I agree with your comment, and think it is an important issue to keep in mind -- that municipalities become dependent on these revenues, and even use them to justify the enforcement programs.
An effective argument against this, I think, is to point out the flawed logic. The way profit motive is supposed to work is to couple it directly to the desired behavior. In the case of law enforcement, if the desired outcome is greater civil officer presence, then the revenue from fines should be directly proportionate to civil officer presence. The very best possible way to ensure this is to have fines arise from the presence of a civil officer. More cops on the street, more revenue. If a municipality wants more revenue from fines, it should put more cops on the street.
It is simple economics. To encourage a particular behavior, money should flow in response to the desired behavior. When money flows to pedantic enforcement instead of to police presence, we financially select for pedantic enforcement instead of police presence.
Hey, I've got a better idea: How about we have actual police officers on the streets? The nice thing about police officers is that instead of merely pedantically punishing the most measurable of laws long after the infraction has occurred, they can detect harmful behavior in progress even when it does not meet specific technical parameters and intercede. A visible presence also has an enormous deterrent effect on all kinds of criminal and negligent behavior. And even better, they are available to help with things that are not directly enforcement related, like calling a tow truck or directing traffic when a signal goes out. You know, to protect *and* to serve.
As a side benefit, this helps ensure that the fines are going where they belong; to pay the salaries of hard-working public service officers -- not into the pocket of some private corporation's CEO.
I can totally dig that the volume of possible copyright infringement -- and hence the volume of takedown notices -- on YouTube is enormous. So large that automated processing is effectively required to keep compliance costs at a manageable level.
So how about publishing the takedowns? Maybe a CSS feed with just the links to the video pages with the removal notice for starters. If that goes smoothly, perhaps you could work toward publishing the takedown requests and the identities of the requesting agents.
I think it is reasonable for the content-generating community to accept that you are a business with real cost management needs to meet. It would be a nice turnabout to the content-generating community for you to make the data available for us to analyze, to enable us to see if patterns of abuse are developing. Just as copyright infringement effectively becomes a cost you must deal with, takedown abuse also becomes an expense to you. This sort of approach would allow you to crowd-source the analysis and mitigation of such abuse. I am sure there are plenty of fair-use nazis out here who would love to help.
new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, look standard, but their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information, and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.
New? Really?
I just got out of advertising (hopefully for the last time) after a total of 6 of the past 11 years spent cutting tracking code.
The first time I wrote code to track brick and mortar coupons to the individual online origin was in 1999. Every online coupon you print has been doing this for many years. Every high tech advertising company in the business makes its pitch in part by having (or at least claiming to have) the most accurate and precise tracking. If you can think of a way that, theoretically, they might be tracking you; they almost certainly are. It is a massive portion of the value proposition behind advertising; learning which advertising works so you can maximize campaign efficiency. The companies that don't do this, and do it well, go out of business quickly.
The most surprising bit here is that the NY Times is just finding out. Perhaps they have their own in-house ad company? Or they don't run coupons online?
All that said, I'm happy to see this get some publicity. It stuns me how much people think they're not being watched on every single page they visit.
for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy.
DVD sales are falling, and piracy may be increasing. However, movie quality is also falling, Hulu is climbing, alternative video entertainment (YouTube, vidcasts, &c) is climbing, streaming rentals (Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes) are climbing, and digital sales are climbing. Average consumer confidence over the past decade has also been at historical lows and the lift from the real estate boom mostly brought (lottery-like, irrational) lump sums of disposable cash that were used for big ticket items, not DVDs. Expanding mortgage obligations also tend to hamper smaller scale short-term disposable income (the kind that is used for DVDs).
The decline of DVD sales is certainly not entirely due to piracy, and may not even be largely due to it. Every time the two are conflated as having a strict and isolated causative relationship the ability to rationally discuss the issue is harmed. Please don't over-simplify this complex system -- there is great harm being done by over-legislation in this area already.
Can Microsoft do that as well? It's their platform right? Oh, wait, it's Apple so it's fine now.
No, no, no. It's *Flash* so it's fine. Flash sucks, Objective C is good, and we should be transitioning to HTML 5. Therefore I can toss aside my principles to root for the oligarch I prefer at the moment... umm, hmmm.
It is tough living in a world of oligarchs. Hoping for one to do the right thing to defend us against the slightly more onerous bad guy. "Save us from Microsoft, Google!" "Save us from Bush, Obama!" "Save us from AT&T, Verizon!" "Save us from the RIAA, Supreme Court!" "Save us from the Supreme Court, Congress!" "Save us from Congress, Supreme Court!"
In a world made of fallible humans, I think I'd rather have less concentration of wealth and power.
