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Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA
boarder8925 writes "In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA: 'We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,' Obama said in his speech, 'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'"
... our jobs!
...at least he's not a Republican!
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Don't question the ingenuity of the Internet.
... I'm just asking:
What would we expect from any President? Pick anyone from the last batch, or even the next batch, of candidates. Do you think any one of them wouldn't back big business in this situation?
"Rampant" piracy? I suppose that's why they've pulled not just record profits pretty much every year but also almost always had a record breaking increase over the previous year's record breaking profits as well.
Their piracy figures, when they aren't just plain made up, are them saying "We expected this much of an increase over last year's profits and we actually got this slightly lower amount so since we didn't overshoot our initial prediction by 500% that 500% must have been lost due to piracy."
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Next up: The Texas schoolboard mandates that textbooks 'de-emphasise' the RECORDED HISTORICAL FACT that Hollywood was founded on industrialised copyright infringement.
National Security folks. National Security. Gotta keep that GDP up for increased tax revenue. At least, so they think.
Life is not for the lazy.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
No, you're wrong.
Those up high have understood that the USA's commercial future is not in manufacturing (they left that to China or Germany). If it's not physical goods, then what else is America selling abroad? IP, that's what. That's where the USA's commercial future lies, and that's what it'll have to defend at all costs, trampling their people's and other nation's right to defend that.
It's that or become insolvent. (look up the USA's trade balance over the last few 20 years. Think it'll improve? Think again.)
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy, but those of us who are knowledgeable and have a strong opinion on this should contact the White House as well as your Senators and Congresspeople to let them know why we should not be supporting ACTA.
White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Congresspeople: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
There's no surprise here. Big business runs Washington. The government will never, NEVER oppose the agenda of the entertainment industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the AMA, the NRA, or the energy industries. I will be shocked if the health care overhaul that is eventually passed doesn't somehow infringe on the health insurance cartel's current way of doing business.
The fact that this got rated "Insightful" is a woeful commentary on the state of rational debate and analysis in the geek world. I thought we were supposed, as a group, to be smart. Apparently not.
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed. Of course production is down right now because we're in a recession, but as a percentage of our economy, manufacturing production is pretty stable. What's down is manufacturing jobs, and that's because productivity is up. The better you are at doing something, the less work you have to do to do it.
In a perfect world, more production per unit of labor would mean that we would all have to work less to achieve the same level of prosperity. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current intellectual property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done. Rather than this new-found prosperity being spread across the whole population, it reaches only a relatively few peoples' pockets, and of course those people get quite rich.
So in fact draconian intellectual property laws are antithetical to prosperity. Obama's thesis here isn't just irrelevant to the average worker's prosperity. It's antithetical to the average worker's prosperity.
See this is were bloody revolutions fail.
Because either A) you're going to elect another batch of morons whom to execute at a later date or B) you're going to have a dictator (military general, etc) show up to fill the void or worse (a foreign entity).
Fail in either case.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
OR
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
How terribly disappointing, Obama. At least the EU threw out this stupid treaty. Hopefully this won't be successful at all.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
ACTA is a truly wonderful thing. We, as Americans, need to strengthen our thought property, not make it more accessible. It's one of the few things that we still do well.
With that being said,
Luckily for at least us Europeans, the European Parliament has already shot the ACTA agreement down in an overwhelming 633-to-13 vote, while also forcing total openness - something the US does not want. This means that despite Obama siding with the content providers, ACTA will most likely not come to fruition.
I hope ACTA becomes a reality. It will solidify my reason to move to Europe (and start calling myself European if they'll have me). I'll pretty much have no reason to stay around here.
Give me that last push I need, Obama. I'm hoping for it
-An Anonymous Game Designer.
I knew my vote was between Dumb and Dumber, but stuff like this still pisses me off.
"But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."
Wait, MPAA/RIAA? Since when do they deal with fake iPods? I hate them as much as the next guy, but I can't find a word in the article relating to copyrights that wasn't inserted by the author.
Obama's speech (as quoted by TFA) seems to relate only to patents and perhaps branded goods, even if ACTA extends to both. It would be interesting to know if this is indicative of an official focus with regard to ACTA.
"Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell"
Since I voted for him, I can say with all sincerity, change my @ASS!
In any reasonably free society, copying of digital content is impossible to prevent. In non-free societies, it does not matter as those in power can take the money of anybody anyways. So, trying to prevent copying of digital content is just a sure path to failure. Incidentially, protecting outdated business models holds a society back and is bad for eveybody.
Well, I guess it does not matter that much for the rest of the world, the US-centric century is certainly over, as its economic power is vanishing rapidly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
despite i have been a staunch supporter of him and quarreled with my conservative american friends for close to a year since his candidacy to his election and even beyond.
really, from this point on, i dont think i will be hypocritical to defend him in any regard. there are things that can be overlooked and forgiven, noone is perfect. but ransoming rights and liberties of the thought process to private individuals is nothing less than feudalism at its best. and someone who can justify this to himself cannot be defended in anything else.
Read radical news here
We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,
I can't wait until the US launches a pre-emptive military strike against <insert media vilified nation here> for a grave and gathering threat of...copyright infringement!
Imaginary property hurts us all.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people'
Because we (Americans) don't make anything solid anymore. Essentially, we give people in other countries the plans to make $FOO, in exchange for a few free $FOOs, then we have to come up with a new $FOO2 to make sure the other countries want to build the new $FOO2. If the manufacturers ever decide that what they are making is good-enough for the next twenty-thirty years, we're screwed unless we can pretend that we own the ideas.
I find the Citation Needed Police annoying at times, but can you substantiate that claim?
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
Don't forget about the oil industry, pharmaceutical, the military-industrial-complex or religious groups.
Oh please, as if anyone could possibly be surprised Obama is a corporate whore. What do you think happens if you can't run for president unelss you can raise $60 million. Do you think his benefactors gave him that money expecting nothing in return?
He's just yet another dirty Chicago politican, with the added advantage of a huge cohort of religious followers who made him the Obamessiah.
I think we have to be careful though with separating unjust prosecution of piracy and piracy itself.
Obama is exactly right. IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy. There needs to be a means by which efforts of the mind are as recognized legally as efforts of the body.
We're becoming a nation where digging ditches and assembling parts is going to be taken over more and more by automation and cheap overseas labor and it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas that continues to pay our bills and put roofs over our heads going forward.
While the RIAA and the MPAA might RIGHT NOW control intellectual property and be the face of IP in the future it's going to be the individual creators who no longer need a large corporate overlord who are going to need the same protections. So we need to be careful that an inventor in Iowa can fight off the mega corporation trying to simply steal his idea and profit off of his innovation without giving him any reward.
The RIAA's laws protect the indie artist FROM the RIAA more so than it protects the RIAA itself. If there were toothless IP laws then Universal Music could just start burning copies of some new popular band and not send them a penny. They have the market and the distribution power. They would overnight become the main source of some new indie band's music without offering any creativity of their own.
You weaken IP and it's not the large corporations that will lose money it's the little guys who will get screwed by the large distributors who have all the money and resources.
'Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'
TRANSLATION:
"Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and the creativity of the American Lawyer. As our education system collapses and laziness and ignorance steadily increase until the Constitution is entirely without meaning and it becomes impossible for our society to function without coercion -- we expect lawyers to bring home enough cash to sustain not just their coke habits but also our military... with a small amount of funds possibly left over for health care (but don't bet on it). We won't have the money in this century to bully anyone with our military capabilities, so we're counting on our lawyers to win the important battles."
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Obama seems to love giving token support to the more popular side of big issues like these without actually researching them first. If he's supposed to be a man of the people, how about supporting consumer rights such as the right to make legal backups of purchased media and the right to enjoy that media on devices of our choosing? Protecting IP is important but not at the expense of the people who make that IP valuable.
Its only fair, the RIAA and the MPAA have made a sizable investment in Obama and especially in Biden. It wouldn't be fair for them to have spent all that money and gotten nothing but a bunch of justice department positions in return. They've made a sizable purchase of politicians. They should be able to enjoy the fruits of ownership.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
In case you don't, it was in the news a while ago. They called it piracy and against capitalist ideals. Am I the only one who is beginning to get worried?
But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.
Look at the Free Culture/Software movement, Obama. There's people all over the place "stealing other people's ideas", except it isn't stealing. When you steal something, you take it from them without their permission. Should you need permission to make a program that does the same thing as another program? Should you need permission to cover, adapt, or remix something someone else did? It's not like you can just sue random people off the street for singing a song you "own" (Oh wait, that happened quite a few times already. Nevermind). None of these uses of our culture should ever be thought of as infringing; doing so practically removes our right to say as we please (then again, people over the years have stated that we have never had "free speech" anyways).
"Fair Use" has produced millions of dollars, and you dare imply that it didn't? By supporting the ACTA/RIAA/MPAA, you're supporting concentration of wealth (which just so happens to be concentrated towards the few companies that are trying to control our culture), which is never a good thing. "Intellectual Property" doesn't need to be "protected" in this matter at all, and these ideas are just getting more and more absurd. Things aren't going to get better if we have people like Obama supporting these crazy ideas.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Dear Mr. President and members of Congress and Senate,
Please, stop listening to the corporate un-citizens. I say un-citizens because all they care about is lining their pockets with money. Not to say that most Americans wouldn't love to line their pockets with money as well, but only Corporate citizens (which aren't even real citizens as they can't be called to fight for their country, aren't held accountable for their actions unless someone with more money than them can fight them) have the money to pay for you to listen to their needs. The luncheons, the corporate sponsored getaways, the private flights and perks are all their way of buying you, you the representatives of us, not corporations.
If you really want to protect the creators of ideas and artistic endevours, you must do away with tyranical organazitions like the RIAA and MPAA which prosecute little children as well as dead or dying citizens for a percieved (never proven) loss of a few pennies, all the while wholesale stealing from the very creators they cry woefully to protect.
I'm going to copy en masse an e-mail sent to me - please read it, please consider it, and please, when you are done, think about pushing corporate citizenship back where it belongs, to non citizenship - without rights, without needs to protect as you would the individuals who actually do the creating of everything you wish to protect.
Pretty interesting if one reads all the way to the end. Follow this by reading "Confessions of An Economic Hit Man", by John Perkins. We had a surplus in 2000 and no way does the banking industry and those who rule it want to see that again, even if it takes two wars.
EVERY U.S. CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Or join the tea party if you are conservative
If the coffee party is non-conservative, why isn't it called the Half-caf-latte-no-whip-mochachino-with-sprinkles party?
And labor unions, and trial lawyers. There will be no true progress until a movement emerges that gores the oxen of both major parties.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You mean, we should start to stock ARM netbooks?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
In a move sure to surprise no one, Obama has come out on the side of the MPAA/RIAA and has backed the ACTA:
I'm glad to see that slashdot maintains such a fair and unbiased approach to reporting. This goes well with the editorial opinion they passed on to us as news on Tuesday. Sure, I know that slashdot is not an actual news agency and has no reporters of its own, but they could at least pretend to not be promoting an agenda when choosing which articles to link to from the front page.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
it was substantiated repeated times in the past, and slashdot ran stories on them. if you search it, you can find. latest was a research from netherlands that showed the pirates bought much more cds than anyone else, ironically.
Read radical news here
... it's who's buying the policy.
Tweet, tweet.
You mean the astroturf group run by a political operative that worked for Barack Obama and Sen James Webb (D-VA)? She also just happened to be a Strategy Analyst for the NY Times.
The one that is organizing a "grassroots" get together in Chicago that isn't actually being lead by anyone FROM Chicago?
They aren't an independent group... they're just another special interest group like Obama for America. If you want to be a tool, by all means, do so, just admit to yourself that you are someone else's pawn.
Intellectual property and copyright are going to be the single greatest hinderance to innovation within this country as patent trolls and copyright lawyers can expect ever increasing amounts of litigation and profit based off of hurting those who are actually going out there and developing products and services which help push the limits of technology. Personally, I come from the belief that if someone can do it better, they should, and that true competition is based off of who is the best. A simple case and point with this is the iPhone*, while Apple introduced little that truly innovated (phone, web-browsing, iPod, email) it was their method and vision which differentiated the iPhone apart from other offerings on the market and earned its position in the mobile market. Imagine if Blackberry held a patent that gave them sole-access to emailing using a non-tethered wireless connected input device, while Nokia held a patent for making phone calls from a device with no central bay-station, and Microsoft held a patent preventing the use of Web-Browsers on anything but Windows Mobile Phones? Well, Apple would've released a really fancy iPod (it's arguable that that's all they did...) and that would've been it.
For a truly competitive market we need nothing but innovation, ingenuity, and gusto, but the free-marketeers and oligopolists will never let that slide because they don't want innovation they want /absurd/ profits. I know things must be paid for, and that a great amount of money is spent on R&D by firms in high-tech, but! They have an advantage of capital, internal knowledge, and a huge labor force to help curb competition already--why do they need more of an advantage. I'm getting lazy, so... /end rant.
Oh wait, one final remark, if another country has access to a large unskilled labor-force and can reproduce something for less--they should. America on the other hand should be using it's highly-skilled labor force, *cough* comparative advantage *cough*, to produce goods which cannot be reproduced without capital and highly-skilled labor.
*I know the iPhone has an absurd amount of patents on it, most probably bullshit, but just ignore this for the example.
Well said. It's a shame that the majority of critics on this board won't even bother to read your post before vomiting up their point of views.
The only "ideas" being defended here that I can see are audio and video (and maybe, text). Sorry, but once the digital revolution hit, Pandeora's box was opened. They can pass all the laws they want to, but they'll be almost impossible to enforce. Second, the duration of copyrights has been extended, not because it makes sense, but because large corporations, many of them foreign, lobbied in this direction. Whatever happened to the voice of the people? We need shorter copyright terms, and reasonably priced content. The reasons for piracy would largely disappear, as would the reasons to need still more lawyers and law enforcement personnel.
He could just as well have said:
"We welcome low standards for patents and long timespans for copyrights because this will help our economy, and we will push these rules down the throat of other nations."
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
While I'm no particular fan of the MPAA, the RIAA or the ACTA, it deserves to be pointed out that the article is substantially misleading and inaccurate. Firstly, the speech to which they refer, in the section about IP protection, talks exclusively about protecting the licensing of technology and make no mention what so ever of the MPAA, the RIAA or music of video piracy. While these organisations happen to also support the ACTA, it is grossly misleading to say that the speech comes out in support of either of them. Secondly, the article says that "the European Parliament has already shot the ACTA agreement down". This is completely incorrect. The European Parliament have demanded that the European Commission make public the nature of its discussions in the ACTA negotiations, and the EU Privacy Commissioner has expressed concern that the treaty might be incompatible with existing EU law, but the parliament have not passed any resolutions regarding the content of the treaty itself (not least because it's secret, so they don't know what it says).
The process through which the ACTA has be created is highly suspect but it does its opponents no service if those who campaign against it can't present an accurate case.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
I find the Citation Needed Police annoying at times
[Citation Needed]
Perhaps the title should be "U.S.'s Obama To Limit Internet Freedom". ;-)
Yes, and then let's build an army of Androids to bring the current leaders to the RIM of despair. iPad myself on the shoulder for that one.
this is precisely capitalism, and precisely what you term as 'free market'.
in any environment in which you allow groups or individuals to become more powerful than others, eventually those who get to the top first subdue or eliminate others and a power hierarchy gets established. this is how precisely feudalism came to being in the first place.
this is the nature of social dynamics, and it will never change. unless there are rules and laws preventing anyone from becoming more powerful than others, there will always be a pyramid of power in the long run.
wealth is power.
put in layman's terms, your 'free market' can exist and be free only in the early times. like in the initial times of united states. later, when some groups get more wealth than others, they will get to the top and establish a hierarchy. so, this is the EXACT thing you should have expected to happen - groups who set up the pyramid first, ensuring that pyramid continues to be, and they stay on top of it.
enjoy your 'free' market capitalism. its much more hard to combat than aristocracy.
Read radical news here
An IP Based Society is great for every other nation on earth, for in 20 to 30 years all the world has to do to destroy America is simply start ignoring her laws.
Do we then start sending troops into nation X for downloading Disney movies? How about when they all decide to stop paying royalties?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
We sure know how to pick 'em.
Ummm.... I see you ignore the fact that major portions of our manufacturing capability have been moved offshore. When was the last time you bought a TV made in the US? When was the last time you bought a major household appliance that was manufactured entirely in the US? How about a car? How long has it been since the majority of steel used in the US was made here?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When you throw out all the things you think you'd like the federal government do and just read what it should be, it's clear that politicians have created a self-feeding machine.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights state that the federal government has jurisdiction in a number of areas, and all other rights belong to the states (unless the states specifically give up a right via an amendment). Lobbying Congress, bribing a Senator, etc... was supposed to be of little value to business because states set their own policies. This would mean that businesses would naturally move to where the climate was most hospitable and states would have to balance heavy-handed regulation and taxes with the jobs and prosperity that attracting businesses would bring.
When a fundamental shift of power from the states to Washington occurs, the balances are gone, everyone stops competing, and instead tries to secure favorable legislation nationwide. Now we have the unholy alliance of government and corporations. Politicians depend on corporate money and corporations depend on provisions biased in their favor.
Our decentralized nation was a good idea. Perhaps a bit inconvenient at times, but it allowed many different ideas to be tested across the country and empowered people with better access to government. We need to re-establish the Constitution as the Law of the Land and hold those accountable who willfully violate it.
He made some un-controversial statements about protecting U.S industry from commercial copying: "But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor."
I don't think anyone would mind that, and that is what a legitimate anti-counterfeiting treaty would prevent.
Alas, the commentator leaps out from beneath his bridge and shouts "the RIAA wants that too, and they're evil, so Obama is evil". That's then picked up by a page headed "Obama Care - Stop Him", and retitled "Obama Sides with RIAA, MPAA; Backs ACTA" and referenced here as "Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA".
