, it's apparent that the parent post ignores the fact that the vast majority of tax money is not given directly back to poor people. Sure, there are programs that do that, but most government programs create large infrastructure projects. Roads, regulatory agencies and military posts are examples
Actually, entitlement spending is where the vast majority of tax dollars (well, or debt-funded dollars) go. Regardless, we're not talking about infrastructure and whatnot, which is a sensible role for the government. We're talking about the kinds of things that people like Bill and Melinda Gates spend their money on. Not dependency-inducing programs, but investment in fundamentally changing cultures (by creating a generation or two that will embrace and perpetuate education and a rational approach to things like vaccinations). Their foundation chooses their battles quite well, I think.
The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks
No. The DDoS attacks are giving all sorts of companies strong reasons to never so business with Wikileaks, and to think twice about making their TOS even more oriented around making it easy to give jackass users the bum's rush. Do you really think that being attacked by a bunch of rebel-without-a-clue script kiddies who are doing this strictly because it's passingly fashionable is actually going to make Amazon want to host content for an oily ego-maniac like Assange? This DDoS attack is going to have exactly the opposite of its intended effect. It's making the vandals look like shrill punks, and it's going to attract all sorts of law enforcement (and later, regulatory) heat of exactly the sort that the Anonymous crowd hates. This displays a classically juvenile lack of getting the big picture. It's an adolescent tantrum.
An investment you made in the stockmarket in 2000 is now worth less today.
Two of my investments in the stockmarket, made in 2000, are worth less today. All of the rest are worth more. In some cases quite a bit more. Taking all of it into account, from that year... it's about a 70% increase. Not great, but not horrible considering there are a couple of real dot-com ball busters in the mix.
So if some foundation had put $1 billion into the exact same mix of stocks I had, today they'd have $1.7 billion. They could have put $500 million into their chosen works, and still been growing. And in the meantime, that cash is out there helping the companies in which its invested grow and pay people for things.
But why should us lower classes have to go begging to some rich guy just to get what they need?
Right! Why beg a rich guy for it, or make it yourself, when you can wait for the rich guy to make it, and then just use some of his money to pay government agencies to take more of it from him, and give you a tiny piece of it! Who cares if there are huge administrative costs, as long as we take it from him, that's what matters.
Of course the problem with that is that once you've got your piece of the rich guy's stuff, somebody else will be looking at you as being richer than he is, and you're next on the list.
Conservatives applaud the sort of thing being discussed because it's done by choice, rather than by force. Liberals hate this sort of thing because it means that some poor guy is getting mosquito netting or an education without a bureaucratic layer of unfireable, unionized government employees making a living off of deciding how the rich guy should be generous, in what amount, when, and to whom, under penalty of imprisonment if he doesn't do it right. Taxing the rich guy and doling out money doesn't create anything. Investing the rich guy's money in a foundation that is chartered specifically to grow and use proceeds to benefit the foundation's targeted recipients does create things. That's the difference between the two approaches, and the ability to grasp that is the difference between conservatives and liberals on a lot of these topics. Forcibly redistributing the fruits of someone else's work doesn't create a thing except a culture of dependence and resentment.
Just like the stock market is going to last forever?
It has so far. Those interested in long-term do-gooding in a particular niche think in longer terms. Changes in education, for example, are cultural issues. That takes generations, not one fiscal year, or the few years spanning some cyclical fluctuation in the value of equities. Over time, a halfway rationally managed pile of equities always has and always will grow in value. If all of the assets in a well balanced portfolio completely cease to exist, you can rest assured that there are far, far bigger problems than splitting hairs over whether it was smarter to buy a big pile of mosquito netting once, or setting up a foundation chartered to buy them regularly and forever.
The stock market is a gamble. Any thoughts otherwise are true bullshit.
Sure, if you only think in the very short term. And you think that, what... handing all of your resources over, in one lump, as cash, to a particular charity for use right then and there... that's not a gamble? We've seen many large funds get hoovered up by corrupt recipients over the years. Better for there to be oversight, guided by the principles of those that set up the foundations. And if they are students of a couple hundred years of history, they'll know that reasonably well balanced long-term investments grow, often very, very substantially. No multi-billion-dollar foundation is going to put all of its stock in a company in Venezuela that could at any moment by rendered worthless by Hugo Chavez in one of his weekly fits of nationalization, or tie up all of the funds in real-estate on one coast of one continent.
