I would recommend the book "math you can't use" for a thorough and useful discussion of the problems with software patents. The FSF has many good things to say on the issue.
Generally prefer incremental changes and improvements over major overhauls. In this case however I am inclined to agree with what I take as the spirit of your argument. Currently I see fixing the patent system as a real possibility, partly because many of the patents existing are so ridiculous and bizarre that they attract the attention and ire of even less technical and less informed members of the public, business, and government. If the system were to be so reformed that only sufficiently complex 'business methods' or software patents survive, this might mask the fundamental problems with patenting ideas, allowing it to survive to the profit of patent lawyers, but to the detriment of human innovation and small business.
If there weren't people with ideas that refused to accept the current taught dogma the Earth would still be flat, and that the sun would still rotate about the Earth.
Nooo... the earth would be (near) sphere, and would rotate around the sun, just as it does now. People might believe otherwise, but that wouldn't change the facts.
And without guidance by a credentialed expert in the field, you will have no understanding of the scholarly context to put them in their proper place.
I agreed with you right up until you spouted this bit of nonsense. Credentials, and social recognition of being an expert in the field are neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee the ability to confer understanding of a subject. They are social tools with that purpose in mind, and they are relatively good indicators, but that doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives. In point of fact, my experience has been that the best people in a particular field are rarely the best at teaching a particular field (be that humanities or physics).
I agree with both you and the writer of the article to equal extent. Conversely, I disagree with both you to a similar extent.
Calling Plato, Proust, etc fucktards really doesn't serve any kind of purpose at all. Do you think you have nothing you can learn from those people? If so, I think it's fair to call you an anti-intellectual. I agree you don't have to go to university to get a broad education and exhibit some intellectual curiosity in the human experience, but showing contempt for that curiosity is pretty contemptible.
While we agree that it's important to think, your post gives the impression that you consider only a narrow band of subjects worth thinking about -- to wit: things that will help you in a business or IT environment.
I could argue that a certain general knowledge of western culture would help you in a business environment. The Borgias and Machiavellie would almost certainly help in a strategic sense, while being well read and erudite is generally helpful unless your aim is to be chief of the cellar dwelling server maintenance tribe. That would however be missing the real point, which is this: your intellect is useful beyond IT and business. It's worth applying your intellect to issues of culture, society, economics, ethics, and humanity. It's worth reading what other people have had to say on the topics, and it's worth reading the intellectual works that have formed the basis of our society. It is especially worthwhile to read these things with a critical, analytical, intellectual mind, to see what you agree with, what strikes you as wonky, and what can be tested and disproven. It is fascinating to see how our minds work, how our societies function, and how they are developed. The more you know about these subjects, the more you can contribute to our society as a whole. In short, it makes you a better human being and a better citizen. It's also fun.
I'm reminded of a guy in my English Lit class at Georgia Tech, who complained loudly that we had to read "The Odyssey". He wanted to know why we had to read what a bunch of dumb Greek guys wrote about gods, when now we have science and understand how the world works. To this day I think on him and have to shake my head at his fat headed willful ignorence. You don't read The Odyssey to understand how the physical world works. You read it to understand how the human mind works, how western culture developed, to understand the origins of what are, even today, common elements of our culture. To understand the power of metaphor. To understand the human tendency to find patterns (even ones that don't exist) and to anthropomorphise patently non-anthropomorphic behavior. To understand how ideas of ethical behavior, culture, civilization and a good life have changed over the years, and the origins of our modern beliefs. To understand how wars start, and how they are justified... It's also very useful to see the mistakes people have made in the past, to understand how and why we make similar mistakes to this day.
In case you are interested, here's my reply the post's author:
I agree that there is a tendency to anti-intellectualism that is prevalent in our society. I also agree that this has spread to so-called geek culture. While I agree with most of your basic assumptions, and many of your conclusions, I have some issues with many of the specifics in your article.
First, your post equates intellectualism with university education. You conflate dislike, distrust, and/or contempt for traditional educational systems with anti-intellectualism. It is entirely possible to admire intellectual thought, strive for intellectual rigor, and apply a curious and analytical nature to the world at large without attending university. Particularly in America, where universities have become commercial institutions, bound tightly to our corporate masters and elite power structures, it easy to imagine losing interest a formal education. As a noteworthy example, I encourage you to read N
Re:I thought this was a good idea..
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Real Life Farmville
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I find it dismal how effectively you, and others in this thread have been brainwashed with anti-democratic sentiment.
You mean: weed-out the un-educated (in the subject of agri-business)? Weed them out and the experiment is pointless.
Here, in the case of running a farm, it makes a certain amount of sense to value experience, and education in farming. A great many people however would characterize farmers as being uneducated in a broad sense. Still, an "uneducated" farmer will likely make better farming decisions than your average physicist, lawyer, doctor, political scientist, computer programmer, etc etc.
