No, they don't. They don't want people trading music at all, they want people buying music. Ideally, they want people buying music only from RIAA members and not getting any music anywhere else.
Of course, I want a lot of things I'm not going to get too. The difficulty is that the RIAA has a lot of money to throw at making their wants into reality for the rest of us.
Read it again. Keeping in mind the inequities of power that Brin never actually gets around to addressing.
He seems to assume that if we can only know as much about those who control us as they know about us, we'll have equal power of them. But he completely neglects the effects of wealth and power on being able to actually do anything useful with that information.
He also fails to adequately address a number of issues. Specifically:
information accessibility does not equate to information use,
wealth and/or power can increase information uptake - meaning those with it can have their version more accepted,
those with no sense of shame are given inordinate amounts of power as his system mostly works on the idea of deterrence (if you give up my secrets, I'll give up yours)
information does not necessarily reduce prejudice,
information does not equate to understanding, and;
We can change this. This is what government and legislation is all about.
Brin assumes that the technology is its own motive force - that any possible niche that a technology might be used for, it will be used for. Unfortunately, he does this in the face of historical evidence. There are a lot of technologies that have not seen adoption by the general public - and some of these are due to legislation and policies that simply make the technology too expensive to be worthwhile.
So read the book again.. but this time, try doing it with a critical eye.
What happens to the woman who's husband was abusing her if he can track down where she now lives? She can also track him and his movements.
And this is better how? Okay, she may be able to avoid being beaten, but she still can't settle down and form a new life ever. She's always got to be tracking this bastard and ready to pick up and move at a moment's notice. How lovely to live a life constantly on the run.
What happens to the poor 68 year old single man who happens to use his credit card to buy a lot of lacey underwear and garters that happen to be his size? He'd probably find out that there are hundreds of thousands of others like him, or he could make an informed choice not to make the purchase. How about the head of the PTA or school principal who in her off hours frequents the fetish clubs? Same deal: either that becomes acceptable for the heads of PTAs or school principals, or they stop doing it.
Nice, you completely avoided both my points - the people most likely to seek this information out are those who want to cause embarassment or harm to another individual, and that what right is it of certain groups to impose their morality on other people, when those other people aren't doing anything to hurt anybody?
In both cases, you assumed that the person would either be forced to change their behavior from something that was not doing anybody any harm to something that more conforms to a whim of the moral majority; or that simply knowing there were others out there like them would be of some benefit. "Well, while those skinheads beat me up, at least I can take solace in knowing there are others like me all over the US." Yeah. That's real comforting.
Forgive me if I don't want to live in such a world.
Now, taking those two points into consideration, try answering those two again.
Of course, this is ludicrous - we can't fire our boss if we don't like his choice of reading material. Sure we can: it's called changing jobs. People do it all the time.
Congratulations on being so amazingly skilled and living in a land of such overflowing employment opportunities that you have the ability to change jobs at the drop of a hat.
Unfortunately, the rest of us live in the real world, where the number of bosses are a lot fewer than the number of employees.
People are reactionary, prejudiced, and frightened about things they imagine but don't know. Knowledge and information is the antidote to that.
Explain to me what you believe it is that guys who beat up on gays are "imagining" that lends to their fear? Once you've done that, tell me how them having more knowledge about who is and is not gay is going to curb that imagining?
Guess what, these folks aren't interested in if homosexuality is normal or natural, and even if you tell them, they still won't make use of it to actually understand what's going on. But hey, give them a list of the names and addresses of the homosexuals in their neighborhood, and you'll likely see them make use of that.
You want proof of this? Simply look at racism. We know that the abilities of a Mexican are comparable to a Caucasian, are comparable to a Black, etc. The knowledge is publically available and has been out there for some time. Yet racism still exists.. hmmm.. could that be because no matter how much information is available, people will still only look at/believe what they want to?
"imagine but don't know" is exactly what I meant by not understanding. And while information is an antidote to factual ignorance, it has no bearing on understanding, and even if it did, its availability is no guaruntee on its being used.