No. Because the person offering it for sale is choosing to give you the opportunity to test drive it. Some musicians also offer their works freely, for a complete download, in hopes that you'll send money or do other business with them. But many other artists specifically do not want their works to be bit-for-bit copied and "shared" with millions of the pirate's friends. That's the difference. You're deciding when the artist should embrace that model, and taking the choice away from them. If you don't like artists that want you to pay first, don't think you're going to change their mind by ripping them off. Change their mind by ignoring them and buying your entertainment from other people, instead.
Your examples of pay-after-service involve offerings made by those suppliers/vendors/businesses that specifically include that way of doing things. It is their choice to allow you to interact with them in that way. There are, though, many exceptions within the same industries that you cite - including restaurants that don't let you walk away with your food until you've paid up front, or businesses (such as wedding photographers) that require a non-refundable deposit, up front.
You can pick and choose the offerings you like, and ignore the ones you don't. Artists that want to be paid at the time you go away with a copy of their work also have that right, and they can choose to skip involvement with people who don't want to pay. But the pirating crowd says, "Too bad! I'm taking it anyway!" You're also saying that, but following up with the suggestion that, if you like it, you might pay.
You must, surely, see the moral difference between these two scenarios. If you don't like the way something's offered, walk away. Don't unilaterally make up rules that the other party wouldn't and can't agree to (since you're ripping a copy of their work without them being involved). And remember that many of the very same artists do provide excerpts of their work for free sampling - the equivalent of you looking over (but not eating) the lettuce before you buy it. Those are people to support by not pirating their works - but their works are none the less found in thousands of busy torrents all across the web. Why is that? It's obvious. People want it, but don't want to be bothered paying for it, and not because they can claim ignorance of the contents of the work. They just want the artist to work for them for free.
All companies in which the controlling share is spread among more than 1 person, the company is nearly incapable of making any long term decisions that don't result in profit during this fiscal quarter.
Good grief. This is wrong. Simply, and factually incorrect. No company would ever survive startup years if this was even remotely true. You wouldn't see a Starbucks, an Amazon, or any of thousands of other companies alive, well, creating jobs, and answering to the ethical guidance of their board members and voting shareholders. Jeff Bezos owns a lot of Amazon shares, but he doesn't own Amazon. Even so, the company's investors support the long haul approach they've always taken. Same goes for Starbucks, sticking with those examples.
Shockingly, companies like that haven't "lost all free capital," or anything close to that scenario.
The $850B isn't "new deficit spending", it's revenue reduction
No. You're thinking of the continuation of the tax rates, which "reduces" revenue by $150B. It's the extension of more unemployment benefits for another long stretch that requires the borrowing of $850B in brand new, shiny Chinese debt. That's what Obama was holding out for on the tax deal. The left can whine all they want about holding tax rates where they were - but the killer, as always, is the colossal new entitlement hemorrhaging.
Which is a pale shadow of the vast and actually not productive entitlement spending that truly is killing us. The $850 billion of new deficit spending that Obama scored this week is a great example.
The fact is that all publically traded LLCs whose controlling share is not held by a single person are by definition obligated to be stupid in business sense and treat their customers and employees like shit.
This is not a fact, it's a stupid lefty meme that has no basis in reality. All sorts of publicly traded companies make decisions based on long-term success, and structure executive incentives around goals that are far past the current fiscal quarter and year. Just don't invest in short-sighted companies, if your objective is to see more thoughtful companies have more cash with which to grow and succeed.
I read it just fine. You take what you want first, then give yourself a little feel-good cover by opting to buy some of it later. You compare buying something up front, in the way that the artist is offering it, to being screwed. Why? Because you... what? didn't want to read a trusted review or listen to the ubiquitous, readily available, and offered-by-the-artist excerpts that are right there to help you make a good decision?
Again, you're deciding that you don't respect the artist enough to do business with them in the manner they are offering, so you decide that you can dictate how they must do business, on your own, without their consent. You're not looking to avoid a couple of less appealing songs on a CD, you're looking for pet entertainment slaves that you can treat how you see fit, throwing them a bone if you decide they deserve it, but consuming their work in advance without honoring the offer they're making. You have no idea how condescending, oily, and petulant you sound.
I can see why you're running away from discussing your habits - they're based on a view of artists that is simultaneously grasping, abusive, dismissive, and whiny. If you don't like how an artist brings something to market, that means that you don't like that artist and their view of that market. Consider having the intellectual integrity to walk away and let some other artist entertain you and engage with you in the way you prefer. Otherwise, you're being a spectacular hypocrite. Of course, you know that, and you're just floundering around trying to justify ripping music and movies by making it sound like someone offering something for sale on their own terms - which you can simply ignore - is somehow screwing you.
