I don't like the thought that some people will give up their one and only life over something so trivial. You'd need to prise my life out of my cold dead hands...
Yes, and this is how all sane people think. Suicide is not driven by actual real reasons - it is driven by mental illness. Sometimes mental stress or other outside factors can contribute to the illness, but when someone gets to the point where they would actually end their own life they can no longer be considered sane.
Which is why it is sad every time it happens. It irks me when people look down on suicide victims for their 'cowardice' or whatever else. Death by suicide is in almost all cases death by illness - comparable to cancer or heart disease.
You can get life in prison for a joint in Texas. Yes, life. Last year, there was a case where a guy was dumb enough to be smoking at a bus stop. The cop tackled him, the joint brushed the cop's arm then landed by the street.
Result: Three felonies. Assault on a peace officer (the lit joint contacting the cop's arm), obstructing justice, and attempted destruction of evidence (since the perp let go of the marijuana as he was taken to the ground.) With TX's three strikes law, that is an additional 20-life. Said guy got convicted on all three counts, and now a TDCJ "guest", whose only purpose in life is to ensure a dividend for the private lockup he is now at.
I'm gonna go with [citation needed] on this one. It seems ludicrous, but if it's true I'd like to read more about it.
Considering taxonomy is the science of identifying, naming, and classifying species I believe taxonomists are in a reasonably good position to do so.
Though it is exciting that scientific breakthroughs in genetics over the last ~20 years have helped revise classifications and clarify relationships between 'species'. Modern taxonomy has been going on for nearly three hundred years with pretty much only anatomy to work with.
The 'species problem' may finally be surmounted at some point in the future, if they can set a genetic standard to differentiate species. We currently still have legacy classifications for many species which can definitely interbreed and produce viable offspring, and many others that can likely do so (including hominoids).
A couple of years ago I migrated around 1000 users from Exchange to Google Apps. We had HEAVY push from management (it was a company-wide initiative in a Fortune 500) but there are still a few holdouts 2.5 years later (just a few stubborn "VIP" users who couldn't be strong-armed). Overall, it was very difficult and time-consuming (and the users hated me and everyone else on my team for months) but the project was successful.
We tried to do the same thing moving from Office2k3 to OpenOffice when things began to calm down a bit, but that project was VERY unsuccessful. The business units all revolted. We were able to migrate about 80% of users in the CIO's organization and a few low-end manufacturing workstations that nobody used for office-type work anyway.
Nice!! Popular Mechanics from 1963! Unfortunately I do not believe any of the "evidence" in that article has been corroborated in the last 50 years, and some has been debunked. (Also, I always love a good Prince Madoc reference!)
It also doesn't really mention any finds of Roman or Phoenician shipwrecks in the Gulf. The primary archeological find referenced is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca_head, which is actually a pretty interesting artifact since it seems authentic and there is still significant controversy regarding how it got to the discovery site. Since everyone involved in the find is now dead we may never be able to confirm that it was/wasn't a hoax.
I've seen a lot about the inscription stuff (which people find all over the place) but most of it ends up being hoaxes or graffiti.
If you like this kind of stuff, check out http://www.1421.tv/. It's an interesting and pretty compelling book, though the mainstream history/archeology community considers it basically fiction.
Short version: Norse contact c. 1000 AD confirmed. Polynesian contact c. 700AD likely. Inuit reverse contact possible.
Everything else is based on pseudo-scientific speculation, unconfirmed "evidence", or unsubstantiated/hoax evidence.
Tales from the White Hart is amazing. I've only ever seen the one (bedraggled) copy that I have in the secondhand market, despite looking for another copy for something like 10 years. It's one of my favorite books, and is light reading with a lot of comedy. I find the content to be in contrast with Clarke's other works that I've read. Most of his work I find a little dry.
but the stuff I use daily is proven beyond doubt in my world-view through careful observation of cause and effect. The only thing missing is a physical instrument to measure the results -- but why should I wait until one is invented when I have direct perception providing observations to work with.
