and we still have major issues with politicians trying to redraw district lines, but you make a very good / valid point. I'll have to look into that further. Thanks.
If I were to pay for the services of a prostitute, I'd at least expect their full attention and for them to put down the dice.:)
and in case you weren't just trying to be funny, D&D, D/D, or sometimes just DD free in 'personal ads' means free of Disease free (technically illness free is what people mean / intend to communicate, but people still say disease anyway) and don't to any Drugs.:) In places where prostitution is not criminalised, such things are certified; workers are tested weekly and is a condition of their employment that they are clean, safe, and happy.
I'm not sure prostitutes need specialised and technical skill or knowledge for what they do
There are always those without skill in any industry willing to get paid, but quality, D&D free sex workers put exceptional time and training both into their physical and social skills. Low barrier to market (no pun intended) always means more aggressive competition. Nobody makes or pays $500+ an hour without specialised skills. Nobody.
Not going to say that it is unbias, but it is my interpretation of information presented in Steal This Film, part II. There was a book industry, it was just small and individual books were very expensive, which also contributed to very low literacy.
Tedious in the extreme? In those times? Are you joking? I would think it would be a great honor. Communication through writing was considered magical and mysterious. What do you think literacy rates were before the printing press? Writing is much easier than historians that had to REMEMBER everything that had ever happened. In both cases, history was very sacred and it was an important responsibility. You think that job was just given to anyone? I know there isn't much care or respect for history by much of anyone today, but I think it is because people just know if they wanted to know something, they can just look in a book, or today, just look it up on wikipedia... a lot of people really take it for granted. Anyway, so long as you are making the assertion that it was "tedious to the extreme" and "very error prone", might you be willing to cite a source that these monks were both lazy and hated their jobs?
Thanks for sharing. It was only recently I have been starting to read about the impact of the 17th amendment and despite looking like a "power to the people", it really just eliminated the state government. We are very far from the constitution AND from the lessons learned from British stateism that were meant to save us from such mistakes.
Hell, congress isn't allowed to print fiat money, so somehow issuing bonds to let European bankers manage all of our money for us, paying them for allowing our economy to exist? From the Jefferson letters, wasn't that, like, the REASON for having a revolution was that the colonies were not allowed to have their own money, it all had to be borrowed at interest crippling our economy. Now, we have exactly the same thing, and a sick, corrupted mess we call a government.
Actually, you got to be impressed that it works at all. Ideally, maybe we are not trying to get to the past, but learning lessons from the words of the founders and using our modern experiences to forge a future very critical of our past mistakes, possibly embracing a level of individual liberty that has not existed before, but could exist today.
Think I will just keep telling myself that until I am not so upset anymore.
Constitutional amendments have had more of an affect than I think you are giving them credit. Further, there were strong protections to keep the constitution from being amended and people have allowed those rules to be ignored. It is highly questionable whether several were ratified legally according to the rules of the constitution.
While I completely agree with a lot of what you say, I can't completely blame the greedy for acting greedy. I think it is the fact that most people don't care and won't educate themselves beyond their government sanitized education. Maybe that is why we have a system that takes a normal inquisitive outgoing and leads them to believe it is a chore. Everyone is so trustful of the government that they do not challenge it; whatever it does, even if it upsets them, that is just "the way things are". People have lives and families, and things they care about that they don't have time to ensure that their city or county, let alone country is run in a way. What we are left with is a few people with nothing better to do than to run for public office. In a way, it is still the same joke it was in high school. Now add to that hard working, intelligent, responsible individuals that want or need something done. Those rich and powerful people (lets just say for a moment they earned it). Whatever they want, they need only convince some of the dumbest, laziest, frat boys that they should get whatever they want, however they want.
Government should coordinate what people need when it is something for the government to handle, but people are easily bought, and while corporations SHOULD be fighting and lobbying for their needs, it is our responsibility as individuals to get people that represent us to stand up for our communities and only help provide the kind of infrastructure that is going to encourage business, not just the best businesses we like that make the biggest promises; no wonder politicians behave this way, we elect them in exactly the same manner.
This is all the more reason people (aka the government) need to allow people to be responsible for themselves and enable liberty then let the chips fall where they will. Market and business with customer needs and desires is already a crazy ball of unpredictable momentum. When government becomes this giant effort to control what everyone wants and needs, it fails. Government CAN NOT do that job. We can want it to, we can desire it to; it isn't that I think it is wrong for the government to do this, it CAN'T do it. They tax, criminalize, subsidize, and every time something goes right, somehow they get credit, and when it goes wrong, they say it was because they didn't do enough. It is no surprise that on a recent civics test / survey that among the MANY tracked demographics, those who had "ever held public office" was second for very worst.
District voting also ties the representatives closely to local interests instead of national concerns
I feel the 17th amendment eliminated the focus on local issues and only national issues are addressed. Let people vote for someone they know, that they can meet, and has a voice among others in the state. Let those people vote on who would represent us in congress. In such a system, where people really knew, from personal experience, who they were voting for, I think the media would have less power to sell the lies.
