The especially weird thing is that a lot of the same people who are big on capital punishment and packing heat also will be the first to bitch about "big government" interfering in their lives with their taxes, healthcare and other "nanny state" regulations.
Oh, come on. Even you know those are completely different issues. The whole point of having some monstrous serial-child-raping-killer put out of everyone's misery is so that such a person is prevented from ever again interfering in people's lives (in either repeating the crime, or still breathing and having breakfast every morning even as the family of a murdered victim gets to wake up, permanently, to the absence of the person killed, and to pay taxes every week to buy that guy his breakfast).
Law enforcement, used to protect people from and to punish the likes of unrepentant violent killers, is exactly in keeping with the expectations of a rationally-sized, constitutionally sound government. Complaining about the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents who are assigned to track and punish folks like 50-year old couples who don't buy government mandated health insurance that forces them to purchase pre-natal care they'll never use is not irreconcilable with preferring a stone cold killer to be stone cold dead instead of outliving his victims by decades.
If you have the guts to condemn someone to die, I think you should also have the guts to execute that penalty.
Many convicted killers say they'd rather die (sooner, by execution) than live out their lives in prison. So if we're talking about horrible things to do to people, should the jury that sends a 20-something person away for decades or for life have to be the team of people that guards the convict in prison? How else would a juror really show that the murderer deserves it, right? When someone is locked up for life in a place that's almost certain to drive them somewhat (or very) mad, could quite likely get them raped for decades, and which certainly would make any normal person utterly miserable... are you letting the juror who helps to make that happen off the hook? No? Yes? Can't have it both ways.
So they can't take your house or other property unless you happen to be selling it? Ah.
And of course they can garnish your wages, which could cost you your house and other property, too.
It is entirely possible for you to become a pauper in this nation, and not have to work to support anyone else.
But if you want to work for yourself to make yourself more than a pauper, you do end up working to support other people who don't, by law. So, the only way to avoid being a slave is to assign yourself to poverty?
Would you care to explain how single-payer (if we implemented it beyond the current scope of seniors and disabled and poor and children) would be immoral?
Because only a smaller number of slaves will actually be doing the work that actually pays for it.
Should a minority of the people spend some portion of the day working to provide housing, food, shoes, and everything else that's considered mandatory for a minimally pleasant life for other people, or face jail for not doing so? The people that say yes are indeed endorsing something immoral.
Which is plainly evident in the way that you have provided stats and other information to the contrary. The problem is that stats about kids in car accidents and sports injuries (and accidents where they're handling a firearm) are publicly available, and corroborate what I just said. Formal studies of the use of firearms (generally, in brandishing, not having to actually shoot) interrupting or preventing violent crime are available in rigorous academic form for your perusal... and even if you assume that the conclusions there are over-inflated by 300%, a third of the stats presented there still hugely eclipse the numbers of deaths and injuries caused by people deliberately using guns to harm others.
Cheap rhetoric? You're the one dishing ad hominem instead of substance. The classic fall-back for the intellectually lazy or deliberately misleading debater.
Actual gun nuts (like you - people whose reaction to their existence is irrational) are known for making up "facts" and being sure to keep things from ever being in any sort of perspective. More violent crimes are stopped because of people who legally own guns than are perpetrated by criminals use them. The number of injuries to children, through accidents with guns, is dwarfed by the number of kids who are hurt (and die) in sports-related incidents, car accidents, etc.
which kill quite a few children in the US every year
Just like prescription meds left on the kitchen counter, cleaning chemicals in the laundry room, pit bulls in the back yard, open windows on the third floor, house fires from careless stove use, and a jillion other things.
The difference compared to the US is that in Switzerland, all those guns are kept at home by people who have been trained and serve(d) in the military
The guy (dead now) who shot up the Navy Yard had previously been in the military. And all he needed was a simple shotgun. The sort of thing that VP Biden says is exactly what people should own for hunting and self defense. He used that simple shotgun to shoot a military guard and gain access to that guard's handgun. He came across the rifle inside the Yard, said the Washington Post.
And no, just about nobody can buy an assault rifle. Do you mean a semi-auto rifle no different than every rancher uses to kill varmints in his cow pasture, only also equipped with black plastic parts that make no difference in lethality, but which make it look scarier to uninformed soccer moms?
Makes me think of when a religious person posts an opinion on Slashdot.
