I didn't realize that your health was my responsibility. Oh wait.. it isn't.. you just want it to be.
No civilized person would refuse to help someone who is seriously sick or injured when they show up at a hospital. I suppose you think that's what we should do?
The fact is, we don't turn people in need away to die in the street. If they show up in the emergency room, we give them care and the taxpayers end up paying for it. The problem is that they'll be back in repeatedly until they die because we don't have a system that allows them to get affordable insurance so that they can get the basic preventative care that could prevent them from ever getting to the point of showing up in the emergency room.
I don't care if you're left or right health care 'reform' was one of Obama's main election platforms so I think ObamaCare is a fitting term.
I see what you're saying, but since in practice only right-wingers use term, it is a useful shibboleth to tell who's who.
Hold the gosh darn phone! So if you are not in favor of having the government run health care, you now have to also be a bible thumping, gun toting wacko as well? I didn't sign up for that, so I guess I have to now like having the government run health care based on its wonderful track record? Get your polarized glasses off and realize that just because you don't like one (gigantic, gargantuan) thing Obama is up to, doesn't put you in the same camp with all the proper "right wing" wackos out there.
First of all, there's not likely to be anything "government-run" about the final bill. The public plan is a way to ensure that an option is open to everyone, but probably won't end up in the final bill. Something needs to be done to make sure that the insurance companies have to compete and can't just cherry-pick the healthiest people. Health care is one area where non-profit really appeals to me. I'm not sure the service offered by insurance companies is really worth anywhere near what it costs. If that money went directly to the health care professionals with a minimal amount of bureaucratic overhead that these companies create, it would probably serve us better. We're going to end up paying for care for everyone anyway, might as well strip out as much unnecessary stuff as possible.
I don't understand most of the complaints against the proposed changes that Obama wants. You've got your Joe Wilsons that are scared to death that a Mexican is going to get a free immunization or something, completely missing the point that these people end up in emergency rooms and we pay even more for them anyway. Immunize them all and give them preventative care. It's cheaper for me that way.
Then there's the issue of seniors and others who wouldn't give up their government-run Medicare and Medicaid for anything, and nobody in Congress is going to even suggest that they should.
Oh, and let's not forget the arguments from the right about the horror stories of socialized medicine in Canada and Europe. Somehow they manage to completely forget that we have more than our share of horror stories of people getting denied coverage or dropped completely when they get sick based on some bit of info that the insurance company conveniently didn't notice when the person was still healthy and paying them every month. People losing coverage when they get laid off. People who can't afford any insurance or can't get insurance because they have an existing condition. These people just end up in the emergency rooms repeatedly until they die. Guess who pays through the nose so that they can live and die in such a horrible way?
Then there's the argument that they don't want anyone telling them who their provider should be. Aside from the fact that nothing proposed would do that, how many people out there actually get a choice now anyway? Only those with a ton of money, that's who. The rest of us get to go with whoever our company made a deal with, or try to find something cheap enough on our own (good luck with that), or go without and rely on the taxpayers to pick up the tab when we end up in the hospital.
There's not a lot of good answers out there, but the one thing that we definitely can't accept is a situation like we have now where the private companies are rewarded for denying as much care as possible, and where you can't even know for sure what you'll be covered for outside of routine procedures because even lawyers often can't figure out what a policy would cover. We pay more than anyone else, but we don't have better outcomes in general than those that pay a lot less. Seems like there's a lot of inefficiency and probably fraud in the system. The difference between the wholesale prices that insurance companies pay and what I would have to pay on my own is absolutely insane too.
I was thinking about how to explain this more clearly, and what I would suggest is for you to answer the question, "why should physical property be protected?" and try to trace the reasons behind that. If I own a piece of land, and let put a lot of research and work into growing crops on that land, and even get financial loans pegged on my growing crops, why should any of that imply that the crops belong to me, and that the government should ensure that they remain with me?
First, I notice you didn't address my example of the patent. Another example of intellectual output, arguably much more useful than most copyrighted works, that only receives 20 years of protection. If it's property, then why does it expire?