17th amendment appears to "give power to the people", but it really just eliminates any power your representatives you vote for to have any influence in representing your interests in Congress. It has made the state almost completely benign. I think the electoral college is great for many reasons I won't go into right now. The problem, as you mentioned, is the two party system. The work necessary for a third party to become relevant is insurmountable. Not to be all conspiratorial about it, but I see it in the best interest of the DNC to "cross party lines" and make sure the Republican party stays strong... just not stronger then them. The only thing that could ever bring in a third party would be a fall of the current second party.
I am proud of what happened recently in Sweden with the recent swell of people joining the Pirate Party. That is exactly how government should work; when government betrays the will of the people, those representatives are out, and new ones are in. It will be interesting to see what happens next election cycle now that it is larger than three of the five parties currently represented in Parliament.
The number of political parties in this country I am certain will always be equal to the reciprocal of the percent of electoral votes necessary to elect the president; 50% = 2 parties, 20% = 5 parties, 10% = 10 parties. At least I think that is how I think it would normalize over a long period of time. I don't expect it would normalize quickly.
The media is the only nominator. I started paying attention to Obama after he got the endorsement of Lessig. However, love him or hate him, he was nominated and ultimately elected by the media. Hollywood's two top choices for who they would want to see as president were Obama and McCain, then they let us pick between them. I thought he would work on reform and try to bring some sanity to the situation, but the change we can believe in here is death to the opposition.
Motivations are hard to judge, at least I like to try to believe this. Obama is smart enough to know that what he does this next four years will tell Hollywood whether or not they want to nominate, and ultimately elect him in 2012. But what is important to us is whether or not his part time job of media d*** ornament is a necessary diplomatic move, or if he is merely going to take the path of least resistance.
Let the market figure it out. The people that figure it out will become super rich until the next technology comes along and someone else will have to figure that out. The new system is killing the old system, and that is just the way progress works.
The printing press DESTROYED the book publishing industry of the time. Lots of people with lots of money providing many jobs to skilled intelligent scribes fought very hard against Gutenberg. Gutenberg was a pirate with no respect for the copyright law of the time.
Finally, despite many book burnings and imprisonment of pirates, the printing press still won. But then as book printing was decriminalized, there was a swarm of new book publishers taking business away from the now old industry, and the copyright wars were going again.
WTF!!! I would be pissed off too if I had a successful business and some new technology came along and made me completely obsolete, but is it too much to ask that the government recognize some pattern here with regard to progress and communication technology? Would it just be "too much progress too quickly" if they gave way to the future, or is it just bad business for the government not to take industry money to support whatever they ask.
I try not to get angry, and just realize that free market is inescapable, and holding the government to a higher standard than thinking they could ever do anything more than to grab as much market share in any and every industry possible just like any other business is a joke. A constitutional government sounds like a great idea, but it isn't divine, and doesn't mean anything more than what we do with it. Not even really talking about the US constitution specifically, just the idea that there could be some kind of social contract that would be shared between people about an acceptable amount of influence we are going to exert on each others lives. Some kind of rules that would say "we believe in justice, but there should be limits on how justice is pursued. There should be simple rules that we can agree to, articulate, and understand.
So the lawful solution has come down to this. Boycott this wretched industry. Call me paranoid, but I won't give money for ANY CD or DVD unless THEY produced it. I always ask if they use creative commons, and usually end up explaining it to them, but in most all cases I ask if they mind if I copy it for friends, assuming I like more of what I hear, and they are flattered. SUPPORT CREATIVE COMMONS!!! It is new, and how people can make money off of something has always been the business of business.
Just because YOU don't know the new way doesn't justify giving an army to the old way. Certain powerful industry leaders of the past have, in their own words, declared war. What side are you on? Joe Biden is not just the friend of my enemy, he is the arms dealer.
Is to say "breaking the law" to imply that there is a burden greater than there really is? And isn't kicking people out for trespassing a reason? I also neither said nor think I implied that you needed to give the reason when you kick someone out, just that if someone decided to sue, you wouldn't be completely free from having to explain what happened to win the defense. If they are not there to do business, then they are trespassing. Are you really kicking people out for NO reason? I would bet if you are unwilling to do business with someone, it is because you are trying to protect your business and pragmatic about your policy.
Just as an example, if you had a hardware store, and without any evidence, you just thought it would be good for business to not allow any high school students in at any time, such a policy couldn't possibly get you in some legal trouble?
Someone else posted a link. The right word was "business that serves the general public" from this and and this (posted by someone else above) seem to support that almost any reason is valid when it can be supported there was almost any business interest, but arbitrary discrimination isn't allowed. That doesn't mean it isn't done, but what business owner would just randomly not want to do business. I didn't mean to imply that a business owner has to sit someone down and explain the reason, maybe they just scream at the customer unintelligibly waving a broom. Just saying if it became a legal matter, the business owner has a burden to meet.
and as far as the last quote, would you mind finding me an example of a limited liability corporation with a business in a commercially zoned area that has successfully argued their right to free association, establishing any kind of precedence, anywhere in the United States?
