Well, from a Christian point of view participating in pornography _does_ harm others, as well as yourself.
First of all, if I want to do something that you think is causing harm to me, THAT'S MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS AND NONE OF YOURS! If I want to star in a porn movie, that's my own decision. If I want to buy a porn movie, that's also my own decision. I don't go around trying to keep people from adhering to certain religions even though I think that many of them (christianity included) can be quite harmful to people. It's an individual's decision. As long as nobody is forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, I don't have a problem with it.
I criticize intolerance, because the "tolerance" crowd is often incapable of seeing any point of view but their own, and quite often the "tolerance" crowd is anything but.
The "tolerant crowd" would be advocating minding your own business. Quit trying to get legislation passed to prevent consenting adults from engaging in this or that activity that you don't approve of. The "tolerant crowd" isn't trying to outlaw religion. They're trying to prevent religion from encroaching on the lives of people who don't want to have anything to do with those religions.
For example, isn't it ironic that when the Boy Scouts want to exclude openly gay leaders from their organization (as protected by the First Amendment) it's called "unfairly imposing their morality on others", but when pro-homosexual people demand that they "tolerate" people who openly engage in behavior that is believed to be immoral, it's called tolerance.
I don't think that private organizations should be compelled to include anyone that they don't want to include. As long as the organization doesn't receive any public funding or other benefits, then they can do as they like as far as I'm concerned. But since gay people pay taxes just like everyone else, I'd be pretty ticked if a publicly funded organization tried to exclude them.
When is the last time you saw a movie or TV show that promoted chastity or modesty?
Nobody forces me to watch crap like that. Nobody forces you to watch something you don't like either.
When was the last time you heard a politician claim that we need to protect the rights of heterosexual people who want to live their lives a certain way (not to suggest that's needed)
As you say, it's not needed. Nobody hassles heterosexuals for being heterosexual. They don't need to have their rights protected any more than they already are. We happen to need extra protection for gay people because their rights are quite likely to be trampled all over simply because someone's religion says that homosexuality is bad.
when was the last time you heard someone say that if you don't want AIDS, don't have promiscuous sex, rather than perpetuating the myth that condoms, which do a really poor job of preventing pregnancy overall, are any better at prevent the transmission of disease?
I hear this all the time. I think it is only one possible solution. Perhaps it's one of the most effective, but it is also not likely to be useful to many people. For many people, it's like saying that if you don't want to get sick, you should encase yourself in a sterile plastic bubble. It's just not practical. You believe your religion is The Truth. This religion says that premarital sex is bad. That's fine for you. Many other people don't believe it. Nor have they seen any good evidence either. It's called "faith" for a reason. So, these people deal with live their lives as best they can. They have human needs and urges. Sometimes they may decide to supress them if they feel they might endanger themselves. Other times they feel that the risk is not that great. Some people just aren't educated about such decisions in the first place. They don't understand the risks. They should be educated rather than preached at. Unfortunately many christians seem to see AIDS as as an opportunity to enforce their morals on others rather than a disease that requires caution and education to prevent.
See? The intolerance and moralizing go both ways. It's amusing how many people fail to see that.
What's amazing to me is that you fail to see the difference between allowing people to do what they want as long as they aren't harming others, and forcing people by law or coercion to conform to your morals and beliefs.
It says 90C is the maximum die temperature. I guess that means you should start worrying if it hits 80C. My 900MHz T-Bird seems to hover between 60-70C. That bothers me, but I'm not sure what else I can do about it. I have a good heatsink that should keep it a lot cooler than that, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be working. I also added 2 extra fans to my case to help with airflow, but nothing seems to work.
I live in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex partnerships.
While I don't like this, I don't think it can be considered a violation of your rights. I also am not convinced that it rises to the level of a human rights violation. You're talking about a right that has never existed in the history of this country. While I agree that you should have this right, I don't see it as a case where the government is taking away a right. It just hasn't gotten to the point where it acknowledges such marriages as a legal event. There are some tricky legal problems that will have to be dealt with, but I think those will get worked out. Like any of the rights movements in our history, I think this one is worth fighting for, and I believe that it will ultimately be successful.
I live in a state where, if you're a black driver on the turnpike, you're much more likely to get pulled over.
