The trush is that nuclear power is already the safest and cleanest power source in the USA - even when you include taking care of radioactive waste.
The truth is, as has been pointed out here several times, that coal powered plants in the USA (trace radiation) are more radioactive then nuclear plants.
The truth is, that 3 mile island was the ultimate example of why nuclear power in the US is so safe. Even in worse case scenarios, and with 20 simeltanious managment and design failures - nothing harmfull happened to anybody.
The truth is, the movement against nuclear power has far more to do with OPEC financing than concern for safety, liabilities, or the environment.
The truth is that 3 mile island wasn't a nuclear disaster by any measure, it was a political disaster.
The truth is that dealing with nuclear waste isn't a problem either, it's also a political problem.
The sad truth is that we could all have had clean, cheap, safe, and environmentally friendly power a long time ago. But big huge nuclear powerplants are just simply too tempting of a target..... for politicians and regulation that is.
Unfortunately, the popular mob is all to often like a herd buffalos, the stampeed that saves one from a lion kills thousands as they head toward the cliff.
I understand what you're saying, but I disagree for example....
At the end of WWII they didn't want to end price controlls because too many people who benefited from them thought the economic shock would be too harmfull. But then all of a sudden the supreme court rulled that they were unconstitutional and an economic boom happened. The same happened at the end of prohibition (though not economic) as soon as it ended, the mob violence ended almost immediately - inspite of the fact that the new economic realities made it harder for them then ever before. Another example, is the former Soviet Union, where we tried to prop up a failed regime with economic aid in the name of maintaining stability - but it ended up making things less stable.
But my worst fear, is things being like the US 1850's plantation system, where it had to fall - but nobody would let it fall untill it was way to late. Forgetting about appeasement and forcing the issue early, would have caused alot of anger and bitterness, but avoided the "bloodiest" war in history.
Today, forcing the issue with copyrights will certainly piss off alot of people, but big brother isn't going to be able to muster up enough strength to shut down peoples free speech rights. In the information age of big databases, big money, and no technological distinction between free speech content and copyright content - it will almost predestine abusive behavior.
Without copyright, I will bet pretty soon, there won't be much of a career as author, artist, nor painter.
Actually, I'm all 4, I've heard that before, and I'm sick and tired of it because it wouldn't matter if I was none, but I'm all and because of that I've seen the crap related to copyrights first hand. (Oh, and PS, the entire renassance happened without copyrights, so where are you comming from)
You know, when people say things like this to me, what it means to me, is that they can't think logically about copyrights - so instead they try probing into my personal life to see if they can find some kind of insincere motive to justify blowing me off and ignoring the facts.
Thanks, but no thanks.
As for me, this is exactly why I dislike people such as Larry Lessig who persue a compromise approach to copyrights. All that ever happens is that they end up getting used and exploited to appease the masses with wishfull thinking, while the MPAA and the RIAA make their next move to screw everyone over.
If anything, it is in our best interest to force the death of copyrights once and for all. It amazes me to see how many people fail to see that the 'emperor is naked' - they actually think that copyrights are just like other free market property rights - that restricting what people can copy actually creates some kind of benefit. Well, bullshit. All people like Lessig do is just get in the way, like those who tried to delay the fall of the USSR, like those who wanted the free states to get along with the slave states. They are useless.
Look for the most part if you don't want to have 'American values' under American rule, then you're free not to more than in any other place.
If you don't want to execrise your freedom of religion, then fine don't. If you don't want to exercise your right to bear arms, then fine dont either. If you don't want to exercise you're freedom of the press, fine then don't do that either. Hell you don't even half to vote. What those who oppose it want - isn't to escape American 'imposed' values, but to impose their values on others - well sorry, noones trying to get a thank you out of those people anyhow.
If you 'owe' that much to your father, then you owe twice as much to you maker who gives you a free will, a mind, and a conscience of your own. Just because people don't understand why things can get so shitty at times does not imply that they are meaningless - the more real the problem, the more real the meaning. It is the very nature of people to take concern about other peoples best interests, that's what people are designed to do, get pissed at them if you want, but they are just being themselves by taking concern about other peoples freedoms. If it's in both parties best interests, why wouldn't we want to do that.
I hate to say this, but without Microsoft, the world would pretty much be the same. This is because, the problem isn't Microsoft.
Microsoft is simply our beliefs, and societies beliefs in copyrights taken to it's logical conclusion. When you believe that people have some kind of inherent moral right to restrict what other people copy - then problems like Microsoft are ineviatable and were practically predestined to happen.
In addition, if we change our beliefs, and societies poor beliefs in things like copyrights then the Microsoft problem will take care of itself and self distruct. Hopefully with the success of Linux and the GPL, it's already on its way.
The REAL Problem With Larry
on
Free Culture
·
· Score: 1
The real problem with Larry is that he does NOT want to get rid of copyrights. Sadly, he more than anyone else should understand the harm they cause, but instead of pushing to get rid of them - he is acting like a sellout - making like it is more important to get along with the 'copyright lords' then it is to have freedom in the information age.
Of course, the 'copyright lords' know this and are all to happy to expolit him to persue their own agenda. I hate to say this, but the more Larry waffles about, the more he desperately tries to get along - the more he just sets himself up to be strung along like a doggie on a leash and for the rest of us to get screwed.
