Actually, there are many barriers to entry into the Canadian marketplace. Taxes, ownership restrictions, tariffs, operational regulations, etc. are all important considerations. In fact, for many products and services, entry into the Canadian marketplace faces more barriers than many other EU or Asian countries.
One of the first and most restrictive factors is the ownership and management restrictions. Take the wireless industry for example. A wireless carrier has to have at least 50% Canadian ownership in order to operate in Canada. This means that T-Mobile, for example, can't just waddle over across the border and start buying frequency, putting up towers, and offering a service. We've had a recent case where it was debated whether or not a certain wireless carrier (Wind Mobile) actually met that ownership requirement. There's also a general requirement for all corporations that the Board of Directors is comprised of at least 25% Canadians (or a minimum of 1 Canadian if the Board has less than 4 Directors).
Many of our industries are much more tightly regulated than are your industries. As I've briefly mentioned in a previous comment, Canada really is more of a socialist country with a market framework. The skeletal infrastructure of our economy is based on market economics, but we flesh that out with quite a heavy load (comparative to America) of social regulations that protect consumers from power asymmetry that arises from market failure, e.g., information asymmetry, natural monopolies,etc..
Many of these regulations are restrictive enough such that a company may consider that an investment in complying with such regulations would not really be worth it for a shot at the comparatively smaller marketplace. Since American companies design products and their respective distribution plans with American regulations in mind, it would take a significant investment to create another roll-out plan for the Canadian marketplace. We only have 30-odd million people, 1/10 of the American population, and our buying power for non-essential items is generally lower because of the way our consumption taxes are structured*.
On the one hand, we don't get many of the new and sparkly fancy gadgets right away. But that's okay, I'm pretty patient for the most part. It's not that big of a deal. Companies big and successful enough will eventually bring their products over the border. On the other hand, we as consumers and taxpayers are protected from many of the perils that arise from market failure. The biggest recent example is the global financial crisis. While many global banks and companies required bailouts, our financial institutions continued to post modest profits and showed a remarkable ability to quickly recover.
So yeah, there are many barriers to entry into the Canadian marketplace, mostly because of our traditional approach towards market economics that's more skewed towards the socialist side. But even though we may not get the latest cool gadgets or the cheapest deals, we're very well protected from many potential disasters that result from market failure. I wouldn't really call this a fault. I'm a patient guy. I can wait 3 more months for that iPad, or another 6 months for that HTC phone. Small price to pay, in my book.
* It's worth noting that our minimum wage is higher than in America, the last time I checked. The general minimum wage is $10.25 an hour in Ontario, and the average is over $9 across Canada (with only 2 provinces falling below $8.50). However, there are a few factors that influence buying power. The first is that non-essential items are almost always taxed higher throughout Canada. For example, groceries, utilities, etc. are exempt from the federal consumption tax. Alcoh
Significant correction: I meant the mid-1900s, not the mid-90s. Tommy Douglas was quite dead and thus didn't have much political influence by the time the 90s rolled around.
I'm also Canadian but did not see an opt-in/out notice. I went to check my public profile and discovered that it was indeed showing my "likes" amongst other things whereas my previous privacy settings explicitly forbade that kind of info being available to non-friends. I've since turned off my public profile altogether and you now get a 404-type page instead. This might be a good compromise if you don't mind people not being able to add you as easily (something I definitely don't mind).
I'm not going to argue that the GP is right or wrong - I haven't talked to many Indians, I have no clue.
However, I will say that being politically active is not necessarily being politically effective. The U.S. has two major parties. Two major candidates compete for the Presidential election, getting anywhere from 95-99% of the total popular vote. You have two choices: right or left? And most of the rest of the world doesn't consider your left-wing choice to even fall left of centre of their respective political spectra. Where's your choice? Where's your freedom? Where's your free market? Politics in the U.S. is a duopoly. It's certainly better than a monopoly, no doubt about that. But how much better is it? How effective is political activism when you only have two real choices?
(Aside. Granted, the nature of the American republic allows for markedly different governance at the level of states. I'm painting an overly broad stroke, and the degree to which there is separation of powers between federal and state levels is a significant advantage that the American republic has. But at least on the federal level, where copyright law resides to the best of my understanding, there are only two real choices. Actually, come to think of it, you might have less choice than you think: the American constitution is written in such a way as to oblige - in theory with considerable exceptions that would take too long to discuss here - the federal government to follow international treaties that it has ratified.)
I won't pretend to speak for other nations, with the exception that I know that there are at least several, to put it mildly, political parties in India. However, in Canada we have four (foreseeably five in the next election) parties that may prove to have a significant share of seats in Parliament. While the NDP and Bloc (failed at figuring out how to directly link due to/.'s encoding) are generally not in the running to form government, they sometimes find themselves with the balance of power during minority governments when the two dominant parties (Liberals and Conservatives) are in a power struggle. Granted, this doesn't happen very often, but because of the significant minorities that they hold, they generally have at least a bit of political clout.
Tommy Douglas is an important example. He was a social democratic (first leader of the NDP) politician who had, arguably, one of the greatest impacts in Canada's political history. He was the first leader/head of any government in Canada to propose that we constitutionally guarantee certain inviolable rights, which ultimately led to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (since our Charter is part of our constitution, it is - again, in theory and with exceptions - supreme over other laws). He's also now widely recognized as the "father" of universal health care in Canada. He helped to accomplish and realize these two important (and many would consider essentially Canadian) feats without his party ever forming government at the federal level.
This is the power of choice in politics. This is an illustration of effective political activism on the part of social democratic supporters in the mid-90s. In Canada, at least, our expectation is that government will step in place to address the power asymmetry that arises between the industry and the consumer when competition in the markets fails.
(Aside. What happens when competition in government fails and there's a significant power asymmetry between politicians and citizens?)
Finally getting to my on-topic points. Now, again, I have little k
Distractions are one thing, and a good, focused driver MAY be able to avoid many of them. But good, focused drivers also need to look around the road to check for drivers who aren't that good, or for pedestrians who are jay-walking, or for children who run out on the street. Good drivers will (and should) check all around themselves for any potential dangers and not just stare straight at where they want to go.
Whoever thought of this idea was probably a poor driver who never looked around his car. What a horrible and dangerous idea.
