I see where you're coming from. We can't know whether the universe is fundamentally 'supposed' to be time-symmetric or time-asymmetric. So maybe the universe is ruled by equations of the sort you describe. However the really troubling thing is this: all the fundamental equations of physics are time-symmetric. These are the equations that are used to predict and model the existence of black holes. So it's really weird that time-symmetric equations predict the emergence of a time-asymmetric phenomenon.
I didn't quite grok what the relevance of the second sentence here was when I read it through the first time, but now it strikes me, I may be thinking of time symmetry differently than it's meant to be used (presuming your usage, which now seems to differ from mine, is the correct one). I was thinking that you could have the laws be "time symmetric" if you were OK with the idea of 'rewinding' to different pasts than you came from, by which I meant that you could say that the math applies fine in both directions so long as that counterintuitive consequence doesn't upset you. But now it dawns on my that your (I presume correct) use of "time symmetric" seems to be that when you play the model fowards and backwards and forwards and backwards and forward again, you replay over the exact same events; and thus interpreted me "why can't it be this way?" question as "what's wrong with time asymmetry?", when I meant it as "why isn't this 'time symmetric'" (in my misunderstood sense, i.e. "why can't you apply these equations backwards time? So what if it gets you a different past than you started with?")
So now with that lightbulb on in my head, I have another question for you, which as a chemist is probably more in your ballpark: are quantum laws, e.g. governing radioactive decay, time-asymmetric in precisely the same way that a black hole is, but in reverse? For if you play the model backwards, say, un-decaying a C-12 atom back to a C-14 atom, don't you lose information? Namely, the information about whether or not the C-14 will in fact decay to C-12 in the next moment; which information, in forward time, does not exist until the event actually occurs or not. If that's so, then this seems to suggest even more strongly the hypothesis (which may be Hawking's proposed solution to the black hole paradox?) that information is not conserved within any given possible world, but only within the set of all possible worlds. Also c.f. quantum wave functions of unobserved systems being deterministic, and thus time-symmetric and information preserving, while the wave collapse of observed systems is indeterministic and thus (?) time-asymmetric and information-creating. Or am I misunderstanding something here about what counts as the creation of information?
However in a universe with black holes destroying information, this no longer holds true. If you follow the 'information' in such a universe, it will decrease every time a black hole absorbs something. So if the universe ever spontaneously reaches a low-entropy state again, then you have to ask "where did all this new information come from?"
Isn't the information of the (lets assume) random Hawking radiation "new" information, in that it is (if not in some way determined by what falls into the black hole) randomly generated? So that random new information could randomly be the same information that fell into the black hole. Of course I suppose it's possible that some information falls into a black hole and the black hole evaporates before ever randomly outputting the lost data; but then, in some other possible world, it did randomly radiate out the same information that fell into it. Perhaps this is something like what Hawking's own proposed solution was? (Information is conserved across all possible worlds even if not within any given one).
But a black hole is time-asymmetric. In one direction, information is irrevocably lost, whereas if you run the equations backwards, information is spontaneously created... which makes no sense (mathematically) because you don't know what information to put in there!
I'm curious: why not just put random information in there? There's effectively random information coming out of the black hole as it 'evaporates' over forward time, so what's wrong with having random particles 'fall out of' a black hole (so to speak) when you play the model backwards?
I seem to recall from somewhere that, quantum mechanically speaking, the past is just as indeterminate as the future, as any number of slightly different recent pasts could have lead to a present indistinguishable from this one. E.g. right now, we have no way of knowing whether or not Proxima Centauri was destroyed by aliens within the past 4.22 years, for light (and thus information) from that place and time has not yet reached us; so the Proxima Centauri of moments less than 4.22 years ago (including the present) ought to be considered in an unobserved (and thus superimposed, undetermined) state, no? Those past events which have not yet had a chance to influence us could have occurred or not - there may or may not still be a Proxima Centauri out there right now - and the local present would be exactly the same.
So, I see no problem with a mathematical model which, when played in one direction, takes what we consider to be fixed, determined inputs (objects falling into black holes, say), and sometimes spits out random outputs (particles 'evaporating' out of black holes), and when played backwards takes those previous outputs as fixed inputs, runs them through the calculations, and spits out random outputs that may or may not be the same as the inputs that we put in when we ran the model forward (e.g. different things fall out of the black hole when played backwards than fell into it going fowards; more probably random things resembling Hawking radiation rather than recognizable objects). It just implies that the past is as indeterminate as the future, which many people may be uncomfortable with, but hey, a lot of this stuff goes against "common sense".
But you seem to know more about the technical details of this than me, so maybe there's some problem I've overlooked?
As a sidenote, I'm also very fond of this approach as a solution to the puzzle of why entropy appears to be time-asymmetric. I understand it, these days entropic decay is taken to be a statistical effect rather than an inviolable law itself - i.e. it's simply VERY VERY unlikely for things to randomly come into a state of lower entropy, while it's quite likely that they will come into a state of higher entropy. Combine that with this indeterminism about the past, and then even running the model backward, you should see entropy increasing, even though that would be a different past than the one you started with when you first ran the model forward. But that's not a problem; that relation of states of affairs at different moments (higher entropy at an "earlier" time, lower entropy at a "later" one), when viewed "forward" ("earlier" to "later"), is merely one of those very exceedingly rare world-line segments where entropy momentarily decreased.
As an even further aside, this was one of my favorite points of discussion in a philosophy of physics course I took once - if entropy can (but exceedingly rarely does) spontaneously decrease, then the whole question of how the universe got into a low-entropy state to begin with (the "why" question behind the Big Bang) can be done away with if you just drop the assumption that time is finite. Metaphorically speaking, one day in the eternal pond that is the universe, an incredibly unlikely (but possible) even occurred, and some ripples and compression waves got together, lifted a pebble off the bed of the pond and spit it into the air; at which point it came crashing back down and made a nice big splash, the waves of
was attacked twice 8 years apart. By that metric, we aren't due for another attack until 2009.
Hmm, I wonder...
New terrorist attack for each new U.S. president? Tried it once when Clinton got into office, didn't accomplish much, no big reaction from us. Got Bush Jr. pretty good and now look at us kicking and screaming. It will be interesting to see if they try to rile up the next administration, whoever that winds up being.
The former seems to be pretty close to Christianity.
The denial of the assumption of any source (speaker, author, text) as a font of absolute truth is "close to Christianity"? Perhaps some more liberal veins of Christianity hold such a position, but all sorts of Biblical literalism, belief in divine revelation, and other sorts of faith (in the sense of unquestioned trust) run completely counter to that (non-absolutist) position. Uncritical faith is a form of absolutism, except instead of "everything I say or believe is right", it's "everything that guy or book says is right".
Then again, lots has been said all over books and press of scientists being objective, not subjective--subjective is there almost always secondary.
