So they're going to pile ~3,500 troops per warship, cross the entire Pacific Ocean, and launch some kind of amphibious assault against the continental US? We had a hard enough time crossing the English Channel.
[...] 60 submarines, 400 nuclear missiles and 1400 fighter aircraft.
A submarine isn't capable of taking territory. Fighter jets can't make the 10,000 mile round trip. And nuclear missiles are a death sentence for us both.
China does not have to get anything it owns to pwn you. They just have to stop buying your treasury bonds and you'll go down in a blink.
If China stops buying our treasury bonds, they won't be able to support their export economy. Sure, they could destroy us economically, but they would fare no better. It's economic MAD.
I must assume that by consciousness, you mean memory? or the ability to associate said pain with something and therefore avoid it?
By consciousness I mean the ability to actually experience sensory input and internal mental states. My digital thermostat responds to its environment and possesses a limited "memory", but I would not attribute any measure of consciousness to it.
You may as well just say what you mean: without a soul to experience pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
Why would I say that? It is most definitely not what I meant.
But be honest with yourself: if it sounds silly when you talk about souls, it's no less silly when you replace "soul" by "consciousness".
You're the one who brought up souls. And yes, you're right, you do sound silly.
If we're discussing the ethics of inflicting pain, I think it would actually be on yourself to prove that concious thought makes pain worse, rather than others to prove that crabs have concious thought.
I think what is being argued is that crabs "feel" pain like my thermostat "feels" temperature. They both react to their environments and respond to external stimuli. But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
Regulated monopolies have to follow the same rules as the government.
No, they don't. What rules are you talking about?
An electric company can not arbitrarily cut-off access just because you started a catering service & burn-up a lot of electricity in your kitchen. Nor can a phone company cutoff access because you tie it up 24/7 making calls, thereby abusing the $15/month unlimited fee. Nor can an internet company.
Here's your problem: You can't lump ISP's in with the electric and phone monopolies. There are major differences in the laws governing these different services.
Can you cite a relevant law or judgment which backs up your claim? Because your constitutional argument falls flat.
Removal of access violates the Constitutional right to a trial by your peers.
Where does the constitution state that you're entitled to a jury trial before a private business can refuse to have you as a customer? Because I'm pretty sure it's not in there at all.
Refraining from issuing an unconstitutional ruling should take precedence.
Well... Yes, of course. But the point is: neither side made the argument that this law is unconstitutional. Appellate judges make judgments on issues where the two sides disagree. In this case--as neither side disputed this law's constitutionality--they really had no constitutional matter before them to adjudicate.
Absent some really clear precedent, judges can only rule on the issues presented to them. I don't think, and the judges didn't think, that the existing precedent was strong enough to declare the law unconstitutional. The unconstitutionality of this law isn't as clear as you make it out to be.
Constitutionality should ALWAYS be taken into account when considering any law.
Constitutionality is usually only taken into account when one of the parties in the case makes the argument that the relevant law is unconstitutional. If Staple's lawyers didn't argue that point, the judges probably won't include it in their ruling.
Judges usually try to refrain from ruling on matters that haven't been argued.
Ranking up players for defeating players ranked lower than them should never happen.
If that is the case, why would a player ever fight anyone else at all? If I'm ranked at number 100, I wouldn't ever fight anyone whose ranking is below 100; if I can't move up (even a little) from winning against them, there's no incentive. And no one who is ranked higher would fight me, for the same reason I wouldn't fight someone below myself. You've eliminated anyone's reason to fight anyone else.
The original poster's idea is the correct one. You just have to tweak the numbers to reduce the incentive to grief.
But do you really think that if copyrights were abolished, no more music would be written? That nobody would ever write another how-to book, or tell another story?
Of course not. But, assuming some artists are just money grubbing sell-outs, without a lick of artistic integrity, those artists won't produce new music without the potential to profit. We'll end up with less art.
Now, it's a trade-off. We end up with more art when we have copyright--which is a benefit; but we are limited as to how we can use it--a cost. The hard part is determining the optimal copyright scheme to maximize that cost/benefit function.
If it takes you more than 10 years (off the top of my head) to create something else that people are willing to pay for then you should find yourself a new career.
And that's exactly the argument that "content producers" are going to make, but in favor of extending copyright protections. As you say, those who cannot capitalize on their creations will find new careers, instead of creating more content. End result: less new content.
I'm all for reducing or eliminating copyright. But, this argument won't convince anyone.
it sounds like you do not own your vehicles very long. most prius owners i know plan to drive it until it dies a horrible death many years from now. (I am a prius owner, fyi).
Well, using the gas mileage statistics here, and assuming the Corrola is $6000 cheaper, if gas is $4 a gallon, you would have to drive the Prius ~130,000 miles to make up the difference. If gas is $2 a gallon, you have to drive 260,000.
