Any decent campaign finance reform will probably be found unconstitutional. But its still the only chance we have of reforming our system. Most politicians have one primary objective: re-election. They're not in it for the money, they're in it for the power. And money is the surest way to get re-elected. People writing in on issues like these won't change squat. The congressman can piss of a few people who realize what a bad idea this is, or piss of the RIAA. What do you think is going to happen?
>Campaign money is a force of nature and will always find a path to the candidate.
Its this kind of fatalism that is more foolish than simply not writing to your congressman. If you need to, pass a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance. But until the day it happens, our government will be essentaially run by business. Of course, they're the occassional outcry against ridiculous laws- and sometimes something actually gets done. But that is the exception rather than the rule.
As poorly researched and supported as Katz' article is, the domination of corporatism does pose a legitimate threat to our society. Some, yourself included, it would seem, mistakably assume that b/c capitalism has triumphed over communism, that capitalism is somehow inherently good or right. But this is a mistake. Capitalism is acknowledge as a pretty sound and successful economic model, but that hardly legitimizes it as a moral philosophy. Moreover, corporatism actually tends to corrupt those forces which make capitalism useful.
The goal of an economy or academic institutions as a whole should be the betterment of society. Experimentally, it has been found that government regulated capitalism is effective to this end in the economy. But that does not mean individual capitalists' goals coincide w/ society's goals for the economy. Which is why the best model for academia is probably not capitalist- and has not been throughout its history. Corporatism is even worse, b/c corporatism is the notion that big-moneyed interests are able to influence various institutions (like politics and academia) w/ money. This extension of the capitalist model to our entire society is not justified by the more simple arguments for a capitalist economy.
With respect to academia today, I'm not sure there is cause for concern, yet. It just so happens that the line between university research work and research work useful to industries has been getting a little fuzzy over the past fifty years. So it is natural for universities to rely on private as well as public sources of income. Whether they are being unduly influenced by those private interests is another question altogether, but of legitimate concern.
His story on the trial is almost comical in and of itself. Its surreal to read something like that in a big news place like ABC. Essentially he accuses the judge of being in league with the government. Such an accusation is hardly a light one, but he just sort of tosses it out there. His article is amazing, surpassing even Gates himself in its audacity.
Re:Your prime assumtions are different...
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
The notion of self ownership seems appealing and intuitive at first, but it is important to consider some things.
First, the obligation rests on the libertarian to demonstrate the full self ownership exists. Arguments along these lines are rarely attempted- appeals to intuition and common sense are commonly appealed to.
To be fair, for issues as basic as this intuition is perhaps the best standard. But intuition does not seem to support the libertarian. Truly, the right to full self ownership prohibits non voluntary taxation. It equates it to forced labor. Intuitively this doesn't make sense. Society cannot really exist w/o non voluntary taxation.
Rather, people have proposed that individual have a different sort of self ownership. For lack of a better term, lets call it autonomy. It grants you freedom (so forced labor is out), but does not promise you ownership over everything you create. Thus the profit from the work you do can be taxed.
This is a simple argument, but really addresses the heart of most people's disagreement w/ libertarianism.
Here's why libertarianism is lame:
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
Intellectual do have reasons for this claim. Although things like freedom rank as pretty important in the American society, they are not the sole property of libertarian philosophy.
Libertarianism starts off with the assumption that individuals have the right to full self ownership. Which would seem appealing at first. This leads to individuals having a right to ownership over the fruits of their labor b/c they own themselves. But this also means that forced labor is morally equivalent to taxation. (As Robert Nozick has claimed) But I don't buy, and neither do most intellectuals.
Instead, most differentiate b/w full self ownership and autonomy/liberty. Essentially, it differentiates between forced labor and taxation. You are given the liberty to do as you will (w/ obvious restrictions), but you do not necessarily have a right to every economic benefit to your work. Thus taxation.
This is why intellectuals grow tired of most libertarians. Nozick is respected b/c he goes through all (or much) of the rigamorole (sp?) expected by philosophers. But most still disagree. And when some self-righteous boneheads start spouting off about liberty and how evil and oppressive taxation and the FDA is, the rest of can only sigh in disappointment.
