Another point is, couldn't the virtual police become corrupt
People get enough of crooked politicians and corrupt cops in real life. They probably don't want to deal with it in a game (unless they can shoot first).
Well, considering that the Constitution sets up a democratically elected Republic, and "capitalism" is not explicitly connected with a governmental type...
Are those like USENET, or IRC, or/. trolls? Typically (most often?) they're moderators, or ops, who are bored to tears all day long and happily lie in wait to start arguments and feed flame wars as often as possible?
Just like in business and government: we can't get rid of the bad apples because they're composed of the oldest, most well-established, most wealthy individuals.
Last I checked piracy was still piracy. What gives you the right to faciliate piracy?
I think we're following the examples set by our social predecessors and superiors:
In business and employment: screw the law, screw the taxpayers, screw right and wrong. Might makes right. If you pee on the VPs shoes you _will_ be fired, or terminated, or laid off, or harassed into the loony bin (which can very easily be done legally as long as you're not a woman, disabled, or in a minority group).
In governments: screw the law, screw treaties, screw higher powers. If the US (arguably the world's older brother if by no other attributes than economic and military might) wants to invade a nation they don't need evidence, they don't need international approval (or they can conjure it with enough aid packages), they just DO IT.
So what gives us a right to facilitate piracy? Because WE CAN. Because we WANT TO. Because that's what our superiors do. Because that's what Alan Greenspan, and George Bush, and all rich and famous and powerful people do. They do what they can, when they want to, as often as they want to.
Perhaps it's time to accept the fact that language is constantly evolving and embrace this usage of the word piracy which has enjoyed popular use for over 200 years now
What's more important is that we need to accept that idiots, who make up a majority of the population, effectively write the common use definitions.
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed
In your fifth amendment example there is no potential profit. Real estate and physical property have real value.
In the prosecution of copyright violation (or theft, or piracy) the most flawed assumption is that the intellectual property has unlimited worth. This is a laughable assumption but one that no one has been able to bury in the legal field.
Of course, you did address all of this in your final suggestion which I'm quite impressed with and will probably spend more than a few minutes pondering over the holiday weekend.
So do you think if someone painted a copy of the Mona Lisa back in 1700-something, they referred to the copying artist as a "pirate" or simply a fraud?
Because if if we're prosecuting people on the premise of intellectual property fraud then we're frying the smallest fish first and that simply doesn't make any sense.
The reason why local governments subsidize the stadiums is because of the local revenue a sports team can bring in
Which is figured much the same way as the estimated losses from filesharing.
Translation: it's all bullshit, and they're fleecing us (the actual working taxpayers) blind without our approval, without our consent, and often using our own tax dollars to fund ad campaigns to convince the less educated taxpayers that what's false is true and what's true is false.
we consume a vastly larger portion of those resources to support our rich society
I don't know what side of the tracks you're from, but I'm certainly not living in a society which could be considered "rich" by any means.
If you believe that our position will not suffer when the people of Africa and Asia demand their fair share, you are a complete moron
My position won't suffer because I'm not living any larger than what I could reasonably have put together using the effort that I've expended over the years. If you're worried that you're living too large and the rest of the world may come to collect its just compensation that's between you and your conscience.
The US government should switch its efforts to why all these 'terrorists' are targetting it. There's gotta be a reason
Shhhh. Don't tell anyone. They spend 12 years (at least) in public school attempting to convince us that there is no such thing as cause and effect.
Entrapment, harassment, taunting... none of these things are recognized. You can poke someone with a sharp stick for days, weeks, years on end... but woe to them should they ever turn around and break your stick. That's destruction of property.
The problem is, if we stop "pissing of the world" we lose alot of perks. Imagine your life with $6.00/gal gasoline and having to abandon the suburbs
That's like saying that the only possible way to have sex is to have make-up sex--requiring you to completely piss off your partner before you can get to cuddling.
It's FUD, and quit spreading it. The world could be a very cooperative and mutually beneficial place and we could retain our high standard of living without fleecing the rest of the world or alienating and angering every foreign nation we come across.
There are only 2 types of people who propagate the lie that our standard of living DEPENDS on our iron-fisted world domination: those who are profiting like pigs from it, and those who don't have a brain.
If I made a product that I put effort and thought into, and I could charge $100 for each, is it lawful if someone in another nation can steal my work and produce straight copies for $10 each, thereby bypassing the entire R&D costs, of which I'm stuck paying for myself as well as freeloaders?
You've just outlined the argument for international trade, tariffs, duties, and every other reprehensible form of economic warfare.