Furthermore, the US has been subsidising drug development and low drug prices in Canada and Europe by allowing high drug prices here to drive innovation. As long as we're chasing pie in the sky, let's force those socialist free riders to start paying their fair share!
Too bad you don't have decent facts to back that up. A study by the Cato Institute shows that given the same usage patterns, Canadians would pay 3% more[PDF file] than their U.S. counterparts.
There's even a minority staff report[PDF] from the U.S. House of Representatives that states, in part: "The drug industry's own testimony indicates that despite the high drug prices in the United States and the low drug prices in other countries, many drug companies are moving research from the United States to other countries," and that "more than two thirds of new drugs are developed by countries headquartered outside the United States."
Also note that some reasons given for the drugs that are lower priced in Canada include reduced liability for pharmacomps, which means reduced risks; and stricter controls on pharmaceutical marketing and advertising, an activity in the United States that pharmaceutical companies are spending amounts equal to or greater than they are spending on research and development.
Never mind that a majority of the research done by and for drug companies is done by the NIH, which is entirely funded by taxpayers. The drug companies take the most promising/profitable looking developments from them finalize what research is left to do, apply patents, and profit for the next 20 years (or 25 with patent extensions). Then they reformulate ("Now take only once a day!") and re-patent.
Get out of the mindset that drug companies care about your health. They don't. They care about making a profit - and if that means applying a submarine patent to a cure in order to prevent others from developing it, and marketing the hell out of something that temporarily relieves the symptoms until their lucrative patent is up, don't think they won't do this.
You want innovation in the drug industry? Shorten the patent protection period while broadening the coverage, so that a minor change in an inactive component of the drug doesn't qualify for a whole new patent.
Gee.. when the number of guns that can be imported or made in a country goes down, what do you think happens to the price?
Gee.. when there's a risk of getting arrested for even carrying a gun around, what happens to the price of guns for those who want to try and sell them now that they're taking a larger risk?
Gee.. when the price of guns on the blackmarket starts to skyrocket what happens to the petty crook who has to spend most of his money to feed various addictions - which do you think they'd forego first, the gun, or the addiction?
Are we ever going to get rid of guns completely? Of course not. Are we ever going to get rid of crime completely? Of course not. In either case, it's no reason to just roll over and say "Oh well, since we can't fix it perfectly, we might as well let everybody do it."
If confining someone is a bad thing, then why is it okay to imprison criminals? Is it a question of degree? It's ok if governments do it but not individuals? How is it ok to do to a criminal what we would not want to happen to us?
This world is neither so black, nor so white, as you would assume.
Seriously. Easy or not, do we really want everybody's personal information accessible?
Also, if information is difficult to access, but still present, who will be the most likely to search it out? We can see who right now - those who want to cause some form of embarrassment or harm to the person.
What happens to the woman who's husband was abusing her if he can track down where she now lives? What happens to the poor 68 year old single man who happens to use his credit card to buy a lot of lacey underwear and garters that happen to be his size? How about the head of the PTA or school principal who in her off hours frequents the fetish clubs?
Maybe you won't try to impose your morals on these people, but can you honestly say there's nobody out there who will?
Brin's arguments are nearly as flawed as Marx's in that they fail to take into account basic human nature, and give all the power to those people who have no sense of shame - usually those who believe their actions are the most righteous.
Also, when reading Brin's Transparent Society, he horribly glosses over the problems of inequitable power. He blithely assumes that if we can see all our bosses peccadillos we will have as much power over our boss as he does over us. Of course, this is ludicrous - we can't fire our boss if we don't like his choice of reading material.
If we all lived in a world where people used reason above all else to make their choices, maybe the fully transparent society would be a good one. Unfortunately, we don't. People tend to be reactionary, prejudiced, and frightened. Knowing something does not equate to understanding it, and as a whole, we tend to react violently to things we don't understand.
Friends: You still can be with your friends. You can change servers to be on another one in an alternate and have your friends change with you. Or you can delete your old character and create a new one and be with your friends.