Having people comment - even very caustically - because someone has paraded their superstition on a web site frequently mostly by rational people who aren't still stuck in a primitive time warp isn't the same as being shot. You get that, right?
how they are sitting idly by while the UK and USA prevent an Australian Senator from executing his elected responsibilities
Maybe HE can explain how the US and UK are preventing him from doing anything? The only people who want to spend some time with him are some investigators in Sweden. Once he gets over himself and addresses their questions, Sweden's done with him, right? That's it. The only entity preventing Julian Assange from doing anything is Julian Assange.
Actually, that's one of things it's worth shouting about. Some weapons are drones, but not all drones are weapons. Yet we have people shouting OMFG EVIL DRONES! every time we use one instead of risking a chopper load of guys with a 1000-mile supply chain to wack a crazy murdering jihaddist running an underwear bomb shop in the middle of the Yemeni desert. And then when a local PD uses one instead of a human-scale helicopter (to avoid spending hundreds of dollars an hour to keep on in the air) while doing SAR or something similar, the freak-out crowd can't get their heads past "drone strike" blah blah blah.
Gee, it's almost like sometimes people use the same word in different contexts or something. Like, "jerk" can be both a noun and a verb. And as a noun, it can be used to describe an action, or to describe someone who pretends they don't understand what pirating (of intellectual property) is. The word has been used for centuries to describe the ripping off of another's creative work.
It's not a matter of it being "super regulated" or not. With the (very tightly controlled) approval of specific uses for two specific aircraft being the exception, all commercial use of UAS (regardless of size) is banned by the FAA. It's hard to be more regulated than "banned."
But don't also forget that China openly brags [google.com] about doing weather modification such as clearing smog for the Beijing Olympics or around other cities
There are also 635 people in congress. None of those men and women are showing any leadership, either.
There's plenty of leadership there, just no followers. There are people who want to lead even farther into Obama's la-la land, just like there are people who want to lead towards a more libertarian atmosphere. When those types (the less-government-can-be-a-good-thing types) speak up, the left immediately calls them racists or whatnot. So they don't get many in congress to come along. You can bring a horse to water, etc.
Remember copyright was introduced to advance learning
No, not just for that. The founders understood that the society would be a much richer place if artists didn't lose their incentive (the ability to make a living if their work was compelling enough to draw a paying audience) to invest the time and effort (and materials, and hired talent, and a million other variables) in creating thing that it takes a lot of time to create. You're thinking of "photographers" as "service providers," but that's only a small sub-set of that sort of work. That's like saying that the guy walking around tables at a restaurant playing a violin for tips is the same as the first chair in a studio orchestra hard at work on a soundtrack project that it will take her and 100 other people two years to complete - long before the paying end customer (the movie fan) ever spends a dime.
Copyright protection allows people (sometimes by themselves, or sometimes including literally thousands of people) to gamble on the long term efforts required to produce more than an on-the-spot performance or hourly service.
The point is that previously you didn't need a contract beyond a check changing hands... the fruits of the labour you've paid for
You always needed a contract. What are the fruits of the labor? What degree of post-production is supposed to be included in the delivered results? How many hours before/during/after does "the check" represent? How many photographers are supposed to cover the event? Is there a "required shot" list? What are the cancellation terms? Who pays for transportation? Who is liable for things going wrong, in what way?
You're only addressing the "work for hire" aspect of a complex process, and only as it relates to the ownership of copyrights. Anybody doing such work without a contract to govern the entire relationship is no professional. And it only takes a couple of lines in that must-have contract to also address ownership of the rights or licensing, etc.
energy having to be spent on non-productive stuff
Contracts are written precisely to minimize the amount of non-productive energy spent.
You do not seem to know the business model very well.
Commercial photography (including social events, of which weddings are a sub-set) has been part of how I make a living for about 30 years. I've watched markets and business models come and go. I know a lot more about it than you do.
Wedding photographers usually have zero and sometimes even negative profit selling photos to the newlyweds once you take into account equipment and consumables.
If by "wedding photographers" you mean "amateurs who don't need to make a living at it," then, maybe.
The profit is achieved by selling copies of the prints to people attending the wedding itself.
Are you writing from some alternate universe, or perhaps through a wormhole connected to 1978? Like I said, this is something that you don't know much about.
A lot of these photographers do contract work for advertisement agencies as well. In this case the client gets to own the digital files.
The fact that you're not even using the right words, here (hint: it's not about the files, it's about transfer of copyrights, or work for hire, or licensing), suggests that you need to study this more.
