But it don't have diddly to do with DMCA.. This is getting way out of hand.. 'guilty until YOU prove innocence'.. and no recourse for lost revenue during the process.
Who lost revenue? Was the sanitation engineer going to pay someone for the patterns in the dumpster? This phantom "lost revenue" and "lost taxes" paradigm is getting out of hand. Folks, it's dead fucking simple. If you never had it, you cannot have lost it.
The funny thing about this is that things have come full circle. Wasn't Charles Babbage's computer (the one Ada Lovelace wrote programs for) essentially a modified sewing machine? IIRC the punchcards they used had originally been used to feed patterns into automatic sewing machines of some sort.
I wondered the same thing, and was initially quick to jump up and shout "DMCA abuse," but as it turns out, from the article:
The companies invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which shields Internet service providers from liability if they comply with takedown requests. It seems the long arm of the DMCA, which has been used to crack down on file-swappers, printer cartridge makers and font creators, is now reaching into the competitive world of sewing patterns.
So the DMCA does not in itself make what the dumpster-diver did illegal, but it does provide prssure to force the ISP to shut down his site. I agree with the other posters in that the outcome really is going to be determined by the salvage laws (eg the legal definition of whose property trash is) which have in recent decades been affected by police searches (some states have made your trash anyone's property to make it easier for police to search it, some states have said it is still yours so police cannot search it with no warrant).
Honestly, I think if you threw it away you have no right to stop people taking it. Discouraging people from recycling garbage is irresponsible given the state of our landfills. I also say this is not a case about copyright at all and McCalls is way out of line. In fact, this stuff is not McCalls' property, anyway. It was sold to the Jo-Ann Fabrics Store and only the exact store he took the patterns from has any case at all.
I also think it is absolutely wrong that any company can own and not distribute an idea. I think there should be some kind of timeframe during which they have to do something with the technology after which they have to license/sell it to someone else or give it away. If they are never going to use it (again) they do not have the right to destroy the idea for everyone else.
In this case I think the main thing that got McCalls feathers in a ruffle was that they intended no one to ever be able to use these patterns again. They probably told the stores to throw them away and not sell them anymore. Who knows why they did that, but the fact they did is to me a gross abuse of the system of intellectual property law.
I never said that the other fuels weren't already taxed. But none of those taxes go to roads, and roads still need to be maintained. We will need a system to measure how much people with alternative fuel cars use the roads.
Quite often the taxes from gasoline do not go to roads either. Tolls are a similar problem. This is part of the issue, and I think that should be addressed before coming up with more gasoline taxes.
The problem with alternative fuel cars is that there really isn't a fair way to tax them that builds in measurements of how they use roads. If you charged enough in registration fees to make up the difference no one could register an alternative fuel car. Pretty much any other scheme would end up seeming to punish those who are being environmentally responsible. If you put an additional levy on electricity you get everybody.
Ultimately, I think the smartest thing to do if taxes must be raised for road maintenance is raise them somewhere that gets everybody. That way people that use gasoline get taxed more and are therefore encouraged to move to alternative fuel cars which will in turn get cheaper. I still say some fiscal responsibility (there really is none in Government anymore, but for a select few anomalies) is the short-term answer, but eventually almost no one will be running a gas-only car and we will still have to maintain roads, so you have a point.
If I unfairly stereotyped you, I am sorry. But your post made it pretty clear you had not read the article. This post makes it pretty clear you do not understand the point of the article. This may be simply because you disagree (which it is clear that you do), in which case it does not matter, I suppose. After all, you are free to feel as you wish.
RMS did not go to the conference because by going there words would be put in his mouth. That is part of it. God knows he doesn't need any more, the man speaks well enough on his own. The distinction between Open Source and Free Software is a very important one, and not to be taken lightly. It is the difference between Microsoft Shared Source and the GPL. It is as wide as the ocean.
Why should Microsoft be invited to an Open Source or Free Software event? Do you invite televangelists to a society of free-thinkers (atheists) meeting? The KKK to a meeting of the Jewish Anti-Defamation league? Why should we invite them when they are only there to cause trouble (the Microsoft Representatives said that with their own mouths, and you would have known that had you read the article).
