+1 Well stated. Of course Fusion Garage management will never admit this.
They would get fired.
Esp. since after the CrunchPad fiasco, it's doubtful any (sane) company would ever want to work with them in the future,
since Fusion Garage could be expected to just steal the product as they did with TechCrunch.
This is like an ISP patenting a technology that allows people message recipients to buy spam filtering from them.
For example, Microsoft selling a spam filtering service, that will filter spam to you FROM HOTMAIL users.
If the sender doesn't use hotmail, then the service will never see the message of course.
Obvious workaround: Don't order gifts through Amazon.
It's easier to find bad gifts in local stores anyways or on no-name websites or Yahoo shops that your recipient has never heard of, and that you've never heard of.
Unless you are sorting by 'lowest rated items first' or searching for something specific, it takes a fair bit of work to find bad things on Amazon.
Amazon's definitely not the ideal place to go looking for bad gifts; although I suppose any place will work when trying to buy your recipient wrong sized clothing,
as long as not all their stuff is one-size-fits-all.
What? You thought the wrong sized clothes were always an accident?
You thought the 'bad gifts' were always errors, rather than a fun jab?
Hahaha.... L:)
Another way... to get around bad gift filtering, have them delivered to yourself, and give it to them the old fashioned way.
Or receive it, wrap it, and re-mail it; probably cheaper than Amazon giftwrap anyways.
Or have it delivered to one of their friends in the area [if they are far away], and the friend can help the gift make it to its final destination.
See, this doesn't stop bad gifts.... it just requires us bad gift givers to be more creative.
If you really want to stop bad gifts, you need to get a third party involved.
Give your relatives the address of the 3rd party as mailing address.
Have a contract for 3rd party to open all your mail, substitute bad gifts, and reseal
As an aside... I wonder the legality of a retailer doing this.
The giver is ordering and paying for a product from a company; payment of money in exchange for goods agreed upon.
The 'recipient' is a third party to this agreement, and not party to the sale -- they are just living at the address the items were ordered to be shipped to.
Amazon is apparently taking the money and quietly substituting the goods for something different from what was purchased.
In what way would it not be fraud, if Amazon did this?
Do they tell you your gift was delivered to the address?
Are they so callous as to inform the giver that their item was substituted or converted?
That's a problem... if the giver finds out, esp. from Amazon, they might be inclined to avoid Amazon.
To avoid backlash.... Amazon is probably sneaking something into the fine print that allows them to substitute goods quietly.
Sounds dangerous if they do so, devious/deceptive, well-intentioned perhaps, but maybe evil in actual fact...
What if the payer doesn't think the substitute is worth as much?
Then Amazon's substitution could be seen as cheating them
Imagine if they substituted a gift without the buyer OR recipient's consent,
with something to provide Amazon higher margins?
Hell... what if they substituted a non-gift item you bought for yourself, to deliver to an address someone just happened to add to their 'bad gift filter'?
What if Amazon did this non-gift substitution without being asked by anyone to do so [because it benefits them] ?
Seems like all this "item substitution" is dangerous territory for a variety of reasons
Debian has "over 25000 [debian.org]". If RHEL6 is "software you can weigh", then Debian must be "software designed to break your scale".:)
Based on this thinking Ubuntu is something you may want to really stay away from.
Ubuntu has multitudes of packages... resulting in its gravitational field being so powerful that not even light can escape.
It is going to eventually collect a ton of matter, and ultimately not even Microsoft will avoid getting caught in its pull.
An Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why?
Because the path of the optical signal got bent by Ubuntu's enormous gravitational field, and veered off course
No... actually CentOS is both it basically provides the built-from-source packages equivalent ot BOTH Redhat Enterprise Linux Workstation edition
and Advanced Platform.
All the workstation packages and all the server packages
Yes, RHEL Server is definitely for servers.
But Redhat makes a version for Workstations too (it has a different manifest with a different list of packages you are allowed to install on your system from the CDs,
and a different list of packages that are restricted or unavailable due to you installing or not installing a certain edition), and CentOS includes rebuilds of all those packages.
So your results can be transmitted to medical authorities.
Probably predominantly the new [future] major medical authority.... the Federal Government
This could become like a 1099 for your Health.
They just need to add the ability to poke yourself with a needle and plug that device into the phone,
and DNA/fingerprint scanners for verification.
From that, your monthly penalties will be calculated.
In the future, I see random drug tests/screening of arbitrary citizens... "You get a text message, please submit a urine sample in the next 60 minutes, or you will be added to no-fly list, flagged for arrest, and billed a $50/hour fine, until you comply. This message brought to you by the DHHS, Department of Homeland Health and Security"
If so, perhaps you should take a look at the civil rights movement and the act of civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience pertains only to unjust laws, which copyright is not. Copyright provides a benefit to people who worked to produce something, at the expense of freeloaders who are mere consumers of copyright works.
Also, where is this harm? You still haven't showed how it's logical to think that something that doesn't exist can be stolen.
It's pretty obvious.
Perhaps it would help you to see the elephant in the room if I showed you examples of other crimes your logic would say "do no harm"
Counterfeiting currency --- copying money... just the same as copying music, right?
Sneaking into sporting events and the movies -- unless it's sold out, noone is harmed, right??
Copying your tickets to sporting events and movies, copies that are undetectable forgeries, sharing convincing clones to friends.
As long as the theater's not full, noone's harmed, right?
Cheating on tests -- this is really just a special type of copying (copying other people's answers surreptitiously over their shoulder) - doesn't harm anyone, right?
Fabricating a resume -- getting people to serve for you as 'fake references', by copying a friend's and having fake records made, to convince an employer to hire you... just another form of harmless copying, right?
See the thing in common?
There's really no difference between the copyright issue and those, there's a thread of deception in all of them.
But the deception and freeloading hurts workers and thus harms the order of society.
dust mites designed to eat through doors to the pilots cabin?
Dust mites? Couldn't someone just use a lock pick disguised as a palm pilot stylus or some crud like that?
The big WTF here is someone thinks WiFi is a risk.
However, there's nothing really stopping the bad guys from using it right now, now is there?
The article says A cellphone connected to a detonation circuit could have allowed a terrorist to trigger an explosion by calling or texting the phone.
No shit. The earth is round... tell us something we didn't know.
It most assuredly was not the ban on use of cell phones on a plane that stopped them from doing this, you know.
Bad guys aren't particularly exacting in terms of following the rules, you know, right?
There are plenty of ways bad guys could communicate a trigger to their device if they needed that.
In reality, they are probably more likely to use timers.
Just a reminder.... timers have a unique characteristic.. they don't suffer from issues like random communication failures or black outs so much.
A 5 minute timer is 5 minutes, regardless of availability of a cell signal.
And a person who can rig a cell phone to an explosive can probably rig some other type of small common reliable radio just as easily.
It's not like the bad guys are working with off the shelf parts or care two shits worth about no-WiFi or no-Cellphone rules.
that TSA did not ban underpants after the last idiot that tried to smuggle a bomb in his shorts and if they ban Wi-Fi.
In a few years instead of having 'full body scanners' we will have sally ports.
To board a plane... doors open, enter sally port chamber 1, doors close, entrance and exits locked.
