Electricity is cheap and plentiful if we used nuclear power. Unfortunatly, the "Enviornmentalists" are the "Useful Idiots" (as Lennin would call them) for the big oil companies, by trying to sabatoge nuclear power.
The real programing by the media is the idea that nuclear power is somehow more dangerous than fossil fuels.
If, as you claim, "The U.S. is in no position to lecture anyone", who is?
I stand corrected. The U.S. should be focused on fighting censorship in the U.S.... Europeans should be focused on fighting censorship in Europe.
The Chinese people should be lecturing to the Chinese government on freedom of speech. There have been revolutions all through history (in fact, the Chinese government itself claims to be "revolutionary"). It is reasonable to assume that either through a violent overthrow of the Chinese government, or through a peaceful political process, the Chinese can end censorship. Western countries actually endanger popular movements in China, because pro-democracy movements are seen by the government as attemps at insurgency created by foriegn enemies.
The obvious "fire" in a crowded theater to start with. It is completly legal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater: The theater could be on fire, someone could have Turrets Syndrome, there could be actors on stage portraying an firing squad execution scene, or it could be a post-modern performance art piece entitled "Elements".
It is illegal to get people killed, which may result if someone yelled "fire" in certain circumstances. But all that would be determined AFTER the person yelled "fire". No-one would suggest that we make a law banning people from saying "fire" in theaters, because someone MAY POSSIBLY IN RARE CIRCUMSTANCES say it in such a way that could be dangerous.
Only because if they didn't a riot of sorts, like in the middle east, could have erupted causing huge amounts of damage.
So let me get this straight... you are saying that it is OK to censor and force people to not print a cartoon, because some people may get offended and riot.
Well, you have just given a lot of people a new political strategy! All we have to do is make a few death threats, burn a few flags, destroy an embassy, and we can get your government to censor all the stuff we do not like on our behalf? More than Muslims are going to play that game!
I don't get how this could be related to censorship? I gave examples of censorship (laws against denying the holocaust, laws against "offending" people of certain religions). That is censorship. Yes, I understand it is censorship that YOU support, but it is censorship. The West has widespead censorship, every bit as extreme as China.
However depending on the circumstances of a particular case I would agree that censorship should be enforced. And this is exactly the same view that the Chinese government has. The Chinese government has different circumstances, so their form of censorship is going to be different than the forms of censorship you are comfortable with. Like I said, you have a lifetime of propoganda telling you why YOUR forms of censorship are good. You are biased to think your forms of censorship are reasonable, and other forms of censorship are unreasonable. But it is purely a question of cultural bias, not some sort of moral position.
I don't think you are addressing my point: The West is just as oppressive as China. China and the West are different in some ways, and so the forms of oppression are different. But in terms of restricting personal freedom, we are no better than the Chinese. People in the West are simply bigoted against the Chinese.
I think the banning of Nazi-ish stuff has to do with Nazis getting their ass kicked. It was one of the few ideologies that was completly trounced and destroyed. Godwin's law aside, Nazism is pretty much a dead ideology. Sure, there are a few Nazis, in the same way there are a few people who still believe the Earth is flat... but Nazism for the most part is dead.
Compare Nazism with something such as Marxism-Lenninism. ML preaches mass murder of entire classes of people, and people with those beliefs have commited acts of mass-murder and genocide that were far worse than the Nazis. Marxism-Lenninism is just as dangerous as Nazism.
Yet, it is allowed to have a Communist party... it is allowed to deny that Stalin killed millions, or Mao killed millions. You can wear a Che Guevara t-shirt, and gay-rights groups aren't going to try to have you charged with a hate crime, even though Guevara was a notorious homophobe.
That is because Marxism-Lenninism wasn't defeated in a war the way Nazism was. There are still many Marxist-Lenninist out there. It didn't get it's ass kicked the way Nazism did.
So it appears that hate speech laws are more about suppressing marginalized ideologies, that suppressing hateful ideologies. It is simply coincidence that Nazism is both a hateful ideology and a marginalized ideology.
The only real 'speech' laws that the US has that it activly tries to enforce over the Internet are child porn laws. Those are enforced because compelling a minor to strip naked and fuck a dog or whatever is illegal. China and the West are night and day when it comes to Internet content. The West makes almost no attempt to regulate the content that goes up. The US is actually the most extreme case that does the absolutely least regulation. If you want to throw up a Nazi hate site, that is a-okay in the US.
You are kidding, right?
Try advertising for a political candidate 60 days before a national election... you are not going to be able to do it! Try running a free online classified website. You will be punished if SOMEONE ELSE posts on your website an add which can be interpreted as having some sort of bias against a protected group. Try posting information on how to build pipe bombs, or circumvent certain types of encryption, and you will be shut down and/or punished.
The U.S. has all sorts of restrictions on free speech! Not quite as totalitarian and sinister as speech restrictions in Europe or Canada or places like that... but "We aren't as Totalitarian as Europe" is no kind of excuse! The U.S. is in no position to lecture anyone, or brag to anyone about Freedom of Speech.
The West has censorship every bit as extreme as China:
In the U.S. among others, there are all kinds of restrictions on when and how you make political speech, and how you pay for it ("Campaign Finance Reform").
In Canada charges are being filed against a newspaper who reprinted the the Mohammed cartoons, and in Sweden an online site that published the Mohammed cartoons was shut down by the government. In Canada a guy was even charged and convicted for running an ad that had nothing but references to the bible.
Most of Europe doesn't allow people to deny the houlocaust happened. And religious groups often get people charged with "hate crimes" for critizing certain religions.
There is political censorship everywhere in the Western world as extreme as China. You might not find it as extreme, but of course you are biased to think that your forms of censorship are OK, and their forms of censorship is bad. This is anti-Chinese bigotry, plain and simple.
It is probably hard for most people to admit, because there is so much propoganda and cultural conditioning for people to support their governments... but most Western governments are every bit as oppressive as the Chinese government. In fact, in some ways nowadays, Chinese people are MORE free than people in the West.
