watches TV and gets protection from violent prisoners. I *want* many of society's criminals rehabilitated so their lives can be of benefit to others (unfortunately, prison rarely rehabilitates). On the other hand, I want those who've violently taken things from others to be forced to serve them. In the case of murder, I believe no amount of labor can truly repay for the damage done, so the only option is to take back as much labor as possible, which is life, without parole, at hard labor.
I'd also like to add that, as the friend of someone who was thrown in jail merely for wearing the t-shirt of a heavy metal band, I am thankful that the ACLU exists.
The author of the article makes some interesting speculations, but would have been better served by doing some research before waxing philosophical.
First, at least with DSL, the main reason that it's usually asymmetric in favor of download speed is a technical one -- issues arise with crosstalk. Check out http://www.commweb.com/article/COM20011010S0005 for a more thorough discussion.
Also, the reason the Supreme Court ruled the way it did in Eldred v. Ashcroft wasn't because of confusion about what kind of right copyright is or anything so abstract. The court said that since the term of copyright enacted by the Sonny Bono CTEA was still limited, it was constitutional. It's not the court's job to decide what length of term is appropriate to protect innovation; that's why Congress was given that charge by the Constitution. If you, like most thinking human beings, don't agree with the copyright term lengths, your representatives are where you should look for relief.
In short, it seems that much of what the author is attributing to Big Media changing the notion of copyrights and the nature of the 'Net is due to technical concerns of one kind or another. Does that mean the threat isn't there? No, but we're not going to get anywhere by misunderstanding its origins.
The Republican Party is geared towards saving people money.
Sounds good so far ... most people consider saving money to be a good thing.
This is the key issue for Republican politics, regardless of all the morality bullshit they spew.
Well, if you are immoral, then you don't understand morality. You can't image actually having it, so you impute weird motives instead of just listening to what people say.
If you're greedy, you vote Republican, whether it's for an end to the estate tax or a $300 tax refund loan.
How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?
I put in the extra hours, I got the deliverable done on time, I did the work, why shouldn't I keep my money? How is that greedy? I think that coveting other people's money is what is greedy.
Doc Searls makes the mistake of attempting to blame the problem on a conservative mindset in the entertainment and telecom industries. He rehashes the same old misconception: left=open, right=good old boys club; left=fairness, right=tyranny of the powerful. It's easy to find how this is not true, using his own article. He says how the telecoms are used to operating in a regulated environment. So who regulated the environment, but liberal legislators who wanted to promote (ding, ding, ding) FAIRNESS. If you have a natural monopoly, it's not inherently ILLEGAL. However, trying to ARTIFICIALLY extend the monopoly past its possible lifespan or use your position to gouge customers is not allowed by antitrust laws. He also inexplicably uses a sports metaphor (make it, take it) and makes me wonder if the liberal idea of baskeball would require putting weights on Allan Iverson to make it more "fair". Similarly, he jokingly admits that he'd like to have the same copyright law that existed under Nixon. The irony is that the mess that is our current copyright law was introduced under the Carter administration.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
This is not a new concept: whoever controls information outlets controls what the readers of that content see. Ever wonder why there is a King James Version of the Bible? or a New International version? They started from arguments between groups that eventually resulted in new bibles being printed. The same thing happens with movies and music. Anyone over 40 can give you the name of a song they like that got remade recently and an incident where some kid thought the remake was the original, giving credit to the new artist. Or old TV movies/series that get remade to the same effect.
Every time a new distribution media comes along it is usually controlled easily and readily because startup costs and production tended to be centralized. Publishing companies need printing presses, music and TV need studios, etc. People who want to control the distribution can easily do so by cutting it off or regulating it at the source. Distribution was also easily controlled since transportation cartels tended to be monopolies or oligopolies that would make deals with producers or get taken over by them. Localized distrubitors could be bullied with threats of price wars or bribed with treats of guarenteed monopolies in their area (much as states do with wine distribution contracts these days). Yet the internet is an entirely different entity, in that distributor and publisher have been combined into one and that no one corporation can hope to realistically control even the majority of computer-based infrastructure.
