you argued it by saying I don't have a right to make my point based on who I am and what you imagine my accomplishments are
Really? Which words did I use that say that, exactly?
You are instead saying that young people in disputes with businesses deserve to be "spanked."
Really? Which words did I use that say that?
You are complaining about "young people"
No, I'm responding to your invocation of them as what you describe as victims of a court system run by, apparently, people like musicians who decide to invest some of their money to form a record label, and who do like almost every industry, and pay a trade association to handle some of their collective legal, political, and public relations issues.
the spirit of the law is that big corporations and corporate are implicitly responsible, good and therefore in the right. When they don't like what a young person does that young person is in the wrong. It's just that simple
What a bunch of whiny bullshit.
Plenty of large companies get their asses handed to them in court. And plenty of "young people" are, indeed, busy ripping off entertainment so they don't have to spend their Double Skinny Grande Half-Caffe Latte money on the movie they want to see. The funny thing is that you don't even see the irony in making absurd, sweeping generalizations as you complain about being on the recieving end of absurd, sweeping generalizations.
Come back when you have formed a business (you know, incorporated), and have spent some time dealing with the paperwork and legal entanglements. Then create something that a lot of people want, and which is therefore widely ripped off by people who don't think they have any obligation to meet their entertainers in an actual market (nope! entertainment slaves are just fine, right?), and spend some time enjoying that scenario for a while.
"Young people" who leech off of the creative people whose work they want are in no position to complain when they get spanked for doing so.
This calls the "incentive" motive for copyright into question to some extent.
Why? The work may very well have never come into existence without the creator having some expectation of reproduction rights control. Most creative professionals could never afford to dedicate all of their working hours to creative works if it could simply be ripped off and reproduced by someone else the moment it's done. So what if the author only writes one remarkable work, or spends a lifetime cranking out weekly syndicated columns?
the problem is that the current US copyright system essentially entitles an artist (or beneficiaries) to income with no additional creative effort
And people can ignore the work entirely with no effort whatsoever, too! If they want a copy of it, and the creator (or his designees) are still considering an item for sale, the people who want it can purchase it. Some creative works require years of effort, and huge investment up front in order to create. Your complaint is that people are being paid for that work after it's published. What model would you prefer... one where the author only makes money by reading the book out loud in coffee shops? Or where readers are talked into paying for a book before it's written?
Here's an idea: let the author take all the risk, as he does now, and write in advance of having actual customers. If a publisher is sufficiently impressed and wants to secure a contract to help sell the book, and wants to pay an advance to encourage that relationship, that's between the author and the publisher. But what if it takes years for the book to catch on, and to find an audience? Are you suggesting that the writer's investment in the time it takes to produce the work is a lost gamble after... a month? A year? Because if it really starts to sell a year later, that's when the author is making money with "no additional effort." Because all of the "additional effort" was risked up front (with the vast majority of writers losing that bet, and never making any money, obviously).
And as for transferring rights to, say, the author's family? How about this: he spends ten years of his life working on a major reference book that he knows will grow an audience and sell. He forgoes other ways to make money during those ten years, keeping his family's standard of living lower than it otherwise would have been, in exchange for the greater change that will come once his project becomes sellable. So, the book is published, and he dies the same day. You're saying that his substantial investment over ten years, with his family in mind, should now be a lost investment, and too bad for them... because all of the sudden it's public domain? Think it through.
Art does not belong to the artist. I'm not going to say some hippie crap like art belongs to everyone, rather I say it doesn't belong to anyone, it just is.
No. Gravity just is. Art has to be created.
You can't own blue, righteous indignation, the smell of napalm, or the force (sorry Lucas).
Do you understand why your last example is nothing at all like the first three?
We grant the privilege of profit for a period of time as a robust method of rewarding people for their efforts in proportion to how much people like the results of their mental labor.
