Yes, national socialism would have a hard time gathering votes on here despite all the great economic advantages and shiny, shiny boots of leather.
Sometimes good decisions are based on more than expediency, like attempting to not support totalitarian regimes whether governmental or commercial, which exist only by consent.
I would rather the trains ran a little late even if Microsoft could make them run on-time.
Great, we had to go there. "Kiddie" and then resort to recommending MS SQL, which has proven itself to be, shall we say, not the most "reliable" on the planet and elaboration shouldn't be necessary in these parts. Oddly enough, although MS SQL was "licensed" (a-la CPM, sigh) from Sybase, people often simultaneously disparage Sybase and praise MS SQL, despite the fact the Sybase licenses are roughly half of MS SQL. So we're left, essentially, with Oracle, which the vast majority of businesses will find not the least bit cost effective, for that matter even necessary, certainly not at twice to four times that of the next commercial competition. No wonder people look for open source solutions.
At any rate, many "big kids" are using the most unfairly bullied product, slandered most likely because it is a software boy-named-sue, MySQL. Why not have a read before taking childish pot-shots:
http://www.mysql.com/press/MySQL_userlist.pdf
In the end this silly "I'm a big boy because I use oracle and your a little gurly kiddie because you don't" bullshit is just empty bravado. Businesses generally attempt to find the most cost effective means to meet a need and often Oracle ends up being like buying a stealth fighter to deliver a pizza. It often just doesn't make sense even for a big kid with billions of dollars, which might be why the $30B+ multinational BASF uses PostgreSQL.
Frankly, after the named-user license Oracle sold the State of California, no matter how idiotic the clearly comatose contract negotiators were, one would be remiss to not consider other companies with slightly less egregious behavior on record.
...Yes and I can follow my job from the Republic of California to the Commonwealth of Virginia, further than from Nice to Moscow. I just executed such a 2500 mile move, so I fail to see a functional difference between the US and EU as once exiting either, WTO has more or less the same effect.
Oh right, like Japan... which has to import nearly all its raw materials. I wouldn't feel so secure in your job since environmental regulations here are relatively restrictive and places like Central Asia are ripe for rape by U.S. companies looking for cheap raw materials, as close to slave labor as possible and regulatory regimes as close to non-existent as possible.
Start saving your pennies.
"One wonders how much mathematical masturbation takes place when analysing and generating these numbers," -- John Leyden in an article from The Register on "Why mi2g is so unpopular."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28233.ht ml
For blocking "objectionable" content it may be effective, but the attempt to block "casual surfing" if any access is deemed "work-related" simply seems pointless. If someone is going to laze around on the internet, they can do it just as well on CNN or the Wall Street Journal just as easily as on the latest incarnation of the jennicam.
This reminds me of one poor sod at a rather large company I worked for a while ago who got caught using his computer for porn. He freaked out that there was a network logging system that surely must have caught someone else on his machine. In fact, it was deemed wholly absurd to waste resources planning, deploying and maintaining systems for that. Someone had simply walked by his cubicle and reported him, leading to his instantaneous termination.
Most of that sort of abuse is quite easy to curb simply by similar social pressure -- e.g. "get caught, you're fired" -- rather like what is done for every other kind of workplace offense.
If you licensed 1.3 MILLION "performances" -- the physical maximum at 300kbps for an entire year -- and received no income from that, the fees payable to ASCAP would be no more than $1,742 per year.
Schedule A $ 624.00 Schedule B $ 949.00 Schedule C $ 1,742.00
My whole point in this is that, ignoring for the moment some of the absurd scandals in this arena, ASCAP does offer performance licenses based on both income generated and number of performances that are VERY cost effective even for the average user, even if significant income is generated in the process.
Remeber, we're talking about lawsuits listing five or six offending tracks, which presumably the offending parties very well might have purchased -- but then, remember, that purchase is for the media itself (CD, LP, tape, 8-track, whatever) and does NOT include any license to distribute by any means.
The web license do restrict to streaming media that cannot be saved (a BIG difference from P2P obviously). However, the fact that they DO offer internet broadcast licenses that are so inexpensive and so similar to radio licenses draws a rather huge question into the absurd distinction that is made between the "fair use" that has been applied to all broadcast media -- e.g. you can record from radio or television broadcast anything you want for personal use -- and the vast left-wing conspiracy that is destroying the entire music industry.