I'm not going to comment on what sort of press coverage science gets, but I get the feeling from this comment that you're still thinking of objectivity and subjectivity as competing polar opposites, and also conflating epistemology and ontology again. Scientists are ontologically objective just in that they are searching to discover (and thus clearly believe that there exists) some objective truth; without that, nobody would do science at all, we'd just all get together and talk about what we believe and establish by popular opinion what "the truth" was. (Nicean councils anyone?) Scientists are epistemically subjective in that their findings are always in the form of "we performed observation X and saw phenomenon Y which is consistent (or inconsistent) with the predictions of theory Z". Early texts on "natural philosophy" and empiricism, which established the modern scientific paradigm, made a big point of this in contrast to earlier, more mystical, religiously-colored philosophical methods that relied on someone's intuitive insights or divine revelation to "prove" or "discover" things about the natural world.
It is precisely this subjectivity, the perspective-qualified, uncertainty-laden phrasing, which makes scientists so "objective" in the colloquial-epistemic sense of speaking something close to the absolute truth. If I say "either it will rain tomorrow, or it won't rain tomorrow", that claim is qualified to such a degree that it can't help but be true; if it rains tomorrow, I'm right, and if not, I'm still right. If I say "I see someone who looks like Bob across the street there, I think it might be him", and it turns out on closer inspection not to have been Bob but just someone similar to Bob in appearance, then I've not embarrassed myself the way I would had I said loudly "Behold, there is Bob across the street!" and turned out to be wrong. I'd have just noted a phenomenon (someone with a Bob-like appearance across the street) consistent with a hypothesis (the existence of Bob across the street). So scientists are only "objective" in this epistemic sense because they carefully avoid making claims that they can't back up. They don't claim to have any kind of special privileged access to the truth, extra clear insight or a personal line to God; they're just very careful not to say anything which might turn out false, which in the end leaves them with a bunch of "we think that such-and-such" and "it seems probable that so-and-so", instead of just absolutes like "such-and-such" and "so-and-so".
If the media spin on science comes off as "scientists prove that such-and-such" or "scientists discover that so-and-so", then that's the media's fault, not science's fault
In any case, you're talking about some kind of ontological-epistemological relativism, because from what you say it seems that ontological and epistemological are somewhat independent, and one can pick and string together whichever doctrines one finds suitable from these two disciplines.
I certainly don't hold epistemology and ontology to be completely independent, for I believe that there are no unknowable truths (that is to say, facts about the world that could not be empirically verified, were there someone with the right sensors in the right p
I like the ones who claim that people don't P2P music, they P2P a binary MP3-encoded representation of it and therefore it is out of copyright law (seriously, I swear I've seen this on Slashdot). I'm sure they won't mind me kicking them right in the fucking head, after all, they are just a bag of water made of cells. It doesn't sound like you took me to mean that sort of thing you're railing against there, but just in case, I'd like to be clear that that's not what I was talking about. I'm talking about the idea that the reproduction of information of any sort (including music in any form) does not violate anybody's rights, where by "rights" I mean roughly "legitimate ethical claims for actions or omissions by others"; not anything like "entitlements granted and enforced by law". Copying music (whether in MP3 form or tape-to-tape as in the old days) may violate the latter sort of thing (an entitlement to a monopoly on replication of certain works, granted and enforced by law), but many would argue that it does not violate the former sort of thing. Of course, as what constitutes a legitimate ethical claim is far from settled (at least as far as public consensus goes), plenty of others would argue against such a position; but there's plenty of people out there (and here on Slashdot especially) who hold a position like that, and thus pirate with a clear conscience because they don't think there's anything unethical about it, despite what the laws may say.
Among the honorable people in my book are the pirates who simply acknowledge that they have no interest in purchasing music, and that they pirate to save money. No need to blame anybody else for having the basic and fundamental desire to save money. If the rights of others don't happen to matter to you, you're cerrtainly not alone.
Don't forget those of this group who simply deny that any "rights" are being violated by sending some ones and zeros around. Plenty of that type will get all up in arms about genuine rights violations; they just deny that copying data is such a crime.
As I understand it, patents are monopolies on the right to produce/manufacture/sell products utilizing particular techniques, not the right to use products which operates by or were manufactured using those particular techniques? E.g. if my lawnmower uses various patented methods of mowing lawns, those patents merely restrict me from making ripoff lawnmowers; they can't restrict my right to use the lawnmower I've bought (from the patent owner) on whatever lawn I want, can they?
Because that sounds like what the "EULA" on these old albums are trying to use as justification: "We own patents on methods used in playing and recording records; this is a record, made using those patented methods; therefore we can dictate whatever terms of use we want, and if you don't obey, you're violating our patents." Can patents really restrict personal use of purchased items like this? I was under the impression that if I'm not trying to manufacture, market, or copy anything, then "intellectual property" laws (patent, trademark and copyright law, respectively) held no say over how I used items that I own.
You're completely right that it's not theft; however, it's not really piracy either (which is a kind of theft by the literal definition), nor is it copyright infringement or anything like it. The acquisition of the information is a collection of different crimes (depending on how they went about getting it; opening someone's mail, etc). But the use of the information, which is the real harmful part, is one simple crime: fraud. Someone else is going around pretending to be you. So just call it fraud, or "identity fraud" if you want to be more specific (as opposed to, say, tax fraud or false advertising or some such). In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard that term (identity fraud) used in some official capacity a few times...
Why not the death penalty? Seriously, what social use is there for anyone who'd commit identity theft? While I certainly agree that this identity thief should be punished much more harshly than she was, the above is not a question that should ever be asked when contemplating what to do or not do to another person. It's a quick leap from that kind of thinking to punishing people for being lazy and unproductive - after all, what social use is there for them?
The appropriate question to ask in this case is "What does this identity thief owe the victim and society?", i.e., what has she cost everyone? Her punishment should be just sufficient to repay those costs (and the repayment should go to the injured parties), and to undo any benefit she may have gained from the crime (so it's clear that this is not a way to profit even after you've been caught and punished). If the criminal is poor and destitute and can't pay back what she owes, make her work from confinement to pay off her debts.
How could any responsible and culturally literate individual not be somewhat of a relativist? Given that there is never any absolutes and no action has any inherent meaning, it's time we stepped out of the dark ages. That is far from a given, despite the way that humanities courses in modern (sorry, postmodern) universities teach it these days.
It's a far cry from admitting your fallibility (refraining from ever thinking you are absolutely right) to denying objectivity (asserting that there is no absolute truth or absolute good to strive to understand or attain). The latter is relativism; the former is simply not absolutism. And those two -isms are not even on the same spectrum; relativism isn't just non-absolutism or vice versa. Relativism is a metaphysical doctrine (talking about what actually is, or in this case, is not) denying objectivity, i.e. denying that there is something which really is true independent of anyone's opinions; absolutism is an epistemological doctrine (talking about knowledge, understanding of belief) denying subjectivity, i.e. denying that one's access to that independent truth is incomplete and colored by one's perspective. Thus, one can be both objective and subjective, as scientists strive to be. The conflation of objectivity with absolutism is the error at the root of all the relativist bull going around these days, which itself is really just a conflation of "truth" with "belief". A purely descriptive relativism is obviously true: duh, people believe different things. But it doesn't follow from that that they're all equally right. Likewise, it doesn't follow from the denial of that *that* any of them are absolutely right.
Inept ? Incompetent ? You just described one of the most brilliant schemes to get around the laws proctecting ordinary citizens from arbitrary arrest I've ever heard of, and you call the people who came up with it incompetent ? Just what are your standards for competence, pray tell ?
