On behalf of Australia I'd like to apologise to the rest of The Internet for our politicians' stupidity.
However, in our defence, we are once again only seeking to win the America's Cup equivalent for the 'world's most ridiculous internet-focused legislation'. We will, of course, be forced to hand it back very shortly after acquiring it.
If your business is making toast, yes. If you don't know how every part of your business works, you're vulnerable to changes that you can't foresee, or better-researched competition. So yes, if you have a toast-making business, you really need to know about toasters.
Most startups fail, yes, but entrepreneurs usually try more than once. The mantra is 'fail fast': If your current business isn't going to work, then find out fast and do something else. It is risky, and there is a danger that you'll spend years working very hard for very little actual money, but you only need to get lucky once.
I think I can speak for all men about the punching in the nads thing, yes. It's a common experience and we all perceive it in the same way. Yes, there will be people on the edges of the bell curve who enjoy the pain, but they will still experience the pain in the same way.
The listener also has a choice, which is the bit overlooked. The listener can take offence, or not take offence. They can listen, or not listen. They can interpret the intent behind the words as generously as possible or as meanly as possible. Being punched in the 'nads always hurts, being told you're an idiot can hurt or not hurt depending on how you take it, and the person telling you you're an idiot may have no idea they're about to cause pain rather than laughter.
And I'm drawing on the history of prohibition, when alcohol was criminalised and the majority/large minority of society still drank it, enough to make the rule of law irrelevant. There's also the outlawing of prostitution, which doesn't prevent prostitution, just makes prostitutes less likely to report crimes against them (such as rape) and makes them more vulnerable because of their criminal status. It's pretty easy to see if you criminalise a common activity, it doesn't prevent the activity, but criminalises otherwise law-abiding people and prevents the reporting of more serious crimes because of the criminal status of the victims.
Why is it OK to legislate against a punch in the 'nads, but not against psychological harm? In what way is a brain any less a damageable organ of the body than a testicle?
A punch in the 'nads is perceived by every victim in the same way, and there is a clear intention on behalf of the puncher to cause pain and injury. This is not so clear-cut with trolling and griefing 'offences'. An insult or a taunt is perceived differently by different people, and the 'perpetrator' has no means of knowing in advance how their comment will be received. Taking too much offence is as much of a problem as giving too much offence, especially when we as a society universally blame the giver not the taker. This gives over-sensitive people immediate 'victim' status, which some people enjoy and therefore court offence so that they can be victims. If we limit the ability to give offence without making some sensible rules about taking offence too, then we end up in a situation where no-one can say anything meaningful, just bland platitudes.
But morality cannot be enforced by laws, banning something doesn't prevent people from doing it, it just makes them criminals when they do it.
Like rape.
Indeed, and murder, and theft, and so on. We reject the fact that a minority of our community perform these acts, and the punish them if they do. But criminalise too many things (like alcohol for example) and suddenly a majority of our community are criminals, the word 'criminal' ceases to have any negative effect, and it becomes impossible for us to reject them. Then the rapists will have a field day because they're suddenly the criminal majority and aren't being rejected by society. If you really abhor rape, then you'll work hard to prevent attempts to legislate morality because it will dilute the social consequences of rape.
It's the removal of personal judgement that worries me. I'm no longer able to judge for myself 'is this a safe thing to do?' and suffer the consequences. Mostly because of the insurance industry's habit of suing anyone else when a claim is made, so site owners and operators have had to set standard rules for everyone, and set those rules at a low enough level so that idiots won't hurt themselves. So we now see personal judgement and personal responsibility as a dangerous thing that must be removed from any situation and replaced with standard behaviours. Anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed (and will eventually be mandatory), because if it was harmful or antisocial there'd be a rule against it so it must be OK. We're starting to see rules against trolling and griefing appear, which is the next logical step.
But morality cannot be enforced by laws, banning something doesn't prevent people from doing it, it just makes them criminals when they do it. If you ban enough things, your entire society becomes criminal and all the laws stop having any meaning or effect.
I had the same thought. After reading their introduction manual, it seems they work by the same model.
In theory this should work.. hire bright, motivated people, set them broad goals to achieve, don't let anything impair their motivation or the ability to achieve their goals, and you should out-perform conventional top-down management structures by an order of magnitude.
It'll be interesting to see how it works in practice as Valve scales up. So far so good, but they're about to come up against the likes of Google and Microsoft with their latest projects, so let's see if the theory holds true...
Universalism is different from infallibilism. Take physics for a non-moral example. Whatever the laws of physics are, they apply to everything everywhere; if they didn't, they wouldn't be laws of physics. But no physicist ever thinks that they are in possession of the perfect, final physics; every theory is always open to revision. But whichever theory actually is correct -- even if we never precisely identify it -- is universally correct.
Well we have no way of proving that, there are areas of the universe that are forever beyond our reach where the laws could be different. And there's the other hypothetical point that there could be many possible laws of physics until we observe one of them to be true. But edge cases aside, you're right.
