Bias intimidation is intimitading a group of people based on your bias. He didn't just post the video (which would just be an invasion of privacy), he posted text saying in effect 'look at these digusting people, gays deserve ridicule'. That is bias intimidation. The same thing is true of burning a cross in a black's front yard, or painting swastikas on synagogues. Those are not just simple acts of arson and vandalism, they are intended to send a message to all blacks and Jews that they better watch out. That is intimidation.
Hate crimes do not "give certain segments.. special protection". They protect everyone from crimes committed against them because of their race, color, gender, sexual orientation, etc. There is no 'special protection' for blacks, or women, or gays, or anyone else you think is getting special protection. Everyone has a race, color, gender, etc.
Uh, so what? They certainly are not a civil matter. Whether they are a criminal matter or not does not change the fact that ordinary citizens have no right to investigate someone else for unregistered guns.
It's a terrible analogy. Unregistered guns are a criminal matter. Ordinary citizens have no right to act as police. Unlicensed software is a civil matter. Not only is the copyright holder allowed to pursue infringement cases, he is the only one (or his agent) who can. The only options they really have are to either get the business to voluntarily give up the information, or start an actual lawsuit. Once a lawsuit is started it gets very expensive for everyone.
That is some mighty fine editing you have done there. You seem to have left out:
a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means c : to take surreptitiously or without permission
Are you saying piracy does not take or appropriate without right? Or that it is not taking surreptitiously or without permission?
And before you want to argue 'take', the same dictionary offers this as the first definition of take:
To get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control
and later: to obtain or secure for use (as by lease, subscription, or purchase)
Are you actually trying to say that no-one ever pirated a single song that they would have purchased had the pirated copy not been available? That position is equally as absurd as claiming that every download is a lost sale (a position I don't think they've ever taken legally). The truth is somewhere in between there, but it is impossible to tell exactly where.
Yes, people should be able to make their own copies for their own personal use. And yes, DRM sucks. But let's be honest here, DRM came LONG (many decades) after people demonstrated their willingness to make and distribute copies.
For the discussion to move anywhere, both sides need to adjust their thinking. The media companies should make clear that making copies for your own personal use is OK. But, at the same time, sites the TPB and file sharers should be denounced just as harshly as the media companies for forcing the media companies to act in their own best interest so harshly.
Much as the pirates hate to admit it, the media companies have changed. The arguments used to be 'if we could just download instead of buying physical CDs, we wouldn't pirate'. Then it was 'if we could buy a single song for $1 instead of a whole CD, we wouldn't pirate'. For more than a decade that has been possible. Then it was 'well, if we could hear the song first we wouldn't pirate'. Most sites selling songs let you sample them before purchase. Then it was 'well, there is DRM on the songs, so I can't play it on all my devices'. Most sites now sell DRM-free songs. On the other hand, even with those changes, piracy still continues, just as rampant as ever. Until people are willing to admit that piracy IS a problem, you can expect the media companies to just continue digging their heels in.
Money is not paper. Money is value transferred from one person to another. That transfer may occur by passing bits of paper, or it may occur by transferring numbers on a ledger. It is all still money.
If you print up a trillion dollars worth of perfect copies of money, are you now a trillionaire? Of course not. It is just paper.
If you distribute that trillion dollars worth of perfect fakes to a hundred million people, have you done any harm? Hell yes. All money just became worth a whole lot less. The people who legitimately own the money supply (ie all of us) have been harmed.
If digital copies have no value, why do so many people want them (to the point that they are willing to break the law to get them)? Your point that digital copies have zero value is demonstrably 100% false. Value is determined by the desirability of something, not its cost to produce. Is a gold nugget found in a stream while fishing any less valuable than one that was mined at great expense?
If he is over analyzing the metaphor it is because the metaphor is completely wrong. Here is their 'metaphor' in a nutshell: "You say people are willing to accept copies of songs the same as originals, so you should be willing to accept a copy of money as an original". It makes no sense at all. None. People ARE willing to accept copies of songs the same as originals, and no-one is willing to accept copies of money.
The thing that makes photocopies less valuable is that NO ONE WILL ACCEPT THEM from you. And if you did try to use them, you have committed a felony.
Oh, you mean like identity theft and theft of service, which do not 'take' anything from the victim? The word you are looking for (and which the RIAA, etc, never use) is larceny.