Except when the gun freaks tend to be supporters of the most despotic government in recent American history, that is. What makes you think that supporters of an armed public support the current government? The Republican party is one of the biggest supporters of gun control ever. No national gun control law would be possible without significant support from the Republicans.
You would like to imagine that all people who support gun ownership are gun toting, Bush supporting, Rednecks. That stereotype is complete fiction. For example, when I lived in Detroit, the primarily Democratic, urban, African American electorate overwelming voted in a referendum to allow concieled carry of weapons for any reason (previously in Michigan, concieled carry was only allowed for people who had a "good reason", such as jewelry shop owners, professional bodyguards, etc.). The Democratic party tends to be for gun control, but when Democrats are offered a referendum where they can vote directly themselves, they are almost universally against gun control. The Democratic party gets a lot of money from the gun control lobby, so they go against the views of their constituents. In Brazil, the recent referendum to ban the private ownership of guns was a total failure - the gun control lobby thought that the left-leaning poor would garantee an almost total victory since leftist parties tend to favor gun control - Instead people from all walks of life thrashed the gun control measure. It was an utter and complete political disaster for the gun control lobby. Now there is a popular movement to constitutionally garantee the right to bear arms in Brazil.
Your "understanding" of the gun control issue comes mostly from propoganda by governments and political groups that have a vested interest in keeping the people disarmed and helpless.
Although that you might want to consider the fact that it's actually the more wealthy people in Europe who tend to be in favour of gun ownership, not us salt-of-the-earth serf types. I have to disagree... Almost universally the urban bougiouse support gun control. The urban bougoise like to think they are "progressive", and so when they support gun control they convince themselves that it has the support of the poor... when in fact the poor are voting for the "progressive" parties for economic benefits, not for anything to do with gun control. When the issue of gun control is actually put to a referendum to be decided by the people, the masses are almost universally against gun control.
Hey, why not go the whole way and let everyone own tanks and ICBMs. It would be unconstitutional to prevent them, of course. In the U.S. many private persons do own tanks (although usually they are historical preservationists and have no intention of using tanks for combat - regardless, even historical tanks could still cause some pretty serious mayhem, don't you think). And private companies are developing satalite launch vehicals - and as you know, anything that can launch a satalite can be used as an ICBM. Of course, tanks and ICBMs are different than say, an assualt rifle, in that virtually no private person could afford a tank or an ICBM. Tanks and ICBMs are prohibitivly expensive for your average person.
If he cut funds for schools (which he didn't do), would that mean that we would start doing as well as the countries that spend 1/3 or 1/4 as much per capita on schools, and still kick Americas ass in Math and Science?
I mean, the U.S. is doing a pretty crappy job compared to other countries... and we spend more per capita than nearly all other industrialized nations - both in dollars and percentage of GDP.
So, what is the point you are trying to make? An armed public was thought to be fundamental to democracy by all sorts of people, from George Orwell, to Malcom X, to Mohandas Gandhi.
Traditionally in Europe, only the upper classes were allowed to own and be trained in weapons, and the serfs and lower classes were disarmed. As Europe evolved from serfdom to social democracy, the government technocrats replaced the hereditary elite, but it was a matter of tradition to keep people disarmed (except amoung certain traditionally independent groups of Europeans). Gun control seems as natural to Europeans as having a picture of a hereditary monarch on money, or having a recognized state religion.
However, the United States fought a people's revolution against a Monarchy... having an armed population not only made practical sense, but it was a symbolic way of saying "you are all part of the upper class now!". Of course, the egalitarian ideals have been eroded over the years, or were never quite implemented in the first place - but we still have that attachment to the concept of "every man is a nobleman" ideal.
But none of that contradicts the relevancy of gun control or the lack of it. An armed population is the last defence against despotism. Every totalitarian leader has disarmed the people who he intended to oppress. If gun control isn't an issue in Europe, it is Europe's mistake. I am also pretty sure the acts of genocide and mass murder common in Europe (even as late as the 1990s), would be far less common if oppressed people were disarmed and helpless.
(Also, on a note, I know there are European countries that have gun ownership similiar to the United States [Austria], and some places where gun ownership is a respected duty to the country [Switzerland], and people who were historicaly disarmed because of foriegn invasion [Ireland]... and so my generalizations about Europe don't apply everywhere in Europe)
People were complaining that Google and other were complying with the oppressive laws in China, and thereby abusing human rights... and something should be done. Along comes a bill (Slashdotters seems to love government regulation) to directly address this issue (i.e. if the servers are not in China, then Google or whoever don't have to obey Chinese censorship laws... that is at least the theory behind it). Now people are whining and complaining about that bill!
I don't think you are all Libetarians or Anarchists and against this simply because you are against most forms government regulation. So could someone, who thinks Google is evil for doing buisness in China, who opposes the government restricting buisness in China on human rights grounds, and IS NOT a libertarian and just opposing the government on principle, please explain to me the logic of your decision.
PLEASE... Seriously, I am not going to diss you or disagree with you in any way. I will give you the last word and won't even reply back. I seriously want to understand the logic of your beliefs. This is not a rhetorical question, and I am not being factitious. I realize this is a failure to comprehend on my part, and would be very greatful to have you enlighten me on this issue.
Seriously, stopping unfair business practices is one of the things that even a libertarian should want from their government. The free market cannot exist in places where the market is manipulated, such as due to trusts or fraud, and there is no one that can stop it like the government.*
The trouble is that the government is a monopoly that uses trusts, fraud, and even violence as a buisness practice. We are not saying that a Microsoft "Monopoly" is good, we are wondering who is worse, the U.S. government or Microsoft.
I mean, no one disagrees that if any corporation used the same practices as the government (even ignoring the outright violence it commits), that the CEOs and most of the employees would be in prison. So if our government is by anyone's standards a corrupt monopoly, how can we trust the government to fight monopolies? If I can get linux, OSX, as easy as Windows... when I can install an alternative browser with about 30 seconds worth of effort.