On the other hand, considering there is a buy into the program, it might be reasonable to assume that only people with an interest in farming will take place. In that case they might take the effort to educate themselves into the real life consequences. In such a situation crowd sourcing might be effective.
One failure you make in thinking is your unquestioned assumption that educated people make better decisions than uneducated people. In the case of farming, a good farmer will probably make better decisions than a non-farmer, but from your language it's clear that you have an elitist, anti-democracy attitude which I would like to attempt to disabuse.
Consider for example the jelly bean experiment. If you take a jar of jelly beans and ask people to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, the average guess will converge toward the actual number of jelly beans in the jar. The more people participating in the experiment the better. You won't get a better distribution by restricting yourself to people with PhD's.
Your elitist attitudes also require you to neglect the fact of association bias. Individuals who are successful within a given society, who have the largest share in the bounty of that society, tend to associate themselves most with that society, and are most inclined to support whatever policies, however idiotic and injust. A clear example from our own history is support for the Vietnam war, which was very strong among educated elites. The "uneducated" masses however were strongly against America's mass bombing of poor agrarians in a small country that never did us no harm. The "educated" elite bought into the Gulf of Tonkin incident and turned into bloodthirsty savages willing to blast poor farmers who wanted nothing more than to get rid of colonialist oppression (much as we had done some 175 years earlier). The "uneducated" masses were mistrustful and thought it was all a line of bullshit. The "uneducated" masses in America were educated to the fact that the really elite in our country were thinking only of their own selfish and short sighted interests, while the "educated" were trained in sophisticated methods of rationalization to excuse a foolish and evil misadventure. This trend applies quite generally, to our invasion of the bay of pigs, the Afghan war, the Iraq wars, the civil rights movement, etc. It's not unique to American culture either. It's a pretty uniform trend. The high ranking Nazis were typically very well educated, for example, and look how that turned out.
It is telling and ironic that you ridicule the fact that the single highest issue in the United States, when the government asked for reform ideas, was the repeal of Marijuanna prohibition. Legalizing drugs in general was of course discussed, but ending all drug prohibition across the board remains a fringe issue and was nowhere near the top. Ending Marijuanna prohibition and replacing it with a system of taxation and regulation similar to what we do with Tobacco was however right at the top, by far in the number one place. This is yet another example of where American policy would benefit from more democratic processes. The current system of Marijuanna prohibition is completely retarded and does not serve the interests of anyone besides the law enforcement community, paramilitaries, and of course the illegal drug cartels. Eve
In my decadent western country, old copper doesn't exist. Copper is a valuable commodity. It's almost always dug up, sold off, recycled, re-sold and re-used by us fat-cat Western capitalists as soon as a more profitable use is found. There is no extra copper just lying in the ground. All the copper that's out there is in use by some utility or other. Anyone who takes it is a thief, plain and simple. The idea that there are legitimate copper scavengers is as ludicrous to a Westerner as the idea that there are legitimate diamond scavengers. Nobody just leaves that stuff lying around.
Where do you live? Here in the United States we have all sorts of homeless people running around scavenging metal. You often see them walking around with grocery carts full of aluminum, copper, sometimes steel.
Also, you might be interested to know that in many areas of the world diamonds can be found just lying around on the ground. Or at least they could be until Europeans started cordoning off areas that were rich in diamonds, and shooting anyone that tries to walk away with a diamond they found lying on the ground.
I don't agree with your assessment that RMS is a zealot. I think this news item just shows that RMS was right -- if we forget that the Free Software is about freedom, and just focus on whether or not the source is open, we allow the parasites a foothold, which they will use to maximize their profits and erode our freedom. It becomes a mechanism by which corporations steal the labor of the creators -- they steal it from the community by robbing us of our freedoms.
The solution is to get our population growth under control (i.e. population reduction, not growth). There are some simple, non totalitarian ways to do this:
First, we need to recognize that the world is overpopulated, that this overpopulation has dire consequences, and that concern for future generations means having fewer children. This will lead to smaller families through social pressure and education. Currently this issue is almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. Through this process new and creative ideas to encourage population reduction will no doubt develop. The remaining suggestions I list below are the ones that spring to my limited imagination.
Financial incentives for vasectomies: Free vasectomies to anyone who wants them. Social pressure to get one after the first or second kid. Tax breaks for vasectomies. College credits for the children of parents who get them. Etc.
Stop teaching kids that abstinence is the best way to prevent pregnancy. Teach birth control and population concerns in school.
Free birth control everywhere. Pills, condoms whatever, all available free of charge. Pay for it by taxing people who choose to have more than two children
Stop making foreign aid dependent on teaching wrong headed policies like abstinence-only birth control
Start giving the Catholic church infinite shit for its policy of teaching Africans not to use condoms, which is evil in so many many ways.