There are a number of reasons for this that I find plausible. Here are two:
1. You are very well-versed on the topics covered by The Economist that you have read. This is very likely true in this specific case, as our community is very sensitive to copyright law and history. The Economist, while targeting a highly educated audience, must sometimes seek common ground even among such heady heights. Copyright is a topic most people have not considered so deeply; so even the brightest of those outside our community are likely to require a more elementary starting point than we.
2. You have read a few articles here and there in The Economist, but have rarely read entire issues. The Economist covers such a broad range of matters -- so many things touch the global economy -- that it is easy to find many articles which are of little use to any given individual. In my case I find the majority of their articles to be, while well researched and written, relatively uninteresting to me. In such a broad space there is bound to be a great deal of chaff relative to each reader's mind.
A possibility that I find extremely implausible is that The Economist is, in fact, utterly lacking in significant content. I say this based on the variety of people I know who find it to be one of the few truly substantial periodicals. Off the top of my head, there's a couple Ivy League grads, a PhD computer scientist, a PhD candidate in some field of biology, and three college drop-outs who are nonetheless among the smartest people I know.
All of which is to say; I can completely understand that you may have found some articles you have read to be shallower than your own knowledge of their topic space (assuming you are fairly astute regarding said space), and others that covered a subject you found inconsequential. I think it is unlikely, however, that the magazine is objectively and entirely mere fluff.
Excluding data carriers from common carrier requirements was one of the dumbest things we have ever done.
Simple principle: If you want to make decisions about which traffic to carry at what speed, you are legally liable for all traffic you carry. If you want safe harbor from liability, you cannot decide which packets get special treatment.
Throttling is fine if it is unbiased. Picking winners and losers is not the ISP's prerogative.
Step 4: US taxes should apply only within US borders. As a resident in a foreign country, I shouldn't have to pay the US tax money.
It's easy to solve this part. Just renounce your citizenship and you won't have to pay US income tax. See, the benefits of being a US citizen have very little to do with your geophysical location. The US has long arms, and you get most of the protections of this nation no matter where you are in the world. So, if you want to remain a US citizen, you pay your dues.
A friend and ex-Navy officer explained this to me when he was working overseas for UBS, then HSBC. He was making a ton of money, and paying his taxes proudly.
When it comes to tax policy, anyone can say "I want to pay less taxes." It is such heavily trod ground as to induce a yawn at the mere mention. Try something different. Start with a few years of studying historical tax policies in the US and abroad, then present a cogent argument for your position. Demonstrate an awareness of the total implications (including economic shifts over time that would result from the change).
And, quit whining. We all hate giving money away. It takes a bit more maturity to realize that even though I disagree with much of what my money is used for, and though I've visited to more than a dozen fine first world countries, I still cannot name another place that I would rather call my nation.
President Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document.
To me, this screams for a simplification of tax law. Here's a thought:
Step 1: Eliminate corporate taxes. (and as another commenter opined, eliminate the ludicrous notion of corporate person-hood while you're at it)
Now, once you've done step 1, guess what? The argument about capital gains being double-taxation disappears. So:
Step 2: Eliminate any distinction between capital gains and any other form of income in terms of taxation. Treat all income as just income.
The big corporations aren't paying corporate taxes anyway, and all it really does is incentivize them to dump their profits into advertising to increase their market cap.
Hey, here's an idea: What say we actually consider the spirit of the 4th amendment, eh? We need an example though... Some form of remote communication that existed back in the day when people had more recent knowledge of the importance of the Bill of Rights. Ideally something that could regularly fall into the hands of both the government and third parties. Something like United States Postal Service mail.
See, USPS mail is pretty much the earliest significant form of remote communications in the United States. It goes all the way back to 1775. The policies regarding the privacy of postal mail are pretty much exactly what the founding fathers intended, so we can be pretty sure they are what a bunch of smart, argumentative guys would come up with when seriously considering -- from up close and personal -- the dangers of invasion of privacy.
Now what are those standards? Well, if you tamper with the mail, you go to jail. If you open someone else's mail, you go to jail. If the government wants to open your mail, they need a warrant. They need a real warrant, from a judge and supported by oath or affirmation, not a flunky clerk with a rubber stamp and a pen register.
That is what the 4th amendment is about: You have a right to be secure in your papers. Genuinely secure. Not "the government won't look unless they feel like it", but genuinely secure that it won't happen for light or transient reasons. Even if those papers are not in your home or your possession. Even if they are in an envelope that can be seen through. Even if that envelope could be opened and resealed without anyone knowing. You mess with the mail, you go to jail.
That is the standard of the people who actually faced, fought, and defeated oligarchy. It is a good one. It is fundamental to true liberty -- the liberty of having a truly free mind. It is the standard we should apply to all private communications. Google, Microsoft, FBI, everybody -- keep your cotton picking noses out of my private communications unless you have a real warrant or my express written permission (notarized, of course).