The question really is, why do you need an alternate character on the same server? Why not put that role-playing effort into fully realizing the one character on a certain server? Instead of being "Foffa Bet, Bounty Hunter -- when it looks like bounty hunting is good, otherwise Jedi Master Doya," concentrate on one or the other. Your choices have more meaning this way -- okay.. I'm one kick ass jedi, but I might miss out on some cool opportunities to work for Jabba." This is a good thing. It encourages you to keep pushing development around your one character rather than just jumping ship if things get a little slow.
Crafting: This is exactly the point. They don't want a single person being able to do all the crafts, as this reduces interdependancy and hence community, and hence RP. Instead, you'll have to deal with several people who have worked really hard to be the top dogs in their craft. This also allows more people to experience that pride in having a high-skill, well-utilized crafter, and encourages demand for those type of people.
Roleplaying: This is a valid concern. Fortunately, you can play different characters on different servers. Or you can pay the money for an extra account if you really really have to be two characters on one server.. of course, that means that you're missing out on half of the time of your other character.
And if all you needed was a completely flat file, you might be right.
Unfortunately, you need a database that can handle that level of storage and that many records, yet still has reasonable times for searches and updates with various data integrity checks etc. That's where the real cost comes in.
And for those kind of databases, storing a terabyte worth of records can cost half as much again as storing a terabyte minus one.
His findings were about concealed carry laws, not about "more armed" vs. "less armed".
Also, his findings relied upon data gathered almost exclusively from the United States, a society where gun possession is already common. As such, looking at what happens when you "restrict" gun ownership really is, in this case, what happens when you restrict it from law-abiding citizens, and does not take into account the long term economic affects that strict regulation may impose upon purchasing guns.
Guns don't cause violence. Gun control doesn't cause violence.
Violence occurs because of societal reasons, guns are merely a tool used to enact the violence.
As such, trying to find statistics is really quite meaningless - the best that you'll be able to do is show whether a society is, in general, more or less violent than a neighbouring one.
Those who argue "Gun control gives the criminals a free hand" neglect to think about the economic affects that happen if guns are strictly controlled.. that is, they get much more expensive, even on the black market. (Perhaps especially so). They also neglect to realize that when everybody in the society is armed, you may be able to defend yourself from a criminal, but the criminal is much more likely to be ready to kill as well.
Those who argue "No gun control lets all criminals attain guns" miss the issue that violence is going to occur regardless - whether it be gun, knife or other, and being able to protect yourself is a valid concern.
That all being said, I am for fairly tight gun control, not only for the economic affects, but simply for the reason that guns, specifically automatic weapons, make it far too easy for a violent impulse to become a very deadly reality.
Against a determined criminal, I'll admit that gun control will likely do nothing. But the lack of gun control does just as little against a determined criminal - they're going to commit the crime anyway. What it does do is raise the stakes we all play at. So instead of you get mugged but survive, it becomes you start to get mugged and someone dies.
Peel layers from a data file thin enough that no layer is independantly recognizable. Scatter the layers throughout a P2P system. Now no individual user possesses the whole file, but all users can reconstruct a working copy when they want to play it.
Windows is MICROSOFT'S OPERATING SYSTEM. THEY MADE IT. THEY CAN PUT WHATEVER THEY WANT ON IT.
No. They can't.
The reason? They are a monopoly, and monopolies are held to a higher standard than the average company.
Your Ford/Chevy analogy falls apart because of this. If there was only one automaker in the world, then that automaker would be similarly restricted from making it impossible for third parties to make replacement parts.
Microsoft's employees laboured over the operating system to make it work good (if it didn't work good, why would so many people use it?).
I never understand why people bother trolling.. is there a point to it?
At any rate, you could just as easily ask why do so many people buy Campbell's Tomato Soup when making it from scratch costs less, tastes better, is more nutritious, and really takes no more time? It boils down to marketing and to people being unaware of the alternatives.
A business's only motivation is, and should be, to make a profit. [emphasis added]
This is utter bullshit.
The only reason we allow businesses and corporations to run is to better society as a whole. Even the Founders had some grave doubts about corporations, but they were seen as a neccessary evil in order to encourage a good economy and a better standard of living for all.
The key words there are "for all", not for the shareholders, not for the employees, not even for the customers, but for everybody.
