This is something we hear all the time from almost every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Patents feel like a "necessary evil," but no one feels like they need them. This should really wake up Congress. They always talk up how patents help and protect entrepreneurs, but the reality is that they're a complete nuisance for most.
HAHAAHAHAHHHHAHAHHHHHAHHHAAAAHAHAA. That was awesome. My eyes are watering. Man, I've been working long hours for the past week or two, and I needed a good laugh this morning.
That is absolutely precious. OK, Mr. Masnick: I hate to be the one to bear this bad news, so I'll try to do it gently. Congress is not interested in protecting entrepreneurs, the middle class, small business, or any of the other drums they beat so frequently. When a Congress person says "We have a responsibility to protect XYZ", it is like when the President says, "I have complete confidence in Michael Brown". It means "The referenced person/class is a freaking albatross that I would sooner toss down the oubliette than spend one more minute thinking about, but professional politicianing requires that I pretend I don't want to gut it and sell the tender innards to my friends."
Congress cares about lobbyists with a lot of money. Period. End of story. Entrepreneurs have jack shit. Entrenched incumbents have the money. Entrenched incumbents are who is served by patent policy. Congress is entirely awake and aware of who their puppet masters are.
Want proof? Read this. We are the only country in the world that still rewards the inventor with the patent, instead of the company with the fastest lawyers. It is blindingly obviously the right way to reward innovation instead of litigation. It is so obvious that for Congress to accept First-to-File would be indefensible as supporting innovation or entrepreneurs to anyone who has even a remote knowledge of the patent process. And for inventors who have lots of patents, like my Father, the idea of First-to-File is enough to send him into a half hour apoplectic tirade that makes me fear for his heart. Yet the movement to make the switch is alive and kicking, and probably going to happen within the next few years. Why? Mostly because with every check Microsoft writes to damned near every person in Congress, they say, "Oh, and pass first-to-file -- we're tired of only getting patents when one of our employees invents something."
One thing that I've increasingly lost track of is why people would put themselves in so much risk to attack these organizatoins.
I suspect that is because you are doing it wrong. When you find some people's actions to be irrational, you can do one of two things: Form an opinion that they must be crazy, judging them by your perceptions and values, and start telling others they cannot be rational, pointing out the bits that you see as inconsistent. Or, you can operate on the assumption that for people to do something so alien to your way of thinking there must be some motive and seek to understand what that might be.
You are taking the first approach, which can only ever lead to estrangement. This practice is common. For example, it is often encouraged by nationalists regarding enemies of the state or by political parties in a two-party system seeking to reinforce the duopoly. If your objective is to remain confused and upset, or to keep others so, that is the right thing to do -- but then I somewhat wonder what you are doing here. We're not really much on ostriches here. Lots of illusions get shattered here. Which only leaves the motive of influencing others to fail to understand, which seems dickish.
If you take the latter approach, it really seems like it is not that hard to understand why these people are doing this. You haven't mentioned any of the reasons that people might do this, so it really seems like you are not trying to get it. That seems odd to me. If you are not trying to understand them, why submit a post that makes that fact so apparent? It is not very impressive -- it is far easier to not understand non-standard people than to understand them. Again the only good reason I can come up with is wanting to influence others to share your lack of understanding, rather than a genuine expression of your personal desire to understand.
crippling poverty and religious conviction, that are given as the underlying cause.
While those things are often given as the underlying cause, they are not always so. Religion, sure, sometimes. Crippling poverty is much less often the true motive (never?).
Typically (always?) when poverty is cited, the true motivation is a perception of bias in the distribution of money and/or power. Poor people very rarely incite revolution if those in power are just as poor and have no ability to change things. Really it wouldn't make much sense, would it? More often they are attacking a system in which they perceive an unhealthy concentration of wealth and/or power.
You have pointed out, probably correctly, that the members of anonymous are less likely to be focused on the money side. That can be seen somewhat in the fact that they use advanced technology that implies some degree of affluence (relative to global monetary distribution), but even more so in their choice of targets -- almost all (at least in recent months) have been about power.
So: Can you see any kind of power imbalance between the kinds of people that might be in Anonymous and a guy who is a liaison between the FBI and private sector companies that sell high-tech devices? Have you heard any stories in the past 10 years that might make some people perceive an increasing misdirection of concentrated power. or of an increase in the degree of concentration of power?
P.S.:
As I go through and edit the above, I am struck by another thought. This is well documented. The notion that people don't just do things like Anonymous is doing, given the risk of their actions, for no reason. And it is one of my all-time favorite sentences:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
If it seems like Anonymous is doing something way out of the ordinary, that is because they are. If the goal is to use the mechanisms of society to destroy them, then keeping people confused and upset is a fine (if disingenuous) path to that end. If the goal is to understand them, it is not hard.
Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software patents, with new global-economy-destroying patent trolls doing the disruption in more cases than not.
There, FTFY. Your points are well taken, Marc (and well documented in singularity theory). The problem is, software patents reward litigation over innovation, so it's not going to be the information processing innovators who will win. Under the current system, we will continue to be the serfs -- skilled labor in a cage.
The more interesting question to me is, will we realize what is happening to us, and change our future? Is it already starting, through the various pseudo-revolutionary information processing collectives (GNU, WikiLeaks, Anonymous, etc)?
You don't really understand the meaning of the word. "Lawyer" has a legal meaning;
You are being deliberately obtuse. This is not a meeting of the bar association, it is a public discussion forum. If your intent is to recant your initial statement, because you did not realize this was not a meeting of the bar association, I will not fault you for it.
Both [the iPod and iPhone] are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.
'zat a little more obvious now?
My statement that $12.5 billion barriers to entry enhance innovation was meant to be equally obviously sarcastic. Barriers to entry are specifically interesting in economics because they cause the market to distort away from competition -- one of the chief advantages of competition is innovation. So barriers to entry are inherently harmful to innovation, and can only be justified by significant tangible counteracting benefits -- which many, including myself, would argue are not apparent in rapidly advancing technical spaces like mobile devices.
Correct. That would be covered by this part: "If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you."
You have no idea what I'm doing with my life
Umm, you said, "I am a lawyer." That is an expression of identity. Expressions of identity mean something to people in normal parlance.
"Lawyer" just means I have a license.
Don't be ridiculous. "I am a lawyer" means you are a lawyer. It is an expression of identity, and it has meaning. This is not a court of law, it is a discussion forum. Words mean what they actually mean here, not what weasels sharpen them into.
You are the one who introduced the fact that you are a lawyer. If you want to discuss that, we can. If you are now saying you do not want to discuss it, I completely understand.
If you are now saying that you are not really a lawyer in the common sense that is reasonably construed from "I am a lawyer", then there is nothing to discuss, and never was, except perhaps for your misrepresentation.
But to say, "I am a member of a justly ostracized class, and I don't want to be ostracized, and I will not tell you why" is utterly uncompelling.
Look, we're tarring with a single brush, but it really isn't that broad. Fact is, your industry is doing serious damage to our society, and profiting from the damage. That is reasonable cause for some pretty serious backlash.
You may be innocent, you may be one of the good guys. Maybe you are working to fix the problem. Maybe you are not, but you have convinced yourself that being a part of the system does not mean you condone it. Maybe you work in a corner of law that is not quite so seriously screwed up by your kin. If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you.
If you want us to believe that lawyers, in general, are not worthy of society's scorn, well, simple fact is you are wrong, and it is not going to happen.
If you want us to express fondness for you, despite your profession, then you've got to tell us why you are not part of the problem. Same treatment you would get if you were a congressman or an Abu Ghraib guard.
This is how cultures deal with internal threats that cannot be easily handled through official channels. We ostracize them. You can get special dispensation, but you have to ask for it, and explain why you deserve it.
Look, just because one of the world's most powerful companies tried to create new mobile products, and wound up having to pay $12.5 billion to be allowed the privilege is no reason to overreact. You see, $12.5 billion barriers to entry are good for innovation. Massive government fiat barriers to entry encourage entrenched incumbency, and entrenched incumbents are very inventive. Just look at the iPod and iPhone. Both of those devices are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.
The real death toll from Katrina, for example, is still classified.
Classified?
Are you saying the number is extremely hard to calculate perfectly, and so it is something other than 1836 (current number listed on Wikipedia), and depends on your definition, and nobody really knows?
Or do you mean that the actual number including proximate deaths is well known and clearly documented by the government, significantly higher than the 1836 cited on Wikipedia, and has been intentionally prohibited from public view?
If the latter, I am very intrigued by your supposition. Do you have a source?
I'm walking down the street with a concealed handgun (perfectly legal in 30+ states) and the DHS van shows I'm packing heat. Next thing I know I'm on the ground with a knee in my back and automatic weapons pointed at me.
Let's see if we can get the other side of the aisle on board as well:
"I'm walking down the street with a bong in my pocket (none of the gov't's damned business) and the DHS van shows I'm packing illegal paraphernalia. Next thing I know I'm on the ground with a knee in my back and they're pinching my herb.":)
The government isn't telling them they can't have a voice, the government is telling them they can't smash up poor shopkeeps' storefronts to make their point.