You know, there is a why you see very little commentary in the philosophical community on Rand. That is b/c it is not worth their time. I remember a day when I was so sure of myself, that Rand was obviously right. Then I started to really think about things, attempted to address issues on their own ground and realized that maybe the world wasn't so simple. Philosophers are a little annoying at times- but when you take a closer look you realize that- damn- they're pretty smart. Most of them have a sufficient grasp of the subjects they're discussing to realize that the complexity of said subject exceeds even their ability to provide final answers. Rand is so sure of herself, as are her followers, that they either don't have or don't exercise the intellectual capacity to see that gaping flaws in her philosophy. No I won't discuss them here. One could not do justice for such a topic in a slashdot post. But read some other books in the community- maybe even take some classes and interact directly with the people in the community- and then maybe we can discuss it.
Well said. I would agree. And I would add that although many people will maintain that Napster has legitimate uses, and is therefore legitimate, this is not true. It is not possible to compare Napster to search engines. Search engines are used for a wide variety of purposes, the vast majority of which are legal. Napster is used almost exclusively for the exchange of copyrighted material. This is illegal and Napster should be held responsible. Not for the exchange of one piece of copyrighted work, but b/c they provide a service for the almost explicit purpose of the exchange of copyrighted work, regardless of what their license says.
Do I like the RIAA? No. They are restricting the distribution of music online by refusing to give licenses to those companies wishing to do. This is what Senator Hatch criticized them for during the recent congressional hearing. And as much as I dislike the government, an anti-trust suit against the RIAA may be the best legal solution.
Why, exactly, should this be illegal? It is voluntary, if you may not have noticed. But moreover, your email is not linked to your home address. Your home address is linked to you email forwarding address. So somebody could determine your email address via your home address. Now if somebody hacked into the post office database... but bad things can always happen if somebody hacks into government agency databases.
You'll probably get more spam email. Hardly the greatest breach of privacy ever conceived.
This article started well... but it got worse and worse as I kept reading. I strongly oppose IP law as it currently exists and is enforced. I think it is the result of years of corporate influence in government for selfish ends and has resulted in a system which comes no where near its original intent. I think the founders of our constitution had it right. The intent of intellectual property law should be to encourage the creation of those intellectual idea. At the time, they felt limited control over intellectual property would be effective. And I agree. This is where the article starts. But it quickly goes astray. The authors first mistake is when he discounts the importance of economic investment in the creation of ideas:
>Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
Yeah, but if I have capital and I pay somebody else to do that work- then I've contributed to that process. Communism make the same mistake when they assume that only the worker has added value to a product- not the person who invested capital to allow the process in the first place.
Then he goes through a series of examples where IP law has been lame. Well, duh. But he's just setting up a straw man argument for IP law in general. The important part is his critique of common justifications for IP law. And, mostly, they attempt to refute the idea that individuals have a right to the fruit of their intellectual labor.
This is actually a very non-trivial issue. And the author would do well to comment on which philosophical tradition he's following. The Libertarian school will claim, that due to full self-ownership, we have the absolute right to the fruit of our labor. More radical versions of this philosophy support the claim that taxation is illegitimate unless consented to. With that foundation, its hard to argue that intellectual property is not justified.
I, however, am not Libertarian, along with the majority of modern philosophers and society. A more generally accepted philosophy, like Rawls, would grant individuals freedom and liberty to believe/think/do what they want, but not promise them complete control over the fruit of their labor. In any reasonable society this is essentially necessary. Even if you believe there is some dessert associated with your labor, society still determines to what extent you can profit from it. This is necessary in order to tax people. There is no, 'what you would have made if government weren't there', b/c w/o government, it wouldn't have been very much.
With such an understanding of economic dessert, it is much more reasonable to take the approach of the founding fathers of our constitution. We grant IP so far as it benefits society, not b/c the people who possess these copyrights/patents/etc. have some inherent right to benefit from these things.
