Technically speaking, I have the right to rip my own DVDs. I just don't have the right to have the tools to rip my own DVDs. (Is that insanely confusing? Yes, yes it is.) As far as being public about it, I don't go around bragging about it to tons of people (these Slashdot posts notwithstanding). Notice I didn't even say what tools I used because I don't want anyone claiming that I'm "incenting people to break copyright" or some such by advertising tools to rip DVDs.
I just said what I do and I'm not sharing my rips at all, no matter how much people beg. Not that they would, mind you. I'm sure that the rips that I'm taking my time to make have already been done a dozen or more times and are being shared out by a hundred people on P2P networks. On the MPAA radar, I'm sure "guy who rips DVDs he's bought and then keeps them to himself" is way lower than "guy who rips DVDs and then posts them to P2P networks" or "guy who downloads rips from P2P networks and then shares them back out." I'm probably even lower than "guy who leeches rips from P2P networks, refusing to share them back out."
True. Although were DVD ripping not an option, I'd have just put up with the DVDs I had already bought, wouldn't buy many more DVDs and would rely more on Netflix (both mail and online) as well as my local library's DVD collection. I actually won the CinemaTube so if it just sat there unused it wouldn't have cost me anything. Still, the ability to put my entire DVD collection on an external hard drive and play it on my TV is exactly what I've been looking for for years.
Now I've never pirated a DVD* and wouldn't recommend it, but I sympathize with the reasoning. Those preview screens are awful. Especially the unskippable ones on Sesame Street DVDs that tell you how much good money given to Sesame Workshop does. Hello? I bought the DVD and my kid just wants to see Ernie, Grover and crew. He doesn't care that "kids around the world are counting." At least let me hit "Menu" to skip by your commercial and get to the show!
* Full disclosure: I have ripped my own DVDs but don't share them out nor do I download rips others have made.
Well, the first grader *might* handle the DVD properly if it weren't for two factors:
1) The DVD player is above his reach. He's more likely to bring the entire entertainment center down on him than get the DVD in properly.
2) He has a 2 year old little brother who would be quick enough to snatch the DVD the second his older brother looks away to do who-knows-what with it.
Now when it comes to remote controls, he's a wiz. Too much of one, actually. He figured out how to record shows on our DVR by observing me doing it once and started recording every single show he likes. Needless to say, this filled up our DVR pretty quickly!
The industry has no real chance of wooing me with Blu Ray anytime soon. I don't even have an HD TV set in my house. The way I see it, money is tight and my TVs work fine. Do they show resolution as good as HD TVs? No, but it is good enough for my purposes. Eventually, when those TVs fail, I'll buy an HD TV but only because those seem to be the only ones on the market now.
And even when I do get a HD TV, I'll still use my trusty DVD players. Heck, I'm still using one about 10 years old that has the annoying habit of automatically closing the tray a second after you open it. So you need to open it, hold the tray open, place the DVD in and *then* let it close. But other than that glitch I'm fine with the player's performance so I haven't spent the $30 or so to replace it. And even, way down the road, if I upgrade to Blu Ray, my DVDs should still work on those players just fine.
Basically, the industry has no hope of getting me to pay for Blu Ray titles that I already own in DVD format. Of course, they'd *like* me to pay them again for the "Special Edition" and then the "Blu Ray combo pack" and then the "Ultra Cool Blu Ray Remastered Edition" and then the "Limited Time Collector's Box Set", etc. But I wouldn't buy all those whether or not I had access to DVD ripping. No lost sales here.
Oh and thanks for the Handbrake/K9Copy mentions. I'll have to try those on some of the more stubborn DVDs I have.
I agree. I have stacks of DVDs that I never watch because it's tricky to open the DVD case (it's in the living room where the kids often stack their toys), find the movie I want to watch, put it in the player and keep track of where the empty case is. Plus, if the kids want to watch a movie, they can't do it themselves. (My 1st grade son is computer/electronics savvy but I'm not letting him handle a DVD by himself just yet.)
Meanwhile, I have a CinemaTube hooked up to an external hard drive. I've ripped many of my DVDs onto this hard drive and can now watch them on my TV without needing to load the discs. Technically, I've violated copyright law, but I don't consider this a violation because a) I'm just place/format shifting and b) I'm not sharing these rips out. (Nor am I downloading rips to put on there.)
