I don't think it's so much a distinction between profit sites and not-for-profit sites, I think it's more the case of generally respecting your users, something both types of sites should do. Cases like this can motivate the profit-making ones to the consider the loss of revenue if they don't.
Sites like AFF tend to think in terms of "our content is protected by copyright, but your content is ours". These guys will do anything they want with the stuff posted to their site, based on that nice wordy bit of legalize they present to you when you sign up. Nobody should be agreeing to that, but the site is going beyond reasonable use anyway.
AFF has lots of affiliate sites. You could post your profile on "Adult Friend Finder", delete your account when the month runs out (because you only signed up when you came home drunk, horny, and alone one night), then find a couple of months later in a Google search that your profile is a front-page advertisement on "Bukake and WaterWorks Finder". And you agreed to allow it. How's that for beyond reasonable?
Where this could become troubling for the industry is the need to verify beyond a doubt that every user is really who they say they are before using the contents of their profiles in advertising. It seems while they wouldn't be liable for defamation as a result of the fake profile, they can still get in trouble for using a person's likeness in their advertising if it came from a bogus profile. Well, it becomes troubling for some of the industry, namely those cheapskates that profit from taking content that their users provided for free and using it to generate profit.
Often, (like FF and AFF), the users are actually paying a fee to the site, and posting content. Buried in the EULA is a provision that basically requires the users to provide a royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license to their content for any use whatsoever (at least they don't ask for an exclusive license, although some might try go that far, even after Geocities got slapped for it).
Nearly every site that allows users to post their own content or creations have some sort of EULA or acceptable use provisions, but the decent ones allow you to keep control and ownership, and only require you to allow them to move the content around in the normal course of providing services. If they want a artsy model for their banner ads, they pay somebody for that, they don't just mine their users' content and grab whatever they want.
It's that kind of practice that's in danger, and it should be. I can see Publisher's Clearing House asking for such a release if they hand you $10,000,000. But asking you to pay for a service and then using your content (even you "likeness") to generate even more revenue is trying to have it both ways, and should end.
Yeah, I'm in a bad mood. So sue me. You can sue people in the US for being in a bad mood? Of course! Our right to sue suffers no restrictions or abridgments. One of the few absolute rights still in full force!
Wouldn't that make your mood worse when you're sued? Yes, but that doesn't excuse you from a lawsuit any more than being broke does (although it may deter anyone from *wanting* to sue). Being sued when you're broke just makes you... more broke! Just too bad for the victim of the lawsuit, there, because you can't be held liable for the effects of your lawsuit on the defendant.
Also, what kind of conviction can you expect? Sentenced to be in a good mood for 5 years (2 years probation when you show good behavior)? Whoa! Slow down, there, cowboy. You don't get to impose criminal penalties in a lawsuit. All you get is sanctions in kind, and/or money. So, you find somebody in a bad mood - "Hey, let me cheer you up!". "No! I want to stay in a bad mood."
"Fine! I'm suing."
"Yes, judge, I just wanted to cheer him up."
"You are ordered to be cheered up by the plaintiff - or pay him 10 billion dollars!"
Bush has literally and provable gotten away with mass murder.
I think it would be easier to argue that about Johnson (or even Lincoln). Almost 60,000 died in Vietnam, all predicated on an attack in the Tonkin Gulf that is now believed to have never happened at all.
Well we were talking about violating your rights. Yes, Nixon was spying on the other party, but so was Clinton. They had FBI files of all their political opponents sitting in a room in the white house. Vince Foster was one of many that died under mysterious circumstances, and [someone] removed files from his office after he was dead. There are many other accusations, as well as lying under oath (regardless of the reasons for it). He also presided over the killing of women and children in Waco, and enacted numerous executive orders (that is, without congressional approval) that were clear violations of the Constitution. The point I was making was that he got away with all that - no resignation or successful impeachment.
FDR destroyed more citizens rights than any other president. For one thing, he created the most powerful armed bureaucracy in the history of the world (the IRS). The "new deal" legislation took a lot of power from the states, and the people. He interred Japanese immigrants in concentration camps during WWII, as well as creating an "Office of Censorship" to control speech during the war. When the court started telling him that his programs violated the constitution, he packed the court with supporters to ensure his legislation was upheld. He probably contributed more to destroying the principles of the Constitution than any other president.
Far from being held accountable for violating his oath and his trust under the Constitution, he was hailed as a hero.