Now, as for the rest of your question, let me start with the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Your property is whatever you can take and defend. If your society helps you do this, more power to you. But property is not any sort of absolute right. There are many ways for your property to be taken from you. Only the rule of law protects property. If there is no law to make the government defend your right to property, then you're back to defending it yourself. The law (in the US) does not consider writings and discoveries to be property, but does ensure that exclusive rights will be granted for a limited time.
Honestly, I don't see any good reason for copyright to exist except to encourage the creation of new works. I think that that could be accomplished with a much more limited copyright, in both scope and duration. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and I don't see why those who take ideas that came before them and weave them together in a new way really deserve any sort of lifetime (or longer) protection for those works. They use ideas from works that were never copyrighted or whose copyrights expired (and those terms were much shorter than what we have now). I really don't see the benefit to society to walling off these works. I don't believe that someone decides whether to create something worthwhile based on some calculation about whether they'll get 30 or 50 or 1000 years of protection for it.
Look at even the most expensive creations now, like Hollywood movies. They cost tens of millions to make. Do you believe that they're projecting out 90+ years to determine whether or not to make a movie? No way. They plan to reap at least 90% of the profit from it within a few years. For those rare few that become timeless classics, maybe they'll continue to make money, but it certainly isn't a deciding factor in whether to make the movie or not. Those classics are the ones that become the most ingrained in our culture too, and I think we'd benefit more by having unfettered access to them after a reasonable time than to have them cut off for our entire lifetimes and likely our childrens' lifetimes as well. I don't see the sense in that.
Historically, politicians are pretty shitty deciders of military policy. Let the Generals have a great deal more free reign, and we're likely to see better results.
Unless you're talking about how he hasn't followed up at all on all those promises to get us out of Iraq he made during the Campaign. That's a pretty legitimate complaint.
They set up an exit strategy, informed largely by the commanders in Iraq. What more do people want? We should just drop everything and leave the country to devolve into an even bigger mess we'll have to deal with later? Seems like we're doing the only thing we can responsibly do to get out in a reasonable amount of time.
If it is objectively determined to be property, then it should be protected. Whether or not the government decides to protect it, and whether or not they decide they have the power to add limitations, is a different matter, and doesn't affect whether or not it should actually be protected.
It isn't objectively determined to be property, as it bears little resemblance to the traditional notion of property, and I think you'll find it rather impossible to prove otherwise. If it was truly property, then why does a patent expire after 20 years? Why do libraries exist? I go could on and on. The fact is that it's not property, it's simply a right that can be granted by the Congress under the Constitution. The right has limits, as determined by Congress.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
Indeed, so you've just shown how the majority can still vote for the violation of rights. So much for the notion that democracy is always a Good Thing(TM).
There is the issue of considering "intellectual property" to be property in a real sense. It's only protected because the government decided to do so. Putting limitations on that protection is also within their purview. Especially when it's being used in such a way as to inhibit or prevent competition.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
You're dropping the context of the word "investment". In any other situation where I force you at gunpoint to accept something now in exchange for something later, it is not a free trade, and not an investment. They owe us nothing. The transaction should have never occurred.
Forced, at gunpoint even? Do you not recall the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford going to Washington on multiple occasions, claiming that they needed billions in loans to prevent their companies from collapsing? They begged for the bailout. I'm no fan of the bailout, but politicians from both sides were claiming that it needed to be done to prevent more jobs from being lost.
I knew a guy, not rich but a regular Joe, who had a knack to always position himself to allow him to reap praise for projects already on the track to success, and get out of failing projects in time. He got plenty of promotions without really accomplishing something, but his success did require that special knack.
Of course, sometimes just being there is enough. Joining a startup that grows into a success despite your best efforts, and suddenly that crappy stock you got in lieu of a decent salary is worth 8 figures...
Coattails are the best means of transportation. Figure out how to stay on them and you can go far for free.
I would doubt that Obamacare would help her. It would probably be similar to medicare (or most normal insurance systems) and take more than 3 weeks to fund.