I can't really argue with this one. It's a serious problem. It's probably one of those things that will take a long time to fix. I'm not sure how much of it is caused by racism in the cops and how much is just them doing their job. While black people are stopped more often than anyone else, black people also commit a disproportionate amount of the crime. I happen to think that racism is largely to blame for their situation in the first place which is often why they end up committing crimes. It's a vicious circle, and that's why I don't think this is something that will be cured anytime soon. But we should definitely be doing what we can to chip away at it.
I live in a state where students are being sent home for wearing religious symbols in school.
Sounds like overzealous administrators again. It's an epidemic. People go berserk and demand that administrators eliminate any and all possibility of harm to students from the schools. Administrators have no idea how to comply with these demands. So they end up stamping out individualism in any form they can recognize and write a rule for. I think the law is pretty clear that while schools are not supposed to advocate any religion, they are also not required to prevent students from acknowledging their religion. IMO, they shouldn't be having student-lead (or anybody-lead) prayers at school events. There is no need to subject everybody at the event to the religion of one faction, regardless of how large that faction might be. On the other hand, there is no need to prevent students from praying or performing any other religious practice in school as long as it does not create a disturbance. Nor should students be prevented from wearing religious symbols, whether it be a cross, star, pentagram, etc. I think that the courts will act sensibly in these cases. People in general are another matter though.
I live in a world where thousands of children have recently been sold into slavery.
Since this is outside the country, I can't really form much of an opinion on how it should be dealt with. I think there are very few Americans with access to all the necessary information to make an informed decision about how we should deal with such issues. Sad, but true.
Anyway, I agree with you that there are other issues we should be concerned with. Some that are more serious than copyright laws. But I also don't think that we should just work on one problem at a time. There are many many people working on any given problem. You simply have to contribute what you can in the areas where you have something to offer. Most people don't have a clue about copyright. You can tell that just by reading the majority of posts here to any story about it. I've decided that it's one area that I am fairly well informed and where I can at least help to inform and persuade others and badger my congresscritters about it. As far as I know, that's what people do when they want something changed in this country. It's just a question of how to get the information out to everybody without it being twisted or corrupted along the way. I do believe it is a serious issue though, even though it currently gets characterized by the media as an issue of whether or not people should be able to download free music or not. I guess that doesn't surprise me.
it's a shame that it seems to register so high on the list of so many people here when there are (again IMHO) much more important rights and freedoms being infringed.
Such as? I take any infringements on my rights seriously. This just happens to be one of the most serious infringements that I'm aware of. It could have a significant impact on me. There are many others that I'm concerned about as well. Most of them haven't been killed by a law or court decision yet though as fair use has. I'd like to know what rights and freedoms you ARE concerned about. Care to clue me in?
I think he made the point that if the law is there, you might as well take advantage of it. It obviously helped him by letting him spot a corrupt politician out to do him harm.
Whoa.... I never said anything about a moral imperative to boycott. I personally believe that what the RIAA and MPAA are doing is very very wrong, but I never said anything resembling what you seem to think that I believe. You did misquote the other poster though. He said "strip US ALL of our freedoms", not "strip US OF ALL our freedoms." There is a significant difference there. I have to agree with his actual statement though. They are trying to strip us of our freedom. Maybe they haven't gone far enough yet to worry you. Well.. it's plenty far to worry me and a lot of others. With any luck they'll never make the changes stick and things will be fine. If not, then maybe you'll get worried later. Hope it will be soon enough to make a difference.
I have yet to see them try to strip me of my freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They are already trying to take away our fair use rights. Maybe you don't mind losing your rights as long as it's done a little at a time, but losing that right would just establish another bad precedent that they will use to take away even more from us. But I'm sure you'd rather just not think about it. Go see Joe Dirt or something.
You guys seem to like throwing out numbers. Could you do us all a favor and give us some links or at least explain where you managed to come by these numbers?
But remember, it's not just loss of compatibility with non-Windows users, it's also loss of compatibility with everyone who owns a portable MP3 player or a hard drive or CD-based car MP3 player as well. That probably expands the number of people they are cutting out by a fairly wide margin.
You're a lot more likely to get modded up if you explain what the hell you mean and offer some evidence to support it. Otherwise you're just another ranting idiot.
That's why we should give up on html and java/javascript and return to a language that everyone already has on his computer: Basic. Etc, etc.
