Don't confuse coherent logical structure with sanity, the latter ties back to reality. Maintaining draconian, abusable and potentially destructive to democracy laws alive 'just in case' is only as sane as keeping a loaded handgun on the bedside table because nothing bad has occured yet.
Having just recently been relinquished of toxic and deadly materials - Crest, Head and Shoulders and hair gel - twice in the course of a simple inter-province business trip I got a full taste of the madness which ensues when Harper-types get their way. He might as well call an election now and get it over with before the rest of his PNAC wannabees get too settled in. His governement is well past the best-by date.
"I don't know, did this schoolmaster knowingly "pirate" his software? It's not clear to me from the article. Gorbachev argues the nuance he didn't know he was committing a crime. That to me sounds like splitting semantic hairs."
How is this different than hard time for stealing a loaf a bread? We've finally allowed a belief in corporate BS-wrapped self-interest almost religious in magnitude to push back human rights to Hugo's time. Siberian prison for using software? What have we become? Incidentally, my understnding is the Soviet system for IP was very much different than the West's. All of it was State owned. Implying that a back water school teacher was in some way acting in a 'nefarious' manner and knew the consequences of contravening fast changing WIPO statutes is almost beneath contempt.
Lying to the police or the courts, those who adminster the law, is an offense punishable by jail term and fines, yet the far more grevious misleading lawmakers is considered business as usual. One act affects an individual or small group while the other a nation. Why aren't these people going to jail? I'm all for this being considered a form of treason.
Consider the other side. For decades the general public has been completely unaware of the legislative distortions purchased by content providers and how many rights previously taken for granted weve lost in the name of so-called protection. What you describe, coupled with the loss of ability to copy DVDs, lawsuits for downloading, soon to be lost ability to record TV programs, etc., will bring to suburban living rooms in a very unambiguous manner the true motives and consequences of oligarchy protection organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. Once YouTube/Google suits start flying thick and fast maybe well finally come back around to an understanding of the original intent of copyright and the cost of expanding a utilitarian accommodation made to enhance the Arts and Sciences into an absolutist right over the control of common culture.
"'Population Explosion Causing the End of Civilization by 2000' crowd."
The Club of Rome's predictions based on extrapolation of trends is not comparable to general consensus on the interpretation of data among global climatologists. Its not close to equivalent, no more so than predicting the stock market over the next decade is equivalent to concluding the late 1990s crash strongly correlates to the Dot Com bust.
The entire article reads like one long, dissembling pack of lies meant to exert influence on upcoming changes to our copyright legislation. The claims are idiotic at face value.
- Montreal, a city of approximately 4 million, is responsible for 50% of the worlds 6.5 billion inhabitants piracy. 0.6% pirates 50%. Sure.
- Conflating the normal understanding of movie piracy as distributing movies with cams in theatres is a cheap Iraq/terrorist juxtaposition ploy
- The advantage is convenience, pirates cam both English and French for release in, of all places, Asia where the vast majority speak neither (ignoring that Quebec French is significantly different the French spoken elsewhere.)
- Finally, that somehow copyright legislation has much of any bearing on it.
How we got to a place where marketing shill non-entities of tertiary industries, such as the "chief executive of the Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain" or "president of Fox's domestic distribution", have the balls to threaten foreign countries is best left to historians but its well past time politicians put these dogs back in their place as purveyors of useless trivialities and told to STFU.
This is as much about Quebec culture as Harper's softwood lumber agreement with the US was about protecting BC logging: not at all. Harper wants to align with an ideological equal and Canadians citizens come second. Had the Liberals not become such a haven for kickbacks and gerrymandering he would still be no more than a prairie curiousity.
"As for mass-produced Canadian beer, try Rickard's Red. It used to be great, and is now merely "surprisingly drinkable"..."
When I asked one of the former Ontario reps why Molson changed formulas, he confided the original Rickard's Red was carmel-coloured Export. When the brand took off the brewery was in danger of being caught re-branding and was forced to alter the recipe. To be a little more off-topic, BC has a slew of great beer but Quebec tops the heap. Even their national brands, such as Export, use a different, market-specific formula. Plus it's (still?) available in quarts.
