many believe that laws already exist that allow copyright owners to punish illegal traders
Er, it's a plain fact that there are already laws for the punishment of copyright infringement. This makes it sound as if it's an unsolved mystery like sightings of UFOs or Bigfoot.
If the US passed a law outlawing spam, or provided a do-not-email list, with harsh penalties for breaking it, do you think it would help?
It would help even if no one is actually prosecuted -- for one thing, it would instantly void every "pink contract" (to paraphrase Dr. McCoy, you can't contract to do a damn illegal thing).
Is it time to apply the computer-cracking laws to circumvention of anti-spam filters? After all, the two are identical in effect (break into somebody else's system without permission, and indeed against an express prohibition).
And included is a flabbergasting claim from RIAA head Hillary Rosen that only 3 percent of consumers polled are buying less music because prices are too high
Well, then, bootlegging must not be a serious problem -- since price is the only advantage illegal bootlegs have over authorized copies, and only 3% of the market is put off by the price of the latter, then 97% of the market will stay with you anyway.
Food production is heavily subsidized by the government as well. Why don't we get free food? Could the government make farmers give their food away to anyone since we helped pay for it?
If the farmers had gotten together and bought a law making it illegal to grow your own veggies (i.e. if they had acted like the incumbent phone companies), then it would be reasonable to either extract concessions in return or take away the special benefit.
If the ILECs were willing to give up the benefits of a mandated infrastructure monopoly (including retroactive payback for what they have already gained from it), then I'd have no objection to letting them off the hook. The problem is that they want it both ways.
Yep. However, since a last-mile line subsidized by a government monopoly (just try to string your own phone lines hither and yon without the Proper Permits[tm] and see what happens) is not "private", the question is irrelevant.
There's a fine line between "warning" and "declaration." The products you mentioned that had genuine warning labels had real detrimental side effects. On the other hand, labels on food that say "genetically modified" or "irradiated" are not warnings because there are no real detrimental side-effects to using these foods (or at least no claims of side-effects that can hold water).
The labelling under discussion here falls into the former category -- it is a matter of clear and obvious fact that it will be difficult or impossible to play round silver objects bearing copy-restricted content on some CD players, to transfer the sounds encoded on the disk to a portable MP3 player, or otherwise use it in some of the ways that one would expect a CD to be usable.
The government at most should label products with health and safety issues.
So, you don't think I would be doing anything wrong if I sold ordinary tap water as "Dr. Steve's Muscle-Making, Brain-Building, Potency-Pumping Elixir"? After all, the tap water isn't unhealthy or unsafe (not even by diverting people from trying other more promising techniques toward those ends -- that merely results in them staying the same, not becoming any worse off).
As pointed out upthread, products ordinarily come with a "warranty of implied fitness" (i.e. the expectation that if used for their intended purpose by a reasonable and prudent person, they'll work as expected). A 5 1/2" silver disk with copy prevention that looks like a CD and is not clearly labeled as a non-CD is fraudulent, for the same reason that counterfeit machine parts are fraudulent -- they just don't do what a reasonable purchaser would expect of them.
The government is making an attempt at forcing speech, with their police power, on the speakers.
Yep, and properly so. A lie of omission, when it would mislead a reasonable person into making a false assumption, is just that -- a lie. A lie uttered in connection with a commercial transaction is fraud. Fraud is a crime, and is recognized as such by pretty much everybody who accepts that there is any such thing as "crime". QED.
84% of [entertaiment lobby] donations in the last election went to Dems
You'd think that even if Republicans don't have any principles, they'd at least have enough self-preservation instinct to make life unpleasant for their enemies. Even lower animals can figure that out.
I think calling it "anti-piracy technology" is completely appropriate. That is what it is designed for
I don't concede this assertion. IMO, one of the design goals is to establish standards that enforce controls on usage, not just copying. Anyone who cares to prove me wrong is welcome to market a DVD player in the US that is infinitely region-resettable and ignores fast-forward lockouts.
The 9/11 hijackers flew on the same flights again and again. This should have been noticed.
Noticing that isn't useful -- anybody with recurring business in the same city and a more-or-less routine schedule is going to repeatedly fly on the same flight.