It's a bit more miles than most people would think.
If a textual document format allows for embedding executable code, then any text editor should be able to do so. If the format does not allow such code, how can emacs embed it?
You can embed Emacs Lisp into a document which will be executed when the document is opened in Emacs. It's not machine code, but is pretty powerful nonetheless. Potentially, the Lisp could exploit a buffer overflow in Emacs and would open it up to arbitrary code execution, just like Acrobat.
No, the fight was lost when we first decided to use ones and zeros to represent both code and data. There is simply no significant difference between the two. Indeed, you can't have data which does not alter the execution of code.
Therein lies the bugaboo -- the only compelling reasons, for the politicians, currently have to do with the wads of cash and free lunches that the RIAA and member companies provide.
I'm not quite so pessimistic. I can't really blame politicians for upholding the current copyright regime. From their perspective, copyright protection has enabled the production of a rich and diverse artistic ecosystem in the US. I'd be nervous too about drastically changing anything, for fear of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. It's worked for 200 years, why scrap it now?
We have to show them that we can produce art of the same, or better, quality without the protections of traditional copyright. We need to show them that copyright is unnecessary or harmful. We already have a decent start on this: artists are increasingly releasing their work to be shared freely, a significant portion of the software market is dominated by GPL or BSD licensed software, and people everywhere are making and distributing content on sites like YouTube. We've not quite reached parity yet with the traditional media; but it's close.
Once that happens, we'll probably see copyright fade into irrelevance. The laws may never leave the books, but so long as artists don't invoke their protections, they may as well have.
Which points to the underlying malaise of the whole US political system: how do we re-align the interests of the political class with the interests of the country as a whole, and of the citizens (i.e. humans, not corporations) in particular?
Well, now that's a problem well above my pay-grade.
The thought that worries me, is that maybe we've got the government we deserve. No matter how much money corporations pour into campaign coffers, the people are the ones with the power to vote them out. But, we don't. If the citizens of this country really wanted to change things, they could. Any attempt to change the political system has to begin by changing the mindset of the citizenry. Unfortunately, that's far harder than enacting campaign finance reform or term limits.
If piracy is killing the music industry, then how is iTunes profitable?
I'm not implying that piracy is killing the music industry. I'm just saying that it is disingenous to state that a significant fraction of pirates are just looking for DRM-free music, and would be willing to pay for it, were the means to do so available. The availability of DRM-free iTunes and Amazon music has not resulted in a decrease in piracy.
So, there must be some other reason why most pirates infringe copyright. We can only have an honest debate about copyright reform in this country after we have all acknowledged this fact.
Copyright infringement may increase or decrease the revenue of artists and record companies, but you need to recognize that the argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale is complete bullshit.
I agree. But, as soon as you engage in this argument, you've already lost. That's my point. You've taken the RIAA's bait, and allowed them to frame the debate.
Copyright infringement is currently illegal. Instead of debating how many sales are lost to downloads or how the high price of music leads to piracy--arguments based on the premise that piracy is not as bad as the RIAA says--we should be focused on positive arguments for copyright reform. If we want to change the law, we have to give the politicians a reason to.
As long as music pirates are seen as people who only want music without having to pay for it, we'll never win this argument.
Please tell me where I can order a CD with just the songs I want on it?
Oh right, you need to buy the whole package.
If you pay $20 for a CD with 10 songs, but you only listen to 5 of them, you're effectively paying $4 per song; rather than the $2 per song nominal price. So you're just making the argument that people pirate because music is too expensive. How does that square with the "piracy does not equal lost sales" argument? You can't have it both ways.
Because iTunes is platform-locked and therefore sucks ass.
CD's are platform-locked; you have to have a CD player. Generic mp3's are platform-locked; you have to have a computer or dedicated mp3 player. Records are platform-locked; you have to have a turntable.
Some people pirate music they already own just because it`s faster (downloading 60mb? not even a minute) than the hassle of putting the cd in the tray, clicking convert, and picking it out.
Unless you can show that a non-negligible percentage of file-sharing is done for this reason, you haven't added anything to the discussion. Of course there are plenty of legitimate (as I believe this is) reasons to file-share. But the vast majority of the infringing traffic is generated by people who just want music for free.
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With their 3 million troops, 860 warships [...]
So they're going to pile ~3,500 troops per warship, cross the entire Pacific Ocean, and launch some kind of amphibious assault against the continental US? We had a hard enough time crossing the English Channel.
[...] 60 submarines, 400 nuclear missiles and 1400 fighter aircraft.
A submarine isn't capable of taking territory. Fighter jets can't make the 10,000 mile round trip. And nuclear missiles are a death sentence for us both.
China does not have to get anything it owns to pwn you. They just have to stop buying your treasury bonds and you'll go down in a blink.