Do you begin to see a pattern here? This is a classic "guilt by association" scam, in which you say "X", and are promptly tarred and feathered by a commentator who says "but the <insert your choice of evil group here> is in favor of X, therfore you're a member/supporter/fellow-traveler of <evil group>.
One should attack Mr. Obama for what he said, not for something Mr. Sandoval said on his behalf...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
You might get lucky and end up with a benevolent dictator. It has happened at least a couple of times in the history of humanity....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The so-called Coffee Party is actually just another astroturf wing of the Obama campaign machine.
Flamebait? Everything I said is true. Just because you don't like what I said doesn't mean it's a troll or flamebait.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
Why do idiots like you exist in such large quantities in the US, and only in the US? I'm starting to think that there was some self-selection sample bias in terms of the genetic and/or psychological predispositions of the early American settlers.
That's true as far as it goes, but take it another step. If those fat cats can't make their money in America any more, they move to other countries where they can. That means our best and brightest (and often luckiest) will not BE in America any more. Now their success doesn't help America -at all-.
Those laws, as much as we hate them, keep those fat cats from taking their fat loot elsewhere.
Are they too much right now? Absolutely. Should they be abolished? Hell no.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It is really not a defense of these policies to note that we are moving to an economy where copyrights and patents are our chief export; it is just a description of the broader problem that nobody wants to manufacture their goods in America anymore. The solution is not to try to push other countries to accept our versions of copyright and patent law, it is to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Sadly, the major parties seem to have no interest in the seemingly obvious solution...
Palm trees and 8
is stuff like the latest Britney spears cd(i know it's kind of a exaggeration but it's closer to the truth then you realize) draconion laws such as these are needed to a degree.
As far as I know most democratic supporters are disappointed with Obama's centrist policies. So you're just trolling. Good luck with that.
If you aren't paying for your entertainment media, then you aren't paying taxes. Similarly, the rightholders aren't paying income taxes on the money they are getting.
Therefore, piracy reduces tax revenues. Obama would really like to have a health care system that didn't just skyrocket the deficit out of control, while maintaining the idea that everyone (even the illegal immigrants) are getting health care coverage with government subsidies. Well, obviously he can't do that with shrinking tax revenues, now can he?
Has your income gone up this year from last year? Do you expect to be paying more or less in income taxes next year? Well, big media companies are looking at exactly the same situation and the government is getting nervous. Smaller tax revenues mean more deficit spending and maybe (gasp!) some programs getting cut and pork projects not getting done.
This will result in congresscritters not being reelected because they failed to "deliver" for their constituents. Yup, I'd say everyone in the US is worried about that.
I just spent 5 minutes looking through their site and couldn't find a single thing that they are actually about. It's even worse than the Tea Party in that regards (and their name just sounds reactionary).
Even their top level FAQ button is just crap about username/registration process.
What are they actually for?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
but if an individual cannot distinguish the importance of freedoms over 'right of ownership' over thought processes, and comes up defending the private interests that seek to monopolize thought, there is nothing to defend about him.
acta is evil. it is the most evil thing since spanish inquisition. the very fact that whole thing proceeds by CIRCUMVENTING democratical procedures is itself appalling from the start, leave aside all the 'measures' that seek to cramp down freedoms for some parties' interests.
it wouldnt be radical to say that anyone who sides with evil, for WHATEVER reason, is the enemy, for, by siding with such kind of evil, they have become dangerous to our freedoms themselves.
Read radical news here
...in this presentation.
Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity
...and surprise.
Because noone expects American invasion!
(jk - we do)
Let's develop a new business model for artists (that results in more money in their pockets overall). Let's convince young people (the media firms' primary customers) that the media companies are evil, for the same reason everyone hates Monsanto or $EVIL_CORP.
The only hope for freedom is the destruction of the media companies. If we fight the individual legislation, they will simply bring it back, again and again.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
The thing I'd most like to see, even more than any form of health care reform and such, is a reliable form of instant run off voting. (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method ). With that third parties would not be spoilers and might grow into feasible choices, and when you have more than two choices, it becomes a lot harder to demonize your opponent with lies, since it helps the third party..
We all know that "rampant" piracy is a myth.
The proper attitude of the intellectual property thief is passant reguardant .
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If the coffee party is non-conservative, why isn't it called the Half-caf-latte-no-whip-mochachino-with-sprinkles party?
Just because the coffee party lacks the BDSM part of the tea-baggers doesn't mean they're "no-whip"!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
One thing to keep in mind when gambling: in the long run, the house always wins.
TEA PARTY = grass roots COFFEE PARTY = Obama Astroturf as someone close to the Obama administration started the coffee party and is PROGRESSIVE we must stop California from infecting the rest of the country fokes drink TEA not COFFEE
Meanwhile, those indie artists who actually WANT free distribution get screwed by the general assumption that all songs/movies are controlled by the RIAA/MPAA.
If an artist ever had a contract with a big label, that label will try to control their songs, permanently. It's happened before, and it will happen again. It doesn't matter what the details of the contract were. Somebody's going to make a poor design choice (possibly but deniably with intent), and say "For all these billion songs we published, start sending DMCA notices to Youtube users," and their automated system will do it. It doesn't matter that since that original (non-exclusive) contract, the song is now freely available. If they get caught, they say "Oops, sorry!" and pay no fine, and make no effort to prevent it from happening again. If they don't get caught, then it's another person who might pay them a $2000 settlement for music they don't own.
It's not even likely that tougher laws will prevent the recording labels from trampling your rights anyway. According to OSNews, each label has a list of songs they used without permission, such as for compilation albums and such. They say they're making an effort to track down the artists on that list, and that's good enough for them. They can claim that with such a huge number of songs to deal with, and so many contracts, such things fall through the cracks. They'll get sympathy from courts, and go on their merry way.
The system, especially when designed by big groups, screws over normal people.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If all our life support and entire infrastructure is entirely mechanized, why will we need jobs? Are we going to have to pay the machines?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In other news, politicians - especially in the US - are beholden to their campaign contributors.
Seriously, politicians are paid for by industries, your only real choice is which industry you want to support. Don't make the mistake of thinking that anyone above a local representative level gives a toss about the voters unless they absolutely have to (Not that local reps do half the time, but they're rarely owned by corporate interests, just self-interest, which might end up being the same as yours if you're lucky).
True dat. The free market is the most efficient generator of wealth, for sure. The problem is that there's no assurance about where that wealth is going to end up. China getting rich isn't doing us a whole lot of good. As much as it may pain the libertarians, I think there are times you have make a trade-off between national interest and economic efficiency.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
You seem to have a skewed sense of statistics and what constitutes a viable proof.
"These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks)"
Well first off control groups are only helpful when they only have 1 thing different from each other (the thing you are studying). And you cannot say that an Asian-American is identical to a African-American in everything except that a African-A will be inclined to vote for a fellow African-A while a Asian-A will not.
Ethnic groups have their own racism's (for all I know Asian-Americans are on average racist against African-Americans, and that is why they voted less for Obama).
"Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans."
Here is the bottom line, while I am sure some people only voted for him because of his skin color we have no reason to think that McCain represented Americans any more then him, or that any other past president did.
And you plan to fix this "problem" by encouraging other to vote by skin color.
So while we do not know who the future presidential candidates will be, you already somehow know that the black ones will "not represent mainstream America" and therefore must be opposed?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed.
To quote Peter Schiff : 'If we're becoming so much more productive where are the goods we're producing and why can't I see it in the balance of trade ? If we're so productive where are the exports ?"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The fact that this got rated "Insightful" is a woeful commentary on the state of rational debate and analysis in the geek world. I thought we were supposed, as a group, to be smart. Apparently not.
Psst. The dirty little secret is that nerds are as dumb as stumps. They only tell themselves that they are 'the smart ones' because it keeps them from killing themselves in high school.
Not entirely true. The revolution that produced the USA produced a stable, democratic system of government. Washington, Jefferson, and the rest designed the government to be as stable as possible. The problem is that a government is like a Windows install. The more virus scanners, firewalls, and the like that add to it, the longer before it falls apart. In the USA, it took about 175-200 years for this to happen. In other democracies, we have had times less than 20 years. We can debate about what "security vulnerability" allowed the collapse. The issue here that allowed the collapse appears to be the issue of campaign finance (lobbying) and biased media coverage.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy.
IP is just various monopoly rights. See the former Soviet union on how well monopolies work. Monopolies are antithetical to an effective economy and thus will not be a foundation, but a burden.
it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas
Please. IP is mainly good for extracting resources out of an economy, it has nothing to do with 'exporting'. Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy, and most of the time (certainly in the case of the US), the monopoly rights will be held by foreign corporations.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again. Repealing at the very least copyright and patents would be a good start towards reestablishing a highly competitive free market and lowering the burden on western labour (thus reducing their price).
In fact, manufacturing in the U.S. is doing very well. Productivity is at an all-time high, and the amount we are producing has not been in decline, as is commonly believed.
I'd have guessed that greater than 95% of the products I purchase and use on a regular basis are manufactured outside of the U.S. Would you mind providing more information as to what sectors are producing 'at an all-time high'? I'm not trolling or even necessarily disagreeing with you, but there appears to be a distinct disconnect here.
Biden, and half the staff are ex-MAFIAA people.
Wasn’t there this staff position, where the first guy hired, went to jail shorty after it. And the replacement also went to jail on day one. Then the third one, I think, stuck. And they all had massive ties to the MAFIAA.
Don’t remember which position it was though, or I could look up the exact facts.
But who cares. ACTA is already dead here in Europe. The Pirate Party is gaining strongly, and this will only strengthen it.
And unless massive censorship kicks in, the Internet will route around it.
Look at Brazil. They already ignore the whole patenting/copyright madness of the USA as part of an embargo.
Sorry US government (not talking about the population here!), but your times of having the world in a tight grip are over.
Bush/Cheney broke the ban. Now avalanche is rolling, and it’s going down.
(I just hope the US population doesn’t get punished for the faults of their government. :/)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior ...
Why would you think that? Do you consider every lawyer or politician in love with their blackberry to be tech savvy? Every politician on twitter to be tech savvy? Obama is extremely intelligent but his training and experience is as a lawyer. We have had past presidents who were honest-to-god engineers. Carter was one of the first naval officers trained to operate nuclear power plants. Hoover was a mining engineer that developed various processes to improve yields. He wrote a popular university textbook for engineering and translated a classic medieval mining text. He was also an advocate and user of the new tech of his day, radio and aviation. I'm sure there were other presidents who were pretty tech savvy in their day but this is all I can think of offhand.
In a perfect world, more production per unit of labor would mean that we would all have to work less to achieve the same level of prosperity. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current intellectual property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done.
Not just IP laws. The fact that a lot of industrial manufacturing is capital intensive combined with the relatively small segment of social networks that access to capital flows in. Or, as Marx might have said, most workers don't own the means of production under a capitalist system. Go back in time and reduce patent and copyright protections circa 1910 or even 1810 (where the benefits were more limited) and story of how the gains in the system play out for labor is pretty much going to be the same.
It's not that copyright and patent laws don't represent another barrier to entry: they sometimes do. But most of the time, they pretty much protect industrial competitors from other would-be industrial competitors.
We software geeks tend to see things a bit differently because for the last 20-30 years, we're one of the few groups lucky enough to be in an industry where we do more or less own the means of production (got a computer? And a compiler? Or interpreter for a capable language? Congratulations! You have production capacity!) because it's relatively affordable. So our barriers to entry are less about capital and more about other things like product awareness, network effects... and cost of compliance with the law, including copyright & patent law.
Maybe this will become more important in the future if it turns out that more industrial capacity becomes available for ownership down at the household level, and that's reason enough to make sure copyright and patent law are a balance bargain rather than a giveaway to lawyers and other people whose sense of entitlement is so great that they really, genuinely view ideas as genuine property, and so I think fighting against ACTA and its ilk are worthwhile... but let's not kid ourselves, copyrights and patents haven't really been the main tool of abuse in the relationship between capital and labor.
Tweet, tweet.
So... Tea Party are right wing without a plan, and Coffee party are without a plan or direction.
In theory, yes.
But the cost of fighting any of these mega-corps is so immense that, in effect, unless you're fighting somebody near your own weight class (in terms of available resources) you will lose, and likely never even get to see the verdict. Look at what Monsanto's done to agriculture in the last decade. If you don't pay to plant Monsanto's seed, they sue you into bankruptcy where you have to sell the farm to a Monsanto friend. It is defacto illegal to harvest seed from crops now, because though there is no law against it the people who used to make a living running the seed-collecting machines were sued for contributory infringement against Monsanto's genetic patents. It just costs too much for a person to defend against that. Especially since most corperations structure themselves in such a way that they don't own anything and use cashflow for everything, and the laws are written to that effect. Farmers have little cashflow and millions of dollars in assets (land, property) and therefore repeatedly get destroyed if they don't lay down and give a large cut of profits to Monsanto.
Your argument about the RIAA stealing an indie band's music and selling it on their own is crap. The laws that protect the RIAA don't cover that, and the indie bands can't afford the cost to use a DMCA-approved content protection system to trigger DMCA violations. Having music IP laws that allow for statuatory payments per performance and such is fine, but the erosion of fair use (though, historically, fair use as a legal concept has re-emerged more recently than not, and is being beat back down) is soley the RIAA powed by friends in Washington DC.
Other IPs vary, but more often than not it's the Monsantos that the laws are written for to protect, not the individual inventor.
I am become
I thought cartels were generally considered illegal. By supporting these entities he is essentially supporting the notion of legal cartels. I think the USA is going to become more and more isolated in its point of views.
I had great hope for some real change when Obama came in, but he standing shows that there isn't really much separating the Democrats and the Republicans. For me, it really goes to show the whole notion of democracy in the states is more about changing the logo of the party in charge, rather than anything else. Which ever party is in charge, it is still the corporations which hold them by the balls. What it will take to institute a government which is by the people for the people, rather than by the people for the corporations.
I have nothing against copyright, rather I disagree with copyrights going beyond a reasonable amount of time.
One question I do have, is what will the reaction of the open source community be in 70 years when the first copyrights of Linux become public domain? This is not a indication of support for long copyrights, but trying to understand the reaction of the community when the shoe is on the other foot.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
> as a percentage of our economy, manufacturing production is pretty stable.
If this is actually true, I suspect the following:
(1) As a percentage of our economy, it is stable, but that both (a) as a percentage of world production and (b) in terms of raw tonnage, production is down because industrial production prices are rising faster than inflation.
(2) This would be wholly false if the government had not bailed out GM. General Motors is one of the largest, if not the largest, auto manufacturers in the world. Its production capacity could not be allowed to be destroyed, for military reasons if none other.
(3) The Military Industrial Complex is responsible for most of this manufacturing production. This isn't tinfoil hat, it's just the size of the defense budget and the national interest in keeping production capacity at home.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Quick, grasp it!
Ideas=dime a dozen. Implementing those ideas is worth a lot more. That means manufacturing, real wealth creation. The fatcat politicians and wall street labor arbitragers destroyed manufacturing in the US for short term megaprofits, and created ever so much more complicated "financial instruments" and other sorts of gambling games and debt to replace it, along with running the printing presses with the currency. Those cons are about run out now. So..check the economic headlines over the past two years. Now, they are hosed, they hosed the economy. They have no back up plan that can work now. This is a last ditch effort to try and save it. This will be futile, or as they say, "good luck with that".
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made by a US company. The "interesting" software in new Internet-connected TVs (Netflix, VUDU, Cinemanow, Pandora, Youtube) is all made by US companies. And not coincidentally, all of those companies focus on distribution of the higher-margin content that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to protect.
The economic (and military) successes of the United States have almost always been based on technological innovation and entrepreneurship - and those innovations DO need to be protected.
The MPAA/RIAA's methods of "enforcing" their IP are despicable. But without any protection, one of the current major assets of the US - media and entertainment - will be in serious jeopardy. Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different. That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online. Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
Nah. Time for BEAR ARMS!
Surgeons and genetics scientist of the USA rejoice!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
you have to read well.
EU passed a resolution that banned any form of 3strikes anywhere in europe. Held the regulations and rules it put out before over anything proposed in acta. this means no isp liability of policing their networks for private parties' copyrights. it mandates that cutting an individual's internet access cannot happen unless through a court. it demanded full disclosure of the acta text to all members of the parliament, as mandated by eu laws. eu laws also mandate that parliament share anything with eu public, so anything that is disclosed to eu parliament has to be disclosed to entire european public.
european commission has to abide by it. there is no other route that they can take. commission already said that they are going to push the other acta negotiating parties for full disclosure. if they dont, commission wont be able to stay on the table any more, for they are not allowed to negotiate and sign anything before eu parliament knows it.
and if the text is disclosed, that means shit will hit the fan.
so yea, eu parliament seems to really have shot acta down. and probably not only for europe, for entire world.
Read radical news here
Please don't feed the copy-and-paste trolls. If you're going to feed the trolls, at least find one that puts some effort into trolling.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What idiot modded this copypasta insightful?
the problem that i see is that there's no accountability. same thing for the tea party. or for that matter, obama. i gave a bit of money to the campaign, and there might be a lot of people that did that don't agree with some of his decisions. but it's very hard to apply any sort of leverage - the campaign is the single point of contact, and as such largely controls the message
for the sake of argument, lets assume that 30% of the money that the obama campaign raised was from people who actively oppose the speech the article is referring to. (yes, i know it's probably _far_ lower ... this is for the sake of argument) it's almost impossible for that 30% to find each other, to figure out that other "supporters" aren't happy with the current direction. if that block could get together, they'd have some influence. but we can't
i supported the obama campaign largely because the financing was (at least initially) driven by small donations. that concept has the potential to be revolutionary, but i think there needs to be another step. the people making the donations need a way to maintain some control, to have a unified voice
we need a proxy - to not give money to a campaign directly, but thru a proxy that represents a particular set of beliefs - and maybe even to negotiate with various candidates to try to find the best match. the coffee (or tea) party might be a step in that direction, but it seems to be more about positive energy than any particular issue (or at least, not issues that i'm strongly in favor of)
My blog
If only Obama really was a "radical leftist." If anything, he's a Republican in disguise.
