Why aren't you entitled to it? Much of it should be public domain. Moreover, copyright rights aren't property rights. Steal my phone from me and I don't have a phone. Copy something I wrote and I'm not affected.
Bread for a starving family is very different. There's a finite supply of bread and making another loaf consumes resources. Copying files can be done without limit, and it's basically free.
While I agree that services like Netflix are probably making a dent, piracy is NEVER going to go away.
Economically, it becomes irrelevant. If somebody's not going to pay money for your product, you don't lose money if that person pirates it. If somebody's willing to be a customer rather than a pirate, charging a reasonable fee in a convenient way for a legitimate copy will attract that person.
It's a bad analogy. If you take cash from me, I suddenly don't have the cash any more, nor any way to replace it (other than earning more). If you copy my Nanowrimo folders on DropBox, I haven't lost a thing. Since they aren't of publishable quality, I'm not even losing potential profits.
Suppose that something I write is actually of publishable quality, and I start making money on it. Why the hell should I have to go to Washington DC every year to keep a relatively small income stream coming? You're saying that copyright doesn't exist for the little guy.
In the US, in particular, copyright exists as an incentive for people to create things. The idea is that someone or some company will create something because of the money they can make for X years. Therefore, a copyright over X years is against the intention of the Constitution. I propose that nobody does anything specifically because of money they might be able to make 30 years later, and therefore 30 years is a halfway reasonable copyright term.
And it's mostly conservatives who discourage what they see as non-patriotic or anti-Christian comments, and want people to lose their jobs over them. As a liberal who's been on mostly conservative sites, I've noticed that conservatives are sensitive, although they don't admit it. One will make a political comment, and it's normal, but if a liberal replies then the liberal is bringing politics into the group and shouldn't be done. That's a "safe space".
Think of it as insurance. The fact that I've been putting money in my 401(k) doesn't mean I'll get any out on retirement. On the average, those of us with 401(k)s are almost certainly going to seriously benefit from them, but it's not a lock. The money that went into my pension fund is guaranteed to have a certain return as long as I live.
On the average, it's not worth buying insurance, since insurance companies have to make a profit on what they bring in and invest vs. what they pay out. That doesn't stop people from buying it with voluntary and informed decisions.
The pensions my wife and I will be getting were paid for as part of our employment agreement. Money was removed from our paychecks and put into the pension system. In many cases, it's an issue of paying money to the employee later, during retirement, instead of higher pay at the time of employment.
The value of my 401(k) is not entirely connected to my contributions, either. It's primarily stocks, and those vary.
Having both is far superior. My wife and I will be pulling in about $5K/month on work-related pensions (mostly my wife, actually), regardless of our fairly considerable savings.
The US has by far the most expensive health care system in the world. That's easy to measure.
The US doesn't have the best health in the world. The standard public health statistics show that.
There's a discrepancy there, and it needs to be explained. Citing possibly relevant papers isn't an explanation, although it can be a useful part of an explanation.
People need to exercise responsibility; this has been true for millennia.
I really doubt there's any change in responsibility here, so much as what's available and what's pushed. Pretty much everyone has a breaking point on most or all things, and modern advertisers and food producers are targeting weaknesses and trying to break people's diets.
This is arguably a psychological attack intending to hurt us physically (if only as a side effect), and that's the sort of thing the government should protect us against.
First, for rough statistical purposes, transgender people don't exist. There's too few of them to make a difference to in two significant digits. Second, the ones in the armed forces are probably not fatties.
Anecdotally, I have been getting more than my dollars' worth out of health care insurance lately, for things that are nowhere near killing me or even slowing me down too much.
It's the price of being the dominant superpower. There's lots of people who still have it in for the Brits, since we only took over from them in the 1940s.
In the US, I qualify for full Social Security benefits at 66, and people born six years after me qualify at 67. However, the age discrimination laws cover discrimination against people from 40 to 65, so it's entirely legal for my employer to say "You're too old - so you're out of here" on my 65th birthday, a year before I get full benefits. (This isn't a problem for me personally, but it turns out that very few people have stashed away as much money as my wife and I.)
Yeah, ping time sucks with an SUV, but you have to admit the bandwidth is way up there. I much prefer downloading software the modern way than the old way (which was direct delivery of a physical object).
I'm saying that "better than most of the rest of the world" is an insufficient goal for the US. You hit a bit of a sore spot for me, and if I overreacted I apologize.
It's much more John Stuart Mill than Karl Marx, I assure you, and John Stuart Mill wrote in the Nineteenth Century, so I'm not being post-modernist (unless you have an odd definition of modern). It isn't really moral relativism either, since that implies that there is no objective answer (as opposed to whether the objective answer is easy to find, or even determinable with what we know now). I do reject arbitrary rules of morality, like many other people who think about ethics, so if you want me to accept a rule you'll have to show me how it's overall good for people.
So, in fact, your description of my ethical system is completely incorrect. If you want to debate ethical theory, I'm ready to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Why aren't you entitled to it? Much of it should be public domain. Moreover, copyright rights aren't property rights. Steal my phone from me and I don't have a phone. Copy something I wrote and I'm not affected.