Is the grocery store screwing you by offering expensive steaks you elect not to buy? Is a professional photographer screwing you by offering a wedding photography package that's outside your budget? How is a musician screwing you by offering a recording that you're not confident you're going to like at the set price? Just walk away. Ripping it off instead is a completely craven, punk move.
You seem frustrated that you have no real argument against against piracy
How many times do you need to hear the real argument. The artist creates something. You don't want to pay what the artist asks, so instead of looking for your entertainment elsewhere, you rip it off instead. That you find that to be too complex for you to follow along with, ethically, says everything we need to know about you. You have no principles at stake, and are an end-justifies-the-means person. You want what an artist has created, and your desire for it trumps any moral calculus that might be involved.
The real irony, of course, is found in your desire to experience what the artist has created, implying a certain amount of respect for the artist him/herself. Would you look the artist in the eye, in person, and say, "I really like your work, but I find a few dollars is asking too much, so I'm just going to go ahead and rip it off, OK? Oh, and I just can't wait for your next release. Keep up the great work!"
Why? Because you don't like the price the artist is asking? I can't afford a nice Mercedes, either, because of the price they set. So to avoid screwing myself by paying more than I can afford, I don't buy one. You seem to be thinking that any artist who charges a price other than the one you dictate is somehow "screwing" you.
Are you screwing your employer by only continuing to work there at a price you think is appropriate? Your choice of language is really odd, and betrays a real sense of entitlement when it comes to an artist's work.
but that is something that only private companies care about, corporations wouldn't dare give you one day off this week
Do you actually understand what a corporation is? That's a rhetorical question, because you obviously do not.
...how they can drug you...
Never mind, you're a tool. Or a troll. Or both. A Trool.
If you actually have something offer, your employer would rather meet your expectations for PTO than have you work for a competitor. If all you want to do is show up and push a broom, don't expect them to be looking for extra ways to pay you to not be there doing that non-stressful, low-productivity job. It's called a market for a reason. The whole point is that people who bother even a little bit to be more valuable to the people to whom they're selling their time and expertise have and can get more options and flexibility.
Never mind. You'd rather that the Nanny State dictated ever interaction between you and the rest of the world, right? Have you asked the Nanny State if you're allowed to respond to this post? Better check.
Well, at least you're finally calling it like it is. Your position is that if you can rip it off, you should, because the artist isn't doing a good enough job at preventing you from sneaking into their concert. Your logic insists that anybody who can get around paying for a concert should. So, ideally, nobody would pay, right?
The artist does the work of preparing for the concert, and offers tickets for sale. If nobody is interested, the artist has lost the gamble, and did the preparation for nothing. But if people are interested, and pay, it was a good gamble. You're suggesting that anyone who wants to should be able to trump the artist's offering, and just rip off the experience of the concert on their own terms because they're able to jump the fence. That, logically, ignoring the wishes of the artist and the offering made for the experience of enjoying their work, the audience can and should simply bypass the artist's offer and find a way to pirate what they want. They want what the artist is offering, but aren't willing to engage the artist in a market... because they know how to cheat past what the artist has offered. This is how your ethics work? I'm guessing you walk out on a lot of restaurant and bar tabs, too.
both are equally bad in my mind and I'm pretty sure the whole piracy issue won't be laid to rest until entities come up with a way to compete in an open market in a way that isn't screwing their customers over.
It's simple. If you don't buy something you're not a customer. If you don't want to be a customer on the terms the artist has chosen when they offer their work for sale, then just walk away. There, you can't possibly be "screwed over," and neither can the artist. If you're right, and there's a huge pending market for artists who can make a living by giving away what they produce, then surely you can find them as a source for your entertainment, right? The internet is a huge place - I'm sure you can locate some willing donors who want you to spread their work around without compensation. They're out there. Why do you need "entities" to convince more of them to do that?
If you can make a case that an artist will be better off without copyright protection, and that they'll make a better living and be more able to create their works if they don't ask a price for them, then make that case. Don't just wave your hands and hope for some magic "entity" to do it for you. Go ahead: outline the business model.
I'm sure that if you actually tried to understand what I was saying you wouldn't have arrived at this conclusion
Oh, I hear you loud and clear. You're plain as day.
Not to mention that competition 'hurts' (at least by the "'loss' of potential future gain equates to harm" logic) businesses and people in the same way.
