Maybe instead of fighting for the removal of the COPPA as unconstitutional, people should be arguing that it's unconstitutional to apply some of it's protections to just children. In other words, turn a bad thing into a good thing, and let any site that collects personal information on anyone without consent, regardless of age, be fined.
I dunno about you guys, but I'm tired of being discriminated against. Kids get everything, free meals, free toys, free shelter. Now they get free constitutional rights? I have to shell out thousands to my state Senator if I want a luxury like that. Enough is enough!
Should've added that the FCC has their own page on the act, which is more informative and less boring than reading the full text of the act itself. CJR's archives also have a 1997 article reviewing year one of the '96 act.
This is a copy of an old post I made that got buried. It goes well with the CJR information, if anyone is interested in doing some research on the subject:
SEC. 202. BROADCAST OWNERSHIP. (a) NATIONAL RADIO STATION OWNERSHIP RULE CHANGES REQUIRED- The Commission shall modify section 73.3555 of its regulations (47 C.F.R. 73.3555) by eliminating any provisions limiting the number of AM or FM broadcast stations which may be owned or controlled by one entity nationally.....
...(c) TELEVISION OWNERSHIP LIMITATIONS- (1) NATIONAL OWNERSHIP LIMITATIONS- The Commission shall modify its rules for multiple ownership set forth in section 73.3555 of its regulations (47 C.F.R. 73.3555)-- (A) by eliminating the restrictions on the number of television stations that a person or entity may directly or indirectly own, operate, or control, or have a cognizable interest in, nationwide...
Dear John Dvorak, I write this message in hopes that you will respond with the utmost urgency and direct me to a law enforcement facility where I may immediately turn myself in and have my remote control impounded. For years I have lived in ignorance; breaking the law by changing the channel when commercials appear on my television. I will cooperate in anyway that I can in order to bring myself to justice.
Obviously, it effects the perception of the business to other people. Again, consider a christian's beliefs and whether or not they would want to support a company that dealt in pornography. In the same way they wouldn't go to a store that had a porn section, or a resturaunt that sold pot (common in some countries), they wouldn't want a website they and their family had grown accustomed to, to dive into the sex business.
Granted, they might be extremists, they might be doing more damage to society than good, but their voice has to be heard and respected just as much as anyone else's. Hell, I'm not even christian -- I don't like the way Walmart decides what's morally acceptable when they control so much of what's available, if it were up to me TV would be uncensored after 10pm and parents would be expected to take responsibility for their child a few measely hours at night. It all seems logical, when you agree, but when you're one of 'god's children' it might seem perfectly logical to hate gays and burn playboy magazines.
I'm not saying whether Yahoo should've gone with it or not, the point is that everyone's voice gets heard and they were the ones who spoke up. Another aspect of your 'falling trees' quip might suggest that, by your logic, thousands of trees in a park could be cut down -- and if no environmentalists saw it, only knew it had happened, they would have no justifiable right to be angry.
By the way, I base that on my opinion that it would take more than a few religious fanatics to convince Yahoo to drop plans that would pull them out of the gutter. If that somehow isn't the case then maybe I'm wrong, but since christian groups are very organized online (like a hive-mind), my guess is that yahoo got tons of complaints and very few people did anything but.
Consider that in the same way people are supposedly pushing their morals on you by taking porn off Yahoo, you are pushing your beliefs on them by demanding it be there. Personally, I think it's common sense that banning porn completely is wrong -- I also think that having porn in every store is wrong. In the end the only thing that matters is the peoples' choice, and if it's such a travesty for democracy you might've considered emailing your support to Yahoo beforehand.
I don't get it, the people responding to argue seem a little hypocritical to me. Banning porn in the country, making it illegal -- that would be a reason for anger. I don't think Yahoo would've gone back on it if plenty of people hadn't said their piece, and I love the person who posted this for pointing out the importance of individuals over business. You can get porn in plenty of places, why is it so horrible that people who were active enough to voice their opinion won the day? Personally I do wish the country were a hundred times more open about sex, and I don't agree with equating porn to evil, but I think this is still an important thing (blatant self-promotion), as far as the power-struggle goes.