But moral codes change over time, and it's not a continual smooth evolution towards a 'better' moral code. If there is a universal moral code, we struggle to define it or attain it, and seem to frequently get all turned around and regress from it.
If your morality is permissive, that is, it has things which are neither obligatory nor forbidden, but which you can do or not do as you choose, then there is room for many different voluntary ways of living. Your clothes, your food, your language, your rituals, your games, your stories, your songs; there are the parts of culture which are not matters of moral concern, for a properly permissive sense of morality at least, and such a morality will allow many clusters of such morally irrelevant (but personally significant) cultural patterns to coexist.
So when does all of that become a new moral code for a specific subculture? There are many examples of subcultures living within the confines of a more permissive society who have defined a culture-specific moral code that is more restrictive (or even more permissive, with say the Swingers or the Nudists). when do we consider those sub-cultures to be proper cultures with proper moral codes of their own that they've defined? For example, the rural conservative sub-culture would define burning the nation's flag as a deeply immoral act. But for urban progressives, it's a valid form of protest that is illegal but not immoral. Surely this moral difference is defined by the cultural difference, not that a different 'universal' moral code applies?
...how do you get him to see that his morals are not absolute and don't cover everyone?
This is false. Well ok, when qualified with "his" it's true -- the morals such people as you describe propound are not the universally correct ones -- but there are some universally correct ones, that do cover everyone. Those are generally quite permissive, so there's a lot of room for different cultures to maintain their differences without violating them, but whatever actions really aren't OK, really aren't OK anywhere, no matter how many local douchebags think they are.
So his morals are wrong but yours are right? Interesting...I wonder what he thinks of that. The majority of theists believe that morals are passed down from whatever deity they believe in, and are therefore perfect, universal and unchangeable. This gets problematic, of course, when different theologies believe that different things are moral/immoral.
Denying that leads to exactly the kind of absurdities you illustrate here: the possibility of mutually-exclusive culturally-defined moralities having to be simultaneously adhered to whenever those different cultures meet. It's logically impossible, and is a great reductio ad absurdum against morality being culturally defined.
Of course, the way we normally cope with this is that visitors adapt to the cultural norms of the place that they're visiting ("when in Rome"). It usually works fine, until you get asshats who are convinced that their $deity-given morals trump your weak western culturally-defined morals and they can behave like they at home regardless of who it upsets.
I'm struggling to see what does define moralily if it isn't culture, or indeed, how you define a culture without including its morality.
Oh God, I wish. The reality is, they're just a different culture; appreciate it, or leave it.
Interesting point. Let's equate the nasty brogrammer culture that harrasses women with the nasty muslim culture that harrasses women*.
Given that it's apparently acceptable for a country to define a set of rules or cultural norms based on a religion that allows, even condones, behaviour like this, and OK for members of that country to take those cultural norms on holiday with them, is it therefore also acceptable for a group of people to define a set of rules or cultural norms for an event based on social awkwardness that allows, even condones, a set of behaviours that would be unacceptable outside that event?
Where do you start drawing that line? How small does a subculture get while retaining the right to set cultural norms? Can you have two differently-normed subcultures of a parent subculture attending the same event and respecting each other's cultures? And how do you get the 'infringing' subculture to behave itself? If a muslim man thinks he has the right to touch up my girlfriend because she's wearing a bikini, but will respond with violence if I burn a Koran in front of him, how do you get him to see that his morals are not absolute and don't cover everyone? If some muppet at a convention thinks he has the right to sexually assault girls, do I have the right to spray-paint his laptop screen with abusive graffiti?
Of course, it could be argued that hacker culture does not, in fact, include the right to randomly assault strangers and 'appreciate it or leave' is not only logically flawed but actually just bullshit posturing.
* I'm not talking about the strange women-only clothing rules, the bizarre 'no driving while in possession of a vagina' rules, or even the exclusion from wide areas of public life for people with matching chromosomes. I'm talking about what muslim men get up to when put in a holiday resort where half the population wear bikinis. It's very similar to what the brogrammers get up to.
Pretty much my thinking too. But the law is not necessarily logical (or concerned with justice but that's another discussion).
Given that the software is probably: - written by an outsource company in a foreign jurisdiction, and no-one from the 'owning' company has ever examined the code to check that it does what the developer said it does - running on a transient set of virtual servers rented (and indeed only existing) by the minute from a commercial hosting provider in a foreign jurisdiction - subject to change at any time without notice by another outsource support provider operating from a foreign jurisdiction
then what gives it the authority to act as a copyright holder in the USA and issue a DMCA notice?
how do you grant a piece of software the authority to act as a copyright holder?
While your comment is indeed +5 Insightful. It is also off topic since no company filed a complaint, the video was caught by a over zealous automated system.
It was indeed a company that filed the complaint, their name is right there in the message that the video is blocked by.... That they let a over zealous automated system file complaints on their behalf does not absolve them from being responsible.