The difference is the client pays a lot more, a whole lot more than a wedding couple is willing to pay.
There are wedding couples who pay $300 for a full day's work with a DVD and full rights, and there are wedding couples who pay $30,000 for what amounts to a small movie production company to spend the entire weekend with them - and what they get is a limited license to a version of the finished body of work. Likewise there are commercial clients who write work for hire contracts (where the photographer never has copyrights), and those that merely want to license an image or two from the entire shoot.
The purpose of copyright and patents as outlined in the US Constitution ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries") is no longer being served.
Except that the things it costs hundreds of thousands or many millions of dollars to create wouldn't exist at all without the ability to bring back those costs (and the profit that makes it worth risking all of that money) sometimes many years after huge checks are written for talent and production budgets. Don't like it? Just stick with the artists who are willing to give away their copyrights immediately or after a short period of time. If you're right, and the giving up of copyrights shortly after a work is completed is the morally right thing to do, then there should be all sorts of right-thinking artists happily walking away from their copyrights. Surely enough to keep you entertained without having to buy entertainment from an artist or publisher that distastefully hangs onto their own rights for much longer. Besides, how could you enjoy entertainment made by someone whose judgement and moral character is so abhorrent to you? Presto! Ignore them, and stick with the give-up-the-rights-early crowd. Surely they make enough movies, music, novels and texts to appease you.
Now if you don't put it into a contract, you have to pay for every reprint you want to give away after paying a good wage for a photographer to shoot pictures of your wedding.
No, now you pay for whatever the contract between the two parties says. You know, the think you both talk about and agree to before anyone signs anything or any money changes hands? If you don't like what a photographer charges, or what they're willing to sign over to you (license-wise) as part of that transaction, just go strike a deal with any of the thousands of other photographers looking to compete. Who cares what the default is? Do you sign contracts or spend thousands of dollars on professional services without looking things over?
Slashdot Mirror
The especially weird thing is that a lot of the same people who are big on capital punishment and packing heat also will be the first to bitch about "big government" interfering in their lives with their taxes, healthcare and other "nanny state" regulations.
Oh, come on. Even you know those are completely different issues. The whole point of having some monstrous serial-child-raping-killer put out of everyone's misery is so that such a person is prevented from ever again interfering in people's lives (in either repeating the crime, or still breathing and having breakfast every morning even as the family of a murdered victim gets to wake up, permanently, to the absence of the person killed, and to pay taxes every week to buy that guy his breakfast).
Law enforcement, used to protect people from and to punish the likes of unrepentant violent killers, is exactly in keeping with the expectations of a rationally-sized, constitutionally sound government. Complaining about the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents who are assigned to track and punish folks like 50-year old couples who don't buy government mandated health insurance that forces them to purchase pre-natal care they'll never use is not irreconcilable with preferring a stone cold killer to be stone cold dead instead of outliving his victims by decades.
Sometimes people rob to put food on the table for their kids because they have little option.
You really think that killing someone else for their food is OK? There are always other options.
If you have the guts to condemn someone to die, I think you should also have the guts to execute that penalty.
Many convicted killers say they'd rather die (sooner, by execution) than live out their lives in prison. So if we're talking about horrible things to do to people, should the jury that sends a 20-something person away for decades or for life have to be the team of people that guards the convict in prison? How else would a juror really show that the murderer deserves it, right? When someone is locked up for life in a place that's almost certain to drive them somewhat (or very) mad, could quite likely get them raped for decades, and which certainly would make any normal person utterly miserable ... are you letting the juror who helps to make that happen off the hook? No? Yes? Can't have it both ways.
And of course they can garnish your wages, which could cost you your house and other property, too.
It is entirely possible for you to become a pauper in this nation, and not have to work to support anyone else.
But if you want to work for yourself to make yourself more than a pauper, you do end up working to support other people who don't, by law. So, the only way to avoid being a slave is to assign yourself to poverty?
Creating an account and actually proceeding to use it to explore rates and whatnot are different things. How far did you go with it?
Would you care to explain how single-payer (if we implemented it beyond the current scope of seniors and disabled and poor and children) would be immoral?
Because only a smaller number of slaves will actually be doing the work that actually pays for it.