Given that the ostensible function of government is to serve the people, when it fails to do so and instead starts messing with people's lives, I'd call that incompetence. Whenever someone does something else instead of what they're supposed to be doing, they're incompetent; just like I'd be an incompetent employee if I spent all day at work watching YouTube videos and leeching off of free coffee instead of, you know, working. (Or for a better analogy still, if I spent all day going around interfering with my employers' and coworkers' business, yelling at them, threatening them, and interfering with their ability to get their work done, instead of doing my job).
There's a fairly easy solution to this, which I'd like to suggest. Look at the centre of mass of the two-planet system. If it is inside the larger planet, then that planet is the primary, and the other one is a moon. This would designate Pluto and Charon as a double-planet system, but leave Earth and Luna as a planet and its moon.
Yes, this is what I meant by a planet being a moon if it's orbit is centered on another planet; that meaning, if the point it orbits (the center of mass of the combined system) is within another planet. If the two objects mutually orbit a point outside either of them, then I'd classify them both as irregular planets. However, you're right that there is still the questionable scenario where that system of two irregular planets itself regularly orbits a star; oughtn't that be distinguished somehow from two objects orbiting each other but NOT together in a regular orbit around a star? Also, I'm rather happy with my system for it's technically allowing Earth-Luna to qualify as a system of two major planets (both round but not fusionable bodies) while also qualifying as a planet and its moon.
Incidentally, I think you've misunderstood things slightly in designating Pluto (and Eris) as irregular planets under your classification system. Pluto still orbits the Sun - it just has a more eccentric orbit than any of the other planets. If you want to designate it as irregular, and other planets as regular, then you need to decide exactly how much eccentricity is necessary for irregularity.
I intended to mean something similar to the above with that criterion; however, and hence my qualification in the original post, I'm not entirely sure where the center of mass of, say, the Mars-Sun system is, relative to the Pluto-Sun system. Are both within the sun? Or both outside, what with them all having elliptical orbits and all? What about a random comet or asteroid?
Also, it dawns on me that there's an additional scenario I had not considered: a small star orbiting a much larger star such that their center of gravity is within the larger star, which seems like it ought to be distinguished from double star systems where that is not the case (where their center of gravity is not inside either of them). This in turn makes me realize that there's really only two variables we need to classify things by here:
How big is it? (Fusionable, round, or neither?) What does it orbit*? (A star, a planet, or nothing?) (*Restricted here to mean the center of mass of the system of which it is a part is within another object in the system).
The above disproportionate star systems would be a (fusionable,star) orbiting a (fusionable,nothing). Earth would be (round,star) orbiting a (fusionable,nothing). But my brain is starting to wind down now so I think I'm going to stop pursuing this train of thought before I end up babbling even more nonsense...
You are of course completely right that naming conventions per se tell us nothing about the physical universe. However, good taxonomies and naming conventions will allow someone to tell a lot about the physical attributes of something which has previously been examined and classified by someone else just be hearing it's name. For example, "lion" and "tiger" are two names which refer to very similar objects, but you wouldn't know that just by their names. Panthea leo and Panthera tigris, on the other hand, let you know that these are both subtypes of some object class Panthera, and if you know what that entails, then you'll know a lot about both of those objects. If I overheard that there's a wild Fubar on the loose, I'd have no idea what that was until it was explained to me (though by context I could guess that it's some sort of animal); however, if I overheard that a Panthera fubaris had escaped, while still not knowing what exactly that was, I'd know it was some sort of large carnivorous feline, and thus just by convenient naming, I'd be able to learn (and communicate) new information much more quickly.
- Amongst non-stars, bodies which are of sufficient mass to be approximately round (major planets) versus those which are not (minor planets or asteroids) Er, scratch that "asteroids" bit, that was written in error.
Also, it dawns on me that all non-stars are planets (though not planets simpliciter) by this system of classification, so, this line merely distinguishes between major and minor planets.
On that note, it would probably also be useful to distinguish first between bodies at rest upon other bodies (like me and this computer) versus bodies in freefall (like all the forgoing bodies), for I'm uncomfortable with myself being classified as either a star or a planet. We could call the latter "celestial" bodies and the former, say, "terrestrial".
it's a planet. If it's orbiting a larger planet, then it's a moon.
What, no distinction between round moons and non-round moons?
I think we need to have our system of classifications able to accurately distinguish between:
- Bodies of sufficient mass that they would undergo fusion if of fusionable composition (stars). - Amongst those, ones which are of fusionable composition (active stars) versus those which no longer are (inactive stars). - Amongst non-stars, bodies which are of sufficient mass to be approximately round (major planets) versus those which are not (minor planets or asteroids) - Amongst planets, those which have an orbit centered on a star (regular planets) versus those which do not (irregular planets). - Amongst irregular planets, those which have an orbit centered on another planet (moons) versus those which do not (asteroids).
Thus, Phobos and Deimos are minor irregular planets, and also moons (call them just "minor moons" since all moons are irregular planets); while similar bodies in the asteroid belt are also minor irregular planets, but are not moons but rather asteroids. Europa and Ganymede are a major irregular planets and also moons ("major moons"). Luna is a major moon. Eris and Pluto (if I understand the irregularity of their orbits correctly) are major irregular planets and also asteroids (or just "major asteroids", for all asteroids are irregular planets). Earth, Mars, etc are major regular planets, and schoolkids can memorize those and ignore the rest; for simplicity of terminology we can always assume "major" and "regular" unless specified otherwise, so "planet" alone refers just to bodies like those.
There now, everybody happy? Pluto is a planet; it's even a major planet; however, it's an irregular major planet and thus not a "planet" simpliciter.
AT&T is not AT&T now, because the name was sold to an abusive west coast telephone company named SBC.
Just a minor nitpick, but SBC wasn't originally a "west coast" telephone company. That was Pacific Bell, of whom I used to be a customer and with whom I was thoroughly satisfied. SBC was Southern Bell, who later bought out Pacific Bell and most of the other fragments of the old AT&T, eventually including what remained of AT&T, as you said.
I was briefly an SBC customer as well (after they bought Pacific Bell but before I moved to a predominantly Verizon area), and I don't recall them being so horrible either. It seems almost like they were waiting to complete their consolidation before letting loose on the maniacal laughter.
This is a perfect example of the difference between psychological altruism (what we normally think of as "altruism", as describes a sort behavior) and evolutionary altruism (which is a precise technical term in biology which describes a property of heritable traits, not behavior).
Psychological altruism is performing behavior which requires for motivation only the benefit (however broadly you are to construe benefit) of a person other than the one performing the action. So, if I'm inclined to do something nice for you, even if I don't get anything out of it, then I am an altruistic person, and such nice things are altruistic behavior.
Evolutionary altruism is having heritable traits which increase the reproductive fitness of others without increasing the reproductive fitness of the individual who has that trait. Sterility is evolutionarily altruistic (in social animals at least), and yet clearly not psychologically altruistic (you don't choose what genes you're born with).
These plants are evolutionarily altruistic. They are not psychologically altruistic, because they have no psychological traits at all.