Security guard instructions: (1) Remove ALL clothing, deposit anything you were carrying.
All items will be checked, no carry on items.
Shirt, Shorts, Shoes, Socks, Bra, Panties, jewelry, etc.
Place in "quarantine tray".
Close and lock tray. Tray exits the room through a small slot, goes through a scanner, all items are searched thoroughly
for any liquids, containers, chemicals, etc.
Instruction (2) second door opens, person proceeds to chamber 2.
Person enters chamber 2, chamber 2 entrance 1 closes, doors locked.
Security guard instructions: (1) step in decontamination chamber,
(2) passenger's temperature, blood pressure are taken, blood is drawn and tested for communicable diseases, a sample is kept on file for mandatory DNA testing.
(3) passenger is hosed down with soap and water, high-pressure spray, rinsed, and dried , then sprayed with disinfectants.
(4) passenger's hands are scanned, Iris is scanned, fingerprints, weight, voice samples, facial patterns are taken and stored, biometric samples for future identification.
(5) background check is performed.
(5) passenger is presented with their passenger uniform for this journey.
clothing is just an orange jumpsuit or something embossed with their "passenger ID number" for this trip,
and a big diaper. Passengers are required to wear diapers, in case they need to use the bathroom during trip, because noone will be allowed to leave their seat a second decontamination will occur at the end of their voyage. Photo ID is attached to the clothing, as well as background check result code; for example, if they are in any watch lists, their clothing will contain a number that identifies this, to ensure staff are well aware of the concern.
Every passenger's suit should also be equipped with a parachute. If something should go wrong, they'll need it.
(6) Passenger is handed a pair of handcuffs and directed to place hands behind back and cuff themselves.
Security guard watches to ensure this is done correctly; the cuffs contain a wireless transmitter and a green light, and ding sound that will activate once the passenger is properly cuffed. If at any time, the cuff lock is defeated, or detached from a living wrist, outside the disembarkment room, an alarm will sound;
they can only be unlocked at the end of the trip, or by the cockpit with biometric authorization provided by the pilot, in an emergency.
(7) One final inspection of cuffed passenger, and a side door on the port will be opened. An assistant will walk in, strap the passenger in a straight jacket, lock the jacket with a padlock, exit the chamber, and close the door. In case a handcuff should fail, these can be removed only with a flight attendant's key.
(8) The guard will unlock the second door, and the passenger leaves the boarding sally port.
(9) As the passenger exits the second door, the doorman hooks the passenger to a rig which will carry them up into the plane efficiently.
The passenger will be unlocked and have their clothing and other items returned, only when the flight is over.
(10) During the trip, passengers will be strapped in their seat by a flight-attendant.
The seat belts are modified, so a flight attendant's key, security code + BIO thumb scan, or a cockpit command is required to unlock.
"Being forced to do business and obtain their goods or services is at least equally harmful."
Not to the artists which you're supposedly defending. They would be better off for it.
What is right is determined not based solely on the interests of any one party, but the interests of society.
Society has determined the need for copyright to (as the constitution states it) promote progress in the science and useful arts.
Failing to follow the norms set down by society harms society as a whole, as determined by society.
Society sets rules to minimize the total harm and ensure justice and fairness, not for the mere purpose of providing advantage to one party.
In the absence of copyright, there is no market for copyright works, thus, it follows, that there is very little useful software, very little in terms of media and entertainment, OR they make copies impossible through some other means, such as perfect DRM and patents.
Also, why are you even bothering to mention the legality of copyright infringement?
Because the legality is important. And has to do with ability or failure to comply with social norms with respect to lawful behavior. As you know copyright works are licensed, not sold.
The license is always under condition of following the law.
The retailers too have to agree to certain terms.
By securing and using the work, you always make a promise of some type in the form of a EULA, the end-user license agreement.
And you generally have to re-affirm interactively that you promise this is true, before the software will allow you to use it.
This means that in essence you always make a promise to the author of the software, and if you don't abide by the law you violate a promise; in other words, if you make copies instead of buying them, you are failing to uphold your end of a promise, and money owed to the copyright owner is not paid as a result.
We are talking about "maybes" here. All of them, including the pirate, have a "chance" to eventually award the author with their money, as unlikely as that may be.
No. We are talking about economics here, and statistics. If you are in the business of selling a copyrighted work, your customers need or want the product. At any point in time, it is the number of prospective amount of customers is basically fixed. If you assume there is no piracy, then U% of the prospective customers will buy that product from you, V% will not buy the product, because it is too expensive, even if they want it (or it satisfies their needs).
Those V% remain prospective customers who do not have the product; you can use marketing techniques to overcome their hesitation and influence them to buy later, when they find the money.
But if there are a bunch of illegal copies of your work floating around, W% of your customers will buy it instead, X% will partake of the illegal copies, and Y% will not buy or obtain illegal copies.
And W% is strictly less than V% is strictly less than Y%.
This translates directly into dollars lost immediately, and later into the future, as there are increasingly fewer people to sell the product to. And that is what is referred to as economic damage.
The percentage of pirates who "recant" and ultimately pay is so small as to be completely neglected, these people don't exist on a large enough scale to make any difference economically.
That's merely a single point that I made. However, since harming someone by not giving them money doesn't really hurt them
That is not sound, because forcing people to buy and obtain a product the person does not want would generally causes more total harm than total harm would be caused to the seller by people refusing to buy and obtain a product.
There is HARM caused by not doing business with someone who wants you to do business with them, but this is acceptable because Being forced to do business and obtain their goods or services is at least equally harmful.
Going by your logic, yes, it should.
No, it should not. You are extending an argument into an absurd exaggeration where it does not apply.
Logicians call this a straw man.
You are basically warping my argument, by modifying it into one that you can punch holes in.
The problem is, my argument does not extend to the situation you imply it does.
To say that a copyright owner is economically damaged by people making copies of their work, in no way implies that a copyright owner is equally damaged by people simply refusing to buy their work (who do not have their decision influenced by possessing a legal copy).
The first case is called a theft of the services (in regards to the copyright owner's efforts to build the product), and the latter case is called business risk.
You're not taking into account people who protest a business and refuse to buy the product.
They exist, and they can hurt the business. This falls under expected business risk. When you are in business, you can reasonably expect adversaries will do certain legal things accepted by society that can have negative consequences for you.
This is different from someone conducting a crime against you (such as copyright infringement), that exacts economic damage upon you.
Or people who don't like the product. Or people who don't and never will have money to buy the product.
They exist. And if you are in any business selling a product, you have this obstacle.
This is a standard business risk that every organization faces and doesn't imply any illegal or immoral activity.
People in society have a right to not like your product. People in society have a right to not buy your product.
Forcing them to buy something they do not want would do them at least just as much harm as they could do to you by not buying.
In fact, due to t
Just because there are other things that can harm the copyright owner does not mean that making illegal copies does not exact economic damage upon the copyright owner.
I'm getting genuinely confused. First you say that harm was done to you because a pirate didn't give you money, but then you say it doesn't apply to non-pirates who didn't buy your product.
The non-pirates who did not buy the copyright product still have a need or desire for the product, if they had a need or desire for it in the first place.
