1. there is no such thing as a society that works without government
2. democracy has been shown that consent of the will of the people actually works. in fact, works better than traditional forms of government that rely upon rule by force
this should dispel all the anti-government trolls, the idiots who equate any government with the worst kind of government, and think somehow no government results in anything except somalia
in a land where people live peacefully, legitimacy is derived from the consent of the will of the people. in a land where people are in conflict, legitimacy is derived from force
it would be ideal if the land in question were legitimately ruled by what people consent to. but the people who live there are all too happy to reach for bombs and guns, and so they have decided that the way of the bomb and the gun is what rules their lands. blaming outsiders is a convenient excuse for one's own failures. outsiders would have no rhyme or reason to get involved if one side or the other weren't asking outsiders to get involved: there'd be no way in, all sides would repulse the outsiders. but in a land where calling in foreign powers is perfectly acceptable because hatred of your neighbor because they are sunni, or kurd, or whatever, is more important than regional solidarity, is a land that will never rule itself
the best thing about the Arab Spring is that those who spearheaded the overthrow of deeply unpopular governments insisted on no violence. because they knew this was all the excuse the government needed to respond with it's own violence. in this way, they won their own country
now the question remains if the discipline of this path of no violence can be adhered to. unfortunately, the middle east is fractured by ancient vendettas and conflicts, between religions and tribes. it is very hard for such a land to be ruled by peace. too many are hellbent on blood as the only answer, to conflicts which are best left aside
the arab world will never have peace, growth, and prosperity until the arab world itself, regardless of what outsiders do, put aside their own internal conflicts
what is legitimate in the arab world? ideally, what arabs want, decided peacefully. it is up to arabs themselves to reach for peace themselves, as the Arab Spring shows, that is the way they free themselves form oppression, foreign, yes, but mostly domestic
right, because the brutal dictator would be fighting the drug trade, rather than profiting from it
after all, when someone is completely ruthless, he's only completely ruthless in certain ways, and 100% virtuous in others, right?
kind of like how people on the right scream "YEAH!" when asked if they would just let the poor die without health insurance... but of course, the same people say they would give generously to charity. oh, of course
it's a nice cheat in your wish-fulfillment "philosophy" to imagine that brutality is a selective virtue. brutal is brutal: stupid and mean
i described how an artist would make money the honest way. i didn't describe how all artists would make money. the idea that all artists would make money on the internet is a hilarious joke that no one takes seriously, except perhaps yourself
"reading comprehension:" it's on the syllabus in most 2nd grade class rooms. do take a remedial course
actually, if you are an independent artist, you should read about the long tail
what the internet provides is a way to capitalize on vanishingly small economic niches. a capacity that did not exist before the internet, where you were either signed by a middle man who pocketed most of the money you made, or you pocketed nothing at all
preinternet: 10 signed bands making millions. 10,000 unsigned bands making nothing
post internet: 1 band making millions. 10 making hundreds of thousands. 100 making tens of thousands. 1,000 making thousands. 10,000 making hundreds
and they make that money directly, with fans. no middle man who takes 90% of the cut, which is what IP law is for: the middleman's benefit, not yours. he makes sure you sign over all your rights before your recording ever gets heard by anyone. additionally, the bands make the money the honest way in the internet arena: recorded media is just advertising, if you want money, you do gigs and concerts, you WORK for your money
i don't pay the guy who built my house a dime every time i walk in the front door. if you perform, you get ticket revenue. what you put on the internet is just advertising. this crazy economic model of giving away free content in order to boost fame and then capitalize on that has a crazy economic precursor called RADIO
you may consider me a troll. to me, this sounds like shooting the messenger. i am not imposing some wacky ideology on you. i am describing the reality of the media landscape today. go ahead and cling to a dead past if it makes you feel better. but the political assholes can make all the laws they want: technology just routes around them
please, obsess with the molehill called al gore. and complete ignore the mountain: the entrenched power structure aptly rewarded by the trillions in the energy industry
why do you see so much menace in the form of the outsider called al gore, and not in the entrenched power that spit him out when he stopped playing their game? why? because your head is turned by propaganda. "look, over there: al gore! the bogeyman! run and hide! pay no attention to us, who are in power, and have no interest in any agenda which threatens the flow of oil and the money into the coffers of our masters"
you're an idiot. you really a grade aaa propagandized fool
"The fallacy of your argument is the assumption that all artists will be rich and famous..."
i stopped reading there. I never said anything remotely like that. Therefore, you are not worth interacting with because you can't even keep track of what someone actually says.
