In short: abolishing copyright entirely completely eradicates the financial incentive to pay artists to make work. I'm sure some will do it anyway, but most people have to make a living, so there will be virtually no professional, full-time artists of any kind ever again. That, to me, is insane.
I'd like to point out that the greatest works of art of all time were produced in an era where there were no such things as copyright laws. It's called patronage, and it worked for thousands of years.
Maybe if every teeny bopper whore who wants to pout at a camera, sing to an over-produced track and get paid millions for it suddenly can't make money because the artificial monopoly supporting such a business model vanishes, we wouldn't be innundated with mindless crap. Maybe we would all be better off if the only people who made art were the ones that were passionate enough to make it without thought of getting paid.
It may be worthwhile studying now only because some of the older individuals in the workforce didn't grow up completely immersed in the same multitasking oriented environment those that are 30 and under have.
I have to echo one of my fellow responders...you don't multi-task better because you grew up around computers, you multi-task better because you are young. I graduated high school in 91, and so my early computer/tv/phone/gf sessions were occurring right at that magic age around 25, when we tend to loose that elasticity of brain that allows us to hold more complex logic structures in our heads - a task which happens to require lots of task switching. It is a very strange sensation to feel yourself...get dumber.
I don't see myself as less capable now than I was then, larger because experience more than makes up for the lost skill. However, I'm not nearly as capable of switching between disparate tasks as I was back then. Perhaps it is not worth studying yet - the first internet generation is in their 20's. In ten years, we may know a whole lot more.
1. When you type an address in the address bar, (at least in firefox), it does a google search behind the scenes for your URL.
2. Google is my homepage. When I launch firefox, the google search box has focus. Why go to the address bar to type "cnn" when I can do it in the search box?
3. Browsers may add "http://www." and ".com", but what if it is https and.org? If you just search for it you don't have to worry about it.
4. Search engines correct typos, address bars do not.
Your Point #1: It has everything to do with parenting skill. If you are any bit worth a parent, you WILL be able to find out what they are doing because you will realize the importance of knowing what your kids are up to. Yes, we were all kids, and all of us got caught doing something we wren't supposed to be doing. In my case, it was building a truck mounted potato cannon that could be heard from two zip codes away, imitation nitrocellulose and napalm, and launching rockets from miniature 'silos' buried underneath the backyard lawn. Don't pawn off your shortcoings as a parent on other things and expect them to do your job for you. You don't have to monitor your kids all the time to know what is going on and what shouldn't be going on.
Irrelevant and incorrect. My abilities as a parent have no bearing on the merits of a lawsuit. And you are dreaming if you think a sixteen year old cannot hide something from his parents. Keep telling yourself that. Truth is, by the time a kid is 12 or so, you have probably done all that can be done as a parent in that regard - you just have to hope your kid doesn't make a stupid decision. Teenagers have a remarkable ability to completely ignore their parents.
Your Point #2: MySpace undoubtedly knows there are predators operating on their site and there is absolutely no way to tell a predator from Joe Average on the Internet. You can't expect everyone to be able to and eager to provide a credit card #, or driver's license number, or social security number just so they can sign up. What do you propose next.....Shutting down the Internet because ICANN knows full well that child predators operate on the Internet as well? What about the local Mall? I'll bet that there are more child predators at America's malls at any given time than there are on MySpace. So, seeing as how we know, through police records, news reports, and such, that child predators are lurking at malls, does it make sense to shut them down like MySpace? Absolutely not.
Who said anything about shutting someone down? We are talking about a lawsuit here - monetary compensation for corporate negligence.
Your Point #3: Registration through snail mail? Are you serious? This isn't exactly a warranty card for your new vaccuum cleaner we're talking about. Nobody would care enough about anything online if they has to send in written permission through the mail. Besides, if you can fake it online, you can fake it in the mail. Like I said before, ID can be faked, if you haven't been paying attention to the amount of ID fraud that has been going on for the last decade. It's not about profits, it's about PRACTICALITY. It is very impractical to sort through the millions of requests that MySpace would be slammed with if there had to be someone to physically open the letter, read it, enter the information, and then file the letter as proof. I know it has become popular in society for the Have-Nots to blame there problems and misery on the Haves.