It is worth something to a person selling a product to have such people in existence.
Their existence provides favorable pricing pressure for the seller and a source of future sales.
The existence of people who don't have their desire for the product satisfied means, there is a chance the copyright owner may be able to sell to them in the future; either that they will cave in and buy it, or that the author might in the future find terms of sale that will be acceptable to the buyer.
If the buyer instead takes an illegally made copy of the product, they will never need to buy it from the author,
because they took an unauthorized copy which provides them the benefit, satisfies their needs, and makes them unavailable as a source of demand for the product.
From an economic pricing point of view, this makes what the rights holder has to sell worth less on the market place, both because 1 person on the buying side is not buying, and because there are illegal copies competing against the owner on the selling side.
Deprived you of $500,000... that you didn't have in the first place. So, basically you're saying that you want your money that you would have had in the future back?
No, it's saying I want money that has to be paid to me as a condition for my software being used to provide the benefit obtained.
Copyright law is designed to protect my rights against people who would otherwise copy my software to obtain the benefits without paying me the amount due in exchange for receiving those benefits from each copy of my software.
Imagine that some random person decides not to buy your product. They would 'owe' you $100,000, just like a pirate apparently would.
No, they would not. Because they did not obtain the benefit from having a copy of my product.
If they obtained the benefit of having a copy of my product and running it on their computer, then yes, they would owe me 100,000.
No one HAS to make the deal, and exchange 100,000 for the benefit of running a copy of my product.
The use of software is an exchange.
They can either pay me 100,000 and run an additional copy of their product, or they can keep their 100,000 and not run that extra copy of my product; both of those are "fair" and don't deprive me of anything.
What would be unfair would be me taking 100,000 extra from them and not letting them run an extra copy, OR them running an extra copy without paying me 100,000.
In either case, one side would be getting cheated, and have recourse under the law.
Again, this is nonexistence. Merely saying "copyright infringement" does not prove that any harm has been done. In order for harm to be done, something must be taken from them (or damaged).
Nonsense.
If I create an optical engineering software program that provides unique capabilities, and I sell it to Enterprises for $100,000 per seat.
An Enterprise that buys 1 copy of my software and illegally makes 5 copies of my software deprives me of $500,000 that they owe me for the right to have 6 copies of my software.
They HAVE deprived me of something, my legal right, and they have inflicted serious monetary harm on me.
In addition, their act of piracy gives them a competitive advantage over other Enterprises that do the legal thing, and correctly pay me for their engineers' licenses.
The same principal applies to people trading MP3s on peer to peer networks.
I as author of a song have a right to compensation for each copy sold, and they are depriving me of tangible monetary value every time they create a counterfeit copy.
In addition, they are using my name, title, and branding in distributing this content, which means that, since they have not done a very good job producing this copy, the poor quality of what they are distributing hurts my reputation, and they are unfairly competing against me.
The entire point of my post is to point out that this does not hurt anyone, and thus should not be considered a crime.
And the entire point of mine is that it DOES hurt someone.
It hurts the copyright owner who spent money to develop the work, by devaluing their product and depriving them of their market for it.
Choosing not to buy their product, by the way, harms them also, but it is a different situation altogether.
You are essentially suggesting that refusing to buy something and smashing a shop window one night and taking it are morally equivalent, which is just bunk.
You have not shown why it is "illogical". All you have shown is that your claim that "no damage is done" is irrational. First of all, the question of whether damage is done or not is separate from the question of whether it is legal or ethical for that damage to happen.
For one thing, it is impossible to steal money that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money. You can't deprive someone of something that doesn't exist.
The crime is not stealing money. The crime is copyright infringement.
We are referring to an injury that copyright infringement inflicts on authors.
Yes, YOU CAN deprive someone of something that doesn't exist. Copyright infringement is just one type of example of that. Another example is called tortious interference with business relationships.
In this type of crime, a person (or company) engages in activities designed to discourage or prevent people from engaging in a business relationship with an entity.
A possible example of the crime of tortious interference would be telling people on the street not to buy a company's products.
There are cases where it is legal to deprive someone of profits they could reasonably expect, but if you deprive them of profit by infringing upon their legally protected rights, then you deprived them of profits in an illegal way; in other words, you would have committed the crime of copyright infringement in doing so.
You 'steal' potential profit every single time you decide to not buy a product.
It is lawful to deprive someone of profit by choosing not to purchase their product.
It is unlawful to deprive someone of profit by taking product from them or infringing upon their rights.
They have a legally protected right to their profit, but there are legal ways they can fail to obtain their profit Copyright infringement is not one of those legal ways.
You 'steal' potential profit every single time you decide to warn others who were originally going to buy the product not to buy the product for whatever reason
This depends on the content of your warning.
In some cases "warning" people not to buy a company's product can be actionable, and you can be sued for damages, if the loss due to your warning is sufficient, and your warning doesn't actually contain something substantive that you can prove.
(For example, if the "warning" is just your opinion, which you represented as a warning, then you may have to pay reparations to the company for the lost revenue)
Under no circumstances is a "fair price" of a copy smaller than the lesser of what the author sells a copy for, and the cost to produce the work divided by the number of copies produced with the copyright owner's permission.
Copyright grants authors certain exclusive rights to their creations, including the right to monetize them and therefore the right to compensation for each copy made.
Authors even have the right to deny copying altogether to increase the value of copies of their work already on the market, and to sell more copies later at a higher value.
Copying data denies them of the exclusive right.
Which of course damages the original authors, as described above, it denies them the benefit of their legally protected monopoly, and other exclusive rights to the market for their product; which reduces the copyright owner's revenue, therefore depriving them of money from sales that is rightfully theirs.
A summation, for all different instances of infringement:
The number of total data bits uploaded in this instance of infringement DIVIDED by number of bits in the actual file being uploaded TIMES
number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file DIVIDED BY total number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file
TIMES the proportion of perceptible copyright content during that time duration
TIMES the greater of $1 or the minimum price the publisher ever sold or licensed at least that many tenths of a second of that work for on the market
PLUS A penalty capped at 10% of the greater of the infringer's Gross income and the parent's gross income, if a parent is responsible
calculated as ( fixed dollar penalty for infringing activities TIMES the number of overt intentional acts of infringement )
Where each overt intentional act must be proven, intent must be proven, and there must be at least one intentional act of infringement to warrant a penalty.
An act of infringement is an act of infringement taken with full knowledge of the human TIMES the number of infringements they will have knowledge of in advance.
For example, uploading a file, placing a file on someone else's anonymous FTP server is one act of infringement.
The uploader has committed one infringement.
Sending an e-mail to 3 people is 3 acts of infringement.
Even if two of those 3 e-mail addresses is invalid, and the message never gets delivered to anyone, or generates bounces and gets delivered to a bunch of admins, with the infringing content.
Downloading a copyright file using Bittorrent is 0 acts of intentional infringement, if the downloader is unaware of how the protocol works, or it cannot be proven they uploaded copyright bits.
