If it was simply limited the number of immigrants that'd be one thing, but it's to protect their culture. That's a code word for "people who do things like us". Not "speak the language", not "won't go on welfare".
But sure, you go with your idea. It works for you.
Not really, as for the creation of jobs. It is quite complex and if you ask economists one says you create jobs by lowering it and the other by raising it. But, that said, lowering the interest rate increases spending, both by consumers and by businesses, this moves products which creates jobs. It *seems* pretty simple, though I'm sure if you lower it too far there's some rebound that does the opposite.
Re: Golden step ladder.
My point was one along the lines of "it can always be worse". You pulled yourself up from minimal education and a lack of money, someone else pulls himself up from the same thing but in a wheelchair, or such. I haven't had anything (past the age of 18) handed to me as such, but I know I've got it better than many, and often for reasons that aren't physically obvious. As such, I try not to say that it's laziness that keeps people down. That's part of it for sure, but it seems too simple to be the whole answer.
But, I certainly know what you mean about the rich kids. Getting a $100k car as a gift for pulling in solid Bs while you work your ass off. The same kids who get a job at Dad's factory pulling in a huge wage, and they whine about how tough things are. (Remind me to smack the next guy who complains about the cost of parts for his beemer.:)
The GPL doesn't need testing any more than me saying "If you don't buy it, don't take it" needs testing. It's fully supported by current law. If they don't want to license it, they can't use it.
If they don't own the code though, we wouldn't get it. The judge isn't going to force them to break one law to right the damages from breaking another law. If they do own it, we'd only get it if we threatened (and looked like we could get) huge damages.
What needs testing isn't the theory behind the GPL, but if we can find the money to enforce it. But, even if we pick and choose our battles, the claim doesn't get weaker thankfully, unlike trademark protection.
There's not much of a line between saying "furiners out" and "dark skinned people out". If, by definition, nobody of your race is a foreigner, you're kicking out everyone of another race.
This seems to me to be a case where "reverse" racism is good. In other words, if it's done by a rich white man, it's bad. If it's done by one of the victims of rich white men, (ie. anyone else) it's good. Insert the KKK, or Israel, and ask yourself how you'd view this.
Basic capitalism doesn't see me as anything other than a wealth producer and there aren't *any* political systems where I'm anything other than subservient to the system.
I think the USSR would have failed, regardless of which system it pretended to use, and that a country will free happy people could do well with socialism. I know that the more socialist the country, the happier it tends to be, for Western Europeon countries and Canada/US.
Someone asked how many people the Earth could sustain, you mentioned six billion people, Texas, and Tokyo. To me, the answer said "Tokyo is an example of how it can sustain more than (whatever number, evenly distributed, would make Texas have six billion)."
But yes, the question isn't how much land I need to build living quarters on, it's how much land I need to provide everything I require, house, food, electricity, etc.
Jobs and Wozniak worked very hard to create the Apple 2, neither anticipating a hudnredth the success that Apple enjoyed, even in the early days.
Further, when Apple did get big, who got rich? Wozniak, or Jobs (and other management)? If money was the only reason that people create, would anyone who watched this ever work as an engineer? Time and time again, management comes along and takes 95% of the money in trade for very little real work.
At least in a communism, management wouldn't get paid more than the techs.
In a communism, Enron wouldn't have happened. Worldcom wouldn't have happened.
Besides, there are many valid half-way steps between pure capitalism and pure communism. My point isn't that communism is better, just that it's not all bad. And that it's not at all related to Russia, despite Russia's lip service to communism.
What the government can do is stop playing with the interest rate in favor of entrenched business. Let the market decide the interest rate and if that warrants loans for new investment, let it happen.
Protectionist policies are also often a positive way to create work. If you look for a suitably horrid place, you can find people willing to do any job for pennies. If you export your jobs there you give money to the people doing the exporting, but at the cost of your people who had those jobs. Often, especially if done in an uncontrolled manner, this hurts more than the cheap goods help.
