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Flushing the Net Down the Tubes
netcetra writes "From a post by on CircleID by Phillip J. Windley: 'Doc Searls has written a brilliant piece framing the battle for the Net at Linux Journal. ... if you take the time to read just one essay on the Net and the politics surround it this year, read this one.' Quote from Doc himself: 'This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.' Also see additional background on the piece on Doc Searls blog."
The United States contains about 296 million people. 12,000 murders divided by 296,000,000 people equates to 0.004% of the population. Similarly, rapes = 0.03%, car thefts = 0.3%, burglaries and assaults = 0.7% each. These are all less than 1% of the population, and in most cases, much less.
On the other hand, anecdotally I'd say that at least a third of the population condones non-commercial copyright infringement (and I'm being conservative in my estimate, and taking into account the propaganda of the RIAA).
The point is, when an act is accepted by a significant proportion of the population, chances are that act is ethical -- in fact, it can be argued that ethics only exist relative to the population. So yeah, if murder and copyright infringment were performed at the same rate, then either both would be acceptable, or neither would. Of course, if a third of the population condoned murder, we'd have a society more similar to the Roman Empire (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Your use of absolute numbers are meaningless, and borderline FUD -- 12,000 out of 12,000 means something completely different than 12,000 out of 296,000,000.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If murder were at the same rate as copyright infringement, would you argue that both were bad laws, neither were bad laws, or only one?
... then what becomes a murder now? What if all manslaughters were murders? How about hitting a dog on the road? Stepping on bugs?
... I would definately say there was something wrong with the "murder" law.
... remind yourself again how badly manipulated the copyright law is today. Note also for the record that Congress is not done with their rewriting of copyright law.
Well, before we do that, let's look a little deeper. Copyright used to last only 14 years. Now it is 70ish years beyond the death of the creator. It has been extended and expanded well beyond it's useful function, and is a horrid aberration of its original intention.
Murder today only applies to the willful killing of a human being. Should this law be extended the way copyright law has been extended
If ALL those things were now considered to be murders, then you would definately have a murder rate comparable to the rate at which copyright infringement occurs.
If all that were true, then yes
To properly answer your question, I would successfully argue that both laws were bad.
While I will agree that this argument initially sounds ludicrous
Do you honestly think that we are in a 'dark ages'? We are accelerating so quickly technologically and connecting so fast that I don't think the average human comprehends it. Think back just 10 years ago. Most people were not connected to the Internet. Internet usage has sky rocketed up faster then anything in our wildest dreams. Further, it isn't even the Internet. Cell phones are another fine example. I remember being awed by my friends massive clunky cell phone in the mid 90's that got shit for reception. Now, it is easier to count the people I know who don't own a cell phone then it is to count the people that do. I got a jump drive I keep in my pocket the other day for $20 with more hard drive space then the computer I owned back in 95.
Further, it isn't just technology that is interconnecting. The entire world is interconnecting. China, EU, and the US are all so dependent upon each other that any sort of conflict between them is unthinkable to the point that loss of one could lead to a collapsing (or at least crippled) society in the others.
Look, I am not saying that everything is rosy colored and wonderful, but point to a time in history that was better. Do you long for the brutal dictatorships that existed almost exclusively up until the past few centuries? Do you miss the wonderful days of the industrial revolution when it was common place to die early and lose a hand in hazardous machinery? Maybe you miss the days of American expansion westward and European colonialism that chewed up the natives they got in the way. Do you long for the days when a married woman couldn't own property, much less vote? Maybe you miss the good old days of New Deal, complete with withering racism and World War. Maybe your nostalgia only reaches back a couple days and blindly forgets the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the ever present and very real threat of nuclear annihilation, and starvation in the millions that afflicted pretty much everyone on the Asian content. If this is the Dark Ages, what the hell exactly was everything that came before this time?
