There is no such thing that is "food" but not a drug, to at least some small degree. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm agreeing.
Too many people seem to demonize drugs because they're illegal, without going through the thought process of wondering WHY they are illegal. After all, most drugs were perfectly legal at one time. Opium (laudanum, or "tincture of opium", was a common over-the-counter remedy), heroin, morphine, cocaine, marijuana, amphetamine, many mushrooms, etc. all used to be legal at some point, and are now "regulated" to some extent in the U.S. today.
But more people need to examine the assumptions behind that regulation, as well as weighing the costs of that regulation, which in many cases have turned out to be much worse than the thing being regulated.
Morality and ethics are supposed to inform the law, not the other way around. A substance is not "bad" just because it is illegal. Substances are supposed to be illegal because they are bad. Those are two very different things. I would argue that the latter at least has a certain amount of reasoning on its side; the former is just plain irrational.
"Prohibition has worked once. 'ludes are unavailable. "
But that's a special case, for several reasons. First, apparently it's not readily manufactured on the street (unlike many other drugs), so when the commercial supply was cut off, it basically disappeared. Second, there wasn't much motivation to reproduce it on the street, because of the ready availability of effective substitutes.
"Yes. I want to love in a free country so I want to balance this out and err on the side of freedom. But yes."
There is no balance between this and freedom. You can have one or the other, but not both.
Where something that is good for a person (laws against driving while intoxicated, for example) ALSO prevents injury or loss of life to others, it may be justified. But I cannot in good conscience agree with laws that protect adults from themselves.
"I consider myself rational. I'll admit (2). I'm not ready to admit (1). We'd have to look at an alternative America with no laws and see if we are now in a world with 50m or more addicts or not."
Nonsense. A lack of prohibition is very far from the same as "an alternative America with no laws". Nobody is proposing anarchy here.
"But note that Portugal just substantially reduced the penalties for possession."
They virtually eliminated penalties for possession. That is across-the board decriminalization ("across the board" in the sense that it applies to all drugs, as opposed to just, say, marijuana.) That is what is commonly meant when people discuss "decriminalization". It does not mean looking away when someone sells heroin to schoolchildren. It just means adults in possession do not face hefty fines or jail time.
The statistics are very favorable. Studies of Portugal have shown virtually no downside.
Granted, Portugal is not the United States. But again, we have to look at the unfavorable aspects of prohibition. It has some very nasty side effects. Among them: it has made the United States the leader of the "Western" world in per-capita incarceration. Try telling me that isn't a harsh societal cost. You won't get very far.
"But you might argue that if you click on a button on an artist's website that says in huge letters "CLICK TO BUY FROM iTUNES!" that it overrides the small print."
If I were a judge, I would be inclined to listen to such an argument.
A typical EULA is often called a "shrink wrap license" in regard to software. An "agreement" that is contained in the box, or in a pop-up window during the install procedure. It can't be legally binding because it is only seen after the transaction has already been made. Trying to enforce that as a "binding agreement" violates just about every principle of contract law that has ever existed.
On the other hand, if there is a EULA, like on the website for example, that you have to agree to before the sale, yes it can be binding. For example, if you agree that you are only licensing the product, not buying it. Etc.
As long as it's made before the transaction, a "licensing agreement" or "terms of use" can be binding.
So you are in favor of laws that protect people from themselves?
After all: (A) there is no way in hell people today don't know smoking is bad for them, and (B) don't give me any guff about second-hand smoke. The only major "study" done in that regard was tossed out of court by a judge who ruled that it was obviously contrived bullshit. And you can hardly accuse judge Jackson of bias... he was the same judge who ruled that tobacco companies could be sued for damages.
"The question is whether the benefits of criminalization, the avoidance of widespread use, can be achieved without criminalization."
Not much question, really. Most countries that have across-the-board decriminalized drugs have shown no increase that can be attributed to the decriminalization. Portugal, for example, showed a small increase after they decriminalized, but it was right in line with increases across the rest of Europe for the same drugs at the same time.
I don't think anybody who is completely rational is claiming drugs are harmless. But if you are rational, you have to admit these things: (1) the "War on Drugs" has been a complete and utter failure, (2) its societal costs are themselves quite devastating.
It isn't responsible to discuss the harm drugs do without also discussing the harm that efforts to remove them do.