The whole point of these kinds of conferences is to support and promote Open Source and Free Software. To invite someone who is squarely against both is detrimental. To force someone like RMS to choose between appearing and having his name used in support of lies, or not appearing at all is no choice at all, and is indeed an outrage. I don't blame him in the least for not going, though perhaps he could have staged a protest outside and given away Debian GNU/Linux CDs, or something.
The source of their "hunger study" is Brandeis U. a small Jewish (read liberal) University. Is this the *best* the OFB can do, or is it the only research they can find that justifies their existance and continued funding?
So we shouldn't listen to the lying Jews? hmm I seem to have heard this line before.
Maybe they are the only uni who cared to do a study on this. I don't know.
How do they define "hunger"?
These studies are publicly available. If you want to know how they defined hunger, from where they drew their figures, etc, you can always look it up. It's probably on the net, even, but if not you could visit a local library. Granted it's possible the study was skewed or something but you don't seem to be providing any reason to believe it was other than a very poor attempt at racial profiling.
For the record, I have been friends with some pretty damned conservative Jews.:P
You don't escape taxes by building houses in former meadows/farmland/woods/etc. Let me be more clear. Property taxes encourage density by charging people for land. This encourages them to actually use the land they own.
Land outside the city usually costs less and has less property tax (especially if it is outside the city limits.... erm...)
Most parks, arenas, museums, galleries, symphonies, etc I know of charge money. And most highways don't go through cities, they go around cities. And those highways that do go through cities are generally only used by people who live or work in that city (and therefore pay taxes to that city).
You are probably right. But there are plenty of interstate highways that do. Some don't even have bypasses! On of the worst (which has lots of interstate and international traffic) is this one.
I'm pro-rights and all but "they have no right to know where i drive"? Uhm, they paid for the road you're driving on.
Ah, a Democrat in the house. tsk tsk. Who is "they" exactly, again? The Government? Which Government? Federal funds go to interstate highways, and state funds go to state roads, IIRC. Off course it matters not. All those funds come from *me,* the taxpayer.
Perhaps you will say that I did not personally pay all the taxes. In which case I woudl say perhaps you have a point if you are advocating that everyone's driving habits (including those of politicians) be posted for all to see. I woudl not advocate that, but it would make things interesting, eh?
I think you have unintentionally hit on yet another important point in this debate. Why don't people take care of their parents when they get old? They took care of you, why not take care of them? This was a given in human society going back to, like, neanderthal times. But today it's not even discussed. Hell, people seem more ready to pay more to see that their parents go to a ratty old home to be abused, robbed, and forgotten than take care of them. That is just sad.
If someone in my family did not get social security, I know I would help them if I could. I already plan to take care of my parents rather than have them rot in a "home." People that send their parents to nursing homes are just sick.
In fact, high property taxes to support the NEA and the rest of the public school aparatchiks are part of the reason that we have such low parental involvement: often, both parents must work to support the schools and all the rest of government, leaving little time for bake sales, children, education, and such trivia.
One small niggle. How do property taxes fund the NEA? And what do they have to do with the public school system? I think your argument needs some small adjustments. =ahem= You seem to be mixing them together.
So because they work for the government, they don't deserve sick time, nor vacation days, nor health insurance, nor a pension?
They don't seem to think that I deserve these things. Why should they get them? Are they special?
I'd really like to see some figures about the "exponential" tax growth and the 80% of taxes that are wasted. I imagine the growth in taxes collected is mysteriously tied to population growth, and your 80% is a number you picked out of the air.
I'm pretty sure it was pulled out of thin air. I am also pretty sure there has been an exponential rise in taxes if you count all the many ways government will tax you. But then I could alwasy do research and prove myself wrong:P.
The poster was not talking about that. Unless by "goods" you mean his/her house. This tax would hit you no matter where you buy your gasoline, because it is a tax on miles driven in your car.
They did the same thing at the Federal level with the tax cut. Bush promised a tax cut ages ago, but Congress wouldn't pass it for some reason. Months and months passed, people were suffering from the neglected economy, and wondering why in the hell the government and media were ignoring this basic fact. By the time they got around to passing the tax cut (after whittling it from $1.25 trillion to $325 billion) probably just about everyone was *begging* for it. (I knwo I got suckered!)