Interesting question actually. Not sure that's been tested in law yet. People doing things as a consequence of their employment are representing a company and the company is responsible. Officers of a company are vicariously liable for the things that their employees do. But is a company responsible for the actions of software claiming to represent it? IANAL, just a business student (in another country), so if there's anyone out there who does know, I'd be interested...
I think part of the problem here is the ridiculous situation the USA got itself into with regard to lobbying.
Shrill screeching from an established industry about how they're about to be destroyed (and with them all those jobs) has a tendency to convert into tax breaks, improved legal protection, even whole brand new restrictions on trade that favour the incumbent players.
So, as you say, the cooler heads prevail and behind the scenes are perfectly aware of the market conditions and how to cope with them, and the shrieking for help is a deliberate, cynical tactic.
'People like me' have the opinion that arguments from authority are a logical fallacy. That's it.
Believe it or not, you can support someone's right to have their research considered without necessarily agreeing with their research or being 'anti-science'. In fact I would think that the definition of being 'anti-science' is refusing to consider some research because of the credentials of the author.
Just calm down, take a deep breath, accept that we don't know everything about everything and that there's no need to get into a frothing rage about someone trying to do some research. If his research is wrong, then I'm sure someone will point it out soon enough. If it's right, then we've gained more knowledge and that's a good thing.
He was awarded his PhD in the same year that he published his paper on Special Relativity, previous to that he'd had a single peer-reviewed paper published (4 years earlier).
So yes, no credentials to speak of. He was definitely not an established figure in the field for such groundbreaking work, and not even employed in academia or doing grant-based research.
Arguments from authority are a logical fallacy. Comparing Watts to Einstein is irrelevant. However, saying that someone is not qualified to have an opinion or publish a paper worth looking at because they're not an established figure in the field is as wrong for Watts as it was for Einstein.
Not only for the idea that a serious company lets a masturbating-and-throwing-poo grinning idiot loose in their sensitive vitals, but also because it draws so many parallels with other resilient systems.
Allergies cured by parasitical worms? Chaos Monkey Effect - you need something attacking your defences for your system to stay healthy
Ecosystem that relies on bushfires to clear old vegetation? Chaos Monkey Effect
Something almost Zen about not only turning an attacker's violence against them, but deliberately introducing new attackers so your system is strengthened by them.
Can't be arsed to spend the time or energy arguing any more. I've done the research, I'm still watching the blogs and journals, but I'm done with the discussions. It's become too polarised, it seems there's no longer a sane middle ground that says 'I don't think we know this as well as we think we do'. And I'm as guilty as most of taking a side and arguing it, instead of admitting my ignorance and being objective.
So, from now on I'm just going to vote for and donate to the people who seem to be making sense, and wait for the thermometers and tide gauges to tell us who was right and who was wrong.
I'm pretty sure, however, that we're not going to drown or burn, and neither are we going to be herded into green work camps by a new UN World Government. The truth, as always, will be somewhere in between.
oh here we go again... another slashdot discussion ends up in yank partisan bickering.
Please, for the love of all things shiny, stop. Just stop. Both your political parties are exactly the same, and no-one in the rest of the world gives a toss.
IP laws do not provide 'protection' for anyone, they just provide the grounds for a court case.
Because court cases are generally won by the side with the best lawyers, unless they're complete idiots as in TFA, laws generally favour corporations rather than consumers, and larger corporations rather than smaller ones.
This, obviously, is a generalisation and there are always counter-examples of the little guy winning. But if IP laws can be said to protect anyone, then they generally protect the rich against the poor.
and damn... I got into the morality argument again. I hate that. The portrayal of this whole issue as a moral issue and not a business issue is a move by the content industry to attempt to preserve their broken business model.
I DO NOT believe that any of us has the right to FORCE an artists to adopt a business model that they don't wish to adopt. This is where you cross the line from "perfectly moral business proposal" to "immoral use of force."
Ah but markets force people to change their business models all the time. They call them 'market forces' for a reason. Markets change as a result of technological changes. The market for recorded music was created by technological change (vinyl records) and is being destroyed by technological change (digital music). Market forces are not immoral, but they will force people in the market to change their business models, even against their wishes.
OK, so we're there, basically. You're agreeing that there is nothing inherently immoral in sharing music (or any content), the immorality is that someone, somewhere, way back up the chain broke an agreement that they had with a licensee of the original artist, and that makes any sharing of that content immoral.
There's one small but obvious flaw with this...the music doesn't come with an attached licence. I don't know if a track I'm downloading is immoral or not. I don't know if the artist whose music I'm listening to has agreed to this use of their content or not, so I don't know whether downloading the track is a moral or immoral action. Nor, as a consumer, can I be expected to know this. I could make the blanket assumption that copying any music is immoral, but that's not a valid assumption when there are musicians who are experimenting with new business models and who want me to share their music (as you've pointed out, this is probably the future of music). I could purchase all my music from music stores, but again that would rule out new business models that involve sharing which I'd like to encourage. I file my music by genre not by licence conditions.