This is only "The Dark Ages" is you are a jaded liberal who has some how managed to shrink his view of history down to the past 6 years or so. Stop, take a deep breath, and realize that 6 years is a hiccup in the grand scheme of things. Further, even in those 6 years things have gotten better despite Bush's ham fisted blundering. Further still, things are better now then they were at any other time in history.
Honestly, take a deep breath and realize that the world isn't so bad. You can post angry rants on Slashdot, you clearly have an Internet connection, chances are you can vote, and I imagine you probably are not starving. Those four things alone make this time in history better then all the times before it. Relax and don't let today's day to day politics get you all worked up and taint your view of history in the long term.
Or, more recently, the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s?
Or, currently, the systematic violations of your rights that occur at airports every time that you want to make a trip on a commercial airline?
Or the killing of non-human animals for sport?
Or the killing of pre-natal children?
Or the forced indocrination of religion on post-natal children (in church , Sunday-school, etc.)?
Or the idea that it's OK for a government to take a huge chunk of your income and spend it on things to which you are ethically opposed (like war, or Welfare (or both, depending on your point of view))?
Or the idea that Britney Spears has talent and deserves her fame?
Or the idea that it's O.K. for stupid football games to repeatedly preempt a great T.V. program like Firefly, eventually leading to the latter program's demise?
Wait, I appear to be drifting off-topic.
The point that I'm trying to make is that a popular belief is not always ethical, especially by my standards, which are the only ones that I care about anyway.
That's why the U.S. government was created as a republic, not a democracy, and why we have a Supreme Court to curb the excesses of a supposedly popularly-elected Congress.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I would like to point out that it was the liberals who fought for womens rights, civil rights, clean air, and unions. They are still fighting for more and are still being resisted by the same forces.
Don't take my comment that liberals think the world is coming to an end as a statement against liberals. My point was more that liberals are more inclined to look for the doom and gloom over the past few years and declare that the world is about to come to an end. Pick a broad liberal ideal; civil rights, health care quality/coverage, infant mortality/life expectancy, hunger, tolerance, wages / hours, whatever, it is better today then it was 50 years ago. We are even more well off if you look a 100 years back. Look 200 years back and the difference is so stark that it isn't even a meaningful comparison. The liberals are winning.
If anyone has reason to cry doom and gloom it is actually the right wing folks. All of their 'morality' issues are being hacked to pieces. There is more sex for non reproductive purposes, greater acceptance of homosexuals, proportionally fewer marriages, more broken homes, and all of the bread and butter of a conservative platform. Hell, the fact that we are at the point where we can even have a gay marriage debate is rocking conservatives to the core. Just 15 years back, talking about gay marriage would illicit roughly the response of talking about bestiality.
I suppose it all depends on whether you look at the glass as being half full or half empty. In this day and age we have the power and the technology to ensure that nobody is starving, that nobody has to die from poverty or war or famine. All it takes is a little money and little will.
There certainly is more that could be done, but the relics of the past do not easily die. There is no amount of money, technology, and will that could make North Korea a happy place unless by 'happy place' you mean 'war zone'. War and famine are political problems. No one in this world should starve. Not only do we have more then enough food for everyone, but we are trying to get that food to the people. Somalia is a perfect example of this. Somalians are not starving because the rest of the world is unwilling to feed them. Somalians are starving because short of going in guns blazing, we can't we can't keep our aid out of the hands of warlords. In fact, this very dilemma is what resulted in the US invading Somalia. We wanted to give them food. We had the food and the means to get it there; we just needed to keep warlords from taking it. If you recall, things didn't go so well when we tried to intervene (IE see Black Hawk Down).
So sure, we could certainly do more, it just boils down to disagreement as to how to do more (does globalism hurt or help?), and the problems with humans some times sucking no matter how much power and technology you have. The larger point is that even though we certainly screw up, fail politically, and in general act like the imperfect humans that we are, we are still steam rolling forward. Things are getting better. A political charged look at the best 6 years might make you think differently, but the second you look at this era from a historical point of view, it quickly becomes clear which direction things are headed. Now is a great time to be alive.