Obviously it's too late to help her, but one of the key points that Obama made last night was that everyone would be required to have some coverage, and that she couldn't be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. So if that plan had been put in place under the previous administration, she'd be covered right now.
Absolutely! The laws serve no other purpose than to allow multinational corporations to bully... uhh... other... multinational corporations?
No, it allows more established corporations (and patent trolls) with large patent portfolios to prevent competition from young upstarts. Megacorps don't often go after other megacorps because it would end up as mutually assured destruction. They just cross-license their portfolios.
In class action lawsuits, you basically find a few named plaintiffs to represent all the unnamed plaintiff class members, and they get to make decisions regarding settlement. It has nothing to do with copyright law.
If they're going to be profiting from giving rights to these works to Google, then it certainly seems that it should have something to do with copyright law. I understand why they don't want it to be opt-in rather than opt-out, but the fundamental problem is copyright law itself. This class-action suit just waves away the problems to allow some people to profit from the deal, copyright law be damned.
I can't wait for the government to charge me for the right to choose my health care provider. It will be okay because this new form of taxation will only hurt people in the middle class forcing them to go onto the national system. There is nothing wrong with this because the government system is really good, and it's okay to force people to do things you want as long as you know it's good for them.
Except that nobody is going to choose your provider for you. Of course it's not like most people, especially the middle class get a choice anyway. You go with whoever your company has a deal with. If you get private insurance, then, in most states, you have a very limited selection of companies to choose from, and they don't even really compete because nobody, not even lawyers, can really tell you what you'll actually be covered for by reading your policy.
For all the horror stories that the right has trotted out about Canada and Europe, we've got more than our share of horror stories here at home with insurance company bean-counters denying coverage to people when they develop some serious problem, even though they've been paying for coverage for years. Or they use some technicality to drop you completely. Conveniently they never notice these little issues when you're healthy and giving them money every month. People die because of this. It's a twisted, fucked up system that rewards insurance companies for finding ways to screw people over once they need the help they've been paying for.
In the end, it doesn't matter what we think the cost is going to be, because we're already paying for people without insurance anyway. It's costing us ridiculous amounts of money for things like emergency room visits and it's not improving overall health, because by the time you're in the emergency room, things have gone too far.
Simply put, if you're affected, and you want to, you can put in a claim form and get some money from Google.. on an on-going basis. If you don't want, nothing changes.
True, but keep in mind that there's an opt-out requirement, so if you want out you have to let them know.
You have all the same (insanely restrictive) rights under copyright law.
Insanely restrictive things like "uhh, please don't make money off my books without my permission."
I believe the opt-out period already ended sometime last week. I still don't understand how those publishers were able to make such a deal without explicit permission from each author they represent. That is unless authors have to give the publishers a lot more control than I thought. As much as I'm opposed to the way copyright laws have evolved, somehow this doesn't seem like they're looking out for the rights of the authors, but just trying to cut the best deal for their company.
Hearing Joe rattle off a subaru commercial in her new car made me cringe. And she didn't even drive it fast - what's the point?
Well it was like one sentence that took about 3 seconds to say, and lots of people I know regurgitate the dealer-provided highlights when talking about their new cars, so it didn't seem really out of place to me. Especially for a character like her who is into that stuff. It doesn't really impact the show for me, so I'm fine with it. But yeah, they should have at least had a scene where she gets to haul ass somewhere in it.
If you could suggest any advantages compared to the internet then you'd sound more convincing. What exactly is the dvr for?
My DVR will automatically record entire seasons of shows without any effort on my part aside from a couple clicks of the record button. I'll also get the captioning along with the show too, which is a big deal for me since it helps my wife understand the dialog better (she's not a native english speaker). Those are pretty big advantages IMO.
And yes Nielsen DOES measure "same day viewing" to include people who watch using DVRs.
Same day viewing? Does that really matter? I record lots of shows and rarely watch them the same day they air. Hell, I'm watching shows that are 3 weeks old right now since I just got back from vacation.