As it turned out, the tax cut (which I was not surprised to hear was supposed to mostly favour "the rich," though the soundbites never said how... a simple rate decrease for everyone equally would do *that* after all) was not at all what they said it was (surprise surprise). Apparently the EIC is getting axed and so are teachers (whose salaries won't be able to be paid). Meanwhile we are spending more on defense than ever in the history of mankind (even though didn't we just whack all our enemies? hmm....).
Later I found out that ads that were taken out to publicize this (for instance one advertizing a blood drive that was to pay a teacher's salary) were not allowed because they criticized the president. Granted this is big nasty corporations limiting free speech versus the government doing it, but it is all a big mess if you ask me.
Anyway, just another example of getting the populace to *beg* for their medicine. blech!:P
Tho I must give them this, they are getting sneaky. I've seen cops take an exit off the freeway, so naturally everyone speeds up, for the waiting cop hiding at the on-ramp.
This is actually a pretty old trick. Ol' Barney Fife was doing taht one.
I've also noticed the police driving tricked out cars. A little while ago, I saw a new Subaru WRX, that was lowered, had rims, exhaust, tinted windows (which looked tinted darker than state law allows!), etc. And it was on theside of the freeway, with hidden police lights, and pulled somebody over, presumably for speeding...
In southern OR, I have also seen beater cars, that were police cars pulling people over.
That's just... wrong. It's not fair, man! It's not Faaaaaaaair!:)
Felons cannot vote. If you are caught with even a trace amount of some drugs, or a fairly small amount of others, it is a felony. In some states, like Nevada, any amount of marijuana is considered a felony.
I suspect if felons could vote, some of these laws would be handled differently. As it is, the fact that felons cannot vote has led to making more and more minor crimes into felonies so that undesirables can be accused of such things and their voting right staken away legally.
If you travelled too many miles in too short a time then you have been speeding so shouldn't you get a ticket? A GPS tracking system makes it easy to get caught for speeding but you're still breaking the law so what are you complaining about?
Ah, grasshopper, but you seem to underestimate the wisdom of our illustrious government officials. If Enterprise Rent-A-Car can charge its customers speeding tickets based on the tracking devices in their cars (even after the courts told them not to!), why can't the government? In fact it would not surprise me if by speeding you got at least a ticket or two from a police officer (who would likewise fish for additional reasons to ticket you as they are wont to do) and then had to pay another ticket which arrives in your mail that was generated by this system. Not really out of order for them, really.
The fuels that are used to make electricity are taxed to hell and back. The electricity itself is taxed when it is made and again when it is consumed. Fuel Cells will have all kinds of fine taxes attached to them, most of which you will not notice (except the sales tax) but they will be there.
It irks me that governments all around who cannot properly spend their current budgets want more taxes and spin it like we are "avoiding taxes" or like taxes are "uncollected" or some other such whiney spin phrase when really what they are after is more tax money. If they can't spend the money they have now on essential services instead of on bullshit, they do not deserve more.
Another issue recently came up in Texas, where the state budget is god-knows-how-many millions in the hole, and no new budget has been approved since, oh, I don't know, since Bush was Governor or something. But the legislature seems to have plenty of time to spend on redistricting (and attendant shenanigans, which has been a time killer for literal decades) and debating for months over whether they should pass laws to discriminate against homosexuals.
This business in Oregon is more of the same kind of political bullshit. Trying to pass a law that will create a tax that will probably cost more to collect than it will bring in, and in the meantime why don't we throw out some civil rights while we are at it. Do these people just sit around and think this stuff up just to see what people will do about it for their personal entertainment? It's like our politicians just want attention or something.
And I was bitching about the taxes we pay in the US! At least we don't pay taxes on our taxes! Criminey. Glad I don't live in a taxman's paradise... yet.:P
Of course the way things are going, we will probably soon pay taxes like Europe and CA but still not have a decent health care or education system. (Yes I know we have the best hospitals and our universities are in international demand for various reasons but that is not all there is to it.):P
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But it don't have diddly to do with DMCA.. This is getting way out of hand.. 'guilty until YOU prove innocence'.. and no recourse for lost revenue during the process.
Who lost revenue? Was the sanitation engineer going to pay someone for the patterns in the dumpster? This phantom "lost revenue" and "lost taxes" paradigm is getting out of hand. Folks, it's dead fucking simple. If you never had it, you cannot have lost it.