When they "brought Basic into the 21st century", Microsoft had to introduce so many new features as to make Basic just as complex to use as Java or C++, or any other modern language really (ok, maybe I shouldn't go that far, they do take away a lot of flexibility that you would get from C or C++ for the additional cost of a lot more knowledge of APIs). Just because you learned Basic back in junior high doesn't mean you would have the foggiest idea how to use it's current and upcoming incarnations. Hell, Basic is the first language I ever encountered too. But I didn't stick with it very long. Other languages were much more powerful and made more sense to use. While the intricacies of any given language can take a significant effort to master, the effort can be well worth it if the language offers enough benefit over whatever you are currently using.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it really doesn't matter what language programmers grew up using. If it was Basic, they've long since moved on to other languages (including VB which is much much different than the Basic that many of us started off with), so it wouldn't do all that much good to move back to developing in Basic at this point.
Slashdot may have posted quite a few stories about Indrema, but that's because tons of people submitted those stories. As much as we all doubted that it would ever actually make it, most of us were really hoping for a miracle. I don't think Slashdot ever said anything resembling "Indeed it is. Clearly, Linux is the future of gaming consoles. The world cheers to be offered more choices." The most optimistic thing I saw from Slashdot was this, "I'm still pretty excited to see what comes of Indrema. I'm still waiting for the converged media box, and they've got as good of a shot as anyone." Most of their other comments were nowhere near as optimistic.
So, Slashdot wasn't really being harsh or hypocritical. They wanted the product to succeed as much as the rest of us, but they never really seemed to expect it to any more than the rest of us either. Various posters are a different matter, but you could accuse "posters" in general of damn near anything and be able to back it up with links. The articles themselves were posted because Slashdotters submitted them. Just as with any other article, you must judge bias and such for yourself.
Wild Tangent was founded by Microsoft's former DirectX evangelist, Alex St. John. How could the company that Microsoft bought DirectX from turn into a company that was founded by a former MS employee? I don't get it.
That said though, I think they're most likely hoping that people who really like their distro will pay for it. Kinda like how everyone always says that they'd like to give their money directly to the artists instead of to the record companies. Well, here's a situation where you can do just that. If you like the distro that these guys put together, then send them the cash.
Under this law, I wouldn't be able to because filtering software doesn't exist for Linux.
Nah, I doubt they'd go that far. Knowing the clowns in the state legislature here, they'll probably just make you buy Windows censorware anyway. Logic is not their strong suit.
Look, you're not subsidising the business. Open Source software that is freely available to the public is a good thing, regardless of whether or not a company finds a way to profit from it. A company gets a tax credit for donating computers, money, etc, to a charity. Why not for donating a software program to the public? It doesn't necessarily mean the money will have to be taken from someone else either. That's up to the government, and ultimately us as voters, right? I'm sure we'll all grieve that some Senators' pet projects will have to find funding elsewhere, but we'll survive.
The real solution is the removal of the tax. I'm with the Libertarians on this one.
I agree with the Libertarians on quite a few things as well. Too bad their candidates always come off as crackpots. They need to find someone a tad more moderate to get in and start things moving in the right direction. This all or nothing, all at once approach won't work. Their candidates even scare me, and I'm inclined to agree with them fairly often.
The problem is not that someone will copyright it after it becomes public domain in the US, the problem is that if the US has a shorter term length than Europe, nobody will copyright works in the US. They'll copyright them in Europe instead. This creates a standoff between the US and Europe. The US can say, "We only honor copyrights for 14 years." Then the EU says, "Well if you won't honor our copyrights for our full 90 year (for example) term, then we just won't enforce US copyrights here at all!" Then the US says, "Fine, then we won't enforce EU copyrights here either!" Then we end up with a really ugly situation. What needs to happen is that we need to convince our government to convince other governments that copyrights last too long now and that we should have a much shorter term for them. Unfortunately, with so much money at stake, I fear the kinds of heinous crimes that will probably be committed to prevent such a thing from happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, from a Christian point of view participating in pornography _does_ harm others, as well as yourself.
First of all, if I want to do something that you think is causing harm to me, THAT'S MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS AND NONE OF YOURS! If I want to star in a porn movie, that's my own decision. If I want to buy a porn movie, that's also my own decision. I don't go around trying to keep people from adhering to certain religions even though I think that many of them (christianity included) can be quite harmful to people. It's an individual's decision. As long as nobody is forcing someone to do something they don't want to do, I don't have a problem with it.
