The 'net and many of it's denizens don't understand how the real world works and don't think they should have to anyhow. As if the 'net was some free form construct completely unconnected to the real world.
I think they do understand how the real world works, and don't care for it much. They want the 'Net to remain uncontaminated by the imperfections of the "real world" for as long as possible.
There was nothing about denying people the rights to sell the crap they own.
There's nothing wrong with offering to buy back the products, but to prevent the owner from selling to someone else would infringe on the rights of the property owner. The secondary market can be influenced, but not controlled. No blanket claim can be made that any other sellers must be acting fraudulently.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the government organization responsible for collecting taxes is itself a perfect example of why the overhead for government "services" is so high? It's amazing they manage to get anything done at all with so much beaurocracy...
The most effective criminals in the world are friendly, well-dressed, and outgoing. And usually only technologically-competent enough to get the job done.
Such individuals are commonly known as "politicians".
Where are you getting this bizarre definition of "free market"? It's certainly not one of the standard meanings, e.g. "A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, in a free market environment buyers and sellers do not coerce or mislead each other nor are they coerced by a third party" (Source). Perhaps you should invent your own term to describe this concept you've invented rather than co-opting an existing phrase.
Now the idea of property implies an ownership of something. A patent is an official recognition of that ownership.... If you implement a different system of controlling or determining ownership, you are not removing a patent, you are simply calling it something else.
We are obviously not talking about the same things here. When I say "patent" I mean the kind issued by the USPO, a time-limited monopoly over the use of a particular process, method or design, not official recognition of property ownership in general. The traditional free-market definition of property does not include monopolies over processes, methods, or designs, and is thus not simply a patent by another name.
I think it is you who are a bit confused. You are describing the general concept of a "market economy", not a free market. In particular:
But a free market is expected to follow a [sic] the laws regardless
If that were true even a pure command economy could be considered a free market, subject to laws which dictate the time, place, and form of every transaction, rendering the term "free market" completely meaningless. The existance of a free market implies a very specific system of laws, which are part of the definition. These laws are all specific cases of the Non-Aggression Principle: an action is permitted if and only if everyone whose use of their property, including themselves, is impacted by the action consents to it voluntarily. Any law which redefines what property is, or bestows additional "property rights", or imposes conditions or limitations on the enforcement of property rights -- any law which is not a subset of the N.A.P. -- is incompatible with a free market.
On the surface, a free market doesn't preclude companies from holding patents or unlimited licenses.
Sure it does. There are no patents -- or copyrights -- in a free market. In a free market anyone can do whatever they wish with their own property, insofar as such use is compatible with the same freedom for others. Patent and copyright infringement do not impact the ability of others to use their property as they wish, and as such are meaningless concepts in a free market.
we all know that someone is the loser in EVERY transaction, be it monetary, social or otherwise
[citation needed]
The entire point of trade is that it's possible for two people to exchange property such that both benefit, due to differences in individual preferences. Example: you're hungry, but all you have is currency, which you can't eat. Someone else has a bushel of apples, and isn't (that) hungry, but would like currency to buy something else. By trading your currency for their apples you reduce your hunger and they get the currency they wanted. You both see yourselves as better off due to the exchange.
I would think people on/. of all people would know that just because the majority believes or does something does not make it right.
Absolutely. However, the government's claim to legitimacy depends entirely on the support of the majority. If the majority do not want a certain policy enforced -- as evidenced by the fact that they do not follow it themselves -- then the government does not even have its normal flimsy justification to pursue violations of the policy.
It would appear you are correct. My response was based on pre-NTFS behavior; I switched to Linux before NTFS became popular for home systems.
The locking behavior was at least the original justification for requiring a reboot; I have no idea why the practice continues now that it is no longer necessary.
I believe that taxes should be levied on "wealth" not "income." Everything else is just class warfare against the poor and middle class.
Which is better than class warfare against the upper class because...? Any tax, no matter how you divide it up, benefits some group(s) at the expense of everyone else. The only exception is if you tax people in exact proportion to the costs of the services they voluntarily choose to benefit from, but in that case it's not really a tax at all.
On Windows any executable or library currently in use is locked such that the file cannot be deleted, renamed, or overwritten. To replace a locked DLL the installer must write the new version to a temporary location and set up a script to complete the process on the next startup, when the DLL is (hopefully) no longer in use. Processes started before that point load the old DLL.
I would vote AutoCAD as the most descriptive, considering the kind of person that would be likely to look for it. At least the fact that it's an (Automatic) Computer-Aided Design package is right there in the name. In what way does "Visual Studio" suggest a programming environment?
