the rallying cry now is When Conciousness Begins; however, according to current research into cognitive psychology up to half of all our actions/interactions may have a genetic basis that varies from individual to individual meaning that conciousness or the blueprints to a unique conciousness are inherent from the conception.
Consciousness and the blueprints to consciousness are completely different things. Just because consciousness may be affected by genetics doesn't mean that a single-celled fertilised egg is conscious.
Indeed, by that logic, sperm and ova are conscious. Any man should be considered a mass murderer, but no one ever seems to care about these living cells.
The book comes with copyrights, which says you can't copy it. You can sell that one book to someone else, but you can't make copies and sell them or even give them away.
The same with software.
As for lettuces, the problem is that all the arguments people put forward for EULAs being valid apply to lettuces also. Is there any law that says EULAs are valid for software but not anything else? I wasn't aware that EULAs had been upheld in court, and the point about software being easily copied may only explain why companies try to do it with software and not lettuces - it says nothing about whether it is legally valid or not.
If I found a piece of paper hidden in my lettuce saying "By eating this, you agree to blah blah blah", this has about as much meaning to me as an EULA presented when I try to install software.
This EULA is displayed before Windows even begins to load
But is it displayed before the user purchases the machine? This would seem to be the important issue, if the original poster's claim about only purchasing a particular licence is to have any merit at all.
There is such a thing, even here in our country, as an atheist who wants freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion.
There's nothing wrong with wanting freedom from religion, in the sense of freedom of having it forced upon us, as opposed to removing the freedom for anyone to practice religion.
Anyhow, your example of the t-shirt wearing atheist is nothing to do with wanting freedom from religion. He's just expressing his opinion on the matter, and he has just as much right to do so as any religious person.
So trouser-wearing female teachers aren't allowed either, or is it just the men who aren't allowed to wear skirts?
I disagree with your claim that cross dressing is necessarily a sexual-identity/confusion issue; ultimately dress codes a product of society, not something fundamental to sexuality or gender.
Personally I think more harm is done by forcing the views that males have to do these things and behave in this way, and females have to do things in a different way. If more people were used to the idea that not everyone behaves or things the same because of their sex or whatever, the world would be a better, more tolerant place, IMO. This is kind of like the people who say things like gay characters shouldn't appear in shows seen by kids. There's no inherent reason why wearing a particular piece of clothing is bad - it's only a taboo because few people do it, and few people do it because it's a taboo.
that's too young to be thrusting these types of issues on first-graders. Just let them learn to read at that age, for goodness sake. Teach them about different sexualities when they're a little older and can understand.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that the issues should be thrust upon them or taught to them. And again, cross dressing is not necessarily (and usually not, I would have thought) a "sexuality" (well, I'm not sure quite what you would mean by that, but it doesn't imply the person is of a non-straight sexuality, nor does it imply they have a fetish for cross-dressing).
Firstly, a picture ID isn't compulsory. People like myself are more against the compulsory part than the biometric part, especially if after the introduction of it, more and more places start requiring ID (or in the extreme case, it becomes compulsory to carry).
Secondly, when I show photo ID to someone, they don't scan a copy to keep on their own database, but this is exactly what anyone requiring ID will be able to do (and as much as I'd like to think this was tin foil hat conspiracy stuff, remember that this is what the US Government have openly said they are doing with fingerprints of foreigners who enter the country).
The problem with this is that it's like saying we shouldn't change any laws at all, because someone might introduce completely stupid or unjust laws.
Now sure, for those reasons it is best to make it so that changing laws is hard and goes through whatever drawn-out checks. I'm not saying that same sex marriage has to be allowed overnight, just that this is something that should change.
Plus, this argument works both ways, since Bush has tried to get an amendment to prevent gay marriage. If you start being so hasty to change the constitution for things like this, where next, we might say - an amendment to prevent black people from getting married perhaps?