ACTA will only work when every (first world) country is implementing it, but the EU-Parliament is already against it, because the discussion on ACTA and all documents are kept undisclosed. You could say: Who cares what this parliament is thinking? Well Obama should care, because if the parliament is not involved and the documents are not public, then the EU will not implement ACTA which means almost 500 mio people will not be threatened by ACTA. Third world countries will not adopt to ACTA either when the EU is not doing so.
Even though, some information leaked and it looks like that ACTA would not be legal in Germany as the constitutions defines certain rights. For example the state is not allowed to transfer information on Internet-traffic to private organizations without reasonable suspicion and a letter from a judge. Also the three-strikes-law-idea is against the rules in the EU, and obviously it is against the French constitution. And I am absolutely sure if they would try it in Germany it will fail too. As cutting you of from the Internet violates your right to be informed. And this right is very important in a democracy. It is definitely not an allowed sanction by any European constitution or agreement. So ACTA may be a dead horse and Obama is riding it. It would be better when he would tell all these US-Americans that general health care is good and that securing the existential basis of any person in a country is a necessary thing.
From what I can find, the Coffee Party's founder has too many ties to the current president. Also, you display of false modesty when you mention the number of people who have joined is a bit of a turn off.
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy
That's an assertion, not an argument. I'll agree that creativity and intellectual endeavour will be the foundation of any future economy. Whether these are best embodied, encouraged, and protected by a system that treats new ideas like tangible property or by some other mechanism is less obvious.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Do something about it and join the Coffee Party [coffeepartyusa.com]?
I love your solution to disagreeing with behavior by the Obama Administration: Join an organization started by members of Obama's Presidential campaign. You are worried about the tea party being taken over by special interests, so you suggest joining an organization that is basically just a subsidiary of the Democratic Party (which you seem to believe, likely correctly, is run by special interests).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really, I don't know if you're trolling or if you're just a typical Glenn Beck listener, but I'll bite anyway.
TEA PARTY = grass roots COFFEE PARTY = Obama Astroturf
The "tea party" is only as grass-roots as the "coffee party" is.
as someone close to the Obama administration started the coffee party and is PROGRESSIVE
Wait, which is it? Are they associated with the Obama administration, or are they progressive? They can't be both, considering that the Obama administration is vehemently anti-progressive.
He didn't ignore anything, you just either fail at reading comprehension, or have rejected his factually true statements because you prefer the fantasy you already subscribe to. For every dollar value of manufacturing capacity that moved off shore, it was replaced by some other manufacturing capacity. We still manufacture more than we did fifty years ago. We still manufacture more than virtually anyone else (by dollar value). We just manufacture different things.
Consumption has risen faster than our production. That doesn't mean production hasn't been rising.
But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea ...
Ideas cannot be stolen. It is a physical impossibility. The copyright & patent industry love to blur the lines of the law and pretend that using IP without authorization is as heinous as breaking into someone's house and stealing their physical goods. But it is a complete lie. It's bad enough that the various industries that benefit from these get away with blatant misleading and deception of the general public about it, but having the *president* endorse that lie is very disappointing.
Yeah, because our "success" in Iraq and Afghanistan is good for our economy. See? American unemployment is at an all-time low!
For every Vespasian, there's a Nero AND a Caligula.
The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers . . .
I guess because idiots like you exist that cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with your arrogance, and love of big government.
Are you done with the insults and ready to actually discuss things now, or is all you can do is hand out insults because that's your only argument to what I actually said.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
As a rule brands have little to do with innovation, ingenuity or creativity. Trademarks should be backed by quality and expertise, not by fuzzy feelings associated with the brand, otherwise they are of no benefit to customers and not worth protecting.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
you still didnt get it it seems.
yea. a market restricted with copyright and patent monopolies is not a free market.
but, it was a free market before those patent and copyright monopolies came into being.
and those patent and copyright monopolies came into being because the first groups to be able to garner more wealth than others used their wealth to corner the market and then to lobby politicians to put out rules in their favor. and now youre in this situation.
its precisely because the market was free in the first place, allowing groups to gather much more wealth than others. for it not to happen, you need to have a controlled market, with rules and regulations to ensure that noone garners huge heaps of wealth to the extent of becoming practical feudal lords. ironic and contradictory it seems, it is not. we use similar regulations and laws in civil life. we need same kinds of limitations in money and wealth too.
never forget this - it never changed at ANY point in history, even when emperors or dictators were about : wealth is power.
Read radical news here
Ip Laws in principle are not wrong but the length of time is. If my children and grand children can live off some IP I developed, They have little incentive to create on their own. Same goes for corporations
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
You know, you'd think /.'ers could find their way around the web without me having to hold their little hands.
Coffee Party USA aims to reinvigorate the public sphere, drawing from diverse backgrounds and diverse perspectives, with the goal of expanding the influence of the People in America's political arena. We do not require nor adhere to any preexisting ideology. We encourage deliberation guided by reason amongst the many viewpoints held by our members. We see our diversity as a strength, not a weakness, because we believe that faithful deliberation from multiple vantage points is the best way to achieve the common good. It is in the responsible and reasonable practice of deliberation that we hope to contribute to society.
Coffee Party USA is made up of people acting independently of political parties, of corporations, and of political lobbying networks. To this point, all products created and hours logged for Coffee Party have been carried out in the spirit of volunteerism. In the coming months and years, we hope to transform our disappointment in our current political system into a force that will return our nation to a course of popular governance, of the People by the People for the People.
We are diverse -- ethnically, geographically, politically, in age and in experience.
We are 100% grassroots. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented.
We demand a government that responds to the needs of the majority of its citizens as expressed by our votes and by our voices; NOT corporate interests as expressed by misleading advertisements and campaign contributions.
We want a society in which democracy is treated as sacrosanct and ordinary citizens participate out of a sense of civic duty, civic pride, and a desire to contribute to society. The Coffee Party is a call to action. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers gave us an enduring gift -- Democracy -- and we must use it to meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/content/about-us
From the Coffee Party web site: http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/content/coffee-party-fact-check
http://votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=456&lang=en#1
votes by members. surprisingly, the votes are also in line with their national party lines.
Read radical news here
Until we form one, we'll all just continue bitching about it on /. I'll be the first to join.
If only Obama really was a "radical leftist." If anything, he's a Republican in disguise.
I'm not sure why this is modded down. The Democratic party in the US is at best moderate-right.
I think there was a reclassification of food assembly as manufacturing. The 14 year old behind the counter at Mcdonalds is now a manufacturing power house.
The MPAA/RIAA's methods of "enforcing" their IP are despicable. But without any protection, one of the current major assets of the US - media and entertainment - will be in serious jeopardy. Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different. That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online. Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
The problem here is that for all his apparent "good will" he either doesn't get it, or he is banking on the voters not to get it and push something through.
It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.
You can't put a copyright on an idea that someone else in a third world country won't just copy WITH CHEAPER INPUTS AND LABOR. You can copyright a song, a movie that sort of thing yes - but unless he wants the US to simply be the entertainment supplier of the world, he is chasing the wrong fish here.
If you come up with an idea to say, make cheap energy through some form of funky technology (insert some form of wind, wave, whatever) and think that the chaps down the road in China, India and a bunch of other countries won't make knock off versions of it WITH FULL SUPPORT OF THEIR GOVERNMENTS then you are totally kidding yourself.
Just the same as if one of those countries jumped in with the exact same technology, I can assure you that the US government would be totally backing US to manufacture the same idea but in their own backyard rather than just buying tons and tons of the stuff from overseas.
While I agree with protecting your own IP, this whole process is dominated by protecting one small part of the overall industry and not the industry as a whole. That's why I think Obama in this is either being kidded or is hoping that his speech will float above the bullshit filters of most voters.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
When, and how? I can't name a single example of this ever actually happening.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
TEA PARTY = grass roots
Good one. I didn't know "sponsored by Fox News" == "grass roots."
so what difference does it make ? he is not a member, but he helps them to reach their evil agenda. what is the end result ?
Read radical news here
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made by a US company.
I wish that was the case, but unfortunately, it's not. With a few discrete exceptions (Motorola and TI still provide a lot of the digital processing chips, for example), most of it is made overseas as well. This certainly includes the user interface processors, memory, A/D conversion, and most of the "glue" chips, which are made by NEC, Hitachi, Samsung, et. al.
Don't take my word for it, open up that box and look at the chips for yourself.
Not that I agree with draconian IP laws, and I'm no fan of the RIAA/MPAA, either. And I certainly believe that software patents go beyond dumb and descend into insanity.
There's a world of difference between protecting genuine innovation, and just granting "unlimited gouge rights" to the first guy who races to the Patent Office with something obvious (think: One Click Shopping, "Look And Feel" with a "Help" button to the right, etc., etc.).
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
But those indie artists can already distribute free or do whatever they want with their music.
I was referring to the ones who, for whatever reason, were with a label and have since returned to being independent. In practice, entering a contract with a label means they will try to own you, even after it's terminated, and even if it's not exclusive.
It's not like the big labels have some right to your material before you make a contract with them.
Note the second point I made. In practice, labels use whatever music they want, and MIGHT fulfill obligations later. If you sue, they can simply say "Oh, we were trying to find you, but couldn't. Hey, can we use your song for that album we released five years ago? No? Okay, we won't sell that album again. Sorry."
If you get any level of fame, the labels will try to take advantage of you, and you don't have much in the way of recourse. If you sue them, they can simply bring in the parade of high-priced lawyers, and you're stuck with what you can afford. The only way to have a chance would be to immediately sell out to another label with money, but they'd be in the RIAA too, so your suit would be dropped or settled for a trivial amount.
the only way for an indie artist to actually succeed is by playing the RIAA's game. Earn a tiny amount of fame on your own, get the attention of a big label, and sell your soul in a permanent exclusive contract. When that contract's expired, retire into oblivion and never produce music again. Be a good peon, and you might get some royalty checks now and then.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
Pardon the 2nd post, but I had to add that I agree with this 1,000 %. Well said.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
It's quite convenient for the Motion Picture and Music industries to claim their interests are as important if not more-so than the actual protection of IP that matters, technology, medicine, engineering, etc...
As a musician who has "IP" out there, and reserves the right to protect it, it is laughable to think my musical creation, or ANY creative work that is for pure entertainment, is somehow is in the same league or group as the non-entertainment IP mentioned latter.
Music and movies are a social commentary, and have attributes to the cultural arts. You can't physically cure diseases, purify water, or put a man on the moon with a movie or a song. To suggest that entertainment IP is detrimental to the survival of the US and world economies is heinous and utterly absurd. It is exactly this type of IP legislation, and selfishness by the multimedia arts industry, that is preventing real world solutions from being distributed to those who need it most.
Ex. Can't distribute cheap malaria vaccines to those is Africa or 3 world countries since the patent holders prefer to keep supply at deflated levels while maintaining inflationary profit margins.
Like most things in life, this is about money. Pure and simple.
Next time you go see a movie, or buy that new Blu-Ray or DVD, or purchase a song online, take into consideration that you are feeding the very machine that is willing to stifle every expression of liberty, purely to maintain their market. Congratulate yourself in knowing you play your part.
I couldn't find it when I wrote my post, but this is (I think) the instance I had in mind. There was also personal experience, when I got detected by my university's automatic system for sharing music from Jamendo. The detection system used lists from major labels, and the music was under a CC license that allowed sharing.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
*He* would.
Any politician will support the entity that contributes the most.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They're trade representatives of their respective industries. No shit that Obama's going to back them.
As much as we like to shit on the MPAA and RIAA, they make IP. subsequently, and often foolishly, they try to protect their IP. Which is their right.
I can't get riled up over IP violation law anymore. There's just so much more to life than ripping DVDs to put on my PSP, Phone or for backup purposes. I'm not saying that the cause is lost, just, not worth burning calories on on slashdot.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Sounds better in the media then ' we bilked you people out of lots of money last year.. and we want more this year"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Dey derp a-der!
If free distribution and viral marketing on the internet works so great, why aren't they doing it?
Because "they" are still living in the past.
I'm losing respect for Obama, fast. I voted for him. The alternative was horrid. I didn't really feel like I had a choice. I hoped he would accomplish good things. It has been over a year and not only has he gotten nothing done but he has gone back on campaign promises. Once again we have a loser for a President. How many administrations do we have to put up with this before we've been punished enough here in Heck?
Lets have someone like Dean or Perot, with vision and just a tinge of insanity. It would make things more interesting.
Actually that is a very good point. These people seem to think countries outside the US are all backwater dumps. Parts of them are (as are plenty of places here) but that doesn't mean they don't have some brilliant people. We will end up importing ideas as well as goods with things like ACTA. At least until our printing presses stop printing money.
is the only cure for this. If enough software/games/movies/music is licensed under the GPL then there would be no need to waste money on crappy closed source options. All of what I mentioned are just promotion, give me office for free charge me for support, or give me more incentive to buy like lower prices or include extra scarce products with my software/music/movies/games etc. Sell me the experience not the imaginary 1's and 0's on a piece of plastic that cost less than what one of my toe nail clippings are worth!
Visit my Forums?
Unfortunately, that's not the case in the U.S. because our current property laws allow a relatively few people to take the lion's share of the benefit from the production being done.
Fixed that for you!
In addition... you are aware that you are critisizing capitalism aren't you. Be less afraid of communism (not the state type) it's what you are really talking about.
OBAMAA
Am I the only one who is beginning to get worried?
Probably.
Glad you finally woke up.
The writing has been on the wall for quite a few years now, and the rest of us have been worried all along.
I am not a 'media consumer', but a potential customer for their services.
I consume food and drink, not movies or music. When i am done consuming my dinner, it is gone...unavailable for re-use.
When I watch a move, listen to music, or read a book...all are still there after I'm done, not consumed.
If you think of yourself as a 'consumer' of IP, then you have already been subjugated, and the brainwashing almost complete.
Get them thinking like cattle, then they will act like cattle and be as easy to control.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
on google :
http://www.google.com/search?q=obama+backs+acta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
Read radical news here
So in fact draconian intellectual property laws are antithetical to prosperity.
Isn't any draconian law antithetical to prosperity?
I think the interesting question in this case is where the line is between "draconian" and "impotent". You'd think there would be a huge area in between, but we don't seem to be able to find it: a few people are getting penalised absurdly for relatively minor infractions, while millions of people continue to break the law at the expense of legal rightsholders and get away with it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There you go. You have successfully brought the old slashdot by argue ip laws but ignoring the executing congressmen bit. Maybe because everyone wants to do that now?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You voted for a lightly-regarded senator with a minimal track record.
You ignored the fact that Big Media heavily pushed his candidacy.
It's entirely too late to complain now.
Am I the only one who is beginning to get worried?
Only those of you just noticing the writing on the wall that's been there for several decades now.
The rest of saw this coming years ago.
I am not a 'consumer' of media, I am a potential customer for the works of media.
When I consume dinner or a beer, it's gone...consumed.
When I listen to music, read a book, or watch a film...they are still there after I'm done...not consumed.
If you accept the label of 'consumer', or use it in this context...you have already been subjugated. Your brainwashing is almost complete.
Get them thinking like cattle, and they behave like cattle.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Don't underestimate the power of your ISP. No internet for you!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal."
- Quellcrist Falconer
"innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people" except the average american doesn't produce original content, in fact the average american listens to copyrighted mainstream garbage every day just finalizing proof that our administration only cares about the mega companies
I'm just rating it "Interesting" because I think an armed rebellion in the US would be interesting to watch from the other side of the pond.
The music industry's big problems are not going to be solved by ACTA/DMCA, or whatever.
(1) The Internet has provided the revolution in marketing. If a musician sells a song on the internet for a dime, then he's making more money off his music with that CD than he would if he was bound by a music industry contract. The "big music contract" is a pyramid scheme.
(2) People can find diverse music on the internet.
(3) You can buy an awesome digital recorder for well under a thousand dollars.
(4) Sound processing software is now beyond awesome. You can get awesome sampled instruments and can fully produce them (think VSTs and Ableton, Melodyne, Cubase, etc.). This stuff is not that expensive and it is really revolutionary.
Two things keeping the music industry from collapsing are the love that the young fogies have for hit music and the inertia of the musicians.
It's so much easier for people to be told what music to like than it is for them to discover music for themselves. The broadcast media have had about sixty years of dictating mass taste. Trendsetting has spawned from a very centralized location for the past few decades. Now, trends can be spawned globally. One cool thing from a group of kids in Argentina can become all the rage in Winnipeg or Singapore. Trends will become more like the weather and less like an idea spawned by some really "cool" people. William Gibson talks about similar themes in his books. People still really want to be a part of the herd, though. The success of "People", "US", "Star", the National Enquirer and fools like Perez Hilton are proof enough of that. The shape, form, and number of those herds will not be as predictable or easy to follow as they have been in the past. That's a bitch for the music industry, because the music industry has so many unnecessary middlemen.
Musicians are really beginning to market themselves now. That's the way for them to make money. The odds of hitting it big with a label are absurd. Even if you get a contract, the advance is the most money the musicians usually see. You don't have to be "cross-collateralized" when you sell your own music.
So, it's just a matter of time. Raving against the music industry is stupid. You're only raving against a soon-to-be-extinct dinosaur that doesn't even know you exist. If you really want to fight the music industry, develop shrink-wrapped ready-to-go open source music promotion & sales websites for bands! You'll help accelerate the death of big music much faster that way than by stupidly moaning for your Britney Spears albums. Facilitate an easy, cheap, and visible internet presence for independent musicians!