What I mean, is that by avoiding a direct fight against copyrights today, and avoiding blatent civil disobedience, all he is doing is making the pain we're going to suffer tommorow worse. All that's going to happen, is that the 'copyright lords' will get more power and more abusive - and when it does come down to the ineviatable fight, more people will suffer.
First, the right to protect your rights is a right. All to often law enforcement has this attitude that the common people "shouldn't worry their prety little heads off" and that only they should have any power or authority, only they should defend rights by force, and only they will have good solutions. Bull, when they act like this - they really need to be put in their place.
Second, I would be hard pressed to believe that copying a file violates anybody's rights. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the fact is that the Internet has got to be one of the least coercive social forums ever created since the birth of human kind. Now that all these vigilantes are choosing to hang out there smells alot more like problemed people who are looking for rational sounding excuses to act violent, than a true buring desire to secure the safety of information and children.
Before going gung ho, maybe these people should renember that old saying "those who live by the sword, die by the sword"
In the 1850's there was a political movement called the cooperationists. Basically they wanted the free states to get along with the slave states, while working out some compromise where the southern states could keep slavery.
Not only did their position guarantee that history would mark them irrelavent, and morally shallow, but they were also easy prey to the plantation masters who exploited them to shift the debate away from the slavery issue at hand. In the end they just delayed the inevitable and made the problem at hand worse by playing into the hands of the plantation masters and strengthening their position.
Well I'm sorry, but if that doesn't describe ESR and Lessing to a tee - then what does. Yeah, by shifting the argument away from the copyright debate they've lessened the pain at hand, but in the long run have really screwed us over. and helped consolidate power to the copyright lords. I believe too that they will be proven to be morally shallow and history will make them irrelavent.
...There is no choice, no freedom in slavery (duh), slaves are the subject of violence and force. That is why slavery is not a right.
But there is no choice with patents. I might have the knowhow to make say AIDS drugs, I might have the equiptment, I might have even invented them myself anyhow if given another month, but the government will coerce me not to do it because they call this invention a property right to the first person in line at the patent office.
Because of that, people dying of AIDS don't have a choice of who they buy drugs from, they have no freedom to do it themselves, they have no freedom to choose another vendor, when they die they have effectively been subjected to violence and force. That is why patents are not right,and why it is fair gaim to compare them to other false property rights like slavery.
Of course, if you don't like patnets, you are free to invent something else of your own, and if you don't like slaves you are free not to own them.
Are patents and copyrights economical? For example, if everyone looses controll over 10K worth of copyrights, but gains access to everyone elses 10K worth of copyrights - then that is a massive effective net gain. The same logic applies to patents. The same logic does not apply to tangable property like cars, because not everybody can use my car at the same time without depriving me access to it too, with copyrights and patnets they can.
Someone else making use of an invention or work does not deprive you of it's intrinsic benefit. If a factory can make their production 10% more efficient by inventing a new cog, you can better believe they will do it even if their competitors can too. If the IBM has a serious bug fix to the Linux kernel on their PC's - you can better believe they'll implement it even if their competitors can copy it. In fact the success of Linux demonstrates quite clearly that you don't need massive private monopolies to create massive achievments technical or economic.
Copyrights are already gone, and patents are comming soon precicely because they are not economical. Percicely because they can not survive the information age, just as slavery could not survive the industrial revolution. And as with slavery, the shit is already starting to hit the fan (at least with copyrights) because of of the internet. Patents will take a little longer - till rapid prototyping and nano technology reaches the home.
...And I can't help but notice, that you've yet again failed to have any possible suggestion about how in magical fearie land where corporations are not allwoed to be greedy and property rights aren't allowed to be enforced....
And I couldn't help to notice that you avoided the slavery analogy. So is slavery a property right or is it not? What's the mater, aren't you pro american, don't you believe in property rights, commerce, and business, how will the plantations recover their costs and be profitable without slaves? You answer that question, and I'll answer yours.
You remind me of "singapore inc", they talk about commerce and markets - but they're really statist officials preserving the're cozy little butts - that's the greed I'm refering too. Maybe that's the problem with the old guard in the LP too. If you know that much about the LP, then you know damn well that alleged "intellectual property (meaning copyright and patent monopolies)" is anything but a settled issue - so it's rather cocky of you to go off like anyone against IP is some kind of socialist. It's bad enough that your unfounded assertions that patents are a property right are more likely to screw you than help you, but that you want to screw everyone else too under the false pretext of free markets noless is what will be your undoing.
... Prosperity has come through free markets, free societies, and free governments--the same system that you are now trying to destroy by destroying property rights....
and... Well, let's just do a brief comparison of how many millions, MILLIONS of innocents have died under socialist regimes, versus free, capitalist societies. Stalin, Marx, Mao--are you an admirer of theirs? If you are, I suggest you look at the figures, and see which type of society needlessly wastes life....
What the hell, I consider myself libertarian, these two sentences pretty much sum up your whole problem. Free markets and property rights are rights that exist inspite of government, not because of it. Just because the government calls something a property right does not mean that it is. Just because the government calls anything a right does not mean that it is. Why do you think I went thru all the trouble to talk about slavery. They called it a property, they cried from the mountains that is behind americas prosperity and great economic success, they wined and screamed about incentive and free markets, and it was all crap. It was not about property at all, but controll. That pretty much sums up the patent situation too. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact the property has natural limits where not everybody can use it at the same time. Patents have no such foundation, it's all about subjective incentives and percieved rights. There are all about creating limits for the sake of limits, not because of natural law realities.