Before the rise of intellectual property, artists were mostly poor (most of human history, when plenty of art was created). At the height of the age of LPs, cassette tapes, and CDs, artists were mostly poor. In the Internet age, artists are and will be mostly poor, forever. Making art is always a gamble, and the Internet age doesn't make artists more poor or less poor, although the idea that there is no middle man who gets a contract and siphons off most of the profits seems quite tempting, no? Reality check, genius: IP law is for the benefit of the middle man, not the artist. Only the truly highly successful can write their own ticket. All the one hit wonders of this world don't see a dime after their fame quickly fades, but the middle men still do, because the contract stipulates they own the IP.
How the media is distributed and the economics around that doesn't change the simple fact that thousands toil in obscurity for every JayZ or Coldplay. True in 1611. True in 2011. True in 2411.
Do you want to throw out more dimwitted red herrings?
the companies with the most money make the most donations, and politicians do their bidding. i would go on, but if you don't understand how much money goes from petroleum corporations to politicians, you are willfully blind or amazingly stupid. i mean they start WARS for these assholes, and yet you want to continue with the delusion that university hippies and politicians who don't follow the money are the ones who are going to dominate. i could be polite, but i don't see the point: you're an idiot. i mean really: you want to hold an opinion in complete disregard of all political, financial and scientifically obvious evidence. please get your head out of your hilariously propagandized ass
so you are suggesting that politicians are in the pocket of university hippies, rather than the multinational corporations that invest millions in their election campaigns
science will be used in politics. you need to make peace with that. this notion you have that it somehow shouldn't may be a nice platitude, but that wish of yours will never be reality
given that i accept that ugly truth, my point of view is the correct one: policy derived from science, no matter the flaws, is superior to policy derived in opposition to science
now you can continue to wish for the impossibility of science not intersecting with politics. or you can accept that it will, and make a choice as to which policy you support. you don't have the luxury of not choosing, unless you wish to choose to be irrelevant in the discussion
and yet, for all the failures you see in politics derived from climate science, it is politics obviously superior to politics derived from denying climate science
politics derived from entrenched corporate interests, such as multinational petroleum companies, is something i react more strongly against
dimwitted idiots think evolution says something about racism. callous class warfare proponents think evolution says something about society
evolution has to do with speciation. it has nothing to do with racism or class warfare, no matter how many dimwitted fools try to force that round peg into a square hole
in the same way, all of the red herrings you reference above mean nothing, because anyone with a malformed, dimwitted understanding of a scientific concept can say that the scientific concept supports almost any random belief they want it to. this has more to do with the idiocy of the person with the bad beliefs and tghe weak understanding of science, than it says about the actual hard cold facts of the actual science
climate science says the earth is warming. this is verified cold (pun intended) hard truth. what some idiot thinks that fact says about the beliefs they hold, whether left or right, means nothing
but anyone who directly denies the actual truth of what science says: they lose. no matter what somebody with contrary beliefs thinks has "won" because of their dimwitted understanding of science
you don't get to criticize hard science because some dimwit who doesn't understand the science thinks it supports their beliefs that you don't like. you can criticize their beliefs, but not the actual science. or you are equally a fool. got it?