The only thing absurd in this is the ridiculous arguments that people (like you) use to defend it. What sense does 'if the two are equivalent they would be happy to have copies of our money' make? Why would they (or anyone else) accept a scanned image of money? It has nothing to do with 'physical equivalence'. It has to do with thing being offered being entirely worthless.
And where exactly do they equate copying with physical taking anyway? Lemme guess, you're one of those people who insist the word 'stealing' means depriving the original owner of a physical object. To which I offer: stealing a kiss, stealing away in the night, stealing a peek, stealing a base, stealing one's thunder, stealing an idea, stealing one's heart, etc. Exactly what did the original owner lose in each of those cases? Nothing. What do they all have in common? Being done without permission or surreptitiously, you know, just like copyright infringement.
You appear to only be focusing on the type of counterfeiting that is large scale (ie done by foreign governments) and is intended to devalue legitimate currency. All those protections you listed are to protect against that. Those types of operations do not use scanners and ink jet printers.
However, another type of counterfeiting is only concerned with generating wealth for the counterfeiter. For that type of operation to be successful, the money only has to change hands once. And that mostly involves giving it to people who are not going to do any sort of authenticity checks on a $20 bill. Like, pretty much everyone. When you get cash from an ATM, do you check it? How do you know the guy who filled the ATM didn't take the real money and substitute counterfeits? How about when you get change at a store? How do you know the clerk didn't change real bills for fake ones? By the time the counterfeits are detected it is too late, and you are out the money (and may land in trouble of your own for trying to pass counterfeits).
The biggest problem is the paper, and people have found ways to bleach the ink off smaller denominations and reprint with larger denominations.
Scanned/printed counterfeiting is real, and the people most often hurt by it are regular individuals.
What a bunch of genius's. Now, instead of just being a pirate and having the RIAA & MPAA after you, you can also be a counterfeiter and have the feds after you.
Define better. All medications are a tradeoff between getting the desired effect and avoiding side effects. Medicines do not have the exact same effect on every person. What is a tolerable (or non-existent) side-effect in one person may be intolerable in another. What is very effective on one person may not produce the desired result on another. Samples are a good way for a doctor to see if a particular medicine is right for a particular patient. The alternative is for the doctor to write a prescription, the patient buys the drug, then finds out a few days/weeks later that the very expensive drug is not right, and he gets to buy ANOTHER drug.
Guess what category 'educating doctors' falls under? That's right, marketing. How do they educate doctors? By buying ads, and sending reps to talk to the doctors. How does a busy doctor have time to talk to a rep? The rep buys him lunch. How does the rep convince the doctor that his meds are right for the doctor's patients? By giving him samples. All of the above costs money (lots of it) and it all comes out of the marketing budget.
As for consumer level advertising: you are assuming that everyone for whom a medicine is appropriate will go to the doctor and tell them about the problem, even if they don't know anything can be done about it. This is nonsense. Before Viagra (and its widespread advertsing), how many men went to their doctor and complained about ED? Almost none, first because it was embarassing, and second because every man knew there was nothing that could be done anyway. Do people with joint pain go to the doctor, or do they just assume it is part of aging and put up with it (or worse, self medicate)? Is constantly feeling sad normal, or is there something wrong that can be fixed?
Yeah, right. Let's examine your claim that "defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine".
Bernie Madoff - 150 years Bernie Ebbers - 25 years Dennis Kozlowski - 25 years Jeffrey Skilling - 24 years, 4 months
Yup, just 'slaps on the wrist'.
Why aren't they jailing the CEO of cables companies? How about: because they aren't doing anything illegal. What laws do you imagine they have broken? If we take your ridiculous assertion that they are charging >5000 times cost, then their profit margins should be about 99.999%. They aren't anywhere close to that (TWC is 8.5%, Comcast is 8.56%), so clearly you are just plain wrong on that one.
Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of AT&T and Verizon? Again, what laws to you suppose they have broken? At most they have breached your contract. So sue them. Oh, you signed a contract saying you wouldn't sue? Well then that's your problem, isn't it.
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What don't you understand about that simple statement?
Bias intimidation is intimitading a group of people based on your bias. He didn't just post the video (which would just be an invasion of privacy), he posted text saying in effect 'look at these digusting people, gays deserve ridicule'. That is bias intimidation. The same thing is true of burning a cross in a black's front yard, or painting swastikas on synagogues. Those are not just simple acts of arson and vandalism, they are intended to send a message to all blacks and Jews that they better watch out. That is intimidation.
