So should racist speeches be prohibited? There are pros (it decreases amount of racism) and cons (freedom of speech).
There is another con. If they are prohibited then it's impossible for the speaker to be heckled or otherwise critiqued. The speeches will still take place, in private, before a carefully vetted audience, with "security" to deal with any "undesirables" who might manage to infiltrate.
There are people behind bars for questioning the holocaust - they never threatened anyone with extermination - they only asked questions and gave unpopular opinions.
Most likely asking the "wrong" (or at least politically incorrect) questions. Including such questions as "Where's the evidence that XYZ happened in the way claimed?" The real "hate speach" would appear to be labling skeptics as "deniers". Especially in respect of a subject where decades old propaganda and fraudulent claims are involved.
unfortunately the argument of "Either you are with us or you are against us." is still 100% Valid. You either support terrorism and the acts that terrorists do, or you do not support terrorism, and you want to do anything within means and power to abolish the fear that terrorism instills.
the "you are with us or against us". Also tends to imply "If you don't support the measures we advocate against terrorists then you must be supporting terrorism".
Basically you have it completely backwards. The far extreme right is called fascism and the far extreme left is called socialism.
Political extremism can look very similar regardless of if it is left wing or right wing. It's been suggested that "left" and "right" are actually on a circle rather than a straight line.
For what it's worth, as someone from the Netherlands, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that most of the citizens actually would rather see freedom of speech trump most, or all, other rights. It's just the government that wants to set all kinds of bizarre limits and gets its knickers in a twist when people contest existing limits. How this can be, in a supposedly democratic nation, is hard to fathom, until you realise that most of the Dutch vote what they think they should vote (left, right, Christian,...) rather than on the issues.
It's probably also the case that government tends to attract people with athoritarian leanings. Even in an otherwise fair electoral system having any element of self selection for political candidates means that you are very unlikely to get a government which reflects the public. What appear to be "bizarre limits" are typically the results of politicans, already out of touch with the public, being influenced by lobby groups with very extreme (even insane) points of view.
Let me clarify that for you, Free speech is not just an american thing. It is infact one of the corner stones of Liberty, when you give it up you give up a lot more.
It was an already well understood concept when the US Consitution was written.
Or he could talk to broadcaster Mike Read. Whilst someone coined the term "Streisand effect" in 2005. The effect of attempts to censor information resulting in that information gaining a much wider audience. (Adding "on the Internet", makes about as much sense as a patent for something which has been done for a long time with "with a computer" added.) This isn't really anything to do with technology it's an attribute of human behaviour. Other examples include movies such as The Exorcist, Life of Brian, Last Temptation of Christ. The effect is also clearly described in the novel "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".
I also wonder how many have considered voting for his party and now, learning about this and what kind of people are inside it, won't touch it.
Especially those from what used to be called the DDR.
Not to mention that, if you really insist, you can still choose a different copy of Wikipedia to get information about him. Ok, granted, not in German, but is there anyone in Germany using the internet and NOT able to read English?
IME there arn't that many Germans who don't understand English. No doubt there are cached copies of the German text available too.
Could you have a anti-racism law that doesn't undermine free speech?
One of the basic premises of free speech is that offensive speech should be allowed.
Especially given that banning anything has all sorts of negative consequences. These consequences being often ignored by those who advocate said banning.
A big part of anti-racism laws is to prevent offensive speech as it relates to race, right?
In practice such laws tend to be quite selective and not ban racism which is politically correct at the time of the law's creation.
What's news here is that it is no longer a civil matter when you infringe upon a company's intellectual property rights, It's criminal. This should always be a civil matter. I do not want to have my tax dollars spent on locking people up in prison for copyright infringement.
There's also a very big problem that criminal law for all practical purposes does not apply to "corporate people". The principle of equal protection under the law is being violated here. Since when a company infringes an individual's intellectual property there is no way in which that company will wind up in prison. That's before you even consider that this involves companies which are completly hypocritical when it comes to the whole issue of copyright infringement.
A big flaw in that argument is that it assumes everyone who copies the movie would have shelled out the fifteen dollars to see it in the theater, had they not downloaded it. This is simply not the case, and it applies to all forms of copyright infringement (software, music, and movies).
It's something which a lot of people just don't get. That many of these people were never "potential customers" in the first place.