Seeding a file on Bittorrent is an overt act, and a number of infringements to be calculated based on their upload ratio TIMES the percentage of the file they downloaded. For example, assuming the infringer downloaded the entire file, an upload ratio of 0 is 0 infringements, a ratio of 0.5 is 0.5 infringements, 2 is 2 infringements, etc.
Offering a file on a Peer to Peer network is an overt act.
There used to be no such thing. The 1099 is due to a new rule passed in the late 1900s that requires payers of money to report who they paid money to, for the purpose of taxing the income.
Of course, before income tax, reporting such things was optional usually, and it became more mandatory in more and more cases over time.
Abortion - always either optional or forbidden.
Originally forbidden... became an option in some jurisdictions. It is already known that there is such a thing as Compulsory Abortion.
This happens mostly in China and similar jurisdictions, and is a method of population control. In the future, this will become mandatory in more jurisdictions in some cases, where babies are genetically tested in the womb, and parents begin to be found liable for genetic problems of their children that they knew about and did not abort.
Health insurance - approximately everybody would have it if it were affordable, so not really optional.
It is optional even if you can afford it, or at least, it was before the law was passed.
"The law" isn't the only thing that make things optional or not.
Health insurance was made "more mandatory" by increasing costs, and people's income not increasing to match higher costs -- you could always pay health care expenses out of pocket.
This has become harder, due to government regulation of the industry by reducing competition, and increasing liabilities, making having insurance less of a de-facto option.
Social security - never optional.
Social security is the government scheme that makes retirement and "retirement insurance" or "saving for retirement" mandatory.
Before this scheme, 'saving for retirement' was optional. The prior option would be to have children and others care for and support you in retirement.
The draft - never has been optional
The example was military service, not 'the draft'. "The draft" or the "selective service", for example, in the US, is a scheme that makes military service mandatory at various times.
Charitable donations - not mandatory.
They are because they are made for you. Even if you only pay taxes, you are donating huge amounts to charity, because they are taken right out of the taxes.
They were made mandatory by using taxpayer dollars to fund them. Essentially, the governments of various countries take money from citizens and give them directly to any 'charitable' causes that ask. For example, taxpayer dollars are used to fund infrastructure used by non-profit organizations, in the US, and yet 501(c) organizations, including political and other interest groups, industry associations, etc, are exempt from many taxes.
Many also receive additional funding from the government in various other forms.
"Welfare" in the US is also another example of forced charity.
Voting - not mandatory.
In certain jurisdictions (For Example: Australia, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Chile) it in fact is mandatory or required under penalty of law, and failing to vote can carry a penalty, usually something minor like an administrative fine, forfeit of certain privileges and licenses, revokation or denial of passports, disqualification from access to certain government services.
Jury duty - was this ever optional?
Jury duty was not always compulsary service, with jurors selected at random.
Institutional schooling - not mandatory, but you do have to educate your children. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
I'm not taking a position on whether it is bad, good, or neutral.
It is essential mandatory. There is still "option Y" in that case, home school, but it is in the later stages of being excluded, it just hasn't been outright banned yet, in the US, anyways.
This often happens in oppressive regimes like governments... you offer a new taboo practice / a majority of people will be extremely uncomfortable with
at first as an "OPTION", so the majority who would resist authority will not object.
For example... voting, jury duty, institutional schooling, legal representation, keeping money in the bank, alimony/child support, charitable donations, armed forces recruitment (draft), auto insurance, social security, full body scan, health insurance / gov't health care public "option", abortions, filing 1099s for people you pay money to, .
Our history is full of things becoming mandatory or de-facto mandatory that were at first snuck in as something else,
using it's actually just optional as an excuse to introduce it to placate any objectors, until the thing becomes well-entrenched.
This isn't even the tip of the iceberg, it happens over and over and over again, reliably.
Options can easily be made the only way with some simple manipulation; it can be fought, but it is an uphill battle and a long fight... I hope EPIC succeeds, but you know, they are fighting a gov't who believes they have a legitimate security interest in their policies. The gov't think they are security experts, and picks arbitrarily oppressive policies, even though they are obviously not using sound mathematics and science to evaluate the risk VS cost...
Presumably if body scanning is accepted, the message is clear there will be little the gov't cannot do.
It would be almost impossible to fight "backscatter machines", since that is just a furtherance of the 'body scan option' which can become mandatory.
The way these things get introduced is the gov't
answers any objection with "You don't have to submit to X. You can opt for Y instead."
Where Y is less invasive, but less convenient for authorities.
At first Y may be on equal footing, but is increasingly and intentionally made less convenient, discouraged by officials, OR officials [unofficially] are directed to implement things counter to policy -- for example, refusing option Y, but doing so in a way that will diffuse or deflect criticism away from the government... such as denying it in private, and in public denying that they denied the option.
The less convenient option Y becomes, the greater the portion of the population will opt for the uncomfortable but more 'convenient' or faster option.
This means, that eventually the societal norms are adjusted. So many people opted for the convenience over time that full body scanning is considered "the norm",
and is therefore socially acceptable.
Now all the government has to do is take option Y away, by making it unpallatable.
All they have to do is ensure anyone who picks option Y is embarrassed or harassed, and the people who see it will learn a lesson to never pick option Y.
The final stage is to make option Y socially unacceptable, and then do away with it altogether.
But web surfing can easily burn all 6 hours of a MacBook air's Battery life.
A slow internet connection can also rob runtime hours and battery life, since you spend more time with your monitor and wireless radios fully powered waiting for pages to load.
I think ATT should reimb me for lost battery time, every time I don't get the full advertised speed:)
Hell, just running OS X can do that, if you are keeping the CPU out of sleep mode, OS X can suck all the battery.
What's more scary about Flash ads and website advertising is how much they can rob from YOUR life.. laptop batteries can always be charged, but humans have finite lifetime... reduced in the form of annoyance/stress and time consumed wasted looking at stupid ads.
The Ads can grab your attention which can ultimately be expensive. Maybe each time isn't much a footprint -- but it happens so often, especially with d*****'ed annoying BLINK tags, Animated GIFs, Flash, Javascript/DHTML, Web 2.0 stuff, Java, and other similar effects.
Flash itself begins to seem darn benign.
And we haven't even talked about spam, popups, and web pages that convince gullible people to read articles, and waste their energy trying to sign up for some scammer's Nigerian "money windfall", make-money-fast, pyramid scheme, ponzi scheme, or Work-at-Home-for-massive-$ scam.
Imagine how much laptop battery time web-based flash (and not flash-based) advertisement cause users to drain. And how many years of "human run-time" are drained, esp. net over all humans who use the internet, as a result of that junk.
I suppose it won't be long before movie producers and book publishers are required to do research, prepare environmental impact statements,
and seek approval before they can publish a film or distribute a book
Something tells me, a few public service announcements, and temporary moratorium on trafficing of owls, and fine/jail time for capturing an owl without a permit, could end the idiocy fairly quickly.
Sorry, the following video could not be displayed.
Reason: Porn on the iPhone is illegal, you have violated the app store user agreement.
Apple black ops will be descending on your house shortly to exercise Apple's right under page 26994 of your contract, and confiscate all your iPhones.
P.S. No. This does not allow you to cancel your ATT iPhone wireless agreement or data plan without an early termination charge.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 Well stated. Of course Fusion Garage management will never admit this. They would get fired.