I figured that I'd start where I might have more effect. I helped campaign for a local city council candidate. A week or two after she took office she traded the area I was in to another councilman in exchange for a "more secure" area.
Wow. Just wow. I'm sure this is illegal, but of course that's not going to stop them from doing it. There's enough case law regarding redistricting to point out that you can't allow an official to take over representation for a constituency that voted for someone else. Which is why redistricting decisions always take affect on the next election.
Unfortunately you have to either have a lot of money or a lot of free time to make a court challenge like that. And of course they will use your (tax) money to defend themselves.
Well, judging from the posts (and mods) on/., there seems to be a good proportion of engineers who will support pretty much any anti-US movement. The recruiters just need to lurk here for a while, then start emailing a few with "Hey, are you just going to complain about the warmongering imperialist US government, or do you really want to *do* something about it?"
launching an invasion without the consent of Congress
blockading Southern ports before formally declaring war
unilaterally suspending the writ of habeas corpus and arresting and imprisoning thousands of Northern citizens without a warrant
censoring telegraph communications
confiscating private property, including firearms
He also effectively gutted the 9th and 10th amendment, but not recognizing state's rights, and not recognizing any rights of citizens that had been effectively considered theirs until his presidency.
and effectively gutting the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Yeah, and it'll stay that way until someone figures out how to fix the lobbying problem. As long as the corporations decide who gets the bribage, they'll pick the people who can make them the most money and avoid the people who have a spine.
Fixed that for you. Sorry, but that's not actually true. Corporations don't spend money lobbying the party leaders to select a candidate they like - instead they just throw money and whatever candidate is likely to win in an effort to have their opinions heard (and the opportunity to write legislation).
Do you even know how your local party selects candidates? Have you been to the committee meetings where potential candidates are discussed? Have you joined the party or signed up to be a delegate, and attend the conventions where the party decides who they will support for an election?
If not, they *you* are not doing anything to fix the problem.
If you are really convinced that the US purposefully incited the attack and withheld information to ensure that the local commanders were surprised, you might want to check out "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange. It covers the material you talk about, but with an objective view of the facts obtained from what seems an exhaustive research effort.
I'm convinced from the read that there was no "conspiracy" to ensure the US was drawn into the war. I do think that was an inevitable eventually regardless of the attack.
I'm not very familiar with the Golf of Tonkin incident - I have heard before that it was considered a fake that Johnson either embellished or took advantage of for political gain. It wouldn't surprise me.
I still think it's a stretch to claim that the "US has a long track record of such behavior", which I take to mean inciting wars for imperialist or other aims. I can only think of 3 in the last 150 years (if you count Tonkin):
Border skirmishes leading to the Mexican-American war
Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to Vietnam
9/11 attacks as an excuse for the invasion of Iraq
Bullshit. Every time someone says "the democrats and the republicans are the same" I think back to 2000 when I said something similar.. "Bush or Gore... eh it doesn't really matter, both parties are the same". And boy I don't think I've ever been so wrong about something in all my life.
Gore's speech on 9/12/2001:
Planes are bad, mmkay? Planes cause global warming and destroy buildings, mmkay? We need to walk more, mmkay? And use one of my personal inventions - the Internet! - instead of those face-to-face meetings so much. I'm cereal!
The democrats will violate your rights just as quick as the Republicans.
This may be true but you have to admit the Republicans are a lot better at it.
Don't be so sure. If compare, say, Nixon vs. Clinton, or Bush vs. FDR, you would have to conclude that at least Democrats are better at getting away with it.
Well, he's right - writing good legislation really is hard, especially since most of the time they are relying on "industry consultants" to help them, and they are inevitably motivated by their own agendas.
Part of the problem is the vast library of existing legislation that's been around since AT&T was first handed a monopoly on right-of-way for telegraph wires. The first step is to identify and organize that mess, including everything that the FCC controls, spectrum, rights-of-way, broadcaster and FTC regulations, etc., etc. Repeal it all. Then start over from the basis of a nationwide "communications infrastructure policy". A good start would be a basic layered network topology, agnostic to content. Media, data link, network.
Now you've got a starting framework for a policy - but lots of players with huge investments in all the stuff you're planning to create a new policy for.
Yea, I'd say "hard" is an understatement. No wonder: (from the article)
By the end of the debate, Crawford was the only member of the panel still insisting on an activist Congress to address issues such as network neutrality and network management. I can understand why the rest would have very little confidence that Congress can really effectively do the work required.