Incidentally this isn't a new problem in the music industry. There have been cases where unscrupulous record distributors have made compilation albums of music without the agreement of the original artists. The purchasers of those albums are obviously acting in good faith, and yet are recipients of illegal, immoral music that they should immediately return to the store for a refund if they knew. Except, of course, that they don't know and can't be expected to know.
Obviously if I purchased some music and there's an explicit agreement that I have signed/clicked on with that purchase that says 'don't copy this' then I'm breaking a rule by copying it, and I'd agree probably breaking a moral code. But there's a wide range of activity here... am I allowed to format-shift my music, is that breaking the 'no copying' rule? I'm obviously allowed to lend my CD's to friends, so can I format-shift my CD's and lend the subsequent mp3's to friends? If I lend my CD to a friend and they then copy it, am I breaking the agreement I made with the artist, or is my friend who didn't make any agreement?
To take a real-life example again... I move in with a girl. We merge music collections like we merge everything else in our lives. We buy music together and format-shift the resulting tracks to our mp3 players. Then we split up because sometimes these things just don't work out, and amongst the endless hassle of splitting apart the joint life we created, we each take a copy of the entire mp3 collection that we bought. I'd argue that attempting to make us go through a process of identifying each track's original licence conditions to determine whether that music track can be shared or if we need to have an argument about who gets to keep it is pointless, futile, and if your business depends on that happening then your business is broken. And no, I don't think this is the moral equivalent of firebombing a Mcdonald's, and any attempt by the music industry to portray the two actions as morally equivalent is just plain wrong.
Let's invert this and see what it looks like from the other side, just to try and shift some attitudes here;)
I have a thing. I can copy this thing for no cost and give it to you, so then we both have a thing. I lose nothing in this transaction, nothing at all. You gain happiness from this transaction, at no cost to me. Surely it is immoral for me to refuse to copy my thing for you, to give you happiness at no cost to me?
Note that this is *not* like the old recording industry, where if I have a physical copy of a record, then giving it to you for free deprives me of my physical copy so I am perfectly entitled to keep hold of my copy. But in this situation, surely depriving you of your free copy of my thing is an immoral action?
If my livelihood depends on you not getting a copy of my thing for free, then the only immorality is to do with depriving me of my livelihood. But that's where this stops being about morals and starts being about business models. Because if I change my business model then your behaviour stops depriving me of my livelihood and stops being something I consider immoral and starts being something I consider good.
Let's provide a concrete example... I routinely visit Penny Arcade's* website and view their comics for free. They don't consider this immoral, because they've worked out their business model so that they make a living from people like me visiting their site. But I am enjoying their content for free. I could copy their comics to my hard drive and send them to my friends, and they wouldn't consider that immoral. This *behaviour* is not immoral. And yet this exact behaviour is what you consider so extremely immoral when applied to downloading a copy of (for example) The Beatles' music. The difference between the two is not that my behaviour is moral for one and immoral for another, but that the business model for Penny Arcade is different from the business model for The Beatles. If The Beatles changed their business model so that they profited from the free exchange of their music, then my exact same behaviour would suddenly become 'moral'. This is why this whole problem is not about the morality of customer behaviour, but about the effectiveness of business models in a digital world because it's the business model that determines the 'morality' of the behaviour. This is also why setting up the behaviour as being intrinsically moral or immoral is a straw man.
* forgive my not finding a music example, but content is content and it's very late at night here. Replace each comic with a streaming audio track and the business model is the same
Again, it's not about morals or ethics, and framing the argument as a moral choice *is* a straw man. This is a business we're talking about, not an ethics convention.
The common practice of the market, whether you like that or not, whether the creator of content likes that or not, is that musical tracks are freely available for no cost. That's maybe not an ideal situation for people to create content in, but it does accurately describe reality. You can say that that's 'immoral' all you want, but that's irrelevant to the facts of the market as it operates.
Need and entitlement also have nothing to do with it. The bare facts of the situation is that everyone (including the lady in the original article) lives in a world where copied music is the norm, where constantly trading music with friends and family, even with strangers on the internet, is socially normal behaviour. Trying to change this by labelling it as 'immoral' behaviour is pointless and specious. Maybe it could have been changed way back in the 80's, maybe if the original CD format had some kind of encryption protocol, but not now.
Content creators must adapt to the market, same as any other business, rather than try and force the market to adapt to their wishes. It's pretty simple, lots of people are doing it successfully, it just involves a change in thought processes where mp3's of the music are not 'worth' anything, where you want people to copy your songs and share them with their friends, because the more popular your music is, the easier it is to sell concert tickets/t-shirts/donations/whatever your business model is. In this world, with this business model and attitude, suddenly copying and sharing music becomes a good thing, everyone becomes happy, and the world is a better place.
Slashdot Mirror
On behalf of Australia I'd like to apologise to the rest of The Internet for our politicians' stupidity.
However, in our defence, we are once again only seeking to win the America's Cup equivalent for the 'world's most ridiculous internet-focused legislation'.