If China stops buying our treasury bonds, they won't be able to support their export economy. Sure, they could destroy us economically, but they would fare no better. It's economic MAD.
China owns the USA to a large extent.
I would like to see how they intend to come over here and get it.
I must assume that by consciousness, you mean memory? or the ability to associate said pain with something and therefore avoid it?
By consciousness I mean the ability to actually experience sensory input and internal mental states. My digital thermostat responds to its environment and possesses a limited "memory", but I would not attribute any measure of consciousness to it.
You may as well just say what you mean: without a soul to experience pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
Why would I say that? It is most definitely not what I meant.
But be honest with yourself: if it sounds silly when you talk about souls, it's no less silly when you replace "soul" by "consciousness".
You're the one who brought up souls. And yes, you're right, you do sound silly.
I just don't get how people can make this argument, most of the time justifying it saying 'it has only so and so few brain cells'.
It doesn't matter how many brain cells a crab has. If it does not possess consciousness, there's nothing there to experience pain.
You only need nerve cells to transmit the pain stimuli, and crabs have these.
So do I. But, if I'm unconscious for any reason, I don't experience any pain, no matter what my nerve cells are transmitting.
So why not just assume that being boiled alive isn't exactly a pleasant experience for crabs and lobsters [...]
Why do you assume there's any consciousness there to experience that pain, in the first place?
If we're discussing the ethics of inflicting pain, I think it would actually be on yourself to prove that concious thought makes pain worse, rather than others to prove that crabs have concious thought.
I think what is being argued is that crabs "feel" pain like my thermostat "feels" temperature. They both react to their environments and respond to external stimuli. But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
Regulated monopolies have to follow the same rules as the government.
No, they don't. What rules are you talking about?
An electric company can not arbitrarily cut-off access just because you started a catering service & burn-up a lot of electricity in your kitchen. Nor can a phone company cutoff access because you tie it up 24/7 making calls, thereby abusing the $15/month unlimited fee. Nor can an internet company.
Here's your problem: You can't lump ISP's in with the electric and phone monopolies. There are major differences in the laws governing these different services.
Can you cite a relevant law or judgment which backs up your claim? Because your constitutional argument falls flat.
Removal of access violates the Constitutional right to a trial by your peers.
Where does the constitution state that you're entitled to a jury trial before a private business can refuse to have you as a customer? Because I'm pretty sure it's not in there at all.
Refraining from issuing an unconstitutional ruling should take precedence.
Well... Yes, of course. But the point is: neither side made the argument that this law is unconstitutional. Appellate judges make judgments on issues where the two sides disagree. In this case--as neither side disputed this law's constitutionality--they really had no constitutional matter before them to adjudicate.
Absent some really clear precedent, judges can only rule on the issues presented to them. I don't think, and the judges didn't think, that the existing precedent was strong enough to declare the law unconstitutional. The unconstitutionality of this law isn't as clear as you make it out to be.
Constitutionality should ALWAYS be taken into account when considering any law.
Constitutionality is usually only taken into account when one of the parties in the case makes the argument that the relevant law is unconstitutional. If Staple's lawyers didn't argue that point, the judges probably won't include it in their ruling.
Judges usually try to refrain from ruling on matters that haven't been argued.
Ranking up players for defeating players ranked lower than them should never happen.
If that is the case, why would a player ever fight anyone else at all? If I'm ranked at number 100, I wouldn't ever fight anyone whose ranking is below 100; if I can't move up (even a little) from winning against them, there's no incentive. And no one who is ranked higher would fight me, for the same reason I wouldn't fight someone below myself. You've eliminated anyone's reason to fight anyone else.
The original poster's idea is the correct one. You just have to tweak the numbers to reduce the incentive to grief.
But do you really think that if copyrights were abolished, no more music would be written? That nobody would ever write another how-to book, or tell another story?
Of course not. But, assuming some artists are just money grubbing sell-outs, without a lick of artistic integrity, those artists won't produce new music without the potential to profit. We'll end up with less art.
Now, it's a trade-off. We end up with more art when we have copyright--which is a benefit; but we are limited as to how we can use it--a cost. The hard part is determining the optimal copyright scheme to maximize that cost/benefit function.
If it takes you more than 10 years (off the top of my head) to create something else that people are willing to pay for then you should find yourself a new career.
And that's exactly the argument that "content producers" are going to make, but in favor of extending copyright protections. As you say, those who cannot capitalize on their creations will find new careers, instead of creating more content. End result: less new content.
I'm all for reducing or eliminating copyright. But, this argument won't convince anyone.
it sounds like you do not own your vehicles very long. most prius owners i know plan to drive it until it dies a horrible death many years from now. (I am a prius owner, fyi).
