Which was only a problem because the legal system let Scientology treat their religious texts as trade secrets or something. Something related to intellectual property for sure.
You'd think if the religion was any good they'd want their text spread as far and wide as possible.
DRM is often enforced by patenting the decode algorithm and using the patent as a stick against anyone who implements it without a license, and to get a license you have to agree to enforce the DRM.
This in fact is how bluray works.
The fact that you have to use the threat of a patent infringement lawsuit to force companies to implement the DRM if they want the content is very telling.
My opinion on pirates is that, right or wrong, they are simply unstoppable and see ANY form of copy protection as a challenge. They crack stuff just for fun.
Using DRM to stop a pirate is like using a stinkbomb to blow up a castle. No damage except to the noses of innocent bystanders.
Pirate's gonna pirate no matter what you do. It's time for publishers to accept that as reality and quit fighting a battle they can't win, and start worrying about giving its customers a better deal than the cheapskate pirates can, or making pirates look like worse scum than they are themselves.
The way to actually beat a pirate is to cut them out of the supply chain by making customers want your legit version better than the pirated version. If you treat your customers badly they're not going to see the difference between you and the pirates you love to hate so much, and that eliminates reputation as a factor in purchasing decisions.
Bringing yourself down to the pirate's level is only going to eliminate any advantage you have in good will and let the pirates walk on you on cost advantages.
The problem is that the baker is getting away with having his flour, eggs, and sugar provided to him at costs below what anyone else can get because he has access to cheap ingredients nobody else can get, and then he comes back home, bakes a huge cake, and then hogs most of it for himself and gives just enough of it to the local guys that they can keep helping him bake more of it.
1. Filthy rich companies that spend less on local labor 2. Oppressed foreign citizens that are so under privileged that they JUMP at the chance to shaft american jobless that actually do far better at their most broken down than they could ever hope to achieve themselves even working their guts out.
Maybe the solution is cluing into the fact that we poor americans actually have it pretty damn good compared to third world countries like China.
Yes, I called China a third world country for a reason.
Unfortunately corporate greed knows no boundaries, certainly not international ones.
You make people too hard to squeeze, they'll just squeeze who they can over in China.
The mantra that "greed is good" fails to take into account that hurting other people is part and parcel of helping yourself if there's only so much pie to go around.
Never mind that monopolies that hoard market share are responsible for the so called shortages in the first place.
And then other countries with fewer scruples will start getting ahead of us.
That's the problem.
In the biggest arena of all, there ARE no rules beyond what everyone agrees to, and nations competing for the biggest GDP act very much like corporations in ONE nation competing for market share.
In arenas big and small, it's nothing but a fight.
We usually prohibit children from public school if we don't vaccinate, but we also have compulsory education which indirectly implies compulsory vaccinations.
1. Socialize health insurance to cut down on the myriads of paperwork that clinics wind up having to process, have it all federally processed, and make the claims process streamlined and electronic. Have it accept 2. Privatize health care and keep it competitive. 3. Give everyone a health account that gets billed for medical treatments, and top it up with an allowance every year. 4. The allowance goes towards any deficits, but deficits that haven't been covered are wiped after two years 5. Give the person a tax credit of any surplus in the account that persists for two years
Results:
With a single insurance carrier with a homogeneous style of paperwork to deal with, overhead costs go down With a competitive medical *care* industry the good old capitalistic benefits of high quality and low cost come in With everyone getting the power to get treatment for necessary stuff no matter what, nobody has to go broke paying to stay alive or well. With unpaid deficits expiring, people don't get condemned forever if they rack up a huge medical bill. With everyone having a potential tax credit dangled in front of them like a carrot people have an incentive not to waste the government's money.
Slashdot Mirror
Which was only a problem because the legal system let Scientology treat their religious texts as trade secrets or something. Something related to intellectual property for sure.
You'd think if the religion was any good they'd want their text spread as far and wide as possible.
I don't get it.
If you have a monopoly big enough to keep everyone else out it's no longer capitalism.
Communism is still communism even if the party in question lacks any de-jure sovereignty.
You need the same power to filter out trolls that you can abuse to filter out dissenters. It's all about people in power making decisions.
Most major decisions period.
The people in power always get to decide what is right.
That's what power means.
The solution is better contact between authors and readers so that the power hungry publishers don't get in a position to dictate terms.
This is really the same position as the MAFIAA.
Capitalism is also about reducing the gap between cost and price by having that gap smell juicy enough to attract a little thing called competition.
Blu-ray is industry standard DRM.
DRM is often enforced by patenting the decode algorithm and using the patent as a stick against anyone who implements it without a license, and to get a license you have to agree to enforce the DRM.
