I "pirate" media to preview/prelisten before making a purchase decision. Were I not able to preview/prelisten, I'd buy NOTHING.
That has been factored in, too. Purchased media can't be returned when you realize you got something crappy (I assume that's why you preview your purchases). In many cases they don't want you to preview it, in the hopes you would buy it hoping for the best and be stuck with it. The game industry seems to have mostly done away with download-able game demos for that reason (only a few good ones may have a demo). Some of the crappier movies are purposely released to avoid a critic screening, hoping that at the first few days will be good.
I'm not saying that I like that CEOs make as much as they do, but I often wonder if it even matters how much they make. Do lottery winners suddenly become threats to society with that money, simply because they have a lot of it?
It probably doesn't matter how much CEOs make - although one does wonder why CEOs make orders of magnitude more money now than before. What does matter is when CEOs don't seem to lose their salaries and bonuses when the company is ran into the ground (sometimes bonuses even improve!). Anyone in a position of power with an incentive to do damage is a significant threat to the society. If murdering people improved someone's chances of winning the lottery -- then yes, that person would be a major threat to the society.
The NDAA provision is a statutory law, it CANNOT overrule any amendment. If they are in conflict, then the NDAA loses.
Your idealism is... cute. Can't speak for the 1st amendment, but the 6th one is very much gone. It seems that being called a terrorist easily negates Constitutional protections nowdays.
Oh, and I believe that 8th is out too, since Al-Awlaki was a US citizen, and seeing how he never got any trial (couldn't reach out to court/lawyers safely), one could argue his execution was cruel and unusual.
While this happened before NDAA passage, I do believe that NDAA made it officially allowed now.
"Flip flopping" just means changing your mind, right? Changing your mind should only be viewed negatively when it is done with dishonest intent - to deceive and manipulate others, or to act against one's own core beliefs.
Sorry, I have to respectfully call bullshit. I can't believe this is marked +5 insightful. Yes, "flip flopping" means changing your mind. However, the typical use refers to "convenient" changes that seem to coincide with one's political career advantage (particularly when these changes happen 2 or more times, not just once). For example, I hear that Mitt Romney used to be pro-life before he ran in MA. Then he had introduced a beautiful story of a relative who had to go through abortion changing his stance to pro-choice. Oddly enough, he is pro-life once again now - the relative long forgotten. You show me one politician who honestly changed his position without any obvious advantage to their current platform/constituency/etc, and I'll believe your point then... Ron Paul is simply consistent as his beliefs have not changed, most others change with the wind.
Since in America we have trial by jury, if it goes to court it seems unlikely there will be able to find a jury willing to convict.
Ah, grasshopper, but even so, once they are vindicated... who is going to return 50M (that's the number I have seen) worth of equipment that got confiscated? How about the files that they had and people with paid accounts? No one is going to compensate them for the damage if they are found innocent?
So they have been punished quite severely loooong before the courts/jury get to them. They must be terrorists...
And how is this any different than any of the programs that followed 9/11?
Ooh, ooh, ooh [raises hand] I know! At least this program is apparently being scrapped, while TSA is getting increased funding and building US-border scanners and releasing VIPR teams outside of the damn airports now.
It should have been 'Programmer Steals Code..' Not 'Chinese Programmer Steals Code...'
Well, to be fair, the fact that he is not a US-citizen seems relevant. I am not the first to express surprise that a foreign worker was hired and had access to something so sensitive. I seem to remember that even federal internships often require citizenship. A lot easier to check US-citizen background when hiring, I imagine.
I will concede that you are making a reasonable argument and that the damage from song-copying will exceed it's market value of 99c at iTunes.
However, you seem to also imply that the damage is proportional to scale of distribution and I take an issue with that. I could believe that damage is proportional to how many people I distribute the song to directly. Beyond that I don't give them permission and it is their responsibility if they choose to distribute a song further
Your talk of "multiply it by the distribution scale" is how MPAA/RIAA are claiming 6 gadzillion dollars of damage every day. Assume that 1 person can reach 1million downloaders (directly and indirectly), then consider 1000 people and you have 1 billion downloads. And if you sue 10,000 people you can claim 10billion downloads. It works in linear progression!