No. We grant people the right to be in control of what they've created so that there is some incentive for people to create things in the first place. What they do with their ability to control when and how their work is reproduced is up them. Some people have no interest in profiting on a creative work, but neither do they want to see it used in cheesy advertisement by some third party, or as campaign material for a politician they can't stand. If anyone can just rip off and use your work however they see fit the moment you make, you're going to have far less of an incentive to invest the time.
Suppose she knew uploading music was illegal. She still might not have known her download software was uploading
Well, shoot. That's a fantastic excuse, isn't it? So she's innocent because she can't understand that everyone else using Limewire is making stuff available that she'd otherwise have to pay for, and she's looking at screens, right in front of her eyes that show how many people are connected to the things she's uploading, but her argument is that even though she's smart enough to install and operate the software, she's too dumb to wonder how all the magic free stuff happens? I've never met a single kid older than 10 who hasn't - for years - understood that you can buy your entertainment for pennies, through legit services, or you can go and rip it off, hoping that you'll be lost in the noise and not get caught.
Children are not expected to be adults.
Fair enough. Then her parents are the ones who are responsible for her behavior, and thus the consequences.
I have yet to see any proof... to people who were predominantly unlikely to buy it in the first place
Are you even listening to yourself? You need proof that she understood copyright law (not that ignorance of the law matters... ever try that when you've been busted speeding in your car? No?), but you're happy to make assertions about the predominant behavior of the people receiving the files she was publishing?
Are you really going to sit there and suggest that hundreds of millions of kids downloading pirated music and movies aren't, in some portion, doing it to avoid having to pay for their entertainment? Really?
It's quite Kafkaesque that the penalty for duplication would be vastly higher than the penalty for outright theft.
Except we're not talking about the quaint practice of copying a track from an LP onto a cassette for a friend, are we? We're talking about using a massive distribution network to deliberately make works available to millions of anonymous people, in perfect copies. I agree, though, that perhaps the penalties for theft should be stiffer.
some teenager shares something somewhere, and she cant have 'innocent infringement' defense
No, some teenager somewhere directly violates copyright by distrubuting protected works. And she can't have an 'innocent infringement' defense because: she's not innocent of distributing copyrighted works.
now, tell me what would happen, if wikileaks published transcripts or audio of a conversation in between riaa and judge/jury?
So, you're comparing something that somebody actually did with a fantasy imaginary event that sounds nice and sinister, but about which you're not providing any details? That's super helpful.
Huh. Never thought of it that way. Come to think of it, why are all of those idiotic filmmakers, violinists, photographers, studio musicians, makeup artists, directors, choreographers, singers, recording engineers and all of their support people, assistants, representatives, insurance agents, and everyone else even complaining, anyway? All they do is re-arrange some bits, right?
I can tell you've never actually created anything.
And you know that your favorite fantasy redneck villain is behind this (as opposed to Iranians, Chinese, Koreans, Saudis, or anyone else unhappy about their off the record discussions being made public) how, exactly? Ah, you don't. It's just a chance for you to make a petulent, sniffing, elitist poke at your favorite stereotype, from your own basement, while wearing your mother's clothes, with a Julien Assange blow-up doll in your lap. Right? Because I have just as much information about you as you have about the imaginary person you're blaming. What's especially fun is that you miss the irony of your preferred state of affairs, where "well-educated" people with broken ethics considered their own smartness to be a license to be jackasses.
Nothing like a congress to rubber stamp anything the executive desires.
Which is exactly why the newly elected congress got elected. Because the voters weren't pleased with the relationship between the current administration and the congressional majority caucus. Now it's going to be a more adversarial relationship, with greater scrutiny and more checks on the administration's policies. As it should be.
Last I checked, a NARC officer is a private individual hired to do a job. The government is elected and represents the people of the US.
Law enforcement officers at every level (city, county, state, and federal) report to and get their operational guidance from elected executives (mayors, county commissioners, governors, the White House, etc), and have their funding controlled by elected legislators (county or city councils, state or federal congresses, and so on). A county narcotics officer is no different than a State Department employee or a CIA spook in that regard.
