I believe in freedom of speech. If some individual wants to stand up in public and say that he supports depriving every citizen of free speech and due process of law to help save the profitability of a 90 year old mouse cartoon - then I will defend his right to do that.
For an elected representative to not only do that - but to sponsor or support a bill which does that also - that's a different thing. That's a failure of citizenship, a neglect of your civic duty. These are essential liberties our nation was founded to protect. Such a representative should be removed from office as swiftly as the democratic process will allow, as he's a threat to the security of the Republic and the liberty of its People.
There is no Mulligan on this one, no middle ground. Either you are FOR freedom of speech and due process of law forever and always, or you're NOT.
Slashdot posts cannot be censored or filtered off the site. We don't do that here. They can't even be taken back by the author after you've pressed "submit" and believe me, I've put a few I'd like to have back. On the balance I prefer it this way, and well, as the post accepted page says, you should have thought of that before you pressed "submit".
Shill posts detract. Pointing out shill posts detract. But there's nothing to be done. There are financial interests involved, and they will spam. There are folks who want to white-knight slashdot as a forum for Truth, and I'm guilty of that now and then even though I know that's not what it's for. As a wise someone once said (and I paraphrase), "the value of a free thing approaches zero over time". The moderation system works.
Dart looks to be interesting tech. No doubt Google will look to make it an open standard that anyone can implement - even IE. And that will move us closer to the day that all apps are web apps, which cannot be anything but a good thing. It's time that the client architecture was unhooked from the application ecosystem at the network layer. In fact, it's at least 15 years past time for that. That was the goal of X Windows (not to be confused with the upstart), back in the day (onion, belt, lawn, etc).
I hear Motorola invented this "cellular phone" thing that might prove popular some day. You should look it up on Wikipedia. But not Wednesday. Wednesday Wikipedia will be down.
Actually I misread that. Sentiment is running in favor of full blackout - no posting, editing or reading of articles for all of English Wikipedia for the full 12-hour period Wednesday, by a ratio of 5:1 over the soft blackout option. There is also support for a blackout of all of Wiki worldwide, but just a wee bit less. And it's approved by the legal team. It looks like Wednesday's going to be a no-Wikipedia day.
But it looks like a click-through to access the site on the 18th and a banner on every page for a couple weeks. That's about as much as Wiki can do, as they're pretty essential. No word yet on Google. Facebook has scheduled a press event for the day, but no clue whether it's related.
More and more big sites are getting in on the game.
I am missing your point - or perhaps you're missing mine. Stealing is not quite exactly theft. In this particular case I'm quite OK with stealing, but I'm not OK with trying to pretend it's not stealing. We need to own up and admit that we're taking without permit of law, and that it's not legal, and that it's still OK. Otherwise it's just being a cheap-ass and not a social statement.
The meaning of words is to a limited extent fungible. In a certain sense if you can take control of the meaning of the words, you win the discussion. There's a reason I "stole" the handle "symbolset" back in the day, as the symbolset is the nexus between expression and understanding. I'm not trying to manipulate the meaning of the words here: I'm just trying to use them effectively to convey a critical idea. Putting across fine discriminations can be a difficult thing when we're still arguing about what the meaning of "is" is. English is, at best, a difficult language. It's no wonder people have difficulty learning it.
I don't find any fault with your argument that by taking a copy of content the owner is in no way diminished. He still has his copy, he can still sell it. You can still buy copies of "The History of England" published in the 1800's and well into the public domain - if you have a few hundred dollars to spare. Fully public domain copies of "Grimm's Fairy Tales" and other classic works also.
Theft is a civil order matter, governed by laws to the extent that they can be applied. Stealing is a personal moral matter, subject to exigencies and necessities of the day but governed overall by what is "right". Often, but not always, they are the same thing.
I argue with your objection, but not your intent. You have a good point, as do I.
In my mind stealing is subtly different from theft. In theft, you unfairly deprive someone of something they had, enriching yourself thereby. In stealing you enrich yourself with something you're not entitled to by law and whether or not someone else was deprived thereby is irrelevant. It's splitting hairs exceedingly fine I admit, and what do I know? - but that's my take on the theft/stealing thing.
No, that's not enough. They propose to take away by force of law all citizens' to freedom of speech and due process of law whether they consume their products or not, to preserve their business model. That's not a boycott level "deprive you of the profits you got from me" thing. That's a "take away your ability to do business entirely" thing. That's war. That's a "destroy your entire reason for being" thing.