Then the other poster should be advocating removal of marriage altogether - even if this is (as he points out) unlikely to happen, it would be the fair solution given the point of view.
The reason it is unlikely to happen is because most people don't share his view that marriage is unfair - they think that actually it's a great thing. You can't argue that x is wrong on the one hand, but on the other hand insist that we should keep x because of what the majority think, when "the majority" disagree with your original starting point.
And I still disagree with the idea that allowing everyone the access to the rights of marriage, and making it more flexible is making it more wrong - the only reason I view marriage as wrong is because it only favours one particular type of lifestyle.
But I don't understand the need for homosexual marriage.
So what's the need for marriage?
I'm not some eugenicist freak, mind you. But, I'm almost certainly going to be painted as one for what I'm about to say... human society does have an interest in perpetuating itself. And if growing people in test tubes does become an option, I'm not sure that method is such a good thing. The US has seen a drop in population growth, that excluding immigration, could have grave consequences in a not so distant future. (And I'm not blaming homosexuality for this, either). So, it's at least plausible that we all have an interest in promoting heterosexual marriage beyond "alternative lifestyles".
But trying to persuade people to be heterosexual through government benefits, in the hopes that they'll then have children, is something that is very ineffective. You are surely far better off having a system that rewards people who *actually have children*, if that is your aim.
There are plenty of childless straight couples out there, and they are surely more of the reason for falling birth rates (if this is the case) than there being more same sex couples (and indeed, you agree that they are not to blame for this), and it is surely easier to persuade childless straight couples to have children, than it is to persuade childless same sex couples to break up, change their sexuality, find someone else and have children..
and I think anyone that votes for the lesser of two evils is sure to get evil anyway,
Well, it's a crappy system, but I'd rather have the lesser of two evils than the greater of two evils.
The point is, it isn't unfair that monogamous straight couples support other lifestyles, when they themselves are already well supported by everyone else. By your logic, any form of tax or government is unfair. "Oh why should I have to support all these things I don't believe or agree with," whines the guy who ignores that those people pay taxes too, for things that he benefits from.
It's not a case of two wrongs make a right, it's that there are two ways to fix it. If we agree that a system is unfairly biased towards one set of people, they you either remove the biased system altogether, or you work at providing the benefits it for more people to even things out. Of course I realise that the former is unlikely to happen, that is why we work for the latter.
Your argument seems to hinge around this idea that "non traditional" somehow equals wrong. Strangely, not everyone agrees with you.
But the article seems to suggest nothing of the sort, and instead was expecting people to continue their normal daily routines, but without the Internet.
The law only recognizes a union of two people into a household to facilitate raising children.
it's quite true that many who marry simply never have children. However, these to me only represent imperfections in the system, not its intent.
So improve the system. If marriage is really about raising children, start advocating changes (eg, annulling marriages if they don't have children in a certain timeframe).
And whilst gay couples may not be able to have their own children, those in multiple relationships can and do have children, so polygamy should be allowed even if this argument means that same sex marriages aren't.
Oh, and plenty of the benefits offered to married people, if not most of them, have little or nothing to do with giving birth to children. So we might want to scrap those.
Or why not just scrap legal marriage altogether, and give whatever benefits that are appropriate to those people who have children?
Frankly, I don't care if people want to marry their vibrators. But as another submitter said, the costs of entering into these non-traditional relationships should be born by the individuals, and not society.
Fine, keep it to an individual thing. So why should people who are single, in a same sex or polyamorous relationship, support the costs or monogamous opposite-sex couples getting married? I don't see why I should have to.
Anyone who labels this as a false slippery slope is betting that there are no judges that agree. It is for certain that laws against polygamy, polyandy, group marriage, bestiality, marriage with underaged but mentally mature children, etc. are all going to be overturned in the courts.
That's irrelevant - it's still a slippery slope argument. If judges allow polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, it's because they consider good reasons for doing so, and it's hardly a problem to allow such marriages. But if you think there are reasons why a particular type of marriage (eg, marriage with children) is wrong, then arguing for same sex marriage doesn't imply that marriage with [something-bad] should be allowed.