We will, of course, be forced to hand it back very shortly after acquiring it.
If your business is making toast, yes.
If you don't know how every part of your business works, you're vulnerable to changes that you can't foresee, or better-researched competition.
So yes, if you have a toast-making business, you really need to know about toasters.
Most startups fail, yes, but entrepreneurs usually try more than once.
The mantra is 'fail fast': If your current business isn't going to work, then find out fast and do something else.
It is risky, and there is a danger that you'll spend years working very hard for very little actual money, but you only need to get lucky once.
bullshit, I've never met a problem that couldn't be solved elegantly with just a hammer.
your screwdriver fancy-dancy crap is just adding complexity to problems. Screws are just odd-shaped nails after all!
I think I can speak for all men about the punching in the nads thing, yes. It's a common experience and we all perceive it in the same way. Yes, there will be people on the edges of the bell curve who enjoy the pain, but they will still experience the pain in the same way.
The listener also has a choice, which is the bit overlooked. The listener can take offence, or not take offence. They can listen, or not listen. They can interpret the intent behind the words as generously as possible or as meanly as possible. Being punched in the 'nads always hurts, being told you're an idiot can hurt or not hurt depending on how you take it, and the person telling you you're an idiot may have no idea they're about to cause pain rather than laughter.
And I'm drawing on the history of prohibition, when alcohol was criminalised and the majority/large minority of society still drank it, enough to make the rule of law irrelevant.
There's also the outlawing of prostitution, which doesn't prevent prostitution, just makes prostitutes less likely to report crimes against them (such as rape) and makes them more vulnerable because of their criminal status. It's pretty easy to see if you criminalise a common activity, it doesn't prevent the activity, but criminalises otherwise law-abiding people and prevents the reporting of more serious crimes because of the criminal status of the victims.
Why is it OK to legislate against a punch in the 'nads, but not against psychological harm? In what way is a brain any less a damageable organ of the body than a testicle?
A punch in the 'nads is perceived by every victim in the same way, and there is a clear intention on behalf of the puncher to cause pain and injury. This is not so clear-cut with trolling and griefing 'offences'. An insult or a taunt is perceived differently by different people, and the 'perpetrator' has no means of knowing in advance how their comment will be received.
Taking too much offence is as much of a problem as giving too much offence, especially when we as a society universally blame the giver not the taker. This gives over-sensitive people immediate 'victim' status, which some people enjoy and therefore court offence so that they can be victims. If we limit the ability to give offence without making some sensible rules about taking offence too, then we end up in a situation where no-one can say anything meaningful, just bland platitudes.
But morality cannot be enforced by laws, banning something doesn't prevent people from doing it, it just makes them criminals when they do it.
Like rape.
Indeed, and murder, and theft, and so on. We reject the fact that a minority of our community perform these acts, and the punish them if they do. But criminalise too many things (like alcohol for example) and suddenly a majority of our community are criminals, the word 'criminal' ceases to have any negative effect, and it becomes impossible for us to reject them. Then the rapists will have a field day because they're suddenly the criminal majority and aren't being rejected by society. If you really abhor rape, then you'll work hard to prevent attempts to legislate morality because it will dilute the social consequences of rape.
It's the removal of personal judgement that worries me. I'm no longer able to judge for myself 'is this a safe thing to do?' and suffer the consequences. Mostly because of the insurance industry's habit of suing anyone else when a claim is made, so site owners and operators have had to set standard rules for everyone, and set those rules at a low enough level so that idiots won't hurt themselves.
So we now see personal judgement and personal responsibility as a dangerous thing that must be removed from any situation and replaced with standard behaviours. Anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed (and will eventually be mandatory), because if it was harmful or antisocial there'd be a rule against it so it must be OK.
We're starting to see rules against trolling and griefing appear, which is the next logical step.
But morality cannot be enforced by laws, banning something doesn't prevent people from doing it, it just makes them criminals when they do it. If you ban enough things, your entire society becomes criminal and all the laws stop having any meaning or effect.
I had the same thought. After reading their introduction manual, it seems they work by the same model.
In theory this should work.. hire bright, motivated people, set them broad goals to achieve, don't let anything impair their motivation or the ability to achieve their goals, and you should out-perform conventional top-down management structures by an order of magnitude.
It'll be interesting to see how it works in practice as Valve scales up. So far so good, but they're about to come up against the likes of Google and Microsoft with their latest projects, so let's see if the theory holds true...
Universalism is different from infallibilism. Take physics for a non-moral example. Whatever the laws of physics are, they apply to everything everywhere; if they didn't, they wouldn't be laws of physics. But no physicist ever thinks that they are in possession of the perfect, final physics; every theory is always open to revision. But whichever theory actually is correct -- even if we never precisely identify it -- is universally correct.
Well we have no way of proving that, there are areas of the universe that are forever beyond our reach where the laws could be different. And there's the other hypothetical point that there could be many possible laws of physics until we observe one of them to be true. But edge cases aside, you're right.
