The morality of it, and blame for it, is neither here nor there
I cannot agree - the nature of the future, and the nature of predictions of it - go directly to issues of morality and "blame".
For instance, the accuracy of your predictions depend upon the moral and political state of the present and actions based upon the present state of societies. If, for instance, China, the US, N Korea, and Taiwan pusue common cause for mutual benefit (as unlikely as that may sound, it would be an example of a differing moral and political condition), then war between them within the next 50 years becomes less likely.
I think that point follows logically, since your predictions depend upon the current political conditions remaining in place sufficiently long to cause a war. Insofar as that happens, your predictions seem accurate, but what good are predictions if we can't use them for something?
The two most obvious uses of such predictions would be a) prepare for that war, b) start changing the political/social/economic/moral conditions that can only lead to war. In case b), morality and (future) blame are obviously "here or there" - case a) is the default under the current system, and that condition is a function of morality and politics - so both pertain in both cases.
That said - I can sympathize with your desire to stop short of a discussion of those factors in this thread, since it could become a very long and complicated thread indeed, with a very nasty noise to signal ratio.
It is amusing me to read the opinions of people who are completely out of their element...
Heheh. Yeah, but responding to them is more fun...
I'm a SIGINT guy in the Army. I've spent a number of years now building/accrediting/auditing intelligence processing systems (READ: secure computers)
... uhm, I'm not fluent in yer.mil code speak, but if I understood you correctly, you just claimed to be in Army Intelligence? US Army?
you silly little Slashdot geeks have NO idea what you're talking about when it comes to DoD red-tape.
So are you bragging or complaining? Not all slashdot geeks are silly or little, you know - some of us are big and morose... with wicked, evil, jaded senses of humour about terms like "army intelligence"...:D
Funny you should mention that - I was just thinking I should have brought up Isreal as one of those well-armed Middle Eastern states in my previous reply to the poster who pointed out that Iraq, Afghanistan, et al tend to be heavily armed but do not defend their own liberty.
There are a lot of variations on the idea of private ownership of firearms - I just happen to favour the one laid out in the US Constitution - although I do remain a bit pissed that each household in Bagdad is allowed one AK-47 and I still haven't been issued a permit for an M-16. WtF?
You do realise that "neo-con" means Joooooooos don't you?
Jews? Well, I do understand that there is a large faction of the Right-wing in the US that supports the Isreali oppression of the Palestinians - and yes, I do consider what Isreal has done to the Palestinians "Oppression" - but I have not made the quantum leap to include all neo-cons in the Zionist set.
My use of "neo-con" refers specificly to the group that has seized control of the US Federal Govt and the US national media starting around the time Newt Gingrich's star went into ascension - I guess that goes back to the late 1970's or early 1980's. This is a group made up primarily of Fundamentalist Christians who have no qualms at all about instituting a Theocracy in the US - so I suppose they do have a bit of soft spot for the so-called "Holy Land", yes. And for Isreal, since the Christians worship the same Jehovah as the Jews in the same monotheistic manner.
But no, if I mean "Jews" I will say "Jews". And if I mean "Zionists" I will say "Zionists". I tend to be rather plain spoken that way.;)
The neo-cons I'm refering to are the ones who have corrupted their US citizenship by serving foreign masters and goals to the detriment of The United States. So I guess Zionists could be considered a sub-set of the neo-cons, but Jews per se are not necesarily Zionists, either, so while there may be an intersection of sets there, you have three distinct groups with distinct characteristics. They are not one and the same.
Thinly disguised as "pro-Isreal in the Middle-East".
Your logic breaks down here (probably why you got modded "Flamebait", but I don't mind - it's all good) - Anti-Semitism is thinly disguised as "pro-Isreal" ? I encourage you to take your time and use the preview feature. What you posted there comes across more as a sort of drunken jeer than as a coherent remark. Less alcohol, more weed, would be my reccomendation. Put the lime in the coconut, eh?
My understanding is that in places like Iraq, Afganistan, and most of the middle east the citizens possess lots of weapons. Yet they have all had their share of dictators and invaders
Good point. It's my understanding that their use of those weapons is not as directed - and hence (arguably) not as effective - as it could be. The mere possession of arms represents only the capability to use force - it does not confer any particular intelligence in the direction and control of that force.
It is my opinion that such is the difference between civilized countries who fight for their own freedom and not-so-civilized countries which depend upon others to fight their battles for them.
If you take Iraq as an example - there were a significant number of people who bore arms in support of the regime of Saddam Hussein - just as there are a significant number of persons in the US who have "Sportsmen for Bush" stickers next to their NRA stickers on their SUV.
One could reasonably argue that the Dubya regime would already have been toppled if the opposition had not been so eager to decry the this and other fundamental principles upon which the nation was founded. The so-called Left is just as guilty of letting the coup happen as the so-called Right is of perpetrating it. As I believe I have said before, the USA PATRIOT ACt is just a formalization of the same behaviour that was being engaged in by the Clinton administration (w.r.t. abrogation of Civil Liberties). Two sides, maybe, but still the same coin: Blood and Oil.
miracles are easy to explain. Something has gone wrong, so the simulation is stopped and restored from backup. A bit of editing is done, and the simulation is restarted.
Bah. Self-modifying code is the basis of all miracles/magicks/intelligent behaviour.
I would say that everyone needs to be accountable, police and judiciary included... Personal responsiblity is a good idea - and even the neo-cons in the US thought so - up until they realized that it applied to them, too...
Many officers who issue firearm licences think it is plain ludicrous to be dishing out firearms certificates when Yardie gangsters are gunning down rivals with Uzi submachine guns.
As has been said many, many times in the ongoing arguments over firearms rights in the US: "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns."
As I understand it, though, the UK does not have a clause in their Constitution requiring Citizens to bear arms against Tyranny in defense of Liberty. Not sure whose job that is in the UK...?
It is far easier these days to get and use a firearm illegally than it is to get and use one legally (in the US). The result? As you describe - a proliferation of gun crimes and criminals with guns, while citizens go begging for defense of their own rights.
There are some notable exceptions to this situation - e.g. counties where residents are *required* to own a firearm (very low crime rates in those areas), but overall the current fascist regime has continues to pursue Hitler's ideal - an disarmed (and largely mis-informed) population. How else is a fascist dictator to get by, after all?
"My idea of gun control is to hit what I shoot at."
Thank-you, chicago, but I can't take any real credit for it. I'm just trying to keep some ideas alive that I heard once when I was a whipper-snapper. Give yerself some credit, too - I can't post anything coherent if nobody says anything worth replying do, which you did. Please - be free to take and use anything I type here that makes sense to you. You seem like a thinking sort of person, which is really all it takes.