Esp. since after the CrunchPad fiasco, it's doubtful any (sane) company would ever want to work with them in the future, since Fusion Garage could be expected to just steal the product as they did with TechCrunch.
This is like an ISP patenting a technology that allows people message recipients to buy spam filtering from them. For example, Microsoft selling a spam filtering service, that will filter spam to you FROM HOTMAIL users. If the sender doesn't use hotmail, then the service will never see the message of course.
Obvious workaround: Don't order gifts through Amazon. It's easier to find bad gifts in local stores anyways or on no-name websites or Yahoo shops that your recipient has never heard of, and that you've never heard of. Unless you are sorting by 'lowest rated items first' or searching for something specific, it takes a fair bit of work to find bad things on Amazon. Amazon's definitely not the ideal place to go looking for bad gifts; although I suppose any place will work when trying to buy your recipient wrong sized clothing, as long as not all their stuff is one-size-fits-all.
What? You thought the wrong sized clothes were always an accident? You thought the 'bad gifts' were always errors, rather than a fun jab? Hahaha.... L:)
Another way... to get around bad gift filtering, have them delivered to yourself, and give it to them the old fashioned way. Or receive it, wrap it, and re-mail it; probably cheaper than Amazon giftwrap anyways. Or have it delivered to one of their friends in the area [if they are far away], and the friend can help the gift make it to its final destination.
See, this doesn't stop bad gifts.... it just requires us bad gift givers to be more creative.
If you really want to stop bad gifts, you need to get a third party involved. Give your relatives the address of the 3rd party as mailing address. Have a contract for 3rd party to open all your mail, substitute bad gifts, and reseal
As an aside... I wonder the legality of a retailer doing this.
The giver is ordering and paying for a product from a company; payment of money in exchange for goods agreed upon. The 'recipient' is a third party to this agreement, and not party to the sale -- they are just living at the address the items were ordered to be shipped to.
Amazon is apparently taking the money and quietly substituting the goods for something different from what was purchased.
In what way would it not be fraud, if Amazon did this? Do they tell you your gift was delivered to the address? Are they so callous as to inform the giver that their item was substituted or converted?
That's a problem... if the giver finds out, esp. from Amazon, they might be inclined to avoid Amazon.
To avoid backlash.... Amazon is probably sneaking something into the fine print that allows them to substitute goods quietly. Sounds dangerous if they do so, devious/deceptive, well-intentioned perhaps, but maybe evil in actual fact... What if the payer doesn't think the substitute is worth as much? Then Amazon's substitution could be seen as cheating them
Imagine if they substituted a gift without the buyer OR recipient's consent, with something to provide Amazon higher margins?
Hell... what if they substituted a non-gift item you bought for yourself, to deliver to an address someone just happened to add to their 'bad gift filter'? What if Amazon did this non-gift substitution without being asked by anyone to do so [because it benefits them] ?
Seems like all this "item substitution" is dangerous territory for a variety of reasons
Now, now: MiniTruth said that she fully complied. Also, the chocolate ration has been increased from 30 grammes to 20.
Except that 'chocolate' has been secretly re-defined to be cardboard.
Enjoy your cardboar, err, I mean chocolate...
Debian has "over 25000 [debian.org]". If RHEL6 is "software you can weigh", then Debian must be "software designed to break your scale". :)
Based on this thinking Ubuntu is something you may want to really stay away from.
Ubuntu has multitudes of packages... resulting in its gravitational field being so powerful that not even light can escape. It is going to eventually collect a ton of matter, and ultimately not even Microsoft will avoid getting caught in its pull.
An Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because the path of the optical signal got bent by Ubuntu's enormous gravitational field, and veered off course
CentOS is a server platform.
No... actually CentOS is both it basically provides the built-from-source packages equivalent ot BOTH Redhat Enterprise Linux Workstation edition and Advanced Platform.
All the workstation packages and all the server packages
Yes, RHEL Server is definitely for servers.
But Redhat makes a version for Workstations too (it has a different manifest with a different list of packages you are allowed to install on your system from the CDs, and a different list of packages that are restricted or unavailable due to you installing or not installing a certain edition), and CentOS includes rebuilds of all those packages.
So your results can be transmitted to medical authorities.
Probably predominantly the new [future] major medical authority.... the Federal Government
This could become like a 1099 for your Health. They just need to add the ability to poke yourself with a needle and plug that device into the phone, and DNA/fingerprint scanners for verification.
From that, your monthly penalties will be calculated.
In the future, I see random drug tests/screening of arbitrary citizens... "You get a text message, please submit a urine sample in the next 60 minutes, or you will be added to no-fly list, flagged for arrest, and billed a $50/hour fine, until you comply. This message brought to you by the DHHS, Department of Homeland Health and Security"
It is obviously some super-secret government/military thing.
If it was not sanctioned by the military, we would be at high alert right now, right?
If so, perhaps you should take a look at the civil rights movement and the act of civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience pertains only to unjust laws, which copyright is not. Copyright provides a benefit to people who worked to produce something, at the expense of freeloaders who are mere consumers of copyright works.
Also, where is this harm? You still haven't showed how it's logical to think that something that doesn't exist can be stolen.
It's pretty obvious.
Perhaps it would help you to see the elephant in the room if I showed you examples of other crimes your logic would say "do no harm"
See the thing in common? There's really no difference between the copyright issue and those, there's a thread of deception in all of them.
But the deception and freeloading hurts workers and thus harms the order of society.
dust mites designed to eat through doors to the pilots cabin?
Dust mites? Couldn't someone just use a lock pick disguised as a palm pilot stylus or some crud like that?
The big WTF here is someone thinks WiFi is a risk. However, there's nothing really stopping the bad guys from using it right now, now is there?
The article says A cellphone connected to a detonation circuit could have allowed a terrorist to trigger an explosion by calling or texting the phone.
No shit. The earth is round... tell us something we didn't know.
It most assuredly was not the ban on use of cell phones on a plane that stopped them from doing this, you know. Bad guys aren't particularly exacting in terms of following the rules, you know, right?
There are plenty of ways bad guys could communicate a trigger to their device if they needed that. In reality, they are probably more likely to use timers.
Just a reminder.... timers have a unique characteristic.. they don't suffer from issues like random communication failures or black outs so much. A 5 minute timer is 5 minutes, regardless of availability of a cell signal.
And a person who can rig a cell phone to an explosive can probably rig some other type of small common reliable radio just as easily.
It's not like the bad guys are working with off the shelf parts or care two shits worth about no-WiFi or no-Cellphone rules.
that TSA did not ban underpants after the last idiot that tried to smuggle a bomb in his shorts and if they ban Wi-Fi.
In a few years instead of having 'full body scanners' we will have sally ports.
To board a plane... doors open, enter sally port chamber 1, doors close, entrance and exits locked.
Security guard instructions: (1) Remove ALL clothing, deposit anything you were carrying. All items will be checked, no carry on items. Shirt, Shorts, Shoes, Socks, Bra, Panties, jewelry, etc. Place in "quarantine tray". Close and lock tray. Tray exits the room through a small slot, goes through a scanner, all items are searched thoroughly for any liquids, containers, chemicals, etc. Instruction (2) second door opens, person proceeds to chamber 2.
