copyrights are an illegitimate law
on
Piracy Economics
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
When a law is unjust, people not only have a right to defy it, but a duty. Copyrights are unjust. They attack our culture, require the destruction of our privacy to be enforced, attack the free flow of information on the internet, and cause fragmentation to societies knowledge base of literature. The cost and effort to secure and enforce them is growing exponentially as society enters the information age.
The reason why anti-copyright behavior works so well in the free market is simply because copyrights are anti freedom and anti free market. http://davidlita.googlepages.com/copyrights/
Rationalizations? WTF! How about Copyrights are not "rights", theft and stealing is not copying, copyrights are monopolies and not "protection", and intellectual property is not "property". Hell, piracy isn't even piracy.
IMHO, the number one thing that keeps technologies from being widely adopted is copyright and patent. They outright punish people who make things that are compatable and play nice with every one elses products. They also make it so that only the patent holder can dictate how a panteted product in question is used, meaning that anyone else who wants to come up with a similar product must get permission or engineer around it.
.... which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up an...
That was all I needed to read to know that the rest of it was going to be out of touch. The first problem they need to get over is that "intellectual property" is not property, and is anti free market. If you want to give money to OSS developers, then fine, but intellectual "property" has no place in modern societies nor the information age. It's sorta like the guilds of midevil times that claimed things like "the right to make Shoes" was a property right. Sun, are you a guild? Do you want your future to be their future?
The future is information services and not information "properties". The information age is doing to information services what the industrial revolution did to production. My recommendation to Sun is that they had better get with the program or stand the hell out of the way of the freight train that is heading straight toward them. In fact, throwing around phrases like "free intellectual property" might be a bad indication of Suns ability to compete in an undistorted free market. If so, I would be very nervous about placing my bets on Sun Microsystems anytime soon.
IMHO, the US is suffering the birthing pains of the information age. In the information age, profit will center around information services rather than information controls (like copyrights). In order for our society to make that transition, copyrights and all their control infrastructure (DMCA) must die.
Another kind of information is money. Money is information about relative value and cost over time. But our fiat monitary system makes it's profit and controls people by constantly lying to them about the value of their money and taking the "cream" off the top. $5 in 1920 will buy what $100 will buy today. In order for our society to enter into the information age, the fiat monitary system must die. US productivity has increased at 3-5% per year for several years. In a normal society that would translate to "having to work half as much as you did 15 years ago to keep the same standard of living" or "or having twice as much pay (adjusted for inflation) (and then some because of education and experience)". The income tax system (and all the other financial controls being imposed on people also must die. )
I disagree with you that the US is doomed to pizza delivery though. Free markets are not about markets. but about freedom and people taking advantage of that freedom to create wealth and opportunity that never existed before. The political and economic freedom rankings in the US still blow China off the map(for now). We are more than capable of competing with them head on if we stop screwing up our money and stop trying to control people by controling the information ithey use.
First off, the fact that FDA regulations drive costs out of controll is a very compelling argument that the FDA is crap and doesn't work, but not a compelling argument in favor of patent monopolies.
Second, patents add a certain risk to openly sharing research. It means that companies and indnvidual inventors must often go it alone and has the effect of driving R&D costs thru the roof and dapening usefullness. Now they sceam "wahhh we want patnets because R&D costs co much", what a crock. The US has higher drug prices precicely because this system makes R&D so costly.
Thrid off, the motivation to make and manufacture new cures is the same is the motivation to make anything better. Competition in the market place. When IBM and Intel lost their big lawsuits over the PC interface, did the industry stagnate and come to a halt because there was no motivation to produce things that fit that interface. NO, the industry boomed, it exploded, it went nuclear, more innovation was created than in all of the history of human kind.
Fourth, it's well known that the pharmacuticals spend most of their profits on marketing and not R&D.
The bottom line is that patents are a phony property, sorta like slavery, but even worse. Like how AIDS generics were held back from 15 million Africans dying of AIDS, like how air-bags and anti-lock brakes were held back in cars for 20 years while over a million people died in auto accidents. The "it's an incentive", "it's a property", "the great prosperity of America rests on it", we've herd all those arguments before. They are crap. There is no rational justification for this kind of behavior.
let's say I am working on my own project in a garage to try and find cure for some weird disease, let's say I am trying to remove the HIV from a human. Let's say I succeed.
I'm glad you mentioned that. Patents increase the risk of sharing research making it so that most inventors or companies must go it alone driving R&D costs thru the roof while dampening usefullness. And then they wine... "we need patents because R&D costs so much!" - what a crock.