You are utterly cool! Hey they have dumped boddie on your yard?!!! did I get that right?
I appreciate the sentiment, man, but I gotta tell you - it is *not* cool to have stuff like that happen to you - it just really sux, actually. But yeah - it really happened. And I think the technical term for me (when those sorts of things were going on) was not so much "cool" as it was "hotter than a 2 dollar pistol on saturday nite" - as in "if you know me then at least 2 federal agencies have your name on at least one list each" and my best freind was a lawyer. And fwiw, no - I am not wanted (to the best of my knowledge) and am not a career criminal - I'm just a guy who doesn't like to be told to shut up.
.Its good to know that there are intellegent people still hangin in there rejecting all this nazi bullshit.
I just wanted to make sure you knew you're not the only one out here... And as the guy on FSTV reminds us: "You are not alone"
WHile I agree with you in substance, the statement above is in-consistent with the concept of Rights presented in the US Constitution. You have the Right - no one can take that away from you. The oppressor can only violate your Right - perhaps interfere with your exercise of your Rights - they cannot remove your Rights from you, since the Rights enumerated in the Constitution are not conferred by any human authority. They derive from the divine, according to the framers, and attempts to deny those Rights appears to have been - at least in their minds - a valid reason to fight - until the oppression ends, or until death if need be.
So if you agree with the Constitution, any entity that tries to interfere with the Rights endowed you by the Creator is just begging to get its ass kicked - regardless of who it is. In the instance you specifically mention - the rich trying to deny the existence of the Rights of the not-so-rich - the Rich are attempting to buy something they cannot own (and typically - once they're outed - trying to buy coverage for their vulnerable asses).
This is one of the differences between Rights and Privilege. Their money doesn't buy them any additional Rights, regardless of what you may have been told, or what they may wish you to believe. And in my experience they go down just like any other sack o' shit if you whack 'em behind the ear...
You need to get a little more paranoid. [...] Today John Kerry supporters do not fear that their next boss will refuse to hire them even though he is a Bush supporter.
Sounds to me like you need to be a lot more paranoid. The situtation you have described here has existed for quite some time - and not just for Kerry supporters.
you would not believe all the Nazis who flame me over my views of the MASS MURDERER CRIMINAL and Proffiteer GWB
Yes I would. I've had servers wrecked, my house broken into, dead bodies dumped in my yard - most recently they trashed my WiFi dish. Don't kid yourself that I don't get the message(s) they're sending. In my experience, though, the neo-cons make poor flamers, and don't have the stomach for a good flame war most of the time. They prefer to get personally and physically violent whenever possible...
One man told me that I have two places I belong... IN the kitchen and in the bed room...He said "whats wrong with this country is women and f***ts got too many rights"
Well, I hesitate to think of the kinds of places a cretin like that might come up with for me to belong ("HELL" being on of most commonly suggested but least practical).
He said "whats wrong with this country is women and f***ts got too many rights" WHat is odd is there are lots of knuckle draggers who would go along with him.
I've found this to be truest in red states in general and in the deep south in particular. In my considered opinion, "what's wrong with this country" is a list that begins with Religion (the starting point of that process that those knuckle-draggers have so confused with Thought and Reason).
Hopefully when his brother gets 'elected' to office when GWB is out we might get a more tolerant dictator. who knows...
I'm thinking Jeb might actually be preferable to what we're probably going to get. The Right has been working for some time to make sure that Hillary Clinton is the "Democratic" (I put that in quotes because I consider that the Democratic Party as it was once known has ceased to exist as a viable political entity in the US - we have only the Republicrats, now, and Hillary is busting ass to remain a memeber in good standing) - anyway - the Right has determined that, since they probably can't win with another hard-right candidate until at least 2020 they will groom Hillary for Mistress of Domination for the New Reich. Note that there is no viable right-wing candidate to date, and that Faux News is already predicting Hillary will be the next president.
Mistress Hillary will continue to suck up to the religious right while pushing policy ever further into the previously uncharted (for the US) totalitarian realms. Note that under Clinton the First (or "Clinton I" - you heard it here first!) most of the items that are formalized under the PATRIOT Act as part of the so-called "War on Terror" were common and sanctioned practice (wire-tapping, for instance), but were never publicly discussed or codified into law - it was all "back door" and "behind the scenes". All the Dubya Regime has done is bring it all out in the open and try to spin it as a Good Thing(tm) required for National Security.
It's shocking. Most of the people who comment here are facing a serious threat to their liberty, and all they can do is make lame jokes.
Look deep into my eyes and ask yourself again if you can believe I'm joking.
--
If you support dishonesty and violence, don't say you are Christian.
Christianity itself is based on nothing but dishonesty and violence. The talk of Peace is just another attempt to co-opt more pagans. The technologies of Death and Destruction have never been so far advanced as they have been under Christian World Domination. Witness the current imbalance of military power between Christian and non-Christian nations. You might claim "God is with us" - I submit that if you replace the word "Faith" with the word "Fissionable Material" much of the New Testament still rings true: "If you had but Fissionable Material the size of a grain of mustard seed you could move yon mountain into the sea." etc...
Christians have ever worshipped military strength and Victory At Any Price [deceit] over an Peace, Love, Understanding, Wisdom, Truth, or any actual Virtue.
See and this is just more propaganda so that Gw and his cronnies can shut down the net...
Correct.
What do they think we are stupid.
You should understand (not being stupid) that what you think doesn't matter in this context. This is a measure designed to enable brute force attacks (under color of Law) on those who are not stupid enough to believe the rationale provided.
"They" are not trying to influence your thought in this, they are incluencing the people (and there are a lot of them) who have always felt that there's something a bit strange about people who use the internet: That vast right-wing, fundie christian population that sucks nazi ass in an attempt to get a leg up on those that they know are smarter and more capable than themselves.
Those people don't want you to have internet access, since if you do, then you are by definition "smarter" and more capable than they are. You have quick, trivially easy access to information that can't get, don't want, and don't want you to have.
That population is the one that continues to tolerate the facist coup that has destroyed America. That is the population that will return us to the stone age to await the return of their Lord - who (they believe) will deal with all those godless, smart-ass internet information junkies once and for all by placing them in the Lake of Eternal Hellfire.