I totally agree about those two sentences you mentioned above, the problem is that patnets are NOT property. If anything is about faries and wishfull thinking, they are.
FYI, I was a kid when IBM lost the lawsuit where they assumed that they had patented rights over the PC interface, and Compaq prevailed in the lawsuit that was filed against them over the BIOS imitations, and AMD won even though they had the daylights sued out of them for immitating the x86 instruction set.
So with all these presumptions of intellectual property thrown out, and all these "incentives" forever ruined. Did the industry dry up? Did R&D fizzle out? NO! In fact just the opposite happened. No, in fact it would be more accutate to say that these events triggerred a nuclear explosion of innovation never seen before in the history of human kind. Well, the funny thing is that when they could no longer compete by locking out their competitors, the only other option was to compete on innovation and costs.
Incentive to make knowledge available, advancing arts and sciences, cost of discovery, cost of R&D, unpredictable difficulties and risks. I've herd it all before and it's all crap. Patents are about winning the race by throwing up road blocks for you competitors rather then winning it by running faster, that's all there is too it.
On no uncertain terms patent monopolies are crap, they waste time, money, and they ruin peoples lives. They have no place in a free society, and people literally needlessly die because of them. The day that patents are gone forever will be a great day for humanity, freedom, free markets, and the world.
... Did you ever stop to think and wonder why slavery didn't spread outside of the south?...
Of course I've thought why. It is because the the industrisl revolution required a mobile and educated workforce to succede. The anti-thesus of the plantation system which bacame popular in the more tropical southern regions. Today we are are in the information age, it requires the free flow of information, ideas, and invention... get it.
...I fail to see any parallels between a company spending hundreds of millions, paying hundreds of SCIENTISTS, to create drugs, and slave labor....
Well then let me explain it to you. Perhaps I have no incentive to grow cotton unless I can whip slaves on the plantation, perhaps I have no incentive to develop AIDS drugs unless I have the right to lock out 10 million children in Africa dying of AIDS from getting generics. You tell me if there's any moral difference. Incentive does not a right make.
I ask you again--if a drug company spends hundreds of millions of dollars developing a new drug...
And I'll explain it to you again. The road to prosperity comes thru maing freedom an end in itself and not greed. Maybe some drug companies will go bankrupt, maybe some plantations will too. I don't give a crap, there are things infinitely more important. Once you stop asserting sone poorly thought out notion that there exists some kind of a right to restrict how others use ideas and inventions then the solutions will present themselves. Maybe, you won't like them, maybe how things turn out will suck for you. I have no sympathy because plenty of other people are needlessly dying because of the way things are now. Patnets need to die and they will one way or the other, deal with it.
Nobody in their right mind would *produce anything new of any value at all* if they didn't have some financial insentive for doing it.
That insentive is patent royalties for 9-15 years.
Face it, that's capitalism. The bottom line drives everything --- but the system approaches maximum efficiency, so it's hardly "bad"
That's like saying it's free market if the government granted someone a monopoly on growing oranges, because they have no "incentive" to grow oranges if someone else can. Bull. Patents have nothing to do with free markets at all, they have to do with controll. Controll that's based off of government regulation, not natural limits in supply and demand, not shortages of talent, not lack of ability, or lack of knowhow. There already enough limits and conflicts about how to use limited resources without the government adding in more, dont you think?
Orange farmers, beef producers, walmart, sears, funny thing is they seem pretty capitalistic and pretty big without special government granted monopolies on what they can sell.
So the bottom line is that the patent system is inherently unstable because it is not true to free market principles any more the plantation system and the "right to own slaves" was. It's a phony right that is a fraud because it is far more about controll that restricts how people can use inventions than it is about property or other rights. The sooner we get rid of patents the better and safer we will all be.
How are drug companies that spent hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars developing drugs supposed to compete when a company can simply replicate their drugs for a penny, without the R&D costs?
How can they possibly make enough money to pay their scientists, to buy equipment, to fund studies, etc?
Do you have any ideas?
Well isn't that the point. That's like asking how will the plantation masters ever make any money without slaves, ever recover the large cost of purchase and of running a plantation?
Of course the answer is that the road to prosperity cones thru making freedom an end in itself and not greed. Patents are not about incentive, not about freedom, not about R&D but controll and greed. That's why they are so inherently evil and need to go away.
Well, if you're saying that we need to reform social security too, by getting rid of it. Than I am all for it. It is clearly the biggest exploiting the elderly, racket, ponzi-scheme ever to birth upon the history of human kind.
The soluion, as in any similar crime, is to stop the exploitation, halt the collection, and punish those responsible for promoting the scheme to begin with.
Creating new drugs is expensive, the R&D is high, then you get the costs of FDA approval (necessary trials, etc.). This is doubly so now that a single lawsuit for a single drug can kill a company. So without patents what incentive will there be for companies to research new drugs? The maybe 6 months you get to sell it for before someone makes a cheaper alternative since copying costs a lot less? Yeah they're suing African countries but at the same time without them the drug would never exist in the first place. There are already drugs which are never sold because they would not be profitable (few people have the disorder).