The point in bringing this up is that the RIAA is making a blanket case that anything Peer-2-Peer is flatly illegal and there is no case to be made for legitimacy when in the terms written by the actual licensing body (ASCAP) it is fundamentally a technicality that could easily be remedied and just as easily begin generating revenue at the rates already set by them.
I mean, look, to operate a radio station, a blanket license for the entire catalog for any station earning less than $50,000 is $6,200 -- for a format completely incapable of controlling listener behavior and capable of transmitting over 8,000 hours of content, or roughly 150,000 tracks of music.
All I am saying is that they have licensing structures in place for distribution. Offer people a legal island at the existing rates and SOMEONE will still have to buy the fricken CD's, but they would have a constant revenue stream from everyone regardless of if they buy a damned thing.
No, I'm not confusing it. Yes, we're talking about an effective way of keeping child pornography out of the U.S. I'm pointing out the patently obvious fact that using IP addresses is directly comparable to using telephone numbers. They're essentially arbitrary and of no informational value.
When such arbitrary information is used to identify people for crimes (think of the truncated passenger name lists in CAPPS), people get harassed. It may not be the intention, but it is the effect. It is also inexcusable to use useless information when useful information exists simply because it is easier for a completely ignorant moron (read: a politician) to say "a-ha! I have your IP address" and then proceed to legislate. The problem is that when politicians are allowed to legislate such dreck, they invariably create systems that are easy to be put into, but nearly impossible to get out of.
Yeah, it's great. It's sort of like creating a blacklist for addresses and telephone numbers then sending random S.W.A.T. teams out and blanket wire-taps.
The guy moves out, you move in. Suddenly, you'r ass-up to a full body-cavity search and your front door is a pile of matchsticks.
Hey, why not make the worthless domain registrars actually verify who the hell you are so they can identify the actual people behind the sites? Then the police/fbi/kaos/control could just do an nslookup and drive over. No, that would be too freakin' logical. Harassing innocent people is P.A.T.R.I.O.Tic
UGH.
What irks me, and I think subliminally the entire planet, is the implied value of the crime (oops in some parallel universe it's a civil issue, damn those details). Now, here's an object lesson, conveniently provided by the American Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (aka ASCAP), you know the guys that actually do the licensing?
Go ahead, play with it.
http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/license.html
If you put in the assumptions:
User revenue: $1 User sessions >= 60 minutes: 100,000 Total user sessions: 100,000 Total performances from ASCAP catalog: 100,000
The result is (under all rate schedules): Total annual license fee: $264
Even if you pulled in $100,000 in revenue, your license fee with the above assumptions would be between $1,600 and $4,440 per year.
Hey, if I could play every freakin' song ASCAP distributes royalties on and rake in $100 large doing it and only have to shell out a maximum of 400 bucks a month... well, where the hell do they come up with $15 GRAND?!?!?
The management overhead of this system would result in the obvious:
1) anyone who could remotely need access to the internet as a job function would get unlimited access which may or may not already be logged.
2) anyone who doesn't would either be completed blocked, if they are not already, or using this system would simply modify their behavior, either choosing to be logged, or reducing their activity to below-radar levels.
Any manager with an I.Q. above fifty would realize that an employee dicking-off for hours will fail to meet performance metrics. Doesn't matter if that is the internet or three hour lunches.
All this system does is increase the cost and complexity of supervision.
Anyone who has ever worked in a major university information sciences research department will tell you that as a matter of fact. One of the bigger water cooler buzzes a few years ago was what to do with the general dwindling of funding from DoD and NSF. Needless to say, that problem solved itself.
No vast conspiracy here. Everyone is completely aware of it.
You sound like the guy who drove into my Bentley at 35mph when it was parked at Wal*Mart. Why don't you give me your name, address, license plate number and a notarized admission of guilt?
Oh yeah, I was only borrowing the car to deliver pizza, but I'm sure the actual owner, his insurance company and bank won't sue you into oblivion if I hand all your documentation over with an admission of guilt.
Taxes simply do not directly relate from source to expenditure as evidenced by the personal and corporate income taxes, which pay for, well, practically everything --- like the military, which along with the NSF paid for the vast majority of the research that made the internet possible in the first place.
Can you imagine if your proposition was true? Some good things, I guess, like pay for war by taxing people who wage it or pay for drug enforcement by taxing cocaine. Okay. Sounds good.