- As others have said, a horse isn't a person. - This is a very poorly argued slippery slope argument. Same sex marriage is no closer to multiple marriages than opposite marriages, so you can just as equally argue that we shouldn't let heterosexuals marry because next they'll be wanting multiple marriages. - But then again, I don't see why multiple marriages shouldn't be allowed. It would be more work to change the laws, but at the end of the day benefits and legal relationships given by the Government should reflect the sorts of lifestyles that people have, not the other way round.
Sure with a phone you don't meet the person but you do hear their voice , with all the intonation etc that goes with it. With the internet you don't even get that
Yeah, it's not like you can do voice chat over the Internet.
Oh wait. And you can see them too on the Internet if you want, which conveys far greater information that just hearing them on a phone.
Of course, I agree with you that it's not a 100% accurate comparison - because people use the Internet for leisure too, as well as the social aspect. A better comparison would be, 20 years ago or so, removing the phone and TV, and perhaps radio, from people's homes for two weeks.
So if they're "real" friends why don't you ask them for their phone number or better yet
Because for the most part, the Internet is a more reliable and more efficient method of communication. Even for organising my in-real-life social life, I am still very much dependant on the Internet for this. I don't see why using a more efficient method of communication is counted as an "addiction".
Anyway, since when are phones face to face communication? I'm sure people would have trouble giving up their phones (especially these days with mobiles). If we're going to say that relying on the Internet is a bad thing and an addiction, the same thing applies to phones too.
Er, prices in the UK and the US don't translate according to the exchange rate, it's a bit ridiculous to tell me I can actually buy new albums from a shop for 5UKP - I only wish that were true!
Having said that, the actual price is irrelevant (which is why I said "or whatever equivalents in your currency"), my point was that the price some people are willing to pay may be greater than zero, but less than the sale price. Clearly this is true whether the sale price is 5UKP, 15UKP or 500UKP.
I agree it's very hard for someone to know for sure whether they would have otherwise bought it, but there are various ways round this. For example, there may be albums which the person only found out he liked after downloading it - so whether he really likes them, or hates them, and whether or not he would have bought them is irrelevant, because without filesharing he most likely would not have found out he likes them in the first place.
Another way, is to look at pure numbers. If someone has thousands of mp3s, it can be perfectly reasonable for him to say that without filesharing, he wouldn't be spending thousands or tens of thousands of pounds on CDs.
People may not be able to say whether they would have bought one particular CD, but they can better estimate how much money they would or are able to spend on CDs.
Well you either know very rich students, or ones with few music tastes. Obviously I took into account things like part time jobs, but trust me, few students have hundreds or thousands of pounds of spare cash lying around.
Another point to consider is the perceived market price - even if someone does have the money to buy a CD, if they perceive its value at 5UKP, but it is selling at 15UKP (or whatever equivalents in your currency), then it is consistent that (a) they wouldn't have bought it anyway without filesharing, even if they have the money, and (b) if they can get it for cheaper or for free, they would still like to listen to it.
Certainly when I was a student, whilst I had enough to buy an occasional CD, the idea of buying every single CD that I wanted would be far from possible.
They decide they wouldn't have bought it, but continue to listen to it. I said that sevral times. If you listen to it, decide not to buy it, then never listen again it's different.
I don't think this means that they are lying when they say they wouldn't have bought it. Remember, people don't have an infinite amount of money.
So it's quite a conceivable situation that someone has a fixed amount of money that they spend on CDs, and downloading means that they listen to more music that they wouldn't have otherwise bought if they couldn't download it. It would be wrong to say "I would never pay for this music because it's crap" and continue to listen to it, but saying they wouldn't have otherwise bought it, whilst still listening to it, can be a perfectly truthful statement.
