No way dude. There is way too much bullshit out there for scientists to accept the standard that they "have to examine the device to say for sure" every time. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this guy is long on claims while short on evidence. Until he puts out some evidence, the scientists feel comfortable assuming he is full of it.
Yeah. The important part is whether the person would commit the crime anyway. So, just putting out a car and waiting for it to be stolen, that's a passive thing, no person will be induced to steal the car unless they were going to anyway. The other situation puts out an attractive criminal opportunity and actively induces people to commit crimes they might not otherwise commit. I'm sure some other examples would be harder to balance, but the two you gave are good examples on either side of that line.
Yeah. Seriously. If the idealistic hippies can grow up and fuck up the country THIS BADLY, then why the hell should I imitate that? Why should I get all uppity and march in the streets to change policy and get us out of unjust wars? So I can grow up and elect an evil President with no respect for the rule of law? Is that my goal? No, fuck it, you're right, I do have more important things to attend to: my own damn life. I'll stack up my chips and watch as things unfold, because if the hippies taught us anything, it's that activists don't matter for shit.
He was!? Then I met him! I went to that museum and saw a talk from Percy the UFO Survivor who was a totally crazy wackjob who talked about his multiple abductions from his grandparents' peanut farm.
The owner came up and introduced himself to me and I shook his hand. He was much less crazy than Percy.
That's not true at all. Calling potential customers who break the law "criminals" might induce them to obtain your product legally.
The burden is not at all on the producer to price their products at a level that people are willing to pay. They can set their price any way they want, and appropriate response by the public is to merely not buy it.
Music is only different because it's so easy to get for free. If you don't think a CD that you want to buy is worth the money it costs, then you can try to get it cheaper (perhaps, the way I do it, by buying used CDs), or you can do without it. If you otherwise choose to copy the music without paying for it, you are rightly called a criminal, insofar as you have broken the law. Being a criminal doesn't make you morally bad, if you think the law is wrong, but you're still a criminal.
Look, if you think music is worth the price, buy it. If you don't, then do without it. Or, if you want to copy it for free, then go ahead and do it, but don't complain when people point out that you are breaking the law, and if they like the law that you are bad for breaking it.
Just because the music industry is run by assholes doesn't mean you can act with impunity or that everything you do is moral and upstanding.
I love Prince's work, have seen him live many times, and his guitar is amazing and every bit as good as Eddie Van Halen or Eric Clapton, who yes, I've also seen live.
Wow, dude, that's awesome. So, what year do you live in, anyway? 1984? 1986? Those were good times, yeah. Me, I live here in 2007, and we have a whole slate of new great musicians. If you ever make it to 2007, check them out.
If you weren't planning on buying it, then either 1.) it has no value to you, in which case you wouldn't bother to copy it because it would be a waste of your effort, or 2.) it is less valuable to you than the price it costs in the store, in which case you are taking for free something which someone else produced for profit, thus depriving them of that profit. You can argue that it's moral to steal from rich out-of-touch bastards if you want, but don't act like it has no impact, because it does.
Your point may be that music copying is not "theft", which is correct: theft implies deprivation of use, and copying does not deprive the owner of use. Still, that's not the whole picture.
I'm going to go out on a limb here an say that no one in the world advocated "abuse of services", though people may differ on what abuse is. But, a person can certainly be against abuse of services, and still not want a national ID card, or a bio card, or a fingerprint card, or whatever. Those two things aren't in opposition, as you imply.
A person who takes that position could advocate a less intrusive, even if less effective, form of identification.
Brother, I hate to break this to you, but you don't live in a free country. I know America has its drawbacks, but we do cling to our freedom, or, some of it anyway. I mean that about lots of things in Britain.
You are right about the important issue and wrong about the other important issue. You are right in saying that the current crappy state of American FM radio is due to terrible rules managing who can own stations. We can pretty much blame this on ClearChannel. Their programming sucks eggs and they own all the radio stations. That statement is a generalization which also happens to be almost totally true. ClearChannel sucks, and they own all radio, so all radio sucks.