I will totally agree that shopping centers are goofy, but to the best of my understanding, don't shopping centers most always have their own zoning with special rules and such that are agreements made between the mall business and the city.
You cite some great sources... and I don't see how they don't completely support what I said. Am I articulating myself so poorly?
Is it a violation of your civil rights for a business to refuse to serve you because of the way you look, the way you smell, or the way you act? The answer is . . . it depends.
There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.
the refusal of service was not based on the club members' unconventional dress, but was to protect a legitimate business interest in preventing fights between rival club members.
I thought I reiterated this point several times. You MUST have a legitimate reason for discrimination and establish cause and effect of a POLICY, and policies must be reasonably and equally enforced. What qualifies as public nuisance can be almost ANYTHING. In your first source, the poster mentions being kicked out of a place for "being smelly". That is the nuisance, so that makes it legal.
In addition, most courts donâ(TM)t allow restaurants to refuse service to patrons based on extremely arbitrary conditions. For example, a person likely canâ(TM)t be refused service due to having a lazy eye.
But Arenâ(TM)t Restaurants Considered Private Property?
Yes, however they are also considered places of public accommodation. In other words, the primary purpose of a restaurant is to sell food to the general public, which necessarily requires susceptibility to equal protection laws.
These signs also do not preclude a court from finding other arbitrary refusals of service to be discriminatory. Simply put, restaurants that carry a âoeRight to Refuse Serviceâ sign are subject to the same laws as restaurants without one.
Isn't that almost exactly what I said? Or were you debating the legal controversy of the signs, or whether or not it is considered "civil disobedience" to make a statement that implies some type of legal right that doesn't actually exist. In your own references, do you see how each of those cases established a scope and context for the law beyond civil rights to equal protection that means the signs are at very least misleading.
I don't think I could find better sources to support what I said. When you are not serving the general public and are a private business (not just privately owned) you have the right to free association, and the right to discriminate for ANY REASON is protected, otherwise it is a violation of freedom of assembly and speech. In other words, the right to peacefully gather includes the right to peacefully NOT assemble. It wouldn't be any different than you and your best friend wanting to go to the beach, and your "insert ethnicity here" neighbor wants to go with you. You have a legal right say no, even if your ONLY reason is their ethnicity. It is just rarely in a businesses best interest to keep that right because instead they take the tax, zoning, and many other advantages that come with "serving the general public".The "civil rights" argument is just statute that easily and clearly puts the business owner in the wrong, but that by no means that they are otherwise "in the clear".
And as these issues are always attempting to be more clearly defined, civil rights has only mostly established that there can not be a compelling interest in discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. Two "common" exceptions: Chinese restaurants have shown that the public prefers Chinese food to be served by Chinese people; this has given owners of Chinese restaurants the right to discriminate in their employment practices. Actors and models are discriminated against all the time legally. Not even including such examples, companies can discriminate without reason, just not FOR specific reasons that must be provable. An establishment "serving the
I know how the technology works, and I strongly believe that The Pirate Bay is fighting the good and moral side of this fight, defending ideas and culture from evil that would commodity and purposely retard human progress for perceived personal gain. They are "guilty" of what they are "accused", but it is the whole system that is poisoned. They enable people to harness better technology for what it was meant to do. Their strong anti-copyright / anti-monopoly position is intentionally in stark contrast to "the system" AND it is a fine example of people's / consumers beliefs and black market economics.
Without knowing how to put this any other way, were you disagreeing with the post, or just the subject heading? I don't think my intended point was so poorly articulated.
Governments and people are in conflict. Law, for the laymen, is either "bad things" or "what you need to do", but for citizens and really anyone with any respect for the law understands that law is a social contract. One sided contracts are both amoral and void, and people are elected to represent us such that we can be enabled to live our lives. If such an idea sounds grossly idealistic or "nothing like reality", that gap goes to show how little respect there is for government or law.
I think that is an important point. The Pirate Bay is a central location on the web to find stuff that is heavily protected by copyright law AND things people want they don't feel (at that moment) they want to pay for (or at least the asking price). I think you also have to consider the dual marketing of both The Pirate Bay AND the Recording Industry makes albums that are marketed around the world are going to get proportionally larger global attention. The world is big enough that minor global attention generally beats out any kind of regional dominance; just being very popular in China OR United States doesn't mean you are going to be close to being #1 in the world. Just doesn't work that way.
Pirate Bay is about "illegal" sharing; it is a place where you can get stuff that you can not get elsewhere. If artists are sharing their music freely, because they use a Creative Commons license, what motivation is there for pirates to rescue it? There isn't anything to save.
