This means the observer is the universe. This means that due to non-locality, distance and space are illusions. This means time/change is energy. And energy is conciousness/self awareness.
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your pharmacology.
I am, according to certain arguably objective measures, in the top tenth-of-one-percent of the population. Whoopty-doo, I'm less stupid than 99.9% of the population. Just because I'm one of the brightest sheep in the flock doesn't change the fact that sheep are idiots and I am still a sheep. A slightly less stupid than typical sheep.
certainly not irrational
According to a US survey 73% of the population selected "Believe in" for at least one of: ESP / Haunted Houses / Ghosts / Telepathy / Clairvoyance / Precognition / Astrology / Communicate mentally with the dead / Witches / Reincarnation / Channeling. Note that this was a "Believe in / Not sure about / Don't believe" type survey. So we have only 27% who selected "Not Sure" or "Not Believe" across all ten items.... and the result would be far less than 27% who actually "Not Believe" across all ten.
And that merely begins to scratch the surface of gross irrationality. It doesn't even touch on endless routine forms of irrationality.... being more likely to buy a product because of a Hot Model in a TV commercial or psychologically filtering & spinning information to align with a political preference or doing silly little things "for luck" or having irrational little habits or various sorts of interpersonal issues and on and on and on.
I don't buy into any sort of paranormal or pseudoscience nonsense, and (I believe/hope) I am less irrational than most people in some other common ways, but that merely makes me less irrational that most people. I am rational enough to recognize and acknowledge that I am far from immune.
And it hardly matters if you can get on the ballot if you have no chance of going further (ask Ron Paul).
Getting on the ballot is (relatively) easy, and how far you go is pretty well determined by how much general public support they get.
There is a lot to respect about Ron Paul. He also had some fairly intense support.
However in many ways his positions were rather extreme, and he in fact had very little support. As I said yes he had some intense support, but as a percentage of the public he had very little support.
It doesn't take any "grand conspiracy" of the media or "party elite" to validly explain how little coverage and other attention he got. Coverage and other attention is legitimately influenced by how much support (and likelihood to win) that a candidate has. Yes, that tends to be a vicious circle. People how already draw a large base of public support get more coverage and thus tend to draw more support. However it is entirely unreasonable to expect the US Communist Party candidate to get any notable coverage in the presidential election when he has negligible support and no chance to win, just as it is unreasonable to expect all of the minor primary candidates with minimal support and negligible chance to win to get equal coverage with the front runners already holding large support.
Explain the meteoric rise of John McCain without them.
John McCain already had MASSIVE public name recognition and broad public support. With the massive disaster-that-is-Bush, and the massive collapse of the Republican position in the last House/Senate elections, a very large portion of the Republican party was desperate to latch onto an "extremely moderate" candidate to stop their massive bleeding in the center.
Ron Paul is a lot of things, but "extremely moderate" is most certainly NOT one of them. Chuckle.
Complain to the company. (Obviously, in this case it worked! Shock!)
No, it didn't.
One day a company announces they plan to put lead and mercury in the milk they sell. The next day the company announces that they will only put lead in their milk.
And I supposed to feel grateful?
Hell no, I'm just as pissed off as I was yesterday.
Either I'm going to skip the milk entirely, or I'll get the milk from the Good Samaritan who volunteers to do the work filtering the lead out himself. And if that Good Samaritan then offers the milk for free - well gee - pay for poisoned milk or get clean milk for free - pay for poisoned milk or get clean milk for free - gee that's a toughie. I dunno... that clean milk sure sounds swell.... I might just be forced to go with the free stuff.
If so, you're contributing to the reason why these companies think they need to have DRM.
With enough people publicly talking about it, maybe.... just maybe.... they will start to get the clue applying DRM schemes will block some non-trivial number of people from pirating the game (who then may or may not buy it instead) AND it will run off some paying customers AND it will ALSO convert a non-trivial number of paying customers into pirates.
Either I've completely misunderstood you or I can't even comprehend what you're objections to the new scheme that they've developed are.
I think you misunderstood him. He said "protection like this makes me MUCH less likely to buy a game", I believe "protection like" referred to the DRM malware itself. I believe his position is that the "new and improved" malware is absolutely no different than the the original malware that the company just got publicly spanked for.
The one and only change announced here is nothing more than an announcement that it won't phone home as much. That's it. It's still exactly the identical malware, the code is still just as hostile, it merely hides that hostility slightly better merely by trimming back the most obvious attacks on running on a ten-day-timer.