So I guess you're ignoring my well-laid out explanation of why IP isn't particularly distinct from, and could feasibly be analogous to, physical property, and providing us with your own self-serving analogy.
It's not *my* analogy, as I said, it's Thomas Jefferson's, and one that he used when debating the copyrights and patents provisions of the US Constitution. The provisions that have been perverted to ridiculous proportions to support the greed of corporations that became rich by controlling the means of production that they can no longer control.
I wasn't ignoring your explanation - I was trying to point out why it doesn't make sense. Property is tangible. "IP" is a made-up term that the elite try to use to confuse property with government-sanctioned monopolies on reproduction of certain goods. They will never be the same, viewed the same, or treated the same, no matter how many times you try to confuse the issue by using the word "property" to describe these concepts.
If you do make that nigh value-less flame available to the public, you lose whatever profitability you may have been promised when you made it. So yes, you are deprived of value, just like regular stealing. It works better if you take a multimillion dollar movie instead of a flame, because multimillion dollar movies don't pay for themselves.
Not really, because it doesn't matter what was spent to make something, that doesn't give it value. You're never "promised" profitability - it's always a risk. You sound like you think because you put effort into something you should be able to demand something from society. It only has value based on the demand that the market will bear. There are plenty of multimillion dollar movies made that end up worth less than the studios paid for them. So even though they can spend the money, then make copies for $0.25 each, they still wasted their money because they can't find 20 million people that will pay $1 for the movie.
You can't prevent it from being copied informally like that, and it simply isn't worth it (for copyright holders or their customers) to enforce that high on the hyperbola.
But where do you draw the line, then? Think of a possible future where computing power and storage is so advanced that people can upload themselves into an artificial brain and live on after they die. Now they know lots of songs, and they "hear" songs and "see" movies right over the network. What's the difference? Where is the economic mechanism to prevent the sharing among sentient entities?
An idea is not covered by any form of IP. Patents can prevent you from marketing a product using certain ideas (certainly not from conveying or expressing that idea), which someone else has worked hard to come up with and refine (in theory). Art is far more specific.
Tell that to the patent trolls. Again, where is the line? And how do you enforce these laws? Death of the author plus 70 years? How long do we hold up progress so that corporations can reap profits?
Basically, physical property is already a theoretical concept independent from tangible objects. You may own that kilogram of potatoes, but there is nothing physical in your ownership. If someone steals your potatoes, they don't instantly own them; you still do (you just no longer have possession of them). Just because it's easy to take property doesn't mean that we should align ownership with possession. That would destroy the point of property and negate the vast positives of defining property. It would also be cheaper in terms of enforcement and chances for civil system abuses (ala RIAA lawsuits) to ignore property, but we have decided that those costs are vastly outweighed by the benefits. If as many people were to commit physical theft as people currently commit copyright infringement, I would bet my bottom dollar there would be moves to abolish physical property to be in synch with the fickle nature of possession.
IP is relatively new, and difficult to enforce. Therefore it is not currently as entrenched in our morality, and a community of infringers has been allowed to form in the absence of adequate enforcement. IP could reflect society if society started to support IP law, like we did with the concept of property, and like physical property, we could benefit from it's addition to property law. The current abnormally high rate of abuse once it's refined and enforced properly, like physical property is. To quote the old propaganda "You wouldn't steal a car..." No, no, and NO! IP (Imaginary Property) is *nothing* like tangible property. It's not property at all, any more than (as Thomas Jefferson analogized) a the flame on your candle is property. Share your flame with me, and we are both enriched and neither of us are deprived.
If you don't make the payments on your IP, it cannot be repossessed. If I have a good memory, I can keep your IP in my head - will you have the courts compel brain surgery against infringers to recover the stolen property? How much is your IP worth? If you make 1 million copies of your $0.99 song, do we tax your IP at a high rate, because you are now worth almost a million dollars?
On the other hand, what about real, tangible property? Can we treat it similar to IP? If it's been 70 years after the death of the builder, can everyone come live in that house? Once that sack of potatoes is in the public domain, can we make potatoes au gratin, even though the original owner made mashed potatoes?
I'm really disgusted with the ludicrous idea that IP should be treated the same as tangible property. It's not the same, and can never be treated the same. You speak of some crazy IP law as something that should be "entrenched in our morality". As long as people have independent thought, that is impossible, because when sharing an idea becomes morally repugnant, we will no longer be human.
