Download == some fraction of a Lost Sale. How big a fraction exactly is only relevant for grandstanding, that both RIAA and its foes engage in.
The reality remains, that some sales are lost due to illegal downloading, and that the victims are entitled to compensation. Including punitive monies — to not only compensate for the loss itself, but to punish the thieves (yes, thieves).
but for most of us not just twelve grand, but even measly $2500 is still real money
Of course, it is real money. But car is a real purchase. Someone unable to save the measly 2500 for the rare occasion of buying a car (in America!) has serious problem, and $2500 aren't going to solve them.
Besides, only an idiot would make a $12,000 down payment on a car with his hard-earned cash, when he can get into the same car for a $2500 down payment he received from the government for his beater
Sure, it would be stupid for an individual to reject such government hand-out. My point was, no such hand-outs should be offered.
if you weren't a dumbass, you would have realized that most folks out there driving piece-of-shit cars don't have $12,000
Those who can't afford a cheap car in America are the dumb-asses, not me:-)
You are definitely not my uncle. My uncle is way smarter than you.
Will we ever see NewYorkCountryLawer unequivocally condemn the little thieves, that RIAA are fighting?
Nope, never. Instead, watch yet another thread bogged down by "troll" moderations and objections to my use of the term "thieves"...
Overview of noun theft
The noun theft has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- (the act of taking something from someone unlawfully; "the thieving is awful at Kennedy International")
You have a job, so you can afford to make car loan payments [...]
How the fook does an American — born-and-raised in this country, with all its vast advantages over millions of people elsewhere in the world — justify not being able to afford a $12K upfront for a new car? Not even the $2500 of a down-payment? What's wrong with you, people? How do immigrants, coming here (legally and otherwise) do it, without the head-start of knowing the language, the culture, and being legally allowed to earn living?
a kick in the butt to finally get rid of your rust bucket
Kick in the butt is something, that parents are supposed to administer once in a while. But the government is neither your mommy nor daddy. And if free money is your idea of a "kick in the butt", then I'd rather you not be involved in raising children, including your own.
Because if you made it the only format, it might not be one that can embed in the webpage ala youtube.
I have not used Windows in over 10 years, but I'm pretty certain, MP4 can be embedded in a web-page.
And if, somehow, receiving such content is still too difficult for some people (YouTube requires flash, which too requires some futzing around once), well, those people will be watching inauguration on TV.
the current satellite bounce links can be reserved for use only if/when the direct links go out.
Basically, I agree with you, except in the above — the plane's "pilots" would have to be located fairly close to the action. Placing them, as is done now, half way across the globe in Nevada, just would not work. Ever.
Earth's circumference is 40076000 meters. The speed of light is 299792458 meters per second. The round-trip latency will thus be at least 0.13 of a second, which is substantial even for driving in the rain — and the real lag will be bigger. This is a serious disadvantage and no money or technology can solve this problem.
Only deploying the controllers closer to the battlefields — itself quite a logistical challenge — will. Perhaps, retrofitting the carriers to keep the "pilots" on the ship is the next practical step... But first, most of the current decision-makers among military pilots would have to retire...
OK, I understand why they would want to choke civil unrest by censoring dissidents online, but porn? How's that helping them?
During the USSR days, it was customary for Mr. Putin's agency to declare political dissenters as common criminals to soften the West's attempts to free them.
Your asking the question and its high moderation both explain, why the tactics worked. Unable to perceive the actual levels of evil of the Communist regimes, Western "liberals" (who seriously think, G.W. Bush is vilest creature ever to rule a country) fall for their lies:
Release all political prisoners!
Oh, no, we don't have any.
What about so-and-so? We demand, he be released at once!
Oh, but so-and-so attempted to rape a young athlete last year and must serve his sentence.
Really? Ah, ok, then, sorry to bother you...
Similarly:
Your shutting down of such-and-such.cn is an intolerable violation of the principle of Free Speech!
Come, come, even your country would not tolerate the pornographic content we've found posted on their servers.
Oh, really? Never mind then, sorry to bother you...
The solution, provided you are willing to bear the cost (i.e. taxes) would be to offer the stream in a secondary format.
I had no problems watching the presidential debates on FreeBSD/amd64 computer. The cost of offering an mpg- or mp4-stream (the latter immediately viewable by iPhone-users, BTW) is negligible, even if, indeed, used as a secondary format. But why not offer it is the only format?