I'd be interested in some examples of things that you feel are unmeasurable but still proven to work.
I'm more inclined to believe that one or both of you are unable to determine distance perfectly without a measuring instrument, than that the officer was purposely lying about a couple of hundred feet, especially when it does not affect the illegality of the situation.
Laws vary state-by-state in the US but mere cohabitation is often not enough to invoke common-law marriage. Various requirements include: willingness/consent of both parties, public recognition, consummation, cohabitation, etc.
As far as I can tell (and contrary to what I often hear) it is not possible to "accidentally" become involved in a common-law marriage in the US, as all state laws regarding the subject seem to require mutual agreement or intent, and most require the couple to actually represent themselves as married (e.g., under such rules it would be impossible/difficult to secretly engage in a common-law marriage).
"I've got to" is not better than "I gotta" (except perhaps that "gotta" is probably not an actual word).
"I have got to" is wrong. "I have to" would be correct.
"I've got to" and "I gotta" are both common in spoken vernacular though, so criticizing the usage on an internet forum is a little silly.:)
Our (US) banks will also do that, though they generally require that you roll change (organize it into specifically denominated paper packets) if you attempt to exchange a significant quantity. The machines in question are charging a convenience fee so you can avoid the somewhat tedious rolling.
I agree. The difference is that physical property theft is wrong - with or without laws to make it so. This is generally not debatable. (The glaring exception would be a hypothetical society where the concept of personal property truly does not exist.)
The 'copyright is wrong' argument is much more complicated, with a lot more gray area. For example, I would say that copying a CD for a buddy is difficult to attack on moral grounds alone, while making and distributing copies on a large scale for profit is not very defensible and probably wrong. But, is making a lot of your personal music collection available to others wrong? Maybe, but it's very debatable.
It's a little like renting or timesharing the said car. You don't exactly own the game, just like you don't exactly own a timeshared car even though you do get to drive it around and you can tell your friends it's yours. This is not an exact analogy, but I think you get the idea. Now if you let your friend have a copy of the game, the person losing the value is the owner of the work, i.e. the author. In the case of the timeshared car, if you let your friend joyride the car off the record you are putting the other co-owners in a losing situation that is probably against the agreement you have with them about using the car.
So, in both of the above situations, you yourself aren't losing value, you're absolutely right about that! But when the MPAA puts its "you wouldn't steal.." motto, they don't mean stealing from an owner of a copy of the tape. They mean themselves, of course. They are basically saying that by copying you are robbing them of the opportunity to charge you. Although that is not stealing literally, if someone robs you of your right to make a buck (note that you do have that right), you can sue for damages in the amount that you justifiably argue that you would have earned, if you weren't robbed of the opportunity.
It is inherently difficult (perhaps impossible) to contrive a situation with physical property that is parallel to violating copyright. I do like this example (better than the ones in your earlier post, which I have heard before and in my opinion are not very relevant).
A more accurate (though rather contrived) example in my view would be a group of people carpooling in a shared car.
What if we take a small group of individuals (let's say 4) who all happen to be housemates, and all work at the same place (or near enough that they park in the same parking lot). They realize that they spend almost no time traveling by car to anywhere aside from their workplace. Each of them come to the point where they plan to buy a new car. They each go look at cars independently, make a purchasing decision, get their finances arranged, and are prepared to each purchase a car.
Before they make their purchases, however, they happen to have a discussion about this and come up with a money-saving plan. To save money, they each decide not to buy a new personal car and instead split the cost to buy one that they will all share. They buy the car, and share it.
The auto manufacturing and resale industries have clearly lost 3 sales. Is it wrong for the housemates to do this, merely because of the fact they are taking 3 sales away from two extremely significant industries?
This is still not a perfect example, but I think it at least flows with the copyright problem logically.
There are issues with this comparison in the real world, primarily with convenience. Even though our 4 housemates above determined it would be convenient to share a car, that is a contrived and probably rare situation. With copying music/video/text in the digital era convenience is no longer a barrier. Someone can easily and conveniently copy an mp3 file many, many times with no loss in quality. Large numbers of individuals can then listen to these mp3 copies independently with no impact on convenience or experience.
