Well, if that's really the case, then you're pretty much on the same page I am, you just haven't made the logical extension. In the eyes of the law, distributing a transcription of a song someone else has written without their permission is just as wrong as distributing a recording thereof. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's okay to break the part of the law that you don't like, but not the part you do like. I guess everyone feels that way, but it's kind of pointless for me to discuss it with you if you don't see the contradiction in that position.
You didn't make a point, you just didn't realize it. You were trying to illustrate something by using a comparison that didn't compare--rape just doesn't equate to theoretical loss of revenue, no matter how you cut it. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, I'm just trying to get you to put your argument in English. If you wanted me to address the question of "since when does the free market mean that if you don't like the price of something you take it" why didn't you just ask it? You stated it just fine this time--leave off on the stretched analogies and say what you really mean so we can have a conversation.
First, let me put you, and other people who think this is theft, in the proper perspective (talk about building strawmen). It's not, and no one who is participating in legal action over it pretends so. It's infringement. Theft is the illegal taking of actual, physical, irreplaceable (in the sense that the single item that is taken can no longer be possessed by the original owner) goods. As is oft pointed out, an illegal copy is just that--a copy. Nothing has been taken from anyone. This may sound like weaseling to you, but it's a point of law that you should get used to if you want to discuss these matters without sounding like a moron. Infringement is not, and cannot, be equated with theft, because it deals in the theoretical--what if, possibly, maybe. If you want to talk about what copyright is really about, go to the source of American copyright law: Article One, Section Eight. I think you'll find that it's about exactly what I said it's about--promotion of "Arts and Sciences," not locking them away.
Second, this is not some sort of whiny justification of Napster. It's just the way things are going to be with digitized information. Piss and moan about it, celebrate it, try to deny it, whatever... but it's abundantly clear for those who are willing to look that intellectual property distribution is not going to work the way it has in the past. It's just too easy to spread it around. No amount of code, regardless of how it has been written, can sufficiently control a group of people who choose to ignore it. Noticed anyone speeding lately? May not be right but it happens, and that's what I'm saying.
Finally, to your question: this doesn't have anything at all to do with the free market. I'm not sure where you thought I said that. It has to do with the market for books and music, and the fact that a lot of that market is going to have access to those books and music outside of the artist's agreed distribution channels. Personally, I think the answer lies more with reducing prices and easing distribution than it does with trying to beat your potential consumers over the head with copyright controls and legal action, but who knows? What I can tell you is that things will not stay the way they are... and that's my point.
What is a song but an idea of an arrangement of musical notes? The notes aren't copyrighted--it's the arrangement. It's ephemeral because you can't lock it in a room somewhere.
I'm not really equipped to comment in depth on the PLA's level of discipline (although it's interesting to note that some units apparently refused to participate in the clearing of the square--not sure if this indicates lack of discipline or simply very deeply seated social unrest). And I do not dispute that the protesters became violent--extremely violent in some cases. As far as the quotes go, I stand by them as conveying the general tone of the leadership--certainly there were other points of view present, but they don't seem to have carried the day. One of the interesting thing about the papers, in fact, is the level of dissent they reveal in the leadership structure. But it seems clear that Shangkun's faction (including Deng) were the ones to carry the day.
I see where you are coming from, but (and I haven't read the book, and we're not sure if it's 100% authentic anyway) I still disagree with your central tenet: I think that when the leadership deployed troops, they had every intent of using force and probably deadly force. Having made several prior attempts to clear the area without becoming violent, it seems ludicrous to assume that they would think that their final attempt would succeed without force where the others had failed. So; we'll have to agree to disagree. Nice talking to you about it, though.
Oh, please--take twenty minutes and come up with a slightly less pathetic analogy. Spreading someone's ideas around is hardly comparable to violating someone's person by force. Maybe you thought by going to extremes you'd better illustrate your point, but it just makes you sound like a fifth-grader who doesn't understand the issue.