And this is where the author makes his next mistake. He assumes that society will be most benefited w/o IP at all! He talks about how scientist don't profit very much from the work they do. They're payed independently, by universities and the government. And its true that the government attempts to encourage intellectual advancement in society by funding scientists. But this model isn't going to work in every field. Engineering solutions to problems are much better left to the market. But in order for that to happen, people need to be sure that they will see a return on their investment for finding solutions.
If I think that people could benefit from a word processor and invest my own time, or hire other people to program a word processor, I'm going to expect some compensation for it. Some people (noticeably in the open source community) may not. But that is not a reliable source of innovation. Our society intellectual advancements should not be dependent on volunteerism. In restricted arena's, it may prove beneficial, but generally compensation will prove necessary.
>Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals, such as author Agatha Christie, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
This claim implies that this would be the only damage done by getting rid of IP. But this assumption is naive. Many of the advancement made in society today are no longer just the results of independent, self-motivated individuals. I am temporarily working for a company as an RF engineer/intern. They pay me and others to design and test various circuits. They spend lots of money on equipment and personnel. But they can do that b/c they know when they come up with a design, they can sell it as their own. Do you really think that would be possible w/o IP? The designs are frequently simple. I can sketch a schematic for you on a piece of paper. A bill of materials and the board layout and you'd have the culmination of all the company's investment. But it wouldn't exist unless they were confident it was protected by IP.
Honestly, the system as it exists today is pretty bad. But that is not b/c IP is inherently wrong. Its mostly b/c corporate interests have decided the way IP is going to go over the years. The first step is to reform the process by which patents and copyrights are granted, then dramatically reduce the length of time they hold for. Don't throw it out altogether.
That's what we should do, huh? Just like that? As easy as can be? Honestly, getting a few thousand die hard music fans to stop buying CD's is going to be a tad difficult. The same w/ the DJs and the millions of pop music fans.
Yeah, Taco not buying CDs won't change much by itself, but hey, he probably knows that. Sometimes it is about principals. If I think what the music companies are doing is wrong, maybe I don't want to give them MY financial support. I'm not going to commit myself to a moral crusade against them, but I'm was never obligated to. I recognize that it won't mean a whole lot to them, but it might mean something to me.
I appreciate your concern about the lack of knowledge that we have about what's going on. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. There is simply no way for a spytype agency to reveal what they're doing to the American public b/c then they would also be revealing that to the people they're spying on. The only hope is to elect people you support, and hope things don't get too screwed up.
With respect to the companies thing, obviously I am in the dark, but I have heard one story that was released a while ago. I can't give you much of the details, as I am only recounting from memory, but apparently an US agency determined that a French corporation has used bribery to obtain a contract from a South American government. They called them on it and a US contractor got the deal instead. If that's a good example of how the system works, I guess I'm okay with that. Sort of preventing other companies from gaining illicit advantages. Admittedly, it may not work like that always, and so its good to have independent people worried and investigating these things. But until they turn up some dirt, I can only go with the information on the table.
First, I'm not sure that Echelon-like programs are useless. There are a variety of threats to the public safety that existed during the cold war and continue to exist now, which can be prevented to some extent by the information gathering that Echelon provides. Admittedly, organisations, particularly those in the government, will tend to try to justify their own existence/collect more funding/etc. But more is required to demonstrate that the NSA has overstepped their bounds.
Additionally, it is easy to talk vaguely about the universal human rights that our founding fathers established, but, frankly, its rather naive. Remember, many of our founding fathers were supporters of slavery. And just in case you thought they were ardent supporters of freedom of speech, read about the Alien and Sedition Act. Essentially, it limited voting and free speech to prevent opposition to the party in power. Fortunately, it did not last long.
If you want to talk about rights violations, state what rights you're talking about, how they're specified in our constitution and how they're being violated. Its not sufficient to mention human rights, and then expect us to all agree that the NSA is evil. I've lived in the US all my life, too. And I am not proud of all the things the US government has done. But until you can provide me with examples supported by sound reasoning, I see no reason why I should be ashamed. And even then, I reserve the right to disagree with your judgement.