It is like you have a headache. Some people swear my THC, because it is safe, natural, and minimal side effects compared to many other medications. However, in this legal environments, many countries outlaw cannabis, so they need to hit up their local drug dealer. But lets say you just want an Asprin; your drug buddies may have Asprin with them, but why not just go to the store where it is cheap and readily available? A closer analogy is probably amphetamine, because there are so many more varieties. Caffeine is cheap and in many food products, and popular, but not powerful enough and too many side effects compared to alternatives. Ritalin, Dexedrine, and their many flavors and varieties are popular and promoted by drug companies and doctors, quality controlled, but also patent controlled making it very expensive, especially if you do not have health / prescription drug insurance. Again, your local street dealer is going to give you a cheap alternative, except they may keep less fancy notes about what they think you are going to be using it for. And while it is still going to still be a bit more expensive, I'd bet plenty of street dealers keep plenty of prescription drugs on hand. I do not see it as ironic at all that street dealers would keep expensive and illegal drugs available, but won't sell generics or OTC. It is just economics; the financial motivation of the dealer, and the value to the customer just don't meet in those areas.
I used to "pirate" music in order to figure out what I wanted to buy. When the legal environment became hostile, the only thing I stopped doing was buying music. In recent years, I have not pirated any music for a variety of reasons, but my final reason is that I am not interested in hearing the voice or message of artists that actively or passively support a war against the consumer or free culture, with the exception of Last.fm and Sirius Radio. My preference and what I share with friends are links from archive.org and creativecommons.org such as Jamendo and Librivox. I also take the same approach with software.
As the OP pointed out, things are still very centrally controlled. This war isn't about piracy, it is about maintaining control, particularly in the realm of perceptions. There is more I could say, but nothing that hasn't already been said better in Steal this Film, Part II.
Screw those stats though: If you haven't seen a revolution in the freedom and availability of indie music, film, software, and all "IP" for that matter in this "digital age" you haven't been looking.
What it sounded like was that he wanted to keep a database with Google that was encrypted and wanted to search it remotely and securely, but without Google being able to look at the data. Even if that were possible, why are you trusting Google with that in the first place? Why not store it somewhere else? I would think keep encrypted data on a server and make a secure connection to it. You send your normal query across the encrypted channel to the secure server, it does its regular search and sends the result back across the secured channel. Add to that some secure authentication, and I thought that would have met the objective (even if the implementation is slightly different than described). If you wanted encrypted data stored in an untrusted location (why are you doing this again?) then you would think it would be necessary to hash specific queries as keys to encrypted data lacking the necessary information to decrypt the information remotely. Either way, guess I will see what other people are saying if this question seems more obvious (differently) to someone else.
Part of what Amazon sells is that your books will always be available, and that is why you should buy a Kindle rather than xyz ebook. If your Kindle brinks like that, it is just another ebook, and not what they sold you.
At least in the US, a business open to the public can only refuse business to a person that is breaking the law such as being a nuisance, and they can ask you to leave if you are loitering. The "We reserve the right to refuse business..." is an act of civil disobedience, and I would bet protect free speech, so long as it is not enforced. Businesses must give a lawful reason to refuse to serve someone. The opposite of that is the right to free association, but those same businesses must not advertise or serve to the public, they loose rights to limited liability, and many tax breaks / incentives. In those case, there is no limit on how you choose to discriminate; ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, whatever.
On the other hand, a company has the right to refuse service to anybody.
False. This is an act of civil disobedience. You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. It is just that enough businesses disagree with the law that it would be a major hassle for the police to go around arresting people for it, and of course there is very likely the free speech issue. You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.
I'll bet there are further complication that would fall under the Clayton Anti-trust Act, but in defense, I am sure they use one of those special legal things in their TOS where it says that you are not purchasing anything accept access to their database, but you do not actually own anything, like Windows, that way they can do anything they want and claim you have no right to say what they do to THEIR operating system.
I would bet in this case, as with many TOS's of its kind, it would not hold up in court. And just to pick on Amazon a little more, why would Amazon ALLOW a customer to conduct lawful business in such a way that it would cause the customer to break some agreement they had with Amazon? There wasn't any coercion or hacking involved. He didn't trick anyone into giving him a refund all those times. This is just Amazon bullying a customer into making fewer returns that are within his legal right to do so.
If they want to call all information "Intellectual Property", then here is what you get: Consumer protection for purchases of intellectual property equal to that of any other good. It is great that Amazon wants to be on the bleeding edge of new things, but that doesn't mean that hypothetically grey areas of the law suddenly don't apply.
Not to mention, I want to see this three armed scale you speak of.
But how long can you hold on NOT mentioning your competition. For awhile, Get The Facts was doing direct comparisons between Windows and Ubuntu Server.
And personally, I think Coke and Pepsi work very 'hard' to ensure that consumers think they are the two you need to choose between. They were once the same company.
Slashdot Mirror
and we still have major issues with politicians trying to redraw district lines, but you make a very good / valid point. I'll have to look into that further. Thanks.