The SyFy channel show Eureka has done a lot of product placement as well. It's obvious, but they handle it either in a low-key or tongue-in-cheek manner. Last season I think it was Degree anti-perspirant as the major sponsor. Right now it seems to be Subaru. I can deal with this kind of placement as long as they don't get too ridiculous about it and it doesn't start having a negative impact on the show.
That's not how monopolies work. If Wal-Mart had an *actual* monopoly, they *could* raise their prices because no one else would be there to undercut them.
In your analogy, it would be like the villain throwing a dead hero back his sword.
Wouldn't it be more like the villain turning about and gloating about how they are all that, completely oblivious to the child/sibling/friend/unrelated-person to the dead hero coming in and taking advantage of the villain's inattention?
How would any competitor ever gain a foothold if monopoly laws weren't in place to prevent Wal-Mart from simply having its stores in whatever area the competitor operates in undercut their prices until they go out of business? It's not like a competitor can spring up overnight with a global supply chain and stores to compete everywhere at once.
To state that much shorter, "Wal-Mart is as much a monopoly as Microsoft is."
No, dead wrong. Microsoft was determined to have had a monopoly and was convicted of abusing it. Twice. It was a completely different situation that Wal-Mart, which is not a monopoly. No comparison there at all.
>>>And until then- you suffer from the effects of the current monopolist.
Riiiiight because there are no other places for us to shop then Walmart (cough - Target, Kmart, Meiers, Sears, Boscovs,...). Pu-leeze if you're going to make an argument, don't make it so easy to refute.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that Wal-Mart is a monopoly. The GP post was talking about monopolies in general, and that's what he responded to. He quoted the line. He never says anything about Wal-Mart at all.
Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well?
And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point,
if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.
It seems like the labels don't necessarily do a lot to really help a band succeed. They just mooch off of them as much as possible and see where things go. If they get big, you can probably mooch more for a while, until their contract is up anyway. If they don't get big, then you just keep collecting whatever money you can from them anyway. Interesting view on this from one of those bands that never quite made it really big here.
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I didn't realize that your health was my responsibility. Oh wait.. it isn't.. you just want it to be.
No civilized person would refuse to help someone who is seriously sick or injured when they show up at a hospital. I suppose you think that's what we should do?
The fact is, we don't turn people in need away to die in the street. If they show up in the emergency room, we give them care and the taxpayers end up paying for it. The problem is that they'll be back in repeatedly until they die because we don't have a system that allows them to get affordable insurance so that they can get the basic preventative care that could prevent them from ever getting to the point of showing up in the emergency room.
Hold the gosh darn phone! So if you are not in favor of having the government run health care, you now have to also be a bible thumping, gun toting wacko as well? I didn't sign up for that, so I guess I have to now like having the government run health care based on its wonderful track record? Get your polarized glasses off and realize that just because you don't like one (gigantic, gargantuan) thing Obama is up to, doesn't put you in the same camp with all the proper "right wing" wackos out there.
First of all, there's not likely to be anything "government-run" about the final bill. The public plan is a way to ensure that an option is open to everyone, but probably won't end up in the final bill. Something needs to be done to make sure that the insurance companies have to compete and can't just cherry-pick the healthiest people. Health care is one area where non-profit really appeals to me. I'm not sure the service offered by insurance companies is really worth anywhere near what it costs. If that money went directly to the health care professionals with a minimal amount of bureaucratic overhead that these companies create, it would probably serve us better. We're going to end up paying for care for everyone anyway, might as well strip out as much unnecessary stuff as possible.
I don't understand most of the complaints against the proposed changes that Obama wants. You've got your Joe Wilsons that are scared to death that a Mexican is going to get a free immunization or something, completely missing the point that these people end up in emergency rooms and we pay even more for them anyway. Immunize them all and give them preventative care. It's cheaper for me that way.
Then there's the issue of seniors and others who wouldn't give up their government-run Medicare and Medicaid for anything, and nobody in Congress is going to even suggest that they should.
Oh, and let's not forget the arguments from the right about the horror stories of socialized medicine in Canada and Europe. Somehow they manage to completely forget that we have more than our share of horror stories of people getting denied coverage or dropped completely when they get sick based on some bit of info that the insurance company conveniently didn't notice when the person was still healthy and paying them every month. People losing coverage when they get laid off. People who can't afford any insurance or can't get insurance because they have an existing condition. These people just end up in the emergency rooms repeatedly until they die. Guess who pays through the nose so that they can live and die in such a horrible way?
