Literally give the source code and rights to continue development to anyone and everyone.
A new project will pick it up and continue development without breaking the law. And at that point its unlikely the NSA will be able to do anything to it.
That's fine. I understand your position. You believe you have a right to steal.
Understood.
I disagree. I don't think stealing is permissible and that property rights are important for a healthy society and economy.
You again will disagree with that... and think various things like people that don't get paid somehow keep making things for people that don't pay them.
And that's fine. Its unforgivably stupid... but you have a right to believe unforgivably stupid things.
You do not however have a right to not be judged for that... And I've obviously judged you to be a moron.
You doubtless have your own judgments of me... but since I've judged you a moron, I don't much care what those are obviously.
Just as many companies have done when interfered with by the government... you should terminate services that the government presumes to control that they have no right to control.
It is your bundling of services that apparently allows them to do this... were the students contracting with ATT or Verizon or whatever for their ISP service they would be treated as normal users and not subjected to additional restrictions on their network access. It is only because you provide these services that this has been allowed to happen.
The ethical thing in this situation is to stop providing those services. Inform all representative government officials responsible for areas you operate in that government law has forced this response. And then help your tenants get internet service separately.
It is not acceptable that your users be subjected to this level of control whether or not it is by court order. Utterly unacceptable.
So you think that if an inventor invents something you have a right to steal their invention and use it at will because they have no right to own things they create?
I'm sorry but this isn't a strawman. You are asserting ownership over things other people created.
The cable companies and the common carrier telephone companies are afforded regional monopolies on the rational that it would be unseemly or untidy to have 20 phone companies all running cable through the same neighborhood.
And because of that idiocy, we have ONE company in each area with total control and no competition.
You're saying you have a right to steal what other people produce and you think that people will keep producing things even if everything they produce is stolen.
This is pretty much why third world countries stay third world countries.
One of the bigger problems in desperately poor countries is that they're almost all hopelessly corrupt. You apparently would be surprised to know that the poverty is actually a consequence of the corruption... not the other way around.
You see, when there is really no rule of law and no real property rights, there is a disincentive to improve things or produce things because they'll be stolen.
lets say you have a small farm. And lets say there are a lot of rocks in the field. If you go around and pull all the rocks out of the field, the farm will be more productive and more valuable. Obviously you should do that right? Well, what if you do that and then someone says "hey, nice farm... it's mine now." Well, then it doesn't make sense to take the rocks out of the field. In fact, not only should not you take the rocks out of the field but you should go out of your way to produce no more then you absolutely need to survive. Any sign of wealth or success will draw in predators that will steal what you have.
And this is why bread basket countries in africa that could feed the entire continent of africa starve. You see it happening all the time. Literally a guy improves his farm... man comes from the city... says "nice farm"... and then says if the farmer doesn't "sell the farm for "nothing" men will come with guns and kill his family.
Everyone in the area hears this story. And the lesson is learned.
You want to steal everything someone makes? Fine. Then the people that make things can't make a living making things for you. Which means they won't. Which means you'll get a tiny fraction of what you're getting now.
Long story short... People need to be paid for their work. Saying that people don't need to be paid is idiotic.
Neither article actually addressed the issue or justified the use of a swat team showing up at the factory and confiscating the material at gun point.
As to settling the case, the entire thing was a vast abuse of power and given that the executive lately hasn't been responsive to either judicial or legislative oversight, it isn't uncommon for people to just settle and run away from what is turning out to be one of the least accountable administrations in US history.
As to which political factions gin up opposition to this behavior... it really doesn't matter... and citing well known partisan supporters of that same administration really does very little to back up your position especially when those articles are more in the way of editorials... that is opinions... rather then actual articles that cite real information.
Its the same as a copyright in most cases. If I write a book or a song or paint a picture... and you wish to read it, listen to it, view it... then you must abide by my terms.
The patient is supposed to work in much the same way.
Here you'll tell me what about someone that came up with the same invention independently and now their work is rendered meaningless simply because some guy got to the patient office 2 seconds earlier.
That is an issue... and I'd be open to discussing resolutions to that. However, if you came up with the same invention a year later or two years later then its much more likely for me to conclude that you just copied his work and are now fraudulently claiming to have come up with it yourself.
In any case... inventors must be paid. You seem to think you have a right to steal or believe that the system will still work if people don't get paid. This is obviously moronic.
Do you want to defend a moronic position or do you want to clarify it so it isn't so painfully dumb?
They told you in the article... transport costs mostly were killing them.