Aren't YOU scared by the U.S. government? If you aren't, then you probably don't know very much about it. Last time I checked Microsoft hasn't killed anyone, have they? I haven't heard even the most rabid anti-Microsoft person ever accuse Microsoft of murder - even on Slashdot!!! I am just not that scared of Microsoft the make a deal with the devil to "protect" me from them.
technologies on the industry. And claiming that the monopoly granted to the owner of a copyright can qualify for antitrust violations is an unproven stretch. But notice what facilitates the monopoly and market manipulations in the music industry... the government. People crack DRM technology quicker than I even know the technology existed (literally, most of us first hear about a DRM technology when we read a story about someone who cracked it!:) ) I am not afraid that the music industry will create some uncrackable DRM program. DRM is a joke.
What I fear is that the government will (or already has in some cases) make it illegal for me to crack that technology. It will make it illegal for me to post how to circumvent DRM. I fear the legal restrictions that the government will place on media, not the companies that own that media. If it wasn't for the government, the RIAA could do nothing more than nag us.
It still won't work. The U.S. spent billions, if not trillions by now, trying to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. They have a whole police/military machine trying to keep the stuff out. They have a million people in prison for selling or using the stuff. And it doesn't seem to have any effect. (In fact, the drug laws probably perpetuate the drug trade. The U.S. government is like the OPEC of drugs... they are just effective enough to limit the drugs such as they become very profitable to smuggle.
Now, information is way easier to smuggle and hide than illicit substances. Especially in the age of the Internet. Expect any attemps to ban games to be as effective as the "War on Drugs".
In 5 years the web will be TV. I don't mean that in the way that there will be lots of full screen video. I mean that all content will be produced by the rich and politically connected who can deal with the immense amount of regulation and restriction, and the average person will be a consumer, and not a participant or producer. The egalitarianism of the internet is going to be destroyed, and it will be brought under corporate control, by the same people who claim to be egalitarian and protecting us from "Evil" corporations.
How about people being reasonable? Is it reasonable to discriminate publically? We are not talking about private citizen being discriminatory or property owners being discriminatory in private. We are talking about discriminatory against the public. No, we are not talking about discrimination whatsoever. This law does nothing to stop discrimination. It says that newspapers can be sued for printing certain ads. Printing those ads are not discrimination... they are simply printing text verbatum that people submited.
And also, it is far more important for the Government to be reasonable than ordinary people. Ordinary people don't have military, police, or vast global unchecked power that the government does. The government is far more prone to abuse than any ordinary citizen.
If the cost is the reason to ignore discriminiation, then slavery is more than reasonable by any standard. Once again - Printing an ad != discrimination. Craigslist does not discriminate in any way! The people renting the houses are discriminating. Should we punish the contracters who built the building if a landlord discriminates? What about the utilities that service the discriminating landlord?
For any business, costs of compliance is high regardless due to regulations and license. And this itself is a form of discrimination far more distructive than some occasional housing discrimination. If you need vast amounts of capital just to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, only rich people will be able to afford to start buisnesses. You have gamed the system against poor people (who are disproportionatly minorities). I have seen the burn out neighborhoods with no buisnesses, even though labor and real estate is cheap, because the cost of regulation is just too expensive for anyone but multi-millionares to even hope to begin starting buisnesses.
The Law that protects the rights of individual and freedom isn't being "extra" constitutional. We are explicitly garanteed freedom of speech. This was intentionally created to protect newspapers and media from being punished for speech that people might dislike. If you restrict speech in any way, you are violating the first amendment to the constitution.
FYI, Craigslist is backed by a huge corporation with an army of lawyers and millions of dollars. Exactly. Craigslist will be able to afford this restriction. Any smaller competitors will not. Hence, you have garanteed that only big corporations and the extreme wealthy will be able to run classified ads. So much for eliminating discrimination!
But going even deeper, this law does absolutly nothing to stop discrimination. A person will simply not print anything about discrimination in their ad, and discriminate anyway, and get away with it. The crime of "discrimination" is virtually impossible to prove (because you have to prove someething inside a person's head). Every once in a while a person might make a huge mistake, and there might be a token prosecution, but it is really pretty useless. In fact, this law makes it HARDER to punish people for prosecution, because it make illegal the type of hard evidence you would need to punish people for discrimination.
I would feel sorry for the guy, except this was a government office. You know that if it was a speeding ticket, or getting a permit to repair a driveway, or any number of other things, no pencil pushing beurocrat would "let it slide" for anything. If only more city government employees got screwed by the major, they would know how we feel!
But what about laws being reasonable? You know that the law is going to place an enourmous burdon on Craigslist. If you have millions of ads, the cost to manually check each one to make sure there is no discimintory language is going to be pretty damn high.
Laws are not sacred. They don't exist for their own sake. They are supposed to protect us, not enslave us. If a law is unreasonable, if the costs of compliance is too high, and it is restricting a totally reasonable activity (running a online classifieds system), then the law is anti-social and oppressive.
The legal system has turned into nothing more than a system of extortion, and this is the perfect example of just the case. Aside from the law being extra-constitutional, it will destroy any online classified system that isn't backed by a huge corporation with an army of lawyers and millions of dollars.
Sorry, but the U.S. is not longer really a viable place to do buisness... The legal system has become so insane, and what is more insane is a significant portion of people think it is noraml, or even good. If you have a choice not to do buisness in the U.S. (which is the case with Web based buisnesses), DON'T DO BUISNESS IN THE U.S.... There are so many laws, they are so restrictive, and there is no common sense to as what is reasonable or not.
So, in this example, we have a law that is totally ineffective at eliminating housing discrimination... Yet, we are going to make it super-expensive or impossible to run a whole set of services, for this crappy ineffectual law.
If you are running a web based buisness, there are plenty of countries that you can run your buisness out of. Because of the nature of the internet, it doesn't matter if you are in the U.S. or not.
It would be very easy and very economical to run an internet radio station. It would be fairly simple to build a p2p broadcast client that operated like bittorrent (so as to eliminate the need for a single server to serve bandwidth to everyone). And find people who would want to DJ and play music is easy. There is nothing inherently expensive or technically difficult about that. Because the costs are so cheap, it wouldn't take much to make it a profitable buisness.