Out of curiosity, what is so left-wing that it could get a teacher in trouble for teaching it? Perhaps private and/or midwestern universities are different but out here in the University of California (in Santa Barbara) most of the humanities courses I've taken (excepting most philosophy classes, and unfortunately including political science classes) spout even the most radical Marxist, feminist, and postmodernist bull like it's gospel. I'm not saying everything that Marxists, feminists, et al, say is worthless, but a lot of it is certainly controversial to say that least.
At least in philosophy classes professors usually have the good graces to present it as "this is what such-and-such people believe; lets discuss arguments for and against it"; and the good ones won't even let on to what their own opinion is, even if it means presenting what they know to be weak arguments against it just to give the other side a say. Most of the other humanities though... 'liberalism entails racism', 'truth is nothing but a power relationship', and any talk about 'gender' beyond merely commenting that it is a social construct and as such doesn't really exist... it's all such nonsense, but it's taught like it's incontrovertible fact. I just today finished with a "Global Peace and Security" class which pretty much flat out said that global redistribution of wealth is the only way to attain world peace, in the same matter of fact way that you'd discuss something like geology.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just tired of this shit. For the record, I'm (very roughly speaking and not literally correct, with lots of nuances to be clarified) a skeptic, a liberal, an atheist, and an anarchist, so I'm not exactly right-wing myself if that's where your coming from. But one way or another, I'm having trouble imagining what could possibly be so left-wing that it could get a teacher in trouble at a modern (sorry, "postmodern") university.
When you purchase shrink-wrapped software, in addition to the media and printed manual, you are purchasing a license to use the software. That license is granted by the maker of the software and is transferred to you by the retailer.
No! The only rights of yours which copyright law allows a copyright holder to restrict is the right to make copies outside the confines of "fair use" cases. The copy you are purchasing in this case has already been made, by the copyright holder or his authorized agents: it's the copy on the disc you buy. What you are doing is BUYING A DISC, on which there is a legally-made copy of some copyrighted materials.
Now, case law may have said otherwise already, but it seems most reasonable to me that if making a copy for personal backup, timeshifting, etc, is considered fair use, making a copy to your computer for use (and keeping the copy on the CD for backup) would be fair use as well. So, while you are technically making a copy and thus, if that copying is not fair use, they could demand additional terms of you in exchange for waiving their restriction of your right to copy, I can't really imagine a reasonable argument being made that copying computer software from the media you obtained it on to the personal computer you intended to use it on is not fair use.
Of course, the caveat is, law isn't necessarily bound by reasonable arguments. But my original point stands: nobody can grant you a right to execute a copy of code that you own on hardware that you own, because you already have that right. All they can do is waive the restriction on copying outside of fair use... which, reasonably, you wouldn't need waived to make use of it anyway.
Make Net businesses compete on the same level as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Yes, wonderful idea! We should also force taxi drivers who know of shortcuts to take the same busy main roads as everyone else. In fact, lets just make sure that everyone with any sort of competitive advantage is thoroughly handicapped. Equality for all, at any price!
How, exactly, do you think that the mass media are used to participate in a coup? The cameramen bash the president's troop with their cameras? Or maybe, maybe a media's involvement in a coup is through propaganda? Maybe? The broadcast of negative opinions or even slanderous lies against a government is no more participation in a coup than saying "Kennedy is a monster who eats babies for breakfast and he should be shot" would have been participation in his assassination. Either they were materially connected with the coup, in which case there's conspiracy for treason and they should face whatever punishment may warranted for such; or they were just talking smack, in which case, leave them alone, even if they are wrong.
Of course, there's the added complication of using public radio spectrum, so an argument can be made that the public (presumably represented by the government) has some right to say who can or can't use that spectrum, and thus has the right to just not renew a troublesome station's broadcast license. Now, if they get in shit for their YouTube "broadcasts", that will cast bad light on the state of freedom in Venezuala.
You're still leaving out the category of people who don't believe in copyright, but don't care to be martyrs, and just want to exercise what they believe to be their rights without taking shit for it. Strictly speaking they're a subset of group "B", although since we're talking about uploaders rather than downloaders (since there's no legal culpability one way or another in downloading), it's more like "you like to share stuff" than "you like free stuff". But that division of group "B" is really the distinction I was intending to make: some people pirate/share out of unreflective disregard for the law and whether or not it is just; but some people pirate/share fully aware of the law and holding on some reasoned grounds that it's none of the government's business to say who they can share a bunch of 1's and 0's with. The latter group can be further subdivided into those who just want to do what they feel is within their rights without being bothered, and those who want to be heroes and buck the system by flagrantly and publicly exercising those rights in full view of everyone; the latter being your group "C".
A plausible analogy to the group I speak of would be people with a libertarian political outlook who like to smoke pot (given that pot smoking is illegal where they are). They believe it's within their rights to do so and government should fuck off and leave them alone if they want to do it; but that doesn't mean that they want it publicly known that they smoke pot, cause then they'd get in trouble and they don't want that hassle. They just want to do something they feel is permissible and don't want to be bothered about it.
I completely agree with you thought that the metadata poses no practical barrier to anyone with a modicum of intelligence who wants to share music for whatever reason.
And for the record I don't acquire new music by any means very often at all, and when I do so it's almost always via CD, so this whole exercise is purely academic to me. Though academically speaking, I can't see any sound philosophical justification for copyright law; paying people in appreciation for music they made that you like is certainly *good*, and so people should do it whether or not they have to, but I don't see any sound argument for it being *obligatory*, and I believe that the state (or whatever other enforcement mechanism you may have) is justified in enforcing at most obligations, and not supererogatory (non-obligatory) goods.
In fact this issue seems like a good way to distinguish between those who are against DRM because it restricts their rights to legally use their music, and those who actually just want to pirate music but use rights-based DRM arguments as an cover.
What about those who object to the existence of copyright law in the first place on the grounds of rights-based arguments, and don't think that the free sharing of data should be thought of as "piracy" at all? You're falsely grouping people into "those good folks who just want to be able to do what the law allows them without any extralegal restraints" and "those bad people who just want to break the law", but just as there is a large group of people who don't even mind the extralegal restraints (DRM), there's plenty of people who find the law itself unjust. Ethical is not synonymous with legal.
Psychological altruism is the tendency to act from certain non-selfish motives; see below for more on this.
Ethical altruism is the doctrine that the rightful object of ethics is the wellbeing of other people, and that selfish considerations are entirely amoral if not even immoral. Not all people who are psychologically altruists (people who are motivated to do certain acts for non-selfish reasons) subscribe to the doctrine of evolutionary altruism; you could be an ethiical egoist (holding that what is ethically right is looking out for yourself) and also a psychological altruist (motivated to do nice things for other people regardless of what you get; maybe you don't even enjoy doing it, but you feel motivated for some unselfish, possibly irrational reason).
Evolutionary altruism is a precise technical term specifying a quality of certain inherited traits such that they confer a fitness benefit on other individuals at a cost (or at least, at no benefit) to the fitness of the individual organism with those traits. Note that this is a quality of *inherited traits*, not of the individuals who bear those traits, and that the benefits conferred are strictly reproductive fitness. Giving a person suffering a painful death a painkilling drug to ease their suffering is not evolutionarily altruistic, though it may be psychologically or ethically altruistic; being sterile but otherwise a normal, productive member of society is evolutionarily altruistic but not related to psychology or ethics at all.