I wouldn't steal a car, but if I could give a car to someone that didn't have one simply by pulling it out of my ass at no cost to me, that seems like a really "moral" thing to do. Telling me it's wrong because [Big Corporation] should get something because *I* made a copy of a car just doesn't *feel* right.
Wait - you mean I can't just add a compiler switch and get parallel processor support? Dammit! This sounds hard! Damn you Technical Progress - Damn you!
Well what you are talking about, there, is prior restraint. You're saying that it's alright to deny someone their rights until they follow some process or other, and pay some arbitrary fee. That's just not justifyable in any sense, when you want to have a free society. You might as well pass some laws that say no one is allowed to print a newspaper or hand out flyers until they get a speech permit and obtain a speech license. After all, they may say something that is harmful or incites violence, or is seditious or libelous.
The states do have their own soverign rights. Many of them fought against changing driking laws to 21, many against manditory seat belt laws, many against multiple speed limit changes. Fact is, all the federal government has to do is wave federal highway money in front of them (or threaten to take it away) and the states will bend and take it in the ass. They have over and over and over again...
Sad, isn't it? It's really all about money. States that decide they get more highway funds than it will cost them to implement Real ID will implement it, while states that get small amounts of highway funds will oppose it.
Facts:
- The Real-ID system will be at least as secure (if not more) than the best existing state ID system in place currently. Sure, it will be a big target, but it will also be closely guarded by top security people since it's such a public issue. Access will be restricted to public sector netowrks, not open to the public or common hacking attacks, just like the ATM network and existing police and DMV systems. It will be monitored constantly. Do you think South Carolina has a top notch FBI security team monitoring access to THEIR systems? I can tell you as someone who knows a few former programmers at the for SC state who wrote that system, NO IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT! there have even been breakins at DMV offices where PC, printer, and blank IDs have been stolen since the system requires no direct connection to a secure validation network in order to print IDs.
You're kidding, right? First of all, it will still be the state DMV's that are running and controlling the system, it will just be "connected" to a nationalized database. Sure, there will be more, and more higher-paid *government* security folks, but there will also be a lot more people with access, and less centralized control over who they are.
- Currently, all you have to do if you loose your license in one state is move to another and apply for a licesne there. Too many DUI's? just move and reset. Under Federally issued ID, this will not be possible, and states can protect themselves from repeat bad drivers (driving is a privelidge, not a right, and if you abuse it, we have the right to take it away and make sure you can't get it back, even if you move). This will lower insurance costs across the board.
This is just a total fiction. If you get so much as a speeding ticket in one (of many) states, it will follow you to whatever DMV you next register with (in most places). Currently, this is accomplished mostly by states joining cooperative agreements. The only thing nationalizing will do is that they will track you down *faster* than they do now, but they do it now. Try having your license suspended in one state and going to another to get one. You won't be able to do it except in some very rare circumstances. Not worth the cost and loss of privacy, IMHO.
- Few people in security (professional residential, even bartenders) can be expected to know how to spot fake IDs from every state (There are over 200 legal forms of ID circulating in america). With a single secure ID, we don't have to even look for fake info, we can swipe it, compare a computer screen to information on the ID, and compare the picture to the person, even use a biometric scan as further confirmation. RFID may not be secure, and it may only take a few days for someone to crack the chip in the ID and distribute hardware and software to edit it, but cracking the text printed on the ID will be much tougher. The state of CT has one of the hardest to forge IDs I've ever seen, and I've not seen them all. If REAL-ID takes even a handfull of their tricks, you won't see a lot of these faked (especially if it becomes a federal crime to do so, not a local misdemeanor!)
So you expect every bar and restaurant to install biometric iris scanners just to check everybody's ID? It will all be cracked eventually, and changing the
I don't know what you're getting at, here. Are you saying that since he doesn't want to be hand over his rights to the MVD that he can't seek help from law enforcement when his property is stolen?
I say kudos to the guy for standing up for what he believes in. I wouldn't be brave enough to do it myself (nor the time to deal with all the legal research and filings). I support his efforts.