There has to be real money being lost before you can assume a loss of $50 million dollars to the economy, not fictional "maybe dollars" that the RIAA and MPAA like to use.
To do this you'd need to know the number of people who didn't go to see the movie because of the "pirate version" vs the number of people who only went to see it because they got a "preview". The vast majority of people watching the pirated copy may well fall into the "wouldn't have paid to see it" group. Thing is that both of these industries are so used to "creative accounting" (typically to avoid paying the actual creative people) that they probably don't have a clue what actual money is. Though it might not be a bad idea to have some of their accountants try a bit of screen writing once in a while:). One simple action which could be taken which would probably reduce piracy would be not to restrict release to one geographic region at a time. Which leads to there being a huge group of people who cannot pay even if they wanted to. Given a choice between "pirate copy" and nothing (with a possiblity of an official copy turning up sometime in the future) what does anyone with two brain cells expect.
Some of the best movies I've ever seen were made by hobbyists. Clerks and Blair Witch Project come to mind immediately, but there are many more. The myth of the billion dollar industry is nothing more than an artificial barrier to entry. Sure, you need a $5k camera to get a good picture, but you do *not* need a $5m actor.
The movie industry (along with the music industry) uses such convoluted accounting practices that it's possible impossible to tell if using expensive actors is actually "worth it" in terms of revenue in any case.
I disagree with the absurd punishments being handed out for copyright infringement, especially when the police treat burglary and drug offenses with such nonchalance these days.
IIRC the most economically damaging, but often ignored crimes fall into the catagory of "corporate crime".
Like, for example, the ability to upload the data for others to download and circumvent copyright laws, and therefore is significantly different than a brain.
Unless of course you're a cyborg from the future, in which case I for one welcome our apparently borderline retarded, shitty-analogy-making, time traveling, Cybernetic Anonymous Coward Overlords.
And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work.
Once copyright terms are greater than about two thirds of the average human lifespan they are for all practical terms unlimited.
Slightly more on topic, this is absolutely fucking crazy. It doesn't compete with the bus service, because cars are inherently more mobile than a bus run. Cars can go from point A, to point D, without all that visiting points B and C in between.
Having to visit points B & C may well increase the journey time from A to D greatly. Buses also tend to travel according to a timetable, which they need to stick to regardless of the number of passengers or traffic conditions. This can lead to a bus waiting at a stop where no passengers wish to board or leave, but the bus itself can't depart before a certain time.
There are obviously two different markets, one, mass transport along fixed routes, two, point to point transport by small numbers of people.
The obvious competition with car sharing is taxis rather than buses. Yet taxi companies don't appear to be complaining here.
Please give me an example of a major policy that is going to change under the Obama Administration. Even on illegal wiretapping he agrees with Bush.
If you have few candidates then it's quite possible that there will be things they agree on. But the majority of the electorate may well disagree on. It's certainly not going to help if it's seen as positive that candidates have "political experience".
The difference is that I have a choice of which private enterprises I do business with. Short of armed revolt or emigration I don't have that same choice when it comes to Government.
The latter may also require a change of citizenship. There are governments who insist that their rules apply to all their citizens not just those on "their soil".
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry. When you force banks to give loans to people without any means of paying them back, the banks are going to fail.
This dosn't say if there were too many or too few regulations. More that some of the regulations which existed were daft. You'd need to examine all of the regulations to draw a conclusion about the former,
"For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted."
If law enforcement were aware of this why did they apparently do nothing. Even if only to arrest her for "money laundering". Why is it that "scam baiters" all appear to be ordinary people doing it in their spare time without there being any cops who do this as their job?
Companies will simply stop selling your government the things it needs to be more efficient, or will insist on huge fees to compensate for loss of intellectual property.
Except that governments are, or at least should be, in a position of power in any negotiations involving companies. Both these companies and the concept of "intellectual property" only exist at the whim of governments.
Slashdot Mirror
So should racist speeches be prohibited? There are pros (it decreases amount of racism) and cons (freedom of speech).
There is another con. If they are prohibited then it's impossible for the speaker to be heckled or otherwise critiqued. The speeches will still take place, in private, before a carefully vetted audience, with "security" to deal with any "undesirables" who might manage to infiltrate.
There are people behind bars for questioning the holocaust - they never threatened anyone with extermination - they only asked questions and gave unpopular opinions.