When a corporation starts going against that, when it actually starts doing harm to some people, that corporation is not fulfilling the reasons it is allowed to exist for.
Too bad you didn't read the whole paragraph you quoted: society can choose to regulate them as much as society wants.
So yes, if we as a society decides that a corporation should have no ability to access property or assets, then it doesn't have this ability. If we as a society feel that a corporation's assets should be confiscated for the good of the general public, then it is entirely within the rights for us to do that. If we decide that a corporation can't be a monopoly, we can break it up.
Doing these without reason would of course be stupid and bad for the general economy and the population as a whole. But should we be able to? Certainly.
Now learn the difference between Rights and Privileges. Just because a corporation doesn't have any of these activities prohibited as a Right doesn't mean that we as a society can't give it the privilege of operating without undue fear of this happening - but that's something we as a society CHOOSE to give it, it's not a right, and shouldn't be enshrined in law as such.
This idea breaks when you consider that corporations are legal persons, and that they can own copyrights.
Here's a thought, instead of trying to massage the idea around corporations being legal persons, we remove this silly fiction of corporations being legal persons.
Corporations are a collective of people. Period. They are not persons. They have no right to free speech, they have no right to bear arms, they have no right to vote. Each individual within the corporation has that right, certainly, but when they are acting "as the collective", then those rights go out the window and society can choose to regulate them as much as society wants.
This Legal Persons crap was bought and paid for by the corporations a long time ago. It's time we took it back.
It could also result in Microsoft going, "Eh, this ain't worth the 300 million dollar loss per year. Shoot the whole thing and use the PR of cutting unprofitable businesses to boost our stock price and give anti-monopoly evidence at the same time."
They can actually ask you to leave, just because. They don't need to give a reason.
Now, if they routinely tell all the black people to leave, a case for discrimination can be brought, and evidence would need to be presented that black people tend to get discriminated against at that store.
If the store routinely tells people who are comparing prices to leave, they will significantly reduce their available customer pool, and that's their own problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, do they not want people trading legally?
No, they don't.
They don't want people trading music at all, they want people buying music. Ideally, they want people buying music only from RIAA members and not getting any music anywhere else.
Of course, I want a lot of things I'm not going to get too. The difficulty is that the RIAA has a lot of money to throw at making their wants into reality for the rest of us.
Give it time. It takes them at least 3 hours to double-post.
What, you expect them to be fast at being wrong?
You missed one important thing they get.. ..some brakes on .NET.
He seems to assume that if we can only know as much about those who control us as they know about us, we'll have equal power of them. But he completely neglects the effects of wealth and power on being able to actually do anything useful with that information.
He also fails to adequately address a number of issues. Specifically:
Brin assumes that the technology is its own motive force - that any possible niche that a technology might be used for, it will be used for. Unfortunately, he does this in the face of historical evidence. There are a lot of technologies that have not seen adoption by the general public - and some of these are due to legislation and policies that simply make the technology too expensive to be worthwhile.
So read the book again.. but this time, try doing it with a critical eye.
What happens to the woman who's husband was abusing her if he can track down where she now lives?
She can also track him and his movements.
And this is better how? Okay, she may be able to avoid being beaten, but she still can't settle down and form a new life ever. She's always got to be tracking this bastard and ready to pick up and move at a moment's notice. How lovely to live a life constantly on the run.
What happens to the poor 68 year old single man who happens to use his credit card to buy a lot of lacey underwear and garters that happen to be his size?
He'd probably find out that there are hundreds of thousands of others like him, or he could make an informed choice not to make the purchase.
How about the head of the PTA or school principal who in her off hours frequents the fetish clubs?
Same deal: either that becomes acceptable for the heads of PTAs or school principals, or they stop doing it.
Nice, you completely avoided both my points - the people most likely to seek this information out are those who want to cause embarassment or harm to another individual, and that what right is it of certain groups to impose their morality on other people, when those other people aren't doing anything to hurt anybody?
In both cases, you assumed that the person would either be forced to change their behavior from something that was not doing anybody any harm to something that more conforms to a whim of the moral majority; or that simply knowing there were others out there like them would be of some benefit. "Well, while those skinheads beat me up, at least I can take solace in knowing there are others like me all over the US." Yeah. That's real comforting.