I criticize intolerance, because the "tolerance" crowd is often incapable of seeing any point of view but their own, and quite often the "tolerance" crowd is anything but.
The "tolerant crowd" would be advocating minding your own business. Quit trying to get legislation passed to prevent consenting adults from engaging in this or that activity that you don't approve of. The "tolerant crowd" isn't trying to outlaw religion. They're trying to prevent religion from encroaching on the lives of people who don't want to have anything to do with those religions.
For example, isn't it ironic that when the Boy Scouts want to exclude openly gay leaders from their organization (as protected by the First Amendment) it's called "unfairly imposing their morality on others", but when pro-homosexual people demand that they "tolerate" people who openly engage in behavior that is believed to be immoral, it's called tolerance.
I don't think that private organizations should be compelled to include anyone that they don't want to include. As long as the organization doesn't receive any public funding or other benefits, then they can do as they like as far as I'm concerned. But since gay people pay taxes just like everyone else, I'd be pretty ticked if a publicly funded organization tried to exclude them.
When is the last time you saw a movie or TV show that promoted chastity or modesty?
Nobody forces me to watch crap like that. Nobody forces you to watch something you don't like either.
When was the last time you heard a politician claim that we need to protect the rights of heterosexual people who want to live their lives a certain way (not to suggest that's needed)
As you say, it's not needed. Nobody hassles heterosexuals for being heterosexual. They don't need to have their rights protected any more than they already are. We happen to need extra protection for gay people because their rights are quite likely to be trampled all over simply because someone's religion says that homosexuality is bad.
when was the last time you heard someone say that if you don't want AIDS, don't have promiscuous sex, rather than perpetuating the myth that condoms, which do a really poor job of preventing pregnancy overall, are any better at prevent the transmission of disease?
I hear this all the time. I think it is only one possible solution. Perhaps it's one of the most effective, but it is also not likely to be useful to many people. For many people, it's like saying that if you don't want to get sick, you should encase yourself in a sterile plastic bubble. It's just not practical. You believe your religion is The Truth. This religion says that premarital sex is bad. That's fine for you. Many other people don't believe it. Nor have they seen any good evidence either. It's called "faith" for a reason. So, these people deal with live their lives as best they can. They have human needs and urges. Sometimes they may decide to supress them if they feel they might endanger themselves. Other times they feel that the risk is not that great. Some people just aren't educated about such decisions in the first place. They don't understand the risks. They should be educated rather than preached at. Unfortunately many christians seem to see AIDS as as an opportunity to enforce their morals on others rather than a disease that requires caution and education to prevent.
See? The intolerance and moralizing go both ways. It's amusing how many people fail to see that.
What's amazing to me is that you fail to see the difference between allowing people to do what they want as long as they aren't harming others, and forcing people by law or coercion to conform to your morals and beliefs.
You can read about the temp specs in this document: (in pdf.. sorry.. that's all I could find)
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/techdocs/pd f/23794.pdf
It says 90C is the maximum die temperature. I guess that means you should start worrying if it hits 80C. My 900MHz T-Bird seems to hover between 60-70C. That bothers me, but I'm not sure what else I can do about it. I have a good heatsink that should keep it a lot cooler than that, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be working. I also added 2 extra fans to my case to help with airflow, but nothing seems to work.
I live in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex partnerships.
While I don't like this, I don't think it can be considered a violation of your rights. I also am not convinced that it rises to the level of a human rights violation. You're talking about a right that has never existed in the history of this country. While I agree that you should have this right, I don't see it as a case where the government is taking away a right. It just hasn't gotten to the point where it acknowledges such marriages as a legal event. There are some tricky legal problems that will have to be dealt with, but I think those will get worked out. Like any of the rights movements in our history, I think this one is worth fighting for, and I believe that it will ultimately be successful.
I live in a state where, if you're a black driver on the turnpike, you're much more likely to get pulled over.
I can't really argue with this one. It's a serious problem. It's probably one of those things that will take a long time to fix. I'm not sure how much of it is caused by racism in the cops and how much is just them doing their job. While black people are stopped more often than anyone else, black people also commit a disproportionate amount of the crime. I happen to think that racism is largely to blame for their situation in the first place which is often why they end up committing crimes. It's a vicious circle, and that's why I don't think this is something that will be cured anytime soon. But we should definitely be doing what we can to chip away at it.