Most likely asking the "wrong" (or at least politically incorrect) questions. Including such questions as "Where's the evidence that XYZ happened in the way claimed?"
The real "hate speach" would appear to be labling skeptics as "deniers". Especially in respect of a subject where decades old propaganda and fraudulent claims are involved.
unfortunately the argument of "Either you are with us or you are against us." is still 100% Valid. You either support terrorism and the acts that terrorists do, or you do not support terrorism, and you want to do anything within means and power to abolish the fear that terrorism instills.
the "you are with us or against us". Also tends to imply "If you don't support the measures we advocate against terrorists then you must be supporting terrorism".
Basically you have it completely backwards. The far extreme right is called fascism and the far extreme left is called socialism.
Political extremism can look very similar regardless of if it is left wing or right wing. It's been suggested that "left" and "right" are actually on a circle rather than a straight line.
Remember always that your 'land of the free' was founded by slave owners.
With the US currently being "number one" when it comes to holding people in prison.
For what it's worth, as someone from the Netherlands, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that most of the citizens actually would rather see freedom of speech trump most, or all, other rights. It's just the government that wants to set all kinds of bizarre limits and gets its knickers in a twist when people contest existing limits. How this can be, in a supposedly democratic nation, is hard to fathom, until you realise that most of the Dutch vote what they think they should vote (left, right, Christian, ...) rather than on the issues.
It's probably also the case that government tends to attract people with athoritarian leanings. Even in an otherwise fair electoral system having any element of self selection for political candidates means that you are very unlikely to get a government which reflects the public.
What appear to be "bizarre limits" are typically the results of politicans, already out of touch with the public, being influenced by lobby groups with very extreme (even insane) points of view.
Let me clarify that for you, Free speech is not just an american thing. It is infact one of the corner stones of Liberty, when you give it up you give up a lot more.
It was an already well understood concept when the US Consitution was written.
She knows how well that works.
Or he could talk to broadcaster Mike Read. Whilst someone coined the term "Streisand effect" in 2005. The effect of attempts to censor information resulting in that information gaining a much wider audience. (Adding "on the Internet", makes about as much sense as a patent for something which has been done for a long time with "with a computer" added.) This isn't really anything to do with technology it's an attribute of human behaviour.
Other examples include movies such as The Exorcist, Life of Brian, Last Temptation of Christ. The effect is also clearly described in the novel "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".
I also wonder how many have considered voting for his party and now, learning about this and what kind of people are inside it, won't touch it.
Especially those from what used to be called the DDR.
Not to mention that, if you really insist, you can still choose a different copy of Wikipedia to get information about him. Ok, granted, not in German, but is there anyone in Germany using the internet and NOT able to read English?
IME there arn't that many Germans who don't understand English. No doubt there are cached copies of the German text available too.
Could you have a anti-racism law that doesn't undermine free speech?
One of the basic premises of free speech is that offensive speech should be allowed.
Especially given that banning anything has all sorts of negative consequences. These consequences being often ignored by those who advocate said banning.
A big part of anti-racism laws is to prevent offensive speech as it relates to race, right?
In practice such laws tend to be quite selective and not ban racism which is politically correct at the time of the law's creation.
Absurd Lawsuits 101: Professor Mitch Bainwol.... first students apparently need interpreters?
This weekend which country is ahead in this "sport" France or Germany?
What's news here is that it is no longer a civil matter when you infringe upon a company's intellectual property rights, It's criminal. This should always be a civil matter. I do not want to have my tax dollars spent on locking people up in prison for copyright infringement.
There's also a very big problem that criminal law for all practical purposes does not apply to "corporate people". The principle of equal protection under the law is being violated here. Since when a company infringes an individual's intellectual property there is no way in which that company will wind up in prison.
That's before you even consider that this involves companies which are completly hypocritical when it comes to the whole issue of copyright infringement.
A big flaw in that argument is that it assumes everyone who copies the movie would have shelled out the fifteen dollars to see it in the theater, had they not downloaded it. This is simply not the case, and it applies to all forms of copyright infringement (software, music, and movies).
:).
It's something which a lot of people just don't get. That many of these people were never "potential customers" in the first place.
There has to be real money being lost before you can assume a loss of $50 million dollars to the economy, not fictional "maybe dollars" that the RIAA and MPAA like to use.