Slashdot Mirror
Any decent campaign finance reform will probably be found unconstitutional. But its still the only chance we have of reforming our system. Most politicians have one primary objective: re-election. They're not in it for the money, they're in it for the power. And money is the surest way to get re-elected. People writing in on issues like these won't change squat. The congressman can piss of a few people who realize what a bad idea this is, or piss of the RIAA. What do you think is going to happen?
>Campaign money is a force of nature and will always find a path to the candidate.
Its this kind of fatalism that is more foolish than simply not writing to your congressman. If you need to, pass a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance. But until the day it happens, our government will be essentaially run by business. Of course, they're the occassional outcry against ridiculous laws- and sometimes something actually gets done. But that is the exception rather than the rule.
As poorly researched and supported as Katz' article is, the domination of corporatism does pose a legitimate threat to our society. Some, yourself included, it would seem, mistakably assume that b/c capitalism has triumphed over communism, that capitalism is somehow inherently good or right. But this is a mistake. Capitalism is acknowledge as a pretty sound and successful economic model, but that hardly legitimizes it as a moral philosophy. Moreover, corporatism actually tends to corrupt those forces which make capitalism useful.
The goal of an economy or academic institutions as a whole should be the betterment of society. Experimentally, it has been found that government regulated capitalism is effective to this end in the economy. But that does not mean individual capitalists' goals coincide w/ society's goals for the economy. Which is why the best model for academia is probably not capitalist- and has not been throughout its history. Corporatism is even worse, b/c corporatism is the notion that big-moneyed interests are able to influence various institutions (like politics and academia) w/ money. This extension of the capitalist model to our entire society is not justified by the more simple arguments for a capitalist economy.
With respect to academia today, I'm not sure there is cause for concern, yet. It just so happens that the line between university research work and research work useful to industries has been getting a little fuzzy over the past fifty years. So it is natural for universities to rely on private as well as public sources of income. Whether they are being unduly influenced by those private interests is another question altogether, but of legitimate concern.
His story on the trial is almost comical in and of itself. Its surreal to read something like that in a big news place like ABC. Essentially he accuses the judge of being in league with the government. Such an accusation is hardly a light one, but he just sort of tosses it out there. His article is amazing, surpassing even Gates himself in its audacity.
The notion of self ownership seems appealing and intuitive at first, but it is important to consider some things.
First, the obligation rests on the libertarian to demonstrate the full self ownership exists. Arguments along these lines are rarely attempted- appeals to intuition and common sense are commonly appealed to.
To be fair, for issues as basic as this intuition is perhaps the best standard. But intuition does not seem to support the libertarian. Truly, the right to full self ownership prohibits non voluntary taxation. It equates it to forced labor. Intuitively this doesn't make sense. Society cannot really exist w/o non voluntary taxation.
Rather, people have proposed that individual have a different sort of self ownership. For lack of a better term, lets call it autonomy. It grants you freedom (so forced labor is out), but does not promise you ownership over everything you create. Thus the profit from the work you do can be taxed.
This is a simple argument, but really addresses the heart of most people's disagreement w/ libertarianism.
Intellectual do have reasons for this claim. Although things like freedom rank as pretty important in the American society, they are not the sole property of libertarian philosophy.
Libertarianism starts off with the assumption that individuals have the right to full self ownership. Which would seem appealing at first. This leads to individuals having a right to ownership over the fruits of their labor b/c they own themselves. But this also means that forced labor is morally equivalent to taxation. (As Robert Nozick has claimed) But I don't buy, and neither do most intellectuals.
Instead, most differentiate b/w full self ownership and autonomy/liberty. Essentially, it differentiates between forced labor and taxation. You are given the liberty to do as you will (w/ obvious restrictions), but you do not necessarily have a right to every economic benefit to your work. Thus taxation.
This is why intellectuals grow tired of most libertarians. Nozick is respected b/c he goes through all (or much) of the rigamorole (sp?) expected by philosophers. But most still disagree. And when some self-righteous boneheads start spouting off about liberty and how evil and oppressive taxation and the FDA is, the rest of can only sigh in disappointment.