You people act like IP theft doesn't occur all the time, like it's something that only those unclean media-sharing p2p people get involved in. Time to wake up to reality: it's not a crime, it's a fact of life.
The law exist to protect us from people stealing our stuff
Give it a rest. You're assuming that your stuff has unlimited value and that it is your justly god-given right to fleece the public for as many dollars as you can get. As a retort, I say your stuff is worthless and that you've recouped any honest profit you earned with the first copy sold. Now go peddle your FUD elsewhere.
If I don't have a natural right to copy, then you have no natural right to profit.
How come they don't use this kind of math against those evil media sharing people? Let's see, the album went triple platinum (what is that, 3 million copies?) and I distributed 4 copies of track 7 out of 12... so your estimated damage is 1/12 * 4/(3 million) * $16/ea.
I'm reading that as a statement that artists/inventors are unable to resist easier financing by selling rights instead of raising their own capital(?)
(practicing self-restraint) No. Quit trolling.
Who holds the title/deed?
The bank still does. That's not the point. The point is that excusing government as a work in progress completely ignores that for the last 200 years the work in progress has been to generate more red tape to benefit DC and Wall Street.
Any links?
Google for Illodial (sp?). You'll find mostly Libertarian rantings and ravings, so spare me the critique. The bottom line is that it's true. You'll never own the land you think you own.
That's my primary point. If they would adhere to the 9th and 10th amendments like they're supposed to, they shouldn't be involved in any of these activities. It was never conceived that the government would or should become this large.
Who else gets to disregard their rules of employment so blatantly?
I've never agreed with the legal precedent which recognizes an organization as a separate entity. It's a clear recipe for money laundering when the janitor doesn't get to vote on the salary of the CEO. As it stands, however, the politicians and lawyers know where the easiest butter is.
What if this is the only way to make it clear that the government is serious about protecting copyrights?
That's my point of contention. I do not feel that the government should have any more than the most cursory involvement in the issue. Any involvement they should have should concentrate more on the original inventors and creators and less on he who holds the legally tendered rights.
Nobody is holding a gun to the heads of creators and inventors.
That is so old and overused that I'm going to ignore the rest of the section. It is completely ignorant of the powerful force that financial impact has. Let's stick with reality.
Patience. Now is not the time to throw in the towel in exasperation. Our government has always been, and always will be (I really hope) a work in progress.
Two hundred years ago when you bought land you put out stakes and said,"This is mine.". Now, even when you buy the land, even when you've paid every dollar on the mortgage, there is still some megacorp which holds the final title deed to the land as issued and recognized by other organizations which have all their own rules and conditions and channels and RED TAPE for denying you the right to own your land.
I've had to change the channel I had been running mine on for several months in order to get away from people who had just set theirs up on the same channel as mine
I'm convinced that all my neighbors reconfigure theirs to be on my channel once every few months. I started out on 4, then 8, then 3, now 2...
Through elections we select who will represent the majority of the interests in the this country
But they're not representing a majority interest. I didn't hear any talk of cameras, EVER, in any campaigns.
Everyone else in the nation has a job description. You can get fired for doing anything outside your job description. I don't see cameras anywhere in the Constitution, nor in any campaign flyers, nor in any texts which address the responsibility of politicians.
You! The politician! Put your hands behind your head and step AWAY from my paycheck!
In public, the government can put up cameras because it is a public space and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy
No. They can't. You know why they can't? Because they never knocked on my door and asked me for the money to buy the cameras. If they had asked for money to buy cameras, I would have told them to get bent. I didn't hear any mention of cameras in any of the campaigns.
Oh wait. You mean there's a catch here? They don't have to ask me for money or tell me what they're doing? They can just go ahead and do whatever they want? Is there a limit to that anywhere? No? Damn. This isn't much of a liberty and freedom republic.
Problem is that sometimes large groups of people can take advantage of that.
Most of them are registered on Wall Street.
believe that in this case, our government is being pretty hands off
Their hands are pretty strong when they find in favor of click-through EULAs and gargantuan employee agreements. That's all about intellectual property.
Do you really think that if there were a genuine threat of jail time for file sharers, they'd still share?
Think about what you're saying. Do you really think file-sharing warrants jail time? If you want to enforce the rights of the inventors and creators, how about removing the laws which make it legal for corporations to hold those inventors and creators in a paycheck to paycheck stranglehold? I have yet to see a contract which includes a single right that I retain--they're all about the company.
Slashdot Mirror
Another point is, couldn't the virtual police become corrupt
People get enough of crooked politicians and corrupt cops in real life. They probably don't want to deal with it in a game (unless they can shoot first).
If that's all you have to worry about...
