i said that the canadians had appointed a *chief justice*
So you did. My mistake. Though actually, that's not necessarily a good thing... appointing the best person for the job, though harder to quantify, is the point.
i am not canadian, but i wish that our government embraced our population more like theirs do.
Oh, I'm sure they'd love to. It's just that people like me keep fighting against being embraced.
higher taxes yes, (though ontario's taxes on business will be 10% lower than all of it's neighbouring states next year)
God knows if their provincial taxes were as high as their national ones, they'd have no money left at all.
as for the infringements of personal liberty for the commom good, how would you classify our government's role in forcing a generation of young men into vietnam?
I'd classify it as "bad". More specifically, "really, really bad".
for the common good?
Neither for the common good, nor for liberty. It was a thing ill done. FWIW, I oppose (at least) peacetime draft.
i hear in canada they have government healthcare that everyone pays into. not perfect but recent studies showed that care there was on par with u.s. healthcare
The latter statement is, to say the least, controversial. At any rate, what I oppose about such a scheme is that (like Social Security here) it's not voluntary. I have no choice about it... if I decide not to put my money into it, the government comes and puts me in jail. Even if I pay, I am bereft of my choices within the health care system. Such a coercive system is offensive to me.
i will ask you very honestly: why do you need a gun? hunting, sport... but why handguns?
I will answer you honestly: whether I need handguns is not the point. I want handguns. I do not need to tell the government why I need something... it is enough that I want it, and am not hurting my neighbors.
I go out of my way (having lived in some pretty crummy places) to live in a rural setting, with little crime. I don't really need to lock my doors... some people even leave their keys in the ignition when they leave their cars. I certainly hope that in any case I would never need to use a handgun for violence against another person.
Why might I feel I needed one? Because my self-defense is my own responsibility... the courts have made it clear that a police officer need not risk his life for mine, and I don't know why I should expect him to anyway. Because I am often far from help... and the same can be said by people in NYC.
Why might I want one? Because I feel a responsibility, as a peaceful person, to participate in making my community more secure. Because I believe that my owning such a weapon might make the government ever-so-slightly less inclined to abuse its power. Because I believe that it symbolizes my dignity as a free person, governed by my own consent. Because I like the noise it makes.
i would be interested, entirely academically-- i'm not trying to bait you, on how you think that the canadian government restricts the personal liberty to an extent that doesn't seem to pay off in the long run.
I'm no expert on Canadian government, so I'm not sure my answer would be worth much. In any case, my answer would go astray of my real point. It's not whether it pays off... that presumes that one's freedom is not itself to be valued, that it is not an end in itself. I'm not interested in being house-slave, even if it's a posh position.
you want low expections? consider campaign finance spending
Consider free speech.
or the dealth penalty-- an abhorrent and illogical tool of the penal system
Abhorrent to you, maybe. And not illogical at all, from my perspective.
why are one out of five school children under-nourished in the richest country in the world?
I'm not familiar with this statistic, but I find it difficult to believe. Anyway, you'd might as well ask why any of them are mal-nourished, when they clearly needn't be. I don't know. I don't know enough about the problem. I do know that in most places you can get an adequate diet for free... I've done it.
why is our voter turn-out so low?
You presume that it should be higher. The point, IMHO, is that government should be irrelevant to most people's lives. But insofar as it's a measure of discontent, I'd say because government has been centralized so far that people don't feel they have any serious influence. They may be right.
why is literacy here so low?
A socialized, monopolistic educational system.
because of the extent of personal liberty over the common good?
Quite the contrary... because of misguided efforts to promote the common good at the expense of personal liberty. Or haven't you noticed that everything the government runs turns bad?
why do we have the highest incarceration rate in the west?
A single, simple cause: The War Against Drugs. Another egregious affront to liberty.
why so many school shootings?
A socialized, one-size fits all federal educational system which isn't much more than a system for warehousing children. Certainly not because kids suddenly have access to guns.
i've never heard of another nation with such lofty morals and incredibly low expectations. "as long as i'm ok, who cares about the rest."
America leads the world in charity. Sure we have responsibilities to others... it's just not the role of government to make sure we fulfill them.
yet they manage, with a dose of the 'common good' to beat us at our own game of being the greatest nation on earth in which to live.
Not for me. For me, Iowa, USA is (as far as I know) the best place in the world to live... though it could assuredly be far better.
I don't mean this in any hostile sense, but why don't you choose to live in Canada? I would, if I were you. You have family there, you share their values, it sounds perfect.
Heck, I don't begrudge Canadians their choices. I don't even think Nebraskans should have to live the way Iowans do... the loss of the freedom to choose is one of the great tragedies of the American drive to centralize government.
But anyway, let me make clear, I am not pleased with the state of America these days. I am not defending our status quo, and many of the problems you cite concern me much. But my vision of what changes are needed is quite different than yours.
The markets are tracked seperately. Microsoft has "server" products and "desktop" products. Try to install Backoffice on NT server and see what happens. Hence, there is a difference in market.
Linux, on the other hand, is not differentiated. You can run Apache on your workstation. I remain unconvinced, but unless you think it important, I'm not inclined to belabor the point. This is a long enough post already.:-)
A monopoly doesn't mean there isn't ANY choice. It means that there is little, that the switching cost is extremely high, and that a company has virtual control over a market.
There is plenty of choice, switching cost for the cool stuff is zero, and I'm not sure the word "market" is even wholly applicable here.
The choice is mostly between something which sucks and something outstanding... I won't say which is which, but Windows isn't the latter.;-)
Switching from something costly to something free is hardly an argument. Sure, for a large organization it can be very expensive, but that's neither the fault of MS nor Linux, nor of FreeBSD, etc. Asking the DOJ for help because your company can't make the transition, and they'd rather force their present platform vendor to change its ways is absurd.
And even talking about "control over a market" seems very strange in this context, because we're lumping together the supply of both free and non-free items. Let's say Debian winds up on 90% of the computers world-wide (oh, please, God, pleeease!), and nobody buys Debian disks, they just download it. If Windows is installed on the remaining 10%, Microsoft has 100% control over the market for operating systems. I would find it difficult to say, under such a circumstance, however, that MS had a monopoly from which the public needed protected.
Anti-trust legislation isn't about keeping one company from dominating a market, it's about protecting consumers from artificially inflated prices and making sure they have choices. Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally, nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
There are *always* alternatives to any monopoly other than food, water, shelter. You can walk, rather than use the oil/electric monopoly. Use a radio rather than a landlocked phone. Use carrier pidgeons, Write a letter, etc.
By this analogy, perhaps I could grant that Microsoft has a dangerous monopoly on the supply of carrier pidgeons.:-)
I think you misunderstand the application of Monopoly/Antitrust law. Its *not* illegal to have a monopoly.
I understand this quite well.
It *is* illegal to *leverage* that into *new* markets. Slightly subjective, granted, but Microsoft's argument is easily compared to a defendant arguing that "assault is subjective" when the victim was beaten within an inch of its life.
Here's where I think you fail to understand Monopoly/Antitrust law. Netscape is not the victim. These laws are not put in place to protect Netscape. They are put in place to protect the consumers. And the end users, the alleged victims, certainly have not been beaten within an inch of their lives. In fact, they're better off than they were before... though certainly through no charitable impulse on the part of Microsoft.
Did they drop the price of their monopoly product? No. Their monopoly product was threatened - and so they entered a new market - with the express intent to damage compitition in that market (which might have affected their monopoly market) - and gave THAT away.
What they basically did was to destroy the browser market completely. Now we don't have to pay for Netscape or IE, and the act spawned Mozilla, which is a far greater boon to the people than either of the others. All of which happened without the DOJ's help. Not exactly the sort of thing which makes me feel dependent upon the government for my protection.
They aren't being punished for having a monopoly -but for keeping competitiors/things that could have upset that - from realizing.
Supposedly, they're not being punished at all. Antitrust laws aren't punititve. Supposedly they're being broken up to protect the consumers.
But without those laws, we WOULDN"T BE TYPING HERE!:) AT&T wouldn't see the need for all these datalines. 56K is surely enough for anybody, right?
Without the laws which made Bell a government-mandated monopoly in the first place, an antitrust action wouldn't have been necessary.
IBM would have most of the computer market under their thumb, and who needs client/server?
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
That is supreme irony.:)
No... the supreme irony is that the US government is almost solely responsible for creating US monopolies.
Market based economics fail in the real world, sadly.
This is the real source of our differences. I don't believe that for one minute. The only alternative I feel I need to provide is freedom.
Additionally - thinking a law is unjust does not justify flaunting it.
Sure it does.
Well, ok, it usually doesn't. I've argued this point here before. But there are, to me, clear examples of laws which need broken. Rosa Parks flaunted a law, and it was a deed well done IMHO. Ditto for the folks who staged The Boston Teaparty. And I would argue that nearly any law of a Fascist or Communist government should be flaunted at any opportunity.
Microsoft's attitude is still "We did nothing wrong". (Funny, considering without those laws, they wouldnt' exist).
Again, I think this is totally untrue. The latter part, I mean.
Not that the laws are wrong, that they did nothing wrong.
I daresay, if you asked them privately, they would certainly tell you they thought the laws were wrong. That's simply not a viable tact to take in court.
Wow... someone actually changed the Subject line!:-)
Microsoft is not a monopoly.
What's your definition of monopoly
My definition would be something like, "a situation in which one company has such extensive control over the supply of a commodity that they can arbitrarily dictate the market price." I'd have to think that over, but it looks good to me offhand.