What I am doing isn't costing the movie industry any "lost sales." In fact, it might increase sales as I'll be more likely to watch DVD movies I buy and not just regard them as wasted cash. So why should it be illegal just because I *might* share the DVD rip on the Internet? Why not call sharing the DVD rip illegal (since that is what they are worried about) and end it at that? (Of course, the answer to these questions is that they want to have the ability later to sell you "digital copies" that will play on "authorized devices" even if they don't offer such copies for sale now.)
Even if there's a lesser of two evils, you might not want to vote for that person. They still might be "too evil" for your tastes. Should you vote for candidate A who says they'll kill 1 million people when elected or candidate B who says they'll kill 2 million people when elected? (Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but it's meant to drive the point home clearer.)
Third parties are an option, but the problem with them is the votes get spread out. Let's say that 31% of people vote for candidate A and 30% of people vote for candidate B. Now let's suppose that the remaining 39% of people vote for 3rd party candidates. You'd think this would look impressive, but in the real world, there would be probably about 10 candidates to choose from. Each candidate would get less than 4% of the vote, trailing far behind A or B.
Perhaps we need to take an idea from 80's movie Brewster's Millions and form a "None of the Above" party. The candidate "None of the Above" would appeal to both right-wingers who think the Republican candidate doesn't go far enough to the right, left-wingers who think the Democrat candidate doesn't go far enough to the left and people who think the candidates aren't "in the center" enough. If "None of the Above" captured even half of that hypothetical 39%, it would make an impressive 18.5% showing. That kind of general dissatisfaction with the choices presented would register where a few 4% third party showings wouldn't. And it would need to be a visible option on the ballot because otherwise people wouldn't pick it.
Of course, this wouldn't solve the problem of "I'm voting for Candidate A because he's in the party I always vote for and if I don't I'll be effectively helping Candidate B (from that party I don't like) get into office."
Do you think that "colored folk" (to use a term from that era) shouldn't have used the courts to fight against "separate but equal" and equal rights in general? Perhaps they should have just sat quietly and waiting patiently for white men to decide that it should be changed.
When you see something you perceive as unjust, you shouldn't just sit back and wait for it to correct itself. You take action to get it corrected. And if correcting it generates push back from groups that what to perpetuate the injustice, well those groups would have likely prevented "spontaneous injustice correction" anyway.
I'll admit I don't write/contribute to open source (due to lack of expertise and time), but I do use it. Even worse, I'm teaching my son to use it when I let him use FireFox, TuxPaint, TuxMath, TuxTyping, etc. Not only am I guilty of "piracy via open source" but I'm indoctrinating a new generation of "open source pirates." I guess I need to be forced to walk the plank.
All these worlds are yours except Europa. And Enceladus. The two worlds that aren't yours are Europa and Enceladus... and Titan. The three worlds... no, amongst your worlds... amongst the worlds.... I'll come in again.
When was the last time you changed your mind about a significant, foundational piece of data in your life?
I'm not talking about an uncertainty being made resolute on one side of the fence or the other.
I'm talking about a belief you once held to be true and around which you based your daily decision-making processes and then after review, realized that you were wrong and then took steps to alter your behavior accordingly.
Honestly, a couple of weeks ago. I realized that a religious practice I had been following for over a decade wasn't justified (religiously speaking) the way I had thought it was. Looking at the actual religious justification, I didn't agree with it. So I changed my practices. I'll admit that it took me a long time to actually make the change, though. Momentum in beliefs can be a powerful force.
Now, if you have experienced that, ask yourself the following. . .
Did you change your mind because of your own curiosity, reasoning and data collection OR because your tribe and its associated authority figures changed their minds and you felt compelled to follow suit?
My rabbi would definitely disagree with my change, so no to that authority figure. My wife (less religious than I am) liked the change but would probably prefer I changed much more. In the end, I decided that I was going to set aside every's expectations of what I should do and only consider what *I* felt was right. It was the only way to be true to my own self. If, after arriving at my decision, people weren't happy with it, I'd deal with it afterwords.
Are you the sort of person who switches back and forth between beliefs easily?
Not at all. Like many people, I'm susceptible to "belief momentum": The feeling that, since you've done things this way for a long time you've got to keep doing things this way. Plus, I fear the slippery slope. I'm afraid that if I change belief A that I'm ambivalent about, it'll lead to pressure to change belief B that I feel strongly about. One big reason why I decided to not consider anyone else's opinion. I wanted to arrive at my decision based purely on my own beliefs and not based on fears of what others would think/say/pressure me to do.
Are you the sort of person who refuses to change belief systems out of fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded?