Still, we often make decisions in the real world that cause 'loss of sale' in an industry. Sometimes we are still able to fully experience a product while causing the loss of sale.
So the question becomes: is it morally wrong to cause loss of sale in an industry while still legally utilizing the product? Is it only morally wrong if it is extremely convenient for you to do so? Perhaps. But it obviously is very different from theft.
Correction: A lot of people do not believe that it is wrong. This is the case despite the fact that we have experienced 20+ years of propaganda intended to convince us that violating copyright is exactly the same as physical property theft (e.g. "You wouldn't steal a car, would you??").
The real question is what will happen if many other sites like TPB spring up...
Excellent post, but in regards to this particular statement: I am fairly confidant that the number of torrent-indexing sites already available could be qualified as 'many'. TPB is just a prominent one.
Another way to look at it from the publisher/developer perspective is that they are trying to artificially introduce the natural depreciation that occurs in industries with a physical product.
I think the first-sale doctrine should probably (unfortunately for content producers) apply to all media products, and I very much do not like the fact that copyright has been allowed to restrict non-commercial copying. However, I sympathize with the pain content producers feel towards being held to the same standards as producers of physical goods.
To use a car analogy: There is incentive to buy new cars over used cars, as the actual quality of the car is affected by use. In the automotive industry specifically there is an extremely high rate of depreciation. A used car is worth MUCH less than a new car, even if it is 'lightly used'. (Because of this, it is often more cost-effective to buy a car used, due to the highly frontloaded depreciation affecting the cost-value ratio, which is why there is such an active market for used cars).
With media products, there is no depreciation of value. A used copy of a game often has exactly the same value as a brand new copy. Yes, you have to worry about scratched-up discs etc., but even slight physical damage to the media can make the difference between maintaining 100% of the original value and being unusable (and therefore unsellable). This was not as big of a problem with media products produced using older technology (books are a perfect example) since the value could be affected by the physical condition of the media container.
This is one of the semi-legitimate reasons that content producers are getting behind DRM and other anti-consumer techniques so strongly. They believe that with these techniques they (more-or-less successfully) can avoid introducing a product with no depreciation of value into their market. I personally believe there are much better solutions to the problem, and that in time content producers will continue to come up with inventive business models that do not abuse their customers. However, I do understand the perspective that causes these knee-jerk abusive solutions that keep popping up.
"The case did not involve the federal ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidate campaigns or political parties, which remain illegal in races for federal office."
I never knew that this ban was actually in place. But, I've read statistics that seem to contradict this, and campaign/party contributions from corporations seem to be openly and knowingly reported on....
Can anyone explain the apparent contradiction here? Or perhaps I am having a reading comprehension fail and not understanding the actual meaning of the statement?
By copying/viewing/enjoying content that is copyrighted by others (regardless of whether you have permission to do this or not) you are not taking or appropriating their ideas or property.
And before anyone becomes pedantic: I am aware that the word 'stealing' has other, related definitions (e.g. 'stealing third base') but they are completely irrelevant to the point here.
The discussion of whether or not a violation of intellectual property is morally wrong (regardless of laws put in place) is rather complicated and many people have differing viewpoints on the subject. It irritates me when the issue is muddied when so many people cry 'thief!' when no theft has taken place.
Sneaking into a local movie theater without paying would also not be stealing. I suspect it would be some form of trespassing.
Illegally copying/viewing/enjoying copyrighted content is not stealing, by any widely accepted definition of "stealing". Violating copyright is illegal in many jurisdictions, and it could very well be considered wrong (depending on your personal morals) but it is not theft.
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I don't like the thought that some people will give up their one and only life over something so trivial. You'd need to prise my life out of my cold dead hands...