evolution has to do with speciation. it has nothing to do with racism or class warfare, no matter how many dimwitted fools try to force that round peg into a square hole
an artist deserves to make a living. they will give concerts with ticket receipts, advertise products, produce personalized content, and otherwise become very rich on the ancillary sources of revenue derived from their fame. fame which is fed on my distributing their content. they will thank me for the FREE ADVERTISING i give them, which is what a media file is. ever hear of RADIO?
what i will not do, is give a dime to the guy who built my house every time i open my front door, or give a quarter to the company that built my car every time i turn the ignition. nor, as some laws now say, will my GRANDCHILDREN give the GRANDCHILDREN of my home builder a dime every time they open the front door, ridiculous! you work for something: give a concert, you take the ticket receipts, and then it's over
if a guy sat in a studio and recorded a song, i will listen to that recording whenever i please, for free, and i will share it with anyone i want to, for free, and that guy will be happy at my enthusiasm, because it fills concert halls and makes me listen to him when he advertises a product. i am providing him a service: advertising, for free
and he will be very rich and famous for that. what i will not do, is give him money, for a product whose natural economic value, a media file, is point and click zero
anything else i can help you with today?
i am not imposing my beliefs on anyone. i am imposing natural economic truth on a philosophically failed way to think about media files, stuck in an era from before the internet
or you are a paranoid fool who will grasp at straws rather than simply admit you have lost the argument
yeah, it's all a conspiracy. pfffft
it's never just the simple matter that science has spoken against your beliefs, and that if you were motivated by intellectual honesty rather than blind stubbornness, you would admit when you are wrong like an adult
WHY it is getting warmer: that is indeed more inferential. but why does it matter? it is a problem we need to solve no matter the cause. we are homo sapiens: we don't adapt to our environment, we adapt our environment to us. we don't wait to grow fur to go into cold lands, we slaughter herbivores and use their fur. we don't evolve the ability to stand outside in the dead of winter, we cut up some sod and build an artificial cave, then we burn some peat to keep warm inside. we are homo sapiens: we adjust the thermostat to our needs, we don't stand there and suffer
and we aren't going to suffer a warming planet. we cool the planet down. how? why? are you going to doubt our ingenuity? are you going to doubt our determination? go ahead, bet against us. bad bet. we are homo sapiens, adjusting the thermostat to our needs is what we do
the warming planet, whether natural or manmade, is going to cost us, in one way or another: more damaging storms, lower crop yields, desertification, etc.
so we can suffer these costs by doing nothing, like a dumb herbivore standing there through the cold winter, like you apparently want to do, or proactively do something that science says will cool things down, and therefore bring the earth into a climate zone to our liking. that effort will cost us, certainly. but it will cost us a hell of a lot less than doing nothing!
i assert that your beliefs are driven by an inability to appreciate more abstract costs. you see the costs on the bottom line of a tax bill, but you won't admit the cost of doing nothing in terms of more hurricanes and more deserts. which is a greater cost!
and i'm sorry, but i am an intelligent being, and i will not let your dimwittedness and shortsightedness doom my species, so you WILL lose this argument. propaganda by shortsighted greedy fools only works against truth and determination only for so long, and eventually, dimwits who can't appreciate abstract costs will be overruled
"So blind, egotistical self righteousness trumps brown people getting enough food to eat."
the political objective becomes a logical product of the climate science. you are suggesting the science is being used by leftists. what if the science just naturally and inevitably supports what leftists are saying?
example: evolution. the idea we evolved from now extinct species that were more like apes, then rodents, then sea slime, challenges religious beliefs that posits that, for example, a god made man in his image. a religious scholar might comment that atheists are using evolution to destroy religion. but what if evolution just naturally and without any prompting, challenges age-old religious beliefs?