Now the second, and more important point: psychological altruism is not "sacrificing oneself for the good of others" or "putting others before oneself" or even "doing good for others regardless of the costs to oneself". There are plenty of small acts of kindness and charity that we rightly call altruistic, which people would not have done had it cost them more, e.g. someone would probably not donate to charity if it meant they were not going to be able to eat this week; thus demonstrating that there was self-interest involved in the consideration of that act. Altruism is simply doing good for others regardless of the BENEFITS to oneself; acting from a desire to help other people, without asking "what do I get out of it?", even though you might still ask "what will this cost me?". Ethical altruism requires that you put others before yourself; but the article seems pretty clearly to be talking about psychological altruism (in particular, as an inherited trait, which may or may not be evolutionarily altruistic; if being nice gets you laid more, it's not evolutionarily altruistic).
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I see where you're coming from. We can't know whether the universe is fundamentally 'supposed' to be time-symmetric or time-asymmetric. So maybe the universe is ruled by equations of the sort you describe. However the really troubling thing is this: all the fundamental equations of physics are time-symmetric. These are the equations that are used to predict and model the existence of black holes. So it's really weird that time-symmetric equations predict the emergence of a time-asymmetric phenomenon.
I didn't quite grok what the relevance of the second sentence here was when I read it through the first time, but now it strikes me, I may be thinking of time symmetry differently than it's meant to be used (presuming your usage, which now seems to differ from mine, is the correct one). I was thinking that you could have the laws be "time symmetric" if you were OK with the idea of 'rewinding' to different pasts than you came from, by which I meant that you could say that the math applies fine in both directions so long as that counterintuitive consequence doesn't upset you. But now it dawns on my that your (I presume correct) use of "time symmetric" seems to be that when you play the model fowards and backwards and forwards and backwards and forward again, you replay over the exact same events; and thus interpreted me "why can't it be this way?" question as "what's wrong with time asymmetry?", when I meant it as "why isn't this 'time symmetric'" (in my misunderstood sense, i.e. "why can't you apply these equations backwards time? So what if it gets you a different past than you started with?")
So now with that lightbulb on in my head, I have another question for you, which as a chemist is probably more in your ballpark: are quantum laws, e.g. governing radioactive decay, time-asymmetric in precisely the same way that a black hole is, but in reverse? For if you play the model backwards, say, un-decaying a C-12 atom back to a C-14 atom, don't you lose information? Namely, the information about whether or not the C-14 will in fact decay to C-12 in the next moment; which information, in forward time, does not exist until the event actually occurs or not. If that's so, then this seems to suggest even more strongly the hypothesis (which may be Hawking's proposed solution to the black hole paradox?) that information is not conserved within any given possible world, but only within the set of all possible worlds. Also c.f. quantum wave functions of unobserved systems being deterministic, and thus time-symmetric and information preserving, while the wave collapse of observed systems is indeterministic and thus (?) time-asymmetric and information-creating. Or am I misunderstanding something here about what counts as the creation of information?
However in a universe with black holes destroying information, this no longer holds true. If you follow the 'information' in such a universe, it will decrease every time a black hole absorbs something. So if the universe ever spontaneously reaches a low-entropy state again, then you have to ask "where did all this new information come from?"
Isn't the information of the (lets assume) random Hawking radiation "new" information, in that it is (if not in some way determined by what falls into the black hole) randomly generated? So that random new information could randomly be the same information that fell into the black hole. Of course I suppose it's possible that some information falls into a black hole and the black hole evaporates before ever randomly outputting the lost data; but then, in some other possible world, it did randomly radiate out the same information that fell into it. Perhaps this is something like what Hawking's own proposed solution was? (Information is conserved across all possible worlds even if not within any given one).
But a black hole is time-asymmetric. In one direction, information is irrevocably lost, whereas if you run the equations backwards, information is spontaneously created... which makes no sense (mathematically) because you don't know what information to put in there!
I'm curious: why not just put random information in there? There's effectively random information coming out of the black hole as it 'evaporates' over forward time, so what's wrong with having random particles 'fall out of' a black hole (so to speak) when you play the model backwards?
I seem to recall from somewhere that, quantum mechanically speaking, the past is just as indeterminate as the future, as any number of slightly different recent pasts could have lead to a present indistinguishable from this one. E.g. right now, we have no way of knowing whether or not Proxima Centauri was destroyed by aliens within the past 4.22 years, for light (and thus information) from that place and time has not yet reached us; so the Proxima Centauri of moments less than 4.22 years ago (including the present) ought to be considered in an unobserved (and thus superimposed, undetermined) state, no? Those past events which have not yet had a chance to influence us could have occurred or not - there may or may not still be a Proxima Centauri out there right now - and the local present would be exactly the same.
So, I see no problem with a mathematical model which, when played in one direction, takes what we consider to be fixed, determined inputs (objects falling into black holes, say), and sometimes spits out random outputs (particles 'evaporating' out of black holes), and when played backwards takes those previous outputs as fixed inputs, runs them through the calculations, and spits out random outputs that may or may not be the same as the inputs that we put in when we ran the model forward (e.g. different things fall out of the black hole when played backwards than fell into it going fowards; more probably random things resembling Hawking radiation rather than recognizable objects). It just implies that the past is as indeterminate as the future, which many people may be uncomfortable with, but hey, a lot of this stuff goes against "common sense".
But you seem to know more about the technical details of this than me, so maybe there's some problem I've overlooked?
As a sidenote, I'm also very fond of this approach as a solution to the puzzle of why entropy appears to be time-asymmetric. I understand it, these days entropic decay is taken to be a statistical effect rather than an inviolable law itself - i.e. it's simply VERY VERY unlikely for things to randomly come into a state of lower entropy, while it's quite likely that they will come into a state of higher entropy. Combine that with this indeterminism about the past, and then even running the model backward, you should see entropy increasing, even though that would be a different past than the one you started with when you first ran the model forward. But that's not a problem; that relation of states of affairs at different moments (higher entropy at an "earlier" time, lower entropy at a "later" one), when viewed "forward" ("earlier" to "later"), is merely one of those very exceedingly rare world-line segments where entropy momentarily decreased.
As an even further aside, this was one of my favorite points of discussion in a philosophy of physics course I took once - if entropy can (but exceedingly rarely does) spontaneously decrease, then the whole question of how the universe got into a low-entropy state to begin with (the "why" question behind the Big Bang) can be done away with if you just drop the assumption that time is finite. Metaphorically speaking, one day in the eternal pond that is the universe, an incredibly unlikely (but possible) even occurred, and some ripples and compression waves got together, lifted a pebble off the bed of the pond and spit it into the air; at which point it came crashing back down and made a nice big splash, the waves of
was attacked twice 8 years apart. By that metric, we aren't due for another attack until 2009.
Hmm, I wonder...
New terrorist attack for each new U.S. president? Tried it once when Clinton got into office, didn't accomplish much, no big reaction from us. Got Bush Jr. pretty good and now look at us kicking and screaming. It will be interesting to see if they try to rile up the next administration, whoever that winds up being.
The former seems to be pretty close to Christianity.