As with any new medium, test cases arise that will set precedent for how to approach this new medium. Companies with the money are bribing Congressional officials to guarentee their copyrights and change the nature of them from honorable, respectable, limited right to an exact piece material into exclusive right to repress any and every idea even remotely based on the original idea for 75-100 years. Innovation has slowed dramatically as a result, and this would decimate engineering and scientific progress if the same ideas ever became law in those fields. Yet now people can readily copy material and distribute (publish) it with the click of a mouse. There's no time to tax it, regulate it, put it through a middleman, or anything else. Copyright laws were changing even before the internet came about, and music oligopolies were exploiting the populace for decades, but now they can be circumvented with ease. This infuriates the companies since fair-market value for their material turns out to be so much lower than their formerly enforcable prices were. Thus, in a backlash, they now want to charge more to "make up for lost profit" and have Draconian copyrights and copyright enforcement laws to protect their material ad infinitum whether it is justifiable or not.
What really makes this tricky is that the infrastructure is diverse and the battlefield is international. Laws are limited only to the country they are made in. Ultimately it would take the UN to write legislation for anything realistic to apply to the entire planet, so the companies are going for the next-best thing: arresting or bankrupting anyone in the US involved in "copyright violation" and trying to force other countries to do the same. They do this by threatening trade sanctions by bemoaning their loss of revenues due to "pirates", legitimate or otherwise, and getting pity from some of the populace. It also helps that these same companies also tend to own TV and news stations as well as many congressmen who rely on those sources to get re-elected.
It will be difficult to fight this war from our end since we lack the resources and congresmen of these giant companies. How do we fight back legally? First, get some like-minded friends together and write your congressmen and see if they won their last election by a thin margin. If they are not solidly rooted in their district, they will very likely listen to what you and your voting friends have to say. Second, if you are not already, get regist
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
As many other posters have pointed out, suggesting optical links for anything larger than a LAN party must be a joke (you're not an idiot, right?). A much more reasonable suggestion is the launch of publicly-controlled communications microsatellites.
Perhaps the launch vehicle could be built on some of that X-Prize technology that keeps generating press-releases. We might actually have to find some radio spectrum a little more useful than the visual range (since it's in space, I assume we only have to worry about interference and not licensing?). But the cost of launching a few satellites that communicate with off-the-shelf minidishes would almost certainly be lower overall than setting up line-of-sight laser connections. And the open source community already knows enough about routing (and is now starting to do hardware projects) that the design is not a major obstacle.
1) Identify core values near and dear to the slashdot crowd (copyright, civil liberties, all that).
2) Rank each candidate based on their votes and political statements on these core values
3) Prof^H^H^H^H Publish!
Seriously, the NRA does it, NARAL does it, lots of groups do it. I await the day when a candidate goes up to the podium and says "Slashdot gives me an A+ rating, vote for me!"
I'm a Canadian (who works in the US) and I've noted (given my constant exposure to it) that American politics are very, very strange.
It seems that a large number of Americans see politics as some sort of sport or game, where "our team" plays against "their team" with control of the Presidency, House, Senate etc as both goal and a means of keeping score.
As such, it seems that many, many voters look straight past the issues, and instead vote for their "team" regardless of the conduct of the actual players.
A prime example is what happened to Bill Clinton, and what is now (not) happening to Dubya.
Clinton is an articulate, intelligent man. He is also a known philanderer who had an affair on the job and lied about it. And despite this character flaw, during his two terms as President, the US did pretty well.
Yet despite his intelligence and demonstrated competance, he and his wife were the targets of levels of harrassment and abuse, orchestrated by "the other side", to a degree that was downright Orwellian. Once the affair (and the subsequent lie) was exposed, he was hauled in front of an impeachement hearing, ostensibly for lying to the American People.
Now I cannot condone the lie, although I can understand it - the man was trying to protect his private life. Martial fidelity is a deeply personal subject and nobobody wants his dirty laundry aired publically.