Parent and GP are exactly right. Tourette's may be a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to assume that a good majority of us are not qualified to make the judgment of whether or not the girl's light sensitivity is serious enough that holding a particular light source near her face will cause any pain and/or injury. Perhaps only a certain range of EMR wavelengths would trigger a reaction? There are a number of possibilities. I'm not a doctor. Most of the rest of/. are not doctors. The judge is not a doctor.
There are a number of things that happen before a trial occurs. There are details to which we are not privy. Did the girl's lawyer(s) contact experts? If so, did those experts admit of a possibility that events could have transpired as described? If so, then there might be a basis for a case. If the answer is negative for either of those questions, then the lawsuit may be frivolous. But most of us are simply unqualified to make that judgment without further information.
Then HTC should buy out Nokia to combine great touchscreen hardware with a solid/cool/functional platform, and then LG should buy out HTC and put cool blinking lights and win back the teenage girl market. But by then the phone would have lost their business market so they would have to spin off their business-oriented smart phone division (formerly Blackberry). Of course, former Nokia employees would be pissed that LG is creating flip phones and using touchscreens so they all rage quit and form their own phone company that focuses on simple-to-use candy-bar and slider phones. Also because of the flip phone format, touchscreen user-friendliness would be rendered nearly useless, so LG would spin off their touch division (formerly HTC).
Even better! You can rig your steering wheel to be a game controller and play a driving game right from your car's steering wheel!! What could possibly go wrong?!
I don't know where you live that you can have such faith in your neighbours. I'd sooner trust Bill Clinton to be alone with my girlfriend in the oval office than the asshole next door.
Hmm. I have made some speculations, yes, and that probably makes my opinion... biased, perhaps. I wouldn't say partisan so much, and certainly would not like to be categorized with the likes of the NDP.
At any rate, Mr. Harper and his friends (Mr. Prentice, as you mentioned, and Mr. Flaherty) have provided little reason for any of us to trust them in any capacity. They are either incompetent or dishonest (c.f. the recent ballooning deficit fiasco), and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Harper, the brilliant political strategist, is incompetent.
Mr. Harper is very methodical and he knows his audience. He released a 40-odd page picture book as his platform for 2008 that left little, if any, room for analysis. Full of vague promises of "helping Canadians" and being "tough on crime", the picture book sold. It was accessible and understandable to most Canadians, even though most of the content was either too vague to say anything of substance or made completely unsubstantiated claims.
Now why I say this is because I think that Mr. Harper's open plans (such as the health care changes you've mentioned) are merely stepping stones for his actual goals that he's revealed in the past (before he had to be careful about what he could say). Now that he's in power, he has to control the message (as shown by his refusal to do unscripted or unscreened interviews on mainstream media). Especially telling is his tenure as the chief policy advisor of Preston Manning's Reform Party.
As chief policy advisor of the Reform Party (I'm going to summarize some of the points in the article, which I think is a pretty accurate list of the Reform Party's core beliefs under Mr. Manning and Mr. Harper's direction), Mr. Harper, still a student at the U of Calgary at the time, came up with their platform to privatize many Crown Corporations including Canada Post, CBC, and Petro-Canada. To be fair, Petro-Can did eventually start to lose money and the government eventually sold it to Suncor. The Reform Party was also very pro-life, opposed homosexual marriage, opposed government-funded bilingualism and multiculturalism, and opposed immigration policies that would "radically or suddenly alter the ethnic make up of Canada". I don't know about you, but those beliefs seem pretty radically right to me and, I would venture to guess, many other Canadians.
Furthermore, a two-tier health system with private and public insurance would result in a perverse incentive structure. People would not be treated based on their needs (as is the case now), but would rather be treated based on how much they (or rather their insurance policy) could pay. Health care isn't, strictly speaking, a zero-sum game (although things like organ transplants and bed spaces definitely are), but it's close enough that whenever someone gains, someone else will almost always lose. This is a very significant step towards the capitalization of health care.
So again, I've taken the liberty to speculate on Mr. Harper's intentions, and you're right in calling me out on that. But I think that I have plenty of pretty solid grounds on which to rest my speculations.
It's quite sad, but I'd have to say that it's no use. People don't vote with reason. Most Canadians still have it in their head that Conservatives = good for economy, Liberals = good for social progression (NDP = big waste of money, Green = too new to trust, Bloq = separatist). Despite the fact that both Mulroney and Harper have categorically disproven that, Canadians still believe it because that's what they were taught. We've become a little lax about our social progressivism, and many Canadians actually bemoan many of our social rights. The Omar Khadr case is symbolic of this mindset. Khadr was under 18 when he was fighting, and that is automatically enough to qualify him as a child soldier (and a Canadian citizen) who has certain rights. However, Mr. Harper, and many other Canadians, don't care about his rights because he was "fighting for the bad guys."
I think the litmus test of any socially progressive country is whether they are able to maintain that even the most despicable criminal who committed the most heinous crimes have equal rights as the rest of society. Rights that include a fair trial, due process, etc. Canada, under the direction of Mr. Harper, has failed that test in the case of Omar Khadr. But, as I said, this is a mindset that is reflective of many Canadians.
No matter how well articulated an article or essay may be, people will not read it. And even if they read it, they will simply turn a blind eye. That's, unfortunately, just how people work. Until an issue comes up that affects them directly, they will not be interested. In this case, all they know is that Canada weathered the financial storm pretty well, and Mr. Harper just so happens to be at the helm at the moment. They don't care that Mr. Paul Martin basically designed the ship that has kept us afloat. The people have their icon.
I'm Canadian, but I may be able to answer your question to some extent. We've elected a Conservative government since 2006. They are on the far right of the Canadian political spectrum, even falling to the right of centre on the American spectrum. Since they've come in power, there are several small but significant changes to our country's traditions.