The bottom line is that federal government exists for a vast number of reasons, like people cheering behind the president as he asks for $87 billion to throw at Iraq, which, along with the rest of the $2 trillion budget, has to come from somewhere.
The schedule for excise taxes will illuminate the tedious number of seemingly ridiculous taxes, which together provide about $70 billion in revenue, or more or less what it costs for a year's worth of fumbling around in Iraq. Telephone taxes bring in just under $7 billion.
Contrary to popular opinion, your hard-earned-dollars that you'd so like the government to keep their "grubby hands off" make up only half of the budget. The other TRILLION has to come from somewhere. Of course, we could just overthrow the government and pretend we're living in Western Sahara in blissful anarchy.
That kiss was hardly pornographic.
If you'd let your kids listen to Chris Rock's X-rated and generally tasteless rants, not to mention the lyrical content of half the music presented, only to piss and moan about what was more of a peck, hell they barely touched, than deep-tongue-girl-on-girl-action, methinks you should re-evaluate the threat to the aforementioned youth.
Provide a list of actual psychological studies that show a causal link with a reasonable level of corelation between violent entertainment in media -- that is, not actually engaging in physical violence, but rather watching a bloody cartoon on a playstation, and actual BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
There is a huge danger in inductive reasoning. You could reasonably relate the consumption of Coca-cola with genocide and would likely find numerous individuals who had consumed Coca-cola and committed genocide, possibly at the same time. However, that would prove absolutely nothing about the relationship unless you could provide a high level of corelation, which is pretty doubtful.
If these assumed "copy-cat" violent acts happened ten thousand times per year in the U.S. alone, that would still pale in comparison to the millions upon millions of individuals who share the same supposed causes with no similar effects. It simply is not reasonable to take such statistical outliers and so broadly apply assumptions when there clearly must be other factors.....like maybe parents who leave their children unattended with loaded firearms... just a guess.
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that watching any kind of movie, playing any kind of video game or listening to any kind of music has any causal effect whatsoever in determining behavior. This is akin to the myth about hypnosis that you can be made to do all manner of things when in fact under hypnosis you will never do anything you would not otherwise do when fully conscious.
That a "latchkey kid" as we used to call them has two physically and/or emotionally distant parents; is physically, psychologically or sexually abused at home, school or church; is constantly bombarded with information seemingly from reality (i.e. the news, their teachers, their parents) that, without going into endless detail, essentially says "[you|we]'re [screwed|flawed|worthless]" may all have just a little more of an effect than a single freakin' video game. Those or similar factors are FAR more likely than any obvious fantasy, whether it is a game, movie or music. If a kid cannot tell the difference between such obvious fantasies and reality, there are clearly MUCH larger problems going on in that child's life than anything you can fit on a five-inch piece of plastic.
Perhaps because if you filter out such terms it would be reasonably impossible, save for physically marching to every university library on the planet, to research all manner of subjects.
The fact that anything is abhorrent, no matter the severity or lack thereof, is precisely why information on it should be available. Someone typing in AskJeeves "how could you kill eight million Jews" should be able to pull up the text of the Nuremburg trials without risking a lawsuit for attempted murder or copyright infringement of the estate of Stanley Kramer.
That principle is far more in the public interest than whether or not Britney Spears' royalties are at stake, let alone her record label or the company profitting from piracy of her music, which is why you will find the issue of filtering at the top of the issues concerning the American Library Association.
If you came up with a database of millions of records and couldn't come up with a shred of documentation as to where, when and how you acquired the information, you most likely stole it.
I've used public records databases for twenty years some of which are now available through services like "KnowX." The various levels of government involved are only required to make certain information freely available, which can mean having a printout in a particular office. Most do not have web access from the source. Even if they did, individually accessing every city, county and state through dozens of interfaces would not be useful.
Until the federal government provides an overarching public records access system down to the city level, which is not going to happen, there will be a demand for just such commercial products. Compiling such database collections of national scope is certainly valuable, very expensive and should be protected.
This notion of public information magically becoming private is about as likely as if your produced "a list of presidents of the United States" with the effect that somehow George Bush would no longer be able to utter his own name.
Well, then, I'd better return my european bancards immediately, au complete with smart chips and digital cash features.
Just because this absurd country (the USA) cant get it's collective shit together doesn't mean a damned thing is doomed to failure, much less already in the global past-tense.