But at the end of the day, the issue of if Clinton had an affair or not, or if he lied about it or not, had zero impact on the type of job he was doing as President.
But now....
We have a President who plays for the other team; the team that went to such extrordinary lengths to try and bring down the former President. this President, too, has been caught in a lie, also presented directly to the American people. But unlike the former President's lie, THIS lie was used to justify taking the country to war against another nation. Unlike Clinton's hummer, Dubya's lie about Iraq buying nuclear material resulted in enormous taxpayer expendature and American deaths.
The latter lie is more serious than the former by several orders of magnitude, but is is going unchallenged, from what I can see because the journalists who should be going after Dubya for his misconduct play for his team.
If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
So then, I ask you - are you capable of breaking away from your "team" and voting for someone based on concience and consideration of the issues, or are you forever tied to support the candidate with the (R) behind his name?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Jumping in, against my better judgement...
As a discloser, I am what you would probably classify upper-class (I never can keep it straight). I support tax cuts across the board for people who pay taxes, as a general rule, to stimulate the economy.
With that said, frankly, the taxes I pay are fair. My tax bracket is the highest, but, due to the magic of tax brackets, my effective tax rate is 26% (people forget that your tax bracket is what you pay on the last dollar you earn, not every dollar you earn). At first glance, you think, "wow, paying a quarter of all you make in taxes." But for it, I get defense, police, roads, etc, etc. Easily worth 25%. Not worth 60%, worth more than 10%. I think the 25% I pay is about right. (I also lean toward a flat-tax, but thats a different argument).
I am a major believer in free-market economics. You may think this strange, but I support a living-wage. Yes, economically, it skews the labor market. Yes, it sends some jobs oversees (but not service jobs). Yes, regulation is generally bad. Res, yes yes.
But I grew up in a single-parent family with a mother working 2 minumum wage jobs. She worked very, very hard. She managed money very, very well. I didn't realize how badly out of style her clothes were; she didn't buy ANY new clothes that I can remember. Her kids came first. In short, she did everything right, everything that conservatives support, yet we were still short on money.
We survived. One Christmas there were no presents for me and my sister. My Mom severly cut her finger and did not go to the hospital; we couldn't afford it. No one should live that way, least of all a single-mother with small children doing everything right.
It is said that a society can be judged by its treatment of its old, its young, its poor, its sick, and its criminal. Our criminals get great food and healthcare, yet we let hard-working, honest people struggle to merely survive. While economically a bad idea, for shere humanity, we need a living wage law.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Searls seemed quite honest in his article that Democrats are to blame for creating the sick regulatory environment that brought about this mess.
His point, however, has to do with the here-and-now of a Republican controlled government. What he's saying is that in trying to "dismantle" media regulation in an inept fashion *, Republicans are only allowing its unhealthy spawn to metastasize.
* Though I would suggest that big-money campaign contributions have as much to do with the flawed deregulation plan as ineptitude.
return us to the that age of localized community forum..
If enough people within a populated area run an open wireless hub, a community 'freenet' can be built across a small city or town.
I don't know where you've been, but we currently have a $450bn projected deficit for the year 2003, and that number may grow to $500bn by the end of the year. This number, along with the trillions of debt that Reagan and Bush created, are essentially a loan taken out in your name, and in the name of every taxpayer in the USA.
After the Bush tax cut, the rich still pay a much higher percentage and actual amount than the non-rich.
Ah yes. Because you're one of the millions of people who don't actually look at your paycheck before you cash it. Maybe I can help you, by pointing out the 7.5% Social Security tax that the government withdraws from your check, along with the additional 7.5% that the government demands from your employer (money that you could be getting paid, otherwise.) And even though this isn't "income tax", it's being used to fund the war in Iraq, Congressional Pork, and who knows what else. If it looks like a tax, smells like a tax... Then it's a tax.
But the great thing about Social Security tax is that you only pay that 15% on the first $88,000 of your income. So under Bush's new tax cuts someone who declares $70,000 of income pays 35.03% of their income to the Federal Government, while someone who makes $1,000,000 pays only 33.81%. So much for fair.