My point is that no one can actually have a right to an idea, or to anything ephemeral, because ultimately, there is no way to control it. You can't keep people from hearing music in their heads, or playing it on their own instruments, or whistling it in the street. All the laws in the world are not going to help. And copyright law, despite your misapprehension of it, was never intended to do such a thing. Artists can decide on whatever process they would like, but ultimately, the only one that will protect their work is to not release it. Whining about rights won't fix it; engendering respect in your audience might.
Well, the fact that "hey, this is China" was pretty much my point. You would never hear a line like that here, and to the best of my knowledge, no such thing was ever said at Kent State. Furthermore, the real military was never deployed at Kent State, unlike Tianenmen--generally, that's not allowed here by our Constitution. The level of discipline in a National Guard unit and in a regular unit such as those used in Tianenmen are not comparable--it's less easy to believe that regulars got nervous and popped off without orders than it is to believe that weekend warriors did.
To me, it indicates that the possibility, or even the probability of large scale gunplay was acceptable to the leadership, and that the call they made felt that dead protestors were preferable to a continued occupation of the square. Of course they didn't want a massacre--but it seems clear that they would rather have that than continued embarrasment.
As far as the quote I chose, that was one of the more restrained ones in the article, despite coming from a general (who was, apparently, conveying Deng's own views, if you read the whole quote). I mean, if I was just interested in picking out bits that sound bad for the government, why wouldn't I have grabbed a gem like: "Give 'em no mercy!" hollers hard-liner Wang Zhen. "The students are nuts if they think this handful of people can overthrow our party and our government!" I'm not sure what more you want--of course I'm citing points in the article that support my argument; I feel that the article as a whole does so, and without simply re-posting the whole thing, there's never going to be a complete telling. Granted, it is Time--but I've read similar analyses in hard copy sources elsewhere.
The ultimate right of the creator, and the only absolute one, is the decision of whether or not to release the work in the first place. Once it's out there, control is an illusion supplied by the courts. We're primarily talking about intangibles here; a tune, a storyline, an image. You cannot really control that once you've shown it to someone else. This only becomes absolutely clear in a world of digital reproduction, where the dissemination of the intangible becomes trivial. And while your argument about the value of a work is valid from a certain point of view, from the point of view of the market, it's bullshit. The thing is worth what people will pay for it--and they won't pay much if it's easy to get for free. Which it will be, from now on. Game over. The details are still falling out, but I think it's pretty clear that the genie is not going back into the bottle. So you're wrong--art is worth less to the market than it used to be. Artists are going to have to get used to it.
So we get to the purpose of copyright: which is to encourage the creators of art to disseminate their works by making it possible for them to profit by their reproduction. It's not a guarantee that you're going to get rich off of it, and it's not designed to do so. It's there so that people won't hang on to their ideas for fear of having them stolen.
Now, I would propose that the ultimate test of the function of copyright is whether or not ideas are still being published by their creators. If they're not, then copyright law isn't working; if they are, then it is or it's unnecessary.
So I ask you this: how many groups are not publishing tunes now because they're afraid of getting them ripped off on Napster?
I don't know of any. I doubt there are any. The mega-bands don't have much to lose; smaller groups tend to have everything to gain by getting a wider audience. I have a great degree of difficulty imagining that any garage band, anywhere, is going to fold up shop and stop producing because of something like Napster. Because of that, I find that most arguments for stringently enforcing copyright in this medium are somewhat spurious--the intent of the law is already being served.
Well, here's your evidence. The authenticity of the documents has not been verified, but the people who decide such things seem to be leaning toward their veracity. It's pretty clear that the leadership was in favor of mowing down the crowds, as long as it didn't happen in the square itself. That's significantly different from Kent State, or for that matter, most such incidents in the US. We ain't perfect and there are abuses, but don't underestimate the power of free speech (while it lasts). Leaders here, even if inclined to make such decisions, are not thrilled at the almost certain prospects of them being discovered and published.