Then there's the argument that they don't want anyone telling them who their provider should be. Aside from the fact that nothing proposed would do that, how many people out there actually get a choice now anyway? Only those with a ton of money, that's who. The rest of us get to go with whoever our company made a deal with, or try to find something cheap enough on our own (good luck with that), or go without and rely on the taxpayers to pick up the tab when we end up in the hospital.
There's not a lot of good answers out there, but the one thing that we definitely can't accept is a situation like we have now where the private companies are rewarded for denying as much care as possible, and where you can't even know for sure what you'll be covered for outside of routine procedures because even lawyers often can't figure out what a policy would cover. We pay more than anyone else, but we don't have better outcomes in general than those that pay a lot less. Seems like there's a lot of inefficiency and probably fraud in the system. The difference between the wholesale prices that insurance companies pay and what I would have to pay on my own is absolutely insane too.
ok.. that got long... sorry bout that...
I was thinking about how to explain this more clearly, and what I would suggest is for you to answer the question, "why should physical property be protected?" and try to trace the reasons behind that. If I own a piece of land, and let put a lot of research and work into growing crops on that land, and even get financial loans pegged on my growing crops, why should any of that imply that the crops belong to me, and that the government should ensure that they remain with me?
First, I notice you didn't address my example of the patent. Another example of intellectual output, arguably much more useful than most copyrighted works, that only receives 20 years of protection. If it's property, then why does it expire?
Now, as for the rest of your question, let me start with the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Your property is whatever you can take and defend. If your society helps you do this, more power to you. But property is not any sort of absolute right. There are many ways for your property to be taken from you. Only the rule of law protects property. If there is no law to make the government defend your right to property, then you're back to defending it yourself. The law (in the US) does not consider writings and discoveries to be property, but does ensure that exclusive rights will be granted for a limited time.
Honestly, I don't see any good reason for copyright to exist except to encourage the creation of new works. I think that that could be accomplished with a much more limited copyright, in both scope and duration. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and I don't see why those who take ideas that came before them and weave them together in a new way really deserve any sort of lifetime (or longer) protection for those works. They use ideas from works that were never copyrighted or whose copyrights expired (and those terms were much shorter than what we have now). I really don't see the benefit to society to walling off these works. I don't believe that someone decides whether to create something worthwhile based on some calculation about whether they'll get 30 or 50 or 1000 years of protection for it.
Look at even the most expensive creations now, like Hollywood movies. They cost tens of millions to make. Do you believe that they're projecting out 90+ years to determine whether or not to make a movie? No way. They plan to reap at least 90% of the profit from it within a few years. For those rare few that become timeless classics, maybe they'll continue to make money, but it certainly isn't a deciding factor in whether to make the movie or not. Those classics are the ones that become the most ingrained in our culture too, and I think we'd benefit more by having unfettered access to them after a reasonable time than to have them cut off for our entire lifetimes and likely our childrens' lifetimes as well. I don't see the sense in that.
Historically, politicians are pretty shitty deciders of military policy. Let the Generals have a great deal more free reign, and we're likely to see better results.
Unless you're talking about how he hasn't followed up at all on all those promises to get us out of Iraq he made during the Campaign. That's a pretty legitimate complaint.
They set up an exit strategy, informed largely by the commanders in Iraq. What more do people want? We should just drop everything and leave the country to devolve into an even bigger mess we'll have to deal with later? Seems like we're doing the only thing we can responsibly do to get out in a reasonable amount of time.
If it is objectively determined to be property, then it should be protected. Whether or not the government decides to protect it, and whether or not they decide they have the power to add limitations, is a different matter, and doesn't affect whether or not it should actually be protected.
