The submissions by NewYorkCountryLawyer tend to illuminate abuses of the legal process on the part of attorneys and investigators working on behalf of the RIAA.
Nope, that is simply not true. All of his submissions — and discussion-board arguments — show perfectly explicit opinion, that **AA's very premise is wrong — not just their methods, but their goals of enforcing their (intellectual) property rights are bogus.
How you feel about that really depends on how you feel about copyright in general.
Come on, come on. Don't shy away from the fighting words. This is Slashdot — a forum, where not a week without an (accepted) submission from somebody calling themselves "IDontBelieveInImaginaryProperty", and where somebody else (NewYorkCountryLawyer) is often seen rationalizing away violations of intellectual property rights — mostly on the basis, that it is not exactly the same as theft...
The vast Slashdot hypocrisy, thus boils down to
violating the wishes of software creators — bad (unless the creator is a big corporationy corporation);
violating the wishes of music creators — Ok, free muzak!
Cue in retarded comments on how music-creators and music-resellers are different from each other...
Your argument against the validity of the word "stealing" is missing the point. Even if you don't mean it as such (and I think you do), it looks is as if an act being "not quite stealing" justifies the act — it does not. Whatever quibbles may exist about "rational" copyright law and/or "rational" approach to violations, the violations are wrong.
How wrong? In our modern society, where actually making physical things (be they CDs, books, medicines, or designer purses) is much easier than designing them, it is just as wrong as stealing. The effects are the same, and the immorality is the same — hence my (and *AA's) insistence on the term "theft". Single download — petty theft. Massive reproduction — major heist...
Stealing food by a hungry person may be explained away by their hunger. Theft of music by a bored teenager (hi, modder) is unjustifiable. Especially if the stolen stuff is subsequently derided for "poor quality", as happens on Slashdot all the time (to moderators' cheer), completely ignoring the absurdity of stealing something, that sucks.
I'm guessing that the RIAA could think of a better way to curb piracy
The debate, once again, should not be around a particular method of law-enforcement, but whether 100% effective law-enforcement is desirable...
It means, you can not exceed speed-limit by 1 mile/h, nor drop a candy-wrap on the street, nor ask for money on subway. You will also not be beaten by a cop, nor will they be able to treat fire-hydrants as special parking spots reserved for "the force". Etcaetera...
Do we want the laws obeyed and enforced 100%, or do we want to live some "wriggle-room" for the dystopian future, when it will be needed to fight some kind of oppression?
If the quality is so bad, why are so many people downloading the stuff (illegally)? Just ignore it and read a freaking book on a train — I do... But don't try to justify theft by the "poor quality" of what's stolen (even if it is "just information").
That's easy, spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail. I apply it to snail mail as well.
Then you have to apply it to sales-pitches on the street (and the handing out of fliers). And that activity is certainly protected by the First Amendment...
To balance their right to speak with our right not to listen, when we don't want to, a better definition is required...
Yes but there is a common cause to these deaths, police intervention with taser.
When somebody loses control of their car and slams into a highway barrier — is the barrier's intervention "the cause of death"? Is the engineer, who designed it, to blame? Are the workers, who built the barrier, liable for all the deaths?
Just as the barrier is there to keep wayward cars from getting on to the other side of the highway (and killing/injuring a multitude of others), police are there to keep order — which some times includes stopping an unruly individual. When the target (quite possibly upstanding and/or perfectly innocent) dies, it is no less tragic, than when a driver (for example, falling a sleep, after a night of hard work) hits the barrier...
This approach can certainly be (ab)used to excuse police excesses — but blaming police/taser for all taser-related deaths is highly inaccurate.
But I digress... What we need is an acceptable definition of spamming, that's better than "I know it, when I see it", which is the current standard. Maybe, a cool and well publicized X-prize would result in somebody coming up with one?..
No one is deprived of property, due to the nature of the beast.
The term "stealing" is used here for good reason — it explains, what's happening perfectly well. The "Occam's razor" principle says, we don't need a new term...
Someone might be denied a small portion of their revenue stream though.
My point exactly. Whether the portion is "small" or large is really irrelevant — the deprived will try to inflate the figures, the depriving will aim for the opposite. The fact remains — somebody (the victim) is getting deprived of something valuable by others (thieves).
My original post is now "-1 Troll"... Apparently, grasping the parallel between stealing music and stealing source code is too difficult for most Slashdotters...
There is no reason why artists can't self distribute, and maintain control of their IP now.