The funny thing about this is that things have come full circle. Wasn't Charles Babbage's computer (the one Ada Lovelace wrote programs for) essentially a modified sewing machine? IIRC the punchcards they used had originally been used to feed patterns into automatic sewing machines of some sort.
They could always make people who are branded as "liberals" wear donkeys... that would make "pin the tail on the donkey" games more interesting...
Heck, then again, the way the US is going they will probably be branding "liberals" (with a branding iron) any day now.
I wondered the same thing, and was initially quick to jump up and shout "DMCA abuse," but as it turns out, from the article:
The companies invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which shields Internet service providers from liability if they comply with takedown requests. It seems the long arm of the DMCA, which has been used to crack down on file-swappers, printer cartridge makers and font creators, is now reaching into the competitive world of sewing patterns.
So the DMCA does not in itself make what the dumpster-diver did illegal, but it does provide prssure to force the ISP to shut down his site. I agree with the other posters in that the outcome really is going to be determined by the salvage laws (eg the legal definition of whose property trash is) which have in recent decades been affected by police searches (some states have made your trash anyone's property to make it easier for police to search it, some states have said it is still yours so police cannot search it with no warrant).
Honestly, I think if you threw it away you have no right to stop people taking it. Discouraging people from recycling garbage is irresponsible given the state of our landfills. I also say this is not a case about copyright at all and McCalls is way out of line. In fact, this stuff is not McCalls' property, anyway. It was sold to the Jo-Ann Fabrics Store and only the exact store he took the patterns from has any case at all.
I also think it is absolutely wrong that any company can own and not distribute an idea. I think there should be some kind of timeframe during which they have to do something with the technology after which they have to license/sell it to someone else or give it away. If they are never going to use it (again) they do not have the right to destroy the idea for everyone else.
In this case I think the main thing that got McCalls feathers in a ruffle was that they intended no one to ever be able to use these patterns again. They probably told the stores to throw them away and not sell them anymore. Who knows why they did that, but the fact they did is to me a gross abuse of the system of intellectual property law.
I never said that the other fuels weren't already taxed. But none of those taxes go to roads, and roads still need to be maintained. We will need a system to measure how much people with alternative fuel cars use the roads.
Quite often the taxes from gasoline do not go to roads either. Tolls are a similar problem. This is part of the issue, and I think that should be addressed before coming up with more gasoline taxes.
The problem with alternative fuel cars is that there really isn't a fair way to tax them that builds in measurements of how they use roads. If you charged enough in registration fees to make up the difference no one could register an alternative fuel car. Pretty much any other scheme would end up seeming to punish those who are being environmentally responsible. If you put an additional levy on electricity you get everybody.
Ultimately, I think the smartest thing to do if taxes must be raised for road maintenance is raise them somewhere that gets everybody. That way people that use gasoline get taxed more and are therefore encouraged to move to alternative fuel cars which will in turn get cheaper. I still say some fiscal responsibility (there really is none in Government anymore, but for a select few anomalies) is the short-term answer, but eventually almost no one will be running a gas-only car and we will still have to maintain roads, so you have a point.
If I unfairly stereotyped you, I am sorry. But your post made it pretty clear you had not read the article. This post makes it pretty clear you do not understand the point of the article. This may be simply because you disagree (which it is clear that you do), in which case it does not matter, I suppose. After all, you are free to feel as you wish.
RMS did not go to the conference because by going there words would be put in his mouth. That is part of it. God knows he doesn't need any more, the man speaks well enough on his own. The distinction between Open Source and Free Software is a very important one, and not to be taken lightly. It is the difference between Microsoft Shared Source and the GPL. It is as wide as the ocean.
Why should Microsoft be invited to an Open Source or Free Software event? Do you invite televangelists to a society of free-thinkers (atheists) meeting? The KKK to a meeting of the Jewish Anti-Defamation league? Why should we invite them when they are only there to cause trouble (the Microsoft Representatives said that with their own mouths, and you would have known that had you read the article).
The whole point of these kinds of conferences is to support and promote Open Source and Free Software. To invite someone who is squarely against both is detrimental. To force someone like RMS to choose between appearing and having his name used in support of lies, or not appearing at all is no choice at all, and is indeed an outrage. I don't blame him in the least for not going, though perhaps he could have staged a protest outside and given away Debian GNU/Linux CDs, or something.