Eleven U.S. lawmakers have asked the FTC to investigate Google's launch of its Buzz social-networking product for breaches of consumer privacy.
Oligarch 2:
Saying an old e-mail or your online photo album should have the same privacy protection from police as your home filing cabinet, Google, Microsoft and others said Tuesday they will ask Congress to overhaul a 24-year-old federal law that helps define online and mobile phone privacy.
Isn't it nice to have such honorable oligarchs? Nobly bickering over who gets to read my communications to serve their own ends, unhindered by petty respect for the intent and spirit of the 4th amendment.
The principle of first sale exists for a very specific reason, and it is exactly the case here. First sale exists precisely so that the buyer can have a standard, simple understanding of what "buy" means. Muddling the notion of "buy" makes the free market more complicated, inhibiting the ideal of perfect information.
Of course, in this country we regularly seek not the free market. This is particularly true of late with copyrighted works. Given the DoJ has been populated with former RIAA lawyers, you can guess how much the principles of free market capitalism will matter.
If you are decrypting or gaining access to decrypted classified video, what do they expect is going to happen?
If they believed they lived in a proper modern republic, they would believe that they would be protected by the first amendment for publishing the info, and by whistle-blower protections for gaining access to the information. The government is our servant, not our master. When a member or members of We The People reasonably believe that they have caught the authorities with their hand in the cookie jar, it is the sworn duty of the authorities as our servants to stand down and let The People speak, and if necessary, judge.
I worry a little that throwing raw data out there with interpretations like "murder-coverup" is just as political an act as covering it up, not to mention a little sensationalistic.
It is both those things, of course. Winning battles of the direction of society requires both sensationalism and politicking. We see it played out in every election. Don't hate the player, hate the game. The sad fact is that we who do not have administrative power cannot set the rules of the game. And given that we all (on both sides, to be fair) love our interpretation of the principles of The Nation, we must be willing to engage on the battlefield they give us, or accept the sacrifice of The Nation's principles.
War is hell. Freedom isn't free. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
The "eternal" part is perhaps the most important one. We can't just fight for our Nation oversees, or only in time of war, or only against external enemies. Our Grand Experiment is tremendously delicate, and as susceptible to corruption from within as from without. And it is an experiment worth protecting -- because it has already shown (with occasional lapses, of course) more potential to be the shining light to the world than perhaps any other society in history. That is a big, scary, and sometimes painful responsibility -- but also something which gives me great pride.
What will happen if the company that owns the patent asserts it?
Not sure exactly, but a few general truths will hold:
1. Giant corporations and fast attack hitmen will do battle. 2. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars of our GDP will be redistributed to law firms. 3. Tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of dollars of our GDP will pay the salaries of judges and court functionaries. 4. Some of the parties will give some of the other parties giant piles of cash in a settlement before the court passes judgment. (none of the parties want an actual precedent to be set -- clarification of laws only serves to reduce the effectiveness of spurious legal arm-twisting) 5. In recognition of the settlement in item 4, the parties will all get the right to participate in the fiat monopoly. 6. No natural person who actually invents things will benefit in any rational proportion to their contribution or to the leviathan sums of money that get hurled around.
The patent system may support the progress of science and the useful arts, but in its current form it only does so as a tiny fraction of the extent to which it supports the progress of barratry and the wasteful arts.
It is the idea that all border guards will be able to easily discriminate the legality of content
"Article 2.7: Ex-Officio Action" [presenting just the US version here]
"1. Each party shall provide that its customs authorities may act upon their own initiative, to suspend the release of... suspected pirated copyright goods..."
The content need not be illegal (nor easily discriminated as such), the guard merely needs to posit suspicion.
In the battlefield of the kind US soldiers face in the Middle East, I think it would be a tad cumbersome to verify the combatant down your gun sight isn't a citizen before pulling the trigger.
There is a chasm of difference between pulling the trigger on an enemy combatant on an active battlefield and remotely targeting a specific person who is not engaged in active combat.
It depends on the government and the business. In a free market, business almost always does save the customer money. In a natural monopoly like utilities, roads, bridges, etc, you're going to pay through the nose if privately owned.
Well said.
Two other factors that make markets susceptible to distortion are elasticity and imperfect information. A great example is health care -- people are very poorly informed and demand is extremely insensitive to price (in addition to the fiat monopolies of patents and trade protectionism, and the natural monopoly of regionally captive audiences).
The original poster seems to want to condemn religious intolerance and injustice by being intolerant himself.
Off the original topic I'm guessing -- I'm assuming the original poster was being intolerant of all religion and not just of intolerant religion -- but curious about your view:
If intolerance is wrong, is it wrong to be intolerant of intolerant people? Serious question -- I have rolled this around in my head for a long time and haven't locked in my final answer. Since you indicate an interest in the topic, I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
You ask good questions. It will be fun to think them through:
this seems like a VERY valid argument.