To join the author in playing devil's advocate, I don't think it's about choosing copy protection over none--it's going to be about choosing new hardware and better performance over old. Quite simply, manufacturers aren't going to be developing new hardware that doesn't conform to the new copy protection standards. That's why the author stresses the power of the entertainment industry. It's not that they can force you to buy one product over another, it's that they can pressure the manufacturer's into only producing one sort. Look at DVDs. It's not that there isn't a demand for regionless or multi-region players--a quick buzz through slashdot will show you that. But there's extreme pressure on the makers to not produce them, so you're not going to find a cheap one. Of course, if you're willing to pay, that's another matter--but this conversation was about reasonably priced products.
Still, I think that the PC user market is both large enough and entrenched enough to keep this sort of thing from happening anytime soon. Look at the outcry over the P4's embedded tracking features. I'm not as pessimistic as the author is on the matter.
Why don't you bone up on the law before posting stupid comments? They can always bring suit... the only question is whether or not they are allowed to introduce certain pieces of evidence. More to the point, at least one of the ways I suggested that they could get it is not illegal at all, and the other way may not allow them to use the evidence themselves, but it could certainly be turned over to the authorities and be used by them (the exclusionary rule generally only protects defendants from evidence obtained directly by unconstitutional actions by the authorities themselves--see Necropuppy's excellent link above) to introduce criminal copyright violation charges.
Apparently, you need to read a couple more Slashdot articles, kid... maybe then you'll 'get it'--they're not always dead accurate.
Regardless, even if obtained illegally it can provide PC. And if you invite them in, it's not burglary--all they have to do is get in to one of the trading groups, and per the terms of use, you've given them permission to download files from your computer. Even if they don't bother to get in on a group, they'd hardly need to get into your system to intercept the encrypted traffic and try to crack it.
Doubtful; all they have to do is get themselves invited into one of the share groups and harvest from there. Even if they did take the (stupid) brute force, cracking the encryption approach, I think they'd still only face penalties as detailed under the DMCA for circumventing copyright protection mechanisms... and as I say, I think they would probably consider it worth the cost.
It wouldn't bring down the DMCA at all; it would just expose the RIAA (or representatives thereof) to prosecution under the same statutes. I think they're willing to sacrifice a couple of reps, or a few hundred grand in court costs and penalties, to shut something like this down. They sure haven't shown any restraint in spending to bring Napster, et al, to their knees.
I'm not entirely sure that's true, but even if it is, what is illegal for a private citizen (or industry group, in this case) is different than what is illegal for a public police force. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's ability to invade private areas without a warrant detailing probable cause. But if an RIAA rep wanted to go in, gather evidence, and present it to the feds, that would probably constitute sufficient probable cause. And keep in mind that's just for criminal matters--a court order could force Aimster to open up records for civil litigation.
RIAA might get into their own pan of hot water for circumventing DMCA to monitor Aimster, but it wouldn't prevent them from bringing suit, and they might well consider it a small price to pay to shut the service down.
Hmm. Well, if you have to just drop an important consideration like that into the "who knows?" file, that indicates to me a degree of pre-supposition that isn't supported by the evidence at hand--classic conspiracy theory. It makes for fun conversation, but not a very stable philosophy.
I was down there, both days, and if The Man was sending in agents provocateur, he was using The Boy to do it--most of the people throwing crap and bashing in windows didn't look to be but barely clear of the short side of puberty.
Of course, the common conception is that most of the troublemakers were from a relatively small group of anarchists not explicitly related with any of the more conventional protest groups that were there. My point, though, was that regardless of affiliation, if you're going to stand between cops and the bad guys as a human wall, then you'd better be doing something to control the bad guys yourself, or you're part of the problem. The labor marchers, for instance (lotsa big, burly AFL-CIO truck drivers) didn't put up with any hooliganism on their route--most of the bad stuff happened in the primarily younger, more peace-loving enviro crowds.