It's the ways government exerts *some* control that are the issue. If they'd leave the interest rate alone things would stabilize. (Though not necessarily for the better. I'm not saying they shouldn't meddle, just that they do and as a result that they bear some responsibility to help those hurt by the meddling.) If they'd open the borders to people when they opened them to goods eventually things would settle out. It's the opening of the border to sweat-shop goods without opening the border to sweat-shop employees that creates the artificial wage boundaries.
As for the opportunity to make a living for yourself, that's a nice idea. But if you call what a kid from the projects gets, "an opportunity", then you yourself likely got a golden step ladder and a hand up. Some people do squander their chances, other people are fighting to get to where you started.
You mean their system of ruthless dictators killing tens of millions of people for imagined political offenses? You mean keeping everything for the upper classes so that the people would starve, regardless of what economic system the country was supposedly using?
There's nothing that says a communism or socialism can't be a democracy and support basic human rights. Until we see one that is, I submit that we don't have any evidence that either of these systems will fail. After all, there have been capitalism dictatorships that have failed, these weren't the fault of capitalism.
Of course, you could say that it's not capitalism if the government exerts any pressure like that, and thus we've never seen a capitalism fail. I'd say then that we've never even seen a pure capitalism.
In Ayn Rand novels the heros create something. She doesn't have Ken Lay and companies like Enron and Worldcom which steal from the workers. In her books the heroes actually invent something worthwhile, they don't just inherit from their parents.
Further, I don't think that's even a large minority of the open source movement, that wants everything given to them. I also don't think you avoid that in any group. I know right-wing (financially) people who support trade regulations (or the relaxation of the same) because it benefits them. They happen to be in oil (or whatever) and they're lobbying to hurt electric cars (for example) because they want more money for less work. They want people to be forced to buy their product. Essentially, they want a hand-out. I've seen hard-core libertarians ranting about how we should have to pay for our air so that the lazy poor don't use all the oxygen, without stopping to think that they've never worked a day in their life, that it was their parents who earned the money that let them sit around lecturing everyone about fiscal responsibility.
There's someone in every group who wants an unfair advantage to give them money.
There are many valid arguments for social responsibility, even simply the enlightened self interest in "A rising tide floats all boats." By bringing your god into it and effectively saying, "I act kindly because I was told to," you're saying you can't think of a rational reason. That you're only kept in check by hellfire and damnation as a punishment. I on the other hand, would like to think that I'd make a good neighbor because I, without being forced, want to be a good neighbor.
Yes, I'm aware I look intolerant, but at least I'm willing to tell you what nobody else will. If you bring up religion you appear uneducated. You make people classify you with creationists and other freaks.
The wealth that's in your family because they rode west faster and fenced off thousands of square miles of land, despite working no harder than anyone else.
The wealth that your daddy handed you because he abused patent laws, putting my family out of business.
The wealth you've got because you screwed your employees (think Enron) and the government lets you keep because of our pathicly law white-collar-crime laws.
That's the wealth I'd say we redistribute. Until we can provide everyone with a basic start, I don't think we can say society is fair. Until we can say society is fair, I don't see why I should favor you (the entrenched rich) versus someone who wants to write a law that makes money flow the other way.
If we're both given an equal start and you do better than me, you deserve it. If I'm suffering the burden of being born in the projects, largely because unjust laws put my parents there, and I don't do as well as you, pardon me if I don't think you "earned" the difference.
I don't mind creating wealth for everyone. In fact, as long as it doesn't hurt my ability to provide for myself, I'd rather create a better world for others while I'm at it.
Must look out for #1 though, if you starve "helping others", you're not going to be much help.
Would things really be better if we shuffled all the bastards from one level of government to another? Personally, I prefer larger (territoriality wise) government to local government. You're less likely to find out that having long hair is a morality violation and some hick town cop is throwing you in jail for it. Also, consistent laws are better for business.