It isn't objectively determined to be property, as it bears little resemblance to the traditional notion of property, and I think you'll find it rather impossible to prove otherwise. If it was truly property, then why does a patent expire after 20 years? Why do libraries exist? I go could on and on. The fact is that it's not property, it's simply a right that can be granted by the Congress under the Constitution. The right has limits, as determined by Congress.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
Indeed, so you've just shown how the majority can still vote for the violation of rights. So much for the notion that democracy is always a Good Thing(TM).
There is the issue of considering "intellectual property" to be property in a real sense. It's only protected because the government decided to do so. Putting limitations on that protection is also within their purview. Especially when it's being used in such a way as to inhibit or prevent competition.
That doesn't change where the force was applied.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
We invested in them. They do owe us something.
You're dropping the context of the word "investment". In any other situation where I force you at gunpoint to accept something now in exchange for something later, it is not a free trade, and not an investment. They owe us nothing. The transaction should have never occurred.
Forced, at gunpoint even? Do you not recall the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford going to Washington on multiple occasions, claiming that they needed billions in loans to prevent their companies from collapsing? They begged for the bailout. I'm no fan of the bailout, but politicians from both sides were claiming that it needed to be done to prevent more jobs from being lost.
I knew a guy, not rich but a regular Joe, who had a knack to always position himself to allow him to reap praise for projects already on the track to success, and get out of failing projects in time. He got plenty of promotions without really accomplishing something, but his success did require that special knack. Of course, sometimes just being there is enough. Joining a startup that grows into a success despite your best efforts, and suddenly that crappy stock you got in lieu of a decent salary is worth 8 figures...
Coattails are the best means of transportation. Figure out how to stay on them and you can go far for free.
I would doubt that Obamacare would help her. It would probably be similar to medicare (or most normal insurance systems) and take more than 3 weeks to fund.
Obviously it's too late to help her, but one of the key points that Obama made last night was that everyone would be required to have some coverage, and that she couldn't be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. So if that plan had been put in place under the previous administration, she'd be covered right now.
Absolutely! The laws serve no other purpose than to allow multinational corporations to bully... uhh... other... multinational corporations?
No, it allows more established corporations (and patent trolls) with large patent portfolios to prevent competition from young upstarts. Megacorps don't often go after other megacorps because it would end up as mutually assured destruction. They just cross-license their portfolios.
In class action lawsuits, you basically find a few named plaintiffs to represent all the unnamed plaintiff class members, and they get to make decisions regarding settlement. It has nothing to do with copyright law.
If they're going to be profiting from giving rights to these works to Google, then it certainly seems that it should have something to do with copyright law. I understand why they don't want it to be opt-in rather than opt-out, but the fundamental problem is copyright law itself. This class-action suit just waves away the problems to allow some people to profit from the deal, copyright law be damned.
I can't wait for the government to charge me for the right to choose my health care provider. It will be okay because this new form of taxation will only hurt people in the middle class forcing them to go onto the national system. There is nothing wrong with this because the government system is really good, and it's okay to force people to do things you want as long as you know it's good for them.
Except that nobody is going to choose your provider for you. Of course it's not like most people, especially the middle class get a choice anyway. You go with whoever your company has a deal with. If you get private insurance, then, in most states, you have a very limited selection of companies to choose from, and they don't even really compete because nobody, not even lawyers, can really tell you what you'll actually be covered for by reading your policy.
For all the horror stories that the right has trotted out about Canada and Europe, we've got more than our share of horror stories here at home with insurance company bean-counters denying coverage to people when they develop some serious problem, even though they've been paying for coverage for years. Or they use some technicality to drop you completely. Conveniently they never notice these little issues when you're healthy and giving them money every month. People die because of this. It's a twisted, fucked up system that rewards insurance companies for finding ways to screw people over once they need the help they've been paying for.
In the end, it doesn't matter what we think the cost is going to be, because we're already paying for people without insurance anyway. It's costing us ridiculous amounts of money for things like emergency room visits and it's not improving overall health, because by the time you're in the emergency room, things have gone too far.