Another easy, cheap and environmentally benign method, which can help carry us over until we reach a stable and sustainable population, is to reduce meat consumption. This can be done by ceasing the subsidies to the milk and dairy industries, and instituting strict controls to ensure that the cost of meat and animal products accurately reflects the labor and resources consumed in their production -- which is currently far from the case.
LGBT stuff is an easy way for a company to appear ethical without affecting its bottom line. It's one of the reasons it's a popular conversation around election time, because it's a way the two party can appear different, without addressing the really important issue of the day, which is how the wealthy elite are screwing us all. Please note, that I mention this not to belittle LGBT issues, which are no doubt important and valid. But LGBT's need food, health care, worker protection, a stable economy, ect, too.
You might say that some of these things are so old they shouldn't count anymore, but given their long ranging implications what should the statute of limitations on monopoly abuse be?
Here are a few things off the top of my head:
rampant, malicious, pernicious monopoly abuse and anti-competitive practices for which they have been convicted, in court, in both the United states and Europe.
You might be wondering why nothing ever happened in the U.S. after Microsoft's conviction... That's because NOTHING HAPPENED. Why not? Well, GWB got elected, and his Justice department just dropped the case. This fact is no doubt completely unrelated to the large donations that Microsoft and its then chairman bill made to the grand old party and its members. Since it's clearly coincidental, we can't add manipulation and degradation of our democracy to the list...
Microsoft has been an innovator in the area of permatemping its workforce. If you're one of a core of elites you get lovely benefits and salaries, but the vast majority of their workforce are outsourced to temp agencies where they work full time, for years, without enjoying any of the rights and privileges granted to them by the law of the land. This is true for the cleaning ladies up to the developers. Of course, in American business, this wouldn't get called unethical, but I call it so.
Microsoft has also been an innovator in dodging taxes and exercising its political clout in its home state of Washington.
The social and economic costs of these points is far worse than hiring strippers for a company party. Frankly, as long as you hire strippers of both sexes, I don't see what the problem with hiring strippers is. I guess it boils down to, in America, it's okay to exploit your workforce, undermine democracy, undermine the economy of the state you live in, and break anti-trust laws, as long as you don't do anything that violates peoples sexual prudishness.
You seriously missed the previous sentence which started with, "they seem to be going about it like assholes"?
As far as I can see, the only "asshole" behavior that they are engaging in is treating the kindergartens like everyone else. They aren't accusing the kindergartens and creche's of being theives, they aren't trying to jail anyone, they're just sending them letters that say, in the future they (the kindergartens) too must pay a license to sing any songs under their control. In other words, it's not how they are going about, it is the fact that they are going after kindergartens that makes them assholes (or, well, you know, bigger assholes).
If you are trying to make the point that trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of the world that they can, regardless of the social impact is the underlying asshole behavior, then I'm inclined to agree with you. On the other hand, I do see this case as being particularly egregious, and here's why: Teaching children songs and using music and culture as part of the education process of future generations of humanity is about as worthwhile a use of music and culture as one could possibly imagine. It's something that should be encourages, and it's one of those instances where our gut, emotional reaction is completely valid. Making it harder for creche's and kindergartens to operate is simply abysmal behavior. It's an order of magnitude worse than requiring an office party to do the same thing, and that is in turn an order of magnitude worse than requiring a club owner to do, which in turn is a bit worse than requiring someone making a commercial film to do so. All these things rob our culture and profit greedy assholes who don't contribute anything to that culture. Going after kindergartens is the logical extreme, which in its extremity points out the fallicies in the system. You may also be unaware that kindergartens and creche's in Germany are in short supply, and are often organized by parents on a volunteer basis because there just aren't enough (my cousin has organized one for example). So yeah, it's fucking terrible that they are placing an additional burden on people trying to make a positive social contribution.
If copyright is going to be a positive influence in society, and I believe an argument can be made in its defence, it requires us to differentiate between cases. So selling copies of a song I wrote without my permission is a case where I see copyright law having merit. Kids singing a song I wrote in kindergarten is a case where applying copyright law is meritless. Copyright law should not be applied to every situation where it might possibly be applied... it's for this reason that we (used to?) have the concept of fair use.
Attention copyright apologists: please don't give me that tired old line about artists having to pay their bills. Copyright law in the modern world benefits giant corporations, not artists. See www.questioncopyright.org for detailed investigations and examples. See "Sitka sings the blues" and the lectures of the creative artist responsible, for an example which categorically disproves the faulty assumption that copyright is necessary to encourage or support artists. There is plenty of evidence to encourage questioning the very existance of copyright, and there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that current copyright law needs, at the very least, massive reform.
Then there's no such thing as basic research. Any useful research eventually leads to a monetary incentive.