This in fact is how bluray works.
The fact that you have to use the threat of a patent infringement lawsuit to force companies to implement the DRM if they want the content is very telling.
My opinion on pirates is that, right or wrong, they are simply unstoppable and see ANY form of copy protection as a challenge. They crack stuff just for fun.
Using DRM to stop a pirate is like using a stinkbomb to blow up a castle. No damage except to the noses of innocent bystanders.
Pirate's gonna pirate no matter what you do. It's time for publishers to accept that as reality and quit fighting a battle they can't win, and start worrying about giving its customers a better deal than the cheapskate pirates can, or making pirates look like worse scum than they are themselves.
The way to actually beat a pirate is to cut them out of the supply chain by making customers want your legit version better than the pirated version. If you treat your customers badly they're not going to see the difference between you and the pirates you love to hate so much, and that eliminates reputation as a factor in purchasing decisions.
Bringing yourself down to the pirate's level is only going to eliminate any advantage you have in good will and let the pirates walk on you on cost advantages.
Unfortunately humans are not logical creatures even when they are intelligent.
And if someone who is smart but biased dislikes a particular comment, his intelligence isn't going to actually improve anything.
Think of metamoderators as randomly selected members of a jury.
The problem is that the baker is getting away with having his flour, eggs, and sugar provided to him at costs below what anyone else can get because he has access to cheap ingredients nobody else can get, and then he comes back home, bakes a huge cake, and then hogs most of it for himself and gives just enough of it to the local guys that they can keep helping him bake more of it.
It's pretty economical for two classes:
1. Filthy rich companies that spend less on local labor
2. Oppressed foreign citizens that are so under privileged that they JUMP at the chance to shaft american jobless that actually do far better at their most broken down than they could ever hope to achieve themselves even working their guts out.
Maybe the solution is cluing into the fact that we poor americans actually have it pretty damn good compared to third world countries like China.
Yes, I called China a third world country for a reason.
There is no solution to the problem.
Even civilization is a commodity subject to the forces of competition.
The benefits are civil services and the costs are taxes.
Unfortunately corporate greed knows no boundaries, certainly not international ones.
You make people too hard to squeeze, they'll just squeeze who they can over in China.
The mantra that "greed is good" fails to take into account that hurting other people is part and parcel of helping yourself if there's only so much pie to go around.
Never mind that monopolies that hoard market share are responsible for the so called shortages in the first place.
If you hoard, you'll cause a shortage.
And then other countries with fewer scruples will start getting ahead of us.
That's the problem.
In the biggest arena of all, there ARE no rules beyond what everyone agrees to, and nations competing for the biggest GDP act very much like corporations in ONE nation competing for market share.
In arenas big and small, it's nothing but a fight.
Competition is trying to do better for yourself.
Cutthroat competition is hurting your opponents to do so.
So you're saying that a murder was covered up AS a suicide?
DNSSEC is unpopular with governments because it breaks censorship.
Age of majority IS arbitrary.
It's whatever the law of the nation that is sovereign over the citizen in question SAYS it is.
The government telling you what you can or cannot do is pretty much the definition of what a law is.
That's just happy horseshit boilerplate to placate the masses.
Political payoffs ensure that this practice can and will continue as planned.
Here in the US vaccinations are simply mandatory.
We usually prohibit children from public school if we don't vaccinate, but we also have compulsory education which indirectly implies compulsory vaccinations.
Here's my solution
1. Socialize health insurance to cut down on the myriads of paperwork that clinics wind up having to process, have it all federally processed, and make the claims process streamlined and electronic. Have it accept
2. Privatize health care and keep it competitive.
3. Give everyone a health account that gets billed for medical treatments, and top it up with an allowance every year.
4. The allowance goes towards any deficits, but deficits that haven't been covered are wiped after two years
5. Give the person a tax credit of any surplus in the account that persists for two years
Results:
With a single insurance carrier with a homogeneous style of paperwork to deal with, overhead costs go down
With a competitive medical *care* industry the good old capitalistic benefits of high quality and low cost come in
With everyone getting the power to get treatment for necessary stuff no matter what, nobody has to go broke paying to stay alive or well.
With unpaid deficits expiring, people don't get condemned forever if they rack up a huge medical bill.
With everyone having a potential tax credit dangled in front of them like a carrot people have an incentive not to waste the government's money.
We don't do it for cars.
We do it for the license you need to drive on public roads.
I think the only reason child labor laws exist is because parents are a powerful lobby group and don't want their kids exploited.
Believe me, the corporate sector would use child labor if they could get away with it.
Oh wait, they already do by buying their supply chain from overseas.