at some point, you are going to have to concede that the science challenges your political beliefs, without any contrived or phony effort or dubious agenda. then you are going to have to give up your political beliefs, or continue to cling to them in denial of what science says. not because leftists have won, but because reality has won
if you don't understand the simple fucking concept of respecting the dead, ANY dead, of ANY conflict, you lack the cognitive faculties to say anything intelligent on the entire subject matter
it became common property when the artist sang the song or filmed the movie and it entered the minds of millions. he or she can profit on that, for a limited amount of time WE THE PEOPLE define in order to reward them for their innovation with our thanks. unfortunately, lawyer scumbags have extended that period into absurdity
pharmaceutical companies spend billions on miracle drugs they only have 20 years to profit on. that system seems to work just fine
they are limited to 20 years because the understanding that the incentive to innovate exists in tension with corporate greed trumping human life because of economics. this morality is readily apparent to all
in the same way, there is tension between innovation and corporate greed trumping the cultural commons. but because the contrast is not so starkly defined, such as with human life versus greed and with pharmaceutical patents, lobbyists have gotten away with figurative murder in the realm of movies and songs
who suffers/ we all suffer. our culture is less rich because we cannot freely trade on the cultural motifs and standards of our shared cultural experience with out some lawyer asshole asking for money, until such cultural motifs are so stale not even our grandparents recall them
cultural innovation is hindered by copyright laws that exist well into the realm of obscene lengths of time
therefore it is my initiative, and that of others morally outraged at this abuse, to purposefully go out of our way to hurt the bottom lines of the scumbags who perpetrate this impoverishment of our culture. your bottom line is not more important than my culture, and i will go out of way to hurt your bottom line because you say otherwise. ip law is a bloated disgusting abomination, and it will be destroyed. technology will trump law. your avarice insults my sense of fairness
There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.
Slashdot Mirror
1. there is no such thing as a society that works without government
2. democracy has been shown that consent of the will of the people actually works. in fact, works better than traditional forms of government that rely upon rule by force
this should dispel all the anti-government trolls, the idiots who equate any government with the worst kind of government, and think somehow no government results in anything except somalia
in a land where people live peacefully, legitimacy is derived from the consent of the will of the people. in a land where people are in conflict, legitimacy is derived from force
it would be ideal if the land in question were legitimately ruled by what people consent to. but the people who live there are all too happy to reach for bombs and guns, and so they have decided that the way of the bomb and the gun is what rules their lands. blaming outsiders is a convenient excuse for one's own failures. outsiders would have no rhyme or reason to get involved if one side or the other weren't asking outsiders to get involved: there'd be no way in, all sides would repulse the outsiders. but in a land where calling in foreign powers is perfectly acceptable because hatred of your neighbor because they are sunni, or kurd, or whatever, is more important than regional solidarity, is a land that will never rule itself
the best thing about the Arab Spring is that those who spearheaded the overthrow of deeply unpopular governments insisted on no violence. because they knew this was all the excuse the government needed to respond with it's own violence. in this way, they won their own country
now the question remains if the discipline of this path of no violence can be adhered to. unfortunately, the middle east is fractured by ancient vendettas and conflicts, between religions and tribes. it is very hard for such a land to be ruled by peace. too many are hellbent on blood as the only answer, to conflicts which are best left aside
the arab world will never have peace, growth, and prosperity until the arab world itself, regardless of what outsiders do, put aside their own internal conflicts
what is legitimate in the arab world? ideally, what arabs want, decided peacefully. it is up to arabs themselves to reach for peace themselves, as the Arab Spring shows, that is the way they free themselves form oppression, foreign, yes, but mostly domestic
right, because the brutal dictator would be fighting the drug trade, rather than profiting from it
after all, when someone is completely ruthless, he's only completely ruthless in certain ways, and 100% virtuous in others, right?
kind of like how people on the right scream "YEAH!" when asked if they would just let the poor die without health insurance... but of course, the same people say they would give generously to charity. oh, of course
it's a nice cheat in your wish-fulfillment "philosophy" to imagine that brutality is a selective virtue. brutal is brutal: stupid and mean
yes, we're human: we get in car accidents, we trip and fall down the stairs, we say things we don't really mean
but we don't betray our own principles over an extended period of time in a calculated conscious manner
that's not being human, that's being a scumbag
"I don't know this photographer, so I don't know how sincere that regret is."