I do not see a single reason to allow anyone to copy my work without my permission and without being paid for it.
I do, so why don't you do what you want with your copy and I'll do what I want with mine.
[in sert description of how he intends to preserve a perfect controll over the knowledge of his work here]
The thing is that there are a lot of smart people in the world, and most inventions are incramental and build off of prior ones and prior knowledge.
The notion that we can put them all on hold for 20+ years for the sake of your single desired peronal monopoly is a crock. OH, btw, those bands who withheld making music because others could copy it on the internet against their will. They are dead while the ones who didn't care are flourishing. So please GTF out of the way, we can make due without you. Really, we can.
You see. A lot of stores would like to charge each and every customer a different price. Those prices being the set that maximizes revenues from that particular customer. But in practice that is very difficult. Changing differnet prices on the same item for every sale would be cumbersome, and customers who see the person in front of them get a better deal than they do might get pissed. The stores response to this is customer "value" cards.
In an idea scenario, they set all prices on the high end - but then give the customers "value" cards that offer varing discounts and rewards so as to optimize sales and profit. For example, if they know you won't pay more than $2 for a soda, then your soda will always be $2. For example, they might do something like use buying habits track your period. If you buy tampons on the day of your period - you will get reamed hard because they know you need them right now, but if you buy them in the off cycle then you get a good deal. If you buy just milk in the early morning, you will get reamed hard because they know you might need it for breakfast right then, but if you buy it later on you will get a competitive discount. If you buy a phone today, but the last phone you bought was two years ago and had a two year average lifespan, then you get reamed hard because they know you need a replacement right now. Otherwise you get a deal. If you buy condoms on friday night, you get a nailed hard, but if you buy them on wednesday morning you get a great deal.
"Still look on the bright side - if nobody has them, rich or poor, black or white - at least everyone's equal"
This is property rights talk, it is only true because not everybody can control the same resource at the same time. With invention they can. If a researcher looses one patnet monopoly, but gaines access to 10 million others - then that will be a net gain for R&D no matter how you look at it. Research will not dry up without patents, but rather will boom as there is more cheap access to invention, and as the market would shift around invention services instead of invention controls, and as companies would shift to first-mover advantage rather than patent advantage.
Did the internet dry up because nobody could stop others from copying information they created? Did Linux dry up because anyone could copy freely? Did the x86 dry up when IBM and intel lost their big patent lawsuits in the courts? No, they all boomed beyond belief.
Well, then you obviously haven't herd the pro-patent side.
Also, what are you saying - that because of all the other evil things in the world, it's OK to beat them down even more.
"We would NOT be better off if it became unprofitable to develop new drugs in the first place."
Nonsense, as I said patents kill collaboration and drive R&D costs thru the roof. Historically most drug innovation and R&D has happened in western countries without patents. India today, Italy yesterday, Germany before that, and ironically even the US (for European companies) which for a long time refused to respect European patents.
Killing patents would increase innovation, not decrease it. As an inventor in a world without patents - I may loose monopoly over one invention - yet gain access to ten million others. It would spawn an immediate invention services industry. As I said, inventors are good at inventing, lawyers, mega corps, and governments are good at controlling things.
Also, what you're saying doesn't pan out in the real world. When IBM and Intel lost their patent lawsuits about the x86 compatible PC - did invention and innovation dry up as people refused to invent and capitalize businesses? No, just the opposite happened, the x86 boomed and a trillion dollar industry popped up around it.
Patents kill collaboration in a way that drives up the cost of R&D, get rid of them and things become easier to invent, hot harder. India recently has had more R&D than the US - yet their patents are far weaker. Historically Germany had more when they had no patents, and Italy had more when they had none. Ironically, even the US had more when we weren't respecting European patents - all the companies came here to do their R&D uninhibited. Also, most technology is incremental and progressive, saying that it would never be invented anyhow is false.
He's right, it never does, it's like slave reform. Any "solution" that puts off complete elimination only openes itself up to the next level of abuse. Patents are arguably more evil than slavery. Like 15 million impovrished Africans being sued in the world court not to purchase generic AIDS drugs from India, like safety devices in cars held back 20 years while over a million people died in auto accidents. Like 20 million elderly being subjected to overpriced drugs that have unknown chemichal distortions only because safer classes aren't patentable. It's amazing the number of people we are willing to torture and kill in the name of fradulent property rights. People say "well, we would never be so barbaric as to allow fradulent use of the word 'property' to justify the torture and murder of innocent people like they did in 1850, we would never be like those idiots who just wanted the slave states to get along with the free states". NOT!