Very agreed. My corporatist and capitalist friends are very smart, and they do not reach their conclusions lightly. I do belittle them for their conclusions, because they are wrong. But the argument has a lot of rational merit -- it just doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.
Do we ask Adobe if they are Price Fixing their Designer Suites to $1600? No. They are the only one's selling Adobe Software.
Copyright is a monopoly, and it leads to monopoly rents. That is why The Constitution specifies that the term must be limited. Some, including myself, argue that copyright should exist, but should have a duration more like Jefferson and the other Founders intended (as noted by the period of time they actually chose). Those who hold that view are, in effect, arguing that the amount of price fixing that we allow Adobe is too great -- but also that it should exist to act as a guarantee of a limited additional opportunity to profit on goods which can be copied for an arbitrarily low price.
The same does not necessarily hold for goods which have a significantly non-zero marginal cost of production (ie: if each unit has a significant material cost relative to its market value). For such goods, the free market laws of supply and demand are believed to be more efficient than the government at setting the price. Investors provide risk capital -- knowing that it may be lost -- in relation to their belief that they can build a competitive business. Their privilege to have such an opportunity is acquired by virtue of their willingness to risk the capital. That is, the fact that their capital is at risk is not a reason to pity them and give them a monopoly -- it is the nature of risk capital and the natural cost of entry to a capitalist free market.
When the government removes that risk, the capital provider loses his inhibition to gambling. The result is a bubble/crash cycle which is disruptive to long-term investment. This inhibition to long-term investment is self-catalyzing -- as long term investment becomes more precarious, short term investment (relatively speaking) is elevated in value. Short term investing, in turn, increases the instability of capital markets, and so the cycle continues. (roughly until the velocity of money is insufficient to continue the cycle)
Wow -- that was a helluva digression, but I enjoyed it.:)
PRICE FIXING, should concentrate on LOCAL business, and PRICE DUMPING should be our only worry from foreign manufacturers.
I tend to disagree with nationalist policies. (whew -- I could go on a digression here even bigger than the one above, but I will refrain)
Let us assume that we want to act nationalistically, for the sake of argument.
Price dumping from foreign companies means we can buy more stuff for the same number of dollars. That is generally a good thing. Overconsumption is a bad thing, but that is more a matter of our monetary policy (our interest rates are too low, too often) than of foreign nations' willingness to sell us stuff below cost. Consider if the middle east were "dumping" crude oil in the US market -- that would be a good thing, right? Same with all goods.
There is the caveat of the inefficiency of the market. Since the inputs of production are not frictionless, there is always at least some barrier to entry. In addition there are fiat barriers to entry, from zoning to patents. Because of these things, short term dumping followed by gouging can be inefficient to economies -- but this is true regardless of whether the dumper is domestic or foreign. In the foreign case, the monopoly rents charged during the gouging phase exit the nation (again, assuming we are taking a nationalist approach), so it is worse than internal dumping. But internal dumping is also inefficient. In fact, in the internal dumping case, dumping is inefficient regardless of whether gouging occurs -- if it does not, t
"'You can't have a technology destroy the business,' said the attorney representing the plaintiff. 'If you fire up a big fab plant with CRT tubes, and the next generation technology destroys it, then you have a big fab plant manufacturing buggy whips. So they have to make sure the price points for these [newer] technologies... don't destroy existing markets.'"
Sounds like the "pro" side of the argument that I constantly hear from my corporatist / protectionist friends. "New technology is destroying the entrenched incumbents! If the existing corporations fail it will mean economic collapse! We must hobble new technology! We must buy more laws to prevent the future from coming! The future requires us to think and adapt! And -- EGADS -- TO HIRE ENGINEERS!"
would prohibit peer-to-peer file-sharing programs from being installed without the informed consent of the authorized computer user. The legislation would also prohibit P2P software that would prevent the authorized user from blocking the installation of a P2P file-sharing program and/or disabling or removing any P2P file-sharing program.
Just change it to:
would prohibit programs from being installed without the informed consent of the authorized computer user. The legislation would also prohibit software that would prevent the authorized user from blocking the installation of a program and/or disabling or removing any program.
As you note, though, this would mean that the oligarchs would not be permitted to control the computers of the serfs.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your comment, and think it is an important issue to keep in mind -- that municipalities become dependent on these revenues, and even use them to justify the enforcement programs.
An effective argument against this, I think, is to point out the flawed logic. The way profit motive is supposed to work is to couple it directly to the desired behavior. In the case of law enforcement, if the desired outcome is greater civil officer presence, then the revenue from fines should be directly proportionate to civil officer presence. The very best possible way to ensure this is to have fines arise from the presence of a civil officer. More cops on the street, more revenue. If a municipality wants more revenue from fines, it should put more cops on the street.