The denial of the assumption of any source (speaker, author, text) as a font of absolute truth is "close to Christianity"? Perhaps some more liberal veins of Christianity hold such a position, but all sorts of Biblical literalism, belief in divine revelation, and other sorts of faith (in the sense of unquestioned trust) run completely counter to that (non-absolutist) position. Uncritical faith is a form of absolutism, except instead of "everything I say or believe is right", it's "everything that guy or book says is right".
Then again, lots has been said all over books and press of scientists being objective, not subjective--subjective is there almost always secondary.
I'm not going to comment on what sort of press coverage science gets, but I get the feeling from this comment that you're still thinking of objectivity and subjectivity as competing polar opposites, and also conflating epistemology and ontology again. Scientists are ontologically objective just in that they are searching to discover (and thus clearly believe that there exists) some objective truth; without that, nobody would do science at all, we'd just all get together and talk about what we believe and establish by popular opinion what "the truth" was. (Nicean councils anyone?) Scientists are epistemically subjective in that their findings are always in the form of "we performed observation X and saw phenomenon Y which is consistent (or inconsistent) with the predictions of theory Z". Early texts on "natural philosophy" and empiricism, which established the modern scientific paradigm, made a big point of this in contrast to earlier, more mystical, religiously-colored philosophical methods that relied on someone's intuitive insights or divine revelation to "prove" or "discover" things about the natural world.
It is precisely this subjectivity, the perspective-qualified, uncertainty-laden phrasing, which makes scientists so "objective" in the colloquial-epistemic sense of speaking something close to the absolute truth. If I say "either it will rain tomorrow, or it won't rain tomorrow", that claim is qualified to such a degree that it can't help but be true; if it rains tomorrow, I'm right, and if not, I'm still right. If I say "I see someone who looks like Bob across the street there, I think it might be him", and it turns out on closer inspection not to have been Bob but just someone similar to Bob in appearance, then I've not embarrassed myself the way I would had I said loudly "Behold, there is Bob across the street!" and turned out to be wrong. I'd have just noted a phenomenon (someone with a Bob-like appearance across the street) consistent with a hypothesis (the existence of Bob across the street). So scientists are only "objective" in this epistemic sense because they carefully avoid making claims that they can't back up. They don't claim to have any kind of special privileged access to the truth, extra clear insight or a personal line to God; they're just very careful not to say anything which might turn out false, which in the end leaves them with a bunch of "we think that such-and-such" and "it seems probable that so-and-so", instead of just absolutes like "such-and-such" and "so-and-so".
If the media spin on science comes off as "scientists prove that such-and-such" or "scientists discover that so-and-so", then that's the media's fault, not science's fault
In any case, you're talking about some kind of ontological-epistemological relativism, because from what you say it seems that ontological and epistemological are somewhat independent, and one can pick and string together whichever doctrines one finds suitable from these two disciplines.
I certainly don't hold epistemology and ontology to be completely independent, for I believe that there are no unknowable truths (that is to say, facts about the world that could not be empirically verified, were there someone with the right sensors in the right p
Among the honorable people in my book are the pirates who simply acknowledge that they have no interest in purchasing music, and that they pirate to save money. No need to blame anybody else for having the basic and fundamental desire to save money. If the rights of others don't happen to matter to you, you're cerrtainly not alone.
Don't forget those of this group who simply deny that any "rights" are being violated by sending some ones and zeros around. Plenty of that type will get all up in arms about genuine rights violations; they just deny that copying data is such a crime.
As I understand it, patents are monopolies on the right to produce/manufacture/sell products utilizing particular techniques, not the right to use products which operates by or were manufactured using those particular techniques? E.g. if my lawnmower uses various patented methods of mowing lawns, those patents merely restrict me from making ripoff lawnmowers; they can't restrict my right to use the lawnmower I've bought (from the patent owner) on whatever lawn I want, can they?
Because that sounds like what the "EULA" on these old albums are trying to use as justification: "We own patents on methods used in playing and recording records; this is a record, made using those patented methods; therefore we can dictate whatever terms of use we want, and if you don't obey, you're violating our patents." Can patents really restrict personal use of purchased items like this? I was under the impression that if I'm not trying to manufacture, market, or copy anything, then "intellectual property" laws (patent, trademark and copyright law, respectively) held no say over how I used items that I own.
You're completely right that it's not theft; however, it's not really piracy either (which is a kind of theft by the literal definition), nor is it copyright infringement or anything like it. The acquisition of the information is a collection of different crimes (depending on how they went about getting it; opening someone's mail, etc). But the use of the information, which is the real harmful part, is one simple crime: fraud. Someone else is going around pretending to be you. So just call it fraud, or "identity fraud" if you want to be more specific (as opposed to, say, tax fraud or false advertising or some such). In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard that term (identity fraud) used in some official capacity a few times...
The appropriate question to ask in this case is "What does this identity thief owe the victim and society?", i.e., what has she cost everyone? Her punishment should be just sufficient to repay those costs (and the repayment should go to the injured parties), and to undo any benefit she may have gained from the crime (so it's clear that this is not a way to profit even after you've been caught and punished). If the criminal is poor and destitute and can't pay back what she owes, make her work from confinement to pay off her debts.
It's a far cry from admitting your fallibility (refraining from ever thinking you are absolutely right) to denying objectivity (asserting that there is no absolute truth or absolute good to strive to understand or attain). The latter is relativism; the former is simply not absolutism. And those two -isms are not even on the same spectrum; relativism isn't just non-absolutism or vice versa. Relativism is a metaphysical doctrine (talking about what actually is, or in this case, is not) denying objectivity, i.e. denying that there is something which really is true independent of anyone's opinions; absolutism is an epistemological doctrine (talking about knowledge, understanding of belief) denying subjectivity, i.e. denying that one's access to that independent truth is incomplete and colored by one's perspective. Thus, one can be both objective and subjective, as scientists strive to be. The conflation of objectivity with absolutism is the error at the root of all the relativist bull going around these days, which itself is really just a conflation of "truth" with "belief". A purely descriptive relativism is obviously true: duh, people believe different things. But it doesn't follow from that that they're all equally right. Likewise, it doesn't follow from the denial of that *that* any of them are absolutely right.
Inept ? Incompetent ? You just described one of the most brilliant schemes to get around the laws proctecting ordinary citizens from arbitrary arrest I've ever heard of, and you call the people who came up with it incompetent ? Just what are your standards for competence, pray tell ?
Given that the ostensible function of government is to serve the people, when it fails to do so and instead starts messing with people's lives, I'd call that incompetence. Whenever someone does something else instead of what they're supposed to be doing, they're incompetent; just like I'd be an incompetent employee if I spent all day at work watching YouTube videos and leeching off of free coffee instead of, you know, working. (Or for a better analogy still, if I spent all day going around interfering with my employers' and coworkers' business, yelling at them, threatening them, and interfering with their ability to get their work done, instead of doing my job).
There's a fairly easy solution to this, which I'd like to suggest. Look at the centre of mass of the two-planet system. If it is inside the larger planet, then that planet is the primary, and the other one is a moon. This would designate Pluto and Charon as a double-planet system, but leave Earth and Luna as a planet and its moon.