Not much of a line. Any policy, other than perhaps sunscreen purchasing, based on skin color is racist; discriminating based on the basis of race. If Mexicans can have a racially pure culture, so can the KKK. You can't have it both ways.
Not really. The poor just to the North in Canada are treated better. Digital cameras are about the same cost there even.
Many Western European countries treat everyone quite well, despite being so socialist as to make your head spin.
Talk about how capitalism is the only system that creates anything, or makes anything efficient, is bunk. The engineers working in most capitalist countries make a comfortable but not outstanding wage, it's the managers who are in the position to siphon off the money and get rich. Put those same engineers in a communist country (a real one, not a dictatorship like the USSR) and they'd have just as much incentive to create. Most creative types aren't driven by the idea of getting rich, they're driven by working in their field and as long as they get a comfortable living they're happy.
I know I'd work just as hard if I was in a communist country and my "paycheck" was the same as everyone elses, as long as it was run at least as well as my existing government.
A communist government whose goal was to create as much surplus as possible and put it in the hands of the people would be much like a capitalist government, except without the monetary extremes. Anyone willing to participate in society would be cared for and nobody would get fantastically rich.
By that logic, if my credit card debt requires me to rob 7-11s to pay it, it requires something illegal and I can't be bound by it.
What the GPL says and the courts would uphold (it's just plain obvious) is that if you can't uphold your obligations under one license (the GPL) because of an existing one (don't release proprietary code), that you can't enter into the second contract. If you use GPLed code it's without the permission of the GPL, plain copyright violation.
If the source code belonged to Linksys, linking it to the GPLed code wouldn't even force their code to be release under the GPL. What it would do is put them into the position of having violated the copyright of the GPLed code for commercial purposes, something they could get out of by releasing their code and saying "Oops". Or, they could handle it like any other company caught distributing a competitors product would. (ie, countersue for emotional pain and suffering.)
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I should change that to: "If you can express your idea concisely enough for it to get stolen, it's not enough to base a business on."
Some ideas, like how to run gigabit networking over 1-pair telephone cable, might be enough to support a business. Some, like being an auction-house *online* aren't. That's not to say it's not a valid business idea, but that there's nothing amazing about it. It's like saying you want to start a general store, or a real-world auction house. Not a bad idea, we always need stores, but it's not going to revolutionize the business world. You can probably tell someone you're going to open a store without being "scooped".
So tell them "We're planning to offer just-in-time inventory systems to small companies". There isn't anything secret in that, it's all going to be on your sales material. Don't tell them "we're using a combination of X, Y, and Z with this new technique".
If your idea is simple enough that another company, without your source code and hardware, can implement it so easily that the VC can trivially get them to do it, it's a pretty crappy idea.
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If you can express your whole "special" idea in a concise enough way that someone who hears it can "steal" it, your idea wasn't worth anything.
Fedex "delivers packages around the world in one day", Starbucks "sells 'gourmet' coffee", and Amazon "sells books on the internet". That's all pretty trivial stuff and, on paper, easily copied.
But how can Fedex do it? Their hub system and computerized inventory system are key to the idea but aren't obvious from simply hearing "Deliver packages". And selling books online is easy but building a community of people to review all the material and offering referral bonuses aren't obvious from hearing about the idea yet are crucial to the company's success.
If your idea is simpler than that, and thus more easily copied, it's probably not an idea to base a business on, it's probably a sideline for an existing business with the resources to exploit it quickly. A product idea, not a business idea.
Summary: "Selling Ice to Desert Nomads" isn't intellectual property, it's not a business idea.
Try the WD 10k RPM IDE drives, supposedly they're SCSI speed for like half the price.
Make sure you don't make mistakes with your drives like putting anything on the same IDE controller as your OS drive, make sure you use an 80-pin IDE cable, and that the drive is using UDMA5. IDE can be fast, but it's easy to screw up.