'Time claims that "nobody cares" about the Government's increased spying powers and that "polling consistently supports that conclusion." They don't cite a single poll because that assertion is blatantly false. Just this weekend, a new poll released by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University proves that exactly the opposite is true. That poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is "very secretive" has doubled in the last two years alone (to 44%)'"
I have no idea what the truth is on this matter, but the fact that "nobody cares" is not refuted by "the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is 'very secretive' has doubled... to 44%." Simply put, it's entirely possible more people believe the government is more secretive--but they simply don't care.
It's not in any way shocking to learn that people are apathetic. If you ask them whether they want a secretive government, most people will say no. But if you use an objective metric it's very easy to conclude that those same people really don't care that strongly one way or the other.
Way to point out a strawman argument by creating another tangential strawman.
You're right about this: How secretive the government is perceived to be is not related to how people feel about that secrecy. However, neither has anything to do with who cares about domestic spying. Your post discusses basically 3 different issues:
Government bureaucracies spying on citizens and others inside the US
How secretive the government is about its activities (including domestic spying)
Apathy of the American people (regarding government secrecy and domestic spying)
I'm pretty much in the camp "Don't care if they are spying", but only because I think anything they happen across that I may have said on the phone or email or whatever falls squarely into the "so what" category.
Government secrecy, however, is quite another issue. Transparency of government activity is vital to a free society. One of the basic tenets of the Constitution of the US is that the powers of the Federal government should be limited, and those powers flow from the people. Too much secrecy runs counter to that idea.
So, sure, go ahead and "spy" on me all you want - so long as I'm able to get more information about what my government is doing than they are able to obtain about me, everything will be fine. Really, it's the government secrecy that people *should* be most concerned about.
...you people manage to debate for WEEKS and write THOUSANDS of webpages, newspaper-articles, BLOG-entries and whatnot on the topic of showing a single naked female breast on TV for perhaps 5 seconds.
You missed the point. For years the Super Bowl halftime show had degenerated into the most banal crap-fest that even the most jaded pop-marketer would cringe at suggesting. It had gone on long enough. So when that happened it was the perfect excuse to bring up the hue and cry about how bad the Super Bowl half-time shows really were.
As a result, the NFL decided the only "safe" course was to book more traditional acts. So instead of trendy cardboard acts like Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, subsequent Super Bowl half-times have included Paul McCartney, Prince, and Tom Petty.
I think that is a vast improvement, and well worth all the press to point out what morons the Super Bowl promoters were.
Slashdot Mirror
Sites like AFF tend to think in terms of "our content is protected by copyright, but your content is ours". These guys will do anything they want with the stuff posted to their site, based on that nice wordy bit of legalize they present to you when you sign up. Nobody should be agreeing to that, but the site is going beyond reasonable use anyway.
AFF has lots of affiliate sites. You could post your profile on "Adult Friend Finder", delete your account when the month runs out (because you only signed up when you came home drunk, horny, and alone one night), then find a couple of months later in a Google search that your profile is a front-page advertisement on "Bukake and WaterWorks Finder". And you agreed to allow it. How's that for beyond reasonable?
Often, (like FF and AFF), the users are actually paying a fee to the site, and posting content. Buried in the EULA is a provision that basically requires the users to provide a royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license to their content for any use whatsoever (at least they don't ask for an exclusive license, although some might try go that far, even after Geocities got slapped for it).
Nearly every site that allows users to post their own content or creations have some sort of EULA or acceptable use provisions, but the decent ones allow you to keep control and ownership, and only require you to allow them to move the content around in the normal course of providing services. If they want a artsy model for their banner ads, they pay somebody for that, they don't just mine their users' content and grab whatever they want.
It's that kind of practice that's in danger, and it should be. I can see Publisher's Clearing House asking for such a release if they hand you $10,000,000. But asking you to pay for a service and then using your content (even you "likeness") to generate even more revenue is trying to have it both ways, and should end.
Of course! Our right to sue suffers no restrictions or abridgments. One of the few absolute rights still in full force! Wouldn't that make your mood worse when you're sued?
Yes, but that doesn't excuse you from a lawsuit any more than being broke does (although it may deter anyone from *wanting* to sue). Being sued when you're broke just makes you
"No! I want to stay in a bad mood."
"Fine! I'm suing."
"Yes, judge, I just wanted to cheer him up."
"You are ordered to be cheered up by the plaintiff - or pay him 10 billion dollars!"
I think it would be easier to argue that about Johnson (or even Lincoln). Almost 60,000 died in Vietnam, all predicated on an attack in the Tonkin Gulf that is now believed to have never happened at all.