Some of them can — but it is their decision and is nobody else's business. If a musician (or any creator of something hard to create but easy to copy) wants to be able to sell their creation via an intermediary (rather than directly to the public), they ought to be able to do so. Treating such intermediaries as somehow undeserving of legal protection simply debases the original creations... It does not change the immorality and illegality of unauthorized copying one bit (pun intended) — Metallica, for example, which owns its own distribution AFAIK, has been quite outspoken against piracy. So let's not change the subject.
This is all plain and simple. The Slashdot groupthink (muzak — kooool, RIAA — baaaad) is simply clouding the judgment... Once again, had this been about, say, Linksys and their use of GPL code, the term "stealing" and the appropriate indignation would've been everywhere — and highly moderated — without anybody even being deprived of any revenue.
Nope, it is more like a small group of owners fighting millions little thieves. Each one of them can only steal so little, each particular theft is laughable — especially when the little perp is placed next to the giant (and uber-rich) victim. But they are still wrong...
Don't even try to say: "nothing is stolen by copying," — that's quite ridiculous and self-inconsistent (thus automatically wrong).
If the Ten Commandments were a "living document", the "Thou shalt not violate copyrights" would've been found in it by now... It certainly is found there — by Slashdot participants anyway — whenever someone is found to have copied GPL code. Then we are all outrage — as if something were, indeed stolen.
Cue in the thunderous laugh of millions of permanent residents... The only "benefit", resident non-citizens have, is the ability to avoid jury duty. Taxes are levied on all (without representation, of course — ha-ha).
I know, what you meant — you are not a permanent resident of NY either... But do choose your words more carefully.
I'll see your "5 Interesting" with my "5 Informative" (hopefully)...
The Mosaic browser was based on the libwww software developed at CERN. They did not credit the work, but all the major intellectual components of the Web came from CERN: The URI, HTTP, HTML, 404 not found.
Well, let's check the evidence... The current sources of libwww (version 5.4.0):
Bear MIT's and CERN's copyright from 1995;
Aknowledge Tim's work at CERN from 1991 (Library/src/HTFile.c says: Feb 91 Written Tim Berners-Lee CERN/CN)
The (really-really) old version of libwww — still available inside xmosaic distribution also list Tim and CERN as authors — and carry CERN's 1991 copyright.
So, both Tim and CERN got their credit back then and continue getting it now.
But libwww only contained 40 '*.[ch]' files, and the entire xmosaic has 137. Of the 40 files under libwww, TBL was only responsible for 6 (HTFTP.c, HTNews.c, HTAtom.c, HTFile.c, HTAtom.h, tcp.h).
So, any claim, that Tim/CERN are the fundamental "inventors" here is wrong.
Tim's prior claim is well established, as is the fact that there were Web browsers developed before Tim met the NCSA people.
References would be useful — maybe, you are referring to Gopher?.. That was, indeed, a nifty system, but it was written in University of Minnesota — in 1991, about the same time Tim was working on the pieces of libwww. Did Tim's pre-NCSA work produce anything better than Gopher?
But I did not claim, NCSA "invented" WWW either — the term Hypertext, for example, is from 1965... NCSA merely made it widely usable by creating the first browser looking similar to what we still use today.
And even that is a stretch. The "web" he invented at CERN had all of the content sitting on a single server. More like today's Wiki-sites, than WWW. If anybody, it is the creators of Mosaic (at NCSA), who really did it.
The only people I see pushing this myth about Tim's role being fundamental (rather than "merely" substantial), are those anxious about US' just claim to have created the Internet (and WWW) and given it to the world. Although Tim lives in the US now, he is of British origin, which, somehow, gives comfort to those possessed by anti-American sentiment — at least, they don't owe us anything;-)
Imagine a fatwa banning would-be terrorists from using Internet to communicate, organize, and post their videos, because it is an American invention...
The observed confusion between "web" (for which Tim does deserve plenty if not 100% of the credit) and "the Internet" (for which he neither claims nor deserves any) may very well have been deliberate... In a few more years, the few people, who know the difference will get tired of pointing it out...
The main reason I can see for the scheme to work, is the "saving" from highway taxes embedded in the price of each regularly-purchased fuel...
Apart from the blatant inefficiencies present in transporting these quantities of raw materials, I imagine that the cost of sugar will skyrocket even if the thing actually works.