Person enters chamber 2, chamber 2 entrance 1 closes, doors locked. Security guard instructions: (1) step in decontamination chamber, (2) passenger's temperature, blood pressure are taken, blood is drawn and tested for communicable diseases, a sample is kept on file for mandatory DNA testing. (3) passenger is hosed down with soap and water, high-pressure spray, rinsed, and dried , then sprayed with disinfectants. (4) passenger's hands are scanned, Iris is scanned, fingerprints, weight, voice samples, facial patterns are taken and stored, biometric samples for future identification. (5) background check is performed.
(5) passenger is presented with their passenger uniform for this journey. clothing is just an orange jumpsuit or something embossed with their "passenger ID number" for this trip, and a big diaper. Passengers are required to wear diapers, in case they need to use the bathroom during trip, because noone will be allowed to leave their seat a second decontamination will occur at the end of their voyage. Photo ID is attached to the clothing, as well as background check result code; for example, if they are in any watch lists, their clothing will contain a number that identifies this, to ensure staff are well aware of the concern.
Every passenger's suit should also be equipped with a parachute. If something should go wrong, they'll need it.
(6) Passenger is handed a pair of handcuffs and directed to place hands behind back and cuff themselves. Security guard watches to ensure this is done correctly; the cuffs contain a wireless transmitter and a green light, and ding sound that will activate once the passenger is properly cuffed. If at any time, the cuff lock is defeated, or detached from a living wrist, outside the disembarkment room, an alarm will sound; they can only be unlocked at the end of the trip, or by the cockpit with biometric authorization provided by the pilot, in an emergency.
(7) One final inspection of cuffed passenger, and a side door on the port will be opened. An assistant will walk in, strap the passenger in a straight jacket, lock the jacket with a padlock, exit the chamber, and close the door. In case a handcuff should fail, these can be removed only with a flight attendant's key.
(8) The guard will unlock the second door, and the passenger leaves the boarding sally port.
(9) As the passenger exits the second door, the doorman hooks the passenger to a rig which will carry them up into the plane efficiently. The passenger will be unlocked and have their clothing and other items returned, only when the flight is over.
(10) During the trip, passengers will be strapped in their seat by a flight-attendant. The seat belts are modified, so a flight attendant's key, security code + BIO thumb scan, or a cockpit command is required to unlock.
"Being forced to do business and obtain their goods or services is at least equally harmful."
Not to the artists which you're supposedly defending. They would be better off for it.
What is right is determined not based solely on the interests of any one party, but the interests of society.
Society has determined the need for copyright to (as the constitution states it) promote progress in the science and useful arts.
Failing to follow the norms set down by society harms society as a whole, as determined by society.
Society sets rules to minimize the total harm and ensure justice and fairness, not for the mere purpose of providing advantage to one party.
In the absence of copyright, there is no market for copyright works, thus, it follows, that there is very little useful software, very little in terms of media and entertainment, OR they make copies impossible through some other means, such as perfect DRM and patents.
Also, why are you even bothering to mention the legality of copyright infringement?
Because the legality is important. And has to do with ability or failure to comply with social norms with respect to lawful behavior. As you know copyright works are licensed, not sold. The license is always under condition of following the law. The retailers too have to agree to certain terms.
By securing and using the work, you always make a promise of some type in the form of a EULA, the end-user license agreement. And you generally have to re-affirm interactively that you promise this is true, before the software will allow you to use it.
This means that in essence you always make a promise to the author of the software, and if you don't abide by the law you violate a promise; in other words, if you make copies instead of buying them, you are failing to uphold your end of a promise, and money owed to the copyright owner is not paid as a result.
We are talking about "maybes" here. All of them, including the pirate, have a "chance" to eventually award the author with their money, as unlikely as that may be.
No. We are talking about economics here, and statistics. If you are in the business of selling a copyrighted work, your customers need or want the product. At any point in time, it is the number of prospective amount of customers is basically fixed. If you assume there is no piracy, then U% of the prospective customers will buy that product from you, V% will not buy the product, because it is too expensive, even if they want it (or it satisfies their needs).
Those V% remain prospective customers who do not have the product; you can use marketing techniques to overcome their hesitation and influence them to buy later, when they find the money.
But if there are a bunch of illegal copies of your work floating around, W% of your customers will buy it instead, X% will partake of the illegal copies, and Y% will not buy or obtain illegal copies.
And W% is strictly less than V% is strictly less than Y%. This translates directly into dollars lost immediately, and later into the future, as there are increasingly fewer people to sell the product to. And that is what is referred to as economic damage.
The percentage of pirates who "recant" and ultimately pay is so small as to be completely neglected, these people don't exist on a large enough scale to make any difference economically.
That's merely a single point that I made. However, since harming someone by not giving them money doesn't really hurt them
That is not sound, because forcing people to buy and obtain a product the person does not want would generally causes more total harm than total harm would be caused to the seller by people refusing to buy and obtain a product.
There is HARM caused by not doing business with someone who wants you to do business with them, but this is acceptable because Being forced to do business and obtain their goods or services is at least equally harmful.
Going by your logic, yes, it should.
No, it should not. You are extending an argument into an absurd exaggeration where it does not apply.
Logicians call this a straw man. You are basically warping my argument, by modifying it into one that you can punch holes in.
The problem is, my argument does not extend to the situation you imply it does.
To say that a copyright owner is economically damaged by people making copies of their work, in no way implies that a copyright owner is equally damaged by people simply refusing to buy their work (who do not have their decision influenced by possessing a legal copy).
The first case is called a theft of the services (in regards to the copyright owner's efforts to build the product), and the latter case is called business risk.
You're not taking into account people who protest a business and refuse to buy the product.
They exist, and they can hurt the business. This falls under expected business risk. When you are in business, you can reasonably expect adversaries will do certain legal things accepted by society that can have negative consequences for you.
This is different from someone conducting a crime against you (such as copyright infringement), that exacts economic damage upon you.
Or people who don't like the product. Or people who don't and never will have money to buy the product.
They exist. And if you are in any business selling a product, you have this obstacle. This is a standard business risk that every organization faces and doesn't imply any illegal or immoral activity.
People in society have a right to not like your product. People in society have a right to not buy your product. Forcing them to buy something they do not want would do them at least just as much harm as they could do to you by not buying. In fact, due to t
Just because there are other things that can harm the copyright owner does not mean that making illegal copies does not exact economic damage upon the copyright owner.
I'm getting genuinely confused. First you say that harm was done to you because a pirate didn't give you money, but then you say it doesn't apply to non-pirates who didn't buy your product.
The non-pirates who did not buy the copyright product still have a need or desire for the product, if they had a need or desire for it in the first place.
It is worth something to a person selling a product to have such people in existence. Their existence provides favorable pricing pressure for the seller and a source of future sales.
The existence of people who don't have their desire for the product satisfied means, there is a chance the copyright owner may be able to sell to them in the future; either that they will cave in and buy it, or that the author might in the future find terms of sale that will be acceptable to the buyer.
