But, seriously, if you use someone's work, then you should be willing to pay for their work. That can take any number of routes, but the emphasis is on 'being fair'. (This implies that work not be overpriced.)
Well... you just left the content cartels out right there. "Fair" really isn't in their vocabulary.
Of course these people then call the "mafiaa" greedy
Ah... excuse me, but they are greedy, to an extent that makes British Petroleum look positively philanthropic. The feeling I get from most Slashdotters is far more balanced than you are trying to portray: getting things for free is irrelevant. Being able to communicate and use the Internet as we see fit is of paramount importance, and keeping the media companies and governments in their place is necessary in order to do that. I'm a software engineer, and I make my living via copyrights and patents as well... yet I recognize that the needs of the copyright industry should not be placed above all else.
Frankly, entertainment is just not that important in the overall scheme of things, in spite of the megalomaniacal mental state that seems to permeate that industry. You may find this hard to believe, but the Internet is actually used for other things than copyright infringement (that's the correct term under U.S. law, you know: "piracy" is reserved for those who commit infringement for profit.) But PIRACY just sounds so much nastier, doesn't it? Evokes images of swashbuckling, one-eyed peg-legged types murdering and raping and pillaging and all that. It's just cartel PR, though.
What I would hope you would do, before commenting upon this subject any further, is research the history of the content industry (all of it, books and print media, music, and motion pictures.) What you will soon discover, if you're sufficiently intellectually honest, are organizations who need to be opposed, at all levels, out of simple self-preservation. This is not about free stuff. This is about having any stuff. Yes, it's that serious.
Keep in mind that the Internet, to the content cartels, is just another annoying technology to be opposed, limited, neutered, and if possible eliminated. Cassette tape, VHS, writeable DVDs and CDs, Digital Audio Tape, you-name-it... they tried to make it illegal. In fact, anything that they perceive as a threat to their hegemony, their iron-fisted control of content distribution, is to be eliminated regardless of cost, and regardless of who gets hurt.
So get it out of your head that this is about free copies. It's not. It never has been. It's about whether the greatest invention in human history will be continue to be used for the good of all... or a few rich sociopaths with all the vision and foresight of a toadstool.
I honestly don't care if you lose all respect for my countrymen. Since I'm a US citizen, that would be Americans, like you.
Sorry... the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that floats around social networks irritates me sometimes, especially when dealing with copyright abuse since it's foreign outfits that are mostly responsible for the likes of the AHRA, Sonny Bonehead Copyright Extension Act, the DMCA, and now SOPA/PIPA. Congress isn't smart enough to come up with this on their own: they need someone else to give them these bad ideas and then pay them for the privilege of turning the things into law.
And then they go vote for the same sociopaths they've always been voting for. As usual, people exactly get the government they deserve.
Sure. Just like they do the world 'round. The human race has been doing that for ten thousand years, and until we figure out that you don't put people in power who actually want to be there (or who, in the worst cases, are fucking insane) it's not going to change.
Personally, I believe that we should come up with a profile of what kind of person would be required to properly serve in the office of Senator, Representative or, for that matter, President. I mean, we do that for every other kind of job, don't we? Why is high political office an exception? Shouldn't we know if a candidate is actually qualified, rather than his just saying he knows what he's doing?
Then we search for those people, and when we find a bunch of them, we let the people vote on which ones we think will best serve the country. Just like being picked for jury duty, which is actually not far from what the Founders wanted Congressmen to be. That is, civic-minded individuals who would serve their term, and then go back to their regular lives and live under the laws they had made.
... and then, if they do a good job, we let them out when their term is up. As of right now, the system selects for people who are good at acquiring the job (e.g., getting elected) and maintaining the position (e.g, getting re-elected.) It does not properly select for individuals who are actually good at the job itself.
Alternatively, we could require that several detailed psychological profiles be taken of every candidate running for the Presidency or Congressional office. Then we post those profiles conveniently online at www.psychoswhackjobsandheadcases.gov for every voter to see in blazing red, white and blue. That might help keep the obvious low-hanging-fruitcakes out of the system anyway.