Forgive me if I don't want to live in such a world.
Now, taking those two points into consideration, try answering those two again.
Of course, this is ludicrous - we can't fire our boss if we don't like his choice of reading material.
Sure we can: it's called changing jobs. People do it all the time.
Congratulations on being so amazingly skilled and living in a land of such overflowing employment opportunities that you have the ability to change jobs at the drop of a hat.
Unfortunately, the rest of us live in the real world, where the number of bosses are a lot fewer than the number of employees.
People are reactionary, prejudiced, and frightened about things they imagine but don't know. Knowledge and information is the antidote to that.
Explain to me what you believe it is that guys who beat up on gays are "imagining" that lends to their fear? Once you've done that, tell me how them having more knowledge about who is and is not gay is going to curb that imagining?
Guess what, these folks aren't interested in if homosexuality is normal or natural, and even if you tell them, they still won't make use of it to actually understand what's going on. But hey, give them a list of the names and addresses of the homosexuals in their neighborhood, and you'll likely see them make use of that.
You want proof of this? Simply look at racism. We know that the abilities of a Mexican are comparable to a Caucasian, are comparable to a Black, etc. The knowledge is publically available and has been out there for some time. Yet racism still exists.. hmmm.. could that be because no matter how much information is available, people will still only look at/believe what they want to?
"imagine but don't know" is exactly what I meant by not understanding. And while information is an antidote to factual ignorance, it has no bearing on understanding, and even if it did, its availability is no guaruntee on its being used.
Furthermore, the US has been subsidising drug development and low drug prices in Canada and Europe by allowing high drug prices here to drive innovation. As long as we're chasing pie in the sky, let's force those socialist free riders to start paying their fair share!
Too bad you don't have decent facts to back that up. A study by the Cato Institute shows that given the same usage patterns, Canadians would pay 3% more[PDF file] than their U.S. counterparts.
There's even a minority staff report[PDF] from the U.S. House of Representatives that states, in part:
"The drug industry's own testimony indicates that despite the high drug prices in the United States and the low drug prices in other countries, many drug companies are moving research from the United States to other countries," and that "more than two thirds of new drugs are developed by countries headquartered outside the United States."
Also note that some reasons given for the drugs that are lower priced in Canada include reduced liability for pharmacomps, which means reduced risks; and stricter controls on pharmaceutical marketing and advertising, an activity in the United States that pharmaceutical companies are spending amounts equal to or greater than they are spending on research and development.
Never mind that a majority of the research done by and for drug companies is done by the NIH, which is entirely funded by taxpayers. The drug companies take the most promising/profitable looking developments from them finalize what research is left to do, apply patents, and profit for the next 20 years (or 25 with patent extensions). Then they reformulate ("Now take only once a day!") and re-patent.
Get out of the mindset that drug companies care about your health. They don't. They care about making a profit - and if that means applying a submarine patent to a cure in order to prevent others from developing it, and marketing the hell out of something that temporarily relieves the symptoms until their lucrative patent is up, don't think they won't do this.
You want innovation in the drug industry? Shorten the patent protection period while broadening the coverage, so that a minor change in an inactive component of the drug doesn't qualify for a whole new patent.
Gee.. when the number of guns that can be imported or made in a country goes down, what do you think happens to the price?
Gee.. when there's a risk of getting arrested for even carrying a gun around, what happens to the price of guns for those who want to try and sell them now that they're taking a larger risk?
Gee.. when the price of guns on the blackmarket starts to skyrocket what happens to the petty crook who has to spend most of his money to feed various addictions - which do you think they'd forego first, the gun, or the addiction?
Are we ever going to get rid of guns completely? Of course not. Are we ever going to get rid of crime completely? Of course not. In either case, it's no reason to just roll over and say "Oh well, since we can't fix it perfectly, we might as well let everybody do it."
What? Never heard of a Pardon?
If confining someone is a bad thing, then why is it okay to imprison criminals? Is it a question of degree? It's ok if governments do it but not individuals? How is it ok to do to a criminal what we would not want to happen to us?