Courts have consistently held for over 100 years that the form of a work is immaterial. A player piano roll is no different from the printed sheet music for Copyright purposes. Software on paper tape is identical, for Copyright purposes, as a computer file or the same code printed in a book. MP3s are identical (for Copyright purposes) to the music from which they are made... whether written, or on a record, or on a CD.
No difference. So there is no justification for them being treated differently.
If TFA is an accurate description of the lawsuit, then ReDigi has very, very good grounds for appeal. This judge apparently has his head stuffed somewhere the sun doesn't shine.
"I really don't see why anyone was surprised at this ruling."
This ruling is surprising because it violates the First Sale doctrine.
Let's get this straight: this case was about purchase of an MP3. Not a "license".
In no other case (as recently affirmed by the Supreme Court) is an author or publisher of a work allowed to place conditions on the item after the "first sale", unless a prior agreement exists. The only restrictions are those embodied in current Copyright law.
This ruling would seem to directly contradict that. Unless there is something unusual about the case that is not in the article.
"Terms and Conditions" are not the same as Copyright law. I do wish people would get this through their heads.
There are many, many cases in which Copyright law differs from the terms and conditions offered by a software or media company. In those cases, it is Copyright law that applies, not the terms and conditions the company tries very hard to convince you are binding.
Having said that: if you agreed to terms and conditions prior to the sale, in many cases those terms actually are binding.
Yeah, she's mainly used it for doing webmail, playing the occasional game of Solitaire, etc. The VIA is just Gawdawful slow. I doubled the RAM to 1GB. With XP, normally that would speed up a slow system quite a bit. Hardly made a difference here. So it's definitely CPU bound.
I'm not questioning it. I don't claim that's not real. But the militant partnering with Communist pretenders (because there has never been a real Communist nation in recorded history) is also true. The only question I see is: which reason was predominant?
I should add: if, as Marx claimed, this represents "evolution" of society, I think it is pretty safe to say that in humanity's experience, Socialism is an evolutionary dead-end.
"My preferred adjective here would be "Stalinist", because it's not even communist..."
I agree. That's why I wrote "wannabes". Nobody so far has implemented a true Communist government. They haven't even been good Socialists. They all get stuck at the "central government" part of Marx's theoretical "evolution" of society.
And it's easy to see why: once in power, the central government simply doesn't want to give it up.
Get off it. You are not arguing with reason, you are being an ass.
First, my comment was:
"But it's pretty hard to argue that they aren't related."
Please explain what is "overly broad" about that. It IS difficult to argue -- in a sound, reasonable, scientific manner, anyway -- that the two are not related. Your reply:
"Its pretty easy to demonstrate they are independent of one another."
Say what? A single anecdote in reply to a comment like that does not demonstrate anything of the sort. If I had expressed a theory that the two were 100% correlated (as opposed to somewhat related), then it would indeed have been a counterexample, and would have actually demonstrated something.
"While studying such things I seem to recall being told that the person resorting to ad hominem attacks just identified themselves as the loser of the argument."
I admit that it was a bit of a snide remark, but that's because your comment deserved one. It was not, however, an "ad hominem attack", because I wasn't using it as part of my argument.
You just earned another snide remark about your critical thinking skills. But it appears that it would be pointless to go there, so I won't. Have a GREAT day.
"... with political connections otherwise they wouldn't have been so much stink from the USA for so many years..."
Actually, the main reason for the stink was Cuba's militant ties to Russia and other Communist wannabes. Which was a hell of a good reason for a stink, at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
"There was a sense it was going to be a big deal and there was going to be a lot of money made, but nobody quite knew how to do it right away."
I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of people still don't know how to do it.
Drinking too much water can kill you.
There is no such thing that is "food" but not a drug, to at least some small degree. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm agreeing.
Too many people seem to demonize drugs because they're illegal, without going through the thought process of wondering WHY they are illegal. After all, most drugs were perfectly legal at one time. Opium (laudanum, or "tincture of opium", was a common over-the-counter remedy), heroin, morphine, cocaine, marijuana, amphetamine, many mushrooms, etc. all used to be legal at some point, and are now "regulated" to some extent in the U.S. today.
But more people need to examine the assumptions behind that regulation, as well as weighing the costs of that regulation, which in many cases have turned out to be much worse than the thing being regulated.
Morality and ethics are supposed to inform the law, not the other way around. A substance is not "bad" just because it is illegal. Substances are supposed to be illegal because they are bad. Those are two very different things. I would argue that the latter at least has a certain amount of reasoning on its side; the former is just plain irrational.