On the other hand, shit man, people go on continuing to choose to listen to the radio. Don't they realize it sucks? I would literally (literally!) rather listen to silence than commercial/CC radio. I just turn it off. I can't stand it. But, man, if everyone else chooses to listen to shitty radio instead of silence, then who are you and I to tell them they can't do that? Also, if a business becomes successful, who are we to tell it how it can function? They aren't hurting anyone, they're just playing shitty songs. If you and I want good radio, then we should start a radio conglomerate and compete with them. Wouldn't people flock to us, if we put on good programming? Here's the thing: no. People love crappy media. The evidence is perfectly clear. Even though there are a few precious good independent radio stations, people still listen to CC. Even though there is The Economist, people still read People Magazine. People love low quality media. We should complain and boycott, but as a libertarian, I'm inclined to stop there and not legislate my will.
For several years, from about 1998 to last year, I didn't consume media (radio/tv). That was sad for me. It's not so much sad to miss out on all the shitty media, it's more sad that I know there is a little bit of good programming out there, but I can't find it because it is lost in the gigantic pile of steaming turds. Luckily, last year media over the internet became a reality for me and I started enjoying quite a few TV shows and some movies which I can download, commercial free, to watch at my convenience. Then this year I've started enjoying a lot of podcasts, which is a great replacement for crap radio. The revolution is upon us, brother, just get all your media from the internet and enjoy what you want when you want. It's sad, but you just need to give up on radio and tv.
The police need the warrant to get into your filing cabinet, but if they see the postcard/email while its in the mail/flowing over a public line, then I can see that being reasonable.
How is that part different from tapping your telephone?
Of course encrypted email is more secure, but that's a second (different) issue. The same would be true for mail, if the letter inside the envelope is encrypted. Where the postcard analogy falls down is that with email, there is almost no legitimate way anyone else will accidently see it (except admins doing maintenance.. and statistically the odds of that happening for any given piece of mail are very very low).
An analogy that is even less innately private is radio. Plaintext radio can be overheard by anyone who happens to be listening. Everybody (except for cellphone users) knows that. Yet one of the very first things you learn when you prepare for an FCC license exam is that a 1936 law prohibits you from divulging any private message you hear to anyone but the intended recipient. 72 years ago, they understood that privacy could be expected even though it was technically easy to listen in. It is different than tapping your telephone. It's more like overhearing a phone conversation you're having in public. If you are talking about killing the president on your cell phone while standing near a police officer, then he will hear it, and rightly arrest you. If you are emailing about killing the president while a police officer is watching bits go by in the air (which is not anything like a wire tap), then that officer will rightly arrest you.
I was thinking more of transmitting your email unencrypted over an unencrypted line, like sending email from free wifi in the park. Someone watching the bits go by will see your email. Searching your ISP email box doesn't follow the metaphor; that would definitely require a warrant. But on the other hand, having your email stored on a server is what gives you the expectation of privacy. That would be more like receiving a postcard in the mail, and then putting it in your filing cabinet. The police need the warrant to get into your filing cabinet, but if they see the postcard/email while its in the mail/flowing over a public line, then I can see that being reasonable.
A postcard, or a plaintext email, is like the front seat of your car: you have very low expectation of privacy because it's in plain public sight. A cop who pulls you over for a minor infraction will see your drugs sitting in the passenger seat and ask you about them.
A sealed letter, or an encrypted email, is like the trunk of your car: you have a high expectation of privacy because it's hidden from sight and locked. A cop who pulls you over needs consent or probable cause to search there.
Excellently argued. I hope courts follow your reasoning. Still, if applied to criminal law, that would make packet sniffers criminal tools, which I hope won't happen.