No. Legitimate competition faces the same challenges as their competitors. All businesses (from artists to large corporations) face competition. It's factored into how they address the market they're in, and anyone competing to enter that market has to find away to address the costs, risks, and work involved in producing something that will either grow the market, or make their offering more attractive.
But someone who enters into a market with the advantage of having lowered their costs or risks by ripping off something that their competitors otherwise pay for (like R&D investments, or third-party services, etc) distort that market. You can't really call someone who breaks the law in order to beat you a competitor, per se. They are harming the other people in that same market, because they're deliberately breaking the market's rules in order to have an advantage. Their ethical competition won't do that, and are thus harmed.
never even had their money in the first place
So if only one person buys a ticket to a concert, and 9,999 other people jump the fence and sneak in so they can get their entertainment without having to pay what the artist has asked, that's cool... because the artist never had their money in the first place, right? Hey, they're performing anyway, so it's not like they have to do any extra work to entertain those extra few thousand people or anything. One ticket sale should be more than enough for them, don't you think? They haven't lost anything if that one paying customer holds the fire escape door open for thousands of his close personal friends, right?
When a law makes illegal something that a significant number of people do and don't see as wrong, that is a problem with the law, not the people breaking it. Indeed, such laws should continue to be broken.
Gotcha. So when a couple thousand college students swarm out onto a street after a sporting event, and make up almost all of the people in that street (a "significant number" of them, to use your language), and they decide to torch a few cars and smash some store windows because they're pleased or upset at what happened in some game... why, the laws against looting and vandalism are the problem, and should be broken. Right? Right.
Ah. So you're not avoiding the issue of lost sales because it's notoriously difficult to exactly pin down who would have purchased something vs. not purchase it in the context of easy piracy... your contention is that every single person who watches pirated movies and listens to pirated music is someone who would not otherwise have purchased it... and that that makes copyright law irrelevent to piracy. And you were lecturing somebody else about their illogical beliefs?
To call the person to whom I replied (who is saying that he was arrested because a broken condom equals rape) incorrect. Because regardless of the variations in the reporting, nobody has made that contention, and it's certainly not an aspect of Swedish law. I replied to someone who is just making stuff up.
a MORONIC interpretation of the law was made, saying that 'not stopping after a condom broke is rape'.
What's your agenda, exactly, that you're deliberately mis-representing what's been said/reported? It's not that not stopping after a condom breaks is rape in Sweden, it's that not stopping after the woman says "stop!" that matters. Nobody invented that on the fly just for fun.
Mod parent down. Scent Cone is trolling every WL story with the same boring bullshit.
Way to address the substance of the matter. Trying to just shout down and getting angry if someone points out a few bits of intellectual dishonesty does sounds like a typical Assange sycophant, though, so you get points for keeping the faith. Good tactic, there, referring to a rebuttal about "world government" as boring, and thus a troll. You're a rhetorical genius, truly.
Undercover agents' identities get blown all the time, and whenever it happens, there are standard reassignment procedures in place to deal with this case. Public scrutiny isn't introducing anything new here. Similarly, it's not rocket science to reschedule a surprise inspection.
Are you really this obtuse? The "everything must be done in the open" advocates want a system in which there can be no surprise inspections or undercover cops busting, say, someone committing insurance fraud or trying to hire someone to commit a murder. You're talking about how easy it is to clean up after spilled info, but you're not addressing what the wikicult wants: no ability to have anything to go wrong in the first place. No customs agent whose home address and family can't be instantly known to armed smugglers. No ability to land Air Force One anyplace but a handful of US Air Force bases. No ability for the Treasury to operate anti-counterfeiting techniques and operations. And a thousand more things.
I wonder how much you'll have to pay prison guards once every prisoner with connections to gangs like MS13 can know the home addresses and schools of every guard's children? I wonder what you intend to do with organized crime when you can no longer seat a witness before a grand jury? How will you handle the deaths of women who can no longer keep their use of a government protection program's housing secret from the ex-husband who's sworn to beat her to death? OMG, teh internets mean that there will be no more bad people so none of that matters, right?
who is usually in the business of propping up totalitarian regimes all over the place
Yes, like... France. And South Korea. And Japan. And Germany. And the UK. And Poland. And Cameroon. And Belgium. And the Netherlands. And Canada. Yes, yes, I see your point.