As a general argument against the conspiracy theory, though, I ask, what benefit did the SPD and local government establishment get out of the way things turned out? Now they have a bad reputation, on-going problems, and Schell's going to get turned out on his ear next election. And after last Tuesday, our new police chief may be going the way of the old, who basically had to resign after WTO. If all that was intentionally provoked, what did the people in power get out of it besides grief? And if you're going to argue that it just backfired on them, I would say, get some consistency in your argument--either they're these powerful, cynical overlords, or they're a bunch of bumbling fools; I'm not going to buy both.
Just out of curiosity, were you down there at all?
Thanks for the clarification; learn something new all the time.
I was aware that advanced level marks courses teach disabling shots, but never heard of more basic courses addressing the matter. In a crowd control context, it makes a lot more sense. I still can't figure out the reply from the Air Force guy, but I'll have to look into it some more.
Great; now the far-left is starting to breed conspiracy theorists just like the far right. Maybe ya'll should hook up and work on some way to turn all them black helicopters and evil corporate special interests against each other.
It's long been a constitutionally accepted practice to use non-federalized militia troops (ie, the National Guard) in state emergency situations. That's all that happened during WTO; and frankly, they should have done it much sooner, since none of you down in the crowd seemed to be able to take responsibility enough to control your more radical elements without a spanking from The Man.
And how long ago was this? In recent history (the last twenty years or so) I've never heard of any entry-level weapons instruction course (police or military) that differentiates between "shoot-to-kill" and "shoot-to-wound" doctrine. You aim for center of mass, period. The head if it's an armored target. In a stressful situation, it's an ambitious goal just to hit the target, let alone in a specific area that will only disable. And I've always, always been taught that if you're in a situation when you're seriously considering pulling the trigger, it had better be serious enough that it's worth a killing. As someone else in this thread pointed out, it can be tough to non-lethally hurt someone badly enough to stop them. If you absolutely, positively have to stop your target, then you've gotta go for the gold on the first try. You never have enough control to ensure a wound--if you're going to point a gun and fire, you'd better be willing to kill.
Usually, I hear people throw around phrases like that, I think maybe they aren't too familiar with the subject at hand. But if in fact the Marines taught this doctrine at some point, I'd be interested to hear more about it.
My impression is that it's a wide beam--like meters wide, at range--so unless you can run out of the field of effect in less than two seconds, you're still gonna be feeling pretty toasty.
Putting it that way, it makes it seem like a Good Thing. I mean, wasn't the.com TLD originally supposed to be just for real companies? Individual sites not commercial in nature would be more appropriately slotted into geographic TLDs or some of the newly designated TLDs.
With any luck, that might actually tone down the vituperative disputes we're currently seeing over.com domain names, and result in less corporatization of the web as people get used to finding things without automatically slapping a '.com' on the end of them. IMHO, the current inappropriate designation of a lot of non-commercial sites is responsible for the domain name firestorm we've been experiencing.
Wow, do we have a little chip on our shoulder, or what? I didn't notice that the original poster was extolling the virtues of Bill Clinton.
Gore, at least, might have been enough of a geek to see the value in less sexy projects like the Pluto probe, rather than just the big-name Mars and ISS projects (although I think those are important, too).
And whether or not NASA's new approach of doing it on the cheap was a result of budgetary constraints or not, I can't really say, but regardless it certainly seems to me a very practical and cost-effective way of surveying the solar system.
Oh, for christ's sake, it was a joke. You can't tack into a solar wind anyway, keel or no--the aerodynamic effect that allows sailboats to tack upwind is not a property of the photon breeze that pushes a light sail.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if that's really the case, then you're pretty much on the same page I am, you just haven't made the logical extension. In the eyes of the law, distributing a transcription of a song someone else has written without their permission is just as wrong as distributing a recording thereof. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's okay to break the part of the law that you don't like, but not the part you do like. I guess everyone feels that way, but it's kind of pointless for me to discuss it with you if you don't see the contradiction in that position.