Among many other issues, if the company closes up shop or if their server gets hit by lightning or anything else, this malware still attacks your system. It is still actively hostile and it still actively prevents you from using the software you bought and it still wages an active war against any attempt to get your computer and your software working properly.
Yes, their motivation for it is an attempt to reduce piracy. However that does not change the fact that it is hostile code, does not change the fact that it is maleware.
I suppose it sucks if you don't have internet access (but then how are you posting to Slashdot?)
Just because I'm posting to Slashdot from this computer, and doing so today, does not mean that the computer I install it on to play is connected to the internet, or even that I will have any handy access to the internet at all at that time. Which is aside from the point that by computer shouldn't be "phone home" to them at all unless I ask it to, and that it is entirely illegitimate for the software to interfere with my usage of my computer and usage of the game I bought if their DRM server goes down or even I merely *don't* have my computer call them over the internet.
the overly silly requirement of having the CD/DVD in the drive while playing the game,
Right, MALWARE. It's malware, in contrast to legitimate valuable software such as a CD emulator utilities. Such utilities are valuable for playing old games that assume data is on the CD for the mere reason that hard drives weren't big enough to fully install the game back then... and which as also legitimate and valuable for working around stupid DRM CD-check type malware. And hypothetically, a equivalent legitimate valuable utility to enable me to install and run the game I bought even when I have no internet access, or to install and run the game I bought even if the company goes out of business or their DRM servers otherwise go offline, or even to do so when I do have access and merely decline to notify the company over the internet.
So while removing the ten-day timer is a "good thing", I'm still just as pissed off today as I was yesterday.
If one day story comes out that a company plans to actively add lead and mercury to the milk you buy, and the next day a story comes out that that the company has decided to stick with the lead but not add the mercury, is that supposed to be good news? Are we supposed to be happy about that? Are we supposed to say 'ok, I'm not pissed at them anymore"? Are be supposed to be GRATEFUL that they decided not to add the mercury?
No.
Either I am not skip the milk entirely... or I will get the milk from some Good Samaritan who volunteers to do some work to filter the lead out. And if that Good Samaritan also happens to offer me that clean milk for free, well gee, that's a seriously tough call there...... I can pay for poisoned milk, or I can get nice clean milk for free.... oooooo that's a real toughie.
The problem isn't a few powerful evil elites. Who do you think chooses who gets on the ballot? The typical general public, in the party primaries. It is reasonably easy for pretty much anyone to get on the primary ballot if they really want to - as Stephen Colbert demonstrated as a gag.
No, the problem is people. People are stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animals. All of us are stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animals. *I* am a stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animal. Even the best of us are merely slightly less stupid, slightly less irrational, slightly less short sighted, slightly less selfserving, slightly less herd-oriented than the abysmal average.
THAT is the problem.
(* footnote) I mean that "insult" playfully, to highlight the deep cynicism of my own post by contrast to the more modest cynicism of your post.
Your linked qoute does not say downloading is illegal at all.
Ok, I glossed over that simple part with just the statement "By downloading you are "creating a copy", and violating copyright law". The basis for that is:
Title 17 Section 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; etc.
When you save a copy, you are violating the reproduction right unless you have authorization or you can justify a Fair Use defense. Fair Use is an extremely complex and extremely fuzzy issue.
Sorry Mr AC, but in the US downloading MP3s is legal.
Sorry, but US Copyright law )and that of most every nation on earth) is horribly broken. Assuming it's not Creative Commons or otherwise authorized, downloading an MP3 is indeed illegal. By downloading you are "creating a copy", and violating copyright law.
In fact it is a violation of law even if if you had no reason to suspect it was an infringement, a violation of law even if you had no particular intent to get that particular file, a violation of law even if the file was misnamed and you in fact believed you were downloading a perfectly legal file.
United States Code, Title 17, Section 504, Paragraph (c)(2) Statutory Damages: (2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
So, lets say you surf to an ordinary website - lets say the front page of Slashdot for instance. And lets say there's an icon on Slashdot's front page - lets say this one for instance. And lets say for the sake of argument that someone on the Slashdot staff improperly "borrowed" that image from some company website.