Again, I did not say I agreed with how the information was leaked. I simply stated that if our government is performing shady/illegal activities that the public should know about it.
So you don'lt like how it was leaked, but still think it should be leaked, just to somebody who doesn't have such a god complex and a desparate need for publicity? What is it that you're doing, exactly, other than complaining that you don't think congressional oversight of the executive branch is always sufficient? So far, I'm seeing as much or more hypocrisy in your complaints than I am in any specific diplomatic action you're grousing about.
I'm saying that, currently, the general public has no way to know what shady/illegal activities our government may be performing in the name of national interests.
Of course they do. That's the whole point of having three branches of government, which serve as checks on each other. The whole point of having legislative oversight of executive activies is so that locally elected representatives - who are routinely up for re-election or change - can sound off if they see something being done by the executive branch that they think merits action.
But information is information, and now we have information we didn't have before... The information is useful, despite the messenger
So how is this any different than publishing the IDs and home addresses of every under-cover narcotics cop? After all, one of them is very likely up to no good, no matter how many others are doing hard, dangerous work that demands anonymity. Too bad, right? We need information! All of it! All the time! There is no such thing as a single trustworthy government employee, right, and only the New York Times can be trusted to know what information can be held back!
No, really. What's your point? You're saying that people can't be trusted to do work that involves secrecy, so you're trusting other people to judge what's appropriate, while completely throwing out the very real, critical strategic and tactical value of not having everything you do or say broadcast to your adversaries, or to the enemies of those you're trying to protect.
I understand that some things need to be kept secret
Do you, really? Your solution seems to be to review all of the horses as they run out of the barn, and then to close the door later.
Stop it.
Why? The current load has already identified an Iranian informant. Do you suppose that the Mullahs' regime, which kills people who protest against them, will just say, "Oh well, information is information!" and let people like that be? I see.
I always wonder why people say that, when they mean the exact opposite (could not care less, right?).
Regardles: so, your contention is that the best way to decide which communication should be allowed to be frank and private is to have government employee steal the data, provide it to a foreign person with a highly politicized agenda, and then have that person pick and choose the documents that best support his agenda while he published those secret communications in the press?
Here's a better approach. Elect people you trust, and don't re-elect the ones you don't. Your elected legislators run the oversight committees that review and entirely control the purse strings for every bit of the operations that are in discussion here. Think Nancy Pelosi was too lax in her casual blow-off of CIA briefings that she later found her constituents thought were important? Throw her out for not sharing your priorities. Don't think that the incoming congressional majority is going to be thoughtful enough about what is and isn't appropriately kept in the form of back-chanel communications between the US, China, the Russians, et al? In two years you'll have a chance to vote differently.
Having an egomaniac like Assange line up his chosen leaks to further his own agenda and self agrandizement is hardly the right way to approach it. Which illegal activities do you suppose you've busted a US diplomat in the middle of, as he's privately discussing which particular Arabs seem to be funding AQ? And how do you suppose Assange has helped to keep that important information flowing when he decides to make public information that may get an informant or on important inside-the-finance-world source killed for their trouble?
Why? Because I'm advocating the ability to retain some privacy in diplomatic communications? And because I'm calling the prior poster an idiot for his contention that the fact that we have private communications between diplomats is the reason that there are "evil deeds on a large scale" in the world? You're calling ME ridiculous?
You do understand, right, that when two diplomats talking to each other about how their countries are going to deal with the crazies like the despots running North Korea, or Venezuela, or Iran, that they need to be able to keep those conversations from the crazies in question?
Never mind. I see that you think that Iran only kills pro-democracy protestors because other countries talk privately among themselves. And that you think North Korea only enslaves its own people, and continues to push counterfeit currency, drugs, and weapons out into the world for cold cash because South Korea wants the ability to talk, in private, with the allies that help to defend it? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?