You didn't make a point, you just didn't realize it. You were trying to illustrate something by using a comparison that didn't compare--rape just doesn't equate to theoretical loss of revenue, no matter how you cut it. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, I'm just trying to get you to put your argument in English. If you wanted me to address the question of "since when does the free market mean that if you don't like the price of something you take it" why didn't you just ask it? You stated it just fine this time--leave off on the stretched analogies and say what you really mean so we can have a conversation.
First, let me put you, and other people who think this is theft, in the proper perspective (talk about building strawmen). It's not, and no one who is participating in legal action over it pretends so. It's infringement. Theft is the illegal taking of actual, physical, irreplaceable (in the sense that the single item that is taken can no longer be possessed by the original owner) goods. As is oft pointed out, an illegal copy is just that--a copy. Nothing has been taken from anyone. This may sound like weaseling to you, but it's a point of law that you should get used to if you want to discuss these matters without sounding like a moron. Infringement is not, and cannot, be equated with theft, because it deals in the theoretical--what if, possibly, maybe. If you want to talk about what copyright is really about, go to the source of American copyright law: Article One, Section Eight. I think you'll find that it's about exactly what I said it's about--promotion of "Arts and Sciences," not locking them away.
Second, this is not some sort of whiny justification of Napster. It's just the way things are going to be with digitized information. Piss and moan about it, celebrate it, try to deny it, whatever... but it's abundantly clear for those who are willing to look that intellectual property distribution is not going to work the way it has in the past. It's just too easy to spread it around. No amount of code, regardless of how it has been written, can sufficiently control a group of people who choose to ignore it. Noticed anyone speeding lately? May not be right but it happens, and that's what I'm saying.
Finally, to your question: this doesn't have anything at all to do with the free market. I'm not sure where you thought I said that. It has to do with the market for books and music, and the fact that a lot of that market is going to have access to those books and music outside of the artist's agreed distribution channels. Personally, I think the answer lies more with reducing prices and easing distribution than it does with trying to beat your potential consumers over the head with copyright controls and legal action, but who knows? What I can tell you is that things will not stay the way they are... and that's my point.
Hope you enjoyed your dinner.
What is a song but an idea of an arrangement of musical notes? The notes aren't copyrighted--it's the arrangement. It's ephemeral because you can't lock it in a room somewhere.
I'm not really equipped to comment in depth on the PLA's level of discipline (although it's interesting to note that some units apparently refused to participate in the clearing of the square--not sure if this indicates lack of discipline or simply very deeply seated social unrest). And I do not dispute that the protesters became violent--extremely violent in some cases. As far as the quotes go, I stand by them as conveying the general tone of the leadership--certainly there were other points of view present, but they don't seem to have carried the day. One of the interesting thing about the papers, in fact, is the level of dissent they reveal in the leadership structure. But it seems clear that Shangkun's faction (including Deng) were the ones to carry the day.
I see where you are coming from, but (and I haven't read the book, and we're not sure if it's 100% authentic anyway) I still disagree with your central tenet: I think that when the leadership deployed troops, they had every intent of using force and probably deadly force. Having made several prior attempts to clear the area without becoming violent, it seems ludicrous to assume that they would think that their final attempt would succeed without force where the others had failed. So; we'll have to agree to disagree. Nice talking to you about it, though.
Oh, please--take twenty minutes and come up with a slightly less pathetic analogy. Spreading someone's ideas around is hardly comparable to violating someone's person by force. Maybe you thought by going to extremes you'd better illustrate your point, but it just makes you sound like a fifth-grader who doesn't understand the issue.