The record companies would have us believe that people have unlimited amounts of money and finite want for music (so every downloaded copy is a lost sale); personally I would have thought that the exact opposite is true (that people tend to have limited amounts of money to spend, but far less limited desire to listen to more music).
I agree with your first post in that we need to take into account lost sales if we are to determine if overall downloading is economically good or bad for the record companies, but I don't think that we can say most downloaded files are lost sales.
ID cards: Do they want billions of pounds/dollars of taxpayers' money spent on a system (and in the UK, we'll be paying something like 70UKP individually for a card) when there is no clear reason for doing so (first it's terrorists - despite there being no explanation on how it will help - then next minute it's to stop immigrants from getting a job)?
Do they want to have to carry a card everywhere, and face fines, or possibly being detained until they can prove who they are, if they happen to forget one day, despite the fact they haven't done anything else wrong? (Nevermind the hassles if you lose your card, or have it stolen).
Do they want vast amounts of personal information stored on that card, which could be read by all sorts of people (the Government, foreign governments, random dubious people with appropriate equipment)?
I don't see the connection between cameras in the house and a national ID card as an example.
Well it's an argument against monitoring, as the original post asked. Cameras in homes may be an extreme situation, but it's an argument against the "I have nothing to hide" argument, and shows that people do prefer having privacy. Despite being "conspiracy theorist like", I can't see why cameras in homes are a bad idea *if* one has adopted the stance of "No one needs privacy, I have nothing to hide blah blah".
Would probably be more fair that way...
That might be true on things like driving records, but supposing it was things like your lifestyle, or your DNA? There are all sorts of things insurance companies would love to discriminate against, even though you individually may not have a bad record.
I elect a politician to lead, not do my bidding.
I do both, and I don't elect politicians to have control over me.
Slashdot Mirror
the rallying cry now is When Conciousness Begins; however, according to current research into cognitive psychology up to half of all our actions/interactions may have a genetic basis that varies from individual to individual meaning that conciousness or the blueprints to a unique conciousness are inherent from the conception.
Consciousness and the blueprints to consciousness are completely different things. Just because consciousness may be affected by genetics doesn't mean that a single-celled fertilised egg is conscious.
Indeed, by that logic, sperm and ova are conscious. Any man should be considered a mass murderer, but no one ever seems to care about these living cells.
The book comes with copyrights, which says you can't copy it. You can sell that one book to someone else, but you can't make copies and sell them or even give them away.
The same with software.
As for lettuces, the problem is that all the arguments people put forward for EULAs being valid apply to lettuces also. Is there any law that says EULAs are valid for software but not anything else? I wasn't aware that EULAs had been upheld in court, and the point about software being easily copied may only explain why companies try to do it with software and not lettuces - it says nothing about whether it is legally valid or not.
If I found a piece of paper hidden in my lettuce saying "By eating this, you agree to blah blah blah", this has about as much meaning to me as an EULA presented when I try to install software.
This EULA is displayed before Windows even begins to load
But is it displayed before the user purchases the machine? This would seem to be the important issue, if the original poster's claim about only purchasing a particular licence is to have any merit at all.
There is such a thing, even here in our country, as an atheist who wants freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion.
There's nothing wrong with wanting freedom from religion, in the sense of freedom of having it forced upon us, as opposed to removing the freedom for anyone to practice religion.
Anyhow, your example of the t-shirt wearing atheist is nothing to do with wanting freedom from religion. He's just expressing his opinion on the matter, and he has just as much right to do so as any religious person.
So trouser-wearing female teachers aren't allowed either, or is it just the men who aren't allowed to wear skirts?
I disagree with your claim that cross dressing is necessarily a sexual-identity/confusion issue; ultimately dress codes a product of society, not something fundamental to sexuality or gender.