How about a commercial site, a retailer that can sell just about anything you need, only this retailer has a 'shitlist' of companies it won't deal with -- a lot like the list administrators (from the story) use to block domains that propagate spam. Think of the possibilites; thousands of members (slashdotter's too, right?) who only buy from this site and it's retailers (who are thoroughly researched by a quality assurance team.) The guidelines retailers must meet can be decided by what members see as important -- such as shoes that aren't made in a sweatshop. Say Intel is a retailer on the site -- they endorse CPRM, members get angry and vote to take their merchandise off the site. The more members, the bigger the boycott: the bigger the boycott, the more companies that are eager to respect your rights without being punished first.
One can hope, at least;)
Now let's see if this message is buried too deep to get seen.
The money should come either solely from the public, or yes, even from taxes. As it's been said, PBS is important to American citizens. Our taxes pay for this, when they should be paying for this. What could PBS do with $150,000,000,000 a year, I wonder? I can't tell you whether corporate sponsorship is an influence on PBS or not, but when it comes to MSNBC and other stations of that ilk, you'd have to be a fool to think it doesn't -- it most certainly does. And it will most certainly do the same, to PBS sooner or later, as it has before.
What news outlets do we even have left that aren't touched by some corporate influence? Not many, it seems. C-Span, I guess.
That's just a jim dandy idea! Also, don't you think that with all the money we save from not having to upgrade, we could buy beast-machines from alienware.com, and give them out to the less fortunate among our community? I've got a Pentium 2 300 MHz, 96 MB RAM, a SB PCI64, and a 12mb Voodoo 2, so I get by. I'm just saying, is all.
SEC. 202. BROADCAST OWNERSHIP.
(a) NATIONAL RADIO STATION OWNERSHIP RULE CHANGES REQUIRED- The Commission shall modify section 73.3555 of its regulations (47 C.F.R. 73.3555) by eliminating any provisions limiting the number of AM or FM broadcast stations which may be owned or controlled by one entity nationally.....
...(c) TELEVISION OWNERSHIP LIMITATIONS-
(1) NATIONAL OWNERSHIP LIMITATIONS- The Commission shall modify its rules for multiple ownership set forth in section 73.3555 of its regulations (47 C.F.R. 73.3555)--
(A) by eliminating the restrictions on the number of television stations that a person or entity may directly or indirectly own, operate, or control, or have a cognizable interest in, nationwide...
I'd buy it tomorrow if I knew how the hell to use Linux. I'm not much of a techie at all. The main reason I would is because I'm not a big fan of microsoft, but I also understand that things tend to run better on Linux -- and since I get 15 fps in Tribes 2 I'm all for that.
Well, IMO enforcing peace through fear isn't exactly the good ol' American solution -- but, I was pointing the comment at the people in Washington that wouldn't have to fight one. If their motivation were prevention, there would be solutions that are much more passive than an invulnerable bomber. When has a move like that ever prevented anything? Countries like China will just respond with their own inventions, and it escalates back and forth into eternity or war, whichever comes first.
The military's vision calls for a bomber that would be too fast to shoot down.
Someone needs to head up to Washington DC with a bag full of copies of Tribes 2 and Half-Life. That way the warmongers can have a harmless outlet for their pent-up aggression, and the civilized world can stop worrying and wondering, which pissing contestant will dream up the most efficient means of mass-murdering the opponent's population.
Or 'This plasma turret deployed in part by: Pepsi, generation next!'
But seriously, I've been known to use a website address as a name in online games. Nothing like sony.com, mostly slashdot.org, progress.org, or junkbusters.org. I figure if anyone visits and learns anything the name is more useful than something like "Sir Fragsalot {SC}" But I sometimes get screamed at for advertising a site. Players have used such inflamatory terms as "fucking gay." My guess is that when ads go into games, they'll do a very good job of telling people which products and companies to hate intensely.
Ok I volunteer for the first trip to that habitable planet. Between spy planes in China and the RIAA on my hard drive I'm willing take my chances with ET.
I've never understood the draw with these shows. When the robots shoot missles from their fingers and lasers from their eyes, while simultaneously transforming into a tank, I'll watch.
I think it's idiotic on both sides to label the other party 'the bad guys', as if they weren't organizations made up of individuals with different views and morals.