Dubya, Cheney, Rove, et al serve that population, and this so-called "news" story is published to let them know that Dubya is doing what they want. No one cares what you think - you are the liberal intelligentsia (you have a degree, don't you? From one of those liberal universities? You use the Internet, don't you? You're a Terrorist, obviously, and probably a Pervert, as well. What else would you be doing on the Internet?) - who cares if you have an Internet do use? You? Well, the courts and the law enforcement system are in place to deal with such anti-social behaviour. No worries there.
Terrorist have been using technology since the beginning...whats the big hub bub?
I question your premise, here. Neither the Right-wing Chrisitian Terrorists, nor the Right-wing Islamic Terrorists have made particularly good use of of technology thus far. Certainly not as effective as, say, the protests at the RNC in NYC, the indy media people, the FSTV network, etc - for instance...
Fact is Right-wingers apparenly draw on actual Conservatism for only one thing: They are Luddites. I postulate that this is because they generally have lower IQs than the average technophile and are not really capable of using technology effectively, but that would just be my observation.
In fact, I think if you examine the problem you will find that the reason they want to shut down the Internet is because they are losing the battle to control it absolutely. They hate and fear it, therefore they must kill it. And don't kid yourself that they won't; we're most of the way there already.
they are going to prob start trying to shut down email first then entire domains.
Do you have some evidence that this is not already being done? Wake up, man... It's not like the domain shut down would be allowed to tell you [see:USA PATRIOT Act] or the warrents [issued in secret - ibid] would be made public. It's not as though there is appeals proccess for decisions taken by secret tribunals [see again:the PATRIOT Act and PATRIOT Act 2]
They wanted to shutdown the gps system but I think that plan failed cuz we depend on it so much..
No, the GPS system was left up so they could accurately plot the position of your cell phone - your phone is xmitting its position while it's on - and (arguably) probably when it's not.
It is times like this why I shake my head and ask why the rebulican party wants to kill local businesses, seeing that is what they say they stand for.
iirc, Republicans have never been good for small business - sometimes good for the top 1 or 2% of mega-corps, but never for small business.
Besides, the Republicans must follow the natural cycle of all such totalitarian and tyrants: When they have run out of victims/enemies, they must turn on and devour themselves.
Republicans gorge on the blood of their own young. [see also: Iraq and Big Oil]
Of course, Democrats are not better - selling the souls of their young to appease the Republicans [see also: John Kerry and Hillary Clinton]...
No, the black hole eats the antiparticles, and it looks like it's emitting real particles.
Hmmm. So why would the black hole attract only anti-particles? How do we know anti-particles aren't being emitted near the black hole? According to the previous explination, both are formed, and some escape.
If I understand particle/anti-particle correctly, then there's no particular reason the black hole should prefer one over the other - they should have identical "mass", right?
Finally, one of the methods of radiation from black holes is that of spontaneous particle-antiparticle production in the tremendous gravitational gradient outside a black hole. Normally, these particle-antiparticle pairs recombine quickly. However, if one travels nearer a black hole than the other (they're emitted going in opposite directions relative to their center of mass, to combine linear momentum), it can get sucked down the gravity well, and the other escapes.
So there are anti-particles being emitted from black holes?
There's not much you can do about some of these things - but having back doors like this hurts more than it helps, and with enough resources you can get the keys.
I think you've gone to the point of the problems with this idea - it brings to my mind the whole problem with gun bans - if you make it illegal to own a gun, it is only the law-abiding citizens who will be disarmed - the people you're trying to get them away from will still have them.
Legislation which assumes that the criminals will follow the law is just mindless - and this "backdoor" business is a good example. Not only do these sorts of measures compromise the rights of those who are law-abiding, they make the criminals' jobs trivially easy. How much simpler to buy or steal the global wiretap authentication procedure (keys, whatever) than to have the skillz to have to hack it for every device you want to compromise?
Centralization is Bad - antithietical to the whole concept of networking.
And does no one else recall that this same measure - requiring ISPs to provide backdoor governmental access to the networks - was decried by the US when the former USSR mandated it? Something about routing the backbones thru the information ministry, or some such. Read this in a hardcopy newspaper back in the day - wish I could find an online reference to it, since it seems the US "won" the cold war by becoming everything they decried in their "enemy".
Which raises another point: How are the 3-letter guys going to get this into the routers or VoIP devices in, say, Hong Kong?
What I did say is "Even so, some legitimate copies of Windows would be sold in China, if only to the government, businesses, and few people who could afford it." I also said, "All the software companies, music companies, and movie companies would be making a great deal more money if piracy was not an issue."
Yes, that was the modification you made to your position when I challenged your initial, ridiculous assertion. You're figuring you're doing okay by thinking a move ahead - I figure you're probably a 'bot, since no person could possibly still be interested in this incessant meowing about the alleged theft of your imagined software.
Again, you have not addressed my point through-out. And as best I've been able to make out, you don't have a point. You're just jumping up and down hollering ME TOO, ME TOO thinking that somehow validates some stupidity by the government. I would tell you to re-read the earliest posts in this thread, but it's clear at this point that you are incapable of understanding what you're talking about - let alone what anyone else is talking about...
I don't know of a single instance when a software company, record company, or movie company "victimized" me.
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Even so, your response is a bunch of emotional masturbation that doesn't even address my point.
Heh. A "bunch of", eh? Interesting - if flowery [pun intended - get it?] - mixture of metaphors... Well, I'd say you're the one getting emotional, here. I'd also say that mastrubation should be emotional - it's a lot more fun that way... but I digress...
Still, if you examine the content of what I'm saying [my splurge blossoms? RoTFL], you will find (assuming you are actually capable of these arguably more sophisticated constructs possible with English) that I'm not being particularly emotional, although I do make pretty liberal us of some strongly perjorative language. This is by intent, and not indicative any particularly strong feelings on the topic - so again, your assumptions are holing your own argument.
Point out exactly where I said they were interchangable.
Sorry. Not worth my time to page back thru your lame meanderings. Especially since you clearly don't believe strongly enough in the position you're espousing to even remember your own basic points. Look it up yourself. It was somewhere along about your second post in this thread.
The US fucking invented the CD player. I don't give a shit who makes it now. If some sweatshop in China can make one for $10, then fine. There's no profit in it for us to compete with them. That'll also help them claw their way out of poverty due to the failure of the communist economic system they used to live under.
Heh heh. Yeah - here your actual position is getting close to the surface. That's okay - I guessed it early on.
Then maybe they'll be able to legitimately pay for the things they want from us.
Or maybe they'll just continue to choose not to. After all, theft, copyright violation, and patent theft are all integral parts of Capitalism as practiced by the US. Always have been. Check your history. This phenomenon has gone global. And you're just whining because the basic principles of US economic growth have been copped by other people. That's the real IP "theft" you're talking about, and that particulat IP was neither copyrighted nor patented.