Personally I think more harm is done by forcing the views that males have to do these things and behave in this way, and females have to do things in a different way. If more people were used to the idea that not everyone behaves or things the same because of their sex or whatever, the world would be a better, more tolerant place, IMO. This is kind of like the people who say things like gay characters shouldn't appear in shows seen by kids. There's no inherent reason why wearing a particular piece of clothing is bad - it's only a taboo because few people do it, and few people do it because it's a taboo.
that's too young to be thrusting these types of issues on first-graders. Just let them learn to read at that age, for goodness sake. Teach them about different sexualities when they're a little older and can understand.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that the issues should be thrust upon them or taught to them. And again, cross dressing is not necessarily (and usually not, I would have thought) a "sexuality" (well, I'm not sure quite what you would mean by that, but it doesn't imply the person is of a non-straight sexuality, nor does it imply they have a fetish for cross-dressing).
Firstly, a picture ID isn't compulsory. People like myself are more against the compulsory part than the biometric part, especially if after the introduction of it, more and more places start requiring ID (or in the extreme case, it becomes compulsory to carry).
Secondly, when I show photo ID to someone, they don't scan a copy to keep on their own database, but this is exactly what anyone requiring ID will be able to do (and as much as I'd like to think this was tin foil hat conspiracy stuff, remember that this is what the US Government have openly said they are doing with fingerprints of foreigners who enter the country).
Snopes suggests that this is a move "by Democrats seeking to make an anti-war statement": http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp.
The problem with this is that it's like saying we shouldn't change any laws at all, because someone might introduce completely stupid or unjust laws.
Now sure, for those reasons it is best to make it so that changing laws is hard and goes through whatever drawn-out checks. I'm not saying that same sex marriage has to be allowed overnight, just that this is something that should change.
Plus, this argument works both ways, since Bush has tried to get an amendment to prevent gay marriage. If you start being so hasty to change the constitution for things like this, where next, we might say - an amendment to prevent black people from getting married perhaps?
Then the other poster should be advocating removal of marriage altogether - even if this is (as he points out) unlikely to happen, it would be the fair solution given the point of view.
The reason it is unlikely to happen is because most people don't share his view that marriage is unfair - they think that actually it's a great thing. You can't argue that x is wrong on the one hand, but on the other hand insist that we should keep x because of what the majority think, when "the majority" disagree with your original starting point.
And I still disagree with the idea that allowing everyone the access to the rights of marriage, and making it more flexible is making it more wrong - the only reason I view marriage as wrong is because it only favours one particular type of lifestyle.
But I don't understand the need for homosexual marriage.
So what's the need for marriage?
I'm not some eugenicist freak, mind you. But, I'm almost certainly going to be painted as one for what I'm about to say... human society does have an interest in perpetuating itself. And if growing people in test tubes does become an option, I'm not sure that method is such a good thing. The US has seen a drop in population growth, that excluding immigration, could have grave consequences in a not so distant future. (And I'm not blaming homosexuality for this, either). So, it's at least plausible that we all have an interest in promoting heterosexual marriage beyond "alternative lifestyles".
But trying to persuade people to be heterosexual through government benefits, in the hopes that they'll then have children, is something that is very ineffective. You are surely far better off having a system that rewards people who *actually have children*, if that is your aim.
There are plenty of childless straight couples out there, and they are surely more of the reason for falling birth rates (if this is the case) than there being more same sex couples (and indeed, you agree that they are not to blame for this), and it is surely easier to persuade childless straight couples to have children, than it is to persuade childless same sex couples to break up, change their sexuality, find someone else and have children..
and I think anyone that votes for the lesser of two evils is sure to get evil anyway,
Well, it's a crappy system, but I'd rather have the lesser of two evils than the greater of two evils.
The point is, it isn't unfair that monogamous straight couples support other lifestyles, when they themselves are already well supported by everyone else. By your logic, any form of tax or government is unfair. "Oh why should I have to support all these things I don't believe or agree with," whines the guy who ignores that those people pay taxes too, for things that he benefits from.