Well, under US law everyone who visits Slashdot becomes an "innocent infringer". If you are sued, and the burden is on you to prove that you are an "innocent infringer", then instead of the usual $750 minimum damages the court is permitted to lower it to $200. Now multiply $200 by the number of people who browse the internet, and multiply that by the number of webpages someone may view, and multiply that by the fact that a page might contain a dozen or even a hundred items - each of which might be infringing and independently liable for $200. Just a single person engaging in several days of ordinary internet browsing could easily rack up a million dollars in technical copyright infringement liability - $200 at a time.
Any sane copyright law should be strictly aimed at the sending side of the equation. If I try to download a perfectly legal Creative Commons MP3, and someone instead sends me a misnamed Madonna song, it is absolutely insane for the law to say that I can be sued in court and be forces to pay Madonna a $200 minimum.
The only reason copyright copyright law is tolerated as it is, is because copyright law is almost never a enforced. If copyright law were ever actually and strictly enforced, the entire planet would grind to a halt.
No laws against it, so you acquire some. Law gets passed without you knowing and you're stuck with possession.
No... try this one on for size:
No laws against it, so you acquire some. A random committee of unelected bureaucrats places the drug on a list without you knowing and you're stuck with possession. Congress no longer bothers voting on drug criminalization.
While there is certainly a measure of truth in there, it completely misses the true cause behind most of those problems.
And that true cause is the fact that the people, the general public, the voters, are in general shortsighted and stupid. The voters pretty well insist politicians lie to us, tell us fantasy stories, and do stupid things.
Why do we have deficits? Because voters want to hear promises that the government will give us various new swell things that cost money, and people want to hear lower taxes. Any politician who doesn't say one of these things, and generally say BOTH of these things at the same time, can't get elected.
It's not merely the DMCA that is criminal. The N.E.T. act in fact turned a substantial percentage of the entire U.S. population into felons. In particular essentially everyone who has ever used P2P at all - tens of millions of people right there - are felons. And it goes beyond that. Two elementary school children who swap oldskool audiocassette tapes are felons. And more.
The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. -- The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Title 17 United States Code Section 506 Criminal offenses (a) Criminal Infringement. -- (1) In general. -- Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed -- (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
So under section (A) it is Criminal Infringement if you infringe and have "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works", criminalizes ANY P2P use if you upload some much as a single file and download so much as a single file. Or if you exchange some much as a an audiocassette mix tape, or almost anything else. Under section (B) "reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 pretty well covers any nontrivial uploading anywhere or almost any sort of nontrivial distribution at all, even if you never receive anything at all. Section (C) criminalizes any "pre-release" leak whatsoever. Note that later text "clarifies" that a movie released to movie theaters is still in "pre-release", so any leak of a movie running in theaters but "has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility" is criminal.
Prison sentence: Up to 10 years for a second offense. Up to 5 years for "the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500". (Which would cover moderate P2P usage.) Up to 1 year "in any other case". (Covering effectively anyone who has ever touched P2P at all, any anyone who has done any of a number of other trivial things such as swap mix tapes.)
I figure the US population is currently subject to well over a hundred million person-years in prison.
And for bonus points, I love the way industry lawyers pulled off most of this insane law by slipping an innocent looking sentence into the DEFINITIONS section of law, and advertising their beloved bill as merely updating copyright law to properly deal with commercial criminal infringement operations. That's the typical sort of thing that goes on when you literally allow industry lawyers to write the laws we pass.
Can somebody explain the legal theory according to which the widow incurred an obligation to pay for the search?
Presumably the bill and the "obligation" is attributed directly to the lost person they are searching for. As his wife, everything she has is also his. The bill would be collected from his assets, which are incidentally half hers.
And if he didn't have a wife, the bill would be collected out of his assets which would otherwise be inherited by his children or whoever else.
The government can simply take on more debt without raising taxes.
NO, it can't.
All you can do in that direction is take on debt, run up interest on that debt while stalling out for the next election cycle, and stick us with:
(1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill.
And if people really want to play stupid games, the next guy also stalls out for the next election cycle too, runs up a second round of interest, plus interest on the original interest, and then sticks us with:
(1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus (2) a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill, plus (3) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the original bill, plus (4) a tax increase to cover the interest on the second round of interest on the original bill.
And if your George W. Bush and his remaining diehard fans, then you pull these games for for a third round AND you run a war AND you cut taxes, resulting in: (1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus (2) a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill, plus (3) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the original bill, plus (4) a tax increase to cover the interest on the interest on the original bill, plus (5) a tax increase to cover the third round of interest on the original bill, plus (6) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the interest on the original bill, plus (7) a tax increase to cover the interest on the second round of interest on the original bill, plus (8) a tax increase to cover the interest on the interest on the interest on the original bill, plus (9) a tax increase to cover the war, plus (10) a tax increase to cover the interest on the war, plus (11) a tax increase to cover the tax cut debt, plus (12) a tax increase to cover the interest on the tax cut debt.