Yes, this is what I meant by a planet being a moon if it's orbit is centered on another planet; that meaning, if the point it orbits (the center of mass of the combined system) is within another planet. If the two objects mutually orbit a point outside either of them, then I'd classify them both as irregular planets. However, you're right that there is still the questionable scenario where that system of two irregular planets itself regularly orbits a star; oughtn't that be distinguished somehow from two objects orbiting each other but NOT together in a regular orbit around a star? Also, I'm rather happy with my system for it's technically allowing Earth-Luna to qualify as a system of two major planets (both round but not fusionable bodies) while also qualifying as a planet and its moon.
Incidentally, I think you've misunderstood things slightly in designating Pluto (and Eris) as irregular planets under your classification system. Pluto still orbits the Sun - it just has a more eccentric orbit than any of the other planets. If you want to designate it as irregular, and other planets as regular, then you need to decide exactly how much eccentricity is necessary for irregularity.
I intended to mean something similar to the above with that criterion; however, and hence my qualification in the original post, I'm not entirely sure where the center of mass of, say, the Mars-Sun system is, relative to the Pluto-Sun system. Are both within the sun? Or both outside, what with them all having elliptical orbits and all? What about a random comet or asteroid?
Also, it dawns on me that there's an additional scenario I had not considered: a small star orbiting a much larger star such that their center of gravity is within the larger star, which seems like it ought to be distinguished from double star systems where that is not the case (where their center of gravity is not inside either of them). This in turn makes me realize that there's really only two variables we need to classify things by here:
How big is it? (Fusionable, round, or neither?)
What does it orbit*? (A star, a planet, or nothing?)
(*Restricted here to mean the center of mass of the system of which it is a part is within another object in the system).
The above disproportionate star systems would be a (fusionable,star) orbiting a (fusionable,nothing). Earth would be (round,star) orbiting a (fusionable,nothing). But my brain is starting to wind down now so I think I'm going to stop pursuing this train of thought before I end up babbling even more nonsense...
You are of course completely right that naming conventions per se tell us nothing about the physical universe. However, good taxonomies and naming conventions will allow someone to tell a lot about the physical attributes of something which has previously been examined and classified by someone else just be hearing it's name. For example, "lion" and "tiger" are two names which refer to very similar objects, but you wouldn't know that just by their names. Panthea leo and Panthera tigris, on the other hand, let you know that these are both subtypes of some object class Panthera, and if you know what that entails, then you'll know a lot about both of those objects. If I overheard that there's a wild Fubar on the loose, I'd have no idea what that was until it was explained to me (though by context I could guess that it's some sort of animal); however, if I overheard that a Panthera fubaris had escaped, while still not knowing what exactly that was, I'd know it was some sort of large carnivorous feline, and thus just by convenient naming, I'd be able to learn (and communicate) new information much more quickly.
Also, it dawns on me that all non-stars are planets (though not planets simpliciter) by this system of classification, so, this line merely distinguishes between major and minor planets.
On that note, it would probably also be useful to distinguish first between bodies at rest upon other bodies (like me and this computer) versus bodies in freefall (like all the forgoing bodies), for I'm uncomfortable with myself being classified as either a star or a planet. We could call the latter "celestial" bodies and the former, say, "terrestrial".
it's a planet. If it's orbiting a larger planet, then it's a moon.
What, no distinction between round moons and non-round moons?
I think we need to have our system of classifications able to accurately distinguish between:
- Bodies of sufficient mass that they would undergo fusion if of fusionable composition (stars).
- Amongst those, ones which are of fusionable composition (active stars) versus those which no longer are (inactive stars).
- Amongst non-stars, bodies which are of sufficient mass to be approximately round (major planets) versus those which are not (minor planets or asteroids)
- Amongst planets, those which have an orbit centered on a star (regular planets) versus those which do not (irregular planets).
- Amongst irregular planets, those which have an orbit centered on another planet (moons) versus those which do not (asteroids).
Thus, Phobos and Deimos are minor irregular planets, and also moons (call them just "minor moons" since all moons are irregular planets); while similar bodies in the asteroid belt are also minor irregular planets, but are not moons but rather asteroids. Europa and Ganymede are a major irregular planets and also moons ("major moons"). Luna is a major moon. Eris and Pluto (if I understand the irregularity of their orbits correctly) are major irregular planets and also asteroids (or just "major asteroids", for all asteroids are irregular planets). Earth, Mars, etc are major regular planets, and schoolkids can memorize those and ignore the rest; for simplicity of terminology we can always assume "major" and "regular" unless specified otherwise, so "planet" alone refers just to bodies like those.
There now, everybody happy? Pluto is a planet; it's even a major planet; however, it's an irregular major planet and thus not a "planet" simpliciter.
AT&T is not AT&T now, because the name was sold to an abusive west coast telephone company named SBC.
Just a minor nitpick, but SBC wasn't originally a "west coast" telephone company. That was Pacific Bell, of whom I used to be a customer and with whom I was thoroughly satisfied. SBC was Southern Bell, who later bought out Pacific Bell and most of the other fragments of the old AT&T, eventually including what remained of AT&T, as you said.
I was briefly an SBC customer as well (after they bought Pacific Bell but before I moved to a predominantly Verizon area), and I don't recall them being so horrible either. It seems almost like they were waiting to complete their consolidation before letting loose on the maniacal laughter.
This is a perfect example of the difference between psychological altruism (what we normally think of as "altruism", as describes a sort behavior) and evolutionary altruism (which is a precise technical term in biology which describes a property of heritable traits, not behavior).
Psychological altruism is performing behavior which requires for motivation only the benefit (however broadly you are to construe benefit) of a person other than the one performing the action. So, if I'm inclined to do something nice for you, even if I don't get anything out of it, then I am an altruistic person, and such nice things are altruistic behavior.
Evolutionary altruism is having heritable traits which increase the reproductive fitness of others without increasing the reproductive fitness of the individual who has that trait. Sterility is evolutionarily altruistic (in social animals at least), and yet clearly not psychologically altruistic (you don't choose what genes you're born with).
These plants are evolutionarily altruistic. They are not psychologically altruistic, because they have no psychological traits at all.
Out of curiosity, what is so left-wing that it could get a teacher in trouble for teaching it? Perhaps private and/or midwestern universities are different but out here in the University of California (in Santa Barbara) most of the humanities courses I've taken (excepting most philosophy classes, and unfortunately including political science classes) spout even the most radical Marxist, feminist, and postmodernist bull like it's gospel. I'm not saying everything that Marxists, feminists, et al, say is worthless, but a lot of it is certainly controversial to say that least.
At least in philosophy classes professors usually have the good graces to present it as "this is what such-and-such people believe; lets discuss arguments for and against it"; and the good ones won't even let on to what their own opinion is, even if it means presenting what they know to be weak arguments against it just to give the other side a say. Most of the other humanities though... 'liberalism entails racism', 'truth is nothing but a power relationship', and any talk about 'gender' beyond merely commenting that it is a social construct and as such doesn't really exist... it's all such nonsense, but it's taught like it's incontrovertible fact. I just today finished with a "Global Peace and Security" class which pretty much flat out said that global redistribution of wealth is the only way to attain world peace, in the same matter of fact way that you'd discuss something like geology.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just tired of this shit. For the record, I'm (very roughly speaking and not literally correct, with lots of nuances to be clarified) a skeptic, a liberal, an atheist, and an anarchist, so I'm not exactly right-wing myself if that's where your coming from. But one way or another, I'm having trouble imagining what could possibly be so left-wing that it could get a teacher in trouble at a modern (sorry, "postmodern") university.
