If Trump gets in and the GOP controls Congress, what's to stop the GOP from going full-on-alt-right? Let's assume that Trump wins by a large margin, he'll have a mandate and will pretty much get to shape the GOP any way he likes. The alt-right will be emboldened and will push for any dissenters in the Republican Party to either fall in line or lose their seats. We saw it recently with the Tea Party. Any GOP politician who didn't toe the Tea Party line was called a RINO and forced out in favor of more extreme candidates. In the "Trump wins by a landslide, GOP controls Congress" scenario, the GOP might not restrict Trump but egg him on in an effort to prove their loyalty to the alt-right movement in the Republican Party.
Don't we have a tradition of innocent until proven guilty in this country? If Hillary Clinton hasn't been convicted (or even, at this point, charged) with any crimes, how is it fair to say that she's "unofficially not-guilty." Isn't she - by definition - not guilty until she's been proven guilty in a court of law? I mention that last part because "that Facebook post I saw which linked to a blog post which totally showed why Hillary is guilty of personally killing everyone who crosses her" doesn't count as proof of her guilt.
The Clintons have an ironclad control over the Democrat Party - nothing can oppose them. Bill Clinton displayed it during his administration, and any alternate power center in the party - be it Bernie, Obama, Pocahontas, et al - now blindly stands by Hilary.
They now stand behind Hillary because she's the nominee and because they think Trump is genuinely dangerous (as opposed to just "I don't agree with his policies"). If the Clintons had such an ironclad control over the Democratic Party, then how did Obama win the nomination over Hillary in 2008. By your "ironclad control" theory, Obama's candidacy should have been shut down and we would be talking about President Hillary Clinton's final days in office and some other Democratic candidate's chances on Tuesday.
And, to continue the car metaphor, do you get into the car with someone who might take you in the wrong direction or the person who promises to change the direction the car is going in - by driving it off a cliff?
Not every change is a good one. People voting for a candidate simply because that person wants to "change the system" without bothering to research just what those changes are or what effects they would cause are being extremely short sighted.
My college's newspaper made a controversial decision to run a Holocaust denier's ad and justified it as "we need to air both sides of this issue." (This was in the late 90's.) Airing both sides of an issue is often a good thing, but there are instances when one side is so clearly wrong that all "airing both sides" does is make both sides seem equivalent. It elevates the clearly wrong side and degrades the clearly correct side so that both are just another point of view.
The big problem is when the diehards (from either side) think they they are in the middle. My father thinks I've been "brainwashed" (his words) by liberal propaganda because I'm not voting for Trump and because I don't exclusively watch FOX News. He doesn't care about my reasons or any political arguments. All he cares is that my views are to the left of his and thus I'm a liberal. If you asked him where he was on the political spectrum, he'd probably claim to be in the center.
They've been fighting synthetic diamonds over this entire time. The article's methods might be their latest attempts, but De Beers trying to stop synthetic diamonds - or at least brand them as "not as good as natural" diamonds - has been going on this entire time.
If we assumed one person looking at each e-mail manually, then yes this would be a Herculean task. Of course, as Calydor pointed out, they likely had more than one person looking at these.The more people looking at them, the quicker they'd go through them. They could also have narrowed down which e-mails needed to be checked. An e-mail from Anthony Weiner to his wireless carrier with the subject line of "Deleting Accidentally Texted Photos" probably doesn't need to be looked into for the Clinton investigation. Same goes for ones dated before Hillary was Secretary of State or ones dated after she left the post. Finally, they could do some plain text searching for certain keywords to quickly identity which e-mails needed to be given a closer look and which could be bypassed. By doing this, they could narrow down how many e-mails needed to be checked per person to a reasonable amount such that they could be sure that none of the 650,000 e-mails contained anything that would change the status of the investigation.
It's not even the digging up of natural stones that makes them expensive. De Beers grabs just about every source of natural diamonds that they can and stores them away. By limiting the supply, they can drive prices up. If all of the diamonds in De Beers storehouses were to go on the market, the price of diamonds would drop.