Hell, half of Europe works only one month out of the year.
Why not? They won't be taking any of that money home, anyway! :)
The source of their "hunger study" is Brandeis U. a small Jewish (read liberal) University. Is this the *best* the OFB can do, or is it the only research they can find that justifies their existance and continued funding?
So we shouldn't listen to the lying Jews? hmm I seem to have heard this line before.
Maybe they are the only uni who cared to do a study on this. I don't know.
How do they define "hunger"?
These studies are publicly available. If you want to know how they defined hunger, from where they drew their figures, etc, you can always look it up. It's probably on the net, even, but if not you could visit a local library. Granted it's possible the study was skewed or something but you don't seem to be providing any reason to believe it was other than a very poor attempt at racial profiling.
For the record, I have been friends with some pretty damned conservative Jews. :P
You don't escape taxes by building houses in former meadows/farmland/woods/etc. Let me be more clear. Property taxes encourage density by charging people for land. This encourages them to actually use the land they own.
Land outside the city usually costs less and has less property tax (especially if it is outside the city limits.... erm...)
Most parks, arenas, museums, galleries, symphonies, etc I know of charge money. And most highways don't go through cities, they go around cities. And those highways that do go through cities are generally only used by people who live or work in that city (and therefore pay taxes to that city).
You are probably right. But there are plenty of interstate highways that do. Some don't even have bypasses! On of the worst (which has lots of interstate and international traffic) is this one.
There is: 100%. Government can't take any more than that.
I would not put it past them to try.
I'm pro-rights and all but "they have no right to know where i drive"? Uhm, they paid for the road you're driving on.
Ah, a Democrat in the house. tsk tsk. Who is "they" exactly, again? The Government? Which Government? Federal funds go to interstate highways, and state funds go to state roads, IIRC. Off course it matters not. All those funds come from *me,* the taxpayer.
Perhaps you will say that I did not personally pay all the taxes. In which case I woudl say perhaps you have a point if you are advocating that everyone's driving habits (including those of politicians) be posted for all to see. I woudl not advocate that, but it would make things interesting, eh?
I think you have unintentionally hit on yet another important point in this debate. Why don't people take care of their parents when they get old? They took care of you, why not take care of them? This was a given in human society going back to, like, neanderthal times. But today it's not even discussed. Hell, people seem more ready to pay more to see that their parents go to a ratty old home to be abused, robbed, and forgotten than take care of them. That is just sad.
If someone in my family did not get social security, I know I would help them if I could. I already plan to take care of my parents rather than have them rot in a "home." People that send their parents to nursing homes are just sick.
In fact, high property taxes to support the NEA and the rest of the public school aparatchiks are part of the reason that we have such low parental involvement: often, both parents must work to support the schools and all the rest of government, leaving little time for bake sales, children, education, and such trivia.
One small niggle. How do property taxes fund the NEA? And what do they have to do with the public school system? I think your argument needs some small adjustments. =ahem= You seem to be mixing them together.
and oil companies will sell you the fuel cells.
So because they work for the government, they don't deserve sick time, nor vacation days, nor health insurance, nor a pension?
They don't seem to think that I deserve these things. Why should they get them? Are they special?
I'd really like to see some figures about the "exponential" tax growth and the 80% of taxes that are wasted. I imagine the growth in taxes collected is mysteriously tied to population growth, and your 80% is a number you picked out of the air.
I'm pretty sure it was pulled out of thin air. I am also pretty sure there has been an exponential rise in taxes if you count all the many ways government will tax you. But then I could alwasy do research and prove myself wrong :P.
The poster was not talking about that. Unless by "goods" you mean his/her house. This tax would hit you no matter where you buy your gasoline, because it is a tax on miles driven in your car.
They did the same thing at the Federal level with the tax cut. Bush promised a tax cut ages ago, but Congress wouldn't pass it for some reason. Months and months passed, people were suffering from the neglected economy, and wondering why in the hell the government and media were ignoring this basic fact. By the time they got around to passing the tax cut (after whittling it from $1.25 trillion to $325 billion) probably just about everyone was *begging* for it. (I knwo I got suckered!)