But they should not be able to communicate frankly when discussing Saudi Arabia's funding of terrorism, or China's deliberate sabotage, even as they work on a way to publicly discuss such things? Never mind, you're a blowhard, and can't imagine that a diplomat would ever be involved in anything that's not "filthy." Interesting choice of word, there, actually. You should get in a little supportive time with someone who will let you talk about your issues in private. Um, unless you think there should be no privacy between people as they discuss sensitive things... which is apparently how you think.
Wikileaks exists to make sure this stuff gets out while the responsible parties can still be held accountable
No, Wikileaks exists to publish and publicize things that are in keeping with their editorial position and world view. Which is to say, they have an agenda with particular political leanings, and that's why they do it. As for "held accountable," they choose their releases in an attempt to punish those they dislike, and to allow those they like to scate on by. This is evident in the paranoid ramblings of their oily front man, and in the headlines of their breathless, hyperbolic press releases.
But the whole point of keeping them at Guantanamo is to keep them out of the USA and so deny them the protection of the law of the capturing country.
No, that is not the whole point. Enemy combatants don't get those protections either way, when captured in the field during a conflict. But GITMO has the benefit of being isolated (from attacks by the groups that would like to rescue their captured buddies or - preferrably - 'martyr' them while they're being held), already having excellent security, and being removed from the conflict areas without having to make a giant spectacle and terror magnet out of location near some US city.
You don't even understand what you're talking about, do you? Do you even understand the relationship between embassy staff and the executives for which they work, back in their home countries? Do you understand their need to be able to communicate frankly, in private, while important negotiations are taking place? Do you have any idea the appropriate difference in tone in behind the scenese communications about other countries, and the public communication with those countries? You either do, and you're a pathetic troll, or you don't and you're pathetically ignorant. Either way, grow up.
Nope. The "max" standard of living has absolutely nothing to do with it. You could issue an executive fiat that would take away all of the personal assets and cap the lifestyles of the wealthiest 5% of US citizens (you know, the ones who pay the vast majority of all of the taxes, already), and that wouldn't, in any way, make poor people better off in the long term.
Embrace that strategy, and you're also embracing the strategy of cannibalizing anyone who makes a little more money than some other guy. That principle doesn't rest until everyone is dragged down to the lowest common denominator.
You're really arguing that people who make millions would be less "productive" if taxed at a higher rate?
No, I'm arguing that making the 5% of people in the country who pay the vast majority of the taxes pay even more of the taxes won't make poor people any more productive, but it will increase the demographic that is being given an incentive not to be so. How many tax dollars a rich basketball player or the owner of a large business pays isn't the point. The point is that you're liking the idea of taxing them more because you think that will fix what's wrong with poor people. Which couldn't possibly be more exactly wrong.
if we stop buying their media, they'll simply assume we're stealing it anyways
The people who create the entertainment that everyone is ripping off won't notice when there are no longer thousands of web sites dedicated to ripping off those works?
The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s
Nonsense. The standard of living is substantially higher - for everyone - than it was 90 years ago. How rich some people is has nothing to do with how much better off everyone is. Your class-baiting, "the pie can never grow, so the only way for anyone to enter the middle class is to take money from somebody else" clap-trap is embarassingly juvenile.
In the 1930s, we dodged lightning. FDR was a visionary
No. FDR was a patronizing rich guy (who wasn't "visionary" enough, apparently to spread his own "maldistributed" disgusting display of personal wealth around to the nearest farmhands, was he?) who directly, and personally made the Great Depression much worse, and much longer than it otherwise would have been. He hurt more poor people than any single person in the last century, and his legacy is a lower strata of squalid dependency and a sub-culture of plantation-living poor people who - thanks to people like you - blame entirely the wrong people for it and think that only cure is more of the same.
enough nuclear weapons to turn every city in the world to glass that glows in the dark
Slashdot Mirror
you argued it by saying I don't have a right to make my point based on who I am and what you imagine my accomplishments are
Really? Which words did I use that say that, exactly?
You are instead saying that young people in disputes with businesses deserve to be "spanked."