Most of the cost of new drugs does not go into R&D it goes into marketing, and to say drugs wouldn't be invented is very presumptions (think insulin, think penacillin they happened inspite of patents not because of them) And if too much regulations and liabilities are killing our medicine companies, that might be a good argument for reducing liabilities and regulations, but not a good one for patents.
In addition, you are ignoring how patents have a profound effect on collaberation. 500 researchers who are working together to find a cure for X will do alot more then 500 researchers trying to lock each other out by getting a patent application first - at considerably less cost too, and considerably less risk that they will all loose their shirts if a better cure comes along 6 months later.
Once again, patents are a fraud and a lie and they ruin peoples lives for no just reason. They day they die - our society will be alot better off and our people a lot healthier.
1. There are bad patents. No one disputes that - like the amazon patent on one-click shopping and the transmeta patent on code-morphing.
2. There are good patents. Patents on compression are a good example of such patents. They involve some serious work by one or two geniuses who deserve some monetary reward on their work.
This is the whole problem, too many people don't see patents for what they are. They are not a form of "protection", they are a form of controll. Sort of like saying "well the King disallows bad religions, and the King disallows good religions - so we should do a study of which religions are good and which religions are bad" . NO, Pull your head out!!! Annytime you restrict how people can use any type of innovation you are going to have negative and unpredictable consequences. Some are worse than others, but lets get real - as long as patents exist you are not going to have a fair patent system any more then we could expect a King to fairly choose which religions people can worship. (eg. how do you know that 50 other people wouldn't have independently invented similar compression routines within the next year or so anyhow patents or not, is their work and effort worthless)
The end in itself is to get rid of Patents, anything that goes in that direction is inherently good, anything that pulls away from it is inherehtly bad.
The patnet office needs to have less power, not more. When's the last time you ever herd of a bureauocracy being improved by throwing money at it.
The simple fact is, patents are evil, especially pharmacutical patnets where they have done little to create medical breakthroughs (inspite of all the propaganda to the contrary) but they have done alot to lock out people who are dying and can not afford certain types of medicine. Hell, they even sued the nations of Africa for creating generic drugs for people who's percapita GDP is less then $400 per year! This is not what I call innovation. And those countless millions of dollars worth of ads for lipator, are not what I call innovative either.
OK, every time someone says that patents and copyrights need to die, someone else comes back and says - "the GPL is a copyright!", or they'll say "the patent system might need reform, but it we still need it!". This completely ignories how the GPL's circumventing the "right" to restrict what people copy is the foundation of it's success, and completely ignores the overwhelming failure of patents to "protect" little inventors overall, and the huge successes that have resulted when people were unable to impose patents (eg, think IBM compatable PC, and AMD). Yes, successes that benefited the little guys too. Not to mention all the millions of patents on things that woud have been invented anyhow.
To these people I wish to say, please prove that copyrights and patents are worth it. Since they're the ones who wish to promote massive restrictions on what people can immitate and copy, let them prove for once that it provides a benefit instead of saying pathetic quotes like "I worry about how people will make money without IP" or "look at all the great wealth that patnets and copyrights have brought America". (sorta like in the 1850 when they said, look at all the wealth America has because of the plantation system, how will we make money without slaves?)
Of course, the appropiate answer is that the road to propserity comes thru making freedom an end in itself, not greed. People in the USA should understand that more than anybody, sadly it seems all to many have spit on the very beliefs that got them to where they are. It's bad enough that they've screwed up their own lives, but that try to restrict every one else too is what will damn them.
I don't suppose they could make it decentralized so that we can get rid of Icann, Network Solutions, and the root name servers - (and hopefully AOL).
And anonymous/encrypted, so that if people trade p2p or talk bad about their government - they don't half to worry about an ip trace leading to their door being busted down and getting their teeth kicked in unless they want to reveal where they are.
Back in the 1850's - it didn't matter that the plantation system was super rich, it didn't matter that the people who ran it were super smart, and it didn't matter that they were ultra powerfull and influencial arround the world.
What mattered was that technology had "commoditized" the labor market, meaning that it was more important that society had a skilled and mobile workforce rather than one that was controlled like the slaves. After that it was only a matter of time before the south tried to fence themselves off from the onslaught by breaking off from the union which then caused all hell to break loose.
Well, today the internet and other technology has commoditized the software industry, the music industry, and if not already the movie industry and information in general. It is more important that it flow freely than be controlled. They are trying to fence themselves off using a wall of laws and DRM, but now as then society can't and won't let them be successfull. Warning: SCO and the RIAA are just the tip of the iceberg - all hell is starting to break loose.
You should know that I of course believe that God created the world in 7 days. Why not? If there is an omnipotent God, why could he *not* do it in 7 days?
Because I believe that God's nature is to be rational, but that human nature is to be finite and to overlook things. And the fact is that the Bible was written by humans even if it was inspired by God, and humans with a very limited understanding of scientific method at that.
In addition, early Jewish culture relied heavially on numerology - for example "7" would often translate to "enough", "12" would often translate to complete, "40" would often translate to "a lot, or a long time". That fact is lost in modern day translations. So how do you know it isn't saying "God did more than enough when he made the universe".
Thank God someone didn't tell the story of goldylocks and the three bears in the Bible - or they might have actually thought bears talked back then too!