The completion of the meme I was driving at is a US military theme (Marines, I think) that I was avoiding completing because it encourages personal violence that I'm not in favor of. But to be completely factual it goes something like "kick my dog and I burn down your house."
In an election year it's easy enough to turn the migration of birds into a D vs R thing. But not this time. This thing has adherents on both sides of the aisle. We can safely leave partisan politics out of this one.
The issue here is that there are members of the body politick - elected representatives in the hallowed halls of Congress - who believe that it's quite acceptible to sacrifice the core values of freedom of speech and due process of law that our nation was founded on, to preserve the profitability of a 90 year old mouse cartoon. What political party these men adhere to is neither here nor there. They're a threat to the Republic and should be removed from office as swiftly as the democratic process will allow. To do anything else is just to admit that democracy has failed.
That is partly true, and it's a shame. But "we" are definitely the ones harmed by this attempt to steal our rights of due process and free speech. It's time to send the message that if you kick that particular dog the response will be asymmetrical.
The fix was in during the Bush presidency too. How do you think the antitrust investigation got shut down? Then as now the money went to both sides to ensure that no matter who won, they got their way. It's not a D or R thing.
It's not a D or R thing. The fix was in on both sides. That's how they do it these days, and it's how they'll do it next time too. Redundancy: It's not just for servers, storage and networking any more.
Microsoft paid a lot of money to get their lawyers into the FTC and the DOJ. It would be passing strange for these to not go after Google. It doesn't matter, because they still have to operate within the law.
That he's a conlaw scholar really isn't open to question. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school, and was editor and president of the Harvard Law Review. I suppose this does eliminate the ability to plead ignorance. But the facts are what they are. The President is a Constitutional scholar.
Slashdot Mirror
They're working on that. Some foreign language versions may blackout entirely. For sure there will be anti-SOPA headers on all of Wikipedia worldwide.
I believe in freedom of speech. If some individual wants to stand up in public and say that he supports depriving every citizen of free speech and due process of law to help save the profitability of a 90 year old mouse cartoon - then I will defend his right to do that.
For an elected representative to not only do that - but to sponsor or support a bill which does that also - that's a different thing. That's a failure of citizenship, a neglect of your civic duty. These are essential liberties our nation was founded to protect. Such a representative should be removed from office as swiftly as the democratic process will allow, as he's a threat to the security of the Republic and the liberty of its People.
There is no Mulligan on this one, no middle ground. Either you are FOR freedom of speech and due process of law forever and always, or you're NOT.
Slashdot posts cannot be censored or filtered off the site. We don't do that here. They can't even be taken back by the author after you've pressed "submit" and believe me, I've put a few I'd like to have back. On the balance I prefer it this way, and well, as the post accepted page says, you should have thought of that before you pressed "submit".
Shill posts detract. Pointing out shill posts detract. But there's nothing to be done. There are financial interests involved, and they will spam. There are folks who want to white-knight slashdot as a forum for Truth, and I'm guilty of that now and then even though I know that's not what it's for. As a wise someone once said (and I paraphrase), "the value of a free thing approaches zero over time". The moderation system works.
Dart looks to be interesting tech. No doubt Google will look to make it an open standard that anyone can implement - even IE. And that will move us closer to the day that all apps are web apps, which cannot be anything but a good thing. It's time that the client architecture was unhooked from the application ecosystem at the network layer. In fact, it's at least 15 years past time for that. That was the goal of X Windows (not to be confused with the upstart), back in the day (onion, belt, lawn, etc).
I hear Motorola invented this "cellular phone" thing that might prove popular some day. You should look it up on Wikipedia. But not Wednesday. Wednesday Wikipedia will be down.
Florian Mueller to the white courtesy phone. One order of crow to go for Mr. Mueller.
Blackout day is still on. I am pleased to share the report that Wikipedia will definitely participate.
The fire isn't out until the ashes are cold and dead.
Actually I misread that. Sentiment is running in favor of full blackout - no posting, editing or reading of articles for all of English Wikipedia for the full 12-hour period Wednesday, by a ratio of 5:1 over the soft blackout option. There is also support for a blackout of all of Wiki worldwide, but just a wee bit less. And it's approved by the legal team. It looks like Wednesday's going to be a no-Wikipedia day.