If I were to pay for the services of a prostitute, I'd at least expect their full attention and for them to put down the dice. :)
:) In places where prostitution is not criminalised, such things are certified; workers are tested weekly and is a condition of their employment that they are clean, safe, and happy.
and in case you weren't just trying to be funny, D&D, D/D, or sometimes just DD free in 'personal ads' means free of Disease free (technically illness free is what people mean / intend to communicate, but people still say disease anyway) and don't to any Drugs.
You mean again? http://mises.org/story/3056
I'm not sure prostitutes need specialised and technical skill or knowledge for what they do
There are always those without skill in any industry willing to get paid, but quality, D&D free sex workers put exceptional time and training both into their physical and social skills. Low barrier to market (no pun intended) always means more aggressive competition. Nobody makes or pays $500+ an hour without specialised skills. Nobody.
Not going to say that it is unbias, but it is my interpretation of information presented in Steal This Film, part II. There was a book industry, it was just small and individual books were very expensive, which also contributed to very low literacy.
Tedious in the extreme? In those times? Are you joking? I would think it would be a great honor. Communication through writing was considered magical and mysterious. What do you think literacy rates were before the printing press? Writing is much easier than historians that had to REMEMBER everything that had ever happened. In both cases, history was very sacred and it was an important responsibility. You think that job was just given to anyone? I know there isn't much care or respect for history by much of anyone today, but I think it is because people just know if they wanted to know something, they can just look in a book, or today, just look it up on wikipedia... a lot of people really take it for granted. Anyway, so long as you are making the assertion that it was "tedious to the extreme" and "very error prone", might you be willing to cite a source that these monks were both lazy and hated their jobs?
Thanks for sharing. It was only recently I have been starting to read about the impact of the 17th amendment and despite looking like a "power to the people", it really just eliminated the state government. We are very far from the constitution AND from the lessons learned from British stateism that were meant to save us from such mistakes.
Hell, congress isn't allowed to print fiat money, so somehow issuing bonds to let European bankers manage all of our money for us, paying them for allowing our economy to exist? From the Jefferson letters, wasn't that, like, the REASON for having a revolution was that the colonies were not allowed to have their own money, it all had to be borrowed at interest crippling our economy. Now, we have exactly the same thing, and a sick, corrupted mess we call a government.
Actually, you got to be impressed that it works at all. Ideally, maybe we are not trying to get to the past, but learning lessons from the words of the founders and using our modern experiences to forge a future very critical of our past mistakes, possibly embracing a level of individual liberty that has not existed before, but could exist today.
Think I will just keep telling myself that until I am not so upset anymore.
Constitutional amendments have had more of an affect than I think you are giving them credit. Further, there were strong protections to keep the constitution from being amended and people have allowed those rules to be ignored. It is highly questionable whether several were ratified legally according to the rules of the constitution.
http://political-resources.com/taxes/16thamendment/default.htm
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/14th_amendment_not_ratified.htm
http://www.constitutionalconcepts.org/13thamendment.htm ratified and ignored by fed
While I completely agree with a lot of what you say, I can't completely blame the greedy for acting greedy. I think it is the fact that most people don't care and won't educate themselves beyond their government sanitized education. Maybe that is why we have a system that takes a normal inquisitive outgoing and leads them to believe it is a chore. Everyone is so trustful of the government that they do not challenge it; whatever it does, even if it upsets them, that is just "the way things are". People have lives and families, and things they care about that they don't have time to ensure that their city or county, let alone country is run in a way. What we are left with is a few people with nothing better to do than to run for public office. In a way, it is still the same joke it was in high school. Now add to that hard working, intelligent, responsible individuals that want or need something done. Those rich and powerful people (lets just say for a moment they earned it). Whatever they want, they need only convince some of the dumbest, laziest, frat boys that they should get whatever they want, however they want.
Government should coordinate what people need when it is something for the government to handle, but people are easily bought, and while corporations SHOULD be fighting and lobbying for their needs, it is our responsibility as individuals to get people that represent us to stand up for our communities and only help provide the kind of infrastructure that is going to encourage business, not just the best businesses we like that make the biggest promises; no wonder politicians behave this way, we elect them in exactly the same manner.
This is all the more reason people (aka the government) need to allow people to be responsible for themselves and enable liberty then let the chips fall where they will. Market and business with customer needs and desires is already a crazy ball of unpredictable momentum. When government becomes this giant effort to control what everyone wants and needs, it fails. Government CAN NOT do that job. We can want it to, we can desire it to; it isn't that I think it is wrong for the government to do this, it CAN'T do it. They tax, criminalize, subsidize, and every time something goes right, somehow they get credit, and when it goes wrong, they say it was because they didn't do enough. It is no surprise that on a recent civics test / survey that among the MANY tracked demographics, those who had "ever held public office" was second for very worst.
District voting also ties the representatives closely to local interests instead of national concerns
I feel the 17th amendment eliminated the focus on local issues and only national issues are addressed. Let people vote for someone they know, that they can meet, and has a voice among others in the state. Let those people vote on who would represent us in congress. In such a system, where people really knew, from personal experience, who they were voting for, I think the media would have less power to sell the lies.