- The Prime Minister now abuses his executive authority to evade Parliamentary accountability and mask his contempt of Parliament. - The Prime Minister now has an entire entourage of armed guards and travels with them in a fleet of at least 5 cars... to a house across the street (our Governor General's house), instead of walking like every single one of the previous PMs. - We now have, for all intents and purposes, free speech zones, although they're not called as such. The RCMP blocks protesters from coming within a certain radius of the Prime Minister because the PM, and I quote from an RCMP letter, "could have been embarrassed." - The Prime Minister has, time and again, tried to intervene with arms-length governmental agencies by appointing to important positions those who share his neo-conservative views and equal contempt of Parliament. For example, the Rights and Democracy organization chair was appointed by the PM, and now that the organization is coming under fire, the chair refuses to appear before a Parliamentary committee. - The PM also intervenes with arms-length agencies by firing or replacing those in positions of power in those agencies for disagreeing with him. Paul Kennedy, former RCMP watchdog, is the latest victim of this campaign, as he was way too critical of the RCMP. For example, Kennedy wanted to hold officers accountable for their actions! Unthinkable. - The PM has, for a couple of years now, if I recall correctly, refused to do unscripted interviews with mainstream national media outlets (particularly with the public broadcaster, CBC) because he accuses mainstream national media outlets of liberal bias (where have you heard that before?). He's also tried, unsuccessfully, to dismantle the CBC, but has instead settled for reducing its budget year-over-year.
To understand how that is relevant to your question, you will need some background information on Canadian politics and our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Mr. Harper LOOOOOVVVESSS you guys. He LOVES America. In a 1997 speech, he blasts Canada for being a "Northern European welfare state" (like Norway or Sweden) and makes the case that America is the shining conservative beacon towards which we as a nation should strive to resemble. This is reflective of his practices while he was in office. He's hired former Republican consultants and PR people and strategists to help with his campaigning and policy decisions. To cut to the chase, Mr. Harper is an American Republican at heart.
In Canada, we've had a long political tradition of responsible politics. There were some scandals here and there, but they were relatively minor. The most controversial use of the executive power of the PMO (Prime Minister's Office) was back in the Trudeau era, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act because of terrorism-related acts (bombings, kidnappings) by the FLQ in Quebec, a Quebec nationalist group. Even then, the use may be controversial or questionable, but it was undoubtedly a crisis situation. Otherwise, the executive power of the PMO has almost always been exercised responsibly. That is, until Mr. Harper came along. He abused Parliamentary process by defying the will of Parliament. In Canadian politics, the appointment of a PM is not technically decided by the party with the most seats. It is decided by whichever Member of Parliament has the most support in terms of the number of other Members of Parliament. So a coalition with the opposition parties would mean a new Prime Minister. Mr. Harper didn't like this very much, so he decided
Actually this is the perfect market segment for such a "dating" service, if you can call it that. Other dating services target those who don't have time to indulge in the social/leisure scene (business people, etc.), and this one targets those who don't WANT to indulge in the social scene. Instead of looking up profiles for common interests, you already know that the PlayDate you're matched up with will have at least one major common interest (gaming).
I think it's an interesting (although ridiculously expensive) idea. I have no idea if a guy in that position would pay over $7 a pop just to game with a girl, but it does have some potential. Then again, dating sites like eHarmony charge anywhere from $20-$60/month. Love is a lucrative business.
You're right and wrong. The question of whether or not he possessed child porn really had little to do with the decision. HOWEVER, the Court did write exactly what the summary quoted. So it will serve as legal precedent.
The reason why he was acquitted is because the search warrant itself was quashed. An invalid search warrant means that the subsequent search is illegal. So while you're right that the police had a search warrant, it was improperly obtained and thus rendered invalid. You made it sound like they had a valid search warrant, which is false. To issue a search warrant, police need to provide reasonable grounds to a judge as to why the search warrant is necessary or, you might be able to see this coming, warranted. This is to protect Charter rights.
The Court found that the police did NOT have reasonable grounds, and that an objective reasonable person would only have a mere suspicion that he might be creating/consuming child porn. Suspicion is NOT enough to issue a search warrant. Furthermore, it wasn't the fault of the issuing judge that the search warrant was issued. The police used misleading language and omitted important exculpatory information in their Information To Obtain (ITO, basically a warrant application). If the police had not been misleading in their ITO, the judge probably would not have issued a search warrant.
You've conveniently included some of the deceptive claims made by the police. The Court found that the following information was pertinent and exculpatory, and, taken with the situation as a whole, would serve to more than mitigate any reasons to suspect the man: 1) The technician did not find probable child porn links. He found links that were entitled "lolita". If you've ever seen porn, you know that the term "lolita" is used in PLENTY of legal porn productions. These are POSSIBLE child porn links, at best. 2) The child showed NO signs of abuse, trauma, or anything other such signs of harm. The child was fully clothed and playing with her toys. 3) The mother was also in the house. 4) From the fact that the webcam was pointed at his daughter, you CANNOT then conclude that he might be making child porn. That would make it so that every person who has a video camera and likes to take home videos of their children child porn suspects. This is ludicrous. 5) The technician saw legal porn. But legal porn is legal, and from Morelli's consumption of legal porn, you can't suddenly conclude that he likes illegal porn. Logically questionable, at best.
The Court found that all of the above created a situation where you may, kind of, sort of, suspect child porn production. But that would involve an AWFUL LOT of speculation. Search warrants, again, cannot be issued on the basis of suspicion or speculation, but rather reasonable grounds. Since there are no reasonable grounds to issue a search warrant and the issuing judge was misled by the police, the original search warrant was invalidated. This means that the subsequent search and all the evidence obtained cannot be introduced in the Court. Without any evidence from the search, the charges do not hold. Morelli acquitted.
In this particular case, if you RTFA (yeah, yeah, you must be new here, etc.), you will notice that the Morelli, the accused, was also suspected of creating child porn with his 3 yo daughter.
I didn't RTFPDF yet, but here are my preliminary thoughts. I understand the rationale that the fine of $1000 per email is that it is punitive, but why $1000? $1000 per email seems like an awfully exaggerated fine. Didn't we agree that fines or other cash penalties should be at least roughly tied to the amount of harm done? For example, sharing a $1 song should not amount to thousands upon thousands of dollars in fines. Likewise, a single spam email that costs the victim almost nothing but time, annoyance, and/or fractions of a cent in bandwidth costs probably shouldn't warrant a $1000 fine.
Now if a scam email actually defrauded someone of money (the victim could either be the person spammed or an ad agency), the punishment should be relative to the amount defrauded, plus some significant punitive penalty.
If we think that outrageous fines are unjust and unwarranted, shouldn't we apply this rule across the board? Figure out the actual damages and go from there instead of just slapping a $1000 price tag on each email. Doesn't that make more sense?