In any case, anyone who runs windows does so because they choose to. Plain vanilla Linux (not to mention FreeBSD) has a market price of zero. Further, it's of higher quality than Windows. The supply is unlimited. Microsoft hasn't won, the people have viable choices, and there's just no need for the DOJ to rescue us.
You've said you're not a lawyer, so I'm trying to put this in terms you'll understand.
Neither am I particularly dense. As a citizen of a country which espouses liberty, I expect that if the government is going to curtail someone's freedom to protect the economic interests of the people, that the people are actually in danger and unable to defend themselves. This is not the case at all. If the DOJ wants to apply the Sherman Act where it'll do some good, let them go after the Post Office or the Public Schools.
Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous...
Not being a lawyer is a poor excuse for not understand the law. Read the law and then comment on it.
First of all, I have read the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Secondly, being a lawyer is every excuse for not understanding the law. Laws are often incomprehensible simply from reading them, because their actual meaning is dependent upon myriad judicial interpretations, and the way they interact with other laws. Such factors are often extremely difficult to assess without becoming a lawyer.
For example, the US Constitution: Article I, Section VIII. The Enumerated Powers of Congress. If you aren't familiar with cases like United States vs. Darby, and Wickard v. Filburn, you surely couldn't understand how the Commerce Clause could be used to justify, say, the Brady Handgun Act. I happen to know this because I've stubbornly plowed through loads of information and nagged lawyers for answers.
And if I kept it up for every case I had an interest in as a citizen, I'd be a lawyer before long. So your statement doesn't seem to hold any water at all to me.
Thirdly, having read the Sherman Act several times, it still seems damned nebulous to me.
perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty
I'm really tired of hearing this "Death Penalty" reference. This is certainly not the death penalty. Microsoft will not be dying. Instead it will be seperated into two parts. One of which will probably retain the name, and most of the better staff.
Ok, my turn. What's your definition of "Death Penalty"?.
If you take away a company's means of sustinence, and its very identity, it's pretty clear that they're dead. Microsoft, as we know (and loathe) it, will no longer exist. That's dead to me.
Wrong, Microsoft may not be a monopoly in the server space, where Linux is competing most, but nobody claimed that.
I'm not so sure there's a valid distinction to be made between the two, for the purposes of this argument, but let's pass on that...
OTOH MS is still a monopoly in the desktop space, where the only real competition now could be Apple and maybe BeOS, Linux is only entering this and is far from being mature (but its coming).
I daresay, Linux is running quite a few more desktops than BeOS, mature or not. In any case, Windows is certainly not the only choice a person has for their desktop, so they're not a monopoly in that sense, at least. And as far as I can tell, that's the only sense in which the consumer needs any protection here.
Don't worry, any suit seems nebulous when you are not a lawyer,
And often, I'm told, if you are. Let me rephrase that... this one seems more nebulous than most.:-)
this is because the law got out of our reach, whic is bad IMHO.
Amen, Brother!
I don't like the Government meddling with technology either but I still think that the anti-trust laws are still up to date.
The more I think and read about it, the more I think they're not. The Sherman Act... we're talking about a document intended to keep a company from limiting the supply of a physical good in order to raise prices. It's being applied in a situation where the company in question is only too happy to produce as many copies of their software as anyone will buy... and their great anti-competitive act was to drop their prices to zero! Something's amiss here.
perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
They have. It is not as if they weren't told it was wrong.
Yeah, they surely were guilty of all the antics you list. The real question, to me, is more about the power of the US Government than Microsoft's scruple shortage. Saying that MS flaunted the laws doesn't answer whether the laws are just.
Oh, BTW, have you kids? Pretend yes for one minute. Let's say that you caught your kid doing very bad things. Let's say that he ask for forgiveness and you grant it. Let's say you catch him again doing the same thing. Let's say he deny everything despite ample proofs of the contrary.
Would you let him go away easily?
With this characterization I totally disagree. The US Government is not our parent, and we are not its children. We are adults, governed, supposedly, by our own consent.
Had I children, they would not be secure in their effects against search and seizure on my part. I would not hesitate to ask them self-incriminating questions, and demand answers. They would not be permitted to speak in any fashion they pleased. They are children, and are ruled by their elders, not governed by their elected peers.
There is a growing paternalism in the US Government, which I find most offensive. They're not supposed to be protecting us from ourselves, or deciding who's naughty and scolding them back into the fold. They're supposed to be protecting our rights, and enforcing our contracts and clearly defined, categorically applied laws.
Seriously, they cannot arrest you directly but with the current trend in copyright/patent/trademark/intellectual property laws in general companies (MS included) will have enough powers to put you in jail at a whim because it would be next to impossible not to break these law and to still have a spark of liberty left.
This, however, is really the fault of the government. They're the ones who put you in jail, and who make and enforce unjust laws. So no, it's still not MS I have cause to fear, IMHO.
A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story. Isn't that the role of a governmnet?
This has come up elsewhere, so I believe I should have been clearer in my diction. No, they don't pick and choose, in the sense that they should never have discretionary power over enforcing laws. The role of the Legislature is to make clear, generally applicable laws. The role of the Executive is to bring charges, uniformly, without favor, against anyone who seems to violate those laws. The role of the Judiciary is to decide whether those laws have indeed been broken.
It should never be the case that the Legislature makes laws which are vague, aimed against individuals, or which make the whole population criminal. The Executive must not choose to prosecute one fellow but not another, according to their desires. Nor should the courts play favorites, or interpret law to suit their purpose. These things I mean by picking and choosing.
its not about whether microsoft are a monopoly, or whether they have competition.
its about what they did to stifle competition using powers that only a monopoly has, and how they tried to use their monopoly in one market to create a monopoly in another.
I'm sorry, that makes no sense whatsoever. Any questions as to how they used their monopoly powers is predicated upon the assumption that they had a monopoly. And whether they had a monopoly is a question of whether they have competition.
being a monopoly isnt illegal, what microsoft did was and they must be stopped from doing it further
Of course, whether it should be illegal is at issue here. And yeah, wouldn't all hell break loose if Microsoft were to give away yet more software. Sheesh.
and punished for their crimes as well.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there's no question of punishing Microsoft here. Antitrust laws are not punitive. They are remedial.
Windows can suceed now because of competetion forcing it to improve faster than it would without competition.
I must say, I think you're missing the point. It is assuredly not the business of the US Government to look out for Microsoft's good, helping it to improve its products.
Besides which, to say they'll improve their products isn't to say they'll succeed. Improving their products isn't their goal; making money is their goal. If the best product made the most money, several today's underdogs would be on top, along with numerous companies which died along the way.
Q: Did AT&T's parts die after their breakup?
Did AT&T make a living by marketing products with a shorter lifespan than a hamster?
*the* fundamental of western democracy is the division of the government and the judiciary. the government writes laws, the courts strike them down or uphold them.
Our difference here is semantic. At least here in the US, we say the Legislature writes laws, and the Judiciary interprets them. These are deemed branches of the Government, along with the Executive branch. Lawmaking and judging are, of course, kept separate (or they're supposed to be... but that's a different rant). Perhaps you put things differently up north... but to my ear, it seems odd to say that the courts aren't part of the Goverment. They're certainly not private.
in canada the prime minister (who has incredible powers compared to the u.s. president) appoints supreme court members himself, albeit from a list provided by the provincial law associations with regional restrictions-- ie. three must be from quebec, etc.
In the US the president picks all federal judges, subject to the approval of congress. He generally picks the Supreme Court justices firsthand, and takes the advice of Governors and legislators from his own party on the lower positions. Congressional approval is usually a rubber-stamping, with a few notable exceptions.
such a narrow selective process and yet canadian citizens have complete faith in their supreme court and judiciary. how do they do it?
From your description of the gun control situation, I'm tempted to say, "low expectations".;-)
Seriously, though, we've had major problems, IMHO, with the whole scheme. Checks and balances only work when the branches of government remain in opposition to one another... if they begin to cooperate, things get messy. In the 20th century the US Executive branch began loading the Judiciary with people biased in favor of increasing the scope of Legislative power. Long, sordid story, and it's nowhere near over.
they recently named the first woman supreme court chief justice in the world.
We appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the US Supreme Court in 1981. Either your justice isn't the first, or you're very casual in your use of "recent".:-)
may i also comment that this has been one of the more civil threads that i have ever seen on slashdot.
Oh... wait a second, I forgot...
YOU FOOL! YOU DISAGREE WITH ME? DIE!!!
Ahh... much better. Forgot I was on Slashdot for a minute there!
your signature doesn't sit well either. you're certainly right about the trade off between individual liberty and the greater good.
I think I'd prefer to say, "the common good". I'm not sure I'd like to say there's a greater good than individual liberty.
while on the subject of canada, somehow the banning of handguns and other firearms north of the border has impinged on the personal freedom to shoot each other and yielded the greater good of fewer broken families and lost friends.
I'm pleased for you. My impression is that your country has indeed often chosen to limit individual liberty in the interests of what it believed was for the common good. It's well that such a place exists; if I wished to live in such a society, I could move there.
I want to be free. I want to be left alone to order my own affairs as I see fit, so long as I don't prevent my neighbors from doing the same. And I want to own guns.
As it happens, I don't at all believe that banning handguns in the US would stem violence (corroborating data available upon request). Frankly, even if it would, I would oppose it. I have no wish to trade liberty for security, and there ought to be a place for such people as I. People who shared this attitude founded the United States, and quite a few still live in it. We'll fight to keep it free.
the idea of needing a gun to defend yourself from the government-- having that *enshrined* in our constitution-- to me is ludicrous. what happened to government of the people for the people?