He seemed to appreciate the problems with SOPA and gave a very similar reply to the one from the White House.
You seem to think this is ok for some reason! Congressmen should read the damn legislation (I know, I know, but a man can dream...). If they can't read it, they should have a staff member or two summarize it, not just the lobbyist. The bill may be technical, but the problem is rather simple from what I understand - website shutdown comes before judicial review or even presenting reasonable evidence of accusation.
The really sad part was the reaction of the majority of the audience, average age estimated in the 60's.
I believe that the myth of "old geezers who don't know internet" is starting to get stale. I suspect most congressmen know full well the damaging consequences and the payoffs they get (even if they are missing all the fine technical details). Problem is not they don't understand, but that they are willing to sell their services.
I can't buy a copy direct from you, so even if I wanted to I couldn't buy your book in a way that's convenient to me.
Hear, hear! That's my favorite one, and I hope any book authors/content providers/etc here will listen up. You release your product in some manner where I find it difficult to impossible to buy it, and then you wonder about bad sales, rampant piracy, etc, etc.
There are plenty of honest people who would buy your product, but if you release a DRM-ed PDF, or an e-book only edition (happened with a website I frequent), then people without e-book readers WILL NOT BUY IT. Similarly (as discussed recently on slashdot) if you release a game that will mess with my drivers and require constant internet connection for single-player, I will not buy it. It isn't even the principle so much (as the OP). I don't trust paypal, but I have a paypal account. However, I also don't have an e-reader and I don't always have internet connection. So products that deliberatly ignore my situation are really of very little use to me.
A lot of "art" is produced with claimed values without anybody at any time offering to pay any amount at all for it.
To be fair, none of that "art" is up for debate. The laws may be draconian, copyright length might be unreasonable, but we are talking about things people want. Or do you mean that if people are downloading things but don't want to pay for it at all, then it means the price is a "claimed", irrelevant value? You have twisted OP's words. he most certainly meant "I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid, [when others want and are somehow getting that produced content]"
It is about how the unauthorized copying compromises the copyright holder's exclusivity to copy the work. And in particular, since exclusivity by definition means that nobody else is doing it, that compromise is effectively permanent
Bzzzzt! While you make a well reasoned argument, this is where I start worrying. Your argument makes sense in a way, but you can only have ONE permanent compromise. So if you take a stand that someone had illegally copied your song/film/etc they have compromised it forever (enabling secondary distribution), then arbitrary punitive damages make sense. However, then you can't sue anyone else, because your work has been irreversibly damaged already.
Plus the damages are at up to 125K (or such) per song. It would make sense to force the accuser to provide their (substantiated) estimates of how many copies you have enabled and charge you for each one. However, trying to pin secondary distribution or permanent copyright damage on the accused is ridiculous.
I fully understand the used game market hurts the developers;
That is not really true. One theory I have heard is that game prices already include the intrinsic resale value of the item. Just like if I buy a car for $15K, I expect I can resell it for, say $5K in 3 or 4 years. If I knew that the car would be utterly worthless resale-wise, I probably wouldn't buy it for $15K.
Once game sellers find a way to completely eradicate the used game market (to the point where 90%+ of the users will be aware of inability to resell), they will suffer the consequences. They just want to have their cake and eat it too.
But having had first-hand experience with UAV strikes, I am a big fan. Partially because UAVs are very good at minimizing collateral damage; they use precision munitions with a very small footprint. You get orders of magnitude less damage (of all kinds) than you do with big stick munitions like air strikes or cruise missiles.
So you see no problem here? Risk to American lives and large collateral damage are the only things that merit concern in your book? You are part of the problem. The "war against terrorism" (that has no meaning and will never end, of course) is rapidly turning several countries into a video game (with real casualties), but you don't see a problem here??
I can't tell you the number of times when I saw UAVs with legit targets NOT shoot because the identity of the target was in question or because the risk of collateral damage too great.