There are a few people running for President right now whose psychological makeup I would dearly love to know more about.
And you know this means war, right? The US is waging cyber war against the world in the name of corporate profit. We will not be subdued, we will never surrender.
These actions only made the situation worse for you. The Pirate Bay went from being a way to get free stuff to an ideology, a political movement gaining ground fast in Europe and a symbol of hope for those who love freedom and democracy around the world.
Are you truly that naive? Yes, yes I see you are.
This has nothing to do with America. This has to do with several specific large corporations (Sony's media division, Vivendi, BMG, and several other foreign owned corporations) spending a paltry few million dollars on bribes^h^h^h^h^h^hcampaign contributions to members of our Congress. So far as I'm concerned, as soon as you idiots manage to put a leash on the sociopaths running your content cartel, maybe you'll find yourself without any more SOPAs. Believe me, Congress didn't think this up for themselves: this particular bit of corruption and malfeasance in office was bought and paid for by foreign influences. A good chunk of Congress should be up on treason charges for their involvement in this, but that does not excuse Japan and Europe for not reining in the bastard outfits that came over here and started raising hate and discontent. We're sick and tired of BMG, Vivendi, Viacom and the like suing U.S. citizens, filing false DMCA takedown notices, and generally behaving like multibillionare two-year-olds. Tell them to fucking grow up and learn how to make money in the Internet age.
As for you, go back home and fix your own problems, keep your arrogant, self-serving, incredibly backwards corporations out of our government, and we'll happily leave you the fuck alone.
It's a better argument for why we don't need the USA.
Comments like that serve no purpose. Citizens of this country are up in arms about what our government (at the behest of certain large foreign corporations, I might add: Sony and several European media outfits can take most of the heat for SOPA, after all, they paid for it.) wants to do with these stupid laws. If you want us to continue to fight to respect you and the freedoms you currently enjoy on the Internet (whatever your own government permits you in that regard, if anything) you should show a little respect in return.
Speaking of one of those "people" I can say that it isn't so much a matter of not "caring" about SOPA/PIPA, it's more a matter of having not a whole lot we can do about it. Seriously, what is the advice given to US citizens who care? "Contact your congresscritter". Unfortunately, those of us in the Rest Of The World don't get to have one of those. We *could* bitch to our own government about how we disapprove of some not-yet-passed legislation that's being debated by a foreign government, but I'll let you take a guess how much effect that's going to have.
Actually, there's nothing preventing you from sending emails, written letters or phoning our Congresspeople. It's apparent to me (as an American) that Congress still has this U.S.-centric attitude towards the Internet, and I believe that needs to change, quickly. Hearing from a fifty or sixty million thoroughly incensed foreigners might very well be a good first step. Yeah, okay, we started the Internet ball rolling almost forty years ago, but this baby has gone global now. Time for Congress to accept that fact, and stop threatening to corrupt a piece of Internet infrastructure (e.g., the DNS root servers) that the economies of many other nations are now dependent.
Not everyone who is accused is actually convicted.
True, but this is all about PR, about intimidation, about inducing fear, not about redress of any specific grievance. Everyone will remember that Megaupload got raided and their staff arrested. Nobody will remember that they got acquitted (if they do) and in any event, they're out of business for the time being.
By continuing to pirate after SOPA, and helping those in America to the same, to demonstrate that the law is utterly useless at its stated purpose.
Then in five years the MPAA can write SOPA2, which will ban all encryption software and VPNs.
Won't take five years, and I wouldn't be surprised to find they've got a rider ready to be attached to SOPA at the last minute. They have to be careful with that though: there are far too many legitimate, mainstream uses for VPNs and encryption for a general ban to ever be enforced. Banks and large corporations, for example, would go ballistic. Millions of people telecommute using encrypted VPNs: how do you distinguish between legitimate encrypted traffic and that used for (ahem!) nefarious purposes? Do you have the ISP do it? Do you have the government maintain lists of approved VPN destinations? It's not a simple task.
I've written to "my" representatives. Every time I get "thank you for your concerns but... form letter bullshit explaining why my concerns won't have any impact..."