Sorry, but I'm not willing to sentence someone before they commit a crime just because I see them as a potential threat. Justice requires that the punishment fit what they actually did to you, not what you or others expect them to do in the future.
Perhaps a better question would be: are you willing to take the risk that the person you're locking up may later be proven innocent, knowing that if that happens you'll have to pay restitution for all the pain and suffering you've caused them (not to mention lost wages, etc.)?
The "correct" balance between false positive vs. false negatives is far too abstract to have any objective answer. This is a situation that calls for a feedback loop, punishment in proportion to the effects of an incorrect judgment. The standard of evidence would then take care of itself. In any event, it is only right that one make up for harm done to others, even when one thought one was doing the right thing at the time.
Money is just a proxy for the goods or services it could have purchased. Directly controlling people's actions is at least as bad as taking an "equivalent" amount of their money.
There's also Mercurial, which maintains a command syntax similar to Subversion, but uses distributed repositories. With it one can easily create a local repository suitable for offline use, including access to the full project history.
"The law" is whatever the last time judge decided after hearing a shouting match between two attorneys.
You're over-simplifying things. In particular, while precedence can be applied from any prior case, it is only binding in the event that the prior case was the ruling of a higher-level court. That rule is in place so that people can rely on the application of legal principles remaining consistent from one case to the next. If the precedent is wrong, or incorrectly applied, there is always the possibility of appeal. In my (albeit limited) experience it tends to be the rulings based on the written laws that make the least sense, most likely because detailed, written laws cannot take into consideration the unique circumstances of each case. Case law takes into account the principles and reasoning behind the decision, not just the definition of the offense and its designated penalties.
The standard disclaimer about not taking legal advice from some random Internet commenter applies, of course.
No, property rights derive from original use, the desire for stability, and the concept of reciprocation. Almost everyone wants to control the environment around them in order to manage their risk and prepare for the future. Achieving this requires the cooperation of others, and these others cannot be expected to respect one's claims if one does not respect their claims in turn. Property law is the system that developed over an extended period of time to deal with conflicting claims; the guiding principle of property law is that original use of unowned property establishes a rightful claim between the use and the property which can only be altered by explicit abandonment, voluntary exchange, or the owner's violation of another's property rights.
This is all part of the common law, most of which was developed and enforced quite independently of any government influence. U.S. property law is derived from the common law, which preexists the U.S. government. The existence of property rights independent of the government was an underlying principle of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The government sometimes recognizes property rights, or violates them; it cannot grant them.
The implicit agreement of the market is something to the effect of "if you don't like the price, don't buy it". But an assumption built into "don't buy it" is that you're not going to have the same benefits as having bought it, either.
That's not entirely accurate. There's nothing in the "market rules" that prevents you from getting the same "benefits" some other way. The actual rule is that you don't deprive someone else of the use of their property without their permission. Despite the whole "IP" misnomer, copyright infringement doesn't deprive anyone of their property, or involve any other form of coercion; ergo, it represents a perfectly legitimate alternative to buying a copy from the official distributor(s).
Humans do not exhibit Malthusian population growth. That growth is already constrained to less than the maximum the environment can handle is the single most obvious difference between human populations and most other animals, and a significant part of why humans have a far higher individual standard of living.
It's inevitable that we, as a species, will utilize every resource we can. It's only Malthusian if population growth takes precedence over every other concern, leaving everyone at a subsistence living standard. There are no signs that we are moving towards such a state.
When a commodities trader buys oil contracts, he's part of the demand, even though he has no intention of consuming the oil.
Solution to the current bubble: When the contract becomes due, pull up to the trader's office with a tanker truck and flood the building with the crude. That'll teach'em not to speculate.
By the time the contract is due the oil has already been sold to someone who does intend to use it. The trader has no incentive to retain the contract through fulfillment, even if the price has dropped; they buy expecting the price to increase, but either way the money from selling the contract is more useful to them than a tanker full of crude oil on their doorstep.
I'm not a lawyer -- of course -- but it seems to me that threatening a ton of people with lawsuits in order to achieve a settlement and then never following through when the settlement is rejected would be just a bit too obvious, even for organizations like these. I doubt most courts look favorably on that sort of bluff, even ignoring the fact that only a credible threat of being sued would induce people to settle in the first place.
That makes no sense. The government is charged with upholding the rights of the citizenry, and that can only be done through the courts and by force. Private implementations of force are rights violations.