Yes, and this is how all sane people think. Suicide is not driven by actual real reasons - it is driven by mental illness. Sometimes mental stress or other outside factors can contribute to the illness, but when someone gets to the point where they would actually end their own life they can no longer be considered sane.
Which is why it is sad every time it happens. It irks me when people look down on suicide victims for their 'cowardice' or whatever else. Death by suicide is in almost all cases death by illness - comparable to cancer or heart disease.
You can get life in prison for a joint in Texas. Yes, life. Last year, there was a case where a guy was dumb enough to be smoking at a bus stop. The cop tackled him, the joint brushed the cop's arm then landed by the street.
Result: Three felonies. Assault on a peace officer (the lit joint contacting the cop's arm), obstructing justice, and attempted destruction of evidence (since the perp let go of the marijuana as he was taken to the ground.) With TX's three strikes law, that is an additional 20-life. Said guy got convicted on all three counts, and now a TDCJ "guest", whose only purpose in life is to ensure a dividend for the private lockup he is now at.
I'm gonna go with [citation needed] on this one. It seems ludicrous, but if it's true I'd like to read more about it.
Considering taxonomy is the science of identifying, naming, and classifying species I believe taxonomists are in a reasonably good position to do so.
Though it is exciting that scientific breakthroughs in genetics over the last ~20 years have helped revise classifications and clarify relationships between 'species'. Modern taxonomy has been going on for nearly three hundred years with pretty much only anatomy to work with.
The 'species problem' may finally be surmounted at some point in the future, if they can set a genetic standard to differentiate species. We currently still have legacy classifications for many species which can definitely interbreed and produce viable offspring, and many others that can likely do so (including hominoids).
A couple of years ago I migrated around 1000 users from Exchange to Google Apps. We had HEAVY push from management (it was a company-wide initiative in a Fortune 500) but there are still a few holdouts 2.5 years later (just a few stubborn "VIP" users who couldn't be strong-armed). Overall, it was very difficult and time-consuming (and the users hated me and everyone else on my team for months) but the project was successful.
We tried to do the same thing moving from Office2k3 to OpenOffice when things began to calm down a bit, but that project was VERY unsuccessful. The business units all revolted. We were able to migrate about 80% of users in the CIO's organization and a few low-end manufacturing workstations that nobody used for office-type work anyway.
Nice!! Popular Mechanics from 1963! Unfortunately I do not believe any of the "evidence" in that article has been corroborated in the last 50 years, and some has been debunked. (Also, I always love a good Prince Madoc reference!)
It also doesn't really mention any finds of Roman or Phoenician shipwrecks in the Gulf. The primary archeological find referenced is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca_head, which is actually a pretty interesting artifact since it seems authentic and there is still significant controversy regarding how it got to the discovery site. Since everyone involved in the find is now dead we may never be able to confirm that it was/wasn't a hoax.
I've seen a lot about the inscription stuff (which people find all over the place) but most of it ends up being hoaxes or graffiti.
If you like this kind of stuff, check out http://www.1421.tv/. It's an interesting and pretty compelling book, though the mainstream history/archeology community considers it basically fiction.
lol found the Minoan village reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Stonehenge
Seriously. Some of the fringe theories mentioned I haven't even heard of (Minoan villages...?).
Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact
Short version: Norse contact c. 1000 AD confirmed. Polynesian contact c. 700AD likely. Inuit reverse contact possible. Everything else is based on pseudo-scientific speculation, unconfirmed "evidence", or unsubstantiated/hoax evidence.
Tales from the White Hart is amazing. I've only ever seen the one (bedraggled) copy that I have in the secondhand market, despite looking for another copy for something like 10 years. It's one of my favorite books, and is light reading with a lot of comedy. I find the content to be in contrast with Clarke's other works that I've read. Most of his work I find a little dry.
Some info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States
(in my state, these laws are still on the books)
And here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#United_States
but the stuff I use daily is proven beyond doubt in my world-view through careful observation of cause and effect. The only thing missing is a physical instrument to measure the results -- but why should I wait until one is invented when I have direct perception providing observations to work with.