FDR destroyed more citizens rights than any other president. For one thing, he created the most powerful armed bureaucracy in the history of the world (the IRS). The "new deal" legislation took a lot of power from the states, and the people. He interred Japanese immigrants in concentration camps during WWII, as well as creating an "Office of Censorship" to control speech during the war. When the court started telling him that his programs violated the constitution, he packed the court with supporters to ensure his legislation was upheld. He probably contributed more to destroying the principles of the Constitution than any other president.
Far from being held accountable for violating his oath and his trust under the Constitution, he was hailed as a hero.
And that's a troll? Who coined the phase "mods on crack" anyway?
Wow. Just wow. I'm sure this is illegal, but of course that's not going to stop them from doing it. There's enough case law regarding redistricting to point out that you can't allow an official to take over representation for a constituency that voted for someone else. Which is why redistricting decisions always take affect on the next election.
Unfortunately you have to either have a lot of money or a lot of free time to make a court challenge like that. And of course they will use your (tax) money to defend themselves.
Well, judging from the posts (and mods) on /., there seems to be a good proportion of engineers who will support pretty much any anti-US movement. The recruiters just need to lurk here for a while, then start emailing a few with "Hey, are you just going to complain about the warmongering imperialist US government, or do you really want to *do* something about it?"
- launching an invasion without the consent of Congress
- blockading Southern ports before formally declaring war
- unilaterally suspending the writ of habeas corpus and arresting and imprisoning thousands of Northern citizens without a warrant
- censoring telegraph communications
- confiscating private property, including firearms
He also effectively gutted the 9th and 10th amendment, but not recognizing state's rights, and not recognizing any rights of citizens that had been effectively considered theirs until his presidency. and effectively gutting the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.Yeah, and it'll stay that way until someone figures out how to fix the lobbying problem. As long as the corporations decide who gets the bribage, they'll pick the people who can make them the most money and avoid the people who have a spine.
Fixed that for you. Sorry, but that's not actually true. Corporations don't spend money lobbying the party leaders to select a candidate they like - instead they just throw money and whatever candidate is likely to win in an effort to have their opinions heard (and the opportunity to write legislation).
Do you even know how your local party selects candidates? Have you been to the committee meetings where potential candidates are discussed? Have you joined the party or signed up to be a delegate, and attend the conventions where the party decides who they will support for an election?
If not, they *you* are not doing anything to fix the problem.
I'm convinced from the read that there was no "conspiracy" to ensure the US was drawn into the war. I do think that was an inevitable eventually regardless of the attack.
I'm not very familiar with the Golf of Tonkin incident - I have heard before that it was considered a fake that Johnson either embellished or took advantage of for political gain. It wouldn't surprise me.
I still think it's a stretch to claim that the "US has a long track record of such behavior", which I take to mean inciting wars for imperialist or other aims. I can only think of 3 in the last 150 years (if you count Tonkin):
Gore's speech on 9/12/2001:
This may be true but you have to admit the Republicans are a lot better at it.
Don't be so sure. If compare, say, Nixon vs. Clinton, or Bush vs. FDR, you would have to conclude that at least Democrats are better at getting away with it.
Part of the problem is the vast library of existing legislation that's been around since AT&T was first handed a monopoly on right-of-way for telegraph wires. The first step is to identify and organize that mess, including everything that the FCC controls, spectrum, rights-of-way, broadcaster and FTC regulations, etc., etc. Repeal it all. Then start over from the basis of a nationwide "communications infrastructure policy". A good start would be a basic layered network topology, agnostic to content. Media, data link, network.
Now you've got a starting framework for a policy - but lots of players with huge investments in all the stuff you're planning to create a new policy for.
Yea, I'd say "hard" is an understatement. No wonder: (from the article)
By the end of the debate, Crawford was the only member of the panel still insisting on an activist Congress to address issues such as network neutrality and network management. I can understand why the rest would have very little confidence that Congress can really effectively do the work required.It's not *my* analogy, as I said, it's Thomas Jefferson's, and one that he used when debating the copyrights and patents provisions of the US Constitution. The provisions that have been perverted to ridiculous proportions to support the greed of corporations that became rich by controlling the means of production that they can no longer control.