Start accepting that taking reasonable actions in collecting intelligence could help in preventing another terrorist attack.
This begs the question of what is "reasonable". Identifying passengers on an airplane and checking them against a watch list of people for whom grounds of suspicion have been established is reasonable. Poindexter's one-stop dossier project is not. Depending on the exact extent of the "passenger data" being provided by the EU, the step described in this story may or may not be reasonable.
If you people haven't learned from 9/11 by now, airplanes have been a target for terrorists for years, and will likely continue to be.
When I see a decent night stick next to the barf bag and advertising magazine, and when the pilots are routinely armed, then I'll believe that government policies have some rational relationship to the threat of airplane terrorism. The TSA (Turkeys Standing Around) is a bad joke.
Kamen declares himself "somewhat pleased and surprised" that so many state legislators agreed to change their laws to accommodate his scooter
It's hardly surpising that the laws are for sale. Now that the money machine has sputtered and died, they'll change back quickly enough as soon as the first pedestrian with any pull gets clobbered (they don't all have indoor parking).
The spam dropboxes (the address for suckers to reply) often is on hotmail. Whenever I report one, the drones send a message a few days later asking if the issue has been resolved (yeah, right, I'm going to try to send mail to a spam drop box to find out whether or not you bothered to do your fscking job and nuke it).
people who use a continuous flow of newly creatred hotmail accounts to SEND spam? Shouldn't Msoft do something about them too?
Now, now, you can't expect them to be able to handle something as technically complex as imposing a 2 second per destination address delay on new accounts.
The one change that I would make in the electoral system is to have all states use the Maine/Nebraska system (each Congressional district vote maps to one electoral vote; the state as a whole maps to the two electoral votes corresponding to its Senate representation). This would prevent outlying areas within a state from being effectively disenfranchised by a few cities, while preserving the weight of rural, urban, etc common interests.
The examples you gave were business decisions by Murdoch for whatever reason he has for courting the Chinese
Your argument is a textbook example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy (i.e. inventing new definitions on the fly in order to arbitrarily exclude evidence against your claim).
As it happens, I do not want anyone I don't know to cause my telephone to ring. How do you suggest I bring about this desire?
Well, since he doesn't want the guvmint to enforce your private property rights, I can only assume that he wants you to enforce them yourself a la Bun-Bun.
Enforcing private property rights (to paraphrase Reagan, "I am paying for this telephone!") is one of the proper functions of government. By your reasoning, anyone who calls the cops instead of turning vigilante is "penalizing the taxpayer".
(Of course, this argument doesn't apply if you're an anarchist, in which case just say so and we can agree to disagree.)
I actually agree with this, but it was nominated for best documentary. I think it should win something.
The Academy should create a "Most Politically Correct" award. That way they could get it out of their system and then give out the other awards based on merit.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, it's a plain fact that there are already laws for the punishment of copyright infringement. This makes it sound as if it's an unsolved mystery like sightings of UFOs or Bigfoot.
It would help even if no one is actually prosecuted -- for one thing, it would instantly void every "pink contract" (to paraphrase Dr. McCoy, you can't contract to do a damn illegal thing).
Is it time to apply the computer-cracking laws to circumvention of anti-spam filters? After all, the two are identical in effect (break into somebody else's system without permission, and indeed against an express prohibition).
Well, then, bootlegging must not be a serious problem -- since price is the only advantage illegal bootlegs have over authorized copies, and only 3% of the market is put off by the price of the latter, then 97% of the market will stay with you anyway.
Then the lien for decades of government-mandated monopoly benefits is due now, to be Paid In Full.
If the farmers had gotten together and bought a law making it illegal to grow your own veggies (i.e. if they had acted like the incumbent phone companies), then it would be reasonable to either extract concessions in return or take away the special benefit.
If the ILECs were willing to give up the benefits of a mandated infrastructure monopoly (including retroactive payback for what they have already gained from it), then I'd have no objection to letting them off the hook. The problem is that they want it both ways.
Yep. However, since a last-mile line subsidized by a government monopoly (just try to string your own phone lines hither and yon without the Proper Permits[tm] and see what happens) is not "private", the question is irrelevant.