Really? Which words did I use that say that?
You are complaining about "young people"
No, I'm responding to your invocation of them as what you describe as victims of a court system run by, apparently, people like musicians who decide to invest some of their money to form a record label, and who do like almost every industry, and pay a trade association to handle some of their collective legal, political, and public relations issues.
the spirit of the law is that big corporations and corporate are implicitly responsible, good and therefore in the right. When they don't like what a young person does that young person is in the wrong. It's just that simple
What a bunch of whiny bullshit.
Plenty of large companies get their asses handed to them in court. And plenty of "young people" are, indeed, busy ripping off entertainment so they don't have to spend their Double Skinny Grande Half-Caffe Latte money on the movie they want to see. The funny thing is that you don't even see the irony in making absurd, sweeping generalizations as you complain about being on the recieving end of absurd, sweeping generalizations.
Come back when you have formed a business (you know, incorporated), and have spent some time dealing with the paperwork and legal entanglements. Then create something that a lot of people want, and which is therefore widely ripped off by people who don't think they have any obligation to meet their entertainers in an actual market (nope! entertainment slaves are just fine, right?), and spend some time enjoying that scenario for a while.
"Young people" who leech off of the creative people whose work they want are in no position to complain when they get spanked for doing so.
This calls the "incentive" motive for copyright into question to some extent.
... one where the author only makes money by reading the book out loud in coffee shops? Or where readers are talked into paying for a book before it's written?
... a month? A year? Because if it really starts to sell a year later, that's when the author is making money with "no additional effort." Because all of the "additional effort" was risked up front (with the vast majority of writers losing that bet, and never making any money, obviously).
... because all of the sudden it's public domain? Think it through.
Why? The work may very well have never come into existence without the creator having some expectation of reproduction rights control. Most creative professionals could never afford to dedicate all of their working hours to creative works if it could simply be ripped off and reproduced by someone else the moment it's done. So what if the author only writes one remarkable work, or spends a lifetime cranking out weekly syndicated columns?
the problem is that the current US copyright system essentially entitles an artist (or beneficiaries) to income with no additional creative effort
And people can ignore the work entirely with no effort whatsoever, too! If they want a copy of it, and the creator (or his designees) are still considering an item for sale, the people who want it can purchase it. Some creative works require years of effort, and huge investment up front in order to create. Your complaint is that people are being paid for that work after it's published. What model would you prefer
Here's an idea: let the author take all the risk, as he does now, and write in advance of having actual customers. If a publisher is sufficiently impressed and wants to secure a contract to help sell the book, and wants to pay an advance to encourage that relationship, that's between the author and the publisher. But what if it takes years for the book to catch on, and to find an audience? Are you suggesting that the writer's investment in the time it takes to produce the work is a lost gamble after
And as for transferring rights to, say, the author's family? How about this: he spends ten years of his life working on a major reference book that he knows will grow an audience and sell. He forgoes other ways to make money during those ten years, keeping his family's standard of living lower than it otherwise would have been, in exchange for the greater change that will come once his project becomes sellable. So, the book is published, and he dies the same day. You're saying that his substantial investment over ten years, with his family in mind, should now be a lost investment, and too bad for them
Art does not belong to the artist. I'm not going to say some hippie crap like art belongs to everyone, rather I say it doesn't belong to anyone, it just is.
No. Gravity just is. Art has to be created.
You can't own blue, righteous indignation, the smell of napalm, or the force (sorry Lucas).
Do you understand why your last example is nothing at all like the first three?
We grant the privilege of profit for a period of time as a robust method of rewarding people for their efforts in proportion to how much people like the results of their mental labor.
No. We grant people the right to be in control of what they've created so that there is some incentive for people to create things in the first place. What they do with their ability to control when and how their work is reproduced is up them. Some people have no interest in profiting on a creative work, but neither do they want to see it used in cheesy advertisement by some third party, or as campaign material for a politician they can't stand. If anyone can just rip off and use your work however they see fit the moment you make, you're going to have far less of an incentive to invest the time.