"Not that terrorists are all that articulate about
their goals or anything, but when did they say they
wanted to strengthen our existing government's security
services..."
The popular claim forever has been the terrorists hate America for its liberties and free way of life. A despotic government deals with that nicely.
"..and annoy us while flying (oh noes!),..."
Sarcastic straw man, see above.
"..while leaving our hated strip clubs.."
They have a declared jihad on peelers?
"...and foreign occupations."
They want you out of the Middle East and to stop supporting regimes like the Saudis, or in the past Saddam and the Shah of Iran.
"...and breweries intact?"
Well, given the taste of most American beers here you may have a valid point.
"The terrorists had superior training in combat and weapons..."
Cites please, and only cites relevant towards demostrating how a handful of men could have overtaken 20+ times thier number of potentially armed defendants in cramped quarters.
.."and would have merely massacred all the passengers on the plane before taking the cockpit."
For you perhaps. I envy your ability to strip all nuance and extenuating circumstance from hundreds of years intellectual property law into one, simple formula. The changes in copyright penalties from civil to criminal? Simple, ignore it. The extensions from 20 years to 'your great grandchildren might get a chance'? Simple, ignore it. Universal DRM for the mosty beneficial and powerful general devices in the history of mankind for the benefit of a handful of niche, secondary industries? Simple again. Simply do as media companies tell you like a good corporate citizen, it's their 'right' to determine the flow of information to maximize profit..cough cough... save the artists who despise them. Sorry, there I go making things complex again. Such simplicity of vision where others see only strife and harm to society....
It's sad to see, so far down the road, yet another invalid comparison between 'intellectual property' and physical objects moderated Insightful. If you haven't been paying attention for the last thousand discussions delineating the differences in law then little anyone says today will loosen that mental block for you.
Well, there's the difference isn't it? Python and THHGTTG were repeated ad nauseam for being exceptional and novel entertainment for the time. Cause: exceptionalism, Effect: tell all your friends. Advertising, the art of perpetual lying, is attempting to 'leverage' the process in reverse. Cause: tell everyone, Effect: create the false impression of exceptionalism long enough make a decent buck. Ad agencies have evolved into social parasites, latching to every spontaneous trend in order to suck coin from us, finally kill it with opportunism and cynicism. To my mind they are far more harmful than purveyors of video games, depictions of violence, porn, or all the other typical boogey-men, not the least for the fact we're continually exposed to their prevarications from the moment we're first dropped in front of the television.
Conversely, the annual millions radio stations pay out in licensing fees for the privledge of giving artists free air time could go towards properly staffing studios. Same for restaraunts, taxi companies, and every establishment that pays a fee for a radio playing in the background.
How would you feel to discover that a single individual was tracking all your communications, monitoring your movements, collating all public traces you leave behind? Most here would find it disturbing and seek legal remedy. Yet when a government automates and collates this across an entire citizenry it's made to sound like an issue for those prone to 'foamy mouth diatribes'. Yet at worse an individual can harm one, two, a dozen others before being taken out of circulation, governments have consistently harmed tens of millions and survived to terrorize for generations more. Your position makes no sense.
Any proof of that? Evidence the NSA mined all civil communications for generations would be political dynamite (if the use of such adjectives are still considered wise on-line.)
"Police who have experience with crime probably have a somewhat better perspective on the hows and whys of crime than you Joe Searchbot does."
Now that is just too funny. Some fun Googling terms to expand your horizons and education: "satanic panic", "heavy metal backwards masking", "day care centre child abuse rings", "recovered memory syndrome". Hyper aggressive police forces and district attorneys have proven themselves among those with the least common sense perspective on these issues.
Yes, you do. That's why it's called a democratic republic. Not to say there isn't an alarming number of people here who wouldn't welcome an authoritarian state with open, maybe even raised arms.
"The thing is - the WAPI standard was a "secret" while the IEEE standard simply isn't. Intel and other multinationals would have to yield their intellectual property to chineese companies to support the WAPI standard. THAT is what the
companies gripped about."
Sorry, you sound genuine and knowledgeable but this doesn't parse. China's 'closed' WAPI required disseminating intellectual property, IEEE's 'open' protocol didn't?