My point is that no one can actually have a right to an idea, or to anything ephemeral, because ultimately, there is no way to control it. You can't keep people from hearing music in their heads, or playing it on their own instruments, or whistling it in the street. All the laws in the world are not going to help. And copyright law, despite your misapprehension of it, was never intended to do such a thing. Artists can decide on whatever process they would like, but ultimately, the only one that will protect their work is to not release it. Whining about rights won't fix it; engendering respect in your audience might.
Well, the fact that "hey, this is China" was pretty much my point. You would never hear a line like that here, and to the best of my knowledge, no such thing was ever said at Kent State. Furthermore, the real military was never deployed at Kent State, unlike Tianenmen--generally, that's not allowed here by our Constitution. The level of discipline in a National Guard unit and in a regular unit such as those used in Tianenmen are not comparable--it's less easy to believe that regulars got nervous and popped off without orders than it is to believe that weekend warriors did.
To me, it indicates that the possibility, or even the probability of large scale gunplay was acceptable to the leadership, and that the call they made felt that dead protestors were preferable to a continued occupation of the square. Of course they didn't want a massacre--but it seems clear that they would rather have that than continued embarrasment.
As far as the quote I chose, that was one of the more restrained ones in the article, despite coming from a general (who was, apparently, conveying Deng's own views, if you read the whole quote). I mean, if I was just interested in picking out bits that sound bad for the government, why wouldn't I have grabbed a gem like: "Give 'em no mercy!" hollers hard-liner Wang Zhen. "The students are nuts if they think this handful of people can overthrow our party and our government!" I'm not sure what more you want--of course I'm citing points in the article that support my argument; I feel that the article as a whole does so, and without simply re-posting the whole thing, there's never going to be a complete telling. Granted, it is Time--but I've read similar analyses in hard copy sources elsewhere.
You're too young, kid. Maybe in a few years.
Well, to lapse into realpolitik for a moment:
The ultimate right of the creator, and the only absolute one, is the decision of whether or not to release the work in the first place. Once it's out there, control is an illusion supplied by the courts. We're primarily talking about intangibles here; a tune, a storyline, an image. You cannot really control that once you've shown it to someone else. This only becomes absolutely clear in a world of digital reproduction, where the dissemination of the intangible becomes trivial. And while your argument about the value of a work is valid from a certain point of view, from the point of view of the market, it's bullshit. The thing is worth what people will pay for it--and they won't pay much if it's easy to get for free. Which it will be, from now on. Game over. The details are still falling out, but I think it's pretty clear that the genie is not going back into the bottle. So you're wrong--art is worth less to the market than it used to be. Artists are going to have to get used to it.
So we get to the purpose of copyright: which is to encourage the creators of art to disseminate their works by making it possible for them to profit by their reproduction. It's not a guarantee that you're going to get rich off of it, and it's not designed to do so. It's there so that people won't hang on to their ideas for fear of having them stolen.
Now, I would propose that the ultimate test of the function of copyright is whether or not ideas are still being published by their creators. If they're not, then copyright law isn't working; if they are, then it is or it's unnecessary.
So I ask you this: how many groups are not publishing tunes now because they're afraid of getting them ripped off on Napster?
I don't know of any. I doubt there are any. The mega-bands don't have much to lose; smaller groups tend to have everything to gain by getting a wider audience. I have a great degree of difficulty imagining that any garage band, anywhere, is going to fold up shop and stop producing because of something like Napster. Because of that, I find that most arguments for stringently enforcing copyright in this medium are somewhat spurious--the intent of the law is already being served.
TIMEasia.com | What Really Happened? | 1/15/2001
Well, here's your evidence. The authenticity of the documents has not been verified, but the people who decide such things seem to be leaning toward their veracity. It's pretty clear that the leadership was in favor of mowing down the crowds, as long as it didn't happen in the square itself. That's significantly different from Kent State, or for that matter, most such incidents in the US. We ain't perfect and there are abuses, but don't underestimate the power of free speech (while it lasts). Leaders here, even if inclined to make such decisions, are not thrilled at the almost certain prospects of them being discovered and published.