It is simple economics. To encourage a particular behavior, money should flow in response to the desired behavior. When money flows to pedantic enforcement instead of to police presence, we financially select for pedantic enforcement instead of police presence.
Hey, I've got a better idea: How about we have actual police officers on the streets? The nice thing about police officers is that instead of merely pedantically punishing the most measurable of laws long after the infraction has occurred, they can detect harmful behavior in progress even when it does not meet specific technical parameters and intercede. A visible presence also has an enormous deterrent effect on all kinds of criminal and negligent behavior. And even better, they are available to help with things that are not directly enforcement related, like calling a tow truck or directing traffic when a signal goes out. You know, to protect *and* to serve.
As a side benefit, this helps ensure that the fines are going where they belong; to pay the salaries of hard-working public service officers -- not into the pocket of some private corporation's CEO.
Earlier today I saw this most worthwhile project by Google to publish Government takedowns and data requests:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/20/197254/Google-Enumerates-Government-Requests
Now this article makes me ponder...
Open Letter to Google/YouTube:
I can totally dig that the volume of possible copyright infringement -- and hence the volume of takedown notices -- on YouTube is enormous. So large that automated processing is effectively required to keep compliance costs at a manageable level.
So how about publishing the takedowns? Maybe a CSS feed with just the links to the video pages with the removal notice for starters. If that goes smoothly, perhaps you could work toward publishing the takedown requests and the identities of the requesting agents.
I think it is reasonable for the content-generating community to accept that you are a business with real cost management needs to meet. It would be a nice turnabout to the content-generating community for you to make the data available for us to analyze, to enable us to see if patterns of abuse are developing. Just as copyright infringement effectively becomes a cost you must deal with, takedown abuse also becomes an expense to you. This sort of approach would allow you to crowd-source the analysis and mitigation of such abuse. I am sure there are plenty of fair-use nazis out here who would love to help.
Win/Win my friends, that's what it's all about.
Thanks for your consideration,
Bob
Hi Google,
Quick thought -- could you also publish the YouTube DMCA takedowns?
Thanks!
Bob
new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, look standard, but their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information, and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.
New? Really?
I just got out of advertising (hopefully for the last time) after a total of 6 of the past 11 years spent cutting tracking code.
The first time I wrote code to track brick and mortar coupons to the individual online origin was in 1999. Every online coupon you print has been doing this for many years. Every high tech advertising company in the business makes its pitch in part by having (or at least claiming to have) the most accurate and precise tracking. If you can think of a way that, theoretically, they might be tracking you; they almost certainly are. It is a massive portion of the value proposition behind advertising; learning which advertising works so you can maximize campaign efficiency. The companies that don't do this, and do it well, go out of business quickly.
The most surprising bit here is that the NY Times is just finding out. Perhaps they have their own in-house ad company? Or they don't run coupons online?
All that said, I'm happy to see this get some publicity. It stuns me how much people think they're not being watched on every single page they visit.
for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy.
DVD sales are falling, and piracy may be increasing. However, movie quality is also falling, Hulu is climbing, alternative video entertainment (YouTube, vidcasts, &c) is climbing, streaming rentals (Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes) are climbing, and digital sales are climbing. Average consumer confidence over the past decade has also been at historical lows and the lift from the real estate boom mostly brought (lottery-like, irrational) lump sums of disposable cash that were used for big ticket items, not DVDs. Expanding mortgage obligations also tend to hamper smaller scale short-term disposable income (the kind that is used for DVDs).
The decline of DVD sales is certainly not entirely due to piracy, and may not even be largely due to it. Every time the two are conflated as having a strict and isolated causative relationship the ability to rationally discuss the issue is harmed. Please don't over-simplify this complex system -- there is great harm being done by over-legislation in this area already.
Can Microsoft do that as well? It's their platform right? Oh, wait, it's Apple so it's fine now.
No, no, no. It's *Flash* so it's fine. Flash sucks, Objective C is good, and we should be transitioning to HTML 5. Therefore I can toss aside my principles to root for the oligarch I prefer at the moment... umm, hmmm.
It is tough living in a world of oligarchs. Hoping for one to do the right thing to defend us against the slightly more onerous bad guy. "Save us from Microsoft, Google!" "Save us from Bush, Obama!" "Save us from AT&T, Verizon!" "Save us from the RIAA, Supreme Court!" "Save us from the Supreme Court, Congress!" "Save us from Congress, Supreme Court!"
In a world made of fallible humans, I think I'd rather have less concentration of wealth and power.
I never read anything useful in The Economist.
