> That's just not true though. The track record of > RIAA and MPAA should show that, sometimes, they > take action against things that clearly help their > bottom-line.
The RIAA and MPAA don't have a bottom line. They are industry associations that were formed in order to lobby for legislation that is in the intrest of their members.
"The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies..." [1]
Part of the "legal climate" that the associations desire is one of strong intellectual property rights; as such, the groups will always pursue actions against entities such as clean-flix even if these actions harm sales in the short term.
In the long term, if sufficent demand for 'clean' movies should arise, the association's members will be able to provide the product themselves, and any legal precedent established through action against someone like clean-flix will ensure that they can do so without competition.
I have, as at least one other poster, noticed that a large number of the posters on this forum appear to be confused about the intent of the Geneva Convention and other international "laws" of warfare. I have even seen one poster ask, to paraphrase, "Why try to civilize war?". That, of course, is not the intent of the Geneva convention. The laws of warfare are instead intended to place limits on the dehumanization which occurs on such a widespread scale in warfare. As an example, consider the use of FMJ (full metal jacket) ammunition in rifles. Yes, this ammunition is more likely to wound, then kill, as one poster did point out; but the real reason why this ammunition is required is that the wounds it causes are more likely to be treatable than, say, ammunition which fragments after entering the body, which was designed specifically to cause massive damage to flesh. Similarly, how many do not agree that it is wrong to torture or maim the captured enemy? Once taken as prisoners, those men lose their ability to defend themselves; attacks upon them have no honour. As a result, the Geneva convention places limits on the treatment and conditions of prisoners, and not respecting those limits is likely to cause your captured soliders to be treated in a like manner by your enemy. Lastly, how many can not agree that attacks on defenseless civilian targets are wrong? The laws of warfare, then, place limits on these attacks.
Historically, we have violated the laws of warfare, as has been pointed out in this forum; but, I would ask, how often have we (the US) violated those laws only in response to a similar violation of our enemies?
So, the laws of warfare seek not to civilize war, but instead to impose limits on the amount of damage that war can do to civilization, or as another poster put it, when the only course is morally wrong, to force opposing nations to limit the amount of wrong that they inflict upon each other.
What the hell are you talking about?;P Let me try to take this one (controversial) point at a time:
>Because we lose the trust of the nations of the >world? Any nation with a clue doesn't trust us >already.
Ummm... yeah. Those nations may not _trust_ us, exactly, but learning that the US is developing controversial weapons tech. and having the US openly admit to such are two very different things. Although this is almost a strawman argument (argh!) think of it this way: The US has almost certainly developed bio/chem weapons tech. "for the national defense", even though we are barred from doing so by various treaties. The other nations of the world know this. They also know that, due to those treaties, we will not deploy bio/chemical weapons. The ABM treaty was designed with a similar aim in mind: go ahead and research ABM tech, but don't deploy it because it will upset the balance of power.
>Part of that big business is the military, and >it's good business to build weapons, defense >systems, and promote the occasional conflict to >boost sales.
I would challenge the poster to back that statement up with fact. I very much doubt that it has ever been "good business" to divert large amounts of money away from the civillian economy and then have little way to account to the public for how it was spent. The defense budget, IMHO, is quite simply the biggest money laundering operation in all of history. As for "boosting sales" through the "occasional confilct", I can hardly see how; the main affect of war is to depress the civilian economy as the govt. spends into debt to build tanks/planes/bombs in the factories which were building cars/civilian aircraft/consumer electronics.
>There is no M.A.D. now. If the treaties are >broken there won't be a war or a nuclear >exchange. There is no country out there (and it >would be difficult to find an alliance of them >even) capable of waging an effective war against >this country...
I can assure everyone that M.A.D, as a doctrine, has never and will never cease to be in effect until the day that every nuke on this planet is dismantled. Russia, I assure you, still has nuclear missiles under their control which could launch within a 15 minute window if the order for an attack is given. [1] Russia could easily launch a devastating nuclear strike on the US mainland. China is also rapidly developing the capability to field ICBMs which could deliver a "small" nuclear device to the US west coast which IIRC, would still be more than an order of magnitude more powerful than the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima (the only real-world "test" of the terrifying abilties of such a weapon).
>and in the interest of the American people (by >decreasing the likelihood that an ICBM will >obliterate some number of them).
I have great doubts that ABM technology will ever have the ability to destroy ICBMs targeted at the US. The problems with ABM technology stem from many seprate areas: the difficulty in hitting such a fast moving target, the ease with which the enemy can disguise real warheads so that ABMs target fake warheads flown on the same delivery vehicle, and the large numbers of warheads (or MIRVs) that can be place on one delivery vehicle. [2]
In closing, ABM technolgy has three main problems: (1) It has, at current, a low accuracy and is therfore unreliable. (2) It is a very expensive research program which is consuming resources that would be better put to work in the civilian economy. (3) It will have a destabilizing effect on the current international climate; the ease with which we discard the treaty proventing its deployment will also cause other nations to question our trustworthiness (sp?).