People like you have to believe that in order to advance you must keep everyone else down. There is another school of thought that believes - as I do - that living is a cooperative effort - that the way to advance yourself is to advance yourself and all those who help to advance the agenda you believ
No, what we're discussing is China selling copies of software, CDs, and DVDs without paying the creators. I do not accept your adjustment of the argument.
You're making clear here that you don't understand my original comments. I started out talking about the actions of the Bush regime in appointing a cabinet position at the behest of certain very large corporations who are manufacturing losses in their balance sheets in order that they reap certain benefits that accrue to corporations who are able to successfully portray themselves as victims.
You chose to respond with a related but ultimately meaningless assertion concerning the morality of theft. This is a classical tactic for those of your ilk, but I subit that it is you who is depending upon the touchy-feely, emotional argument, not I. That should be fairly clear if you read back thru the discussion. You are making appeals to emotion ("theft", "piracy") and nationalism.
I'm simply pointing out that your high-sounding morality is in fact hollow and morally bankrupt. I don't expect you to agree, since if you did you wouldn't be harping on the same old mindless party line, as you have been doing. Get over yourself.
I don't agree that quality of life would decrease.
This is a clear example of you engaging in precisely the tactic you are whining that I am using on you. I never said the quality of life would decrease. I was just pointing out that your argument is a wast of bits, and extrapolating that product probably is, as well.
Again, you are putting words into my mouth. Go back and read my actual statements.
I can only conclude that your own grasp of the arguments you are using is limited - probably due to limited linguistic and/or logical skills. Read it yourself. I understood it the first 3 times. Clearly you still don't.
You're severely weakening your own position simply by not agreeing that what you said is what you said - clearly you don't recognize the the concepts you're reciting when you see them written out using different words and phrasing.
You still haven't explained how the earnings of these companies aren't "legitimate".
It's pretty obvious to anyone who has been vicitmized by these corps - you clearly don't count yourself in that group - in fact, you apparently don't consider that such a group exists. You futher can't handle your own arguments without mindlessly repeating the same hackneyed PR copy - I don't choose to get into any depth of argument with you when you're already so obviously foundering on the basic precepts. You probably don't even realize that I'm not disagreeing with you in any meaningful way - you're just spoiling for a reason to retype whatever page of talking points you're copying...
If you want to use my work, then pay for it. Otherwise, leave it alone.
This is getting comical... Simmer down, big boy - is someone stealing your software? Hey welcome to LIFE. Some one is always stealing something, and someone is always chasing them for it. Try Open Source - it'll lower your stress levels...
You screw over my group and it does affect me.
If I want to "screw over your group" I can come up with far more effective and efficient ways to go about it than "pirating" your lame-ass proprietary software, believe me. Just be glad I'm such a nice guy...
The fact that you could download it in the first place means that the person you downloaded from liked it.
Simply and obviously fallacious.
you can't sell goods to one market at one price while selling it to a rich market at a higher price. That is called dumping, and it is illegal,
Really? So you're saying that Microsoft selling WinXP in Thailand for ~$49US is illegal? I didn't realize... Of course, I figure M$ is taking a dump every time the do a release - dumping on the consumers, that is...
not to mention repugnant and plain stupid.
Interesting - are you saying this in consideration of the fact that the same companies you purport to be defending engage in these practices ("dumping")? They do, you know...
Why does China get to pay less for a CD than I do here in the US. We frickin made the CD in the first place.
LoL. Yeah. Right. We can't even make the widget to play the CD - I defy you to find one manufactured in the US. And the execs making the decisions in the entertainment industry (what CD's get made)? You want to claim they are American?
You're still wet behind the ears, sonny. Come back when you get a clue.
And here's one for you: The entertainment industry and the software industry are not really as interchangeable as you seem to want to believe. To claim they are is just disingenuous, and detracts hugely from anything you might actually have to say.
Asking payment for my work is not "greedy" and "control-freak-like".
Depends on the work and the amount you ask. Furthermore, we're not discussing asking for payment, we're talking about a situation where the purported "owner" of the work is demanding to be paid, regardless of the relative merit of their work.
That is the way the world operates and you are delusional to think otherwise.
You are clearly someone who believes that The Way It Has Always Been is the Way That It Is, and The Way That It Will Always Be. This is a fundamental difference between us - from my perspective, you are the one who is delusional. You seem to believe that e.g. the products produced by Microsoft have some intrinsic, objective value. I, on the other hand, consider them a liability for any of a number of reasons.
I have come to the conclusion that you are not a reasonable individual, and are simply arguing the points you are arguing in order to have an opporutnity to Be Right, regardless of the broader issues you are glossing over. You're not even really trying to pursuade, choosing instead prosyletize for a stagnant position that you already know to be enforced by Law.
Bottom line is: If everything you are whining for were to suddenly come to be, graven in Law, and fully enforced, the relative quality of Life on Planet Earth would not be improved one iota - the IP realm will continue to decay into recycling of the same old same old, and you will sit back fat and happy sipping your psuedo-beer, watching the tube, and pretending to create software that people want - talking up yourself and your pals. Nothing changed, nothing risked, nothing gained.
So what's your point?
And in case you missed it (for the last couple centuries), even the Law makes a distinction between intellectual property - which can be copied and remain more or less intact - and property. Your grocery store analogy just shows that you don't have any real understanding of your own argument - you're just parrotting.
Apologies for getting this response out of sequence...
You made the previous flawed claim, not me.
I couched it as an interrogative - you proceded to support the assertion, and now you claim you don't... huh?
You do in fact claim that sales are revenue that belongs to the seller - regardless of whether or not the buyer has agreed to pay the terms. That is precisely what you are saying when you claim that the pirated copies are equal in dollar value to the same number of sales in the unit price demanded by the manufacturer.
I give you that the piracy may even be illegal (although it is my understanding that in China it is not, since they do not subscribe to US copyright law), but that doesn't justify your math, here. It's just wrong. You have no reasonable estimate of how many copies of any particular item may be sold in China at $20 - only estimates of how many copies are selling at $1 or $2.