You know, there is a why you see very little commentary in the philosophical community on Rand. That is b/c it is not worth their time. I remember a day when I was so sure of myself, that Rand was obviously right. Then I started to really think about things, attempted to address issues on their own ground and realized that maybe the world wasn't so simple. Philosophers are a little annoying at times- but when you take a closer look you realize that- damn- they're pretty smart. Most of them have a sufficient grasp of the subjects they're discussing to realize that the complexity of said subject exceeds even their ability to provide final answers. Rand is so sure of herself, as are her followers, that they either don't have or don't exercise the intellectual capacity to see that gaping flaws in her philosophy. No I won't discuss them here. One could not do justice for such a topic in a slashdot post. But read some other books in the community- maybe even take some classes and interact directly with the people in the community- and then maybe we can discuss it.
Well said. I would agree. And I would add that although many people will maintain that Napster has legitimate uses, and is therefore legitimate, this is not true. It is not possible to compare Napster to search engines. Search engines are used for a wide variety of purposes, the vast majority of which are legal. Napster is used almost exclusively for the exchange of copyrighted material. This is illegal and Napster should be held responsible. Not for the exchange of one piece of copyrighted work, but b/c they provide a service for the almost explicit purpose of the exchange of copyrighted work, regardless of what their license says.
Do I like the RIAA? No. They are restricting the distribution of music online by refusing to give licenses to those companies wishing to do. This is what Senator Hatch criticized them for during the recent congressional hearing. And as much as I dislike the government, an anti-trust suit against the RIAA may be the best legal solution.
Why, exactly, should this be illegal? It is voluntary, if you may not have noticed. But moreover, your email is not linked to your home address. Your home address is linked to you email forwarding address. So somebody could determine your email address via your home address. Now if somebody hacked into the post office database... but bad things can always happen if somebody hacks into government agency databases.
You'll probably get more spam email. Hardly the greatest breach of privacy ever conceived.
This article started well... but it got worse and worse as I kept reading. I strongly oppose IP law as it currently exists and is enforced. I think it is the result of years of corporate influence in government for selfish ends and has resulted in a system which comes no where near its original intent. I think the founders of our constitution had it right. The intent of intellectual property law should be to encourage the creation of those intellectual idea. At the time, they felt limited control over intellectual property would be effective. And I agree. This is where the article starts. But it quickly goes astray.
The authors first mistake is when he discounts the importance of economic investment in the creation of ideas:
>Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
Yeah, but if I have capital and I pay somebody else to do that work- then I've contributed to that process. Communism make the same mistake when they assume that only the worker has added value to a product- not the person who invested capital to allow the process in the first place.
Then he goes through a series of examples where IP law has been lame. Well, duh. But he's just setting up a straw man argument for IP law in general. The important part is his critique of common justifications for IP law. And, mostly, they attempt to refute the idea that individuals have a right to the fruit of their intellectual labor.
This is actually a very non-trivial issue. And the author would do well to comment on which philosophical tradition he's following. The Libertarian school will claim, that due to full self-ownership, we have the absolute right to the fruit of our labor. More radical versions of this philosophy support the claim that taxation is illegitimate unless consented to. With that foundation, its hard to argue that intellectual property is not justified.
I, however, am not Libertarian, along with the majority of modern philosophers and society. A more generally accepted philosophy, like Rawls, would grant individuals freedom and liberty to believe/think/do what they want, but not promise them complete control over the fruit of their labor. In any reasonable society this is essentially necessary. Even if you believe there is some dessert associated with your labor, society still determines to what extent you can profit from it. This is necessary in order to tax people. There is no, 'what you would have made if government weren't there', b/c w/o government, it wouldn't have been very much.
With such an understanding of economic dessert, it is much more reasonable to take the approach of the founding fathers of our constitution. We grant IP so far as it benefits society, not b/c the people who possess these copyrights/patents/etc. have some inherent right to benefit from these things.