Most of the time it takes force to counter a rights-violation, true. Rights-violations (a.k.a. "aggression") always involve the use of force, and more importantly the initiation of force. Not all use of force is aggression, though: self-defense, whether personal or on behalf of someone else, is a use of force which is not aggression, and not a violation of anyone's rights. It makes no difference whether the use of force (aggressive or defensive) is private or public. Aggression is wrong, even when performed by a public official in full accordance with the written laws; defensive use of force -- including immediate self-defense, restitution, and retribution -- is not wrong, even when carried out by a private individual or organization.
The courts are just an established way to prove to the world that your use of force is, in fact, defensive and justified. You don't have to use them, but if you don't then the burden of proving that your use of force was not aggressive in nature is entirely on your shoulders.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they do understand how the real world works, and don't care for it much. They want the 'Net to remain uncontaminated by the imperfections of the "real world" for as long as possible.
For the most part I agree with them.
There's nothing wrong with offering to buy back the products, but to prevent the owner from selling to someone else would infringe on the rights of the property owner. The secondary market can be influenced, but not controlled. No blanket claim can be made that any other sellers must be acting fraudulently.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the government organization responsible for collecting taxes is itself a perfect example of why the overhead for government "services" is so high? It's amazing they manage to get anything done at all with so much beaurocracy...
Such individuals are commonly known as "politicians".
Where are you getting this bizarre definition of "free market"? It's certainly not one of the standard meanings, e.g. "A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, in a free market environment buyers and sellers do not coerce or mislead each other nor are they coerced by a third party" (Source). Perhaps you should invent your own term to describe this concept you've invented rather than co-opting an existing phrase.
We are obviously not talking about the same things here. When I say "patent" I mean the kind issued by the USPO, a time-limited monopoly over the use of a particular process, method or design, not official recognition of property ownership in general. The traditional free-market definition of property does not include monopolies over processes, methods, or designs, and is thus not simply a patent by another name.
I think it is you who are a bit confused. You are describing the general concept of a "market economy", not a free market. In particular:
If that were true even a pure command economy could be considered a free market, subject to laws which dictate the time, place, and form of every transaction, rendering the term "free market" completely meaningless. The existance of a free market implies a very specific system of laws, which are part of the definition. These laws are all specific cases of the Non-Aggression Principle: an action is permitted if and only if everyone whose use of their property, including themselves, is impacted by the action consents to it voluntarily. Any law which redefines what property is, or bestows additional "property rights", or imposes conditions or limitations on the enforcement of property rights -- any law which is not a subset of the N.A.P. -- is incompatible with a free market.
Sure it does. There are no patents -- or copyrights -- in a free market. In a free market anyone can do whatever they wish with their own property, insofar as such use is compatible with the same freedom for others. Patent and copyright infringement do not impact the ability of others to use their property as they wish, and as such are meaningless concepts in a free market.
[citation needed]
The entire point of trade is that it's possible for two people to exchange property such that both benefit, due to differences in individual preferences. Example: you're hungry, but all you have is currency, which you can't eat. Someone else has a bushel of apples, and isn't (that) hungry, but would like currency to buy something else. By trading your currency for their apples you reduce your hunger and they get the currency they wanted. You both see yourselves as better off due to the exchange.
Absolutely. However, the government's claim to legitimacy depends entirely on the support of the majority. If the majority do not want a certain policy enforced -- as evidenced by the fact that they do not follow it themselves -- then the government does not even have its normal flimsy justification to pursue violations of the policy.
It would appear you are correct. My response was based on pre-NTFS behavior; I switched to Linux before NTFS became popular for home systems.
The locking behavior was at least the original justification for requiring a reboot; I have no idea why the practice continues now that it is no longer necessary.
Which is better than class warfare against the upper class because...? Any tax, no matter how you divide it up, benefits some group(s) at the expense of everyone else. The only exception is if you tax people in exact proportion to the costs of the services they voluntarily choose to benefit from, but in that case it's not really a tax at all.
On Windows any executable or library currently in use is locked such that the file cannot be deleted, renamed, or overwritten. To replace a locked DLL the installer must write the new version to a temporary location and set up a script to complete the process on the next startup, when the DLL is (hopefully) no longer in use. Processes started before that point load the old DLL.
I would vote AutoCAD as the most descriptive, considering the kind of person that would be likely to look for it. At least the fact that it's an (Automatic) Computer-Aided Design package is right there in the name. In what way does "Visual Studio" suggest a programming environment?