Last time they did "patent reform" they created a patent court. But being a patent court means they had more incentive than ever to expand their influence by expanding the scope, role, and influence of patents. It totally blew up in our faces. This time it will probably mean that all the small company innovators who can't hire a staff of lawyers to file first are going to get screwed. Yeah, they may have prior art, but yeah they will need to hire an army of lawyers to defned it.
The bottom line is that innovators and scientists are good at inventing things. Lwayers and governments and conglomerates are good at controling things. Think about it. Patnets punish people who share and collaberate, and now with first file that will be more true than ever, who will share R&D when that very sharing could lock them out and screw them. If people think R&D costs are high now, just wait, and watch.... then they will say "wahhh, we need more patnets because R&D costs more than ever". The phrase, "the bad tree bears bad fruit has never been so true as with patnets."
What will hhappen to the economy for engineering when we can just download a pirated description of a machine and 'print' it out?
The biggest economic boom in the history of human kind.
After the information age society is going to move into the replication age and manufacturing is going to shift from the factory back into the home. But the factory infrastructure won't go away - instead it will retool and go big. Mile long ships, mile high buildings, air ships as big as cities that have cities in them are just some of the possibilities. Society will become an invention service society.
One other thing. When invention commoditizes, the patent system will die - Just like the information age forced the commoditisation of information and the death of copyrights, and the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of labor and the violent death of the plantation system. That is why it is so important THAT WE MUST KILL PATENTS!!!!! Think about it, you can't control information with physical force, but with invention you can. That is why the death of copyrights will involve lots of lawsuits but little physical violence. That won't be the case when killing the patent system. WE MUST KILL PATENTS NOW BECAUSE IF WE DONT THERE WILL BE AWFULL VIOLENCE.
The whole goal of filing tons of patents you won't develop is to wait for someone else to do the work for you.
In truth, the stealth patent strategy is only used by a tiny minority of vultures. The vast magority of companies (eg. IBM,HP) use them to get into cross-licence agreements, or use them as ammunition to defend against lawsuits. In the industry, patents are almost never used to "protect" invenstions, but only to protect against lawsuits. So in that way, no patent goes unused.
... for trying to make copyrights work. After all, we never take the position that copyrighrs are shit and that we have a right to do whatever we can do to defy them, No, instead we take the position that they are some type of kind benevolent tyrrany that can be overcome if we just all try to get along. Well, bullshit. Copyrights are to the information age what slavery was to the industrial revolution. The people who want everyone to "just get along" are evil in ways that we can't even imagine.
... should be that the US has a 200-800 year supply of coal, and if OPEC or anyone else in the world says "screw the US", the US can just turn around and say "screw you". Coal can be processed to make fuel too. We shouldn't sell our independence and liberty down the river for the sake of some enviromental cause. Even if we used all the coal, only the tiniest percential of mountains would even have noticable changes.
The information age is doing for information services exactly what the industrial revolution did for production.
However in this analogy Microsoft is like the plantation masters who thought that the industrial revolution was all about leveraging inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit.
Back then they relied on a false property construct, slavery, to impose this vision while stupidly missing out on the entire industrial revolution.
Today Microsoft relies on a false property construct, copyrights (and DRM), to impose their vision while stupidly missing out on the entire information age.
Hey Microsoft !
Why don't you minimize the damage now by killing your license system, killing DRM, back off the patent BS, go open source, become truely sincere with Linux, and use the power of your brand name to cary on from there. The adjustment will probably hurt like hell, but it will be the only thing that saves your butt in the long run.
Well, lets put it this way. Are Al Gore and the UN an orginisation of environmentalists and scientists persuing truth, knowledge, and understanding or are they politicians who don't give a shit about anything else other than power.
It costs 40K per year to hold someone in jail. They couldn't afford it even if they wanted to. Perhaps they make an example out of a handful of people every once in a while, but that's about the most they can do.
They take away up to half your life earnings. You are far more likely to be ruined by giving into them than by defiance. "those who ran and hid from the guards risked getting shot, but those who went with them were genocided", Germany. 1943
When someone asks why does my daughter has a car seat, don't say "because it's the Law". Fuck that! It's because of her safety. Well the same is true of the IRS and income tax. Don't say "because of some legal technicality". Fuck that! They have no right to tax me like that even if the law was a sloid as gold.