It has a nasty habit of turning into government upon the people and against the people. Privately held guns are at least something to help prevent that eventuallity. And actually, I see the fact that the goverment might try to take our guns as sure proof that we need guns to protect ourselves from the government.
They are useful for defense against unlawful individuals as well. I don't wish to live in a place where I am not allowed the most practical means of self-defense.
to me that would be like microsoft giving you are hammer to smash the monitor with so you would get less blue screens.
Our government doesn't give us guns; we make and buy them ourselves. Your solution is a little more like Microsoft coming around to collect your hammers, so you don't damage your monitors.
why not fix the problem of disconnection between the government and its people rather than coming up with an ultimately destructive escape hatch?
First of all, I'd prefer the Government wasn't too closely connected to the people. I don't approve of mob rule... the masses are not much more benevolent dictators than individuals. I expect a government limited by constitutional principles.
Secondly, the US government has the potential to run amok. Now granted you guys made us look bad in the 1812 War, but these days the Canadian Government seems an unlikely candidate for Global Despot... they'll just have to stick to overtaxing the Canadians.
Our Goverment is proven dangerous, powerful, and getting more powerful. It's all very well to say, "well, change it, then!" but doing so's another matter. It's not in the nature of government to give away power.
Anyway, there's a long rant for you. Pleasure hearing from you... though I'm not sure why you chose to make a thoughtful post as a Coward.
Of course, a big reason that Linux (and BeOS, and possibly the revival of Macintosh) got so successful is that they were given their chance to come out and not be strangled to death when M$ got hauled into court.
Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure. Personally, I don't think that the suit did more than speed up Linux's inevitable ascent... you can't strangle it, and how many people get Linux pre-installed even today?
You're probably right about the Mac (though the pretty colors helped). But then I don't like Apple much more than Microsoft... at least Microsoft has never disappointed me.
BeOS still is barely treading water, as far as I can tell, so God knows what they'd be doing if the suit hadn't come along. Probably sitting on El Camino Real with "Will code for food!" signs.:-)
As Reality Master 101 points out, they're not supposed to be punished at all.
regardless of their position now
Since they are supposed to be remediated, only their present (and possibly immediate future) position counts.
(and I disagree: business structures and attitudes in place unfairly favor M$ precisely because of their monopolist behavior. Since that behavior damages consumer choice, the monopoly is illegal).
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I run Debian. I don't see that my choices as a consumer have been overly limited by business structures or attitudes.
Also, I think M$'s past conduct and history of not abiding by promises / good faith agreements preclude any punishment less harsh than structural remediation.
That's an interesting point... they are a lying pack of dogs, aren't they? If one accepts your prior argument, this one probably merits consideration.
Also, while there's a great deal of attention being paid to Linux and M$ competitors, the truth really is that M$ continues to hold a significant majority of market share through illegal machinations.
The law is not intended to prevent companys from gaining a significant majority of the market share, by hook or by crook. The law is intended to protect consumer choice. Linux, *BSD, BeOS, and other operating systems are available... as are Mozilla, Lynx, Netscape and Opera. Consumers have numerous high-quality choices, and some free ones to boot.
Note as well that there is no regulation in the software industry. Would you rather have a US Department of Computing or a series of unorganized Justice decrees?
I'm not sure what I could have said to prompt such a question, but no, of course not. I'd rather have the Feds stick to their Enumerated Powers, and goverment in general go back to protecting rights and enforcing contracts. I don't see why I must choose between the present (IMHO unacceptable) situation, and the worse one you portray.
Personally, I think our freedom to compute lies not in government regulation but in the correct and apropos application of meatspace law towards the 'net (or at least the US portions), keeping in mind the ways in which the 'net is different than the environment that formed the laws in the first place.
You're an optimist. I think our freedom to compute lies mostly in strong crypto and in ignoring many laws on a fairly massive scale.:-)
M$'s hijinx with Kerberos, its security probs with IIS/IE, etc. only help justify my rather unfriendly attitude towards it..
If an unfriendly attitude were all that needed justified here, we'd be in complete agreement.
Actually, I believe that as soon as a company's sales represent a certain fixed percentage (over 75?) of a given market, they are a monopoly, in the legal sense.
I stand corrected... it would appear that they are, from a legal standpoint, a monopoly. Let me put it another way.
I submit that a legal definition, such as this, is a formalization of a common definition. We commonly use the word, "murder", in a certain imprecise but meaningful fashion. Legally OTOH, murder has necessary and sufficient conditions.
Microsoft has viable competition. The people have choices... mine, for instance, is Debian. Calling such a situation a monopoly is like accusing someone of murdering a still-living person. If it's legally true, the law's wacky.
What they argued was whether they had used that monopoly to alter other business transactions in their favor.
And this is clearly nebulous.:-) What kind of a law is that? You can have a monopoly, but you can't use it... and you, the company, are responsible for figuring out what that means.
But putting aside the (to me, real) issue of whether it's a bad law, I'm far from convinced that splitting up Microsoft is an appropriate "remedy". As Reality Master 101 points out, Antitrust laws ARE NOT PUNATIVE. They are remedial.
And picking and choosing who is a criminal isn't the government's job, it's the court's job.
The court is part of the government. But I think I should be more clear than to say, "pick and choose". When I speak of picking and choosing, I mean when:
Laws are passed which do not apply categorically
People are selectively prosecuted, or
The courts do not apply the laws uniformly to the accused.
When laws are vaguely written, people can easily be selectively prosecuted for violating them. You can write laws so that everyone is a criminal... if you can then pick and choose who to prosecute, you've got tyrrany.
You're right, you surely don't understand the nuances of the case very well. You don't even understand the roles of the major players.
But ya know what? That's okay. That doesn't make you a bad person, or ignorant, or a fool. It just means you are underinformed. Join the club--there are lots of us.
You argue couthly... I appreciate the courtesy.
In my own reductive view, there are only two major players. The People of the US (moreso those of certain states than others), and Microsoft. Laws are in place which limit the freedom of economic activity, in the economic interests of the people.
That doesn't qualify me to decide the case, but I can certainly evaluate, in a general way, the justice and efficacy of the laws, and the way in which they're being enforced.
I disagree with you that this is troubling, for two reasons. First, Microsoft got what they deserved.
By this argument, you can throw out due process entirely, so long as someone gets what they deserve. You could justify lynchings that way.
Second, it won't have much appreciable effect one way or the other.
Again, the end directly justifying the means. You're probably right... I don't see how MS can beat the Free Software movement. But there's a big difference between losing a fight and being forced to forfeit.
No, sorry, you're wrong - that's not in question. Does the word "fact" mean anything to you?
Microsoft meets the legal definition of a monopoly... you're not the first to point this out. I stand corrected. I was thinking more of monopoly in the dictionary sense:
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
exclusive possession or control
The legal definition of a monopoly, apparently, concerns percentage of sales, which is an awkward metric, since strictly speaking Linux itself is not offered for sale. But like I said, I stand corrected.
This does not, however, change my opinion on the whole; I assume my reasoning is obvious.
No. I detest Microsoft, and I love freedom. My feelings for Microsoft, however, are irrelevant.
Did you actually follow this case AT ALL?
Anti-trust laws protect the common interest, not freedom. This is an inherent compromise. I cannot make better reply to such a vague question.
PS M$ HAS performed criminal acts; that's the whole point.....
No. That is an important point; there are other points. The punishment must fit the crime, and the laws themselves must be just. Such points are important in any legal action.
or are you just part of the Microsoft "grassroots" letter-writing strategy
Let me state my feelings more strongly. Microsoft sucks. Bill Gates sucks. If they go under and he spontaneously combusts tomorrow, Free Beer on me.
Microsoft can have you arrested, and can have your property taken away.
There's a very big difference, IMOHO, between having you arrested and arresting you; likewise between having your property taken away and simply taking your property away. Sure, either one sucks.:-) But if it's wrongly done, the blame must ultimately lie with the government.
The government meddled from day one by awarding software patents and making it difficult to reverse engineer legally. While I disagree with the ruling, I do not have a problem in theory, at least, with the government, which enabled Microsoft's profits through intellectual property laws (which are monopolies according to the Constitution), testing to see if Microsoft is abusing the privilege
It seems a very bad thing to me. If government-awarded privileges show themselves destructive of the common good, the privileges themselves need to be curtailed. The goverment has certainly created and then punished monopolies in the past. Ma Bell, for instance. Legislation to fix legislation to fix legislation is all too common, and too dangerous.
To use law to control a nation weakens the nation.
But to use nature to control a nation strengthens the nation. - Tao Te Ching
(IP is only a right if you assume that government grants rights rather than protects them, IMHO.)
There's a distinction traditionally made between natural rights (life, liberty, property, for instance), and created rights (though I'm not sure "created" is the right term). I certainly view IP as the latter sort.
"Ex post facto" law, as interpreted in the Constitution, is a retroactive criminal law that increases the penalty.
I appreciate the interesting point. I looked the matter up. The US Constitution forbids both Congress and the States to make ex post facto laws, without distinguishing between criminal and civil laws. (Aritcle I, Section IX, Clause III, and Article I, Section X, Clause I).
Disturbingly enough, however, you're right... the interpretation that these clauses apply only to criminal laws goes back to 1789, Calder vs. Bull.
I am appalled. The more I learn about the constitution, and the way it's been (mis)interpreted, the spookier it all gets. Thank you for pointing this out.
Obviously, MS is not in criminal court, and so your argument of sacrificing an important principle is, in this case, invalid.