Slashdot Mirror
, it's apparent that the parent post ignores the fact that the vast majority of tax money is not given directly back to poor people. Sure, there are programs that do that, but most government programs create large infrastructure projects. Roads, regulatory agencies and military posts are examples
Actually, entitlement spending is where the vast majority of tax dollars (well, or debt-funded dollars) go. Regardless, we're not talking about infrastructure and whatnot, which is a sensible role for the government. We're talking about the kinds of things that people like Bill and Melinda Gates spend their money on. Not dependency-inducing programs, but investment in fundamentally changing cultures (by creating a generation or two that will embrace and perpetuate education and a rational approach to things like vaccinations). Their foundation chooses their battles quite well, I think.
The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks
No. The DDoS attacks are giving all sorts of companies strong reasons to never so business with Wikileaks, and to think twice about making their TOS even more oriented around making it easy to give jackass users the bum's rush. Do you really think that being attacked by a bunch of rebel-without-a-clue script kiddies who are doing this strictly because it's passingly fashionable is actually going to make Amazon want to host content for an oily ego-maniac like Assange? This DDoS attack is going to have exactly the opposite of its intended effect. It's making the vandals look like shrill punks, and it's going to attract all sorts of law enforcement (and later, regulatory) heat of exactly the sort that the Anonymous crowd hates. This displays a classically juvenile lack of getting the big picture. It's an adolescent tantrum.
An investment you made in the stockmarket in 2000 is now worth less today.
... it's about a 70% increase. Not great, but not horrible considering there are a couple of real dot-com ball busters in the mix.
Two of my investments in the stockmarket, made in 2000, are worth less today. All of the rest are worth more. In some cases quite a bit more. Taking all of it into account, from that year
So if some foundation had put $1 billion into the exact same mix of stocks I had, today they'd have $1.7 billion. They could have put $500 million into their chosen works, and still been growing. And in the meantime, that cash is out there helping the companies in which its invested grow and pay people for things.
But why should us lower classes have to go begging to some rich guy just to get what they need?
Right! Why beg a rich guy for it, or make it yourself, when you can wait for the rich guy to make it, and then just use some of his money to pay government agencies to take more of it from him, and give you a tiny piece of it! Who cares if there are huge administrative costs, as long as we take it from him, that's what matters.
Of course the problem with that is that once you've got your piece of the rich guy's stuff, somebody else will be looking at you as being richer than he is, and you're next on the list.
Conservatives applaud the sort of thing being discussed because it's done by choice, rather than by force. Liberals hate this sort of thing because it means that some poor guy is getting mosquito netting or an education without a bureaucratic layer of unfireable, unionized government employees making a living off of deciding how the rich guy should be generous, in what amount, when, and to whom, under penalty of imprisonment if he doesn't do it right. Taxing the rich guy and doling out money doesn't create anything. Investing the rich guy's money in a foundation that is chartered specifically to grow and use proceeds to benefit the foundation's targeted recipients does create things. That's the difference between the two approaches, and the ability to grasp that is the difference between conservatives and liberals on a lot of these topics. Forcibly redistributing the fruits of someone else's work doesn't create a thing except a culture of dependence and resentment.
Just like the stock market is going to last forever?
... handing all of your resources over, in one lump, as cash, to a particular charity for use right then and there ... that's not a gamble? We've seen many large funds get hoovered up by corrupt recipients over the years. Better for there to be oversight, guided by the principles of those that set up the foundations. And if they are students of a couple hundred years of history, they'll know that reasonably well balanced long-term investments grow, often very, very substantially. No multi-billion-dollar foundation is going to put all of its stock in a company in Venezuela that could at any moment by rendered worthless by Hugo Chavez in one of his weekly fits of nationalization, or tie up all of the funds in real-estate on one coast of one continent.
It has so far. Those interested in long-term do-gooding in a particular niche think in longer terms. Changes in education, for example, are cultural issues. That takes generations, not one fiscal year, or the few years spanning some cyclical fluctuation in the value of equities. Over time, a halfway rationally managed pile of equities always has and always will grow in value. If all of the assets in a well balanced portfolio completely cease to exist, you can rest assured that there are far, far bigger problems than splitting hairs over whether it was smarter to buy a big pile of mosquito netting once, or setting up a foundation chartered to buy them regularly and forever.
The stock market is a gamble. Any thoughts otherwise are true bullshit.
Sure, if you only think in the very short term. And you think that, what
So if I test drive a car I'm obligated to buy it?