Simply put, if you're affected, and you want to, you can put in a claim form and get some money from Google.. on an on-going basis. If you don't want, nothing changes. True, but keep in mind that there's an opt-out requirement, so if you want out you have to let them know. You have all the same (insanely restrictive) rights under copyright law. Insanely restrictive things like "uhh, please don't make money off my books without my permission."
I believe the opt-out period already ended sometime last week. I still don't understand how those publishers were able to make such a deal without explicit permission from each author they represent. That is unless authors have to give the publishers a lot more control than I thought. As much as I'm opposed to the way copyright laws have evolved, somehow this doesn't seem like they're looking out for the rights of the authors, but just trying to cut the best deal for their company.
The darn corks always end up floating down in the wine or break and then you have crumbs in your wine and on top of that, wine tastes like crap.
You're doing it wrong...
Hearing Joe rattle off a subaru commercial in her new car made me cringe. And she didn't even drive it fast - what's the point?
Well it was like one sentence that took about 3 seconds to say, and lots of people I know regurgitate the dealer-provided highlights when talking about their new cars, so it didn't seem really out of place to me. Especially for a character like her who is into that stuff. It doesn't really impact the show for me, so I'm fine with it. But yeah, they should have at least had a scene where she gets to haul ass somewhere in it.
If you could suggest any advantages compared to the internet then you'd sound more convincing. What exactly is the dvr for?
My DVR will automatically record entire seasons of shows without any effort on my part aside from a couple clicks of the record button. I'll also get the captioning along with the show too, which is a big deal for me since it helps my wife understand the dialog better (she's not a native english speaker). Those are pretty big advantages IMO.
And yes Nielsen DOES measure "same day viewing" to include people who watch using DVRs.
Same day viewing? Does that really matter? I record lots of shows and rarely watch them the same day they air. Hell, I'm watching shows that are 3 weeks old right now since I just got back from vacation.
The SyFy channel show Eureka has done a lot of product placement as well. It's obvious, but they handle it either in a low-key or tongue-in-cheek manner. Last season I think it was Degree anti-perspirant as the major sponsor. Right now it seems to be Subaru. I can deal with this kind of placement as long as they don't get too ridiculous about it and it doesn't start having a negative impact on the show.
Remember, Fair Use isn't a right, it's a legal defense.
What?
It means that claiming fair use won't keep you out of court, you have to actually go to court and use that as your defense.
That's not how monopolies work. If Wal-Mart had an *actual* monopoly, they *could* raise their prices because no one else would be there to undercut them. In your analogy, it would be like the villain throwing a dead hero back his sword.
Wouldn't it be more like the villain turning about and gloating about how they are all that, completely oblivious to the child/sibling/friend/unrelated-person to the dead hero coming in and taking advantage of the villain's inattention?
How would any competitor ever gain a foothold if monopoly laws weren't in place to prevent Wal-Mart from simply having its stores in whatever area the competitor operates in undercut their prices until they go out of business? It's not like a competitor can spring up overnight with a global supply chain and stores to compete everywhere at once.
To state that much shorter, "Wal-Mart is as much a monopoly as Microsoft is."
No, dead wrong. Microsoft was determined to have had a monopoly and was convicted of abusing it. Twice. It was a completely different situation that Wal-Mart, which is not a monopoly. No comparison there at all.
>>>And until then- you suffer from the effects of the current monopolist.
Riiiiight because there are no other places for us to shop then Walmart (cough - Target, Kmart, Meiers, Sears, Boscovs, ...). Pu-leeze if you're going to make an argument, don't make it so easy to refute.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that Wal-Mart is a monopoly. The GP post was talking about monopolies in general, and that's what he responded to. He quoted the line. He never says anything about Wal-Mart at all.
Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well? And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point, if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.
It seems like the labels don't necessarily do a lot to really help a band succeed. They just mooch off of them as much as possible and see where things go. If they get big, you can probably mooch more for a while, until their contract is up anyway. If they don't get big, then you just keep collecting whatever money you can from them anyway. Interesting view on this from one of those bands that never quite made it really big here.
This story is just like Biden revealing the secret bunker.
Which apparently isn't what actually happened, according to this follow-up: http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/05/18/biden-did-not-reveal-the-secret-bunker