That information should be useful to the morons runing the entertainment industry, and it should transparent to the morons running the regime, but no one wants to talk about it. They're gaining far more trying to force the Chinese to pay their asking price and scrambling for moral high ground using words like "theft" and "piracy" - I find it laughable, myself, but if I were one of the mafiosos whose business it was to make sure that copies of work sold in China paid my company instead of some pirate, one of the first things I'd be looking at would be "how cheaply can I sell this and still turn a profit?" Of course, that is a pragmatic, capitalist POV which discounts any desire to take something that I can't legitimately earn. This is how we can know that the principles involved are simply grifters - gouging the market to line their own pockets, and screw the consumer - why do they have to consider the buyer if they can dictate the price by law? Who will care that the content of the CD isn't worth $10, let alone $20?
I might add that if piracy were not an issue, then companies would not have to charge as much for software, CDs, and DVDs. Because of this problem, all of us who actually follow the law then pay for this problem.
This is a purely specious and fallacious argument. It sounds good, but if you examine the math (as above) and think about it for a moment, it is obvious bunk. The entertainment conglomerates would cut their own throats to get legislation giving them a stronger lock on the market - they've been at this for decades - they know damned well that appearing to take a loss from these "theives" is critically important to their arguments. Hence, they have manufactured one. It does not exist - it's an artifact of the innaccurate assertion that Not Sales == Capital Loss. That is simply not the case, as anyone who has spent much time selling anything can tell you. You didn't make the sale - change your pitch, adjust your price - whatever - but move on, it's not a loss, but it could be a learning experience if you're smart enough.
As for working for a living, I don't know where you get that comment. I am working for a living. And I want to get paid for it. How about you actually pay for the goods you use, just like everyone else in the civilized world.
I wasn't refering to you, personally. I was refering to the corporate machine which expects some fixed price for their product, and when they can't get it they want to use legal means to assure that they get what they want, rather than what the market will bear.
For my own part - I have no use for pirated goods - as I believe I mentioned. In fact, I typically pay a premium to get things from actual producers of products instead of from lawyers who claim to own someone elses work - as in the entertainment industry. You seem to imagine that "copyright holder" == "artist" or something equally fantastical...
....considering evidence that Orkut may be involved with the CIA and NSA.
Well, I guess if the CIA is involved in Orkut, they would naturally want to limit any trade their to their own products - crack cocaine, last I heard. Apparently LSD didn't have a high enough percentage of repeat customers.
So yeah - this is probably a turf war. Those nasty, lazy stoners treading on the turf of the big bad coke nazis.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot agree - the nature of the future, and the nature of predictions of it - go directly to issues of morality and "blame".
For instance, the accuracy of your predictions depend upon the moral and political state of the present and actions based upon the present state of societies. If, for instance, China, the US, N Korea, and Taiwan pusue common cause for mutual benefit (as unlikely as that may sound, it would be an example of a differing moral and political condition), then war between them within the next 50 years becomes less likely.
I think that point follows logically, since your predictions depend upon the current political conditions remaining in place sufficiently long to cause a war. Insofar as that happens, your predictions seem accurate, but what good are predictions if we can't use them for something?
The two most obvious uses of such predictions would be a) prepare for that war, b) start changing the political/social/economic/moral conditions that can only lead to war. In case b), morality and (future) blame are obviously "here or there" - case a) is the default under the current system, and that condition is a function of morality and politics - so both pertain in both cases.
That said - I can sympathize with your desire to stop short of a discussion of those factors in this thread, since it could become a very long and complicated thread indeed, with a very nasty noise to signal ratio.
Heheh. Yeah, but responding to them is more fun...
... uhm, I'm not fluent in yer .mil code speak, but if I understood you correctly, you just claimed to be in Army Intelligence? US Army?
So are you bragging or complaining? Not all slashdot geeks are silly or little, you know - some of us are big and morose... with wicked, evil, jaded senses of humour about terms like "army intelligence"...:D
Funny you should mention that - I was just thinking I should have brought up Isreal as one of those well-armed Middle Eastern states in my previous reply to the poster who pointed out that Iraq, Afghanistan, et al tend to be heavily armed but do not defend their own liberty.
There are a lot of variations on the idea of private ownership of firearms - I just happen to favour the one laid out in the US Constitution - although I do remain a bit pissed that each household in Bagdad is allowed one AK-47 and I still haven't been issued a permit for an M-16. WtF?
Jews? Well, I do understand that there is a large faction of the Right-wing in the US that supports the Isreali oppression of the Palestinians - and yes, I do consider what Isreal has done to the Palestinians "Oppression" - but I have not made the quantum leap to include all neo-cons in the Zionist set.
My use of "neo-con" refers specificly to the group that has seized control of the US Federal Govt and the US national media starting around the time Newt Gingrich's star went into ascension - I guess that goes back to the late 1970's or early 1980's. This is a group made up primarily of Fundamentalist Christians who have no qualms at all about instituting a Theocracy in the US - so I suppose they do have a bit of soft spot for the so-called "Holy Land", yes. And for Isreal, since the Christians worship the same Jehovah as the Jews in the same monotheistic manner.
But no, if I mean "Jews" I will say "Jews". And if I mean "Zionists" I will say "Zionists". I tend to be rather plain spoken that way. ;)
The neo-cons I'm refering to are the ones who have corrupted their US citizenship by serving foreign masters and goals to the detriment of The United States. So I guess Zionists could be considered a sub-set of the neo-cons, but Jews per se are not necesarily Zionists, either, so while there may be an intersection of sets there, you have three distinct groups with distinct characteristics. They are not one and the same.
Your logic breaks down here (probably why you got modded "Flamebait", but I don't mind - it's all good) - Anti-Semitism is thinly disguised as "pro-Isreal" ? I encourage you to take your time and use the preview feature. What you posted there comes across more as a sort of drunken jeer than as a coherent remark. Less alcohol, more weed, would be my reccomendation. Put the lime in the coconut, eh?
Good point. It's my understanding that their use of those weapons is not as directed - and hence (arguably) not as effective - as it could be. The mere possession of arms represents only the capability to use force - it does not confer any particular intelligence in the direction and control of that force.
It is my opinion that such is the difference between civilized countries who fight for their own freedom and not-so-civilized countries which depend upon others to fight their battles for them.
If you take Iraq as an example - there were a significant number of people who bore arms in support of the regime of Saddam Hussein - just as there are a significant number of persons in the US who have "Sportsmen for Bush" stickers next to their NRA stickers on their SUV.
One could reasonably argue that the Dubya regime would already have been toppled if the opposition had not been so eager to decry the this and other fundamental principles upon which the nation was founded. The so-called Left is just as guilty of letting the coup happen as the so-called Right is of perpetrating it. As I believe I have said before, the USA PATRIOT ACt is just a formalization of the same behaviour that was being engaged in by the Clinton administration (w.r.t. abrogation of Civil Liberties). Two sides, maybe, but still the same coin: Blood and Oil.