The hard part of Internet radio is dealing with all the legal restrictions, licencing, ASCAP payments, and whatever.
Like all government regulation, the regulations and legal restrictions are designed to create fixed costs such that the barrier to entry is so high that there are only a few large competitors in the industry.
Eliminate all the restrictions and regulations, and Internet radio will take off.
From the flag of Switzerland... Since Switzerland was traditionally neutral, they created the red cross to be similiar to signify neutrality. They reversed the colors.
If the Red Cross is going to go after video game developers, I think that Switzerland should go after the Red Cross.
I generally think we should respect religion... and not go out of our way to insult it.
But, the thing is, too many religions are also political philosophies. Once you bring your religion into politics, your religion should be fair game for ridicule, insult, or any sort of nasty speech. Islam, (as well as Christianity, but I could go on and on about that, so I will leave it out of this post), is also a political ideology. It is being used as a basis for laws, for systems of government... Heck, even where I live in Canada people are pushing to have Sharia Law enforced in family courts!!!
Once you cross that line, then watch out. There is nothing wrong with insulting Islam as a political ideology, any more than there is anything wrong with insulting Socialism, or Capitalism, or Facism, or Communism. There is nothing wrong with making an insulting cartoon of Muhammad, than making an insulting cartoon of G. W. Bush. It is all part of free political discourse. Political satire is a of democracy and free expression.
If you don't want your religion insulted, then don't try to force your religious ideals on me through the political system. If you are promoting Intelligent Design, or Sharia Law, or anything else on me and at my expense through the political system, I have a right to call out your retarded political philosophy.
Instead of defacing websites, any person who is upset about having their ideology insulted should adopt the lifestyle of the 5th century from which Islamic philosophy began... That way they will not have to be exposed to a diverse global media of the 21st century. If you are going to adopt an ancient political ideology, you need an economic system and technologic lifestyle that is compatible with your belief system. It has worked pretty well for the Amish and Mennonites.
Games just aren't long enough, don't have enough content, or are too short between the sequals.
When I play a game, I have to develop a whole new skill set. Each game has it's own physics, rules, key-configurations, etc.... Once I spend the time developing a basic proficiency in a game, I want to enjoy as much content in that game world as possible.
Most of the games I enjoy, I could play them for years without getting bored, so long as someone kept developing new content. My favorite games are GTA series, or Morrowind, or games with big open worlds and lots of content. But if a FPS had a subscription services where I could purchase new levels each week (and especially if it was all part of some continuing story), it would take an extremly long time to get bored.
And I think a lot of people agree with me. Look at MMPOGs... people like them because of the human interaction of course... but people also like them because the game content never runs out (once you complete the quests, you can play meta-games such as guild politics, trading for profit, and there will also be expansions coming along)
How do you know if someone is a drug addicts, serial killer, pedophile, or drive-by shooting gang banger? If people were convicted of these things, they would be in jail and wouldn't be able to have kids the way things work now. And if they are NOT convicted of these things, then you are looking at some sort of indirect evidence ("gang tatoos"... the guy is "creepy looking", he doesn't go to church) in order to discover they are not fit parents?
Since you are trying to predict crimes you don't know have been commited, it leaves things open for interpretation. And interpretation can be very dangerous.
But that is only some of the problems... what do you do if parents have kids without licences? Throw them in jail and put the kid in an orphanage?
What happens if it turns out that 80% of ethnic group A get licences, and 20% of ethnic group B get licences. Regardless if it is fair and impartial or not, you are going to have a lot of pissed off people in group B. Many people will even accuse the system of being a passive form of "ethnic cleansing".
And what happens if people try to take it farther. If having children were licenced, there are definitly some people who would try to get the licence to include their moral agenda. What if someplace bans athiests from having kids (you know there are a lot of places were something like that could pass - the same places that teach Intelligent Design in schools). What about certain political beliefs? Can Neo-Nazis have a child licence? What about Scientologists? What if the parents openly favor corporal punishment, or believe in a religion that favors corporal punishment? The whole licencing process would be a field day for people with an agenda.
Does the licence cost anything? Are their fees to pay? Could you be discriminating against the poor by requiring they pay a licencing fee?
Do you have to be a citizen to get the licence? And if so, what about diplomatic staff from other countries? What happens if someone from the U.S. goes to a country without child licencing, has a kid there, and then brings it back?
Like I said, discrimination is only one problem with what you are suggesting (a huge problem, but only one of many).
But what is a "gang", and what are "gang tatoos"? I knew a bunch of guys who were part of a university fraternity that had frat tatooes, and ran together causing trouble. Where they a "gang"? Did they have "gang tatooes"?
When it is done by white bougiouse kids, it is a fraternity, and kids having fun. When it is done by poor hispanic kids, it is a gang, and they will get beat up by the gang squad. There is a cultural/ethnic bias.
You have a "learning disability" if you are a white kid in the suburbs, you are "illiterate" when you are a black kid in the inner city. Same thing, but one will get you all kinds of legal protection and special help from the government, while the other will get you fired from your job.
Walmart is a big corporate monster destroying America, while Ikea is a wonderful place and great member of the comunity, even though their buisness model and practices vitually identitcal (huge box stores that cut costs, pay their employees low wages, and sell disposable consumer goods driving local sellers of higher quality goods out of buisness). Of course, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Walmart services more poor rural people, while Ikea services urbanites with more money, now could it?
Most likely, if the government create some "standard" of good parenting, the standard would be based on the upper middle class suburban wasp ideal. Certain ethnic groups, or cultural groups, or religious groups, would have an advantage. Now, it is fine if certain groups have certain advantages in certain private relationships - but with GOVERNMENT, with something that is PUBLIC, when it is a part of the legal system and not optional or voluntary - then the government has the obligation to make sure there is no kind of bias one way or another. People are entitled to equal protection under the law. And that would be EXTREMLY hard to do with parenting licences.
