Well, until someone figures out how to cure old age and its illnesses, we'll all continue to die from lack of healthcare. And to fix that is going to take more than just money.
The original AC gave the example, "piracy" (of the IP sort). That would indeed be an example of copyright infringement that led to use of copyrighted material without permission.
And I find your attempts to intrepret everything in the worst possible way, when you are obviously capable of intrepreting things in a different light indicates you are the dishonest one.
Oh, come on. These are your words in two consecutive posts. If you don't want people to think that way of you, then give a little thought to what you are saying. I'll just point out that it is not hard to interpret this in a worse light than I have.
Do you know for certain that head slamming took place?
Zimmerman had injuries on the back of his head consistent with that particular story.
Do you know what caused any head slamming that did take place?
Obviously not. But this is an innocent until proven guilty situation. And there's probably a lot of evidence that will confirm or not Zimmerman's story. If he and Martin were grappling at the time of the shooting, then both will bear evidence of that and gunpowder residue. If Zimmerman's head was bashed into a sidewalk, then that will probably be evidence as well including where that happened.
If Zimmerman has ever boasted publicly about how he confronts burglars with gun drawn or other actions or behavior that would undermine his defense, that will probably come out as well.
My view is that if this was a simple case of Zimmerman gunning down a defenseless man without any sort of excuse, it wouldn't have taken as long as it did for him to be tried.
The only thing that's certain right now is that Zimmerman caused the incident to happen. He initiated it. He used excessive force - shooting an unarmed man is pretty fucking excessive.
He wouldn't have initiated those head injuries by killing Martin first. So there's something wrong with your story right there. And if you have a reasonable expectation of grievous injury or death, then shooting an unarmed man who caused that expectation is not excessive force.
Copyright infringement and theft are legally two different things, and the legal definition is what matters.
There are several things to note here. First, you depend here on the whim of a legislature for the "legal definition", who could change the definitions, perhaps to spite this very argument. Then what happens to your argument?
Second, there are a variety of crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, and counterfeiting which in themselves aren't crimes, but can and usually are committed for the furtherance of some act of stealing.
Originally, I wasn't saying that copyright infringement was stealing much less the legal definition of theft (though I did get sloppy and let someone move those particular goalposts without remark), but that "pirating", that is, acquiring and using copies of a copyrighted work without permission, was stealing. That is an act that goes beyond just copyright infringement.
You appropriate the IP by making that unauthorized copy. Hence, the label of "stealing".
IP may be a little more abstract than physical property. But the real difference is not the semantics of how you unlawfully exploit IP, but the ease with which one can do so. Copying illegally a work is just a little easier than copying illegally that work a billion additional times.
In the physical world, it's extremely hard to copy a complex physical item once, much less many times. And one need to come up with the physical resources to constitute these copies.
First, my relative got a bill. I've seen it, it's real. Hell, I got a bill for a rape kit once... I didn't pay. A family who's kid was run over by a police car (officer was 100% at fault) was billed for the repair of the dent to the car.
My suspension of disbelief is broken. Please pay $100.
Secret vote only works, if you're voting for the candidates you think you're voting for. I gather there's supposed to be some ways to certify a secret ballot so that you can verify that your vote was counted as you expected without revealing that information to others.
Evidence points to them having nuclear weapons. And this isn't an innocent until proven guilty situation. If they don't want to be considered to have nuclear weapons (and as a result subject to the penalties that they currently experience), then they need to open their facilities to inspection by the IAEA and they need to cease whatever nuclear weapons programs they have going on now.
And by that definition quoting someone on slashdot is also theft.
Quoting in this context is fair use. You can always contact Slashdot's parent corporation, Dice Inc., if you think you see a case of copyright infringement.
Also the use of the term intellectual property is pretty recent. I would say it wasn't used much before 1990.