Sure, because they get thousands upon thousands of letters and other communications and no one person could possibly read them all. Are you naive enough to have expected a personal response? The best you can hope for is a form-letter that is usually written to be as inoffensive as possible. However, a well-thought-out letter likely will be read by their staff, and they most certainly do collate that information for decision-making purposes. It's in their best interests to know what their constituents are up in arms about.
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!
I think GoDaddy plans to make money from resale of seized domains. Those are likely to be worth some serious scratch.
I would love to see other countries speak out against the US on this. I wish we could get economic sanctions from passing a law like this. If you aren't American maybe it's at least something to write to your representatives and ask them to release a statement against the US about this, or even seek to take action (such as push to end the lopsided power we wield over the internet). Sure, some Canadian politician writing a complaint to the US might not mean much, but if said complaint is signed by dozens, and similar occurs in many European countries, at the very least the American public might realize SOPA is a big deal.
Well, economic sanctions against superpowers (even ones like us that are on the way out) generally don't work out too well. The problem is that Congress has demonstrated over the past several years an inability to think globally about Internet-related issues. They just seem to be unaware of the fact that, well, hundreds of millions of people in other countries are just as economically and culturally dependent upon the network as we are, and don't appreciate anyone screwing around with it.
We'll have to route around the USA. Make the DNS root be in EU or iceland, and start paying for things in bitcoin, rather than Mastercard or Visa. Actually, it's not so big a deal. It can be done!
Yes, it is a big deal because DNS only works _if everyone uses it._ One of the big fears about DNS (one that I think Congress is not considering because, well, they're fundamentally stupid) is what will happen to the global network when DNS becomes balkanized, with every nation (or blocs of nations) running their own systems. Granted, the Internet couldn't care less about DNS: all it cares about is IP addresses. But the Domain Name System is a vital part of the World Wide Web, and URLs are everywhere, even within embedded systems.
Secondly, there is no single "DNS root". There are, last I was aware, thirteen root servers that are geographically distributed around the world, and hundreds of thousands of secondary domain name servers operated by ISPs and large organizations of one kind or another. Historically, the U.S. government pretty much left the things alone, and that worked out very well for all concerned. The fact that we're going to be sacrificing the trust other countries placed in us when they got on-board the Internet, just to satisfy the greed of an industry worth a paltry five or ten billion dollars a year is just astonishing. The rest of us, the ones who run our 2.4 trillion dollar economy, are more than a little pissed off about this.
To be fair, you can thank several _European_ corporations, the big media conglomerates such as Sony, Vivendi, BMG and others, for spending the millions to buy SOPA, PIPA, and a host of other similar bad laws. So you don't get to dump all of this in our laps, and if our Justice Department hadn't already been subverted by big media (several top spots at the DoJ are currently occupied by ex-RIAA lawyers) several Congresspeople would be under investigation for treason.
In the US (the home of democracy, defender of the free world, etc), corporations can openly bribe their senators to get the laws they want.
That's actually not the worst part of it. Look who's been funding any number of bad copyright-related laws, such as the Audio Home Recording Act, Sonny Bonehead Copyright Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and others in that vein. It's mostly non-U.S. corporations (granted, through local intermediaries such as the MPAA/RIAA), but they follow the orders of their people who fund them. What we have here are foreign-owned entities that are directly influencing American lawmakers and public policy. That ought to be enough to put certain Congresspeople up on treason charges (or something along those lines.)
In Germany, the president is currently under a lot of pressure, and may have to resign, because he got a private credit for his house at too favorable a rate of interest.
I can imagine what would happen in Germany if, say, Ford or General Motors attempted to bribe some of their ministers to get favorable laws passed. There would be prison sentences handed out all around.
The rest sound fake because they are. Mostly large businesses and rich people who fund private associations to commit their sins, so they don't get literally executed when the revolution comes.
Yah... plausible deniability. Like the big studios and record labels and their "industry trade groups" like the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, etc.
A lot of those on the list aren't interested in copyright so much as they are in branding, like the National Confectioners Association and Nike. They couldn't care less about internet piracy - they just want a way to shut down overseas-run websites selling counterfeit products with their logo on.