It's exactly like irresponsible people who knowingly live beyond their means by racking up a two-inch stack of credit cards. Every month you stall, the credit card balance just keeps increasing and the INTEREST on the balance compounds faster and faster. Eventually the INTEREST ALONE would grow bigger than your entire income and everything comes crashing down. You wake up one day and there are no more credit cards available. You can't pay your Visa bill on your American Express card anymore. You wake up and find that someone else owns your car, someone else owns your home, someone else owns the shirt on your back. Except when it comes to government debt you can't hide behind bankruptcy laws and the "someone else" isn't your local bank, the "someone else" is China and other massive foreign holders of US debt.
The current US national debt is over nine point three trillion dollars - and I'm not sure that even fully includes the Iraq war debt which generally gets buried off of the normal financial books.
That is almost thirty one thousand dollars of "credit card debt" for every man woman and child in the entire United States.
That is nearly one eighth of a million dollars in "credit card debt" for a mother-and-father-with-two-small-children family of four.
P.S. This post is not saying anything either way about billing Fossett's widow for these search and rescue efforts. I am strictly addressing the disturbingly common and extremely dangerous candyland idea that "The government can simply take on more debt without raising taxes".
If a politician promises all sorts of swell things that you want to hear (be it doubling the strength of the US military or be it health care), AND they say they will cut your taxes (because everyone loves lower taxes), they are just pandering with impossible candyland nonsense. ALL talk about taxes is fundamentally bunk. One way or another, sooner or later, every dollar of spending results in a dollar in taxes (or a dollar PLUS INTEREST in taxes). The only true discussion is specifi
The extreme position taken by many posters on this thread
Yes, by you and a tiny minority of others here.
In my original post I was clearly (I thought) referring to material which was photographic and therefore a recording of real world acts.
Yes. The law explicitly criminalizes possession photos of non-criminal real world acts. You are being quite extreme and quite absurd is defending such a thing.
pictures of what may be criminal acts
Criminalizing pictures of NON-criminal acts is only modestly more extreme and only modestly more insane than criminalizing pictures of criminal acts.
Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of fictional but realistic looking bank robberies? Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of genuine and actually criminal bank robberies? Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of fictional but realistic looking arson? Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of genuine and actually criminal arson? Should we imprison the entire movie industry for distributing fictional but realistic images of almost EVERY crime there is? Should we imprison the entire TV news industry for broadcasting actual images of almost EVERY actual crime there is? And most of all, should we criminalize images of bank managers perfectly legally taking money out of a bank vault, because it might resemble a bank robbery and because somewhere someday someone who might ever see it might actually commit a bank robbery?
I have a really radical suggestion. How about we quit wasting the time and labor of police pursuing people for mere possession of banned images and wasting the time of the judicial perosecuting people for mere possession of banned images, and INSTEAD dedicate all of that time and effort against people actually committing actual criminal acts.
Yeah, it was crazy and radical suggestion... sending the police after people who actually commit criminal arson and people who actually commit criminal bank robberies and people who actually criminal violence. You're right, screw that. Better to dedicate that effort going after people who possess images of crimes and especially going after people who possess fictional images of fictional crimes and most of all important going after people who possess actual images of actual legal acts.
Slashdot Mirror
This means the observer is the universe. This means that due to non-locality, distance and space are illusions. This means time/change is energy. And energy is conciousness/self awareness.
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your pharmacology.
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Ummmm....... America?
Oh wait, a civilization that hasn't invaded France. Nevermind.
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(1) Barack Obama
(2) Hillary Clinton
(3) John Mccain
(4) Cowboy Neil
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I assure you the best of us are not stupid
I am, according to certain arguably objective measures, in the top tenth-of-one-percent of the population. Whoopty-doo, I'm less stupid than 99.9% of the population. Just because I'm one of the brightest sheep in the flock doesn't change the fact that sheep are idiots and I am still a sheep. A slightly less stupid than typical sheep.
certainly not irrational
According to a US survey 73% of the population selected "Believe in" for at least one of: ESP / Haunted Houses / Ghosts / Telepathy / Clairvoyance / Precognition / Astrology / Communicate mentally with the dead / Witches / Reincarnation / Channeling. Note that this was a "Believe in / Not sure about / Don't believe" type survey. So we have only 27% who selected "Not Sure" or "Not Believe" across all ten items.... and the result would be far less than 27% who actually "Not Believe" across all ten.