The labelling under discussion here falls into the former category -- it is a matter of clear and obvious fact that it will be difficult or impossible to play round silver objects bearing copy-restricted content on some CD players, to transfer the sounds encoded on the disk to a portable MP3 player, or otherwise use it in some of the ways that one would expect a CD to be usable.
So, you don't think I would be doing anything wrong if I sold ordinary tap water as "Dr. Steve's Muscle-Making, Brain-Building, Potency-Pumping Elixir"? After all, the tap water isn't unhealthy or unsafe (not even by diverting people from trying other more promising techniques toward those ends -- that merely results in them staying the same, not becoming any worse off).
As pointed out upthread, products ordinarily come with a "warranty of implied fitness" (i.e. the expectation that if used for their intended purpose by a reasonable and prudent person, they'll work as expected). A 5 1/2" silver disk with copy prevention that looks like a CD and is not clearly labeled as a non-CD is fraudulent, for the same reason that counterfeit machine parts are fraudulent -- they just don't do what a reasonable purchaser would expect of them.
Yep, and properly so. A lie of omission, when it would mislead a reasonable person into making a false assumption, is just that -- a lie. A lie uttered in connection with a commercial transaction is fraud. Fraud is a crime, and is recognized as such by pretty much everybody who accepts that there is any such thing as "crime". QED.
You'd think that even if Republicans don't have any principles, they'd at least have enough self-preservation instinct to make life unpleasant for their enemies. Even lower animals can figure that out.
I don't concede this assertion. IMO, one of the design goals is to establish standards that enforce controls on usage, not just copying. Anyone who cares to prove me wrong is welcome to market a DVD player in the US that is infinitely region-resettable and ignores fast-forward lockouts.
Reportedly, some of the 9/11 terrorists spent their last night on earth drinking and buying lap dances.
Noticing that isn't useful -- anybody with recurring business in the same city and a more-or-less routine schedule is going to repeatedly fly on the same flight.
Start accepting that taking reasonable actions in collecting intelligence could help in preventing another terrorist attack.
This begs the question of what is "reasonable". Identifying passengers on an airplane and checking them against a watch list of people for whom grounds of suspicion have been established is reasonable. Poindexter's one-stop dossier project is not. Depending on the exact extent of the "passenger data" being provided by the EU, the step described in this story may or may not be reasonable.
When I see a decent night stick next to the barf bag and advertising magazine, and when the pilots are routinely armed, then I'll believe that government policies have some rational relationship to the threat of airplane terrorism. The TSA (Turkeys Standing Around) is a bad joke.
It's hardly surpising that the laws are for sale. Now that the money machine has sputtered and died, they'll change back quickly enough as soon as the first pedestrian with any pull gets clobbered (they don't all have indoor parking).
The spam dropboxes (the address for suckers to reply) often is on hotmail. Whenever I report one, the drones send a message a few days later asking if the issue has been resolved (yeah, right, I'm going to try to send mail to a spam drop box to find out whether or not you bothered to do your fscking job and nuke it).
Now, now, you can't expect them to be able to handle something as technically complex as imposing a 2 second per destination address delay on new accounts.
The one change that I would make in the electoral system is to have all states use the Maine/Nebraska system (each Congressional district vote maps to one electoral vote; the state as a whole maps to the two electoral votes corresponding to its Senate representation). This would prevent outlying areas within a state from being effectively disenfranchised by a few cities, while preserving the weight of rural, urban, etc common interests.
Your argument is a textbook example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy (i.e. inventing new definitions on the fly in order to arbitrarily exclude evidence against your claim).
And now we're about to close a loophole in them.
Well, since he doesn't want the guvmint to enforce your private property rights, I can only assume that he wants you to enforce them yourself a la Bun-Bun.
(Of course, this argument doesn't apply if you're an anarchist, in which case just say so and we can agree to disagree.)
The Academy should create a "Most Politically Correct" award. That way they could get it out of their system and then give out the other awards based on merit.
[standard spammer excuses]
Wow, your post title is a textbook example of truth in advertising.