That is just about what one would expect from Barrak Bin'Laden Obama
What the F*** is Kharma i do got teeth i don't got no kharma
I have been calling for armed rebellion for years now. I somehow doubt it will ever happen, even though the United States Constitution gives us the LEGAL RIGHT to overthrow the US Government at any time the people deem necessary.
hahaha, get fucked murika
I have to agree with this. Living in Raleigh, NC, a fairly large but new city, I simply don't see hardly ANY factories ANYWHERE. As far as the eye can see, everything is suburbs and retail (grocery stores and Home Depots on every block). We seem to be a completely consumption-based economy. There some high-tech (i.e. IBM, who's quickly offshoring jobs to China) and some bio-pharmaceutical. But I don't see much work for the 'average joe' that you used to have in this country when industry was king.
It's downright scary thinking what might happen if World War 3 were to ever break out. The only reason we won WWII was because our factories produced weapons faster than the Axis countries (who's factories were being bombed). Virtually ALL of our industry was used for the war effort in order to accomplish this. But we'd never be able to win a conventional drawn-out war anymore. We simply don't have the industry anymore. And who does? China. And who's side are they likely to be on in WW3? Not ours. So it's virtually guaranteed that WW3 is going to be nuclear, since that's the only way we'd 'win' the war.
You're going to have to pay the guy who owns the machines that produce what you want.
Dilbert RSS feed
Yes it is a self selection sample bias of the early Americans.
And that outlook is precisely why some shitty little colonies became a global superpower, economic powerhouse, and research and innovation center or the world.
Of course they've been overwhelmed now, hence the imminent collapse of all of that.
Wow, that's a big fucking surprise that Obama and the Democrats suck Hollywood's, the recording industry's, and Big Content's cocks. And then all the Slashdot lefties try to justify it with "but...but...the Republicans would have done it too!". Yeah, right.
Obama is a hypocritical lying piece of crap politician JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fucking moron.
England was. Or maybe Germany. Or whatever. The US became a world power basically as a consequence of WW1, not before it.
Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy
If that is so, then why do countries in the West with relatively strong IP laws have thriving markets for books, films, music, software, etc., while places like China where there isn't such strong protection for IP have a thriving thriving market for copied stuff that originated in the West?
Of course artificial monopolies created by IP laws are a net loss after the works have been made, where they deliberately restrict what would otherwise be cheap mass distribution of the works. If we repealed all copyright protection tomorrow, society would benefit enormously, for the next year or two. But this completely ignores the incentivisation aspect of our current IP systems, and what would happen five or ten or twenty years down the line.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
mpaa copyright on that lug nut you put on the car
PROFIT
everytime someone uses that tire YOUR RICH
and if your on a engine part OMG years of love in wealth
It has been pretended by some that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. 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 anybody. 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.
[No wonder the texas board of education wants jefferson written the fuck out of american history]
"Isn't any draconian law antithetical to prosperity?"
No, not really. You could pretty easily make a draconian law to that effect, but you can't possibly say that a law which (for example) allows suspected drunk drivers to be executed on the side of the road (extremely draconian) would realistically prevent everyone from being prosperous.
"I think the interesting question in this case is where the line is between "draconian" and "impotent". You'd think there would be a huge area in between, but we don't seem to be able to find it: a few people are getting penalised absurdly for relatively minor infractions, while millions of people continue to break the law at the expense of legal rightsholders and get away with it."
There is, and we used to have it, but people complained about the costs (which is ironic, because the solution is so very much more expensive in the long run) and "unfairness" (to be fair, there was a lot of it, but since there still is, so perhaps the flaw lies elsewhere...): we actually used to empower fairly low-level government officials and bureaucrats to use their god-given brains and make decisions. The upside was that rather than having one official with the ability to half-make decisions and 200 lackeys who serve to shuffle around paperwork in triplicate, we could have 3 or 4 officials with 1 or 2 secretaries each and spend a fraction as much (though far more per person... decision makers are expensive) to get far more done. The downside was that these people had huge amounts of discretionary power to abuse, and did so, blatantly. So now we pay a whole bunch more, have a lot more people involved, are less able to actually get anything done, and still have massive iniquities and waste. Go us.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I don't really care about the specific issue (not north-american here), but a featured post in that site made me laugh: "Holland today is probably the worst country in Europe".
They don't know much of Europe, do they?
Dilbert RSS feed
While your point is entirely fair and valid, I am still waiting for someone to propose a credible alternative to the principles of the current system (not to be confused with their current overweight implementation).
I know the old joke that the surest sign of intelligent life in space is that we don't know about it. However, in the real world, there is nothing in copyright law today that would prevent entrepreneurs in creative industries from adopting new business models that do not rely on copyright protection. If those models were more successful, they would therefore be a better incentive to create and share works, and businesses following them would be more profitable. That being the case, it is telling that in a forum like this, full of geeks with an interest in the subject, no-one seems to have heard of such alternative models taking over yet.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Decorative GASSED JEWS!!! :D
Yup. How's that whole "hope and change" think working out?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Makes sense that our politicians on both sides would sick up for our successful industries. Don't hear about those two needing bailouts...
The USA doesn't EXPORT much of anything anymore:
Military and related products
Movies & Music & TV(?)
IP lawsuits
MSonopoly software
Gambling (aka Banking "products")
It makes sense these "industries" are largely untouchable; even when they screw over their own country.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
there could be made no better quotation at this time and point.
Read radical news here
It's already been modded "Flamebait" twice. :')
read the comments. no 'leftie' is justifying it. this is not something that can be justified.
Read radical news here
This comment made me laugh. The ignorance about historical events is appalling. Let me enlighten you:
Note: I'm not pro-tea party or pro-coffee party, in fact I don't care (not American)
Dilbert RSS feed
Anybody who expects the democrats to be on the right side of the issue on patent and copyright issues is fooling themselves. I wish it weren't so, but progressives haven't yet figured out that maximal patent and copyright is a really bad thing. OTOH, the Republicans aren't any better. So at least until one or the other party gets a clue, this isn't an issue upon which we can really base our voting choices. If you care, the place to work this out is in the primary races--run against the incumbent yourself, and make copyright/patent balance your issue. You won't win, but you might raise some consciousnesses.
Um, Raleigh and the whole RTP area is about research and education, not manufacturing. Hell, there are three major universities and a bunch of smaller universities in the area. It's not set up for manufacturing. That's just how the US. Manufacturing is done is some places, and research in others. The two usually don't overlap. Or perhaps you would expect a smelting plant next to Princeton University? Or a car manufacturing plant on 5th Avenue in NYC?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Most cars sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S. Granted, they're made in foreign-owned plants, but they're made in the U.S. With globalization, there are really very few products you can point at where every assembly is made in a single country, but nevertheless the U.S. still makes stuff--the claim that all our jobs have moved offshore simply isn't true.
Agreed but if you become a nation whose economy is solely based on IP and little else, those with more resources/Infrastructure/agriculture will just relieve you of the fruits of your labor.. and there is nothing you can do about it.
No I have not been playing starcraft 2 ;-)
Well, its obvious that your true colors (the color of $$) have been reveled....just like your predecessor that pushed the DMCA into our lives. All I have to say is FU, Mr. Obama!. And FU Bill Clinton you c0cksuck3r! I am truly ashamed to have voted for either of you. Change is coming alright....it's just not what we were lead to believe. Don't worry, change is going to come during the next elections when I help vote your sorry ass out of office.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
I don't know what specifically the GP was referring to, but if you check out this graph, you will see that US exports aren't really as bad as you would think listening to some of the scaremongers. Most of the exports are industrial items, not cheap consumer goods that you purchase and use on a regular basis, which is why you feel a disconnect. But as you can see, anyone who says, "America doesn't manufacture anything" is making it up and hasn't actually looked at the numbers.
Qxe4
Form my observation if the US is going to rely on their national intelligence to support the economy, they are in BIG trouble!
You mean *OUR* IP, right? WTF gives you the right to dictate how I wish to protect my IP. Enforce the laws you have now, you jackass.
Not to raise a "tu quoque" argument here, but of course the Tea Party is precisely the same thing, just a part of a different political machine (the same one that brought Sarah Palin into the limelight).
Which brings me to Rule #1 of understanding any political organization: follow the money.
I am officially gone from
I hope that nobody is surprised by this.
Love sees no species.
maybe because he's an idiot that believes the republican party and john mccain is his friend.
and indeed he is an idiot.
similar to a variant of idiots that believe the democratic party and obama is THEIR friend.
either way, both of you are fucked. and the two of you are going to work together, perhaps unknowingly, to fuck over a whole lot of people.
if both groups, including you, ended up killing each other. that would be win win situation in my mind.
The fact that this post is modded Flamebait show how much we have forgotten as a nation. Capitalism brings and has brought us unprecedented economic freedom and prosperity and now half the country would be satisfied with the high-taxes, high unemployment, and nanny state the Democrat party is crafting for us.
I have the clean conscience of being able to say I didn't vote Democrat in the election that put the sock puppet in Oval Orifice.
'n' "I told you so!"
nya, nya...
"Won't Get Fooled Again" eh boys?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Really, I ignored his "facts"? Manufacturing, as a percentage of the US economy, has decreased for 50 years. In 2006 manufacturing accounted for only 12% of the economy. In 1993 it was 15.9% of the economy. In 1953 it was 28% of the economy.
That's more than a 50% decline in percentage of the economy. So, tell me again just how healthy the manufacturing sector of the economy is....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Thanks for voting for this guy
christianity ?
or any religion at all...
The lack of due process in ACTA is bad but can we use it on the RIAA just send them a few copyright notes or use some open wifi. Any ways what will mass banning get us a lot of small business shut down and maybe few big ones as well.
Nah, you've got it wrong. Would you also say that Bruce Springsteen has a "monopoly" over sales of his concert tickets; monopolies are bad, therefore, everyone should be allowed to create and sell tickets to his concerts? Of course not. IP covers a whole lot of things - it includes trademarks (i.e. the right to exclusive use of a name). Do you think that Honda's "monopoly" over the name "Honda" constitutes some sort of unfair monopoly which degrades the economy? No. Do you think that open-source software has a right to put any restrictions on how people use their software (like whether or not to release the code, or sell it, or rename it)? Without the concept and enforcement of "intellectual property", then everyone should be allowed to to anything with it. What about a company coming along and taking a musician's songs or author's writing, packaging them up in a CD or book and selling them in stores? Without IP, that's perfectly okay. The fact of the matter is that without IP, it's pretty darn hard for creators to get paid for their work because it's all 100% public domain without IP laws. This idea about repealing copyright for a competitive marketplace is bizarrely out of touch with real-world economics, though I can certainly understand why it appeals to the freeloaders on the internet (who have much to gain by taking everything they can grab, but nothing to lose because they produce nothing for anyone to take). I really can't understand why Slashdot, of all places, seems to be so out of touch with economics in the real world.
When was the last time you bought a car that wasn't manufactured in the U.S.?
I seem to recall companies like Honda - companies that are not U.S. based, mind you - building factories in America because, well, cars are friggin' huge. It's expensive as hell to ship them across an entire fucking Ocean and then drive them cross-country. It's cheaper to pay good wages in America than to pay lesser wages in other countries and ship it out.
Yeah, yeah, there's still plenty of companies that import, but as stuff like Chrysler and whatnot collapse I'm sure that there will be foreign companies looking to snap up fully-functional plants so they can save on shipping. Remember, having a plant in the states gives you access to most of North America by land.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
you're going to elect another batch of morons whom to execute at a later date
So long as we have a definite date set in advance to make sure this happens before the morons do any damage, this sounds like a win-win to me! ~
Nobody said "all" our manufacturing jobs have moved offshore. However, a large number of them have. In 1953 manufacturing was 28% of our economy. In 2005 it was 12% of our economy.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
A credible alternative is the simple abolition of copyright and patent law. We don't need them. I don't care if you think it's credible or not, I'm working to make it happen with or without you.
(Plagiarism is another matter, more properly covered by fraud law).
Sides with the RIAA.
Wants DNA collected with all arrests.
Shuts Down Federal ACORN Probe into Corruption & Voter Registration Fraud.
Kills further moon projects.
Raise gas prices to $7.00 a gallon to "protect the environment".
He is either evil or stupid.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
> I somehow doubt it will ever happen, even though the United States Constitution gives us the LEGAL RIGHT to overthrow the US Government at any time the people deem necessary.
That seems rather silly. When one overthrows ones government, one is hardly going to throw oneself and others who were involved in jail afterwards because it was illegal, is one? Usually the following two rules apply:
1) If your revolution succeeds, it was legal.
2) If your revolution fails, it was illegal.
When it comes to revolutions the law is fairly irrelevant.
I love your solution to disagreeing with behavior by the Obama Administration: Join an organization started by members of Obama's Presidential campaign. You are worried about the tea party being taken over by special interests, so you suggest joining an organization that is basically just a subsidiary of the Democratic Party (which you seem to believe, likely correctly, is run by special interests).
Precisely, join up and outnumber the original members. At that point, the organization is yours.
How do you kill that which has no life?
You would be better off with a benevolent dictator because at least you could then exert the right to a violent revolution to overthrow the government should they turn into a tyrant.
Here are some apt quotes from Thomas Jefferson:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Notice how you supposedly have a democracy and yet you fear your government and you no sense of liberty? Democracy does not guarantee liberty.
Notice how you now have large cities and how corrupt they are? Notice how some of your own people are trying to remove the right to bare arms? Notice how your government wastes money on all sorts of welfare including corporate welfare (bailouts and grants)?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Good cars can be built in the U.S. so long as the UAW isn't involved.
Yeah, that sounded like what they would say about themselves.
You didn't address his assertion about who founded it...which sounds believable. And which, if true, casts doubt on a lot of their self-characterizations.
As for his "I couldn't find a thing about what they were actually about", I'm not sure that waffling is what you want me to think they're about, but if that's what you want, ok.
FWIW the PolitiFact site ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/ ) now says that Obama has kept 96 out of the over 500 campaign promises they track. They break it down into more detail, and I don't always agree with them as to what constitutes keeping a promise. If you're interested you might check it out.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
We're going to aggressively protect BIG MEDIA,' Obama said in his speech, 'Our single greatest asset is THEIR MONEY! [...] It is essential to our prosperity AS POLITICIANS AND BENEFACTORS and it will only become more so in this century.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again.
Right on. Leaning on IP isn't the way forward. We can't expect to be an entire nation full of "thinkers" with a "service economy" forever. You can't eat intellectual property. You can't live in it either. Ultimately we have to be able to create what we need or at least create what other people need.
American benefits enormously from our content flowing around the world. We lose considerable soft power when you lock down content.
Any convenient enough delivery like the iTunes store will moves product abroad, even in China. If otoh you totally block the people who cannot afford the product, then they'll just listen to European music instead. ACTA will never apply to China either, btw.
America's soft power has been evaporating on every front. In education, Bush tightening student visas was extremely bad, but the costs were already driving foreigners away. Do you realize how Europe has been reversing the Monroe Doctrine by educating upper middle class kids from Central and South America?
ACTA's three-strikes provisions are a fundamental violation of human rights and simply won't help. ACTA's insane seizure requirements are clearly designed to keep drugs prices high in poor countries, which kills people. Obama's support for ACTA has just cost him my campaign contributions next time. I'll surely still vote for him, but I'll never donate money.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
is that an important metric?
Our economy is actually 40x larger than it was in 1953. Does it follow that manufacturing should be 40x bigger as well?
blacks are like 12% of the population and more than half have been disenfrachised from voting because they're in jail or felons... not a significant percentage of the vote. Whites+Hispanics put Obama in office, but mostly whites. I voted for him because he's the only candidate who isn't a total sell-out, don't give a shit about his race.
I bet there's some interesting math involved, not to mention a certain amount of heady scare.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Given the US is the biggest consumer market in terms of spending in the world, it's little surprise that there's an imbalance of trade, even with a strong manufacturing sector. If you can find domestic customers for all that you can produce, why go to the additional expense of exporting to countries where they're likely to pay less than the domestic customer?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
citation/source?
Do note that the 14 year old does contribute to GDP, whatever the classification. Had McDonalds been reassigned from Food to Manufacturing, there would be a definite slide in the food figures. So if you can show either evidence of reclassification or the corresponding drop in the food sector, we'll believe.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Where's a Vetinari when you need one?
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
For all of the above points, not necessarily. The reason it's stable despite job losses could be due entirely to productivity gains, as show in this post from FiveThirtyEight. Note that the source of data is from the Fed. Productivity gains could have been brought about from all manner of things, but particularly relevant would be increased automation, for which "us" nerds are at least partially to blame.
That said, the mil-ind complex certainly has a hand, and had Chrysler/GM gone down hard it would be a very different chart, I suspect.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Senator McCain, there's no reason to start name-calling.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Obama is better than that posting indicates. Clearly the key to that message is that he wants to stop foreign entities from pirating works on a commercial scale. His views about American individuals file sharing are probably a horse of anothe color.
Really? did you go to one of the meetings? I doubt it, because you sound like you have no idea what this thing is really about about.
I went to the meeting yesterday and MOST people I met would qualify as independent, centrists with few on the center-left and few on the center-right. All if not most felt disenfranchised. People that originally supported Obama because of the "Change" mantra are disappointed when they see little to no change at all.
I couldn't care less how the Coffee Party was started or who started it. The movement has a life of its own. The people is making it that way.
I see nothing wrong with the idea that just regular folks can get together and talk about politics, and particularly doing so in a climate of civility and respect for other people's point of view. This was poised to happen, given the discourse we see from Washington. Who cares if a former activist and film maker did it? It could have been a retired Admiral and it would be the same.
And before you go bashing me, I have as many Libertarian ideas as I have Socialist ones. I'm all over the spectrum and I'm trying to find a common ground with the system in this country instead of proposing a rip-and-replace model that won't go anywhere.
The model employed by successful Free Software projects and, indeed, 90% of all software written, seems to work well. Get someone to pay for that act of creating the work in the first place (which is hard), not for making copies (which is easy). Trying to find the difficult thing by charging for the easy thing doesn't make sense.