Either it's televised on the television, or streamed on the internet.
Either way, RIAA is fighting theft of their members' intellectual property.
Yet by seeing the amount of efforts the great legal minds — from NewYorkCountryLawyer to Ivy League law professors — one would think, RIAA is trying to abolish the Constitution or something...
Just because there isn't currently an unmanned fighter doesn't mean they can't defend themselves, or be used for air to air combat.
It was my understanding, that although the cameras provide decent observation angles, they can't provide equivalent of the glass cockpit. Similarly, although the communication links are high-speed, there is still latency. Both of these factors would make controlling of a high-speed fighter from a remote (sometimes half-way across the globe) location rather impractical, limiting UAVs' use to slow, defenseless, and cheap apparata.
Seriously, I know of some hedge funds, that pay premiums for placing their algorithmic trading servers right there next to the stock-exchanges — to help reduce communication latencies, which would dull the efficiencies of their exploiting momentarily opportunities in price-differences. They could trade on Tokyo exchange from a server in the US, but they don't want to be impeded by the latency of price-quotes arriving from and of their automatic execution orders reach the exchange. The speed of lights is high, but not infinite.
Similarly, controlling a real fighter jet over Afghanistan from Nevada would be rather inefficient, although one could still deploy the "pilots" to Afghanistan without putting them on the planes. Some day...
So have we got to the stage yet where we can just have our unmanned vehicles fight their unmanned vehicles over an empty patch of ocean and declare a winner?
The whole point of UAVs is that they are great in assymetrical warfare — such as what we and our allies (like Israel) are engaged in now and for the foreseeable future. A really strong military facing weak opponents, who carefully exploit not military strength (which they do not have), but their blending among civilians, terrorism, and some legal tricks too.
It does not work the other way — against comparable or stronger military. When Georgians tried, earlier this year, to use UAVs to monitor their rebel territories from the air, the rebel-supporting Russia quickly blasted the UAV out of the sky with a manned fighter.
Should we come to the unfortunate point of facing a comparably-equipped military once again, Air Force's spending priorities will change again.
"Impossible to quantify" does not rule out the quantity "zero", so your claim is false.
It implies the quantity being non-zero (because otherwise the GGP would've said so), and it certainly is non-zero in our case. If 1000 people found a song worthy of downloading, certainly one of them (likely — more) would've found it worthy of paying some amount (X being above zero) of money for it. That X/1000 (still above zero) is the perfectly tangible amount stolen from the song's owner, be they the original author, or whoever the author sold their rights to.
But, once again, the loss of value is not, in fact, a requirement for the dictionary definition of theft, so let's stop splitting hairs.
Seriously, it's no more difficult than looking at the relevant sections of law.
Law? So a plain dictionary is no longer sufficient?
"Theft" or "stealing" is defined by law as the unlawful taking of real property.
I'd be curious, which law that is — would you oblige with the chapter and verse, please? A link would do...
That's why copyright law is covered by its own section in the US Code--- because it isn't covered by the sections on "stealing".
Yes, "larceny" is also a separate thing in law, and so is "grand larceny". In plain English it is still theft, though, covered by that age-old maxim at the Subject of this (sub)thread: "Though shall not steal".
Now, why is the opposition to my use of the word "theft" so vociferous? Are you really under an impression, that once you prove, that copyright infringement is not exactly like theft, there is nothing morally wrong with it?
Why don't you state — for the record — that copyright infringement is wrong and whoever willfully engages in it deserves some sort of non-trivial punishment? We will then be able to move on to discussing, what such non-trivial punishment (beyond compensating the victims) ought to be...
No, at most it loses marketing potential. That is a fictive amount, so it is impossible to quantify how much is really lost.
As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination. Even if it were zero, the act of taking something illegally is defined as "stealing", whether or not the original owner has lost anything. From Princeton WordNet, once again: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing — the act of taking something from someone unlawfully.
Thus the term "stealing" is, in fact, quite accurate
Only if you also accept that corporate espionage is stealing, and phishing is stealing, and murder is stealing.
Why not? Corporate espionage is, indeed, commonly referred to a "stealing secrets", phishing is known as "theft of private data", and murder — the premeditated taking of life — can be viewed as a (particularly disgusting and reprehensible) form of stealing too.