And that merely begins to scratch the surface of gross irrationality. It doesn't even touch on endless routine forms of irrationality.... being more likely to buy a product because of a Hot Model in a TV commercial or psychologically filtering & spinning information to align with a political preference or doing silly little things "for luck" or having irrational little habits or various sorts of interpersonal issues and on and on and on.
I don't buy into any sort of paranormal or pseudoscience nonsense, and (I believe/hope) I am less irrational than most people in some other common ways, but that merely makes me less irrational that most people. I am rational enough to recognize and acknowledge that I am far from immune.
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And it hardly matters if you can get on the ballot if you have no chance of going further (ask Ron Paul).
Getting on the ballot is (relatively) easy, and how far you go is pretty well determined by how much general public support they get.
There is a lot to respect about Ron Paul. He also had some fairly intense support.
However in many ways his positions were rather extreme, and he in fact had very little support. As I said yes he had some intense support, but as a percentage of the public he had very little support.
It doesn't take any "grand conspiracy" of the media or "party elite" to validly explain how little coverage and other attention he got. Coverage and other attention is legitimately influenced by how much support (and likelihood to win) that a candidate has. Yes, that tends to be a vicious circle. People how already draw a large base of public support get more coverage and thus tend to draw more support. However it is entirely unreasonable to expect the US Communist Party candidate to get any notable coverage in the presidential election when he has negligible support and no chance to win, just as it is unreasonable to expect all of the minor primary candidates with minimal support and negligible chance to win to get equal coverage with the front runners already holding large support.
Explain the meteoric rise of John McCain without them.
John McCain already had MASSIVE public name recognition and broad public support. With the massive disaster-that-is-Bush, and the massive collapse of the Republican position in the last House/Senate elections, a very large portion of the Republican party was desperate to latch onto an "extremely moderate" candidate to stop their massive bleeding in the center.
Ron Paul is a lot of things, but "extremely moderate" is most certainly NOT one of them. Chuckle.
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Complain to the company. (Obviously, in this case it worked! Shock!)
No, it didn't.
One day a company announces they plan to put lead and mercury in the milk they sell.
The next day the company announces that they will only put lead in their milk.
And I supposed to feel grateful?
Hell no, I'm just as pissed off as I was yesterday.
Either I'm going to skip the milk entirely, or I'll get the milk from the Good Samaritan who volunteers to do the work filtering the lead out himself. And if that Good Samaritan then offers the milk for free - well gee - pay for poisoned milk or get clean milk for free - pay for poisoned milk or get clean milk for free - gee that's a toughie. I dunno... that clean milk sure sounds swell.... I might just be forced to go with the free stuff.
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If so, you're contributing to the reason why these companies think they need to have DRM.
With enough people publicly talking about it, maybe.... just maybe.... they will start to get the clue applying DRM schemes will block some non-trivial number of people from pirating the game (who then may or may not buy it instead) AND it will run off some paying customers AND it will ALSO convert a non-trivial number of paying customers into pirates.
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Either I've completely misunderstood you or I can't even comprehend what you're objections to the new scheme that they've developed are.
I think you misunderstood him.
He said "protection like this makes me MUCH less likely to buy a game", I believe "protection like" referred to the DRM malware itself. I believe his position is that the "new and improved" malware is absolutely no different than the the original malware that the company just got publicly spanked for.
The one and only change announced here is nothing more than an announcement that it won't phone home as much. That's it. It's still exactly the identical malware, the code is still just as hostile, it merely hides that hostility slightly better merely by trimming back the most obvious attacks on running on a ten-day-timer.
Among many other issues, if the company closes up shop or if their server gets hit by lightning or anything else, this malware still attacks your system. It is still actively hostile and it still actively prevents you from using the software you bought and it still wages an active war against any attempt to get your computer and your software working properly.
Yes, their motivation for it is an attempt to reduce piracy. However that does not change the fact that it is hostile code, does not change the fact that it is maleware.
I suppose it sucks if you don't have internet access (but then how are you posting to Slashdot?)