Aha, but there you are wrong. If you send a postcard, you have very low expectation of privacy. However, if you put your letter inside an envelope, then you have an expectation that the envelope will only be opened by the intended recipient. Regular email as we mostly know it is like a postcard, but you can put your postcard into an electronic envelope by encrypting it, which would give you a greater expectation of privacy. Sure, a person can still break your encryption, but that person could also just open your envelope. We would recognize these actions as crimes, preserving your privacy.
One difference might be that people sort of think of email more like a letter than a postcard. A court could find that email has protections similar to a letter. As a techie, I would disagree with that, exactly because of what the GP said: it's so easy to sniff around and see emails that it's difficult to say it's a protected medium. I predict in the future a huge legal case where this exactly is the crux -- the question, what is the expectation of privacy in an unencrypted email? I further predict that the result will be similar to a postcard, not a letter.
To be clear, the decision today didn't look at that question, rather the question of whether a warrant is required to search email at all. I see that as so blatantly obvious that I'm shocked the government would even question it. Look, government, hey, you know for 250 years courts have consistently told you that you need a warrant to search just about everything that isn't an emergency, so by now you should be used to it.
I agree with everything you said, except the thing about the rich, fat white dudes. As a young, poor, skinny white dude who hopes to one day be an old, rich, fat white dude, I have plenty of pity for those people getting ripped off by stupidass school bureaucrats who blatantly wasted taxpayer money on computers they evidently didn't need (since they never used them, and can't even find them).
This is 100% the fault of the school district administrators, 0% the fault of IBM, and if there are any fit rich white men losing money on it, then I have full pity for them.
IBM is correct when it says they are generous to allow a debt from the 80s to be paid twenty years later with no interest. In that time, IBM could have turned that five million into fifty million.
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No way dude. There is way too much bullshit out there for scientists to accept the standard that they "have to examine the device to say for sure" every time. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this guy is long on claims while short on evidence. Until he puts out some evidence, the scientists feel comfortable assuming he is full of it.
Thank you. End of argument. Next.
That is a wonderfully airtight universal argument against all varieties of crackpot shimsham.
Yeah. The important part is whether the person would commit the crime anyway. So, just putting out a car and waiting for it to be stolen, that's a passive thing, no person will be induced to steal the car unless they were going to anyway. The other situation puts out an attractive criminal opportunity and actively induces people to commit crimes they might not otherwise commit. I'm sure some other examples would be harder to balance, but the two you gave are good examples on either side of that line.
Yeah, that's the theory. I wish it actually worked that way. Man, that would be sweet!
Yeah. Seriously. If the idealistic hippies can grow up and fuck up the country THIS BADLY, then why the hell should I imitate that? Why should I get all uppity and march in the streets to change policy and get us out of unjust wars? So I can grow up and elect an evil President with no respect for the rule of law? Is that my goal? No, fuck it, you're right, I do have more important things to attend to: my own damn life. I'll stack up my chips and watch as things unfold, because if the hippies taught us anything, it's that activists don't matter for shit.
He was!? Then I met him! I went to that museum and saw a talk from Percy the UFO Survivor who was a totally crazy wackjob who talked about his multiple abductions from his grandparents' peanut farm.
The owner came up and introduced himself to me and I shook his hand. He was much less crazy than Percy.
That's not true at all. Calling potential customers who break the law "criminals" might induce them to obtain your product legally.
The burden is not at all on the producer to price their products at a level that people are willing to pay. They can set their price any way they want, and appropriate response by the public is to merely not buy it.
Music is only different because it's so easy to get for free. If you don't think a CD that you want to buy is worth the money it costs, then you can try to get it cheaper (perhaps, the way I do it, by buying used CDs), or you can do without it. If you otherwise choose to copy the music without paying for it, you are rightly called a criminal, insofar as you have broken the law. Being a criminal doesn't make you morally bad, if you think the law is wrong, but you're still a criminal.
Look, if you think music is worth the price, buy it. If you don't, then do without it. Or, if you want to copy it for free, then go ahead and do it, but don't complain when people point out that you are breaking the law, and if they like the law that you are bad for breaking it.