How are Republicans so pristine, when the Hagel amendment was possibly the worst thing that could've ever happened to campaign finance reform? Everyone I see supporting Hagel talked about how it limited soft money, how it was real reform because it also limited other groups and parties -- no one would address the fact that limiting (not banning) soft money, would have had the complete opposite effect of reform, because it would've been written into law that soft money was an acceptable practice, not deserving of complete removal. We're talking about illegal contributions here. A practice that isn't even necessary; that only exists to serve greed; to "legalize bribes and legalize extortion".
How are the Democrats any better, when John Breaux co-wrote the Hagel Amendment?
How is John McCain so evil? When did he try to put groups like the EFF out of the loop? Who does the EFF contribute to, exactly? Maybe you mean the restrictions on TV ads, which require disclosure of the people funding it? Restrictions that only ban an ad when it's aimed at electing 1 person or the other, and even then only when it's within 60 days of the election. Restrictions that have no effect on ads which only list facts or compare stances, without saying "So and so voted to kill babies." Restrictions that, despite that, still raise questions about the right of people to criticize their government, and so they are restrictions that many people (including McCain) didn't support. And when they were passed, people like McCain voted against the non-severability amendment so that when those restrictions are removed as unconstitutional they won't destroy McCain-Feingold.
How can Democrats be so bad with respectable people like Feingold, Joseph Biden, and John Edwards in their ranks?
There's good people, and there's stupid people. Both parties have their share. And I blame the way this slanted article was phrased for ever starting all this nonsense.
Personally I'd love to live 'forever' -- forever meaning 'until something made it impossible for my brain to continue functioning' -- 'brain' meaning I am willing to be transplanted into a new body, cloned and transplanted into my clone, or transplanted into an f'ing snow-globe to avoid death by any possible means that I can prevent -- means that I can prevent do not include the destruction of my brain, at this time. I'm also agnostic, so I fear death in more ways than one. To me death is oblivion, and the equivalent of not being able to finish a really good book you were reading. I know it sounds morbid, but when I die I would prefer that it be the result of some doomsday scale event. It's not that I want to be a part of some horrific end to mankind, it's that I don't want to miss anything. Maybe it's silly and weird, but that's just me. I don't wanna die until I absolutely can't avoid it by any means.
I look at it this way; it's illegal for AOL-Time Warner, or any other ISP's, to block access to content from any users based on the content being hosted by a competitor or being accessed on their servers by users of a competing service. So in the end, I think it comes down to the question of just how different are Instant Messaging programs from plain ol' internet use? Not much if you ask me. An intregal part of internet communication is that it's simple and nearly instantaneous (even more so than email or message boards in this case). Programs like AIM, ICQ, or Odigo aren't services on their own. If they were, they might prefer to charge you for the use. What they are is an extension of address books, chatrooms, and file sharing.
AOL can't legally block all @home users from reaching their and their members' sites, so how is it that they can block users of another IM program from communicating with AIM and ICQ users? Again, AIM and ICQ only simplify abilities their users already have, so I don't see how they can exclude people when their program isn't membership based, and is publicly accessable. The only purpose it serves is to take away a person's choice by making all other programs inconvenient (in that AIM and ICQ are probably home to most of their friends).
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I've confused my COPPA (good thing) with my CIPA (bad thing), but you get the idea.
Maybe instead of fighting for the removal of the COPPA as unconstitutional, people should be arguing that it's unconstitutional to apply some of it's protections to just children. In other words, turn a bad thing into a good thing, and let any site that collects personal information on anyone without consent, regardless of age, be fined.
I dunno about you guys, but I'm tired of being discriminated against. Kids get everything, free meals, free toys, free shelter. Now they get free constitutional rights? I have to shell out thousands to my state Senator if I want a luxury like that. Enough is enough!
Should've added that the FCC has their own page on the act, which is more informative and less boring than reading the full text of the act itself. CJR's archives also have a 1997 article reviewing year one of the '96 act.
Blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Dear John Dvorak, I write this message in hopes that you will respond with the utmost urgency and direct me to a law enforcement facility where I may immediately turn myself in and have my remote control impounded. For years I have lived in ignorance; breaking the law by changing the channel when commercials appear on my television. I will cooperate in anyway that I can in order to bring myself to justice.
Sincerely, John Q. Public
Obviously, it effects the perception of the business to other people. Again, consider a christian's beliefs and whether or not they would want to support a company that dealt in pornography. In the same way they wouldn't go to a store that had a porn section, or a resturaunt that sold pot (common in some countries), they wouldn't want a website they and their family had grown accustomed to, to dive into the sex business.