Wikipedia notes several uses of "intellectual property", the phrase in English in 1845:
Only thus can ingenuity and perseverance be
encouraged to exert themselves in this way usefully to the community; and only in this way can we
protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man's own,
and as much the fruit of his honest industry, as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.
And in the "modern sense" in the constitution for the North German Confederacy (as "Schutz des geistigen Eigentums") in 1867. I gather it didn't become prevalent outside of the law on intellectual property until about the time you suggest.
Use the proper name, dihydrogen monoxide or DHMO for short! "Water" is an industry trademark that hides the noxious, foul chemical nature of the substance.
Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish.
Have you actually looked at such research? There are vast amounts spent on HIV, cancer, etc. These are in no way "languishing". As to "dick hardening", a decline in enjoyment of sex is an obvious quality of life issue for many older men and women (these drugs can help both sexes, not just men). What would the point be of extending life span without a corresponding effort to improve the quality of that extra lifespan?
all because we tolerate allowing people to become too rich and powerful, and invariably they turn into sociopaths and destroy us
Well, it wasn't a problem for the past few centuries. The wealthiest and most powerful just aren't any wealthier or powerful than they were centuries ago. No dark age happened in the meantime. What changed?
You just equated the libertarian belief system with lying.
In all, that's what I expect from libertarians. They are a bunch of liars.
So do you "like to think of yourself" as a liar? I find this confusion rather annoying. Why not just sort out your ideas first before making unfounded, blanket denunciations?
Much like atheist/agnostic split where nearly all current agnostics fit the original definition of "atheist" but the church poisoned the definitions in an attempt to divide the heathens.
You ignore here both that the term agnostic was defined by a foe of organized religion and that the definition serves a useful non-ideological purpose, semantically distinguishing between an active disbelief in theism or the supernatural from one that doesn't have a belief one way or another due to the inherent unknowability of the problem.
Has it occurred to you that justifiable homicides aren't the problem?
Well, researching the issue through the power of Google, that was a primary claim of the problems with the Florida law, namely a tripling of justifiable homicides over the past few years. I haven't seen any other arguments, backed by evidence rather than anecdotes (this, for example, is an anecdote story), to indicate that there is a problem.
I sense you think there is some problem. Why don't you show it first before we continue this discussion?
but it is not "stealing" by any remotely logic definition of the word
One merely needs to look at actual definitions of to steal:
: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
I gather the intent here is that copyright is not property, even though it is legally treated as property.
to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
This definition doesn't even require that something be considered property.
It's pointless to make such an argument without even attempting to crack open a dictionary. Semantically, only countries which have a language which uses the word "steal" can have a definition of "steal", legally or not.
It's also worth noting that the term "intellectual property" has been used to describe things like copyright and such for a century and a half. Under that model/viewpoint, unlawful copying is indeed theft.
You *still* believe pirating is stealing, even after spending time on slashdot?
I don't know about the other poster, but I do. It doesn't mean I'll get worked up enough to defend a failed business plan. This seems like one of the opportunities to get rid of crime by making it legal.
There is simply no reason for anyone to take the life of another human being.
Most such self-defense killings have a reason along the line of "I thought my life was in danger and it was kill or be killed. So I killed the other person." There's a reason. It might not be a good or true reason, but it's a hell of a lot more than "no" reason.
I can understand the sentiment behind the first sentence, that deadly force should never be used. But deadly force is often used in the furtherance of evil activities. I just don't see a moral argument for saying that someone should allow themselves to be killed by another merely because it is immoral that the other person die. My view is that if my life is threatened by another to the point where it is them or me, I will try hard to make it them. Not only to save my life, which I consider sufficient reason in itself, but to protect others.
Advice from 911 operators as you note is not legally binding so no point talking that up.