There's so much wrong with your assertion that it's difficult to know where to begin... Basic research often leads to a monetary incentive, but generations after the research has been done... i.e. the monetary incentives don't come in to play for the person or entity doing the research, but to later entities who benefit from the knowledge gained from that research. Some basic research benefits society as a whole without generating any financial rewards at all for the researcher.
It's a pretty sad indictment of our space program. If this is the best they can do with the money, it's no wonder research on space-travel is underfunded.
You're either far more cynical than I am, or far more naive. You're post leaves both as possiblities.
It's possible that you're terribly cynical, and that you feel like you should not, nor should you be able to, communicate ideas and thoughts which might lead to negative workspace repurcussions -- regardless of whether or not those thoughts are well thought out, rational, and in your own (or your classes) self interests. I.e. you feel that there is no need or merit to stand up to private power.
Or your hopelessly naive, in that you think that this is a positive and harmless development because, after all, these companies are justy looking for hopelessly destructive and anti-social behavior, and this sort of thing is in no way a burden and restriction on your freedom of speech, especially not your freedom to analyze the power structure of America, or to in some way attack the interests of the corporate and wealthy elite.
Maybe, but he/she didn't word it that way. The language speaks strongly in absolutes, and is shockingly ethnocentric. Or it would be shocking if Americans were aware what ethnocentrism is. Just look at the statement:
You act as if that's anything strange with a randomly chosen culture. Our standards (no child labor, no child marriages, slavery, freedom of opinion, free economy,...) are all 1-on-1 copies from an ideological belief system - halfway between catholic and protestant christianity - and then people act totally surprised when other belief systems (or even slight variations on our belief system) don't allow them.
Wow. Look at what the language implies. He's also schockingly wrong, although it's not hard to see how he/she got so badly misinformed.
An excellent, rudimentary correction to our piss-poor history knowledge (and understanding of the historical influences of our culture) is "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by J.W. Loewen. I can't recommend it enough.
The degree to which you are missing the point is disturbing. It almost makes me wonder if you are being deliberately obtuse, but I assume not.
People using flash and people using itunes are orthogonal, independent. Whether using flash or using itunes is more negative is irrelevant to either my point or to the OP.
Look at it this way: Mr. X kicks puppies and kittens every day. One day someone teaches him that puppies have feelings, and mr X stops kicking them. He continues to kick kittens however.
Is mr X's cessation of his puppy kicking not a good thing? Of course it's a good thing. It would be better if he would additionally stop kicking kitties, but the net harm being done is reduced, so it's a good thing. A step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, even if you haven't reached your goal yet.
Whether or not it's worse to kick kitties or to kick puppies is completely irrelevant. If you're doing both, and you stop doing one, it's an improvement. Additionally, if mr X. learns that kicking puppies is wrong, we have raised mr. X's awareness, and it may make it easier to teach mr X that it's wrong to kick kitties, by analogy. Oh Look! The same argument applies to using proprietary tools for music and video. Wow!
The people who need commerce are those who are deeply programmed with our heirarchal culture, which in so many ways imposes a class structure on society, breaking them down into haves and have-nots. A great many people, with a great deal of power, would be lost without the validation that their relative wealth brings them. Thus, a disproportionately powerful segment of the population would rather see us all grow poorer and retain their relative position of advantage, than to see us all grow wealthier, but they themselves be reduced to social equals. This is exactly what's happening with our society's new ability to disseminate information and culture at virtually no cost. The parasites who have grown fat off the old system of want, are terrified of losing their social advantage in a system of plenty
If someone did invent a replicator, and necessary free energy to fuel it, you should expect a period where these elements attempt to exert control, through copyright, patent and trademark laws. One hopes the period would be brief, but who can tell.
The level of indoctrination into this system is profound, but there have been many successful cultures and societies which didn't have this feature, so there is hope.
As food for thought, consider the engineers at IEEE working on this. These are by all means intelligent and capable people. How much richer would we all be if they would stop working on stupid useless shit, whose only purpose is to keep arbitrary, harmful systems of power in place, by creating an artifical barrier to communication? Surely they can find more useful applicatoins for their talents.
First: Primarily my argument disputes the copryight oligarchist argument that copy==theft, and intends to use an existing institution (libraries) which are well respected, to obviate the emotional association the oligarchists are attempting to establish with their copy==theft propaganda campaign.
Second: who says the impact of a local library on sales is negative (I'm assuming that you mean a reduction in sales of x%). This is a completely unwarranted assumption. I'm an avid library user, but my library use does not have a negative effect on my purchasing of media. Quite the opposite in fact. On the other hand, it does allow people access to more culture and information and culture than they could otherwise afford. This enriches us all. Oh hey, look, the same arguments apply to file sharing (I'm an avid file sharer, but it doesn't affect the amount I spend on media at all .