The inefficiencies of "trade-protection" keeping the regular sugar prices high don't bother you?;-) Anyway, the cost of the "inedible" sugar will unlikely exceed that of the edible kind, will it? What we may see is the larger share of sugar getting classified as "inedible" and other quirks intended to get around the protectionist regulations...
Ah, but what you fail to realize is that even if Americans are able to get outside info, a lot of them have no desire to DO so [...] It's willful ignorance, and THAT'S the scariest of all.
So, you have a problem with the people's free will? They choose not to get outside info, and you hate it?.. What's the alternative? Some elite institution forcing, what it sees "fit to print" (cough-cough), onto us? Since, of course, a human being can not possibly digest everything, that happens around the globe, that elite institution has to apply its own filtering, right?
I'm sorry, but I find this far scarier, than what you are describing...
you've achieved much more than just simple censorship
Excuse me... I have achieved? Do you believe, somebody is doing this on purpose? No, it is, very simply, a consequence of freedom of press and other freedoms. Printers are free to publish, what they please — they just aren't guaranteed to be paid for it. So, to be paid, they choose to publish, what people want to read about. That's all — if you meddling with this, you will impede freedoms...
Conceptually, the strategy of having a vocal "mainstream media" that labels anyone outside [...]
Do you seriously believe, there is such a strategy in someone's drawer somewhere? Labeled with "execute on put date here"?..
In the USSR, everyone knew that the news was all government propaganda.
Having grown up in the USSR, I can state, that no, most unfortunately, not everyone knew that...
In the USA today, most people believe in the "free press".
Of course it is free — no quotes. The craziest — and often mutually contradictory — things are freely published with impunity. Ted Rall and Ann Coulter are equally accessible from Yahoo's "Op Ed" (in addition to having their own web-sites). Arabic-language American newspaper(s) were openly mocking the hapless Americans burned in Falluja right after the event — all perfectly legal.
I wonder, what your definition of free press is, if America's press does not qualify... Would it be "freer", if somebody special were to decide, what the unwashed masses must read? Hopefully not — the only alternative is for these masses to decide for themselves — and that's what you see happening...
Our only limits are self-imposed — blasting the government is perfectly Ok, but a picturing a noose or mocking somebody's prophet is not. Legal (mostly), but impolite...
Depends on your definition of "waste" though, are sitcoms a waste if you enjoy them?
I say, they are — along with watching (rather than participating in) sports, etc.
Unless the stuff is educational or otherwise improving (if it helps you rest or improves your relationship with the other parent of your children, for example, then it is fine), engaging in it is a waste. I'm surprised, computer-games have not been listed yet...
When Julius Caesar observed foreigners in Rome cooing with their pets, he famously asked: "Aren't their women bearing children?"
The waste of time on entertainment — along with the waste of emotions/nurturing on anything but your own kind is hardly new to our times... Religions and totalitarian governments have been trying to limit it in people for millennia.
This is not to say, I have not indulged in this waste — or that anyone should be begrudged for doing so. Just not excessively...
Once again, it should be viewed broadly — witness, for example, the realization by various religions, that "sex must be for procreation only" is too strict, and replacing it with "sex must be with your spouse only" (healthy relationships mean happier people and better brought up kids). Back to sitcoms, if you enjoy a particular one with your wife and/or friends, it is Ok. Otherwise — stop doing it and take the garbage out instead.
"All it takes is one new generation to grow up behind these 'iron curtains'...
Sounds like America.
Please, confirm for the record, that it is your belief, one or more generations of Americans have grown up behind an 'iron curtain' unable to get information from an outside source.
There's a difference between ISPs, whom you are paying for access/bandwidth, and private Wi-Fi networks.
There is not. The hardware is privately owned, and who is paying whom for what is nobody else's business.
The GP implies that people will be forced to open up their private networks, which is not the case and has nothing to do with network neutrality.
Yes, yes, everybody wants the rules and regulations to apply to others — not themselves... Landlords can't discriminate on race, but I don't want to live among put race here. In many places — such as NYC — discrimination is officially allowed for owner-occupants of two-family houses, for example — because the voters wanted the law to apply to others, who are a minority. Employers shouldn't be able to fire because of political views, but I am not going to order from a pizzeria, where the owner is a Bush-supporter. Everyone else must treat all packets the same, but my router is not going to...
What? Wait, but it is my router! I did not mean it to apply to all — only to the evil corporations, who are acting evil and corporationy (and even make money!)...