There are a number of reasons for this that I find plausible. Here are two:
1. You are very well-versed on the topics covered by The Economist that you have read. This is very likely true in this specific case, as our community is very sensitive to copyright law and history. The Economist, while targeting a highly educated audience, must sometimes seek common ground even among such heady heights. Copyright is a topic most people have not considered so deeply; so even the brightest of those outside our community are likely to require a more elementary starting point than we.
2. You have read a few articles here and there in The Economist, but have rarely read entire issues. The Economist covers such a broad range of matters -- so many things touch the global economy -- that it is easy to find many articles which are of little use to any given individual. In my case I find the majority of their articles to be, while well researched and written, relatively uninteresting to me. In such a broad space there is bound to be a great deal of chaff relative to each reader's mind.
A possibility that I find extremely implausible is that The Economist is, in fact, utterly lacking in significant content. I say this based on the variety of people I know who find it to be one of the few truly substantial periodicals. Off the top of my head, there's a couple Ivy League grads, a PhD computer scientist, a PhD candidate in some field of biology, and three college drop-outs who are nonetheless among the smartest people I know.
All of which is to say; I can completely understand that you may have found some articles you have read to be shallower than your own knowledge of their topic space (assuming you are fairly astute regarding said space), and others that covered a subject you found inconsequential. I think it is unlikely, however, that the magazine is objectively and entirely mere fluff.
Excluding data carriers from common carrier requirements was one of the dumbest things we have ever done.
Simple principle: If you want to make decisions about which traffic to carry at what speed, you are legally liable for all traffic you carry. If you want safe harbor from liability, you cannot decide which packets get special treatment.
Throttling is fine if it is unbiased. Picking winners and losers is not the ISP's prerogative.
Step 4: US taxes should apply only within US borders. As a resident in a foreign country, I shouldn't have to pay the US tax money.
It's easy to solve this part. Just renounce your citizenship and you won't have to pay US income tax. See, the benefits of being a US citizen have very little to do with your geophysical location. The US has long arms, and you get most of the protections of this nation no matter where you are in the world. So, if you want to remain a US citizen, you pay your dues.
A friend and ex-Navy officer explained this to me when he was working overseas for UBS, then HSBC. He was making a ton of money, and paying his taxes proudly.
When it comes to tax policy, anyone can say "I want to pay less taxes." It is such heavily trod ground as to induce a yawn at the mere mention. Try something different. Start with a few years of studying historical tax policies in the US and abroad, then present a cogent argument for your position. Demonstrate an awareness of the total implications (including economic shifts over time that would result from the change).
And, quit whining. We all hate giving money away. It takes a bit more maturity to realize that even though I disagree with much of what my money is used for, and though I've visited to more than a dozen fine first world countries, I still cannot name another place that I would rather call my nation.
President Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document.
Obligatory image link:
http://images.google.com/images?q=ford+cheney+rumsfeld
To me, this screams for a simplification of tax law. Here's a thought:
Step 1: Eliminate corporate taxes. (and as another commenter opined, eliminate the ludicrous notion of corporate person-hood while you're at it)
Now, once you've done step 1, guess what? The argument about capital gains being double-taxation disappears. So:
Step 2: Eliminate any distinction between capital gains and any other form of income in terms of taxation. Treat all income as just income.
The big corporations aren't paying corporate taxes anyway, and all it really does is incentivize them to dump their profits into advertising to increase their market cap.
I love how all the oligarchs are snooping on our communications and pointing the fingers at everyone else.
Google & Microsoft accuse the Federal Gov't:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/03/1728214
Microsoft accuses Google:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/31/2223228
The Federal Gov't accuses Google:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/31/1428244
Hey, here's an idea: What say we actually consider the spirit of the 4th amendment, eh? We need an example though... Some form of remote communication that existed back in the day when people had more recent knowledge of the importance of the Bill of Rights. Ideally something that could regularly fall into the hands of both the government and third parties. Something like United States Postal Service mail.
See, USPS mail is pretty much the earliest significant form of remote communications in the United States. It goes all the way back to 1775. The policies regarding the privacy of postal mail are pretty much exactly what the founding fathers intended, so we can be pretty sure they are what a bunch of smart, argumentative guys would come up with when seriously considering -- from up close and personal -- the dangers of invasion of privacy.
Now what are those standards? Well, if you tamper with the mail, you go to jail. If you open someone else's mail, you go to jail. If the government wants to open your mail, they need a warrant. They need a real warrant, from a judge and supported by oath or affirmation, not a flunky clerk with a rubber stamp and a pen register.
That is what the 4th amendment is about: You have a right to be secure in your papers. Genuinely secure. Not "the government won't look unless they feel like it", but genuinely secure that it won't happen for light or transient reasons. Even if those papers are not in your home or your possession. Even if they are in an envelope that can be seen through. Even if that envelope could be opened and resealed without anyone knowing. You mess with the mail, you go to jail.