Theft is a synonym for stealing.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it. [...]
The RIAA uses the terms "piracy" and "stealing" in referring to copyright infringement, but do so inaccurately, as part of their propaganda.
Indeed. Stealing, which you are very well aware of, is not a synonym for copyright infringement. It is just a more generic: although not all theft is done through copyright infringement, all copyright infringement is stealing. The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully. A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Although a commonly mentioned other requirement — that the original owner be deprived of something — is not, in fact, part of the above quoted Princeton WordNet definition, it is dishonest to claim, that copyright infringement is a "victimless crime" — the copyright-holder's property does lose value. Thus the term "stealing" is, in fact, quite accurate.
Anyway, would you condemn copyright infringement — for the record?
The real pity is the society's general sympathy towards the small-time crooks, who download the wares they didn't pay for.
There may or may not be a fault here and there in how *AA fights for the rights of their members, but the underlying problem is that people continue to steal (yes, their action is closer to stealing of tangible goods, than "information superhighway" is to an autobahn).
Well if you count all the abuse the people there suffer, it's quite easy actually.
Please, count. Let's see them...
The US is going down the bad road in small steps
Germany's "bad road" ended with genocide (its militarism was nothing new, surpassed before and after). Please, indicate, which nation/race is under threat of genocide at the hands of the US. And if you can't — apologize.
Guantanamo Bay comes close [to being a death camp, where millions were turned into soap and ashes -mi]
Please, explain in more detail, how Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of terrorist-suspects reside without threat to their lives "comes close" to a death camp built to kill, and were countless thousands of people accused of nothing other than being Jews did, indeed, perish.
I'm not saying, there is nothing wrong with Gitmo. But claiming, as you just did, that it "comes close" to a Nazi death camp is a sign of exactly the kind of moronity, that Godwin's Law is supposed to banish from public discourse.
Perhaps. Or, maybe, of the 1920, when the country's new Hope was demanding Change?
Seriously, you and I know, what he meant, so let's not engage in hair-splitting. Nazism's racism was just as much of a pillar as their Socialism. They began persecuting Jews in earnest in 1933, and continued on to full-blown genocide.
Nothing of the kind is happening in the USA today. No minority is banned from government employment. When some dimwit offends an Arab or a Muslim, for example, the victim gets compensated. And no group even claims to be a target of genocide.
Ahh, I see. So that Nazi's were fine and dandy up until they started the death camps. Anything prior was acceptable to you?
Let's not change the subject to what's acceptable to me. The GGP alleged, USA is exactly like Nazi Germany.
I maintain, that without the death camps, a very important piece is missing. So important, in fact, the entire comparison is bogus and should've been laughed out of any decent forum as per Godwin's Law.
I mean, he could've said, USA is like Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy (both were Fascist, but without the horrors of death camps), but he didn't... His real motivation, thus, was to insult my country — not to engage in valid debate. One may be forgiven for exacting some strange pleasure out of demonstrating such mouth-breathing dimwitted assholes for who they are...
Using paper may remain an option, but my hypothetical FOIA-2.0 would require government agencies to allow people to subscribe to receive regular updates to their files in each agency — by e-mail. Either that, or instant access via agency's web-site (with a single cross-.gov sign-on) must be made available a'la "online banking".
If Obama really is as computer-savvy as his McCain-mocking ads were implying, he should make his government do this without waiting for Congress to make it into a legal requirement.
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Download == some fraction of a Lost Sale. How big a fraction exactly is only relevant for grandstanding, that both RIAA and its foes engage in.
The reality remains, that some sales are lost due to illegal downloading, and that the victims are entitled to compensation. Including punitive monies — to not only compensate for the loss itself, but to punish the thieves (yes, thieves).
Of course, it is real money. But car is a real purchase. Someone unable to save the measly 2500 for the rare occasion of buying a car (in America!) has serious problem, and $2500 aren't going to solve them.
Sure, it would be stupid for an individual to reject such government hand-out. My point was, no such hand-outs should be offered.
Those who can't afford a cheap car in America are the dumb-asses, not me :-)
Then take his money, instead of robbing me. Deal?
Will we ever see NewYorkCountryLawer unequivocally condemn the little thieves, that RIAA are fighting?
Nope, never. Instead, watch yet another thread bogged down by "troll" moderations and objections to my use of the term "thieves"...