Bah. Self-modifying code is the basis of all miracles/magicks/intelligent behaviour.
I would say that everyone needs to be accountable, police and judiciary included... Personal responsiblity is a good idea - and even the neo-cons in the US thought so - up until they realized that it applied to them, too...
As has been said many, many times in the ongoing arguments over firearms rights in the US: "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns."
As I understand it, though, the UK does not have a clause in their Constitution requiring Citizens to bear arms against Tyranny in defense of Liberty. Not sure whose job that is in the UK...?
It is far easier these days to get and use a firearm illegally than it is to get and use one legally (in the US). The result? As you describe - a proliferation of gun crimes and criminals with guns, while citizens go begging for defense of their own rights.
There are some notable exceptions to this situation - e.g. counties where residents are *required* to own a firearm (very low crime rates in those areas), but overall the current fascist regime has continues to pursue Hitler's ideal - an disarmed (and largely mis-informed) population. How else is a fascist dictator to get by, after all?
"My idea of gun control is to hit what I shoot at."
Thank-you, chicago, but I can't take any real credit for it. I'm just trying to keep some ideas alive that I heard once when I was a whipper-snapper. Give yerself some credit, too - I can't post anything coherent if nobody says anything worth replying do, which you did. Please - be free to take and use anything I type here that makes sense to you. You seem like a thinking sort of person, which is really all it takes.
I appreciate the sentiment, man, but I gotta tell you - it is *not* cool to have stuff like that happen to you - it just really sux, actually. But yeah - it really happened. And I think the technical term for me (when those sorts of things were going on) was not so much "cool" as it was "hotter than a 2 dollar pistol on saturday nite" - as in "if you know me then at least 2 federal agencies have your name on at least one list each" and my best freind was a lawyer. And fwiw, no - I am not wanted (to the best of my knowledge) and am not a career criminal - I'm just a guy who doesn't like to be told to shut up.
I just wanted to make sure you knew you're not the only one out here ... And as the guy on FSTV reminds us: "You are not alone"
See also: Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, Texas written by Ralph Nader, 10 August 2005 published on DemocracyRising.US - really you are not alone...
WHile I agree with you in substance, the statement above is in-consistent with the concept of Rights presented in the US Constitution. You have the Right - no one can take that away from you. The oppressor can only violate your Right - perhaps interfere with your exercise of your Rights - they cannot remove your Rights from you, since the Rights enumerated in the Constitution are not conferred by any human authority. They derive from the divine, according to the framers, and attempts to deny those Rights appears to have been - at least in their minds - a valid reason to fight - until the oppression ends, or until death if need be.
So if you agree with the Constitution, any entity that tries to interfere with the Rights endowed you by the Creator is just begging to get its ass kicked - regardless of who it is. In the instance you specifically mention - the rich trying to deny the existence of the Rights of the not-so-rich - the Rich are attempting to buy something they cannot own (and typically - once they're outed - trying to buy coverage for their vulnerable asses).
This is one of the differences between Rights and Privilege. Their money doesn't buy them any additional Rights, regardless of what you may have been told, or what they may wish you to believe. And in my experience they go down just like any other sack o' shit if you whack 'em behind the ear...
Sounds to me like you need to be a lot more paranoid. The situtation you have described here has existed for quite some time - and not just for Kerry supporters.
Yes I would. I've had servers wrecked, my house broken into, dead bodies dumped in my yard - most recently they trashed my WiFi dish. Don't kid yourself that I don't get the message(s) they're sending. In my experience, though, the neo-cons make poor flamers, and don't have the stomach for a good flame war most of the time. They prefer to get personally and physically violent whenever possible...
Well, I hesitate to think of the kinds of places a cretin like that might come up with for me to belong ("HELL" being on of most commonly suggested but least practical).
I've found this to be truest in red states in general and in the deep south in particular. In my considered opinion, "what's wrong with this country" is a list that begins with Religion (the starting point of that process that those knuckle-draggers have so confused with Thought and Reason).
I'm thinking Jeb might actually be preferable to what we're probably going to get. The Right has been working for some time to make sure that Hillary Clinton is the "Democratic" (I put that in quotes because I consider that the Democratic Party as it was once known has ceased to exist as a viable political entity in the US - we have only the Republicrats, now, and Hillary is busting ass to remain a memeber in good standing) - anyway - the Right has determined that, since they probably can't win with another hard-right candidate until at least 2020 they will groom Hillary for Mistress of Domination for the New Reich. Note that there is no viable right-wing candidate to date, and that Faux News is already predicting Hillary will be the next president.
Mistress Hillary will continue to suck up to the religious right while pushing policy ever further into the previously uncharted (for the US) totalitarian realms. Note that under Clinton the First (or "Clinton I" - you heard it here first!) most of the items that are formalized under the PATRIOT Act as part of the so-called "War on Terror" were common and sanctioned practice (wire-tapping, for instance), but were never publicly discussed or codified into law - it was all "back door" and "behind the scenes". All the Dubya Regime has done is bring it all out in the open and try to spin it as a Good Thing(tm) required for National Security.
Look deep into my eyes and ask yourself again if you can believe I'm joking.
Christianity itself is based on nothing but dishonesty and violence. The talk of Peace is just another attempt to co-opt more pagans. The technologies of Death and Destruction have never been so far advanced as they have been under Christian World Domination. Witness the current imbalance of military power between Christian and non-Christian nations. You might claim "God is with us" - I submit that if you replace the word "Faith" with the word "Fissionable Material" much of the New Testament still rings true: "If you had but Fissionable Material the size of a grain of mustard seed you could move yon mountain into the sea." etc ...
Christians have ever worshipped military strength and Victory At Any Price [deceit] over an Peace, Love, Understanding, Wisdom, Truth, or any actual Virtue.
And quit posing at being jaded.
Correct.
You should understand (not being stupid) that what you think doesn't matter in this context. This is a measure designed to enable brute force attacks (under color of Law) on those who are not stupid enough to believe the rationale provided.
"They" are not trying to influence your thought in this, they are incluencing the people (and there are a lot of them) who have always felt that there's something a bit strange about people who use the internet: That vast right-wing, fundie christian population that sucks nazi ass in an attempt to get a leg up on those that they know are smarter and more capable than themselves.
Those people don't want you to have internet access, since if you do, then you are by definition "smarter" and more capable than they are. You have quick, trivially easy access to information that can't get, don't want, and don't want you to have.