What this reminds me of is those poor workers who suffered and strained so hard to make communisim a utopia, when what they really needed to be doing is doing everything they can to defy the system tooth and nail. Well, the same is true here. Instead of going thru intricate legal arguments and legal technicalities as to why the US income tax system is illegal, we should just admit that they have that power, that it is an unjust power, and act thru every legal and illegal means possible to defy and evade taxes.
... we don't need regulations to enforce it. The companies who refuse to get it will eventually be forced to change, suffer from disruptive technology, or be eliminated from the gene pool.
Slashdot Mirror
oops, try taking the trailing / off the end of the url. sorry
http://davidlita.googlepages.com/copyrights
When a law is unjust, people not only have a right to defy it, but a duty. Copyrights are unjust. They attack our culture, require the destruction of our privacy to be enforced, attack the free flow of information on the internet, and cause fragmentation to societies knowledge base of literature. The cost and effort to secure and enforce them is growing exponentially as society enters the information age.
The reason why anti-copyright behavior works so well in the free market is simply because copyrights are anti freedom and anti free market. http://davidlita.googlepages.com/copyrights/
Rationalizations? WTF! How about Copyrights are not "rights", theft and stealing is not copying, copyrights are monopolies and not "protection", and intellectual property is not "property". Hell, piracy isn't even piracy.
IMHO, the number one thing that keeps technologies from being widely adopted is copyright and patent. They outright punish people who make things that are compatable and play nice with every one elses products. They also make it so that only the patent holder can dictate how a panteted product in question is used, meaning that anyone else who wants to come up with a similar product must get permission or engineer around it.
That was all I needed to read to know that the rest of it was going to be out of touch. The first problem they need to get over is that "intellectual property" is not property, and is anti free market. If you want to give money to OSS developers, then fine, but intellectual "property" has no place in modern societies nor the information age. It's sorta like the guilds of midevil times that claimed things like "the right to make Shoes" was a property right. Sun, are you a guild? Do you want your future to be their future?
The future is information services and not information "properties". The information age is doing to information services what the industrial revolution did to production. My recommendation to Sun is that they had better get with the program or stand the hell out of the way of the freight train that is heading straight toward them. In fact, throwing around phrases like "free intellectual property" might be a bad indication of Suns ability to compete in an undistorted free market. If so, I would be very nervous about placing my bets on Sun Microsystems anytime soon.
IMHO, the US is suffering the birthing pains of the information age. In the information age, profit will center around information services rather than information controls (like copyrights). In order for our society to make that transition, copyrights and all their control infrastructure (DMCA) must die.
Another kind of information is money. Money is information about relative value and cost over time. But our fiat monitary system makes it's profit and controls people by constantly lying to them about the value of their money and taking the "cream" off the top. $5 in 1920 will buy what $100 will buy today. In order for our society to enter into the information age, the fiat monitary system must die. US productivity has increased at 3-5% per year for several years. In a normal society that would translate to "having to work half as much as you did 15 years ago to keep the same standard of living" or "or having twice as much pay (adjusted for inflation) (and then some because of education and experience)". The income tax system (and all the other financial controls being imposed on people also must die. )
I disagree with you that the US is doomed to pizza delivery though. Free markets are not about markets. but about freedom and people taking advantage of that freedom to create wealth and opportunity that never existed before. The political and economic freedom rankings in the US still blow China off the map(for now). We are more than capable of competing with them head on if we stop screwing up our money and stop trying to control people by controling the information ithey use.
The bottom line is that patents are a phony property, sorta like slavery, but even worse. Like how AIDS generics were held back from 15 million Africans dying of AIDS, like how air-bags and anti-lock brakes were held back in cars for 20 years while over a million people died in auto accidents. The "it's an incentive", "it's a property", "the great prosperity of America rests on it", we've herd all those arguments before. They are crap. There is no rational justification for this kind of behavior.
I'm glad you mentioned that. Patents increase the risk of sharing research making it so that most inventors or companies must go it alone driving R&D costs thru the roof while dampening usefullness. And then they wine ... "we need patents because R&D costs so much!" - what a crock.
I do, so why don't you do what you want with your copy and I'll do what I want with mine.
The thing is that there are a lot of smart people in the world, and most inventions are incramental and build off of prior ones and prior knowledge.