Should a minority of the people spend some portion of the day working to provide housing, food, shoes, and everything else that's considered mandatory for a minimally pleasant life for other people, or face jail for not doing so? The people that say yes are indeed endorsing something immoral.
it is transparently faulty
Which is plainly evident in the way that you have provided stats and other information to the contrary. The problem is that stats about kids in car accidents and sports injuries (and accidents where they're handling a firearm) are publicly available, and corroborate what I just said. Formal studies of the use of firearms (generally, in brandishing, not having to actually shoot) interrupting or preventing violent crime are available in rigorous academic form for your perusal ... and even if you assume that the conclusions there are over-inflated by 300%, a third of the stats presented there still hugely eclipse the numbers of deaths and injuries caused by people deliberately using guns to harm others.
Cheap rhetoric? You're the one dishing ad hominem instead of substance. The classic fall-back for the intellectually lazy or deliberately misleading debater.
Gun-nuts are resistant to facts
Actual gun nuts (like you - people whose reaction to their existence is irrational) are known for making up "facts" and being sure to keep things from ever being in any sort of perspective. More violent crimes are stopped because of people who legally own guns than are perpetrated by criminals use them. The number of injuries to children, through accidents with guns, is dwarfed by the number of kids who are hurt (and die) in sports-related incidents, car accidents, etc.
No, the criminals don't carry guns because the people they're intending to victimize are less likely to be able to defend themselves.
which kill quite a few children in the US every year
Just like prescription meds left on the kitchen counter, cleaning chemicals in the laundry room, pit bulls in the back yard, open windows on the third floor, house fires from careless stove use, and a jillion other things.
security guards and beat policemen do not carry guns
Are you saying that the military guards who protect the entrances to the UK's military headquarters buildings are unarmed? Really?
The difference compared to the US is that in Switzerland, all those guns are kept at home by people who have been trained and serve(d) in the military
The guy (dead now) who shot up the Navy Yard had previously been in the military. And all he needed was a simple shotgun. The sort of thing that VP Biden says is exactly what people should own for hunting and self defense. He used that simple shotgun to shoot a military guard and gain access to that guard's handgun. He came across the rifle inside the Yard, said the Washington Post.
And no, just about nobody can buy an assault rifle. Do you mean a semi-auto rifle no different than every rancher uses to kill varmints in his cow pasture, only also equipped with black plastic parts that make no difference in lethality, but which make it look scarier to uninformed soccer moms?
Makes me think of when a religious person posts an opinion on Slashdot.
Having people comment - even very caustically - because someone has paraded their superstition on a web site frequently mostly by rational people who aren't still stuck in a primitive time warp isn't the same as being shot. You get that, right?
how they are sitting idly by while the UK and USA prevent an Australian Senator from executing his elected responsibilities
Maybe HE can explain how the US and UK are preventing him from doing anything? The only people who want to spend some time with him are some investigators in Sweden. Once he gets over himself and addresses their questions, Sweden's done with him, right? That's it. The only entity preventing Julian Assange from doing anything is Julian Assange.
STOP SHOUTING.
Actually, that's one of things it's worth shouting about. Some weapons are drones, but not all drones are weapons. Yet we have people shouting OMFG EVIL DRONES! every time we use one instead of risking a chopper load of guys with a 1000-mile supply chain to wack a crazy murdering jihaddist running an underwear bomb shop in the middle of the Yemeni desert. And then when a local PD uses one instead of a human-scale helicopter (to avoid spending hundreds of dollars an hour to keep on in the air) while doing SAR or something similar, the freak-out crowd can't get their heads past "drone strike" blah blah blah.
They're just tools.
Gee, it's almost like sometimes people use the same word in different contexts or something. Like, "jerk" can be both a noun and a verb. And as a noun, it can be used to describe an action, or to describe someone who pretends they don't understand what pirating (of intellectual property) is. The word has been used for centuries to describe the ripping off of another's creative work.
It's not a matter of it being "super regulated" or not. With the (very tightly controlled) approval of specific uses for two specific aircraft being the exception, all commercial use of UAS (regardless of size) is banned by the FAA. It's hard to be more regulated than "banned."
But don't also forget that China openly brags [google.com] about doing weather modification such as clearing smog for the Beijing Olympics or around other cities
Yeah, well, China also tries to pass off dogs as lions . So, yeah.
There are also 635 people in congress. None of those men and women are showing any leadership, either.
There's plenty of leadership there, just no followers. There are people who want to lead even farther into Obama's la-la land, just like there are people who want to lead towards a more libertarian atmosphere. When those types (the less-government-can-be-a-good-thing types) speak up, the left immediately calls them racists or whatnot. So they don't get many in congress to come along. You can bring a horse to water, etc.