De Beers can't buy up the supply of synthetic diamonds, though. Any lab anywhere can get the equipment and start churning out synthetic diamonds. And whereas natural stones might be of varying quality, synthetics can be perfect every time.
De Beers is a monopolistic company that is suddenly finding itself facing competition. As such, they are reacting as monopolistic companies usually do - not by competing with a better product but by trying to shut down or shout down their new competition.
That was my first thought as well. How long until we have clips of "I'm Republican candidate Jack Johnson and I love eating puppies! I kill and eat them all day long. Vote for me." followed by "I'm Democratic candidate John Jackson. People have wondered how I stay so healthy. Well, I take a daily bath in the blood of newborn babies. Vote for me."
Right now, "it feels true" spreads fast across the Internet regardless of any facts backing it. How fast would it spread if there's "audio proof" that some candidate said some horrible things? On the flip side, what if a politician actually DID say something horrible? Could they deny it, claim it was "Audio Photoshopped", and get away with it?
I remember the old days when a driver who was blinded by the sun decided to drive faster, ran a red light, and plowed into my mother's car (with me in the front passenger seat). The driver's wife sued my parents' insurance company because she broke her leg, she couldn't sue her husband, and NY state laws meant that we were partially responsible for just being there (despite clearly having the right of way). My parents' insurance company settled without consulting my parents, and then raised my parents' rates because of the settlement. (My parents quickly ditched this insurance company.)
The point of the story is that insurance companies have always sought ways to charge customers more even before social media.
Interestingly, Humphrey Carter, in Tolkien’s official biography, noted that while Tolkien was displeased with the Ace editions, they at least sported covers that resembled their stories; by contrast, Tolkien was distressed at the cover art for the Ballantine editions, to which he noted: “What has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs?”
Ace’s editions were a commercial success, selling over 100,000 copies, which angered Tolkien and his publishers. They complained, and as early as May 1965, Tolkien began to urge the fans who wrote to him to inform them that the American copies were pirated: "I am now inserting in every note of acknowledgement to readers in the U.S.A. a brief note informing them that Ace Books is a pirate, and asking them to inform others."
Competition to the Ace copies arrived at the same time, as Ballantine Books released their own ‘authorized’ The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in October and Return of the King in November of 1966. While Ace’s editions were priced at $0.75 against Ballantine’s $0.95, the tide began to turn as the negative publicity mounted.
It’s interesting to see that Tolkien utilized the fanbase that he so abhorred to fight back against the unauthorized editions. He was also correct: The incredible publicity that the row received, which pulled in efforts from the Science Fiction Writers of America, helped to grow the fervent readership for the tales from Middle Earth. It’s also ironic that while Tolkien had resisted so “ ‘degenerate a form’ as the paperback book,” it was in that format which they first appeared and grew in popularity within the United States.
Bookstores and fans began to boycott the unauthorized edition, and by February 1966, Tolkien reported in a letter that he had reached an agreement with Wollheim to receive some royalties from their publication run, and a promise that they would let the edition sell out, with no further print runs. Ace was under no legal obligation to agree to such a deal, but considerable pressure from their rival publishers and readers forced them to the table. By March, Ace announced that they had reached an agreement with the author, and their edition fell out of print.
I didn't say it would be easy to roll back copyright terms to a sane length. Any serious proposal to do so would be met with the full lobbying force of the entire content industry. Then again, so would any proposal to abolish copyright entirely. Perhaps we could propose abolishing copyright and then "settling" for copyright terms of 28 years?
And often it depends on the person behind the keyboard. If you have two computers with the same level of security, the computer with the insecure user will get hacked before (and more frequently than) the computer with the more secure user. Unfortunately, user education can only take you so far.
And they would be if copyright was 14 years + a one-time optional 14 year extension. If this were still the length of copyright, everything from 1988 and earlier would be in the public domain. Everything from 2002 and earlier that wasn't renewed would be in the public domain as well.