What's so mind blowing about it? It's not like standards are public in the way TV's NTSC was. They're corporate property. FM is perfect example, an open protocol being supplanted by IBOC, a transmission scheme owned by a single corporate consortium. A license to print money for generations. Corporatists or Communists, pick your poison.
Slashdot Mirror
30 million Canadians
$30 Billion per year
$100,000,000 per corporate American head
This is about enriching a very few - those with the funds to infulence international politics - at the expense of every citizen's freedoms.
Don't confuse coherent logical structure with sanity, the latter ties back to reality. Maintaining draconian, abusable and potentially destructive to democracy laws alive 'just in case' is only as sane as keeping a loaded handgun on the bedside table because nothing bad has occured yet.
Having just recently been relinquished of toxic and deadly materials - Crest, Head and Shoulders and hair gel - twice in the course of a simple inter-province business trip I got a full taste of the madness which ensues when Harper-types get their way. He might as well call an election now and get it over with before the rest of his PNAC wannabees get too settled in. His governement is well past the best-by date.
'Score:5, Insightful'? Slashdot continues its headlong tumble.
Let me just say on behalf of everyone here how honoured we are to have a member of the Bush Administration contribute to this forum.
How is this different than hard time for stealing a loaf a bread? We've finally allowed a belief in corporate BS-wrapped self-interest almost religious in magnitude to push back human rights to Hugo's time. Siberian prison for using software? What have we become? Incidentally, my understnding is the Soviet system for IP was very much different than the West's. All of it was State owned. Implying that a back water school teacher was in some way acting in a 'nefarious' manner and knew the consequences of contravening fast changing WIPO statutes is almost beneath contempt.
Lying to the police or the courts, those who adminster the law, is an offense punishable by jail term and fines, yet the far more grevious misleading lawmakers is considered business as usual. One act affects an individual or small group while the other a nation. Why aren't these people going to jail? I'm all for this being considered a form of treason.
Consider the other side. For decades the general public has been completely unaware of the legislative distortions purchased by content providers and how many rights previously taken for granted weve lost in the name of so-called protection. What you describe, coupled with the loss of ability to copy DVDs, lawsuits for downloading, soon to be lost ability to record TV programs, etc., will bring to suburban living rooms in a very unambiguous manner the true motives and consequences of oligarchy protection organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. Once YouTube/Google suits start flying thick and fast maybe well finally come back around to an understanding of the original intent of copyright and the cost of expanding a utilitarian accommodation made to enhance the Arts and Sciences into an absolutist right over the control of common culture.
'Stretching' might be common to both.
The Club of Rome's predictions based on extrapolation of trends is not comparable to general consensus on the interpretation of data among global climatologists. Its not close to equivalent, no more so than predicting the stock market over the next decade is equivalent to concluding the late 1990s crash strongly correlates to the Dot Com bust.
- Montreal, a city of approximately 4 million, is responsible for 50% of the worlds 6.5 billion inhabitants piracy. 0.6% pirates 50%. Sure.
- Conflating the normal understanding of movie piracy as distributing movies with cams in theatres is a cheap Iraq/terrorist juxtaposition ploy
- The advantage is convenience, pirates cam both English and French for release in, of all places, Asia where the vast majority speak neither (ignoring that Quebec French is significantly different the French spoken elsewhere.)
- Finally, that somehow copyright legislation has much of any bearing on it.
How we got to a place where marketing shill non-entities of tertiary industries, such as the "chief executive of the Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain" or "president of Fox's domestic distribution", have the balls to threaten foreign countries is best left to historians but its well past time politicians put these dogs back in their place as purveyors of useless trivialities and told to STFU.
This is as much about Quebec culture as Harper's softwood lumber agreement with the US was about protecting BC logging: not at all. Harper wants to align with an ideological equal and Canadians citizens come second. Had the Liberals not become such a haven for kickbacks and gerrymandering he would still be no more than a prairie curiousity.