Off-topic: While education certainly plays a big part in helping people learn how to write, I think that true progress has to be intrinsically motivated. Some people can write perfectly coherent basic essays, but once they're required to break out of the standard tripartite format, they are no longer able to write anything in a comprehensible way. Over and above education, I think we need to encourage children to read and write more (if done when they're young, we may succeed in creating intrinsic motivations within them to read/write). Reading is where you're exposed to different writing styles, and writing is where you develop your own. That's why I think that blogs are A Good Thing despite most of them being inane drivel. It encourages writing, which hopefully will have significant long term benefits in improving the quality of written communications.
On-topic: A lot of legal writing that I've been exposed to (I've been exposed to a reasonable amount, being a criminology/ethics/law student) have been pretty well written, mostly as clear as this blog post. The difference is that this particular topic includes language that is pretty familiar to/. and is relatively new to law. The reason why "legalese" is hard to read is because many legal definitions stretch back decades, and even more of them stretch back centuries. Legal writing tends to continue using old terms that have been established in the past, because a change in the word may be interpreted as a change in what's referenced.
At any event, Mr. Levine did a good job in expressing YT's side of the story. If true, I hope Viacom really gets what's coming from the presiding judge.
You're working under the assumption that prosecutors can't (or won't) make legally compelling arguments that those trials can nevertheless be considered fair, and such suspects should be forced to stand trial anyway, with or without a lawyer.
I don't know if you've met many prosecutors, but that's a very optimistic view you have.
Descartes might have been wrong, but that's kind of missing the point. During an era when scepticism was viewed as being inherently blasphemous and absurd, he embraced scepticism as a practical philosophy. Descartes, along with Hume and several others during the early modern period, began to establish moderate scepticism as the basis for a practical philosophy of scientific enquiry.
There's no doubting that Descartes made many mistakes in Meditations. But from the fact that the work isn't perfect, it doesn't entail that it wasn't a great and influential work that's brought us one step closer to understanding the nature of reason. One step of many, to be sure, but one step nonetheless.
Also, he didn't say that he can't trust the existence of the world without God. Rather, he gave an ontological argument for God, established His existence, and then, because God exists and He doesn't deceive, Descartes no longer had to justify the existence of the world (without a God). Of course, this is what led to the famed Cartesian circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_circle), but your short analysis showed that you didn't really understand the text. As I replied in another thread, Jonathan Bennett is translating early modern works to more modern language, resulting in more clear and accessible works (available: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/de.html). I highly encourage that you read it over again and try to get more out of it.
While I'm at it, it seems that a more empirical philosophy would interest you more. Descartes had some influence on Hume's work. Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is one of the best treatments of the philosophy of science in the early modern era, and definitely my favourite work out of that era. if you're interested, you should definitely check it out: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/he.html
Which text? Text of the letter? TFA says that "the letter would be published in a collection later this year."
As for the Meditations, Dr. Jonathan Bennett does a wonderful job of translating early modern works into modern English so that they're more clear and accessible. Here are the Meditations: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/de.html
Some ION systems have struggled slightly with 1080p decoding. If ION 2 is all it's billed to be (harder, better, faster, stronger) while keeping smaller energy footprint with seamless switching between integrated and discrete graphics (as Anand seems to think it does well: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3737), then I'm all for it.
Of course, the ION 2 platform isn't going to be limited to netbooks. The market for small HTPCs (Zotac MAG or Acer Revo and their ilk, I think they're called "nettops" or something) seems to be slowly but steadily gaining steam. Those platforms need to be able to smoothly drive 1920x1080 displays, and ION 2 seems to be something of a match made in heaven for this sort of purpose.
If I'm reading you right, you're saying that something that is very useful and has a lot of legitimate uses but at the same time has a few illegitimate uses should be considered a bad thing. Huh. Who knew? I guess the RIAA has more influence on us than we thought.
This is exactly right, I think. If copyright were held to some reasonable time limit, most works would easily be preserved. Additional changes to copyright could also work to ensure that any reasonably available works are preserved. If, for example, third parties like Google were allowed to scan and store the books without distributing or otherwise making use of them (other than fair use, presumably) until the copyright term expires, then it would allow the archival and preservation of works. Of course, this probably opens a whole other can of worms in terms of other copyright issues.
So really, the problem is not that people want to be compensated for their work (we all do - some of us code, some of us do constructions, some of us cook, some of us write, but we all want to be paid for doing whatever we do), but rather that systems of copyright as they stand are not striking a good balance (or ANY balance, really) between ensuring that people are paid for their work and ensuring the preservation and free use of works for the future.
That's kind of a non-sequitur. The GGP clearly implied that if he were to write a book, he would share it for free.
As for the GGP: Some people write books for a living, and that's a perfectly acceptable career choice. Sure, if I come up with a very plausible epistemological account, I would want to share that information with as many people as I can. But I'd also like to be able to SURVIVE.
Let's say that I somehow invalidated the scientific method as it currently stands and replace it with some other method that is fundamentally different and is better able to arrive at truth (For the sake of argument, please allow that this is in principle possible). I think that such an achievement would undoubtedly add value to the world. Do you think that I would be somehow morally inferior if I wanted to be compensated for my contribution to human knowledge? I may not study what I study or write what I write motivated only by greed for money, but that doesn't mean that it's a moral failure on my part to derive the money I need in order to survive or be able to live a good life from the fruits of my study or writing. Same goes with people who write fiction or how-to guides or what-have-you. They are providing something of value at significant cost to themselves.
I don't know if you realize this, but it takes a LOT of time and effort to write a good book. Sure, a sizable portion of the author population want to share what they write to the world, but they need to live. They need to feed themselves, they need to feed their families, they need shelter. How is that a moral deficiency as you imply by your post?
As much as people around these parts like to say that information wants to be free (as in beer and/or speech, depending on who you ask), the fact of the matter is that the process of coming up with that information and writing and organizing it in a way that is clear and comprehensible is not free (as in beer). Money goes in for research grants, people put in tremendous amounts of hours painstakingly researching and organizing their data or information. These people contribute (some significantly, some less so) to the common good of human knowledge. And you don't think that they should have the moral right to some recompense for their investment?
I can't comment on the case proper as I don't know enough about the specifics, but your implication that it is a moral deficiency on the part of an author to expect some compensation when someone makes use of or otherwise consumes their work is ludicrous.