Hate crimes do not "give certain segments .. special protection". They protect everyone from crimes committed against them because of their race, color, gender, sexual orientation, etc. There is no 'special protection' for blacks, or women, or gays, or anyone else you think is getting special protection. Everyone has a race, color, gender, etc.
True. But I meant that the reason you would not accept a counterfeit from someone else is that you would be committing a felony when trying to use it.
Uh, so what? They certainly are not a civil matter. Whether they are a criminal matter or not does not change the fact that ordinary citizens have no right to investigate someone else for unregistered guns.
It's a terrible analogy. Unregistered guns are a criminal matter. Ordinary citizens have no right to act as police. Unlicensed software is a civil matter. Not only is the copyright holder allowed to pursue infringement cases, he is the only one (or his agent) who can. The only options they really have are to either get the business to voluntarily give up the information, or start an actual lawsuit. Once a lawsuit is started it gets very expensive for everyone.
That is some mighty fine editing you have done there. You seem to have left out:
a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
b : to take away by force or unjust means
c : to take surreptitiously or without permission
Are you saying piracy does not take or appropriate without right? Or that it is not taking surreptitiously or without permission?
And before you want to argue 'take', the same dictionary offers this as the first definition of take:
To get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control
and later: to obtain or secure for use (as by lease, subscription, or purchase)
Are you actually trying to say that no-one ever pirated a single song that they would have purchased had the pirated copy not been available? That position is equally as absurd as claiming that every download is a lost sale (a position I don't think they've ever taken legally). The truth is somewhere in between there, but it is impossible to tell exactly where.
Yes, people should be able to make their own copies for their own personal use. And yes, DRM sucks. But let's be honest here, DRM came LONG (many decades) after people demonstrated their willingness to make and distribute copies.
For the discussion to move anywhere, both sides need to adjust their thinking. The media companies should make clear that making copies for your own personal use is OK. But, at the same time, sites the TPB and file sharers should be denounced just as harshly as the media companies for forcing the media companies to act in their own best interest so harshly.
Much as the pirates hate to admit it, the media companies have changed. The arguments used to be 'if we could just download instead of buying physical CDs, we wouldn't pirate'. Then it was 'if we could buy a single song for $1 instead of a whole CD, we wouldn't pirate'. For more than a decade that has been possible. Then it was 'well, if we could hear the song first we wouldn't pirate'. Most sites selling songs let you sample them before purchase. Then it was 'well, there is DRM on the songs, so I can't play it on all my devices'. Most sites now sell DRM-free songs. On the other hand, even with those changes, piracy still continues, just as rampant as ever. Until people are willing to admit that piracy IS a problem, you can expect the media companies to just continue digging their heels in.
Money is not paper. Money is value transferred from one person to another. That transfer may occur by passing bits of paper, or it may occur by transferring numbers on a ledger. It is all still money.
If you print up a trillion dollars worth of perfect copies of money, are you now a trillionaire? Of course not. It is just paper.
If you distribute that trillion dollars worth of perfect fakes to a hundred million people, have you done any harm? Hell yes. All money just became worth a whole lot less. The people who legitimately own the money supply (ie all of us) have been harmed.
If digital copies have no value, why do so many people want them (to the point that they are willing to break the law to get them)? Your point that digital copies have zero value is demonstrably 100% false. Value is determined by the desirability of something, not its cost to produce. Is a gold nugget found in a stream while fishing any less valuable than one that was mined at great expense?
If he is over analyzing the metaphor it is because the metaphor is completely wrong. Here is their 'metaphor' in a nutshell: "You say people are willing to accept copies of songs the same as originals, so you should be willing to accept a copy of money as an original". It makes no sense at all. None. People ARE willing to accept copies of songs the same as originals, and no-one is willing to accept copies of money.
The thing that makes photocopies less valuable is that NO ONE WILL ACCEPT THEM from you. And if you did try to use them, you have committed a felony.
Yes, I know that. My point was that they do have real assets, they just don't have the cash on hand. Which I think is the same thing you are saying.
Oh, you mean like identity theft and theft of service, which do not 'take' anything from the victim? The word you are looking for (and which the RIAA, etc, never use) is larceny.
Genius, sheer genius. Use Willie Nelson as evidence that getting busted for pot must be a frame job.
He said 'real world valuable asset', not 'physical money'. As they say in It's a Wonderful Life, "Your money isn't here, it's in Joe's house".