Just because I'm posting to Slashdot from this computer, and doing so today, does not mean that the computer I install it on to play is connected to the internet, or even that I will have any handy access to the internet at all at that time. Which is aside from the point that by computer shouldn't be "phone home" to them at all unless I ask it to, and that it is entirely illegitimate for the software to interfere with my usage of my computer and usage of the game I bought if their DRM server goes down or even I merely *don't* have my computer call them over the internet.
the overly silly requirement of having the CD/DVD in the drive while playing the game,
Right, MALWARE.
It's malware, in contrast to legitimate valuable software such as a CD emulator utilities. Such utilities are valuable for playing old games that assume data is on the CD for the mere reason that hard drives weren't big enough to fully install the game back then... and which as also legitimate and valuable for working around stupid DRM CD-check type malware.
And hypothetically, a equivalent legitimate valuable utility to enable me to install and run the game I bought even when I have no internet access, or to install and run the game I bought even if the company goes out of business or their DRM servers otherwise go offline, or even to do so when I do have access and merely decline to notify the company over the internet.
So while removing the ten-day timer is a "good thing", I'm still just as pissed off today as I was yesterday.
If one day story comes out that a company plans to actively add lead and mercury to the milk you buy, and the next day a story comes out that that the company has decided to stick with the lead but not add the mercury, is that supposed to be good news? Are we supposed to be happy about that? Are we supposed to say 'ok, I'm not pissed at them anymore"? Are be supposed to be GRATEFUL that they decided not to add the mercury?
No.
Either I am not skip the milk entirely...
or I will get the milk from some Good Samaritan who volunteers to do some work to filter the lead out. And if that Good Samaritan also happens to offer me that clean milk for free, well gee, that's a seriously tough call there...... I can pay for poisoned milk, or I can get nice clean milk for free.... oooooo that's a real toughie.
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the elite chooses who gets on the ballot.
Damn candlyland optimists (* footnote).
The problem isn't a few powerful evil elites.
Who do you think chooses who gets on the ballot? The typical general public, in the party primaries. It is reasonably easy for pretty much anyone to get on the primary ballot if they really want to - as Stephen Colbert demonstrated as a gag.
No, the problem is people.
People are stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animals.
All of us are stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animals.
*I* am a stupid irrational short sighted selfserving herd animal.
Even the best of us are merely slightly less stupid, slightly less irrational, slightly less short sighted, slightly less selfserving, slightly less herd-oriented than the abysmal average.
THAT is the problem.
(* footnote) I mean that "insult" playfully, to highlight the deep cynicism of my own post by contrast to the more modest cynicism of your post.
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trying to stop people from sharing files over the internet is like trying to stop them watching porn, except a lot harder.
Dude, filesharing gets you harder then you're seriously watching the wrong porn.
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if someone can screw things up with presidential powers, someone else ought to be able to unscrew things up using those powers.
No. Some things a president may screw are impossible to unscrew.
Bill Clinton.
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OFC a carismatic democratic president could go to a democratic congress and say "hey how about you suggest this?" and they will say "how high?"
I'm all with you, but getting copyright reform is going to be hard enough without bringing up marijuana reform too.
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Your linked qoute does not say downloading is illegal at all.
Ok, I glossed over that simple part with just the statement "By downloading you are "creating a copy", and violating copyright law". The basis for that is:
Title 17 Section 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
etc.
When you save a copy, you are violating the reproduction right unless you have authorization or you can justify a Fair Use defense. Fair Use is an extremely complex and extremely fuzzy issue.
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Sorry Mr AC, but in the US downloading MP3s is legal.
Sorry, but US Copyright law )and that of most every nation on earth) is horribly broken. Assuming it's not Creative Commons or otherwise authorized, downloading an MP3 is indeed illegal. By downloading you are "creating a copy", and violating copyright law.
In fact it is a violation of law even if if you had no reason to suspect it was an infringement, a violation of law even if you had no particular intent to get that particular file, a violation of law even if the file was misnamed and you in fact believed you were downloading a perfectly legal file.
United States Code, Title 17, Section 504, Paragraph (c)(2) Statutory Damages:
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
So, lets say you surf to an ordinary website - lets say the front page of Slashdot for instance.
And lets say there's an icon on Slashdot's front page - lets say this one for instance.
And lets say for the sake of argument that someone on the Slashdot staff improperly "borrowed" that image from some company website.