To do this you'd need to know the number of people who didn't go to see the movie because of the "pirate version" vs the number of people who only went to see it because they got a "preview". The vast majority of people watching the pirated copy may well fall into the "wouldn't have paid to see it" group. Thing is that both of these industries are so used to "creative accounting" (typically to avoid paying the actual creative people) that they probably don't have a clue what actual money is. Though it might not be a bad idea to have some of their accountants try a bit of screen writing once in a while
One simple action which could be taken which would probably reduce piracy would be not to restrict release to one geographic region at a time. Which leads to there being a huge group of people who cannot pay even if they wanted to. Given a choice between "pirate copy" and nothing (with a possiblity of an official copy turning up sometime in the future) what does anyone with two brain cells expect.
Some of the best movies I've ever seen were made by hobbyists. Clerks and Blair Witch Project come to mind immediately, but there are many more. The myth of the billion dollar industry is nothing more than an artificial barrier to entry. Sure, you need a $5k camera to get a good picture, but you do *not* need a $5m actor.
The movie industry (along with the music industry) uses such convoluted accounting practices that it's possible impossible to tell if using expensive actors is actually "worth it" in terms of revenue in any case.
I disagree with the absurd punishments being handed out for copyright infringement, especially when the police treat burglary and drug offenses with such nonchalance these days.
IIRC the most economically damaging, but often ignored crimes fall into the catagory of "corporate crime".
Like, for example, the ability to upload the data for others to download and circumvent copyright laws, and therefore is significantly different than a brain.
:)
Unless of course you're a cyborg from the future, in which case I for one welcome our apparently borderline retarded, shitty-analogy-making, time traveling, Cybernetic Anonymous Coward Overlords.
But only if they look like Summer Glau
That's a bit rich since the movie industry itself regularly engages in fraud to rip off movie makers and actors.
Together with the MPAA pirating both movies and software.
And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work.
Once copyright terms are greater than about two thirds of the average human lifespan they are for all practical terms unlimited.
If the University doesn't deliver the mail isn't that some sort of mail fraud? Or am I missing something...
The university is not the post office, nor are the RIAA paying them to operate a private courier service.
Slightly more on topic, this is absolutely fucking crazy. It doesn't compete with the bus service, because cars are inherently more mobile than a bus run. Cars can go from point A, to point D, without all that visiting points B and C in between.
Having to visit points B & C may well increase the journey time from A to D greatly. Buses also tend to travel according to a timetable, which they need to stick to regardless of the number of passengers or traffic conditions. This can lead to a bus waiting at a stop where no passengers wish to board or leave, but the bus itself can't depart before a certain time.
There are obviously two different markets, one, mass transport along fixed routes, two, point to point transport by small numbers of people.
The obvious competition with car sharing is taxis rather than buses. Yet taxi companies don't appear to be complaining here.
Please give me an example of a major policy that is going to change under the Obama Administration. Even on illegal wiretapping he agrees with Bush.
If you have few candidates then it's quite possible that there will be things they agree on. But the majority of the electorate may well disagree on. It's certainly not going to help if it's seen as positive that candidates have "political experience".
The difference is that I have a choice of which private enterprises I do business with. Short of armed revolt or emigration I don't have that same choice when it comes to Government.
The latter may also require a change of citizenship. There are governments who insist that their rules apply to all their citizens not just those on "their soil".
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry. When you force banks to give loans to people without any means of paying them back, the banks are going to fail.
This dosn't say if there were too many or too few regulations. More that some of the regulations which existed were daft. You'd need to examine all of the regulations to draw a conclusion about the former,
Yeah that worked real well for the ancient Greeks. Their direct democracy led to a ruling class that stayed in power by political games.
IIRC they did have a mechanism to counter this. That of randomly selected legislative juries.
"For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted."
If law enforcement were aware of this why did they apparently do nothing. Even if only to arrest her for "money laundering". Why is it that "scam baiters" all appear to be ordinary people doing it in their spare time without there being any cops who do this as their job?
This woman is the reason these kinds of scams exist. She should be exiled.
But who'd want her in their country?
Companies will simply stop selling your government the things it needs to be more efficient, or will insist on huge fees to compensate for loss of intellectual property.
Except that governments are, or at least should be, in a position of power in any negotiations involving companies. Both these companies and the concept of "intellectual property" only exist at the whim of governments.