I'd say no with qualifications. It's not a fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded that held me back, but a fear that changing one belief would lead to pressure to change other beliefs.
Do you lie to yourself in order to take the edge off uncomfortable truths? Are you lying to yourself right now about any of the answers to these questions?
No and no. (Or, at least, not anymore than the average person lies to themselves.) I prefer to confront these things head-on, even if the confrontation takes awhile to fully resolve.
It's probably a bit of both. Powerful positions attract those who would like to use such power. However, if you give someone power they might honestly think they're using it for the common good. They might honestly try to use it wisely, but the temptation will always be there.
There's a bad guy on the loose and you have this power to pull cell phone records without a judge's ok. You might get approval the first few times, but how long until the urge to catch the bad guy and end his threat becomes too great and you pull those records "just this once" without approval? And since you did it that one time and nobody objected/got hurt (in fact, peoples' lives were saved/made better), why not do it again? Just this second time, mind you. It's to help people. It really won't matter if you only do it two... ok, maybe three times. Four times max. Definitely no more than five... or six...
Before you know it, you're using this power regularly and stomping on civil liberties right and left. In your mind, though, you're still doing everything not to further your own power, but "for the good of the people." And any attempts to remove your increased powers, returning you to the proper levels of power, are seen as a threat to your ability to protect the world from the bad guys. (Thus, civil liberties activists are working for the bad guys and must be stopped....)
Easy, both major parties are for Big Government. The difference is just what areas of the government that they want bigger. And, of course, for all their protests, neither party will really try to shrink government too much when they take power. They'll just slow/freeze the growth of the "bad big government" sections and increase the growth of the "good big government" sections. This applies to the states as well as the federal government.
If Google is required to get the consent of all involved parties before posting a video, where's the line? Do message boards need to get signed consent from all parties before making a user's posting live? If I post "anegg is wrong in his arguments", does Slashdot need to get your consent before making the posting live or risk being sued?
And think about it from the user's standpoint. Even assuming that websites could somehow track down users and ask for their consent, people would start getting consent letters from various websites. More well-known people would get lots of letters and wouldn't be able to reply to them all. Thus, many perfectly-average-and-innocent postings would be stalled. And if the posting/video was about someone's less than legal activities, all that person would need to do would be to refuse to approve it. No more negative information about them online! Say goodbye to the Streisand Effect because Barbara would simply refuse consent and the information disappears.
Of course, in the real world this is impossible to enforce, but the system that the Italian courts seem to want in place would be a disaster if it didn't work and an even bigger disaster if it worked.
Even that's not an exception. If they brought the inappropriate pictures to school, then it is on school property and thus their business. If the student is looking at the photos in his room, at a friend's house or even has a hidden stash a block away from the school, it isn't the school's business at all.
If his grades were suffering because of looking at inappropriate pictures (or drugs or whatever), then the proper response is for the teacher to call for a meeting with the parents, not for the school administrators to require secretive spy cameras to make sure students aren't doing anything deemed inappropriate.
My son's school definitely couldn't afford that. In fact, my son's school district is talking about cutting the art/music programs and closing two schools. Including the school my son is in which happens to be one of the highest performing school in the district. Of course, the fact that the superintendent is a temporary one who won't be around to deal with the fallout has *nothing* to do about it. (No, I'm not bitter.)
That was my idea also. Put their funding in a big container filled with Monopoly money. Shake it a bit, divide it in half and pour in more Monopoly money. Repeat about 30 or so times. Sure the remaining items in the container will be all Monopoly money (if they're really lucky, maybe a single real bill), but the Monopoly money will have magically transformed into legal tender that they can spend at such wonderful places as Marvin Gardens, Boardwalk and even Park Place!
I'd argue that the crime is taking the photo of the kid while he was at home regardless of whether he was doing drugs or not. The school's business begins when the students enter the building and ends when the students leave the building. If he came to school stoned, by all means exact punishment, but a kid sitting in his room in his parent's house is out of the school's jurisdiction. They have no right to spy on kids to see what they're doing while at home.
And did he share his candy with others? Because, you realize if he did it means lost sales for the makers of Mike & Ike. Perhaps the Candy Industry Association of America (CIAA) needs to investigate!;-)
I definitely don't think legalizing it would make woman toss out their tops en masse. In fact, most woman, most days, would likely want to cover up. (Just like you don't see a lot of shirtless men walking about town.) My wife and I have talked about this (in the context of public breastfeeding discussions) and she's definitely for the right to do this, but wouldn't do it herself.