Granted, they might be extremists, they might be doing more damage to society than good, but their voice has to be heard and respected just as much as anyone else's. Hell, I'm not even christian -- I don't like the way Walmart decides what's morally acceptable when they control so much of what's available, if it were up to me TV would be uncensored after 10pm and parents would be expected to take responsibility for their child a few measely hours at night. It all seems logical, when you agree, but when you're one of 'god's children' it might seem perfectly logical to hate gays and burn playboy magazines.
I'm not saying whether Yahoo should've gone with it or not, the point is that everyone's voice gets heard and they were the ones who spoke up. Another aspect of your 'falling trees' quip might suggest that, by your logic, thousands of trees in a park could be cut down -- and if no environmentalists saw it, only knew it had happened, they would have no justifiable right to be angry.
By the way, I base that on my opinion that it would take more than a few religious fanatics to convince Yahoo to drop plans that would pull them out of the gutter. If that somehow isn't the case then maybe I'm wrong, but since christian groups are very organized online (like a hive-mind), my guess is that yahoo got tons of complaints and very few people did anything but.
Consider that in the same way people are supposedly pushing their morals on you by taking porn off Yahoo, you are pushing your beliefs on them by demanding it be there. Personally, I think it's common sense that banning porn completely is wrong -- I also think that having porn in every store is wrong. In the end the only thing that matters is the peoples' choice, and if it's such a travesty for democracy you might've considered emailing your support to Yahoo beforehand.
I don't get it, the people responding to argue seem a little hypocritical to me. Banning porn in the country, making it illegal -- that would be a reason for anger. I don't think Yahoo would've gone back on it if plenty of people hadn't said their piece, and I love the person who posted this for pointing out the importance of individuals over business. You can get porn in plenty of places, why is it so horrible that people who were active enough to voice their opinion won the day? Personally I do wish the country were a hundred times more open about sex, and I don't agree with equating porn to evil, but I think this is still an important thing (blatant self-promotion), as far as the power-struggle goes.
How about a commercial site, a retailer that can sell just about anything you need, only this retailer has a 'shitlist' of companies it won't deal with -- a lot like the list administrators (from the story) use to block domains that propagate spam. Think of the possibilites; thousands of members (slashdotter's too, right?) who only buy from this site and it's retailers (who are thoroughly researched by a quality assurance team.) The guidelines retailers must meet can be decided by what members see as important -- such as shoes that aren't made in a sweatshop. Say Intel is a retailer on the site -- they endorse CPRM, members get angry and vote to take their merchandise off the site. The more members, the bigger the boycott: the bigger the boycott, the more companies that are eager to respect your rights without being punished first.
;)
One can hope, at least
Now let's see if this message is buried too deep to get seen.
The money should come either solely from the public, or yes, even from taxes. As it's been said, PBS is important to American citizens. Our taxes pay for this, when they should be paying for this. What could PBS do with $150,000,000,000 a year, I wonder? I can't tell you whether corporate sponsorship is an influence on PBS or not, but when it comes to MSNBC and other stations of that ilk, you'd have to be a fool to think it doesn't -- it most certainly does. And it will most certainly do the same, to PBS sooner or later, as it has before.
What news outlets do we even have left that aren't touched by some corporate influence? Not many, it seems. C-Span, I guess.
Did I mention that I have a massive 4 gig hard drive on this baby?
That's just a jim dandy idea! Also, don't you think that with all the money we save from not having to upgrade, we could buy beast-machines from alienware.com, and give them out to the less fortunate among our community? I've got a Pentium 2 300 MHz, 96 MB RAM, a SB PCI64, and a 12mb Voodoo 2, so I get by. I'm just saying, is all.
I'd buy it tomorrow if I knew how the hell to use Linux. I'm not much of a techie at all. The main reason I would is because I'm not a big fan of microsoft, but I also understand that things tend to run better on Linux -- and since I get 15 fps in Tribes 2 I'm all for that.
Well, IMO enforcing peace through fear isn't exactly the good ol' American solution -- but, I was pointing the comment at the people in Washington that wouldn't have to fight one. If their motivation were prevention, there would be solutions that are much more passive than an invulnerable bomber. When has a move like that ever prevented anything? Countries like China will just respond with their own inventions, and it escalates back and forth into eternity or war, whichever comes first.