Actually, I maintain that an important principle is being violated. It cannot be just to punish people (or companies) for violating either secret or yet-unwritten laws. I didn't realize, however, that such a state of affairs was the status quo.
As far as "picks and chooses who is a criminal", that's called legal judgement. It's the foundation upon which our entire system is based:).
I guess I'm not sure what you mean. Selective enforcement of laws is certainly illegal, however.
Well, since I appear to be a lone soul with a dissenting opinion, I'd might as well blurt it out. I think this is dreadful.
Which is not to say I like Microsoft... I certainly don't. But if you love freedom, you have to be prepared to speak out for your enemies.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. It might have been closer to a monopoly when it assaulted Netscape, but it's obviously not so now. Linux (okay, okay, GNU/Linux), is prospering happily alongside Windows, and the movement has spawned its own little industry. And it's free, for crying out loud, in every sense. I, for one, don't doubt for a moment that Linux would trounce Windows on its own merits, given more time. Besides, there are other fine, though less popular, alternatives.
Instead, we're to see the US Government step in. Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous... and if a law is vague enough, it's as good as allowing ex post facto prosecution. Sure Microsoft is scuzzy. That's what makes this action so popular... but are we sacrificing an important principle which would protect us later? I'm surprised to find so many Slashdotters hailing government for meddling with technology, using all those oft-maligned outdated laws, simply because this time it suits their purposes.
I don't know. I surely don't understand the nuances of this case very well, so perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
But what fear have I of Microsoft? They cannot arrest me or take my property. A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story.
If you're having trouble with this, maybe you should be running a more appropriate networking protocol. Actually, Microsoft has made a fine contribution to this field... netBUOY.
Someone in the Napster chain had to violate IP laws.
That seems like it must be so.
The people who are taking advantage of them are doing in principle what is the same as buying stolen goods.
That's a different issue entirely. I would say not... you're presuming that the artist has some natural right to tell other people what they may and may not do with his creation. Now if you're a painter or a sculptor, sure... someone can't just walk off with your art. Then you don't have it anymore. But Metallica still has their songs. I would say, then, that nothing's been stolen.
Assuming that IP rights are natural, rather than artificial, is quite a tricky position. For instance, do they have the right to charge me for playing their songs myself, on a musical instrument? If not, why not? And I was an athlete in college... what about my rights? Lots of pictures taken of me performing my art, why have I no laws to protect my natural rights to these pictures? Bummer.
So anyway, laws broken? Sure. Theft? I say no.
The problem with just randomly violating laws that are "unjust" is that the "justness" of a law is in the eye of the beholder.
Well, there may be an objective answer as to the justice of a given law, but sure, we're pretty subjective in our regard for them. You're right, and that's certainly a point; there's a difficult balance to be struck. I guess my opinion is, if you feel strongly, break the law... just be ready to abide any consequences.
What if I feel it's "unjust" to pay income taxes?
Funny you should mention! I do. Which is why I do my damndest not to pay them, though I don't feel strongly enough to defy the law outright and go to jail. I also work within the system to try and change the laws.
Mind, it's not the money... it really is a matter of principle. I'd rather give twice as much to some random fellow off the street.
If the intent was merely to switch to a new form of government where the local people had a say in the taxes they paid, there was no need to destroy property which belonged to a 3rd party. Sure, said 3rd party was profiting from the existing laws
The 3rd party was behind the creation of those laws. They were using a legislative system, in which the colonies had no voice, to drive colonial tea merchants out of business. This was no more ethical than simply grabbing someone's tea and dumping it in the harbor.
Sure it was always illegal to destroy other people's merchandise. But it was a way to fight back. What, after all, makes a law a law? If I declare my own laws, will you feel obliged to follow them? Probably not. What if I come to your house with my friends and we all have guns? You'll probably follow them, but I doubt you'll feel so strongly about fine points of legality. You might even fight back by doing things which, under normal circumstances, we'd deem wrong. I wouldn't blame you if you did.
Governments and rules of law can usually be changed without doing damage to anything other than the governments and laws themselves.
Generally true. Mrs. Parks, the former example, did no damage. But what if your business goes under in the interim? The colonists got the Stamp Acts repealed, then the Townsend Acts repealed, only to find they were still being punitively taxed. People can only take so much.
Even in exceptional cases it's pretty easy to avoid hurting parties that aren't involved in the enforcement of such laws.
Sure, the East India company wasn't involved in the enforcement of the laws. They were involved in the creation of the laws... and they deserved what they got. And on a more on-topic note, what exactly have Lars and the boys suffered, other than indignation? I haven't noticed any claim that their sales have dropped as a result of MP3 trading.
Oh, incidentally... very pleasant conversing with you.:-)
Using Napster as you described may not in fact be a violation of copyright law, nor is sharing music, so long as you do it the right way.
Probably true. But I don't think ill of those who simply use Napster to get whatever music they want, either; I just wanted to point out that some non-opportunists disagree.
I think it's pretty easy to say that if an artist says, "these are the terms under which I'm performing for you" and you accept those terms, and then violate them, that you have to question what your moral foundation is.
I agree that one should keep one's word. However, I think it's very easy to say that most "pirates" never accepted any terms at all... so this hardly seems germaine.
Rosa Park's actions and similar forms of civil disobedience are extreme measures, and they are always based on the principle of forcing discussion of an issue (typically in a court of law).
Not at all. Mrs. Parks was perfectly within her rights to do as she did simply because it was her seat, and someone else tried to take it unjustly (though lawfully). The action need not have any higher aim. In fact, though I don't know what she was thinking, I doubt she was attempting to force discussion of the issue. I would suppose she was just fed up.
However, if you think there is a problem with a law providing additional rights to "IP owners", that should take the form of refusing to impose those restricitions on IP that the law would say you own and in refusing to have anything to do with IP which comes burdened with those restrictions.
So if I feel my freedom is being unjustly infringed upon, I should refuse to exercise it? Quite the opposite in my opinion. It half makes me want to download Metallica songs on principle... lucky for them I'm lazy!;-)
And yes, I do think the Boston Tea Party was a criminal act that could and should have been handled differently. It doesn't mean that the cause was unjust, but the means were.
Well, however much we may disagree, I certainly respect your principled devotion to law and order. In my opinion, laws are merely tools meant to achieve ends such as liberty and justice. The moment they become destructive to those ends, they need to be tossed right out the window. Let the legislators catch up in their own time.
There may, of course, be circumstances in which ignoring a law would cause more harm than good; in such a case I would counsel against it. I would not, necessarily, censure one who asserted his rights even so.
I don't know enough about why you disapprove of the Tea Party to argue the point. I believe it was a thing well done, just as the revolution that followed. The first two paragraphs of The Declaration of Independence sum up my reasons pretty nicely.
I think it's merely the opportunists out there (or as Larry Wall described them "Persons of leisurely moral growth") who think it's a good thing to pirate music.
I, for one, have nothing against people sharing music. I've rarely bothered with Napster, and when I have it's been mostly to get things I've already had on my scratched-up CDs anyway. Maybe I'm a vicarious opportunist.;-)
However, just because you think a law is stupid doesn't mean you break it (c.f. chaos;-).
So Rosa Parks should have moved quietly to the back of the bus? Not that we have an analogous situation here, but I strongly disagree with your statement in general. Laws are only as good as the authority they're based upon, and in general the liberty and rights of the people take precedence. Breaking laws may be a moral imperative, or an assertion of one's rights (like the Boston Teaparty).
Happily, though, I tend to agree with the rest of your post.:-)
Does anyone really think Napster-like file sharing technology is going away? Frankly, it seems to me little more than a harbinger of more powerful and profound things to come... and I think it arrogant and quixotic to suppose that you can press the order of things into your own ethical scheme.
If a song it the writer's intellectual property, why mustn't I pay him to play it myself, say on my piano? Because it's not practical to enforce such a restriction. Our intellectual property conventions have arisen in accordance with technology and circumstances. Once upon a time, printing recordings of music was an expensive undertaking, and thus centralized and easily controlled. Technology dictated ethics: copyright laws were deemed good, at least in part, because they were enforceable.
Now things are different, and intransigent souls, predictably, are demanding that ethics dictate technology. I cannot imagine them winning. What I can imagine them doing is making random people's lives miserable by sporatically attempting to enforce an unenforcable law.
Say Metallica wins their law suit... what does that change? Is there to be an unending string of reverse-class-action lawsuits by every musical group? At least by those groups who can afford to defend their intellectual property...
Or say Napster gets shut down. What about Gnutella and Freenet, not to mention tomorrow's God-knows-what super-sneaky encrypted system? Can they be stopped, short of shutting down the Internet?
I was quite young when I learned an unpleasant fact about property: if you can't enforce your rights, you haven't got any. Now in most matters we depend upon government to protect our property rights, but the same rule applies... if they can't enforce them, you haven't got any. What we need to be considering are practical plans for a sustainable system, not pie-in-the-sky discussions of what's right.
As a majority of any committee meeting consists of reactive bantering, and endless hours of one 'spinning his wheels', this flywheel technology could be applied here, so something productive can be actually produced from these all to common corporate events.
This can also be applied to senate hearings, legal sessions, phylosophical discussions about the existance of ones self, dogs chasing their tails, and any other event or activity that involves a person (either literally or figuratively) running around in circles.
I feel constrained to point out that this will not work if the philosophers do not, in fact, exist.
Even assuming it (seemingly) works, you run the serious risk that the philosophers will take the action of the flywheel as proof that they do exist, and the conversation will end. Not a very reliable power source.