No. Because the person offering it for sale is choosing to give you the opportunity to test drive it. Some musicians also offer their works freely, for a complete download, in hopes that you'll send money or do other business with them. But many other artists specifically do not want their works to be bit-for-bit copied and "shared" with millions of the pirate's friends. That's the difference. You're deciding when the artist should embrace that model, and taking the choice away from them. If you don't like artists that want you to pay first, don't think you're going to change their mind by ripping them off. Change their mind by ignoring them and buying your entertainment from other people, instead.
Your examples of pay-after-service involve offerings made by those suppliers/vendors/businesses that specifically include that way of doing things. It is their choice to allow you to interact with them in that way. There are, though, many exceptions within the same industries that you cite - including restaurants that don't let you walk away with your food until you've paid up front, or businesses (such as wedding photographers) that require a non-refundable deposit, up front.
You can pick and choose the offerings you like, and ignore the ones you don't. Artists that want to be paid at the time you go away with a copy of their work also have that right, and they can choose to skip involvement with people who don't want to pay. But the pirating crowd says, "Too bad! I'm taking it anyway!" You're also saying that, but following up with the suggestion that, if you like it, you might pay.
You must, surely, see the moral difference between these two scenarios. If you don't like the way something's offered, walk away. Don't unilaterally make up rules that the other party wouldn't and can't agree to (since you're ripping a copy of their work without them being involved). And remember that many of the very same artists do provide excerpts of their work for free sampling - the equivalent of you looking over (but not eating) the lettuce before you buy it. Those are people to support by not pirating their works - but their works are none the less found in thousands of busy torrents all across the web. Why is that? It's obvious. People want it, but don't want to be bothered paying for it, and not because they can claim ignorance of the contents of the work. They just want the artist to work for them for free.
All companies in which the controlling share is spread among more than 1 person, the company is nearly incapable of making any long term decisions that don't result in profit during this fiscal quarter.
Good grief. This is wrong. Simply, and factually incorrect. No company would ever survive startup years if this was even remotely true. You wouldn't see a Starbucks, an Amazon, or any of thousands of other companies alive, well, creating jobs, and answering to the ethical guidance of their board members and voting shareholders. Jeff Bezos owns a lot of Amazon shares, but he doesn't own Amazon. Even so, the company's investors support the long haul approach they've always taken. Same goes for Starbucks, sticking with those examples.
Shockingly, companies like that haven't "lost all free capital," or anything close to that scenario.
The $850B isn't "new deficit spending", it's revenue reduction
No. You're thinking of the continuation of the tax rates, which "reduces" revenue by $150B. It's the extension of more unemployment benefits for another long stretch that requires the borrowing of $850B in brand new, shiny Chinese debt. That's what Obama was holding out for on the tax deal. The left can whine all they want about holding tax rates where they were - but the killer, as always, is the colossal new entitlement hemorrhaging.
vast and counterproductive military budgets
Which is a pale shadow of the vast and actually not productive entitlement spending that truly is killing us. The $850 billion of new deficit spending that Obama scored this week is a great example.
The fact is that all publically traded LLCs whose controlling share is not held by a single person are by definition obligated to be stupid in business sense and treat their customers and employees like shit.
This is not a fact, it's a stupid lefty meme that has no basis in reality. All sorts of publicly traded companies make decisions based on long-term success, and structure executive incentives around goals that are far past the current fiscal quarter and year. Just don't invest in short-sighted companies, if your objective is to see more thoughtful companies have more cash with which to grow and succeed.
What's fictional? You're the one that said you rip first and might pay later.
I read it just fine. You take what you want first, then give yourself a little feel-good cover by opting to buy some of it later. You compare buying something up front, in the way that the artist is offering it, to being screwed. Why? Because you ... what? didn't want to read a trusted review or listen to the ubiquitous, readily available, and offered-by-the-artist excerpts that are right there to help you make a good decision?
Again, you're deciding that you don't respect the artist enough to do business with them in the manner they are offering, so you decide that you can dictate how they must do business, on your own, without their consent. You're not looking to avoid a couple of less appealing songs on a CD, you're looking for pet entertainment slaves that you can treat how you see fit, throwing them a bone if you decide they deserve it, but consuming their work in advance without honoring the offer they're making. You have no idea how condescending, oily, and petulant you sound.
I can see why you're running away from discussing your habits - they're based on a view of artists that is simultaneously grasping, abusive, dismissive, and whiny. If you don't like how an artist brings something to market, that means that you don't like that artist and their view of that market. Consider having the intellectual integrity to walk away and let some other artist entertain you and engage with you in the way you prefer. Otherwise, you're being a spectacular hypocrite. Of course, you know that, and you're just floundering around trying to justify ripping music and movies by making it sound like someone offering something for sale on their own terms - which you can simply ignore - is somehow screwing you.