Third: While libraries and copying might negatively impact sales, the amount of "harm" done by their existence has to take into account the totality of their effects. They increase our net cultural and intelectual wealth, by providing information and culture to people regardless of how much they can afford them. They provide new mechanisms for the propagation of culture and information, freeing us from the necessity of oligarchal, profit motivated distribution firms. They provide small artists, intelectuals and creators a much more level playing field, allowing ideas and culture which are less marketable, less acceptable to the oligarchists (who act as defacto, dollar oriented censors). This gives us a richer, more vibrant culture. It also allows unestablished creators more access to revenue. These benefits have to be weighed against the "harm" of reduced sales and profit for the big mass media creators and publishers.
If copyright weakens, shortens, declines, or disappears entirely, incentives for creation won't disappear, they will simply change. I personally believe they will change for the better, but trying to justify that belief would be a long discussion, and full of conjecture. The above statements are however firmly grounded in objective, testable fact.
Absolutely you are correct. But I've heard that copyright holders tried to shut down libraries in the past, and that this authorization was hard won. This would make the analogy and parallels even stronger.
I don't have a citation for this claim though, nor any kind of hard facts. Does anyone have an enlightening link or citation?
I disagree that the parent is stuck in old ways of thinking.
The fundamental idea of allowing a restriction to copy rights (restricting free speech) in order to provide a financial incentive for creative works is not all bad. However, as the costs of production and reproduction decrease, the length of copyright should shorten. Unfortunately, thanks to corporate hijacking of the legislative system, copyright laws have essentially gone to infinity, robbing from the public domain.
A 2, or even ten year copyright would make quite a bit of sense. Artists could still exert some creative and financial control over their works, particularly for commercial exploitation. A copyright law that allowed goods to enter into the public domain within a persons lifetime would give people more of a sense of the real purpose of copyright law making it more inherently just. People tend to disobey laws they find unjust more than they do laws they agree with, even if they aren't capable of articulating it.
Unfortunately the oligarchists are working the other strategy: trying to warp our culture and indoctrinate our kids into the idea that information is property, and thereby create the illusion that copying is theft. Since these people have a lot of control over our primary means of communication (movies, tv, music) they are being remarkably successful. When was the last time you saw a positive or intelligent portrayal of music sharing on a TV program or movie for example?
I would even say it's a slightly better analogy. The effect to the copyright holder is nearly the same as that of a library. If you check out media from a library, you are less likely to buy it, unless you want the manufactured, physical thing to possess (CD, book, whatever). It's rather like having an infinite library which provides infinite copies for infinite lengths of time, with no profit to the library and no cost to the user.
Freedom of conscience (ie. no violent persecution based on religion) - exists in Christianity and Bushido
You must be reading a different history than me.
You might be interested to know that at a time where the European christians tortured or expelled Jews and Muslims, Turks and Moors allowed Jews and Christians freedom of worship.
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I would recommend the book "math you can't use" for a thorough and useful discussion of the problems with software patents. The FSF has many good things to say on the issue.
Generally prefer incremental changes and improvements over major overhauls. In this case however I am inclined to agree with what I take as the spirit of your argument. Currently I see fixing the patent system as a real possibility, partly because many of the patents existing are so ridiculous and bizarre that they attract the attention and ire of even less technical and less informed members of the public, business, and government. If the system were to be so reformed that only sufficiently complex 'business methods' or software patents survive, this might mask the fundamental problems with patenting ideas, allowing it to survive to the profit of patent lawyers, but to the detriment of human innovation and small business.
Nooo... the earth would be (near) sphere, and would rotate around the sun, just as it does now. People might believe otherwise, but that wouldn't change the facts.
I agreed with you right up until you spouted this bit of nonsense. Credentials, and social recognition of being an expert in the field are neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee the ability to confer understanding of a subject. They are social tools with that purpose in mind, and they are relatively good indicators, but that doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives. In point of fact, my experience has been that the best people in a particular field are rarely the best at teaching a particular field (be that humanities or physics).
I agree with both you and the writer of the article to equal extent. Conversely, I disagree with both you to a similar extent.
Calling Plato, Proust, etc fucktards really doesn't serve any kind of purpose at all. Do you think you have nothing you can learn from those people? If so, I think it's fair to call you an anti-intellectual. I agree you don't have to go to university to get a broad education and exhibit some intellectual curiosity in the human experience, but showing contempt for that curiosity is pretty contemptible.
While we agree that it's important to think, your post gives the impression that you consider only a narrow band of subjects worth thinking about -- to wit: things that will help you in a business or IT environment.
I could argue that a certain general knowledge of western culture would help you in a business environment. The Borgias and Machiavellie would almost certainly help in a strategic sense, while being well read and erudite is generally helpful unless your aim is to be chief of the cellar dwelling server maintenance tribe. That would however be missing the real point, which is this: your intellect is useful beyond IT and business. It's worth applying your intellect to issues of culture, society, economics, ethics, and humanity. It's worth reading what other people have had to say on the topics, and it's worth reading the intellectual works that have formed the basis of our society. It is especially worthwhile to read these things with a critical, analytical, intellectual mind, to see what you agree with, what strikes you as wonky, and what can be tested and disproven. It is fascinating to see how our minds work, how our societies function, and how they are developed. The more you know about these subjects, the more you can contribute to our society as a whole. In short, it makes you a better human being and a better citizen. It's also fun.