The government is doing both. It is saying they cannot smash up storefronts (by arresting the people who did that), and saying they cannot speak in such a way as might incite others to smash up storefronts (by arresting the two kids in this story). Maybe that is the right answer in this case -- I am not saying these kids are innocent. But these two did not smash up anything, nor did their actions result in anything getting smashed up. So it is not just the government saying people cannot smash things, nor even that their voice cannot be the proximate cause of things getting smashed -- these kids did not do either of those things.
That is precisely why this is a story worth discussing. What these kids did is, in my opinion, closer to shouting fire in a crowded theater than it is to discussing politically motivated direct action. However, it is clearly not shouting fire in a crowded theater. Shouting fire is a more proximate cause of violence, and implies that a subsequent stampede occurs with a physical threat to safety -- no such physical threat occurred in this case.
Nobody listened in this case, so it is purely a question of whether what they said was illegal in itself. That is worth discussing, and it is worth discussing more soberly than your second paragraph suggests. The tenor of your second paragraph does not fit well in intelligent discussion of law at any time, and is far less appropriate now, with riots happening all over the world -- most of them more clearly political direct action than this case. Now is the time to be very careful and sober about our rights, not to piss them away with emotionalist bluster, presenting questions of gray area as if only a fool or maniac would disagree.
and there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young â" a form in which ideas are more difficult to express.
While I agree that there is a dearth of visually-oriented critical thinking pieces out there, I think it may simply be that we have not yet adapted to the new media. It used to be difficult for Joe Thinker to put out something with a significant visual component, so most critical thinking has been focused on prose. You can, however, go at least as far back as Tufte, or as recent as Lessig and TED, to find that people are putting critical thinking into visual forms.
So while the article may be right, I think the message that we (critical thinkers) should take from it is that we need to put some effort into the visual component to remain fresh and expressive in tomorrow's world.
This guy is the poster boy for why cell phone usage in cars should be banned in more places.
Shouldn't the poster boy be someone who caused an accident? Who was in charge of the nomination process? Surely there is someone out there who ran into a school bus full of special needs children while texting, or something.
Mozilla's Asa Dotzler explained, "We're moving to a more Web-like convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as long as it's the latest version."
The system administrators of that web site can see exactly which version of the software is installed, and it is extremely important. Just like we, end users, need to be able to do when we manage the software installed on our home computers.
The reason you don't see the version number of the platform software on a web site is because you are interacting exclusively as the end user, not the sysadmin. For your home computers, however, you are both the end user and the sysadmin. Sysadmins need to know version numbers.
Microsoft made the same mistake recently claiming that the openness of the underlying software in a cloud service is irrelevant because the end users do not care. The fact that the cloud disentangles the end user and sysadmin roles does not mean that either no longer exists, nor that those roles have been disentangled on the home computer.
"Sound familiar? Anonymouse are doing what those they claim to fight against are doing."
Not too familiar with the concept of dissidence and revolution, I take it? That is exactly how it is, every time. Small group of outsiders, attempting to push their agenda, which they believe represents the true will of the complacent populace. If it gathers enough support, it becomes a revolution.
"One of the things that the PROTECT-IP act is said to do is make DNS servers censor websites that have been accused of copyright infringement. Drew Wilson... found 8 ways to circumvent such censorship.... If anything, the list raises serious doubts that the PROTECT IP Act will even put a dent on copyright infringement online."
Think of our legislators as black hats, poking holes in our network infrastructure because they are malicious pricks, or getting paid, or both, but the end result is that we learn how to make the network resistant to their attacks. In a way, they perform an important function. Sure, we all prefer white hats, but the black hats are out there, in congress, running major corporations, and even in the White House. Nothing is going to change that, so we must secure our network from the threat they represent.
> "'One could argue that Google is using its dominance in search advertising to unfairly gain entry into another market by giving that new product, Android, away for free. Does this remind you of any famous antitrust case?'"
Yes.
And Google's competitors are also abusing flaws in the patent system.
Having one set of abuses to correct another set of abuses doesn't mean that Google's competitors are good, or that the patent system is working. They are all opportunistic and sociopathic. You have identified a second kind of distortion which is harmful to free market capitalism. Both flaws should be addressed at the system level, and these companies that are abusing these flaws should all be castigated.
I am curious to see if the following series of events will play out:
1. This bill is proposed. 2. Major ISPs form a coalition and raise hell about costs. 3. Politicians offer to include government money to defray the costs of data retention. (at a ludicrously high profit margin for the ISPs) 4. Major ISP coalition lines up in support of the bill.
That's pretty much how it went with the telcos when the government granted itself monitoring rooms.