"a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis... and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip"
Imagine a movie entitled "Live and Let Die."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, national socialism would have a hard time gathering votes on here despite all the great economic advantages and shiny, shiny boots of leather.
Sometimes good decisions are based on more than expediency, like attempting to not support totalitarian regimes whether governmental or commercial, which exist only by consent.
I would rather the trains ran a little late even if Microsoft could make them run on-time.
At any rate, many "big kids" are using the most unfairly bullied product, slandered most likely because it is a software boy-named-sue, MySQL. Why not have a read before taking childish pot-shots:
http://www.mysql.com/press/MySQL_userlist.pdf
In the end this silly "I'm a big boy because I use oracle and your a little gurly kiddie because you don't" bullshit is just empty bravado. Businesses generally attempt to find the most cost effective means to meet a need and often Oracle ends up being like buying a stealth fighter to deliver a pizza. It often just doesn't make sense even for a big kid with billions of dollars, which might be why the $30B+ multinational BASF uses PostgreSQL.
Frankly, after the named-user license Oracle sold the State of California, no matter how idiotic the clearly comatose contract negotiators were, one would be remiss to not consider other companies with slightly less egregious behavior on record.
Oh right, like Japan... which has to import nearly all its raw materials. I wouldn't feel so secure in your job since environmental regulations here are relatively restrictive and places like Central Asia are ripe for rape by U.S. companies looking for cheap raw materials, as close to slave labor as possible and regulatory regimes as close to non-existent as possible. Start saving your pennies.
"One wonders how much mathematical masturbation takes place when analysing and generating these numbers," -- John Leyden in an article from The Register on "Why mi2g is so unpopular."
t ml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28233.h
Vastly different. It is like MSI producing Nvidia benchmarks at an XBox booth at Microsoft Conference to an audience of former Enron traders.
No conflicts of interest, noooo sir.
For blocking "objectionable" content it may be effective, but the attempt to block "casual surfing" if any access is deemed "work-related" simply seems pointless. If someone is going to laze around on the internet, they can do it just as well on CNN or the Wall Street Journal just as easily as on the latest incarnation of the jennicam. This reminds me of one poor sod at a rather large company I worked for a while ago who got caught using his computer for porn. He freaked out that there was a network logging system that surely must have caught someone else on his machine. In fact, it was deemed wholly absurd to waste resources planning, deploying and maintaining systems for that. Someone had simply walked by his cubicle and reported him, leading to his instantaneous termination. Most of that sort of abuse is quite easy to curb simply by similar social pressure -- e.g. "get caught, you're fired" -- rather like what is done for every other kind of workplace offense.
If you licensed 1.3 MILLION "performances" -- the physical maximum at 300kbps for an entire year -- and received no income from that, the fees payable to ASCAP would be no more than $1,742 per year.
Schedule A $ 624.00
Schedule B $ 949.00
Schedule C $ 1,742.00
My whole point in this is that, ignoring for the moment some of the absurd scandals in this arena, ASCAP does offer performance licenses based on both income generated and number of performances that are VERY cost effective even for the average user, even if significant income is generated in the process.
Remeber, we're talking about lawsuits listing five or six offending tracks, which presumably the offending parties very well might have purchased -- but then, remember, that purchase is for the media itself (CD, LP, tape, 8-track, whatever) and does NOT include any license to distribute by any means.
The web license do restrict to streaming media that cannot be saved (a BIG difference from P2P obviously). However, the fact that they DO offer internet broadcast licenses that are so inexpensive and so similar to radio licenses draws a rather huge question into the absurd distinction that is made between the "fair use" that has been applied to all broadcast media -- e.g. you can record from radio or television broadcast anything you want for personal use -- and the vast left-wing conspiracy that is destroying the entire music industry.
The point in bringing this up is that the RIAA is making a blanket case that anything Peer-2-Peer is flatly illegal and there is no case to be made for legitimacy when in the terms written by the actual licensing body (ASCAP) it is fundamentally a technicality that could easily be remedied and just as easily begin generating revenue at the rates already set by them.
I mean, look, to operate a radio station, a blanket license for the entire catalog for any station earning less than $50,000 is $6,200 -- for a format completely incapable of controlling listener behavior and capable of transmitting over 8,000 hours of content, or roughly 150,000 tracks of music.