Slashdot Mirror
Electricity is cheap and plentiful if we used nuclear power. Unfortunatly, the "Enviornmentalists" are the "Useful Idiots" (as Lennin would call them) for the big oil companies, by trying to sabatoge nuclear power.
The real programing by the media is the idea that nuclear power is somehow more dangerous than fossil fuels.
If, as you claim, "The U.S. is in no position to lecture anyone", who is?
... Europeans should be focused on fighting censorship in Europe.
I stand corrected. The U.S. should be focused on fighting censorship in the U.S.
The Chinese people should be lecturing to the Chinese government on freedom of speech. There have been revolutions all through history (in fact, the Chinese government itself claims to be "revolutionary"). It is reasonable to assume that either through a violent overthrow of the Chinese government, or through a peaceful political process, the Chinese can end censorship. Western countries actually endanger popular movements in China, because pro-democracy movements are seen by the government as attemps at insurgency created by foriegn enemies.
The obvious "fire" in a crowded theater to start with.
It is completly legal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater: The theater could be on fire, someone could have Turrets Syndrome, there could be actors on stage portraying an firing squad execution scene, or it could be a post-modern performance art piece entitled "Elements".
It is illegal to get people killed, which may result if someone yelled "fire" in certain circumstances. But all that would be determined AFTER the person yelled "fire". No-one would suggest that we make a law banning people from saying "fire" in theaters, because someone MAY POSSIBLY IN RARE CIRCUMSTANCES say it in such a way that could be dangerous.
Only because if they didn't a riot of sorts, like in the middle east, could have erupted causing huge amounts of damage.
So let me get this straight... you are saying that it is OK to censor and force people to not print a cartoon, because some people may get offended and riot.
Well, you have just given a lot of people a new political strategy! All we have to do is make a few death threats, burn a few flags, destroy an embassy, and we can get your government to censor all the stuff we do not like on our behalf? More than Muslims are going to play that game!
I don't get how this could be related to censorship?
I gave examples of censorship (laws against denying the holocaust, laws against "offending" people of certain religions). That is censorship. Yes, I understand it is censorship that YOU support, but it is censorship. The West has widespead censorship, every bit as extreme as China.
However depending on the circumstances of a particular case I would agree that censorship should be enforced.
And this is exactly the same view that the Chinese government has. The Chinese government has different circumstances, so their form of censorship is going to be different than the forms of censorship you are comfortable with. Like I said, you have a lifetime of propoganda telling you why YOUR forms of censorship are good. You are biased to think your forms of censorship are reasonable, and other forms of censorship are unreasonable. But it is purely a question of cultural bias, not some sort of moral position.
I don't think you are addressing my point: The West is just as oppressive as China. China and the West are different in some ways, and so the forms of oppression are different. But in terms of restricting personal freedom, we are no better than the Chinese. People in the West are simply bigoted against the Chinese.
I think the banning of Nazi-ish stuff has to do with Nazis getting their ass kicked. It was one of the few ideologies that was completly trounced and destroyed. Godwin's law aside, Nazism is pretty much a dead ideology. Sure, there are a few Nazis, in the same way there are a few people who still believe the Earth is flat... but Nazism for the most part is dead.
Compare Nazism with something such as Marxism-Lenninism. ML preaches mass murder of entire classes of people, and people with those beliefs have commited acts of mass-murder and genocide that were far worse than the Nazis. Marxism-Lenninism is just as dangerous as Nazism.
Yet, it is allowed to have a Communist party... it is allowed to deny that Stalin killed millions, or Mao killed millions. You can wear a Che Guevara t-shirt, and gay-rights groups aren't going to try to have you charged with a hate crime, even though Guevara was a notorious homophobe.
That is because Marxism-Lenninism wasn't defeated in a war the way Nazism was. There are still many Marxist-Lenninist out there. It didn't get it's ass kicked the way Nazism did.
So it appears that hate speech laws are more about suppressing marginalized ideologies, that suppressing hateful ideologies. It is simply coincidence that Nazism is both a hateful ideology and a marginalized ideology.
The only real 'speech' laws that the US has that it activly tries to enforce over the Internet are child porn laws. Those are enforced because compelling a minor to strip naked and fuck a dog or whatever is illegal. China and the West are night and day when it comes to Internet content. The West makes almost no attempt to regulate the content that goes up. The US is actually the most extreme case that does the absolutely least regulation. If you want to throw up a Nazi hate site, that is a-okay in the US.
You are kidding, right?
Try advertising for a political candidate 60 days before a national election... you are not going to be able to do it!
Try running a free online classified website. You will be punished if SOMEONE ELSE posts on your website an add which can be interpreted as having some sort of bias against a protected group.
Try posting information on how to build pipe bombs, or circumvent certain types of encryption, and you will be shut down and/or punished.
The U.S. has all sorts of restrictions on free speech! Not quite as totalitarian and sinister as speech restrictions in Europe or Canada or places like that... but "We aren't as Totalitarian as Europe" is no kind of excuse! The U.S. is in no position to lecture anyone, or brag to anyone about Freedom of Speech.
The West has censorship every bit as extreme as China:
In the U.S. among others, there are all kinds of restrictions on when and how you make political speech, and how you pay for it ("Campaign Finance Reform").
In Canada charges are being filed against a newspaper who reprinted the the Mohammed cartoons, and in Sweden an online site that published the Mohammed cartoons was shut down by the government. In Canada a guy was even charged and convicted for running an ad that had nothing but references to the bible.
Most of Europe doesn't allow people to deny the houlocaust happened. And religious groups often get people charged with "hate crimes" for critizing certain religions.
There is political censorship everywhere in the Western world as extreme as China. You might not find it as extreme, but of course you are biased to think that your forms of censorship are OK, and their forms of censorship is bad. This is anti-Chinese bigotry, plain and simple.
It is probably hard for most people to admit, because there is so much propoganda and cultural conditioning for people to support their governments... but most Western governments are every bit as oppressive as the Chinese government. In fact, in some ways nowadays, Chinese people are MORE free than people in the West.
Except when the gun freaks tend to be supporters of the most despotic government in recent American history, that is.