"While the idea of anonymous social networking sounds like an oxymoron, the use of pseudonyms to mask a user's online identity has a long history that stretches back to the earliest days of the Internet and local bulletin board systems (BBS)."
The use of pseudonymous communication goes a bit further back than that. The value to society is rather plainly displayed in the body of the Federalist Papers, by Publius -- a pseudonym for Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Anyone who argues that pseudonymity is a bad thing has to explain how The Federalist Papers would have been better without it, or how The United States would have been better without The Federalist Papers.
> customers don't care about the underlying platform as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open.
That seems true. Customers want openness in the part that they deal with. Since the customer does not deal with system maintenance and development, he does not care whether the underlying platform is open. The provider of the cloud service, on the other hand, has a deeply vested interest in the openness of the platform. Maintenance, repair, and extension requirements all strongly favor an open platform from the cloud service provider's perspective.
Pointing out that the customer does not care about platform openness as long as the protocol is open is a bit like saying that automobile drivers do not care if the paving crew uses horse-drawn paving machines as long as they get the job done in a timely manner. It does not necessarily follow that horse-drawn paving machines make sense.
If the purpose of this discussion is to analyze the current state of law, then your point is worth considering.
I think, however, that the purpose of this discussion is to discuss what law should be. I cannot see how it benefits our society to confer personhood on a construct of government for generating GDP. Corporations are entities that we as a society choose to create and allow to exist because they do wonderful things for the economy. The notion of equality of citizens is fundamentally opposed to the notion of granting equal status to non-human entities, such as government constructs.
Furthermore, corporations are not allowed to vote, they are not included in the census counts that determine the number of representatives in Congress, they do not have the right to plead the fifth, and they do not enjoy equal protection from unreasonable search and seizure. If we were considering whether they are persons, then it would be plain on its face that the law does not treat them as natural persons under the Constitution.
Corporations are not persons, and should not be persons. The fact that they have been granted some first amendment protection is not a matter of Constitutional law, but of flawed and inconsistent interpretation of subsequent non-Constitutional law.
> I don't think you appreciate just how much laws regulating speech do for you on a daily basis.
I don't think you understand the distinction between "corporation" and "citizen", the definition of public speech, nor the meaning of proximate harm.
> Have you ever read the label on a food item? It's accurate because of laws regulating speech.
Corporate speech. Corporations are not citizens and do not have the right of free speech.
> Have you ever read/seen/listened to an advertisement? They can't lie to you because of laws regulating speech.
Corporate speech. Also paid speech -- even if it were a citizen purchasing the ad and another citizen running it, the trade could still be regulated.
> Have you ever made an oral contract? It's enforceable because of laws regulating speech.
The laws do not inhibit the speech, they cover the agreement to enter into a contract; the speech is merely the vehicle. You can stand on a soapbox in the park and say the exact same thing, without intending to form a contract, and it will not be regulated in any way.
> Have you ever been stampeded after someone shouted fire in a crowded theater? Probably not... because of laws regulating speech.
Clear and present danger. Free speech does not cover speech acts which are the proximate cause of physical harm. And this one is the common example precisely because it is the extreme limit of the authority of the government to regulate public speech. Nothing which is significantly less proximate is covered.
> Lying to the police is a crime. Perjury is a crime.
Saying the same things while standing on a soapbox in the park is completely unregulated. It is not an inhibition against public speech, it is an inhibition against disrupting a public office in the performance of its duty. In much the same way, walking into a courtroom and singing Jingle Bells would get you removed from court and possibly jailed for contempt or creating a public disturbance.
> Our legal system works because of laws regulating speech.
Our legal system does not have the authority to inhibit public speech by a citizen which is not the proximate cause of harm to another citizen.
> But the "call to 'shoot the [racist slur]'" was clearly unacceptable and should have been illegal. In the UK this would be incitement to violence and incitement of racial hatred.
Part of the founding of the US was when a group of people started publishing pamphlets saying that we should attack the lawful government. As it happens, it was the UK government against which the US patriots were calling for attack.
That enormous historic event paints in stark contrast why the UK might have a law against such behavior, and the US might see the right to do so as central to our principles -- even when the person who does it is a bigoted asshole. To paraphrase Larry Flynt: Rights exist precisely to protect the people we want to subjugate.
> C) This benefits the US. The US MADE money from this.
The US made less than one percent. When you get less back on a loan than the rate of inflation, it is losing money. When you are the investor of last resort in a failing business, you are supposed to get much more than the going rate, not less.
I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do for external reasons, but to claim it was a sound investment in direct ROI is false.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
This is something we hear all the time from almost every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Patents feel like a "necessary evil," but no one feels like they need them. This should really wake up Congress. They always talk up how patents help and protect entrepreneurs, but the reality is that they're a complete nuisance for most.