The only thing absurd in this is the ridiculous arguments that people (like you) use to defend it. What sense does 'if the two are equivalent they would be happy to have copies of our money' make? Why would they (or anyone else) accept a scanned image of money? It has nothing to do with 'physical equivalence'. It has to do with thing being offered being entirely worthless.
And where exactly do they equate copying with physical taking anyway? Lemme guess, you're one of those people who insist the word 'stealing' means depriving the original owner of a physical object. To which I offer: stealing a kiss, stealing away in the night, stealing a peek, stealing a base, stealing one's thunder, stealing an idea, stealing one's heart, etc. Exactly what did the original owner lose in each of those cases? Nothing. What do they all have in common? Being done without permission or surreptitiously, you know, just like copyright infringement.
You appear to only be focusing on the type of counterfeiting that is large scale (ie done by foreign governments) and is intended to devalue legitimate currency. All those protections you listed are to protect against that. Those types of operations do not use scanners and ink jet printers.
However, another type of counterfeiting is only concerned with generating wealth for the counterfeiter. For that type of operation to be successful, the money only has to change hands once. And that mostly involves giving it to people who are not going to do any sort of authenticity checks on a $20 bill. Like, pretty much everyone. When you get cash from an ATM, do you check it? How do you know the guy who filled the ATM didn't take the real money and substitute counterfeits? How about when you get change at a store? How do you know the clerk didn't change real bills for fake ones? By the time the counterfeits are detected it is too late, and you are out the money (and may land in trouble of your own for trying to pass counterfeits).
The biggest problem is the paper, and people have found ways to bleach the ink off smaller denominations and reprint with larger denominations.
Scanned/printed counterfeiting is real, and the people most often hurt by it are regular individuals.
You are aware that vending machines, ATM's etc do this sort of thing aren't you?
What a bunch of genius's. Now, instead of just being a pirate and having the RIAA & MPAA after you, you can also be a counterfeiter and have the feds after you.
Encyclopedia Brittanica is not gone, just the PRINT version. They do have digital offerings.
Define better. All medications are a tradeoff between getting the desired effect and avoiding side effects. Medicines do not have the exact same effect on every person. What is a tolerable (or non-existent) side-effect in one person may be intolerable in another. What is very effective on one person may not produce the desired result on another. Samples are a good way for a doctor to see if a particular medicine is right for a particular patient. The alternative is for the doctor to write a prescription, the patient buys the drug, then finds out a few days/weeks later that the very expensive drug is not right, and he gets to buy ANOTHER drug.
P/E has nothing to do with how profitable a company is, it is just a ratio of the stock price to EPS.
The correct thing to look at when talking about profitability is profit margin. Bayer: 6.77%. Google: 25.56%. Apple: 28.20%.
Guess what category 'educating doctors' falls under? That's right, marketing. How do they educate doctors? By buying ads, and sending reps to talk to the doctors. How does a busy doctor have time to talk to a rep? The rep buys him lunch. How does the rep convince the doctor that his meds are right for the doctor's patients? By giving him samples. All of the above costs money (lots of it) and it all comes out of the marketing budget.
As for consumer level advertising: you are assuming that everyone for whom a medicine is appropriate will go to the doctor and tell them about the problem, even if they don't know anything can be done about it. This is nonsense. Before Viagra (and its widespread advertsing), how many men went to their doctor and complained about ED? Almost none, first because it was embarassing, and second because every man knew there was nothing that could be done anyway. Do people with joint pain go to the doctor, or do they just assume it is part of aging and put up with it (or worse, self medicate)? Is constantly feeling sad normal, or is there something wrong that can be fixed?
Yeah, right. Let's examine your claim that "defrauding thousands of people at a time comes only with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine".
Bernie Madoff - 150 years
Bernie Ebbers - 25 years
Dennis Kozlowski - 25 years
Jeffrey Skilling - 24 years, 4 months
Yup, just 'slaps on the wrist'.
Why aren't they jailing the CEO of cables companies? How about: because they aren't doing anything illegal. What laws do you imagine they have broken? If we take your ridiculous assertion that they are charging >5000 times cost, then their profit margins should be about 99.999%. They aren't anywhere close to that (TWC is 8.5%, Comcast is 8.56%), so clearly you are just plain wrong on that one.
Why aren't they jailing the CEOs of AT&T and Verizon? Again, what laws to you suppose they have broken? At most they have breached your contract. So sue them. Oh, you signed a contract saying you wouldn't sue? Well then that's your problem, isn't it.
Wait, you mean International Business Machines doesn't make things for the masses? Who'd a thunk it?