Did you miss the part where it was a hypothetical situation that he was wishing would happen?
Did YOU miss the part where he didn't describe anything? He just said "RIAA! Boo! Scary! Evil! Something something judges something juries! Eeeevil!"
Suppose she knew uploading music was illegal. She still might not have known her download software was uploading
Well, shoot. That's a fantastic excuse, isn't it? So she's innocent because she can't understand that everyone else using Limewire is making stuff available that she'd otherwise have to pay for, and she's looking at screens, right in front of her eyes that show how many people are connected to the things she's uploading, but her argument is that even though she's smart enough to install and operate the software, she's too dumb to wonder how all the magic free stuff happens? I've never met a single kid older than 10 who hasn't - for years - understood that you can buy your entertainment for pennies, through legit services, or you can go and rip it off, hoping that you'll be lost in the noise and not get caught.
Children are not expected to be adults.
Fair enough. Then her parents are the ones who are responsible for her behavior, and thus the consequences.
I have yet to see any proof ... to people who were predominantly unlikely to buy it in the first place
... ever try that when you've been busted speeding in your car? No?), but you're happy to make assertions about the predominant behavior of the people receiving the files she was publishing?
Are you even listening to yourself? You need proof that she understood copyright law (not that ignorance of the law matters
The only loss is a hypothetical loss of income
Are you really going to sit there and suggest that hundreds of millions of kids downloading pirated music and movies aren't, in some portion, doing it to avoid having to pay for their entertainment? Really?
It's quite Kafkaesque that the penalty for duplication would be vastly higher than the penalty for outright theft.
Except we're not talking about the quaint practice of copying a track from an LP onto a cassette for a friend, are we? We're talking about using a massive distribution network to deliberately make works available to millions of anonymous people, in perfect copies. I agree, though, that perhaps the penalties for theft should be stiffer.
some teenager shares something somewhere, and she cant have 'innocent infringement' defense
No, some teenager somewhere directly violates copyright by distrubuting protected works. And she can't have an 'innocent infringement' defense because: she's not innocent of distributing copyrighted works.
now, tell me what would happen, if wikileaks published transcripts or audio of a conversation in between riaa and judge/jury?
So, you're comparing something that somebody actually did with a fantasy imaginary event that sounds nice and sinister, but about which you're not providing any details? That's super helpful.
and have a lesser penalty than duplicating bits
Huh. Never thought of it that way. Come to think of it, why are all of those idiotic filmmakers, violinists, photographers, studio musicians, makeup artists, directors, choreographers, singers, recording engineers and all of their support people, assistants, representatives, insurance agents, and everyone else even complaining, anyway? All they do is re-arrange some bits, right?
I can tell you've never actually created anything.
And you know that your favorite fantasy redneck villain is behind this (as opposed to Iranians, Chinese, Koreans, Saudis, or anyone else unhappy about their off the record discussions being made public) how, exactly? Ah, you don't. It's just a chance for you to make a petulent, sniffing, elitist poke at your favorite stereotype, from your own basement, while wearing your mother's clothes, with a Julien Assange blow-up doll in your lap. Right? Because I have just as much information about you as you have about the imaginary person you're blaming. What's especially fun is that you miss the irony of your preferred state of affairs, where "well-educated" people with broken ethics considered their own smartness to be a license to be jackasses.
Nothing like a congress to rubber stamp anything the executive desires.
Which is exactly why the newly elected congress got elected. Because the voters weren't pleased with the relationship between the current administration and the congressional majority caucus. Now it's going to be a more adversarial relationship, with greater scrutiny and more checks on the administration's policies. As it should be.
Last I checked, a NARC officer is a private individual hired to do a job. The government is elected and represents the people of the US.
Law enforcement officers at every level (city, county, state, and federal) report to and get their operational guidance from elected executives (mayors, county commissioners, governors, the White House, etc), and have their funding controlled by elected legislators (county or city councils, state or federal congresses, and so on). A county narcotics officer is no different than a State Department employee or a CIA spook in that regard.