According to the official announcements coming from the administration (in so far they even admit the UAV "secret" use), is that there due to high drone accuracy there had been no civilian casualties whatsoever. Not once. How do you feel about that theory?
That's of little consolation since the road shouldn't have begun. I am not sure how this is even gotten that far. I mean, I was pretty sure that only serious crimes (typically, murder and up) qualify for extradition. How could (anyone in) the British Government be possibly willing to hand over a non-US citizen for copyright infringement?
Here's something I could ask the next smug European person who wonders about ridiculous US laws. US asking for extradition is far less stupid than UK even considering following through with it!
Include a starter pistol in your luggage, and declare it. It seems the TSA's rules include starter pistols as "weapons", and if you have one, they'll inspect your luggage before your eyes, lock it, and store it in a separate part of the airplane.
Can't you just keep the laptop in carry-on instead? some of us have a life. Spending extra half-hour waiting for them to accommodate your special screening needs is not in the budget. Also, if the gun-carrying bag is stored separately, wouldn't you have to receive it separately, well after the rest of the passengers?
if I won the powerball tomorrow, I doubt I'd even go back in to collect the few personal things I keep at my desk.
Maybe you need to look into getting a different job. I assure you that I won powerball I would find the use for the money but I would not leave my job. Don't you have colleagues you like? Friends of yours who would hang out with you on their free time but work during the day like you?
If you had nothing to do all day, you'd get bored soon enough. Also, don't get me started on what kind of women you would find yourself chasing (as an non-working and bored millionaire). Could be fun, but not in the long run.
This government knows that the populist uprisings are going to eventually come to our shores, this is why they're bringing the troops home,
Gaaah, why must people say wrong things on Slashdot? I don't think the government is worried about the basement uprisings that are refering to.
The soldiers are being brought back from Iraq (the only real withdrawal I am aware of) because Bush signed an agreement to bring them back by the end of 2011. Also, Obama had negotiated to keep more soldiers in Iraq, but couldn't get unqualified immunity for them from the Iraqi government. You can read a well written article by Glenn Greenwald here if you wish to know more.
so if it says $20 on the shelf, it's actually $20 when you get to the counter... not $20 + 5.75% or whatever random percentage the state/county applies.
You may think this scheme was designed solely to drive you nuts, but there are legitimate reasons for this
First, sales taxes are changed by individual states in US, so the rate can vary from 0% (NH and some others) to 10%+. Also, the city may charge additional sales taxes on top of the state tax. So trying to even out the price would mean that each item will have at least 20 or 30 different prices, state to state, city to city.
Second, related to the previous point, hiding the tax in the total is considered bad form by some, because that creates an opportunity to raise taxes without most people noticing (as you don't know the tax rate with EU system). Now, in EU the VAT is shared, so that's a lesser issue. But if you live in state X in US, you would have to be proactive to even know that your particular state (or even city) decided to increase their tax rate.
I'm quite glad he only tried it the once (and frankly, he should have self-edited Tom out at the start).
Why? I find it amusing to read the debates regarding who the hell Tom is and how he fits into the power structure hierarchy of various beings defined in the Tolkien universe. Certainly, that should not be overdone, but one exception makes things more interesting!
he was retired and had to have been at least 70, but he was brilliant and his analytical skills don't seem to have declined at all.
Oh, my, how did that get rated +5 insightful? With all due respect, even if your anecdote was not about one vaguely described example, it is still completely pointless and irrelevant
Since that was someone you knew in high school, you probably weren't born when he was under 45. Sadly, there is an excellent chance that he was even more brilliant when he was 30 or 40. The decline is, after all, a relative thing.
Look what happened to GoDaddy when it was found out they were supporting it.
Nothing happened to GoDaddy. They lost some customers, but half of that was due to them being a crappy company. Also, many people are under the mistaken impression that GoDaddy withdrew support (or opposed) SOPA. Neither of those things happened - they just toned down their support to control PR. They are still for SOPA.