With wireless mesh technology, it would seem simple enough to set up a community internet without any central government or corporate provider at all. Besides, if the city controlls it, then it is only a matter of time before they monitor it, you should see the list of restrictions that most city libraries impose if you want a taste of whats to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Well,
..... for politicians and regulation that is.
The trush is that nuclear power is already the safest and cleanest power source in the USA - even when you include taking care of radioactive waste.
The truth is, as has been pointed out here several times, that coal powered plants in the USA (trace radiation) are more radioactive then nuclear plants.
The truth is, that 3 mile island was the ultimate example of why nuclear power in the US is so safe. Even in worse case scenarios, and with 20 simeltanious managment and design failures - nothing harmfull happened to anybody.
The truth is, the movement against nuclear power has far more to do with OPEC financing than concern for safety, liabilities, or the environment.
The truth is that 3 mile island wasn't a nuclear disaster by any measure, it was a political disaster.
The truth is that dealing with nuclear waste isn't a problem either, it's also a political problem.
The sad truth is that we could all have had clean, cheap, safe, and environmentally friendly power a long time ago. But big huge nuclear powerplants are just simply too tempting of a target
Unfortunately, the popular mob is all to often like a herd buffalos, the stampeed that saves one from a lion kills thousands as they head toward the cliff.
I understand what you're saying, but I disagree for example....
At the end of WWII they didn't want to end price controlls because too many people who benefited from them thought the economic shock would be too harmfull. But then all of a sudden the supreme court rulled that they were unconstitutional and an economic boom happened. The same happened at the end of prohibition (though not economic) as soon as it ended, the mob violence ended almost immediately - inspite of the fact that the new economic realities made it harder for them then ever before. Another example, is the former Soviet Union, where we tried to prop up a failed regime with economic aid in the name of maintaining stability - but it ended up making things less stable.
But my worst fear, is things being like the US 1850's plantation system, where it had to fall - but nobody would let it fall untill it was way to late. Forgetting about appeasement and forcing the issue early, would have caused alot of anger and bitterness, but avoided the "bloodiest" war in history.
Today, forcing the issue with copyrights will certainly piss off alot of people, but big brother isn't going to be able to muster up enough strength to shut down peoples free speech rights. In the information age of big databases, big money, and no technological distinction between free speech content and copyright content - it will almost predestine abusive behavior.
I bet you're not one of the following.
1. Author
2. Artist
3. Programmer
4. Painter
Without copyright, I will bet pretty soon, there won't be much of a career as author, artist, nor painter.
Actually, I'm all 4, I've heard that before, and I'm sick and tired of it because it wouldn't matter if I was none, but I'm all and because of that I've seen the crap related to copyrights first hand. (Oh, and PS, the entire renassance happened without copyrights, so where are you comming from)
You know, when people say things like this to me, what it means to me, is that they can't think logically about copyrights - so instead they try probing into my personal life to see if they can find some kind of insincere motive to justify blowing me off and ignoring the facts.
Thanks, but no thanks.
As for me, this is exactly why I dislike people such as Larry Lessig who persue a compromise approach to copyrights. All that ever happens is that they end up getting used and exploited to appease the masses with wishfull thinking, while the MPAA and the RIAA make their next move to screw everyone over.
If anything, it is in our best interest to force the death of copyrights once and for all. It amazes me to see how many people fail to see that the 'emperor is naked' - they actually think that copyrights are just like other free market property rights - that restricting what people can copy actually creates some kind of benefit. Well, bullshit. All people like Lessig do is just get in the way, like those who tried to delay the fall of the USSR, like those who wanted the free states to get along with the slave states. They are useless.
Look for the most part if you don't want to have 'American values' under American rule, then you're free not to more than in any other place.
If you don't want to execrise your freedom of religion, then fine don't. If you don't want to exercise your right to bear arms, then fine dont either. If you don't want to exercise you're freedom of the press, fine then don't do that either. Hell you don't even half to vote. What those who oppose it want - isn't to escape American 'imposed' values, but to impose their values on others - well sorry, noones trying to get a thank you out of those people anyhow.
If you 'owe' that much to your father, then you owe twice as much to you maker who gives you a free will, a mind, and a conscience of your own. Just because people don't understand why things can get so shitty at times does not imply that they are meaningless - the more real the problem, the more real the meaning. It is the very nature of people to take concern about other peoples best interests, that's what people are designed to do, get pissed at them if you want, but they are just being themselves by taking concern about other peoples freedoms. If it's in both parties best interests, why wouldn't we want to do that.
I hate to say this, but without Microsoft, the world would pretty much be the same. This is because, the problem isn't Microsoft.
Microsoft is simply our beliefs, and societies beliefs in copyrights taken to it's logical conclusion. When you believe that people have some kind of inherent moral right to restrict what other people copy - then problems like Microsoft are ineviatable and were practically predestined to happen.
In addition, if we change our beliefs, and societies poor beliefs in things like copyrights then the Microsoft problem will take care of itself and self distruct. Hopefully with the success of Linux and the GPL, it's already on its way.
The real problem with Larry is that he does NOT want to get rid of copyrights. Sadly, he more than anyone else should understand the harm they cause, but instead of pushing to get rid of them - he is acting like a sellout - making like it is more important to get along with the 'copyright lords' then it is to have freedom in the information age.