The notion that we can put them all on hold for 20+ years for the sake of your single desired peronal monopoly is a crock. OH, btw, those bands who withheld making music because others could copy it on the internet against their will. They are dead while the ones who didn't care are flourishing. So please GTF out of the way, we can make due without you. Really, we can.
title says it all.
You see. A lot of stores would like to charge each and every customer a different price. Those prices being the set that maximizes revenues from that particular customer. But in practice that is very difficult. Changing differnet prices on the same item for every sale would be cumbersome, and customers who see the person in front of them get a better deal than they do might get pissed. The stores response to this is customer "value" cards.
In an idea scenario, they set all prices on the high end - but then give the customers "value" cards that offer varing discounts and rewards so as to optimize sales and profit. For example, if they know you won't pay more than $2 for a soda, then your soda will always be $2. For example, they might do something like use buying habits track your period. If you buy tampons on the day of your period - you will get reamed hard because they know you need them right now, but if you buy them in the off cycle then you get a good deal. If you buy just milk in the early morning, you will get reamed hard because they know you might need it for breakfast right then, but if you buy it later on you will get a competitive discount. If you buy a phone today, but the last phone you bought was two years ago and had a two year average lifespan, then you get reamed hard because they know you need a replacement right now. Otherwise you get a deal. If you buy condoms on friday night, you get a nailed hard, but if you buy them on wednesday morning you get a great deal.
This is property rights talk, it is only true because not everybody can control the same resource at the same time. With invention they can. If a researcher looses one patnet monopoly, but gaines access to 10 million others - then that will be a net gain for R&D no matter how you look at it. Research will not dry up without patents, but rather will boom as there is more cheap access to invention, and as the market would shift around invention services instead of invention controls, and as companies would shift to first-mover advantage rather than patent advantage.
Did the internet dry up because nobody could stop others from copying information they created? Did Linux dry up because anyone could copy freely? Did the x86 dry up when IBM and intel lost their big patent lawsuits in the courts? No, they all boomed beyond belief.
"Hyperbole doesn't help your case"
Well, then you obviously haven't herd the pro-patent side.
Also, what are you saying - that because of all the other evil things in the world, it's OK to beat them down even more.
"We would NOT be better off if it became unprofitable to develop new drugs in the first place."
Nonsense, as I said patents kill collaboration and drive R&D costs thru the roof. Historically most drug innovation and R&D has happened in western countries without patents. India today, Italy yesterday, Germany before that, and ironically even the US (for European companies) which for a long time refused to respect European patents.
Killing patents would increase innovation, not decrease it. As an inventor in a world without patents - I may loose monopoly over one invention - yet gain access to ten million others. It would spawn an immediate invention services industry. As I said, inventors are good at inventing, lawyers, mega corps, and governments are good at controlling things.
Also, what you're saying doesn't pan out in the real world. When IBM and Intel lost their patent lawsuits about the x86 compatible PC - did invention and innovation dry up as people refused to invent and capitalize businesses? No, just the opposite happened, the x86 boomed and a trillion dollar industry popped up around it.
Patents kill collaboration in a way that drives up the cost of R&D, get rid of them and things become easier to invent, hot harder. India recently has had more R&D than the US - yet their patents are far weaker. Historically Germany had more when they had no patents, and Italy had more when they had none. Ironically, even the US had more when we weren't respecting European patents - all the companies came here to do their R&D uninhibited. Also, most technology is incremental and progressive, saying that it would never be invented anyhow is false.
He's right, it never does, it's like slave reform. Any "solution" that puts off complete elimination only openes itself up to the next level of abuse. Patents are arguably more evil than slavery. Like 15 million impovrished Africans being sued in the world court not to purchase generic AIDS drugs from India, like safety devices in cars held back 20 years while over a million people died in auto accidents. Like 20 million elderly being subjected to overpriced drugs that have unknown chemichal distortions only because safer classes aren't patentable. It's amazing the number of people we are willing to torture and kill in the name of fradulent property rights. People say "well, we would never be so barbaric as to allow fradulent use of the word 'property' to justify the torture and murder of innocent people like they did in 1850, we would never be like those idiots who just wanted the slave states to get along with the free states". NOT!
Last time they did "patent reform" they created a patent court. But being a patent court means they had more incentive than ever to expand their influence by expanding the scope, role, and influence of patents. It totally blew up in our faces. This time it will probably mean that all the small company innovators who can't hire a staff of lawyers to file first are going to get screwed. Yeah, they may have prior art, but yeah they will need to hire an army of lawyers to defned it.