As an additional last point, a nuclear attack, at this time in history, seems unlikely to be delivered by a missile. It seems far more likely to me that chemical, biological, or nuclear agents could be far more easily smuggled into the counrty and then used by terrorists. Yet congress has, until recently, provided little funding to assist with the creation of anti-terrorist personnel to defend us against this kind of attack, which while more dangerous than an ICBM, could also more feasibly be intercepted. [3] [4]
PS. SciAm has also published, in the past, two feature articles which could be of interest here. One of them dealt with scenarios of terrorist attack on a US city by bio/chem/nuclear agents, and the other was a criticism of the ABM program and outlined the reasons why it would be unlikely to successfully provent an nuclear attack from striking its intended target. I could not find URLs on the sciam website for those articles; however, if you really want to read them, try browsing through the tables of contents for their mags for the last 2 years and they should be in their somewhere!:)
You know what the sadest thing of this whole situation is?
The web got this guy into this mess. The same medium which was designed to let us all share information is what allowed IDG to spend 5 minutes with a search engine and turn up this supposed dilution of their trademark. So, indirectly, this person has had their privacy violated by IDG: They are donating their time, as a service to a community of people, maintaining a public record. IDG took advantage of that by targeting them for a comment made by someone else in a public discussion forum.
But, what's on IDG's web site? Advertisements. Where is the info on IDG's ethics? Where on their site can you find IDG performing any kind of service to any community at all?
Where is the web site that would allow me to observe congress in action, browse the congressional record, or make my opinion felt directly to the congress so as to have some small influence on the process by which are laws are formulated? How can I see a record of from whom representatives have received contributions? Where is the site that details the (valuable?) service that congress provides to us?
Information like that will never be on the web; Either those people have vested interests in preventing us from ever seeing that sort of information, or else it dosen't exist.
It makes me think that the net is only about sharing information if that information isn't valuable.
Actually, The moon _would_ be a good investment! I am surprised that this hasn't been mentioned already, but the lunar soil has trapped large amounts of Helium-3 from the solar "wind" over the long ages of its existence. The same material is comparitively rare here thanks to our strong magnetic field, and Helium-3, IIRC, would make a good fuel for a fusion reaction. So once we develop fusion rocket engines, the moon will be a big gas station in high earth orbit!!!
We'll see how long that UN treaty lasts then, before some multi-planetary corp. or large govt. decides to build a big strip mining operation on the moon.
Slashdot Mirror
> That's just not true though. The track record of
..." [1]
> RIAA and MPAA should show that, sometimes, they
> take action against things that clearly help their
> bottom-line.
The RIAA and MPAA don't have a bottom line. They are industry associations that were formed in order to lobby for legislation that is in the intrest of their members.
"The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies
Part of the "legal climate" that the associations desire is one of strong intellectual property rights; as such, the groups will always pursue actions against entities such as clean-flix even if these actions harm sales in the short term.
In the long term, if sufficent demand for 'clean' movies should arise, the association's members will be able to provide the product themselves, and any legal precedent established through action against someone like clean-flix will ensure that they can do so without competition.
[1] http://riaa.org/About-Who.cfm
You, sir, are a coward and a troll. I only hope this gets moderated down to a _very_ low score. Promptly.
I have, as at least one other poster, noticed that a large number of the posters on this forum appear to be confused about the intent of the Geneva Convention and other international "laws" of warfare. I have even seen one poster ask, to paraphrase, "Why try to civilize war?". That, of course, is not the intent of the Geneva convention. The laws of warfare are instead intended to place limits on the dehumanization which occurs on such a widespread scale in warfare. As an example, consider the use of FMJ (full metal jacket) ammunition in rifles. Yes, this ammunition is more likely to wound, then kill, as one poster did point out; but the real reason why this ammunition is required is that the wounds it causes are more likely to be treatable than, say, ammunition which fragments after entering the body, which was designed specifically to cause massive damage to flesh. Similarly, how many do not agree that it is wrong to torture or maim the captured enemy? Once taken as prisoners, those men lose their ability to defend themselves; attacks upon them have no honour. As a result, the Geneva convention places limits on the treatment and conditions of prisoners, and not respecting those limits is likely to cause your captured soliders to be treated in a like manner by your enemy. Lastly, how many can not agree that attacks on defenseless civilian targets are wrong? The laws of warfare, then, place limits on these attacks.
Historically, we have violated the laws of warfare, as has been pointed out in this forum; but, I would ask, how often have we (the US) violated those laws only in response to a similar violation of our enemies?
So, the laws of warfare seek not to civilize war, but instead to impose limits on the amount of damage that war can do to civilization, or as another poster put it, when the only course is morally wrong, to force opposing nations to limit the amount of wrong that they inflict upon each other.
What the hell are you talking about? ;P
...
h tml t ml
:)
Let me try to take this one (controversial) point at a time:
>Because we lose the trust of the nations of the
>world? Any nation with a clue doesn't trust us
>already.
Ummm... yeah. Those nations may not _trust_ us, exactly, but learning that the US is developing controversial weapons tech. and having the US openly admit to such are two very different things. Although this is almost a strawman argument (argh!) think of it this way:
The US has almost certainly developed bio/chem weapons tech. "for the national defense", even though we are barred from doing so by various treaties. The other nations of the world know this. They also know that, due to those treaties, we will not deploy bio/chemical weapons. The ABM treaty was designed with a similar aim in mind: go ahead and research ABM tech, but don't deploy it because it will upset the balance of power.
