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3 Strikes — Denying Physics Won't Save the Video Stars
Philip K D writes "Award-winning SF author and BoingBoing co-editor Cory Doctorow has an editorial in today's Times of London. Doctorow elegantly eviscerates the basic injustice posed by the imminent Mandelson '3 Strikes' law in Britain. He makes the explicit observation: 'The internet is an integral part of our children's education; it's critical to our employment; it's how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It's how we engage with government. It's the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn't just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.' It is worth noting that Doctorow was influential in the creation of the Creative Commons. He has enjoyed considerable commercial success for his writings, owing in no small part on his insistence that his work be made available for unrestricted electronic distribution and copying."
In related news, the UK's second-largest ISP, TalkTalk, is now threatening legal action if Mandelson's plan goes through.
In the Bush years, the US had become the poster child for bad government in the Western world. Now, though, it seams the UK is the clear leader in this respect. There are so man examples other than this one. For example, just today, the UK fired a drug policy advisor because his scientific findings "sent the wrong message."
Yes, in the UK government, stating scientific facts is now a fire-able offense. Bush was pretty anti-science, but even he didn't outright fire people like that.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
First I've heard of this. Citation, please?
I know that Doctorow was one of CC's early adopters. I've never heard that he was involved in the creation of the license.
IMO Cory Doctorow is good writer, but an absolute genius at self-promotion.
Find free books.
We also saw how well communist ideas worked for Russia (from our perspective) during the early 40's, and actually did things that headed us ever so slightly in the direction of communism. (You can definitively say that social security is a small step in that direction, considering the generally "free market" position of the country beforehand.) We saw many, many state-sponsored programs emerge during that time, when Russia was actually something to be reckoned with. Do you think that this time, the aspects we see as working the best for our main competitors that we integrate will destroy us, or will we have another pullback from the edge of going down the path others have?
California is holding legislative hearings on the legalization of Cannabis for non-medical use. Earlier this year Barney Frank introduced legislation in the US House that would have legalized small amounts of marijuana at the federal level. Public opinion in favor of legalization of marijuana is at an all time high.
Now I'm not saying it's going to happen any time soon, but there's been more progress in the last year than in my entire life time. But that wasn't really my point, my point is that we're going to have to suffer through decades of copyright warfare, wasting millions of dollars and people-years in jail, just like we have in the war on drug users.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
. There is a worldwide momentum to see drug abuse as health problem instead of a criminal issue, and consequently to de-criminalize the personal use of (some or all) drugs:
Mexico
Portugal
Argentina
Similar legislation has been approved in Colombia, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain
I see no sign of countries being 'coerced' into stricter drug laws.
I just don't get it. Why do people keep confusing socialism with communism? They are so very different. It's not even "Some purely academic" thing. It's two completely different ideologies. Political system. Economic systems. Communism relies on free market and people's ability to profit while socialism relies on state control.
Communism isnt social programs like Social Security. Communism is state owned property and means of production. This is something tea baggers should have been taught in school. Social Security isnt paid for by nationalizing all the business, its a tax, same as roads, navies, etc.
No. Just no. I beg you, read some Marx or Engels (or any socialist or communist philosopher or economist) before you try to explain communism to someone.
State owns nothing in communism. That's the whole point. There isn't supposed to even be a state, except perhaps (Marx never went into this subject) for law enforcement, etc.
Removing property from people and running a state command economy has nothing to do with these things. Heck, by the 1940s the Soviets were in a panic because the world was modernizing and the "commune" concept was only successful with the simple economics of the agrarian system and all the command economy voodoo cant compete with an open market in a complex economy. Forty years later their fears were realized when they couldnt afford anything and shortly collapsed.
That is exactly the opposite of true. Marx specifically noted that communism could never work in an agricultural society (which applied to Russia, China and North Korea at the time) as it required industrialized society to work. It was part of the communist theory (which you clearly haven't studied at all), which predicted that a society like soviet union would certainly fail.
Then again, soviet union was a socialist country, not a communist one. It even said so in it's constitutuion.
I think the lesson here is centralized planning economies attached to a totalitarian government == fail. Not "theres wisdom in command economies."
I think that the lesson here is "If inventor of a whole new economic theory says 'It won't work in your society' and you still try to force it through with incompetent dictators, your end result isn't very good.". Then again... Before socialism, Soviet Russia was FAR behind the western world when it comes to living conditions. So comparing "1970s soviets had it much worse than people of 1970s USA" is hardly valid.
Sadly, a lot of the pro-communist people in the states were fed carefully engineered propaganda and life in the Soviet Union was not what they thought it was. This all tied in with what the Unions were doing but Unions didnt need communist sympathizers, if anything having people in their ranks only hurt them politically.
You personally lack any idea of what communism is so you perhaps aren't a good authority about the subject.
Fortune magazine september issue? The cover says "Is Pot Already Legal?
For those who do not know David Nutt is an academic who works for the scientific advisory body on illegal drug use in the UK. He has just been sacked for expressing the view that drug harm research was being ignored by politicians and the information being disseminated by the state was being degraded by the choice of the party in power to classify particular drugs for political reasons rather than the research results on the harm that they were causing. It is not unusual for politicians to choose how to run society on the basis of whether they will be re-elected by the influence of various other players in a democracy - in this case the owners of certain media outlets who are believed to have considerable influence on the election of politicians. However this case calls into question why the party in power bothers to employ expensive researchers who they sack if the right answer is not being provided. Why not just tell us how it is based on what they think will get them re-elected. The party in power is a disgusting cesspool of unprincipled scum who will do anything to foist their arbitrary theories of how society should be run on us. They are no better than the generals in Burma or the greedy rulers of Iraq. Shame on them for their lies and incompetence. The three strikes and your out laws are just another thing that they follow because they have zero interest in reality but think that it will spin well to get them re-elected. They are lazy and evil.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
To clarify, David Nutt is an academic, who works for Imperial College. His role as government advisor on drugs was unpaid, and he is being sacked from this unpaid position. The government may be paying for expensive researchers on this subject somewhere else, but it was not paying him directly.