The only way this would work is if the philosophers remained uncertain of the existence of the flywheel. However, to ensure this would require a third conversationalist, dedicated to keeping a contrary position. Thus you have to have an external power source... still no free energy.
I need hardly point out that as soon as the Senate notices they're powering flywheels, they'll put such a tax on it that it will no longer be cost-effective.
Which leaves dogs and lawyers. Frankly, I don't think you've any right to treat dogs that way.
If you really ARE law-abiding, why do you need a gun?
A similar argument could be made against privacy. If you really ARE law-abiding, why do you need encryption? Why are you afraid of law enforcement officers routinely checking your home? What have you got to hide?
IMHO, your very first question shows a misunderstanding of the roots of American culture. In a free society, one need not justify one's actions, when they do not infringe directly on the rights of others. It is enough that a free man may want a gun.
Slashdot Mirror
So you did. My mistake. Though actually, that's not necessarily a good thing... appointing the best person for the job, though harder to quantify, is the point.
i am not canadian, but i wish that our government embraced our population more like theirs do.
Oh, I'm sure they'd love to. It's just that people like me keep fighting against being embraced.
higher taxes yes, (though ontario's taxes on business will be 10% lower than all of it's neighbouring states next year)
God knows if their provincial taxes were as high as their national ones, they'd have no money left at all.
as for the infringements of personal liberty for the commom good, how would you classify our government's role in forcing a generation of young men into vietnam?
I'd classify it as "bad". More specifically, "really, really bad".
for the common good?
Neither for the common good, nor for liberty. It was a thing ill done. FWIW, I oppose (at least) peacetime draft.
i hear in canada they have government healthcare that everyone pays into. not perfect but recent studies showed that care there was on par with u.s. healthcare
The latter statement is, to say the least, controversial. At any rate, what I oppose about such a scheme is that (like Social Security here) it's not voluntary. I have no choice about it... if I decide not to put my money into it, the government comes and puts me in jail. Even if I pay, I am bereft of my choices within the health care system. Such a coercive system is offensive to me.
i will ask you very honestly: why do you need a gun? hunting, sport... but why handguns?
I will answer you honestly: whether I need handguns is not the point. I want handguns. I do not need to tell the government why I need something... it is enough that I want it, and am not hurting my neighbors.
I go out of my way (having lived in some pretty crummy places) to live in a rural setting, with little crime. I don't really need to lock my doors... some people even leave their keys in the ignition when they leave their cars. I certainly hope that in any case I would never need to use a handgun for violence against another person.
Why might I feel I needed one? Because my self-defense is my own responsibility... the courts have made it clear that a police officer need not risk his life for mine, and I don't know why I should expect him to anyway. Because I am often far from help... and the same can be said by people in NYC.
Why might I want one? Because I feel a responsibility, as a peaceful person, to participate in making my community more secure. Because I believe that my owning such a weapon might make the government ever-so-slightly less inclined to abuse its power. Because I believe that it symbolizes my dignity as a free person, governed by my own consent. Because I like the noise it makes.
i would be interested, entirely academically-- i'm not trying to bait you, on how you think that the canadian government restricts the personal liberty to an extent that doesn't seem to pay off in the long run.
I'm no expert on Canadian government, so I'm not sure my answer would be worth much. In any case, my answer would go astray of my real point. It's not whether it pays off... that presumes that one's freedom is not itself to be valued, that it is not an end in itself. I'm not interested in being house-slave, even if it's a posh position.
you want low expections? consider campaign finance spending
Consider free speech.
or the dealth penalty-- an abhorrent and illogical tool of the penal system
Abhorrent to you, maybe. And not illogical at all, from my perspective.
why are one out of five school children under-nourished in the richest country in the world?
I'm not familiar with this statistic, but I find it difficult to believe. Anyway, you'd might as well ask why any of them are mal-nourished, when they clearly needn't be. I don't know. I don't know enough about the problem. I do know that in most places you can get an adequate diet for free... I've done it.
why is our voter turn-out so low?
You presume that it should be higher. The point, IMHO, is that government should be irrelevant to most people's lives. But insofar as it's a measure of discontent, I'd say because government has been centralized so far that people don't feel they have any serious influence. They may be right.
why is literacy here so low?
A socialized, monopolistic educational system.
because of the extent of personal liberty over the common good?
Quite the contrary... because of misguided efforts to promote the common good at the expense of personal liberty. Or haven't you noticed that everything the government runs turns bad?
why do we have the highest incarceration rate in the west?
A single, simple cause: The War Against Drugs. Another egregious affront to liberty.
why so many school shootings?
A socialized, one-size fits all federal educational system which isn't much more than a system for warehousing children. Certainly not because kids suddenly have access to guns.
i've never heard of another nation with such lofty morals and incredibly low expectations. "as long as i'm ok, who cares about the rest."
America leads the world in charity. Sure we have responsibilities to others... it's just not the role of government to make sure we fulfill them.
yet they manage, with a dose of the 'common good' to beat us at our own game of being the greatest nation on earth in which to live.
Not for me. For me, Iowa, USA is (as far as I know) the best place in the world to live... though it could assuredly be far better.
I don't mean this in any hostile sense, but why don't you choose to live in Canada? I would, if I were you. You have family there, you share their values, it sounds perfect.
Heck, I don't begrudge Canadians their choices. I don't even think Nebraskans should have to live the way Iowans do... the loss of the freedom to choose is one of the great tragedies of the American drive to centralize government.
But anyway, let me make clear, I am not pleased with the state of America these days. I am not defending our status quo, and many of the problems you cite concern me much. But my vision of what changes are needed is quite different than yours.
sorry for being so argumentative.
Don't be. Thank you for the vigorous debate.
Linux, on the other hand, is not differentiated. You can run Apache on your workstation. I remain unconvinced, but unless you think it important, I'm not inclined to belabor the point. This is a long enough post already. :-)
A monopoly doesn't mean there isn't ANY choice. It means that there is little, that the switching cost is extremely high, and that a company has virtual control over a market.
There is plenty of choice, switching cost for the cool stuff is zero, and I'm not sure the word "market" is even wholly applicable here.
The choice is mostly between something which sucks and something outstanding... I won't say which is which, but Windows isn't the latter. ;-)
Switching from something costly to something free is hardly an argument. Sure, for a large organization it can be very expensive, but that's neither the fault of MS nor Linux, nor of FreeBSD, etc. Asking the DOJ for help because your company can't make the transition, and they'd rather force their present platform vendor to change its ways is absurd.
And even talking about "control over a market" seems very strange in this context, because we're lumping together the supply of both free and non-free items. Let's say Debian winds up on 90% of the computers world-wide (oh, please, God, pleeease!), and nobody buys Debian disks, they just download it. If Windows is installed on the remaining 10%, Microsoft has 100% control over the market for operating systems. I would find it difficult to say, under such a circumstance, however, that MS had a monopoly from which the public needed protected.
Anti-trust legislation isn't about keeping one company from dominating a market, it's about protecting consumers from artificially inflated prices and making sure they have choices. Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally, nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
There are *always* alternatives to any monopoly other than food, water, shelter. You can walk, rather than use the oil/electric monopoly. Use a radio rather than a landlocked phone. Use carrier pidgeons, Write a letter, etc.
By this analogy, perhaps I could grant that Microsoft has a dangerous monopoly on the supply of carrier pidgeons. :-)
I think you misunderstand the application of Monopoly/Antitrust law. Its *not* illegal to have a monopoly.
I understand this quite well.
It *is* illegal to *leverage* that into *new* markets. Slightly subjective, granted, but Microsoft's argument is easily compared to a defendant arguing that "assault is subjective" when the victim was beaten within an inch of its life.
Here's where I think you fail to understand Monopoly/Antitrust law. Netscape is not the victim. These laws are not put in place to protect Netscape. They are put in place to protect the consumers. And the end users, the alleged victims, certainly have not been beaten within an inch of their lives. In fact, they're better off than they were before... though certainly through no charitable impulse on the part of Microsoft.
Did they drop the price of their monopoly product? No. Their monopoly product was threatened - and so they entered a new market - with the express intent to damage compitition in that market (which might have affected their monopoly market) - and gave THAT away.
What they basically did was to destroy the browser market completely. Now we don't have to pay for Netscape or IE, and the act spawned Mozilla, which is a far greater boon to the people than either of the others. All of which happened without the DOJ's help. Not exactly the sort of thing which makes me feel dependent upon the government for my protection.
They aren't being punished for having a monopoly -but for keeping competitiors/things that could have upset that - from realizing.
Supposedly, they're not being punished at all. Antitrust laws aren't punititve. Supposedly they're being broken up to protect the consumers.
But without those laws, we WOULDN"T BE TYPING HERE! :) AT&T wouldn't see the need for all these datalines. 56K is surely enough for anybody, right?
Without the laws which made Bell a government-mandated monopoly in the first place, an antitrust action wouldn't have been necessary.
IBM would have most of the computer market under their thumb, and who needs client/server?
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
That is supreme irony. :)
No... the supreme irony is that the US government is almost solely responsible for creating US monopolies.
Market based economics fail in the real world, sadly.
This is the real source of our differences. I don't believe that for one minute. The only alternative I feel I need to provide is freedom.
Additionally - thinking a law is unjust does not justify flaunting it.
Sure it does.
Well, ok, it usually doesn't. I've argued this point here before. But there are, to me, clear examples of laws which need broken. Rosa Parks flaunted a law, and it was a deed well done IMHO. Ditto for the folks who staged The Boston Teaparty. And I would argue that nearly any law of a Fascist or Communist government should be flaunted at any opportunity.