My point being that most recreational drugs can be supplied by illegal manufacturers if the legitimate manufacturing is cut off.
"Prohibition has worked once. 'ludes are unavailable. "
But that's a special case, for several reasons. First, apparently it's not readily manufactured on the street (unlike many other drugs), so when the commercial supply was cut off, it basically disappeared. Second, there wasn't much motivation to reproduce it on the street, because of the ready availability of effective substitutes.
"Yes. I want to love in a free country so I want to balance this out and err on the side of freedom. But yes."
There is no balance between this and freedom. You can have one or the other, but not both.
Where something that is good for a person (laws against driving while intoxicated, for example) ALSO prevents injury or loss of life to others, it may be justified. But I cannot in good conscience agree with laws that protect adults from themselves.
"I consider myself rational. I'll admit (2). I'm not ready to admit (1). We'd have to look at an alternative America with no laws and see if we are now in a world with 50m or more addicts or not."
Nonsense. A lack of prohibition is very far from the same as "an alternative America with no laws". Nobody is proposing anarchy here.
"But note that Portugal just substantially reduced the penalties for possession."
They virtually eliminated penalties for possession. That is across-the board decriminalization ("across the board" in the sense that it applies to all drugs, as opposed to just, say, marijuana.) That is what is commonly meant when people discuss "decriminalization". It does not mean looking away when someone sells heroin to schoolchildren. It just means adults in possession do not face hefty fines or jail time.
The statistics are very favorable. Studies of Portugal have shown virtually no downside.
Granted, Portugal is not the United States. But again, we have to look at the unfavorable aspects of prohibition. It has some very nasty side effects. Among them: it has made the United States the leader of the "Western" world in per-capita incarceration. Try telling me that isn't a harsh societal cost. You won't get very far.
"But you might argue that if you click on a button on an artist's website that says in huge letters "CLICK TO BUY FROM iTUNES!" that it overrides the small print."
If I were a judge, I would be inclined to listen to such an argument.
"No, because I'm still using Tweetdeck 0.38.1. I tried the newer version, but every so often it just decides it doesn't want to pull updates anymore."
By the end of May, support for the older API will be pulled completely, and you won't be able to use it anymore.
The Web app is nothing at all like the old Tweetdeck. Yes, the web app is comparable to Twitter's version, Twitter's version sucks.
"A prior agreement ... like a EULA?"
A typical EULA is often called a "shrink wrap license" in regard to software. An "agreement" that is contained in the box, or in a pop-up window during the install procedure. It can't be legally binding because it is only seen after the transaction has already been made. Trying to enforce that as a "binding agreement" violates just about every principle of contract law that has ever existed.
On the other hand, if there is a EULA, like on the website for example, that you have to agree to before the sale, yes it can be binding. For example, if you agree that you are only licensing the product, not buying it. Etc.
As long as it's made before the transaction, a "licensing agreement" or "terms of use" can be binding.
"Prohibition has been fairly successful most times it has been used in drastically reducing usage."
Except in the United States.
Prohibition of alcohol actually saw per-capita alcohol consumption go UP by a significant amount.
Prohibition of other drugs in the United States has demonstrably not decreased demand or consumption.
I am curious about where it has been "fairly successful". Certainly not here.
"Smoking kills 300k a year."
So you are in favor of laws that protect people from themselves?
After all: (A) there is no way in hell people today don't know smoking is bad for them, and (B) don't give me any guff about second-hand smoke. The only major "study" done in that regard was tossed out of court by a judge who ruled that it was obviously contrived bullshit. And you can hardly accuse judge Jackson of bias... he was the same judge who ruled that tobacco companies could be sued for damages.
"The question is whether the benefits of criminalization, the avoidance of widespread use, can be achieved without criminalization."
Not much question, really. Most countries that have across-the-board decriminalized drugs have shown no increase that can be attributed to the decriminalization. Portugal, for example, showed a small increase after they decriminalized, but it was right in line with increases across the rest of Europe for the same drugs at the same time.
I don't think anybody who is completely rational is claiming drugs are harmless. But if you are rational, you have to admit these things: (1) the "War on Drugs" has been a complete and utter failure, (2) its societal costs are themselves quite devastating.
It isn't responsible to discuss the harm drugs do without also discussing the harm that efforts to remove them do.