That is the standard of the people who actually faced, fought, and defeated oligarchy. It is a good one. It is fundamental to true liberty -- the liberty of having a truly free mind. It is the standard we should apply to all private communications. Google, Microsoft, FBI, everybody -- keep your cotton picking noses out of my private communications unless you have a real warrant or my express written permission (notarized, of course).
Oligarch 1:
Eleven U.S. lawmakers have asked the FTC to investigate Google's launch of its Buzz social-networking product for breaches of consumer privacy.
Oligarch 2:
Saying an old e-mail or your online photo album should have the same privacy protection from police as your home filing cabinet, Google, Microsoft and others said Tuesday they will ask Congress to overhaul a 24-year-old federal law that helps define online and mobile phone privacy.
Isn't it nice to have such honorable oligarchs? Nobly bickering over who gets to read my communications to serve their own ends, unhindered by petty respect for the intent and spirit of the 4th amendment.
The principle of first sale exists for a very specific reason, and it is exactly the case here. First sale exists precisely so that the buyer can have a standard, simple understanding of what "buy" means. Muddling the notion of "buy" makes the free market more complicated, inhibiting the ideal of perfect information.
Of course, in this country we regularly seek not the free market. This is particularly true of late with copyrighted works. Given the DoJ has been populated with former RIAA lawyers, you can guess how much the principles of free market capitalism will matter.
If you are decrypting or gaining access to decrypted classified video, what do they expect is going to happen?
If they believed they lived in a proper modern republic, they would believe that they would be protected by the first amendment for publishing the info, and by whistle-blower protections for gaining access to the information. The government is our servant, not our master. When a member or members of We The People reasonably believe that they have caught the authorities with their hand in the cookie jar, it is the sworn duty of the authorities as our servants to stand down and let The People speak, and if necessary, judge.
I worry a little that throwing raw data out there with interpretations like "murder-coverup" is just as political an act as covering it up, not to mention a little sensationalistic.
It is both those things, of course. Winning battles of the direction of society requires both sensationalism and politicking. We see it played out in every election. Don't hate the player, hate the game. The sad fact is that we who do not have administrative power cannot set the rules of the game. And given that we all (on both sides, to be fair) love our interpretation of the principles of The Nation, we must be willing to engage on the battlefield they give us, or accept the sacrifice of The Nation's principles.
War is hell. Freedom isn't free. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
The "eternal" part is perhaps the most important one. We can't just fight for our Nation oversees, or only in time of war, or only against external enemies. Our Grand Experiment is tremendously delicate, and as susceptible to corruption from within as from without. And it is an experiment worth protecting -- because it has already shown (with occasional lapses, of course) more potential to be the shining light to the world than perhaps any other society in history. That is a big, scary, and sometimes painful responsibility -- but also something which gives me great pride.
What will happen if the company that owns the patent asserts it?
Not sure exactly, but a few general truths will hold:
1. Giant corporations and fast attack hitmen will do battle.
2. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars of our GDP will be redistributed to law firms.
3. Tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of dollars of our GDP will pay the salaries of judges and court functionaries.
4. Some of the parties will give some of the other parties giant piles of cash in a settlement before the court passes judgment. (none of the parties want an actual precedent to be set -- clarification of laws only serves to reduce the effectiveness of spurious legal arm-twisting)
5. In recognition of the settlement in item 4, the parties will all get the right to participate in the fiat monopoly.
6. No natural person who actually invents things will benefit in any rational proportion to their contribution or to the leviathan sums of money that get hurled around.
The patent system may support the progress of science and the useful arts, but in its current form it only does so as a tiny fraction of the extent to which it supports the progress of barratry and the wasteful arts.
It is the idea that all border guards will be able to easily discriminate the legality of content
"Article 2.7: Ex-Officio Action" [presenting just the US version here]
"1. Each party shall provide that its customs authorities may act upon their own initiative, to suspend the release of ... suspected pirated copyright goods..."
The content need not be illegal (nor easily discriminated as such), the guard merely needs to posit suspicion.
HAHAHA -- awesome. Best social hack I've heard in quite a while. Well played, and thanks for the giggle. :)
In the battlefield of the kind US soldiers face in the Middle East, I think it would be a tad cumbersome to verify the combatant down your gun sight isn't a citizen before pulling the trigger.
There is a chasm of difference between pulling the trigger on an enemy combatant on an active battlefield and remotely targeting a specific person who is not engaged in active combat.
It depends on the government and the business. In a free market, business almost always does save the customer money. In a natural monopoly like utilities, roads, bridges, etc, you're going to pay through the nose if privately owned.
Well said.
Two other factors that make markets susceptible to distortion are elasticity and imperfect information. A great example is health care -- people are very poorly informed and demand is extremely insensitive to price (in addition to the fiat monopolies of patents and trade protectionism, and the natural monopoly of regionally captive audiences).