Slashdot Mirror
I just checked and the DVD player is indeed a Pioneer DV-333. That wouldn't happen to be the model number of your player also, would it?
I can't recall at the moment (I'll have to check when I get home), but my old "mind of its own" DVD player might be a Pioneer too.
Technically speaking, I have the right to rip my own DVDs. I just don't have the right to have the tools to rip my own DVDs. (Is that insanely confusing? Yes, yes it is.) As far as being public about it, I don't go around bragging about it to tons of people (these Slashdot posts notwithstanding). Notice I didn't even say what tools I used because I don't want anyone claiming that I'm "incenting people to break copyright" or some such by advertising tools to rip DVDs.
I just said what I do and I'm not sharing my rips at all, no matter how much people beg. Not that they would, mind you. I'm sure that the rips that I'm taking my time to make have already been done a dozen or more times and are being shared out by a hundred people on P2P networks. On the MPAA radar, I'm sure "guy who rips DVDs he's bought and then keeps them to himself" is way lower than "guy who rips DVDs and then posts them to P2P networks" or "guy who downloads rips from P2P networks and then shares them back out." I'm probably even lower than "guy who leeches rips from P2P networks, refusing to share them back out."
True. Although were DVD ripping not an option, I'd have just put up with the DVDs I had already bought, wouldn't buy many more DVDs and would rely more on Netflix (both mail and online) as well as my local library's DVD collection. I actually won the CinemaTube so if it just sat there unused it wouldn't have cost me anything. Still, the ability to put my entire DVD collection on an external hard drive and play it on my TV is exactly what I've been looking for for years.
Geek.com has a somewhat-related article up today about why people pirate DVDs: http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/why-people-pirate-movies-20100219/
Now I've never pirated a DVD* and wouldn't recommend it, but I sympathize with the reasoning. Those preview screens are awful. Especially the unskippable ones on Sesame Street DVDs that tell you how much good money given to Sesame Workshop does. Hello? I bought the DVD and my kid just wants to see Ernie, Grover and crew. He doesn't care that "kids around the world are counting." At least let me hit "Menu" to skip by your commercial and get to the show!
* Full disclosure: I have ripped my own DVDs but don't share them out nor do I download rips others have made.
Well, the first grader *might* handle the DVD properly if it weren't for two factors:
1) The DVD player is above his reach. He's more likely to bring the entire entertainment center down on him than get the DVD in properly.
2) He has a 2 year old little brother who would be quick enough to snatch the DVD the second his older brother looks away to do who-knows-what with it.
Now when it comes to remote controls, he's a wiz. Too much of one, actually. He figured out how to record shows on our DVR by observing me doing it once and started recording every single show he likes. Needless to say, this filled up our DVR pretty quickly!
The industry has no real chance of wooing me with Blu Ray anytime soon. I don't even have an HD TV set in my house. The way I see it, money is tight and my TVs work fine. Do they show resolution as good as HD TVs? No, but it is good enough for my purposes. Eventually, when those TVs fail, I'll buy an HD TV but only because those seem to be the only ones on the market now.
And even when I do get a HD TV, I'll still use my trusty DVD players. Heck, I'm still using one about 10 years old that has the annoying habit of automatically closing the tray a second after you open it. So you need to open it, hold the tray open, place the DVD in and *then* let it close. But other than that glitch I'm fine with the player's performance so I haven't spent the $30 or so to replace it. And even, way down the road, if I upgrade to Blu Ray, my DVDs should still work on those players just fine.
Basically, the industry has no hope of getting me to pay for Blu Ray titles that I already own in DVD format. Of course, they'd *like* me to pay them again for the "Special Edition" and then the "Blu Ray combo pack" and then the "Ultra Cool Blu Ray Remastered Edition" and then the "Limited Time Collector's Box Set", etc. But I wouldn't buy all those whether or not I had access to DVD ripping. No lost sales here.
Oh and thanks for the Handbrake/K9Copy mentions. I'll have to try those on some of the more stubborn DVDs I have.
I agree. I have stacks of DVDs that I never watch because it's tricky to open the DVD case (it's in the living room where the kids often stack their toys), find the movie I want to watch, put it in the player and keep track of where the empty case is. Plus, if the kids want to watch a movie, they can't do it themselves. (My 1st grade son is computer/electronics savvy but I'm not letting him handle a DVD by himself just yet.)