Of course, the 'copyright lords' know this and are all to happy to expolit him to persue their own agenda. I hate to say this, but the more Larry waffles about, the more he desperately tries to get along - the more he just sets himself up to be strung along like a doggie on a leash and for the rest of us to get screwed.
What I mean, is that by avoiding a direct fight against copyrights today, and avoiding blatent civil disobedience, all he is doing is making the pain we're going to suffer tommorow worse. All that's going to happen, is that the 'copyright lords' will get more power and more abusive - and when it does come down to the ineviatable fight, more people will suffer.
I disagree, they're both wrong.
First, the right to protect your rights is a right. All to often law enforcement has this attitude that the common people "shouldn't worry their prety little heads off" and that only they should have any power or authority, only they should defend rights by force, and only they will have good solutions. Bull, when they act like this - they really need to be put in their place.
Second, I would be hard pressed to believe that copying a file violates anybody's rights. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the fact is that the Internet has got to be one of the least coercive social forums ever created since the birth of human kind. Now that all these vigilantes are choosing to hang out there smells alot more like problemed people who are looking for rational sounding excuses to act violent, than a true buring desire to secure the safety of information and children.
Before going gung ho, maybe these people should renember that old saying "those who live by the sword, die by the sword"
In the 1850's there was a political movement called the cooperationists. Basically they wanted the free states to get along with the slave states, while working out some compromise where the southern states could keep slavery.
Not only did their position guarantee that history would mark them irrelavent, and morally shallow, but they were also easy prey to the plantation masters who exploited them to shift the debate away from the slavery issue at hand. In the end they just delayed the inevitable and made the problem at hand worse by playing into the hands of the plantation masters and strengthening their position.
Well I'm sorry, but if that doesn't describe ESR and Lessing to a tee - then what does. Yeah, by shifting the argument away from the copyright debate they've lessened the pain at hand, but in the long run have really screwed us over. and helped consolidate power to the copyright lords. I believe too that they will be proven to be morally shallow and history will make them irrelavent.
But there is no choice with patents. I might have the knowhow to make say AIDS drugs, I might have the equiptment, I might have even invented them myself anyhow if given another month, but the government will coerce me not to do it because they call this invention a property right to the first person in line at the patent office.
Because of that, people dying of AIDS don't have a choice of who they buy drugs from, they have no freedom to do it themselves, they have no freedom to choose another vendor, when they die they have effectively been subjected to violence and force. That is why patents are not right,and why it is fair gaim to compare them to other false property rights like slavery.
Of course, if you don't like patnets, you are free to invent something else of your own, and if you don't like slaves you are free not to own them.
Are patents and copyrights economical? For example, if everyone looses controll over 10K worth of copyrights, but gains access to everyone elses 10K worth of copyrights - then that is a massive effective net gain. The same logic applies to patents. The same logic does not apply to tangable property like cars, because not everybody can use my car at the same time without depriving me access to it too, with copyrights and patnets they can.
Someone else making use of an invention or work does not deprive you of it's intrinsic benefit. If a factory can make their production 10% more efficient by inventing a new cog, you can better believe they will do it even if their competitors can too. If the IBM has a serious bug fix to the Linux kernel on their PC's - you can better believe they'll implement it even if their competitors can copy it. In fact the success of Linux demonstrates quite clearly that you don't need massive private monopolies to create massive achievments technical or economic.
Copyrights are already gone, and patents are comming soon precicely because they are not economical. Percicely because they can not survive the information age, just as slavery could not survive the industrial revolution. And as with slavery, the shit is already starting to hit the fan (at least with copyrights) because of of the internet. Patents will take a little longer - till rapid prototyping and nano technology reaches the home.
And I couldn't help to notice that you avoided the slavery analogy. So is slavery a property right or is it not? What's the mater, aren't you pro american, don't you believe in property rights, commerce, and business, how will the plantations recover their costs and be profitable without slaves? You answer that question, and I'll answer yours.
You remind me of "singapore inc", they talk about commerce and markets - but they're really statist officials preserving the're cozy little butts - that's the greed I'm refering too. Maybe that's the problem with the old guard in the LP too. If you know that much about the LP, then you know damn well that alleged "intellectual property (meaning copyright and patent monopolies)" is anything but a settled issue - so it's rather cocky of you to go off like anyone against IP is some kind of socialist. It's bad enough that your unfounded assertions that patents are a property right are more likely to screw you than help you, but that you want to screw everyone else too under the false pretext of free markets noless is what will be your undoing.
and
What the hell, I consider myself libertarian, these two sentences pretty much sum up your whole problem. Free markets and property rights are rights that exist inspite of government, not because of it. Just because the government calls something a property right does not mean that it is. Just because the government calls anything a right does not mean that it is. Why do you think I went thru all the trouble to talk about slavery. They called it a property, they cried from the mountains that is behind americas prosperity and great economic success, they wined and screamed about incentive and free markets, and it was all crap. It was not about property at all, but controll. That pretty much sums up the patent situation too. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact the property has natural limits where not everybody can use it at the same time. Patents have no such foundation, it's all about subjective incentives and percieved rights. There are all about creating limits for the sake of limits, not because of natural law realities.
I totally agree about those two sentences you mentioned above, the problem is that patnets are NOT property. If anything is about faries and wishfull thinking, they are.