Again, I did not say I agreed with how the information was leaked. I simply stated that if our government is performing shady/illegal activities that the public should know about it.
So you don'lt like how it was leaked, but still think it should be leaked, just to somebody who doesn't have such a god complex and a desparate need for publicity? What is it that you're doing, exactly, other than complaining that you don't think congressional oversight of the executive branch is always sufficient? So far, I'm seeing as much or more hypocrisy in your complaints than I am in any specific diplomatic action you're grousing about.
I'm saying that, currently, the general public has no way to know what shady/illegal activities our government may be performing in the name of national interests.
... The information is useful, despite the messenger
Of course they do. That's the whole point of having three branches of government, which serve as checks on each other. The whole point of having legislative oversight of executive activies is so that locally elected representatives - who are routinely up for re-election or change - can sound off if they see something being done by the executive branch that they think merits action.
But information is information, and now we have information we didn't have before
So how is this any different than publishing the IDs and home addresses of every under-cover narcotics cop? After all, one of them is very likely up to no good, no matter how many others are doing hard, dangerous work that demands anonymity. Too bad, right? We need information! All of it! All the time! There is no such thing as a single trustworthy government employee, right, and only the New York Times can be trusted to know what information can be held back!
No, really. What's your point? You're saying that people can't be trusted to do work that involves secrecy, so you're trusting other people to judge what's appropriate, while completely throwing out the very real, critical strategic and tactical value of not having everything you do or say broadcast to your adversaries, or to the enemies of those you're trying to protect.
I understand that some things need to be kept secret
Do you, really? Your solution seems to be to review all of the horses as they run out of the barn, and then to close the door later.
Stop it.
Why? The current load has already identified an Iranian informant. Do you suppose that the Mullahs' regime, which kills people who protest against them, will just say, "Oh well, information is information!" and let people like that be? I see.
they could care less
I always wonder why people say that, when they mean the exact opposite (could not care less, right?).
Regardles: so, your contention is that the best way to decide which communication should be allowed to be frank and private is to have government employee steal the data, provide it to a foreign person with a highly politicized agenda, and then have that person pick and choose the documents that best support his agenda while he published those secret communications in the press?
Here's a better approach. Elect people you trust, and don't re-elect the ones you don't. Your elected legislators run the oversight committees that review and entirely control the purse strings for every bit of the operations that are in discussion here. Think Nancy Pelosi was too lax in her casual blow-off of CIA briefings that she later found her constituents thought were important? Throw her out for not sharing your priorities. Don't think that the incoming congressional majority is going to be thoughtful enough about what is and isn't appropriately kept in the form of back-chanel communications between the US, China, the Russians, et al? In two years you'll have a chance to vote differently.
Having an egomaniac like Assange line up his chosen leaks to further his own agenda and self agrandizement is hardly the right way to approach it. Which illegal activities do you suppose you've busted a US diplomat in the middle of, as he's privately discussing which particular Arabs seem to be funding AQ? And how do you suppose Assange has helped to keep that important information flowing when he decides to make public information that may get an informant or on important inside-the-finance-world source killed for their trouble?
Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Why? Because I'm advocating the ability to retain some privacy in diplomatic communications? And because I'm calling the prior poster an idiot for his contention that the fact that we have private communications between diplomats is the reason that there are "evil deeds on a large scale" in the world? You're calling ME ridiculous?
You do understand, right, that when two diplomats talking to each other about how their countries are going to deal with the crazies like the despots running North Korea, or Venezuela, or Iran, that they need to be able to keep those conversations from the crazies in question? Never mind. I see that you think that Iran only kills pro-democracy protestors because other countries talk privately among themselves. And that you think North Korea only enslaves its own people, and continues to push counterfeit currency, drugs, and weapons out into the world for cold cash because South Korea wants the ability to talk, in private, with the allies that help to defend it? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?