That population is the one that continues to tolerate the facist coup that has destroyed America. That is the population that will return us to the stone age to await the return of their Lord - who (they believe) will deal with all those godless, smart-ass internet information junkies once and for all by placing them in the Lake of Eternal Hellfire.
Dubya, Cheney, Rove, et al serve that population, and this so-called "news" story is published to let them know that Dubya is doing what they want. No one cares what you think - you are the liberal intelligentsia (you have a degree, don't you? From one of those liberal universities? You use the Internet, don't you? You're a Terrorist, obviously, and probably a Pervert, as well. What else would you be doing on the Internet?) - who cares if you have an Internet do use? You? Well, the courts and the law enforcement system are in place to deal with such anti-social behaviour. No worries there.
I question your premise, here. Neither the Right-wing Chrisitian Terrorists, nor the Right-wing Islamic Terrorists have made particularly good use of of technology thus far. Certainly not as effective as, say, the protests at the RNC in NYC, the indy media people, the FSTV network, etc - for instance...
Fact is Right-wingers apparenly draw on actual Conservatism for only one thing: They are Luddites. I postulate that this is because they generally have lower IQs than the average technophile and are not really capable of using technology effectively, but that would just be my observation.
In fact, I think if you examine the problem you will find that the reason they want to shut down the Internet is because they are losing the battle to control it absolutely. They hate and fear it, therefore they must kill it. And don't kid yourself that they won't; we're most of the way there already.
Do you have some evidence that this is not already being done? Wake up, man... It's not like the domain shut down would be allowed to tell you [see:USA PATRIOT Act] or the warrents [issued in secret - ibid] would be made public. It's not as though there is appeals proccess for decisions taken by secret tribunals [see again:the PATRIOT Act and PATRIOT Act 2]
No, the GPS system was left up so they could accurately plot the position of your cell phone - your phone is xmitting its position while it's on - and (arguably) probably when it's not.
Yeah - it was before Microsoft invested so heavily in it. Surprise surprise.
iirc, Republicans have never been good for small business - sometimes good for the top 1 or 2% of mega-corps, but never for small business.
Besides, the Republicans must follow the natural cycle of all such totalitarian and tyrants: When they have run out of victims/enemies, they must turn on and devour themselves.
Republicans gorge on the blood of their own young. [see also: Iraq and Big Oil]
Of course, Democrats are not better - selling the souls of their young to appease the Republicans [see also: John Kerry and Hillary Clinton] ...
Hmmm. So why would the black hole attract only anti-particles? How do we know anti-particles aren't being emitted near the black hole? According to the previous explination, both are formed, and some escape.
If I understand particle/anti-particle correctly, then there's no particular reason the black hole should prefer one over the other - they should have identical "mass", right?
So there are anti-particles being emitted from black holes?
I think you've gone to the point of the problems with this idea - it brings to my mind the whole problem with gun bans - if you make it illegal to own a gun, it is only the law-abiding citizens who will be disarmed - the people you're trying to get them away from will still have them.
Legislation which assumes that the criminals will follow the law is just mindless - and this "backdoor" business is a good example. Not only do these sorts of measures compromise the rights of those who are law-abiding, they make the criminals' jobs trivially easy. How much simpler to buy or steal the global wiretap authentication procedure (keys, whatever) than to have the skillz to have to hack it for every device you want to compromise?
Centralization is Bad - antithietical to the whole concept of networking.
And does no one else recall that this same measure - requiring ISPs to provide backdoor governmental access to the networks - was decried by the US when the former USSR mandated it? Something about routing the backbones thru the information ministry, or some such. Read this in a hardcopy newspaper back in the day - wish I could find an online reference to it, since it seems the US "won" the cold war by becoming everything they decried in their "enemy".
Which raises another point: How are the 3-letter guys going to get this into the routers or VoIP devices in, say, Hong Kong?
Yes, that was the modification you made to your position when I challenged your initial, ridiculous assertion. You're figuring you're doing okay by thinking a move ahead - I figure you're probably a 'bot, since no person could possibly still be interested in this incessant meowing about the alleged theft of your imagined software.
Again, you have not addressed my point through-out. And as best I've been able to make out, you don't have a point. You're just jumping up and down hollering ME TOO, ME TOO thinking that somehow validates some stupidity by the government. I would tell you to re-read the earliest posts in this thread, but it's clear at this point that you are incapable of understanding what you're talking about - let alone what anyone else is talking about...
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Heh. A "bunch of", eh? Interesting - if flowery [pun intended - get it?] - mixture of metaphors... Well, I'd say you're the one getting emotional, here. I'd also say that mastrubation should be emotional - it's a lot more fun that way ... but I digress ...
Still, if you examine the content of what I'm saying [my splurge blossoms? RoTFL], you will find (assuming you are actually capable of these arguably more sophisticated constructs possible with English) that I'm not being particularly emotional, although I do make pretty liberal us of some strongly perjorative language. This is by intent, and not indicative any particularly strong feelings on the topic - so again, your assumptions are holing your own argument.
Sorry. Not worth my time to page back thru your lame meanderings. Especially since you clearly don't believe strongly enough in the position you're espousing to even remember your own basic points. Look it up yourself. It was somewhere along about your second post in this thread.
Heh heh. Yeah - here your actual position is getting close to the surface. That's okay - I guessed it early on.
Or maybe they'll just continue to choose not to. After all, theft, copyright violation, and patent theft are all integral parts of Capitalism as practiced by the US. Always have been. Check your history. This phenomenon has gone global. And you're just whining because the basic principles of US economic growth have been copped by other people. That's the real IP "theft" you're talking about, and that particulat IP was neither copyrighted nor patented.
People like you have to believe that in order to advance you must keep everyone else down. There is another school of thought that believes - as I do - that living is a cooperative effort - that the way to advance yourself is to advance yourself and all those who help to advance the agenda you believ
You're making clear here that you don't understand my original comments. I started out talking about the actions of the Bush regime in appointing a cabinet position at the behest of certain very large corporations who are manufacturing losses in their balance sheets in order that they reap certain benefits that accrue to corporations who are able to successfully portray themselves as victims.
You chose to respond with a related but ultimately meaningless assertion concerning the morality of theft. This is a classical tactic for those of your ilk, but I subit that it is you who is depending upon the touchy-feely, emotional argument, not I. That should be fairly clear if you read back thru the discussion. You are making appeals to emotion ("theft", "piracy") and nationalism.
I'm simply pointing out that your high-sounding morality is in fact hollow and morally bankrupt. I don't expect you to agree, since if you did you wouldn't be harping on the same old mindless party line, as you have been doing. Get over yourself.