Imagine what happens when companies like 1800contacts, Ford, Adidas
There is less of a direct channel there. I haven't bought anything from 1800contacts or Ford or Adidas in a while. Also, for Ford and Adidas at least, you buy from a retail intermediary. I am sure if I stopped by a Ford dealership to tell them that I boycott Ford purchases, they would call the headquarters immediately!
Several people in line looked surprised there was such a thing as "opt out" (sigh).
I too find it sad that so many people go in as sheep. There is no way these scans are a good thing for your health.
I got a pat down without any junk-grabbing and I was on my way in about 30 seconds.
You don't have enough data, my friend. While I do find the pat downs reasonably professional (just pointless), I do have some other data points for you:
Once, a TSA employer tried to explain to me how media portrays them unfairly and how these are "new" safer machines.
Even better, once I spent about 5-7 minutes waiting for a same-gender agent to come over and give me a pat down. I was standing at the entrance, waiting, while my brand new expensive laptop was sitting on the other side OUT OF MY BAG and in a SEPARATE BIN at the end of the baggage x-ray belt. I wonder if these accidental delays are a lesson for opt-outs? Who would be responsible if someone took it? I couldn't see my laptop from where I had to stand.
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That has been factored in, too. Purchased media can't be returned when you realize you got something crappy (I assume that's why you preview your purchases). In many cases they don't want you to preview it, in the hopes you would buy it hoping for the best and be stuck with it. The game industry seems to have mostly done away with download-able game demos for that reason (only a few good ones may have a demo). Some of the crappier movies are purposely released to avoid a critic screening, hoping that at the first few days will be good.
It probably doesn't matter how much CEOs make - although one does wonder why CEOs make orders of magnitude more money now than before. What does matter is when CEOs don't seem to lose their salaries and bonuses when the company is ran into the ground (sometimes bonuses even improve!). Anyone in a position of power with an incentive to do damage is a significant threat to the society. If murdering people improved someone's chances of winning the lottery -- then yes, that person would be a major threat to the society.
I don't follow, to be honest. So, can you be held in contempt of court for refusing to testify against yourself too? How is this different?
Your idealism is... cute. Can't speak for the 1st amendment, but the 6th one is very much gone. It seems that being called a terrorist easily negates Constitutional protections nowdays.
Oh, and I believe that 8th is out too, since Al-Awlaki was a US citizen, and seeing how he never got any trial (couldn't reach out to court/lawyers safely), one could argue his execution was cruel and unusual.
While this happened before NDAA passage, I do believe that NDAA made it officially allowed now.
Sorry, I have to respectfully call bullshit. I can't believe this is marked +5 insightful. Yes, "flip flopping" means changing your mind. However, the typical use refers to "convenient" changes that seem to coincide with one's political career advantage (particularly when these changes happen 2 or more times, not just once). For example, I hear that Mitt Romney used to be pro-life before he ran in MA. Then he had introduced a beautiful story of a relative who had to go through abortion changing his stance to pro-choice. Oddly enough, he is pro-life once again now - the relative long forgotten.
You show me one politician who honestly changed his position without any obvious advantage to their current platform/constituency/etc, and I'll believe your point then... Ron Paul is simply consistent as his beliefs have not changed, most others change with the wind.
Ah, grasshopper, but even so, once they are vindicated... who is going to return 50M (that's the number I have seen) worth of equipment that got confiscated? How about the files that they had and people with paid accounts? No one is going to compensate them for the damage if they are found innocent?
So they have been punished quite severely loooong before the courts/jury get to them. They must be terrorists...
Ooh, ooh, ooh [raises hand] I know! At least this program is apparently being scrapped, while TSA is getting increased funding and building US-border scanners and releasing VIPR teams outside of the damn airports now.
Well, to be fair, the fact that he is not a US-citizen seems relevant. I am not the first to express surprise that a foreign worker was hired and had access to something so sensitive. I seem to remember that even federal internships often require citizenship. A lot easier to check US-citizen background when hiring, I imagine.