When you purchase shrink-wrapped software, in addition to the media and printed manual, you are purchasing a license to use the software. That license is granted by the maker of the software and is transferred to you by the retailer.
No! The only rights of yours which copyright law allows a copyright holder to restrict is the right to make copies outside the confines of "fair use" cases. The copy you are purchasing in this case has already been made, by the copyright holder or his authorized agents: it's the copy on the disc you buy. What you are doing is BUYING A DISC, on which there is a legally-made copy of some copyrighted materials.
Now, case law may have said otherwise already, but it seems most reasonable to me that if making a copy for personal backup, timeshifting, etc, is considered fair use, making a copy to your computer for use (and keeping the copy on the CD for backup) would be fair use as well. So, while you are technically making a copy and thus, if that copying is not fair use, they could demand additional terms of you in exchange for waiving their restriction of your right to copy, I can't really imagine a reasonable argument being made that copying computer software from the media you obtained it on to the personal computer you intended to use it on is not fair use.
Of course, the caveat is, law isn't necessarily bound by reasonable arguments. But my original point stands: nobody can grant you a right to execute a copy of code that you own on hardware that you own, because you already have that right. All they can do is waive the restriction on copying outside of fair use... which, reasonably, you wouldn't need waived to make use of it anyway.
Make Net businesses compete on the same level as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Yes, wonderful idea! We should also force taxi drivers who know of shortcuts to take the same busy main roads as everyone else. In fact, lets just make sure that everyone with any sort of competitive advantage is thoroughly handicapped. Equality for all, at any price!
Or maybe, maybe a media's involvement in a coup is through propaganda? Maybe? The broadcast of negative opinions or even slanderous lies against a government is no more participation in a coup than saying "Kennedy is a monster who eats babies for breakfast and he should be shot" would have been participation in his assassination. Either they were materially connected with the coup, in which case there's conspiracy for treason and they should face whatever punishment may warranted for such; or they were just talking smack, in which case, leave them alone, even if they are wrong.
Of course, there's the added complication of using public radio spectrum, so an argument can be made that the public (presumably represented by the government) has some right to say who can or can't use that spectrum, and thus has the right to just not renew a troublesome station's broadcast license. Now, if they get in shit for their YouTube "broadcasts", that will cast bad light on the state of freedom in Venezuala.
You're still leaving out the category of people who don't believe in copyright, but don't care to be martyrs, and just want to exercise what they believe to be their rights without taking shit for it. Strictly speaking they're a subset of group "B", although since we're talking about uploaders rather than downloaders (since there's no legal culpability one way or another in downloading), it's more like "you like to share stuff" than "you like free stuff". But that division of group "B" is really the distinction I was intending to make: some people pirate/share out of unreflective disregard for the law and whether or not it is just; but some people pirate/share fully aware of the law and holding on some reasoned grounds that it's none of the government's business to say who they can share a bunch of 1's and 0's with. The latter group can be further subdivided into those who just want to do what they feel is within their rights without being bothered, and those who want to be heroes and buck the system by flagrantly and publicly exercising those rights in full view of everyone; the latter being your group "C".
A plausible analogy to the group I speak of would be people with a libertarian political outlook who like to smoke pot (given that pot smoking is illegal where they are). They believe it's within their rights to do so and government should fuck off and leave them alone if they want to do it; but that doesn't mean that they want it publicly known that they smoke pot, cause then they'd get in trouble and they don't want that hassle. They just want to do something they feel is permissible and don't want to be bothered about it.
I completely agree with you thought that the metadata poses no practical barrier to anyone with a modicum of intelligence who wants to share music for whatever reason.
And for the record I don't acquire new music by any means very often at all, and when I do so it's almost always via CD, so this whole exercise is purely academic to me. Though academically speaking, I can't see any sound philosophical justification for copyright law; paying people in appreciation for music they made that you like is certainly *good*, and so people should do it whether or not they have to, but I don't see any sound argument for it being *obligatory*, and I believe that the state (or whatever other enforcement mechanism you may have) is justified in enforcing at most obligations, and not supererogatory (non-obligatory) goods.
In fact this issue seems like a good way to distinguish between those who are against DRM because it restricts their rights to legally use their music, and those who actually just want to pirate music but use rights-based DRM arguments as an cover.
What about those who object to the existence of copyright law in the first place on the grounds of rights-based arguments, and don't think that the free sharing of data should be thought of as "piracy" at all? You're falsely grouping people into "those good folks who just want to be able to do what the law allows them without any extralegal restraints" and "those bad people who just want to break the law", but just as there is a large group of people who don't even mind the extralegal restraints (DRM), there's plenty of people who find the law itself unjust. Ethical is not synonymous with legal.
I keep seeing couple of misconceptions in this thread, which show up quite often elsewhere, and I just thought I'd help clear them up:
First, psychological altruism != ethical altruism != evolutionary altruism.
Psychological altruism is the tendency to act from certain non-selfish motives; see below for more on this.
Ethical altruism is the doctrine that the rightful object of ethics is the wellbeing of other people, and that selfish considerations are entirely amoral if not even immoral. Not all people who are psychologically altruists (people who are motivated to do certain acts for non-selfish reasons) subscribe to the doctrine of evolutionary altruism; you could be an ethiical egoist (holding that what is ethically right is looking out for yourself) and also a psychological altruist (motivated to do nice things for other people regardless of what you get; maybe you don't even enjoy doing it, but you feel motivated for some unselfish, possibly irrational reason).
Evolutionary altruism is a precise technical term specifying a quality of certain inherited traits such that they confer a fitness benefit on other individuals at a cost (or at least, at no benefit) to the fitness of the individual organism with those traits. Note that this is a quality of *inherited traits*, not of the individuals who bear those traits, and that the benefits conferred are strictly reproductive fitness. Giving a person suffering a painful death a painkilling drug to ease their suffering is not evolutionarily altruistic, though it may be psychologically or ethically altruistic; being sterile but otherwise a normal, productive member of society is evolutionarily altruistic but not related to psychology or ethics at all.
Now the second, and more important point: psychological altruism is not "sacrificing oneself for the good of others" or "putting others before oneself" or even "doing good for others regardless of the costs to oneself". There are plenty of small acts of kindness and charity that we rightly call altruistic, which people would not have done had it cost them more, e.g. someone would probably not donate to charity if it meant they were not going to be able to eat this week; thus demonstrating that there was self-interest involved in the consideration of that act. Altruism is simply doing good for others regardless of the BENEFITS to oneself; acting from a desire to help other people, without asking "what do I get out of it?", even though you might still ask "what will this cost me?". Ethical altruism requires that you put others before yourself; but the article seems pretty clearly to be talking about psychological altruism (in particular, as an inherited trait, which may or may not be evolutionarily altruistic; if being nice gets you laid more, it's not evolutionarily altruistic).