My oldest son has Autism and, after his diagnosis, I realized I have Autism also. I went through a short phase where I blamed myself for "giving" him Autism. I got over it, though, when I realized that I have no control over which genes I pass on to him. It was just luck of the draw. (My youngest son is neurotypical.)
If not vaccinating only affected the stupid people who didn't vaccinate, I'd agree with you. However, not vaccinating puts people at risk who either can't be vaccinated (due to age or illness) or whose vaccines didn't "take" (vaccines are 99% effective but there's 1% who get vaccinated and aren't protected). Usually, those who can't be vaccinated or whose vaccines didn't prove effective are protected by everyone whose vaccines are working. This is called herd immunity. But if more and more people choose not to vaccinate, they weaken herd immunity and the at risk groups who didn't have a choice in the matter can get sick or die.
That is a good point. Without copyright, not only would you compete against yourself when selling your own book, it would annihilate any control directly related follow on work -- movies, book sequels, etc.
And, just in case people somehow think that individuals or small businesses would prosper without any copyright, who would be the ones to quickly churn out a movie or book sequel based on an authors (instantly copyright-less) book? Big media companies. So I publish my novel (Shameless Plug: The title is "Ghost Thief"). MGM somehow gets wind of it and decides to do a movie based on my book. They don't consult me or compensate me. In fact, they mangle my work entirely. I might be able to sue them, but without copyright protection I'll be an individual bringing a flimsy case against a large media powerhouse's army of high priced attorneys.
On the flip side, if someone made a fan film from a "previously copyrighted" work done by a big media company, the big would likely still threaten a massive lawsuit unless the fan took down his work. The lawsuit threats might be unfounded, but they would be able to bully people into settling out of court and/or taking down their derivative works.
In short, a world without copyright would be one that the big companies exploited even more. What we need is copyright to stick around, but to be limited in term.
If they could run Android apps (even in some kind of speedy emulation), that would be a huge selling point. On launch, the tablet would have a vast library of games to choose from.
Lets say we do away with copyright tomorrow and all of my novels have that creator endorsed marking on them. The big question is whether the book buying public would even care. My novel sells for $7.99 (paperback). Suppose HarperCollins decides to publish an edition of my book without my approval. Thanks to copyright going away, there is no legal recourse for me to tell them to stop or to compensate me. Being a bigger publishing house, they might be able to undercut me on price. Now, my $7.99 paperback has to contend with their $4.99 paperback edition. Plus, they are able to get their version of my book into all the bookstores while mine is still limited in scope. (My book is only available from Amazon at the moment.)
The big question is: Would the buying public care that my book has the "Creator Endorsed" logo on it or would they flock to the cheaper copy to save some cash?
As much as I'd like to say people would go with Creator Endorsed, I think they'd go with the saved cash and I'd wind up losing sales. (This is the only time when I'd call "lost sales" an actual thing since the person actually bought a copy of the book but did so from someone who was selling their own version without getting approval/providing compensation.)
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
The big problem with copyright law isn't its existence. It's the length. Copyright was originally 14 years plus a one-time 14 year extension. This isn't so bad. The novel I just published would have until 2044 (assuming I renewed the copyright) to make me money. Then, the book transfers to the public domain for others to build on it. Very few works still make money after 28 years - and I'd wager most of the ones that still do (like Star Wars) partly keep making money because of new material being added.
However, over the years, copyright terms lengthened until now it's 70 years after the author's death. If I die at age 90, my novel will be protected by copyright until 2135. At that point, my youngest son (now 9) would be 128 - and likely deceased. If my youngest son had a child at 30, his child would be 98 when my copyright ran out. I don't need copyrights on my works lasting until my great-great-great grandchildren are born. That's not giving me incentive to create new works. 14 years + 14 years would be plenty.
If copyright law was reset back to 14 years plus an optional one-time 14 year extension, a lot of the problems with copyright would go away.
The corresponding legislative check on this is Congressional oversight, which is similarly broad.