"We're sorry Juan got raped Mrs. Epstien. Yes, we knew there was a chance this could happen, and yes, we could have taken steps to prevent it, but it just wasn't PRACTICAL." Which is why they are getting sued.
Your Point #4: That's it, blame the guys who have more mone than you. Your envy of the rich is telling and it is a bad argument anyways. So what if they made a pile of money operating their site. If they were catering exclusively to child predators, then that would be flagrantly illegal. What manner are they operating in? They aren't catering exclusively to child predators, or even to predators in any way. They are offering a service that is being used by EVERYONE, but in the wrong way by a few individuals who use it in a way as serving their own illegal and sordid intentions.
Ford a while ago had a problem with their tires on the Explorers. They knew the tires would fail, and that people would die. But they didn't issue a recall right away - they measured the cost to the company those lives repres
So have malls, cinemas, street corners or pretty much anywhere else you can think of...with the most common place being the family home or a relations home. So your point is? Only way anything could operate and guarantee child predators could not operate is.....actually there is no way except to kill all children in the world
Except malls often hire security guards, and place cameras around. Cinemas have staff monitoring activities. Yes, child predators operate other places as well - and if a case can be made that some mall knew child predators were operating, and did not take sufficient steps to prevent it while still making a profit, they should get sued too.
No it would have shut the site down, period. And guess what would happen then? Another site would just start up run by someone else
...which proves my point. MySpace chose money over reasonable steps.
This has nothing to do with the law, or the government. I can sue you for looking at me funny. Civil lawsuits are always about money. This is about a person saying "MySpace made money while creating an environment which caused my family harm." Not really any different than a polluter.
Not a single thread supporting the lawsuit modded +3. Mostly comments from people who don't have kids talking about things they have no experience with (i.e. raising children), and smug comments from people who do. I don't care about my karma, so here goes:
1. It is impossible to monitor your kids all of the time. We were all kids once, and we know it is true. This has nothing to do with parenting skill.
2. MySpace has been operating for quite a while knowing full well that child predators are active on their site.
3. MySpace could certainly have done more to validate identity (registration through snail mail?), but that would have eaten into profits.
4. MySpace has made a pile of money (mainly by being bought) while operating in this manner.
So, from where I sit, MySpace has made a pile of money by being user-friendly to child predators. Why shouldn't they get sued again?
The media, at least mass media, are by their very definition and size required to be corporations by themselves. The difference to "normal" corporations is that the goods they sell are information.
Bzzzt. Incorrect. The goods they sell are eyeballs. Your eyeballs on ads. Never forget that when it comes to mass media you are the product. That's why Britney and K-Fed are on the front page of CNN - because you will look.
1. Google paid 1.5% of the company in stock to purchase YouTube. Google stock jumped 5% on the news. Purchasing YouTube resulted in a profit for Google.
2. Television as we know it is dieing, and quickly. You can already watch many network shows on the web. Moving shows to the web means that networks can gather better metrics, which means better add targeting, which means higher add prices, which means fewer adds. Everybody wins. (And before you go on about greedy media companies, nobody knows better how not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg than Google).
3. Media providers were already signing up in ones and twos with YouTube. They will now fall all over themselves to sign up with the web's largest advertising company.
4. You can't be sued for hosting copyrighted content unless you have been properly notified of your infringement by the copyright holder and ignored it. No legal risk unless you bungle it.
5. With media providers signing up with YouTube to host their copyrighted content, there will be more copyrighted content available, at higher quality. You will have to sit through adds, but not as many as when you watch TV, and you can do it at your own schedule.
Google will be the largest media company in the world within 10 years. You heard it here first.