17th amendment appears to "give power to the people", but it really just eliminates any power your representatives you vote for to have any influence in representing your interests in Congress. It has made the state almost completely benign. I think the electoral college is great for many reasons I won't go into right now. The problem, as you mentioned, is the two party system. The work necessary for a third party to become relevant is insurmountable. Not to be all conspiratorial about it, but I see it in the best interest of the DNC to "cross party lines" and make sure the Republican party stays strong... just not stronger then them. The only thing that could ever bring in a third party would be a fall of the current second party.
I am proud of what happened recently in Sweden with the recent swell of people joining the Pirate Party. That is exactly how government should work; when government betrays the will of the people, those representatives are out, and new ones are in. It will be interesting to see what happens next election cycle now that it is larger than three of the five parties currently represented in Parliament.
The number of political parties in this country I am certain will always be equal to the reciprocal of the percent of electoral votes necessary to elect the president; 50% = 2 parties, 20% = 5 parties, 10% = 10 parties. At least I think that is how I think it would normalize over a long period of time. I don't expect it would normalize quickly.
Both?
The media is the only nominator. I started paying attention to Obama after he got the endorsement of Lessig. However, love him or hate him, he was nominated and ultimately elected by the media. Hollywood's two top choices for who they would want to see as president were Obama and McCain, then they let us pick between them. I thought he would work on reform and try to bring some sanity to the situation, but the change we can believe in here is death to the opposition.
Motivations are hard to judge, at least I like to try to believe this. Obama is smart enough to know that what he does this next four years will tell Hollywood whether or not they want to nominate, and ultimately elect him in 2012. But what is important to us is whether or not his part time job of media d*** ornament is a necessary diplomatic move, or if he is merely going to take the path of least resistance.
Let the market figure it out. The people that figure it out will become super rich until the next technology comes along and someone else will have to figure that out. The new system is killing the old system, and that is just the way progress works.
The printing press DESTROYED the book publishing industry of the time. Lots of people with lots of money providing many jobs to skilled intelligent scribes fought very hard against Gutenberg. Gutenberg was a pirate with no respect for the copyright law of the time.
Finally, despite many book burnings and imprisonment of pirates, the printing press still won. But then as book printing was decriminalized, there was a swarm of new book publishers taking business away from the now old industry, and the copyright wars were going again.
WTF!!! I would be pissed off too if I had a successful business and some new technology came along and made me completely obsolete, but is it too much to ask that the government recognize some pattern here with regard to progress and communication technology? Would it just be "too much progress too quickly" if they gave way to the future, or is it just bad business for the government not to take industry money to support whatever they ask.
I try not to get angry, and just realize that free market is inescapable, and holding the government to a higher standard than thinking they could ever do anything more than to grab as much market share in any and every industry possible just like any other business is a joke. A constitutional government sounds like a great idea, but it isn't divine, and doesn't mean anything more than what we do with it. Not even really talking about the US constitution specifically, just the idea that there could be some kind of social contract that would be shared between people about an acceptable amount of influence we are going to exert on each others lives. Some kind of rules that would say "we believe in justice, but there should be limits on how justice is pursued. There should be simple rules that we can agree to, articulate, and understand.
So the lawful solution has come down to this. Boycott this wretched industry. Call me paranoid, but I won't give money for ANY CD or DVD unless THEY produced it. I always ask if they use creative commons, and usually end up explaining it to them, but in most all cases I ask if they mind if I copy it for friends, assuming I like more of what I hear, and they are flattered. SUPPORT CREATIVE COMMONS!!! It is new, and how people can make money off of something has always been the business of business.
Just because YOU don't know the new way doesn't justify giving an army to the old way. Certain powerful industry leaders of the past have, in their own words, declared war. What side are you on? Joe Biden is not just the friend of my enemy, he is the arms dealer.
Is to say "breaking the law" to imply that there is a burden greater than there really is? And isn't kicking people out for trespassing a reason? I also neither said nor think I implied that you needed to give the reason when you kick someone out, just that if someone decided to sue, you wouldn't be completely free from having to explain what happened to win the defense. If they are not there to do business, then they are trespassing. Are you really kicking people out for NO reason? I would bet if you are unwilling to do business with someone, it is because you are trying to protect your business and pragmatic about your policy.
Just as an example, if you had a hardware store, and without any evidence, you just thought it would be good for business to not allow any high school students in at any time, such a policy couldn't possibly get you in some legal trouble?
Someone else posted a link. The right word was "business that serves the general public" from this and and this (posted by someone else above) seem to support that almost any reason is valid when it can be supported there was almost any business interest, but arbitrary discrimination isn't allowed. That doesn't mean it isn't done, but what business owner would just randomly not want to do business. I didn't mean to imply that a business owner has to sit someone down and explain the reason, maybe they just scream at the customer unintelligibly waving a broom. Just saying if it became a legal matter, the business owner has a burden to meet.
and as far as the last quote, would you mind finding me an example of a limited liability corporation with a business in a commercially zoned area that has successfully argued their right to free association, establishing any kind of precedence, anywhere in the United States?