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Actually, there are many barriers to entry into the Canadian marketplace. Taxes, ownership restrictions, tariffs, operational regulations, etc. are all important considerations. In fact, for many products and services, entry into the Canadian marketplace faces more barriers than many other EU or Asian countries.
One of the first and most restrictive factors is the ownership and management restrictions. Take the wireless industry for example. A wireless carrier has to have at least 50% Canadian ownership in order to operate in Canada. This means that T-Mobile, for example, can't just waddle over across the border and start buying frequency, putting up towers, and offering a service. We've had a recent case where it was debated whether or not a certain wireless carrier (Wind Mobile) actually met that ownership requirement. There's also a general requirement for all corporations that the Board of Directors is comprised of at least 25% Canadians (or a minimum of 1 Canadian if the Board has less than 4 Directors).
Many of our industries are much more tightly regulated than are your industries. As I've briefly mentioned in a previous comment, Canada really is more of a socialist country with a market framework. The skeletal infrastructure of our economy is based on market economics, but we flesh that out with quite a heavy load (comparative to America) of social regulations that protect consumers from power asymmetry that arises from market failure, e.g., information asymmetry, natural monopolies,etc..
Many of these regulations are restrictive enough such that a company may consider that an investment in complying with such regulations would not really be worth it for a shot at the comparatively smaller marketplace. Since American companies design products and their respective distribution plans with American regulations in mind, it would take a significant investment to create another roll-out plan for the Canadian marketplace. We only have 30-odd million people, 1/10 of the American population, and our buying power for non-essential items is generally lower because of the way our consumption taxes are structured*.
On the one hand, we don't get many of the new and sparkly fancy gadgets right away. But that's okay, I'm pretty patient for the most part. It's not that big of a deal. Companies big and successful enough will eventually bring their products over the border. On the other hand, we as consumers and taxpayers are protected from many of the perils that arise from market failure. The biggest recent example is the global financial crisis. While many global banks and companies required bailouts, our financial institutions continued to post modest profits and showed a remarkable ability to quickly recover.
So yeah, there are many barriers to entry into the Canadian marketplace, mostly because of our traditional approach towards market economics that's more skewed towards the socialist side. But even though we may not get the latest cool gadgets or the cheapest deals, we're very well protected from many potential disasters that result from market failure. I wouldn't really call this a fault. I'm a patient guy. I can wait 3 more months for that iPad, or another 6 months for that HTC phone. Small price to pay, in my book.
* It's worth noting that our minimum wage is higher than in America, the last time I checked. The general minimum wage is $10.25 an hour in Ontario, and the average is over $9 across Canada (with only 2 provinces falling below $8.50). However, there are a few factors that influence buying power. The first is that non-essential items are almost always taxed higher throughout Canada. For example, groceries, utilities, etc. are exempt from the federal consumption tax. Alcoh
Significant correction: I meant the mid-1900s, not the mid-90s. Tommy Douglas was quite dead and thus didn't have much political influence by the time the 90s rolled around.
I'm also Canadian but did not see an opt-in/out notice. I went to check my public profile and discovered that it was indeed showing my "likes" amongst other things whereas my previous privacy settings explicitly forbade that kind of info being available to non-friends. I've since turned off my public profile altogether and you now get a 404-type page instead. This might be a good compromise if you don't mind people not being able to add you as easily (something I definitely don't mind).
I'm not going to argue that the GP is right or wrong - I haven't talked to many Indians, I have no clue.
However, I will say that being politically active is not necessarily being politically effective. The U.S. has two major parties. Two major candidates compete for the Presidential election, getting anywhere from 95-99% of the total popular vote. You have two choices: right or left? And most of the rest of the world doesn't consider your left-wing choice to even fall left of centre of their respective political spectra. Where's your choice? Where's your freedom? Where's your free market? Politics in the U.S. is a duopoly. It's certainly better than a monopoly, no doubt about that. But how much better is it? How effective is political activism when you only have two real choices?
(Aside. Granted, the nature of the American republic allows for markedly different governance at the level of states. I'm painting an overly broad stroke, and the degree to which there is separation of powers between federal and state levels is a significant advantage that the American republic has. But at least on the federal level, where copyright law resides to the best of my understanding, there are only two real choices. Actually, come to think of it, you might have less choice than you think: the American constitution is written in such a way as to oblige - in theory with considerable exceptions that would take too long to discuss here - the federal government to follow international treaties that it has ratified.)
I won't pretend to speak for other nations, with the exception that I know that there are at least several, to put it mildly, political parties in India. However, in Canada we have four (foreseeably five in the next election) parties that may prove to have a significant share of seats in Parliament. While the NDP and Bloc (failed at figuring out how to directly link due to /.'s encoding) are generally not in the running to form government, they sometimes find themselves with the balance of power during minority governments when the two dominant parties (Liberals and Conservatives) are in a power struggle. Granted, this doesn't happen very often, but because of the significant minorities that they hold, they generally have at least a bit of political clout.
Tommy Douglas is an important example. He was a social democratic (first leader of the NDP) politician who had, arguably, one of the greatest impacts in Canada's political history. He was the first leader/head of any government in Canada to propose that we constitutionally guarantee certain inviolable rights, which ultimately led to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (since our Charter is part of our constitution, it is - again, in theory and with exceptions - supreme over other laws). He's also now widely recognized as the "father" of universal health care in Canada. He helped to accomplish and realize these two important (and many would consider essentially Canadian) feats without his party ever forming government at the federal level.
This is the power of choice in politics. This is an illustration of effective political activism on the part of social democratic supporters in the mid-90s. In Canada, at least, our expectation is that government will step in place to address the power asymmetry that arises between the industry and the consumer when competition in the markets fails.
(Aside. What happens when competition in government fails and there's a significant power asymmetry between politicians and citizens?)
Finally getting to my on-topic points. Now, again, I have little k
No kidding.
Distractions are one thing, and a good, focused driver MAY be able to avoid many of them. But good, focused drivers also need to look around the road to check for drivers who aren't that good, or for pedestrians who are jay-walking, or for children who run out on the street. Good drivers will (and should) check all around themselves for any potential dangers and not just stare straight at where they want to go.
Whoever thought of this idea was probably a poor driver who never looked around his car. What a horrible and dangerous idea.