Bread for a starving family is very different. There's a finite supply of bread and making another loaf consumes resources. Copying files can be done without limit, and it's basically free.
What can Netflix do about this? How do we tell Disney we won't bother?
Economically, it becomes irrelevant. If somebody's not going to pay money for your product, you don't lose money if that person pirates it. If somebody's willing to be a customer rather than a pirate, charging a reasonable fee in a convenient way for a legitimate copy will attract that person.
It's a bad analogy. If you take cash from me, I suddenly don't have the cash any more, nor any way to replace it (other than earning more). If you copy my Nanowrimo folders on DropBox, I haven't lost a thing. Since they aren't of publishable quality, I'm not even losing potential profits.
Suppose that something I write is actually of publishable quality, and I start making money on it. Why the hell should I have to go to Washington DC every year to keep a relatively small income stream coming? You're saying that copyright doesn't exist for the little guy.
In the US, in particular, copyright exists as an incentive for people to create things. The idea is that someone or some company will create something because of the money they can make for X years. Therefore, a copyright over X years is against the intention of the Constitution. I propose that nobody does anything specifically because of money they might be able to make 30 years later, and therefore 30 years is a halfway reasonable copyright term.
Why the surprise? It's a clear case of "I've got mine, Jack, to hell with anyone else who wants to make it good."
And it's mostly conservatives who discourage what they see as non-patriotic or anti-Christian comments, and want people to lose their jobs over them. As a liberal who's been on mostly conservative sites, I've noticed that conservatives are sensitive, although they don't admit it. One will make a political comment, and it's normal, but if a liberal replies then the liberal is bringing politics into the group and shouldn't be done. That's a "safe space".
Actually, businesses need educated healthy employees more now than they used to. So many of the less skilled jobs are simply going away.
Think of it as insurance. The fact that I've been putting money in my 401(k) doesn't mean I'll get any out on retirement. On the average, those of us with 401(k)s are almost certainly going to seriously benefit from them, but it's not a lock. The money that went into my pension fund is guaranteed to have a certain return as long as I live.
On the average, it's not worth buying insurance, since insurance companies have to make a profit on what they bring in and invest vs. what they pay out. That doesn't stop people from buying it with voluntary and informed decisions.
The pensions my wife and I will be getting were paid for as part of our employment agreement. Money was removed from our paychecks and put into the pension system. In many cases, it's an issue of paying money to the employee later, during retirement, instead of higher pay at the time of employment.
The value of my 401(k) is not entirely connected to my contributions, either. It's primarily stocks, and those vary.
Having both is far superior. My wife and I will be pulling in about $5K/month on work-related pensions (mostly my wife, actually), regardless of our fairly considerable savings.
The US has by far the most expensive health care system in the world. That's easy to measure.
The US doesn't have the best health in the world. The standard public health statistics show that.
There's a discrepancy there, and it needs to be explained. Citing possibly relevant papers isn't an explanation, although it can be a useful part of an explanation.
I really doubt there's any change in responsibility here, so much as what's available and what's pushed. Pretty much everyone has a breaking point on most or all things, and modern advertisers and food producers are targeting weaknesses and trying to break people's diets.
This is arguably a psychological attack intending to hurt us physically (if only as a side effect), and that's the sort of thing the government should protect us against.
Quite a few years ago, McDonald's introduced a fairly healthy meal, then dropped it some time later because nobody was buying it.
First, for rough statistical purposes, transgender people don't exist. There's too few of them to make a difference to in two significant digits. Second, the ones in the armed forces are probably not fatties.
Anecdotally, I have been getting more than my dollars' worth out of health care insurance lately, for things that are nowhere near killing me or even slowing me down too much.
I lost all trust in GWB in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, personally.
It's the price of being the dominant superpower. There's lots of people who still have it in for the Brits, since we only took over from them in the 1940s.
In the US, I qualify for full Social Security benefits at 66, and people born six years after me qualify at 67. However, the age discrimination laws cover discrimination against people from 40 to 65, so it's entirely legal for my employer to say "You're too old - so you're out of here" on my 65th birthday, a year before I get full benefits. (This isn't a problem for me personally, but it turns out that very few people have stashed away as much money as my wife and I.)
There will be some 20-year-old predictions that are way off. Some are pretty well on.
I follow the global temperature and the temperature in my metro area, nothing in between. I know what they've been doing.
Yeah, ping time sucks with an SUV, but you have to admit the bandwidth is way up there. I much prefer downloading software the modern way than the old way (which was direct delivery of a physical object).
I'm saying that "better than most of the rest of the world" is an insufficient goal for the US. You hit a bit of a sore spot for me, and if I overreacted I apologize.
It's much more John Stuart Mill than Karl Marx, I assure you, and John Stuart Mill wrote in the Nineteenth Century, so I'm not being post-modernist (unless you have an odd definition of modern). It isn't really moral relativism either, since that implies that there is no objective answer (as opposed to whether the objective answer is easy to find, or even determinable with what we know now). I do reject arbitrary rules of morality, like many other people who think about ethics, so if you want me to accept a rule you'll have to show me how it's overall good for people.
So, in fact, your description of my ethical system is completely incorrect. If you want to debate ethical theory, I'm ready to do so.