If the buyer instead takes an illegally made copy of the product, they will never need to buy it from the author, because they took an unauthorized copy which provides them the benefit, satisfies their needs, and makes them unavailable as a source of demand for the product.
From an economic pricing point of view, this makes what the rights holder has to sell worth less on the market place, both because 1 person on the buying side is not buying, and because there are illegal copies competing against the owner on the selling side.
Deprived you of $500,000... that you didn't have in the first place. So, basically you're saying that you want your money that you would have had in the future back?
No, it's saying I want money that has to be paid to me as a condition for my software being used to provide the benefit obtained. Copyright law is designed to protect my rights against people who would otherwise copy my software to obtain the benefits without paying me the amount due in exchange for receiving those benefits from each copy of my software.
Imagine that some random person decides not to buy your product. They would 'owe' you $100,000, just like a pirate apparently would.
No, they would not. Because they did not obtain the benefit from having a copy of my product.
If they obtained the benefit of having a copy of my product and running it on their computer, then yes, they would owe me 100,000.
No one HAS to make the deal, and exchange 100,000 for the benefit of running a copy of my product.
The use of software is an exchange. They can either pay me 100,000 and run an additional copy of their product, or they can keep their 100,000 and not run that extra copy of my product; both of those are "fair" and don't deprive me of anything.
What would be unfair would be me taking 100,000 extra from them and not letting them run an extra copy, OR them running an extra copy without paying me 100,000. In either case, one side would be getting cheated, and have recourse under the law.
Again, this is nonexistence. Merely saying "copyright infringement" does not prove that any harm has been done. In order for harm to be done, something must be taken from them (or damaged).
Nonsense.
If I create an optical engineering software program that provides unique capabilities, and I sell it to Enterprises for $100,000 per seat.
An Enterprise that buys 1 copy of my software and illegally makes 5 copies of my software deprives me of $500,000 that they owe me for the right to have 6 copies of my software.
They HAVE deprived me of something, my legal right, and they have inflicted serious monetary harm on me.
In addition, their act of piracy gives them a competitive advantage over other Enterprises that do the legal thing, and correctly pay me for their engineers' licenses.
The same principal applies to people trading MP3s on peer to peer networks. I as author of a song have a right to compensation for each copy sold, and they are depriving me of tangible monetary value every time they create a counterfeit copy.
In addition, they are using my name, title, and branding in distributing this content, which means that, since they have not done a very good job producing this copy, the poor quality of what they are distributing hurts my reputation, and they are unfairly competing against me.
In this way, the copyright owner is injured.
The entire point of my post is to point out that this does not hurt anyone, and thus should not be considered a crime.
And the entire point of mine is that it DOES hurt someone.
It hurts the copyright owner who spent money to develop the work, by devaluing their product and depriving them of their market for it.
Choosing not to buy their product, by the way, harms them also, but it is a different situation altogether.
You are essentially suggesting that refusing to buy something and smashing a shop window one night and taking it are morally equivalent, which is just bunk.
Let me explain why this is illogical.
You have not shown why it is "illogical". All you have shown is that your claim that "no damage is done" is irrational. First of all, the question of whether damage is done or not is separate from the question of whether it is legal or ethical for that damage to happen.
For one thing, it is impossible to steal money that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money. You can't deprive someone of something that doesn't exist.
The crime is not stealing money. The crime is copyright infringement. We are referring to an injury that copyright infringement inflicts on authors.
Yes, YOU CAN deprive someone of something that doesn't exist. Copyright infringement is just one type of example of that. Another example is called tortious interference with business relationships.
In this type of crime, a person (or company) engages in activities designed to discourage or prevent people from engaging in a business relationship with an entity. A possible example of the crime of tortious interference would be telling people on the street not to buy a company's products.
There are cases where it is legal to deprive someone of profits they could reasonably expect, but if you deprive them of profit by infringing upon their legally protected rights, then you deprived them of profits in an illegal way; in other words, you would have committed the crime of copyright infringement in doing so.
You 'steal' potential profit every single time you decide to not buy a product.
It is lawful to deprive someone of profit by choosing not to purchase their product. It is unlawful to deprive someone of profit by taking product from them or infringing upon their rights. They have a legally protected right to their profit, but there are legal ways they can fail to obtain their profit Copyright infringement is not one of those legal ways.
You 'steal' potential profit every single time you decide to warn others who were originally going to buy the product not to buy the product for whatever reason
This depends on the content of your warning. In some cases "warning" people not to buy a company's product can be actionable, and you can be sued for damages, if the loss due to your warning is sufficient, and your warning doesn't actually contain something substantive that you can prove.
(For example, if the "warning" is just your opinion, which you represented as a warning, then you may have to pay reparations to the company for the lost revenue)
authors, but that is simply not true.
What do you mean?
Under no circumstances is a "fair price" of a copy smaller than the lesser of what the author sells a copy for, and the cost to produce the work divided by the number of copies produced with the copyright owner's permission.
Copyright grants authors certain exclusive rights to their creations, including the right to monetize them and therefore the right to compensation for each copy made.
Authors even have the right to deny copying altogether to increase the value of copies of their work already on the market, and to sell more copies later at a higher value.
Copying data denies them of the exclusive right. Which of course damages the original authors, as described above, it denies them the benefit of their legally protected monopoly, and other exclusive rights to the market for their product; which reduces the copyright owner's revenue, therefore depriving them of money from sales that is rightfully theirs.
A summation, for all different instances of infringement: The number of total data bits uploaded in this instance of infringement DIVIDED by number of bits in the actual file being uploaded TIMES number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file DIVIDED BY total number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file TIMES the proportion of perceptible copyright content during that time duration TIMES the greater of $1 or the minimum price the publisher ever sold or licensed at least that many tenths of a second of that work for on the market PLUS A penalty capped at 10% of the greater of the infringer's Gross income and the parent's gross income, if a parent is responsible calculated as ( fixed dollar penalty for infringing activities TIMES the number of overt intentional acts of infringement )
Where each overt intentional act must be proven, intent must be proven, and there must be at least one intentional act of infringement to warrant a penalty.
An act of infringement is an act of infringement taken with full knowledge of the human TIMES the number of infringements they will have knowledge of in advance. For example, uploading a file, placing a file on someone else's anonymous FTP server is one act of infringement. The uploader has committed one infringement.
Sending an e-mail to 3 people is 3 acts of infringement. Even if two of those 3 e-mail addresses is invalid, and the message never gets delivered to anyone, or generates bounces and gets delivered to a bunch of admins, with the infringing content.
Downloading a copyright file using Bittorrent is 0 acts of intentional infringement, if the downloader is unaware of how the protocol works, or it cannot be proven they uploaded copyright bits.
Seeding a file on Bittorrent is an overt act, and a number of infringements to be calculated based on their upload ratio TIMES the percentage of the file they downloaded. For example, assuming the infringer downloaded the entire file, an upload ratio of 0 is 0 infringements, a ratio of 0.5 is 0.5 infringements, 2 is 2 infringements, etc.
Offering a file on a Peer to Peer network is an overt act.
1099s - when was this optional?