FYI, I was a kid when IBM lost the lawsuit where they assumed that they had patented rights over the PC interface, and Compaq prevailed in the lawsuit that was filed against them over the BIOS imitations, and AMD won even though they had the daylights sued out of them for immitating the x86 instruction set.
So with all these presumptions of intellectual property thrown out, and all these "incentives" forever ruined. Did the industry dry up? Did R&D fizzle out? NO! In fact just the opposite happened. No, in fact it would be more accutate to say that these events triggerred a nuclear explosion of innovation never seen before in the history of human kind. Well, the funny thing is that when they could no longer compete by locking out their competitors, the only other option was to compete on innovation and costs.
Incentive to make knowledge available, advancing arts and sciences, cost of discovery, cost of R&D, unpredictable difficulties and risks. I've herd it all before and it's all crap. Patents are about winning the race by throwing up road blocks for you competitors rather then winning it by running faster, that's all there is too it.
On no uncertain terms patent monopolies are crap, they waste time, money, and they ruin peoples lives. They have no place in a free society, and people literally needlessly die because of them. The day that patents are gone forever will be a great day for humanity, freedom, free markets, and the world.
Did you ever stop to think and wonder why slavery didn't spread outside of the south?
Of course I've thought why. It is because the the industrisl revolution required a mobile and educated workforce to succede. The anti-thesus of the plantation system which bacame popular in the more tropical southern regions. Today we are are in the information age, it requires the free flow of information, ideas, and invention ... get it.
...I fail to see any parallels between a company spending hundreds of millions, paying hundreds of SCIENTISTS, to create drugs, and slave labor....
Well then let me explain it to you. Perhaps I have no incentive to grow cotton unless I can whip slaves on the plantation, perhaps I have no incentive to develop AIDS drugs unless I have the right to lock out 10 million children in Africa dying of AIDS from getting generics. You tell me if there's any moral difference. Incentive does not a right make.
...
I ask you again--if a drug company spends hundreds of millions of dollars developing a new drug
And I'll explain it to you again. The road to prosperity comes thru maing freedom an end in itself and not greed. Maybe some drug companies will go bankrupt, maybe some plantations will too. I don't give a crap, there are things infinitely more important. Once you stop asserting sone poorly thought out notion that there exists some kind of a right to restrict how others use ideas and inventions then the solutions will present themselves. Maybe, you won't like them, maybe how things turn out will suck for you. I have no sympathy because plenty of other people are needlessly dying because of the way things are now. Patnets need to die and they will one way or the other, deal with it.
Nobody in their right mind would *produce anything new of any value at all* if they didn't have some financial insentive for doing it.
That insentive is patent royalties for 9-15 years.
Face it, that's capitalism. The bottom line drives everything --- but the system approaches maximum efficiency, so it's hardly "bad"
That's like saying it's free market if the government granted someone a monopoly on growing oranges, because they have no "incentive" to grow oranges if someone else can. Bull. Patents have nothing to do with free markets at all, they have to do with controll. Controll that's based off of government regulation, not natural limits in supply and demand, not shortages of talent, not lack of ability, or lack of knowhow. There already enough limits and conflicts about how to use limited resources without the government adding in more, dont you think?
Orange farmers, beef producers, walmart, sears, funny thing is they seem pretty capitalistic and pretty big without special government granted monopolies on what they can sell.
So the bottom line is that the patent system is inherently unstable because it is not true to free market principles any more the plantation system and the "right to own slaves" was. It's a phony right that is a fraud because it is far more about controll that restricts how people can use inventions than it is about property or other rights. The sooner we get rid of patents the better and safer we will all be.
How are drug companies that spent hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars developing drugs supposed to compete when a company can simply replicate their drugs for a penny, without the R&D costs?
How can they possibly make enough money to pay their scientists, to buy equipment, to fund studies, etc?
Do you have any ideas?
Well isn't that the point. That's like asking how will the plantation masters ever make any money without slaves, ever recover the large cost of purchase and of running a plantation?
Of course the answer is that the road to prosperity cones thru making freedom an end in itself and not greed. Patents are not about incentive, not about freedom, not about R&D but controll and greed. That's why they are so inherently evil and need to go away.
Well, if you're saying that we need to reform social security too, by getting rid of it. Than I am all for it. It is clearly the biggest exploiting the elderly, racket, ponzi-scheme ever to birth upon the history of human kind.
The soluion, as in any similar crime, is to stop the exploitation, halt the collection, and punish those responsible for promoting the scheme to begin with.
Creating new drugs is expensive, the R&D is high, then you get the costs of FDA approval (necessary trials, etc.). This is doubly so now that a single lawsuit for a single drug can kill a company. So without patents what incentive will there be for companies to research new drugs? The maybe 6 months you get to sell it for before someone makes a cheaper alternative since copying costs a lot less? Yeah they're suing African countries but at the same time without them the drug would never exist in the first place. There are already drugs which are never sold because they would not be profitable (few people have the disorder).
Most of the cost of new drugs does not go into R&D it goes into marketing, and to say drugs wouldn't be invented is very presumptions (think insulin, think penacillin they happened inspite of patents not because of them) And if too much regulations and liabilities are killing our medicine companies, that might be a good argument for reducing liabilities and regulations, but not a good one for patents.