As others pointed out, Congress also has oversight capabilities by controlling the budget. The President could call for an army of super-intelligent killbots and a thousand rockets to launch them across the world, but everything would be just plans on paper if Congress didn't approve the funding.
At times, you might not need specific funding - for example, drafting plans for "what would we do if a space weather event knocked out power across the US" and small actions might be able to be swallowed by an agency's existing budget, but where major funding is needed Congress acts as a check against the President's plans. (As it should be.)
Comcast had $19.269 billion in revenues last quarter. (Source) This equates to about $211 million per day or $8.8 million per hour. They'll earn back the $2.3 million fine in about 15 minutes and 42 seconds.
Yes, at this point I think there's something else wrong with the tablet. Replacing the battery let me get my son's game data backed up. He's on the autism spectrum and playing video games is one of his coping mechanisms. When he first faced the prospect of losing all of his game data, he melted down badly. Now, I'm looking into the possibility of replacing his tablet with a Chromebook since I heard that some of them can run Android apps. This way, he can still have his Android-based games, but also use the Chromebook for schoolwork.
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If Trump gets in and the GOP controls Congress, what's to stop the GOP from going full-on-alt-right? Let's assume that Trump wins by a large margin, he'll have a mandate and will pretty much get to shape the GOP any way he likes. The alt-right will be emboldened and will push for any dissenters in the Republican Party to either fall in line or lose their seats. We saw it recently with the Tea Party. Any GOP politician who didn't toe the Tea Party line was called a RINO and forced out in favor of more extreme candidates. In the "Trump wins by a landslide, GOP controls Congress" scenario, the GOP might not restrict Trump but egg him on in an effort to prove their loyalty to the alt-right movement in the Republican Party.
Don't we have a tradition of innocent until proven guilty in this country? If Hillary Clinton hasn't been convicted (or even, at this point, charged) with any crimes, how is it fair to say that she's "unofficially not-guilty." Isn't she - by definition - not guilty until she's been proven guilty in a court of law? I mention that last part because "that Facebook post I saw which linked to a blog post which totally showed why Hillary is guilty of personally killing everyone who crosses her" doesn't count as proof of her guilt.
They now stand behind Hillary because she's the nominee and because they think Trump is genuinely dangerous (as opposed to just "I don't agree with his policies"). If the Clintons had such an ironclad control over the Democratic Party, then how did Obama win the nomination over Hillary in 2008. By your "ironclad control" theory, Obama's candidacy should have been shut down and we would be talking about President Hillary Clinton's final days in office and some other Democratic candidate's chances on Tuesday.
And, to continue the car metaphor, do you get into the car with someone who might take you in the wrong direction or the person who promises to change the direction the car is going in - by driving it off a cliff?
Not every change is a good one. People voting for a candidate simply because that person wants to "change the system" without bothering to research just what those changes are or what effects they would cause are being extremely short sighted.
My college's newspaper made a controversial decision to run a Holocaust denier's ad and justified it as "we need to air both sides of this issue." (This was in the late 90's.) Airing both sides of an issue is often a good thing, but there are instances when one side is so clearly wrong that all "airing both sides" does is make both sides seem equivalent. It elevates the clearly wrong side and degrades the clearly correct side so that both are just another point of view.
The big problem is when the diehards (from either side) think they they are in the middle. My father thinks I've been "brainwashed" (his words) by liberal propaganda because I'm not voting for Trump and because I don't exclusively watch FOX News. He doesn't care about my reasons or any political arguments. All he cares is that my views are to the left of his and thus I'm a liberal. If you asked him where he was on the political spectrum, he'd probably claim to be in the center.
They've been fighting synthetic diamonds over this entire time. The article's methods might be their latest attempts, but De Beers trying to stop synthetic diamonds - or at least brand them as "not as good as natural" diamonds - has been going on this entire time.