It's not a case of two wrongs make a right, it's that there are two ways to fix it. If we agree that a system is unfairly biased towards one set of people, they you either remove the biased system altogether, or you work at providing the benefits it for more people to even things out. Of course I realise that the former is unlikely to happen, that is why we work for the latter.
Your argument seems to hinge around this idea that "non traditional" somehow equals wrong. Strangely, not everyone agrees with you.
Well, it's easy if you're taking a vacation.
But the article seems to suggest nothing of the sort, and instead was expecting people to continue their normal daily routines, but without the Internet.
The law only recognizes a union of two people into a household to facilitate raising children.
it's quite true that many who marry simply never have children. However, these to me only represent imperfections in the system, not its intent.
So improve the system. If marriage is really about raising children, start advocating changes (eg, annulling marriages if they don't have children in a certain timeframe).
And whilst gay couples may not be able to have their own children, those in multiple relationships can and do have children, so polygamy should be allowed even if this argument means that same sex marriages aren't.
Oh, and plenty of the benefits offered to married people, if not most of them, have little or nothing to do with giving birth to children. So we might want to scrap those.
Or why not just scrap legal marriage altogether, and give whatever benefits that are appropriate to those people who have children?
Frankly, I don't care if people want to marry
their vibrators. But as another submitter said,
the costs of entering into these non-traditional
relationships should be born by the individuals,
and not society.
Fine, keep it to an individual thing. So why should people who are single, in a same sex or polyamorous relationship, support the costs or monogamous opposite-sex couples getting married? I don't see why I should have to.
Anyone who labels this as a false slippery slope
is betting that there are no judges that agree.
It is for certain that laws against polygamy,
polyandy, group marriage, bestiality, marriage
with underaged but mentally mature children,
etc. are all going to be overturned in the courts.
That's irrelevant - it's still a slippery slope argument. If judges allow polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, it's because they consider good reasons for doing so, and it's hardly a problem to allow such marriages. But if you think there are reasons why a particular type of marriage (eg, marriage with children) is wrong, then arguing for same sex marriage doesn't imply that marriage with [something-bad] should be allowed.
- As others have said, a horse isn't a person.
- This is a very poorly argued slippery slope argument. Same sex marriage is no closer to multiple marriages than opposite marriages, so you can just as equally argue that we shouldn't let heterosexuals marry because next they'll be wanting multiple marriages.
- But then again, I don't see why multiple marriages shouldn't be allowed. It would be more work to change the laws, but at the end of the day benefits and legal relationships given by the Government should reflect the sorts of lifestyles that people have, not the other way round.
Sure with a phone you don't meet the person but you do hear their voice , with all the intonation etc that goes with it. With the internet you don't even get that
Yeah, it's not like you can do voice chat over the Internet.
Oh wait. And you can see them too on the Internet if you want, which conveys far greater information that just hearing them on a phone.
Of course, I agree with you that it's not a 100% accurate comparison - because people use the Internet for leisure too, as well as the social aspect. A better comparison would be, 20 years ago or so, removing the phone and TV, and perhaps radio, from people's homes for two weeks.
So if they're "real" friends why don't you ask them for their phone number or better yet
Because for the most part, the Internet is a more reliable and more efficient method of communication. Even for organising my in-real-life social life, I am still very much dependant on the Internet for this. I don't see why using a more efficient method of communication is counted as an "addiction".
Anyway, since when are phones face to face communication? I'm sure people would have trouble giving up their phones (especially these days with mobiles). If we're going to say that relying on the Internet is a bad thing and an addiction, the same thing applies to phones too.
Er, prices in the UK and the US don't translate according to the exchange rate, it's a bit ridiculous to tell me I can actually buy new albums from a shop for 5UKP - I only wish that were true!
Having said that, the actual price is irrelevant (which is why I said "or whatever equivalents in your currency"), my point was that the price some people are willing to pay may be greater than zero, but less than the sale price. Clearly this is true whether the sale price is 5UKP, 15UKP or 500UKP.