What's the difference between a country lawyer and a rural juror? The urban fervor?
And then ask about the difference between a government-owned University and a private one... The submitter seems to believe, the former ones deserve special immunity...
To clue you in, dufus... Although I am, indeed, foreign-born (gives me an insight, that you'll never get, especially on the subject of Russia), I've been an American for over a decade. I also voted for Bush — twice, although I would've preferred McCain in 2000...
Historians are saying his presidency will be remembered as the worst presidency to date.
Only in jest they are — and only the most partisan Lefties among them. The presidency of the Great Depression was surely far worse. That little incident, when the British/Canadians burned (what then became known as) White House, would ruin a presidency — in the eyes of an objective student of history — too... Vietnam War? Eeew... Enough, I suppose...
You think Americans suck, and are apathetic?
No, only you, dear. Only you and your band of fellow Illiberals...
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, that is simply not true. All of his submissions — and discussion-board arguments — show perfectly explicit opinion, that **AA's very premise is wrong — not just their methods, but their goals of enforcing their (intellectual) property rights are bogus.
Come on, come on. Don't shy away from the fighting words. This is Slashdot — a forum, where not a week without an (accepted) submission from somebody calling themselves "IDontBelieveInImaginaryProperty", and where somebody else (NewYorkCountryLawyer) is often seen rationalizing away violations of intellectual property rights — mostly on the basis, that it is not exactly the same as theft...
The vast Slashdot hypocrisy, thus boils down to
Cue in retarded comments on how music-creators and music-resellers are different from each other...
Q: Should Slashdot concentrate all their efforts on making the site easy to understand for children under 5?
Talk about misleading headlines...
Your argument against the validity of the word "stealing" is missing the point. Even if you don't mean it as such (and I think you do), it looks is as if an act being "not quite stealing" justifies the act — it does not. Whatever quibbles may exist about "rational" copyright law and/or "rational" approach to violations, the violations are wrong.
How wrong? In our modern society, where actually making physical things (be they CDs, books, medicines, or designer purses) is much easier than designing them, it is just as wrong as stealing. The effects are the same, and the immorality is the same — hence my (and *AA's) insistence on the term "theft". Single download — petty theft. Massive reproduction — major heist...
Stealing food by a hungry person may be explained away by their hunger. Theft of music by a bored teenager (hi, modder) is unjustifiable. Especially if the stolen stuff is subsequently derided for "poor quality", as happens on Slashdot all the time (to moderators' cheer), completely ignoring the absurdity of stealing something, that sucks.
None of our business.
If it weren't for the cameras, the pigs would've denied everything.
The debate, once again, should not be around a particular method of law-enforcement, but whether 100% effective law-enforcement is desirable...
It means, you can not exceed speed-limit by 1 mile/h, nor drop a candy-wrap on the street, nor ask for money on subway. You will also not be beaten by a cop, nor will they be able to treat fire-hydrants as special parking spots reserved for "the force". Etcaetera...
Do we want the laws obeyed and enforced 100%, or do we want to live some "wriggle-room" for the dystopian future, when it will be needed to fight some kind of oppression?
Non-standard layout of all other keys does not bother you?..
If the quality is so bad, why are so many people downloading the stuff (illegally)? Just ignore it and read a freaking book on a train — I do... But don't try to justify theft by the "poor quality" of what's stolen (even if it is "just information").
This is the Bush administration's take on waterboarding too.
Exactly...
Then you have to apply it to sales-pitches on the street (and the handing out of fliers). And that activity is certainly protected by the First Amendment...
To balance their right to speak with our right not to listen, when we don't want to, a better definition is required...
When somebody loses control of their car and slams into a highway barrier — is the barrier's intervention "the cause of death"? Is the engineer, who designed it, to blame? Are the workers, who built the barrier, liable for all the deaths?
Just as the barrier is there to keep wayward cars from getting on to the other side of the highway (and killing/injuring a multitude of others), police are there to keep order — which some times includes stopping an unruly individual. When the target (quite possibly upstanding and/or perfectly innocent) dies, it is no less tragic, than when a driver (for example, falling a sleep, after a night of hard work) hits the barrier...
This approach can certainly be (ab)used to excuse police excesses — but blaming police/taser for all taser-related deaths is highly inaccurate.
Heck, thanks to a certain odd couple McCain-Feingold, it does not even cover Free Speech and Freedom of Association any more...