Well, under US law everyone who visits Slashdot becomes an "innocent infringer". If you are sued, and the burden is on you to prove that you are an "innocent infringer", then instead of the usual $750 minimum damages the court is permitted to lower it to $200. Now multiply $200 by the number of people who browse the internet, and multiply that by the number of webpages someone may view, and multiply that by the fact that a page might contain a dozen or even a hundred items - each of which might be infringing and independently liable for $200. Just a single person engaging in several days of ordinary internet browsing could easily rack up a million dollars in technical copyright infringement liability - $200 at a time.
Any sane copyright law should be strictly aimed at the sending side of the equation. If I try to download a perfectly legal Creative Commons MP3, and someone instead sends me a misnamed Madonna song, it is absolutely insane for the law to say that I can be sued in court and be forces to pay Madonna a $200 minimum.
Just the other day I wrote another post on how copyright law says a substantial fraction of the entire population are technically FELONS.
The only reason copyright copyright law is tolerated as it is, is because copyright law is almost never a enforced. If copyright law were ever actually and strictly enforced, the entire planet would grind to a halt.
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ISPs are exempted as common carriers as long as they don't censor traffic.
Hot breaking news from Mon Jun 27, 2005 10:59 AM!
Cable Internet Service Not Common Carrier
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No laws against it, so you acquire some. Law gets passed without you knowing and you're stuck with possession.
No... try this one on for size:
No laws against it, so you acquire some. A random committee of unelected bureaucrats places the drug on a list without you knowing and you're stuck with possession. Congress no longer bothers voting on drug criminalization.
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While there is certainly a measure of truth in there, it completely misses the true cause behind most of those problems.
And that true cause is the fact that the people, the general public, the voters, are in general shortsighted and stupid. The voters pretty well insist politicians lie to us, tell us fantasy stories, and do stupid things.
Why do we have deficits? Because voters want to hear promises that the government will give us various new swell things that cost money, and people want to hear lower taxes. Any politician who doesn't say one of these things, and generally say BOTH of these things at the same time, can't get elected.
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Oops, the some text got botched in my above post. It should have read:
Title 17 United States Code
Section 101 Definitions
The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
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It's not merely the DMCA that is criminal. The N.E.T. act in fact turned a substantial percentage of the entire U.S. population into felons. In particular essentially everyone who has ever used P2P at all - tens of millions of people right there - are felons. And it goes beyond that. Two elementary school children who swap oldskool audiocassette tapes are felons. And more.
The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. -- The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Title 17 United States Code
Section 506 Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. --
(1) In general. -- Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed --
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
So under section (A) it is Criminal Infringement if you infringe and have "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works", criminalizes ANY P2P use if you upload some much as a single file and download so much as a single file. Or if you exchange some much as a an audiocassette mix tape, or almost anything else.
Under section (B) "reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 pretty well covers any nontrivial uploading anywhere or almost any sort of nontrivial distribution at all, even if you never receive anything at all.
Section (C) criminalizes any "pre-release" leak whatsoever. Note that later text "clarifies" that a movie released to movie theaters is still in "pre-release", so any leak of a movie running in theaters but "has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility" is criminal.
Prison sentence:
Up to 10 years for a second offense.
Up to 5 years for "the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500". (Which would cover moderate P2P usage.)
Up to 1 year "in any other case". (Covering effectively anyone who has ever touched P2P at all, any anyone who has done any of a number of other trivial things such as swap mix tapes.)
I figure the US population is currently subject to well over a hundred million person-years in prison.
And for bonus points, I love the way industry lawyers pulled off most of this insane law by slipping an innocent looking sentence into the DEFINITIONS section of law, and advertising their beloved bill as merely updating copyright law to properly deal with commercial criminal infringement operations. That's the typical sort of thing that goes on when you literally allow industry lawyers to write the laws we pass.
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It makes me wonder why they don't arrange First Class to the back of the plane.
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Can somebody explain the legal theory according to which the widow incurred an obligation to pay for the search?
Presumably the bill and the "obligation" is attributed directly to the lost person they are searching for. As his wife, everything she has is also his. The bill would be collected from his assets, which are incidentally half hers.
And if he didn't have a wife, the bill would be collected out of his assets which would otherwise be inherited by his children or whoever else.
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Nah, we're not an orphan haters. We love orphans.
Especially with A1 steak sauce and a side of potatoes.
See? Problem solved.
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The government can simply take on more debt without raising taxes.
NO, it can't.
All you can do in that direction is take on debt, run up interest on that debt while stalling out for the next election cycle, and stick us with:
(1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus
a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill.