What makes you think that supporters of an armed public support the current government? The Republican party is one of the biggest supporters of gun control ever. No national gun control law would be possible without significant support from the Republicans.
You would like to imagine that all people who support gun ownership are gun toting, Bush supporting, Rednecks. That stereotype is complete fiction. For example, when I lived in Detroit, the primarily Democratic, urban, African American electorate overwelming voted in a referendum to allow concieled carry of weapons for any reason (previously in Michigan, concieled carry was only allowed for people who had a "good reason", such as jewelry shop owners, professional bodyguards, etc.). The Democratic party tends to be for gun control, but when Democrats are offered a referendum where they can vote directly themselves, they are almost universally against gun control. The Democratic party gets a lot of money from the gun control lobby, so they go against the views of their constituents. In Brazil, the recent referendum to ban the private ownership of guns was a total failure - the gun control lobby thought that the left-leaning poor would garantee an almost total victory since leftist parties tend to favor gun control - Instead people from all walks of life thrashed the gun control measure. It was an utter and complete political disaster for the gun control lobby. Now there is a popular movement to constitutionally garantee the right to bear arms in Brazil.
Your "understanding" of the gun control issue comes mostly from propoganda by governments and political groups that have a vested interest in keeping the people disarmed and helpless.
Although that you might want to consider the fact that it's actually the more wealthy people in Europe who tend to be in favour of gun ownership, not us salt-of-the-earth serf types.
I have to disagree... Almost universally the urban bougiouse support gun control. The urban bougoise like to think they are "progressive", and so when they support gun control they convince themselves that it has the support of the poor... when in fact the poor are voting for the "progressive" parties for economic benefits, not for anything to do with gun control. When the issue of gun control is actually put to a referendum to be decided by the people, the masses are almost universally against gun control.
Hey, why not go the whole way and let everyone own tanks and ICBMs. It would be unconstitutional to prevent them, of course.
In the U.S. many private persons do own tanks (although usually they are historical preservationists and have no intention of using tanks for combat - regardless, even historical tanks could still cause some pretty serious mayhem, don't you think). And private companies are developing satalite launch vehicals - and as you know, anything that can launch a satalite can be used as an ICBM. Of course, tanks and ICBMs are different than say, an assualt rifle, in that virtually no private person could afford a tank or an ICBM. Tanks and ICBMs are prohibitivly expensive for your average person.
If he cut funds for schools (which he didn't do), would that mean that we would start doing as well as the countries that spend 1/3 or 1/4 as much per capita on schools, and still kick Americas ass in Math and Science?
I mean, the U.S. is doing a pretty crappy job compared to other countries... and we spend more per capita than nearly all other industrialized nations - both in dollars and percentage of GDP.
Yeah, and who needs a passport? Only stinkin' terrorists, thats who!
So, what is the point you are trying to make? An armed public was thought to be fundamental to democracy by all sorts of people, from George Orwell, to Malcom X, to Mohandas Gandhi.
Traditionally in Europe, only the upper classes were allowed to own and be trained in weapons, and the serfs and lower classes were disarmed. As Europe evolved from serfdom to social democracy, the government technocrats replaced the hereditary elite, but it was a matter of tradition to keep people disarmed (except amoung certain traditionally independent groups of Europeans). Gun control seems as natural to Europeans as having a picture of a hereditary monarch on money, or having a recognized state religion.
However, the United States fought a people's revolution against a Monarchy... having an armed population not only made practical sense, but it was a symbolic way of saying "you are all part of the upper class now!". Of course, the egalitarian ideals have been eroded over the years, or were never quite implemented in the first place - but we still have that attachment to the concept of "every man is a nobleman" ideal.
But none of that contradicts the relevancy of gun control or the lack of it. An armed population is the last defence against despotism. Every totalitarian leader has disarmed the people who he intended to oppress. If gun control isn't an issue in Europe, it is Europe's mistake. I am also pretty sure the acts of genocide and mass murder common in Europe (even as late as the 1990s), would be far less common if oppressed people were disarmed and helpless.
(Also, on a note, I know there are European countries that have gun ownership similiar to the United States [Austria], and some places where gun ownership is a respected duty to the country [Switzerland], and people who were historicaly disarmed because of foriegn invasion [Ireland]... and so my generalizations about Europe don't apply everywhere in Europe)
People were complaining that Google and other were complying with the oppressive laws in China, and thereby abusing human rights... and something should be done. Along comes a bill (Slashdotters seems to love government regulation) to directly address this issue (i.e. if the servers are not in China, then Google or whoever don't have to obey Chinese censorship laws... that is at least the theory behind it). Now people are whining and complaining about that bill!
I don't think you are all Libetarians or Anarchists and against this simply because you are against most forms government regulation. So could someone, who thinks Google is evil for doing buisness in China, who opposes the government restricting buisness in China on human rights grounds, and IS NOT a libertarian and just opposing the government on principle, please explain to me the logic of your decision.
PLEASE... Seriously, I am not going to diss you or disagree with you in any way. I will give you the last word and won't even reply back. I seriously want to understand the logic of your beliefs. This is not a rhetorical question, and I am not being factitious. I realize this is a failure to comprehend on my part, and would be very greatful to have you enlighten me on this issue.
Seriously, stopping unfair business practices is one of the things that even a libertarian should want from their government. The free market cannot exist in places where the market is manipulated, such as due to trusts or fraud, and there is no one that can stop it like the government.*
:) ) I am not afraid that the music industry will create some uncrackable DRM program. DRM is a joke.
The trouble is that the government is a monopoly that uses trusts, fraud, and even violence as a buisness practice. We are not saying that a Microsoft "Monopoly" is good, we are wondering who is worse, the U.S. government or Microsoft.
I mean, no one disagrees that if any corporation used the same practices as the government (even ignoring the outright violence it commits), that the CEOs and most of the employees would be in prison. So if our government is by anyone's standards a corrupt monopoly, how can we trust the government to fight monopolies? If I can get linux, OSX, as easy as Windows... when I can install an alternative browser with about 30 seconds worth of effort.