>Part of that big business is the military, and
>it's good business to build weapons, defense
>systems, and promote the occasional conflict to
>boost sales.
I would challenge the poster to back that statement up with fact. I very much doubt that it has ever been "good business" to divert large amounts of money away from the civillian economy and then have little way to account to the public for how it was spent. The defense budget, IMHO, is quite simply the biggest money laundering operation in all of history. As for "boosting sales" through the "occasional confilct", I can hardly see how; the main affect of war is to depress the civilian economy as the govt. spends into debt to build tanks/planes/bombs in the factories which were building cars/civilian aircraft/consumer electronics.
>There is no M.A.D. now. If the treaties are
>broken there won't be a war or a nuclear
>exchange. There is no country out there (and it
>would be difficult to find an alliance of them
>even) capable of waging an effective war against
>this country
I can assure everyone that M.A.D, as a doctrine, has never and will never cease to be in effect until the day that every nuke on this planet is dismantled. Russia, I assure you, still has nuclear missiles under their control which could launch within a 15 minute window if the order for an attack is given. [1]
Russia could easily launch a devastating nuclear strike on the US mainland. China is also rapidly developing the capability to field ICBMs which could deliver a "small" nuclear device to the US west coast which IIRC, would still be more
than an order of magnitude more powerful than the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima (the only real-world "test" of the terrifying abilties of such a weapon).
>and in the interest of the American people (by
>decreasing the likelihood that an ICBM will
>obliterate some number of them).
I have great doubts that ABM technology will ever have the ability to destroy ICBMs targeted at the US. The problems with ABM technology stem from many seprate areas: the difficulty in hitting such a fast moving target, the ease with which the enemy can disguise real warheads so that ABMs target fake warheads flown on the same delivery vehicle, and the large numbers of warheads (or MIRVs) that can be place on one delivery vehicle. [2]
In closing, ABM technolgy has three main problems:
(1) It has, at current, a low accuracy and is therfore unreliable.
(2) It is a very expensive research program which is consuming resources that would be better put to work in the civilian economy.
(3) It will have a destabilizing effect on the current international climate; the ease with which we discard the treaty proventing its deployment will also cause other nations to question our trustworthiness (sp?).
As an additional last point, a nuclear attack, at this time in history, seems unlikely to be delivered by a missile. It seems far more likely to me that chemical, biological, or nuclear agents could be far more easily smuggled into the counrty and then used by terrorists. Yet congress has, until recently, provided little funding to assist with the creation of anti-terrorist personnel to defend us against this kind of attack, which while more dangerous than an ICBM, could also more feasibly be intercepted. [3] [4]
References:
[1] http://www.sciam.com/1197issue/1197vonhippel.html
[2] http://www.sciam.com/1998/0698issue/0698techbus1.
[3] http://www.sciam.com/1999/0499issue/0499infocus.h
[4] http://www.sciam.com/1296issue/1296cole.html
PS. SciAm has also published, in the past, two feature articles which could be of interest here. One of them dealt with scenarios of terrorist attack on a US city by bio/chem/nuclear agents, and the other was a criticism of the ABM program and outlined the reasons why it would be unlikely to successfully provent an nuclear attack from striking its intended target. I could not find URLs on the sciam website for those articles; however, if you really want to read them, try browsing through the tables of contents for their mags for the last 2 years and they should be in their somewhere!
You know what the sadest thing of this whole situation is?
The web got this guy into this mess. The same medium which was designed to let us all share information is what allowed IDG to spend 5 minutes with a search engine and turn up this supposed dilution of their trademark. So, indirectly, this person has had their privacy violated by IDG: They are donating their time, as a service to a community of people, maintaining a public record. IDG took advantage of that by targeting them for a comment made by someone else in a public discussion forum.
But, what's on IDG's web site? Advertisements. Where is the info on IDG's ethics? Where on their site can you find IDG performing any kind of service to any community at all?
Where is the web site that would allow me to observe congress in action, browse the congressional record, or make my opinion felt directly to the congress so as to have some small influence on the process by which are laws are formulated? How can I see a record of from whom representatives have received contributions? Where is the site that details the (valuable?) service that congress provides to us?
Information like that will never be on the web; Either those people have vested interests in preventing us from ever seeing that sort of information, or else it dosen't exist.
It makes me think that the net is only about sharing information if that information isn't valuable.
Actually, The moon _would_ be a good investment!
I am surprised that this hasn't been mentioned already, but the lunar soil has trapped large amounts of Helium-3 from the solar "wind" over the long ages of its existence. The same material is comparitively rare here thanks to our strong magnetic field, and Helium-3, IIRC, would make a good fuel for a fusion reaction. So once we develop fusion rocket engines, the moon will be a big gas station in high earth orbit!!!
We'll see how long that UN treaty lasts then, before some multi-planetary corp. or large govt. decides to build a big strip mining operation on the moon.