But I digress... What we need is an acceptable definition of spamming, that's better than "I know it, when I see it", which is the current standard. Maybe, a cool and well publicized X-prize would result in somebody coming up with one?..
The term "stealing" is used here for good reason — it explains, what's happening perfectly well. The "Occam's razor" principle says, we don't need a new term...
My point exactly. Whether the portion is "small" or large is really irrelevant — the deprived will try to inflate the figures, the depriving will aim for the opposite. The fact remains — somebody (the victim) is getting deprived of something valuable by others (thieves).
My original post is now "-1 Troll"... Apparently, grasping the parallel between stealing music and stealing source code is too difficult for most Slashdotters...
Some of them can — but it is their decision and is nobody else's business. If a musician (or any creator of something hard to create but easy to copy) wants to be able to sell their creation via an intermediary (rather than directly to the public), they ought to be able to do so. Treating such intermediaries as somehow undeserving of legal protection simply debases the original creations... It does not change the immorality and illegality of unauthorized copying one bit (pun intended) — Metallica, for example, which owns its own distribution AFAIK, has been quite outspoken against piracy. So let's not change the subject.
This is all plain and simple. The Slashdot groupthink (muzak — kooool, RIAA — baaaad) is simply clouding the judgment... Once again, had this been about, say, Linksys and their use of GPL code, the term "stealing" and the appropriate indignation would've been everywhere — and highly moderated — without anybody even being deprived of any revenue.
Nope, it is more like a small group of owners fighting millions little thieves. Each one of them can only steal so little, each particular theft is laughable — especially when the little perp is placed next to the giant (and uber-rich) victim. But they are still wrong...
Don't even try to say: "nothing is stolen by copying," — that's quite ridiculous and self-inconsistent (thus automatically wrong).
If the Ten Commandments were a "living document", the "Thou shalt not violate copyrights" would've been found in it by now... It certainly is found there — by Slashdot participants anyway — whenever someone is found to have copied GPL code. Then we are all outrage — as if something were, indeed stolen.
Cue in the thunderous laugh of millions of permanent residents... The only "benefit", resident non-citizens have, is the ability to avoid jury duty. Taxes are levied on all (without representation, of course — ha-ha).
I know, what you meant — you are not a permanent resident of NY either... But do choose your words more carefully.
I'll see your "5 Interesting" with my "5 Informative" (hopefully)...
Well, let's check the evidence... The current sources of libwww (version 5.4.0):
The (really-really) old version of libwww — still available inside xmosaic distribution also list Tim and CERN as authors — and carry CERN's 1991 copyright.
So, both Tim and CERN got their credit back then and continue getting it now.
But libwww only contained 40 '*.[ch]' files, and the entire xmosaic has 137. Of the 40 files under libwww, TBL was only responsible for 6 (HTFTP.c, HTNews.c, HTAtom.c, HTFile.c, HTAtom.h, tcp.h).
So, any claim, that Tim/CERN are the fundamental "inventors" here is wrong.
References would be useful — maybe, you are referring to Gopher?.. That was, indeed, a nifty system, but it was written in University of Minnesota — in 1991, about the same time Tim was working on the pieces of libwww. Did Tim's pre-NCSA work produce anything better than Gopher?
But I did not claim, NCSA "invented" WWW either — the term Hypertext, for example, is from 1965... NCSA merely made it widely usable by creating the first browser looking similar to what we still use today.
And even that is a stretch. The "web" he invented at CERN had all of the content sitting on a single server. More like today's Wiki-sites, than WWW. If anybody, it is the creators of Mosaic (at NCSA), who really did it.
The only people I see pushing this myth about Tim's role being fundamental (rather than "merely" substantial), are those anxious about US' just claim to have created the Internet (and WWW) and given it to the world. Although Tim lives in the US now, he is of British origin, which, somehow, gives comfort to those possessed by anti-American sentiment — at least, they don't owe us anything ;-)
Imagine a fatwa banning would-be terrorists from using Internet to communicate, organize, and post their videos, because it is an American invention...
The observed confusion between "web" (for which Tim does deserve plenty if not 100% of the credit) and "the Internet" (for which he neither claims nor deserves any) may very well have been deliberate... In a few more years, the few people, who know the difference will get tired of pointing it out...
I was considering buying one of those nifty computers, but it would have to be capable of running FreeBSD — with all/most hardware supported...
Has anyone tried?
The main reason I can see for the scheme to work, is the "saving" from highway taxes embedded in the price of each regularly-purchased fuel...