Given that the transport from asia is if anything farther they're referring to the transport costs of parts etc that have to be imported or transported from other parts of the country. This specific type of thing is actually rather expensive in the US. Several other factory operators in the US have cited this as a problem. Especially small operators that can't handle the transport entirely with their own employees.
We'd then have to look at why transport is so much more expensive in the US.
Possible costs include the cost of the driver, the cost of the trucks, the cost of maintenance, the cost of fuel, insurance on the truck, insurance on the driver, insurance on the cargo, and then whatever taxes and fees exist on top of that both state and federal.
I have no break down on the difference but apparently the difference in cost from this one source is prohibitive on US manufacture itself.
Given that the US does manufacture many things internally still we'd have to look at what is different between the two.
I'd assume in this case the central issue is that much of the hardware while assembled in the US is actually still made in Asia. As a result that increases the length of the supply chain. I have no evidence for this but it seems like a reasonable assumption.
In the case of the cell phone maker and many similar industries that are being moved from asia, I think you'll find that they're not totally moved and that there are additional costs due to either limited US supplies or a longer supply chain from asia.
Its important to remember that business is complicated because every business is different. What is more, the tax and regulation codes are also extremely complicated and when one complicated thing interacts with another complicated thing you tend to get a multiplying of diversity.
Setting a maximum tax that included ALL fees, duties, etc as a percentage of profit would help with this because it would ensure that companies could pay all owed taxes and fees and yet not go broke in the process.
Yeah... I'd be happier if they just released the source code for the site so that everyone used the same format. Demonoid had the best organization for files... no one has gotten close to it.
Gibson for example was paying a fee for wood harvested in the US.
They eventually decided they couldn't keep paying for it so they shifted to imported wood from india.
Where upon the FBI raided their factory and repossessed the imported wood citing an old import law from the 1920s that they weren't even in violation of in the first place.
You'll find this in every single industry. There are literally thousands of regulations and fees.
Its not the wages... its the regulations, the taxes, the insurance, etc.
The manufacturing companies can operate just fine in the US paying US wages... its the other stuff that is intolerable.
And no, I'm not talking about income tax on business since that's obviously about nothing when all is said and done. No, the issue is the fees.
The companies get nickle and dimed for stuff that adds up to a big percentage of their total operating costs. Some heavy industries in the US pay more in these fees every year then they do in wages and employee insurance COMBINED.
the whole thing needs to be rationalized and then limited to some maximum percentage that is tolerable.
Most of what you're talking about relates to the US patent office being run badly... not to the idea of patents themselves.
Will I agree that a US federal bureau is being run by halfwits?
Yes. That would hardly be the only portion of the US government run by incompetents.
However, incompetent government officials does not mean that we should make murder legal or negate property rights or negate the first amendment or otherwise radically alter US law simply because the current people put in charge of given services are not doing their job properly.
Now I don't know why they're having such a hard time. They'll likely say they need more money and to hire more people. I think that's probably valid... however, at the same time I question whether the current people there should remain employed by that department or any other at this point. Certainly there are a lot of them that I wouldn't trust in anything but the most literal job... and anything that literal could be automated by literal robots.
The patients are a contract between the inventor and society. A contract that is agreed to individually when you use the invention in return for that access.
If as an inventor you choose not to patient something you can do that. We have many forms of licensing that give people free use of inventions without compensation so long as they cite the inventor's name if the invention is used in a larger work. We also have patients that give people free use of the invention so long as it is not used in any commercial pursuit but does have a fee if a company wishes to make use of it. etc etc etc.
If as an inventor you choose to patient something then society agrees to abide by that patient for a specified number of years in exchange for gaining access to that invention.
If you support contractual law, then you support patients.
End of argument?
Will you now contradict yourself or accept the patient system at least in principle?
I am not defending the currently incarnation of the patient system. We all know it has problems and those problems should be fixed if only to avoid further insurrections against the system.
However, inventors have a right to be compensated for their work. Patients give them that compensation.
Your notion that people will work without being paid is again... unforgivably naive.
If that were true then we'd only protect animals that have a role in the ecosystem. Many are so irrelevant to the ecosystem as to be unworthy of protection by this logic.
The california ferry shrimp for example is impossible to justify for protection under this logic.
The environmental protection people were shutting down construction sites because there were tire ruts that contained water and that water MIGHT contain ferry shrimp.
Justify that on ecological preservation terms.
It is obviously impossible.
Look, part of the problem here is that there are bad actors on both sides of this issue that make people distrust each other.
On the one hand you have companies and individuals that act irresponsibly and damage the ecosystem for their own greed and profit.