If I put a sign on my car saying "Private car, do not steal - Renting via these terms..." it doesn't need to be tested in court. If you don't agree with the rental terms you can't just take the car. The GPL is pretty much that clear. If you don't agree with it you can't take advantage of the offer it makes (rental for example) and thus you're left with the same situation as if the GPL/Sign did not exist - no rights at all.
The "weakness" of the GPL is that the courts may decide that some of what the GPL calls derivative works are not. But this would be a major change in copyright law, contrary to the way the law is moving, and it would apply both ways - allowing "us" to use more of other copyrighted works without infringing.
That money would be spent elsewhere, employing people who weren't parasites.
Most people I know spend 100% of the available money, perhaps after RRSPs and such, but they certainly don't end up with $10 extra at the end of the year because they didn't see a movie, it'll go to letting them do something else or buy something else.
Ditto with telemarketing. People will spend their money on something else, and someone who isn't a telemarketer will be providing the service or making the product.
The things provided by telemarketers are pretty much all shit. Obvious if you think that if it didn't suck people would want to buy it and stores, that exist to sell people things that they want, would carry these things. So people could be spending money on other things, and these other things are pretty much guaranteed to be no worse than telemarketed products and very likely much higher in quality and overall usefulness to the economy. By not spending $50 on some lame collectible plate and spending it on a set of knives at WalMart, you've at least traded your $50 for a useful product. They'll have some resale value and they serve a purpose. The plates are trash and worthless, the knives have value.
Sure, the wages of the people who make and sell this telemarketed trash will likely go to real products, so the $50 isn't completely gone, but a lot of it is, spent on a low quality product that nobody would want even if it didn't suck.
If the telemarketers themselves can't get a job doing something useful, helping you spend that $50 in a productive fashion, then I'd say you should let them starve. They're just parasites.
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To protect "culture". Yeah.
If it was simply limited the number of immigrants that'd be one thing, but it's to protect their culture. That's a code word for "people who do things like us". Not "speak the language", not "won't go on welfare".
But sure, you go with your idea. It works for you.
Re: references to interest rate manipulation.
:)
Not really, as for the creation of jobs. It is quite complex and if you ask economists one says you create jobs by lowering it and the other by raising it. But, that said, lowering the interest rate increases spending, both by consumers and by businesses, this moves products which creates jobs. It *seems* pretty simple, though I'm sure if you lower it too far there's some rebound that does the opposite.
Re: Golden step ladder.
My point was one along the lines of "it can always be worse". You pulled yourself up from minimal education and a lack of money, someone else pulls himself up from the same thing but in a wheelchair, or such. I haven't had anything (past the age of 18) handed to me as such, but I know I've got it better than many, and often for reasons that aren't physically obvious. As such, I try not to say that it's laziness that keeps people down. That's part of it for sure, but it seems too simple to be the whole answer.
But, I certainly know what you mean about the rich kids. Getting a $100k car as a gift for pulling in solid Bs while you work your ass off. The same kids who get a job at Dad's factory pulling in a huge wage, and they whine about how tough things are. (Remind me to smack the next guy who complains about the cost of parts for his beemer.
The GPL doesn't need testing any more than me saying "If you don't buy it, don't take it" needs testing. It's fully supported by current law. If they don't want to license it, they can't use it.
If they don't own the code though, we wouldn't get it. The judge isn't going to force them to break one law to right the damages from breaking another law. If they do own it, we'd only get it if we threatened (and looked like we could get) huge damages.
What needs testing isn't the theory behind the GPL, but if we can find the money to enforce it. But, even if we pick and choose our battles, the claim doesn't get weaker thankfully, unlike trademark protection.
There's not much of a line between saying "furiners out" and "dark skinned people out". If, by definition, nobody of your race is a foreigner, you're kicking out everyone of another race.
This seems to me to be a case where "reverse" racism is good. In other words, if it's done by a rich white man, it's bad. If it's done by one of the victims of rich white men, (ie. anyone else) it's good. Insert the KKK, or Israel, and ask yourself how you'd view this.