But it looks like a click-through to access the site on the 18th and a banner on every page for a couple weeks. That's about as much as Wiki can do, as they're pretty essential. No word yet on Google. Facebook has scheduled a press event for the day, but no clue whether it's related.
More and more big sites are getting in on the game.
Actually in California they inject sewage effluent into their hydrothermal.
I've had enough of this. Fuck off.
Now you've insulted everybody on Earth except the Subgenii.
I am missing your point - or perhaps you're missing mine. Stealing is not quite exactly theft. In this particular case I'm quite OK with stealing, but I'm not OK with trying to pretend it's not stealing. We need to own up and admit that we're taking without permit of law, and that it's not legal, and that it's still OK. Otherwise it's just being a cheap-ass and not a social statement.
No. I could tell you why no, but this time I think I'll keep that to myself.
It's time to check out BSD for general purposes again, instead of just for security-essential purposes. Yay!
The meaning of words is to a limited extent fungible. In a certain sense if you can take control of the meaning of the words, you win the discussion. There's a reason I "stole" the handle "symbolset" back in the day, as the symbolset is the nexus between expression and understanding. I'm not trying to manipulate the meaning of the words here: I'm just trying to use them effectively to convey a critical idea. Putting across fine discriminations can be a difficult thing when we're still arguing about what the meaning of "is" is. English is, at best, a difficult language. It's no wonder people have difficulty learning it.
I don't find any fault with your argument that by taking a copy of content the owner is in no way diminished. He still has his copy, he can still sell it. You can still buy copies of "The History of England" published in the 1800's and well into the public domain - if you have a few hundred dollars to spare. Fully public domain copies of "Grimm's Fairy Tales" and other classic works also.
Theft is a civil order matter, governed by laws to the extent that they can be applied. Stealing is a personal moral matter, subject to exigencies and necessities of the day but governed overall by what is "right". Often, but not always, they are the same thing.
I argue with your objection, but not your intent. You have a good point, as do I.
In my mind stealing is subtly different from theft. In theft, you unfairly deprive someone of something they had, enriching yourself thereby. In stealing you enrich yourself with something you're not entitled to by law and whether or not someone else was deprived thereby is irrelevant. It's splitting hairs exceedingly fine I admit, and what do I know? - but that's my take on the theft/stealing thing.
No, that's not enough. They propose to take away by force of law all citizens' to freedom of speech and due process of law whether they consume their products or not, to preserve their business model. That's not a boycott level "deprive you of the profits you got from me" thing. That's a "take away your ability to do business entirely" thing. That's war. That's a "destroy your entire reason for being" thing.
The completion of the meme I was driving at is a US military theme (Marines, I think) that I was avoiding completing because it encourages personal violence that I'm not in favor of. But to be completely factual it goes something like "kick my dog and I burn down your house."
In an election year it's easy enough to turn the migration of birds into a D vs R thing. But not this time. This thing has adherents on both sides of the aisle. We can safely leave partisan politics out of this one.
The issue here is that there are members of the body politick - elected representatives in the hallowed halls of Congress - who believe that it's quite acceptible to sacrifice the core values of freedom of speech and due process of law that our nation was founded on, to preserve the profitability of a 90 year old mouse cartoon. What political party these men adhere to is neither here nor there. They're a threat to the Republic and should be removed from office as swiftly as the democratic process will allow. To do anything else is just to admit that democracy has failed.
As reported by Cory Doctorow, on BoingBoing.
That is partly true, and it's a shame. But "we" are definitely the ones harmed by this attempt to steal our rights of due process and free speech. It's time to send the message that if you kick that particular dog the response will be asymmetrical.
The fix was in during the Bush presidency too. How do you think the antitrust investigation got shut down? Then as now the money went to both sides to ensure that no matter who won, they got their way. It's not a D or R thing.
It's not a D or R thing. The fix was in on both sides. That's how they do it these days, and it's how they'll do it next time too. Redundancy: It's not just for servers, storage and networking any more.
Microsoft paid a lot of money to get their lawyers into the FTC and the DOJ. It would be passing strange for these to not go after Google. It doesn't matter, because they still have to operate within the law.
That he's a conlaw scholar really isn't open to question. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school, and was editor and president of the Harvard Law Review. I suppose this does eliminate the ability to plead ignorance. But the facts are what they are. The President is a Constitutional scholar.