Perhaps... but an enlightened capitalist realizes that he won't always get what he wants, and shouldn't get everything he wants if the cost to society is too great. Fact is, anyone supporting SOPA for financial gain has demonstrated that they think like the big media companies: do whatever it takes no matter who gets hurt.
That's more than enough to make me look elsewhere for my needs.
Sometimes its unethical to play the game, but as in business, the cheaters usually win. It's a structural thing, because the people who really do want to help the country (instead of themselves) are less likely to cheat and therefore less likely to win. Choose your evil.
It's like I've always said, the system selects for people who are good at getting elected, which has little to do with how they will perform in office. There seems to be an inverse relationship, when you get right down to it.
"Thank you for clearly identifying your ideological slant."
Maybe the GP is just pointing out that republicans are easier to buy?
That may be, but if you look at the history of this, the Democrats have long been the ones who are the most "rightsholder friendly." Consequently, they already had the Democrats in their pocket... acquiring a few Republicans is just icing on the cake.
People complain constantly about the Republicans being under corporate control, but the reality is that the other side of the aisle is just as corporatist: traditionally it was just a different set of industries.
This definitely reeks of a personality cult, in the most disturbing, North Korean sort of way. Nobody has the rights to Dear Leader's image but us, and how dare you produce false idols. At least they didn't keep his body in state on the Apple campus...
I understand that he's been cryogenically stored in a sealed underground chamber in their new headquarters, surrounded by iPhones with his picture on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like sex, I believe in paying for it. (joke)
But, seriously, if you use someone's work, then you should be willing to pay for their work. That can take any number of routes, but the emphasis is on 'being fair'. (This implies that work not be overpriced.)
Well ... you just left the content cartels out right there. "Fair" really isn't in their vocabulary.
Of course these people then call the "mafiaa" greedy
Ah ... excuse me, but they are greedy, to an extent that makes British Petroleum look positively philanthropic. The feeling I get from most Slashdotters is far more balanced than you are trying to portray: getting things for free is irrelevant. Being able to communicate and use the Internet as we see fit is of paramount importance, and keeping the media companies and governments in their place is necessary in order to do that. I'm a software engineer, and I make my living via copyrights and patents as well ... yet I recognize that the needs of the copyright industry should not be placed above all else.
... they tried to make it illegal. In fact, anything that they perceive as a threat to their hegemony, their iron-fisted control of content distribution, is to be eliminated regardless of cost, and regardless of who gets hurt.
... or a few rich sociopaths with all the vision and foresight of a toadstool.
Frankly, entertainment is just not that important in the overall scheme of things, in spite of the megalomaniacal mental state that seems to permeate that industry. You may find this hard to believe, but the Internet is actually used for other things than copyright infringement (that's the correct term under U.S. law, you know: "piracy" is reserved for those who commit infringement for profit.) But PIRACY just sounds so much nastier, doesn't it? Evokes images of swashbuckling, one-eyed peg-legged types murdering and raping and pillaging and all that. It's just cartel PR, though.
What I would hope you would do, before commenting upon this subject any further, is research the history of the content industry (all of it, books and print media, music, and motion pictures.) What you will soon discover, if you're sufficiently intellectually honest, are organizations who need to be opposed, at all levels, out of simple self-preservation. This is not about free stuff. This is about having any stuff. Yes, it's that serious.
Keep in mind that the Internet, to the content cartels, is just another annoying technology to be opposed, limited, neutered, and if possible eliminated. Cassette tape, VHS, writeable DVDs and CDs, Digital Audio Tape, you-name-it
So get it out of your head that this is about free copies. It's not. It never has been. It's about whether the greatest invention in human history will be continue to be used for the good of all
You have to stir it really well, or you get hot spots
That's fine, so long as there's no wire in it.
What a waste of time this all is.
Yoda ... is that you?
I honestly don't care if you lose all respect for my countrymen. Since I'm a US citizen, that would be Americans, like you.