Despite being asked (not told, since a 911 dispatcher cannot give you orders) to not follow the kid, he got out of the car anyway and then somehow the kid ended up dead after being shot with George's gun. There's potential cause for a charge of premeditation - (why did he get out of the car? Even if it's his "legal right" to get out of the car, as some/. posters have been using as justification for killing the kid, why did he get out and go after him if he thought Trayvon was dangerous or suspicious - he's not a cop himself, so what is he going to do when he catches up to him?)
And where's the case for premeditation? None of the acts above indicate such. I bet we'll find that he made a habit of talking to people he saw during his rounds which deflates your case even more.
It's worth noting here that Zimmerman might have in the past gotten a lot of mileage merely out of talking to potential troublemakers. If you're casing a neighborhood for robbery targets and someone sidles up and starts asking you questions about what you're doing, then you might give up on the neighborhood completely and look for something easier.
Nonsense. Even now, Florida has something like 40 justifiable homicides a year by civilians. That's roughly 1 such death per 400,000-500,000 people. It's just not significant for a problem that is supposedly "running amok".
Even at Tombstone's peak population of something like 14,000 people, that would have been a justifiable homicide every three decades.
By your phrase, "come after me with a gun", does the gun have to be out and brandished? Or in a holster with the person merely an uncomfortable distance away from you?
Or you are trying to prove the fact that libertarianism is taking the "best" from 1000 other types of structure and combining them in a way that's impossible and impractical, yet pretending it "could" work (if and only if everyone agreed 100% of the time and nobody had any personal ambition, and wealth was evenly distributed).
Nope. I guess you're wrong again.
The very fact that libertarians have to hold up anti-libertarian organizations as libertarian examples only proves that point.
It's called learning from reality. Let's look at what I actually wrote:
No, merely pointing out that there's no expectation that a central government should have the largest military power.
So this wasn't a "libertarian example", but merely an example of "there's no expectation that a central government should have the largest military power". Why didn't you read what I actually wrote?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, until someone figures out how to cure old age and its illnesses, we'll all continue to die from lack of healthcare. And to fix that is going to take more than just money.
The original AC gave the example, "piracy" (of the IP sort). That would indeed be an example of copyright infringement that led to use of copyrighted material without permission.
And I find your attempts to intrepret everything in the worst possible way, when you are obviously capable of intrepreting things in a different light indicates you are the dishonest one.
Oh, come on. These are your words in two consecutive posts. If you don't want people to think that way of you, then give a little thought to what you are saying. I'll just point out that it is not hard to interpret this in a worse light than I have.
Do you know for certain that head slamming took place?
Zimmerman had injuries on the back of his head consistent with that particular story.
Do you know what caused any head slamming that did take place?
Obviously not. But this is an innocent until proven guilty situation. And there's probably a lot of evidence that will confirm or not Zimmerman's story. If he and Martin were grappling at the time of the shooting, then both will bear evidence of that and gunpowder residue. If Zimmerman's head was bashed into a sidewalk, then that will probably be evidence as well including where that happened.
If Zimmerman has ever boasted publicly about how he confronts burglars with gun drawn or other actions or behavior that would undermine his defense, that will probably come out as well.
My view is that if this was a simple case of Zimmerman gunning down a defenseless man without any sort of excuse, it wouldn't have taken as long as it did for him to be tried.
The only thing that's certain right now is that Zimmerman caused the incident to happen. He initiated it. He used excessive force - shooting an unarmed man is pretty fucking excessive.
He wouldn't have initiated those head injuries by killing Martin first. So there's something wrong with your story right there. And if you have a reasonable expectation of grievous injury or death, then shooting an unarmed man who caused that expectation is not excessive force.
Copyright infringement and theft are legally two different things, and the legal definition is what matters.
There are several things to note here. First, you depend here on the whim of a legislature for the "legal definition", who could change the definitions, perhaps to spite this very argument. Then what happens to your argument?
Second, there are a variety of crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, and counterfeiting which in themselves aren't crimes, but can and usually are committed for the furtherance of some act of stealing.