I will totally agree that shopping centers are goofy, but to the best of my understanding, don't shopping centers most always have their own zoning with special rules and such that are agreements made between the mall business and the city.
Is it a violation of your civil rights for a business to refuse to serve you because of the way you look, the way you smell, or the way you act? The answer is . . . it depends.
There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.
the refusal of service was not based on the club members' unconventional dress, but was to protect a legitimate business interest in preventing fights between rival club members.
I thought I reiterated this point several times. You MUST have a legitimate reason for discrimination and establish cause and effect of a POLICY, and policies must be reasonably and equally enforced. What qualifies as public nuisance can be almost ANYTHING. In your first source, the poster mentions being kicked out of a place for "being smelly". That is the nuisance, so that makes it legal.
In addition, most courts donâ(TM)t allow restaurants to refuse service to patrons based on extremely arbitrary conditions. For example, a person likely canâ(TM)t be refused service due to having a lazy eye.
But Arenâ(TM)t Restaurants Considered Private Property?
Yes, however they are also considered places of public accommodation. In other words, the primary purpose of a restaurant is to sell food to the general public, which necessarily requires susceptibility to equal protection laws.
These signs also do not preclude a court from finding other arbitrary refusals of service to be discriminatory. Simply put, restaurants that carry a âoeRight to Refuse Serviceâ sign are subject to the same laws as restaurants without one.
Isn't that almost exactly what I said? Or were you debating the legal controversy of the signs, or whether or not it is considered "civil disobedience" to make a statement that implies some type of legal right that doesn't actually exist. In your own references, do you see how each of those cases established a scope and context for the law beyond civil rights to equal protection that means the signs are at very least misleading.
I don't think I could find better sources to support what I said. When you are not serving the general public and are a private business (not just privately owned) you have the right to free association, and the right to discriminate for ANY REASON is protected, otherwise it is a violation of freedom of assembly and speech. In other words, the right to peacefully gather includes the right to peacefully NOT assemble. It wouldn't be any different than you and your best friend wanting to go to the beach, and your "insert ethnicity here" neighbor wants to go with you. You have a legal right say no, even if your ONLY reason is their ethnicity. It is just rarely in a businesses best interest to keep that right because instead they take the tax, zoning, and many other advantages that come with "serving the general public".The "civil rights" argument is just statute that easily and clearly puts the business owner in the wrong, but that by no means that they are otherwise "in the clear".
And as these issues are always attempting to be more clearly defined, civil rights has only mostly established that there can not be a compelling interest in discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. Two "common" exceptions: Chinese restaurants have shown that the public prefers Chinese food to be served by Chinese people; this has given owners of Chinese restaurants the right to discriminate in their employment practices. Actors and models are discriminated against all the time legally. Not even including such examples, companies can discriminate without reason, just not FOR specific reasons that must be provable. An establishment "serving the
I know how the technology works, and I strongly believe that The Pirate Bay is fighting the good and moral side of this fight, defending ideas and culture from evil that would commodity and purposely retard human progress for perceived personal gain. They are "guilty" of what they are "accused", but it is the whole system that is poisoned. They enable people to harness better technology for what it was meant to do. Their strong anti-copyright / anti-monopoly position is intentionally in stark contrast to "the system" AND it is a fine example of people's / consumers beliefs and black market economics.
Without knowing how to put this any other way, were you disagreeing with the post, or just the subject heading? I don't think my intended point was so poorly articulated.
Governments and people are in conflict. Law, for the laymen, is either "bad things" or "what you need to do", but for citizens and really anyone with any respect for the law understands that law is a social contract. One sided contracts are both amoral and void, and people are elected to represent us such that we can be enabled to live our lives. If such an idea sounds grossly idealistic or "nothing like reality", that gap goes to show how little respect there is for government or law.
I think that is an important point. The Pirate Bay is a central location on the web to find stuff that is heavily protected by copyright law AND things people want they don't feel (at that moment) they want to pay for (or at least the asking price). I think you also have to consider the dual marketing of both The Pirate Bay AND the Recording Industry makes albums that are marketed around the world are going to get proportionally larger global attention. The world is big enough that minor global attention generally beats out any kind of regional dominance; just being very popular in China OR United States doesn't mean you are going to be close to being #1 in the world. Just doesn't work that way.
Pirate Bay is about "illegal" sharing; it is a place where you can get stuff that you can not get elsewhere. If artists are sharing their music freely, because they use a Creative Commons license, what motivation is there for pirates to rescue it? There isn't anything to save.