If we assumed one person looking at each e-mail manually, then yes this would be a Herculean task. Of course, as Calydor pointed out, they likely had more than one person looking at these.The more people looking at them, the quicker they'd go through them. They could also have narrowed down which e-mails needed to be checked. An e-mail from Anthony Weiner to his wireless carrier with the subject line of "Deleting Accidentally Texted Photos" probably doesn't need to be looked into for the Clinton investigation. Same goes for ones dated before Hillary was Secretary of State or ones dated after she left the post. Finally, they could do some plain text searching for certain keywords to quickly identity which e-mails needed to be given a closer look and which could be bypassed. By doing this, they could narrow down how many e-mails needed to be checked per person to a reasonable amount such that they could be sure that none of the 650,000 e-mails contained anything that would change the status of the investigation.
It's not even the digging up of natural stones that makes them expensive. De Beers grabs just about every source of natural diamonds that they can and stores them away. By limiting the supply, they can drive prices up. If all of the diamonds in De Beers storehouses were to go on the market, the price of diamonds would drop.
De Beers can't buy up the supply of synthetic diamonds, though. Any lab anywhere can get the equipment and start churning out synthetic diamonds. And whereas natural stones might be of varying quality, synthetics can be perfect every time.
De Beers is a monopolistic company that is suddenly finding itself facing competition. As such, they are reacting as monopolistic companies usually do - not by competing with a better product but by trying to shut down or shout down their new competition.
That was my first thought as well. How long until we have clips of "I'm Republican candidate Jack Johnson and I love eating puppies! I kill and eat them all day long. Vote for me." followed by "I'm Democratic candidate John Jackson. People have wondered how I stay so healthy. Well, I take a daily bath in the blood of newborn babies. Vote for me."
Right now, "it feels true" spreads fast across the Internet regardless of any facts backing it. How fast would it spread if there's "audio proof" that some candidate said some horrible things? On the flip side, what if a politician actually DID say something horrible? Could they deny it, claim it was "Audio Photoshopped", and get away with it?
I remember the old days when a driver who was blinded by the sun decided to drive faster, ran a red light, and plowed into my mother's car (with me in the front passenger seat). The driver's wife sued my parents' insurance company because she broke her leg, she couldn't sue her husband, and NY state laws meant that we were partially responsible for just being there (despite clearly having the right of way). My parents' insurance company settled without consulting my parents, and then raised my parents' rates because of the settlement. (My parents quickly ditched this insurance company.)
The point of the story is that insurance companies have always sought ways to charge customers more even before social media.
I found a reference for this: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/unauthorized-lord-rings/
I didn't say it would be easy to roll back copyright terms to a sane length. Any serious proposal to do so would be met with the full lobbying force of the entire content industry. Then again, so would any proposal to abolish copyright entirely. Perhaps we could propose abolishing copyright and then "settling" for copyright terms of 28 years?
And often it depends on the person behind the keyboard. If you have two computers with the same level of security, the computer with the insecure user will get hacked before (and more frequently than) the computer with the more secure user. Unfortunately, user education can only take you so far.
And they would be if copyright was 14 years + a one-time optional 14 year extension. If this were still the length of copyright, everything from 1988 and earlier would be in the public domain. Everything from 2002 and earlier that wasn't renewed would be in the public domain as well.
My oldest son has Autism and, after his diagnosis, I realized I have Autism also. I went through a short phase where I blamed myself for "giving" him Autism. I got over it, though, when I realized that I have no control over which genes I pass on to him. It was just luck of the draw. (My youngest son is neurotypical.)
If not vaccinating only affected the stupid people who didn't vaccinate, I'd agree with you. However, not vaccinating puts people at risk who either can't be vaccinated (due to age or illness) or whose vaccines didn't "take" (vaccines are 99% effective but there's 1% who get vaccinated and aren't protected). Usually, those who can't be vaccinated or whose vaccines didn't prove effective are protected by everyone whose vaccines are working. This is called herd immunity. But if more and more people choose not to vaccinate, they weaken herd immunity and the at risk groups who didn't have a choice in the matter can get sick or die.