I'm reminded of a guy in my English Lit class at Georgia Tech, who complained loudly that we had to read "The Odyssey". He wanted to know why we had to read what a bunch of dumb Greek guys wrote about gods, when now we have science and understand how the world works. To this day I think on him and have to shake my head at his fat headed willful ignorence. You don't read The Odyssey to understand how the physical world works. You read it to understand how the human mind works, how western culture developed, to understand the origins of what are, even today, common elements of our culture. To understand the power of metaphor. To understand the human tendency to find patterns (even ones that don't exist) and to anthropomorphise patently non-anthropomorphic behavior. To understand how ideas of ethical behavior, culture, civilization and a good life have changed over the years, and the origins of our modern beliefs. To understand how wars start, and how they are justified... It's also very useful to see the mistakes people have made in the past, to understand how and why we make similar mistakes to this day.
In case you are interested, here's my reply the post's author:
Here, in the case of running a farm, it makes a certain amount of sense to value experience, and education in farming. A great many people however would characterize farmers as being uneducated in a broad sense. Still, an "uneducated" farmer will likely make better farming decisions than your average physicist, lawyer, doctor, political scientist, computer programmer, etc etc.
On the other hand, considering there is a buy into the program, it might be reasonable to assume that only people with an interest in farming will take place. In that case they might take the effort to educate themselves into the real life consequences. In such a situation crowd sourcing might be effective.
One failure you make in thinking is your unquestioned assumption that educated people make better decisions than uneducated people. In the case of farming, a good farmer will probably make better decisions than a non-farmer, but from your language it's clear that you have an elitist, anti-democracy attitude which I would like to attempt to disabuse.
Consider for example the jelly bean experiment. If you take a jar of jelly beans and ask people to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, the average guess will converge toward the actual number of jelly beans in the jar. The more people participating in the experiment the better. You won't get a better distribution by restricting yourself to people with PhD's.
Your elitist attitudes also require you to neglect the fact of association bias. Individuals who are successful within a given society, who have the largest share in the bounty of that society, tend to associate themselves most with that society, and are most inclined to support whatever policies, however idiotic and injust. A clear example from our own history is support for the Vietnam war, which was very strong among educated elites. The "uneducated" masses however were strongly against America's mass bombing of poor agrarians in a small country that never did us no harm. The "educated" elite bought into the Gulf of Tonkin incident and turned into bloodthirsty savages willing to blast poor farmers who wanted nothing more than to get rid of colonialist oppression (much as we had done some 175 years earlier). The "uneducated" masses were mistrustful and thought it was all a line of bullshit. The "uneducated" masses in America were educated to the fact that the really elite in our country were thinking only of their own selfish and short sighted interests, while the "educated" were trained in sophisticated methods of rationalization to excuse a foolish and evil misadventure. This trend applies quite generally, to our invasion of the bay of pigs, the Afghan war, the Iraq wars, the civil rights movement, etc. It's not unique to American culture either. It's a pretty uniform trend. The high ranking Nazis were typically very well educated, for example, and look how that turned out.
It is telling and ironic that you ridicule the fact that the single highest issue in the United States, when the government asked for reform ideas, was the repeal of Marijuanna prohibition. Legalizing drugs in general was of course discussed, but ending all drug prohibition across the board remains a fringe issue and was nowhere near the top. Ending Marijuanna prohibition and replacing it with a system of taxation and regulation similar to what we do with Tobacco was however right at the top, by far in the number one place. This is yet another example of where American policy would benefit from more democratic processes. The current system of Marijuanna prohibition is completely retarded and does not serve the interests of anyone besides the law enforcement community, paramilitaries, and of course the illegal drug cartels. Eve
Where do you live? Here in the United States we have all sorts of homeless people running around scavenging metal. You often see them walking around with grocery carts full of aluminum, copper, sometimes steel.
Also, you might be interested to know that in many areas of the world diamonds can be found just lying around on the ground. Or at least they could be until Europeans started cordoning off areas that were rich in diamonds, and shooting anyone that tries to walk away with a diamond they found lying on the ground.
I don't agree with your assessment that RMS is a zealot. I think this news item just shows that RMS was right -- if we forget that the Free Software is about freedom, and just focus on whether or not the source is open, we allow the parasites a foothold, which they will use to maximize their profits and erode our freedom. It becomes a mechanism by which corporations steal the labor of the creators -- they steal it from the community by robbing us of our freedoms.