I live in a state where students are being sent home for wearing religious symbols in school.
Sounds like overzealous administrators again. It's an epidemic. People go berserk and demand that administrators eliminate any and all possibility of harm to students from the schools. Administrators have no idea how to comply with these demands. So they end up stamping out individualism in any form they can recognize and write a rule for. I think the law is pretty clear that while schools are not supposed to advocate any religion, they are also not required to prevent students from acknowledging their religion. IMO, they shouldn't be having student-lead (or anybody-lead) prayers at school events. There is no need to subject everybody at the event to the religion of one faction, regardless of how large that faction might be. On the other hand, there is no need to prevent students from praying or performing any other religious practice in school as long as it does not create a disturbance. Nor should students be prevented from wearing religious symbols, whether it be a cross, star, pentagram, etc. I think that the courts will act sensibly in these cases. People in general are another matter though.
I live in a world where thousands of children have recently been sold into slavery.
Since this is outside the country, I can't really form much of an opinion on how it should be dealt with. I think there are very few Americans with access to all the necessary information to make an informed decision about how we should deal with such issues. Sad, but true.
Anyway, I agree with you that there are other issues we should be concerned with. Some that are more serious than copyright laws. But I also don't think that we should just work on one problem at a time. There are many many people working on any given problem. You simply have to contribute what you can in the areas where you have something to offer. Most people don't have a clue about copyright. You can tell that just by reading the majority of posts here to any story about it. I've decided that it's one area that I am fairly well informed and where I can at least help to inform and persuade others and badger my congresscritters about it. As far as I know, that's what people do when they want something changed in this country. It's just a question of how to get the information out to everybody without it being twisted or corrupted along the way. I do believe it is a serious issue though, even though it currently gets characterized by the media as an issue of whether or not people should be able to download free music or not. I guess that doesn't surprise me.
it's a shame that it seems to register so high on the list of so many people here when there are (again IMHO) much more important rights and freedoms being infringed.
Such as? I take any infringements on my rights seriously. This just happens to be one of the most serious infringements that I'm aware of. It could have a significant impact on me. There are many others that I'm concerned about as well. Most of them haven't been killed by a law or court decision yet though as fair use has. I'd like to know what rights and freedoms you ARE concerned about. Care to clue me in?
I think he made the point that if the law is there, you might as well take advantage of it. It obviously helped him by letting him spot a corrupt politician out to do him harm.
Whoa.... I never said anything about a moral imperative to boycott. I personally believe that what the RIAA and MPAA are doing is very very wrong, but I never said anything resembling what you seem to think that I believe. You did misquote the other poster though. He said "strip US ALL of our freedoms", not "strip US OF ALL our freedoms." There is a significant difference there. I have to agree with his actual statement though. They are trying to strip us of our freedom. Maybe they haven't gone far enough yet to worry you. Well.. it's plenty far to worry me and a lot of others. With any luck they'll never make the changes stick and things will be fine. If not, then maybe you'll get worried later. Hope it will be soon enough to make a difference.
I have yet to see them try to strip me of my freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They are already trying to take away our fair use rights. Maybe you don't mind losing your rights as long as it's done a little at a time, but losing that right would just establish another bad precedent that they will use to take away even more from us. But I'm sure you'd rather just not think about it. Go see Joe Dirt or something.
You guys seem to like throwing out numbers. Could you do us all a favor and give us some links or at least explain where you managed to come by these numbers?
Why is the only prejudice it's PC to have is anti-Christian prejudice?
Probably because people are more tolerant of people being less tolerant towards people who are generally a pretty intolerant lot.
But remember, it's not just loss of compatibility with non-Windows users, it's also loss of compatibility with everyone who owns a portable MP3 player or a hard drive or CD-based car MP3 player as well. That probably expands the number of people they are cutting out by a fairly wide margin.
By supporting non-MS media formats, a media producer would get as much extra market share as by translating into Esperanto.
Extra market-share is extra market-share. Why not use MP3 when it gives you access to the whole Windows market, and all the other OS markets as well?
Yes, but when I don't even know what time I'll be home, how can my thermostat know??
You're a lot more likely to get modded up if you explain what the hell you mean and offer some evidence to support it. Otherwise you're just another ranting idiot.