To join the author in playing devil's advocate, I don't think it's about choosing copy protection over none--it's going to be about choosing new hardware and better performance over old. Quite simply, manufacturers aren't going to be developing new hardware that doesn't conform to the new copy protection standards. That's why the author stresses the power of the entertainment industry. It's not that they can force you to buy one product over another, it's that they can pressure the manufacturer's into only producing one sort. Look at DVDs. It's not that there isn't a demand for regionless or multi-region players--a quick buzz through slashdot will show you that. But there's extreme pressure on the makers to not produce them, so you're not going to find a cheap one. Of course, if you're willing to pay, that's another matter--but this conversation was about reasonably priced products.
Still, I think that the PC user market is both large enough and entrenched enough to keep this sort of thing from happening anytime soon. Look at the outcry over the P4's embedded tracking features. I'm not as pessimistic as the author is on the matter.
Why don't you bone up on the law before posting stupid comments? They can always bring suit... the only question is whether or not they are allowed to introduce certain pieces of evidence. More to the point, at least one of the ways I suggested that they could get it is not illegal at all, and the other way may not allow them to use the evidence themselves, but it could certainly be turned over to the authorities and be used by them (the exclusionary rule generally only protects defendants from evidence obtained directly by unconstitutional actions by the authorities themselves--see Necropuppy's excellent link above) to introduce criminal copyright violation charges.
Apparently, you need to read a couple more Slashdot articles, kid... maybe then you'll 'get it'--they're not always dead accurate.
Regardless, even if obtained illegally it can provide PC. And if you invite them in, it's not burglary--all they have to do is get in to one of the trading groups, and per the terms of use, you've given them permission to download files from your computer. Even if they don't bother to get in on a group, they'd hardly need to get into your system to intercept the encrypted traffic and try to crack it.
Doubtful; all they have to do is get themselves invited into one of the share groups and harvest from there. Even if they did take the (stupid) brute force, cracking the encryption approach, I think they'd still only face penalties as detailed under the DMCA for circumventing copyright protection mechanisms... and as I say, I think they would probably consider it worth the cost.
It wouldn't bring down the DMCA at all; it would just expose the RIAA (or representatives thereof) to prosecution under the same statutes. I think they're willing to sacrifice a couple of reps, or a few hundred grand in court costs and penalties, to shut something like this down. They sure haven't shown any restraint in spending to bring Napster, et al, to their knees.
I'm not entirely sure that's true, but even if it is, what is illegal for a private citizen (or industry group, in this case) is different than what is illegal for a public police force. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's ability to invade private areas without a warrant detailing probable cause. But if an RIAA rep wanted to go in, gather evidence, and present it to the feds, that would probably constitute sufficient probable cause. And keep in mind that's just for criminal matters--a court order could force Aimster to open up records for civil litigation.
RIAA might get into their own pan of hot water for circumventing DMCA to monitor Aimster, but it wouldn't prevent them from bringing suit, and they might well consider it a small price to pay to shut the service down.
IANAL
Hmm. Well, if you have to just drop an important consideration like that into the "who knows?" file, that indicates to me a degree of pre-supposition that isn't supported by the evidence at hand--classic conspiracy theory. It makes for fun conversation, but not a very stable philosophy.
I was down there, both days, and if The Man was sending in agents provocateur, he was using The Boy to do it--most of the people throwing crap and bashing in windows didn't look to be but barely clear of the short side of puberty.
LOL. Good comeback!
Of course, the common conception is that most of the troublemakers were from a relatively small group of anarchists not explicitly related with any of the more conventional protest groups that were there. My point, though, was that regardless of affiliation, if you're going to stand between cops and the bad guys as a human wall, then you'd better be doing something to control the bad guys yourself, or you're part of the problem. The labor marchers, for instance (lotsa big, burly AFL-CIO truck drivers) didn't put up with any hooliganism on their route--most of the bad stuff happened in the primarily younger, more peace-loving enviro crowds.