The inefficiencies of "trade-protection" keeping the regular sugar prices high don't bother you? ;-) Anyway, the cost of the "inedible" sugar will unlikely exceed that of the edible kind, will it? What we may see is the larger share of sugar getting classified as "inedible" and other quirks intended to get around the protectionist regulations...
So, you have a problem with the people's free will? They choose not to get outside info, and you hate it?.. What's the alternative? Some elite institution forcing, what it sees "fit to print" (cough-cough), onto us? Since, of course, a human being can not possibly digest everything, that happens around the globe, that elite institution has to apply its own filtering, right?
I'm sorry, but I find this far scarier, than what you are describing...
Excuse me... I have achieved? Do you believe, somebody is doing this on purpose? No, it is, very simply, a consequence of freedom of press and other freedoms. Printers are free to publish, what they please — they just aren't guaranteed to be paid for it. So, to be paid, they choose to publish, what people want to read about. That's all — if you meddling with this, you will impede freedoms...
Do you seriously believe, there is such a strategy in someone's drawer somewhere? Labeled with "execute on put date here"?..
Having grown up in the USSR, I can state, that no, most unfortunately, not everyone knew that...
Of course it is free — no quotes. The craziest — and often mutually contradictory — things are freely published with impunity. Ted Rall and Ann Coulter are equally accessible from Yahoo's "Op Ed" (in addition to having their own web-sites). Arabic-language American newspaper(s) were openly mocking the hapless Americans burned in Falluja right after the event — all perfectly legal.
I wonder, what your definition of free press is, if America's press does not qualify... Would it be "freer", if somebody special were to decide, what the unwashed masses must read? Hopefully not — the only alternative is for these masses to decide for themselves — and that's what you see happening...
Our only limits are self-imposed — blasting the government is perfectly Ok, but a picturing a noose or mocking somebody's prophet is not. Legal (mostly), but impolite...
I say, they are — along with watching (rather than participating in) sports, etc.
Unless the stuff is educational or otherwise improving (if it helps you rest or improves your relationship with the other parent of your children, for example, then it is fine), engaging in it is a waste. I'm surprised, computer-games have not been listed yet...
When Julius Caesar observed foreigners in Rome cooing with their pets, he famously asked: "Aren't their women bearing children?"
The waste of time on entertainment — along with the waste of emotions/nurturing on anything but your own kind is hardly new to our times... Religions and totalitarian governments have been trying to limit it in people for millennia.
This is not to say, I have not indulged in this waste — or that anyone should be begrudged for doing so. Just not excessively...
Once again, it should be viewed broadly — witness, for example, the realization by various religions, that "sex must be for procreation only" is too strict, and replacing it with "sex must be with your spouse only" (healthy relationships mean happier people and better brought up kids). Back to sitcoms, if you enjoy a particular one with your wife and/or friends, it is Ok. Otherwise — stop doing it and take the garbage out instead.
Please, confirm for the record, that it is your belief, one or more generations of Americans have grown up behind an 'iron curtain' unable to get information from an outside source.
Thank you.
There is not. The hardware is privately owned, and who is paying whom for what is nobody else's business.
Yes, yes, everybody wants the rules and regulations to apply to others — not themselves... Landlords can't discriminate on race, but I don't want to live among put race here. In many places — such as NYC — discrimination is officially allowed for owner-occupants of two-family houses, for example — because the voters wanted the law to apply to others, who are a minority. Employers shouldn't be able to fire because of political views, but I am not going to order from a pizzeria, where the owner is a Bush-supporter. Everyone else must treat all packets the same, but my router is not going to...
What? Wait, but it is my router! I did not mean it to apply to all — only to the evil corporations, who are acting evil and corporationy (and even make money!)...
See also NIMBY and related terms/acronyms.
And then ask about the difference between a government-owned University and a private one... The submitter seems to believe, the former ones deserve special immunity...
To clue you in, dufus... Although I am, indeed, foreign-born (gives me an insight, that you'll never get, especially on the subject of Russia), I've been an American for over a decade. I also voted for Bush — twice, although I would've preferred McCain in 2000...
Only in jest they are — and only the most partisan Lefties among them. The presidency of the Great Depression was surely far worse. That little incident, when the British/Canadians burned (what then became known as) White House, would ruin a presidency — in the eyes of an objective student of history — too... Vietnam War? Eeew... Enough, I suppose...
No, only you, dear. Only you and your band of fellow Illiberals...