Basic capitalism doesn't see me as anything other than a wealth producer and there aren't *any* political systems where I'm anything other than subservient to the system.
I think the USSR would have failed, regardless of which system it pretended to use, and that a country will free happy people could do well with socialism. I know that the more socialist the country, the happier it tends to be, for Western Europeon countries and Canada/US.
Someone asked how many people the Earth could sustain, you mentioned six billion people, Texas, and Tokyo. To me, the answer said "Tokyo is an example of how it can sustain more than (whatever number, evenly distributed, would make Texas have six billion)."
But yes, the question isn't how much land I need to build living quarters on, it's how much land I need to provide everything I require, house, food, electricity, etc.
Jobs and Wozniak worked very hard to create the Apple 2, neither anticipating a hudnredth the success that Apple enjoyed, even in the early days.
Further, when Apple did get big, who got rich? Wozniak, or Jobs (and other management)? If money was the only reason that people create, would anyone who watched this ever work as an engineer? Time and time again, management comes along and takes 95% of the money in trade for very little real work.
At least in a communism, management wouldn't get paid more than the techs.
In a communism, Enron wouldn't have happened. Worldcom wouldn't have happened.
Besides, there are many valid half-way steps between pure capitalism and pure communism. My point isn't that communism is better, just that it's not all bad. And that it's not at all related to Russia, despite Russia's lip service to communism.
What the government can do is stop playing with the interest rate in favor of entrenched business. Let the market decide the interest rate and if that warrants loans for new investment, let it happen.
Protectionist policies are also often a positive way to create work. If you look for a suitably horrid place, you can find people willing to do any job for pennies. If you export your jobs there you give money to the people doing the exporting, but at the cost of your people who had those jobs. Often, especially if done in an uncontrolled manner, this hurts more than the cheap goods help.
It's the ways government exerts *some* control that are the issue. If they'd leave the interest rate alone things would stabilize. (Though not necessarily for the better. I'm not saying they shouldn't meddle, just that they do and as a result that they bear some responsibility to help those hurt by the meddling.) If they'd open the borders to people when they opened them to goods eventually things would settle out. It's the opening of the border to sweat-shop goods without opening the border to sweat-shop employees that creates the artificial wage boundaries.
As for the opportunity to make a living for yourself, that's a nice idea. But if you call what a kid from the projects gets, "an opportunity", then you yourself likely got a golden step ladder and a hand up. Some people do squander their chances, other people are fighting to get to where you started.
You mean their system of ruthless dictators killing tens of millions of people for imagined political offenses? You mean keeping everything for the upper classes so that the people would starve, regardless of what economic system the country was supposedly using?
There's nothing that says a communism or socialism can't be a democracy and support basic human rights. Until we see one that is, I submit that we don't have any evidence that either of these systems will fail. After all, there have been capitalism dictatorships that have failed, these weren't the fault of capitalism.
Of course, you could say that it's not capitalism if the government exerts any pressure like that, and thus we've never seen a capitalism fail. I'd say then that we've never even seen a pure capitalism.
In Ayn Rand novels the heros create something. She doesn't have Ken Lay and companies like Enron and Worldcom which steal from the workers. In her books the heroes actually invent something worthwhile, they don't just inherit from their parents.
Further, I don't think that's even a large minority of the open source movement, that wants everything given to them. I also don't think you avoid that in any group. I know right-wing (financially) people who support trade regulations (or the relaxation of the same) because it benefits them. They happen to be in oil (or whatever) and they're lobbying to hurt electric cars (for example) because they want more money for less work. They want people to be forced to buy their product. Essentially, they want a hand-out. I've seen hard-core libertarians ranting about how we should have to pay for our air so that the lazy poor don't use all the oxygen, without stopping to think that they've never worked a day in their life, that it was their parents who earned the money that let them sit around lecturing everyone about fiscal responsibility.