But moral codes change over time, and it's not a continual smooth evolution towards a 'better' moral code. If there is a universal moral code, we struggle to define it or attain it, and seem to frequently get all turned around and regress from it.
If your morality is permissive, that is, it has things which are neither obligatory nor forbidden, but which you can do or not do as you choose, then there is room for many different voluntary ways of living. Your clothes, your food, your language, your rituals, your games, your stories, your songs; there are the parts of culture which are not matters of moral concern, for a properly permissive sense of morality at least, and such a morality will allow many clusters of such morally irrelevant (but personally significant) cultural patterns to coexist.
So when does all of that become a new moral code for a specific subculture? There are many examples of subcultures living within the confines of a more permissive society who have defined a culture-specific moral code that is more restrictive (or even more permissive, with say the Swingers or the Nudists). when do we consider those sub-cultures to be proper cultures with proper moral codes of their own that they've defined?
For example, the rural conservative sub-culture would define burning the nation's flag as a deeply immoral act. But for urban progressives, it's a valid form of protest that is illegal but not immoral.
Surely this moral difference is defined by the cultural difference, not that a different 'universal' moral code applies?
...how do you get him to see that his morals are not absolute and don't cover everyone?
This is false. Well ok, when qualified with "his" it's true -- the morals such people as you describe propound are not the universally correct ones -- but there are some universally correct ones, that do cover everyone. Those are generally quite permissive, so there's a lot of room for different cultures to maintain their differences without violating them, but whatever actions really aren't OK, really aren't OK anywhere, no matter how many local douchebags think they are.
So his morals are wrong but yours are right? Interesting...I wonder what he thinks of that.
The majority of theists believe that morals are passed down from whatever deity they believe in, and are therefore perfect, universal and unchangeable. This gets problematic, of course, when different theologies believe that different things are moral/immoral.
Denying that leads to exactly the kind of absurdities you illustrate here: the possibility of mutually-exclusive culturally-defined moralities having to be simultaneously adhered to whenever those different cultures meet. It's logically impossible, and is a great reductio ad absurdum against morality being culturally defined.
Of course, the way we normally cope with this is that visitors adapt to the cultural norms of the place that they're visiting ("when in Rome"). It usually works fine, until you get asshats who are convinced that their $deity-given morals trump your weak western culturally-defined morals and they can behave like they at home regardless of who it upsets.
I'm struggling to see what does define moralily if it isn't culture, or indeed, how you define a culture without including its morality.
Oh God, I wish. The reality is, they're just a different culture; appreciate it, or leave it.
Interesting point. Let's equate the nasty brogrammer culture that harrasses women with the nasty muslim culture that harrasses women*.
Given that it's apparently acceptable for a country to define a set of rules or cultural norms based on a religion that allows, even condones, behaviour like this, and OK for members of that country to take those cultural norms on holiday with them, is it therefore also acceptable for a group of people to define a set of rules or cultural norms for an event based on social awkwardness that allows, even condones, a set of behaviours that would be unacceptable outside that event?
Where do you start drawing that line? How small does a subculture get while retaining the right to set cultural norms? Can you have two differently-normed subcultures of a parent subculture attending the same event and respecting each other's cultures?
And how do you get the 'infringing' subculture to behave itself? If a muslim man thinks he has the right to touch up my girlfriend because she's wearing a bikini, but will respond with violence if I burn a Koran in front of him, how do you get him to see that his morals are not absolute and don't cover everyone? If some muppet at a convention thinks he has the right to sexually assault girls, do I have the right to spray-paint his laptop screen with abusive graffiti?
Of course, it could be argued that hacker culture does not, in fact, include the right to randomly assault strangers and 'appreciate it or leave' is not only logically flawed but actually just bullshit posturing.
* I'm not talking about the strange women-only clothing rules, the bizarre 'no driving while in possession of a vagina' rules, or even the exclusion from wide areas of public life for people with matching chromosomes. I'm talking about what muslim men get up to when put in a holiday resort where half the population wear bikinis. It's very similar to what the brogrammers get up to.
Pretty much my thinking too. But the law is not necessarily logical (or concerned with justice but that's another discussion).
Given that the software is probably:
- written by an outsource company in a foreign jurisdiction, and no-one from the 'owning' company has ever examined the code to check that it does what the developer said it does
- running on a transient set of virtual servers rented (and indeed only existing) by the minute from a commercial hosting provider in a foreign jurisdiction
- subject to change at any time without notice by another outsource support provider operating from a foreign jurisdiction
then what gives it the authority to act as a copyright holder in the USA and issue a DMCA notice?
how do you grant a piece of software the authority to act as a copyright holder?
While your comment is indeed +5 Insightful. It is also off topic since no company filed a complaint, the video was caught by a over zealous automated system.
It was indeed a company that filed the complaint, their name is right there in the message that the video is blocked by.... That they let a over zealous automated system file complaints on their behalf does not absolve them from being responsible.