Sorry, but I'm not willing to sentence someone before they commit a crime just because I see them as a potential threat. Justice requires that the punishment fit what they actually did to you, not what you or others expect them to do in the future.
Perhaps a better question would be: are you willing to take the risk that the person you're locking up may later be proven innocent, knowing that if that happens you'll have to pay restitution for all the pain and suffering you've caused them (not to mention lost wages, etc.)?
The "correct" balance between false positive vs. false negatives is far too abstract to have any objective answer. This is a situation that calls for a feedback loop, punishment in proportion to the effects of an incorrect judgment. The standard of evidence would then take care of itself. In any event, it is only right that one make up for harm done to others, even when one thought one was doing the right thing at the time.
Money is just a proxy for the goods or services it could have purchased. Directly controlling people's actions is at least as bad as taking an "equivalent" amount of their money.
There's also Mercurial, which maintains a command syntax similar to Subversion, but uses distributed repositories. With it one can easily create a local repository suitable for offline use, including access to the full project history.
You're over-simplifying things. In particular, while precedence can be applied from any prior case, it is only binding in the event that the prior case was the ruling of a higher-level court. That rule is in place so that people can rely on the application of legal principles remaining consistent from one case to the next. If the precedent is wrong, or incorrectly applied, there is always the possibility of appeal. In my (albeit limited) experience it tends to be the rulings based on the written laws that make the least sense, most likely because detailed, written laws cannot take into consideration the unique circumstances of each case. Case law takes into account the principles and reasoning behind the decision, not just the definition of the offense and its designated penalties.
The standard disclaimer about not taking legal advice from some random Internet commenter applies, of course.
No, property rights derive from original use, the desire for stability, and the concept of reciprocation. Almost everyone wants to control the environment around them in order to manage their risk and prepare for the future. Achieving this requires the cooperation of others, and these others cannot be expected to respect one's claims if one does not respect their claims in turn. Property law is the system that developed over an extended period of time to deal with conflicting claims; the guiding principle of property law is that original use of unowned property establishes a rightful claim between the use and the property which can only be altered by explicit abandonment, voluntary exchange, or the owner's violation of another's property rights.
This is all part of the common law, most of which was developed and enforced quite independently of any government influence. U.S. property law is derived from the common law, which preexists the U.S. government. The existence of property rights independent of the government was an underlying principle of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The government sometimes recognizes property rights, or violates them; it cannot grant them.
One cannot lose what one does not already own.
That's not entirely accurate. There's nothing in the "market rules" that prevents you from getting the same "benefits" some other way. The actual rule is that you don't deprive someone else of the use of their property without their permission. Despite the whole "IP" misnomer, copyright infringement doesn't deprive anyone of their property, or involve any other form of coercion; ergo, it represents a perfectly legitimate alternative to buying a copy from the official distributor(s).
Humans do not exhibit Malthusian population growth. That growth is already constrained to less than the maximum the environment can handle is the single most obvious difference between human populations and most other animals, and a significant part of why humans have a far higher individual standard of living.
It's inevitable that we, as a species, will utilize every resource we can. It's only Malthusian if population growth takes precedence over every other concern, leaving everyone at a subsistence living standard. There are no signs that we are moving towards such a state.
By the time the contract is due the oil has already been sold to someone who does intend to use it. The trader has no incentive to retain the contract through fulfillment, even if the price has dropped; they buy expecting the price to increase, but either way the money from selling the contract is more useful to them than a tanker full of crude oil on their doorstep.
I'm not a lawyer -- of course -- but it seems to me that threatening a ton of people with lawsuits in order to achieve a settlement and then never following through when the settlement is rejected would be just a bit too obvious, even for organizations like these. I doubt most courts look favorably on that sort of bluff, even ignoring the fact that only a credible threat of being sued would induce people to settle in the first place.
Most of the time it takes force to counter a rights-violation, true. Rights-violations (a.k.a. "aggression") always involve the use of force, and more importantly the initiation of force. Not all use of force is aggression, though: self-defense, whether personal or on behalf of someone else, is a use of force which is not aggression, and not a violation of anyone's rights. It makes no difference whether the use of force (aggressive or defensive) is private or public. Aggression is wrong, even when performed by a public official in full accordance with the written laws; defensive use of force -- including immediate self-defense, restitution, and retribution -- is not wrong, even when carried out by a private individual or organization.
The courts are just an established way to prove to the world that your use of force is, in fact, defensive and justified. You don't have to use them, but if you don't then the burden of proving that your use of force was not aggressive in nature is entirely on your shoulders.