Originally, I wasn't saying that copyright infringement was stealing much less the legal definition of theft (though I did get sloppy and let someone move those particular goalposts without remark), but that "pirating", that is, acquiring and using copies of a copyrighted work without permission, was stealing. That is an act that goes beyond just copyright infringement.
To "appropriate" is to take or use often without permission.
FIFY.
You can only make a copy.
You appropriate the IP by making that unauthorized copy. Hence, the label of "stealing".
IP may be a little more abstract than physical property. But the real difference is not the semantics of how you unlawfully exploit IP, but the ease with which one can do so. Copying illegally a work is just a little easier than copying illegally that work a billion additional times.
In the physical world, it's extremely hard to copy a complex physical item once, much less many times. And one need to come up with the physical resources to constitute these copies.
While naturally-occurring erosion would've done the same job eventually, I just helped it along with some human-caused erosion.
Or maybe you didn't and the boulder fell when it would have fallen anyway. Correlation isn't causation and all that.
First, my relative got a bill. I've seen it, it's real. Hell, I got a bill for a rape kit once... I didn't pay. A family who's kid was run over by a police car (officer was 100% at fault) was billed for the repair of the dent to the car.
My suspension of disbelief is broken. Please pay $100.
Secret vote only works, if you're voting for the candidates you think you're voting for. I gather there's supposed to be some ways to certify a secret ballot so that you can verify that your vote was counted as you expected without revealing that information to others.
You can't "take" the intellectual property of anyone (unless you are the government).
You can "appropriate" it however.
Evidence points to them having nuclear weapons. And this isn't an innocent until proven guilty situation. If they don't want to be considered to have nuclear weapons (and as a result subject to the penalties that they currently experience), then they need to open their facilities to inspection by the IAEA and they need to cease whatever nuclear weapons programs they have going on now.
And by that definition quoting someone on slashdot is also theft.
Quoting in this context is fair use. You can always contact Slashdot's parent corporation, Dice Inc., if you think you see a case of copyright infringement.
Also the use of the term intellectual property is pretty recent. I would say it wasn't used much before 1990.
Wikipedia notes several uses of "intellectual property", the phrase in English in 1845:
Only thus can ingenuity and perseverance be encouraged to exert themselves in this way usefully to the community; and only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man's own, and as much the fruit of his honest industry, as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.
And in the "modern sense" in the constitution for the North German Confederacy (as "Schutz des geistigen Eigentums") in 1867. I gather it didn't become prevalent outside of the law on intellectual property until about the time you suggest.
Stalking and harassing is not a legal action.
Use the proper name, dihydrogen monoxide or DHMO for short! "Water" is an industry trademark that hides the noxious, foul chemical nature of the substance.
Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish.
Have you actually looked at such research? There are vast amounts spent on HIV, cancer, etc. These are in no way "languishing". As to "dick hardening", a decline in enjoyment of sex is an obvious quality of life issue for many older men and women (these drugs can help both sexes, not just men). What would the point be of extending life span without a corresponding effort to improve the quality of that extra lifespan?
all because we tolerate allowing people to become too rich and powerful, and invariably they turn into sociopaths and destroy us
Well, it wasn't a problem for the past few centuries. The wealthiest and most powerful just aren't any wealthier or powerful than they were centuries ago. No dark age happened in the meantime. What changed?
I like to think of myself as libertarian
You just equated the libertarian belief system with lying.
In all, that's what I expect from libertarians. They are a bunch of liars.
So do you "like to think of yourself" as a liar? I find this confusion rather annoying. Why not just sort out your ideas first before making unfounded, blanket denunciations?
Much like atheist/agnostic split where nearly all current agnostics fit the original definition of "atheist" but the church poisoned the definitions in an attempt to divide the heathens.
You ignore here both that the term agnostic was defined by a foe of organized religion and that the definition serves a useful non-ideological purpose, semantically distinguishing between an active disbelief in theism or the supernatural from one that doesn't have a belief one way or another due to the inherent unknowability of the problem.