There's someone in every group who wants an unfair advantage to give them money.
Way to completely lose all credibility.
There are many valid arguments for social responsibility, even simply the enlightened self interest in "A rising tide floats all boats." By bringing your god into it and effectively saying, "I act kindly because I was told to," you're saying you can't think of a rational reason. That you're only kept in check by hellfire and damnation as a punishment. I on the other hand, would like to think that I'd make a good neighbor because I, without being forced, want to be a good neighbor.
Yes, I'm aware I look intolerant, but at least I'm willing to tell you what nobody else will. If you bring up religion you appear uneducated. You make people classify you with creationists and other freaks.
The wealth that's in your family because they rode west faster and fenced off thousands of square miles of land, despite working no harder than anyone else.
The wealth that your daddy handed you because he abused patent laws, putting my family out of business.
The wealth you've got because you screwed your employees (think Enron) and the government lets you keep because of our pathicly law white-collar-crime laws.
That's the wealth I'd say we redistribute. Until we can provide everyone with a basic start, I don't think we can say society is fair. Until we can say society is fair, I don't see why I should favor you (the entrenched rich) versus someone who wants to write a law that makes money flow the other way.
If we're both given an equal start and you do better than me, you deserve it. If I'm suffering the burden of being born in the projects, largely because unjust laws put my parents there, and I don't do as well as you, pardon me if I don't think you "earned" the difference.
I don't mind creating wealth for everyone. In fact, as long as it doesn't hurt my ability to provide for myself, I'd rather create a better world for others while I'm at it.
Must look out for #1 though, if you starve "helping others", you're not going to be much help.
Would things really be better if we shuffled all the bastards from one level of government to another? Personally, I prefer larger (territoriality wise) government to local government. You're less likely to find out that having long hair is a morality violation and some hick town cop is throwing you in jail for it. Also, consistent laws are better for business.
Not much of a line. Any policy, other than perhaps sunscreen purchasing, based on skin color is racist; discriminating based on the basis of race. If Mexicans can have a racially pure culture, so can the KKK. You can't have it both ways.
Tokyo isn't self sustaining. Even ignoring raw materials and heavy industry, it needs food which isn't being produced locally.
How much land does someone need, with high-tech farming methods, and considering all of their secondary needs.
Not really. The poor just to the North in Canada are treated better. Digital cameras are about the same cost there even.
Many Western European countries treat everyone quite well, despite being so socialist as to make your head spin.
Talk about how capitalism is the only system that creates anything, or makes anything efficient, is bunk. The engineers working in most capitalist countries make a comfortable but not outstanding wage, it's the managers who are in the position to siphon off the money and get rich. Put those same engineers in a communist country (a real one, not a dictatorship like the USSR) and they'd have just as much incentive to create. Most creative types aren't driven by the idea of getting rich, they're driven by working in their field and as long as they get a comfortable living they're happy.
I know I'd work just as hard if I was in a communist country and my "paycheck" was the same as everyone elses, as long as it was run at least as well as my existing government.
A communist government whose goal was to create as much surplus as possible and put it in the hands of the people would be much like a capitalist government, except without the monetary extremes. Anyone willing to participate in society would be cared for and nobody would get fantastically rich.
By that logic, if my credit card debt requires me to rob 7-11s to pay it, it requires something illegal and I can't be bound by it.
What the GPL says and the courts would uphold (it's just plain obvious) is that if you can't uphold your obligations under one license (the GPL) because of an existing one (don't release proprietary code), that you can't enter into the second contract. If you use GPLed code it's without the permission of the GPL, plain copyright violation.
If the source code belonged to Linksys, linking it to the GPLed code wouldn't even force their code to be release under the GPL. What it would do is put them into the position of having violated the copyright of the GPLed code for commercial purposes, something they could get out of by releasing their code and saying "Oops". Or, they could handle it like any other company caught distributing a competitors product would. (ie, countersue for emotional pain and suffering.)