On the other hand you have lobbying groups, advocacy groups, rogue governmental agencies, and various nuts that pervert or exceed environmental rules out of a misguided sense that they're protecting the environment when really they're undermining the credibility of the protection agencies.
The EPA for example should not be a controversial organization. And yet it is very much so because they do things like try to force a guy in Montana to drain his duck pond.
The california ferry shrimp point is something I personally experienced because the EPA was giving my family a hard time when we were trying to build a warehouse on a bit of industrial property. Appreciate, this was land that had been used for warehouses for generations. We tore down the old warehouse and were trying to build a new one top of the same location.
The EPA said there might be ferry shrimp living in the water that had filled tire ruts on the construction site.
I kid you not.
So I'm a little dubious of this sort of thing and you would be as well if you had seen that as well.
My point is that neither side is entirely composed of rational or moral or ethical people. There are bad actors on BOTH sides and you must remain skeptical to avoid being suckered.
to the contrary, yours is impossible to prove. I base my case on historical record which is a matter of fact. Your argument is that this time it will be different and that what happened last time won't happen again.
You can't prove that.
So... now that your own silly rebuttal has been blown back in your face, will you accept the consequences and admit you have no case? Or are you allowed to have no case while everyone else is expected to have one?
I do have one by the way... history, remember... so where is yours?
In practice that doesn't happen because people don't invest the time to invent new things if they know their ideas will be stolen from them and used by their competitors against them.
Not at all. Keeping it secret often means literally keeping it secret... as in telling no one and doing nothing with it that would reveal the secret.
That keeps it secret but you don't make much money on it.
Savvy? This is how companies kept secrets. They would use the technology in house or with trusted customers... but the general public would get no access to it.
Again, this was at one point standard. I'm not debating this with you... you're arguing against historical fact.
Don't waste my time arguing against reality. It merely annoys people that know better.
Slashdot Mirror
Literally give the source code and rights to continue development to anyone and everyone.
A new project will pick it up and continue development without breaking the law. And at that point its unlikely the NSA will be able to do anything to it.
That's fine. I understand your position. You believe you have a right to steal.
Understood.
I disagree. I don't think stealing is permissible and that property rights are important for a healthy society and economy.
You again will disagree with that... and think various things like people that don't get paid somehow keep making things for people that don't pay them.
And that's fine. Its unforgivably stupid... but you have a right to believe unforgivably stupid things.
You do not however have a right to not be judged for that... And I've obviously judged you to be a moron.
You doubtless have your own judgments of me... but since I've judged you a moron, I don't much care what those are obviously.
Good day, sir.
Just as many companies have done when interfered with by the government... you should terminate services that the government presumes to control that they have no right to control.
It is your bundling of services that apparently allows them to do this... were the students contracting with ATT or Verizon or whatever for their ISP service they would be treated as normal users and not subjected to additional restrictions on their network access. It is only because you provide these services that this has been allowed to happen.
The ethical thing in this situation is to stop providing those services. Inform all representative government officials responsible for areas you operate in that government law has forced this response. And then help your tenants get internet service separately.
It is not acceptable that your users be subjected to this level of control whether or not it is by court order. Utterly unacceptable.
So you think that if an inventor invents something you have a right to steal their invention and use it at will because they have no right to own things they create?
I'm sorry but this isn't a strawman. You are asserting ownership over things other people created.
The cable companies and the common carrier telephone companies are afforded regional monopolies on the rational that it would be unseemly or untidy to have 20 phone companies all running cable through the same neighborhood.
And because of that idiocy, we have ONE company in each area with total control and no competition.
So in your opinion, inventors do not deserve to be compensated for their contributions to society.
This means you're either immoral... believing in theft... or stupid thinking you're not advocating stealing.
Its one of the two.
Flip a coin.
We're done here.
Yes, strawmen are fun aren't they...
Now tell me why you keep supporting child slavery and sex with farm animals?
You're saying you have a right to steal what other people produce and you think that people will keep producing things even if everything they produce is stolen.
This is pretty much why third world countries stay third world countries.
One of the bigger problems in desperately poor countries is that they're almost all hopelessly corrupt. You apparently would be surprised to know that the poverty is actually a consequence of the corruption... not the other way around.
You see, when there is really no rule of law and no real property rights, there is a disincentive to improve things or produce things because they'll be stolen.
lets say you have a small farm. And lets say there are a lot of rocks in the field. If you go around and pull all the rocks out of the field, the farm will be more productive and more valuable. Obviously you should do that right? Well, what if you do that and then someone says "hey, nice farm... it's mine now." Well, then it doesn't make sense to take the rocks out of the field. In fact, not only should not you take the rocks out of the field but you should go out of your way to produce no more then you absolutely need to survive. Any sign of wealth or success will draw in predators that will steal what you have.