And if people really want to play stupid games, the next guy also stalls out for the next election cycle too, runs up a second round of interest, plus interest on the original interest, and then sticks us with:
(1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus
(2) a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill, plus
(3) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the original bill, plus
(4) a tax increase to cover the interest on the second round of interest on the original bill.
And if your George W. Bush and his remaining diehard fans, then you pull these games for for a third round AND you run a war AND you cut taxes, resulting in:
(1) A tax increase to cover the original bill, plus
(2) a tax increase to cover the interest on the original bill, plus
(3) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the original bill, plus
(4) a tax increase to cover the interest on the interest on the original bill, plus
(5) a tax increase to cover the third round of interest on the original bill, plus
(6) a tax increase to cover the second round of interest on the interest on the original bill, plus
(7) a tax increase to cover the interest on the second round of interest on the original bill, plus
(8) a tax increase to cover the interest on the interest on the interest on the original bill, plus
(9) a tax increase to cover the war, plus
(10) a tax increase to cover the interest on the war, plus
(11) a tax increase to cover the tax cut debt, plus
(12) a tax increase to cover the interest on the tax cut debt.
It's exactly like irresponsible people who knowingly live beyond their means by racking up a two-inch stack of credit cards. Every month you stall, the credit card balance just keeps increasing and the INTEREST on the balance compounds faster and faster. Eventually the INTEREST ALONE would grow bigger than your entire income and everything comes crashing down. You wake up one day and there are no more credit cards available. You can't pay your Visa bill on your American Express card anymore. You wake up and find that someone else owns your car, someone else owns your home, someone else owns the shirt on your back. Except when it comes to government debt you can't hide behind bankruptcy laws and the "someone else" isn't your local bank, the "someone else" is China and other massive foreign holders of US debt.
The current US national debt is over nine point three trillion dollars - and I'm not sure that even fully includes the Iraq war debt which generally gets buried off of the normal financial books.
That is almost thirty one thousand dollars of "credit card debt" for every man woman and child in the entire United States.
That is nearly one eighth of a million dollars in "credit card debt" for a mother-and-father-with-two-small-children family of four.
P.S.
This post is not saying anything either way about billing Fossett's widow for these search and rescue efforts. I am strictly addressing the disturbingly common and extremely dangerous candyland idea that "The government can simply take on more debt without raising taxes".
If a politician promises all sorts of swell things that you want to hear (be it doubling the strength of the US military or be it health care), AND they say they will cut your taxes (because everyone loves lower taxes), they are just pandering with impossible candyland nonsense. ALL talk about taxes is fundamentally bunk. One way or another, sooner or later, every dollar of spending results in a dollar in taxes (or a dollar PLUS INTEREST in taxes). The only true discussion is specifi
No, it's George W. Bush that was married to WMD's.
Send the bill to him.
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The extreme position taken by many posters on this thread
Yes, by you and a tiny minority of others here.
In my original post I was clearly (I thought) referring to material which was photographic and therefore a recording of real world acts.
Yes. The law explicitly criminalizes possession photos of non-criminal real world acts. You are being quite extreme and quite absurd is defending such a thing.
pictures of what may be criminal acts
Criminalizing pictures of NON-criminal acts is only modestly more extreme and only modestly more insane than criminalizing pictures of criminal acts.
Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of fictional but realistic looking bank robberies?
Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of genuine and actually criminal bank robberies?
Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of fictional but realistic looking arson?
Do you suggest criminalizing possession of images of genuine and actually criminal arson?
Should we imprison the entire movie industry for distributing fictional but realistic images of almost EVERY crime there is?
Should we imprison the entire TV news industry for broadcasting actual images of almost EVERY actual crime there is?
And most of all, should we criminalize images of bank managers perfectly legally taking money out of a bank vault, because it might resemble a bank robbery and because somewhere someday someone who might ever see it might actually commit a bank robbery?
I have a really radical suggestion.
How about we quit wasting the time and labor of police pursuing people for mere possession of banned images and wasting the time of the judicial perosecuting people for mere possession of banned images, and INSTEAD dedicate all of that time and effort against people actually committing actual criminal acts.
Yeah, it was crazy and radical suggestion... sending the police after people who actually commit criminal arson and people who actually commit criminal bank robberies and people who actually criminal violence. You're right, screw that. Better to dedicate that effort going after people who possess images of crimes and especially going after people who possess fictional images of fictional crimes and most of all important going after people who possess actual images of actual legal acts.
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