Sorry ... the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that floats around social networks irritates me sometimes, especially when dealing with copyright abuse since it's foreign outfits that are mostly responsible for the likes of the AHRA, Sonny Bonehead Copyright Extension Act, the DMCA, and now SOPA/PIPA. Congress isn't smart enough to come up with this on their own: they need someone else to give them these bad ideas and then pay them for the privilege of turning the things into law.
And then they go vote for the same sociopaths they've always been voting for. As usual, people exactly get the government they deserve.
Sure. Just like they do the world 'round. The human race has been doing that for ten thousand years, and until we figure out that you don't put people in power who actually want to be there (or who, in the worst cases, are fucking insane) it's not going to change.
... and then, if they do a good job, we let them out when their term is up. As of right now, the system selects for people who are good at acquiring the job (e.g., getting elected) and maintaining the position (e.g, getting re-elected.) It does not properly select for individuals who are actually good at the job itself.
Personally, I believe that we should come up with a profile of what kind of person would be required to properly serve in the office of Senator, Representative or, for that matter, President. I mean, we do that for every other kind of job, don't we? Why is high political office an exception? Shouldn't we know if a candidate is actually qualified, rather than his just saying he knows what he's doing?
Then we search for those people, and when we find a bunch of them, we let the people vote on which ones we think will best serve the country. Just like being picked for jury duty, which is actually not far from what the Founders wanted Congressmen to be. That is, civic-minded individuals who would serve their term, and then go back to their regular lives and live under the laws they had made.
Alternatively, we could require that several detailed psychological profiles be taken of every candidate running for the Presidency or Congressional office. Then we post those profiles conveniently online at www.psychoswhackjobsandheadcases.gov for every voter to see in blazing red, white and blue. That might help keep the obvious low-hanging-fruitcakes out of the system anyway.
There are a few people running for President right now whose psychological makeup I would dearly love to know more about.
And you know this means war, right? The US is waging cyber war against the world in the name of corporate profit. We will not be subdued, we will never surrender.
These actions only made the situation worse for you. The Pirate Bay went from being a way to get free stuff to an ideology, a political movement gaining ground fast in Europe and a symbol of hope for those who love freedom and democracy around the world.
Are you truly that naive? Yes, yes I see you are.
This has nothing to do with America. This has to do with several specific large corporations (Sony's media division, Vivendi, BMG, and several other foreign owned corporations) spending a paltry few million dollars on bribes^h^h^h^h^h^hcampaign contributions to members of our Congress. So far as I'm concerned, as soon as you idiots manage to put a leash on the sociopaths running your content cartel, maybe you'll find yourself without any more SOPAs. Believe me, Congress didn't think this up for themselves: this particular bit of corruption and malfeasance in office was bought and paid for by foreign influences. A good chunk of Congress should be up on treason charges for their involvement in this, but that does not excuse Japan and Europe for not reining in the bastard outfits that came over here and started raising hate and discontent. We're sick and tired of BMG, Vivendi, Viacom and the like suing U.S. citizens, filing false DMCA takedown notices, and generally behaving like multibillionare two-year-olds. Tell them to fucking grow up and learn how to make money in the Internet age.
As for you, go back home and fix your own problems, keep your arrogant, self-serving, incredibly backwards corporations out of our government, and we'll happily leave you the fuck alone.
I, for one, welcome our new Tom Cruise smashing alien overlords.
Yah. Me too. We should be so lucky. There are a few more Scientologists that I wouldn't mind seeing squashed flat as well, just on general principle.
neither FightFreedomOfSpeach nor the AC who responded to his post
I want to know what "speach" is, actually.
It's a better argument for why we don't need the USA.
Comments like that serve no purpose. Citizens of this country are up in arms about what our government (at the behest of certain large foreign corporations, I might add: Sony and several European media outfits can take most of the heat for SOPA, after all, they paid for it.) wants to do with these stupid laws. If you want us to continue to fight to respect you and the freedoms you currently enjoy on the Internet (whatever your own government permits you in that regard, if anything) you should show a little respect in return.
And you got a +5 Insightful for that. Remarkable.