And, just in case people somehow think that individuals or small businesses would prosper without any copyright, who would be the ones to quickly churn out a movie or book sequel based on an authors (instantly copyright-less) book? Big media companies. So I publish my novel (Shameless Plug: The title is "Ghost Thief"). MGM somehow gets wind of it and decides to do a movie based on my book. They don't consult me or compensate me. In fact, they mangle my work entirely. I might be able to sue them, but without copyright protection I'll be an individual bringing a flimsy case against a large media powerhouse's army of high priced attorneys.
On the flip side, if someone made a fan film from a "previously copyrighted" work done by a big media company, the big would likely still threaten a massive lawsuit unless the fan took down his work. The lawsuit threats might be unfounded, but they would be able to bully people into settling out of court and/or taking down their derivative works.
In short, a world without copyright would be one that the big companies exploited even more. What we need is copyright to stick around, but to be limited in term.
If they could run Android apps (even in some kind of speedy emulation), that would be a huge selling point. On launch, the tablet would have a vast library of games to choose from.
Lets say we do away with copyright tomorrow and all of my novels have that creator endorsed marking on them. The big question is whether the book buying public would even care. My novel sells for $7.99 (paperback). Suppose HarperCollins decides to publish an edition of my book without my approval. Thanks to copyright going away, there is no legal recourse for me to tell them to stop or to compensate me. Being a bigger publishing house, they might be able to undercut me on price. Now, my $7.99 paperback has to contend with their $4.99 paperback edition. Plus, they are able to get their version of my book into all the bookstores while mine is still limited in scope. (My book is only available from Amazon at the moment.)
The big question is: Would the buying public care that my book has the "Creator Endorsed" logo on it or would they flock to the cheaper copy to save some cash?
As much as I'd like to say people would go with Creator Endorsed, I think they'd go with the saved cash and I'd wind up losing sales. (This is the only time when I'd call "lost sales" an actual thing since the person actually bought a copy of the book but did so from someone who was selling their own version without getting approval/providing compensation.)
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
The big problem with copyright law isn't its existence. It's the length. Copyright was originally 14 years plus a one-time 14 year extension. This isn't so bad. The novel I just published would have until 2044 (assuming I renewed the copyright) to make me money. Then, the book transfers to the public domain for others to build on it. Very few works still make money after 28 years - and I'd wager most of the ones that still do (like Star Wars) partly keep making money because of new material being added.
However, over the years, copyright terms lengthened until now it's 70 years after the author's death. If I die at age 90, my novel will be protected by copyright until 2135. At that point, my youngest son (now 9) would be 128 - and likely deceased. If my youngest son had a child at 30, his child would be 98 when my copyright ran out. I don't need copyrights on my works lasting until my great-great-great grandchildren are born. That's not giving me incentive to create new works. 14 years + 14 years would be plenty.
If copyright law was reset back to 14 years plus an optional one-time 14 year extension, a lot of the problems with copyright would go away.
The only question is whether it was J'onn or Marvin.
As others pointed out, Congress also has oversight capabilities by controlling the budget. The President could call for an army of super-intelligent killbots and a thousand rockets to launch them across the world, but everything would be just plans on paper if Congress didn't approve the funding.
At times, you might not need specific funding - for example, drafting plans for "what would we do if a space weather event knocked out power across the US" and small actions might be able to be swallowed by an agency's existing budget, but where major funding is needed Congress acts as a check against the President's plans. (As it should be.)
Comcast had $19.269 billion in revenues last quarter. (Source) This equates to about $211 million per day or $8.8 million per hour. They'll earn back the $2.3 million fine in about 15 minutes and 42 seconds.
Yes, at this point I think there's something else wrong with the tablet. Replacing the battery let me get my son's game data backed up. He's on the autism spectrum and playing video games is one of his coping mechanisms. When he first faced the prospect of losing all of his game data, he melted down badly. Now, I'm looking into the possibility of replacing his tablet with a Chromebook since I heard that some of them can run Android apps. This way, he can still have his Android-based games, but also use the Chromebook for schoolwork.