What you really want to do is to set up proxies that will monitor all traffic without blocking anything. Never let them know you have done it. Keep an eye on what they do, and let them get away with some stuff - but every once in a while, drop the hammer. The illusion of parental omniscience is not to be underestimated.:)
For some reason, my 9 year can never figure out how I know when he gets out of bed at night. I'll never tel him the floorboards scream every time he shifts his weight.:)
I say that whether Iraq had WMD is moot. Let's say he had a nuke. He certainly couldn't have had many by any estimation. How the hell is he going to get it here? Saddam is not stupid - any strike that we could tie to him would mean total destruction of Iraq. So, the only threat that would have posed is if he gave it to terrorists to travel to the US and detonate it. So now imagine you are in charge of the security of the United States. You have a budget of 8 billion per month, the current cost of the war. How do you secure the country - by invading Iraq, giving them months of warning (more than enough time to move the nukes out of the country), or do you spend that 8 billion PER MONTH to make sure no one can smuggle a nuke into the US - which currently is still a clear and present danger?
Any way you slice it, invading Iraq was bone dumb. It made our security situation worse, not better.
How about 4th ammendment rights to protection from unreasonable searches without warrants. How about free speech rights (try showing up to a Bush speech with a sign against the Iraq war and count the seconds until you are arrested). How about the right to due process...there are American citizens being held at Gitmo without charge.
So that's about 25% of the Bill of Rights, and I didn't even have to think too hard.
As an educator, I can't assign any computer based work without asssurances that 100% of my students have access to a computer. Issuing everyone a laptop solves that problem.
And before someone cries "library, school computer lab!" - you have obviously never had to deal with a parent throwing a hissy fit about their kid's homework assignment.
I had used my last mod point to mod you as flamebait, but I decided to take the time to respond to you instead.
I'm a pretty liberal guy. Card carrying Bush hater, yellow-dog Democrat. I'm probably defined as agnostic/Bhuddist, and I did professional theatre for several years, so homophope I am definitely not. I'm also an Eagle Scout, and Cub Scout leader for my adopted son's pack.
Your characterization of the Boy Scouts as a bigotted organization is grossly over-simplified. Here are the way things really work in the scouts: a group of parents in a local area get together to form a pack or troop. They have contact with the national organization once or twice a year, through one individual (the committee chair), usually involving money (pack registration, etc.). Leaders have to go through a one time training (mainly concerning how to avoid getting sued - i.e. never be alone with a boy, etc.). No one else has anything to do with the national council.
No one asks you whether you are gay when you sign up to be a scout. No one asks you your religion either - the only time religion becomes a major factor is when you try to get your Eagle Scout - which less than 1% of scouts achieve. The only time this would ever come up is when someone of your pack would complain over the heads of the local committee that a member happens to be gay. Then the member would have to admit it before being removed.
The national council was forced to adopt this position when a lawsuit was brought against them when a regional council expelled a gay leader (James Dale) in 1990. Before this, there was no national policy. The regional council pointed to the "morally straight" clause in the scout oath as justification for the expulsion. The National Council at this point was forced into a decision - not to fight the case, and watch membership and donations plummet, or to fight the case. You know the outcome.
A resolution was released from the National Council in 2002 that banned gay and atheist members. Today was the first day I have ever seen it, and I have been actively involved in scouting for nearly all my life (I was acutally surprised to find anything). Many scouters, myself and all I know included, disagree with the ban. However, the fact of the matter is that scouting has a large Christian base, and would be hurt badly if they took any other position. It is true that scouting has a large portion of homophobic members. However, you just described 70% of the country. As my daddy used to day, there are assholes everywhere.:)
My point is that saying all Boy Scouts are bigotted is well, bigotted. It's like saying all Muslims hate America, or all Democrats are baby killers, or all atheists are immoral.
I personally think St. Louis is one of the best kept secrets in the country. In addition to having one of the lowest costs of living in the nation (my house ran $119/ sq foot, 7 miles from downtown, gas is 2.87 right now), there are good tech jobs - Boeing, Washington University (genome project), Monsanto, Anheuser-Busch, A. G. Edwards, Mastercard...