This world is neither so black, nor so white, as you would assume.
Seriously. Easy or not, do we really want everybody's personal information accessible?
Also, if information is difficult to access, but still present, who will be the most likely to search it out? We can see who right now - those who want to cause some form of embarrassment or harm to the person.
What happens to the woman who's husband was abusing her if he can track down where she now lives? What happens to the poor 68 year old single man who happens to use his credit card to buy a lot of lacey underwear and garters that happen to be his size? How about the head of the PTA or school principal who in her off hours frequents the fetish clubs?
Maybe you won't try to impose your morals on these people, but can you honestly say there's nobody out there who will?
Brin's arguments are nearly as flawed as Marx's in that they fail to take into account basic human nature, and give all the power to those people who have no sense of shame - usually those who believe their actions are the most righteous.
Also, when reading Brin's Transparent Society, he horribly glosses over the problems of inequitable power. He blithely assumes that if we can see all our bosses peccadillos we will have as much power over our boss as he does over us. Of course, this is ludicrous - we can't fire our boss if we don't like his choice of reading material.
If we all lived in a world where people used reason above all else to make their choices, maybe the fully transparent society would be a good one. Unfortunately, we don't. People tend to be reactionary, prejudiced, and frightened. Knowing something does not equate to understanding it, and as a whole, we tend to react violently to things we don't understand.
Friends: You still can be with your friends. You can change servers to be on another one in an alternate and have your friends change with you. Or you can delete your old character and create a new one and be with your friends.
The question really is, why do you need an alternate character on the same server? Why not put that role-playing effort into fully realizing the one character on a certain server? Instead of being "Foffa Bet, Bounty Hunter -- when it looks like bounty hunting is good, otherwise Jedi Master Doya," concentrate on one or the other. Your choices have more meaning this way -- okay.. I'm one kick ass jedi, but I might miss out on some cool opportunities to work for Jabba." This is a good thing. It encourages you to keep pushing development around your one character rather than just jumping ship if things get a little slow.
Crafting: This is exactly the point. They don't want a single person being able to do all the crafts, as this reduces interdependancy and hence community, and hence RP. Instead, you'll have to deal with several people who have worked really hard to be the top dogs in their craft. This also allows more people to experience that pride in having a high-skill, well-utilized crafter, and encourages demand for those type of people.
Roleplaying: This is a valid concern. Fortunately, you can play different characters on different servers. Or you can pay the money for an extra account if you really really have to be two characters on one server.. of course, that means that you're missing out on half of the time of your other character.
And if all you needed was a completely flat file, you might be right.
Unfortunately, you need a database that can handle that level of storage and that many records, yet still has reasonable times for searches and updates with various data integrity checks etc. That's where the real cost comes in.
And for those kind of databases, storing a terabyte worth of records can cost half as much again as storing a terabyte minus one.
It's such a bloated piece of hackware that nobody would believe it was the Windows source.
His findings were about concealed carry laws, not about "more armed" vs. "less armed".
Also, his findings relied upon data gathered almost exclusively from the United States, a society where gun possession is already common. As such, looking at what happens when you "restrict" gun ownership really is, in this case, what happens when you restrict it from law-abiding citizens, and does not take into account the long term economic affects that strict regulation may impose upon purchasing guns.
Guns don't cause violence.
Gun control doesn't cause violence.
Violence occurs because of societal reasons, guns are merely a tool used to enact the violence.
As such, trying to find statistics is really quite meaningless - the best that you'll be able to do is show whether a society is, in general, more or less violent than a neighbouring one.
Those who argue "Gun control gives the criminals a free hand" neglect to think about the economic affects that happen if guns are strictly controlled.. that is, they get much more expensive, even on the black market. (Perhaps especially so). They also neglect to realize that when everybody in the society is armed, you may be able to defend yourself from a criminal, but the criminal is much more likely to be ready to kill as well.
Those who argue "No gun control lets all criminals attain guns" miss the issue that violence is going to occur regardless - whether it be gun, knife or other, and being able to protect yourself is a valid concern.