All I am saying is that they have licensing structures in place for distribution. Offer people a legal island at the existing rates and SOMEONE will still have to buy the fricken CD's, but they would have a constant revenue stream from everyone regardless of if they buy a damned thing.
When such arbitrary information is used to identify people for crimes (think of the truncated passenger name lists in CAPPS), people get harassed. It may not be the intention, but it is the effect. It is also inexcusable to use useless information when useful information exists simply because it is easier for a completely ignorant moron (read: a politician) to say "a-ha! I have your IP address" and then proceed to legislate. The problem is that when politicians are allowed to legislate such dreck, they invariably create systems that are easy to be put into, but nearly impossible to get out of.
Yeah, it's great. It's sort of like creating a blacklist for addresses and telephone numbers then sending random S.W.A.T. teams out and blanket wire-taps. The guy moves out, you move in. Suddenly, you'r ass-up to a full body-cavity search and your front door is a pile of matchsticks. Hey, why not make the worthless domain registrars actually verify who the hell you are so they can identify the actual people behind the sites? Then the police/fbi/kaos/control could just do an nslookup and drive over. No, that would be too freakin' logical. Harassing innocent people is P.A.T.R.I.O.Tic UGH.
What irks me, and I think subliminally the entire planet, is the implied value of the crime (oops in some parallel universe it's a civil issue, damn those details). Now, here's an object lesson, conveniently provided by the American Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (aka ASCAP), you know the guys that actually do the licensing?
Go ahead, play with it.
http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/license.html
If you put in the assumptions:
User revenue: $1
User sessions >= 60 minutes: 100,000
Total user sessions: 100,000
Total performances from ASCAP catalog: 100,000
The result is (under all rate schedules):
Total annual license fee: $264
Even if you pulled in $100,000 in revenue, your license fee with the above assumptions would be between $1,600 and $4,440 per year.
Hey, if I could play every freakin' song ASCAP distributes royalties on and rake in $100 large doing it and only have to shell out a maximum of 400 bucks a month... well, where the hell do they come up with $15 GRAND?!?!?
The management overhead of this system would result in the obvious: 1) anyone who could remotely need access to the internet as a job function would get unlimited access which may or may not already be logged. 2) anyone who doesn't would either be completed blocked, if they are not already, or using this system would simply modify their behavior, either choosing to be logged, or reducing their activity to below-radar levels. Any manager with an I.Q. above fifty would realize that an employee dicking-off for hours will fail to meet performance metrics. Doesn't matter if that is the internet or three hour lunches. All this system does is increase the cost and complexity of supervision.
hell, at this point I'm suprised more engineets aren't thinking of going to Cuba for money or at least the health insurance. Talk of job security.
Anyone who has ever worked in a major university information sciences research department will tell you that as a matter of fact. One of the bigger water cooler buzzes a few years ago was what to do with the general dwindling of funding from DoD and NSF. Needless to say, that problem solved itself.
No vast conspiracy here. Everyone is completely aware of it.
You sound like the guy who drove into my Bentley at 35mph when it was parked at Wal*Mart. Why don't you give me your name, address, license plate number and a notarized admission of guilt?
Oh yeah, I was only borrowing the car to deliver pizza, but I'm sure the actual owner, his insurance company and bank won't sue you into oblivion if I hand all your documentation over with an admission of guilt.
Bessos.
Taxes simply do not directly relate from source to expenditure as evidenced by the personal and corporate income taxes, which pay for, well, practically everything --- like the military, which along with the NSF paid for the vast majority of the research that made the internet possible in the first place. Can you imagine if your proposition was true? Some good things, I guess, like pay for war by taxing people who wage it or pay for drug enforcement by taxing cocaine. Okay. Sounds good.
The bottom line is that federal government exists for a vast number of reasons, like people cheering behind the president as he asks for $87 billion to throw at Iraq, which, along with the rest of the $2 trillion budget, has to come from somewhere.
s
o .xls
The schedule for excise taxes will illuminate the tedious number of seemingly ridiculous taxes, which together provide about $70 billion in revenue, or more or less what it costs for a year's worth of fumbling around in Iraq. Telephone taxes bring in just under $7 billion.
Contrary to popular opinion, your hard-earned-dollars that you'd so like the government to keep their "grubby hands off" make up only half of the budget. The other TRILLION has to come from somewhere. Of course, we could just overthrow the government and pretend we're living in Western Sahara in blissful anarchy.