This is a clear example of you engaging in precisely the tactic you are whining that I am using on you. I never said the quality of life would decrease. I was just pointing out that your argument is a wast of bits, and extrapolating that product probably is, as well.
I can only conclude that your own grasp of the arguments you are using is limited - probably due to limited linguistic and/or logical skills. Read it yourself. I understood it the first 3 times. Clearly you still don't.
You're severely weakening your own position simply by not agreeing that what you said is what you said - clearly you don't recognize the the concepts you're reciting when you see them written out using different words and phrasing.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who has been vicitmized by these corps - you clearly don't count yourself in that group - in fact, you apparently don't consider that such a group exists. You futher can't handle your own arguments without mindlessly repeating the same hackneyed PR copy - I don't choose to get into any depth of argument with you when you're already so obviously foundering on the basic precepts. You probably don't even realize that I'm not disagreeing with you in any meaningful way - you're just spoiling for a reason to retype whatever page of talking points you're copying...
This is getting comical... Simmer down, big boy - is someone stealing your software? Hey welcome to LIFE. Some one is always stealing something, and someone is always chasing them for it. Try Open Source - it'll lower your stress levels...
If I want to "screw over your group" I can come up with far more effective and efficient ways to go about it than "pirating" your lame-ass proprietary software, believe me. Just be glad I'm such a nice guy...
Simply and obviously fallacious.
Really? So you're saying that Microsoft selling WinXP in Thailand for ~$49US is illegal? I didn't realize... Of course, I figure M$ is taking a dump every time the do a release - dumping on the consumers, that is...
Interesting - are you saying this in consideration of the fact that the same companies you purport to be defending engage in these practices ("dumping")? They do, you know...
LoL. Yeah. Right. We can't even make the widget to play the CD - I defy you to find one manufactured in the US. And the execs making the decisions in the entertainment industry (what CD's get made)? You want to claim they are American?
You're still wet behind the ears, sonny. Come back when you get a clue.
And here's one for you: The entertainment industry and the software industry are not really as interchangeable as you seem to want to believe. To claim they are is just disingenuous, and detracts hugely from anything you might actually have to say.
Depends on the work and the amount you ask. Furthermore, we're not discussing asking for payment, we're talking about a situation where the purported "owner" of the work is demanding to be paid, regardless of the relative merit of their work.
You are clearly someone who believes that The Way It Has Always Been is the Way That It Is, and The Way That It Will Always Be. This is a fundamental difference between us - from my perspective, you are the one who is delusional. You seem to believe that e.g. the products produced by Microsoft have some intrinsic, objective value. I, on the other hand, consider them a liability for any of a number of reasons.
I have come to the conclusion that you are not a reasonable individual, and are simply arguing the points you are arguing in order to have an opporutnity to Be Right, regardless of the broader issues you are glossing over. You're not even really trying to pursuade, choosing instead prosyletize for a stagnant position that you already know to be enforced by Law.
Bottom line is: If everything you are whining for were to suddenly come to be, graven in Law, and fully enforced, the relative quality of Life on Planet Earth would not be improved one iota - the IP realm will continue to decay into recycling of the same old same old, and you will sit back fat and happy sipping your psuedo-beer, watching the tube, and pretending to create software that people want - talking up yourself and your pals. Nothing changed, nothing risked, nothing gained.
So what's your point?
And in case you missed it (for the last couple centuries), even the Law makes a distinction between intellectual property - which can be copied and remain more or less intact - and property. Your grocery store analogy just shows that you don't have any real understanding of your own argument - you're just parrotting.
Apologies for getting this response out of sequence...
I couched it as an interrogative - you proceded to support the assertion, and now you claim you don't... huh?
You do in fact claim that sales are revenue that belongs to the seller - regardless of whether or not the buyer has agreed to pay the terms. That is precisely what you are saying when you claim that the pirated copies are equal in dollar value to the same number of sales in the unit price demanded by the manufacturer.
I give you that the piracy may even be illegal (although it is my understanding that in China it is not, since they do not subscribe to US copyright law), but that doesn't justify your math, here. It's just wrong. You have no reasonable estimate of how many copies of any particular item may be sold in China at $20 - only estimates of how many copies are selling at $1 or $2.
That information should be useful to the morons runing the entertainment industry, and it should transparent to the morons running the regime, but no one wants to talk about it. They're gaining far more trying to force the Chinese to pay their asking price and scrambling for moral high ground using words like "theft" and "piracy" - I find it laughable, myself, but if I were one of the mafiosos whose business it was to make sure that copies of work sold in China paid my company instead of some pirate, one of the first things I'd be looking at would be "how cheaply can I sell this and still turn a profit?" Of course, that is a pragmatic, capitalist POV which discounts any desire to take something that I can't legitimately earn. This is how we can know that the principles involved are simply grifters - gouging the market to line their own pockets, and screw the consumer - why do they have to consider the buyer if they can dictate the price by law? Who will care that the content of the CD isn't worth $10, let alone $20?
This is a purely specious and fallacious argument. It sounds good, but if you examine the math (as above) and think about it for a moment, it is obvious bunk. The entertainment conglomerates would cut their own throats to get legislation giving them a stronger lock on the market - they've been at this for decades - they know damned well that appearing to take a loss from these "theives" is critically important to their arguments. Hence, they have manufactured one. It does not exist - it's an artifact of the innaccurate assertion that Not Sales == Capital Loss. That is simply not the case, as anyone who has spent much time selling anything can tell you. You didn't make the sale - change your pitch, adjust your price - whatever - but move on, it's not a loss, but it could be a learning experience if you're smart enough.
I wasn't refering to you, personally. I was refering to the corporate machine which expects some fixed price for their product, and when they can't get it they want to use legal means to assure that they get what they want, rather than what the market will bear.
For my own part - I have no use for pirated goods - as I believe I mentioned. In fact, I typically pay a premium to get things from actual producers of products instead of from lawyers who claim to own someone elses work - as in the entertainment industry. You seem to imagine that "copyright holder" == "artist" or something equally fantastical...
Well, I guess if the CIA is involved in Orkut, they would naturally want to limit any trade their to their own products - crack cocaine, last I heard. Apparently LSD didn't have a high enough percentage of repeat customers.
So yeah - this is probably a turf war. Those nasty, lazy stoners treading on the turf of the big bad coke nazis.
The Reagan administration also told us catsup is a vegetable. Now the same idiots think they can convince teenagers to stop having sex.
While that was once true, times have changed. Nowadays people who trust anything the government says are fools.