Speaking of one of those "people" I can say that it isn't so much a matter of not "caring" about SOPA/PIPA, it's more a matter of having not a whole lot we can do about it. Seriously, what is the advice given to US citizens who care? "Contact your congresscritter". Unfortunately, those of us in the Rest Of The World don't get to have one of those. We *could* bitch to our own government about how we disapprove of some not-yet-passed legislation that's being debated by a foreign government, but I'll let you take a guess how much effect that's going to have.
Actually, there's nothing preventing you from sending emails, written letters or phoning our Congresspeople. It's apparent to me (as an American) that Congress still has this U.S.-centric attitude towards the Internet, and I believe that needs to change, quickly. Hearing from a fifty or sixty million thoroughly incensed foreigners might very well be a good first step. Yeah, okay, we started the Internet ball rolling almost forty years ago, but this baby has gone global now. Time for Congress to accept that fact, and stop threatening to corrupt a piece of Internet infrastructure (e.g., the DNS root servers) that the economies of many other nations are now dependent.
Not everyone who is accused is actually convicted.
True, but this is all about PR, about intimidation, about inducing fear, not about redress of any specific grievance. Everyone will remember that Megaupload got raided and their staff arrested. Nobody will remember that they got acquitted (if they do) and in any event, they're out of business for the time being.
By continuing to pirate after SOPA, and helping those in America to the same, to demonstrate that the law is utterly useless at its stated purpose. Then in five years the MPAA can write SOPA2, which will ban all encryption software and VPNs.
Won't take five years, and I wouldn't be surprised to find they've got a rider ready to be attached to SOPA at the last minute. They have to be careful with that though: there are far too many legitimate, mainstream uses for VPNs and encryption for a general ban to ever be enforced. Banks and large corporations, for example, would go ballistic. Millions of people telecommute using encrypted VPNs: how do you distinguish between legitimate encrypted traffic and that used for (ahem!) nefarious purposes? Do you have the ISP do it? Do you have the government maintain lists of approved VPN destinations? It's not a simple task.
I've written to "my" representatives. Every time I get "thank you for your concerns but... form letter bullshit explaining why my concerns won't have any impact..."
Sure, because they get thousands upon thousands of letters and other communications and no one person could possibly read them all. Are you naive enough to have expected a personal response? The best you can hope for is a form-letter that is usually written to be as inoffensive as possible. However, a well-thought-out letter likely will be read by their staff, and they most certainly do collate that information for decision-making purposes. It's in their best interests to know what their constituents are up in arms about.
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!
I think GoDaddy plans to make money from resale of seized domains. Those are likely to be worth some serious scratch.
I would love to see other countries speak out against the US on this. I wish we could get economic sanctions from passing a law like this. If you aren't American maybe it's at least something to write to your representatives and ask them to release a statement against the US about this, or even seek to take action (such as push to end the lopsided power we wield over the internet). Sure, some Canadian politician writing a complaint to the US might not mean much, but if said complaint is signed by dozens, and similar occurs in many European countries, at the very least the American public might realize SOPA is a big deal.
Well, economic sanctions against superpowers (even ones like us that are on the way out) generally don't work out too well. The problem is that Congress has demonstrated over the past several years an inability to think globally about Internet-related issues. They just seem to be unaware of the fact that, well, hundreds of millions of people in other countries are just as economically and culturally dependent upon the network as we are, and don't appreciate anyone screwing around with it.
We'll have to route around the USA. Make the DNS root be in EU or iceland, and start paying for things in bitcoin, rather than Mastercard or Visa. Actually, it's not so big a deal. It can be done!
Yes, it is a big deal because DNS only works _if everyone uses it._ One of the big fears about DNS (one that I think Congress is not considering because, well, they're fundamentally stupid) is what will happen to the global network when DNS becomes balkanized, with every nation (or blocs of nations) running their own systems. Granted, the Internet couldn't care less about DNS: all it cares about is IP addresses. But the Domain Name System is a vital part of the World Wide Web, and URLs are everywhere, even within embedded systems.