Excise taxes only:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02ex21te.xl
Gross receipts:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02db07c
That kiss was hardly pornographic. If you'd let your kids listen to Chris Rock's X-rated and generally tasteless rants, not to mention the lyrical content of half the music presented, only to piss and moan about what was more of a peck, hell they barely touched, than deep-tongue-girl-on-girl-action, methinks you should re-evaluate the threat to the aforementioned youth.
Great quotes, where are your references?
..like maybe parents who leave their children unattended with loaded firearms... just a guess.
Provide a list of actual psychological studies that show a causal link with a reasonable level of corelation between violent entertainment in media -- that is, not actually engaging in physical violence, but rather watching a bloody cartoon on a playstation, and actual BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
There is a huge danger in inductive reasoning. You could reasonably relate the consumption of Coca-cola with genocide and would likely find numerous individuals who had consumed Coca-cola and committed genocide, possibly at the same time. However, that would prove absolutely nothing about the relationship unless you could provide a high level of corelation, which is pretty doubtful.
If these assumed "copy-cat" violent acts happened ten thousand times per year in the U.S. alone, that would still pale in comparison to the millions upon millions of individuals who share the same supposed causes with no similar effects. It simply is not reasonable to take such statistical outliers and so broadly apply assumptions when there clearly must be other factors...
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that watching any kind of movie, playing any kind of video game or listening to any kind of music has any causal effect whatsoever in determining behavior. This is akin to the myth about hypnosis that you can be made to do all manner of things when in fact under hypnosis you will never do anything you would not otherwise do when fully conscious.
That a "latchkey kid" as we used to call them has two physically and/or emotionally distant parents; is physically, psychologically or sexually abused at home, school or church; is constantly bombarded with information seemingly from reality (i.e. the news, their teachers, their parents) that, without going into endless detail, essentially says "[you|we]'re [screwed|flawed|worthless]" may all have just a little more of an effect than a single freakin' video game. Those or similar factors are FAR more likely than any obvious fantasy, whether it is a game, movie or music. If a kid cannot tell the difference between such obvious fantasies and reality, there are clearly MUCH larger problems going on in that child's life than anything you can fit on a five-inch piece of plastic.
Perhaps because if you filter out such terms it would be reasonably impossible, save for physically marching to every university library on the planet, to research all manner of subjects.
o ciation/Offices/ALA_Washington/Issues2/Civil_Liber ties,_Intellectual_Freedom,_Privacy/Civil_Libertie s,_Intellectual_Freedom_and_Privacy.htm
The fact that anything is abhorrent, no matter the severity or lack thereof, is precisely why information on it should be available. Someone typing in AskJeeves "how could you kill eight million Jews" should be able to pull up the text of the Nuremburg trials without risking a lawsuit for attempted murder or copyright infringement of the estate of Stanley Kramer.
That principle is far more in the public interest than whether or not Britney Spears' royalties are at stake, let alone her record label or the company profitting from piracy of her music, which is why you will find the issue of filtering at the top of the issues concerning the American Library Association.
http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Ass
"There are no white-hat, gray-hats or black-hats. Only criminals and law-abiding citizens." Don't forget the undermenchen and auslanders. Scary.
If you came up with a database of millions of records and couldn't come up with a shred of documentation as to where, when and how you acquired the information, you most likely stole it.
I've used public records databases for twenty years some of which are now available through services like "KnowX." The various levels of government involved are only required to make certain information freely available, which can mean having a printout in a particular office. Most do not have web access from the source. Even if they did, individually accessing every city, county and state through dozens of interfaces would not be useful.
Until the federal government provides an overarching public records access system down to the city level, which is not going to happen, there will be a demand for just such commercial products. Compiling such database collections of national scope is certainly valuable, very expensive and should be protected.
This notion of public information magically becoming private is about as likely as if your produced "a list of presidents of the United States" with the effect that somehow George Bush would no longer be able to utter his own name.
Digital cash is dead?
Well, then, I'd better return my european bancards immediately, au complete with smart chips and digital cash features.
Just because this absurd country (the USA) cant get it's collective shit together doesn't mean a damned thing is doomed to failure, much less already in the global past-tense.
"a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis... and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip" Imagine a movie entitled "Live and Let Die."