I will concede that you are making a reasonable argument and that the damage from song-copying will exceed it's market value of 99c at iTunes. However, you seem to also imply that the damage is proportional to scale of distribution and I take an issue with that. I could believe that damage is proportional to how many people I distribute the song to directly. Beyond that I don't give them permission and it is their responsibility if they choose to distribute a song further
Your talk of "multiply it by the distribution scale" is how MPAA/RIAA are claiming 6 gadzillion dollars of damage every day. Assume that 1 person can reach 1million downloaders (directly and indirectly), then consider 1000 people and you have 1 billion downloads. And if you sue 10,000 people you can claim 10billion downloads. It works in linear progression!
You seem to think this is ok for some reason! Congressmen should read the damn legislation (I know, I know, but a man can dream...). If they can't read it, they should have a staff member or two summarize it, not just the lobbyist. The bill may be technical, but the problem is rather simple from what I understand - website shutdown comes before judicial review or even presenting reasonable evidence of accusation.
The really sad part was the reaction of the majority of the audience, average age estimated in the 60's.
I believe that the myth of "old geezers who don't know internet" is starting to get stale. I suspect most congressmen know full well the damaging consequences and the payoffs they get (even if they are missing all the fine technical details). Problem is not they don't understand, but that they are willing to sell their services.
Hear, hear! That's my favorite one, and I hope any book authors/content providers/etc here will listen up. You release your product in some manner where I find it difficult to impossible to buy it, and then you wonder about bad sales, rampant piracy, etc, etc.
There are plenty of honest people who would buy your product, but if you release a DRM-ed PDF, or an e-book only edition (happened with a website I frequent), then people without e-book readers WILL NOT BUY IT. Similarly (as discussed recently on slashdot) if you release a game that will mess with my drivers and require constant internet connection for single-player, I will not buy it. It isn't even the principle so much (as the OP). I don't trust paypal, but I have a paypal account. However, I also don't have an e-reader and I don't always have internet connection. So products that deliberatly ignore my situation are really of very little use to me.
To be fair, none of that "art" is up for debate. The laws may be draconian, copyright length might be unreasonable, but we are talking about things people want. Or do you mean that if people are downloading things but don't want to pay for it at all, then it means the price is a "claimed", irrelevant value? You have twisted OP's words. he most certainly meant "I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid, [when others want and are somehow getting that produced content]"
Bzzzzt! While you make a well reasoned argument, this is where I start worrying. Your argument makes sense in a way, but you can only have ONE permanent compromise. So if you take a stand that someone had illegally copied your song/film/etc they have compromised it forever (enabling secondary distribution), then arbitrary punitive damages make sense. However, then you can't sue anyone else, because your work has been irreversibly damaged already.
Plus the damages are at up to 125K (or such) per song. It would make sense to force the accuser to provide their (substantiated) estimates of how many copies you have enabled and charge you for each one. However, trying to pin secondary distribution or permanent copyright damage on the accused is ridiculous.
That is not really true. One theory I have heard is that game prices already include the intrinsic resale value of the item. Just like if I buy a car for $15K, I expect I can resell it for, say $5K in 3 or 4 years. If I knew that the car would be utterly worthless resale-wise, I probably wouldn't buy it for $15K.
Once game sellers find a way to completely eradicate the used game market (to the point where 90%+ of the users will be aware of inability to resell), they will suffer the consequences. They just want to have their cake and eat it too.
So you see no problem here? Risk to American lives and large collateral damage are the only things that merit concern in your book? You are part of the problem. The "war against terrorism" (that has no meaning and will never end, of course) is rapidly turning several countries into a video game (with real casualties), but you don't see a problem here??
I can't tell you the number of times when I saw UAVs with legit targets NOT shoot because the identity of the target was in question or because the risk of collateral damage too great.
According to the official announcements coming from the administration (in so far they even admit the UAV "secret" use), is that there due to high drone accuracy there had been no civilian casualties whatsoever. Not once. How do you feel about that theory?