Microsoft's attitude is still "We did nothing wrong". (Funny, considering without those laws, they wouldnt' exist).
Again, I think this is totally untrue. The latter part, I mean.
Not that the laws are wrong, that they did nothing wrong.
I daresay, if you asked them privately, they would certainly tell you they thought the laws were wrong. That's simply not a viable tact to take in court.
Microsoft is not a monopoly.
What's your definition of monopoly
My definition would be something like, "a situation in which one company has such extensive control over the supply of a commodity that they can arbitrarily dictate the market price." I'd have to think that over, but it looks good to me offhand.
In any case, anyone who runs windows does so because they choose to. Plain vanilla Linux (not to mention FreeBSD) has a market price of zero. Further, it's of higher quality than Windows. The supply is unlimited. Microsoft hasn't won, the people have viable choices, and there's just no need for the DOJ to rescue us.
You've said you're not a lawyer, so I'm trying to put this in terms you'll understand.
Neither am I particularly dense. As a citizen of a country which espouses liberty, I expect that if the government is going to curtail someone's freedom to protect the economic interests of the people, that the people are actually in danger and unable to defend themselves. This is not the case at all. If the DOJ wants to apply the Sherman Act where it'll do some good, let them go after the Post Office or the Public Schools.
Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous...
Not being a lawyer is a poor excuse for not understand the law. Read the law and then comment on it.
First of all, I have read the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Secondly, being a lawyer is every excuse for not understanding the law. Laws are often incomprehensible simply from reading them, because their actual meaning is dependent upon myriad judicial interpretations, and the way they interact with other laws. Such factors are often extremely difficult to assess without becoming a lawyer.
For example, the US Constitution: Article I, Section VIII. The Enumerated Powers of Congress. If you aren't familiar with cases like United States vs. Darby, and Wickard v. Filburn, you surely couldn't understand how the Commerce Clause could be used to justify, say, the Brady Handgun Act. I happen to know this because I've stubbornly plowed through loads of information and nagged lawyers for answers.
And if I kept it up for every case I had an interest in as a citizen, I'd be a lawyer before long. So your statement doesn't seem to hold any water at all to me.
Thirdly, having read the Sherman Act several times, it still seems damned nebulous to me.
perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty
I'm really tired of hearing this "Death Penalty" reference. This is certainly not the death penalty. Microsoft will not be dying. Instead it will be seperated into two parts. One of which will probably retain the name, and most of the better staff.
Ok, my turn. What's your definition of "Death Penalty"? .
If you take away a company's means of sustinence, and its very identity, it's pretty clear that they're dead. Microsoft, as we know (and loathe) it, will no longer exist. That's dead to me.
I'm not so sure there's a valid distinction to be made between the two, for the purposes of this argument, but let's pass on that...
OTOH MS is still a monopoly in the desktop space, where the only real competition now could be Apple and maybe BeOS, Linux is only entering this and is far from being mature (but its coming).
I daresay, Linux is running quite a few more desktops than BeOS, mature or not. In any case, Windows is certainly not the only choice a person has for their desktop, so they're not a monopoly in that sense, at least. And as far as I can tell, that's the only sense in which the consumer needs any protection here.
Don't worry, any suit seems nebulous when you are not a lawyer,
And often, I'm told, if you are. Let me rephrase that... this one seems more nebulous than most. :-)
this is because the law got out of our reach, whic is bad IMHO.
Amen, Brother!
I don't like the Government meddling with technology either but I still think that the anti-trust laws are still up to date.
The more I think and read about it, the more I think they're not. The Sherman Act... we're talking about a document intended to keep a company from limiting the supply of a physical good in order to raise prices. It's being applied in a situation where the company in question is only too happy to produce as many copies of their software as anyone will buy... and their great anti-competitive act was to drop their prices to zero! Something's amiss here.
perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
They have. It is not as if they weren't told it was wrong.
Yeah, they surely were guilty of all the antics you list. The real question, to me, is more about the power of the US Government than Microsoft's scruple shortage. Saying that MS flaunted the laws doesn't answer whether the laws are just.
Oh, BTW, have you kids? Pretend yes for one minute.
Let's say that you caught your kid doing very bad things.
Let's say that he ask for forgiveness and you grant it.
Let's say you catch him again doing the same thing.
Let's say he deny everything despite ample proofs of the contrary.
Would you let him go away easily?
With this characterization I totally disagree. The US Government is not our parent, and we are not its children. We are adults, governed, supposedly, by our own consent.
Had I children, they would not be secure in their effects against search and seizure on my part. I would not hesitate to ask them self-incriminating questions, and demand answers. They would not be permitted to speak in any fashion they pleased. They are children, and are ruled by their elders, not governed by their elected peers.
There is a growing paternalism in the US Government, which I find most offensive. They're not supposed to be protecting us from ourselves, or deciding who's naughty and scolding them back into the fold. They're supposed to be protecting our rights, and enforcing our contracts and clearly defined, categorically applied laws.
Seriously, they cannot arrest you directly but with the current trend in copyright/patent/trademark/intellectual property laws in general companies (MS included) will have enough powers to put you in jail at a whim because it would be next to impossible not to break these law and to still have a spark of liberty left.
This, however, is really the fault of the government. They're the ones who put you in jail, and who make and enforce unjust laws. So no, it's still not MS I have cause to fear, IMHO.
A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story. Isn't that the role of a governmnet?
This has come up elsewhere, so I believe I should have been clearer in my diction. No, they don't pick and choose, in the sense that they should never have discretionary power over enforcing laws. The role of the Legislature is to make clear, generally applicable laws. The role of the Executive is to bring charges, uniformly, without favor, against anyone who seems to violate those laws. The role of the Judiciary is to decide whether those laws have indeed been broken.
It should never be the case that the Legislature makes laws which are vague, aimed against individuals, or which make the whole population criminal. The Executive must not choose to prosecute one fellow but not another, according to their desires. Nor should the courts play favorites, or interpret law to suit their purpose. These things I mean by picking and choosing.
its about what they did to stifle competition using powers that only a monopoly has, and how they tried to use their monopoly in one market to create a monopoly in another.
I'm sorry, that makes no sense whatsoever. Any questions as to how they used their monopoly powers is predicated upon the assumption that they had a monopoly. And whether they had a monopoly is a question of whether they have competition.
being a monopoly isnt illegal, what microsoft did was and they must be stopped from doing it further
Of course, whether it should be illegal is at issue here. And yeah, wouldn't all hell break loose if Microsoft were to give away yet more software. Sheesh.
and punished for their crimes as well.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there's no question of punishing Microsoft here. Antitrust laws are not punitive. They are remedial.
simple as that
Your opinion is simple indeed.
It does? I just read it and reread it, and I can find nowhere a definition of a monopoly. Please point this out.
I must say, I think you're missing the point. It is assuredly not the business of the US Government to look out for Microsoft's good, helping it to improve its products.
Besides which, to say they'll improve their products isn't to say they'll succeed. Improving their products isn't their goal; making money is their goal. If the best product made the most money, several today's underdogs would be on top, along with numerous companies which died along the way.
Q: Did AT&T's parts die after their breakup?
Did AT&T make a living by marketing products with a shorter lifespan than a hamster?
Our difference here is semantic. At least here in the US, we say the Legislature writes laws, and the Judiciary interprets them. These are deemed branches of the Government, along with the Executive branch. Lawmaking and judging are, of course, kept separate (or they're supposed to be... but that's a different rant). Perhaps you put things differently up north... but to my ear, it seems odd to say that the courts aren't part of the Goverment. They're certainly not private.
in canada the prime minister (who has incredible powers compared to the u.s. president) appoints supreme court members himself, albeit from a list provided by the provincial law associations with regional restrictions-- ie. three must be from quebec, etc.
In the US the president picks all federal judges, subject to the approval of congress. He generally picks the Supreme Court justices firsthand, and takes the advice of Governors and legislators from his own party on the lower positions. Congressional approval is usually a rubber-stamping, with a few notable exceptions.
such a narrow selective process and yet canadian citizens have complete faith in their supreme court and judiciary. how do they do it?
From your description of the gun control situation, I'm tempted to say, "low expectations". ;-)
Seriously, though, we've had major problems, IMHO, with the whole scheme. Checks and balances only work when the branches of government remain in opposition to one another... if they begin to cooperate, things get messy. In the 20th century the US Executive branch began loading the Judiciary with people biased in favor of increasing the scope of Legislative power. Long, sordid story, and it's nowhere near over.
they recently named the first woman supreme court chief justice in the world.
We appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the US Supreme Court in 1981. Either your justice isn't the first, or you're very casual in your use of "recent". :-)
may i also comment that this has been one of the more civil threads that i have ever seen on slashdot.
Oh... wait a second, I forgot...
YOU FOOL! YOU DISAGREE WITH ME? DIE!!!
Ahh... much better. Forgot I was on Slashdot for a minute there!
your signature doesn't sit well either. you're certainly right about the trade off between individual liberty and the greater good.
I think I'd prefer to say, "the common good". I'm not sure I'd like to say there's a greater good than individual liberty.
while on the subject of canada, somehow the banning of handguns and other firearms north of the border has impinged on the personal freedom to shoot each other and yielded the greater good of fewer broken families and lost friends.
I'm pleased for you. My impression is that your country has indeed often chosen to limit individual liberty in the interests of what it believed was for the common good. It's well that such a place exists; if I wished to live in such a society, I could move there.
I want to be free. I want to be left alone to order my own affairs as I see fit, so long as I don't prevent my neighbors from doing the same. And I want to own guns.