I still have a Nokia television.
Another easy, cheap and environmentally benign method, which can help carry us over until we reach a stable and sustainable population, is to reduce meat consumption. This can be done by ceasing the subsidies to the milk and dairy industries, and instituting strict controls to ensure that the cost of meat and animal products accurately reflects the labor and resources consumed in their production -- which is currently far from the case.
LGBT stuff is an easy way for a company to appear ethical without affecting its bottom line. It's one of the reasons it's a popular conversation around election time, because it's a way the two party can appear different, without addressing the really important issue of the day, which is how the wealthy elite are screwing us all. Please note, that I mention this not to belittle LGBT issues, which are no doubt important and valid. But LGBT's need food, health care, worker protection, a stable economy, ect, too.
Here are a few things off the top of my head:
You might be wondering why nothing ever happened in the U.S. after Microsoft's conviction... That's because NOTHING HAPPENED. Why not? Well, GWB got elected, and his Justice department just dropped the case. This fact is no doubt completely unrelated to the large donations that Microsoft and its then chairman bill made to the grand old party and its members. Since it's clearly coincidental, we can't add manipulation and degradation of our democracy to the list...
The social and economic costs of these points is far worse than hiring strippers for a company party. Frankly, as long as you hire strippers of both sexes, I don't see what the problem with hiring strippers is. I guess it boils down to, in America, it's okay to exploit your workforce, undermine democracy, undermine the economy of the state you live in, and break anti-trust laws, as long as you don't do anything that violates peoples sexual prudishness.
As far as I can see, the only "asshole" behavior that they are engaging in is treating the kindergartens like everyone else. They aren't accusing the kindergartens and creche's of being theives, they aren't trying to jail anyone, they're just sending them letters that say, in the future they (the kindergartens) too must pay a license to sing any songs under their control. In other words, it's not how they are going about, it is the fact that they are going after kindergartens that makes them assholes (or, well, you know, bigger assholes).
If you are trying to make the point that trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of the world that they can, regardless of the social impact is the underlying asshole behavior, then I'm inclined to agree with you. On the other hand, I do see this case as being particularly egregious, and here's why: Teaching children songs and using music and culture as part of the education process of future generations of humanity is about as worthwhile a use of music and culture as one could possibly imagine. It's something that should be encourages, and it's one of those instances where our gut, emotional reaction is completely valid. Making it harder for creche's and kindergartens to operate is simply abysmal behavior. It's an order of magnitude worse than requiring an office party to do the same thing, and that is in turn an order of magnitude worse than requiring a club owner to do, which in turn is a bit worse than requiring someone making a commercial film to do so. All these things rob our culture and profit greedy assholes who don't contribute anything to that culture. Going after kindergartens is the logical extreme, which in its extremity points out the fallicies in the system. You may also be unaware that kindergartens and creche's in Germany are in short supply, and are often organized by parents on a volunteer basis because there just aren't enough (my cousin has organized one for example). So yeah, it's fucking terrible that they are placing an additional burden on people trying to make a positive social contribution.
If copyright is going to be a positive influence in society, and I believe an argument can be made in its defence, it requires us to differentiate between cases. So selling copies of a song I wrote without my permission is a case where I see copyright law having merit. Kids singing a song I wrote in kindergarten is a case where applying copyright law is meritless. Copyright law should not be applied to every situation where it might possibly be applied... it's for this reason that we (used to?) have the concept of fair use.
Attention copyright apologists: please don't give me that tired old line about artists having to pay their bills. Copyright law in the modern world benefits giant corporations, not artists. See www.questioncopyright.org for detailed investigations and examples. See "Sitka sings the blues" and the lectures of the creative artist responsible, for an example which categorically disproves the faulty assumption that copyright is necessary to encourage or support artists. There is plenty of evidence to encourage questioning the very existance of copyright, and there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that current copyright law needs, at the very least, massive reform.
It's a pretty sad indictment of our space program. If this is the best they can do with the money, it's no wonder research on space-travel is underfunded.
Your obeisance to power is depressing.
It's possible that you're terribly cynical, and that you feel like you should not, nor should you be able to, communicate ideas and thoughts which might lead to negative workspace repurcussions -- regardless of whether or not those thoughts are well thought out, rational, and in your own (or your classes) self interests. I.e. you feel that there is no need or merit to stand up to private power.
Or your hopelessly naive, in that you think that this is a positive and harmless development because, after all, these companies are justy looking for hopelessly destructive and anti-social behavior, and this sort of thing is in no way a burden and restriction on your freedom of speech, especially not your freedom to analyze the power structure of America, or to in some way attack the interests of the corporate and wealthy elite.
Which is it?
Wow. Look at what the language implies. He's also schockingly wrong, although it's not hard to see how he/she got so badly misinformed.