I wasn't ignoring your explanation - I was trying to point out why it doesn't make sense. Property is tangible. "IP" is a made-up term that the elite try to use to confuse property with government-sanctioned monopolies on reproduction of certain goods. They will never be the same, viewed the same, or treated the same, no matter how many times you try to confuse the issue by using the word "property" to describe these concepts.
If you do make that nigh value-less flame available to the public, you lose whatever profitability you may have been promised when you made it. So yes, you are deprived of value, just like regular stealing. It works better if you take a multimillion dollar movie instead of a flame, because multimillion dollar movies don't pay for themselves.Not really, because it doesn't matter what was spent to make something, that doesn't give it value. You're never "promised" profitability - it's always a risk. You sound like you think because you put effort into something you should be able to demand something from society. It only has value based on the demand that the market will bear. There are plenty of multimillion dollar movies made that end up worth less than the studios paid for them. So even though they can spend the money, then make copies for $0.25 each, they still wasted their money because they can't find 20 million people that will pay $1 for the movie.
You can't prevent it from being copied informally like that, and it simply isn't worth it (for copyright holders or their customers) to enforce that high on the hyperbola.But where do you draw the line, then? Think of a possible future where computing power and storage is so advanced that people can upload themselves into an artificial brain and live on after they die. Now they know lots of songs, and they "hear" songs and "see" movies right over the network. What's the difference? Where is the economic mechanism to prevent the sharing among sentient entities?
An idea is not covered by any form of IP. Patents can prevent you from marketing a product using certain ideas (certainly not from conveying or expressing that idea), which someone else has worked hard to come up with and refine (in theory). Art is far more specific.Tell that to the patent trolls. Again, where is the line? And how do you enforce these laws? Death of the author plus 70 years? How long do we hold up progress so that corporations can reap profits?
If you don't make the payments on your IP, it cannot be repossessed. If I have a good memory, I can keep your IP in my head - will you have the courts compel brain surgery against infringers to recover the stolen property? How much is your IP worth? If you make 1 million copies of your $0.99 song, do we tax your IP at a high rate, because you are now worth almost a million dollars?
On the other hand, what about real, tangible property? Can we treat it similar to IP? If it's been 70 years after the death of the builder, can everyone come live in that house? Once that sack of potatoes is in the public domain, can we make potatoes au gratin, even though the original owner made mashed potatoes?
I'm really disgusted with the ludicrous idea that IP should be treated the same as tangible property. It's not the same, and can never be treated the same. You speak of some crazy IP law as something that should be "entrenched in our morality". As long as people have independent thought, that is impossible, because when sharing an idea becomes morally repugnant, we will no longer be human.
I wouldn't steal a car, but if I could give a car to someone that didn't have one simply by pulling it out of my ass at no cost to me, that seems like a really "moral" thing to do. Telling me it's wrong because [Big Corporation] should get something because *I* made a copy of a car just doesn't *feel* right.
Wait - you mean I can't just add a compiler switch and get parallel processor support? Dammit! This sounds hard! Damn you Technical Progress - Damn you!
Well what you are talking about, there, is prior restraint. You're saying that it's alright to deny someone their rights until they follow some process or other, and pay some arbitrary fee. That's just not justifyable in any sense, when you want to have a free society. You might as well pass some laws that say no one is allowed to print a newspaper or hand out flyers until they get a speech permit and obtain a speech license. After all, they may say something that is harmful or incites violence, or is seditious or libelous.
The states do have their own soverign rights. Many of them fought against changing driking laws to 21, many against manditory seat belt laws, many against multiple speed limit changes. Fact is, all the federal government has to do is wave federal highway money in front of them (or threaten to take it away) and the states will bend and take it in the ass. They have over and over and over again...
Sad, isn't it? It's really all about money. States that decide they get more highway funds than it will cost them to implement Real ID will implement it, while states that get small amounts of highway funds will oppose it.
Facts:
- The Real-ID system will be at least as secure (if not more) than the best existing state ID system in place currently. Sure, it will be a big target, but it will also be closely guarded by top security people since it's such a public issue. Access will be restricted to public sector netowrks, not open to the public or common hacking attacks, just like the ATM network and existing police and DMV systems. It will be monitored constantly. Do you think South Carolina has a top notch FBI security team monitoring access to THEIR systems? I can tell you as someone who knows a few former programmers at the for SC state who wrote that system, NO IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT! there have even been breakins at DMV offices where PC, printer, and blank IDs have been stolen since the system requires no direct connection to a secure validation network in order to print IDs.