Just because the music industry is run by assholes doesn't mean you can act with impunity or that everything you do is moral and upstanding.
I love Prince's work, have seen him live many times, and his guitar is amazing and every bit as good as Eddie Van Halen or Eric Clapton, who yes, I've also seen live.
Wow, dude, that's awesome. So, what year do you live in, anyway? 1984? 1986? Those were good times, yeah. Me, I live here in 2007, and we have a whole slate of new great musicians. If you ever make it to 2007, check them out.
If you weren't planning on buying it, then either 1.) it has no value to you, in which case you wouldn't bother to copy it because it would be a waste of your effort, or 2.) it is less valuable to you than the price it costs in the store, in which case you are taking for free something which someone else produced for profit, thus depriving them of that profit. You can argue that it's moral to steal from rich out-of-touch bastards if you want, but don't act like it has no impact, because it does.
Your point may be that music copying is not "theft", which is correct: theft implies deprivation of use, and copying does not deprive the owner of use. Still, that's not the whole picture.
I'm going to go out on a limb here an say that no one in the world advocated "abuse of services", though people may differ on what abuse is. But, a person can certainly be against abuse of services, and still not want a national ID card, or a bio card, or a fingerprint card, or whatever. Those two things aren't in opposition, as you imply.
A person who takes that position could advocate a less intrusive, even if less effective, form of identification.
Agreed. Just look how well it worked for Apple.
...and your ten dollars will purchase three and three quarters minutes of a lawyer's time
Encryption allows Alice to send a message to Bob that can't be viewed by Jack.
What!? I thought it was Alice, Bob, and Trudy! Who's Jack?
Hasn't the music industry realized yet that without radio (in any form) they would have zero distribution for new music and fall flat on their faces?
You underestimate the power of MTV and other television sources.
Brother, I hate to break this to you, but you don't live in a free country. I know America has its drawbacks, but we do cling to our freedom, or, some of it anyway. I mean that about lots of things in Britain.
Something that prevents you from doing something is a limitation.
You are right about the important issue and wrong about the other important issue. You are right in saying that the current crappy state of American FM radio is due to terrible rules managing who can own stations. We can pretty much blame this on ClearChannel. Their programming sucks eggs and they own all the radio stations. That statement is a generalization which also happens to be almost totally true. ClearChannel sucks, and they own all radio, so all radio sucks.
On the other hand, shit man, people go on continuing to choose to listen to the radio. Don't they realize it sucks? I would literally (literally!) rather listen to silence than commercial/CC radio. I just turn it off. I can't stand it. But, man, if everyone else chooses to listen to shitty radio instead of silence, then who are you and I to tell them they can't do that? Also, if a business becomes successful, who are we to tell it how it can function? They aren't hurting anyone, they're just playing shitty songs. If you and I want good radio, then we should start a radio conglomerate and compete with them. Wouldn't people flock to us, if we put on good programming? Here's the thing: no. People love crappy media. The evidence is perfectly clear. Even though there are a few precious good independent radio stations, people still listen to CC. Even though there is The Economist, people still read People Magazine. People love low quality media. We should complain and boycott, but as a libertarian, I'm inclined to stop there and not legislate my will.
For several years, from about 1998 to last year, I didn't consume media (radio/tv). That was sad for me. It's not so much sad to miss out on all the shitty media, it's more sad that I know there is a little bit of good programming out there, but I can't find it because it is lost in the gigantic pile of steaming turds. Luckily, last year media over the internet became a reality for me and I started enjoying quite a few TV shows and some movies which I can download, commercial free, to watch at my convenience. Then this year I've started enjoying a lot of podcasts, which is a great replacement for crap radio. The revolution is upon us, brother, just get all your media from the internet and enjoy what you want when you want. It's sad, but you just need to give up on radio and tv.
How is that part different from tapping your telephone?