An excellent, rudimentary correction to our piss-poor history knowledge (and understanding of the historical influences of our culture) is "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by J.W. Loewen. I can't recommend it enough.
People using flash and people using itunes are orthogonal, independent. Whether using flash or using itunes is more negative is irrelevant to either my point or to the OP.
Look at it this way: Mr. X kicks puppies and kittens every day. One day someone teaches him that puppies have feelings, and mr X stops kicking them. He continues to kick kittens however.
Is mr X's cessation of his puppy kicking not a good thing? Of course it's a good thing. It would be better if he would additionally stop kicking kitties, but the net harm being done is reduced, so it's a good thing. A step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, even if you haven't reached your goal yet.
Whether or not it's worse to kick kitties or to kick puppies is completely irrelevant. If you're doing both, and you stop doing one, it's an improvement. Additionally, if mr X. learns that kicking puppies is wrong, we have raised mr. X's awareness, and it may make it easier to teach mr X that it's wrong to kick kitties, by analogy. Oh Look! The same argument applies to using proprietary tools for music and video. Wow!
If someone did invent a replicator, and necessary free energy to fuel it, you should expect a period where these elements attempt to exert control, through copyright, patent and trademark laws. One hopes the period would be brief, but who can tell.
The level of indoctrination into this system is profound, but there have been many successful cultures and societies which didn't have this feature, so there is hope.
As food for thought, consider the engineers at IEEE working on this. These are by all means intelligent and capable people. How much richer would we all be if they would stop working on stupid useless shit, whose only purpose is to keep arbitrary, harmful systems of power in place, by creating an artifical barrier to communication? Surely they can find more useful applicatoins for their talents.
First: Primarily my argument disputes the copryight oligarchist argument that copy==theft, and intends to use an existing institution (libraries) which are well respected, to obviate the emotional association the oligarchists are attempting to establish with their copy==theft propaganda campaign.
Second: who says the impact of a local library on sales is negative (I'm assuming that you mean a reduction in sales of x%). This is a completely unwarranted assumption. I'm an avid library user, but my library use does not have a negative effect on my purchasing of media. Quite the opposite in fact. On the other hand, it does allow people access to more culture and information and culture than they could otherwise afford. This enriches us all. Oh hey, look, the same arguments apply to file sharing (I'm an avid file sharer, but it doesn't affect the amount I spend on media at all .
Third: While libraries and copying might negatively impact sales, the amount of "harm" done by their existence has to take into account the totality of their effects. They increase our net cultural and intelectual wealth, by providing information and culture to people regardless of how much they can afford them. They provide new mechanisms for the propagation of culture and information, freeing us from the necessity of oligarchal, profit motivated distribution firms. They provide small artists, intelectuals and creators a much more level playing field, allowing ideas and culture which are less marketable, less acceptable to the oligarchists (who act as defacto, dollar oriented censors). This gives us a richer, more vibrant culture. It also allows unestablished creators more access to revenue. These benefits have to be weighed against the "harm" of reduced sales and profit for the big mass media creators and publishers.
If copyright weakens, shortens, declines, or disappears entirely, incentives for creation won't disappear, they will simply change. I personally believe they will change for the better, but trying to justify that belief would be a long discussion, and full of conjecture. The above statements are however firmly grounded in objective, testable fact.
I don't have a citation for this claim though, nor any kind of hard facts. Does anyone have an enlightening link or citation?
The fundamental idea of allowing a restriction to copy rights (restricting free speech) in order to provide a financial incentive for creative works is not all bad. However, as the costs of production and reproduction decrease, the length of copyright should shorten. Unfortunately, thanks to corporate hijacking of the legislative system, copyright laws have essentially gone to infinity, robbing from the public domain.
A 2, or even ten year copyright would make quite a bit of sense. Artists could still exert some creative and financial control over their works, particularly for commercial exploitation. A copyright law that allowed goods to enter into the public domain within a persons lifetime would give people more of a sense of the real purpose of copyright law making it more inherently just. People tend to disobey laws they find unjust more than they do laws they agree with, even if they aren't capable of articulating it.
Unfortunately the oligarchists are working the other strategy: trying to warp our culture and indoctrinate our kids into the idea that information is property, and thereby create the illusion that copying is theft. Since these people have a lot of control over our primary means of communication (movies, tv, music) they are being remarkably successful. When was the last time you saw a positive or intelligent portrayal of music sharing on a TV program or movie for example?
I would even say it's a slightly better analogy. The effect to the copyright holder is nearly the same as that of a library. If you check out media from a library, you are less likely to buy it, unless you want the manufactured, physical thing to possess (CD, book, whatever). It's rather like having an infinite library which provides infinite copies for infinite lengths of time, with no profit to the library and no cost to the user.
You must be reading a different history than me.
You might be interested to know that at a time where the European christians tortured or expelled Jews and Muslims, Turks and Moors allowed Jews and Christians freedom of worship.