You're kidding, right? First of all, it will still be the state DMV's that are running and controlling the system, it will just be "connected" to a nationalized database. Sure, there will be more, and more higher-paid *government* security folks, but there will also be a lot more people with access, and less centralized control over who they are.
- Currently, all you have to do if you loose your license in one state is move to another and apply for a licesne there. Too many DUI's? just move and reset. Under Federally issued ID, this will not be possible, and states can protect themselves from repeat bad drivers (driving is a privelidge, not a right, and if you abuse it, we have the right to take it away and make sure you can't get it back, even if you move). This will lower insurance costs across the board.
This is just a total fiction. If you get so much as a speeding ticket in one (of many) states, it will follow you to whatever DMV you next register with (in most places). Currently, this is accomplished mostly by states joining cooperative agreements. The only thing nationalizing will do is that they will track you down *faster* than they do now, but they do it now. Try having your license suspended in one state and going to another to get one. You won't be able to do it except in some very rare circumstances. Not worth the cost and loss of privacy, IMHO.
- Few people in security (professional residential, even bartenders) can be expected to know how to spot fake IDs from every state (There are over 200 legal forms of ID circulating in america). With a single secure ID, we don't have to even look for fake info, we can swipe it, compare a computer screen to information on the ID, and compare the picture to the person, even use a biometric scan as further confirmation. RFID may not be secure, and it may only take a few days for someone to crack the chip in the ID and distribute hardware and software to edit it, but cracking the text printed on the ID will be much tougher. The state of CT has one of the hardest to forge IDs I've ever seen, and I've not seen them all. If REAL-ID takes even a handfull of their tricks, you won't see a lot of these faked (especially if it becomes a federal crime to do so, not a local misdemeanor!)
So you expect every bar and restaurant to install biometric iris scanners just to check everybody's ID? It will all be cracked eventually, and changing the
I say kudos to the guy for standing up for what he believes in. I wouldn't be brave enough to do it myself (nor the time to deal with all the legal research and filings). I support his efforts.
Excellent article. My faith in the scientific community is restored.
Interesting. And here I thought "Windows Defender" was a software tool from Microsoft.
I have no idea what the truth is on this matter, but the fact that "nobody cares" is not refuted by "the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is 'very secretive' has doubled... to 44%." Simply put, it's entirely possible more people believe the government is more secretive--but they simply don't care.
It's not in any way shocking to learn that people are apathetic. If you ask them whether they want a secretive government, most people will say no. But if you use an objective metric it's very easy to conclude that those same people really don't care that strongly one way or the other.
Way to point out a strawman argument by creating another tangential strawman.You're right about this: How secretive the government is perceived to be is not related to how people feel about that secrecy. However, neither has anything to do with who cares about domestic spying. Your post discusses basically 3 different issues:
- Government bureaucracies spying on citizens and others inside the US
- How secretive the government is about its activities (including domestic spying)
- Apathy of the American people (regarding government secrecy and domestic spying)
I'm pretty much in the camp "Don't care if they are spying", but only because I think anything they happen across that I may have said on the phone or email or whatever falls squarely into the "so what" category.Government secrecy, however, is quite another issue. Transparency of government activity is vital to a free society. One of the basic tenets of the Constitution of the US is that the powers of the Federal government should be limited, and those powers flow from the people. Too much secrecy runs counter to that idea.
So, sure, go ahead and "spy" on me all you want - so long as I'm able to get more information about what my government is doing than they are able to obtain about me, everything will be fine. Really, it's the government secrecy that people *should* be most concerned about.
...you people manage to debate for WEEKS and write THOUSANDS of webpages, newspaper-articles, BLOG-entries and whatnot on the topic of showing a single naked female breast on TV for perhaps 5 seconds.You missed the point. For years the Super Bowl halftime show had degenerated into the most banal crap-fest that even the most jaded pop-marketer would cringe at suggesting. It had gone on long enough. So when that happened it was the perfect excuse to bring up the hue and cry about how bad the Super Bowl half-time shows really were.
As a result, the NFL decided the only "safe" course was to book more traditional acts. So instead of trendy cardboard acts like Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, subsequent Super Bowl half-times have included Paul McCartney, Prince, and Tom Petty.
I think that is a vast improvement, and well worth all the press to point out what morons the Super Bowl promoters were.
Hmmm... I guess sometimes it *seems* that way.