Remember copyright was introduced to advance learning
No, not just for that. The founders understood that the society would be a much richer place if artists didn't lose their incentive (the ability to make a living if their work was compelling enough to draw a paying audience) to invest the time and effort (and materials, and hired talent, and a million other variables) in creating thing that it takes a lot of time to create. You're thinking of "photographers" as "service providers," but that's only a small sub-set of that sort of work. That's like saying that the guy walking around tables at a restaurant playing a violin for tips is the same as the first chair in a studio orchestra hard at work on a soundtrack project that it will take her and 100 other people two years to complete - long before the paying end customer (the movie fan) ever spends a dime.
Copyright protection allows people (sometimes by themselves, or sometimes including literally thousands of people) to gamble on the long term efforts required to produce more than an on-the-spot performance or hourly service.
The point is that previously you didn't need a contract beyond a check changing hands ... the fruits of the labour you've paid for
You always needed a contract. What are the fruits of the labor? What degree of post-production is supposed to be included in the delivered results? How many hours before/during/after does "the check" represent? How many photographers are supposed to cover the event? Is there a "required shot" list? What are the cancellation terms? Who pays for transportation? Who is liable for things going wrong, in what way?
You're only addressing the "work for hire" aspect of a complex process, and only as it relates to the ownership of copyrights. Anybody doing such work without a contract to govern the entire relationship is no professional. And it only takes a couple of lines in that must-have contract to also address ownership of the rights or licensing, etc.
energy having to be spent on non-productive stuff
Contracts are written precisely to minimize the amount of non-productive energy spent.
Exactly. "Taking pictures" is about 3% of the job.
You do not seem to know the business model very well.
Commercial photography (including social events, of which weddings are a sub-set) has been part of how I make a living for about 30 years. I've watched markets and business models come and go. I know a lot more about it than you do.
Wedding photographers usually have zero and sometimes even negative profit selling photos to the newlyweds once you take into account equipment and consumables.
If by "wedding photographers" you mean "amateurs who don't need to make a living at it," then, maybe.
The profit is achieved by selling copies of the prints to people attending the wedding itself.
Are you writing from some alternate universe, or perhaps through a wormhole connected to 1978? Like I said, this is something that you don't know much about.
A lot of these photographers do contract work for advertisement agencies as well. In this case the client gets to own the digital files.
The fact that you're not even using the right words, here (hint: it's not about the files, it's about transfer of copyrights, or work for hire, or licensing), suggests that you need to study this more.
The difference is the client pays a lot more, a whole lot more than a wedding couple is willing to pay.
There are wedding couples who pay $300 for a full day's work with a DVD and full rights, and there are wedding couples who pay $30,000 for what amounts to a small movie production company to spend the entire weekend with them - and what they get is a limited license to a version of the finished body of work. Likewise there are commercial clients who write work for hire contracts (where the photographer never has copyrights), and those that merely want to license an image or two from the entire shoot.
The purpose of copyright and patents as outlined in the US Constitution ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries") is no longer being served.
Except that the things it costs hundreds of thousands or many millions of dollars to create wouldn't exist at all without the ability to bring back those costs (and the profit that makes it worth risking all of that money) sometimes many years after huge checks are written for talent and production budgets. Don't like it? Just stick with the artists who are willing to give away their copyrights immediately or after a short period of time. If you're right, and the giving up of copyrights shortly after a work is completed is the morally right thing to do, then there should be all sorts of right-thinking artists happily walking away from their copyrights. Surely enough to keep you entertained without having to buy entertainment from an artist or publisher that distastefully hangs onto their own rights for much longer. Besides, how could you enjoy entertainment made by someone whose judgement and moral character is so abhorrent to you? Presto! Ignore them, and stick with the give-up-the-rights-early crowd. Surely they make enough movies, music, novels and texts to appease you.
Now if you don't put it into a contract, you have to pay for every reprint you want to give away after paying a good wage for a photographer to shoot pictures of your wedding.
No, now you pay for whatever the contract between the two parties says. You know, the think you both talk about and agree to before anyone signs anything or any money changes hands? If you don't like what a photographer charges, or what they're willing to sign over to you (license-wise) as part of that transaction, just go strike a deal with any of the thousands of other photographers looking to compete. Who cares what the default is? Do you sign contracts or spend thousands of dollars on professional services without looking things over?