Has it occurred to you that justifiable homicides aren't the problem?
Well, researching the issue through the power of Google, that was a primary claim of the problems with the Florida law, namely a tripling of justifiable homicides over the past few years. I haven't seen any other arguments, backed by evidence rather than anecdotes (this, for example, is an anecdote story), to indicate that there is a problem.
I sense you think there is some problem. Why don't you show it first before we continue this discussion?
but it is not "stealing" by any remotely logic definition of the word
One merely needs to look at actual definitions of to steal:
: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
I gather the intent here is that copyright is not property, even though it is legally treated as property.
to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
This definition doesn't even require that something be considered property.
It's pointless to make such an argument without even attempting to crack open a dictionary. Semantically, only countries which have a language which uses the word "steal" can have a definition of "steal", legally or not.
It's also worth noting that the term "intellectual property" has been used to describe things like copyright and such for a century and a half. Under that model/viewpoint, unlawful copying is indeed theft.
You *still* believe pirating is stealing, even after spending time on slashdot?
I don't know about the other poster, but I do. It doesn't mean I'll get worked up enough to defend a failed business plan. This seems like one of the opportunities to get rid of crime by making it legal.
There is simply no reason for anyone to take the life of another human being.
Most such self-defense killings have a reason along the line of "I thought my life was in danger and it was kill or be killed. So I killed the other person." There's a reason. It might not be a good or true reason, but it's a hell of a lot more than "no" reason.
I can understand the sentiment behind the first sentence, that deadly force should never be used. But deadly force is often used in the furtherance of evil activities. I just don't see a moral argument for saying that someone should allow themselves to be killed by another merely because it is immoral that the other person die. My view is that if my life is threatened by another to the point where it is them or me, I will try hard to make it them. Not only to save my life, which I consider sufficient reason in itself, but to protect others.
Despite being asked (not told, since a 911 dispatcher cannot give you orders) to not follow the kid, he got out of the car anyway and then somehow the kid ended up dead after being shot with George's gun. There's potential cause for a charge of premeditation - (why did he get out of the car? Even if it's his "legal right" to get out of the car, as some /. posters have been using as justification for killing the kid, why did he get out and go after him if he thought Trayvon was dangerous or suspicious - he's not a cop himself, so what is he going to do when he catches up to him?)
And where's the case for premeditation? None of the acts above indicate such. I bet we'll find that he made a habit of talking to people he saw during his rounds which deflates your case even more.
It's worth noting here that Zimmerman might have in the past gotten a lot of mileage merely out of talking to potential troublemakers. If you're casing a neighborhood for robbery targets and someone sidles up and starts asking you questions about what you're doing, then you might give up on the neighborhood completely and look for something easier.
Florida has lower standards now than Tombstone.
Nonsense. Even now, Florida has something like 40 justifiable homicides a year by civilians. That's roughly 1 such death per 400,000-500,000 people. It's just not significant for a problem that is supposedly "running amok".
Even at Tombstone's peak population of something like 14,000 people, that would have been a justifiable homicide every three decades.
By your phrase, "come after me with a gun", does the gun have to be out and brandished? Or in a holster with the person merely an uncomfortable distance away from you?
Or you are trying to prove the fact that libertarianism is taking the "best" from 1000 other types of structure and combining them in a way that's impossible and impractical, yet pretending it "could" work (if and only if everyone agreed 100% of the time and nobody had any personal ambition, and wealth was evenly distributed).
Nope. I guess you're wrong again.
The very fact that libertarians have to hold up anti-libertarian organizations as libertarian examples only proves that point.
It's called learning from reality. Let's look at what I actually wrote:
No, merely pointing out that there's no expectation that a central government should have the largest military power.
So this wasn't a "libertarian example", but merely an example of "there's no expectation that a central government should have the largest military power". Why didn't you read what I actually wrote?