That all being said, I am for fairly tight gun control, not only for the economic affects, but simply for the reason that guns, specifically automatic weapons, make it far too easy for a violent impulse to become a very deadly reality.
Against a determined criminal, I'll admit that gun control will likely do nothing. But the lack of gun control does just as little against a determined criminal - they're going to commit the crime anyway. What it does do is raise the stakes we all play at. So instead of you get mugged but survive, it becomes you start to get mugged and someone dies.
Peel layers from a data file thin enough that no layer is independantly recognizable. Scatter the layers throughout a P2P system. Now no individual user possesses the whole file, but all users can reconstruct a working copy when they want to play it.
That'd be great.. ..assuming we actually knew how it was transmitted.
Seeing as we don't, the article is educated guesswork at best, complete hogwash at worst.
Windows is MICROSOFT'S OPERATING SYSTEM. THEY MADE IT. THEY CAN PUT WHATEVER THEY WANT ON IT.
No. They can't.
The reason? They are a monopoly, and monopolies are held to a higher standard than the average company.
Your Ford/Chevy analogy falls apart because of this. If there was only one automaker in the world, then that automaker would be similarly restricted from making it impossible for third parties to make replacement parts.
Microsoft's employees laboured over the operating system to make it work good (if it didn't work good, why would so many people use it?).
I never understand why people bother trolling.. is there a point to it?
At any rate, you could just as easily ask why do so many people buy Campbell's Tomato Soup when making it from scratch costs less, tastes better, is more nutritious, and really takes no more time? It boils down to marketing and to people being unaware of the alternatives.
Free secret decoder ring!
A business's only motivation is, and should be, to make a profit. [emphasis added]
This is utter bullshit.
The only reason we allow businesses and corporations to run is to better society as a whole. Even the Founders had some grave doubts about corporations, but they were seen as a neccessary evil in order to encourage a good economy and a better standard of living for all.
The key words there are "for all", not for the shareholders, not for the employees, not even for the customers, but for everybody.
When a corporation starts going against that, when it actually starts doing harm to some people, that corporation is not fulfilling the reasons it is allowed to exist for.
What is a shame is how few people remember this.
Too bad you didn't read the whole paragraph you quoted: society can choose to regulate them as much as society wants.
So yes, if we as a society decides that a corporation should have no ability to access property or assets, then it doesn't have this ability. If we as a society feel that a corporation's assets should be confiscated for the good of the general public, then it is entirely within the rights for us to do that. If we decide that a corporation can't be a monopoly, we can break it up.
Doing these without reason would of course be stupid and bad for the general economy and the population as a whole. But should we be able to? Certainly.
Now learn the difference between Rights and Privileges. Just because a corporation doesn't have any of these activities prohibited as a Right doesn't mean that we as a society can't give it the privilege of operating without undue fear of this happening - but that's something we as a society CHOOSE to give it, it's not a right, and shouldn't be enshrined in law as such.
This idea breaks when you consider that corporations are legal persons, and that they can own copyrights.
Here's a thought, instead of trying to massage the idea around corporations being legal persons, we remove this silly fiction of corporations being legal persons.
Corporations are a collective of people. Period. They are not persons. They have no right to free speech, they have no right to bear arms, they have no right to vote. Each individual within the corporation has that right, certainly, but when they are acting "as the collective", then those rights go out the window and society can choose to regulate them as much as society wants.
This Legal Persons crap was bought and paid for by the corporations a long time ago. It's time we took it back.
People are persons. Corporations aren't.
Well.. at least a lifeform signal.
It could also result in Microsoft going, "Eh, this ain't worth the 300 million dollar loss per year. Shoot the whole thing and use the PR of cutting unprofitable businesses to boost our stock price and give anti-monopoly evidence at the same time."
True, but not quite.
They can actually ask you to leave, just because. They don't need to give a reason.
Now, if they routinely tell all the black people to leave, a case for discrimination can be brought, and evidence would need to be presented that black people tend to get discriminated against at that store.
If the store routinely tells people who are comparing prices to leave, they will significantly reduce their available customer pool, and that's their own problem.