In addition, you are ignoring how patents have a profound effect on collaberation. 500 researchers who are working together to find a cure for X will do alot more then 500 researchers trying to lock each other out by getting a patent application first - at considerably less cost too, and considerably less risk that they will all loose their shirts if a better cure comes along 6 months later.
Once again, patents are a fraud and a lie and they ruin peoples lives for no just reason. They day they die - our society will be alot better off and our people a lot healthier.
The facts are:
1. There are bad patents. No one disputes that - like the amazon patent on one-click shopping and the transmeta patent on code-morphing.
2. There are good patents. Patents on compression are a good example of such patents. They involve some serious work by one or two geniuses who deserve some monetary reward on their work.
This is the whole problem, too many people don't see patents for what they are. They are not a form of "protection", they are a form of controll. Sort of like saying "well the King disallows bad religions, and the King disallows good religions - so we should do a study of which religions are good and which religions are bad" . NO, Pull your head out!!! Annytime you restrict how people can use any type of innovation you are going to have negative and unpredictable consequences. Some are worse than others, but lets get real - as long as patents exist you are not going to have a fair patent system any more then we could expect a King to fairly choose which religions people can worship. (eg. how do you know that 50 other people wouldn't have independently invented similar compression routines within the next year or so anyhow patents or not, is their work and effort worthless)
The end in itself is to get rid of Patents, anything that goes in that direction is inherently good, anything that pulls away from it is inherehtly bad.
The patnet office needs to have less power, not more. When's the last time you ever herd of a bureauocracy being improved by throwing money at it.
The simple fact is, patents are evil, especially pharmacutical patnets where they have done little to create medical breakthroughs (inspite of all the propaganda to the contrary) but they have done alot to lock out people who are dying and can not afford certain types of medicine. Hell, they even sued the nations of Africa for creating generic drugs for people who's percapita GDP is less then $400 per year! This is not what I call innovation. And those countless millions of dollars worth of ads for lipator, are not what I call innovative either.
OK, every time someone says that patents and copyrights need to die, someone else comes back and says - "the GPL is a copyright!", or they'll say "the patent system might need reform, but it we still need it!". This completely ignories how the GPL's circumventing the "right" to restrict what people copy is the foundation of it's success, and completely ignores the overwhelming failure of patents to "protect" little inventors overall, and the huge successes that have resulted when people were unable to impose patents (eg, think IBM compatable PC, and AMD). Yes, successes that benefited the little guys too. Not to mention all the millions of patents on things that woud have been invented anyhow.
To these people I wish to say, please prove that copyrights and patents are worth it. Since they're the ones who wish to promote massive restrictions on what people can immitate and copy, let them prove for once that it provides a benefit instead of saying pathetic quotes like "I worry about how people will make money without IP" or "look at all the great wealth that patnets and copyrights have brought America". (sorta like in the 1850 when they said, look at all the wealth America has because of the plantation system, how will we make money without slaves?)
Of course, the appropiate answer is that the road to propserity comes thru making freedom an end in itself, not greed. People in the USA should understand that more than anybody, sadly it seems all to many have spit on the very beliefs that got them to where they are. It's bad enough that they've screwed up their own lives, but that try to restrict every one else too is what will damn them.
I don't suppose they could make it decentralized so that we can get rid of Icann, Network Solutions, and the root name servers - (and hopefully AOL).
And anonymous/encrypted, so that if people trade p2p or talk bad about their government - they don't half to worry about an ip trace leading to their door being busted down and getting their teeth kicked in unless they want to reveal where they are.
Just my 2cents.
Back in the 1850's - it didn't matter that the plantation system was super rich, it didn't matter that the people who ran it were super smart, and it didn't matter that they were ultra powerfull and influencial arround the world.
What mattered was that technology had "commoditized" the labor market, meaning that it was more important that society had a skilled and mobile workforce rather than one that was controlled like the slaves. After that it was only a matter of time before the south tried to fence themselves off from the onslaught by breaking off from the union which then caused all hell to break loose.
Well, today the internet and other technology has commoditized the software industry, the music industry, and if not already the movie industry and information in general. It is more important that it flow freely than be controlled. They are trying to fence themselves off using a wall of laws and DRM, but now as then society can't and won't let them be successfull. Warning: SCO and the RIAA are just the tip of the iceberg - all hell is starting to break loose.
You should know that I of course believe that God created the world in 7 days. Why not? If there is an omnipotent God, why could he *not* do it in 7 days?
Because I believe that God's nature is to be rational, but that human nature is to be finite and to overlook things. And the fact is that the Bible was written by humans even if it was inspired by God, and humans with a very limited understanding of scientific method at that.
In addition, early Jewish culture relied heavially on numerology - for example "7" would often translate to "enough", "12" would often translate to complete, "40" would often translate to "a lot, or a long time". That fact is lost in modern day translations. So how do you know it isn't saying "God did more than enough when he made the universe".
Thank God someone didn't tell the story of goldylocks and the three bears in the Bible - or they might have actually thought bears talked back then too!
With wireless mesh technology, it would seem simple enough to set up a community internet without any central government or corporate provider at all. Besides, if the city controlls it, then it is only a matter of time before they monitor it, you should see the list of restrictions that most city libraries impose if you want a taste of whats to come.