I'd be interested in some examples of things that you feel are unmeasurable but still proven to work.
I'm more inclined to believe that one or both of you are unable to determine distance perfectly without a measuring instrument, than that the officer was purposely lying about a couple of hundred feet, especially when it does not affect the illegality of the situation.
Laws vary state-by-state in the US but mere cohabitation is often not enough to invoke common-law marriage. Various requirements include: willingness/consent of both parties, public recognition, consummation, cohabitation, etc.
As far as I can tell (and contrary to what I often hear) it is not possible to "accidentally" become involved in a common-law marriage in the US, as all state laws regarding the subject seem to require mutual agreement or intent, and most require the couple to actually represent themselves as married (e.g., under such rules it would be impossible/difficult to secretly engage in a common-law marriage).
"I've got to" is not better than "I gotta" (except perhaps that "gotta" is probably not an actual word). "I have got to" is wrong. "I have to" would be correct. "I've got to" and "I gotta" are both common in spoken vernacular though, so criticizing the usage on an internet forum is a little silly. :)
Our (US) banks will also do that, though they generally require that you roll change (organize it into specifically denominated paper packets) if you attempt to exchange a significant quantity. The machines in question are charging a convenience fee so you can avoid the somewhat tedious rolling.
I agree. The difference is that physical property theft is wrong - with or without laws to make it so. This is generally not debatable. (The glaring exception would be a hypothetical society where the concept of personal property truly does not exist.)
The 'copyright is wrong' argument is much more complicated, with a lot more gray area. For example, I would say that copying a CD for a buddy is difficult to attack on moral grounds alone, while making and distributing copies on a large scale for profit is not very defensible and probably wrong. But, is making a lot of your personal music collection available to others wrong? Maybe, but it's very debatable.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. =[
It's a little like renting or timesharing the said car. You don't exactly own the game, just like you don't exactly own a timeshared car even though you do get to drive it around and you can tell your friends it's yours. This is not an exact analogy, but I think you get the idea. Now if you let your friend have a copy of the game, the person losing the value is the owner of the work, i.e. the author. In the case of the timeshared car, if you let your friend joyride the car off the record you are putting the other co-owners in a losing situation that is probably against the agreement you have with them about using the car.
So, in both of the above situations, you yourself aren't losing value, you're absolutely right about that! But when the MPAA puts its "you wouldn't steal.." motto, they don't mean stealing from an owner of a copy of the tape. They mean themselves, of course. They are basically saying that by copying you are robbing them of the opportunity to charge you. Although that is not stealing literally, if someone robs you of your right to make a buck (note that you do have that right), you can sue for damages in the amount that you justifiably argue that you would have earned, if you weren't robbed of the opportunity.
It is inherently difficult (perhaps impossible) to contrive a situation with physical property that is parallel to violating copyright. I do like this example (better than the ones in your earlier post, which I have heard before and in my opinion are not very relevant).
A more accurate (though rather contrived) example in my view would be a group of people carpooling in a shared car.
What if we take a small group of individuals (let's say 4) who all happen to be housemates, and all work at the same place (or near enough that they park in the same parking lot). They realize that they spend almost no time traveling by car to anywhere aside from their workplace. Each of them come to the point where they plan to buy a new car. They each go look at cars independently, make a purchasing decision, get their finances arranged, and are prepared to each purchase a car.
Before they make their purchases, however, they happen to have a discussion about this and come up with a money-saving plan. To save money, they each decide not to buy a new personal car and instead split the cost to buy one that they will all share. They buy the car, and share it.
The auto manufacturing and resale industries have clearly lost 3 sales. Is it wrong for the housemates to do this, merely because of the fact they are taking 3 sales away from two extremely significant industries?
This is still not a perfect example, but I think it at least flows with the copyright problem logically.
There are issues with this comparison in the real world, primarily with convenience. Even though our 4 housemates above determined it would be convenient to share a car, that is a contrived and probably rare situation. With copying music/video/text in the digital era convenience is no longer a barrier. Someone can easily and conveniently copy an mp3 file many, many times with no loss in quality. Large numbers of individuals can then listen to these mp3 copies independently with no impact on convenience or experience.