How the fook does an American — born-and-raised in this country, with all its vast advantages over millions of people elsewhere in the world — justify not being able to afford a $12K upfront for a new car? Not even the $2500 of a down-payment? What's wrong with you, people? How do immigrants, coming here (legally and otherwise) do it, without the head-start of knowing the language, the culture, and being legally allowed to earn living?
Kick in the butt is something, that parents are supposed to administer once in a while. But the government is neither your mommy nor daddy. And if free money is your idea of a "kick in the butt", then I'd rather you not be involved in raising children, including your own.
And I — a taxpayer — am not your rich uncle.
I have not used Windows in over 10 years, but I'm pretty certain, MP4 can be embedded in a web-page.
And if, somehow, receiving such content is still too difficult for some people (YouTube requires flash, which too requires some futzing around once), well, those people will be watching inauguration on TV.
Basically, I agree with you, except in the above — the plane's "pilots" would have to be located fairly close to the action. Placing them, as is done now, half way across the globe in Nevada, just would not work. Ever.
Earth's circumference is 40076000 meters. The speed of light is 299792458 meters per second. The round-trip latency will thus be at least 0.13 of a second, which is substantial even for driving in the rain — and the real lag will be bigger. This is a serious disadvantage and no money or technology can solve this problem.
Only deploying the controllers closer to the battlefields — itself quite a logistical challenge — will. Perhaps, retrofitting the carriers to keep the "pilots" on the ship is the next practical step... But first, most of the current decision-makers among military pilots would have to retire...
During the USSR days, it was customary for Mr. Putin's agency to declare political dissenters as common criminals to soften the West's attempts to free them.
Your asking the question and its high moderation both explain, why the tactics worked. Unable to perceive the actual levels of evil of the Communist regimes, Western "liberals" (who seriously think, G.W. Bush is vilest creature ever to rule a country) fall for their lies:
Similarly:
I had no problems watching the presidential debates on FreeBSD/amd64 computer. The cost of offering an mpg- or mp4-stream (the latter immediately viewable by iPhone-users, BTW) is negligible, even if, indeed, used as a secondary format. But why not offer it is the only format?
Either way, RIAA is fighting theft of their members' intellectual property.
Yet by seeing the amount of efforts the great legal minds — from NewYorkCountryLawyer to Ivy League law professors — one would think, RIAA is trying to abolish the Constitution or something...
It was my understanding, that although the cameras provide decent observation angles, they can't provide equivalent of the glass cockpit. Similarly, although the communication links are high-speed, there is still latency. Both of these factors would make controlling of a high-speed fighter from a remote (sometimes half-way across the globe) location rather impractical, limiting UAVs' use to slow, defenseless, and cheap apparata.
Seriously, I know of some hedge funds, that pay premiums for placing their algorithmic trading servers right there next to the stock-exchanges — to help reduce communication latencies, which would dull the efficiencies of their exploiting momentarily opportunities in price-differences. They could trade on Tokyo exchange from a server in the US, but they don't want to be impeded by the latency of price-quotes arriving from and of their automatic execution orders reach the exchange. The speed of lights is high, but not infinite.
Similarly, controlling a real fighter jet over Afghanistan from Nevada would be rather inefficient, although one could still deploy the "pilots" to Afghanistan without putting them on the planes. Some day...
The whole point of UAVs is that they are great in assymetrical warfare — such as what we and our allies (like Israel) are engaged in now and for the foreseeable future. A really strong military facing weak opponents, who carefully exploit not military strength (which they do not have), but their blending among civilians, terrorism, and some legal tricks too.
It does not work the other way — against comparable or stronger military. When Georgians tried, earlier this year, to use UAVs to monitor their rebel territories from the air, the rebel-supporting Russia quickly blasted the UAV out of the sky with a manned fighter.
Should we come to the unfortunate point of facing a comparably-equipped military once again, Air Force's spending priorities will change again.
It implies the quantity being non-zero (because otherwise the GGP would've said so), and it certainly is non-zero in our case. If 1000 people found a song worthy of downloading, certainly one of them (likely — more) would've found it worthy of paying some amount (X being above zero) of money for it. That X/1000 (still above zero) is the perfectly tangible amount stolen from the song's owner, be they the original author, or whoever the author sold their rights to.