Well, using the gas mileage statistics here, and assuming the Corrola is $6000 cheaper, if gas is $4 a gallon, you would have to drive the Prius ~130,000 miles to make up the difference. If gas is $2 a gallon, you have to drive 260,000.
It's a bit more miles than most people would think.
If a textual document format allows for embedding executable code, then any text editor should be able to do so. If the format does not allow such code, how can emacs embed it?
You can embed Emacs Lisp into a document which will be executed when the document is opened in Emacs. It's not machine code, but is pretty powerful nonetheless. Potentially, the Lisp could exploit a buffer overflow in Emacs and would open it up to arbitrary code execution, just like Acrobat.
people also don't enter into contracts to receive services all the time, what makes this any different?
When was the last time you received a service without, at least, a verbal contract? It's still a contract.
No, the fight was lost when we first decided to use ones and zeros to represent both code and data. There is simply no significant difference between the two. Indeed, you can't have data which does not alter the execution of code.
Executable code should not be embedded in documents, the format should not allow it, and document readers should not execute code.
Sorry, but you lost this fight a long time ago. Even emacs supports embedded executable code in documents.
Therein lies the bugaboo -- the only compelling reasons, for the politicians, currently have to do with the wads of cash and free lunches that the RIAA and member companies provide.
I'm not quite so pessimistic. I can't really blame politicians for upholding the current copyright regime. From their perspective, copyright protection has enabled the production of a rich and diverse artistic ecosystem in the US. I'd be nervous too about drastically changing anything, for fear of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. It's worked for 200 years, why scrap it now?
We have to show them that we can produce art of the same, or better, quality without the protections of traditional copyright. We need to show them that copyright is unnecessary or harmful. We already have a decent start on this: artists are increasingly releasing their work to be shared freely, a significant portion of the software market is dominated by GPL or BSD licensed software, and people everywhere are making and distributing content on sites like YouTube. We've not quite reached parity yet with the traditional media; but it's close.
Once that happens, we'll probably see copyright fade into irrelevance. The laws may never leave the books, but so long as artists don't invoke their protections, they may as well have.
Which points to the underlying malaise of the whole US political system: how do we re-align the interests of the political class with the interests of the country as a whole, and of the citizens (i.e. humans, not corporations) in particular?
Well, now that's a problem well above my pay-grade.
The thought that worries me, is that maybe we've got the government we deserve. No matter how much money corporations pour into campaign coffers, the people are the ones with the power to vote them out. But, we don't. If the citizens of this country really wanted to change things, they could. Any attempt to change the political system has to begin by changing the mindset of the citizenry. Unfortunately, that's far harder than enacting campaign finance reform or term limits.
If piracy is killing the music industry, then how is iTunes profitable?
I'm not implying that piracy is killing the music industry. I'm just saying that it is disingenous to state that a significant fraction of pirates are just looking for DRM-free music, and would be willing to pay for it, were the means to do so available. The availability of DRM-free iTunes and Amazon music has not resulted in a decrease in piracy.
So, there must be some other reason why most pirates infringe copyright. We can only have an honest debate about copyright reform in this country after we have all acknowledged this fact.
Copyright infringement may increase or decrease the revenue of artists and record companies, but you need to recognize that the argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale is complete bullshit.
I agree. But, as soon as you engage in this argument, you've already lost. That's my point. You've taken the RIAA's bait, and allowed them to frame the debate.
Copyright infringement is currently illegal. Instead of debating how many sales are lost to downloads or how the high price of music leads to piracy--arguments based on the premise that piracy is not as bad as the RIAA says--we should be focused on positive arguments for copyright reform. If we want to change the law, we have to give the politicians a reason to.
As long as music pirates are seen as people who only want music without having to pay for it, we'll never win this argument.
Please tell me where I can order a CD with just the songs I want on it?
Oh right, you need to buy the whole package.
If you pay $20 for a CD with 10 songs, but you only listen to 5 of them, you're effectively paying $4 per song; rather than the $2 per song nominal price. So you're just making the argument that people pirate because music is too expensive. How does that square with the "piracy does not equal lost sales" argument? You can't have it both ways.
Because iTunes is platform-locked and therefore sucks ass.
CD's are platform-locked; you have to have a CD player. Generic mp3's are platform-locked; you have to have a computer or dedicated mp3 player. Records are platform-locked; you have to have a turntable.
Every music delivery method is platform-locked.
Some people pirate music they already own just because it`s faster (downloading 60mb? not even a minute) than the hassle of putting the cd in the tray, clicking convert, and picking it out.
Unless you can show that a non-negligible percentage of file-sharing is done for this reason, you haven't added anything to the discussion. Of course there are plenty of legitimate (as I believe this is) reasons to file-share. But the vast majority of the infringing traffic is generated by people who just want music for free.