Of course encrypted email is more secure, but that's a second (different) issue. The same would be true for mail, if the letter inside the envelope is encrypted. Where the postcard analogy falls down is that with email, there is almost no legitimate way anyone else will accidently see it (except admins doing maintenance.. and statistically the odds of that happening for any given piece of mail are very very low).
An analogy that is even less innately private is radio. Plaintext radio can be overheard by anyone who happens to be listening. Everybody (except for cellphone users) knows that. Yet one of the very first things you learn when you prepare for an FCC license exam is that a 1936 law prohibits you from divulging any private message you hear to anyone but the intended recipient. 72 years ago, they understood that privacy could be expected even though it was technically easy to listen in. It is different than tapping your telephone. It's more like overhearing a phone conversation you're having in public. If you are talking about killing the president on your cell phone while standing near a police officer, then he will hear it, and rightly arrest you. If you are emailing about killing the president while a police officer is watching bits go by in the air (which is not anything like a wire tap), then that officer will rightly arrest you.
I was thinking more of transmitting your email unencrypted over an unencrypted line, like sending email from free wifi in the park. Someone watching the bits go by will see your email. Searching your ISP email box doesn't follow the metaphor; that would definitely require a warrant. But on the other hand, having your email stored on a server is what gives you the expectation of privacy. That would be more like receiving a postcard in the mail, and then putting it in your filing cabinet. The police need the warrant to get into your filing cabinet, but if they see the postcard/email while its in the mail/flowing over a public line, then I can see that being reasonable.
Not as hard as you think.
A postcard, or a plaintext email, is like the front seat of your car: you have very low expectation of privacy because it's in plain public sight. A cop who pulls you over for a minor infraction will see your drugs sitting in the passenger seat and ask you about them.
A sealed letter, or an encrypted email, is like the trunk of your car: you have a high expectation of privacy because it's hidden from sight and locked. A cop who pulls you over needs consent or probable cause to search there.
how the heck is that modded as a troll?
Excellently argued. I hope courts follow your reasoning. Still, if applied to criminal law, that would make packet sniffers criminal tools, which I hope won't happen.
i hope so too.
but i doubt it.
Aha, but there you are wrong. If you send a postcard, you have very low expectation of privacy. However, if you put your letter inside an envelope, then you have an expectation that the envelope will only be opened by the intended recipient. Regular email as we mostly know it is like a postcard, but you can put your postcard into an electronic envelope by encrypting it, which would give you a greater expectation of privacy. Sure, a person can still break your encryption, but that person could also just open your envelope. We would recognize these actions as crimes, preserving your privacy.
One difference might be that people sort of think of email more like a letter than a postcard. A court could find that email has protections similar to a letter. As a techie, I would disagree with that, exactly because of what the GP said: it's so easy to sniff around and see emails that it's difficult to say it's a protected medium. I predict in the future a huge legal case where this exactly is the crux -- the question, what is the expectation of privacy in an unencrypted email? I further predict that the result will be similar to a postcard, not a letter.
To be clear, the decision today didn't look at that question, rather the question of whether a warrant is required to search email at all. I see that as so blatantly obvious that I'm shocked the government would even question it. Look, government, hey, you know for 250 years courts have consistently told you that you need a warrant to search just about everything that isn't an emergency, so by now you should be used to it.
I agree with everything you said, except the thing about the rich, fat white dudes. As a young, poor, skinny white dude who hopes to one day be an old, rich, fat white dude, I have plenty of pity for those people getting ripped off by stupidass school bureaucrats who blatantly wasted taxpayer money on computers they evidently didn't need (since they never used them, and can't even find them).
This is 100% the fault of the school district administrators, 0% the fault of IBM, and if there are any fit rich white men losing money on it, then I have full pity for them.
IBM is correct when it says they are generous to allow a debt from the 80s to be paid twenty years later with no interest. In that time, IBM could have turned that five million into fifty million.