3) Prescribing antibiotics when they are not necessary. Perhaps that files into ignorance in #1 (doctors overusing it or patients demanding it)
That's of little consolation since the road shouldn't have begun. I am not sure how this is even gotten that far. I mean, I was pretty sure that only serious crimes (typically, murder and up) qualify for extradition. How could (anyone in) the British Government be possibly willing to hand over a non-US citizen for copyright infringement?
Here's something I could ask the next smug European person who wonders about ridiculous US laws. US asking for extradition is far less stupid than UK even considering following through with it!
Can't you just keep the laptop in carry-on instead? some of us have a life. Spending extra half-hour waiting for them to accommodate your special screening needs is not in the budget. Also, if the gun-carrying bag is stored separately, wouldn't you have to receive it separately, well after the rest of the passengers?
Maybe you need to look into getting a different job. I assure you that I won powerball I would find the use for the money but I would not leave my job. Don't you have colleagues you like? Friends of yours who would hang out with you on their free time but work during the day like you?
If you had nothing to do all day, you'd get bored soon enough. Also, don't get me started on what kind of women you would find yourself chasing (as an non-working and bored millionaire). Could be fun, but not in the long run.
Gaaah, why must people say wrong things on Slashdot? I don't think the government is worried about the basement uprisings that are refering to.
The soldiers are being brought back from Iraq (the only real withdrawal I am aware of) because Bush signed an agreement to bring them back by the end of 2011. Also, Obama had negotiated to keep more soldiers in Iraq, but couldn't get unqualified immunity for them from the Iraqi government. You can read a well written article by Glenn Greenwald here if you wish to know more.
You may think this scheme was designed solely to drive you nuts, but there are legitimate reasons for this
First, sales taxes are changed by individual states in US, so the rate can vary from 0% (NH and some others) to 10%+. Also, the city may charge additional sales taxes on top of the state tax. So trying to even out the price would mean that each item will have at least 20 or 30 different prices, state to state, city to city.
Second, related to the previous point, hiding the tax in the total is considered bad form by some, because that creates an opportunity to raise taxes without most people noticing (as you don't know the tax rate with EU system). Now, in EU the VAT is shared, so that's a lesser issue. But if you live in state X in US, you would have to be proactive to even know that your particular state (or even city) decided to increase their tax rate.
Why? I find it amusing to read the debates regarding who the hell Tom is and how he fits into the power structure hierarchy of various beings defined in the Tolkien universe. Certainly, that should not be overdone, but one exception makes things more interesting!
Oh, my, how did that get rated +5 insightful? With all due respect, even if your anecdote was not about one vaguely described example, it is still completely pointless and irrelevant
Since that was someone you knew in high school, you probably weren't born when he was under 45. Sadly, there is an excellent chance that he was even more brilliant when he was 30 or 40. The decline is, after all, a relative thing.
Nothing happened to GoDaddy. They lost some customers, but half of that was due to them being a crappy company. Also, many people are under the mistaken impression that GoDaddy withdrew support (or opposed) SOPA. Neither of those things happened - they just toned down their support to control PR. They are still for SOPA.
Imagine what happens when companies like 1800contacts, Ford, Adidas
There is less of a direct channel there. I haven't bought anything from 1800contacts or Ford or Adidas in a while. Also, for Ford and Adidas at least, you buy from a retail intermediary. I am sure if I stopped by a Ford dealership to tell them that I boycott Ford purchases, they would call the headquarters immediately!
I too find it sad that so many people go in as sheep. There is no way these scans are a good thing for your health.
I got a pat down without any junk-grabbing and I was on my way in about 30 seconds.
You don't have enough data, my friend. While I do find the pat downs reasonably professional (just pointless), I do have some other data points for you:
Once, a TSA employer tried to explain to me how media portrays them unfairly and how these are "new" safer machines.
Even better, once I spent about 5-7 minutes waiting for a same-gender agent to come over and give me a pat down. I was standing at the entrance, waiting, while my brand new expensive laptop was sitting on the other side OUT OF MY BAG and in a SEPARATE BIN at the end of the baggage x-ray belt. I wonder if these accidental delays are a lesson for opt-outs? Who would be responsible if someone took it? I couldn't see my laptop from where I had to stand.