his regret is 100% sincere: he regrets being caught
save your human empathy for people who deserve it. this guy doesn't deserve it
i described how an artist would make money the honest way. i didn't describe how all artists would make money. the idea that all artists would make money on the internet is a hilarious joke that no one takes seriously, except perhaps yourself
"reading comprehension:" it's on the syllabus in most 2nd grade class rooms. do take a remedial course
actually, if you are an independent artist, you should read about the long tail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
what the internet provides is a way to capitalize on vanishingly small economic niches. a capacity that did not exist before the internet, where you were either signed by a middle man who pocketed most of the money you made, or you pocketed nothing at all
preinternet: 10 signed bands making millions. 10,000 unsigned bands making nothing
post internet: 1 band making millions. 10 making hundreds of thousands. 100 making tens of thousands. 1,000 making thousands. 10,000 making hundreds
and they make that money directly, with fans. no middle man who takes 90% of the cut, which is what IP law is for: the middleman's benefit, not yours. he makes sure you sign over all your rights before your recording ever gets heard by anyone. additionally, the bands make the money the honest way in the internet arena: recorded media is just advertising, if you want money, you do gigs and concerts, you WORK for your money
i don't pay the guy who built my house a dime every time i walk in the front door. if you perform, you get ticket revenue. what you put on the internet is just advertising. this crazy economic model of giving away free content in order to boost fame and then capitalize on that has a crazy economic precursor called RADIO
you may consider me a troll. to me, this sounds like shooting the messenger. i am not imposing some wacky ideology on you. i am describing the reality of the media landscape today. go ahead and cling to a dead past if it makes you feel better. but the political assholes can make all the laws they want: technology just routes around them
yes: al gore. scary scary al gore
and how many presidencies does he hold?
and how many senate seats?
please, obsess with the molehill called al gore. and complete ignore the mountain: the entrenched power structure aptly rewarded by the trillions in the energy industry
why do you see so much menace in the form of the outsider called al gore, and not in the entrenched power that spit him out when he stopped playing their game? why? because your head is turned by propaganda. "look, over there: al gore! the bogeyman! run and hide! pay no attention to us, who are in power, and have no interest in any agenda which threatens the flow of oil and the money into the coffers of our masters"
you're an idiot. you really a grade aaa propagandized fool
yes, scary scary al gore. without any power
you are a PROPAGANDIZED FOOL
"The fallacy of your argument is the assumption that all artists will be rich and famous..."
i stopped reading there. I never said anything remotely like that. Therefore, you are not worth interacting with because you can't even keep track of what someone actually says.
Before the rise of intellectual property, artists were mostly poor (most of human history, when plenty of art was created). At the height of the age of LPs, cassette tapes, and CDs, artists were mostly poor. In the Internet age, artists are and will be mostly poor, forever. Making art is always a gamble, and the Internet age doesn't make artists more poor or less poor, although the idea that there is no middle man who gets a contract and siphons off most of the profits seems quite tempting, no? Reality check, genius: IP law is for the benefit of the middle man, not the artist. Only the truly highly successful can write their own ticket. All the one hit wonders of this world don't see a dime after their fame quickly fades, but the middle men still do, because the contract stipulates they own the IP.
How the media is distributed and the economics around that doesn't change the simple fact that thousands toil in obscurity for every JayZ or Coldplay. True in 1611. True in 2011. True in 2411.