Parent and GP are exactly right. Tourette's may be a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to assume that a good majority of us are not qualified to make the judgment of whether or not the girl's light sensitivity is serious enough that holding a particular light source near her face will cause any pain and/or injury. Perhaps only a certain range of EMR wavelengths would trigger a reaction? There are a number of possibilities. I'm not a doctor. Most of the rest of /. are not doctors. The judge is not a doctor.
There are a number of things that happen before a trial occurs. There are details to which we are not privy. Did the girl's lawyer(s) contact experts? If so, did those experts admit of a possibility that events could have transpired as described? If so, then there might be a basis for a case. If the answer is negative for either of those questions, then the lawsuit may be frivolous. But most of us are simply unqualified to make that judgment without further information.
I know, I know. I must be new here.
Then HTC should buy out Nokia to combine great touchscreen hardware with a solid/cool/functional platform, and then LG should buy out HTC and put cool blinking lights and win back the teenage girl market. But by then the phone would have lost their business market so they would have to spin off their business-oriented smart phone division (formerly Blackberry). Of course, former Nokia employees would be pissed that LG is creating flip phones and using touchscreens so they all rage quit and form their own phone company that focuses on simple-to-use candy-bar and slider phones. Also because of the flip phone format, touchscreen user-friendliness would be rendered nearly useless, so LG would spin off their touch division (formerly HTC).
Are we done speculating now?
Even better! You can rig your steering wheel to be a game controller and play a driving game right from your car's steering wheel!! What could possibly go wrong?!
Nothing. Is what could go wrong. Nothing.
I don't know where you live that you can have such faith in your neighbours. I'd sooner trust Bill Clinton to be alone with my girlfriend in the oval office than the asshole next door.
Hmm. I have made some speculations, yes, and that probably makes my opinion ... biased, perhaps. I wouldn't say partisan so much, and certainly would not like to be categorized with the likes of the NDP.
At any rate, Mr. Harper and his friends (Mr. Prentice, as you mentioned, and Mr. Flaherty) have provided little reason for any of us to trust them in any capacity. They are either incompetent or dishonest (c.f. the recent ballooning deficit fiasco), and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Harper, the brilliant political strategist, is incompetent.
Mr. Harper is very methodical and he knows his audience. He released a 40-odd page picture book as his platform for 2008 that left little, if any, room for analysis. Full of vague promises of "helping Canadians" and being "tough on crime", the picture book sold. It was accessible and understandable to most Canadians, even though most of the content was either too vague to say anything of substance or made completely unsubstantiated claims.
Now why I say this is because I think that Mr. Harper's open plans (such as the health care changes you've mentioned) are merely stepping stones for his actual goals that he's revealed in the past (before he had to be careful about what he could say). Now that he's in power, he has to control the message (as shown by his refusal to do unscripted or unscreened interviews on mainstream media). Especially telling is his tenure as the chief policy advisor of Preston Manning's Reform Party.
As chief policy advisor of the Reform Party (I'm going to summarize some of the points in the article, which I think is a pretty accurate list of the Reform Party's core beliefs under Mr. Manning and Mr. Harper's direction), Mr. Harper, still a student at the U of Calgary at the time, came up with their platform to privatize many Crown Corporations including Canada Post, CBC, and Petro-Canada. To be fair, Petro-Can did eventually start to lose money and the government eventually sold it to Suncor. The Reform Party was also very pro-life, opposed homosexual marriage, opposed government-funded bilingualism and multiculturalism, and opposed immigration policies that would "radically or suddenly alter the ethnic make up of Canada". I don't know about you, but those beliefs seem pretty radically right to me and, I would venture to guess, many other Canadians.
Furthermore, a two-tier health system with private and public insurance would result in a perverse incentive structure. People would not be treated based on their needs (as is the case now), but would rather be treated based on how much they (or rather their insurance policy) could pay. Health care isn't, strictly speaking, a zero-sum game (although things like organ transplants and bed spaces definitely are), but it's close enough that whenever someone gains, someone else will almost always lose. This is a very significant step towards the capitalization of health care.
So again, I've taken the liberty to speculate on Mr. Harper's intentions, and you're right in calling me out on that. But I think that I have plenty of pretty solid grounds on which to rest my speculations.
It's quite sad, but I'd have to say that it's no use. People don't vote with reason. Most Canadians still have it in their head that Conservatives = good for economy, Liberals = good for social progression (NDP = big waste of money, Green = too new to trust, Bloq = separatist). Despite the fact that both Mulroney and Harper have categorically disproven that, Canadians still believe it because that's what they were taught. We've become a little lax about our social progressivism, and many Canadians actually bemoan many of our social rights. The Omar Khadr case is symbolic of this mindset. Khadr was under 18 when he was fighting, and that is automatically enough to qualify him as a child soldier (and a Canadian citizen) who has certain rights. However, Mr. Harper, and many other Canadians, don't care about his rights because he was "fighting for the bad guys."
I think the litmus test of any socially progressive country is whether they are able to maintain that even the most despicable criminal who committed the most heinous crimes have equal rights as the rest of society. Rights that include a fair trial, due process, etc. Canada, under the direction of Mr. Harper, has failed that test in the case of Omar Khadr. But, as I said, this is a mindset that is reflective of many Canadians.
No matter how well articulated an article or essay may be, people will not read it. And even if they read it, they will simply turn a blind eye. That's, unfortunately, just how people work. Until an issue comes up that affects them directly, they will not be interested. In this case, all they know is that Canada weathered the financial storm pretty well, and Mr. Harper just so happens to be at the helm at the moment. They don't care that Mr. Paul Martin basically designed the ship that has kept us afloat. The people have their icon.
I'm Canadian, but I may be able to answer your question to some extent. We've elected a Conservative government since 2006. They are on the far right of the Canadian political spectrum, even falling to the right of centre on the American spectrum. Since they've come in power, there are several small but significant changes to our country's traditions.
- The Prime Minister now abuses his executive authority to evade Parliamentary accountability and mask his contempt of Parliament. ... to a house across the street (our Governor General's house), instead of walking like every single one of the previous PMs.
- The Prime Minister now has an entire entourage of armed guards and travels with them in a fleet of at least 5 cars
- We now have, for all intents and purposes, free speech zones, although they're not called as such. The RCMP blocks protesters from coming within a certain radius of the Prime Minister because the PM, and I quote from an RCMP letter, "could have been embarrassed."