I submitted this just about the same time. I wonder how many others did.........it really belongs on the front page.
Or 'This plasma turret deployed in part by: Pepsi, generation next!'
But seriously, I've been known to use a website address as a name in online games. Nothing like sony.com, mostly slashdot.org, progress.org, or junkbusters.org. I figure if anyone visits and learns anything the name is more useful than something like "Sir Fragsalot {SC}" But I sometimes get screamed at for advertising a site. Players have used such inflamatory terms as "fucking gay." My guess is that when ads go into games, they'll do a very good job of telling people which products and companies to hate intensely.
Ok I volunteer for the first trip to that habitable planet. Between spy planes in China and the RIAA on my hard drive I'm willing take my chances with ET.
I've never understood the draw with these shows. When the robots shoot missles from their fingers and lasers from their eyes, while simultaneously transforming into a tank, I'll watch.
I think it's idiotic on both sides to label the other party 'the bad guys', as if they weren't organizations made up of individuals with different views and morals.
How are Republicans so pristine, when the Hagel amendment was possibly the worst thing that could've ever happened to campaign finance reform? Everyone I see supporting Hagel talked about how it limited soft money, how it was real reform because it also limited other groups and parties -- no one would address the fact that limiting (not banning) soft money, would have had the complete opposite effect of reform, because it would've been written into law that soft money was an acceptable practice, not deserving of complete removal. We're talking about illegal contributions here. A practice that isn't even necessary; that only exists to serve greed; to "legalize bribes and legalize extortion".
How are the Democrats any better, when John Breaux co-wrote the Hagel Amendment?
How is John McCain so evil? When did he try to put groups like the EFF out of the loop? Who does the EFF contribute to, exactly? Maybe you mean the restrictions on TV ads, which require disclosure of the people funding it? Restrictions that only ban an ad when it's aimed at electing 1 person or the other, and even then only when it's within 60 days of the election. Restrictions that have no effect on ads which only list facts or compare stances, without saying "So and so voted to kill babies." Restrictions that, despite that, still raise questions about the right of people to criticize their government, and so they are restrictions that many people (including McCain) didn't support. And when they were passed, people like McCain voted against the non-severability amendment so that when those restrictions are removed as unconstitutional they won't destroy McCain-Feingold.
How can Democrats be so bad with respectable people like Feingold, Joseph Biden, and John Edwards in their ranks?
There's good people, and there's stupid people. Both parties have their share. And I blame the way this slanted article was phrased for ever starting all this nonsense.
I started wondering about this myself when I saw the news this morning that a spy plane had been forced to land in China.
Personally I'd love to live 'forever' -- forever meaning 'until something made it impossible for my brain to continue functioning' -- 'brain' meaning I am willing to be transplanted into a new body, cloned and transplanted into my clone, or transplanted into an f'ing snow-globe to avoid death by any possible means that I can prevent -- means that I can prevent do not include the destruction of my brain, at this time. I'm also agnostic, so I fear death in more ways than one. To me death is oblivion, and the equivalent of not being able to finish a really good book you were reading. I know it sounds morbid, but when I die I would prefer that it be the result of some doomsday scale event. It's not that I want to be a part of some horrific end to mankind, it's that I don't want to miss anything. Maybe it's silly and weird, but that's just me. I don't wanna die until I absolutely can't avoid it by any means.
I look at it this way; it's illegal for AOL-Time Warner, or any other ISP's, to block access to content from any users based on the content being hosted by a competitor or being accessed on their servers by users of a competing service. So in the end, I think it comes down to the question of just how different are Instant Messaging programs from plain ol' internet use? Not much if you ask me. An intregal part of internet communication is that it's simple and nearly instantaneous (even more so than email or message boards in this case). Programs like AIM, ICQ, or Odigo aren't services on their own. If they were, they might prefer to charge you for the use. What they are is an extension of address books, chatrooms, and file sharing.
AOL can't legally block all @home users from reaching their and their members' sites, so how is it that they can block users of another IM program from communicating with AIM and ICQ users? Again, AIM and ICQ only simplify abilities their users already have, so I don't see how they can exclude people when their program isn't membership based, and is publicly accessable. The only purpose it serves is to take away a person's choice by making all other programs inconvenient (in that AIM and ICQ are probably home to most of their friends).