Do you want to throw out more dimwitted red herrings?
the companies with the most money make the most donations, and politicians do their bidding. i would go on, but if you don't understand how much money goes from petroleum corporations to politicians, you are willfully blind or amazingly stupid. i mean they start WARS for these assholes, and yet you want to continue with the delusion that university hippies and politicians who don't follow the money are the ones who are going to dominate. i could be polite, but i don't see the point: you're an idiot. i mean really: you want to hold an opinion in complete disregard of all political, financial and scientifically obvious evidence. please get your head out of your hilariously propagandized ass
so you are suggesting that politicians are in the pocket of university hippies, rather than the multinational corporations that invest millions in their election campaigns
science will be used in politics. you need to make peace with that. this notion you have that it somehow shouldn't may be a nice platitude, but that wish of yours will never be reality
given that i accept that ugly truth, my point of view is the correct one: policy derived from science, no matter the flaws, is superior to policy derived in opposition to science
now you can continue to wish for the impossibility of science not intersecting with politics. or you can accept that it will, and make a choice as to which policy you support. you don't have the luxury of not choosing, unless you wish to choose to be irrelevant in the discussion
then there's these people
and yet, for all the failures you see in politics derived from climate science, it is politics obviously superior to politics derived from denying climate science
politics derived from entrenched corporate interests, such as multinational petroleum companies, is something i react more strongly against
dimwitted idiots think evolution says something about racism. callous class warfare proponents think evolution says something about society
evolution has to do with speciation. it has nothing to do with racism or class warfare, no matter how many dimwitted fools try to force that round peg into a square hole
in the same way, all of the red herrings you reference above mean nothing, because anyone with a malformed, dimwitted understanding of a scientific concept can say that the scientific concept supports almost any random belief they want it to. this has more to do with the idiocy of the person with the bad beliefs and tghe weak understanding of science, than it says about the actual hard cold facts of the actual science
climate science says the earth is warming. this is verified cold (pun intended) hard truth. what some idiot thinks that fact says about the beliefs they hold, whether left or right, means nothing
but anyone who directly denies the actual truth of what science says: they lose. no matter what somebody with contrary beliefs thinks has "won" because of their dimwitted understanding of science
you don't get to criticize hard science because some dimwit who doesn't understand the science thinks it supports their beliefs that you don't like. you can criticize their beliefs, but not the actual science. or you are equally a fool. got it?
mod parent up
evolution has to do with speciation. it has nothing to do with racism or class warfare, no matter how many dimwitted fools try to force that round peg into a square hole
an artist deserves to make a living. they will give concerts with ticket receipts, advertise products, produce personalized content, and otherwise become very rich on the ancillary sources of revenue derived from their fame. fame which is fed on my distributing their content. they will thank me for the FREE ADVERTISING i give them, which is what a media file is. ever hear of RADIO?
what i will not do, is give a dime to the guy who built my house every time i open my front door, or give a quarter to the company that built my car every time i turn the ignition. nor, as some laws now say, will my GRANDCHILDREN give the GRANDCHILDREN of my home builder a dime every time they open the front door, ridiculous! you work for something: give a concert, you take the ticket receipts, and then it's over
if a guy sat in a studio and recorded a song, i will listen to that recording whenever i please, for free, and i will share it with anyone i want to, for free, and that guy will be happy at my enthusiasm, because it fills concert halls and makes me listen to him when he advertises a product. i am providing him a service: advertising, for free
and he will be very rich and famous for that. what i will not do, is give him money, for a product whose natural economic value, a media file, is point and click zero
anything else i can help you with today?
i am not imposing my beliefs on anyone. i am imposing natural economic truth on a philosophically failed way to think about media files, stuck in an era from before the internet
adapt, or die, dinosaur
or you are a paranoid fool who will grasp at straws rather than simply admit you have lost the argument
yeah, it's all a conspiracy. pfffft
it's never just the simple matter that science has spoken against your beliefs, and that if you were motivated by intellectual honesty rather than blind stubbornness, you would admit when you are wrong like an adult
the earth is getting warmer
this is overwhelmingly verified and agreed upon
WHY it is getting warmer: that is indeed more inferential. but why does it matter? it is a problem we need to solve no matter the cause. we are homo sapiens: we don't adapt to our environment, we adapt our environment to us. we don't wait to grow fur to go into cold lands, we slaughter herbivores and use their fur. we don't evolve the ability to stand outside in the dead of winter, we cut up some sod and build an artificial cave, then we burn some peat to keep warm inside. we are homo sapiens: we adjust the thermostat to our needs, we don't stand there and suffer
and we aren't going to suffer a warming planet. we cool the planet down. how? why? are you going to doubt our ingenuity? are you going to doubt our determination? go ahead, bet against us. bad bet. we are homo sapiens, adjusting the thermostat to our needs is what we do
the warming planet, whether natural or manmade, is going to cost us, in one way or another: more damaging storms, lower crop yields, desertification, etc.