And that's without any fancy deductions, which the wealthier earner will almost certainly be better able to take advantage of. Ask George Bush, who only paid 29% in 1999, on $900,000 worth of income. It's without counting the dividend and capital gains tax cuts which are likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthier person (I don't ever make more than a few hundred per year in dividends.)
Basically, anyone who believes this shit is pulling out their wallet and handing it over to someone who makes more than 10 times what they do. They're doing this, while our budget bleeds, because they think it's "fair"-- though they obviously haven't done the math. They're doing this because they feel that making the wealthy wealthier will somehow help our economy, when the problem currently on the demand side, eg it's people like the middle class and working class that we need to have extra cash to burn.
And somehow, the Republican Party is able to raise ever larger amounts of money. Hmm. I wonder where it's coming from. Basically, if you believe any of this is right, just or fair, then you're a sucker.
How greedy is it to sit and contemplate whether you are going to have steak or lobster tonite, or whether your kids are going to a private boarding school in connecticut or massachusetts, when there are other people down the street who can barely afford to eat ramen and have no hope of going to college based on their socio-economic background?
It's not greedy at all. Take my father as an example--he was born dirt-poor in the sticks of small-town Iowa. He's worked 60-hour weeks ever since he was fifteen years old, save for his law school days, when he was only working 40s so he could "concentrate on school". Once in his life he took a two-week vacation--for his honeymoon--but other than that, he's only taken a maximum of ten days. He joined the Army partially to help cover his college debts; and today he's a respected, esteemed, semi-retired member of the bar... and wealthy.
So. How greedy is it for Dad, who's worked 60-hour weeks for the last fifty years, to say "you know, I want to eat lobster tonight"? I think the man's entitled to it. Of course, you, who know how to spend Dad's money better than he does, and who obviously know how hard Dad has worked for it, have different ideas of what Dad is entitled to.
There's that word, "entitlement". Oooh. Bogeyman. The left thinks the right is allergic to it, that the right wants to shut down all entitlements. Nothing is further from the truth. Conservatives believe there are very few entitlements; the rest is just wishful thinking of the way the world should be.
You're entitled to liberty--entitled to make your own decisions for yourself, not having them imposed upon you by the government. This includes the liberty of making your own economic decisions.
You're entitled to work as hard as you like, or as little as you like. Nobody's cracking a whip over your shoulders. Don't want to work? Don't have to work. Want to work hard? You can work hard.
You're entitled to the fruits of your labors. What you build with your own two hands, you're entitled to own. And you can trade this entitlement--remember the "entitled to economic liberty" thing?--in a fair marketplace; if you want to take RIAA's money and give them the fruits of your labor, you can. The government's not forcing you to do it, nor is it forcing you not to do it.
Those are entitlements, and they all stem from the same basic entitlement: human beings are entitled to political and economic liberty. Everything else that gets swept under the rubric of "entitlement" is just people desperately wishing the world was otherwise than it was.
You have no entitlement to take my money out of my pocket to engage in your own private "redistribution of wealth" schemes. That's not liberty; that's tyranny. That's you making these decisions for me. You can try it if you like, but expect to get socked in the jaw. I don't give a damn about the money; money is a whore. I give a damn about your attempt at turning me into your slave.
If you make $500,000/yr and the government wants 30%, you aren't starving.
In the dot-com boom I was getting paid $100,000 a year. By your logic I was living on easy street, right? The reality is I got evicted from my apartment and was homeless in my car for a few days. Let's look at the math:
From a starting salary of $100,000, take away $50,000 right off the top between California and Federal income taxes. Wham--presto--gone.
From the $50,000 left, take away $36,000 for rent. I was living in a one-bedroom garret in San Francisco and property values were so overinflated that I was paying $3,000 a month just in rent.
From the $14,000 left, take away $3,000 for utilities. California power crisis is a bitch, don't you know.
From the $11,000 left, take away $6,000 for car payments on a five-year-old used car.
From the $5,000 left... that's what you have to live on for a year. That has to put gas in the car, that has to put money