The zoo is rated #1 in the country by Zagat (and it is FREE), symphony in the top 5, art museum in the top 5 (FREE as well)...Forest Park is bigger than Central Park in New York...if you are a baseball fan, there is simply no better place to be. Football hasn't been too bad here either in the last few years. Great place to raise a family. And drive 45 minutes in any direction and you are in the woods.
When I was younger (I'm in my early 30s) I did complain that there wasn't anything to do, and compared to New York or LA, I was right. But I have kids now, and I have more things to do with them for very little cost than I know what to do with. May not be great for 20 somethings looking for excitement, but sure suits me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to point out that the greatest works of art of all time were produced in an era where there were no such things as copyright laws. It's called patronage, and it worked for thousands of years.
Maybe if every teeny bopper whore who wants to pout at a camera, sing to an over-produced track and get paid millions for it suddenly can't make money because the artificial monopoly supporting such a business model vanishes, we wouldn't be innundated with mindless crap. Maybe we would all be better off if the only people who made art were the ones that were passionate enough to make it without thought of getting paid.
Nah, you're right. That's crazy.
I have to echo one of my fellow responders...you don't multi-task better because you grew up around computers, you multi-task better because you are young. I graduated high school in 91, and so my early computer/tv/phone/gf sessions were occurring right at that magic age around 25, when we tend to loose that elasticity of brain that allows us to hold more complex logic structures in our heads - a task which happens to require lots of task switching. It is a very strange sensation to feel yourself...get dumber.
I don't see myself as less capable now than I was then, larger because experience more than makes up for the lost skill. However, I'm not nearly as capable of switching between disparate tasks as I was back then. Perhaps it is not worth studying yet - the first internet generation is in their 20's. In ten years, we may know a whole lot more.
1. Mmmm, US BIG! ENGLAND SMALL! LAYING CABLE EXPENSIVE! FIRE BAD!
2. O NOES! US is teh sUx0rs!
3. omg teh US is teh R0x0rS! France = surrender monkeys!
4. blah blah dark fiber blah blah net nuetrality blah blah GOOGLENET!
5. I for one welcome Korean||English||Chinese overlords.
6. I'm stuck on dial-up, you insensitive clod!
7. If you want to live in the boonies, you pay the price. The invisible hand of Adam Smith will give all true Libertarians happy endings...
8. ???
9. Profit.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
1. When you type an address in the address bar, (at least in firefox), it does a google search behind the scenes for your URL.
2. Google is my homepage. When I launch firefox, the google search box has focus. Why go to the address bar to type "cnn" when I can do it in the search box?
3. Browsers may add "http://www." and ".com", but what if it is https and .org? If you just search for it you don't have to worry about it.
4. Search engines correct typos, address bars do not.
Irrelevant and incorrect. My abilities as a parent have no bearing on the merits of a lawsuit. And you are dreaming if you think a sixteen year old cannot hide something from his parents. Keep telling yourself that. Truth is, by the time a kid is 12 or so, you have probably done all that can be done as a parent in that regard - you just have to hope your kid doesn't make a stupid decision. Teenagers have a remarkable ability to completely ignore their parents.
Your Point #2: MySpace undoubtedly knows there are predators operating on their site and there is absolutely no way to tell a predator from Joe Average on the Internet. You can't expect everyone to be able to and eager to provide a credit card #, or driver's license number, or social security number just so they can sign up. What do you propose next.....Shutting down the Internet because ICANN knows full well that child predators operate on the Internet as well? What about the local Mall? I'll bet that there are more child predators at America's malls at any given time than there are on MySpace. So, seeing as how we know, through police records, news reports, and such, that child predators are lurking at malls, does it make sense to shut them down like MySpace? Absolutely not.
Who said anything about shutting someone down? We are talking about a lawsuit here - monetary compensation for corporate negligence.