- The Prime Minister has, time and again, tried to intervene with arms-length governmental agencies by appointing to important positions those who share his neo-conservative views and equal contempt of Parliament. For example, the Rights and Democracy organization chair was appointed by the PM, and now that the organization is coming under fire, the chair refuses to appear before a Parliamentary committee.
- The PM also intervenes with arms-length agencies by firing or replacing those in positions of power in those agencies for disagreeing with him. Paul Kennedy, former RCMP watchdog, is the latest victim of this campaign, as he was way too critical of the RCMP. For example, Kennedy wanted to hold officers accountable for their actions! Unthinkable.
- The PM has, for a couple of years now, if I recall correctly, refused to do unscripted interviews with mainstream national media outlets (particularly with the public broadcaster, CBC) because he accuses mainstream national media outlets of liberal bias (where have you heard that before?). He's also tried, unsuccessfully, to dismantle the CBC, but has instead settled for reducing its budget year-over-year.
To understand how that is relevant to your question, you will need some background information on Canadian politics and our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Mr. Harper LOOOOOVVVESSS you guys. He LOVES America. In a 1997 speech, he blasts Canada for being a "Northern European welfare state" (like Norway or Sweden) and makes the case that America is the shining conservative beacon towards which we as a nation should strive to resemble. This is reflective of his practices while he was in office. He's hired former Republican consultants and PR people and strategists to help with his campaigning and policy decisions. To cut to the chase, Mr. Harper is an American Republican at heart.
In Canada, we've had a long political tradition of responsible politics. There were some scandals here and there, but they were relatively minor. The most controversial use of the executive power of the PMO (Prime Minister's Office) was back in the Trudeau era, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act because of terrorism-related acts (bombings, kidnappings) by the FLQ in Quebec, a Quebec nationalist group. Even then, the use may be controversial or questionable, but it was undoubtedly a crisis situation. Otherwise, the executive power of the PMO has almost always been exercised responsibly. That is, until Mr. Harper came along. He abused Parliamentary process by defying the will of Parliament. In Canadian politics, the appointment of a PM is not technically decided by the party with the most seats. It is decided by whichever Member of Parliament has the most support in terms of the number of other Members of Parliament. So a coalition with the opposition parties would mean a new Prime Minister. Mr. Harper didn't like this very much, so he decided
Actually this is the perfect market segment for such a "dating" service, if you can call it that. Other dating services target those who don't have time to indulge in the social/leisure scene (business people, etc.), and this one targets those who don't WANT to indulge in the social scene. Instead of looking up profiles for common interests, you already know that the PlayDate you're matched up with will have at least one major common interest (gaming).
I think it's an interesting (although ridiculously expensive) idea. I have no idea if a guy in that position would pay over $7 a pop just to game with a girl, but it does have some potential. Then again, dating sites like eHarmony charge anywhere from $20-$60/month. Love is a lucrative business.
You're right and wrong. The question of whether or not he possessed child porn really had little to do with the decision. HOWEVER, the Court did write exactly what the summary quoted. So it will serve as legal precedent.
The reason why he was acquitted is because the search warrant itself was quashed. An invalid search warrant means that the subsequent search is illegal. So while you're right that the police had a search warrant, it was improperly obtained and thus rendered invalid. You made it sound like they had a valid search warrant, which is false. To issue a search warrant, police need to provide reasonable grounds to a judge as to why the search warrant is necessary or, you might be able to see this coming, warranted. This is to protect Charter rights.
The Court found that the police did NOT have reasonable grounds, and that an objective reasonable person would only have a mere suspicion that he might be creating/consuming child porn. Suspicion is NOT enough to issue a search warrant. Furthermore, it wasn't the fault of the issuing judge that the search warrant was issued. The police used misleading language and omitted important exculpatory information in their Information To Obtain (ITO, basically a warrant application). If the police had not been misleading in their ITO, the judge probably would not have issued a search warrant.
You've conveniently included some of the deceptive claims made by the police. The Court found that the following information was pertinent and exculpatory, and, taken with the situation as a whole, would serve to more than mitigate any reasons to suspect the man:
1) The technician did not find probable child porn links. He found links that were entitled "lolita". If you've ever seen porn, you know that the term "lolita" is used in PLENTY of legal porn productions. These are POSSIBLE child porn links, at best.
2) The child showed NO signs of abuse, trauma, or anything other such signs of harm. The child was fully clothed and playing with her toys.
3) The mother was also in the house.
4) From the fact that the webcam was pointed at his daughter, you CANNOT then conclude that he might be making child porn. That would make it so that every person who has a video camera and likes to take home videos of their children child porn suspects. This is ludicrous.
5) The technician saw legal porn. But legal porn is legal, and from Morelli's consumption of legal porn, you can't suddenly conclude that he likes illegal porn. Logically questionable, at best.
The Court found that all of the above created a situation where you may, kind of, sort of, suspect child porn production. But that would involve an AWFUL LOT of speculation. Search warrants, again, cannot be issued on the basis of suspicion or speculation, but rather reasonable grounds. Since there are no reasonable grounds to issue a search warrant and the issuing judge was misled by the police, the original search warrant was invalidated. This means that the subsequent search and all the evidence obtained cannot be introduced in the Court. Without any evidence from the search, the charges do not hold. Morelli acquitted.
In this particular case, if you RTFA (yeah, yeah, you must be new here, etc.), you will notice that the Morelli, the accused, was also suspected of creating child porn with his 3 yo daughter.
I didn't RTFPDF yet, but here are my preliminary thoughts. I understand the rationale that the fine of $1000 per email is that it is punitive, but why $1000? $1000 per email seems like an awfully exaggerated fine. Didn't we agree that fines or other cash penalties should be at least roughly tied to the amount of harm done? For example, sharing a $1 song should not amount to thousands upon thousands of dollars in fines. Likewise, a single spam email that costs the victim almost nothing but time, annoyance, and/or fractions of a cent in bandwidth costs probably shouldn't warrant a $1000 fine.
Now if a scam email actually defrauded someone of money (the victim could either be the person spammed or an ad agency), the punishment should be relative to the amount defrauded, plus some significant punitive penalty.
If we think that outrageous fines are unjust and unwarranted, shouldn't we apply this rule across the board? Figure out the actual damages and go from there instead of just slapping a $1000 price tag on each email. Doesn't that make more sense?