Is the grocery store screwing you by offering expensive steaks you elect not to buy? Is a professional photographer screwing you by offering a wedding photography package that's outside your budget? How is a musician screwing you by offering a recording that you're not confident you're going to like at the set price? Just walk away. Ripping it off instead is a completely craven, punk move.
You seem frustrated that you have no real argument against against piracy
How many times do you need to hear the real argument. The artist creates something. You don't want to pay what the artist asks, so instead of looking for your entertainment elsewhere, you rip it off instead. That you find that to be too complex for you to follow along with, ethically, says everything we need to know about you. You have no principles at stake, and are an end-justifies-the-means person. You want what an artist has created, and your desire for it trumps any moral calculus that might be involved.
The real irony, of course, is found in your desire to experience what the artist has created, implying a certain amount of respect for the artist him/herself. Would you look the artist in the eye, in person, and say, "I really like your work, but I find a few dollars is asking too much, so I'm just going to go ahead and rip it off, OK? Oh, and I just can't wait for your next release. Keep up the great work!"
If I don't buy it I must be pirating it.
Well, are you? If you're not, you're not.
If I do buy it I'm getting screwed.
Why? Because you don't like the price the artist is asking? I can't afford a nice Mercedes, either, because of the price they set. So to avoid screwing myself by paying more than I can afford, I don't buy one. You seem to be thinking that any artist who charges a price other than the one you dictate is somehow "screwing" you.
Are you screwing your employer by only continuing to work there at a price you think is appropriate? Your choice of language is really odd, and betrays a real sense of entitlement when it comes to an artist's work.
but that is something that only private companies care about, corporations wouldn't dare give you one day off this week
...how they can drug you ...
Do you actually understand what a corporation is? That's a rhetorical question, because you obviously do not.
Never mind, you're a tool. Or a troll. Or both. A Trool.
If you actually have something offer, your employer would rather meet your expectations for PTO than have you work for a competitor. If all you want to do is show up and push a broom, don't expect them to be looking for extra ways to pay you to not be there doing that non-stressful, low-productivity job. It's called a market for a reason. The whole point is that people who bother even a little bit to be more valuable to the people to whom they're selling their time and expertise have and can get more options and flexibility.
Never mind. You'd rather that the Nanny State dictated ever interaction between you and the rest of the world, right? Have you asked the Nanny State if you're allowed to respond to this post? Better check.
Yes, it is. Logically, nothing was taken.
... because they know how to cheat past what the artist has offered. This is how your ethics work? I'm guessing you walk out on a lot of restaurant and bar tabs, too.
Well, at least you're finally calling it like it is. Your position is that if you can rip it off, you should, because the artist isn't doing a good enough job at preventing you from sneaking into their concert. Your logic insists that anybody who can get around paying for a concert should. So, ideally, nobody would pay, right?
The artist does the work of preparing for the concert, and offers tickets for sale. If nobody is interested, the artist has lost the gamble, and did the preparation for nothing. But if people are interested, and pay, it was a good gamble. You're suggesting that anyone who wants to should be able to trump the artist's offering, and just rip off the experience of the concert on their own terms because they're able to jump the fence. That, logically, ignoring the wishes of the artist and the offering made for the experience of enjoying their work, the audience can and should simply bypass the artist's offer and find a way to pirate what they want. They want what the artist is offering, but aren't willing to engage the artist in a market
both are equally bad in my mind and I'm pretty sure the whole piracy issue won't be laid to rest until entities come up with a way to compete in an open market in a way that isn't screwing their customers over.
It's simple. If you don't buy something you're not a customer. If you don't want to be a customer on the terms the artist has chosen when they offer their work for sale, then just walk away. There, you can't possibly be "screwed over," and neither can the artist. If you're right, and there's a huge pending market for artists who can make a living by giving away what they produce, then surely you can find them as a source for your entertainment, right? The internet is a huge place - I'm sure you can locate some willing donors who want you to spread their work around without compensation. They're out there. Why do you need "entities" to convince more of them to do that?
If you can make a case that an artist will be better off without copyright protection, and that they'll make a better living and be more able to create their works if they don't ask a price for them, then make that case. Don't just wave your hands and hope for some magic "entity" to do it for you. Go ahead: outline the business model.