The bottom line is that innovators and scientists are good at inventing things. Lwayers and governments and conglomerates are good at controling things. Think about it. Patnets punish people who share and collaberate, and now with first file that will be more true than ever, who will share R&D when that very sharing could lock them out and screw them. If people think R&D costs are high now, just wait, and watch .... then they will say "wahhh, we need more patnets because R&D costs more than ever". The phrase, "the bad tree bears bad fruit has never been so true as with patnets."
A step in the right direction would be to kill copyright monopolies entirely.
The biggest economic boom in the history of human kind.
After the information age society is going to move into the replication age and manufacturing is going to shift from the factory back into the home. But the factory infrastructure won't go away - instead it will retool and go big. Mile long ships, mile high buildings, air ships as big as cities that have cities in them are just some of the possibilities. Society will become an invention service society.
One other thing. When invention commoditizes, the patent system will die - Just like the information age forced the commoditisation of information and the death of copyrights, and the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of labor and the violent death of the plantation system. That is why it is so important THAT WE MUST KILL PATENTS!!!!! Think about it, you can't control information with physical force, but with invention you can. That is why the death of copyrights will involve lots of lawsuits but little physical violence. That won't be the case when killing the patent system. WE MUST KILL PATENTS NOW BECAUSE IF WE DONT THERE WILL BE AWFULL VIOLENCE.
I was thinking, get this on a p2p network, decentralize it, create a reputation managment (like ebay), and this thing could really explode.
In truth, the stealth patent strategy is only used by a tiny minority of vultures. The vast magority of companies (eg. IBM,HP) use them to get into cross-licence agreements, or use them as ammunition to defend against lawsuits. In the industry, patents are almost never used to "protect" invenstions, but only to protect against lawsuits. So in that way, no patent goes unused.
... for trying to make copyrights work. After all, we never take the position that copyrighrs are shit and that we have a right to do whatever we can do to defy them, No, instead we take the position that they are some type of kind benevolent tyrrany that can be overcome if we just all try to get along. Well, bullshit. Copyrights are to the information age what slavery was to the industrial revolution. The people who want everyone to "just get along" are evil in ways that we can't even imagine.
... should be that the US has a 200-800 year supply of coal, and if OPEC or anyone else in the world says "screw the US", the US can just turn around and say "screw you". Coal can be processed to make fuel too. We shouldn't sell our independence and liberty down the river for the sake of some enviromental cause. Even if we used all the coal, only the tiniest percential of mountains would even have noticable changes.
The information age is doing for information services exactly what the industrial revolution did for production.
However in this analogy Microsoft is like the plantation masters who thought that the industrial revolution was all about leveraging inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit.
Back then they relied on a false property construct, slavery, to impose this vision while stupidly missing out on the entire industrial revolution.
Today Microsoft relies on a false property construct, copyrights (and DRM), to impose their vision while stupidly missing out on the entire information age.
Hey Microsoft !
Why don't you minimize the damage now by killing your license system, killing DRM, back off the patent BS, go open source, become truely sincere with Linux, and use the power of your brand name to cary on from there. The adjustment will probably hurt like hell, but it will be the only thing that saves your butt in the long run.
Well, lets put it this way. Are Al Gore and the UN an orginisation of environmentalists and scientists persuing truth, knowledge, and understanding or are they politicians who don't give a shit about anything else other than power.
It costs 40K per year to hold someone in jail. They couldn't afford it even if they wanted to. Perhaps they make an example out of a handful of people every once in a while, but that's about the most they can do.
They take away up to half your life earnings. You are far more likely to be ruined by giving into them than by defiance. "those who ran and hid from the guards risked getting shot, but those who went with them were genocided", Germany. 1943
When someone asks why does my daughter has a car seat, don't say "because it's the Law". Fuck that! It's because of her safety. Well the same is true of the IRS and income tax. Don't say "because of some legal technicality". Fuck that! They have no right to tax me like that even if the law was a sloid as gold.
What this reminds me of is those poor workers who suffered and strained so hard to make communisim a utopia, when what they really needed to be doing is doing everything they can to defy the system tooth and nail. Well, the same is true here. Instead of going thru intricate legal arguments and legal technicalities as to why the US income tax system is illegal, we should just admit that they have that power, that it is an unjust power, and act thru every legal and illegal means possible to defy and evade taxes.
... we don't need regulations to enforce it. The companies who refuse to get it will eventually be forced to change, suffer from disruptive technology, or be eliminated from the gene pool.