Off-topic:
While education certainly plays a big part in helping people learn how to write, I think that true progress has to be intrinsically motivated. Some people can write perfectly coherent basic essays, but once they're required to break out of the standard tripartite format, they are no longer able to write anything in a comprehensible way. Over and above education, I think we need to encourage children to read and write more (if done when they're young, we may succeed in creating intrinsic motivations within them to read/write). Reading is where you're exposed to different writing styles, and writing is where you develop your own. That's why I think that blogs are A Good Thing despite most of them being inane drivel. It encourages writing, which hopefully will have significant long term benefits in improving the quality of written communications.
On-topic: /. and is relatively new to law. The reason why "legalese" is hard to read is because many legal definitions stretch back decades, and even more of them stretch back centuries. Legal writing tends to continue using old terms that have been established in the past, because a change in the word may be interpreted as a change in what's referenced.
A lot of legal writing that I've been exposed to (I've been exposed to a reasonable amount, being a criminology/ethics/law student) have been pretty well written, mostly as clear as this blog post. The difference is that this particular topic includes language that is pretty familiar to
At any event, Mr. Levine did a good job in expressing YT's side of the story. If true, I hope Viacom really gets what's coming from the presiding judge.
You're working under the assumption that prosecutors can't (or won't) make legally compelling arguments that those trials can nevertheless be considered fair, and such suspects should be forced to stand trial anyway, with or without a lawyer.
I don't know if you've met many prosecutors, but that's a very optimistic view you have.
Descartes might have been wrong, but that's kind of missing the point. During an era when scepticism was viewed as being inherently blasphemous and absurd, he embraced scepticism as a practical philosophy. Descartes, along with Hume and several others during the early modern period, began to establish moderate scepticism as the basis for a practical philosophy of scientific enquiry.
There's no doubting that Descartes made many mistakes in Meditations. But from the fact that the work isn't perfect, it doesn't entail that it wasn't a great and influential work that's brought us one step closer to understanding the nature of reason. One step of many, to be sure, but one step nonetheless.
Also, he didn't say that he can't trust the existence of the world without God. Rather, he gave an ontological argument for God, established His existence, and then, because God exists and He doesn't deceive, Descartes no longer had to justify the existence of the world (without a God). Of course, this is what led to the famed Cartesian circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_circle), but your short analysis showed that you didn't really understand the text. As I replied in another thread, Jonathan Bennett is translating early modern works to more modern language, resulting in more clear and accessible works (available: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/de.html). I highly encourage that you read it over again and try to get more out of it.
While I'm at it, it seems that a more empirical philosophy would interest you more. Descartes had some influence on Hume's work. Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is one of the best treatments of the philosophy of science in the early modern era, and definitely my favourite work out of that era. if you're interested, you should definitely check it out: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/he.html
Which text? Text of the letter? TFA says that "the letter would be published in a collection later this year."
As for the Meditations, Dr. Jonathan Bennett does a wonderful job of translating early modern works into modern English so that they're more clear and accessible. Here are the Meditations: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/de.html
Some ION systems have struggled slightly with 1080p decoding. If ION 2 is all it's billed to be (harder, better, faster, stronger) while keeping smaller energy footprint with seamless switching between integrated and discrete graphics (as Anand seems to think it does well: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3737), then I'm all for it.
Of course, the ION 2 platform isn't going to be limited to netbooks. The market for small HTPCs (Zotac MAG or Acer Revo and their ilk, I think they're called "nettops" or something) seems to be slowly but steadily gaining steam. Those platforms need to be able to smoothly drive 1920x1080 displays, and ION 2 seems to be something of a match made in heaven for this sort of purpose.
If I'm reading you right, you're saying that something that is very useful and has a lot of legitimate uses but at the same time has a few illegitimate uses should be considered a bad thing. Huh. Who knew? I guess the RIAA has more influence on us than we thought.
This case is probably not over yet.
This is exactly right, I think. If copyright were held to some reasonable time limit, most works would easily be preserved. Additional changes to copyright could also work to ensure that any reasonably available works are preserved. If, for example, third parties like Google were allowed to scan and store the books without distributing or otherwise making use of them (other than fair use, presumably) until the copyright term expires, then it would allow the archival and preservation of works. Of course, this probably opens a whole other can of worms in terms of other copyright issues.
So really, the problem is not that people want to be compensated for their work (we all do - some of us code, some of us do constructions, some of us cook, some of us write, but we all want to be paid for doing whatever we do), but rather that systems of copyright as they stand are not striking a good balance (or ANY balance, really) between ensuring that people are paid for their work and ensuring the preservation and free use of works for the future.
That's kind of a non-sequitur. The GGP clearly implied that if he were to write a book, he would share it for free.
As for the GGP: Some people write books for a living, and that's a perfectly acceptable career choice. Sure, if I come up with a very plausible epistemological account, I would want to share that information with as many people as I can. But I'd also like to be able to SURVIVE.
Let's say that I somehow invalidated the scientific method as it currently stands and replace it with some other method that is fundamentally different and is better able to arrive at truth (For the sake of argument, please allow that this is in principle possible). I think that such an achievement would undoubtedly add value to the world. Do you think that I would be somehow morally inferior if I wanted to be compensated for my contribution to human knowledge? I may not study what I study or write what I write motivated only by greed for money, but that doesn't mean that it's a moral failure on my part to derive the money I need in order to survive or be able to live a good life from the fruits of my study or writing. Same goes with people who write fiction or how-to guides or what-have-you. They are providing something of value at significant cost to themselves.
I don't know if you realize this, but it takes a LOT of time and effort to write a good book. Sure, a sizable portion of the author population want to share what they write to the world, but they need to live. They need to feed themselves, they need to feed their families, they need shelter. How is that a moral deficiency as you imply by your post?
As much as people around these parts like to say that information wants to be free (as in beer and/or speech, depending on who you ask), the fact of the matter is that the process of coming up with that information and writing and organizing it in a way that is clear and comprehensible is not free (as in beer). Money goes in for research grants, people put in tremendous amounts of hours painstakingly researching and organizing their data or information. These people contribute (some significantly, some less so) to the common good of human knowledge. And you don't think that they should have the moral right to some recompense for their investment?
I can't comment on the case proper as I don't know enough about the specifics, but your implication that it is a moral deficiency on the part of an author to expect some compensation when someone makes use of or otherwise consumes their work is ludicrous.