Your Point #3: Registration through snail mail? Are you serious? This isn't exactly a warranty card for your new vaccuum cleaner we're talking about. Nobody would care enough about anything online if they has to send in written permission through the mail. Besides, if you can fake it online, you can fake it in the mail. Like I said before, ID can be faked, if you haven't been paying attention to the amount of ID fraud that has been going on for the last decade. It's not about profits, it's about PRACTICALITY. It is very impractical to sort through the millions of requests that MySpace would be slammed with if there had to be someone to physically open the letter, read it, enter the information, and then file the letter as proof. I know it has become popular in society for the Have-Nots to blame there problems and misery on the Haves.
"We're sorry Juan got raped Mrs. Epstien. Yes, we knew there was a chance this could happen, and yes, we could have taken steps to prevent it, but it just wasn't PRACTICAL." Which is why they are getting sued.
Your Point #4: That's it, blame the guys who have more mone than you. Your envy of the rich is telling and it is a bad argument anyways. So what if they made a pile of money operating their site. If they were catering exclusively to child predators, then that would be flagrantly illegal. What manner are they operating in? They aren't catering exclusively to child predators, or even to predators in any way. They are offering a service that is being used by EVERYONE, but in the wrong way by a few individuals who use it in a way as serving their own illegal and sordid intentions.
Ford a while ago had a problem with their tires on the Explorers. They knew the tires would fail, and that people would die. But they didn't issue a recall right away - they measured the cost to the company those lives repres
Except malls often hire security guards, and place cameras around. Cinemas have staff monitoring activities. Yes, child predators operate other places as well - and if a case can be made that some mall knew child predators were operating, and did not take sufficient steps to prevent it while still making a profit, they should get sued too.
No it would have shut the site down, period. And guess what would happen then? Another site would just start up run by someone else
This has nothing to do with the law, or the government. I can sue you for looking at me funny. Civil lawsuits are always about money. This is about a person saying "MySpace made money while creating an environment which caused my family harm." Not really any different than a polluter.
1. It is impossible to monitor your kids all of the time. We were all kids once, and we know it is true. This has nothing to do with parenting skill.
2. MySpace has been operating for quite a while knowing full well that child predators are active on their site.
3. MySpace could certainly have done more to validate identity (registration through snail mail?), but that would have eaten into profits.
4. MySpace has made a pile of money (mainly by being bought) while operating in this manner.
So, from where I sit, MySpace has made a pile of money by being user-friendly to child predators. Why shouldn't they get sued again?
Bzzzt. Incorrect. The goods they sell are eyeballs. Your eyeballs on ads. Never forget that when it comes to mass media you are the product. That's why Britney and K-Fed are on the front page of CNN - because you will look.
Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men.
Nah. I think organized religion holds the title for that one.
1. Google paid 1.5% of the company in stock to purchase YouTube. Google stock jumped 5% on the news. Purchasing YouTube resulted in a profit for Google.
2. Television as we know it is dieing, and quickly. You can already watch many network shows on the web. Moving shows to the web means that networks can gather better metrics, which means better add targeting, which means higher add prices, which means fewer adds. Everybody wins. (And before you go on about greedy media companies, nobody knows better how not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg than Google).
3. Media providers were already signing up in ones and twos with YouTube. They will now fall all over themselves to sign up with the web's largest advertising company.
4. You can't be sued for hosting copyrighted content unless you have been properly notified of your infringement by the copyright holder and ignored it. No legal risk unless you bungle it.
5. With media providers signing up with YouTube to host their copyrighted content, there will be more copyrighted content available, at higher quality. You will have to sit through adds, but not as many as when you watch TV, and you can do it at your own schedule.
Google will be the largest media company in the world within 10 years. You heard it here first.
For some reason, my 9 year can never figure out how I know when he gets out of bed at night. I'll never tel him the floorboards scream every time he shifts his weight. :)
And most kids are not as smart as they think they are. News at 11.