Call me a paranoid nut but it sounds to me like you've just described my entire life.
Well, considering that the Constitution sets up a democratically elected Republic, and "capitalism" is not explicitly connected with a governmental type...
I must conclude you're talking out your ass.
Are those like USENET, or IRC, or /. trolls? Typically (most often?) they're moderators, or ops, who are bored to tears all day long and happily lie in wait to start arguments and feed flame wars as often as possible?
Just like in business and government: we can't get rid of the bad apples because they're composed of the oldest, most well-established, most wealthy individuals.
Last I checked piracy was still piracy. What gives you the right to faciliate piracy?
I think we're following the examples set by our social predecessors and superiors:
In business and employment: screw the law, screw the taxpayers, screw right and wrong. Might makes right. If you pee on the VPs shoes you _will_ be fired, or terminated, or laid off, or harassed into the loony bin (which can very easily be done legally as long as you're not a woman, disabled, or in a minority group).
In governments: screw the law, screw treaties, screw higher powers. If the US (arguably the world's older brother if by no other attributes than economic and military might) wants to invade a nation they don't need evidence, they don't need international approval (or they can conjure it with enough aid packages), they just DO IT.
So what gives us a right to facilitate piracy? Because WE CAN. Because we WANT TO. Because that's what our superiors do. Because that's what Alan Greenspan, and George Bush, and all rich and famous and powerful people do. They do what they can, when they want to, as often as they want to.
Perhaps it's time to accept the fact that language is constantly evolving and embrace this usage of the word piracy which has enjoyed popular use for over 200 years now
What's more important is that we need to accept that idiots, who make up a majority of the population, effectively write the common use definitions.
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed
In your fifth amendment example there is no potential profit. Real estate and physical property have real value.
In the prosecution of copyright violation (or theft, or piracy) the most flawed assumption is that the intellectual property has unlimited worth. This is a laughable assumption but one that no one has been able to bury in the legal field.
Of course, you did address all of this in your final suggestion which I'm quite impressed with and will probably spend more than a few minutes pondering over the holiday weekend.
So do you think if someone painted a copy of the Mona Lisa back in 1700-something, they referred to the copying artist as a "pirate" or simply a fraud?
Because if if we're prosecuting people on the premise of intellectual property fraud then we're frying the smallest fish first and that simply doesn't make any sense.
The reason why local governments subsidize the stadiums is because of the local revenue a sports team can bring in
Which is figured much the same way as the estimated losses from filesharing.
Translation: it's all bullshit, and they're fleecing us (the actual working taxpayers) blind without our approval, without our consent, and often using our own tax dollars to fund ad campaigns to convince the less educated taxpayers that what's false is true and what's true is false.
we consume a vastly larger portion of those resources to support our rich society
I don't know what side of the tracks you're from, but I'm certainly not living in a society which could be considered "rich" by any means.
If you believe that our position will not suffer when the people of Africa and Asia demand their fair share, you are a complete moron
My position won't suffer because I'm not living any larger than what I could reasonably have put together using the effort that I've expended over the years. If you're worried that you're living too large and the rest of the world may come to collect its just compensation that's between you and your conscience.
The US government should switch its efforts to why all these 'terrorists' are targetting it. There's gotta be a reason
Shhhh. Don't tell anyone. They spend 12 years (at least) in public school attempting to convince us that there is no such thing as cause and effect.
Entrapment, harassment, taunting... none of these things are recognized. You can poke someone with a sharp stick for days, weeks, years on end... but woe to them should they ever turn around and break your stick. That's destruction of property.
The problem is, if we stop "pissing of the world" we lose alot of perks. Imagine your life with $6.00/gal gasoline and having to abandon the suburbs
That's like saying that the only possible way to have sex is to have make-up sex--requiring you to completely piss off your partner before you can get to cuddling.
It's FUD, and quit spreading it. The world could be a very cooperative and mutually beneficial place and we could retain our high standard of living without fleecing the rest of the world or alienating and angering every foreign nation we come across.
There are only 2 types of people who propagate the lie that our standard of living DEPENDS on our iron-fisted world domination: those who are profiting like pigs from it, and those who don't have a brain.
If I made a product that I put effort and thought into, and I could charge $100 for each, is it lawful if someone in another nation can steal my work and produce straight copies for $10 each, thereby bypassing the entire R&D costs, of which I'm stuck paying for myself as well as freeloaders?
You've just outlined the argument for international trade, tariffs, duties, and every other reprehensible form of economic warfare.
You people act like IP theft doesn't occur all the time, like it's something that only those unclean media-sharing p2p people get involved in. Time to wake up to reality: it's not a crime, it's a fact of life.