That's why we should give up on html and java/javascript and return to a language that everyone already has on his computer: Basic. Etc, etc.
When they "brought Basic into the 21st century", Microsoft had to introduce so many new features as to make Basic just as complex to use as Java or C++, or any other modern language really (ok, maybe I shouldn't go that far, they do take away a lot of flexibility that you would get from C or C++ for the additional cost of a lot more knowledge of APIs). Just because you learned Basic back in junior high doesn't mean you would have the foggiest idea how to use it's current and upcoming incarnations. Hell, Basic is the first language I ever encountered too. But I didn't stick with it very long. Other languages were much more powerful and made more sense to use. While the intricacies of any given language can take a significant effort to master, the effort can be well worth it if the language offers enough benefit over whatever you are currently using.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it really doesn't matter what language programmers grew up using. If it was Basic, they've long since moved on to other languages (including VB which is much much different than the Basic that many of us started off with), so it wouldn't do all that much good to move back to developing in Basic at this point.
Slashdot may have posted quite a few stories about Indrema, but that's because tons of people submitted those stories. As much as we all doubted that it would ever actually make it, most of us were really hoping for a miracle. I don't think Slashdot ever said anything resembling "Indeed it is. Clearly, Linux is the future of gaming consoles. The world cheers to be offered more choices." The most optimistic thing I saw from Slashdot was this, "I'm still pretty excited to see what comes of Indrema. I'm still waiting for the converged media box, and they've got as good of a shot as anyone." Most of their other comments were nowhere near as optimistic.
So, Slashdot wasn't really being harsh or hypocritical. They wanted the product to succeed as much as the rest of us, but they never really seemed to expect it to any more than the rest of us either. Various posters are a different matter, but you could accuse "posters" in general of damn near anything and be able to back it up with links. The articles themselves were posted because Slashdotters submitted them. Just as with any other article, you must judge bias and such for yourself.
Wild Tangent was founded by Microsoft's former DirectX evangelist, Alex St. John. How could the company that Microsoft bought DirectX from turn into a company that was founded by a former MS employee? I don't get it.
Does Microsoft inform you in their EULA about these audits?
We give them all tiny little swords and declare, "There can be only one!"
Content can not remain in (1) forever.
That remains to be seen.
Seeing as he obviously missed the entire point of the story, I don't think this should be a 5... or even a 2.
That said though, I think they're most likely hoping that people who really like their distro will pay for it. Kinda like how everyone always says that they'd like to give their money directly to the artists instead of to the record companies. Well, here's a situation where you can do just that. If you like the distro that these guys put together, then send them the cash.
Under this law, I wouldn't be able to because filtering software doesn't exist for Linux.
Nah, I doubt they'd go that far. Knowing the clowns in the state legislature here, they'll probably just make you buy Windows censorware anyway. Logic is not their strong suit.
Look, you're not subsidising the business. Open Source software that is freely available to the public is a good thing, regardless of whether or not a company finds a way to profit from it. A company gets a tax credit for donating computers, money, etc, to a charity. Why not for donating a software program to the public? It doesn't necessarily mean the money will have to be taken from someone else either. That's up to the government, and ultimately us as voters, right? I'm sure we'll all grieve that some Senators' pet projects will have to find funding elsewhere, but we'll survive.
The real solution is the removal of the tax. I'm with the Libertarians on this one.
I agree with the Libertarians on quite a few things as well. Too bad their candidates always come off as crackpots. They need to find someone a tad more moderate to get in and start things moving in the right direction. This all or nothing, all at once approach won't work. Their candidates even scare me, and I'm inclined to agree with them fairly often.
The problem is not that someone will copyright it after it becomes public domain in the US, the problem is that if the US has a shorter term length than Europe, nobody will copyright works in the US. They'll copyright them in Europe instead. This creates a standoff between the US and Europe. The US can say, "We only honor copyrights for 14 years." Then the EU says, "Well if you won't honor our copyrights for our full 90 year (for example) term, then we just won't enforce US copyrights here at all!" Then the US says, "Fine, then we won't enforce EU copyrights here either!" Then we end up with a really ugly situation. What needs to happen is that we need to convince our government to convince other governments that copyrights last too long now and that we should have a much shorter term for them. Unfortunately, with so much money at stake, I fear the kinds of heinous crimes that will probably be committed to prevent such a thing from happening.