I should change that to: "If you can express your idea concisely enough for it to get stolen, it's not enough to base a business on."
Some ideas, like how to run gigabit networking over 1-pair telephone cable, might be enough to support a business. Some, like being an auction-house *online* aren't. That's not to say it's not a valid business idea, but that there's nothing amazing about it. It's like saying you want to start a general store, or a real-world auction house. Not a bad idea, we always need stores, but it's not going to revolutionize the business world. You can probably tell someone you're going to open a store without being "scooped".
So tell them "We're planning to offer just-in-time inventory systems to small companies". There isn't anything secret in that, it's all going to be on your sales material. Don't tell them "we're using a combination of X, Y, and Z with this new technique".
If your idea is simple enough that another company, without your source code and hardware, can implement it so easily that the VC can trivially get them to do it, it's a pretty crappy idea.
If you can express your whole "special" idea in a concise enough way that someone who hears it can "steal" it, your idea wasn't worth anything.
Fedex "delivers packages around the world in one day", Starbucks "sells 'gourmet' coffee", and Amazon "sells books on the internet". That's all pretty trivial stuff and, on paper, easily copied.
But how can Fedex do it? Their hub system and computerized inventory system are key to the idea but aren't obvious from simply hearing "Deliver packages". And selling books online is easy but building a community of people to review all the material and offering referral bonuses aren't obvious from hearing about the idea yet are crucial to the company's success.
If your idea is simpler than that, and thus more easily copied, it's probably not an idea to base a business on, it's probably a sideline for an existing business with the resources to exploit it quickly. A product idea, not a business idea.
Summary: "Selling Ice to Desert Nomads" isn't intellectual property, it's not a business idea.
Try the WD 10k RPM IDE drives, supposedly they're SCSI speed for like half the price.
Make sure you don't make mistakes with your drives like putting anything on the same IDE controller as your OS drive, make sure you use an 80-pin IDE cable, and that the drive is using UDMA5. IDE can be fast, but it's easy to screw up.
Do the XP 2500+ chips overclock well? I've got one...
If I put a sign on my car saying "Private car, do not steal - Renting via these terms..." it doesn't need to be tested in court. If you don't agree with the rental terms you can't just take the car. The GPL is pretty much that clear. If you don't agree with it you can't take advantage of the offer it makes (rental for example) and thus you're left with the same situation as if the GPL/Sign did not exist - no rights at all.
The "weakness" of the GPL is that the courts may decide that some of what the GPL calls derivative works are not. But this would be a major change in copyright law, contrary to the way the law is moving, and it would apply both ways - allowing "us" to use more of other copyrighted works without infringing.
That money would be spent elsewhere, employing people who weren't parasites.
Most people I know spend 100% of the available money, perhaps after RRSPs and such, but they certainly don't end up with $10 extra at the end of the year because they didn't see a movie, it'll go to letting them do something else or buy something else.
Ditto with telemarketing. People will spend their money on something else, and someone who isn't a telemarketer will be providing the service or making the product.
The things provided by telemarketers are pretty much all shit. Obvious if you think that if it didn't suck people would want to buy it and stores, that exist to sell people things that they want, would carry these things. So people could be spending money on other things, and these other things are pretty much guaranteed to be no worse than telemarketed products and very likely much higher in quality and overall usefulness to the economy. By not spending $50 on some lame collectible plate and spending it on a set of knives at WalMart, you've at least traded your $50 for a useful product. They'll have some resale value and they serve a purpose. The plates are trash and worthless, the knives have value.
Sure, the wages of the people who make and sell this telemarketed trash will likely go to real products, so the $50 isn't completely gone, but a lot of it is, spent on a low quality product that nobody would want even if it didn't suck.
If the telemarketers themselves can't get a job doing something useful, helping you spend that $50 in a productive fashion, then I'd say you should let them starve. They're just parasites.