Still, we often make decisions in the real world that cause 'loss of sale' in an industry. Sometimes we are still able to fully experience a product while causing the loss of sale.
So the question becomes: is it morally wrong to cause loss of sale in an industry while still legally utilizing the product? Is it only morally wrong if it is extremely convenient for you to do so? Perhaps. But it obviously is very different from theft.
A LOT of people don't realize it is wrong.
Correction: A lot of people do not believe that it is wrong. This is the case despite the fact that we have experienced 20+ years of propaganda intended to convince us that violating copyright is exactly the same as physical property theft (e.g. "You wouldn't steal a car, would you??").
Breaking a law does not make someone a 'criminal' in many cases, such as breaking non-criminal (civil etc.) law.
The real question is what will happen if many other sites like TPB spring up...
Excellent post, but in regards to this particular statement: I am fairly confidant that the number of torrent-indexing sites already available could be qualified as 'many'. TPB is just a prominent one.
Another way to look at it from the publisher/developer perspective is that they are trying to artificially introduce the natural depreciation that occurs in industries with a physical product.
I think the first-sale doctrine should probably (unfortunately for content producers) apply to all media products, and I very much do not like the fact that copyright has been allowed to restrict non-commercial copying. However, I sympathize with the pain content producers feel towards being held to the same standards as producers of physical goods.
To use a car analogy:
There is incentive to buy new cars over used cars, as the actual quality of the car is affected by use. In the automotive industry specifically there is an extremely high rate of depreciation. A used car is worth MUCH less than a new car, even if it is 'lightly used'. (Because of this, it is often more cost-effective to buy a car used, due to the highly frontloaded depreciation affecting the cost-value ratio, which is why there is such an active market for used cars).
With media products, there is no depreciation of value. A used copy of a game often has exactly the same value as a brand new copy. Yes, you have to worry about scratched-up discs etc., but even slight physical damage to the media can make the difference between maintaining 100% of the original value and being unusable (and therefore unsellable). This was not as big of a problem with media products produced using older technology (books are a perfect example) since the value could be affected by the physical condition of the media container.
This is one of the semi-legitimate reasons that content producers are getting behind DRM and other anti-consumer techniques so strongly. They believe that with these techniques they (more-or-less successfully) can avoid introducing a product with no depreciation of value into their market. I personally believe there are much better solutions to the problem, and that in time content producers will continue to come up with inventive business models that do not abuse their customers. However, I do understand the perspective that causes these knee-jerk abusive solutions that keep popping up.
So, I just read this from the article linked:
"The case did not involve the federal ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidate campaigns or political parties, which remain illegal in races for federal office."
I never knew that this ban was actually in place. But, I've read statistics that seem to contradict this, and campaign/party contributions from corporations seem to be openly and knowingly reported on....
Can anyone explain the apparent contradiction here? Or perhaps I am having a reading comprehension fail and not understanding the actual meaning of the statement?
By copying/viewing/enjoying content that is copyrighted by others (regardless of whether you have permission to do this or not) you are not taking or appropriating their ideas or property.
And before anyone becomes pedantic: I am aware that the word 'stealing' has other, related definitions (e.g. 'stealing third base') but they are completely irrelevant to the point here.
I did not say that it was perfectly fine.
The discussion of whether or not a violation of intellectual property is morally wrong (regardless of laws put in place) is rather complicated and many people have differing viewpoints on the subject. It irritates me when the issue is muddied when so many people cry 'thief!' when no theft has taken place.
Sneaking into a local movie theater without paying would also not be stealing. I suspect it would be some form of trespassing.
Illegally copying/viewing/enjoying copyrighted content is not stealing, by any widely accepted definition of "stealing". Violating copyright is illegal in many jurisdictions, and it could very well be considered wrong (depending on your personal morals) but it is not theft.