This is how TV shows are funded, for example. A group puts together a pilot at their own expense (or, sometimes, pitches a concept and gets funding for the pilot). The network then looks at the pilot and pays for it to be created if they think that they can make money selling advertising space. This model might actually (more or less) work even without copyright - you could still sell advertising space for the premiere even if people could copy and redistribute it immediately afterwards, if enough people wanted to watch it immediately.
More rationally, however, you could cut out the middle men. At the moment, to watch TV, you pay advertisers (with your time and - they hope - attention), advertisers pay networks and the networks pay studios who actually make the show. What if, instead of pitching the pilot to the networks, a studio put it online and allowed anyone to share it? Then, if you like it, you invest, say, $10 in the series. Once the series is made, they release it. If you like it, you pay $10 towards season 2, or towards the creators' next project. If the amount required for the project isn't reached within a fixed time period, the money is returned.
Obviously, it's in the interests of the existing group of middle men to ensure that people don't take this model seriously, and propagate the meme that copyright is the only way to fund the creation of ideas. In fact, it's a problematic model because you can only make money from copyright after publishing it, which means that the decision of what should be published is in the hands of the groups with a lot of spare capital.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is classic prevarication with statistics.
I would like to request you restate, including the ABSOLUTE SIZE of the economy, so that we may determine how many "manufacturing jobs" there were at any given time. The percentage of the total economy is only relevant taken with facts on the size of the economy (and it's foolish to have to state that explicitly).
So at least until one or the other party gets a clue, this isn't an issue upon which we can really base our voting choices.
Still, it's funny looking back on Slashdot comments from 2008 and realizing how Obama's supporters had bamboozled themselves into thinking he was going to be "different" about this issue...
I didn't say US economic successes were due to military successes, I said economic and military successes were due to innovation. I also didn't say all US military conflicts ended in success. Reading comprehension is hard, huh?
*blinks* You voted for the guy from Chicago who only managed to get elected to the lower offices by DQing his opponents and getting his buddies to release confidential court records of his opposition opponent as the not total sell out? What color is an orange in your universe?
I'd say, based on this post and a brief perusal of your posting history, that you shouldn't call others ignorant or idiots: Your command of written English is extremely poor, and the quality of your posts suffer as a result. I suspect this stems not so much from ignorance, which you appear to possess in abundance, as stupidity, of which you certainly have no lack.
Jesus H Christ, your posts are every bit as ugly as you are. English - learn it, live it, love it. Until then, stop posting.
Government is run by lobbyists/special interests and runs counter to the wishes of the majority of the population. No change there then. Wasn't Obama the guy who denounced special interests in the presidential debates? Nothing to see here, merely another puppet president controlled by the new world order elites.
We do still produce a lot of that kind of stuff domestically; manufacturing of consumer products has been offshored much faster than manufacturing of expensive industrial goods has. For example, the domestic car industry has declined, but the U.S. is still by a good margin the largest exporter of tractors. Manufacturing of military hardware has moved the least of all.
I'd probably be worried about commodities as a bigger issue. The most glaring one is that we used to produce a lot of oil, and now import most of it. Straddling the commodity/manufacturing line somewhat, the decline in U.S. steel production is probably a significant military issue, although our production actually is still reasonably high (steel-industry employment has been decimated, but number of tons of steel produced was roughly steady from 1980 through 2007 or so, dipping only in the recent recession).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I wish that was the case, but unfortunately, it's not. With a few discrete exceptions (Motorola and TI still provide a lot of the digital processing chips, for example), most of it is made overseas as well. ...
Don't take my word for it, open up that box and look at the chips for yourself.
Actually, I don't need to take your word for it *or* open up any boxes. Why? I have worked on integrating software into dozens of models of TVs, Blu-Ray players, and DVRs in the last few years, spanning almost every major CE company. I'd say over 2/3 of them use Broadcom chips. I have 2 BD players and 2 TVs from 4 different manufacturers on my desk right now, all with BRCM SoCs. Even the companies that fab their own chips in-house often use them as a second source. (As an interesting and mind-boggling aside, almost every major CE company is now using Linux in their TVs, and many of their BD players as well. I bet that's not something Linux expected when he first made it available back in 1991...)
BRCM's market share in the TV/STB business is enormous. Not that it's necessarily a good thing, BRCM can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.
And in general, who are the top 5 fabless semiconductor manufacturers? Qualcomm, Broadcom, STMicro, Marvell, and Conexant. All except STMicro are American companies (and ST is European). Being fabless, yes, most of the chips are made overseas - but that's my point! US innovation has become about IP, not manufacturing. These companies are making huge margins these days by using Taiwanese, Malaysian, Chinese, etc contractors (who are doing well, of course, but no 60% margins there!)
US manufacturing is doing just fine. Here is a recent analysis. The problem is that productivity has risen through automation and manufacturing jobs have disappeared. This was bound to happen no matter what and these jobs are not coming back (I'm surprised that we still need people AT ALL during the manufacturing of a car for example). The conclusions from the well written article I linked to above:
Offshoring manufacturing is a boogeyman that isn't backed up by the facts.
I'm not sure why you think that since you can't see factories from your area that they aren't any around. First, you live in the RTP. Research generally means white collar, learning type of work and not manufacturing. Second, drive about 4 hours to Greenville and visit the BMW plant sometime. Drive a couple more hours to the Honda plant that's also in SC. There is plenty of manufacturing around even if you can't see it from your porch.
industry producing at an all time high? financial industry which is able to create money out of thin air and then charge real interest on it, industry which produces all kinds of fraudulently triple-A rated derivatives and sells them to the hardworking suckers abroad. Most of it doesn't produce anything of value, merely shuffles papers and numbers around.
That's one of the problems with the US economy. Honest work is passe, producing tangible items is passe, everyone wants to get rich by taking loans, blowing money on consumption and gambling on the stock market.
http://economicsofcontempt.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-financial-sector-too-big.html
Financial institutions are responsible for 41% of all corporate profits now, while in 1985 it was 16%, their GDP share jumped from 4 to 8% in last 50 years. They simply grow like a cancer while other industries shrink.
GDP numbers are fluff anyway because they don't measure the health and sustainability of the economy. Peter Schiff (mentioned earlier) explains it well in his multiple appearances - many of them precede the meltdown of 2008 (youtube has it all).
I would start by reading this article, then look at the trade data on your own here.
I don't know if any countries are exporting anything at all times highs right now because of the global recession, though the trade data does show some detail about the US import/export ratios for certain products. For example, in January '10 the US exported over 2x more airplane engine parts, plastics, coal, corn, cotton and metal ore than it imported. If you remove crude oil from the equation the trade imbalance shrinks dramatically.
Were they confidential court records that were suppressed to cover up the truth?
It's time for armed rebellion. We must storm the capital, while the military is stretched thin, and execute the majority of our legislators.
You first.
No, seriously. Why would we do that, when our electoral system is functioning perfectly fine? Newsflash: The American people get the government they elect. Yes, the system is stacked, but all that really stands in the way of true change is the electorate.
I don't understand why you think a populace that is too dumb to vote for someone of quality is somehow not going to be too dumb to properly execute an armed rebellion.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea
that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the
public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged
with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing
circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is
supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or
individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock
of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
No sig today...
That's why.
How's that HOPE AND CHANGE workin' for ya?
Had to say it, folks.
Spotty, to be honest, but I wasn't actually expecting the Second Coming. The World is more willing to work with the US now. The war spendings are now in the budget, and I don't think we're torturing people anymore. We're not being scared like children every other day by orange alert levels. The health care reform - warts and all - seems to have a chance. The rich are no longer getting tax cuts that insult our intelligence. The economy is bad, but not as bad as it could easily have been. Compared to early 2009, it's certainly looking more like we can look up at the sky instead of down into the abyss.
Could he have done more? Sure, but I knew I was voting for a center-left pragmatist.
the only thing he is doing is securing more capital for his reelection campaign, by backing people who think it is OK to fine someone 100,000+ for one illegal download, were-as a stolen CD would normally only demand 100.
"ill keep my guns money and freedom, you keep the change!"
A failed business model is certainly not a priority of the US Government and Obama needs to be forcefully reminded of this. People are dying in foreign wars and in our own hospitals. There are certainly lots more important issues that need to be addressed
It wouldn't be the first. It wouldn't even be the second.
Question: Now that all the manufacturing jobs are all but a memory, what exactly are you going to do with those millions of out of work Americans who don't have the creative ability to "make IP" huh? There are literally millions of them, can't speak for the rest of the country but the south is quickly becoming nothing but dead towns with boarded up homes.
You gonna pay them to sit at home and consume IP? No money for IP working at Mickey D, hell most places you'll be lucky to keep a roof over your head. So what are you gonna do with them? Kinda pointless to try educating them, as we have seen in the tech sector they'll ship the white collar jobs off shore just as quick. So what exactly do you do with these teaming masses in your magical IP economy, which stuff all the money in a few pockets at the top, while the rest can go get fucked?
Better think quick, as all these oath takers and other bunches gathering guns ain't doing it because they are happy little campers you know. All it is gonna take is another Stalin or Hitler, that is a good speaker and can rally the masses to say "see those rich bastards? Why the hell should we be living like dirt while those blood sucking leeches live like kings? let's just kill those pigs and take it back!" to have everything in your IP economy turn into a shit storm. Don't forget multinational corporations have NO loyalty to you, this country, or anyone but themselves.
You got millions out of work, millions of poor, pissed off individuals, many of whom have pretty much become completely disgusted by the greed and corporation kissing like we see in TFA. Frankly I don't think it would take much to light the powderkeg ATM. Wish it wasn't so, but that is what happens when your leaders develop a "let them eat cake" mentality. And we saw how well it turned out for the last ones that had that attitude, didn't we? Don't think it can't happen again, because when you are bankrupt, with no job and no hope, and your life is nothing but shit, what have you got to lose?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The issue here that allowed the collapse appears to be the issue of campaign finance (lobbying) and biased media coverage.
Or when you start removing the built in security to the system it helps progress the collapse faster. Like when we killed the states rights and gave the people the right to vote for the Senate which allows lobbying to have a greater affect on the system by needing the candidates in the senate race to campaign more instead of keeping the people in the state government happy.
The % is not the important number. Our economy has grown tremendously since 1953. The pie has gotten bigger!
[...]
Many independent filmmakers, who controlled from one-quarter to one-third of the domestic marketplace, responded to the creation of the MPPC by moving their operations to Hollywood, whose distance from Edison’s home base of New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and covers the area, was averse to enforcing patent claims."
Exactly, others will move on elsewhere and exclude the U.S. and other jurisdictions. It is a gross failure to look at history and all aspects to these issues and the debate going on. This is exactly what politicians are doing everywhere when they stand by content with the very biased views of lobbyists only.
Good job all you geniuses who voted for him.
Was there anyone else better? Sure.
Was there anyone else who was perfect? Of course not.
Regardless, epic lulz @ the losers who bought into this guy's bullshit. Idiots!
That's really cool that Linux is being used in TVs now. Can you give any examples?
This is completely misleading. These numbers include goods produced by nominally American corporations even if all the work is done by employees based outside of the US. This particular scam has been debunked multiple times by the business press.
BTW, the US GDP numbers also include goods produced outside the USA by non-American labor.
If you strip out the work/products made by non-US employees of US corporations, you'll see that both the US GDP and exports have been in steep decline for the past decade.
Magnus.
the trade deficit picture would be significantly different.
Perhaps not as much as you might think. When you are living on less than $5 per day AND you have to pay $3 just to rent a movie, you are going to do without if you can't get it illicitly.
Hopefully the MPAA & RIAA can get a damn clue and start focusing on the real threat to their business - rampant, organized, professional international piracy.
The MPAA didn't go after Americans because they were the biggest threat to their bottom line, but rather because they were the most convenient and highest value targets. I'm sure that the MPAA/RIAA would love to see the millions of black market street vendors in the developing world disappear tomorrow, but that isn't going to happen. The losses from China, India and South America are HUGE but they are also spread out among a huge number of infringers who individually have too few assets to be worth going after; and they are hard to track down too. Try finding any individual street vendor in the slums of Buenos Aires if you don't believe that.
While I agree with protecting your own IP, this whole process is dominated by protecting one small part of the overall industry and not the industry as a whole.
This raises an interesting speculation, though. The idea may not be to attempt to stop international copyright or patent infringement - that's a Land War In Asia if I've ever seen one - but simply to provide grounds for sanctioning goods and services from overseas that are infringing. The argument could go: "Copying our DVD player designs? We'll stop yours at the border".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
No, they were Jack Ryan's divorce records. They should not have been released at all, but suddenly Obama pops up on the scene, and the records get released by a friendly judge. Afterwards, of course, everybody in the judicial sector agreed they shouldn't have been released, but by then Jack was sunk.
The RIAA's laws protect the indie artist FROM the RIAA more so than it protects the RIAA itself.
About indie artists, let me quote Frank Zappa, in a live performance of 'Tities and Beers':
"Don't talk to me about hell. I Know that, I've been there... remember I signed for United Artists for 8 fucking years!"
What indie artists are you talking about? Madonna?
It is not a prevarication with statistics. It's a number showing the lessening of the importance of manufacturing in our economy. That manufacturing is a much smaller slice of the pie now than it used to be means that manufacturing growth, if it can be called as such, has been at a much slower pace than the rest of the economy. The fact that the entire pie has grown shows just how far manufacturing has fallen when the slice of the pie is now less than half of what it used to be. If manufacturing had grown at the same pace as the rest of the economy for the last 50 years its slice of the pie would be at least close to the same percentage of the economy it was 50 years ago. It's not.
The above fact is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said, but it seems the obvious is often denied.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
you can show graphs, talk numbers until you are blue in the face. what counts is this... jobs are lost when not enough people buy stuff our workers have been making. it's a fact, most everything we have now says madeinchina. are the chinese homes full of stuff madeinAmerica? doubt it. that's the problem. we buy their stuff, keep their workers busy, but there's no reciprocity. scare mongers? you bet. i'm scared when our prez stands up in favor of groups like acta that meet in secrecy to decide our fate. to me that means this man isn't above doing the same thing himself.... operating behind closed doors... as for your wp.org graph, it stops in 2004... this is 2010. what about the recent 6 years? the other poster raves about 'his' graphs which say productivity is "up", but that's irrelevant because productivity means more output with fewer employment hours, NOT that there are more folks working and bringing home the bacon! i think you actually believe the hype about oneworldgovt being a good thing, and that global economy that is balanced by the losses of America is the way ta go! as for your statement against 'America doesn't manufacture anything', sure, it's an over-simplification, but you tell me, how many manufacturing jobs have been lost during the past 20 years in this country, how many companies in this country have closed their doors and 'moved on', as they say... thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom
um.. who in turn outsource those programming jobs to india.
That manufacturing is a much smaller slice of the pie now than it used to be means that manufacturing growth, if it can be called as such, has been at a much slower pace than the rest of the economy.
That would only be true if there were no additional slices of the pie to account for the change in percentage. Instead of throwing out one statistic and trying to make reasonably intelligent people believe you, why not throw out some more - what are the percentages of other sectors of the economy? How much of the GDP was 'information technology' back in '53? How much was transportation?
Perhaps manufacturing has grown much less than other sectors, however you don't provide any data to make any sort of legitimate analysis.
On the other hand, Chinese citizens don't have a whole lot of money to spend on inflated prices for media and entertainment. Those industries are not innovative and unlike new tech and software industries don't produce anything of particular value. I don't believe protecting them at the expense of everyone else is really all that important.
as for your wp.org graph, it stops in 2004... this is 2010. what about the recent 6 years?
Wow, can you not be lazy for a moment and look something up for yourself? Google has existed for a number of years now, you'd think everyone would've learned to use it by now. Apparently not you.
you can show graphs, talk numbers until you are blue in the face. what counts is this... jobs are lost when not enough people buy stuff our workers have been making.
What counts is numbers. That's how you measure how many jobs are still in the country, and how many new jobs have come up. But it is not surprising that someone who doesn't know how to use Google also isn't interested in real, hard data, and would rather go with some vague concept that supports his point.
scare mongers? you bet.
Good, I'm glad we agree on something. Now, get your head back in reality. Here, let me help you. Science is based in data.
Qxe4
As long as big-business and the media companies control the politicians of both parties through lobbyists and "campaign contributions" (graft, anyone?), nothing is likely to change. Reform the system so politicians cannot benefit directly these organizations, and the system will likely repair itself. As long as graft and bribery are permitted, the politicians will continue to tow the line. Entities should not be allowed to influence politics directly.
That is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online.
How's Obama going to change that? The Chinese government doesn't care about US intellectual property. Sure they bust a couple of counterfeiters every once an awhile to put on a good show, but in the end, the government over there doesn't mind if some people are selling pirate copies of Windows 7.
Now this is censorship for real and on a massive scale. Not that fake blog about Chavez a couple of posts back and the legitimate prosecution of slander. God, people really do freak and think only with their unmentionable hole when oil is on the line.
Check out this article about where the profits go from the sale of a single $299 iPod. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100002310/what-the-ipod-tells-us-about-britains-economic-future/
Most of the manufacturing profits go to countries that make the high tech, high cost components like the hard drive and screen. Those countries are Japan and the US. Chinese companies that assemble the final product and stamp "Made in China" on it actually get very little of the profits generated.
I pirated Avatar.
I watched the AVI file.
I think the movie kicked ass.
I no longer feel shy about springing the bucks out when it hits the USA on DVD.
And this time, I get it crystal clear, with ENGLISH subtitles, and most likely, a few extra features.
Our greatest decade of economic growth in recent history was the 1960s under JFK, a Democrat. Corporate taxes were much higher at that time.
the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Ryan and his wife agreed to make their divorce records public. On April 2, 2004, Barack Obama formally established his position about the Ryans' soon-to-be-released divorce records, and called on Democrats not to inject them into the campaign.