And this is where the author makes his next mistake. He assumes that society will be most benefited w/o IP at all! He talks about how scientist don't profit very much from the work they do. They're payed independently, by universities and the government. And its true that the government attempts to encourage intellectual advancement in society by funding scientists. But this model isn't going to work in every field. Engineering solutions to problems are much better left to the market. But in order for that to happen, people need to be sure that they will see a return on their investment for finding solutions.
If I think that people could benefit from a word processor and invest my own time, or hire other people to program a word processor, I'm going to expect some compensation for it. Some people (noticeably in the open source community) may not. But that is not a reliable source of innovation. Our society intellectual advancements should not be dependent on volunteerism. In restricted arena's, it may prove beneficial, but generally compensation will prove necessary.
>Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals, such as author Agatha Christie, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
This claim implies that this would be the only damage done by getting rid of IP. But this assumption is naive. Many of the advancement made in society today are no longer just the results of independent, self-motivated individuals. I am temporarily working for a company as an RF engineer/intern. They pay me and others to design and test various circuits. They spend lots of money on equipment and personnel. But they can do that b/c they know when they come up with a design, they can sell it as their own. Do you really think that would be possible w/o IP? The designs are frequently simple. I can sketch a schematic for you on a piece of paper. A bill of materials and the board layout and you'd have the culmination of all the company's investment. But it wouldn't exist unless they were confident it was protected by IP.
Honestly, the system as it exists today is pretty bad. But that is not b/c IP is inherently wrong. Its mostly b/c corporate interests have decided the way IP is going to go over the years. The first step is to reform the process by which patents and copyrights are granted, then dramatically reduce the length of time they hold for. Don't throw it out altogether.
That's what we should do, huh? Just like that? As easy as can be? Honestly, getting a few thousand die hard music fans to stop buying CD's is going to be a tad difficult. The same w/ the DJs and the millions of pop music fans.
Yeah, Taco not buying CDs won't change much by itself, but hey, he probably knows that. Sometimes it is about principals. If I think what the music companies are doing is wrong, maybe I don't want to give them MY financial support. I'm not going to commit myself to a moral crusade against them, but I'm was never obligated to. I recognize that it won't mean a whole lot to them, but it might mean something to me.
I appreciate your concern about the lack of knowledge that we have about what's going on. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. There is simply no way for a spytype agency to reveal what they're doing to the American public b/c then they would also be revealing that to the people they're spying on. The only hope is to elect people you support, and hope things don't get too screwed up.
With respect to the companies thing, obviously I am in the dark, but I have heard one story that was released a while ago. I can't give you much of the details, as I am only recounting from memory, but apparently an US agency determined that a French corporation has used bribery to obtain a contract from a South American government. They called them on it and a US contractor got the deal instead. If that's a good example of how the system works, I guess I'm okay with that. Sort of preventing other companies from gaining illicit advantages. Admittedly, it may not work like that always, and so its good to have independent people worried and investigating these things. But until they turn up some dirt, I can only go with the information on the table.
First, I'm not sure that Echelon-like programs are useless. There are a variety of threats to the public safety that existed during the cold war and continue to exist now, which can be prevented to some extent by the information gathering that Echelon provides. Admittedly, organisations, particularly those in the government, will tend to try to justify their own existence/collect more funding/etc. But more is required to demonstrate that the NSA has overstepped their bounds.
Additionally, it is easy to talk vaguely about the universal human rights that our founding fathers established, but, frankly, its rather naive. Remember, many of our founding fathers were supporters of slavery. And just in case you thought they were ardent supporters of freedom of speech, read about the Alien and Sedition Act. Essentially, it limited voting and free speech to prevent opposition to the party in power. Fortunately, it did not last long.
If you want to talk about rights violations, state what rights you're talking about, how they're specified in our constitution and how they're being violated. Its not sufficient to mention human rights, and then expect us to all agree that the NSA is evil. I've lived in the US all my life, too. And I am not proud of all the things the US government has done. But until you can provide me with examples supported by sound reasoning, I see no reason why I should be ashamed. And even then, I reserve the right to disagree with your judgement.