But, once again, the loss of value is not, in fact, a requirement for the dictionary definition of theft, so let's stop splitting hairs.
Law? So a plain dictionary is no longer sufficient?
I'd be curious, which law that is — would you oblige with the chapter and verse, please? A link would do...
Yes, "larceny" is also a separate thing in law, and so is "grand larceny". In plain English it is still theft, though, covered by that age-old maxim at the Subject of this (sub)thread: "Though shall not steal".
Now, why is the opposition to my use of the word "theft" so vociferous? Are you really under an impression, that once you prove, that copyright infringement is not exactly like theft, there is nothing morally wrong with it?
Why don't you state — for the record — that copyright infringement is wrong and whoever willfully engages in it deserves some sort of non-trivial punishment? We will then be able to move on to discussing, what such non-trivial punishment (beyond compensating the victims) ought to be...
As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination. Even if it were zero, the act of taking something illegally is defined as "stealing", whether or not the original owner has lost anything. From Princeton WordNet, once again: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing — the act of taking something from someone unlawfully.
Perhaps, you need to post in more than one-liners to be well understood?
Also, try to use punctuation...
Indeed. Stealing, which you are very well aware of, is not a synonym for copyright infringement. It is just a more generic: although not all theft is done through copyright infringement, all copyright infringement is stealing. The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully . A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Although a commonly mentioned other requirement — that the original owner be deprived of something — is not, in fact, part of the above quoted Princeton WordNet definition, it is dishonest to claim, that copyright infringement is a "victimless crime" — the copyright-holder's property does lose value. Thus the term "stealing" is, in fact, quite accurate.
Anyway, would you condemn copyright infringement — for the record?
It is implied in every anti-RIAA statement. Once in a while, a it is also said explicitly — by a poster more honest than yourself.
The real pity is the society's general sympathy towards the small-time crooks, who download the wares they didn't pay for.
There may or may not be a fault here and there in how *AA fights for the rights of their members, but the underlying problem is that people continue to steal (yes, their action is closer to stealing of tangible goods, than "information superhighway" is to an autobahn).
Please, count. Let's see them...
Germany's "bad road" ended with genocide (its militarism was nothing new, surpassed before and after). Please, indicate, which nation/race is under threat of genocide at the hands of the US. And if you can't — apologize.
Nothing personal, dear — it is the Godwin's Law.
Please, explain in more detail, how Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of terrorist-suspects reside without threat to their lives "comes close" to a death camp built to kill, and were countless thousands of people accused of nothing other than being Jews did, indeed, perish.
I'm not saying, there is nothing wrong with Gitmo. But claiming, as you just did, that it "comes close" to a Nazi death camp is a sign of exactly the kind of moronity, that Godwin's Law is supposed to banish from public discourse.
Perhaps. Or, maybe, of the 1920, when the country's new Hope was demanding Change?
Seriously, you and I know, what he meant, so let's not engage in hair-splitting. Nazism's racism was just as much of a pillar as their Socialism. They began persecuting Jews in earnest in 1933, and continued on to full-blown genocide.
Nothing of the kind is happening in the USA today. No minority is banned from government employment. When some dimwit offends an Arab or a Muslim, for example, the victim gets compensated. And no group even claims to be a target of genocide.
Let's not change the subject to what's acceptable to me. The GGP alleged, USA is exactly like Nazi Germany.
I maintain, that without the death camps, a very important piece is missing. So important, in fact, the entire comparison is bogus and should've been laughed out of any decent forum as per Godwin's Law.
I mean, he could've said, USA is like Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy (both were Fascist, but without the horrors of death camps), but he didn't... His real motivation, thus, was to insult my country — not to engage in valid debate. One may be forgiven for exacting some strange pleasure out of demonstrating such mouth-breathing dimwitted assholes for who they are...
TFA seems to indicate quite the opposite, no?
Name one such death camp in Israel.
Using paper may remain an option, but my hypothetical FOIA-2.0 would require government agencies to allow people to subscribe to receive regular updates to their files in each agency — by e-mail. Either that, or instant access via agency's web-site (with a single cross-.gov sign-on) must be made available a'la "online banking".
If Obama really is as computer-savvy as his McCain-mocking ads were implying, he should make his government do this without waiting for Congress to make it into a legal requirement.
Aren't we missing, you know, DEATH CAMPS, where millions of people are turned into soap and ashes?