There used to be no such thing. The 1099 is due to a new rule passed in the late 1900s that requires payers of money to report who they paid money to, for the purpose of taxing the income. Of course, before income tax, reporting such things was optional usually, and it became more mandatory in more and more cases over time.
Abortion - always either optional or forbidden.
Originally forbidden... became an option in some jurisdictions. It is already known that there is such a thing as Compulsory Abortion. This happens mostly in China and similar jurisdictions, and is a method of population control. In the future, this will become mandatory in more jurisdictions in some cases, where babies are genetically tested in the womb, and parents begin to be found liable for genetic problems of their children that they knew about and did not abort.
Health insurance - approximately everybody would have it if it were affordable, so not really optional.
It is optional even if you can afford it, or at least, it was before the law was passed. "The law" isn't the only thing that make things optional or not. Health insurance was made "more mandatory" by increasing costs, and people's income not increasing to match higher costs -- you could always pay health care expenses out of pocket. This has become harder, due to government regulation of the industry by reducing competition, and increasing liabilities, making having insurance less of a de-facto option.
Social security - never optional.
Social security is the government scheme that makes retirement and "retirement insurance" or "saving for retirement" mandatory. Before this scheme, 'saving for retirement' was optional. The prior option would be to have children and others care for and support you in retirement.
The draft - never has been optional
The example was military service, not 'the draft'. "The draft" or the "selective service", for example, in the US, is a scheme that makes military service mandatory at various times.
Charitable donations - not mandatory.
They are because they are made for you. Even if you only pay taxes, you are donating huge amounts to charity, because they are taken right out of the taxes.
They were made mandatory by using taxpayer dollars to fund them. Essentially, the governments of various countries take money from citizens and give them directly to any 'charitable' causes that ask. For example, taxpayer dollars are used to fund infrastructure used by non-profit organizations, in the US, and yet 501(c) organizations, including political and other interest groups, industry associations, etc, are exempt from many taxes.
Many also receive additional funding from the government in various other forms. "Welfare" in the US is also another example of forced charity.
Voting - not mandatory.
In certain jurisdictions (For Example: Australia, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Chile) it in fact is mandatory or required under penalty of law, and failing to vote can carry a penalty, usually something minor like an administrative fine, forfeit of certain privileges and licenses, revokation or denial of passports, disqualification from access to certain government services.
Jury duty - was this ever optional?
Jury duty was not always compulsary service, with jurors selected at random.
Institutional schooling - not mandatory, but you do have to educate your children. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
I'm not taking a position on whether it is bad, good, or neutral.
It is essential mandatory. There is still "option Y" in that case, home school, but it is in the later stages of being excluded, it just hasn't been outright banned yet, in the US, anyways.
Legal representation
This often happens in oppressive regimes like governments... you offer a new taboo practice / a majority of people will be extremely uncomfortable with at first as an "OPTION", so the majority who would resist authority will not object.
For example... voting, jury duty, institutional schooling, legal representation, keeping money in the bank, alimony/child support, charitable donations, armed forces recruitment (draft), auto insurance, social security, full body scan, health insurance / gov't health care public "option", abortions, filing 1099s for people you pay money to, . Our history is full of things becoming mandatory or de-facto mandatory that were at first snuck in as something else, using it's actually just optional as an excuse to introduce it to placate any objectors, until the thing becomes well-entrenched. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg, it happens over and over and over again, reliably. Options can easily be made the only way with some simple manipulation; it can be fought, but it is an uphill battle and a long fight... I hope EPIC succeeds, but you know, they are fighting a gov't who believes they have a legitimate security interest in their policies. The gov't think they are security experts, and picks arbitrarily oppressive policies, even though they are obviously not using sound mathematics and science to evaluate the risk VS cost...
Presumably if body scanning is accepted, the message is clear there will be little the gov't cannot do. It would be almost impossible to fight "backscatter machines", since that is just a furtherance of the 'body scan option' which can become mandatory.
The way these things get introduced is the gov't answers any objection with "You don't have to submit to X. You can opt for Y instead." Where Y is less invasive, but less convenient for authorities.
At first Y may be on equal footing, but is increasingly and intentionally made less convenient, discouraged by officials, OR officials [unofficially] are directed to implement things counter to policy -- for example, refusing option Y, but doing so in a way that will diffuse or deflect criticism away from the government... such as denying it in private, and in public denying that they denied the option.
The less convenient option Y becomes, the greater the portion of the population will opt for the uncomfortable but more 'convenient' or faster option.
This means, that eventually the societal norms are adjusted. So many people opted for the convenience over time that full body scanning is considered "the norm", and is therefore socially acceptable.
Now all the government has to do is take option Y away, by making it unpallatable.
All they have to do is ensure anyone who picks option Y is embarrassed or harassed, and the people who see it will learn a lesson to never pick option Y.
The final stage is to make option Y socially unacceptable, and then do away with it altogether.
But web surfing can easily burn all 6 hours of a MacBook air's Battery life. A slow internet connection can also rob runtime hours and battery life, since you spend more time with your monitor and wireless radios fully powered waiting for pages to load. I think ATT should reimb me for lost battery time, every time I don't get the full advertised speed :)
Hell, just running OS X can do that, if you are keeping the CPU out of sleep mode, OS X can suck all the battery.
What's more scary about Flash ads and website advertising is how much they can rob from YOUR life.. laptop batteries can always be charged, but humans have finite lifetime... reduced in the form of annoyance/stress and time consumed wasted looking at stupid ads.
The Ads can grab your attention which can ultimately be expensive. Maybe each time isn't much a footprint -- but it happens so often, especially with d*****'ed annoying BLINK tags, Animated GIFs, Flash, Javascript/DHTML, Web 2.0 stuff, Java, and other similar effects.
Flash itself begins to seem darn benign.
And we haven't even talked about spam, popups, and web pages that convince gullible people to read articles, and waste their energy trying to sign up for some scammer's Nigerian "money windfall", make-money-fast, pyramid scheme, ponzi scheme, or Work-at-Home-for-massive-$ scam.
Imagine how much laptop battery time web-based flash (and not flash-based) advertisement cause users to drain. And how many years of "human run-time" are drained, esp. net over all humans who use the internet, as a result of that junk.
Let's do away with valentines day, ban 'spring break', or at least close the beaches during that time.
And christmas is a religious holiday anyways, that should definitely be scrapped.
Once those are removed... that should do away with most breakups, right? Maybe get the divorce rates back down.
Then I bet Facebook would have a harder time being all creepy/stalker-like and predicting your break-up dates.
[P.S. No... not a serious suggestion, just a thought experiment]
I suppose it won't be long before movie producers and book publishers are required to do research, prepare environmental impact statements, and seek approval before they can publish a film or distribute a book
Something tells me, a few public service announcements, and temporary moratorium on trafficing of owls, and fine/jail time for capturing an owl without a permit, could end the idiocy fairly quickly.
Sorry, the following video could not be displayed. Reason: Porn on the iPhone is illegal, you have violated the app store user agreement. Apple black ops will be descending on your house shortly to exercise Apple's right under page 26994 of your contract, and confiscate all your iPhones.
P.S. No. This does not allow you to cancel your ATT iPhone wireless agreement or data plan without an early termination charge.