I say that whether Iraq had WMD is moot. Let's say he had a nuke. He certainly couldn't have had many by any estimation. How the hell is he going to get it here? Saddam is not stupid - any strike that we could tie to him would mean total destruction of Iraq. So, the only threat that would have posed is if he gave it to terrorists to travel to the US and detonate it. So now imagine you are in charge of the security of the United States. You have a budget of 8 billion per month, the current cost of the war. How do you secure the country - by invading Iraq, giving them months of warning (more than enough time to move the nukes out of the country), or do you spend that 8 billion PER MONTH to make sure no one can smuggle a nuke into the US - which currently is still a clear and present danger? Any way you slice it, invading Iraq was bone dumb. It made our security situation worse, not better.
How about 4th ammendment rights to protection from unreasonable searches without warrants. How about free speech rights (try showing up to a Bush speech with a sign against the Iraq war and count the seconds until you are arrested). How about the right to due process...there are American citizens being held at Gitmo without charge. So that's about 25% of the Bill of Rights, and I didn't even have to think too hard.
You're right. I really wish the Dems would grow a spine. At least then I wouldn't mind losing.
Why not? Just curious.
Unless something changes in the next couple of years, I don't think you're going to have to imagine much longer...:)
You get the laptop in middle school, and keep it all the way through high school.
Have you never written a paper? These should be done on computers now - most colleges will not accept hand-written work.
And before someone cries "library, school computer lab!" - you have obviously never had to deal with a parent throwing a hissy fit about their kid's homework assignment.
I'm a pretty liberal guy. Card carrying Bush hater, yellow-dog Democrat. I'm probably defined as agnostic/Bhuddist, and I did professional theatre for several years, so homophope I am definitely not. I'm also an Eagle Scout, and Cub Scout leader for my adopted son's pack.
Your characterization of the Boy Scouts as a bigotted organization is grossly over-simplified. Here are the way things really work in the scouts: a group of parents in a local area get together to form a pack or troop. They have contact with the national organization once or twice a year, through one individual (the committee chair), usually involving money (pack registration, etc.). Leaders have to go through a one time training (mainly concerning how to avoid getting sued - i.e. never be alone with a boy, etc.). No one else has anything to do with the national council.
No one asks you whether you are gay when you sign up to be a scout. No one asks you your religion either - the only time religion becomes a major factor is when you try to get your Eagle Scout - which less than 1% of scouts achieve. The only time this would ever come up is when someone of your pack would complain over the heads of the local committee that a member happens to be gay. Then the member would have to admit it before being removed.
The national council was forced to adopt this position when a lawsuit was brought against them when a regional council expelled a gay leader (James Dale) in 1990. Before this, there was no national policy. The regional council pointed to the "morally straight" clause in the scout oath as justification for the expulsion. The National Council at this point was forced into a decision - not to fight the case, and watch membership and donations plummet, or to fight the case. You know the outcome.
A resolution was released from the National Council in 2002 that banned gay and atheist members. Today was the first day I have ever seen it, and I have been actively involved in scouting for nearly all my life (I was acutally surprised to find anything). Many scouters, myself and all I know included, disagree with the ban. However, the fact of the matter is that scouting has a large Christian base, and would be hurt badly if they took any other position. It is true that scouting has a large portion of homophobic members. However, you just described 70% of the country. As my daddy used to day, there are assholes everywhere. :)
My point is that saying all Boy Scouts are bigotted is well, bigotted. It's like saying all Muslims hate America, or all Democrats are baby killers, or all atheists are immoral.
Switch networks. Go with Cingular or T-Mobile, that offer GSM phones. Then just take your SIM card out, stick it in your GSM modem, and done.
The zoo is rated #1 in the country by Zagat (and it is FREE), symphony in the top 5, art museum in the top 5 (FREE as well)...Forest Park is bigger than Central Park in New York...if you are a baseball fan, there is simply no better place to be. Football hasn't been too bad here either in the last few years. Great place to raise a family. And drive 45 minutes in any direction and you are in the woods.
When I was younger (I'm in my early 30s) I did complain that there wasn't anything to do, and compared to New York or LA, I was right. But I have kids now, and I have more things to do with them for very little cost than I know what to do with. May not be great for 20 somethings looking for excitement, but sure suits me.