Meanwhile, I have a CinemaTube hooked up to an external hard drive. I've ripped many of my DVDs onto this hard drive and can now watch them on my TV without needing to load the discs. Technically, I've violated copyright law, but I don't consider this a violation because a) I'm just place/format shifting and b) I'm not sharing these rips out. (Nor am I downloading rips to put on there.)
What I am doing isn't costing the movie industry any "lost sales." In fact, it might increase sales as I'll be more likely to watch DVD movies I buy and not just regard them as wasted cash. So why should it be illegal just because I *might* share the DVD rip on the Internet? Why not call sharing the DVD rip illegal (since that is what they are worried about) and end it at that? (Of course, the answer to these questions is that they want to have the ability later to sell you "digital copies" that will play on "authorized devices" even if they don't offer such copies for sale now.)
Even if there's a lesser of two evils, you might not want to vote for that person. They still might be "too evil" for your tastes. Should you vote for candidate A who says they'll kill 1 million people when elected or candidate B who says they'll kill 2 million people when elected? (Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but it's meant to drive the point home clearer.)
Third parties are an option, but the problem with them is the votes get spread out. Let's say that 31% of people vote for candidate A and 30% of people vote for candidate B. Now let's suppose that the remaining 39% of people vote for 3rd party candidates. You'd think this would look impressive, but in the real world, there would be probably about 10 candidates to choose from. Each candidate would get less than 4% of the vote, trailing far behind A or B.
Perhaps we need to take an idea from 80's movie Brewster's Millions and form a "None of the Above" party. The candidate "None of the Above" would appeal to both right-wingers who think the Republican candidate doesn't go far enough to the right, left-wingers who think the Democrat candidate doesn't go far enough to the left and people who think the candidates aren't "in the center" enough. If "None of the Above" captured even half of that hypothetical 39%, it would make an impressive 18.5% showing. That kind of general dissatisfaction with the choices presented would register where a few 4% third party showings wouldn't. And it would need to be a visible option on the ballot because otherwise people wouldn't pick it.
Of course, this wouldn't solve the problem of "I'm voting for Candidate A because he's in the party I always vote for and if I don't I'll be effectively helping Candidate B (from that party I don't like) get into office."
Do you think that "colored folk" (to use a term from that era) shouldn't have used the courts to fight against "separate but equal" and equal rights in general? Perhaps they should have just sat quietly and waiting patiently for white men to decide that it should be changed.
When you see something you perceive as unjust, you shouldn't just sit back and wait for it to correct itself. You take action to get it corrected. And if correcting it generates push back from groups that what to perpetuate the injustice, well those groups would have likely prevented "spontaneous injustice correction" anyway.
I'll admit I don't write/contribute to open source (due to lack of expertise and time), but I do use it. Even worse, I'm teaching my son to use it when I let him use FireFox, TuxPaint, TuxMath, TuxTyping, etc. Not only am I guilty of "piracy via open source" but I'm indoctrinating a new generation of "open source pirates." I guess I need to be forced to walk the plank.
Or, to mix two different references:
All these worlds are yours except Europa. And Enceladus. The two worlds that aren't yours are Europa and Enceladus... and Titan. The three worlds... no, amongst your worlds... amongst the worlds.... I'll come in again.
Honestly, a couple of weeks ago. I realized that a religious practice I had been following for over a decade wasn't justified (religiously speaking) the way I had thought it was. Looking at the actual religious justification, I didn't agree with it. So I changed my practices. I'll admit that it took me a long time to actually make the change, though. Momentum in beliefs can be a powerful force.
My rabbi would definitely disagree with my change, so no to that authority figure. My wife (less religious than I am) liked the change but would probably prefer I changed much more. In the end, I decided that I was going to set aside every's expectations of what I should do and only consider what *I* felt was right. It was the only way to be true to my own self. If, after arriving at my decision, people weren't happy with it, I'd deal with it afterwords.
Not at all. Like many people, I'm susceptible to "belief momentum": The feeling that, since you've done things this way for a long time you've got to keep doing things this way. Plus, I fear the slippery slope. I'm afraid that if I change belief A that I'm ambivalent about, it'll lead to pressure to change belief B that I feel strongly about. One big reason why I decided to not consider anyone else's opinion. I wanted to arrive at my decision based purely on my own beliefs and not based on fears of what others would think/say/pressure me to do.
I'd say no with qualifications. It's not a fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded that held me back, but a fear that changing one belief would lead to pressure to change other beliefs.
No and no. (Or, at least, not anymore than the average person lies to themselves.) I prefer to confront these things head-on, even if the confrontation takes awhile to fully resolve.