You seem to be forgetting about entertainment.
An HD video can be quite large. You start getting many people downloading or streaming them, and pretty soon you are going to need huge bandwidth.
Addition to my comment:
Courts have consistently held for over 100 years that the form of a work is immaterial. A player piano roll is no different from the printed sheet music for Copyright purposes. Software on paper tape is identical, for Copyright purposes, as a computer file or the same code printed in a book. MP3s are identical (for Copyright purposes) to the music from which they are made... whether written, or on a record, or on a CD.
No difference. So there is no justification for them being treated differently.
If TFA is an accurate description of the lawsuit, then ReDigi has very, very good grounds for appeal. This judge apparently has his head stuffed somewhere the sun doesn't shine.
"I really don't see why anyone was surprised at this ruling."
This ruling is surprising because it violates the First Sale doctrine.
Let's get this straight: this case was about purchase of an MP3. Not a "license".
In no other case (as recently affirmed by the Supreme Court) is an author or publisher of a work allowed to place conditions on the item after the "first sale", unless a prior agreement exists. The only restrictions are those embodied in current Copyright law.
This ruling would seem to directly contradict that. Unless there is something unusual about the case that is not in the article.
"Terms and Conditions" are not the same as Copyright law. I do wish people would get this through their heads.
There are many, many cases in which Copyright law differs from the terms and conditions offered by a software or media company. In those cases, it is Copyright law that applies, not the terms and conditions the company tries very hard to convince you are binding.
Having said that: if you agreed to terms and conditions prior to the sale, in many cases those terms actually are binding.
Yeah, she's mainly used it for doing webmail, playing the occasional game of Solitaire, etc. The VIA is just Gawdawful slow. I doubled the RAM to 1GB. With XP, normally that would speed up a slow system quite a bit. Hardly made a difference here. So it's definitely CPU bound.
I'm not questioning it. I don't claim that's not real. But the militant partnering with Communist pretenders (because there has never been a real Communist nation in recorded history) is also true. The only question I see is: which reason was predominant?
I should add: if, as Marx claimed, this represents "evolution" of society, I think it is pretty safe to say that in humanity's experience, Socialism is an evolutionary dead-end.
"My preferred adjective here would be "Stalinist", because it's not even communist ..."
I agree. That's why I wrote "wannabes". Nobody so far has implemented a true Communist government. They haven't even been good Socialists. They all get stuck at the "central government" part of Marx's theoretical "evolution" of society.
And it's easy to see why: once in power, the central government simply doesn't want to give it up.
First, my comment was:
"But it's pretty hard to argue that they aren't related."
Please explain what is "overly broad" about that. It IS difficult to argue -- in a sound, reasonable, scientific manner, anyway -- that the two are not related. Your reply:
"Its pretty easy to demonstrate they are independent of one another."
Say what? A single anecdote in reply to a comment like that does not demonstrate anything of the sort. If I had expressed a theory that the two were 100% correlated (as opposed to somewhat related), then it would indeed have been a counterexample, and would have actually demonstrated something.
"While studying such things I seem to recall being told that the person resorting to ad hominem attacks just identified themselves as the loser of the argument."
I admit that it was a bit of a snide remark, but that's because your comment deserved one. It was not, however, an "ad hominem attack", because I wasn't using it as part of my argument.
You just earned another snide remark about your critical thinking skills. But it appears that it would be pointless to go there, so I won't. Have a GREAT day.
Reminder: "Troll" is not a substitute for "I disagree".
To the best of my knowledge, my comment was simply factual.
My guess is it's a snot rocket from God.
"... we often have a hard time saying exactly why."
???
Who is this "we"? I have never had even the slightest problem articulating why ubiquitous surveillance is bad. Very bad.
"Its pretty easy to demonstrate they are independent of one another."
Um, sorry to have to tell you this, but individual instances "demonstrate" exactly nothing.
Maybe you need to work on your critical thinking skills?
"... with political connections otherwise they wouldn't have been so much stink from the USA for so many years..."
Actually, the main reason for the stink was Cuba's militant ties to Russia and other Communist wannabes. Which was a hell of a good reason for a stink, at the time.
"A revolution in which 58 men inspired a country of 6.5 million to throw out a dictatorial, postcolonial government?"
... and replaced it with another dictatorial, post-colonial government.
Am I supposed to be impressed?