Interesting question actually. Not sure that's been tested in law yet.
People doing things as a consequence of their employment are representing a company and the company is responsible.
Officers of a company are vicariously liable for the things that their employees do.
But is a company responsible for the actions of software claiming to represent it?
IANAL, just a business student (in another country), so if there's anyone out there who does know, I'd be interested...
I think part of the problem here is the ridiculous situation the USA got itself into with regard to lobbying.
Shrill screeching from an established industry about how they're about to be destroyed (and with them all those jobs) has a tendency to convert into tax breaks, improved legal protection, even whole brand new restrictions on trade that favour the incumbent players.
So, as you say, the cooler heads prevail and behind the scenes are perfectly aware of the market conditions and how to cope with them, and the shrieking for help is a deliberate, cynical tactic.
Interesting reply.
'People like me' have the opinion that arguments from authority are a logical fallacy. That's it.
Believe it or not, you can support someone's right to have their research considered without necessarily agreeing with their research or being 'anti-science'. In fact I would think that the definition of being 'anti-science' is refusing to consider some research because of the credentials of the author.
Just calm down, take a deep breath, accept that we don't know everything about everything and that there's no need to get into a frothing rage about someone trying to do some research. If his research is wrong, then I'm sure someone will point it out soon enough. If it's right, then we've gained more knowledge and that's a good thing.
He was awarded his PhD in the same year that he published his paper on Special Relativity, previous to that he'd had a single peer-reviewed paper published (4 years earlier).
So yes, no credentials to speak of. He was definitely not an established figure in the field for such groundbreaking work, and not even employed in academia or doing grant-based research.
Arguments from authority are a logical fallacy. Comparing Watts to Einstein is irrelevant. However, saying that someone is not qualified to have an opinion or publish a paper worth looking at because they're not an established figure in the field is as wrong for Watts as it was for Einstein.
Patent clerk. No credentials. 'nuff said
Not only for the idea that a serious company lets a masturbating-and-throwing-poo grinning idiot loose in their sensitive vitals, but also because it draws so many parallels with other resilient systems.
Allergies cured by parasitical worms? Chaos Monkey Effect - you need something attacking your defences for your system to stay healthy
Ecosystem that relies on bushfires to clear old vegetation? Chaos Monkey Effect
Something almost Zen about not only turning an attacker's violence against them, but deliberately introducing new attackers so your system is strengthened by them.
Well done chaps, carry on.
Can't be arsed to spend the time or energy arguing any more.
I've done the research, I'm still watching the blogs and journals, but I'm done with the discussions. It's become too polarised, it seems there's no longer a sane middle ground that says 'I don't think we know this as well as we think we do'. And I'm as guilty as most of taking a side and arguing it, instead of admitting my ignorance and being objective.
So, from now on I'm just going to vote for and donate to the people who seem to be making sense, and wait for the thermometers and tide gauges to tell us who was right and who was wrong.
I'm pretty sure, however, that we're not going to drown or burn, and neither are we going to be herded into green work camps by a new UN World Government. The truth, as always, will be somewhere in between.
oh here we go again... another slashdot discussion ends up in yank partisan bickering.
Please, for the love of all things shiny, stop. Just stop. Both your political parties are exactly the same, and no-one in the rest of the world gives a toss.
IP laws do not provide 'protection' for anyone, they just provide the grounds for a court case.
Because court cases are generally won by the side with the best lawyers, unless they're complete idiots as in TFA, laws generally favour corporations rather than consumers, and larger corporations rather than smaller ones.
This, obviously, is a generalisation and there are always counter-examples of the little guy winning. But if IP laws can be said to protect anyone, then they generally protect the rich against the poor.
and damn... I got into the morality argument again. I hate that. The portrayal of this whole issue as a moral issue and not a business issue is a move by the content industry to attempt to preserve their broken business model.
I DO NOT believe that any of us has the right to FORCE an artists to adopt a business model that they don't wish to adopt. This is where you cross the line from "perfectly moral business proposal" to "immoral use of force."
Ah but markets force people to change their business models all the time. They call them 'market forces' for a reason. Markets change as a result of technological changes. The market for recorded music was created by technological change (vinyl records) and is being destroyed by technological change (digital music). Market forces are not immoral, but they will force people in the market to change their business models, even against their wishes.
OK, so we're there, basically. You're agreeing that there is nothing inherently immoral in sharing music (or any content), the immorality is that someone, somewhere, way back up the chain broke an agreement that they had with a licensee of the original artist, and that makes any sharing of that content immoral.
There's one small but obvious flaw with this...the music doesn't come with an attached licence. I don't know if a track I'm downloading is immoral or not. I don't know if the artist whose music I'm listening to has agreed to this use of their content or not, so I don't know whether downloading the track is a moral or immoral action. Nor, as a consumer, can I be expected to know this. I could make the blanket assumption that copying any music is immoral, but that's not a valid assumption when there are musicians who are experimenting with new business models and who want me to share their music (as you've pointed out, this is probably the future of music). I could purchase all my music from music stores, but again that would rule out new business models that involve sharing which I'd like to encourage. I file my music by genre not by licence conditions.