I agree it's very hard for someone to know for sure whether they would have otherwise bought it, but there are various ways round this. For example, there may be albums which the person only found out he liked after downloading it - so whether he really likes them, or hates them, and whether or not he would have bought them is irrelevant, because without filesharing he most likely would not have found out he likes them in the first place.
Another way, is to look at pure numbers. If someone has thousands of mp3s, it can be perfectly reasonable for him to say that without filesharing, he wouldn't be spending thousands or tens of thousands of pounds on CDs.
People may not be able to say whether they would have bought one particular CD, but they can better estimate how much money they would or are able to spend on CDs.
Well you either know very rich students, or ones with few music tastes. Obviously I took into account things like part time jobs, but trust me, few students have hundreds or thousands of pounds of spare cash lying around.
Another point to consider is the perceived market price - even if someone does have the money to buy a CD, if they perceive its value at 5UKP, but it is selling at 15UKP (or whatever equivalents in your currency), then it is consistent that (a) they wouldn't have bought it anyway without filesharing, even if they have the money, and (b) if they can get it for cheaper or for free, they would still like to listen to it.
High school students have money?
Certainly when I was a student, whilst I had enough to buy an occasional CD, the idea of buying every single CD that I wanted would be far from possible.
They decide they wouldn't have bought it, but continue to listen to it. I said that sevral times. If you listen to it, decide not to buy it, then never listen again it's different.
I don't think this means that they are lying when they say they wouldn't have bought it. Remember, people don't have an infinite amount of money.
So it's quite a conceivable situation that someone has a fixed amount of money that they spend on CDs, and downloading means that they listen to more music that they wouldn't have otherwise bought if they couldn't download it. It would be wrong to say "I would never pay for this music because it's crap" and continue to listen to it, but saying they wouldn't have otherwise bought it, whilst still listening to it, can be a perfectly truthful statement.
The record companies would have us believe that people have unlimited amounts of money and finite want for music (so every downloaded copy is a lost sale); personally I would have thought that the exact opposite is true (that people tend to have limited amounts of money to spend, but far less limited desire to listen to more music).
I agree with your first post in that we need to take into account lost sales if we are to determine if overall downloading is economically good or bad for the record companies, but I don't think that we can say most downloaded files are lost sales.
ID cards: Do they want billions of pounds/dollars of taxpayers' money spent on a system (and in the UK, we'll be paying something like 70UKP individually for a card) when there is no clear reason for doing so (first it's terrorists - despite there being no explanation on how it will help - then next minute it's to stop immigrants from getting a job)?
Do they want to have to carry a card everywhere, and face fines, or possibly being detained until they can prove who they are, if they happen to forget one day, despite the fact they haven't done anything else wrong? (Nevermind the hassles if you lose your card, or have it stolen).
Do they want vast amounts of personal information stored on that card, which could be read by all sorts of people (the Government, foreign governments, random dubious people with appropriate equipment)?
I don't see the connection between cameras in the house and a national ID card as an example.
Well it's an argument against monitoring, as the original post asked. Cameras in homes may be an extreme situation, but it's an argument against the "I have nothing to hide" argument, and shows that people do prefer having privacy. Despite being "conspiracy theorist like", I can't see why cameras in homes are a bad idea *if* one has adopted the stance of "No one needs privacy, I have nothing to hide blah blah".
Would probably be more fair that way...
That might be true on things like driving records, but supposing it was things like your lifestyle, or your DNA? There are all sorts of things insurance companies would love to discriminate against, even though you individually may not have a bad record.
I elect a politician to lead, not do my bidding.
I do both, and I don't elect politicians to have control over me.
Don't like it? Don't use PayPal. That's the beauty of the free market.
Except it's no longer a "free market" when they're imposing fines on you, and taking legal action to obtain them.
Last time I looked, stores don't try to impose fines on people buying alcohol underage. The Government might, but that's because it's illegal.