But they should not be able to communicate frankly when discussing Saudi Arabia's funding of terrorism, or China's deliberate sabotage, even as they work on a way to publicly discuss such things? Never mind, you're a blowhard, and can't imagine that a diplomat would ever be involved in anything that's not "filthy." Interesting choice of word, there, actually. You should get in a little supportive time with someone who will let you talk about your issues in private. Um, unless you think there should be no privacy between people as they discuss sensitive things ... which is apparently how you think.
Wikileaks exists to make sure this stuff gets out while the responsible parties can still be held accountable
No, Wikileaks exists to publish and publicize things that are in keeping with their editorial position and world view. Which is to say, they have an agenda with particular political leanings, and that's why they do it. As for "held accountable," they choose their releases in an attempt to punish those they dislike, and to allow those they like to scate on by. This is evident in the paranoid ramblings of their oily front man, and in the headlines of their breathless, hyperbolic press releases.
But the whole point of keeping them at Guantanamo is to keep them out of the USA and so deny them the protection of the law of the capturing country.
No, that is not the whole point. Enemy combatants don't get those protections either way, when captured in the field during a conflict. But GITMO has the benefit of being isolated (from attacks by the groups that would like to rescue their captured buddies or - preferrably - 'martyr' them while they're being held), already having excellent security, and being removed from the conflict areas without having to make a giant spectacle and terror magnet out of location near some US city.
This reveals how bad it have become
You don't even understand what you're talking about, do you? Do you even understand the relationship between embassy staff and the executives for which they work, back in their home countries? Do you understand their need to be able to communicate frankly, in private, while important negotiations are taking place? Do you have any idea the appropriate difference in tone in behind the scenese communications about other countries, and the public communication with those countries? You either do, and you're a pathetic troll, or you don't and you're pathetically ignorant. Either way, grow up.
Nope. The "max" standard of living has absolutely nothing to do with it. You could issue an executive fiat that would take away all of the personal assets and cap the lifestyles of the wealthiest 5% of US citizens (you know, the ones who pay the vast majority of all of the taxes, already), and that wouldn't, in any way, make poor people better off in the long term.
Embrace that strategy, and you're also embracing the strategy of cannibalizing anyone who makes a little more money than some other guy. That principle doesn't rest until everyone is dragged down to the lowest common denominator.
You're really arguing that people who make millions would be less "productive" if taxed at a higher rate?
No, I'm arguing that making the 5% of people in the country who pay the vast majority of the taxes pay even more of the taxes won't make poor people any more productive, but it will increase the demographic that is being given an incentive not to be so. How many tax dollars a rich basketball player or the owner of a large business pays isn't the point. The point is that you're liking the idea of taxing them more because you think that will fix what's wrong with poor people. Which couldn't possibly be more exactly wrong.
I see. So your solution is to make slaves out of the productive people, so that poor people can have more stuff.
if we stop buying their media, they'll simply assume we're stealing it anyways
The people who create the entertainment that everyone is ripping off won't notice when there are no longer thousands of web sites dedicated to ripping off those works?
The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s
Nonsense. The standard of living is substantially higher - for everyone - than it was 90 years ago. How rich some people is has nothing to do with how much better off everyone is. Your class-baiting, "the pie can never grow, so the only way for anyone to enter the middle class is to take money from somebody else" clap-trap is embarassingly juvenile.
In the 1930s, we dodged lightning. FDR was a visionary
No. FDR was a patronizing rich guy (who wasn't "visionary" enough, apparently to spread his own "maldistributed" disgusting display of personal wealth around to the nearest farmhands, was he?) who directly, and personally made the Great Depression much worse, and much longer than it otherwise would have been. He hurt more poor people than any single person in the last century, and his legacy is a lower strata of squalid dependency and a sub-culture of plantation-living poor people who - thanks to people like you - blame entirely the wrong people for it and think that only cure is more of the same.
enough nuclear weapons to turn every city in the world to glass that glows in the dark
Give it a rest, already.