HAHAAHAHAHHHHAHAHHHHHAHHHAAAAHAHAA. That was awesome. My eyes are watering. Man, I've been working long hours for the past week or two, and I needed a good laugh this morning.
That is absolutely precious. OK, Mr. Masnick: I hate to be the one to bear this bad news, so I'll try to do it gently. Congress is not interested in protecting entrepreneurs, the middle class, small business, or any of the other drums they beat so frequently. When a Congress person says "We have a responsibility to protect XYZ", it is like when the President says, "I have complete confidence in Michael Brown". It means "The referenced person/class is a freaking albatross that I would sooner toss down the oubliette than spend one more minute thinking about, but professional politicianing requires that I pretend I don't want to gut it and sell the tender innards to my friends."
Congress cares about lobbyists with a lot of money. Period. End of story. Entrepreneurs have jack shit. Entrenched incumbents have the money. Entrenched incumbents are who is served by patent policy. Congress is entirely awake and aware of who their puppet masters are.
Want proof? Read this. We are the only country in the world that still rewards the inventor with the patent, instead of the company with the fastest lawyers. It is blindingly obviously the right way to reward innovation instead of litigation. It is so obvious that for Congress to accept First-to-File would be indefensible as supporting innovation or entrepreneurs to anyone who has even a remote knowledge of the patent process. And for inventors who have lots of patents, like my Father, the idea of First-to-File is enough to send him into a half hour apoplectic tirade that makes me fear for his heart. Yet the movement to make the switch is alive and kicking, and probably going to happen within the next few years. Why? Mostly because with every check Microsoft writes to damned near every person in Congress, they say, "Oh, and pass first-to-file -- we're tired of only getting patents when one of our employees invents something."
One thing that I've increasingly lost track of is why people would put themselves in so much risk to attack these organizatoins.
I suspect that is because you are doing it wrong. When you find some people's actions to be irrational, you can do one of two things: Form an opinion that they must be crazy, judging them by your perceptions and values, and start telling others they cannot be rational, pointing out the bits that you see as inconsistent. Or, you can operate on the assumption that for people to do something so alien to your way of thinking there must be some motive and seek to understand what that might be.
You are taking the first approach, which can only ever lead to estrangement. This practice is common. For example, it is often encouraged by nationalists regarding enemies of the state or by political parties in a two-party system seeking to reinforce the duopoly. If your objective is to remain confused and upset, or to keep others so, that is the right thing to do -- but then I somewhat wonder what you are doing here. We're not really much on ostriches here. Lots of illusions get shattered here. Which only leaves the motive of influencing others to fail to understand, which seems dickish.
If you take the latter approach, it really seems like it is not that hard to understand why these people are doing this. You haven't mentioned any of the reasons that people might do this, so it really seems like you are not trying to get it. That seems odd to me. If you are not trying to understand them, why submit a post that makes that fact so apparent? It is not very impressive -- it is far easier to not understand non-standard people than to understand them. Again the only good reason I can come up with is wanting to influence others to share your lack of understanding, rather than a genuine expression of your personal desire to understand.
crippling poverty and religious conviction, that are given as the underlying cause.
While those things are often given as the underlying cause, they are not always so. Religion, sure, sometimes. Crippling poverty is much less often the true motive (never?).
Typically (always?) when poverty is cited, the true motivation is a perception of bias in the distribution of money and/or power. Poor people very rarely incite revolution if those in power are just as poor and have no ability to change things. Really it wouldn't make much sense, would it? More often they are attacking a system in which they perceive an unhealthy concentration of wealth and/or power.
You have pointed out, probably correctly, that the members of anonymous are less likely to be focused on the money side. That can be seen somewhat in the fact that they use advanced technology that implies some degree of affluence (relative to global monetary distribution), but even more so in their choice of targets -- almost all (at least in recent months) have been about power.
So: Can you see any kind of power imbalance between the kinds of people that might be in Anonymous and a guy who is a liaison between the FBI and private sector companies that sell high-tech devices? Have you heard any stories in the past 10 years that might make some people perceive an increasing misdirection of concentrated power. or of an increase in the degree of concentration of power?
P.S.:
As I go through and edit the above, I am struck by another thought. This is well documented. The notion that people don't just do things like Anonymous is doing, given the risk of their actions, for no reason. And it is one of my all-time favorite sentences:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
If it seems like Anonymous is doing something way out of the ordinary, that is because they are. If the goal is to use the mechanisms of society to destroy them, then keeping people confused and upset is a fine (if disingenuous) path to that end. If the goal is to understand them, it is not hard.
Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software patents, with new global-economy-destroying patent trolls doing the disruption in more cases than not.
There, FTFY. Your points are well taken, Marc (and well documented in singularity theory). The problem is, software patents reward litigation over innovation, so it's not going to be the information processing innovators who will win. Under the current system, we will continue to be the serfs -- skilled labor in a cage.
The more interesting question to me is, will we realize what is happening to us, and change our future? Is it already starting, through the various pseudo-revolutionary information processing collectives (GNU, WikiLeaks, Anonymous, etc)?
You don't really understand the meaning of the word. "Lawyer" has a legal meaning;
You are being deliberately obtuse. This is not a meeting of the bar association, it is a public discussion forum. If your intent is to recant your initial statement, because you did not realize this was not a meeting of the bar association, I will not fault you for it.
Slashdot needs a 'sarcasm' tag.
Read the last sentence of my post again:
Both [the iPod and iPhone] are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.
'zat a little more obvious now?
My statement that $12.5 billion barriers to entry enhance innovation was meant to be equally obviously sarcastic. Barriers to entry are specifically interesting in economics because they cause the market to distort away from competition -- one of the chief advantages of competition is innovation. So barriers to entry are inherently harmful to innovation, and can only be justified by significant tangible counteracting benefits -- which many, including myself, would argue are not apparent in rapidly advancing technical spaces like mobile devices.
Newp, I don't have to tell you a damned thing.
Correct. That would be covered by this part:
"If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you."
You have no idea what I'm doing with my life
Umm, you said, "I am a lawyer." That is an expression of identity. Expressions of identity mean something to people in normal parlance.
"Lawyer" just means I have a license.
Don't be ridiculous. "I am a lawyer" means you are a lawyer. It is an expression of identity, and it has meaning. This is not a court of law, it is a discussion forum. Words mean what they actually mean here, not what weasels sharpen them into.
You are the one who introduced the fact that you are a lawyer. If you want to discuss that, we can. If you are now saying you do not want to discuss it, I completely understand.
If you are now saying that you are not really a lawyer in the common sense that is reasonably construed from "I am a lawyer", then there is nothing to discuss, and never was, except perhaps for your misrepresentation.
But to say, "I am a member of a justly ostracized class, and I don't want to be ostracized, and I will not tell you why" is utterly uncompelling.
What is the .357 magnum a metaphor for?
Justice? :)
Look, we're tarring with a single brush, but it really isn't that broad. Fact is, your industry is doing serious damage to our society, and profiting from the damage. That is reasonable cause for some pretty serious backlash.
You may be innocent, you may be one of the good guys. Maybe you are working to fix the problem. Maybe you are not, but you have convinced yourself that being a part of the system does not mean you condone it. Maybe you work in a corner of law that is not quite so seriously screwed up by your kin. If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you.
If you want us to believe that lawyers, in general, are not worthy of society's scorn, well, simple fact is you are wrong, and it is not going to happen.
If you want us to express fondness for you, despite your profession, then you've got to tell us why you are not part of the problem. Same treatment you would get if you were a congressman or an Abu Ghraib guard.
This is how cultures deal with internal threats that cannot be easily handled through official channels. We ostracize them. You can get special dispensation, but you have to ask for it, and explain why you deserve it.
Look, just because one of the world's most powerful companies tried to create new mobile products, and wound up having to pay $12.5 billion to be allowed the privilege is no reason to overreact. You see, $12.5 billion barriers to entry are good for innovation. Massive government fiat barriers to entry encourage entrenched incumbency, and entrenched incumbents are very inventive. Just look at the iPod and iPhone. Both of those devices are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.
The real death toll from Katrina, for example, is still classified.
Classified?
Are you saying the number is extremely hard to calculate perfectly, and so it is something other than 1836 (current number listed on Wikipedia), and depends on your definition, and nobody really knows?
Or do you mean that the actual number including proximate deaths is well known and clearly documented by the government, significantly higher than the 1836 cited on Wikipedia, and has been intentionally prohibited from public view?
If the latter, I am very intrigued by your supposition. Do you have a source?
I'm walking down the street with a concealed handgun (perfectly legal in 30+ states) and the DHS van shows I'm packing heat. Next thing I know I'm on the ground with a knee in my back and automatic weapons pointed at me.
Let's see if we can get the other side of the aisle on board as well:
"I'm walking down the street with a bong in my pocket (none of the gov't's damned business) and the DHS van shows I'm packing illegal paraphernalia. Next thing I know I'm on the ground with a knee in my back and they're pinching my herb." :)
The government isn't telling them they can't have a voice, the government is telling them they can't smash up poor shopkeeps' storefronts to make their point.