* Whoosh *
Ummm.... I see you ignore the fact that major portions of our manufacturing capability have been moved offshore. When was the last time you bought a TV made in the US? When was the last time you bought a major household appliance that was manufactured entirely in the US? How about a car? How long has it been since the majority of steel used in the US was made here?
yep, and this is the start of our downfall...
Be seeing you...
Is this a troll I'm just not seeing?
If the pie is twice as big, then a 15% slice of pie is the same size as a former 30% slice of pie. Period.
Heck, I'll even spell out an analogy. Let's say I make 30k a year. Every year I spend 15K buying all the Pop-Tarts at Wal-Mart. With me? I'm spending 50% of my income on pop-tarts. 15K of 30K, 50%.
Now, let's say I get a raise, and now I'm making 60K a year. I like pop-tarts as much as ever, so I keep spending 15K a year buying all the tarts at Wal-Mart. They don't have any more for me to buy, but I'm still buying as many as I always have. Right? 15K = 15K. But now, since I'm making 60K, I'm only spending 25% of my income on Pop-Tarts. 15K = 15K, but 15K/30K = 50% and 15K/60K = 25%.
According to you, I'm spending less on pop-tarts, which is incorrect. Manufacturing has experienced growth and is at record levels. The fact that it has not grown as fast as things like software development or military tech is because these things as economic powers DIDN'T EXIST before a certain point in history.
I'd like to see that after inflation correction. I have a sneaking suspicion it won't look all that great afterwards.
It looked like both sets of supporters were doing a pretty thorough job of fooling themselves.
But hey, an unregulated market with just 2 suppliers will never degenenerate into a cartel, right? FREEDOM! No, CHANGE! Fuck you, we need FREEDOM! Shut it, we want CHANGE!
And yet the only change you have is less freedom. Nice.
For grins, I checked out your linked chart. It is meaningless. If anything, it is an illustration of inflation, and the ever-increasing cost of items/services, and little else.
If you look at the data used to create that chart (http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/industry/OTEA/usfth/aggregate/H04t01.html), you'll see that the important numbers are on the right hand side under the 'TRADE BALANCE' heading. Those numbers are where the problem is, and illustrate that we have a big trade deficit problem.
When you say 'industrial items', I take that to mean factory tools, assemblies, and things of that nature. Of these items, I would venture that the majority of the parts that make up these items were imported to begin with, so the net benefit is nowhere near the perceived benefit.
Your point is not accurate. America, in fact, does not manufacture much.
Long story short:
We are economically fucked, we have been economically fucked for a while, and we have chosen to bury our collective heads in the sand, instead of doing something about it.
If we don't find some way to become self-reliant, and self-sustaining, as both an economic producer, and as a nation, we will continue to be economically fucked.
You CAN see it in the numbers, and the political bullshit sure doesn't help.
Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen, but I follow US matters very closely.
Personally I never liked this all intellectual property obsession (and who does?) and I think it will destroy America in the end. But how exactly this makes Obama evil? So he fully doesn't fit in your worldview how president should act (hint: abolish wars, copyrights and make socialism real. Ok, last part was joke, laugh. Let's say - "make people's lives better"). Yes, no politican is black/white on issues. Yes, politics are maneuvering and there are little room for clear shots. I know geeks doesn't like that. But I thought that geeks are somehow realistic when talking about expectations. Guess not.
He was kinda pro IP before elections (yes, I read actual program) and this doesn't sound like backpedaling or something. What shall be done to show that ACTA can be very harmful and MPAA/RIAA overstepping their territory to pushing DMCA everywhere. And it should be done in civil manner (for example, some prominent IP opponent first asking for making ACTA process more open). So far there have been serious lack of good sounding "proIP" opponents. Mostly it is us, geeks, and we don't make very good party to cheer for. There should be much bigger campaign of explaining copyright stuff and how it affects your everyday tasks.
In the end, Obama or not Obama, this IP stuff will stay (and no, there is no escape for that with electing right leader) and if we really want something to change, we will have to deal with it.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I think that this will not work in the long run!
the only other export article worth to speak of is military equipment and its application!
I don't know what specifically the GP was referring to, but if you check out this graph, you will see that US exports aren't really as bad as you would think listening to some of the scaremongers. Most of the exports are industrial items, not cheap consumer goods that you purchase and use on a regular basis, which is why you feel a disconnect. But as you can see, anyone who says, "America doesn't manufacture anything" is making it up and hasn't actually looked at the numbers.
Using the same data, it's interesting to take a look at the ratio of exported to imported goods since 1960:
Year | exprt | import | exports/imports
1960 | _19.7 | __14.8 | 133%
1970 | _42.5 | __39.9 | 107%
1980 | 224.3 | _249.8 | 90%
1990 | 389.3 | _498.3 | 78%
2000 | 718.7 | 1145.9 | 63%
2004 | 807.6 | 1473.8 | 55%
(amounts are in billions of dollars)
Didn't mean to reply twice but I happened to come across this NY Times op-ed just now which highlights problems with the reported high productivity suggesting it is (at least partly) caused by misreporting due to outsourcing.
"But there’s a problem: labor productivity figures, which are calculated by the Labor Department, count only worker hours in America, even though American-owned factories and labs have been steadily transplanted overseas, and foreign workers have contributed significantly to the final products counted in productivity measures.
The result is an apparent drop in the number of worker hours required to produce goods — and thus increased productivity. But actually, the total number of worker hours does not necessarily change. "
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
You're forgetting the Civil War. That happened less than 100 years in. Basically, a bunch of dumb rednecks didn't want to work for a living. They were willing to fight and die, but they didn't want to pick their own crops.
What we're seeing now is more of the same. There's a certain redneck percentage of the population that is willing to sign up and die in Afghanistan. What they won't do is to not sign up, and just simply get a fucking job.
Laziness and corruption ruins any endeavor. People get used to a free lunch, and they will die for it rather than find a simpler way to live.
In any case, one thing that the Founding Fathers did a poor job at was defining the Presidency. There's been some discussion that the Presidency was poorly thought-out and hastily tacked on to the Constitution.
The Atlantic: Founding Fathers Great Mistake
Anyway, finding a way to keep the idiots out of the party is probably the ultimate conversation topic. I've never seen a good social project last more than a couple of years.
You never played in a band and got a song broadcasted, did you?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I feel that we face two problems here: The fact that US media companies want to saturate our culture and our media with mediocre trash, and the fact that they want us to pay for it...
Wait, make that zero problems.
Time to start making our own shit and putting it straight in the public domain.
'We're going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,'
'But it's only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can't just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.'
Here comes the war with China!
I don't care where he copied it from, it's Insightful as all hell. Looking at the North Carolina primaries vs. Clinton, the lowest number I found for blacks was 87% for Obama (Blacks age 30-44). Overall it's 90-96% of blacks in favor of Obama.
The worst was where they asked if "race is important to you." Whether you said "yes" or "no" didn't affect the outcome, meaning the racial voting patterns were entirely subconscious.
Sure, blacks were perfectly entitled to vote for Obama in the general election. McCain+old+crazy+Palin+crazy = terrible campaign. But the OP is right, in the primary versus Clinton, only 40-70% of whites voted for Clinton. 95% of blacks voted for Obama.
Clinton ran an incredible campaign, too. She took the "Hope" that Obama talked about and made it real. But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
Come now, to be honest, have you ever heard of these sort of problems in Draconia?
The easiest and most simplified way to demonstrate the net loss in the production/incentive stage would be to equate IP laws with a tax/benefit scheme (from a macroeconomic point of view there isn't a significant difference). As such it becomes simply a matter of efficiency at accomplishing the goal, and at general efficiency levels of the IP industries with between 5-20% of funding going towards the goal they're even less efficient than most government schemes. IE, IP is a net loss even compared to outright funding the production with taxes and allowing free distribution.
I have an even better idea than Znork.
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy.
IP is just various monopoly rights. See the former Soviet union on how well monopolies work. Monopolies are antithetical to an effective economy and thus will not be a foundation, but a burden.
it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas
Please. IP is mainly good for extracting resources out of an economy, it has nothing to do with 'exporting'. Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy, and most of the time (certainly in the case of the US), the monopoly rights will be held by foreign corporations.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again. Repealing at the very least copyright and patents would be a good start towards reestablishing a highly competitive free market and lowering the burden on western labour (thus reducing their price).
I will not accept anything less than +4 Interesting for my contribution here.
Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
Only if you're black. Or have a nigger-sized penis, in which case you can get away with anything.
More and more I get the impression this isn't the same Obama that was voted into office. Do people get their brains exchanged or something when they become president? Would explain the 2nd Bush (no brain available at that time).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
To be realistic - and fair - we are never going to see an American president coming out clearly and strongly against the interests of major industries; at least not until American society and its constitution are fundamentally altered - as in a violent revolution. I can't quite see how that is going to happen, but of course, you never know.
Much as I like Obama for his intelligence and what still looks a lot like sincerity, idealism and honesty, when I heard him talk about changing things, I could see that he had set himself up for a major challenge. Like it or not, America is not governed "by the people, for the people", and the president only has the power allowed him by the noble classes that everybody in America assures me don't exist (the fact that you can enter "nobility" in America by becoming immensely rich is not an argument against this - that has always been the way throughout history). Change will only occur as and when they want it.
But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the Obama election is that it brought the crazies and the racists out in the open.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Don't try to pull the ostrich's head out of the sand.
They don't like that, and have a hell of a kick.
Yep. Some kind of voting system that doesn't involve meta-voting (i.e. predicting the winner) would certainly be a big win.
Don't forget the military!
If all you have is imaginary intellectual property, the only way you can really protect it is by force. Well, and trade sanctions, but those won't mean much soon...
Too true, and too tragic considering the birth of the USA as a nation if they should dictate taxes for others to pay and force military action if they refuse.
Though I'm not sure how easy it is to be the #1 military power when more and more manufacturing capability is outsourced.
I lost my sig.
This sounds like a potential honeypot where you go and talk and nothing ever happens.
Generally you start a political party around and idea that everyone agrees with. Not hey, let's invite everyone and see what happens. First of all, you get massive cruft, second you get all the spies from the opposing party on day one.
Give them a couple weeks. If they can't come up with some position papers or an organizational chart, then it's a joke. A true political party has leadership.
That's an interesting analogy, but I think it needs more explanation. For example, where do your key figures of 5–20% come from? And why is it appropriate to compare copyright-supported revenues (which are charged only to those who benefit from the work in question, when they buy their copy) with taxation (which would presumably be charged to everyone, whether or not they benefitted from any given work)?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
>I'd probably be worried about commodities as a bigger issue. Agreed. Rare earth elements are especially concerning.
maybe
I'm wondering why after 8 years of a baffoon and coming up to two years of The (disappointing) Second Coming, nobody's realised that there are more options than Blue and Red.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
From the way you write, with references to Mao and big-government, I think they assume you're a knee-jerk teabagger. Which you might be. "Big Government" has been such a trope since the Reagan years that it's a worn-out meme, and comes across as shrill.
In other words, despite being right, I think you may have deserved flamebait mods. After all, there is a reason why "flamebait" is different from "troll." Flamebait is 100% true, just extremely annoying. "Macintosh is garbage" is the ultimate flamebait example. 100% true 100% of the time :)
This falls under the unfortunate "+1 Uncomfortable Truth" moderation. Nobody wants to mod you up, but it's pretty much a statement of fact.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Pop music is neither innovative or ingenius. Let's burn this mother to the ground and start over... kidding, FBI...
Yeah but where can you go where people don't consider themselves consumers? I live in suburbia, it's like living on a people farm. People just stand around waiting for the food truck to show up and then they complain about their taxes. Moo!
And God forbid you should give them any scary ideas like, "Why don't you shop at that supermarket where everything costs 1/2 as much?" They get this glazed look in their eye, like you just told them there's a hole in the fence, and they don't know whether the farmer is going to come after them with a rifle.
Worst thing about human beings...give them a good idea, and they hate you for making them feel stupid, rather than empowered. Makes you want to start a giant corporation and rob them blind.
IT's funny how when Presidents like Obama talk about profits, productivity, and prosperity it's "ours" but when the actual distribution of the money and American dream takes place suddenly it's all "theirs" and theres nothing left for "us" or "our" children. It's a scam.
Unless you are directly profiting from ACTA, there is no logical reason to support it. Lets make them buy our support just like they make us buy everything we produce.
If that was his idea, it makes some sense since the "coffee party" is small enough it wouldn't take very many people to outnumber the original, unlike the "tea party".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I make a political calculation. Does it help me increase my prosperity or does it keep me down?
ACTA it's a CARTEL move. It's that simple. People in control want to secure control of the entertainment industry. It has nothing to do with artists, musicians, talent, or prosperity for the people who actually come up with new ideas. This is about securing profits for corporate royalty.
It's as simple as that. There is no moral argument because there is no right to profits and if the government is going to secure the rights of profit for one industry over another, that means these music corps are now state owned organizations. It's no different than what goes on in China with their state run industries.
In a free market there would be no need for ACTA. Sure you would need to protect physical property and intellectual property against actual piracy. If we are talking about individuals who mass produce Windows 7 and sell it in China then by all means we should confront that problem. But if we are going to declare another war on American citizens, and charge them with possession of virtual property, I'm absolutely against it. It's already illegal to SELL Windows 7 if it's not genuine.
And honestly I don't see anyone doing that in this country. And if it does happen it's not happening on a massive scale.The only reason this happens is because the music industry kingpins are smart enough to use the government to secure their profits. Maybe you should do the same for your industry, get some reps elected and then have them write laws to secure your job and guarantee your profits.
It's fair game because if one industry can do it, why not all industries?
It's vital that any election you run that you run with industry support. If you want to take out the copyright cartel then you'd have to get many big companies organized behind you to take them on, and these companies must know that their profits are at stake.
Think of the ISP's, the Googles, the Napsters, the Tubes, and if the profit loss is great enough then you can go to these companies and tell them that if this ACTA passes that their profit potential will diminish x1000, you can email their employees a newsletter which alerts them to the dangers of allowing ACTA to pass and how it will influence their salaries and lead to massive layoffs.
If you want to stop ACTA, you have to do it in the corporate boardrooms, not on Slashdot.
The only thing workers care about is keeping their high salaries, or getting a raise. Have salaries been rising? No absolutely not. So who gives a damn about productivity?
If they are going to work you into the grave to raise productivity, why bother?
Just because we do a lot of useless shit at work, and make a lot of useless junk, it does not mean there is any point to what we are doing besides making our bosses richer. The productivity is not the point. Quality is the point, whether it be quality of life, of service, or of the product produced.
Answer this question: Does javascript run on MacOS X or Linux in HTML within web browsers or email programs on those Operating Systems? If so, what exactly stops it from wreaking havoc anymore than it does on Windows??
You can't copyright your job if you don't own it. You can't own anything if you don't own yourself.
Face it, most individuals in this country are owned by corporations to the point that they'll rat out anybody who tries to do their own thing or get ahead. It's your co-worker who tells your bosses all your plans and ideas which keep you from ever being able to compete with your boss.
Well, in my universe the fruit came before the naming of the colour. So, an orange is orange-coloured. I don't know what name you would give that...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
How do you build a stable economy based on "media and entertainment"? You might as well build an economy on fairy dust and lolipops. No wonder this country is in such ruin, with economic thinking like that!
Off shoring has been a HUGE problem for more than a decade. It's been a slow race to the bottom even for people that have jobs, and now that there is no more room at the bottom, we find mass unemployment, with university educated and tradespeople fighting over the same $10/hr useless jobs.
A stable economy comes from a strong manufacturing base, abundant domestic resources and a strong agricultural base. Manufacturing jobs are sent overseas, domestic resources are barred from use (to protect the environment-unless you're China... then do whatever you want), and more of our agriculture is being shipped in from other countries. Horray!
'If we're becoming so much more productive where are the goods we're producing and why can't I see it in the balance of trade ? If we're so productive where are the exports ?"
They're called Treasury bonds, and you guys have been shipping them out to China by the trillion ;)
Seriously, all it would take to "correct" the trade balance is a weakening of the US dollar. Rather than being concerned that the trade balance is negative, you could instead view the situation as a happy one - that mere pieces of paper printed by your government are so desired by the rest of the world (and particularly China) that they give their goods to your country in return for less than they give them to their own people for (in the case of China, this is quite deliberate as they follow a weak RMB policy).
right. I work my a$$ off to create something, and everyone else gets a free ride. That's going to encourage people to work? HA!
HERRRDURRKAADRRRRRR
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy
Your naivette is refreshing, but I would not like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Could you maybe read what he actually said (and if you want to use the word, learn to spell "naïveté", good grief!)?
Can you in any way deny that President Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior? Do you think Bush II was more tech-savvy than Obama? Clinton? Bush I? I very much doubt it.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
However even these American components are made more and more by people with Indian or Chinese surnames, either here on HB1 visas or fresh out of college, and a bunch off that money will go back to their parent countries (especially if and when these folk take their know how and experience home to start businesses there.) All the while cutting the labor market for American Engineers in their own country... Again American business aborts Americans, in favor of pushing the profit margin.
Who do you think's going to maintain all those machines??
Well I guess all of that hope and change translated into a big boost for the common individual, and a giant finger to the corporate conglomerates. Oh wait.... what's that.... it was all just hype for the election? No wonder the youth were so taken in by it, they'd never seen that before. Folks, if you really want change you can believe in, you'd better be willing to fight for it because that's the only way it's going to happen.
Which is one way of asserting that simple Economics 101 principle: the value of things is inversely proportional to their relative scarcity. The only way one has to get any payback from intellectual property is by imposing limits on their reproduction. Good luck on enforcing that.
There was a time once, decades ago, when the US could control any country by controlling trade. Other countries had to sell coffee and bananas to buy American cars, airplanes, radios, etc,
These days, the US goes like this: if you won't buy our movies and software we will not sell you movies and software. The rest of the world has become more or less independent of the US for all practical purposes. Are the American politicians and investors so naive they think they can let manufacturing move overseas while keeping control of the intellectual "property"?