As it turned out, the tax cut (which I was not surprised to hear was supposed to mostly favour "the rich," though the soundbites never said how... a simple rate decrease for everyone equally would do *that* after all) was not at all what they said it was (surprise surprise). Apparently the EIC is getting axed and so are teachers (whose salaries won't be able to be paid). Meanwhile we are spending more on defense than ever in the history of mankind (even though didn't we just whack all our enemies? hmm....).
Later I found out that ads that were taken out to publicize this (for instance one advertizing a blood drive that was to pay a teacher's salary) were not allowed because they criticized the president. Granted this is big nasty corporations limiting free speech versus the government doing it, but it is all a big mess if you ask me.
Anyway, just another example of getting the populace to *beg* for their medicine. blech! :P
Tho I must give them this, they are getting sneaky. I've seen cops take an exit off the freeway, so naturally everyone speeds up, for the waiting cop hiding at the on-ramp.
This is actually a pretty old trick. Ol' Barney Fife was doing taht one.
I've also noticed the police driving tricked out cars. A little while ago, I saw a new Subaru WRX, that was lowered, had rims, exhaust, tinted windows (which looked tinted darker than state law allows!), etc. And it was on theside of the freeway, with hidden police lights, and pulled somebody over, presumably for speeding...
In southern OR, I have also seen beater cars, that were police cars pulling people over.
That's just... wrong. It's not fair, man! It's not Faaaaaaaair! :)
At last a use for my tin-foil hat!
Felons cannot vote. If you are caught with even a trace amount of some drugs, or a fairly small amount of others, it is a felony. In some states, like Nevada, any amount of marijuana is considered a felony.
I suspect if felons could vote, some of these laws would be handled differently. As it is, the fact that felons cannot vote has led to making more and more minor crimes into felonies so that undesirables can be accused of such things and their voting right staken away legally.
What, they don't cut your willy off? Got off lightly there, Tuttle. If you step lightly you might keep your credit rating, too! :P
If you travelled too many miles in too short a time then you have been speeding so shouldn't you get a ticket? A GPS tracking system makes it easy to get caught for speeding but you're still breaking the law so what are you complaining about?
Ah, grasshopper, but you seem to underestimate the wisdom of our illustrious government officials. If Enterprise Rent-A-Car can charge its customers speeding tickets based on the tracking devices in their cars (even after the courts told them not to!), why can't the government? In fact it would not surprise me if by speeding you got at least a ticket or two from a police officer (who would likewise fish for additional reasons to ticket you as they are wont to do) and then had to pay another ticket which arrives in your mail that was generated by this system. Not really out of order for them, really.
The fuels that are used to make electricity are taxed to hell and back. The electricity itself is taxed when it is made and again when it is consumed. Fuel Cells will have all kinds of fine taxes attached to them, most of which you will not notice (except the sales tax) but they will be there.
It irks me that governments all around who cannot properly spend their current budgets want more taxes and spin it like we are "avoiding taxes" or like taxes are "uncollected" or some other such whiney spin phrase when really what they are after is more tax money. If they can't spend the money they have now on essential services instead of on bullshit, they do not deserve more.
Another issue recently came up in Texas, where the state budget is god-knows-how-many millions in the hole, and no new budget has been approved since, oh, I don't know, since Bush was Governor or something. But the legislature seems to have plenty of time to spend on redistricting (and attendant shenanigans, which has been a time killer for literal decades) and debating for months over whether they should pass laws to discriminate against homosexuals.
This business in Oregon is more of the same kind of political bullshit. Trying to pass a law that will create a tax that will probably cost more to collect than it will bring in, and in the meantime why don't we throw out some civil rights while we are at it. Do these people just sit around and think this stuff up just to see what people will do about it for their personal entertainment? It's like our politicians just want attention or something.
And I was bitching about the taxes we pay in the US! At least we don't pay taxes on our taxes! Criminey. Glad I don't live in a taxman's paradise ... yet. :P
Of course the way things are going, we will probably soon pay taxes like Europe and CA but still not have a decent health care or education system. (Yes I know we have the best hospitals and our universities are in international demand for various reasons but that is not all there is to it.) :P
Price wars do not affect gasoline taxes. Gasoline taxes are not set (directly) by oil companies.