The government is doing both. It is saying they cannot smash up storefronts (by arresting the people who did that), and saying they cannot speak in such a way as might incite others to smash up storefronts (by arresting the two kids in this story). Maybe that is the right answer in this case -- I am not saying these kids are innocent. But these two did not smash up anything, nor did their actions result in anything getting smashed up. So it is not just the government saying people cannot smash things, nor even that their voice cannot be the proximate cause of things getting smashed -- these kids did not do either of those things.
That is precisely why this is a story worth discussing. What these kids did is, in my opinion, closer to shouting fire in a crowded theater than it is to discussing politically motivated direct action. However, it is clearly not shouting fire in a crowded theater. Shouting fire is a more proximate cause of violence, and implies that a subsequent stampede occurs with a physical threat to safety -- no such physical threat occurred in this case.
Nobody listened in this case, so it is purely a question of whether what they said was illegal in itself. That is worth discussing, and it is worth discussing more soberly than your second paragraph suggests. The tenor of your second paragraph does not fit well in intelligent discussion of law at any time, and is far less appropriate now, with riots happening all over the world -- most of them more clearly political direct action than this case. Now is the time to be very careful and sober about our rights, not to piss them away with emotionalist bluster, presenting questions of gray area as if only a fool or maniac would disagree.
and there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young â" a form in which ideas are more difficult to express.
While I agree that there is a dearth of visually-oriented critical thinking pieces out there, I think it may simply be that we have not yet adapted to the new media. It used to be difficult for Joe Thinker to put out something with a significant visual component, so most critical thinking has been focused on prose. You can, however, go at least as far back as Tufte, or as recent as Lessig and TED, to find that people are putting critical thinking into visual forms.
So while the article may be right, I think the message that we (critical thinkers) should take from it is that we need to put some effort into the visual component to remain fresh and expressive in tomorrow's world.
This guy is the poster boy for why cell phone usage in cars should be banned in more places.
Shouldn't the poster boy be someone who caused an accident? Who was in charge of the nomination process? Surely there is someone out there who ran into a school bus full of special needs children while texting, or something.
Mozilla's Asa Dotzler explained, "We're moving to a more Web-like convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as long as it's the latest version."
The system administrators of that web site can see exactly which version of the software is installed, and it is extremely important. Just like we, end users, need to be able to do when we manage the software installed on our home computers.
The reason you don't see the version number of the platform software on a web site is because you are interacting exclusively as the end user, not the sysadmin. For your home computers, however, you are both the end user and the sysadmin. Sysadmins need to know version numbers.
Microsoft made the same mistake recently claiming that the openness of the underlying software in a cloud service is irrelevant because the end users do not care. The fact that the cloud disentangles the end user and sysadmin roles does not mean that either no longer exists, nor that those roles have been disentangled on the home computer.
"Sound familiar? Anonymouse are doing what those they claim to fight against are doing."
Not too familiar with the concept of dissidence and revolution, I take it? That is exactly how it is, every time. Small group of outsiders, attempting to push their agenda, which they believe represents the true will of the complacent populace. If it gathers enough support, it becomes a revolution.
For a good example case, see Thomas Paine.
"One of the things that the PROTECT-IP act is said to do is make DNS servers censor websites that have been accused of copyright infringement. Drew Wilson ... found 8 ways to circumvent such censorship. ... If anything, the list raises serious doubts that the PROTECT IP Act will even put a dent on copyright infringement online."
Think of our legislators as black hats, poking holes in our network infrastructure because they are malicious pricks, or getting paid, or both, but the end result is that we learn how to make the network resistant to their attacks. In a way, they perform an important function. Sure, we all prefer white hats, but the black hats are out there, in congress, running major corporations, and even in the White House. Nothing is going to change that, so we must secure our network from the threat they represent.
> "'One could argue that Google is using its dominance in search advertising to unfairly gain entry into another market by giving that new product, Android, away for free. Does this remind you of any famous antitrust case?'"
Yes.
And Google's competitors are also abusing flaws in the patent system.
Having one set of abuses to correct another set of abuses doesn't mean that Google's competitors are good, or that the patent system is working. They are all opportunistic and sociopathic. You have identified a second kind of distortion which is harmful to free market capitalism. Both flaws should be addressed at the system level, and these companies that are abusing these flaws should all be castigated.
I am curious to see if the following series of events will play out:
1. This bill is proposed.
2. Major ISPs form a coalition and raise hell about costs.
3. Politicians offer to include government money to defray the costs of data retention. (at a ludicrously high profit margin for the ISPs)
4. Major ISP coalition lines up in support of the bill.
That's pretty much how it went with the telcos when the government granted itself monitoring rooms.