As it happens, I don't at all believe that banning handguns in the US would stem violence (corroborating data available upon request). Frankly, even if it would, I would oppose it. I have no wish to trade liberty for security, and there ought to be a place for such people as I. People who shared this attitude founded the United States, and quite a few still live in it. We'll fight to keep it free.
the idea of needing a gun to defend yourself from the government-- having that *enshrined* in our constitution-- to me is ludicrous. what happened to government of the people for the people?
It has a nasty habit of turning into government upon the people and against the people. Privately held guns are at least something to help prevent that eventuallity. And actually, I see the fact that the goverment might try to take our guns as sure proof that we need guns to protect ourselves from the government.
They are useful for defense against unlawful individuals as well. I don't wish to live in a place where I am not allowed the most practical means of self-defense.
to me that would be like microsoft giving you are hammer to smash the monitor with so you would get less blue screens.
Our government doesn't give us guns; we make and buy them ourselves. Your solution is a little more like Microsoft coming around to collect your hammers, so you don't damage your monitors.
why not fix the problem of disconnection between the government and its people rather than coming up with an ultimately destructive escape hatch?
First of all, I'd prefer the Government wasn't too closely connected to the people. I don't approve of mob rule... the masses are not much more benevolent dictators than individuals. I expect a government limited by constitutional principles.
Secondly, the US government has the potential to run amok. Now granted you guys made us look bad in the 1812 War, but these days the Canadian Government seems an unlikely candidate for Global Despot... they'll just have to stick to overtaxing the Canadians.
Our Goverment is proven dangerous, powerful, and getting more powerful. It's all very well to say, "well, change it, then!" but doing so's another matter. It's not in the nature of government to give away power.
Anyway, there's a long rant for you. Pleasure hearing from you... though I'm not sure why you chose to make a thoughtful post as a Coward.
No, Joe, I think you're the only one. The rest of us are overjoyed, or at least indifferent.
Oh, twaddle, we are not. As well you know, having replied to my gripe... so cut out the knavery. ;-)
Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure. Personally, I don't think that the suit did more than speed up Linux's inevitable ascent... you can't strangle it, and how many people get Linux pre-installed even today?
You're probably right about the Mac (though the pretty colors helped). But then I don't like Apple much more than Microsoft... at least Microsoft has never disappointed me.
BeOS still is barely treading water, as far as I can tell, so God knows what they'd be doing if the suit hadn't come along. Probably sitting on El Camino Real with "Will code for food!" signs. :-)
As Reality Master 101 points out, they're not supposed to be punished at all.
regardless of their position now
Since they are supposed to be remediated, only their present (and possibly immediate future) position counts.
(and I disagree: business structures and attitudes in place unfairly favor M$ precisely because of their monopolist behavior. Since that behavior damages consumer choice, the monopoly is illegal).
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I run Debian. I don't see that my choices as a consumer have been overly limited by business structures or attitudes.
Also, I think M$'s past conduct and history of not abiding by promises / good faith agreements preclude any punishment less harsh than structural remediation.
That's an interesting point... they are a lying pack of dogs, aren't they? If one accepts your prior argument, this one probably merits consideration.
Also, while there's a great deal of attention being paid to Linux and M$ competitors, the truth really is that M$ continues to hold a significant majority of market share through illegal machinations.
The law is not intended to prevent companys from gaining a significant majority of the market share, by hook or by crook. The law is intended to protect consumer choice. Linux, *BSD, BeOS, and other operating systems are available... as are Mozilla, Lynx, Netscape and Opera. Consumers have numerous high-quality choices, and some free ones to boot.
Note as well that there is no regulation in the software industry. Would you rather have a US Department of Computing or a series of unorganized Justice decrees?
I'm not sure what I could have said to prompt such a question, but no, of course not. I'd rather have the Feds stick to their Enumerated Powers, and goverment in general go back to protecting rights and enforcing contracts. I don't see why I must choose between the present (IMHO unacceptable) situation, and the worse one you portray.
Personally, I think our freedom to compute lies not in government regulation but in the correct and apropos application of meatspace law towards the 'net (or at least the US portions), keeping in mind the ways in which the 'net is different than the environment that formed the laws in the first place.
You're an optimist. I think our freedom to compute lies mostly in strong crypto and in ignoring many laws on a fairly massive scale. :-)
M$'s hijinx with Kerberos, its security probs with IIS/IE, etc. only help justify my rather unfriendly attitude towards it..
If an unfriendly attitude were all that needed justified here, we'd be in complete agreement.
I stand corrected... it would appear that they are, from a legal standpoint, a monopoly. Let me put it another way.
I submit that a legal definition, such as this, is a formalization of a common definition. We commonly use the word, "murder", in a certain imprecise but meaningful fashion. Legally OTOH, murder has necessary and sufficient conditions.
Microsoft has viable competition. The people have choices... mine, for instance, is Debian. Calling such a situation a monopoly is like accusing someone of murdering a still-living person. If it's legally true, the law's wacky.
What they argued was whether they had used that monopoly to alter other business transactions in their favor.
And this is clearly nebulous. :-) What kind of a law is that? You can have a monopoly, but you can't use it... and you, the company, are responsible for figuring out what that means.
But putting aside the (to me, real) issue of whether it's a bad law, I'm far from convinced that splitting up Microsoft is an appropriate "remedy". As Reality Master 101 points out, Antitrust laws ARE NOT PUNATIVE. They are remedial.
And picking and choosing who is a criminal isn't the government's job, it's the court's job.
The court is part of the government. But I think I should be more clear than to say, "pick and choose". When I speak of picking and choosing, I mean when:
When laws are vaguely written, people can easily be selectively prosecuted for violating them. You can write laws so that everyone is a criminal... if you can then pick and choose who to prosecute, you've got tyrrany.
You're right, you surely don't understand the nuances of the case very well. You don't even understand the roles of the major players.
But ya know what? That's okay. That doesn't make you a bad person, or ignorant, or a fool. It just means you are underinformed. Join the club--there are lots of us.
You argue couthly... I appreciate the courtesy.
In my own reductive view, there are only two major players. The People of the US (moreso those of certain states than others), and Microsoft. Laws are in place which limit the freedom of economic activity, in the economic interests of the people.
That doesn't qualify me to decide the case, but I can certainly evaluate, in a general way, the justice and efficacy of the laws, and the way in which they're being enforced.
I disagree with you that this is troubling, for two reasons. First, Microsoft got what they deserved.
By this argument, you can throw out due process entirely, so long as someone gets what they deserve. You could justify lynchings that way.
Second, it won't have much appreciable effect one way or the other.
Again, the end directly justifying the means. You're probably right... I don't see how MS can beat the Free Software movement. But there's a big difference between losing a fight and being forced to forfeit.
No, sorry, you're wrong - that's not in question. Does the word "fact" mean anything to you?
Microsoft meets the legal definition of a monopoly... you're not the first to point this out. I stand corrected. I was thinking more of monopoly in the dictionary sense:
The legal definition of a monopoly, apparently, concerns percentage of sales, which is an awkward metric, since strictly speaking Linux itself is not offered for sale. But like I said, I stand corrected.
This does not, however, change my opinion on the whole; I assume my reasoning is obvious.
No. I detest Microsoft, and I love freedom. My feelings for Microsoft, however, are irrelevant.
Did you actually follow this case AT ALL?
Anti-trust laws protect the common interest, not freedom. This is an inherent compromise. I cannot make better reply to such a vague question.
PS M$ HAS performed criminal acts; that's the whole point.....
No. That is an important point; there are other points. The punishment must fit the crime, and the laws themselves must be just. Such points are important in any legal action.
or are you just part of the Microsoft "grassroots" letter-writing strategy
Let me state my feelings more strongly. Microsoft sucks. Bill Gates sucks. If they go under and he spontaneously combusts tomorrow, Free Beer on me.
There. Happy? I still disagree with you.
There's a very big difference, IMOHO, between having you arrested and arresting you; likewise between having your property taken away and simply taking your property away. Sure, either one sucks. :-) But if it's wrongly done, the blame must ultimately lie with the government.
The government meddled from day one by awarding software patents and making it difficult to reverse engineer legally. While I disagree with the ruling, I do not have a problem in theory, at least, with the government, which enabled Microsoft's profits through intellectual property laws (which are monopolies according to the Constitution), testing to see if Microsoft is abusing the privilege
It seems a very bad thing to me. If government-awarded privileges show themselves destructive of the common good, the privileges themselves need to be curtailed. The goverment has certainly created and then punished monopolies in the past. Ma Bell, for instance. Legislation to fix legislation to fix legislation is all too common, and too dangerous.
(IP is only a right if you assume that government grants rights rather than protects them, IMHO.)
There's a distinction traditionally made between natural rights (life, liberty, property, for instance), and created rights (though I'm not sure "created" is the right term). I certainly view IP as the latter sort.
Yes... I notice your post was number 666 as well! ;-)
I didn't want to post this myself for fear of mindless flaming and ridiculous moderation (as I've already seen).
Yeah... that's a sad state of affairs. I half expected it myself.
I appreciate the interesting point. I looked the matter up. The US Constitution forbids both Congress and the States to make ex post facto laws, without distinguishing between criminal and civil laws. (Aritcle I, Section IX, Clause III, and Article I, Section X, Clause I).
Disturbingly enough, however, you're right... the interpretation that these clauses apply only to criminal laws goes back to 1789, Calder vs. Bull.
I am appalled. The more I learn about the constitution, and the way it's been (mis)interpreted, the spookier it all gets. Thank you for pointing this out.