Secondly, there is no single "DNS root". There are, last I was aware, thirteen root servers that are geographically distributed around the world, and hundreds of thousands of secondary domain name servers operated by ISPs and large organizations of one kind or another. Historically, the U.S. government pretty much left the things alone, and that worked out very well for all concerned. The fact that we're going to be sacrificing the trust other countries placed in us when they got on-board the Internet, just to satisfy the greed of an industry worth a paltry five or ten billion dollars a year is just astonishing. The rest of us, the ones who run our 2.4 trillion dollar economy, are more than a little pissed off about this.
To be fair, you can thank several _European_ corporations, the big media conglomerates such as Sony, Vivendi, BMG and others, for spending the millions to buy SOPA, PIPA, and a host of other similar bad laws. So you don't get to dump all of this in our laps, and if our Justice Department hadn't already been subverted by big media (several top spots at the DoJ are currently occupied by ex-RIAA lawyers) several Congresspeople would be under investigation for treason.
In the US (the home of democracy, defender of the free world, etc), corporations can openly bribe their senators to get the laws they want.
That's actually not the worst part of it. Look who's been funding any number of bad copyright-related laws, such as the Audio Home Recording Act, Sonny Bonehead Copyright Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and others in that vein. It's mostly non-U.S. corporations (granted, through local intermediaries such as the MPAA/RIAA), but they follow the orders of their people who fund them. What we have here are foreign-owned entities that are directly influencing American lawmakers and public policy. That ought to be enough to put certain Congresspeople up on treason charges (or something along those lines.)
In Germany, the president is currently under a lot of pressure, and may have to resign, because he got a private credit for his house at too favorable a rate of interest.
I can imagine what would happen in Germany if, say, Ford or General Motors attempted to bribe some of their ministers to get favorable laws passed. There would be prison sentences handed out all around.
The rest sound fake because they are. Mostly large businesses and rich people who fund private associations to commit their sins, so they don't get literally executed when the revolution comes.
Yah ... plausible deniability. Like the big studios and record labels and their "industry trade groups" like the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, etc.
A lot of those on the list aren't interested in copyright so much as they are in branding, like the National Confectioners Association and Nike. They couldn't care less about internet piracy - they just want a way to shut down overseas-run websites selling counterfeit products with their logo on.
Perhaps ... but an enlightened capitalist realizes that he won't always get what he wants, and shouldn't get everything he wants if the cost to society is too great. Fact is, anyone supporting SOPA for financial gain has demonstrated that they think like the big media companies: do whatever it takes no matter who gets hurt.
That's more than enough to make me look elsewhere for my needs.
Sometimes its unethical to play the game, but as in business, the cheaters usually win. It's a structural thing, because the people who really do want to help the country (instead of themselves) are less likely to cheat and therefore less likely to win. Choose your evil.
It's like I've always said, the system selects for people who are good at getting elected, which has little to do with how they will perform in office. There seems to be an inverse relationship, when you get right down to it.
"Thank you for clearly identifying your ideological slant."
Maybe the GP is just pointing out that republicans are easier to buy?
That may be, but if you look at the history of this, the Democrats have long been the ones who are the most "rightsholder friendly." Consequently, they already had the Democrats in their pocket ... acquiring a few Republicans is just icing on the cake.
People complain constantly about the Republicans being under corporate control, but the reality is that the other side of the aisle is just as corporatist: traditionally it was just a different set of industries.
It wasn't the doll as much as the "Nuclear Medicine" Playset complete with "Mr. Chemo" microwave oven that put them off.
Actually, I think it was the free plastic liver that did them in.
warning! this product contains a likeness known to the state of california to cause lawsuits and frivolous torts.
New Frosted Pop Torts, breakfast of hooligans.
From the article: "To make it extra creepy, the doll's realistic head sculpt features Jobs' famous unblinking stare."
I'd have thought I'd be even more creepy if the doll had eyes that rolled around...
Or blinked.
This definitely reeks of a personality cult, in the most disturbing, North Korean sort of way. Nobody has the rights to Dear Leader's image but us, and how dare you produce false idols. At least they didn't keep his body in state on the Apple campus...
I understand that he's been cryogenically stored in a sealed underground chamber in their new headquarters, surrounded by iPhones with his picture on them.