I'm sure that if you actually tried to understand what I was saying you wouldn't have arrived at this conclusion
... because the artist never had their money in the first place, right? Hey, they're performing anyway, so it's not like they have to do any extra work to entertain those extra few thousand people or anything. One ticket sale should be more than enough for them, don't you think? They haven't lost anything if that one paying customer holds the fire escape door open for thousands of his close personal friends, right?
Oh, I hear you loud and clear. You're plain as day.
Not to mention that competition 'hurts' (at least by the "'loss' of potential future gain equates to harm" logic) businesses and people in the same way.
No. Legitimate competition faces the same challenges as their competitors. All businesses (from artists to large corporations) face competition. It's factored into how they address the market they're in, and anyone competing to enter that market has to find away to address the costs, risks, and work involved in producing something that will either grow the market, or make their offering more attractive.
But someone who enters into a market with the advantage of having lowered their costs or risks by ripping off something that their competitors otherwise pay for (like R&D investments, or third-party services, etc) distort that market. You can't really call someone who breaks the law in order to beat you a competitor, per se. They are harming the other people in that same market, because they're deliberately breaking the market's rules in order to have an advantage. Their ethical competition won't do that, and are thus harmed.
never even had their money in the first place
So if only one person buys a ticket to a concert, and 9,999 other people jump the fence and sneak in so they can get their entertainment without having to pay what the artist has asked, that's cool
When a law makes illegal something that a significant number of people do and don't see as wrong, that is a problem with the law, not the people breaking it. Indeed, such laws should continue to be broken.
... why, the laws against looting and vandalism are the problem, and should be broken. Right? Right.
Gotcha. So when a couple thousand college students swarm out onto a street after a sporting event, and make up almost all of the people in that street (a "significant number" of them, to use your language), and they decide to torch a few cars and smash some store windows because they're pleased or upset at what happened in some game
Ah. So you're not avoiding the issue of lost sales because it's notoriously difficult to exactly pin down who would have purchased something vs. not purchase it in the context of easy piracy ... your contention is that every single person who watches pirated movies and listens to pirated music is someone who would not otherwise have purchased it... and that that makes copyright law irrelevent to piracy. And you were lecturing somebody else about their illogical beliefs?
So speaking of agendas, what's yours?
To call the person to whom I replied (who is saying that he was arrested because a broken condom equals rape) incorrect. Because regardless of the variations in the reporting, nobody has made that contention, and it's certainly not an aspect of Swedish law. I replied to someone who is just making stuff up.
a MORONIC interpretation of the law was made, saying that 'not stopping after a condom broke is rape'.
What's your agenda, exactly, that you're deliberately mis-representing what's been said/reported? It's not that not stopping after a condom breaks is rape in Sweden, it's that not stopping after the woman says "stop!" that matters. Nobody invented that on the fly just for fun.
Mod parent down. Scent Cone is trolling every WL story with the same boring bullshit.
Way to address the substance of the matter. Trying to just shout down and getting angry if someone points out a few bits of intellectual dishonesty does sounds like a typical Assange sycophant, though, so you get points for keeping the faith. Good tactic, there, referring to a rebuttal about "world government" as boring, and thus a troll. You're a rhetorical genius, truly.
Undercover agents' identities get blown all the time, and whenever it happens, there are standard reassignment procedures in place to deal with this case. Public scrutiny isn't introducing anything new here. Similarly, it's not rocket science to reschedule a surprise inspection.
Are you really this obtuse? The "everything must be done in the open" advocates want a system in which there can be no surprise inspections or undercover cops busting, say, someone committing insurance fraud or trying to hire someone to commit a murder. You're talking about how easy it is to clean up after spilled info, but you're not addressing what the wikicult wants: no ability to have anything to go wrong in the first place. No customs agent whose home address and family can't be instantly known to armed smugglers. No ability to land Air Force One anyplace but a handful of US Air Force bases. No ability for the Treasury to operate anti-counterfeiting techniques and operations. And a thousand more things.
I wonder how much you'll have to pay prison guards once every prisoner with connections to gangs like MS13 can know the home addresses and schools of every guard's children? I wonder what you intend to do with organized crime when you can no longer seat a witness before a grand jury? How will you handle the deaths of women who can no longer keep their use of a government protection program's housing secret from the ex-husband who's sworn to beat her to death? OMG, teh internets mean that there will be no more bad people so none of that matters, right?
who is usually in the business of propping up totalitarian regimes all over the place
... France. And South Korea. And Japan. And Germany. And the UK. And Poland. And Cameroon. And Belgium. And the Netherlands. And Canada. Yes, yes, I see your point.
Yes, like