And this is why bread basket countries in africa that could feed the entire continent of africa starve. You see it happening all the time. Literally a guy improves his farm... man comes from the city... says "nice farm"... and then says if the farmer doesn't "sell the farm for "nothing" men will come with guns and kill his family.
Everyone in the area hears this story. And the lesson is learned.
You want to steal everything someone makes? Fine. Then the people that make things can't make a living making things for you. Which means they won't. Which means you'll get a tiny fraction of what you're getting now.
Long story short... People need to be paid for their work. Saying that people don't need to be paid is idiotic.
Neither article actually addressed the issue or justified the use of a swat team showing up at the factory and confiscating the material at gun point.
As to settling the case, the entire thing was a vast abuse of power and given that the executive lately hasn't been responsive to either judicial or legislative oversight, it isn't uncommon for people to just settle and run away from what is turning out to be one of the least accountable administrations in US history.
As to which political factions gin up opposition to this behavior... it really doesn't matter... and citing well known partisan supporters of that same administration really does very little to back up your position especially when those articles are more in the way of editorials... that is opinions... rather then actual articles that cite real information.
Wrong.
Its the same as a copyright in most cases. If I write a book or a song or paint a picture... and you wish to read it, listen to it, view it... then you must abide by my terms.
The patient is supposed to work in much the same way.
Here you'll tell me what about someone that came up with the same invention independently and now their work is rendered meaningless simply because some guy got to the patient office 2 seconds earlier.
That is an issue... and I'd be open to discussing resolutions to that. However, if you came up with the same invention a year later or two years later then its much more likely for me to conclude that you just copied his work and are now fraudulently claiming to have come up with it yourself.
In any case... inventors must be paid. You seem to think you have a right to steal or believe that the system will still work if people don't get paid. This is obviously moronic.
Do you want to defend a moronic position or do you want to clarify it so it isn't so painfully dumb?
They told you in the article... transport costs mostly were killing them.
Given that the transport from asia is if anything farther they're referring to the transport costs of parts etc that have to be imported or transported from other parts of the country. This specific type of thing is actually rather expensive in the US. Several other factory operators in the US have cited this as a problem. Especially small operators that can't handle the transport entirely with their own employees.
We'd then have to look at why transport is so much more expensive in the US.
Possible costs include the cost of the driver, the cost of the trucks, the cost of maintenance, the cost of fuel, insurance on the truck, insurance on the driver, insurance on the cargo, and then whatever taxes and fees exist on top of that both state and federal.
I have no break down on the difference but apparently the difference in cost from this one source is prohibitive on US manufacture itself.
Given that the US does manufacture many things internally still we'd have to look at what is different between the two.
I'd assume in this case the central issue is that much of the hardware while assembled in the US is actually still made in Asia. As a result that increases the length of the supply chain. I have no evidence for this but it seems like a reasonable assumption.
In the case of the cell phone maker and many similar industries that are being moved from asia, I think you'll find that they're not totally moved and that there are additional costs due to either limited US supplies or a longer supply chain from asia.
Its important to remember that business is complicated because every business is different. What is more, the tax and regulation codes are also extremely complicated and when one complicated thing interacts with another complicated thing you tend to get a multiplying of diversity.
Setting a maximum tax that included ALL fees, duties, etc as a percentage of profit would help with this because it would ensure that companies could pay all owed taxes and fees and yet not go broke in the process.
Yeah... I'd be happier if they just released the source code for the site so that everyone used the same format. Demonoid had the best organization for files... no one has gotten close to it.
They're specific to every business.
Gibson for example was paying a fee for wood harvested in the US.
They eventually decided they couldn't keep paying for it so they shifted to imported wood from india.
Where upon the FBI raided their factory and repossessed the imported wood citing an old import law from the 1920s that they weren't even in violation of in the first place.
You'll find this in every single industry. There are literally thousands of regulations and fees.
Pick an industry and I'll cite ten.
Its not the wages... its the regulations, the taxes, the insurance, etc.
The manufacturing companies can operate just fine in the US paying US wages... its the other stuff that is intolerable.
And no, I'm not talking about income tax on business since that's obviously about nothing when all is said and done. No, the issue is the fees.
The companies get nickle and dimed for stuff that adds up to a big percentage of their total operating costs. Some heavy industries in the US pay more in these fees every year then they do in wages and employee insurance COMBINED.
the whole thing needs to be rationalized and then limited to some maximum percentage that is tolerable.