More on Elasticity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
The original poster seems to want to condemn religious intolerance and injustice by being intolerant himself.
Off the original topic I'm guessing -- I'm assuming the original poster was being intolerant of all religion and not just of intolerant religion -- but curious about your view:
If intolerance is wrong, is it wrong to be intolerant of intolerant people? Serious question -- I have rolled this around in my head for a long time and haven't locked in my final answer. Since you indicate an interest in the topic, I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
You ask good questions. It will be fun to think them through:
this seems like a VERY valid argument.
Very agreed. My corporatist and capitalist friends are very smart, and they do not reach their conclusions lightly. I do belittle them for their conclusions, because they are wrong. But the argument has a lot of rational merit -- it just doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.
Do we ask Adobe if they are Price Fixing their Designer Suites to $1600? No. They are the only one's selling Adobe Software.
Copyright is a monopoly, and it leads to monopoly rents. That is why The Constitution specifies that the term must be limited. Some, including myself, argue that copyright should exist, but should have a duration more like Jefferson and the other Founders intended (as noted by the period of time they actually chose). Those who hold that view are, in effect, arguing that the amount of price fixing that we allow Adobe is too great -- but also that it should exist to act as a guarantee of a limited additional opportunity to profit on goods which can be copied for an arbitrarily low price.
The same does not necessarily hold for goods which have a significantly non-zero marginal cost of production (ie: if each unit has a significant material cost relative to its market value). For such goods, the free market laws of supply and demand are believed to be more efficient than the government at setting the price. Investors provide risk capital -- knowing that it may be lost -- in relation to their belief that they can build a competitive business. Their privilege to have such an opportunity is acquired by virtue of their willingness to risk the capital. That is, the fact that their capital is at risk is not a reason to pity them and give them a monopoly -- it is the nature of risk capital and the natural cost of entry to a capitalist free market.
When the government removes that risk, the capital provider loses his inhibition to gambling. The result is a bubble/crash cycle which is disruptive to long-term investment. This inhibition to long-term investment is self-catalyzing -- as long term investment becomes more precarious, short term investment (relatively speaking) is elevated in value. Short term investing, in turn, increases the instability of capital markets, and so the cycle continues. (roughly until the velocity of money is insufficient to continue the cycle)
Wow -- that was a helluva digression, but I enjoyed it. :)
PRICE FIXING, should concentrate on LOCAL business, and PRICE DUMPING should be our only worry from foreign manufacturers.
I tend to disagree with nationalist policies. (whew -- I could go on a digression here even bigger than the one above, but I will refrain)
Let us assume that we want to act nationalistically, for the sake of argument.
Price dumping from foreign companies means we can buy more stuff for the same number of dollars. That is generally a good thing. Overconsumption is a bad thing, but that is more a matter of our monetary policy (our interest rates are too low, too often) than of foreign nations' willingness to sell us stuff below cost. Consider if the middle east were "dumping" crude oil in the US market -- that would be a good thing, right? Same with all goods.
There is the caveat of the inefficiency of the market. Since the inputs of production are not frictionless, there is always at least some barrier to entry. In addition there are fiat barriers to entry, from zoning to patents. Because of these things, short term dumping followed by gouging can be inefficient to economies -- but this is true regardless of whether the dumper is domestic or foreign. In the foreign case, the monopoly rents charged during the gouging phase exit the nation (again, assuming we are taking a nationalist approach), so it is worse than internal dumping. But internal dumping is also inefficient. In fact, in the internal dumping case, dumping is inefficient regardless of whether gouging occurs -- if it does not, t
"'You can't have a technology destroy the business,' said the attorney representing the plaintiff. 'If you fire up a big fab plant with CRT tubes, and the next generation technology destroys it, then you have a big fab plant manufacturing buggy whips. So they have to make sure the price points for these [newer] technologies ... don't destroy existing markets.'"
Sounds like the "pro" side of the argument that I constantly hear from my corporatist / protectionist friends. "New technology is destroying the entrenched incumbents! If the existing corporations fail it will mean economic collapse! We must hobble new technology! We must buy more laws to prevent the future from coming! The future requires us to think and adapt! And -- EGADS -- TO HIRE ENGINEERS!"
Very agreed -- same thing I was going to post.
would prohibit peer-to-peer file-sharing programs from being installed without the informed consent of the authorized computer user. The legislation would also prohibit P2P software that would prevent the authorized user from blocking the installation of a P2P file-sharing program and/or disabling or removing any P2P file-sharing program.
Just change it to:
would prohibit programs from being installed without the informed consent of the authorized computer user. The legislation would also prohibit software that would prevent the authorized user from blocking the installation of a program and/or disabling or removing any program.
As you note, though, this would mean that the oligarchs would not be permitted to control the computers of the serfs.