When I asked one of the former Ontario reps why Molson changed formulas, he confided the original Rickard's Red was carmel-coloured Export. When the brand took off the brewery was in danger of being caught re-branding and was forced to alter the recipe. To be a little more off-topic, BC has a slew of great beer but Quebec tops the heap. Even their national brands, such as Export, use a different, market-specific formula. Plus it's (still?) available in quarts.
The popular claim forever has been the terrorists hate America for its liberties and free way of life. A despotic government deals with that nicely.
"..and annoy us while flying (oh noes!),..."
Sarcastic straw man, see above.
"..while leaving our hated strip clubs.."
They have a declared jihad on peelers?
"...and foreign occupations."
They want you out of the Middle East and to stop supporting regimes like the Saudis, or in the past Saddam and the Shah of Iran.
"...and breweries intact?"
Well, given the taste of most American beers here you may have a valid point.
Cites please, and only cites relevant towards demostrating how a handful of men could have overtaken 20+ times thier number of potentially armed defendants in cramped quarters.
Good thing it turned out so much differently, no?
For you perhaps. I envy your ability to strip all nuance and extenuating circumstance from hundreds of years intellectual property law into one, simple formula. The changes in copyright penalties from civil to criminal? Simple, ignore it. The extensions from 20 years to 'your great grandchildren might get a chance'? Simple, ignore it. Universal DRM for the mosty beneficial and powerful general devices in the history of mankind for the benefit of a handful of niche, secondary industries? Simple again. Simply do as media companies tell you like a good corporate citizen, it's their 'right' to determine the flow of information to maximize profit ..cough cough... save the artists who despise them. Sorry, there I go making things complex again. Such simplicity of vision where others see only strife and harm to society....
It's sad to see, so far down the road, yet another invalid comparison between 'intellectual property' and physical objects moderated Insightful. If you haven't been paying attention for the last thousand discussions delineating the differences in law then little anyone says today will loosen that mental block for you.
Well, there's the difference isn't it? Python and THHGTTG were repeated ad nauseam for being exceptional and novel entertainment for the time. Cause: exceptionalism, Effect: tell all your friends. Advertising, the art of perpetual lying, is attempting to 'leverage' the process in reverse. Cause: tell everyone, Effect: create the false impression of exceptionalism long enough make a decent buck. Ad agencies have evolved into social parasites, latching to every spontaneous trend in order to suck coin from us, finally kill it with opportunism and cynicism. To my mind they are far more harmful than purveyors of video games, depictions of violence, porn, or all the other typical boogey-men, not the least for the fact we're continually exposed to their prevarications from the moment we're first dropped in front of the television.
Conversely, the annual millions radio stations pay out in licensing fees for the privledge of giving artists free air time could go towards properly staffing studios. Same for restaraunts, taxi companies, and every establishment that pays a fee for a radio playing in the background.
How would you feel to discover that a single individual was tracking all your communications, monitoring your movements, collating all public traces you leave behind? Most here would find it disturbing and seek legal remedy. Yet when a government automates and collates this across an entire citizenry it's made to sound like an issue for those prone to 'foamy mouth diatribes'. Yet at worse an individual can harm one, two, a dozen others before being taken out of circulation, governments have consistently harmed tens of millions and survived to terrorize for generations more. Your position makes no sense.
Any proof of that? Evidence the NSA mined all civil communications for generations would be political dynamite (if the use of such adjectives are still considered wise on-line.)
Now that is just too funny. Some fun Googling terms to expand your horizons and education: "satanic panic", "heavy metal backwards masking", "day care centre child abuse rings", "recovered memory syndrome". Hyper aggressive police forces and district attorneys have proven themselves among those with the least common sense perspective on these issues.
Yes, you do. That's why it's called a democratic republic. Not to say there isn't an alarming number of people here who wouldn't welcome an authoritarian state with open, maybe even raised arms.
Sorry, you sound genuine and knowledgeable but this doesn't parse. China's 'closed' WAPI required disseminating intellectual property, IEEE's 'open' protocol didn't?
What's so mind blowing about it? It's not like standards are public in the way TV's NTSC was. They're corporate property. FM is perfect example, an open protocol being supplanted by IBOC, a transmission scheme owned by a single corporate consortium. A license to print money for generations. Corporatists or Communists, pick your poison.