so we can suffer these costs by doing nothing, like a dumb herbivore standing there through the cold winter, like you apparently want to do, or proactively do something that science says will cool things down, and therefore bring the earth into a climate zone to our liking. that effort will cost us, certainly. but it will cost us a hell of a lot less than doing nothing!
i assert that your beliefs are driven by an inability to appreciate more abstract costs. you see the costs on the bottom line of a tax bill, but you won't admit the cost of doing nothing in terms of more hurricanes and more deserts. which is a greater cost!
and i'm sorry, but i am an intelligent being, and i will not let your dimwittedness and shortsightedness doom my species, so you WILL lose this argument. propaganda by shortsighted greedy fools only works against truth and determination only for so long, and eventually, dimwits who can't appreciate abstract costs will be overruled
"So blind, egotistical self righteousness trumps brown people getting enough food to eat."
nice red herring, asshole
c'mon, consider the subject matter
the proper metric here is "billyuns and billyuns"
show some respect for carl!
the political objective becomes a logical product of the climate science. you are suggesting the science is being used by leftists. what if the science just naturally and inevitably supports what leftists are saying?
example: evolution. the idea we evolved from now extinct species that were more like apes, then rodents, then sea slime, challenges religious beliefs that posits that, for example, a god made man in his image. a religious scholar might comment that atheists are using evolution to destroy religion. but what if evolution just naturally and without any prompting, challenges age-old religious beliefs?
at some point, you are going to have to concede that the science challenges your political beliefs, without any contrived or phony effort or dubious agenda. then you are going to have to give up your political beliefs, or continue to cling to them in denial of what science says. not because leftists have won, but because reality has won
if you don't understand the simple fucking concept of respecting the dead, ANY dead, of ANY conflict, you lack the cognitive faculties to say anything intelligent on the entire subject matter
i have a car. if you take my car, i have no car
i have a song. i point and click, and now we both have that song
slightly different concept, right moron?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424088&cid=37383158
it became common property when the artist sang the song or filmed the movie and it entered the minds of millions. he or she can profit on that, for a limited amount of time WE THE PEOPLE define in order to reward them for their innovation with our thanks. unfortunately, lawyer scumbags have extended that period into absurdity
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424088&cid=37383158
you understand ownership of a song to be some sort of ironclad truth, like owning your right or left hand. insane and bizarre
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424088&cid=37383158
pharmaceutical companies spend billions on miracle drugs they only have 20 years to profit on. that system seems to work just fine
they are limited to 20 years because the understanding that the incentive to innovate exists in tension with corporate greed trumping human life because of economics. this morality is readily apparent to all
in the same way, there is tension between innovation and corporate greed trumping the cultural commons. but because the contrast is not so starkly defined, such as with human life versus greed and with pharmaceutical patents, lobbyists have gotten away with figurative murder in the realm of movies and songs
who suffers/ we all suffer. our culture is less rich because we cannot freely trade on the cultural motifs and standards of our shared cultural experience with out some lawyer asshole asking for money, until such cultural motifs are so stale not even our grandparents recall them
example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems
cultural innovation is hindered by copyright laws that exist well into the realm of obscene lengths of time
therefore it is my initiative, and that of others morally outraged at this abuse, to purposefully go out of our way to hurt the bottom lines of the scumbags who perpetrate this impoverishment of our culture. your bottom line is not more important than my culture, and i will go out of way to hurt your bottom line because you say otherwise. ip law is a bloated disgusting abomination, and it will be destroyed. technology will trump law. your avarice insults my sense of fairness
There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.