It is like you have a headache. Some people swear my THC, because it is safe, natural, and minimal side effects compared to many other medications. However, in this legal environments, many countries outlaw cannabis, so they need to hit up their local drug dealer. But lets say you just want an Asprin; your drug buddies may have Asprin with them, but why not just go to the store where it is cheap and readily available? A closer analogy is probably amphetamine, because there are so many more varieties. Caffeine is cheap and in many food products, and popular, but not powerful enough and too many side effects compared to alternatives. Ritalin, Dexedrine, and their many flavors and varieties are popular and promoted by drug companies and doctors, quality controlled, but also patent controlled making it very expensive, especially if you do not have health / prescription drug insurance. Again, your local street dealer is going to give you a cheap alternative, except they may keep less fancy notes about what they think you are going to be using it for. And while it is still going to still be a bit more expensive, I'd bet plenty of street dealers keep plenty of prescription drugs on hand. I do not see it as ironic at all that street dealers would keep expensive and illegal drugs available, but won't sell generics or OTC. It is just economics; the financial motivation of the dealer, and the value to the customer just don't meet in those areas.
I used to "pirate" music in order to figure out what I wanted to buy. When the legal environment became hostile, the only thing I stopped doing was buying music. In recent years, I have not pirated any music for a variety of reasons, but my final reason is that I am not interested in hearing the voice or message of artists that actively or passively support a war against the consumer or free culture, with the exception of Last.fm and Sirius Radio. My preference and what I share with friends are links from archive.org and creativecommons.org such as Jamendo and Librivox. I also take the same approach with software.
As the OP pointed out, things are still very centrally controlled. This war isn't about piracy, it is about maintaining control, particularly in the realm of perceptions. There is more I could say, but nothing that hasn't already been said better in Steal this Film, Part II.
Screw those stats though: If you haven't seen a revolution in the freedom and availability of indie music, film, software, and all "IP" for that matter in this "digital age" you haven't been looking.
What it sounded like was that he wanted to keep a database with Google that was encrypted and wanted to search it remotely and securely, but without Google being able to look at the data. Even if that were possible, why are you trusting Google with that in the first place? Why not store it somewhere else? I would think keep encrypted data on a server and make a secure connection to it. You send your normal query across the encrypted channel to the secure server, it does its regular search and sends the result back across the secured channel. Add to that some secure authentication, and I thought that would have met the objective (even if the implementation is slightly different than described). If you wanted encrypted data stored in an untrusted location (why are you doing this again?) then you would think it would be necessary to hash specific queries as keys to encrypted data lacking the necessary information to decrypt the information remotely. Either way, guess I will see what other people are saying if this question seems more obvious (differently) to someone else.
Part of what Amazon sells is that your books will always be available, and that is why you should buy a Kindle rather than xyz ebook. If your Kindle brinks like that, it is just another ebook, and not what they sold you.
At least in the US, a business open to the public can only refuse business to a person that is breaking the law such as being a nuisance, and they can ask you to leave if you are loitering. The "We reserve the right to refuse business..." is an act of civil disobedience, and I would bet protect free speech, so long as it is not enforced. Businesses must give a lawful reason to refuse to serve someone. The opposite of that is the right to free association, but those same businesses must not advertise or serve to the public, they loose rights to limited liability, and many tax breaks / incentives. In those case, there is no limit on how you choose to discriminate; ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, whatever.
On the other hand, a company has the right to refuse service to anybody.
False. This is an act of civil disobedience. You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. It is just that enough businesses disagree with the law that it would be a major hassle for the police to go around arresting people for it, and of course there is very likely the free speech issue. You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.
I'll bet there are further complication that would fall under the Clayton Anti-trust Act, but in defense, I am sure they use one of those special legal things in their TOS where it says that you are not purchasing anything accept access to their database, but you do not actually own anything, like Windows, that way they can do anything they want and claim you have no right to say what they do to THEIR operating system.
I would bet in this case, as with many TOS's of its kind, it would not hold up in court. And just to pick on Amazon a little more, why would Amazon ALLOW a customer to conduct lawful business in such a way that it would cause the customer to break some agreement they had with Amazon? There wasn't any coercion or hacking involved. He didn't trick anyone into giving him a refund all those times. This is just Amazon bullying a customer into making fewer returns that are within his legal right to do so.
If they want to call all information "Intellectual Property", then here is what you get: Consumer protection for purchases of intellectual property equal to that of any other good. It is great that Amazon wants to be on the bleeding edge of new things, but that doesn't mean that hypothetically grey areas of the law suddenly don't apply.
Not to mention, I want to see this three armed scale you speak of.
I thought that was what ssl was for.
Thank you for posting this. Very informative
But how long can you hold on NOT mentioning your competition. For awhile, Get The Facts was doing direct comparisons between Windows and Ubuntu Server.
And personally, I think Coke and Pepsi work very 'hard' to ensure that consumers think they are the two you need to choose between. They were once the same company.
how does the average user determine whether their ... OS is just a load of bloated crap?
Simple, they use Windows.
I don't think that tool was available until after some legal stink. It also may have been a "beta feature". Sorry, Office 2007, not 2008.