As a general argument against the conspiracy theory, though, I ask, what benefit did the SPD and local government establishment get out of the way things turned out? Now they have a bad reputation, on-going problems, and Schell's going to get turned out on his ear next election. And after last Tuesday, our new police chief may be going the way of the old, who basically had to resign after WTO. If all that was intentionally provoked, what did the people in power get out of it besides grief? And if you're going to argue that it just backfired on them, I would say, get some consistency in your argument--either they're these powerful, cynical overlords, or they're a bunch of bumbling fools; I'm not going to buy both.
Just out of curiosity, were you down there at all?
Thanks for the clarification; learn something new all the time.
I was aware that advanced level marks courses teach disabling shots, but never heard of more basic courses addressing the matter. In a crowd control context, it makes a lot more sense. I still can't figure out the reply from the Air Force guy, but I'll have to look into it some more.
Appreciate the reply.
Great; now the far-left is starting to breed conspiracy theorists just like the far right. Maybe ya'll should hook up and work on some way to turn all them black helicopters and evil corporate special interests against each other.
It's long been a constitutionally accepted practice to use non-federalized militia troops (ie, the National Guard) in state emergency situations. That's all that happened during WTO; and frankly, they should have done it much sooner, since none of you down in the crowd seemed to be able to take responsibility enough to control your more radical elements without a spanking from The Man.
And how long ago was this? In recent history (the last twenty years or so) I've never heard of any entry-level weapons instruction course (police or military) that differentiates between "shoot-to-kill" and "shoot-to-wound" doctrine. You aim for center of mass, period. The head if it's an armored target. In a stressful situation, it's an ambitious goal just to hit the target, let alone in a specific area that will only disable. And I've always, always been taught that if you're in a situation when you're seriously considering pulling the trigger, it had better be serious enough that it's worth a killing. As someone else in this thread pointed out, it can be tough to non-lethally hurt someone badly enough to stop them. If you absolutely, positively have to stop your target, then you've gotta go for the gold on the first try. You never have enough control to ensure a wound--if you're going to point a gun and fire, you'd better be willing to kill.
Usually, I hear people throw around phrases like that, I think maybe they aren't too familiar with the subject at hand. But if in fact the Marines taught this doctrine at some point, I'd be interested to hear more about it.
My impression is that it's a wide beam--like meters wide, at range--so unless you can run out of the field of effect in less than two seconds, you're still gonna be feeling pretty toasty.
Putting it that way, it makes it seem like a Good Thing. I mean, wasn't the .com TLD originally supposed to be just for real companies? Individual sites not commercial in nature would be more appropriately slotted into geographic TLDs or some of the newly designated TLDs.
.com domain names, and result in less corporatization of the web as people get used to finding things without automatically slapping a '.com' on the end of them. IMHO, the current inappropriate designation of a lot of non-commercial sites is responsible for the domain name firestorm we've been experiencing.
With any luck, that might actually tone down the vituperative disputes we're currently seeing over
Wow, do we have a little chip on our shoulder, or what? I didn't notice that the original poster was extolling the virtues of Bill Clinton.
Gore, at least, might have been enough of a geek to see the value in less sexy projects like the Pluto probe, rather than just the big-name Mars and ISS projects (although I think those are important, too).
And whether or not NASA's new approach of doing it on the cheap was a result of budgetary constraints or not, I can't really say, but regardless it certainly seems to me a very practical and cost-effective way of surveying the solar system.
Charon is a lot closer to Pluto's size than the Moon is to Earth's.
Oh, for christ's sake, it was a joke. You can't tack into a solar wind anyway, keel or no--the aerodynamic effect that allows sailboats to tack upwind is not a property of the photon breeze that pushes a light sail.