Aren't YOU scared by the U.S. government? If you aren't, then you probably don't know very much about it. Last time I checked Microsoft hasn't killed anyone, have they? I haven't heard even the most rabid anti-Microsoft person ever accuse Microsoft of murder - even on Slashdot!!! I am just not that scared of Microsoft the make a deal with the devil to "protect" me from them.
technologies on the industry. And claiming that the monopoly granted to the owner of a copyright can qualify for antitrust violations is an unproven stretch.
But notice what facilitates the monopoly and market manipulations in the music industry... the government. People crack DRM technology quicker than I even know the technology existed (literally, most of us first hear about a DRM technology when we read a story about someone who cracked it!
What I fear is that the government will (or already has in some cases) make it illegal for me to crack that technology. It will make it illegal for me to post how to circumvent DRM. I fear the legal restrictions that the government will place on media, not the companies that own that media. If it wasn't for the government, the RIAA could do nothing more than nag us.
It still won't work. The U.S. spent billions, if not trillions by now, trying to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. They have a whole police/military machine trying to keep the stuff out. They have a million people in prison for selling or using the stuff. And it doesn't seem to have any effect. (In fact, the drug laws probably perpetuate the drug trade. The U.S. government is like the OPEC of drugs... they are just effective enough to limit the drugs such as they become very profitable to smuggle.
Now, information is way easier to smuggle and hide than illicit substances. Especially in the age of the Internet. Expect any attemps to ban games to be as effective as the "War on Drugs".
In 5 years the web will be TV. I don't mean that in the way that there will be lots of full screen video. I mean that all content will be produced by the rich and politically connected who can deal with the immense amount of regulation and restriction, and the average person will be a consumer, and not a participant or producer. The egalitarianism of the internet is going to be destroyed, and it will be brought under corporate control, by the same people who claim to be egalitarian and protecting us from "Evil" corporations.
How about people being reasonable? Is it reasonable to discriminate publically? We are not talking about private citizen being discriminatory or property owners being discriminatory in private. We are talking about discriminatory against the public.
No, we are not talking about discrimination whatsoever. This law does nothing to stop discrimination. It says that newspapers can be sued for printing certain ads. Printing those ads are not discrimination... they are simply printing text verbatum that people submited.
And also, it is far more important for the Government to be reasonable than ordinary people. Ordinary people don't have military, police, or vast global unchecked power that the government does. The government is far more prone to abuse than any ordinary citizen.
If the cost is the reason to ignore discriminiation, then slavery is more than reasonable by any standard.
Once again - Printing an ad != discrimination. Craigslist does not discriminate in any way! The people renting the houses are discriminating. Should we punish the contracters who built the building if a landlord discriminates? What about the utilities that service the discriminating landlord?
For any business, costs of compliance is high regardless due to regulations and license.
And this itself is a form of discrimination far more distructive than some occasional housing discrimination. If you need vast amounts of capital just to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, only rich people will be able to afford to start buisnesses. You have gamed the system against poor people (who are disproportionatly minorities). I have seen the burn out neighborhoods with no buisnesses, even though labor and real estate is cheap, because the cost of regulation is just too expensive for anyone but multi-millionares to even hope to begin starting buisnesses.
The Law that protects the rights of individual and freedom isn't being "extra" constitutional.
We are explicitly garanteed freedom of speech. This was intentionally created to protect newspapers and media from being punished for speech that people might dislike. If you restrict speech in any way, you are violating the first amendment to the constitution.
FYI, Craigslist is backed by a huge corporation with an army of lawyers and millions of dollars.
Exactly. Craigslist will be able to afford this restriction. Any smaller competitors will not. Hence, you have garanteed that only big corporations and the extreme wealthy will be able to run classified ads. So much for eliminating discrimination!
But going even deeper, this law does absolutly nothing to stop discrimination. A person will simply not print anything about discrimination in their ad, and discriminate anyway, and get away with it. The crime of "discrimination" is virtually impossible to prove (because you have to prove someething inside a person's head). Every once in a while a person might make a huge mistake, and there might be a token prosecution, but it is really pretty useless. In fact, this law makes it HARDER to punish people for prosecution, because it make illegal the type of hard evidence you would need to punish people for discrimination.
I would feel sorry for the guy, except this was a government office. You know that if it was a speeding ticket, or getting a permit to repair a driveway, or any number of other things, no pencil pushing beurocrat would "let it slide" for anything. If only more city government employees got screwed by the major, they would know how we feel!
But what about laws being reasonable? You know that the law is going to place an enourmous burdon on Craigslist. If you have millions of ads, the cost to manually check each one to make sure there is no discimintory language is going to be pretty damn high.
Laws are not sacred. They don't exist for their own sake. They are supposed to protect us, not enslave us. If a law is unreasonable, if the costs of compliance is too high, and it is restricting a totally reasonable activity (running a online classifieds system), then the law is anti-social and oppressive.
The legal system has turned into nothing more than a system of extortion, and this is the perfect example of just the case. Aside from the law being extra-constitutional, it will destroy any online classified system that isn't backed by a huge corporation with an army of lawyers and millions of dollars.
Sorry, but the U.S. is not longer really a viable place to do buisness... The legal system has become so insane, and what is more insane is a significant portion of people think it is noraml, or even good. If you have a choice not to do buisness in the U.S. (which is the case with Web based buisnesses), DON'T DO BUISNESS IN THE U.S. ... There are so many laws, they are so restrictive, and there is no common sense to as what is reasonable or not.
So, in this example, we have a law that is totally ineffective at eliminating housing discrimination... Yet, we are going to make it super-expensive or impossible to run a whole set of services, for this crappy ineffectual law.
If you are running a web based buisness, there are plenty of countries that you can run your buisness out of. Because of the nature of the internet, it doesn't matter if you are in the U.S. or not.
The constitution is interesting as a historical document, but has no bearing on the modern day operation of the U.S. government.
It would be very easy and very economical to run an internet radio station. It would be fairly simple to build a p2p broadcast client that operated like bittorrent (so as to eliminate the need for a single server to serve bandwidth to everyone). And find people who would want to DJ and play music is easy. There is nothing inherently expensive or technically difficult about that. Because the costs are so cheap, it wouldn't take much to make it a profitable buisness.