Most of what you're talking about relates to the US patent office being run badly... not to the idea of patents themselves.
Will I agree that a US federal bureau is being run by halfwits?
Yes. That would hardly be the only portion of the US government run by incompetents.
However, incompetent government officials does not mean that we should make murder legal or negate property rights or negate the first amendment or otherwise radically alter US law simply because the current people put in charge of given services are not doing their job properly.
Now I don't know why they're having such a hard time. They'll likely say they need more money and to hire more people. I think that's probably valid... however, at the same time I question whether the current people there should remain employed by that department or any other at this point. Certainly there are a lot of them that I wouldn't trust in anything but the most literal job... and anything that literal could be automated by literal robots.
The patients are a contract between the inventor and society. A contract that is agreed to individually when you use the invention in return for that access.
If as an inventor you choose not to patient something you can do that. We have many forms of licensing that give people free use of inventions without compensation so long as they cite the inventor's name if the invention is used in a larger work. We also have patients that give people free use of the invention so long as it is not used in any commercial pursuit but does have a fee if a company wishes to make use of it. etc etc etc.
If as an inventor you choose to patient something then society agrees to abide by that patient for a specified number of years in exchange for gaining access to that invention.
If you support contractual law, then you support patients.
End of argument?
Will you now contradict yourself or accept the patient system at least in principle?
I am not defending the currently incarnation of the patient system. We all know it has problems and those problems should be fixed if only to avoid further insurrections against the system.
However, inventors have a right to be compensated for their work. Patients give them that compensation.
Your notion that people will work without being paid is again... unforgivably naive.
if I invent things and you don't pay me but instead take my work and use it without compensating me at all then you expect me to work for free.
People need to be compensated for work.
This notion of everyone works for free and there are no negative consequences is unforgivably naive.
If that were true then we'd only protect animals that have a role in the ecosystem. Many are so irrelevant to the ecosystem as to be unworthy of protection by this logic.
The california ferry shrimp for example is impossible to justify for protection under this logic.
The environmental protection people were shutting down construction sites because there were tire ruts that contained water and that water MIGHT contain ferry shrimp.
Justify that on ecological preservation terms.
It is obviously impossible.
Look, part of the problem here is that there are bad actors on both sides of this issue that make people distrust each other.
On the one hand you have companies and individuals that act irresponsibly and damage the ecosystem for their own greed and profit.
On the other hand you have lobbying groups, advocacy groups, rogue governmental agencies, and various nuts that pervert or exceed environmental rules out of a misguided sense that they're protecting the environment when really they're undermining the credibility of the protection agencies.
The EPA for example should not be a controversial organization. And yet it is very much so because they do things like try to force a guy in Montana to drain his duck pond.
The california ferry shrimp point is something I personally experienced because the EPA was giving my family a hard time when we were trying to build a warehouse on a bit of industrial property. Appreciate, this was land that had been used for warehouses for generations. We tore down the old warehouse and were trying to build a new one top of the same location.
The EPA said there might be ferry shrimp living in the water that had filled tire ruts on the construction site.
I kid you not.
So I'm a little dubious of this sort of thing and you would be as well if you had seen that as well.
My point is that neither side is entirely composed of rational or moral or ethical people. There are bad actors on BOTH sides and you must remain skeptical to avoid being suckered.
... and copyright... these guys are trying to rent seek on the oddest things.
You are assuming that the only patients are fraudulent ones.
Consider if someone came up with something that wasn't just a bullshit patent.
That is what I'm talking about... not the stupid patients that shouldn't have been accepted in the first place but the real ones.
to the contrary, yours is impossible to prove. I base my case on historical record which is a matter of fact. Your argument is that this time it will be different and that what happened last time won't happen again.
You can't prove that.
So... now that your own silly rebuttal has been blown back in your face, will you accept the consequences and admit you have no case? Or are you allowed to have no case while everyone else is expected to have one?
I do have one by the way... history, remember... so where is yours?
*taps foot impatiently*
In practice that doesn't happen because people don't invest the time to invent new things if they know their ideas will be stolen from them and used by their competitors against them.
Not at all. Keeping it secret often means literally keeping it secret... as in telling no one and doing nothing with it that would reveal the secret.
That keeps it secret but you don't make much money on it.
Savvy? This is how companies kept secrets. They would use the technology in house or with trusted customers... but the general public would get no access to it.
Again, this was at one point standard. I'm not debating this with you... you're arguing against historical fact.
Don't waste my time arguing against reality. It merely annoys people that know better.
Your cynicism as regards the honesty of the legislature leaves us with what?
Are you advocating for dictatorship or would you like to walk that back a bit?