I think Linux is a very good example of how the IP economy works. It was only by strong arm tactics plus a 97% price cut that Microsoft managed to keep their OS on netbooks. Unless American companies completely rethink their pricing tactics for IP the rest of the world is perfectly capable of reinventing everything. That old saying that "ideas are a dime a dozen" has never been more true.
Really?
BRIC countries:
Brazil
Russia
India
China
Those are the emerging forces in the world, FYI. Germany has strong sectors, but they are not stealing America's manufacturing.
Is this a snide comment? You realize ad hominem attacks just make me look right.
Surely you wouldn't steal a car?
Ebay doesn't even pull illegal copies of foreign movies.
You could pull illegal "Night Watch" / "Day Watch" copies off Ebay without a problem, same for bootleg Kung-Fu movies. If you e-mail E-bay the auctions are bootleg copies, they only take them down for the copyright holder, and only if the copyright holder has enforcement in the US. So no, the US does not protect foreign copyrights, only materials that have copyrights in the U.S. or are enforceable in the U.S.
Yes, but more likely than not many of the key parts (with the most valuable IP) - the processor/SoC, digital tuners, etc, are made for a US owned company by workers in a foreign country...
There. Fixed that for you.
I haven't seen an Intel processor that was actually manufactured in the U.S. in what, 15 years? 20?
As for your argument that RIAA and MPAA are "losing billions" to Chinese piracy, please... First of all, that argument doesn't fly here in the U.S. (no, not every pirated copy is a lost sale), so why should it be any different in a country where the average citizen has even less disposable income than here? More to the point, suggesting that music and movies will solve our trade deficit is, well, stupid, even if those industries' bullshit "lost sales" figures were based on reality.
I'm beginning to think some might be twigging onto the concept, especially with this sort of crap coming down from Washington like this.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
That's not a pragmatist in the office. I'm still not quite sure WHAT the man is or what he actually stands for- but it's nothing to do with pragmatism.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Let me get this straight: a president (of a country, not a company) is suggesting using government force, with the cooperation of multiple other governments, to enforce government-granted monopolies (copyright), and enforce DRM (DMCA) despite the fact that the market always rejects DRM whenever non-DRM is available, and you're calling this "free market?" I call that a planned economy, Lenin-style, implemented for the purpose of making sure that the kinds of things that happen in a free market, don't happen.
If you want to make a case for it being a Good Idea, fine, but let's not get silly and call it a free market.
Yes, and government guns are power too. Under a free market, copyright holders would be competing by lowering prices and increasing value (e.g. removing DRM) in order to maximize revenue (wealth, power). Since their customers would be able to timeshift and space shift the content, the wealth -- i.e. power -- would spread out. That's just what happens when people voluntarily transact: everyone comes out ahead. By using government force to prevent a free market from happening, you can concentrate the wealth (i.e. power) and keep the power increase unilateral.
The phenomenon that has you upset, isn't free market capitalism. It's corruption. Our leaders are being paid to work against our country's interests. That this happens to benefit some large campaign contributing companies, doesn't mean companies in general are your enemy; it means those companies are your enemy, as well as your leaders and the people who look the other way ad vote for those leaders.
It can also happen if people ever decide to vote for it. And if you'd like that to happen, maybe the first thing to do is stop misrepresenting what a free market is, planting the idea that free markets are somehow all about governments implementing policies to concentrate power. What you're talking about is fascism, mercantilism, etc: the free market's foes within the ideosphere.
On April 2, 2004, Barack Obama formally established his position about the Ryans' soon-to-be-released divorce records, and called on Democrats not to inject them into the campaign.
Yep, I'm sure that is all there is to this story... We apologize for being so confused.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Yeah, the problem isn't so much that the USD is too strong, but the RMB is artificially weak in terms of a modern currency.
Sorry you're wrong. The Tea Party protests on tax day last year drew 300,000[fivethirtyeight] people across the country after Fox News advertised by airing more than 100 commercial promotions in the ten days before Tax Day. That may seem like a large number yet the Immigration reform protests in 2006 drew more than a million people nationwide[wikipedia]. So did the Prop 8 protests[wikipedia] in 2008, and that was just a Californian issue.
There is genuine grassroots anger at government spending, but the Tea Party in not an embodiment of that. It is manufactured to co-opt that anger.
Entertainment and media aren't an asset. They are entertainment and media, two intellectual concepts who benefit tremendously from the network effect: the more people know about it and have access to it, the better it becomes.
Let's put it this way - if Chinese citizens actually paid for even a small fraction more of the American software, movies, and music they consume, the trade deficit picture would be significantly different.
Newsflash: if Chinese citizens would actually have to pay for the American software, music and movies they consume, they wouldn't consume it.
Obama talking about entertainment and media as one of the major US assets scares the living daylights out of me: it means we've become a nation of circuses, jesters and clowns, employed by other nations like the dancing bears of yore.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
IP protection in the US only protects entrepreneurs, products, and companies inside the US. IPP law only applies in other countries if those countries agree to pursue legal action as directed by the US. Why do you think there are so many pirates in China? because China won't back our IPP law. So, bolstering our IPP law really only protects US companies from other US companies. Beyond that, it's just a nice thought.
This is what Obama is talking about, not picking on homemakers who shared a few mp3s online.
That may well be what Obama was talking about, but you and I both know damn well that the vast, vast majority of the lawsuits will be on home field, not across the pond. Hell, unlikely even Canada or Mexico. Because it's easier and more profitable in the short term to go after the low hanging fruit... the music sharers in the USA. And that's sadly all that anyone gives a shit about nowadays... the profit of the very short term.
You can shove your "astroturf" talking point, you little minded liberal.
The purpose of an economy is to maximize (perceived) wealth within it; monopolies as a general rule result in lower total wealth generated than what the economy would generate without them (although they tend to create concentrations that may give the appearance of more wealth, as you don't note the smaller piles of wealth lost).
Concert places are in themselves limited, so selling more of them would not create more of them, and no extra wealth.
Trademarks are less damaging, especially in their use as identifiers. They're not without damage though, in the sense that they divert excessive amounts of funds into advertising rather than more wealth producing fields (advertisements are fairly overproduced due to the various regulations that overincentivize them).
Without IP, that's perfectly okay.
Sounds great. Lets do that.
The fact of the matter is that without IP, it's pretty darn hard for creators to get paid for their work
The fact of the matter is that with IP they're not getting paid much anyway, in fact, most get nothing. And beyond that they get to compete on a very tilted playing field and exposed to legal risks in their own work. Basically any funding method would be better for creators, because it's hard to find one that works as bad as IP. Personally I tend to argue for something similar to the mandatory radio licensing, but applicable to all copying and exacted as a percentage of gross revenue per copy, and handled like any other tax/benefit scheme (if we really feel that extra incentives are actually needed).
economics in the real world.
Sounds like you ought to read up on economics a bit. Economists such as von Mises and Hayek have criticised IP for the damage it causes to a free market economy, so outside the IP lobbyist groups it's certainly not as if copyright or other IP variants are accepted as a net gain for the economy.
Of course he did. Politicians "call on" groups and/or individuals to do things all the time.
Note that I have no knowledge of anything related to the incident, and indeed this is the first I've heard of it, but the fact that a politician of ANY party (I'm not affiliated with a party, and likely never will be) called on anyone to do anything is not an indication of honesty or high morals.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Why don't all of the like-minded Slashdotters gather their friends, everyone pitch in a few bucks, and collectively buy off a congressman or a senator?
It works for everyone else...
Spelling, grammar, punctuation? We need something that checks logic.
Posting to retain a reference...
better dead than purple!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Jack Ryan...hmm, better ask Tom Clancy. He can settle this for sure.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/15/1740214/The-Coming-Botnet-Stock-Exchange
"'He's not the type to hack randomly, he's only interested in targeted attacks with big payouts."
What Operating System has a 95%++ (or better) market-share out there? Windows... that quote from Robert Hansen's only SECONDING THE MOTION You, symbolset, "rail against".
(Guess who? By the way - IF you see Foredecker? Tell him I'll be getting into touch w/ he about the HOSTS file too...)
The Founders understood this. But they decided in the end that a light burden such as this would in the balance spur more creation than the burden would have hindered. Madison figured this monopoly power could be reigned in by the will of the people should it be abused. Sadly, Madison was a bit naive. Maybe he should have listened to Jefferson more and either abolished this clause or made it much more limited.
First: kudos for the Godwin. I guess this thread just wouldn't be complete without Hitler.
Second: this thread had nothing to do with (not) protecting manufacturing jobs, it had to do with protecting American technology and media. Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?
Third: it really had nothing to do with Americans "consuming IP", it had to do with other countries paying for the IP they already consume.
But to bite on your tangeant... it is ironic that the people complaining the most and voting against large tax increases tend to be those who could use their benefits the most, not those who would pay the bulk of it. Honestly, how do we fix the problem that a growing segment of the population does not have the knowledge or skills to justify the standard of living that they would like to have? (and that's no slight on any "blue collar" worker, just a statement of fact that one can't expect to be paid a huge premium over Chinese workers in the same field and yet shop almost exclusively at Walmart to save a few bucks).
Europe has already tried dealing with some of these issues - and their solution was "social democracy". But in the US we wouldn't dare even think of something with the name "social" in it, because the Republicans have done such a good job convincing the people most in need of it that it's somehow inherently evil and "un-American"...
Why is this pessimistic, paranoid drivel a +5? Of course the answer is educating these people. The bottom line is their skills are obsolete. As you said, we've got millions of people out of work and those jobs are never coming back. It's time for them to go get marketable skills and it's the rest of us who should bear the tax burden of ensuring that they're able to get those marketable skills and return to the workforce as an asset rather than a liability.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Well, if you have something new to add, let's have a link. Otherwise you are just promoting knee-jerk cynicism, which only keeps Americans out of the voting booth.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Probably shouldn't be getting any more specific ;)
But again, I don't really think I have to - I'd be surprised if you could find a decent HDTV (at least 40"+) that *isn't* running Linux. Especially the latest crop with Internet applications.
Fair enough. I'm mostly curious if any of them offer the source. Even better, if they use any GPLv3 software, they'd need to allow for users to install their own firmware. The temptation to build a custom firmware would be overwhelming. Maybe I could fix my Sharp's frustrating lack of customizable input names. :D
We're not being scared like children every other day by orange alert levels.
Unless you're flying...
March 15, 2010
The United States government's national threat level is Elevated, or Yellow.
For all domestic and international flights, the U.S. threat level is High, or Orange.
Just another day in Paradise
Ah, looks like you're another Intellectual Property anarchist. Quite frankly, I put you into the same category as regular anarchists - also people who don't make any sense. You might be armed with lots of excuses why anarchy is the best system, but it still won't work.
... nobody gets paid except the distributor. Do you ever just stop and think about how crazy your scheme is?
Without IP, that's perfectly okay.
Sounds great. Lets do that.
So
The fact of the matter is that with IP they're not getting paid much anyway
Nice. I like the "let's make stuff up" method of argument.
Basically any funding method would be better for creators, because it's hard to find one that works as bad as IP.
Actually, I'd describe it more as "IP is the worst form of profiting from your work; except for all the others" -- kind of like the old Churchill Democracy quote.
Sounds like you ought to read up on economics a bit.
Ha. You're funny.
If you're wondering why I'm not giving you more serious consideration and response to your idea, it's because your idea is so stunningly bad that it doesn't even warrant a response. It's like arguing with David Icke. You've already established yourself as being so far from reasonable that it's not even worth someone's time to try to use reason with you. Seriously, how did you even get to this level of unreasonableness?
I don't think the numbers you request will give you "manufacturing jobs". Total economy size and % of that that is company revenue will not tell you jobs. I think you want the true number of jobs. I further think you need the wages spent on those jobs ( and some scale against how much purchasing power those wages have ) to be able to assess what you are discussing.
emt 377 emt 4
Perhaps not as much as you might think. When you are living on less than $5 per day AND you have to pay $3 just to rent a movie, you are going to do without if you can't get it illicitly.
Well, $5/day is pretty close to the minimum wage these days (not that it's still not way less than the US, but so is the cost of living). There is a rapidly growing "middle class" in China these days that is making plenty of money to afford to pay for movies.
And last time I was in China, *legal* software (say for example, a PC video game) was often about 25-30% of the price in the US. My first thought was a little annoyance at how much we get screwed here, but then I realized it's in everyone's best interest to price soft goods like that at a rate that they might be able to afford rather than buying a pirated version. On the other hand, I don't think I even *saw* any legal CDs or DVDs :)
And note, piracy there is not about people downloading and burning their movies for "free". It's about going to the local market and buying a professionally pirated DVD with a printed case for a couple bucks.
And I don't think is makes sense to go after *any* individual infringers, especially the buyers/consumers of the content. Piracy in Asia is a very profitable business these days, and it's basically condoned or at least completely ignored by the government there. The problem is only going to be solved if the US government gets some backbone and does something at an international trade level, which is what ACTA is for (and will probably be completely useless, sadly - China showed in Copenhagen what they think of international agreements...)
Hell, they already counterfeit our currency as it is... so why not everything else?
But, what are those marketable skills? What are the jobs of tomorrow that the kids are supposed to be learning? Where are the funds for this education? Just like the crumbling infrastructure in the United States, upgrading the working class is not on the radar.
The work of the future is a shifting target, and tossing out abstracts and vapor add nothing to the argument. Most people are involved in the service economy anyway, and unless you own the company, the pay will never be very good.
Most people will spend their work lives catering to the well to do, or taking advantage or the poor.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Here is the key question: In a *democracy*, do you believe that:
a) the poor masses will vote for increasing social benefits, that rely on increasing taxation, and increased payments to "social partnership" industries (i.e. for profit beneficiaries of government programs), or
b) the USA will roll back social programs, thereby holding tax levels in check, and deal with the multiplying poor by some other means (e.g. churches, riot police) etc.
For years we have heard of the benefits of offshoring, and indeed there are benefits. But the downside is that your entire country either ends up with 70% taxation, or class war, or both. The UK is about 30 years ahead of the US in this regard.
Very simply, we are funding China into the 21st century. We are paying them to make us things, and paying ourselves unemployment benefits. Instead, we should be paying *our* unemployed to make things, and let China deal with 4 billion unemployed.
But that isn't as profitable for our super rich.
Frankly, the only good thing I see coming out of this is when the ultra rich of European ancestry attempt to move to the next world empire, they'll discover that the Chinese have got hundreds of years of white peoples racism to pay back. It was easy for the rich to ditch the British Empire (remember that?) to move to the US Empire. Would love to be a fly on the wall when they go to China.
Really? We don't need cars anymore? Or railroads? Or food? Or houses? Or TVs?
The fact is that those jobs could very easily "come back". Why is it that we can protect "Intellectual Property" with draconian international treaties, but we can't protect jobs?
And before you laugh at me for "basic international economics", I advise you to go and, say, spend a year at a university actually studying it, maybe a good one, like Cambridge, like I have.
These "basic international economics" that we all hold to be true and self evident, are simply the repeated recipes of the international rich for making money while your country goes to shit. Closing our borders to international trade stifles growth, they will tell you. I see. Is that a good argument? How is that housing growth 2001-2008 working out for you?
We live in a country where 15% (15%!!!!) of houses are EMPTY. 18.7 MILLION HOUSES are empty. And I can't afford to buy a house.
So the next time someone tells you that closing borders stifles growth, that does not *automatically* mean that it is bad. Ok?
"Design of OSX, Linux, or Unix. The user is separated from full system privileges." - by atomic-penguin (100835) on Monday March 15, @08:10PM (#31490520) Homepage
See subject-line above. Same deal on Windows VISTA, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008.
Unless the other side (eg China) doesn't give a flying rats ass about any ACTA or whatever. They have more paying consumers over there than in US. Probably 90% have less cash, but if China makes their own cheap DVD knock offs (which they do) to avoid payment then no hollywood studio is seeing much money, nor any hardware maker.
ACTA works only for country who already abide to copyright laws. And none of them do have much production left anyway. This is just "get the lawyers some money" scheme.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
I'm not sure why this is modded down. The Democratic party in the US is at best moderate-right.
I'm a "Troll" for saying this? Oh well - I suppose no moderation system can be fool-proof. If you're under the delusion that somehow the Democratic party or Obama is in any way, shape, or form significantly and consistently "leftist," I advise and challenge you to learn about real liberal politics.
It is not drivel, especially when you are spouting the same old bullshit. What EXACTLY are "marketable skills"...hmmm? There are plenty of tech guys with educations and shitloads of student loans that would really like to have a word with you about those "marketable skills" since their jobs got sent to Bangalore. And are you willing to shell out...ohhh...let's say 60+% of your pay in taxes?
We are talking MILLIONS of American workers, and even a bottom of the line trade school can run you a good 35k, and let us just say there are only 5 million Americans that would need to be educated under your "marketable skills" plan. At 35k a piece you are looking at 175,000,000,000. That is 175 billion to give 5 million of your fellow Americans a bottom of the line degree. And what of those not smart enough for a degree..hmmm? Last I checked the average IQ was between 100 and 105, with quite a few below that. Gonna execute them? Lock them up?
Here is the point pal, try to keep up. Ready? There is NO FREE TRADE. there is no such thing, it is all a lie. Tell you what, why don't you and the same number of Americans try to go to India as the number of H1-Bs coming here, see what happens. Wanna bet they turn your ass around? See they are what is known as "nationalistic" as in, they don't want you, just your money. Perot had it right all those years ago when he talked about that giant sucking sound, that was the sound of all our money going out without a dime of it coming back. Do you think those teeming masses of unemployed are an illusion? Maybe you think they are lazy? What are they gonna do, all become lawyers?
The USA is right now sitting on a powderkeg. You have millions that haven't worked in over a year. Why? Because there simply aren't any jobs to be had, that's why. All the money is gone, packed up and moved overseas, the dwindling jobs worth less every day as more and more have to fight for the scraps. Come to the south, come to middle America, and see for yourself. Dead towns and empty homes, far as the eye can see. Recession my ass, we are in the start of another great depression, but nobody has the balls to say the words. The only thing keeping a lid on the powderkeg is millions of unemployment checks cranked off the money presses, but we are at the trillion dollar debt mark, we just can't keep it up.