The hard part of Internet radio is dealing with all the legal restrictions, licencing, ASCAP payments, and whatever.
Like all government regulation, the regulations and legal restrictions are designed to create fixed costs such that the barrier to entry is so high that there are only a few large competitors in the industry.
Eliminate all the restrictions and regulations, and Internet radio will take off.
From the flag of Switzerland... Since Switzerland was traditionally neutral, they created the red cross to be similiar to signify neutrality. They reversed the colors.
If the Red Cross is going to go after video game developers, I think that Switzerland should go after the Red Cross.
I generally think we should respect religion... and not go out of our way to insult it.
But, the thing is, too many religions are also political philosophies. Once you bring your religion into politics, your religion should be fair game for ridicule, insult, or any sort of nasty speech. Islam, (as well as Christianity, but I could go on and on about that, so I will leave it out of this post), is also a political ideology. It is being used as a basis for laws, for systems of government... Heck, even where I live in Canada people are pushing to have Sharia Law enforced in family courts!!!
Once you cross that line, then watch out. There is nothing wrong with insulting Islam as a political ideology, any more than there is anything wrong with insulting Socialism, or Capitalism, or Facism, or Communism. There is nothing wrong with making an insulting cartoon of Muhammad, than making an insulting cartoon of G. W. Bush. It is all part of free political discourse. Political satire is a of democracy and free expression.
If you don't want your religion insulted, then don't try to force your religious ideals on me through the political system. If you are promoting Intelligent Design, or Sharia Law, or anything else on me and at my expense through the political system, I have a right to call out your retarded political philosophy.
Instead of defacing websites, any person who is upset about having their ideology insulted should adopt the lifestyle of the 5th century from which Islamic philosophy began... That way they will not have to be exposed to a diverse global media of the 21st century. If you are going to adopt an ancient political ideology, you need an economic system and technologic lifestyle that is compatible with your belief system. It has worked pretty well for the Amish and Mennonites.
Games just aren't long enough, don't have enough content, or are too short between the sequals.
... Once I spend the time developing a basic proficiency in a game, I want to enjoy as much content in that game world as possible.
When I play a game, I have to develop a whole new skill set. Each game has it's own physics, rules, key-configurations, etc.
Most of the games I enjoy, I could play them for years without getting bored, so long as someone kept developing new content. My favorite games are GTA series, or Morrowind, or games with big open worlds and lots of content. But if a FPS had a subscription services where I could purchase new levels each week (and especially if it was all part of some continuing story), it would take an extremly long time to get bored.
And I think a lot of people agree with me. Look at MMPOGs... people like them because of the human interaction of course... but people also like them because the game content never runs out (once you complete the quests, you can play meta-games such as guild politics, trading for profit, and there will also be expansions coming along)
How do you know if someone is a drug addicts, serial killer, pedophile, or drive-by shooting gang banger? If people were convicted of these things, they would be in jail and wouldn't be able to have kids the way things work now. And if they are NOT convicted of these things, then you are looking at some sort of indirect evidence ("gang tatoos"... the guy is "creepy looking", he doesn't go to church) in order to discover they are not fit parents?
Since you are trying to predict crimes you don't know have been commited, it leaves things open for interpretation. And interpretation can be very dangerous.
But that is only some of the problems... what do you do if parents have kids without licences? Throw them in jail and put the kid in an orphanage?
What happens if it turns out that 80% of ethnic group A get licences, and 20% of ethnic group B get licences. Regardless if it is fair and impartial or not, you are going to have a lot of pissed off people in group B. Many people will even accuse the system of being a passive form of "ethnic cleansing".
And what happens if people try to take it farther. If having children were licenced, there are definitly some people who would try to get the licence to include their moral agenda. What if someplace bans athiests from having kids (you know there are a lot of places were something like that could pass - the same places that teach Intelligent Design in schools). What about certain political beliefs? Can Neo-Nazis have a child licence? What about Scientologists? What if the parents openly favor corporal punishment, or believe in a religion that favors corporal punishment? The whole licencing process would be a field day for people with an agenda.
Does the licence cost anything? Are their fees to pay? Could you be discriminating against the poor by requiring they pay a licencing fee?
Do you have to be a citizen to get the licence? And if so, what about diplomatic staff from other countries? What happens if someone from the U.S. goes to a country without child licencing, has a kid there, and then brings it back?
Like I said, discrimination is only one problem with what you are suggesting (a huge problem, but only one of many).
But what is a "gang", and what are "gang tatoos"? I knew a bunch of guys who were part of a university fraternity that had frat tatooes, and ran together causing trouble. Where they a "gang"? Did they have "gang tatooes"?
When it is done by white bougiouse kids, it is a fraternity, and kids having fun. When it is done by poor hispanic kids, it is a gang, and they will get beat up by the gang squad. There is a cultural/ethnic bias.
You have a "learning disability" if you are a white kid in the suburbs, you are "illiterate" when you are a black kid in the inner city. Same thing, but one will get you all kinds of legal protection and special help from the government, while the other will get you fired from your job.
Walmart is a big corporate monster destroying America, while Ikea is a wonderful place and great member of the comunity, even though their buisness model and practices vitually identitcal (huge box stores that cut costs, pay their employees low wages, and sell disposable consumer goods driving local sellers of higher quality goods out of buisness). Of course, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Walmart services more poor rural people, while Ikea services urbanites with more money, now could it?
Most likely, if the government create some "standard" of good parenting, the standard would be based on the upper middle class suburban wasp ideal. Certain ethnic groups, or cultural groups, or religious groups, would have an advantage. Now, it is fine if certain groups have certain advantages in certain private relationships - but with GOVERNMENT, with something that is PUBLIC, when it is a part of the legal system and not optional or voluntary - then the government has the obligation to make sure there is no kind of bias one way or another. People are entitled to equal protection under the law. And that would be EXTREMLY hard to do with parenting licences.