Incidentally this isn't a new problem in the music industry. There have been cases where unscrupulous record distributors have made compilation albums of music without the agreement of the original artists. The purchasers of those albums are obviously acting in good faith, and yet are recipients of illegal, immoral music that they should immediately return to the store for a refund if they knew. Except, of course, that they don't know and can't be expected to know.
Obviously if I purchased some music and there's an explicit agreement that I have signed/clicked on with that purchase that says 'don't copy this' then I'm breaking a rule by copying it, and I'd agree probably breaking a moral code. But there's a wide range of activity here... am I allowed to format-shift my music, is that breaking the 'no copying' rule? I'm obviously allowed to lend my CD's to friends, so can I format-shift my CD's and lend the subsequent mp3's to friends? If I lend my CD to a friend and they then copy it, am I breaking the agreement I made with the artist, or is my friend who didn't make any agreement?
To take a real-life example again... I move in with a girl. We merge music collections like we merge everything else in our lives. We buy music together and format-shift the resulting tracks to our mp3 players. Then we split up because sometimes these things just don't work out, and amongst the endless hassle of splitting apart the joint life we created, we each take a copy of the entire mp3 collection that we bought. I'd argue that attempting to make us go through a process of identifying each track's original licence conditions to determine whether that music track can be shared or if we need to have an argument about who gets to keep it is pointless, futile, and if your business depends on that happening then your business is broken. And no, I don't think this is the moral equivalent of firebombing a Mcdonald's, and any attempt by the music industry to portray the two actions as morally equivalent is just plain wrong.
Let's invert this and see what it looks like from the other side, just to try and shift some attitudes here ;)
I have a thing. I can copy this thing for no cost and give it to you, so then we both have a thing. I lose nothing in this transaction, nothing at all. You gain happiness from this transaction, at no cost to me. Surely it is immoral for me to refuse to copy my thing for you, to give you happiness at no cost to me?
Note that this is *not* like the old recording industry, where if I have a physical copy of a record, then giving it to you for free deprives me of my physical copy so I am perfectly entitled to keep hold of my copy. But in this situation, surely depriving you of your free copy of my thing is an immoral action?
If my livelihood depends on you not getting a copy of my thing for free, then the only immorality is to do with depriving me of my livelihood. But that's where this stops being about morals and starts being about business models. Because if I change my business model then your behaviour stops depriving me of my livelihood and stops being something I consider immoral and starts being something I consider good.
Let's provide a concrete example... I routinely visit Penny Arcade's* website and view their comics for free. They don't consider this immoral, because they've worked out their business model so that they make a living from people like me visiting their site. But I am enjoying their content for free. I could copy their comics to my hard drive and send them to my friends, and they wouldn't consider that immoral. This *behaviour* is not immoral. And yet this exact behaviour is what you consider so extremely immoral when applied to downloading a copy of (for example) The Beatles' music. The difference between the two is not that my behaviour is moral for one and immoral for another, but that the business model for Penny Arcade is different from the business model for The Beatles. If The Beatles changed their business model so that they profited from the free exchange of their music, then my exact same behaviour would suddenly become 'moral'.
This is why this whole problem is not about the morality of customer behaviour, but about the effectiveness of business models in a digital world because it's the business model that determines the 'morality' of the behaviour. This is also why setting up the behaviour as being intrinsically moral or immoral is a straw man.
* forgive my not finding a music example, but content is content and it's very late at night here. Replace each comic with a streaming audio track and the business model is the same
Again, it's not about morals or ethics, and framing the argument as a moral choice *is* a straw man. This is a business we're talking about, not an ethics convention.
The common practice of the market, whether you like that or not, whether the creator of content likes that or not, is that musical tracks are freely available for no cost. That's maybe not an ideal situation for people to create content in, but it does accurately describe reality. You can say that that's 'immoral' all you want, but that's irrelevant to the facts of the market as it operates.
Need and entitlement also have nothing to do with it. The bare facts of the situation is that everyone (including the lady in the original article) lives in a world where copied music is the norm, where constantly trading music with friends and family, even with strangers on the internet, is socially normal behaviour. Trying to change this by labelling it as 'immoral' behaviour is pointless and specious. Maybe it could have been changed way back in the 80's, maybe if the original CD format had some kind of encryption protocol, but not now.
Content creators must adapt to the market, same as any other business, rather than try and force the market to adapt to their wishes. It's pretty simple, lots of people are doing it successfully, it just involves a change in thought processes where mp3's of the music are not 'worth' anything, where you want people to copy your songs and share them with their friends, because the more popular your music is, the easier it is to sell concert tickets/t-shirts/donations/whatever your business model is. In this world, with this business model and attitude, suddenly copying and sharing music becomes a good thing, everyone becomes happy, and the world is a better place.