Obviously, MS is not in criminal court, and so your argument of sacrificing an important principle is, in this case, invalid.
Actually, I maintain that an important principle is being violated. It cannot be just to punish people (or companies) for violating either secret or yet-unwritten laws. I didn't realize, however, that such a state of affairs was the status quo.
As far as "picks and chooses who is a criminal", that's called legal judgement. It's the foundation upon which our entire system is based :).
I guess I'm not sure what you mean. Selective enforcement of laws is certainly illegal, however.
Which is not to say I like Microsoft... I certainly don't. But if you love freedom, you have to be prepared to speak out for your enemies.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. It might have been closer to a monopoly when it assaulted Netscape, but it's obviously not so now. Linux (okay, okay, GNU/Linux), is prospering happily alongside Windows, and the movement has spawned its own little industry. And it's free, for crying out loud, in every sense. I, for one, don't doubt for a moment that Linux would trounce Windows on its own merits, given more time. Besides, there are other fine, though less popular, alternatives.
Instead, we're to see the US Government step in. Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous... and if a law is vague enough, it's as good as allowing ex post facto prosecution. Sure Microsoft is scuzzy. That's what makes this action so popular... but are we sacrificing an important principle which would protect us later? I'm surprised to find so many Slashdotters hailing government for meddling with technology, using all those oft-maligned outdated laws, simply because this time it suits their purposes.
I don't know. I surely don't understand the nuances of this case very well, so perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
But what fear have I of Microsoft? They cannot arrest me or take my property. A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story.
If you're having trouble with this, maybe you should be running a more appropriate networking protocol. Actually, Microsoft has made a fine contribution to this field... netBUOY.
That seems like it must be so.
The people who are taking advantage of them are doing in principle what is the same as buying stolen goods.
That's a different issue entirely. I would say not... you're presuming that the artist has some natural right to tell other people what they may and may not do with his creation. Now if you're a painter or a sculptor, sure... someone can't just walk off with your art. Then you don't have it anymore. But Metallica still has their songs. I would say, then, that nothing's been stolen.
Assuming that IP rights are natural, rather than artificial, is quite a tricky position. For instance, do they have the right to charge me for playing their songs myself, on a musical instrument? If not, why not? And I was an athlete in college... what about my rights? Lots of pictures taken of me performing my art, why have I no laws to protect my natural rights to these pictures? Bummer.
So anyway, laws broken? Sure. Theft? I say no.
The problem with just randomly violating laws that are "unjust" is that the "justness" of a law is in the eye of the beholder.
Well, there may be an objective answer as to the justice of a given law, but sure, we're pretty subjective in our regard for them. You're right, and that's certainly a point; there's a difficult balance to be struck. I guess my opinion is, if you feel strongly, break the law... just be ready to abide any consequences.
What if I feel it's "unjust" to pay income taxes?
Funny you should mention! I do. Which is why I do my damndest not to pay them, though I don't feel strongly enough to defy the law outright and go to jail. I also work within the system to try and change the laws.
Mind, it's not the money... it really is a matter of principle. I'd rather give twice as much to some random fellow off the street.
If the intent was merely to switch to a new form of government where the local people had a say in the taxes they paid, there was no need to destroy property which belonged to a 3rd party. Sure, said 3rd party was profiting from the existing laws
The 3rd party was behind the creation of those laws. They were using a legislative system, in which the colonies had no voice, to drive colonial tea merchants out of business. This was no more ethical than simply grabbing someone's tea and dumping it in the harbor.
Sure it was always illegal to destroy other people's merchandise. But it was a way to fight back. What, after all, makes a law a law? If I declare my own laws, will you feel obliged to follow them? Probably not. What if I come to your house with my friends and we all have guns? You'll probably follow them, but I doubt you'll feel so strongly about fine points of legality. You might even fight back by doing things which, under normal circumstances, we'd deem wrong. I wouldn't blame you if you did.
Governments and rules of law can usually be changed without doing damage to anything other than the governments and laws themselves.
Generally true. Mrs. Parks, the former example, did no damage. But what if your business goes under in the interim? The colonists got the Stamp Acts repealed, then the Townsend Acts repealed, only to find they were still being punitively taxed. People can only take so much.
Even in exceptional cases it's pretty easy to avoid hurting parties that aren't involved in the enforcement of such laws.
Sure, the East India company wasn't involved in the enforcement of the laws. They were involved in the creation of the laws... and they deserved what they got. And on a more on-topic note, what exactly have Lars and the boys suffered, other than indignation? I haven't noticed any claim that their sales have dropped as a result of MP3 trading.
Oh, incidentally... very pleasant conversing with you. :-)
Probably true. But I don't think ill of those who simply use Napster to get whatever music they want, either; I just wanted to point out that some non-opportunists disagree.
I think it's pretty easy to say that if an artist says, "these are the terms under which I'm performing for you" and you accept those terms, and then violate them, that you have to question what your moral foundation is.
I agree that one should keep one's word. However, I think it's very easy to say that most "pirates" never accepted any terms at all... so this hardly seems germaine.
Rosa Park's actions and similar forms of civil disobedience are extreme measures, and they are always based on the principle of forcing discussion of an issue (typically in a court of law).
Not at all. Mrs. Parks was perfectly within her rights to do as she did simply because it was her seat, and someone else tried to take it unjustly (though lawfully). The action need not have any higher aim. In fact, though I don't know what she was thinking, I doubt she was attempting to force discussion of the issue. I would suppose she was just fed up.
However, if you think there is a problem with a law providing additional rights to "IP owners", that should take the form of refusing to impose those restricitions on IP that the law would say you own and in refusing to have anything to do with IP which comes burdened with those restrictions.
So if I feel my freedom is being unjustly infringed upon, I should refuse to exercise it? Quite the opposite in my opinion. It half makes me want to download Metallica songs on principle... lucky for them I'm lazy! ;-)
And yes, I do think the Boston Tea Party was a criminal act that could and should have been handled differently. It doesn't mean that the cause was unjust, but the means were.
Well, however much we may disagree, I certainly respect your principled devotion to law and order. In my opinion, laws are merely tools meant to achieve ends such as liberty and justice. The moment they become destructive to those ends, they need to be tossed right out the window. Let the legislators catch up in their own time.
There may, of course, be circumstances in which ignoring a law would cause more harm than good; in such a case I would counsel against it. I would not, necessarily, censure one who asserted his rights even so.
I don't know enough about why you disapprove of the Tea Party to argue the point. I believe it was a thing well done, just as the revolution that followed. The first two paragraphs of The Declaration of Independence sum up my reasons pretty nicely.
I, for one, have nothing against people sharing music. I've rarely bothered with Napster, and when I have it's been mostly to get things I've already had on my scratched-up CDs anyway. Maybe I'm a vicarious opportunist. ;-)
However, just because you think a law is stupid doesn't mean you break it (c.f. chaos ;-).
So Rosa Parks should have moved quietly to the back of the bus? Not that we have an analogous situation here, but I strongly disagree with your statement in general. Laws are only as good as the authority they're based upon, and in general the liberty and rights of the people take precedence. Breaking laws may be a moral imperative, or an assertion of one's rights (like the Boston Teaparty).
Happily, though, I tend to agree with the rest of your post. :-)
If a song it the writer's intellectual property, why mustn't I pay him to play it myself, say on my piano? Because it's not practical to enforce such a restriction. Our intellectual property conventions have arisen in accordance with technology and circumstances. Once upon a time, printing recordings of music was an expensive undertaking, and thus centralized and easily controlled. Technology dictated ethics: copyright laws were deemed good, at least in part, because they were enforceable.
Now things are different, and intransigent souls, predictably, are demanding that ethics dictate technology. I cannot imagine them winning. What I can imagine them doing is making random people's lives miserable by sporatically attempting to enforce an unenforcable law.
Say Metallica wins their law suit... what does that change? Is there to be an unending string of reverse-class-action lawsuits by every musical group? At least by those groups who can afford to defend their intellectual property...
Or say Napster gets shut down. What about Gnutella and Freenet, not to mention tomorrow's God-knows-what super-sneaky encrypted system? Can they be stopped, short of shutting down the Internet?
I was quite young when I learned an unpleasant fact about property: if you can't enforce your rights, you haven't got any. Now in most matters we depend upon government to protect our property rights, but the same rule applies... if they can't enforce them, you haven't got any. What we need to be considering are practical plans for a sustainable system, not pie-in-the-sky discussions of what's right.
This can also be applied to senate hearings, legal sessions, phylosophical discussions about the existance of ones self, dogs chasing their tails, and any other event or activity that involves a person (either literally or figuratively) running around in circles.
I feel constrained to point out that this will not work if the philosophers do not, in fact, exist.
Even assuming it (seemingly) works, you run the serious risk that the philosophers will take the action of the flywheel as proof that they do exist, and the conversation will end. Not a very reliable power source.
The only way this would work is if the philosophers remained uncertain of the existence of the flywheel. However, to ensure this would require a third conversationalist, dedicated to keeping a contrary position. Thus you have to have an external power source... still no free energy.
I need hardly point out that as soon as the Senate notices they're powering flywheels, they'll put such a tax on it that it will no longer be cost-effective.
Which leaves dogs and lawyers. Frankly, I don't think you've any right to treat dogs that way.
A similar argument could be made against privacy. If you really ARE law-abiding, why do you need encryption? Why are you afraid of law enforcement officers routinely checking your home? What have you got to hide?
IMHO, your very first question shows a misunderstanding of the roots of American culture. In a free society, one need not justify one's actions, when they do not infringe directly on the rights of others. It is enough that a free man may want a gun.