"Everyone buckled in? Ok. Activate interlock! Dynotherms connected! Infracells up! Mega thrusters are go! Let's go Antro Duo!"
It's probably a bit of both. Powerful positions attract those who would like to use such power. However, if you give someone power they might honestly think they're using it for the common good. They might honestly try to use it wisely, but the temptation will always be there.
There's a bad guy on the loose and you have this power to pull cell phone records without a judge's ok. You might get approval the first few times, but how long until the urge to catch the bad guy and end his threat becomes too great and you pull those records "just this once" without approval? And since you did it that one time and nobody objected/got hurt (in fact, peoples' lives were saved/made better), why not do it again? Just this second time, mind you. It's to help people. It really won't matter if you only do it two... ok, maybe three times. Four times max. Definitely no more than five... or six...
Before you know it, you're using this power regularly and stomping on civil liberties right and left. In your mind, though, you're still doing everything not to further your own power, but "for the good of the people." And any attempts to remove your increased powers, returning you to the proper levels of power, are seen as a threat to your ability to protect the world from the bad guys. (Thus, civil liberties activists are working for the bad guys and must be stopped....)
Easy, both major parties are for Big Government. The difference is just what areas of the government that they want bigger. And, of course, for all their protests, neither party will really try to shrink government too much when they take power. They'll just slow/freeze the growth of the "bad big government" sections and increase the growth of the "good big government" sections. This applies to the states as well as the federal government.
If Google is required to get the consent of all involved parties before posting a video, where's the line? Do message boards need to get signed consent from all parties before making a user's posting live? If I post "anegg is wrong in his arguments", does Slashdot need to get your consent before making the posting live or risk being sued?
And think about it from the user's standpoint. Even assuming that websites could somehow track down users and ask for their consent, people would start getting consent letters from various websites. More well-known people would get lots of letters and wouldn't be able to reply to them all. Thus, many perfectly-average-and-innocent postings would be stalled. And if the posting/video was about someone's less than legal activities, all that person would need to do would be to refuse to approve it. No more negative information about them online! Say goodbye to the Streisand Effect because Barbara would simply refuse consent and the information disappears.
Of course, in the real world this is impossible to enforce, but the system that the Italian courts seem to want in place would be a disaster if it didn't work and an even bigger disaster if it worked.
Even that's not an exception. If they brought the inappropriate pictures to school, then it is on school property and thus their business. If the student is looking at the photos in his room, at a friend's house or even has a hidden stash a block away from the school, it isn't the school's business at all.
If his grades were suffering because of looking at inappropriate pictures (or drugs or whatever), then the proper response is for the teacher to call for a meeting with the parents, not for the school administrators to require secretive spy cameras to make sure students aren't doing anything deemed inappropriate.
My son's school definitely couldn't afford that. In fact, my son's school district is talking about cutting the art/music programs and closing two schools. Including the school my son is in which happens to be one of the highest performing school in the district. Of course, the fact that the superintendent is a temporary one who won't be around to deal with the fallout has *nothing* to do about it. (No, I'm not bitter.)
That was my idea also. Put their funding in a big container filled with Monopoly money. Shake it a bit, divide it in half and pour in more Monopoly money. Repeat about 30 or so times. Sure the remaining items in the container will be all Monopoly money (if they're really lucky, maybe a single real bill), but the Monopoly money will have magically transformed into legal tender that they can spend at such wonderful places as Marvin Gardens, Boardwalk and even Park Place!
But how else will we protect students from the horrors of 4th graders with Lego guns?
I'd argue that the crime is taking the photo of the kid while he was at home regardless of whether he was doing drugs or not. The school's business begins when the students enter the building and ends when the students leave the building. If he came to school stoned, by all means exact punishment, but a kid sitting in his room in his parent's house is out of the school's jurisdiction. They have no right to spy on kids to see what they're doing while at home.
And did he share his candy with others? Because, you realize if he did it means lost sales for the makers of Mike & Ike. Perhaps the Candy Industry Association of America (CIAA) needs to investigate! ;-)
I definitely don't think legalizing it would make woman toss out their tops en masse. In fact, most woman, most days, would likely want to cover up. (Just like you don't see a lot of shirtless men walking about town.) My wife and I have talked about this (in the context of public breastfeeding discussions) and she's definitely for the right to do this, but wouldn't do it herself.
I'm sure before long someone will post the appropriate XKCD comic. You know, the one about "if it exists, there's porn on the Internet about it."