"While the idea of anonymous social networking sounds like an oxymoron, the use of pseudonyms to mask a user's online identity has a long history that stretches back to the earliest days of the Internet and local bulletin board systems (BBS)."
The use of pseudonymous communication goes a bit further back than that. The value to society is rather plainly displayed in the body of the Federalist Papers, by Publius -- a pseudonym for Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Anyone who argues that pseudonymity is a bad thing has to explain how The Federalist Papers would have been better without it, or how The United States would have been better without The Federalist Papers.
> customers don't care about the underlying platform as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open.
That seems true. Customers want openness in the part that they deal with. Since the customer does not deal with system maintenance and development, he does not care whether the underlying platform is open. The provider of the cloud service, on the other hand, has a deeply vested interest in the openness of the platform. Maintenance, repair, and extension requirements all strongly favor an open platform from the cloud service provider's perspective.
Pointing out that the customer does not care about platform openness as long as the protocol is open is a bit like saying that automobile drivers do not care if the paving crew uses horse-drawn paving machines as long as they get the job done in a timely manner. It does not necessarily follow that horse-drawn paving machines make sense.
> Corporations are people
If the purpose of this discussion is to analyze the current state of law, then your point is worth considering.
I think, however, that the purpose of this discussion is to discuss what law should be. I cannot see how it benefits our society to confer personhood on a construct of government for generating GDP. Corporations are entities that we as a society choose to create and allow to exist because they do wonderful things for the economy. The notion of equality of citizens is fundamentally opposed to the notion of granting equal status to non-human entities, such as government constructs.
Furthermore, corporations are not allowed to vote, they are not included in the census counts that determine the number of representatives in Congress, they do not have the right to plead the fifth, and they do not enjoy equal protection from unreasonable search and seizure. If we were considering whether they are persons, then it would be plain on its face that the law does not treat them as natural persons under the Constitution.
Corporations are not persons, and should not be persons. The fact that they have been granted some first amendment protection is not a matter of Constitutional law, but of flawed and inconsistent interpretation of subsequent non-Constitutional law.
> I don't think you appreciate just how much laws regulating speech do for you on a daily basis.
I don't think you understand the distinction between "corporation" and "citizen", the definition of public speech, nor the meaning of proximate harm.
> Have you ever read the label on a food item? It's accurate because of laws regulating speech.
Corporate speech. Corporations are not citizens and do not have the right of free speech.
> Have you ever read/seen/listened to an advertisement? They can't lie to you because of laws regulating speech.
Corporate speech. Also paid speech -- even if it were a citizen purchasing the ad and another citizen running it, the trade could still be regulated.
> Have you ever made an oral contract? It's enforceable because of laws regulating speech.
The laws do not inhibit the speech, they cover the agreement to enter into a contract; the speech is merely the vehicle. You can stand on a soapbox in the park and say the exact same thing, without intending to form a contract, and it will not be regulated in any way.
> Have you ever been stampeded after someone shouted fire in a crowded theater? Probably not... because of laws regulating speech.
Clear and present danger. Free speech does not cover speech acts which are the proximate cause of physical harm. And this one is the common example precisely because it is the extreme limit of the authority of the government to regulate public speech. Nothing which is significantly less proximate is covered.
> Lying to the police is a crime. Perjury is a crime.
Saying the same things while standing on a soapbox in the park is completely unregulated. It is not an inhibition against public speech, it is an inhibition against disrupting a public office in the performance of its duty. In much the same way, walking into a courtroom and singing Jingle Bells would get you removed from court and possibly jailed for contempt or creating a public disturbance.
> Our legal system works because of laws regulating speech.
Our legal system does not have the authority to inhibit public speech by a citizen which is not the proximate cause of harm to another citizen.
> But the "call to 'shoot the [racist slur]'" was clearly unacceptable and should have been illegal. In the UK this would be incitement to violence and incitement of racial hatred.
Part of the founding of the US was when a group of people started publishing pamphlets saying that we should attack the lawful government. As it happens, it was the UK government against which the US patriots were calling for attack.
That enormous historic event paints in stark contrast why the UK might have a law against such behavior, and the US might see the right to do so as central to our principles -- even when the person who does it is a bigoted asshole. To paraphrase Larry Flynt: Rights exist precisely to protect the people we want to subjugate.
Very well written. Definitely presents interesting food for thought. Thank you for the post!
> C) This benefits the US. The US MADE money from this.
The US made less than one percent. When you get less back on a loan than the rate of inflation, it is losing money. When you are the investor of last resort in a failing business, you are supposed to get much more than the going rate, not less.
I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do for external reasons, but to claim it was a sound investment in direct ROI is false.