The law exist to protect us from people stealing our stuff
Give it a rest. You're assuming that your stuff has unlimited value and that it is your justly god-given right to fleece the public for as many dollars as you can get. As a retort, I say your stuff is worthless and that you've recouped any honest profit you earned with the first copy sold. Now go peddle your FUD elsewhere.
If I don't have a natural right to copy, then you have no natural right to profit.
How come they don't use this kind of math against those evil media sharing people? Let's see, the album went triple platinum (what is that, 3 million copies?) and I distributed 4 copies of track 7 out of 12... so your estimated damage is 1/12 * 4/(3 million) * $16/ea.
I'm reading that as a statement that artists/inventors are unable to resist easier financing by selling rights instead of raising their own capital(?)
(practicing self-restraint) No. Quit trolling.
Who holds the title/deed?
The bank still does. That's not the point. The point is that excusing government as a work in progress completely ignores that for the last 200 years the work in progress has been to generate more red tape to benefit DC and Wall Street.
Any links?
Google for Illodial (sp?). You'll find mostly Libertarian rantings and ravings, so spare me the critique. The bottom line is that it's true. You'll never own the land you think you own.
That's my primary point. If they would adhere to the 9th and 10th amendments like they're supposed to, they shouldn't be involved in any of these activities. It was never conceived that the government would or should become this large.
Who else gets to disregard their rules of employment so blatantly?
I've never agreed with the legal precedent which recognizes an organization as a separate entity. It's a clear recipe for money laundering when the janitor doesn't get to vote on the salary of the CEO. As it stands, however, the politicians and lawyers know where the easiest butter is.
What if this is the only way to make it clear that the government is serious about protecting copyrights?
That's my point of contention. I do not feel that the government should have any more than the most cursory involvement in the issue. Any involvement they should have should concentrate more on the original inventors and creators and less on he who holds the legally tendered rights.
Nobody is holding a gun to the heads of creators and inventors.
That is so old and overused that I'm going to ignore the rest of the section. It is completely ignorant of the powerful force that financial impact has. Let's stick with reality.
Patience. Now is not the time to throw in the towel in exasperation. Our government has always been, and always will be (I really hope) a work in progress.
Two hundred years ago when you bought land you put out stakes and said,"This is mine.". Now, even when you buy the land, even when you've paid every dollar on the mortgage, there is still some megacorp which holds the final title deed to the land as issued and recognized by other organizations which have all their own rules and conditions and channels and RED TAPE for denying you the right to own your land.
That's a work in progress.
I've had to change the channel I had been running mine on for several months in order to get away from people who had just set theirs up on the same channel as mine
I'm convinced that all my neighbors reconfigure theirs to be on my channel once every few months. I started out on 4, then 8, then 3, now 2...
Through elections we select who will represent the majority of the interests in the this country
But they're not representing a majority interest. I didn't hear any talk of cameras, EVER, in any campaigns.
Everyone else in the nation has a job description. You can get fired for doing anything outside your job description. I don't see cameras anywhere in the Constitution, nor in any campaign flyers, nor in any texts which address the responsibility of politicians.
You! The politician! Put your hands behind your head and step AWAY from my paycheck!
In public, the government can put up cameras because it is a public space and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy
No. They can't. You know why they can't? Because they never knocked on my door and asked me for the money to buy the cameras. If they had asked for money to buy cameras, I would have told them to get bent. I didn't hear any mention of cameras in any of the campaigns.
Oh wait. You mean there's a catch here? They don't have to ask me for money or tell me what they're doing? They can just go ahead and do whatever they want? Is there a limit to that anywhere? No? Damn. This isn't much of a liberty and freedom republic.
When you can put those definitions into 200 of your own words or less then you may demonstrate competency.
Quoting wikipedia just means you're a web monkey.
Problem is that sometimes large groups of people can take advantage of that.
Most of them are registered on Wall Street.
believe that in this case, our government is being pretty hands off
Their hands are pretty strong when they find in favor of click-through EULAs and gargantuan employee agreements. That's all about intellectual property.
Do you really think that if there were a genuine threat of jail time for file sharers, they'd still share?
Think about what you're saying. Do you really think file-sharing warrants jail time? If you want to enforce the rights of the inventors and creators, how about removing the laws which make it legal for corporations to hold those inventors and creators in a paycheck to paycheck stranglehold? I have yet to see a contract which includes a single right that I retain--they're all about the company.
where are all the professional criminal hackers?
Sitting at terminals using the 0-day exploits that Microsoft insists don't exist.