But keep blowing smoke up your ass, and believing that you can educate an entire nation out of this tar pit, but answer me a simple question: How exactly are you with a 100,000 degree gonna compete with someone from China or India that paid less than 15k for his? He doesn't have the massive debt you do, and in his home country he can live like a king on what wouldn't get you an apartment in the shitty side of town in most cities, much less keep you clothed and fed. How exactly do you compete with that, oh great sage?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Seriously, I'm a huge fan of protecting intellectual property... FAIRLY. It also needs to be intellectual property. I have no arguments that movie makers and musicians MUST be rewarded for their work. In fact, I personally own 1000 DVDs, 1-2,000 books, about 500 audiobooks and who knows what else. But I DO NOT consider them intellectual property. They are art. There needs to be a difference.
The technology used to produce the movie IS intellectual property. The design of a guitar IS intellectual property. The music and films produced with these tools IS ART.
Artists SHOULD be rewarded for their efforts and what they have produced. But it is not the art they're producing which makes a country like America great. People everywhere make art. If you're to give some form of intellectual property for making the U.S. great, it's tangible items designed by Americans that do. Everything from the battery powered nail gun to the fan assisted finger nail drier. It's their creativity when designing solutions to problems that makes them great.
Intellectual Property rights that reward people for coming up with solutions to problems should exist. They should not stop competitors from riding their coat tails, but instead should require the competitor to pay for the rights to make use of the ideas.
It's about time that the government stops considering art and solutions to problems to be the same thing. I highly respect artists and movie makes, but the fact is, I'm offended as a creator of solutions to be mushed into the same group with someone else like this!
If I could mod you up, I would. In short, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Of course Obama (and every other politician on the western planet) would back the large corporations and wealthy. Us "average" person is an inconvenience to them, and if they could do away with us, they surely would.
I'm sad that I live in Australia, because we might as well be the 53rd state, we do everything that Herr Obama (and previous presidents) say. That means we'll get ACTA :-(
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
Obama's done SFA. He's the most boring US president in history. Sure, Bush Jr, fucked up [a lot], but at least he *did* something. Obama seems to be the American version of our own Kevin Rudd (who I nickname "krudd"). All talk, no action, doesn't give a fuck about the people, sides with big business. I'd like to see a average joe become president, not a wealthy businessman. Then, we might see some basic commonsense decisions and respect to the people.
Oh wait, you have a 2 party system that doesn't allow any other party to compete...monopoly anyone?
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
Is it so hard to believe that he'd frown upon piracy?
Just because freeloading is part of the "open source" ethic doesn't mean that all other creators must live by that ethic.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
First off the person who created the coffee party volunteered her time for Obama to help him get elected. She does not nor has ever worked for the white house.
FYI the tea party is run by Dick Army who is a republican who operated conservative lobbyists.
This was just a cheap shot by Fox News to discredit the movement.
If you want to support your democratic or republican representative and then whine be my guest. At least I gave a solution.
http://saveie6.com/
The person who founded it does not work for nor has ever worked for Obama. She only volunteered her time when he was running.
To blame her would be the equivalent of calling you a Bush lobbyist and white house astro turfee because you once held a poster in 2000 for Bush or volunteered your time to him years ago.
This was a very cheap shot by the tea activists who own Fox news.
http://saveie6.com/
The machines themselves. They will do everything we want them to. If not for the politics, we would be much further along.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
But did she volunteer her time as a high official in his campaign? It *does* make a difference.
FWIW, I'm currently so deluged with various groups making (political) claims that I can't quickly verify, that I'm pretty much in overwhelm about the entire process. I have, however, noticed that with a reported 84% of the voters in favor of a public option (How did they derive that number?) Congress is having trouble deciding to vote for it. Really gives one faith in the system, and confidence that all one needs to do is express a reasoned opinion to be paid attention to.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ummm.... How much of the economy back then was "service" compared to the 80%+ of our economy it is today?
However, that's all irrelevant to the issue. The issue is that the manufacturing portion of our economy is much smaller than it used to be and there's good reason for it.
Where's our textile manufacturing? It's in a steep decline and has been for a long time. Imports are taking over the market.
What percentage of our domestic automobile manufacturing is left? I don't know, but I see Michigan's economy is a wreck, Detroit is a wasteland, and we import millions of Japanese, German, and Korean cars. Also, even of the cars manufactured here in the US a large percentage of the parts on those cars are manufactured elsewhere.
The same goes for the parts in major (domestic and commercial) appliances.
Now, add to that what's happened to our steel industry. The "steel belt", for all intents and purposes no longer exists. US Steel used to make 2/3 of all steel used in the US and was the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem steel was the 2nd largest steel company. US Steel now makes 10% of the steel used in the US and is now the 10th largest steel maker in the world. It's now about 1/5 the size of the largest steel maker in the world. Bethlehem Steel is no more. We are importing approximately $1.25 billion worth of steel a MONTH rather than making it ourselves. US manufactured steel used to be the best and it was hard to find imported steel that was worth a damn. In the 60's and 70's imported steel products were a joke. You hit a nail made with imported steel with a hammer and it bent rather than go into the wood. Now, almost all steel fasteners are imported and they are the high quality product.
All of this stuff used to be built here. Now we import a great percentage of it. Those are just some of the reasons why the manufacturing slice of the pie has not kept pace with the rest of the economy.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Marketable skills are the skills the market demands right now. Just because the unemployment rate is 10% doesn't mean there are only enough jobs for 90% of the population. There are plenty of industries with jobs to fill right now but there aren't enough applicants. The proper way for us to deal with our unemployment problem is to get our unemployed folks the skills they need to get the jobs that are available, a tax burden I'm more than willing to bear for the benefit of the whole of society and the economy.
Stop inhaling fear and exhaling anger just long enough to be rational about this.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
. At 35k a piece you are looking at 175,000,000,000. That is 175 billion to give 5 million of your fellow Americans a bottom of the line degree.
Does that sound like a lot of money to you? It is about a year and a half of our military expenses in Iraq. Yes, we could have provided $175B to education rather than blowing up and rebuilding a country that wasn't really responsible for much if any international terrorism in the first place. Throw in another year and we'd be able to pay for everyone's health care for the rest of the decade. That still leaves a few hundred billion left!
The US doesn't have to be isolationist to fix its problems, just get a damn clue about which problems are worth spending money on in the first place.
She was also a campaign worker for Jim Webb in Virginia. The Coffee Party shares office space with another Democratic Party organization. The founder of the Coffee Party also laid out the proposal for the Coffee Party at a convention for Democratic Party activists before she started the Coffee Party.
The Coffee Party is organized top down. The Tea Parties are generally occurring as local groups decide to hold protests. The Tea Party isn't run by anyone because it is not a single organization. There is no national Tea Party organization (although several people have tried to form one, Dick Armey among them).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So they've made a step in the right direction for the newest version of Windows (version 6). That doesn't affect the majority of the Windows install base which is still XP.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
"And, this too, shall pass..." - it always does (I'm living proof - Or, am I still running Windows NT 3.51 regularly here?)
APK
P.S.=> The point is that even though you have OS' today running by the principal, @ least in part, of "least privilege" per user process by default (vs. root/administrator/superuser rights instead by default)? They can still always be attacked, & I wager that javascript is just as utilizable in that capacity via webbrowsers, even on *NIX variants like Linux &/or MacOS X by default, for attacking they just as its still used on all varieties of Windows to date, even the "latest/greatest", UAC & all (DEP & ASRL are good ideas too, but, even those can be circumvented)... apk
Here is the problem with your theory: I am a megacorp, I can hire an American, where I will have to pay decent wages, maybe health benefits, etc, or I can offshore to a place where I can dump my factory's toxic waste straight into the river, treat my workers like dogs and pay them pennies, while cutting myself a big fat bonus for doing so.
Or if I want to stay in the USA I can just use this instructional video as a guide to allow me to bring over an indentured servant, who again I can pay peanuts and treat like shit, and use what would have been the decent pay the Americans would have gotten to cut myself a nice bonus check. See the problem yet? Kinda smell the fail?
They pushed everyone to get tech jobs last time this happened remember? what happened to all those magic tech jobs that was gonna save us? Well they were either sent off shore or were given in large numbers to indentured servants but hey! Surely after education worked so well for all the tech workers, drowning in debt with little job prospects, it'll work again, right?
Wake up and smell the fail pal. Here is the truth-FREE TRADE IS A LIE. There is NO free trade with countries like India and China, because they don't want YOU, or your goods, just your money. Yet the globalists, who are making out better than Goldman Sachs on this scam, will keep blowing smoke up your ass telling you that education will magically fix it. Just recently (sorry I don't have time to find yet another link, Google it) they were setting up law firms in India specializing in American law to be off shore law banks. So what EXACTLY is the "skills they need to get the jobs that are available"...hmmm? Because short of flipping burgers or fixing your pipes or digging your ditches (many of those jobs BTW are being increasingly filled by illegals) pretty much ANY job that requires an education can be done cheaper in a third world country like India.
So let's here a SPECIFIC LIST of these "jobs" they should be educated for, okay? And remember your average factory line worker isn't a nuclear physicist just needing a degree, many are just very basic folks with a sub par public education. So let's here it, we're all ears. Otherwise you're just blowing the same smoke they did over tech jobs. BTW, do you support erasing all the debt of those that took your advice last time and now have worthless tech degrees?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ahhhh.... But JFK would be vilified by much of today's Democratic party. He was NOT big government oriented or entitlement oriented. His most famous speech included the words "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country". This is the antithesis of the progressivism we see in government today that is exemplified by Reed, Pelosi, Kucinich, Obama, and the rest of the left wing of the Democratic party.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Well, the thing to do is to ask what a person means, and what they're about, not insult and moderate to oblivion based upon assumptions.
As to the term "big government", it doesn't matter that it's a common term. It fits the situation. Both the size and power of the federal government has grown beyond belief in the last few decades. In that same time we have been declining in economic strength and political will. We have become a nation depending on government entitlements rather than remembering what made us the greatest nation on earth, and what made us THE MOST desirable nation on earth to live in. Immigration rates, while federal government size/power was much smaller, prove it.
People didn't immigrate here for government benefits. They moved here because government stayed out their way and allowed them to succeed or fail on their own merits. My great grandparents immigrated here at the turn of 20th century and my great grandfather became a successful logger. He had more than $1 worth of logs on the landing when the stock market crashed in '29. He went from dead broke to wealthy in less than 2 decades without government interference or entitlements.
Also, just fyi, I am a political independent. I'm against progressivism in all of its forms whether it comes from the Republicans or the Democrats. I'm also not a tea party member either, although I think they are correct in many of their political stances. I think for myself. I read for myself. I'm a student of history and have been fascinated by it since I was able to read. I truly believe that those who don't know and understand our history cannot understand what we came from, what made us great--politically, morally, economically, and militarily, and what will keep us a great nation.
As a nation we are leaving behind the very principles that allowed us to become great to begin with, and that's both sad and very frustrating to me.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
He had more than $1 worth of logs
That should be: He had more than $1 million worth of logs....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
And maybe you're an idiot because you make just as many illogical assumptions as the idiot that first called me an idiot here and the mods that modded me as flamebait.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
First of all, that argument doesn't fly here in the U.S. (no, not every pirated copy is a lost sale), so why should it be any different in a country where the average citizen has even less disposable income than here?
Bullshit. Have you ever been to a market in China?
Piracy there is not people downloading DVD rips in their home - there are a lot of large, professional piracy rings mass producing near-perfect duplicates.
A couple year ago when my girlfriend was in China she bought me 3 Simpsons DVD sets (ie seasons) for about US$10 total (probably would have been ~$90 online legally). They were in professionally printed cardboard boxed cases. The first thing that made me realize they were counterfeit? Two of the seasons weren't even released yet!
And guess what? They weren't making them all for the extremely rare American tourist that happened to wander by. They were mass produced in a real factory by the tens or hundreds of thousands by organized criminals, and are purchased by Chinese citizens (who are not all dirt poor like you seem to imagine). Are they cheaper than what the studios would charge? Sure, but that was one of my earlier points - it's so systemic that there isn't really even a chance to compete with the pirates on price right now!
The international (mostly Asian) piracy situation is nothing like that in the US, and to try to equate it means you really have no clue...
Oh, and as for where they manufacture processors? Who cares. The top fabless chip companies (Broadcom, Qualcomm, Marvell, Xilinx, Altera, etc - it's a huge list these days) - as well as those who own their own factories outside the US - employ MANY thousands of people in the US, make 60%+ margins and significant profits. While the contract manufacturers (TSMC, UMC, etcc) are much lower margin commodities (but still profitable...) In fact, the economy in Silicon Valley is doing pretty well right now compared to the rest of the country because of this (East Bay housing prices notwithstanding, but that is a completely different issue...)
If anything, that REINFORCES the importance of protecting IP. US companies spend billions of dollars in R&D to design all of the technology, so they better damn well be able to protect it.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-17-2010/in-dodd-we-trust
this daily show bit, VERY well summarizes corporations vs people issue you have in your country. and what they did. in the latter half.
Read radical news here
Specific list: http://careerinfonet.org/indview1.asp?nodeid=45
There's dozens of these lists all over the place. If we empower unemployed folks with the financial means to get trained academically or vocationally for such in-demand jobs, then the unemployment rate will decline.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
there are more options than Blue and Red.
There are, but under the current US electoral system anyone 'defecting' from the Blue/Red centrist axis to vote a minor party gets actively punished by causing their most hated major party to get in.
If you have on a scale:
1. Libertarian (hardcore principled anarcho-capitalist)
2. Republican (mixed compromise capitalist-socialist)
3. Democratic (mixed compromise socialist-capitalist)
4. Green (hardcore principled eco-socialist)
then if you vote 1, you split the vote for 2 causing 3 to get in; if you vote 4, you split the vote for 3 causing 2 to get in. So the result is, if you favour massive rapid social change in one direction, then voting your heart's desire will signal medium change in the opposite direction. So people vote 'tactically' for the follow-up 'lesser evil' of D or R, and foom, that entrenches a centrist consensus. It's a neat self-perpetuating system.
The only way to break this deadlock would be for one or other of the big two parties to massively disintegrate, or a huge social movement cause a third party to rapidly gain enough critical mass to pass the 'voting for this will vote against my cause' barrier.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
In New Zealand in 1984, this 'first past the post' system led to a very interesting government change (Muldoon National to Lange/Douglas Labour) where a Keynesian right-wing government switched to a hybrid Austrian School (hard-right economically) Labour (left politically) government which poured public money into indigenous land settlements, broke a major defence pact to stay nuclear-free, and massively privatised and deregulated the economy, causing a huge swing of money and power from the middle class to the very rich. This happened because the right and left factions both joined in order to defeat the incumbent - since it was the only way within the two-party system.
So I find some of the US politics - especially people like George Lakoff who pontificate about how the current US alignments are pure psychological/philosophical stances and one is good and truth and light and the other regressiev evil delusion - kind of strange. Political alignments are just alignments, they're not generally well-thought-out. Almost any given issue doesn't naturally fall into a 'left' or 'right' divide, it's just that it's been seized as such by current parties.
Witness how 'Democrats' changed from White Jim Crow to the party of affirmative action. That realignment really didn't have much to do with party principles or philosophy; it just happened.
It would be nice if all the issues could be debated separately, on their merits, instead of distorted into huge merged camps. But as long as you have a FPP system, they will, and your politics will be poorer for it.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Second: this thread had nothing to do with (not) protecting manufacturing jobs, it had to do with protecting American technology and media. Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?
If new technology directly competes with old technology for cheaper, and the new technology is primarily software (IP) based rather than hardware, and if the physical manufacturing for the new technology is done offshore... then yes, they are mutually exclusive, because the new will replace the old.
The iMac says proudly, "Designed by Apple in California... made in China". Which says it all really. If the economic strength of America is moving from manufacture to mere design, then it's turning from hardware to 'information', which is a much more fragile thing. Information can be copied. If your national economy starts to depend solely on preventing information being copied, then it seems like you're in a very dangerous place.... you risk being disintermediated as a nation, cut out of the manufacturing loop entirely. And given you also have a huge military spend, that seems like a recipe for rash trigger-finger reactions.
Is America still making stuff which isn't information which competes on the world stage? If so, what? Not cars anymore. Not oil anymore. Not garments anymore. Music, TV, games, software. Drug patents. Some high-end routers perhaps? Lots of guns. And maybe drugs. Anything else?
(New Zealand's getting into a similar bind... we sell sheep and milk and tourism, but the cows are starting to trash our environment... we're getting into high tech, but as information, that's also fragile for the same reasons.)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The central platform of the Coffee Party is campaign reform - the $100 cap on donations, repealing corporations having the same rights as individuals, etc. They're all about getting both sides of the aisle working for the people instead of special interests.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law; as the article clearly explains, no part of copyright law in involved in that. That's an internet company overwhelmed by piracy that doesn't want the hassle of being some minor artist's personal defender, and a record label behaving poorly.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Would you mind pointing out where it "clearly explains" it doesn't involve copyright law? To me, it looks like Warner Music is blatantly abusing copyright law to pressure a third party into catering to them.
Warner Music were claiming the song as their own and MySpace bought into it without even checking.
That looks like a fraudulent claim right there, but it's not, since it wasn't made in an "official" manner. Not that it particularly matters, mind you, since under the current state of the law, "copyright holders" (henceforth known as attackers), whether or not they actually own the copyright to an item, can claim practically anything they want, and it doesn't cost them a thing. Should the defender put up a fight, they have more than enough money to run the defendant into the ground financially.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The Coffee Party is an organization whose sole purpose is to get Democrats elected, preferably Democrats who favor big government.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison